The Complete Simon Iff Page 5

  “If you knew how often I’ve done just that thing!” laughed Major.

  “Well,” continued the mystic, “to come to the murder of this boy Harry “

  “I see where you’re driving,” broke in Jack Flynn. “And as I’m sure you noticed the perfect nonchalance of de Bry when he showed us that picture, you are going to prove that he did it unconsciously, or at least that it’s all so natural to him that he has no sense of it.”

  “You would find out what I am going to prove if you would let me do it,” said Simon, in some ill-humor. Major had felt ashamed of himself for smiling; he was genuinely concerned about his great new artist.

  “To come to the murder of this boy Harry,” repeated the magician, “we notice two things. First, the general surroundings. Storm, isolation, the wild weird atmosphere of the Scottish Highlands—enough to send any man, with an original touch of madness, over the line Second, the nature of the murder itself, it is in perfect keeping with the setting. Its details are elaborate. It is not an ordinary murder, but the murder of—a—I can’t find the right word.”

  Major broke in grimly: “The murder of a great mind gone wrong? Of such a mind as conceived, and such a hand as executed, those masterpieces? Oh my God!”

  “Your interruptions will not alter the facts of the case, or my deductions; pray let me proceed! Besides, there is still one step to take before we arrive at any such conclusion. I want you to remember a peculiar fact about the French Revolution. Here we find a whole set of people, educated, intelligent, complex, and above all humanitarian, who suddenly indulge in wholesale massacre. This, like the crime we are discussing, was a perverse crime. It was not at all in accordance with the general will of the Revolutionists, which was simply Social Justice.

  “But they had been thwarted for generations; thwarting was in their blood, as it were; and when they came to action, they became perverse. Thus—I beg you to believe—it is not merely the artistic temperament which produces these horrible crimes; it is simply any temperament which is suppressed long enough. It is more usual to find this manifested in artists, because they are advanced people who understand pretty well what their will is, who suffer more keenly, in consequence, from the thwarting of that will, especially as they usually perceive only too keenly the fact that it is the errors and stupidities of other people, people who have strayed far from their own orbits, that cause the thwarting in question. I will ask you to consider the case of a man who makes friends of spiders. Oh, you say, that is after he has been in the Bastille for twenty years. Precisely. He may have been a very bad man; he may himself have thwarted his own fundamental impulses of love; but the complete suppression of that instinct for so many years results in its peeping out at last, and taking an unnatural form. There are plenty of similar instances which will occur to you. In the case of the French Revolution, we must also consider the question of atavism. Humanitarian as the leaders were, their forefathers had been inured to fire and sword since the dawn of the race. It was the primitive tribal passions that broke out in them, after centuries of suppression. So you get the same phenomenon in both the man and the race.” Simon paused.

  “That boy, said Major, “has one of the greatest souls ever incarnated on this planet, and I won’t believe he did it.”

  “Your courage is splendid,” replied Simple Simon, “but your beliefs do not invalidate the conclusions of science. E pur si muove.”

  “Is that all?” asked Flynn.

  “For shame, Jack,” cried the mystic; ”I have hardly begun. But I perceive that the light is failing; we had better end this conversation in the presence of André de Bry.” Major paid the bill; and they went across Paris to the old magician’s little studio in the rue Vavin.

  It was a small room, and very simply furnished; but the paintings and sculptures would have made the fame of any museum. Each was the gift of a master to Simon Iff.

  “We shall wait for the young man,” said the mystic, as they seated themselves; you will see that I have no difficulty in forcing him to confess.”

  “I’ll never believe it,” insisted Major.

  “Don’t believe it till you hear it!” was the abrupt retort.

  IV

  A quarter of an hour elapsed; then the slim figure of the boy appeared. In his arms was the picture.

  Simon took it and placed it upon the mantel. Major was right; there was nothing in the room to equal it. The magician went to his desk and wrote out a check for fourteen thousand francs, which he handed to the young painter. “If you would sign this receipt?” De Bry complied.

  “Do not go!” said Simon. “I have much to say to you. You really like the picture? You think it worthy of you?”

  “I wouldn’t have sold it if I didn’t.”

  “Yet you were in sore straits? You were denying yourself food to pay your model?”

  “I shouldn’t have sold it to you if I didn’t think it mine.”

  “That too is worthy. But now, sit down. There are others to consider in this matter. I am going to ask my friends to remain absolutely silent while we talk.”

  “I know what you are going to say,” said the boy.

  “I think it unnecessary and cruel.”

  “Wait till I have done. It is not only necessary and kind, but it is very urgent.”

  “I can’t refuse the first man who has appreciated my work.”

  “Listen while I tell you a story. Many years ago I knew a man named Thornley, a wealthy manufacturer of biscuits. He had one son, Joseph. He asked me one day to recommend a tutor for the lad. I told him of a clergyman named Drew, a man of deep scholarship, great culture, and intense love of art. He worked on the ambition of Joseph Thornley and the boy, after a year’s tuition from Drew, decided to be a painter. The tutor died suddenly; but the boy’s ambition remained. He persuaded his father to let him go to varios art schools, where he studied incessantly with the most praisewhorthv diligence.”

