think.” Her tool scarred right hand reached graspingly towards one corner of the drawing, then described arabesques in the air. “Something new. I’m sick of these’ eternal comparisons. I must stand alone. Even the most incompetent critics must be made to see that I do stand alone.”
“They talk such a lot of rot,” Andrew murmured.
“Perhaps it’s because they have to deal with such a lot of rot.” Miss Meriden was grave. She lifted the drawing once more. “What do you see in this?”
He stared helplessly.
She went on. “I believe that this sort of art must create a new language. There may be here something that cannot be put into words, yet the thought is to be read by the sensitive mind. It must be inevitable, invariable, or the art is false. What does it give you?”
From gaping, he gulped. It gave him a complete blank.
“Nothing,” he murmured reluctantly. “Unless you mean it’s a sea-”
He was going to say sea shell, but it suddenly struck him that this would be one of the objectionable comparisons.
Again the imaginary spectacles came from the blue eyes.
“That’s really remarkable,” she said. “Nothingness, then the sea. Primordial. You feel it? This!” She pointed to some of the more excessive convolutions. “Before thought.”
“Yes,” he agreed uneasily. “Before thought.”
She watched him with a gleam of appreciation in her eyes, then led him across the floor to one of the displayed objects. “This is one of the earlier studies,” she told him. “To be disregarded, naturally. But I’d like your ideas.”
It was a primitive form of harp in transparent plastic, if it was anything. On second thought it was three harps stuck together. Either that or a dimpled bottle with the dimples pressed in to a point of dissolution. The harp suggestion was conveyed by a series of white strings that seemed to be imbedded in the plastic. Whatever you might think of it as a construction, the craftsmanship was superb.
Ruth Meriden leaned forward and touched an electric switch. The pedestal began to revolve slowly. Shifting light on the turning surfaces of perspex made enchanting effects. This might not, in the ordinary sense, be sculpture, but Andrew was full of approval. The only thing he regretted was that it had to mean anything. It was acutely embarrassing to be asked to make something out of nothing. It was like expecting a magician to produce a rabbit when the poor man was obviously without his top hat.
“Well?” inquired Miss Meriden, impatient for the rabbit.
He had seen the word “Etude” on a label before the pedestal began to turn. It recalled again the criticism he had read; he fished in memory for a tag from it.
“Music,” he answered her at last. “Scarlatti.”
“No.” The artist was disappointed. “Beethoven,” she insisted. “Definitely Beethoven. Possibly the Waldstein Sonata.”
She revolved the delicate pyramidal effect. Little pagodas turned within pagodas and glancing lights made chandeliers of ice. This time he had it. The Snow Queen’s Palace.
“I call it Shive Dagon,” Ruth Meriden announced. “Just as a joke, of course. It’s really an abstraction. I’ve never been in Burma.”
“I like it,” Andrew asserted. “It has brio.”
She looked at him with new attention, but this had nothing to do with his borrowed comment. She was puzzled. “Did you say your name was Maclaren?” she asked. “I can’t get rid of the feeling that we’ve met somewhere before. It keeps growing on me. Were you at the Edinburgh Festival last year?”
“No.” Andrew shook his head, but inwardly he nodded to himself. This was the moment. “I was on the plane from Athens the other day.” It startled her, he thought. At any rate she was arrested in a movement and turned slightly to stare at him.
“Then you’re not…” She broke off helplessly. Little coruscations from the revolving abstractions cast ripples of light between them.
“Of course,” she said, making up her mind. “You’re the man who spoke to me at the airport in Brussels. You…”
“I thought you needed help with the porter.”
“It was kind of you.” The belated acknowledgement came in a friendly tone. Then a suspicion took the warmth from her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I had to see you. About Brussels. There was no time to write, so I came out on the chance.”
She looked completely mystified. “Why should you want to”
“To warn you.” It tumbled out as if that had been his sole purpose. “I wanted to reach you before the police.”
“The police! What on earth are you talking about?”
“I was afraid you mightn’t have heard,” he said. “Kusitch is dead.”
“Kusitch?” She frowned impatiently. “Let me get it clearly. Somebody named Kusitch is dead. Is that what you said?”
“Yes. He was taken from the Risler-Moircy. He was murdered. The Brussels police found his body in the Bois de la Cambre.”
“Kusitch?”
“Yes. Shot through the head.”
“And my name is Ruth Meriden? Is that right?”
“Let us be serious, Miss Meriden,” he suggested. “This man was on the plane from Athens to Brussels. He had your address written down in a Green Line Coach Guide. Also he was carrying a review of your show at the Blandish Gallery.”
“This address?” The girl seemed genuinely puzzled. “You mean he was coming here to see me? If he was that interested, why didn’t he speak to me on the plane?” She shrugged helplessly. “I never heard of anyone named Kusitch. Am I supposed to have done so?”
“You may have known him by another name.” “I knew no one on the plane. Did you say he was a Greek?”
“I said he joined the plane at Athens. He was from Yugoslavia, from Dubrovnik. And you’ve just come from Dubrovnik, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have. What about it?” Her voice rose. “What is all this?”
“That’s what I want to find out, Miss Meriden. I came here in the hope that you might be able to tell me.”
She surveyed him coolly. Then she put her hand out and stopped the revolving pagoda.
“What exactly do you want, Mr. Maclaren?” she said curtly.
“Doctor Maclaren,” he corrected her.
The absurdity of the correction was to occur to him later. At that moment it was important that she should find him a responsible person. The word “Doctor” always reassured displaced persons.
It did not reassure Miss Meriden. She looked faintly but not agreeably amused.
“Is that what the police call you?” she inquired.
Andrew stared at her. “The police?”
She nodded. “You must know the kind of thing,” she said sweetly: “’John Smith, alias Andrew Maclaren, alias The Doctor. Poses as medical man or art critic. Works new version of old Spanish prisoner confidence trick using mysterious Yugoslav as bait.’ How much are you after, Dr. Maclaren, and where do I send the money?”
For a moment he stared at her speechlessly. Then he exploded.
“Well, of all the confounded impertinence,” he began.
She turned away contemptuously. “’Blusters when challenged,’” she added. “Have you any proofs of your identity? Of course you must have. False passport and false identity card all complete. Well now, Doctor-or should it be ‘Doc’?-do you get out or do I call the police?”
For a space of about ten seconds he stood there silent. He was shaking with anger now and could feel the blood tingling away from his face. With an effort he brought his voice under control.
“I think you’d better call the police,” he said. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Aren’t you taking things
