Duncan Kyle - The King's Commisar

Malory felt he was a little old for that kind of thing, but he went, for Pilgrim's sake. The man might enjoy it ...

He didn't though; nor did Malory. A florid actuary sitting across from them at the long table began the trouble.

'Saw you at the Turner auction the other night,' he said jovially to Malory. 'Any idea who bought it?'

'No,' said Malory shortly.

'Lot of cash for a yard of canvas and a smear or two of paint, wouldn't you say?' the actuary went on cheerfully. 'People really do toss their money around. Don't believe in it myself.'

'Nor I.' Malory, disliking this talk, wished the man would shut up. He put on his bumbling-old-duffer manner, 'Lot of damned nonsense. That's what I say. Waste of good money! I say, I was hearing about the Chancellor -'

'Funny,' said the actuary with determination. 'I did hear Hillyard, Cleef were the buyers.'

'Got more damned sense,' Malory bumbled. 'Hillyard, Cleef! Dear, oh dear. Hear that, Pilgrim?'

Pilgrim laughed harshly. 'Where'd that pile of horseshit come from?'

'And,' added the actuary cheerfully, raising his voice a little and looking around for additional attention,

'that wasn't all I heard!'

'If the rest is as puerile as that, I should concentrate on the soup,' Malory said. He sipped his own. It was scalding hot.

But the thing was started now. 'The way I heard the story,' said the actuary happily, 'it started very close to the dealer who did the bidding. He said the buyer had to remain anonymous, but it was an Anglo-American banking house -'

'Stuff and nonsense!' said Malory.

'-with a guilty conscience.' The circle of laughter round the actuary widened. The doddering-old-buffer-manner slid away from Malory's shoulders like a snake's sloughed skin. He could sense now what was coming. He reached across the table, placed his forefinger beneath the rim of the actuary's soup plate, and tipped it into the actuary's lap. As he said later to an astonished Pilgrim, 'Really it was the only gratifying moment in the whole evening. Nice to see the fella hopping about clutching his trousers, what? You do know what he was going to say, don't you?'

'No.'

Malory gave him a warning glance. 'I'm not going to let the words even pass my lips, my dear chap. Let things like that get out and they take wing.'

They were taking wing even as he spoke. The actuary had a smallish but painful scald in a thoroughly inconvenient place and he was not the kind of man to allow Malory's grey hairs to offer protection against retribution.

From his bathroom, where he sat with a bag of ice in one hand and a telephone in the other, he set about discovering the name of the current Art Critic of The Times. This established, he managed finally to reach the man and pass on what he described as 'a rumour, but from well-informed circles'. The man from The Times said he was most interested, and certainly he sounded it.

'The City Editor of The Times would be grateful for a word with you,' Pilgrim's secretary said brightly, early the following morning.

Pilgrim picked up the telephone. 'What can I do for you, George?'

It turned out not to be George, the City Editor, whom he knew, but one Valentine, the mumble-mumble, whom he didn't.

'Just one question, Mr Pilgrim, really.'

'Go ahead.'

'Is it true you bought the Turner to present it to the nation?'

Pilgrim proceeded to think very rapidly. If his answer were no, the next question would be, 'Then why did you buy it?' A 'yes' would cost Hillyard, Cleef three and a half million-plus. 'No comment?' No comment indicated slippery men in dark corners. Pilgrim disliked being rude to reporters. Fashionable theory at the Harvard Business School in his time had dictated that the Press was a friend. So what he said was: 'You're out of your skull.'

'You mean you didn't buy it to add it to the Turner Bequest?'

'I mean,' Pilgrim lied crossly, 'that we didn't buy it. That clear?'

'Perfectly,' said Valentine, 'and thank you. Oh, Mr Pilgrim -'

'You said one question.'

'I thought you'd like to know that this story has very wide currency. They were even talking about it in the bar at the House of Commons last night.'

'I see.' Pilgrim ground out a laugh. 'Wonder who's spreading this junk around? Thanks for the tip.'

'So you'll get a lot of enquiries. I should be careful with your answers.'

Pilgrim hung up. On the blotter before him lay the telex from Pepe Robizo confirming that purchase-plus-ten was acceptable.

Pilgrim winced: He now appreciated the truth of Malory's observation of the previous evening: the idea was out and was indeed taking wing. As a result, forces would be gathering. Hillyard, Cleef might be compelled to give away the Turner. And he. Pilgrim, had promised it to Pepe Robizo of all people. The thought made his back feel chill with sweat. That was like snatching its dinner away from a tiger. Time for confession, then. Malory was the adviser; let him advise. To his surprise, Malory appeared quite unconcerned about Robizo but was grimly angry that the story was all over London. 'It's plain malice,' he muttered. That oily little mongrel Sudbury's behind it - can't be anybody else. '

'We can't prove it.'

'Of course we can't. Whole point, isn't it! Fault's yours, Laurence, if I may say so. Fellas like that, they think they have a licence to bore you to death, as well as rob you. But you told him to get a move on. It's wounded vanity.'

'It's going to be all over the papers.'

'Flat denials. It's the only way,' said Malory firmly. 'If we answer no long enough, it will all go away.'

But it stayed. A photograph had somehow been taken on the pavement outside the auction room as Malory and his security men placed the crate in the armoured van. That night the picture was all over the front page of the Standard, the remaining London evening paper, along with a report of Pilgrim's denial.

'It's a lovely likeness! Sir Horace,' Mrs Frobisher remarked as she brought the newspaper into Malory's office. And it was.

Malory, knowing now what was coming, diverted himself for a while by playing a game he rather thought he could win. If Pilgrim's dangerous millionaire Robizo really was a man of strong social ambition, then Robizo was vulnerable; such people always were. It was, after all, simple enough: Robizo was not currently acceptable to a few people whose society he craved. Not the rich: Robizo was rich, so the rich would accept him. It was therefore the aristocratic, the old money. And in Florida that meant. . . Malory smiled. There was always someone. And in this case there was old Digby's daughter, wasn't there Randolph's first wife! Pretty thing, too: Malory remembered the wartime wedding at Admiralty House, even the little silk Persian prayer rug he'd given them. Daughter of one aristo, bearer of the great name of the century, and now married to God! All he needed was somebody in regular touch. After all, it wasn't a question of inviting this Robizo creature to dinner; just some charity reception or other and a large donation plus a shake of the Harriman hand. Yes, she could certainly be asked. Malory was quite busy for a while on the telephone. At last a lady promised to talk to Clarissa, who'd talk to Digby's daughter. Something would certainly be arranged.

In spite of this pleasing little triumph, however, the next few days were not happy ones for anyone except the Press. They, however, loved it! Some targets are far more satisfying to strike at than others, and very high on that list are banks. Then come greedy oil companies, profligate local authorities and corrupt clergymen. The Bank with the Golden Hoard got it very firmly in the neck. The louder the denials, the less they were heeded: 'Sir Horace Malory' [wrote a gentleman in the Sunday Express], 'has spent most of his seventy-eight years making mountains of money. He has a mansion in Gloucestershire, a town house in Mayfair and several million in the bank. Wouldn't it be nice if he devoted some of his filthy lucre to a good clean purpose and added the Turner masterpiece to Britain's great heritage of art treasures!' 'You can't take it with you, Sir Horace . . .'