The Counsellor Page 5

  “‘Art’s a rum job,’” quoted The Counsellor. “Turner said that, and he ought to know. And humanity’s a rum crew. I said that, and I happen to know. When you mix ’em together, anything might happen. I’m not surprised.”

  He seemed to cogitate for a moment or two and then turned to a fresh line.

  “Has Miss Treverton any other relations beyond her uncle?”

  “None that I ever heard of,” Whitgift answered, after a moment’s reflection.

  The Counsellor did not pursue that subject. If anything had happened to the girl, and she died intestate, her uncle would get not only the money she had in the business, but the remainder of her capital as well. But this seemed pushing hypothesis over far.

  His eye was caught by a picture on the wall, and he moved over to examine it.

  “Monet’s ‘Corniche Road,’ isn’t it?” he asked, turning to Whitgift. “Is this one of your own productions?”

  Whitgift nodded in confirmation.

  “One of our most successful attempts,” he explained with some pride. “The man in the street couldn’t tell it from the original, I’m prepared to bet. An expert would, at a glance, though, if he was allowed to look at the canvas, for that dates it. It’s done on canvas foundation, just to lend the last touch of verisimilitude,” he added, with a smile. “And it cost me the devil and all of trouble to work out the process, I can tell you. We’ve been producing stuff in that line for a year or two, but it’s too expensive, really, as a commercial large-scale product. I gave that copy to Miss Treverton. That’s how it comes to be hanging here.”

  The Counsellor again examined the picture, this time with all his attention, peering into the detail of the reproduction.

  “More than pretty good,” he admitted. “Later on, I’d like to hear how you manage it, if you can tell me without giving away your trade secrets. But now I’d like to have a minute or two with Treverton, if he’ll see me. There’s a chance that I might be of some use in the matter of his niece. But I must make sure, first, that he won’t object. After all, my methods are a bit public for some people’s taste. Perhaps he mightn’t care for them.”

  “Oh, he won’t care, one way or the other,” Whitgift assured him. “All he’s really interested in is the Press. Something fresh in our method of reproduction would catch his fancy quicker than anything about Miss Treverton.”

  “If he proposes that I should boost his productions, I’ll refer him to my advertising department,” said The Counsellor, drily. “We have fixed rates for that kind of work.”

  “There’s just one other thing,” Whitgift added, after a momentary hesitation. “He and I haven’t seen quite eye to eye on some points lately. Miss Treverton’s disappearance is one of them. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just take you to him now and leave you together. You can say what you like all the better if I’m not there.”

  “You think so? Very good, then. All the same to me.”

  Chapter Three

  The Troubles of an Art Publisher

  WHITGIFT led The Counsellor to a room even smaller than the one he had already seen. It looked out upon the garage; and originally it might have been a dressing-room, being only about fifteen feet by twenty. It was now furnished as an office, except for one big easy-chair drawn up near the fireplace. A mechanical upward glance assured The Counsellor that here also economy had prevailed over æsthetics, for the ceiling had a heavy stucco design like that in the other room and the original ugly marble mantelpiece had been left in place. The Counsellor found the room unpleasantly warm, and another glance showed him that all the windows were tightly closed, despite the heat.

  “This is Mr. Brand, Treverton,” Whitgift announced. “He wants a few words with you.”

  And with that he withdrew, leaving The Counsellor confronting across the desk a grey-haired, grey-moustached little man, every line in whose face betrayed a waspish temper.

  “Brand? Brand?” said the little man, in a tone which seemed to translate his facial expression into sound. “Oh, yes. I remember, now. You’re the person Whitgift told me about. You run a wireless station, or something. Well, what do you want with me? Be as brief as you can. I’m a busy man.”

  The Counsellor had seen too much of humanity to let bad manners ruffle him. He guessed how he could handle this peppery little creature. The less information he got, the more he would want; and relations might be established.

  “I was asked to help in the matter of your niece’s disappearance,” he pointed out, taking a chair without invitation and sitting down to confront his unwilling host.

  “Well, have you found her? No? I thought as much.”

  “I expect to hear something to-morrow, though.”

  “You do? You’re on a wild goose chase, sir. You’ll end by finding a . . . what is it? . . . a mare’s nest. The girl’s gone off on some prank or other. These modern girls are like that. No stability. You can’t depend on ’em. And, let me tell you, when she chooses to come home again, she may not thank you for raising a hue-and-cry after her. That’s your own affair; nothing to do with me, remember. I didn’t invite you to poke your nose into her affairs. What have you done? Shouted her name over the whole country?”

  “Oh, no. Merely asked if anyone had seen a car with the number EZ 1113. No harm in that, surely.”

  Treverton obviously racked his mind to find some cause for grievance, but apparently he could think of none on the spur of the moment.

  “Oh, well,” he said, with a rather contemptuous shrug, “if you think you’re doing any good, let it go at that. No affair of mine. She’s her own mistress. I’m not her keeper. Find the room hot?” he added, noting The Counsellor’s obvious discomfort. “You’re a fresh air fiend? I’m not. I was born with a chill in my blood. I could live in the Tropics and never feel it. In this infernal climate, I never feel decently warm, never. Draughts everywhere, no matter what one does to stop them.”

