Kitabı oku: «The Pagan Madonna», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XVII
Cunningham did not answer immediately. From Flint his glance went roving from man to man, as if trying to read what they expected of him.
“Flint, you were recommended to me for your knowledge of the Sulu lingo. We’ll need a crew of divers, and we’ll have to pick them up secretly. That’s your job. It’s your only job outside doing your watch with the shovel below. Somehow you’ve got the wrong idea. You think this is a junket of the oil-lamp period. All wrong! You don’t know me, and that’s a pity; because if you did know something about me you’d walk carefully. When we’re off this yacht, I don’t say. If you want what old-timers used to call their pannikin of rum, you’ll be welcome to it. But on board the Wanderer, nothing doing. Get your duffel out. I’ll have a look at it.”
“Get it yourself,” said Flint.
Cunningham appeared small and boyish beside the ex-beachcomber.
“I’m speaking to you decently, Flint, when I ought to bash in your head.”
The tone was gentle and level.
“Why don’t you try it?”
The expectant men thereupon witnessed a feat that was not only deadly in its precision but oddly grotesque. Cunningham’s right hand flew out with the sinister quickness of a cobra’s strike, and he had Flint’s brawny wrist in grip. He danced about, twisted and lurched until he came to an abrupt stop behind Flint’s back. Flint’s mouth began to bend at the corners – a grimace.
“You’ll break it yourself, Flint, if you move another inch,” said Cunningham, nonchalantly. “This is the gentlest trick I have in the bag. Cut out the booze until we’re off this yacht. Be a good sport and play the game according to contract. I don’t like these side shows. But you wanted me to show you. Want to call it off?”
Sweat began to bead Flint’s forehead. He was straining every muscle in his body to minimize that inexorable turning of his elbow and shoulder.
“The stuff is in Number Two bunker,” he said, with a ghastly grin. “I’ll chuck it over.”
“There, now!” Cunningham stepped back. “I might have made it your neck. But I’m patient, because I want this part of the game to go through according to schedule. When I turn back this yacht I want nothing missing but the meals I’ve had.”
Flint rubbed his arm, scowling, and walked over to his bunk.
“Boys,” said Cunningham, “so far you’ve been bricks. Shortly we’ll be heading southeast on our own. Wherever I am known, men will tell you that I never break my word. I promised you that we’d come through with clean heels. Something has happened which we could not forestall. There is a woman on board. It is not necessary to say that she is under my protection.”
He clumped out into the passage.
“Well, say!” burst out the young sailor named Hennessy. “I’m a tough guy, but I couldn’t have turned that trick. Hey, you! If you’ve got any hooch in the coal bunkers, heave it over. I’m telling you! These soft-spoken guys are the kind I lay off, believe you me! I’ve seen all kinds, and I know.”
“Did they kick you out of the Navy?” snarled Flint.
“Say, are you asking me to do it?” flared the Irishman. “You poor boob, you’d be in the sick bay if there hadn’t been a lady on board.”
“A lady?”
“I said a lady! Stand up, you scut!”
But Flint rolled into his bunk and turned his face to the partition.
Cunningham leaned against the port rail. These bursts of fury always left him depressed. He was not a fighting man at all and fate was always flinging him into physical contests. He might have killed the fool: he had been in a killing mood. He was tired. Somehow the punch was gone from the affair, the thrill. Why should that be?
For years he had been planning something like this, and then to have it taste like stale wine! Vaguely he knew that he had made a discovery. The girl! If he were poring over his chart, his glance would drift away; if he were reading, the printed page had a peculiar way of vanishing. Of course it was all nonsense. But that night in Shanghai something had drawn him irresistibly to young Cleigh’s table. It might have been the colour of her hair. At any rate, he hadn’t noticed the beads until he had spoken to young Cleigh.
Glass beads! Queer twist. A little trinket, worthless except for sentimental reasons, throwing these lives together. Of course an oil would have lured the elder Cleigh across the Pacific quite as successfully. The old chap had been particularly keen for a sea voyage after having been cooped up for four years. But in the event of baiting the trap with a painting neither the girl nor the son would have been on board. And Flint could have had his noggin without anybody disturbing him, even if the contract read otherwise.
Law-abiding pirates! How the world would chuckle if the yarn ever reached the newspapers! He had Cleigh in the hollow of his hand. In fancy he saw Cleigh placing his grievance with the British Admiralty. He could imagine the conversation, too.
