Next day we lunched together, and fixed the thing up. I have never seen
anyone so supremely braced. We examined the scheme from every angle and
there wasn't a flaw in it. The only difficulty was to hit on a
plausible purchaser. Archie suggested me, but I couldn't see it. I said
it would sound fishy. Eventually I had a brain wave, and suggested J.
Bellingwood Brackett, the American millionaire. He lives in London, and
you see his name in the papers everyday as having bought some painting
or statue or something, so why shouldn't he buy Archie's "Coming of
Summer?" And Archie said, "Exactly--why shouldn't he? And if he had had
any sense in his fat head, he would have done it long ago, dash him!"
Which shows you that dear old Archie was bracing up, for I've heard him
use much the same language in happier days about a referee.
He went off, crammed to the eyebrows with good food and happiness, to
tell Mrs. Archie that all was well, and that the old home was saved,
and that Canterbury mutton might now be definitely considered as off
the bill of fare.
He told me on the phone that night that he had made the price two
thousand pounds, because he needed the money, and what was two thousand
to a man who had been fleecing the widow and the orphan for forty odd
years without a break? I thought the price was a bit high, but I agreed
that J. Bellingwood could afford it. And happiness, you might say,
reigned supreme.
I don't know when I've had such a nasty jar as I got when Wilberforce
brought me the paper in bed, and I languidly opened it and this jumped
out and bit at me:
BELLINGWOOD BRACKETT DISCOVERS
ENGLISH GENIUS
-----
PAYS STUPENDOUS PRICE FOR YOUNG ARTIST'S PICTURE
-----
HITHERTO UNKNOWN FUTURIST RECEIVED £2,000
Underneath there was a column, some of it about Archie, the rest about
the picture; and scattered over the page were two photographs of old
Archie, looking more like Pa Doughnut than anything human, and a
smudged reproduction of "The Coming of Summer"; and, believe me,
frightful as the original of that weird exhibit looked, the
reproduction had it licked to a whisper. It was one of the ghastliest
things I have ever seen.
Well, after the first shock I recovered a bit. After all, it was fame
for dear old Archie. As soon as I had had lunch I went down to the flat
to congratulate him.
He was sitting there with Mrs. Archie. He was looking a bit dazed, but
she was simmering with joy. She welcomed me as the faithful friend.
"Isn't it perfectly splendid, Mr. Pepper, to think that Archie's genius
has at last been recognized? How quiet he kept it. I had no idea that
Mr. Brackett was even interested in his work. I wonder how he heard of
it?"
"Oh, these things get about," I said. "You can't keep a good man down."
"Think of two thousand pounds for one picture--and the first he has
ever sold!"
"What beats me," I said, "is how the papers got hold of it."
"Oh, I sent it to the papers," said Mrs. Archie, in an offhand way.
"I wonder who did the writing up," I said.
"They would do that in the office, wouldn't they?" said Mrs. Archie.
"I suppose they would," I said. "They are wonders at that sort of
thing."
I couldn't help wishing that Archie would enter into the spirit of the
thing a little more and perk up, instead of sitting there looking like
a codfish. The thing seemed to have stunned the poor chappie.
"After this, Archie," I said, "all you have to do is to sit in your
studio, while the police see that the waiting line of millionaires
doesn't straggle over the pavement. They'll fight----"
"What's that?" said Archie, starting as if someone had dug a red-hot
needle into his calf.
It was only a ring at the bell, followed by a voice asking if Mr.
Ferguson was at home.
"Probably an interviewer," said Mrs. Archie. "I suppose we shall get no
peace for a long time to come."
The door opened, and the cook came in with a card. "'Renshaw Liggett,'"
said Mrs. Archie "I don't know him. Do you, Archie? It must be an
interviewer. Ask him to come in, Julia."
And in he came.
My knowledge of chappies in general, after a fairly wide experience, is
that some chappies seem to kind of convey an atmosphere of
unpleasantness the moment you come into contact with them. Renshaw
Liggett gave me this feeling directly he came in; and when he fixed me
with a sinister glance and said, "Mr. Ferguson?" I felt inclined to say
"Not guilty." I backed a step or two and jerked my head towards Archie,
and Renshaw turned the searchlight off me and switched it onto him.
"You are Mr. Archibald Ferguson, the artist?"
Archie nodded pallidly, and Renshaw nodded, as much as to say that you
couldn't deceive him. He produced a sheet of paper. It was the middle
page of the _Mail_.
"You authorized the publication of this?"
Archie nodded again.
"I represent Mr. Brackett. The publication of this most impudent
fiction has caused Mr. Brackett extreme annoyance, and, as it might
also lead to other and more serious consequences, I must insist that a
full denial be published without a moment's delay."
"What do you mean?" cried Mrs. Archie. "Are you mad?"
She had been standing, listening to the conversation in a sort of
trance. Now she jumped into the fight with a vim that turned Renshaw's
attention to her in a second.
