The Complete Simon Iff Read online

  The mystic turned and greeted the man who had interrupted him with honest gladness; then his other hand shot out to Flynn. “I’ve been out of the world all summer,” he cried, shaking hands all round, “in a hermitage after my own heart. Fancy a castle dating from the crusades, on the very edge of a glacier, and every practicable route barred against the world the flesh, and the devil, in the shape of tourists, tables d’hôte, and newspapers!” “You look thirty!” declared one of the men. “And I feel twenty,” laughed the magician; “what do you say to a little dinner at Lapérouse? I want to walk across the Luxembourg to a feast, as I’ve done any time these fifty years!”

  As it happened, only two of the party were free; Major, the young man with the button, and Jack Flynn.

  After some quiet chat the three strolled off together, arm in arm, down the Boulevard Montparnasse.

  When they reached the Avenue de l’Observatoire, they turned down that noble grove. Here, at all hours of day and night, is a stately solitude. Intended for gaiety, devised as a symbol of gaiety by the most frivolous age of all time, it has become by virtue of age the very incarnation of melancholy grandeur. It seems almost to lament that eighteenth century which fathered it.

  Before they had passed into this majesty more than an hundred yards, the mystic said abruptly: “What’s the trouble?”

  “Haven’t you really seen a paper for six months?” countered Flynn.

  “Of course I haven’t. You know my life; you know that I retire, whenever I am able, from this nightmare illusion of matter to a world of reality. So tell me your latest evil dream!”

  “Evil enough!” said Major, “it doesn’t actually touch us, but it’s a narrow escape. We only heard the climax three days ago; so it’s a green wound, you see.”

  “Yet it doesn’t touch you.”

  “No; but it touches Art, and that’s me, all right!”

  “Will you tell me the story?”

  “I´ll leave that to Flynn. He´s been on the trail all the time.”

  “I was even at the trial.” said Flynn.

  “Come, come” laughed Iff “all these be riddles.”

  “I’ll make them clear enough—all but the one. Now, no interruptions! I have the thing orderly in my mind.”

  “Five: four three: two one: gun!”

  “The place is a small rocky islet off the west coast of Scotland, by name Dubhbheagg. A few fisher-folk live there; nobody else. There is one landing-place, and one only, even in calm weather; in a storm it is inaccessible altogether. Overlooking this quay is a house perched on the cliff; an old stone mansion. The proprietor is one of our sacred guild, and spends most of his time in Central Asia or Central Africa or Central America or Central Australia—anything to be central!— and he lets the house to any one who is fool enough to pay the price.

  “This summer it was rented by the president of the Royal Academy.”

  “What’s that?” said Iff, sharply.

  “The Royal Academy,” explained Flynn, is an institution devised by divine Providence for the detection of British Artists. It brings them into notice by ostentatiously rejecting their works. The president is Lord Cudlipp.”

  “Wasn’t he a Joseph Thorne, or some such name?” asked Simon Iff.

  “Thornton, I think. Ennobled thirteen years ago,” corrected Flynn.

  “It was Thornley,” insisted the sculptor, Major.

  “Yes, Thornley; I remember now. I know him slightly; and I knew his father before him; an M.P and a biscuit manufacturer,” exclaimed the mystic.

  “A pity the son didn’t follow the father,” murmured Major. “I feel sure that his biscuits would have been delightful!”

  “You’re interrupting the court,” protested the editor “To proceed. Here we have Cudlipp in the Big House of Dubhbheagg, with a man and wife to cook for him, both old servants, with him thirty years. There are also his son Harry, his daughter Eleanor, her companionmaid, and—a man from the Quarter!”

  “This Quarter?”

  “Up in Montrouge his studio is, I think, one of those lost cottages with a garden in the middle of a block of houses. Well, this man, or rather boy, he’s not twentyyet, is, or wants to be, a marine painter like Cudlipp—”

  “God forbid!” groaned the Major.

  “Shut up! the boy’s name is Andre de Bry; he’s half Frenchf, half English, I believe, a pretty hot combination.”

  “So I’ve noticed, remarked Iff, as they turned into Lapérouse, crept up the narrow stair, and found a table by the window in the Salle de Miroirs.

  “Harry and Eleanor were born seventeen years ago, twins”

  “Which is dead?” interrupted Iff. The others stared.

