David Lindsey - The Color of Night

“Then that is what you will do?”

He hesitated, though he didn’t know why. She was absolutely right. For some reason he could not fully put his finger on, she seemed suddenly more astute. He felt a little odd about it.

“Yes,” he said, “I will.”

“Good. Mr. Cao has one stipulation.”

A stipulation? What would an eccentric collector be without a stipulation? In this rarefied business prerequisites were a common expression of a special clientele.

“Mr. Cao wishes to remain anonymous in this sale.”

“Very well.” This was not out of the ordinary.

“Nor does he want you to reveal the seller’s ethnic identity. Or mine, his representative.”

This was out of the ordinary. But not a problem, just odd. “Very well,” he said. He loved it.

“Then we have an agreement?”

“Yes, indeed, we have.”

Carrington Knight stood at the window and looked down at the street. In a moment she emerged with her chauffeur, the black umbrella hiding her head and shoulders, and quickly disappeared into the back of the black Jaguar. Silently the car pulled into the traffic of Carlos Place and disappeared into the rain.

He smiled. She was a very shrewd woman. A lovely woman. A woman who might even be dangerous to know. Dangerous in a nonlethal sense. Dangerous in the sense that she was capable of enthralling. He did not have the impression that she would take a man places he did not want to go, but, rather, that she could seduce a man into wanting to go places he normally would have the common sense to avoid. In fact, she had just taken Knight there.

It was his policy to be scrupulous about not identifying his clients. Especially those clients like Schrade who were reclusive-and big spenders.

He was also scrupulous about veiling his methods of selling expensive works. He had learned long, long ago that however colorful he himself might enjoy being, when it came to money, and to the buying and selling of fine art, far more profit was to be made from discretion than from flamboyance. He actually bought most of the artwork he sold, but when he did agree to broker something, he never revealed to a seller the potential buyers he might approach.

Ms. Paille had smoothly relieved him of these two long-standing rules of operation. She had done it in such a way that he had relinquished these long-established principles without protest. He had even enjoyed it.

He looked at the portfolio still open on the library table. It hardly mattered in this instance. Besides, the end result was that he was going to broker one of the sweetest little collections of drawings that he had come across in a long while.

She would bring round the documentation later. Jeffrey had quickly typed up a brief description of the seven drawings, which they all had signed, affirming that she was leaving such items in his safekeeping.

She had been most insistent that the sale take place as quickly as possible. She had given reasons, all having to do with her eccentric employer, Mr. Cao. They had agreed that she would call the next day to make an appointment to bring by the documentation.

All in all a very exciting hour.

He turned back to the library table, relishing the idea of a leisurely examination of the drawings.

The telephone rang.

Knight flinched. He’d forgotten. Quickly he walked to the telephone. He let it ring one more time, then lifted the receiver.

“Carrington.”

“This is Wolf.”

“Yes, Wolf, good of you to call.” Knight was alert, ready, suddenly onstage.

“Helene told me about the Schieles.” Schrade’s baritone conveyed a languid self-confidence that was entirely peculiar to this man. “What do you think?”

“It would be easy to rhapsodize about them, Wolf, but just let me say this: They are first-rate. They are solid. I have never felt more sure of the quality of a Schiele. They’re stunning.”

“Mmmmmm. Good. They are genuine Schieles?”

“As I told Helene, I don’t have any doubts about them being Schieles, but I’ve still got to open them up.”

“When can I see them?”

“The sooner the better. I’ve been retained by the owner to authenticate them.”

“Who is the seller?”

“I’m afraid they wish to remain anonymous. I can tell you this, the drawings are not coming from a collector’s holdings. They were actually unearthed in the estate of a recently deceased family member.”

“Where?”

“Where? Here, in Britain. They didn’t even know what they had. That’s why I was retained. I called you when I realized what we were dealing with. You and I would be the first ones to verify this discovery. Essentially it would be our discovery. A truly significant moment in modern art. To unearth new Schieles, never seen before. That’s why I thought you would want to be here.”

“This time, Carrington,” Schrade said bluntly, cutting through the confection of Knight’s verbal enticements, “I must know the seller, or I won’t consider the purchase.”

Knight was stunned. Good Lord, Claude had been prescient. How freakish.

“But, Wolf, you know that we never-”

“This time, Carrington, I must know.”

“But this just isn’t…”

Silence.

Knight sensed he was pushing his position to the point of effrontery. He thought of the money. The prestige. The deal.

“Very well,” he said. “I have the name and address of the barrister who is representing the seller.”

“Let me have them,” Schrade said.

Knight gave them to him.

“I will call you back,” Schrade said. “Good-bye, Carrington.”

“Wait-” Schrade was gone.

Good Lord! Knight’s hand was trembling as he put down the telephone. Oh, hell, it didn’t matter. Simply to have the seven drawings in his possession when Schrade arrived would be remarkable enough. Knight would relish working up to the surprise.

BROMPTON

He sat at his desk and gazed out at the park across the road from his office, waiting. The telephone call had come just an hour earlier. The caller, who identified himself as a lawyer named Kevin Drenner, had been urgent in his request: to meet with him immediately regarding the anonymous offering for sale of two unauthenticated works reputed to have been done by the artist Egon Schiele. The man had an American accent. Fain, using the name Edward Purchas, told him to come immediately.

So here he was arriving by cab, pausing to pay in the late afternoon drizzle, turning and looking at the facade of Fain’s office, then ducking his head and coming across the broad sidewalk to the front door.

“I’m sorry to be in so much of a hurry,” Drenner said, sitting down with a wheeze in a banker’s chair in Purchas’s office, “but my client-”

“Who is?”

“Gerhard Stoltz. A German citizen of Berlin.”

Purchas nodded.

“Generally does not buy art from anonymous sellers,” Drenner continued. “He understands the drawings in question are excellent, though they have to be authenticated, so he is quite interested. But…”

“He does not buy from anonymous sellers.”

“That’s right.”

“What do you want?”

“The identity of the seller.”

“Just not possible,” Purchas said, leaning his long frame back in his chair. “Sorry.”

“Why?”

“The seller has rules as well. Perhaps these two were simply not meant to do business. I understand there is no dearth of potential buyers, and to eliminate one so early is not a discouragement to my client.”

Drenner looked at him. The pressure he was under was evident. His face was remarkable for its extraordinarily stout jaw structure and for its unpleasant complexion, which was very nearly jaundiced, with putty gray shadows under the cheeks and around the eyes.