"No, madam, I am not mad. Nor, despite the interested assertions of
certain parties whom I need not specify by name, is Mr. Brackett. It
may be news to you, Mrs. Ferguson, that an action is even now pending
in New York, whereby certain parties are attempting to show that my
client, Mr. Brackett, is non compos and should be legally restrained
from exercising control over his property. Their case is extremely
weak, for even if we admit their contention that our client did, on the
eighteenth of June last, attempt to walk up Fifth Avenue in his
pyjamas, we shall be able to show that his action was the result of an
election bet. But as the parties to whom I have alluded will
undoubtedly snatch at every straw in their efforts to prove that Mr.
Brackett is mentally infirm, the prejudicial effect of this publication
cannot be over-estimated. Unless Mr. Brackett can clear himself of the
stigma of having given two thousand pounds for this extraordinary
production of an absolutely unknown artist, the strength of his case
must be seriously shaken. I may add that my client's lavish patronage
of Art is already one of the main planks in the platform of the parties
already referred to. They adduce his extremely generous expenditure in
this direction as evidence that he is incapable of a proper handling of
his money. I need scarcely point out with what sinister pleasure,
therefore, they must have contemplated--this."
And he looked at "The Coming of Summer" as if it were a black beetle.
I must say, much as I disliked the blighter, I couldn't help feeling
that he had right on his side. It hadn't occurred to me in quite that
light before, but, considering it calmly now, I could see that a man
who would disgorge two thousand of the best for Archie's Futurist
masterpiece might very well step straight into the nut factory, and no
questions asked.
Mrs. Archie came right back at him, as game as you please.
"I am sorry for Mr. Brackett's domestic troubles, but my husband can
prove without difficulty that he did buy the picture. Can't you, dear?"
Archie, extremely white about the gills, looked at the ceiling and at
the floor and at me and Renshaw Liggett.
"No," he said finally. "I can't. Because he didn't."
"Exactly," said Renshaw, "and I must ask you to publish that statement
in tomorrow's papers without fail." He rose, and made for the door. "My
client has no objection to young artists advertising themselves,
realizing that this is an age of strenuous competition, but he firmly
refuses to permit them to do it at his expense. Good afternoon."
And he legged it, leaving behind him one of the most chunky silences I
have ever been mixed up in. For the life of me, I couldn't see who was
to make the next remark. I was jolly certain that it wasn't going to be
me.
Eventually Mrs. Archie opened the proceedings.
"What does it mean?"
Archie turned to me with a sort of frozen calm.
"Reggie, would you mind stepping into the kitchen and asking Julia for
this week's _Funny Slices_? I know she has it."
He was right. She unearthed it from a cupboard. I trotted back with it
to the sitting room. Archie took the paper from me, and held it out to
his wife, Doughnuts uppermost.
"Look!" he said.
She looked.
"I do them. I have done them every week for three years. No, don't
speak yet. Listen. This is where all my money came from, all the money
I lost when B. and O. P. Rails went smash. And this is where the money
came from to buy 'The Coming of Summer.' It wasn't Brackett who bought
it; it was myself."
Mrs. Archie was devouring the Doughnuts with wide-open eyes. I caught a
glimpse of them myself, and only just managed not to laugh, for it was
the set of pictures where Pa Doughnut tries to fix the electric light,
one of the very finest things dear old Archie had ever done.
"I don't understand," she said.
"I draw these things. I have sold my soul."
"Archie!"
He winced, but stuck to it bravely.
"Yes, I knew how you would feel about it, and that was why I didn't
dare to tell you, and why we fixed up this story about old Brackett. I
couldn't bear to live on you any longer, and to see you roughing it
here, when we might be having all the money we wanted."
Suddenly, like a boiler exploding, she began to laugh.
"They're the funniest things I ever saw in my life," she gurgled. "Mr.
Pepper, do look! He's trying to cut the electric wire with the
scissors, and everything blazes up. And you've been hiding this from me
all that time!"
Archie goggled dumbly. She dived at a table, and picked up a magazine,
pointing to one of the advertisement pages.
"Read!" she cried. "Read it aloud."
And in a shaking voice Archie read:
You think you are perfectly well, don't you? You wake up in the
morning and spring out of bed and say to yourself that you have
never been better in your life. You're wrong! Unless you are
avoiding coffee as you would avoid the man who always tells you
the smart things his little boy said yesterday, and drinking
SAFETY FIRST MOLASSINE
for breakfast, you cannot be
Perfectly Well.
It is a physical impossibility. Coffee contains an appreciable
quantity of the deadly drug caffeine, and therefore----
"I wrote _that_," she said. "And I wrote the advertisement of the
Spiller Baby Food on page ninety-four, and the one about the Preeminent
Breakfast Sausage on page eighty-six. Oh, Archie, dear, the torments I
have been through, fearing that you would some day find me out and
despise me. I couldn't help it. I had no private means, and I didn't
make enough out of my poetry to keep me in hats. I learned to write
advertisements four years ago at a correspondence school, and I've been
doing them ever since. And now I don't mind your knowing, now that you
have told me this perfectly splendid news. Archie!"
She rushed into his arms like someone charging in for a bowl of soup at
a railway station buffet. And I drifted out. It seemed to me that this
was a scene in which I was not on. I sidled to the door, and slid
forth. They didn't notice me. My experience is that nobody ever
does--much.