  “Excuse an old man’s vanity!” laughed the mystic. “I really have to show off sometimes! You see, I know Jack’s passion for precision of language. He wouldn’t say the simple thing, ’They are twins,’ or ’They are seventeen years old,’ and he wouldn’t say ’They were twins,’ or ’were seventeen years old,’ so I knew that one, and one only, was dead.”

  “I hope your acuteness will continue through dinner,” laughed the editor. “We need it. Now, then, to business. Cudlipp had sort of adopted André de Bry, Used him to prepare his bigger canvases, and so on. De Bry had fallen in love with Eleanor. She returned bis passion De Bry was hopelessly poor—no, not hopelessly, for he had a rich uncle, who had a fad of independence. He wouldn’t give André a farthing; but if the boy succeeded in making himself a career, he promised to leave him every penny he had. The family is noble, much better than Cudlipp’s; so the boy was not a bad match for Eleanor, and, contigently, a very good one. He and Harry were perfectly good friends. There was, in short, no element of disagreement worth notice. The days passed pleasantly, either in painting or fishing, and the evenings in games. One can hardly imagine a more harmonious group.

  ”On the 18th of August the yacht, which supplied the island with stores from the mainland, called and left provisions for the party. To avert false conjecture from the start, I may say that it is absolutely impossible that some mysterious stowaway could have landed from the yacht and hidden somewhere on the island. The police subsequently went through the place with a fine tooth comb. It is thirty miles from the nearest land, is barely a quarter of a mile in its greatest length, has neither a cave nor a tree on it. So don’t talk about that! Well, the yacht weighed anchor on the afternoon of the 18th; that night a storm came up from the Atlantic, and raged for a whole week. It is physically impossible that any one should have landed on the rock during that period. Furthermore, the Big House stands on a quite unclimbable pinnacle—I’m a rock climber, as you know, and I went to see it, and there’s not a crack anywhere. It was only connected with the rest of the island by a wooden bridge of the cantilever type; and the violence of the wind was such that on the second night of the storm it carried it away. This was inconvenient for them, as will be seen; but it simplifies the matter a good deal for us. Well, on the 25th the storm abated, and the fishermen were about to put to sea when they observed Lord.Cudlipp on the edge of the cliff, firing his shotgun. Seeing he was noticed, he signalled and shouted to them to come up. He met them, so far as he could, at the chasm where the bridge had been. ”There has been murder done here,” he said shortly, ”take this message and telegraph it at once.” He flung a stone to them, with a paper wrapped about it. The telegram asked for the police; also for a gang of men with materials to build up the bridge. The following noon relief arrived.

  “The rest of the story needs little detail. It is as astonishingly simple as it is perplexing. The naked body of the boy Harry was found on the morning of the 23rd in the big room used by the other men as a studio—Harry and Eleanor took not the slightest interest in art. Death had been caused by a small deep wound in the femoral artery; a penknife might have made it. But there was no blood; and at the postmortem was revealed the utterly astonishing fact that there was no blood in the whole body—when I say no blood, I mean, not enough for a rabbit! It
had been systematically drained. I need hardly tell you that the whole island went wild with stories of vampires and witches; I won’t bother you with that sort of rubbish.

  “But the horror of the circumstances cannot be easily matched. Imagine to yourselves that lonely crag, itself a monument of desolation, towering from sea to sky, bleak, bare, barren and heartless as sea and sky themselves. Such a place has always bred strange stories—and strange crimes.

  “But think of the feelings of the people in the house, one of them certainly a murderer!

  “However, the police were easily able to narrow down the possibilities. The boy had been chloroformed or otherwise rendered unconscious, without doubt, for there could have been no struggle. The wound was clean, and obviously inflicted by some one with first rate anatomical knowledge. It was, too, a highly civilized crime, so to speak.

  “This really restricted the field of inquiry to the two painters. Common sense excluded the father, whose main hope of an illustrious line was thus cut off. On the other hand, de Bry was a doubtful character. In Paris he had been accustomed to frequent the lowest haunts—the sort of places one find in these little streets about here—and as a matter of fact, he was usually called the ’Apache’ as a sort of nickname. But no one had ever heard of anything very definite, except an alleged duel with knives in a shop off the Boulevard St. Germain called Tout à la Joie, a low drinking cellar. This came out in court later, and sounded nasty, though it was proven that he had been attacked without provocation, and the police had not even arrested him. Still, a man so ready with a knife—it impressed the jury! badly, I could see that.

