had started, I was inclined to agree with Mike Ayers and cross out League of Atonement and make it the League of the White Feather. The only ones that hadn't seemed to develop an acute case of knee-tremor were Dr. Burton and Leopold Elkus the surgeon. Hibbard had been as much scared as anyone, more if anything, but had still been against the police. Apparently he had been ready to go to bed with the willies, but also ready for the sacrifice. Elkus, of course, had been in on it, but I'm coming to that.
My date with Elkus that Wednesday morning was for nine-thiry, but I made an early start because I wanted to stop off at Fifty-sixth Street for a look at the Dreyer gallery where it had happened. I got there before nine. It wasn't a gallery any more, but a bookstore. A middle-aged woman with a wart in front of her ear was nice to me and said of course I could look around, but there wasn't much to be made of it because everything had been changed.
The little room on the right, where the conference had taken place on a Wednesday evening and the body had been found the following morning, was still an office, with a desk and a typewriter and so on, but a lot of shelves had been put in that were obviously new. I called the woman over and she came in the office. I pointed at a door in the back wall and said:
B 'I wonder if you could tell me. Is that the closet where Mr. Eugene Dreyer kept the materials for mixing his drinks?'
She looked hazy. 'Mr. Dreyer…oh •.. that's the man…'
'The man that committed suicide in this room, yes, ma'am. I suppose you wouldn't know.'
'Well, really…'She seemed startled. ‹I hadn't realized it was right in this little room… of course I've heard about it…'
I said, 'Thank you, ma'am,' and went back to the street and got in the roadster.
People who quit living a year ago Christmas and haven't found out about it yet give me a pain, and all I've got for them is politeness and damn little of that.
Leopold Elkus hadn't quit living, I discovered when I got to him in his private room, but he was a sad guy. He was medium-sized, with a big head and big hands, and strong black eyes that kept floating away from you, not sideways or up or down but back into his head. He invited me to sit down and said in a friendly soft voice:
'Understand, Mr. Goodwin, I am seeing you only,, as a courtesy to my friends who have requested it. I have explained to Mr. Farrell that I will not support the enterprise of your employer. ^ Nor will I lend any assistance.'
'Okay.' I grinned at him.^I didn't come to pick a scrap, Dr. Elkus. I just want to ask some questions about September nineteenth, when Eugene Dreyer died. Questions of fact.' ‹I have already answered any question you could possibly put. To the police several times, and to that incredibly ignorant detective…'
'Right. So far we agree. Just as a matter of courtesy to your friends, there's no reason why you shouldn't answer them once more, is there? To converse with the cops and Del Bascom and then draw the line at Nero Wolfe and me… well, that would be like…'
He smiled a sad smile. 'Swallow a camel and strain at a gnat?' God that guy was sad.
'Yeah, I guess so. Only if you saw Nero Wolfe you wouldn't call him a gnat.
–It's like this, Dr. Elkus. I know you won't lend a hand to get the goods on Paul Chapin. But in this Dreyer business you're my only source of firsthand information and so I had to get at you. I understand the other man, the art expert, has gone back to Italy.'
He, nodded. 'Mr. Santini sailed some time ago.'
'Then there's only you. There's no sense in my trying to ask you a lot of trick questions. Why don't you just tell me about it?'
He smiled sad again. ‹I presume you know that two or three of my friends suspect me of lying to shield Paul Chapin?' n'Yeah. Are you?'
'No. I would neither shield him nor injure him, beyond the truth. – Here is the story, Mr. Goodwin. You know, of course, that Eugene Dreyer was an old friend of mine, a classmate in college. He was pretty successful with his art gallery before the depression. I bought things from him occasionally. I have never been under the necessity of pursuing success, since I inherited wealth. My reputation as a surgeon is a by-product of my conviction that there is something wrong with' all human beings, beneath the surface. By chance I have a sure and skillful hand.'
I looked at his big hands folded on his lap, and nodded at his black eyes floating back into his head. He went on:
'Six years ago I gave Eugene Dreyer a tentative order for three Mantegnas – two small ones and a larger one. The price was one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. The paintings were in France.
Paul Chapin happened to be in Europe at that time, and I wrote to ask him to look at them. After I received his report I ordered them. You know, I suppose, that for ten years Paul Chapin tried to be a painter. His work showed great sensitiveness, but his line was erratic and he had no feeling for form. It was interesting, but not good. I am told that he is finding himself in literature – I do not read novels.
'The paintings arrived at a time when I was overworked and had no leisure for a proper examination. I accepted them and paid for them. I was never happy with them; the friendly overtures which I made to those pictures from time to time, and there were many, were always repelled by I them with an indelicacy, a faint harshness, which embarrassed and irritated me. I did not at first suspect them of imposture, I simply could not get along with them. But a few remarks made by expert persons finally aroused my suspicion. In September, nearly two months ago now, Enrico Santini, who knows Mantegna as I know the human viscera, visited this country.
I asked him to look at my
Mantegnas, and he pronounced them frauds. He further said that he knew their source, a certain talented swindler in Paris, and that it was not possible that any reputable dealer had handled them in good faith. ‹I imagine it was the uncomfortable five years those pictures had given me, more than anything else, that caused me to act as I did with Dreyer. Ordinarily I am far too weak in my convictions to | display any sort of ruthlessness, but on this occasion there was no hesitation in me at all. I told Eugene that I wished to return the pictures and receive
