The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (67 page)

“Here’s the breeze again,” said the second mate, a minute later. “We’re moving.” He turned, without another word, and raced aft to the wheel, while the vessel slid over and through the weed field.

Meanwhile, Captain Jeldy had sung out to the men, who had opened the port forecastle door, to keep under cover until he told them to come out. Then he turned to have a look at the vessel itself.

“Look where that brute broke up the sheep-pen!” cried Jeldy, pointing. “And here’s the skylight of the sail locker smashed to bits!”

He walked across to it and glanced down. And suddenly he let out a thunderous shout of astonishment:

“Here’s the Mate, down here!” he shouted. “He’s not over board at all! He’s here!”

He dropped himself down through the skylight on to the sails, and I after him; and, surely, there was the Mate, lying all huddled and insensible on a hummock of spare sails. In his right hand he held a drawn sheath knife, which he was in the habit of carrying, A.B. fashion, while his left hand was all caked with dried blood where he had been badly cut. Afterward we concluded he had cut himself in slashing at one of the tentacles of the squid, which had caught him round the left wrist, the tip of the tentacle being still curled, cruelly tight, about his arm, just as it had been when he hacked it through.

For the rest, it will please you, I am sure, to know that he was not seriously damaged; the creature having obviously flung him violently away, as he slashed at it, so that he had fallen in a stunned condition on to the pile of sails.

We got him on deck and down into his bunk, where we left the steward to attend to him. When we returned to the poop, the vessel had drawn clear of the weed field, and the Captain and I stopped for a few moments to stare astern over the taffrail. The second mate turned also, as he stood at the wheel, and the three of us looked in a silence at that Death Patch lying so quiet and sullen in the dawn.

As we stood and looked, something wavered up out of the heart of the weed—a long, tapering, sinuous thing, that curled and wavered against the dawn-light, and presently sank back again into the demure weed—a veritable spider of the deep, waiting in the great web that Dame Nature had spun for it, in the eddy of her tides and currents.

And we sailed away northward, with strengthening Trades, and left that patch of monstrousness to the loneliness of the sea.

/* */

Captain Gunbolt Charity
and the Painted Lady

S.S. Boston.

April 2nd. Evening.

I
had a splendid offer made me to-day. A man came aboard, with what looked like a drawing-board, wrapped in brown paper.

He had a letter of introduction from a man who knows me.

“My name’s Black, as I guess Mr. Abel’s told you in the letter,” he said. “I want to talk business with you, Cap’n Charity.”

“Go ahead!” I said.

“What I say, goes no further, that’s understood, I guess?” he asked. “Mr. Abel gave you a good name, Cap’n, an’ he told me a thing or two about you that sounded pretty safe to me.”

“I’m mum!” I told him. “If you’ve murdered someone, it’s no concern of mine, and I don’t want to hear about it. If it’s anything clean, get it off your chest. You’ll find me a good listener.”

He nodded.

“You know about that Mona Lisa bit of goods?” he asked me.

“The picture?” I said.

He nodded again.

“Well,” he said, “they got the wrong one. That’s a copy that’s been made from the original. It’s a mighty good copy. It should be; it cost me over twenty thousand dollars, before it was finished.

“It’s so good, you couldn’t make ’em believe it isn’t the original. I got the original, though, safe and sound; and a patron of mine’s mad for it. That’s what I came to see you about. I’ve got to get it taken across and through the U.S.A. Customs.”

“But you don’t tell me that a copy could fool all the art experts who’ve seen the recovered Mona Lisa?” I said. “Why the old canvas—”

“Wood, Cap’n,” he interpolated.

“It’s on wood, is it? “ I said. “I’d never realised that. Well you don’t tell me they don’t know the kind of wood, and the smell and the general oldness and the seasonedness, and all the rest of it, of a panel of wood as old as that must be. The very smell of it would be enough to tell them whether it was the original or not.