“They returned the yacht in perfect condition?”
“Yes.”
“Did they steal anything?”
Cunningham could positively see Cleigh’s jowls redden as he shook his head to the query.
“Sorry. You can’t expect us to waste coal hunting for a scoundrel who only borrowed your yacht.”
But what was the row between Cleigh and his son? That was a puzzler. Not a word! They ignored each other absolutely. These dinners were queer games, to be sure. All three men spoke to the girl, but neither of the Cleighs spoke to him or to each other. A string of glass beads!
What about himself? What had caused his exuberance to die away, his enthusiasm to grow dim? Why, a month gone he would burst into such gales of laughter that his eyes would fill with tears at the thought of this hour! And the wine tasted flat. The greatest sea joke of the age, and he couldn’t boil up over it any more!
Love? He had burnt himself out long ago. But had it been love? Rather had it not been a series of false dawns? To a weepy-waily woman he would have offered the same courtesies, but she would not have drawn his thoughts in any manner. And this one kept entering his thoughts at all times. That would be a joke, wouldn’t it? At this day to feel the scorch of genuine passion!
To dig a pit for Cleigh and to stumble into another himself! In setting this petard he hadn’t got out of range quickly enough. His sense of humour was so keen that he laughed aloud, with a gesture which invited the gods to join him.
Jane, who had been watching the solitary figure from the corner of the deck house and wondering who it was, recognized the voice. The cabin had been stuffy, her own mental confusion had driven sleep away, so she had stolen on deck for the purpose of viewing the splendours of the Oriental night. The stars that seemed so near, so soft; the sea that tossed their reflections hither and yon, or spun a star magically into a silver thread and immediately rolled it up again; the brilliant electric blue of the phosphorescence and the flash of flying fish or a porpoise that ought to have been home and in bed.
She hesitated. She was puzzled. She was not afraid of him – the puzzle lay somewhere else. She was a little afraid of herself. She was afraid of anything that could not immediately be translated into ordinary terms of expression. The man frankly wakened her pity. He seemed as lonely as the sea itself. Slue-Foot! And somewhere a woman had laughed at him. Perhaps that had changed everything, made him what he was.
She wondered if she would ever be able to return to the shell out of which the ironic humour of chance had thrust her. Wondered if she could pick up again philosophically the threads of dull routine. Jane Norman, gliding over this mysterious southern sea, a lone woman among strong and reckless men! Piracy! Pearls! Rugs and paintings worth a quarter of a million! Romance!
Did she want it to last? Did she want romance all the rest of her days? What was this thing within her that was striving for expression? For what was she hunting? What worried her and put fear into her heart was the knowledge that she did not know what she wanted. From all directions came questions she could not answer.
Was she in love? If so, where was the fire that should attend? Was it Denny – or yonder riddle? She felt contented with Denny, but Cunningham’s presence seemed to tear into unexplored corners of her heart and brain. If she were in love with Denny, why didn’t she thrill when he approached? There was only a sense of security, contentment.
The idea of racing round the world romantically with Denny struck her as absurd. Equally contrary to reason was the picture of herself and Cunningham sitting before a wood fire. What was the matter with Jane Norman?
There was one bar of light piercing the fog. She knew now why she had permitted Cleigh to abduct her. To bring about a reconciliation between father and son. And apparently there was as much chance as of east meeting west. She walked over to the rail and joined Cunningham.
“You?” he said.
“The cabin was stuffy. I couldn’t sleep.”
“I wonder.”
“About what?”
“If there isn’t a wild streak in you that corresponds with mine. You fall into the picture naturally – curious and unafraid.”
“Why should I be afraid, and why shouldn’t I be curious?”
“The greatest honour a woman ever paid me. I mean that you shouldn’t be afraid of me when everything should warn you to give me plenty of sea room.”
“I know more about men than I do about women.”
“And I know too much about both.”
“There have been other women – besides the one who laughed?”
“Yes. Perhaps I was cruel enough to make them pay for that.
“‘Funny an’ yellow an’ faithful —
Doll in a teacup she were,
But we lived on the square, like a true-married pair,
An’ I learned about women from ’er!’
“But I wonder what would have happened if it had been a woman like you instead of the one who laughed.”
“I shouldn’t have laughed.”
“This damned face of mine!”