  “Damn it!” roared Major, “he had no more capacity for art that this chair I am sitting on!”

  “I asked you not to interrupt,” returned Simon mildly. “I never said he had! To continue. Backed with ample wealth and influence, and fortified with determination to succeed, Thornley’s career was one long series of triumphs. Although primarily a marine painter, he also did other work, notably portraits. His picture of the king in the uniform of a British Admiral caught the public taste more than any other of his efforts. It was in that year that he was not only elected to the presidency of the Royal Academy of Arts, but raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Cudlipp. His only sorrow was the death of his wife two years after the birth of his children.”

  The magician turned to André. “Good! Now—how did you spend the week of the great storm?”

  “Billiards, mostly,” stammered André taken by surprise. “Chess, too, and some card games. I sketched of course, nearly all day. Eleanor had some needlework. Poor Harry was very bored; he did nothing much.”

  “And Cudlipp buried himself a good deal of anthropology?”

  “Yes; he had Frazer’s ’Golden Bough’ all the time “The boy broke off, and stared. “How did you know that?” he said, aghast.

  “A little bird told me,” said Simon lightly.

  All of a sudden Major sprang to his feet. “Then Cudlipp killed his son,” he shouted, “Oh! Simple Simon, what a fool I’ve been!” And he suddenly broke down in spasm on spasm of sobs. “I promised these gentlemen,” said Simon, taking no notice of the outburst, “that I would force a confession from you this afternoon. I think this is the moment. Come, we are all attention.”

  “I certainly cannot hear this senseless slander against my protector without—”

  “Hush!” said Simon. “I told you this matter was urgent. I meant what I said. You must catch the nine o’clock train for London.”

  “Why?” said the boy, defiantly; “who are you to say this!”

  “I am a person who is going to put a letter in the post in an hour’s time; an
d you had better arrive before the letter.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was explaining to these gentlemen at lunch that all crime was the result of conflict; that perverse crime, in particular, was caused by conflict of the conscious and unconscious wills.”

  “Don’t you see?” said Major, mastering himself, “it couldn’t be you. You were supremely happy; you had the girl you loved; you had found yourself as an artist. But Cudlipp had thwarted his own inner will all his life; he was meant to bake biscuits; and he had forced himself to do those eye-destroying horrors. But—go on, master!—I still don’t see the whole story.”

  “I haven’t told you all the facts yets. Cudlipp’s family was originally Armenian, for one thing, the offspring of some old Babylonian tribe. Then there was the ’Golden Bough’ with its detailed description of various savage rites, especially the sacrifice of the first-born, an idea, by the way, which the Jews only adopted at third or fourth hand from older and autochthonous races. Then the newspapers were filled with long arguments about the Chesidim and ritual murder,3 the trial of that man somewhere in Russia—can’t think of his name—begins with a B—was on at this time. Well, when the suppressed genius of the man for baking biscuits—which may be a passion like another—when that broke out, probably under the strain of the long storm, and the wildness of the whole scene, and possible some sudden realization that this boy here could paint, and he himself never could, why, then his brain snapped. The recent impressions combined with some far strain of atavism, and he resolved upon the murder.”

  “I still can’t see why murder,” said Flynn. “Why should not this biscuit-baking genius go into the kitchen and bake biscuits?”

  “I want you to recognize the fact, you dear good simple soul, that madmen are a thousand times more logical than the sane. The conclusions of normal men are always balanced by other considerations; we criticize our ideas of proper tailoring, for example, in the spotlight of our check books. The madman doesn’t. He wants clothes; he thinks of nothing else; so he goes down to Savile Row and orders a dozen sable overcoats and thirty dress suits. It’s much more logical, if logic were all!

  “So Cudlipp reasoned something like this, as I imagine; ’I’ve wasted forty years trying to paint when I ought to have been baking biscuits; now I must make up for lost time.’ How to do that? The madman’s reason finds it easy The connection between gold and copper coins is an arbitrary one, isn’t it. Yes. Well, if I haven’t got a barrow load of coppers, I can give you a fist full of sovereigns, and it’s just as good. The whole idea of primitive magic (which he had been reading, remember!) rests on arbitrary substitution. The king must die every year, or the sun won’t come back—there’s an arbitrary connection, to begin with, though its based on false reasoning, or rather on correct reasoning from false observation. Now the king doesn’t want to die; so he takes a criminal, labels him king, and kills him. Every one is happy. So this man seeks to satisfy his genius, suppressed for forty years, in a night. Surely it must be through some monstrous act of violence and horror! That is madman’s logic. Then, as I said before, some ancestral memory in the subconscious self influenced his recent impression, and that gave the form to the idea. It is also conceivable that he had a real purpose, thought that the sacrifice of the first-born might enable him to become a painter. Gilles de Retz murdered over 800 children in his endeavor to make gold4. I But of this theory I have no evidence. However, the rest stands.”

