‘Capital,’ Duffy said. ‘Good old what’s-your-name!’
‘Mervyn,’ Cheel said, between teeth suddenly chattering with rage.
‘Mervie. I’ll call you Mervie. Good old Mervie.’ Duffy drained his glass in the expectation of what was to come. He could only have been described as already in liquor. ‘And tell him to get out his Hoyo Coronas at the same time. There’s not a better six-and-sixpenny cigar in London.’
‘I quite agree.’ To his own ear, Cheel managed this concurrence with an air of easy authority. He gave the necessary instructions to the head waiter, who received them with every appearance of courteously dissimulated contempt. ‘Sebastian Holme’s pictures,’ he said firmly to Wutherspoon. ‘I’m asking you whether, to your own certain knowledge, they were all definitely destroyed?’
‘Damned impertinent inquisition!’ Wutherspoon produced this with a sudden and flabbergasting roar as he dug a fork savagely into the ruinous concoction before him. ‘Duffy, who is this awful little man? What’s he doing at our table? Have him put out! Have him taken away!’
‘Steady, Wuggles my boy.’ Duffy was admonitory but not disturbed. ‘This is Mervie, you know. Civil little man I picked up somewhere on the Riviera. Not just one of us, perhaps. But a decent sort of yob, and swimming in the gravy. You should see his bloody car.’
Cheel rose to his feet, gibbering with fury. Then he abruptly sat down again. He realized with horror that both these ghastly men had contrived to get drunk without his noticing it. Perhaps that was why Debby had withdrawn. And now people at the nearer tables were turning and staring. He remembered the rather ticklish exit he had been constrained to make with Hedda Holme from another and less pretentious restaurant. This time, it looked like being worse.
‘Put him out!’ Wutherspoon shouted again. ‘A damned insolent intrusion!’ He took a large gobbet of the disgusting
soufflé
, or whatever the thing was. Ingested in such a passion, it ought to have choked him. But its effect was quite different. ‘Just quieten down,’ he said to Cheel. ‘You’re in danger of creating a scene, my dear chap. Nobody minds a fellow getting a bit tight. But hold it, old boy. Hold it like a gentleman.’
‘Good old Wuggles!’ Duffy said. ‘Good old Mervie! Good old Debby!’ He broke off and looked around him. ‘Where the hell
is
Debby?’
This question was answered as he spoke. An enormous figure, livened in the manner of a doorkeeper or linkman, had appeared at the entrance to the restaurant and was now advancing upon the three diners. Cheel took it for granted that they were all about to be chucked out. The man, however, paused beside Duffy, and made a respectful bow.
‘Madam’s compliments, sir, and she regrets she has had to leave.’
‘Had to leave, eh?’ Duffy seemed not particularly perturbed. ‘Tummy gone wrong, perhaps?’
‘No, sir. She sent a message, sir. Something she had remembered. A visit to pay. An overdue visit, she said, to her old governess. With her compliments, sir, as I said.’
Duffy received this communication – which could scarcely have been intended for credence, Cheel supposed – with an amiably dismissive wave of the hand. Then he seemed to recollect himself.
‘Mervie, old boy,’ he said, ‘give this chap half-a-crown – there’s a good fellow. No – damn it! – give him five bob. And where’s that brandy? We’ve the night before us.’
To revel into the small hours with Duffy and Wuggles was something Mervyn Cheel simply couldn’t take. His mature self knowledge (which has already so variously exhibited itself in this narrative) told him at once that if he made the attempt he would probably end up by committing murder. He therefore worked the lavatory game. That is to say, he withdrew from his companions precisely as Debby had appeared to do; and like Debby he didn’t return. Unlike Debby, however, he sent back no message about an old governess, or even about an old tutor. He just collected his hat and coat, and walked out. The perfect simplicity of this manoeuvre pleased him very much – particularly when he reflected that it had left Duffy and Wuggles to face the bill, after all. He had decided that, in the way of information, there was nothing more to be got out of either of them. And as neither of them looked like being good for anything else – or for anything more, say, than an occasional casual drink – they were in the most obvious sense expendable. It was true that they might, upon some future occasion, fall in with him and exact vengeance. They might even deliberately chase him up with that in view. But on the whole this seemed not probable, since they were both so tight that it was unlikely they would preserve any clear memory of what the evening had been about.
