Weird Tales volume 24 number 03 (7 page)

whom he had married

MARION VAN ORTON finished packing her dressing-case, opened her purse to make sure that her steamer tickets were still there, took one last look in the mirror and then descended the wide, polished staircase of the Van Orton mansion for the last time. Gorham, the butler, met her at the door.

"Madam will be gone for the week end?" he asked.

"Including the week end," Mrs. Van Orton amended.

The town car was waiting at the curb. He helped her into it and stood waiting at the door while she settled back comfortably. She looked up questioningly.

WEIRD TALES

"Will Madam leave any message?" Gorham asked.

"Oh," she sighed, "just say I've gone." "For an indefinite stay, Madam?" Languidly, Mrs. Van Orton motioned to the chauffeur. "No," she said. "Just say I've gone."

The purring motor drew away. Only Gorham's eyes moved as he watched it turn the corner. With a start he recovered himself and closed his mouth. "Well!" he said as he walked up the stairs. A greater degree of volubility had returned to him when he reported the incident to the cook.

Just for the moment, Gilda Ransome's life had crystallized into one desperate wish: if she couldn't scratch her thigh, this instant, she would go stark, raving mad. A few hours earlier she had thought that if she didn't have breakfast life would be insupportable. Hunger was bad enough—but this itch!

"You may rest now," said Mr. Blake, the well-known designer of the fleshier covers of the naughtier magazines. He turned away and lit a cigarette. Gilda applied her nails to her skin as she went behind a screen and drew on a dressing-gown.

She began to think about her hunger again. She was not hungry because she was on a reducing diet—she needed neither reduction nor addition. Every artist for whom she had posed had agreed that her figure was "just the type"—presumably the type that sells magazines. And her face was certainly no less attractive than her figure—which is an emphatic statement.

She felt starved because influenza had kept her idle for three weeks and during that time her money had run out. She had never been one to save.

Later in the day she fainted while try-

ing to hold a tiring pose. Mr. Blake was very much annoyed, and he determined that in the future he would use stronger, if less perfect, models.

N the West Indies there were many,

many men who would have testified to the cleverness of Jeremiah Van Orton. As a lad of twenty he had come to Curacao from Holland, and for forty-five years thereafter he had remained in the Indies. Then he had decided that he was too rich and too old to go on working. That was his first mistake. If he had kept his nose to the grindstone, he would not have come to New York. He would not have met Marion Martin, the actress. He would not have made a fool of himself.

Van Orton sat huddled in front of an open fire and thought the matter over. In this climactic hour he paused to review his life and works.

Vivid flashes of memory confused his efforts to keep his thoughts orderly. A tongue of flame licked around a log in the fireplace. A thread of scented smoke curled into the room. . . . A night in the Haitian jungle—when was it? Twenty—thirty years ago? A black wench was dying. "For no reason," the doctor said; "for superstition. Voodoo." . . . Marion Martin had been convincing. She had said that she was tired of young men—men whom she could not respect. She had said a man was not in his prime until sixty or seventy. Until then, he was callow, unproved, not worthy of admiration or love. He knew nothing of metropolitan people. He had been attracted to her and, presently, he had believed and loved her. . . . What was that about the natives destroying with such care every fingernail cutting, every hair? One had to be careful—voodoo was strong in the West Indies. . . . He had given Marion his honorable name

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and a million dollars besides. Even if she hadn't pretended to love him, he might have done the same. She had given him the illusion of youth. He had thought of a future with her, for her. He might have lived for ever!

And now he was nothing but an old fool who was going to die. But so was she. Oh, yes, so was she!

The idea of following his wife to wherever she might come to rest and murdering her there never occurred to Jeremiah Van Orton. He was too tired and feeble for such a melodramatic role. One did not spend a lifetime in the Indies for nothing. He was clever; except for this little interlude of marriage, he had always been clever. He would find a way, a good wav—a safe way for him, an unpleasant way for her.

Jeremiah Van Orton could always think better among his beautiful collection of paintings. He went to the drawing-room and drew up a chair before a Hobbema landscape. There he remained until he had planned all the details of his vengeance.

IN the restaurant of the Hotel Lafayette, Michael Bonze sat across the table from his friend, Pierre Vanneau, and cursed the age in which they both were born.

"What does art mean in the Twentieth Century?" he asked rhetorically. "Nothing! People talk about the dynamic beauty of a new stream-lined toilet seat or the Empire State Building. Or take Surrealism: daubs—-damn it!—daubs by clumsy, color-blind house-painters! Picasso eats while I starve! Cocteau is the white-haired boy while I worry myself bald! People don't want things to look like what they are—they want them to look like the sublimation of the mood of the essence of the psychological reaction

to what they might be if they weren't what they are. Oh, I know it sounds like sour grapes, but I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the fact that I'm a painter with greater talent than any of them. If I were living in Henry the Eighth's time, people would now be collecting Bonzes instead of Holbeins. Damn the Twentieth Century!"

"Look," said Vanneau, "have you ever painted a beautiful young girl? You know—curves and flowing hair and so on?"

Bonze slapped his big hand down on the table top and the dishes jumped "Are you trying to be insulting?" he bel lowed. "Do you take me for Henry Clive?—or—or Zuloaga, maybe? No Xo, I haven't painted any pretty valen tines of beautiful young girls!"

Vanneau murmured into his coffee cup, "Rubens did. Tiepolo did. Titian did. . . ."

"Oh, shut up!" said Bonze. 'You know what I meant. People won't take that sort of thing from a modern artist— it isn't art. Art is old, wrinkled-up men, or nauseous arrangements of dried fish and rotten apples, or anything sufficiently ugly and nasty."

"How do you know that is so?" Vanneau asked. "What modern artist has dared to paint a pretty picture? I don't know of anyone since Greuze, and his picture sold well enough."

"Well " Bonze began doubtfully.

"And look," Vanneau continued, "in this jaded age, sex appeal is important. Important? It is everything!" He spread out his arms in an all-embracing gesture. "And what do you create for an avid public? A public that waters at the mouth at the very mention of nudism or Mae West? You give them old men and dried fish! