He nodded quickly. “Oh, yes,” he agreed. “The very best. But Mr Schweingurt made tests of it up in the laboratory and proved to his own satisfaction that it’s no more than four or five hundred years old. The original would be several centuries older than that, dating back to around 450 B.C.” He spoke with a certain pride found only in men of his profession, but he spoke of centuries the way we might speak of years, say the turbulent Thirties or the roaring Twenties. “I shouldn’t claim that the Dionysus we received is a forgery, I suppose,” he said; “rather, it’s a copy of the original made by a sculptor of a later era. An excellent copy, too; and worth a great amount of money. But it can’t approach the value of the original.”
He was silent for a moment. I said, “You say that this Dr Bramble from the museum claimed the Dionysus was the original?”
“Yes.” He nodded his dark head. “He and Mr Schweingurt had quite an argument about it.”
“Ah!” I murmured. My thoughts began clicking into some semblance of order.
He leaned forward in his chair aggressively. “No, no! Dr Bramble wouldn’t have done anything like – that! Besides,” and he wiped his fine, smooth hand across his eyes, “the Dionysus is gone. Missing. Stolen! Dr Bramble wouldn’t have stolen it, let alone committed murder for it, whether it was the original or a copy.”
I sipped my drink, gestured with the glass in my hand and argued, “Look at it this way: Suppose the Dionysus was an original, even though Schweingurt’s tests proved it wasn’t. Bramble was so sure it was that he wanted it. An art connoisseur will commit murder for something so priceless as a statuette dating before Christ.” I emptied the glass and watched the thoughtful frown on his face, as he turned the theory over in his mind. He poured himself another drink.
He shook his head. “No. That’s no good. If Bramble were certain the statuette was an original, he could have agreed with Schweingurt and purchased it, as a copy, for a small fortune less than he believed it was worth. He would have done that if he had wanted it badly. He wouldn’t have stolen it.” He took my glass and filled it for himself. “Besides,” he said resolutely, “Dr Bramble wasn’t interested in the Dionysus, which is a decisive point in his favor. He has already bought the Athena – the statue of the goddess outside, which Mr Schweingurt struck when he fell. The Athena is the only original by the same sculptor in the country and is worth even more than the Dionysus. So you see – if Dr Bramble had wanted the Dionysus as representative of that period of art, he might have purchased it as a copy, rather than spend many, many times more for the Athena.”
“The Athena is an original?” I questioned.
“Oh, definitely!”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Well, I hardly think Dr Bramble would have purchased it as an original if it weren’t. He is an expert, you know. And he has been quite anxious to get it these last few days.”
“How long have you had this statue of Athena?” I asked him.
“About two years.” He thought a moment. “Maybe a little longer.”
“And Dr Bramble has been only anxious to buy it in these past few days?”
“Yes.”
“Odd, isn’t it? Especially since Bramble is supposed to be such an authority and would certainly have known of Schweingurt’s having the only authentic sculpture in this country?”
He shrugged indifferently. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “Certainly, Dr Bramble wouldn’t have stolen the Dionysus. I can’t understand why anybody would want to steal a copy.”
“Schweingurt told me the original was worth about sixty-five thousand dollars,” I said. “How much was the copy worth?”
“A couple of thousand, maybe.”
“Plenty of murders have been committed for less than that,” I told him. “Besides, whoever did steal it may not know it’s a copy.”
“Which would leave Bramble out of the picture.”
“Yes.”
Cambelli stared suddenly at the Bourbon in his glass. “Even stealing an original would be stupid,” he mused. “An original Dionysus would be too hard to dispose of. No art connoisseur would buy it unless he knew exactly where it came from. And no one but a connoisseur would be interested in it.” He sipped his whiskey thoughtfully. “There’s a lot more to this than robbery,” he added.
“Much more,” I agreed and let it go at that.
When we left the office, Schweingurt’s body had been removed and the lab men were packing their equipment. I hung around a few minutes near the Athena statue to see if I might pick up some faint clue to the murder, but found nothing and started to turn away when I saw what appeared to be a pencil-shaped object made of marble lying near the base of the statue. I stooped to pick it up when a rough voice behind me bellowed, “Keep your hands off that!”
I straightened quickly, my hands at my sides and stared at the object on the floor.
The voice came alongside me and said, in a friendlier tone, “Oh, it’s you, Mike.” I glanced up at the big, red, Irish face of the plain clothes man. “Sorry,” he said. “Reilly don’t want nothin’ touched. He’s comin’ back in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” I told him. “That pencil-shaped thing caught my eye.” I recognized it as the tip of the staff I had seen on the Dionysus statue, and it told me something – Schweingurt probably had been holding the statuette when he was murdered, the tip of the staff had broken off as he fell.
“What does Reilly think of this job?” I asked the cop.
“Reilly don’t know. The place was closed and there was only the assistant here.” He glanced furtively at Maurice Cambelli standing nervously near the door to Schweingurt’s office. “He thinks maybe there was a robbery motive . . . but he’s not so sure but what Cambelli might have something to do with it.”
I shook my head. “He had no motive,” I argued, thinking of what I already knew about the case – the statuette, Leiderkrantz, Bramble. “I don’t think he had anything to do with it.”
The cop shrugged. “Reilly just isn’t sure about him, that’s all.” He moved away, turned and said, “You won’t touch anything, will you, Mike? Reilly would raise hell with me if you did.”
I nodded, said, “The answer isn’t here, anyway, Grady.” I walked out of the place.
Picking up Leiderkrantz’s trail was a hopeless cause, but it was the only lead I could think of. It kept me busy for three days, picking up pieces, querying people who might have known him or seen him – and running up against a dead end every time. The Customs and airlines representatives were looking for him without success. I finally decided to give up that angle.
A week passed, a week in which I accomplished nothing. Then, one morning I picked up my newspaper and read that Maurice Cambelli had been slapped in jail for the Schweingurt murder. That night I had two visitors, Reilly and Grady from the detective division.
I pulled out a bottle and poured three drinks after they arrived. Reilly looked at the drinks, then at me. “This isn’t a social call, Mike,” he said gruffly and shook his head at the drinks. “We want to know how much you know about the Schweingurt murder.”
I waved my hand at him and got up from my chair. “Okay,” I told him. “Ignore my hospitality. Besides I’m an unsociable guy.” I went into the bedroom, put on a lounging robe and came back. Two of the drinks were gone. That made me feel better. I don’t like the law to be out of sorts with me.
“What about the Schweingurt murder?” I asked. “I thought you’d grabbed the Cambelli kid for that.”
The fire had gone out of Reilly’s eyes. “Don’t try to sell it, Mike,” he said softly. “Maybe you know something, maybe you don’t.” He shrugged. “We grabbed the Cambelli boy. But that doesn’t solve the murder. We found out that a statue was stolen – a thing called Dionysus – and figured there probably was a robbery motive. We found the statue in Cambelli’s room.”