It was in very reasonable good humour, then, that Cheel recovered his splendid car and drove home to the comfortable flat with which he had now provided himself. The arduous day could close with the most innocent of pleasures: a hot bath, a night-cap, and a quiet half-hour with a volume chosen at random from his very respectable collection of refined
erotica
.
Unfortunately this plan didn’t materialize. He had hardly closed the door behind him when he realized that beneath his good humour an indefinable uneasiness was at work. The feeling was the more unpleasant because he felt that he ought to be able to explain it. For some time he mooned about indecisively. He turned on a bath, and then turned it off. He poured himself a drink, and then abandoned it on the chimney-piece. He chose a book, and it didn’t seem to tickle him at all. Perhaps, he thought, he was suffering delayed shock from the atrocious behaviour of the savage Rumbelow in Burlington House. Perhaps he didn’t trust Braunkopf. Perhaps –
Quite suddenly, Cheel spotted the trouble – the operative trouble at the moment. (There were a good many others, after all, rather ominously prowling on the horizon.) There had been something factitious – something bogus, to use a vulgar expression – about that sudden outburst from the man Wutherspoon when he had been tackled about Sebastian Holme’s pictures. At the time, the gross indignity of the expressions then directed at Cheel had obscured this fact from him. But he saw it clearly now. Wutherspoon had been concerned to break off the topic. In other words, Wutherspoon knew something he had been trying to conceal. Could he, conceivably, be possessed of the truth about Sebastian Holme’s continued painful drawing of breath in this harsh world? If he were, could he be hoping (as would be only rational, after all) somehow to cash in on his knowledge? He had spoken bitterly of having returned to England in penury. Did he know something that might get him out of it?
Mervyn Cheel prowled up and down, gloomily perpending these questions. He had a baffled feeling that they had got him well into a target area, but that he still hadn’t scored a bull’s-eye. This irritated him. Glancing around him, he saw, carefully wrapped up in brown paper, the only freshly re-created painting of Holme’s that now remained to him. That morning there had been two. But ‘Clouded Leopards Playing’ was now locked up in the Da Vinci Gallery.
Holme must be given a sharp prodding. This persuasion came to Cheel with a force from which he ought to have taken warning that it wasn’t entirely rational. In sober fact, the painter’s industry was phenomenal; there were several virtually completed pictures in his attic fastness now; within the week, another had been coming along. These circumstances should have been prominent in Cheel’s mind at this moment. It would have been well if he could have realized that Passion was usurping the Rule of Reason in his mind. He had been a good deal harried in the course of the day. He wanted to harry Holme.
Another thought came to him. Within this same past week, Holme had for the first time demanded quite a lot of money. Not, it was true, in any
absolute
reckoning a considerable amount. In fact it had been no more than £50. But what earthly occasion did the man have for even that? When one looked at it in this way, one saw clearly that Sebastian Holme was becoming displeasingly grasping. Not only must he be prodded along. He must also be pulled up.
At this point Cheel remembered that he had certain supplies to deliver to Holme. For their original arrangement had been maintained. Cheel had done all the purchasing of artists’ materials, and had delivered them at his own former lodging. Holme oughtn’t to be given any excuse for idleness on the pretext of not having received this or that on time. Cheel would go along with these various commodities now. The hour, indeed, was late. But it would do no harm to show Holme that there was no time of the day or night at which he mightn’t expect to be kept an eye on.
It is melancholy to have to remark that in all this there might have been detected at play an element of mere and useless fantasy. It was the fantasy of Cheel as Master and Holme as Thrall. If it had come to birth on any specific occasion, that occasion may well have been the moment of Holme’s turning from the abstract pointillist creations of his fellow-conspirator with the dispassionate remark that they were pretty average rubbish. At that moment, of course, Cheel would have liked to have possessed some means of taking the young man’s hide off his back. And this feeling had conceivably remained with him. Had he, at this present juncture, had mental recourse to his favourite play, he might have reflected that one who proposes to thrive by making his fool his purse (which was precisely his design upon Sebastian Holme) must not, indeed, dull device by coldness and delay – but must have an equal care to go to work tenderly. Cheel didn’t go to work tenderly now. He was annoyed. And at this late hour he tumbled out of his flat again, resolved a little to twist the tail of Sebastian Holme.
