Don’t be too sure, thought Darcourt. There had been a time, before he recognized himself as the Fool, when he would have been badgered into assuming full responsibility for these Babes in the Wood. But as the Fool he had other things to attend to. So he gave the Cranes the name of Dean Wintersen’s secretary, and the telephone number at which the Doctor could be reached, and, by means of well-developed professorial will-power—the spiritual equivalent of the Chinese Chi-Kung—he shifted them off his chairs and out of his sight.
They went, thanking him profusely and assuring him that they looked forward to seeing him again. It had already been a terrific experience, they said, just meeting him.
6
Darcourt was not sure how he should approach Arthur and Maria about his discovery, now his certainty, of what The Marriage at Cana really was. Although the Cornish Foundation was in no way underwriting his biography of Francis Cornish, friendship and a sense of decency about a family with whom he was strongly involved made it obligatory that he should tell them what he had found, before he said anything to Princess Amalie and Prince Max. The picture belonged to the New York people, and who could guess what they might say to his information about their treasure? Was it a brilliant piece of detection in the world of art history, or was it the harsh unmasking of a fake? And if a fake, what did that mean in loss of money? That was trouble enough, but the touchiness of the Cornishes about anything that might reflect, however faintly, on the integrity of the great financial house was incalculable. So he dawdled, dotting i’s and crossing t’s in his documentation, and hoping that a favourable moment would declare itself.
The declaration came from an unexpected source. Wally Crottel was apprehended by the police selling marijuana to schoolchildren. In the playground of the Governor Simcoe Public School, Wally was plying a brisk trade in joints at the end of each school day, and some children, with that mixture of innocence and stupidity that marks a certain sort of childish mind, were walking home puffing proudly. Before the police could put the handcuffs on him Wally made an ill-advised break for freedom and was knocked down by a passing car; he was quite badly hurt, and was now in the General Hospital, with a policeman sitting outside his room, with nothing to do but read a paperback book which Mr. Carver told Darcourt was Middlemarch, an unexpected choice. Mr. Carver had tipped off the police about Wally’s profitable sideline, and Mr. Carver could not conceal a deep satisfaction at Wally’s fall.
“But you have to admit the guy was very well organized,” he said. “He was growing the stuff in a corner of a parking lot behind the boarding-house building where he lived. It was quite a small job, but you don’t need an awful lot of the old Mary-Jane to make a few joints, and Wally included a good deal of dried mint with it, to make it go as far as possible, and give a flavour kids liked. Wally was doing very well, for a small operator. Where the kids got the money to pay his price I don’t know, but there are quite a few rich kids in that district, and I think some of them were retailing what they bought from Wally, adulterated with dried grass and God knows what. Little bastards! Imagine kiddy pushers! But we live in a very strange world, professor.”
“We do, indeed. How did you get wise to Wally?”
“There’s a guy lives in the basement of that building where Mr. and Mrs. Cornish have the penthouse that I’ve known for years. Looks like a slob, but he’s not a real slob. I think he had it in for Wally, who was always snooping around that basement apartment, trying to find out how this man and his sister came to be living there. Now, the sister’s a bit of a psychic, and sometimes the cops use her, when they want one. Oh, yes; we cops are not above tips from psychics, and sometimes they’re very useful. You can’t discount anything you hear, in the detective business.”
“Will it go hard with Wally, when he comes to trial?”
“That crook Gwilt is hard at work, building up a case that Wally comes from a broken home—you know what I mean? He’ll do his best to keep Wally in the hospital as long as possible, so he can do whatever he can to get Wally tried before an easy judge. Fat chance! There aren’t any easy judges when it comes to pushing drugs to kids. Wally is headed for a long, reflective retirement as a guest of the Crown.”
“What could that mean?”
“Well, professor, it says on the books you can get life for pushing. Nobody does, but some of the sentences are tough. Lets look on the bright side and say Wally comes out of hospital with a short leg, or a hole in his head, or something showy like that. The judge might go easy on him. He’ll still go to the pen, of course, but if he’s a very good boy, and squeals on a few people he knows, and sucks up the governors and the chaplain, he might be on the street again in seven years, but not a minute less. I’d hope for nine or ten. Pushing to kids is very, very unpopular. Wally has lost face, as the Chinese say. Your friend with the book Wally was whimpering about can forget Wally. How is that nice lady?”
“At this moment, she’s expecting a baby.”
“Couldn’t be better. If you see her, wish her luck from me.”
The very night he heard of Wally’s fall Darcourt hastened to the Cornishes’ apartment, thinking that such news would create an atmosphere friendly to his real mission. He was not pleased to find Powell there before him, making himself very much at home. He could not possibly include Powell in any discussion about The Marriage at Cana. But he told Arthur and Maria about Wally, and about Carver’s forecast of Wally’s future.
“Poor old Wally,” said Maria.
Arthur was dumbfounded. “Poor old—! Maria, don’t you see? This disposes of that business of Wally wanting his father’s book. He wouldn’t get anywhere with a court case about that.”
“Aren’t the courts supposed to forget past misdeeds, when somebody has been foully wronged?”
They’re supposed to, but they don’t. From henceforth, Wally is null and void.”
“I’m astonished at you men. Do you want to have your own way at the expense of a fellow creature’s suffering?”
“I haven’t the least objection to you getting your own way at the expense of anybody’s suffering. Except mine, of course,” said Arthur.
“Wally is suffering because he is stupid,” said Darcourt. “Trying to break away from the cops! Ah, these amateurs! He is obviously a criminal of no real flair.”
“Wouldn’t you have tried to escape?”
“If I were hanging around schoolyards, peddling dope to kids, I would hope to have more grip on my job. If I were a criminal, I would try to use the brains God gave me.”
“All right. Wally is a bad boy and Wally is stupid. But it ill becomes you, as a Christian priest, to be exulting and sniggering. Where’s your pity?”
“Maria, stop playing the Many-Breasted Mother, gushing compassion like a burst waterpipe. You’re kidding. You’re just as glad as we are that Wally’s out of the way.”
“I shall indeed be a mother within quite a short time, and I think a show of compassion becomes me. I know my role.”
Maria smiled a farcical Madonna smile.
“Good! Then I’ll play my role as a Christian priest. Arthur, will you get on the phone and send Wally your own lawyer? Meanwhile I’ll phone the newspaper sob-sisters and shed a few tears about Wally’s sad plight. Geraint, you lodge a complaint under the Charter of Rights. Wally was an employee of this building, and thus of the Cornish Trust, of which Arthur is the Big Cheese. So Arthur must rush to the aid of a victim of our social system. Maria, prepare to appear in court, heavy with child and wearing a veil, to say what a sweet little fellow Wally always was, and how Whistlecraft’s denial of his name to Wally gave him an Anonymity Complex. Wally will have to go to jail, but we can float him in and out on a flood of tears. Of course we’ll keep mum about how Wally tried to shake you down for a million. Come on, let’s get to work. There must be more than one phone in this palace.”