  “To cut a long story short, they arrested André. He refused to enter the witness hox; he had no story to tell; nor, indeed, had any of the others. Harry had gone to bed alive; he was found dead in the morning. No quarrel anywhere. No motive for anybody.

  “The jury was out for twenty-four hours; they came back with that jov which only Scotland offers to its jurymen—the Verdict of the Sitter on the Fence: ’Not proven.’ They all thought he did it, but they couldn´t make up their minds to hang him; so there was the way out. Therefore, André de Bry is at large again; and, by the same token, I came over on the boat with him. He was muffled to the eyes, but I knew him. So he’s probably within a mile of us at this minute.”

  “What do you think of the story?” asked Major, a little anxiously “Oh, I agree with the natives,” replied the mystic, laughingly, to the astonishment of his hearers. “Excuse my referring to the fact that I’m a professional Magus— still, you should not be surprised if I tell you that I hold to the theory of vampires and wehr-wolves and sirens and the rest of the dear creatures!”

  “Be serious, master!” urged Flynn, using a title which he knew would put the mystic on his honor.

  “My dear lad, I believe this murder was done by some one whom none of them knew to have been there.”

  “But how could he have got away?”

  “Vanished whence he came.”

  “A haunted house? Damn it, something in your tone makes my blood run cold.”

  “Well,” slowly answered the mystic, “possibly, in a sense, a haunted house.”

  Major called the waiter to bring another bottle of Burgundy.

  “Have you really formed a theory about the case?” asked Flynn. “To me it’s absolutely beyond reason.”

  “Beneath it, beneath it! Ah well, no matter! As a fact, I have not made up my mind. How can I, till I’ve seen this chap’s pictures?”

  “You think there was some motive of jealousy?” snapped out Major I don’t think at all till I’ve seen them. Look here! do you know his work?

  “No; he hasn’t shown anything. He’s an absolute kid you know. But Tite saw a thing of his in some studio or other, and Tite said it was damned bad. So I dare say it’s pretty decent stuff.”

  “Where’s his studio?”

  “Don’t know,” answered the sculptor. “I’ll find out to-night, if you’re really set on this. May I call for you in the morning? We’ll go up together; perhaps you’ll let me make it déjeuner—you’ll come, of course, Jack— as I’ve been shouting for Burgundy at your dinner, you shall shout for Claret at my lunch!”

  “I’m at Bourcier’s, 50 rue Vavin, as always,”1 said Simon Iff. “The best house, and the best people. in all Paris. Come round at nine.”

  “Right. Meet me there, Flynn. It’s a great hunt, the truth!”

  “With a hunter like Simple Simon, you’ll find it so,” said Flynn, enthusiastically.

  II

  The next morning saw the three friends tramping it up the Boulevard Raspail, past the great calm glory of the unconquered Lion de Belfort, along the busy Boulevard de Montrouge, and so to the very hem of Paris, the “fortifs” dear to the Apache. Here they turned west, and came presently to an old wine shop, throughwhich lay the entrance to the studio of de Bry.

  He was already at work in his little garden; an old man, leaning on a spade, was posing for him.

  Major advanced and offered his card. “Monsieur de Bry! I feel sure you will pardon me. I am a Sociétaire of the Beaux Arts; I have heard that your work is excellent, and I am here with two friends of the most distinguished to ask the honor of looking at it.”

  “Mr. Major!” cried the boy, as he put his brushes down in his eagerness—at first he had not recognized the great man—”indeed, the honor is altogether mine. But I’ve nothing worth seeing, I assure you.”

  Major introduced his friends. De Bry, telling the model to rest, led the party into the studio. With infinite diffidence the boy began to show his work.

  In a few minutes Major, with his hands thrust deep into his trousers’ pockets, and his head thrown back, was reduced to utter silence. Simon Iff, who was watching him as well as the pictures, smiled his grimmest smile. The editor, inured to small talk by his profession, made the conversation. “lt’s all beginnings,” said the boy, “but this is more what I’ve tried for. I did it in the summer.” The mystic noticed with a darkening face that he seemed to speak of that summer as if it had held nothing but a holiday.