  André de Bry listened with white lips to this speech.

  “Now will you confess?” asked the magician, with mild persistence.

  “I don’t see why I should.”

  “Because you are still looking at the past. Can’t you foresee the future?”

  “Ought I to kill myself?”

  “Be serious, sir!” reprimanded Simon. “I see that I must tell you more. So far I have told you how I know that Cudlipp killed his son, and how he came to do it. You may or may not know why he did it but you must know that he did it, if only by a process of exclusion. Then—what will he do next?”

  The boy began to smile. “Oh Eleanor is with an aunt” he said: “she’s safe enough.”

  “Now we begin to confess indirectly” continued Simon. “But what will he do? Is he conscious of his act? You see, I must know all. I was already sure that you would never have left Eleanor in danger. But there are other problems”

  “I’m beaten,” said Andre. “I’ll tell you all I know.”

  “Good.”

  V

  “It was I who discovered the body of poor Harry; for I had risen with the first light, intending to paint. I needn’t go into the events of that day, much; it was all suspicion, perfectly hellish. I haven’t your reasoning powers, Mr. Iff, and I didn’t think he had done it, particularly. He pretended to suspect me, of course. We can see now, thanks to you, that his whole life has been one long hypocrisy, that he has been pretending to be an artist, just like any other fraud. His deadly earnestness about it only made it worse; I see that now. But I didn’t see it then; to me he was just a bad painter, and I looked no deeper. Well, by dinner time our nerves were all on edge; Eleanor’s, naturally, more than any. After dinner I said I would go to bed, meaning to snatch an hour’s sleep and then to watch Eleanor’s door all night. I had told her to have her companion in her room—the poor old lady was glad enough to have company, you can imagine.

  Eleanor s manner to me had been strange beyond words; but I only thought that it meant that she suspected me. However, when I said I was going to bed, she jumped up: ’Do play me a hundred up first!’ she cried; ’I’ll go mad if you don’t.’ We went into the billiard room together. She closed the door, and put her back to it. ’André,’ she cried, ’I’ve been insane about this all day, but I’m in a fearful position. Only—I can’t let you go to bed. I must tell you. Papa did it.’ I caught her in my arms, for she was falling. In a moment she recovered. ’Last night,’ she went on, ’I woke with frightful dreams—and I found my nose was bleeding. I lit my candle, and got up to get water. Then I knew suddenly that something was wrong with Harry. I always have known; it’s the twin sympathy.’”

  “Damnation!” interrupted Simple Simon in a fury, “I’m getting old. I ought to have known that she knew.”

  “You’ve done well enough, sir,” said André; ’it’s been like a miracle to me to hear you. Eleanor went on: ’The moment my nose stopped bleeding I took my black kimono, and went down to Harry’s room. The door was open. I slipped in. It was dark. At that instant I saw the studio door open.’ (They were right opposite, Mr. Iff). ’I knew there would be all kinds of trouble if I were caught wandering about the house at that time of night. I kept still. I could see through the crack of the door. Papa was silhouetted against the light in the studio. He had a wash hand basin, carrying it carefully. I heard him give a short harsh laugh and say aloud: “Now I begin to live.” He went down the little corridor by Harry’s room.’ (It leads to a pepperbox turret. Harry’s room has a window on to that corridor.) ’I went to the side window. I saw papa throw the basin over the cliff. Then he went back, and down the main corridor to his room. I felt for Harry in his bed. He wasn’t there. I found matches. The room was empty. I went into the lighted studio. I saw Harry at once, and knew he was dead. I fainted, when I came to myself I was in my own bedroom. I must have walked there without knowing. A few minutes later, I suppose, the alarm came. Forgive me; I ought to have told you before; you must have suffered fearfully. But I stopped her. ’It’s best, I think, that you have told me now,’ I said, ’we must save him. We must be on our guard, and do nothing.’ We noted Cudlipp’s conduct. It became clear that he would hide his crime to the end, even to letting me be hanged for it. I told her that I would never speak to her again if she interfered, that I would die for the honor of her family. I made her swear by her dead mother. I doubted at first if he were aware of what he had done, but his manner left no doubt. For instance, he made no inquiry into the mystery of the ba
sin missing from his room, and never spoke of it in court. So we knew.”

  “You’re a very noble and very wrong-headed young man,” said Simon; “you don’t really think we can leave things as they are, do you? Observe what is happening now. The explosion in the man’s brain once over, habit has resumed its sway. He’s the hypocritical bourgeois once more—but with the memory of that most fearful deed to lash him. If I know anything of men, it will prey upon his mind; and we shall have either another murder, or, more likely, suicide. Your sacrifice and Eleanor’s will be useless. This is what has to be done: You and I will go to London together to-night. In the morning we will confide in two alienists. We will all go to Cudlipp House; the doctors will certify him insane, he must consent to our terms. He must put himself in the charge of a medical attendant and a male nurse, and he must go away with them, so that he never returns.