“And that’s not all! Why the pigments they used; they can’t be matched to-day, so I understand. And how’d you get the ‘time tone,’ the ‘time surface’—? Why, man, any one of these things could never be faked properly—not well enough to deceive an expert who knew his business. And then, I shouldn’t think it would be possible for any man alive to even imitate the feeling of the picture—that is, if it’s anything like I’m inclined to believe it must be.

“Don’t you see, your tale won’t wash. All these things put together, make a picture as famous as the Gioconda absolutely un-forgable—that is, of course, to an expert.”

“Now, Cap’n,” he said, “you’ve had your say, and I’ll have mine.”

“First of all, to get a panel that could not be pronounced anything but genuine, Cap’n, I had the Mona Lisa panel split, using a special machine-saw for the purpose. It was an anxious job, I can promise you. The man who cut it was an expert at his job, and the saw was a specially made ribbon-saw, with hair-fine teeth.

“He practised on a dozen model panels, before I’d let him split the Mona. Then he put the picture flat on the steel saw-table, and he just skinned off the Mona with no more than a sixteenth of an inch of wood under her. He did it as easy and smooth as skimming milk; but I just stood and sweated till it was done.

“He got a hundred dollars for that ten minutes’ bit of work, and I guess I got a hundred extra grey hairs.

“Well, Cap’n, then I took the Mona, and mounted her on a brand new panel, for she was on a layer of wood so thin that she bent just with picking her up.

“That’s how we got the panel for the copy. The copy’s painted on the old Mona Lisa panel. Smart, wasn’t it? I guess the Experts couldn’t get past that—what! Not much, Sir!

“Queer, when you come to think of it, Cap’n, that if those Frenchmen only thought to notice it (not that they could, after not seeing the lady for a couple of years!) they’d the clue right there, in the thinner panel, that the Mona’s been doctored!

“Great, I call it! And she’ll hang there all through the ages; and people’ll come from all parts and stare and gasp and go away, feeling they’ve seen the only Genuine! And all the time she’ll be where all the real stuff’s going—in God’s own country, Sir— U.S.A. That’s her.

“And to think a pair of calipers would give the whole show away, if only they’d taken the thickness of the panel, before a ‘friend’ of mine lifted her out of the Louvre!”

“That was smart, certainly,” I said. “You can spin a good cuffer. What about the old pigments and all the rest of the impossible things—eh?”

“The pigments, Cap’n, cost me exactly fifteen thousand dollars in cold cash. I bought old canvasses of the same period—some of them were not bad either, and I scraped ’em, Sir. Yes I did, for the pigments that were on ’em. Nearly broke my heart! But this is a big business. Then an old painter I know, got the job of his life. He’s as clever a man as ever stole a canvas, ’cause he hadn’t money to pay for it.

“I got hold of him and locked him up in a room for three months, to get the drink out of him. If someone’d done that for him regular, and given him paint, brushes and canvas, he’d have been pretty near as big a man as the Master himself; but he never could keep his elbow down.

“At the end of the three months, when I’d all my pigments re-ground and mixed ready for use, I showed him the Mona and the empty panel. He went down on to his blessed knees to the thing, and pretty near worshipped.

“I told him there were five thousand big fat dollars for him, the day he’d finished a copy of her, on the wooden panel; that’s if the copy were so good, I couldn’t tell one from t’other.

“Well, Cap’n, he did it. And he did it properly, like a monk might pray. Four months he took; and when it was finished,
 
I couldn’t have told one painting from the other except that the new one wanted ‘sunning’—that’s a little secret of my own. I do part of it with a mercury lamp, and part of it with the sun and coloured glass. I gave her a solid year of that treatment, while she was drying and hardening. Then I’d have defied L. da V. himself to tell one from t’other!”

“And the chap who painted the copy” I asked.

“He got his five thousand bucks,” he said, casually. “There’s a lot of absinthe in five thousand dollars.”

“Poor devil,” I said. “What was the idea of getting this copy made for twenty thousand dollars, when you had the real thing?”

“It was for the French Government to sneak,” he told me.

“What?” I said.

