— Yes, the secrecy.
— What?
— These paintings, selling these paintings, the secrecy of it.
Valentine chuckled. — Of course, he couldn't do any of it alone. Other people do his work for him, get his ideas for him. Who do you think launched this picture here in this country? He motioned to the open reproduction. — Did you read about it?
— Where?
— In the papers. No, you probably never see the newspaper, at that. He didn't tell you, then? He wouldn't, of course. It might interfere.
— Interfere? with what?
— With your work, of course, he's quite frantic about protecting you. I've gathered you're quite as dedicated as those medieval forgers of classical antiquities. Valentine was speaking rapidly and with asperity. — True to your art, so to say?
— True to… yes, that's like saying a man's true to his cancer.
— Don't be upset, don't concern yourself with him, with his explanations of reality.
— But that's what's so strange, it makes so much sense at first, and then if you listen, you. Yes, he understands reality.
— He does not understand reality. Basil Valentine stood up, still, grasping his lapels, and looked down to the lowered face across the table. — Recktall Brown is reality, he said, and after a pause where neither of them moved, turned on a toe and idled out into the room. — A very different thing, he added over his shoulder, and stopped to light a cigarette.
Recktall Brown's voice reached them in the separate phrases of telephone conversation, — Not a dollar more, God damn it., at one point, at another, — God damn it, not a dollar less.
— But let me tell you about discovering this van der Goes. It might amuse you. It was taken to London, secretly of course, and modified with tempera before it was brought back to America, a crude job of overpainting on a glue finish, which would wash right off. It was such an obvious bad job that even customs discovered it. As much as it pained them, poor fellows, since they collect ten per cent on anything they can prove is a copy or an imitation. But there was the genuine, duty-free, original work of art underneath. As a matter of fact, I was called in to help verify it. You see how much we trust your work. And of course everyone respected the owner's "business secret" about where he'd got it. After that incident people were predisposed to accept it.
— But. why? There's no law, is there, against.
— Not a question of law, my dear fellow, Valentine said returning to the table. — Publicity. Publicity.
— But, a thing like this, a… painting like this.
— A painting like this or a tube of toothpaste or a laxative which induces spastic colitis. You can't sell any of them without publicity. The people! Valentine turned away again, and commenced to walk up and down. He was talking more rapidly, in precisions of irritation as though he did not dare stop, for fear of an argument being rejected before he reached its point, or hesitate, and waste a precious instant before Brown's return. Even the Latin came with native sharpness from his tongue when he said, — You recall the maxim, Vulgus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur? Yes, if they want to be deceived, let them be deceived. Have you looked at his hands? he demanded, stopping abruptly at the edge of the table. — At Brown's hands, when he sits with them folded in his lap? And those diamonds? Like a great soft toad, ". ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head"?
— But, all this.
— Yes, think of the tradition you have behind you, Valentine went on, turning his back. — Lucius Mummius, and that famous story in which he charges the men carrying his plunder from Corinth back to Rome, that any of the art treasures lost or broken would have to be replaced at the expense of the man responsible. No more idea of art than the people who surround us today, not a particle of appreciation, but they brought it back to Rome by the ton. Private collecting started, a thing the Greeks never dreamt of. It started in Rome, and forgery with it. The same poseurs, the same idiots who would buy a vase if they had to pay enough for it, the same people who come to Brown, in gray waistcoats, perhaps, instead of togas, the same people in Rome, the same people, the same hands.
— But you, then you, if you feel this way.
— Because the people, the people, they're bringing us to the point Rome reached when a court could award a painting to the man who owned the board, not the artist who had painted on it. Valentine stood with his knees against the edge of the low table. — Yes, when the Roman Republic collapsed, art collecting collapsed, art forging disappeared. And then what. Instead of art they had religion, and all the talent went into holy relics. Half the people collected them, the other half manufactured them. A forest of relics of the True Cross? Miraculous multiplication. Then the Renaissance, and they dropped the knucklebones of the saints and came back to art. His eyes, which were hard and blue now, settled on the radiant figure in the center of the table of the Seven Deadly Sins. — Intricate, cunning forgeries like this, he added, sweeping a hand with a glitter of gold over the whole table as he turned his back. — The people! he said, watching Recktall Brown approach. — Of course I loathe him. — But it's not. This table, it's not a forgery.
— What's the matter? Brown demanded, coming up to them.
— This Bosch, it's not a forgery.
— Who the hell said it was? Look, Valentine.
— Listen.
— Have you got him all upset like this? — Listen, this Bosch painting, it's not a forgery.
Basil Valentine sank back in his chair and clasped a knee between his hands. — It's not? he said quietly, with the beginning of a smile on his lips, and shrugged. — Not even a copy?
— You're God damn right it's not.
— It's not. It can't be.
— Why not? Valentine asked them. His eyes had recovered their light watery blue, agreeable indifference. — The story I heard, you know, he went on after a pause, — was that the original came from the di Brescia collection, one of the finest in Europe, most of them Flemish primitives in fact. The old man, the Conte di Brescia, found himself running out of money. He loved the pictures, and none of his family would have dared suggest he sell a single one, even if they'd known the state of their finances. Of course they were simply waiting for him to die so they could sell them all. Meanwhile they went right on living in the manner which centuries of wealth had taught them, watched the pictures go out to be cleaned and come back, none the wiser. When the old grandee died, they fell over themselves to sell the pictures, and found that every one of them was a copy. They hadn't been sent out to be cleaned, the old man had sent them out to be copied and sold, and the copies were brought back.
— That's right, sold, Brown said, — they sold the originals you just said, and I got this one. I got it ten or fifteen years ago.
— Where?
— Where? Never mind. Right here in America. I picked it up for just about nothing.
— The collection of copies was dispersed too, you know, Valentine said. — Soon after the scandal, in the late 'twenties. And this.
— But wait, listen.
— Don't get yourself upset, my boy, Brown said letting himself down in his chair; and Valentine looked across the table with the faint smile still on his lips.
— Listen, this is the original, it is.
— Don't get yourself so excited, God damn it my boy…
— How are you so certain? Valentine asked calmly.
— Because, listen. What happened was, I heard, I heard this somewhere, abroad, yes somewhere abroad I heard that what happened was, a boy, a boy whose father owned the original, he'd bought it himself, he bought it from the Conte di. Brescia, and the boy. the boy copied it and stole the original and left his copy in its place, and sold the original, he sold it in secret for. for just about nothing.