Читать книгу The Salt Of The Earth - Fred M. White - Страница 6

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Denne's offices were a dominant note in the architectural harmony of the Thames Embankment. The building stood out light and graceful as some Venetian palace, the whole structure being of marble, most of which had been imported. There were well-kept walks and gardens and lawns trim and velvety, as if they had been laid for a century. The ground floor was principally devoted to business purposes, and above were the magnificent suite of rooms where Denne kept his art treasures, and were he entertained his friends in his own lavish fashion. To a certain extent he had followed the lead of the New York millionaires in Fifth-avenue, but there was a note of originality which inspired everything that Denne did. He had his own swimming bath and tennis court; its fact, he had enjoyed the building of his palace, and was tired of it long before the last nail had been driven into the last carpet. In his cynical way he was wont to declare that he had built the place to oblige his friends, though who his friends were he would have found it difficult to say.

Denne was seated in his private office playing with his correspondence. Despite his many interests, and the score of irons he had in the fire, he was by no means a hard-working man, for, like most of his class, he had the gift of picking out the right men to do the work for him. Without this attribute it is impossible for a man to be a multi-millionaire.

So long as Denne rode the whirlwind and directed the storm, the rest followed automatically. He pushed aside a pile of signed letters and shrugged his shoulders. What an easy game when one came to understand it! How comparatively simple to pile up money when the information is right, and one has the exclusive use of a private cable. There were times when Denne was sick of making money—and this was one of them. He pressed one of the numerous buttons by the side of his writing table, and gave an order to the clerk who appeared in reply. A moment later a little man with a shiny bald head slid noiselessly into the room.

He was a strange-looking creature, small and slightly bent. He had a face of exceptional pallor, save at the roots of his hair, which was a bright parchment yellow. The skin on the face was devoid of a single wrinkle, the restless dark eyes had all the fire and sparkle of youth. The man's moustache and whiskers were black and lustrous and unstreaked with grey. His hands were soft as if well manicured. There was a touch of the effeminate about him, and yet a close observer would have noticed that in some faint intangible way Paul Lestrine suggested ripe experience allied with the full weight of years. As a matter of fact, the man was old, so old that he could hardly recollect how many years he numbered. All cities seemed one to him; he was equally at home in Paris, or Rome, or Vienna, and spoke half-a-dozen languages fluently. There was Italian, French and Russian blood in his veins. He was Ishmaelite to his finger tips, but clever, close, and secret as the grave.

There was a strong affinity between these two men, though they repelled one another, and Paul Lestrine hated his patron with a malignity that left nothing to be desired. But Denne was a generous employer, and Lestrine loved money. He was fond of it for its own sake. The mere touch of gold in his palm was to him like a draught of wine to a weary traveller. Who he was and whence he came Denne had not the slightest idea. It was enough that he was a man who carried out strange commissions and secret orders swiftly and silently without question. Nothing that Denne could suggest caused any surprise on the part of Lestrine. It was merely a question of money, and for a handsome cheque he was prepared to do anything that Denne put in his way.

Denne nodded curtly, and Lestrine bowed.

"Did you manage to get it?" Denne asked.

"Even so, sir," Lestrine replied in perfect English. "I have done exactly as you wished. It cost me more money than I expected, but the picture is in my office. Perhaps you would like to see it."

Denne nodded again, Lestrine slipped out of the room, and returned a little later with a square brown paper parcel which he proceeded to lay upon his employer's table. He stripped the covering aside, and there stood revealed a portrait of a woman of rank in the best style of Velasquez. Denne laid his hand almost lovingly on the canvas. Here was one of the few things likely to stir some of the sap of his dead enthusiasm.

"Magnificent," he said. "Ah, you are even cleverer than I took you to be. So this is the Velasquez."

"It is, sir," Lestrine went on in the same voice. "This is the picture which was stolen some two centuries ago from the Royal Palace at Madrid. For two centuries collectors have been seeking it in vain. According to so eminent an authority as Hoppenheim, the picture was originally brought to England and came into the possession of a man of family in the North of Scotland. His successors were ignorant of the value of their treasure, and, indeed, for some thirty or forty years the Velasquez was used as a fire screen in the hall."

"Yes, we know all about that," Denne said. "But suppose we send the picture to Christie's, what will it fetch?"