“It was for a plant!” he explained. “It was going to be ‘planted’; and then an agent of mine was going to approach the picture-dealers and offer to sell it, as the real thing, you know.

“And of course, I knew no dealer on the East side the duck-pond would look at it. No use to anyone this side, except to get ’em into bad trouble. I knew the next thing they’d do, would be to lay information, for the sake of the reward and the press notices.”

“Well,” I asked, “what had you to gain by all that, and what did you gain by getting your agent into the hands of the police?”

“He bungled things!” he told me. “It wasn’t my fault he got nabbed. However, he don’t matter. He’ll be made for life, when he comes out clear of all the bother. I’ll see to that; and he knows he can trust me, so long as he holds his tongue.”

“But the reason you wanted the authorities to cop the copy you’d spent twenty thousand dollars on?” I asked again. “If you were so anxious for them to have a copy, why didn’t you offer to sell it back? They’d have paid a decent sum—quite decent, I should imagine—that’s if they couldn’t get their hands on you first!”

“That’s just the point,” he explained. “If I’d offered to sell back the picture, they’d have approached it in a more suspicious spirit; and I want no blessed suspicions at all, Cap’n. If they thought I was trying to get rid of the original, secretly to a dealer, and that they had dropped on me unexpectedly, then their whole frame of mind would be the way I want it to be—see?

“You see, Cap’n, I paid twenty thousand dollars odd to get that copy made, simply for a blind. I’m taking the original out to U.S.A. where I’ve got a patron for it at five hundred thousand dollars, as I’ve told you; or anyway as I’m telling you now.

“But he won’t even look at it, if there’s going to be any bother attached. I’ve to clean up behind me. I’d to let the French Government have back what they think is their picture; and then my patron can hang the original in his private gallery, without fear of trouble.

“He’s a real collector, and it’s sufficient for him to know he’s got the original, under his own roof-slates, without wanting to shout the song half across the world, like a society hostess.

“If there are any comments, he’ll acknowledge it to be what it isn’t—and that’s a copy. This is bound to go down, as people are convinced the original is clamped up good and solid, back in its old place in the Louvre. Thank God for that sort of collector, I say.” They make living possible for people in my business. Now, have you got all the points, Cap’n?”

He grinned so cheerfully, that I had to do the same thing.

“But all the same,” I told him, “I’m not available for handling stolen goods, Mr. Black. You’ll have to try further up.”

“Come now, Cap’n Charity,” he said; “and you a good American, too! I guess we got to have this bit of goods in little old U.S.A. It’s too fine for any other nation on earth. You mustn’t think it’s only the dollars I’m thinkin’ of. Why, Cap’n, there’s a patron of mine, right here in England, that will give me ninety thousand pounds for it, now that I’ve made it safe; and that’s only fifty thousand dollars under what I’m to get across the water. And out of that fifty thousand I’ve to pay you, and all expenses, and run the risk of the U.S.A. Customs dropping on it, and all my work going up in a flare!

“No, Sir! If it were just the dollars only I’m after, I’d sell it right here, within twenty-four hours, and be shut of all trouble and risk; but it’s got to go over to our country, Cap’n, and stay right there, till it’s acclimatised.”

I couldn’t help liking the man for that. But I had to stare at him a bit, to size up how much he was honest and how much I was dreaming: but he was honest, right enough; and I felt I’d got to look good and hard; so that I’d not forget what an honest picture-dealer looked like.

“What about the French?” I asked him. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I guess I’m not French, Cap’n,” he said. “Anyway, they’ve got a fine copy, and you couldn’t persuade them, not with a hammer, that it wasn’t the real one; not unless you showed ’em the original. I’ll agree then they might grow suspicious; but there’s not got to be any suspicions set going. That’s what all my work’s been to stop.”

“Look here,” I said; “for all I know, this one you want me to put through, may be the copy, that you’re going to palm off on your customer!”

“No, Sir!” he replied, very wrathy in a moment. “No, Sir ! I never try that sort of thing. No double-crossing for me! I’ve never done a patron yet. That’s how I’ve built up my business. I’m known to be honest.”