“You mustn’t say that! Why not try to make over your soul to match it?”
“How is that done?”
The irony was so gentle that she fell silent for a space.
“Are you going to take Mr. Cleigh’s paintings when you leave us?”
“My dear young lady, all I have left to be proud of is my word. I give it to you that I am going after pearls. It may sound crazy, but I can’t help that. I am realizing a dream. I’m something of a fatalist – I’ve had to be. I’ve always reasoned that if I could make the dream come true – this dream of pearls – I’d have a chance to turn over a new leaf. I’ve had to commit acts at times that were against my nature, my instincts. I’ve had to be cruel and terrible, because men would not believe a pretty man could be a strong one. Do you understand? I have been forced to cruel deeds because men would not credit a man’s heart behind a woman’s face. I possess tremendous nervous energy. That’s the principal curse. I can’t sit still; I can’t remain long anywhere; I must go, go, go! Like the Wandering Jew, Ishmael.”
“Do you know what Ishmael means?”
“No. What?”
“‘God heareth.’ Have you ever asked Him for anything?”
“No. Why should I, since He gave me this withered leg? Please don’t preach to me.”
“I won’t, then. But I’m terribly sorry.”
“Of course you are. But – don’t become too sorry. I might want to carry you off to my atoll.”
“If you took me away with you by force, I’d hate you and you’d hate yourself. But you won’t do anything like that.”
“What makes you believe so?”
“I don’t know why, but I do believe it.”
“To be trusted by a woman, a good woman! I’ll tell that to the stars. Tell me about yourself – what you did and how you lived before you came this side.”
It was not a long story, and he nodded from time to time understandingly. Genteel poverty, a life of scrimp and pare – the cage. Romance – a flash of it – and she would return to the old life quite satisfied. Peace, a stormy interlude; then peace again indefinitely. It came to him that he wanted the respect of this young woman for always. But the malice that was ever bubbling up to his tongue and finding speech awoke.
“Suppose I find my pearls – and then come back for you? Romance and adventure! These warm stars always above us at night; the brilliant days; the voyages from isle to isle; palms and gay parrakeets, cocoanuts and mangosteens – and let the world go hang!”
She did not reply, but she moved a little away. He waited for a minute, then laughed softly.
“My dear young lady, this is the interlude you’ve always been longing for. Fate has popped you out of the normal for a few days, and presently she’ll pop you back into it. Some day you’ll marry and have children; you’ll sink into the rut of monotony again and not be conscious of it. On winter nights, before the fire, when the children have been put to bed, your man buried behind his evening paper, you will recall Slue-Foot and the interlude and be happy over it. You’ll hug and cuddle it to your heart secretly. A poignant craving in your life had been satisfied. Kidnapped by pirates, under Oriental stars! Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest – yo-ho, and a bottle of rum! A glorious adventure, with three meals the day and grand opera on the phonograph. Shades of Gilbert and Sullivan! And you will always be wondering whether the pirate made love to you in jest or in earnest – and he’ll always be wondering, too!”
Cunningham turned away abruptly and clumped toward the bridge ladder, which he mounted.
For some inexplicable reason her heart became filled with wild resentment against him. Mocking her, when she had only offered him kindness! She clung to the idea of mockery because it was the only tangible thing she could pluck from her confusion. Thus when she began the descent of the companionway and ran into Dennison coming up her mood was not receptive to reproaches.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“Watching the stars and the phosphorescence. I could not sleep.”
“Alone?”
“No. Mr. Cunningham was with me.”
“I warned you to keep away from that scoundrel!”
“How dare you use that tone to me? Have you any right to tell me what I shall and shall not do?” she stormed at him. “I’ve got to talk to someone. You go about in one perpetual gloom. I purpose to see and talk to Cunningham as often as I please. At least he amuses me.”
With this she rushed past him and on to her cabin, the door of which she closed with such emphasis that it was heard all over the yacht – so sharp was the report that both Cleigh and Dodge awoke and sat up, half convinced that they had heard a pistol shot!
Jane sat down on her bed, still furious. After a while she was able to understand something of this fury. The world was upside down, wrong end to. Dennison, not Cunningham, should have acted the debonair, the nonchalant. Before this adventure began he had been witty, amusing, companionable; now he was as interesting as a bump on a log. At table he was only a poor counterfeit of his father, whose silence was maintained admirably, at all times impressively dignified. Whereas at each encounter Dennison played directly into Cunningham’s hands, and the latter was too much the banterer not to make the most of these episodes.
