Chapter Seven
So.
It may be that some of my readers, equipped with good memories or else forearmed by a fortuitously recent reading of some art history, anticipated the little revelation at the previous chapter's end. But before these readers congratulate themselves too heartily, let them consider why none of those supposedly expert folk involved in the art auction uttered that most potent name. Why, barring one hint by Ellison Seabright, there has not been even the most tentative suggestion along that line. Two points awarded for the correct answer, and more on the subject later. For the moment let it suffice that the reader has now caught up with Mr. Thorn in this much at least: that Magdalen was definitely not a Verrocchio, worth perhaps the quarter of a million dollars or so that Ellison Seabright paid for it; it was instead a genuine Leonardo da Vinci, heretofore unknown to the experts as such, but if its origin could be verified worth easily twenty times that much.
The announcement of the missing aircraft caused Mr. Thorn to cut short his visit to the Seabright mansion as soon as he politely could—which, under the circumstances of confusion prevailing there, was not long. He took his leave without offering his host any further revelations of his own about the painting. He had not been about to provide that gross, half-clever criminal with any very truthful revelations anyway. The two of them vaguely agreed that they would talk to each other again sometime and with that matters between them were left hanging.
Driving his rented Blazer back into the more plebian regions of the city, Mr. Thorn felt unhappy for several reasons. First, the painting was once more out of his reach, gone again, somewhere, where he could not even look at it. Second—or perhaps really first—it is always a painful experience, that dawning realization that one has underestimated an opponent. That first moment when the placidly grazing prey turns suddenly, baring its own fangs, unsheathing its own sharp claws . . . and, perhaps thirdly, perhaps worst of all, is the suspicion that one has finally grown old, become ineffectual through overconfidence.
Mr. Thorn, still determined of course to have his painting, but denied it, and realizing now that he did not even know who his true adversary was, would have liked to go back in time two days, and start over again in the auction room. That being impossible even for him, he decided to do the next best thing, which was to come as close to starting over as he could.
Sighting a public phone booth, he stopped and made a call. Twenty minutes later he was ringing the front doorbell of a modest house on an anonymously modest Phoenix side street.
Robinson Miller, eyes full of subtle suspicions, appeared inside and let Thorn in. At Miller's feet a small dog, on getting his first whiff of the visitor, yapped once in extreme surprise, and then was still. Behind Miller in the living room was the sofa that Mary once had mentioned, looking indeed as if it might have spent part of a long and adventurous career inside a Salvation Army store. Mary herself was just rising from its sagging cushions. Tonight her jeans had been replaced by shorts, revealing legs quite as attractive as Thorn had expected them to be. She wore a blue vinyl vest, doubtless because there was no bra beneath her blue T-shirt. With her usual eagerness for any new development, she greeted the visitor more freely than Miller had. "This is a surprise, Mr. Thorn. Glad to see you. Something's happened, hasn't it?"
"Yes. Though I am not sure exactly what." Thorn took the offered armchair, a place of honor that got the main benefit of the laboring window air conditioner. He declined well-intentioned offers of coffee and beer, and looked calmingly at the small dog who was edging close to offer worship. To the humans he related the essentials of his visit to the Seabright house.
Mary was quite as upset as Thorn had been to hear about the missing plane, though her disquiet had a nobler basis. "Then the plane is really down? That's bad. How many people were on it?"
"Oh, I am sure that by this time it is down, somewhere. I gather that it carried only the pilot, a man named Gliddon. A search is to be started in the morning."
"Gliddon," said Mary, and made a face. "I didn't like him." Still her dislike hardly seemed to make any difference in her concern over the pilot's fate. "When I lived at the house he was always in and out, though I never knew what he did. It must have been some kind of work for Ellison."
Robinson Miller said to Thorn: "Do I understand you to mean that you think the plane didn't really crash?"
"Correct me if I am wrong," said Thorn, "but I believe that the land between here and Santa Fe is somewhat sparsely populated?"
Miller nodded. "Five hundred miles of nothing."
"Mountains, deserts, some forests," Mary amended. "Late last spring two Air Force planes from the missile range at Alamogordo were lost. They crashed right out in the open and in spite of a big search it was months before the wreckage was found. At least it's not winter now. I suppose if Gliddon survived a crash in the mountains he's got a chance."
"Somehow," said Thorn, "I have little doubt that he survived."
Mary looked puzzled; she didn't get it yet. Miller said: "I suppose Seabright was having a fit. Though not over the missing man, of course."
Thorn nodded. "He was going through the motions of one who is, as you say, having a fit over some lost property. Barking orders, phoning hither and yon, demanding explanations, demanding action. But I . . . have had some opportunity of observing humanity under various kinds of stress. And I am sometimes able to see through efforts at deception. And—this is why I have come to talk to you tonight—I think Mr. Seabright was not truly surprised by the news that his masterpiece and his aircraft and its pilot were missing. Indeed, I suspect that one reason I was invited to his house tonight was to provide him with a neutral witness, able to testify to his surprise and his dismay."
Some of Mary's old fierce delight quickly returned. She thumped the arm of the battered sofa. "I believe you!" she cried. "He's pulled another trick! He's getting away with it again!"
But Miller was frowning, shaking his head. "The suggestion being, I suppose, that Seabright is somehow spiriting the painting away into hiding by faking a plane crash. But he's just bought it and paid for it. Why the hell should he steal it from himself?"
Thorn had his ideas on that subject. But he said nothing for the moment.
"Insurance money!" Mary pounced.
Her lawyer was still shaking his head. "No, I don't think so. That kind of thing isn't easy to get away with—"
"Neither is murder, but he got away with killing Helen and Del."
"—and anyway, since the painting was being carried on his private aircraft I doubt that any insurance coverage on it would be in force." Miller's gaze focused suddenly on Thorn. "You're not from some insurance company, are you?"
"No," Thorn said patiently. "I am a collector, as is Seabright."
A few feet away, in the kitchen, the telephone began to ring. Miller got up to answer it.
"Mary." Thorn looked at her intently. "Why did Delaunay give you that painting?"
His gaze did not bother her. "Why? I told you. Out of gratitude, for my helping Helen. He was that kind of a guy, I guess. He knew I'd sell the painting, I'm sure. He just wanted me to have some money to use, helping other kids."
"You say you think Ellison knew about this gift? How can you be sure?"
But Mary was looking toward the kitchen doorway. Miller was standing there, rather like some interviewer with a microphone, holding out toward Mary the yellow telephone receiver on its helixed cord. But the look on his face was that of a man in shock, and Thorn got to his feet.
"Who? What?" asked Mary vaguely, standing also.
Miller licked his bearded lips. "She says . . . she's Helen."