"Forty-five thousand guineas," Lestrine answered promptly. "That is what the picture would bring. Am I over wrong in matters of this kind? But surely, sir, you would never sell it. You couldn't find it in your heart to part with a treasure like that. Besides, it has already cost you half that sum."

"Quite right," Denne smiled. "I haven't the faintest inclination to place it under the hammer. As a matter of fact, I am going to give it away."

Lestrine expressed no surprise or indignation. On the contrary, his back curved to a rounder angle, his features were pinched and condensed into a kind of silent mirth which had something almost Mephistophelian about it. There was a dry, hard joke somewhere, and it touched Lestrine on his humorous side.

"Ah, what it is to be able to dispose of things like a Napoleon," he chuckled. "When I go to the theatre, all the world becomes the stage, and the men and women merely players at a wave of your cheque-book. To whom do you think of giving this picture, sir?"

There was no sign of mirth on Denne's face. He permitted Lestrine to indulge in an outburst like this sometimes.

"To Mr. Mark Callader," he said. "I think you have already had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Callader. He does me the honor of coming here to eat my dinners and use my tennis court. He even brings his friends also. My good Lestrine, tell me in confidence, what you think of Mr. Callader."

"Yahoo," Lestrine said with a convulsive grin. "A choice blackguard, my patron. Oh, I know there is nothing one can put one's hands on. But that man is an out-and-out blackguard. If he had been poor he would have found himself in gaol long ago. Half the women in London are running after him, and yet I wouldn't place any dog of mine under his care."

"He is going to marry one of the handsomest women in the world," Denne said inconsequently. "I suppose you don't look upon Miss Adela Burton as a lucky girl."

Lestrine made a movement as of one who handles a whip.

"He will beat her. He will abuse her. It is in the nature of the man. And so it is to him that you are going to give this beautiful picture! Do you know what I would do with you if it were safe?"

"Knife me, perhaps," Denne laughed.

"No, my master," Lestrine said coolly. "Violence is not to my taste. I would poison you rather than you should part with this marvelous treasure. I would rob you of it now if I could. I would keep it under my humble roof where I could worship it day by day. In all the wide world there is nothing like art. It is the one thing in all the wide world that satisfies and never deceives you. But I am rambling. What do you want me to do?"

"I was coming to that," Denne said thoughtfully. "Out of all the singular commissions I have given you this is, perhaps, the strangest and most unaccountable. You know Mr. Callader's place in the North, the seat in Northumberland, which he is nursing till his nephew comes of age?"

"Do I not?" Lestrine responded. "Is there a single palace or castle in Europe whose treasures I have not inspected? I tell you all such things are wasted in Callader Castle. There are almost priceless works of art in those dark rooms on which the blessed sun never shines. I don't suppose Mr. Callader even knows what he has got. It is strange that so fine a judge should be so careless as to the disposal of family treasures."

"Well, I am not complaining," Denne said. "What you have pointed out to me is a distinct asset in the game I play. Now, what I want you to do is this—of course, nobody knows that the great Velasquez has come into our hands."

"Not a soul."

"Very good. Then you are to go north with the picture. Find some pretext for visiting Callader Castle, and take the Velasquez with you, ostensibly on the ground that you wish to compare it with other pictures there. You will contrive to leave it behind, concealed in some out-of-the-way place, and later on some virtuoso must find it, so that it will appear quite natural that all these years the finest Velasquez has been hidden away at Callader Castle. There will be no trouble over this. Much the same thing has happened to a score of famous pictures."

Lestrine expressed no surprise.

"Of course the thing can be managed," he said. "It is not for me to ask why you are putting all this money in Mr. Callader's pocket. It is only for me to do as I am told."

"I have my own ideas," he said. "No matter what end I mean to achieve. Take the painting away and do exactly as I tell you. I want to be alone."

Very carefully and tenderly Lestrine wrapped up the painting, hugging it to his heart as it it were a beloved child. He passed out presently on the side stairs, muttering to himself as he went, a puzzled frown knitting his brows.

"What's his game? That is the only man in the world who baffles me, and the world seems to understand him well enough. I would give five hundred pounds, aye, a thousand pounds, to know what this means. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. I would not stand in the shoes of Mr. Callader, not even to own the Velasquez."