What if he was worried? Hadn’t she more cause to worry than any one else? For all that, she did not purpose to hide behind the barricaded door of her cabin. If there was a tragedy in the offing it would not fall less heavily because one approached it with melancholy countenance.
Heaven knew that she was no infant as regarded men! In the six years of hospital work she had come into contact with all sorts and conditions of men. Cunningham might be the greatest scoundrel unhung, but so far as she was concerned she need have no fear. This knowledge was instinctive.
But when her cheek touched the pillow she began to cry softly. She was so terribly lonely!
CHAPTER XVIII
The space through which Jane had passed held Dennison’s gaze for two or three minutes. Then he sat down on the companionway step, his arms across his knees and his forehead upon his arms. What to say? What to do? She expected him to be amusing! – when he knew that the calm on board was of the same deceptive quality as that of the sea – below, the terror!
It did not matter that the crew was of high average. They would not be playing such a game unless they were a reckless lot. At any moment they might take it into their heads to swarm over Cunningham and obliterate him. Then what? If the episode of the morning had not convinced Jane, what would? The man Flint had dropped his mask; the others were content to wear theirs yet awhile. Torture for her sake, the fear of what might actually be in store for her, and she expected him to talk and act like a chap out of a novel!
Ordinarily so full of common sense, what had happened to her that her vision should become so obscured as not to recognize the danger of the man? Had he been ugly, Jane would probably have ignored him. But that face of his, as handsome as a Greek god’s, and that tongue with its roots in oil! And there was his deformity – that had drawn her pity. Playing with her, and she deliberately walked into the trap because he was amusing! Why shouldn’t he be, knowing that he held their lives in the hollow of his hand? What imp of Satan wouldn’t have been amiable?
Because the rogues did not run up the skull and crossbones; because they did not swagger up and down the deck, knives and pistols in their sashes, she couldn’t be made to believe them criminals!
Amusing! She could not see that if he spoke roughly it was only an expression of the smothered pain of his mental crucifixion. He could not tell her he loved her for fear she might misinterpret her own sentiments. Besides, her present mood was not inductive to any declaration on his part; a confession might serve only to widen the breach. Who could say that it wasn’t Cunningham’s game to take Jane along with him in the end? There was nothing to prevent that. His father holding aloof, the loyal members of the crew in a most certain negligible minority, what was there to prevent Cunningham from carrying off Jane?
Blood surged into Dennison’s throat; a murderous fury boiled up in him; but he remembered in time what these volcanic outbursts had cost him in the past. So he did not rush to the chart house. Cunningham would lash him with ridicule or be forced to shoot him. But his rage carried him as far as the wireless room. He could hear the smack of the spark, but that was all. He tried the door – locked. He tried the shutters – latched. Cunningham’s man was either calling or answering somebody. Ten minutes inside that room and there would be another tale to tell.
In the end Dennison spent his fury by travelling round the deck until the sea and sky became like pearly smoke. Then he dropped into a chair and fell asleep.
Cunningham had also watched through the night. The silent steersman heard him frequently rustling papers on the chart table or clumping to the bridge or lolling on the port sills – a restlessness that had about it something of the captive tiger.
Retrospection – he could not break the crowding spell of it, twist mentally as he would; and the counter-thought was dimly suicidal. The sea there; a few strides would carry him to the end of the bridge, and then – oblivion. And the girl would not permit him to enact this thought. He laughed. God had mocked him at his birth, and the devil had played with him ever since. He had often faced death hotly and hopefully, but to consider suicide coldly!
A woman who had crossed his path reluctantly, without will of her own; the sort he had always ignored because they had been born for the peace of chimney corners! She – the thought of her – could bring the past crowding upon him and create in his mind a suicidal bent!
Pearls! A great distaste of life fell upon him; the adventure grew flat. The zest that had been his ten days gone, where was it?
Imagination! He had been cursed with too much of it. In his youth he had skulked through alleys and back streets – the fear of laughter and ridicule dogging his mixed heels. Never before to have paused to philosophize over what had caused his wasted life! Too much imagination! Mental strabismus! He had let his over-sensitive imagination wreck and ruin him. A woman’s laughter had given him the viewpoint of a careless world; and he had fled, and he had gone on fleeing all these years from pillar to post. From a shadow!