  He pointed to the door, and The Counsellor saw that it was fitted with draught-excluders.

  “Difficult to avoid draughts in an old house,” he commented. “But I suppose this place suits you for technical purposes. You use the bigger rooms for your machinery and so forth?”

  “Yes, that’s so,” Treverton grunted.

  Whitgift had hinted that Treverton’s mind was mainly occupied by the Ravenscourt Press and that everything else was subsidiary. The Counsellor saw his way clear, now that he had managed to touch on the subject.

  “I noticed a reproduction of a Monet, downstairs,” he explained. “I’ve seen the original in Amsterdam. Difficult to tell your copy from the original, I’d say, unless one had ’em side by side. My secretary praised your results to me the other day, but I’d no notion then that your things were as good as all that.”

  Evidently he had chosen the best line of approach. Treverton did not lose his rudeness, but his hackles seemed to subside under this unsubtle flattery.

  “Good, you think? What do you know about it, anyway? But they are good, for all that. Too expensive for the ordinary buyer, though; for all he wants is a chromo of something by an Old Master to hang up and make him feel he’s cultured. We’re aiming at a different public. What’s the use of reproducing Mona Lisa? It’s been done hundreds of times, hasn’t it? I’m doing things that aren’t hackneyed. (That Monet was merely an experiment, not for sale). There’s heaps of unhackneyed good stuff in the private collections. That’s the line we are working.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” confessed The Counsellor. “Personally, I buy things by the younger artists.”

  “Oh? Interested in art, are you?” said Treverton, with a more friendly note in his voice. “I thought you were just being silly-polite, at first. Have you anything good?”

  The Counsellor reeled off a short list of some things in his own collection.

  “Nothing that would be any good to me,” declared Treverton, bluntly. “Your taste’s not mine.”

  The obvious implication was that The Counsellor’s ta
ste was far beneath his own.

  “I suppose you need some experts?” inquired The Counsellor, who was always eager to pick up any information on things which might interest the public.

  Treverton was now fairly launched on his hobby. He became quite communicative. Yes, he did employ experts. Whitgift, for instance. Treverton explained that originally he had intended to make his reproductions on paper; canvas was a later notion. Whitgift had come in as a paper-making expert. Then he’d taken a hand on the photographic side. Finally, when the canvas idea came up, he’d worked out a filling material to take the place of the preliminary coat of paint in actual painting. Useful fellow, one had to admit. And now he’d branched out again into experiments in the actual printing—a matter of reproducing as far as possible the brush strokes of the original, so far as they produced irregularities on the finished surface. Some modification of the old bichromate process with the raised pattern on the gelatine coming in. He’d got a small printing-press under lock and key in his workshop. No workman went near it. No use letting people know how these things were done until one was ready for the market oneself.

  Then there was a chemist, Albury, with a laboratory on the premises. His job was to turn out dyes for staining the photographic plates to make them colour-sensitive in exactly the right degree required. One could buy dyes of the sort, of course, like neocyanin, but that wasn’t good enough for the Ravenscourt Press. They often wanted something which diverged a shade from the purchasable dyes, and the only way was to synthesise something new and try it. So Albury had a busy time with his dyes and his spectrographs. Quite a good man in his line. Rather sullen and apt to take the bit in his teeth at times, though.

  “Expensive? Of course it’s expensive to run,” Treverton admitted in answer to a feeler from The Counsellor. “It costs me a pretty penny, I can tell you.”

  Apparently The Counsellor had touched a sore spot by his question for after a momentary hesitation, Treverton produced his grievance.

  “It’s only a small company with a nominal capital. I finance it myself to a large extent, out of my own pocket. I pay the piper, so I call the tune. Albury’s continually worrying me to turn out the ordinary kind of reproduction, the sort of thing you can sell by the hundred at anything up to a couple of guineas. It would put the Press on a paying basis, that’s his continual cry. I suppose he wants dividends. I care nothing about dividends. What I want is to turn out the perfect reproduction. It’s a matter of personal pride with me. I went into this line, aiming at that. And all the Albury’s in creation won’t turn me aside to pander to suburban tastes. It isn’t only Albury. There’s that niece of mine. She’s on the same tack. And Whitgift, too, in another way. Not one of them with any ideas above cash. Not a dependable one in the lot. I almost lose my temper at times, and I’m the last man to do that in the ordinary way.”

  Apparently his outburst helped to soothe him. He worked himself into a state in which he was almost friendly to The Counsellor, who contented himself with listening and interjecting sympathetic noises at proper intervals.

  “You’re wasting your time over that niece of mine. What do you want to bother about her for?”

  The Counsellor’s eyes twinkled.

  “It’s a matter of personal pride with me,” he explained with a straight face. “You’ll understand that. I’ve been asked for my help and I can’t afford not to succeed, once I take up a thing of that sort.”

