solutions. If they didn't, I would.
14
SORBO'S HOUSE FACED a school in a leafy lane three furlongs from Streatham Hill station. The area was quiet, apart from restaurants resounding to competing Elvis impersonators, traffic sedately trundling goodnight London.
Steps ran up between huge pot plants that ought to have lived honest lives in Kew Gardens. Lights were on. I knocked, and here came Sorbo, sloshed as a newt. He's like Tinker, never drunk, never sober.
'Jesus H,' he said, swaying in the paltry light. 'Or is it Lovejoy?'
He cackled, heaving his immense girth up and down, a Mr Bumble in an old bottle green frock coat straight from Dickens. I've known Sorbo years - well, five - since he engraved some Victorian drinking glasses for me with tendrils and grapey things, converting them from the tenpenny cheapos (incidentally, never pay more than one zlotnik per dozen) to a week's wage each. Sorbo's old-fashioned, meaning skilled. He's also dishonest, also meaning skilled.
'Of the two, it's probably me,' I said, causing him further mirth. 'Still got your Samuel Nock?'
'I have. And I'm keeping it, Lovejoy.'
He's been bragging about this delectable double-barrelled flintlock pistol for years. He knows I'd kill for it, given a chance. Browned under-and-over barrels, worth a king's ransom, truly beautiful. I could feel it in the room, in an old leather bag by the window.
It has its tiny powder flask, flints, and two spherical lead bullets. He's a selfish blighter, doesn't deserve an antique of such beauty.
Sorbo's like many bachelors. He exists downstairs in one crammed room. He also cooks there - one gas ring - washes in a tin bath, dines there (folding stool for a table), has a small sink, and kips on a truckle bed. This, note, in a four-bedroomed house a family could romp through. I don't understand it. His room is also his factory, with a pride-of-place bench, racks of miniature tools, a kiln, easels that drop from the ceiling on pulleys. For a moment I wondered uneasily if it was Jane Eyre all over again, some lunatic wife up there in her nightie with candles, itching for arson. I shook myself and sat on some reference tomes stacked at bum height.
'You took your time coming, Lovejoy.' It was blame. He sat in a wicker chair, and swilled from a Rodney flask. 'For a friend.'
'I didn't know about Arthur, Sorbo.' I eyed the flask. A Rodney always looks as though it started out a proper bulbous shape but began to melt. Its base is massively flat.
Admiral Rodney got it right, because no storm at sea would ever cause it to spill. But it was too light. 'Soda glass?'
'Polystyrene sheet. I found a way to mould it. Only good for distant views of multiple fakes. Still, it has possibilities.'
One thing about Sorbo, he's active, questing. He's called Sorbo because he once bet that any antique on earth could be faked from Sorbo, a rubbery synthetic. He's almost right, any antique can be faked from anything.
'Dieter Gluck, Sorbo. I found Colette among the bagsters, St Anne's in Soho, but got dusted by that Bern.'
He swigged, didn't offer me any. My Gran had an earthenware bottle behind her speer.
She called it her 'bronchial beverage'. We children hadn't to touch it, on pain of a sip bringing instant death and a coffin on a handcart. I mention this not because it has to do with the story, just to show how envious I am of people with stern principles. I'll invent my own soon, and be the envy of the world.
He sighed. 'Bad news, Lovejoy. It was soon after you and Colette.' He shrugged, an immense business that took time. I noticed a good long case clock, silent, standing against the wall behind him. The room wasn't well lit, just one old oil lamp burning.
'Where'd Gluck come from, Sorbo? A dealer?'
'Selling various old instruments, clockworks, automata, navigational brasses. Colette was flattered, him randy as a duck. They did it even in the shop. I seed them at it.' He shook his head, baffled at the ways of people. 'Arthur was a proper gent. Said nothing.'
'Hard to believe, Sorbo.'
His rheumy eyes fixed me. 'Why? He did the same over you and Colette. Gentleman is as gentleman does. You can't call a gent a lowlife just because you're dross, Lovejoy.'
Ouch. I sat, vision hard to come by. It cleared, me blinking like in a gale. Okay, so Colette was enamoured by this new handsome dealer, so clever at mechanical antiques.
My question was, what happened to Arthur's feudal lordship of Saffron Fields? How come Dieter Gluck owned everything, so tightly that poor Arthur couldn't even be buried under his own mulberry tree? I asked it.
'The old ploy, Lovejoy. Gold bricking, the Yanks called it in my day.'
I was astonished. 'Arthur would never fall for a con trick!'
'He didn't. But Colette did. Hook, line and sinker.' He examined the Rodney flask in the lantern light, swigged from it with abandon.
'What was the brick?'
The gold brick con trick got its name from the time of the USA gold strikes. You're on a train, puffing across the prairies. Along comes a suave bloke, very Mississippi, waistcoat, cigar. Gets talking. He's made a fantastic gold strike, and look! Here are the very deeds to his claim! And assayer's reports, the gold yield a ton an ounce. All he needs is investors. Fancy an investment, stranger? If you look especially gullible, he'd even show you a gold brick, nugget, powdered ore, take you to his mine, where you'll discover, surprise, real gold nuggets buried in the scree.
Nowadays the bait is more likely to be one genuine antique Russian ikon, plus the promise of thousands more. Or one genuine Impressionist painting plus promise of a hundred. Or a four-carat diamond plus the promise of et enticing cetera. The gold brick con trick is always one tempter plus a promise. Remember to say no. It's still done on stock exchanges the world over and works like a dream. I've seen the Gold Brick work brilliantly well even when