He was something of a monster. He saw now where the fault lay. He had never stayed long enough in any one place for people to get accustomed to him. His damnable imagination! And there was conceit of a sort. Probably nobody paid any attention to him after the initial shock and curiosity had died away. There was Scarron in his wheel chair – merry and cheerful and brave, jesting with misfortune; and men and women had loved him.
A moral coward, and until this hour he had never sensed the truth! That was it! He had been a moral coward; he had tried to run away from fate; and here he was at last, in the blind alley the coward always found at the end of the run. He had never thought of anything but what he was – never of what he might have been. For having thrust him unfinished upon a thoughtless rather than a heartless world he had been trying to punish fate, and had punished only himself. A wastrel, a roisterer by night, a spendthrift, and a thief!
What had she said? – reknead his soul so that it would fit his face? Too late!
One staff to lean on, one only – he never broke his word. Why had he laid down for himself this law? What had inspired him to hold always to that? Was there a bit of gold somewhere in his grotesque make-up? A straw on the water, and he clutched it! Why? Cunningham laughed again, and the steersman turned his head slightly.
“Williams, do you believe in God?” asked Cunningham.
“Well, sir, when I’m holding down the wheel – perhaps. The screw is always edging a ship off, and the lighter the ballast the wider the yaw. So you have to keep hitching her over a point to starboard. You trust to me to keep that point, and I trust to God that the north stays where it is.”
“And yet legally you’re a pirate.”
“Oh, that? Well, a fellow ain’t much of a pirate that plays the game we play. And yet – ”
“Ah! And yet?”
“Well, sir, some of the boys are getting restless. And I’ll be mighty glad when we raise that old Dutch bucket of yours. They ain’t bad, understand; just young and heady and wanting a little fun. They growl a lot because they can’t sleep on deck. They growl because there’s nothing to drink. Of course it might hurt Cleigh’s feelings, but I’d like to see all his grog go by the board. You see, sir, it ain’t as if we’d just dropped down from Shanghai. It’s been tarnation dull ever since we left San Francisco.”
“Once on the other boat, they can make a night of it if they want to. But I’ve given my word on the Wanderer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it’s final.”
Cunningham returned to his chart. All these cogitations because a woman had entered his life uninvited! Ten days ago he had not been aware of her existence; and from now on she would be always recurring in his thoughts.
She was not conscious of it, but she was as a wild thing that had been born in captivity, and she was tasting the freedom of space again without knowing what the matter was. But it is the law that all wild things born in captivity lose everything but the echo; a little freedom, a flash of what might have been, and they are ready to return to the cage. So it would be with her.
Supposing – no, he would let her return to her cage. He wondered – had he made his word a law simply to meet and conquer a situation such as this? Or was his hesitance due to the fear of her hate? That would be immediate and unabating. She was not the sort that would bend – she would break. No, he wasn’t monster enough to play that sort of game. She should take back her little adventure to her cage, and in her old age it would become a pleasant souvenir.
He rose and leaned on his arms against a port sill and stared at the stars until they began to fade, until the sea and the sky became like the pearls he would soon be seeking. A string of glass beads, bringing about all these events!
At dawn he went down to the deck for a bit of exercise before he turned in. When he beheld Dennison sound asleep in the chair, his mouth slightly open, his bare feet standing out conspicuously on the foot rest, a bantering, mocking smile twisted the corners of Cunningham’s lips. Noiselessly he settled himself in the adjacent chair, and cynically hoping that Dennison would be first to wake he fell asleep.
The Wanderer’s deck toilet was begun and consummated between six and six-thirty, except in rainy weather. Hose, mops, and holystone, until the teak looked as if it had just left the Rangoon sawmills; then the brass, every knob and piping, every latch and hinge and port loop. The care given the yacht since leaving the Yang-tse might be well called ingratiating. Never was a crew more eager to enact each duty to the utmost – with mighty good reason.
But when they came upon Dennison and Cunningham, asleep side by side, they drew round the spot, dumfounded. But their befuddlement was only a tithe of that which struck Cleigh an hour later. It was his habit to take a short constitutional before breakfast; and when he beheld the two, asleep in adjoining chairs, the fact suggesting that they had come to some friendly understanding, he stopped in his tracks, as they say, never more astonished in all his days.
