He started up it, still talking. “If you haven’t seen Hugh since the war, you’ll be interested in the work he’s been doing lately.”
I was interested though not for artistic reasons. The wall of the mezzanine was hung with twenty-odd paintings: landscapes, portraits, groups of semi-abstract figures, and more abstract still lifes. I recognized some of the scenes he had sketched in the Philippine jungle, transposed into the permanence of oil. In the central position there was a portrait of a bearded man whom I’d hardly have known without the label, Self-Portrait.
Hugh had changed. He had put on weight and lost his youth entirely. There were vertical lines in his forehead, gray flecks in his hair and beard. The light-colored eyes seemed to be smiling sardonically. But when I looked at them from another angle, they were bleak and somber. It was a face a man might see in his bathroom mirror on a cold gray hangover morning.
I turned to the curator hovering at my elbow. “When did he raise the beard?”
“A couple of years ago, I believe, shortly after he joined us as resident painter.”
“Is he obsessed with beards?”
“I don’t quite know what you mean.”
“Neither do I. But I came across a funny thing in his studio this morning. A sketch of a woman, a nude, with a heavy black beard. Does that make any sense to you?”
The old man smiled. “I’ve long since given up trying to make sense out of Hugh. He has his own esthetic logic, I suppose. But I’d have to see this sketch before I could form an opinion. He may have simply been doodling.”
“I doubt it. It was big, and carefully done.” I brought out the question that had been nagging at the back of my mind. “Is there something the matter with him — I mean, emotionally?”
His answer was positive. “Certainly not! He’s simply wrapped up in his work, and he lives by impulse. He’s never on time for appointments.” He looked at his watch. “He promised last night to meet me here this morning at nine and it’s almost nine thirty.”
“When did you see him last night?”
“I left the key of the gallery with him when I went home for dinner. He wanted to change some of the paintings. About eight or a little later he walked over to my house to return the key. We have only the one key, since we can’t afford a watchman.”
“Did he say where he was going after that?”
“He had an appointment, but he didn’t say with whom. It seemed to be urgent, since he wouldn’t stop for a drink. Well,” He glanced at his watch again. “I suppose I’d better be getting down to work, Hugh Western or no Hugh Western.”
Alice was waiting for us at the foot of the stairs. Both her hands gripped the wrought-iron bannister as if she needed it to hold her up. Her voice was no more than a whisper, but it seemed to fill the great room with leaden echoes.
“Dr. Silliman. The Chardin’s gone.”
He stopped so suddenly I nearly ran him down. “That’s impossible.”
“I know. But it’s gone, frame and all.”
He bounded down the remaining steps and disappeared into one of the smaller rooms under the mezzanine. Alice followed him more slowly. I caught up with her.
“There’s a picture missing?”
“Father’s best picture, one of the best Chardins in the country. He lent it to the gallery for a month.”
“Is it worth a lot of money?”
“Yes, it’s very valuable. But it means a lot more to father than the money—” She turned in the doorway and gave me a closed look, as if she’d realized she was telling her family secrets to a stranger.
Silliman was standing with his back to us, staring at a blank space on the opposite wall. He looked badly shaken when he turned around.
“I told the Board that we should install a burglar alarm — the insurance people recommended it. But Admiral Turner was the only one who supported me. Now of course they’ll be blaming me.” His nervous eyes roved around and paused on Alice. “And what is your father going to say?”
“He’ll be sick.” She looked sick herself.
They were getting nowhere, so I cut in, “When did you see it last?”
Silliman answered. “Yesterday afternoon, about five thirty. I showed it to a visitor just before we closed. We check the visitors very carefully from the office, since we have no guards.”
“Who was the visitor?”
“A lady — an elderly lady from Pasadena. She’s above suspicion, of course. I escorted her out myself, and she was the last one in. I know that for a fact.”
“Aren’t you forgetting Hugh?”
“By George, I was. He was here until eight last night. But you surely don’t suggest that Western took it? He’s our resident painter, he’s devoted to the gallery.”
“He might have been careless. If he was working on the mezzanine and left the door unlocked—”
“He always kept it locked,” Alice said coldly. “Hugh isn’t careless about the things that matter.”
“Is there another entrance?”
“No,” Silliman said. “The building was planned for security. There’s only the one window in my office, and it’s heavily barred. We do have an air-conditioning system, but the inlets are much too small for anyone to get through.”
“Let’s have a look at the window.”
The old man was too upset to question my authority. He led me through a storeroom stacked with old gilt-framed pictures whose painters deserved to be “hung,” if the pictures didn’t. The single casement in the office was shut and bolted behind a Venetian blind. I pulled the cord and peered out through the dusty glass. The vertical bars outside the window were no more than three inches apart. None of them looked as if it had been tampered with. Across the alley I could see a few tourists eating breakfast behind the restaurant hedge.
Silliman was leaning on the desk, one hand on the cradle of the phone. Indecision was twisting his face. “I do hate to call the police in a matter like this. I suppose I must, though, mustn’t I?”
Alice covered his hand with hers, the line of her back a taut curve across the desk. “Hadn’t you better talk to father first? He was here with Hugh last night — I should have remembered before. It’s barely possible he took the Chardin home with him.”
“Really? You really think so?” Silliman let go of the telephone and clasped his hands under his chin.
“It wouldn’t be like father to do that without letting you know. But die month is nearly up, isn’t it?”
“Three more days.” His hand returned to the phone. “Is the Admiral at home?”
“He’ll be down at the club by now. Do you have your car?”
“Not this morning.”
I made one of my famous quick decisions, the kind you wake up in the middle of the night regretting five years later. San Francisco could wait. My curiosity was touched, and something deeper than curiosity. Something of the responsibility I’d felt for Hugh in the Philippines, when I was the practical one and he was the evergreen adolescent who thought the jungle was as safe as a scene by Le Douanier Rousseau. Though we were nearly the same age, I’d felt like his elder brother. I still did.
“My car’s around the corner,” I said. “I’ll be glad to drive you.”
The San Marcos Beach Club was a long low building painted an unobtrusive green and standing well back from the road. Everything about it was unobtrusive, including the private policeman who stood inside the plate-glass doors and watched us come up the walk.
“Looking for the Admiral, Miss Turner? I think he’s up on the north deck.”
We crossed a tiled lanai shaded with potted palms, climbed a flight of stairs to a sun deck lined with cabanas. I could see the mountains that walled the city off from the desert in the northeast, and the sea below with its waves glinting like blue fish-scales. The swimming pool on the lee side of the deck was still and clear.