Half an hour later he was in the library. He heard: “So you want to buy that mischief-making cup for an antiquarian friend in the States? And you want its pedigree? I can write you out the particulars, of course. My name counts for something, but I imagine that I was sufficiently precise last time we met.”
“No, sir,” said Carston, “you were not. I have its photograph in the book that wasn’t burned as thoroughly as you might have wished. There it’s described as a mass-vessel, early English, from your collection. Now, I don’t give a damn which it is, but it can’t be that and a poison-cup. And before I write out a cheque I want to know which.”
“But, in any case, Mr. Carston, while we are speaking of money, I imagine that any cheque should be made out to me.”
“No, sir. I and three other persons heard you confirm your son’s gift of it to Miss Taverner.” (His reputation as a collector’s at stake. It can’t be two things at once)—“As to a second opinion, I expect your British Museum could give us that.”
“I admit,” said Mr. Tracy, “that it is probably a mass-cup. In my horror of loose feeling I preferred to suggest any origin, however grim or far-fetched, than that my relatives should abandon themselves to superstition.”
This might have sounded noble, but Carston kept on. Bit of bunk: what has he been up to? That’s what I’m not to find out.
He said:
“It seems to me that you’ve exchanged a fine, mysterious, almost sacred fable for a sordid, even brutal, personal invention. Facts are what I’m here for.”
What I won’t get, not the ones that matter.
“You can be satisfied that in all probability the photograph describes it correctly. An early Church vessel, its shape suggests a chalice, with the setting lost. If so, it might well have been part of a crusader’s loot. Incidentally, since its probable origin greatly enhances its value, you might do well to stick to my earlier suggestion, the last part of which is no more than simple fact—”
“Cool!” Carston gasped. Cucumbers and icebergs.
“—Or is to be part of the price for Scylla Taverner’s hypothetical virginity?” Carston thought:
If I start losing my temper, it is he who will find things out. He chose blind-man’s bluff. We must play until we needn’t.
At the same time conviction came to him that they would find out nothing. His direct attack was obvious, useless, unfruitful.
“I have nothing to say, but that I buy nothing with my eyes shut. And what I’ve come to get is your reasons for supposing it a Church vessel—” Vain repetition. Not even taken the wind out of the old man’s sails. Sailing serenely on: through a weak position: through fraud.
“You shall have them, Mr. Carston, tonight. Signed on my authority. You are staying at the Star?”
In and Out
On his way down the drive Carston knew what you did. In Trollope, in cases of spiritual difficulty, you consulted the vicar. Whether it turned out well depended on whether you found a good vicar or a bad. The landlord directed him. His way led through the churchyard. He noticed a staring white monument, and read on it the name of Picus’s mother.
“Old devil to bury her like that and keep it clean.” In the flagged hall, he walked up a ribbon of green matting, and saw at the end Picus playing with a blind cord.
“Tracy,” he said, “I’ve been trying to clear this up.”
“Any luck?”
“None. Have you a good vicar?”
“I left the churchyard at two in the morning, and said ‘It’s me,’ and I’ve been here since. Sick of night and mist walking. I’ve told him. Come in.”
Felix woke, rolled over in a flood of gold-spangled dust to find himself lapped in faultless health and spirits. Paris’ morning surprise for her children, last night’s debauch innocent as a game of kiss-in-the-ring. Last night’s resolution clarified and unimpaired. He had Boris to find and explain to him what he had meant. Claim his own. He shaved his hardly perceptible beard, whistling an air from Louise. Paris was waiting for him, had given him the day, now in midmorning, which would only be begun by night.
He ran through his pockets. Boris’s address was lost. There were names of unknowns, scrawled on the cabaret cards, not the shred off a bill he remembered, the splendid name scrawled in sucked purple pencil—He rushed out to find his earlier boy friend.
“My dear Felix, how should I know? Those boys sleep anywhere. You might try the quays. You’ll see him about again some night.”
“I don’t mean to wait—I’ve got to find him, if I go to the police.”
“Well, I shouldn’t do that—They probably know too much about him.” Then, incautiously—“He’s probably pretty sick after last night. They say his lungs are going.”
Curiously, that fanned Felix. The older boy for the first time liked him well. Wondered if by any chance he saw in his eyes what “one would fain call master.” It was odd.
“He used to live somewhere in the nest of hotels round the Rue Bonaparte.”
“Good,” said Felix. “I’ll try them, one by one.”
Boris woke up. The young head, a little brutal and afraid in sleep, on waking lost those expressions. “Comme j’ai fait la bombe hier,” rubbing his eyes like a baby. A sixth-floor room in a cheap hotel in old Paris has no romantic quality. It was as much as Boris could do to rise nightly like