  The canvas showed the rock of Dubhbheagg amidst the breakers. It had been painted from a boat on a clear day. The sky was blue; a flight of wildfowl gave life to the picture But the rock itself was more vital than the birds. It seemed the image of some great lost God of solitude, eternally contemplative, eternally alone. It was more melancholy than Dürer’s master work, or Thomson’s interpretation of it. And de Bry had not used the materials of melancholy, or images of death; he had merely painted a rock just as it was when he saw it. Yet he had made it a creature of cosmic life, as significant and vital as the universe itself—and as lonely and inexorable.

  Simon Iff spoke for the first time. “Is that picture for sale?” he asked. “Yes,” said the painter, rather eagerly. They noticed that he looked ill.

  “Probably hasn’t had a meal since that damned affair,” thought Major. “How much?” very stiffly from Simple Simon.

  The painter hesitated. “Would you give me fifty francs for it?” he asked timidly.

  The mystic rose to his feet, and shook his stick in the boy’s face. “No, you damned young scoundrel. I will not!” he roared. “How dare you ask such a price?”

  The boy shrank back; he expected that the old man would strike him.

  “Do you know who I am?” thundered Simon. “I’m the chairman of the Art Committee of the Hemlock Club! That’s the trouble with you artists; you’re blacklegs, every one of you. Offering a thing like that for fifty francs and pulling down the price of everything but the old Masters! Answer me straight now: how much is it worth?”

  The boy was too taken aback to reply.

  “Have you ever seen a worse thing offered for ten thousand francs?” asked Simon, cynically.

  “Oh yes!” he stammered at last.

  “I’ll give you fifteen thousand. Here’s a thousand on account; I’ll send a cheque for the balance this afternoon. Send the picture to Simon Iff, 5
0, rue Vavin. And, if you’ve nothing to do, come and see me as soon as the light fails this afternoon. Yes, bring the picture around in a fiacre. About 5, then!”

  He thrust a big thousand franc note in the boy’s hand, and withdrew stormily from the studio.

  The others followed him; but Major stopped a moment. “Did you like my bust of Rodin?” asked the sculptor. The boy was still too bewildered to do more than nod. “I’ll send you a bronze, if you’d care to have it. And come and see me, any time you care to, and particularly any time you need a friend.” De Bry grasped the offered hand in silence.”

  The others had reached the street when Major caught them. “I hope you don’t mean mischief by that boy,” he said to Iff. “I seem to smell a trap. For heaven’s sake leave him alone! He’s the biggest thing since Turner; if he keeps on growing, the planet won’t hold him.”

  “My mind is quite made up,” returned Simon Iff, coldly. “If the lunch is still on, suppose we take a taxi. If you don’t mind, we’ll have a private room at the Café de la Paix. We shall need to go rather deeply into this matter.”

  III

  Simon Iff would not talk at all of anything but old times in Paris until after lunch, when the decks were Cleared of all but the three Cs—coffee, cigars, and cognac2 Then he cleared his throat.

  “As you have heard me say about a million times Jack, ’Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.’ Failure to observe this precept is the root of all human error. It is our right and duty—the two are one, as Eliphaz Lévi very nearly saw—to expand upon our own true centre, to pursue the exact orbit of our destiny. To quit that orbit is to invite collisions. Suppose it to be my illusion to think it my will to pass through that closed window. I bump my head; I cut my face; I finally make a mess on the boulevard. Or I think it my will to steal my neighbor’s watch. I am caught; police-court, prison, and general disaster. Merely the result of my ignorance in regard to my true destiny. Failure in life and especially criminal failure; collision. Then where is the original collision? In myself. There is a conflict between my conscious will and my unconscious will, between the sophisticated babble of reason and the still small voice of the soul. Poe had quite an idea of this, with his ’Imp of the Perverse’; Ibsen, the greatest of all realists, a more detailed conception, with his ’troll’; but both imagined that consciousness was right and the Inner Light wrong. Now that is a mere assumption, and we mystics, who know that Light, know better. It is the first task of every man who would not only be himself, but understand himself, to make the union or harmony between these two, perfect. Now of course most men, so far as the main path of their lives is concerned, never find these two forces in conflict, never become aware of them at all. The troubles of genius are principally due to a recognition of this truer Light, and of its apparent incompatibility with the conscious will, or perhaps of a realization that they cannot execute their will, because of the pressure of circumstance upon them. Hence the well-earned celebrity of the Artistic Temperament. Frequently we observe that the artist, unable to fulfil himself in his art, turns to vice of one kind or another. It is as if a sculptor, in a gesture of impatience with his Venus, dabbed a handful of clay on her nose, and made her look like an elephant!”