The attic apartment from which Cheel had lately withdrawn, and in which Sebastian Holme now led his industrious and reclusive life, had at one time accommodated the three or four female servants deemed requisite in the London establishment of a solid although not notably prosperous citizen. The citizen had long since departed; the tall house – never other than unbeautiful – had a shabby and disgraced air; its staircase was now the common means of entrance to a warren of unassuming but by no means inexpensive flats.
Cheel parked his car round the corner (for some reason he hesitated to advertise his new splendour in this old haunt) and collected in his arms the various supplies that Holme’s present activities required – including a large canvas which was quite soon (Cheel reflected) going to be worth several pounds sterling per square inch. He moved round to the front of the house and observed that its upper parts were in complete darkness. Holme must have gone to bed. This might be regarded as satisfactory, since it no doubt conduced to his working efficiency that he should keep regular and early hours. If he was asleep by eleven there was no reason why he should not be standing before his easel by eight the next morning. And if he was asleep now Cheel would have the satisfaction of waking him up without ceremony.
The windows on the second floor were lit up, however, and there were sounds suggesting that someone was giving a party. Cheel had never held much commerce with his former neighbours, and he did not expect to meet any of them now. But in this he was mistaken. Just as he climbed the stairs the party began to break up, and several people gave him a perfunctory greeting as they passed. The tenant on the second floor, who went by the name of Binchy, was a sub-artistic character understood to scramble up a living out of scratching designs on glass. Binchy was standing in his doorway, speeding his parting guests. He hailed Cheel now.
‘Evening to you,’ he said. ‘Another whacking canvas, eh? That’s the second I’ve seen you scurrying home with. Quite stepping up your ambitions, aren’t you? It will take you the hell of a time to cover a surface like that with all those damned silly little spots.’
This highly offensive manner of referring to the art of abstract pointillism not unnaturally gave marked offence to Cheel, who responded only with a stiff inclination of the head. At the same time it struck him as reassuring that even a close neighbour like Binchy was unaware of the change of tenancy that had occurred. Holme’s very existence, it seemed, must be totally unsuspected. It might be a good idea, even at some sacrifice of dignity, to encourage Binchy in his ignorance. Cheel therefore turned round and assumed an affable manner.
‘It’s certainly not my old style of thing,’ he said, tapping the stretcher of the canvas. ‘I’m busy at something quite different, as a matter of fact.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Aha!’ Despite himself, Cheel gave a cackle of laughter. ‘As to that, my dear fellow, I’m not sure that I ought to tell you. I’m not sure, indeed, that anybody will ever quite
precisely
know.’ Cheel was about to turn away when he remembered how very rude this nasty man had just been. ‘And how are the jolly old lavatory windows and tooth-mugs?’ he asked. ‘So long.’ He gave a triumphant nod, and climbed the next flight of stairs.
The top landing was in darkness. He had to set down his burden and fumble for the light-switch. When he found it, a flick at it produced no result. Somebody – presumably Holme – had failed to replace a burnt-out bulb. Moreover the door of the attic was locked, so that he had to fumble further for a key which he had sensibly retained. These awkward movements put him in an ill humour again. He unlocked the door and flung it open. He found and turned on the light.
‘Wakeup!’ he said, loudly and peremptorily.
But his words had no effect – for the good reason that the attic was empty.
There could be no doubt of it. The place consisted only of the one large room. Cheel himself had rigged up a screen which to some extent demarcated his sleeping from his waking life. But this, at the start, Holme had torn down and tossed aside. A glance was enough to confirm the disconcerting fact that Sebastian Holme had vanished.
For a moment Cheel felt something like hideous panic. He had, after all, experienced a very trying day, and it is understandable that, for a brief space, his nerve should desert him. What if Holme – as once in St James’s Park – had toyed (this time fatally) with the impulse to contact the police? Almost for the first time, it crossed Cheel’s mind that if Holme was in
his
power, so, equally, was he in
Holme
’s. If the unaccountable young man (and he was, distinguishably, that) chose to have a fit of conscience – or merely elected some rash throwing-over of the traces – things might turn very awkward indeed.