  “I see, I see. If you put it that way, I can see your point. I can’t afford to fail either, in my field. Lose my self-respect if I turned aside from the line I’ve marked out. You understand? Not many people do. Well, what can I do for you?”

  “Money’s the root of all evil. St. Paul didn’t say that, but never mind. Point is, did she take her cheque book with her when she went off?”

  Treverton’s little eyes inspected The Counsellor with more respect than before.

  “You’re smarter than you look,” he admitted ungraciously. “I never thought of that. We’ll go and see. She keeps it in a drawer of her writing-desk.”

  They descended to the room with the Monet reproduction. Treverton went straight to the writing-desk, pulled out one of the drawers, rummaged through the contents, and then turned round.

  “No cheque book here,” he reported.

  He closed the drawer and began a systematic search through the desk, but drew blank in the end.

  “Not there,” he admitted. “She must have taken it with her. So she knew she was going before she left the house. Nobody takes a cheque book to a tennis party. Well, it doesn’t worry me. She’s her own mistress. I’ve nothing to do with her pranks.”

  “Did you question the servants?” asked The Counsellor. “She didn’t leave any message with them?”

  “Not that I heard. You can put it to them yourself if you like.”

  “If you don’t mind,” said The Counsellor.

  Treverton rang the bell and summoned a house-keeper and a maid. Neither of them had been given any message by Miss Treverton before she went away. They were quite positive on that point. Treverton dismissed them.

  “That doesn’t get you much further,” he pointed out, with ill-concealed satisfaction. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Think there’s a man in the case?” asked The Counsellor bluntly.

  “How should I know? I’m not her father-confessor, you know. She’s had cubs dangling after her at times. She’s not unattractive in looks. That’s her picture, over there, on the desk. There was an American, a year or two ago. They seemed to hit it off together. But he’d no money, so that was that. And Whitgift seems a bit struck. I see more than I’m meant to, at times. But all the glad eye was on his side. I could see that. Besides, he has no money either. I tried to get him to tide me over once, when expenses were heavy, but he’d absolutely nothing in hand. That was some years ago, of course; but he hasn’t come into any fortune since, that I’ve heard about.”

  “It’s as well this old bird doesn’t know I’ve any spare cash,” The Counsellor reflected. “If he suspected it, he’d be out to touch me for a monkey, in the interests of his Art.”

  He kept this idea to himself, however, and instead returned to Miss Treverton’s affairs.

  “You may have seen the letters she got. Any U.S.A. stamps on them?”

  “You’re thinking about that American, eh?” Treverton inferred. “Yes, I’ve seen an American letter now and again. One came for her about a fortnight ago, I remember.”

  “They still correspond, then? I’ll bear that in mind.”

  Since the talk had passed from the subject of the Ravenscourt Press, Treverton had begun to show signs of fidgetiness; and now he had evidently no further interest in The Counsellor.

  “That all you want to know?” he demanded. “If so, you’ll excuse me. I’m a busy man.”

  “I’d like to have a word or two with Whitgift, before I go,” The Counsellor explained.

  “Very well. I’ll send him here. Nothing else I can do? Then, good-bye. Sorry you’re wasting your time. Still, it’s your time. And your business. Good-bye.”

  He departed ungraciously. The Counsellor walked over and picked up the snapshot from the desk.

  “It doesn’t look a mercenary face, in spite of dear Uncle’s views,” he reflected.

  In a few moments Whitgift reappeared.

  “I hope you enjoyed your interview,” he said, sardonically. “Did he succeed in touching you for funds—or perhaps I should say: Did he succeed in interesting you financially in the Press? No? He generally takes that line when he thinks there’s a chance.”

  “Must be an expensive affair,” The Counsellor commented.

  “He’d sack the lot of us if he dared,” confessed Whitgift philosophically. “But he can’t. First, because we know too much. Second, because both my colleague Albury and I have contracts, which have three years still to run. He can’t scrap either of us, otherwise he’d give us the push to-morrow and get in Chinese cheap lab
our in our shoes.”

  He gave The Counsellor a shrewd glance, and then continued:

  “I shouldn’t put any cash into this business, if I were in your shoes. Run on different lines, by different people, it might pay a dividend. But not so long as he’s in charge. I’m being honest with you, because you’ve done me a good turn over this affair.”

  The Counsellor pulled a comic grimace.

  “Don’t count on gratitude for that tip,” he cautioned Whitgift. “You haven’t prevented me from losing any money in the concern.”

  “He hasn’t an ingratiating manner, and that’s a fact,” Whitgift retorted with a cheerful grin. “But pass that. Did you learn anything about Miss Treverton from him?”

  “Nothing very useful, except that she gets letters with U.S.A. stamps on them.”

  Whitgift’s smile vanished.

  “Yes, I believe she does,” he confirmed. “She still corresponds with that American, damn him.”

  “There’s one thing I’d like to know,” The Counsellor said carelessly. “You told me she took a tennis outfit with her in the car. Did you see it?”