For as long as five minutes he remained motionless, the fine, rugged face of his son on one side and the amazing beauty of Cunningham’s on the other. But in the morning light, in repose, Cunningham’s face was tinged with age and sadness. There was, however, no grain of pity in Cleigh’s heart. Cunningham had made his bed of horsehair; let him twist and writhe upon it.
But the two of them together, sleeping as peacefully as babes! Dennison had one arm flung behind his head. It gave Cleigh a shock, for he recognized the posture. As a lad Dennison had slept that way. Cunningham’s withered leg was folded under his sound one.
What had happened? Cleigh shook his head; he could not make it out. Moreover, he could not wake either and demand the solution to the puzzle. He could not put his hand on his son’s shoulder, and he would not put it on Cunningham’s. Pride on one side and distaste on the other. But the two of them together!
He got round the impasse by kicking out the foot rest of the third chair. Immediately Cunningham opened his eyes. First he turned to see if Dennison was still in his chair. Finding this to be the case, he grinned amiably at the father. Exactly the situation he would have prayed for had he believed in the efficacy of prayer.
“Surprises you, eh? Looks as if he had signed on with the Great Adventure Company.”
His voice woke Dennison, who blinked in the sunshine for a moment, then looked about. He comprehended at once.
With easy dignity he swung his bare feet to the deck and made for the companion; never a second glance at either his father or Cunningham.
“Chip of the old block!” observed Cunningham. “You two! On my word, I never saw two bigger fools in all my time! What’s it about? What the devil did he do – murder someone, rob the office safe, or marry Tottie Lightfoot? And Lord, how you both love me! And how much more you’ll love me when I become the dear departed!”
Cleigh, understanding that the situation was a creation of pure malice on Cunningham’s part – Cleigh wheeled and resumed his tramp round the deck.
Cunningham plowed his fingers through his hair, gripped and pulled it in a kind of ecstasy. Cleigh’s phiz. The memory of it would keep him in good humour all day. After all, there was a lot of good sport in the world. The days were all right. It was only in the quiet vigils of the night that the uninvited thought intruded. On board the old Dutch tramp he would sleep o’nights, and the past would present only a dull edge.
If the atoll had cocoanut palms, hang it, he would build a shack and make it his winter home! Dolce far niente! Maybe he might take up the brush again and do a little amateur painting. Yes, in the daytime the old top wasn’t so bad. He hoped he would have no more nonsense from Flint. A surly beggar, but a necessary pawn in the game.
Pearls! Some to sell and some to play with. Lovely, tenderly beautiful pearls – a rope of them round Jane Norman’s throat. He slid off the chair. As a fool, he hung in the same gallery as the Cleighs.
Cleigh ate his breakfast alone. Upon inquiry he learned that Jane was indisposed and that Dennison had gone into the pantry and picked up his breakfast there. Cleigh found the day unspeakably dull. He read, played the phonograph, and tried all the solitaires he knew; but a hundred times he sensed the want of the pleasant voice of the girl in his ears.
What would she be demanding of him as a reparation? He was always sifting this query about, now on this side, now on that, without getting anywhere. Not money. What then?
That night both Jane and Dennison came in to dinner. Cleigh saw instantly that something was amiss. The boy’s face was gloomy and his lips locked, and the girl’s mouth was set and cheerless. Cleigh was fired by curiosity to ascertain the trouble, but here again was an impasse.
“I’m sorry I spoke so roughly last night,” said Dennison, unexpectedly.
“And I am sorry that I answered you so sharply. But all this worry and fuss over me is getting on my nerves. You’ve written down Cunningham as a despicable rogue, when he is only an interesting one. If only you would give banter for banter, you might take some of the wind out of his sails. But instead you go about as if the next hour was to be our last!”
“Who knows?”
“There you go! In a minute we’ll be digging up the hatchet again.”
But she softened the reproach by smiling. At this moment Cunningham came in briskly and cheerfully. He sat down, threw the napkin across his knees, and sent an ingratiating smile round the table.
“Cleigh” – he was always talking to Cleigh, and apparently not minding in the least that he was totally ignored – “Cleigh, they are doing a good job in the Santa Maria delle Grazie, so I am told. Milan, of course. They are restoring Da Vinci’s Cenacolo. What called it to mind is the fact that this is also the last supper. To-morrow at this hour you will be in possession and I’ll be off for my pearls.”
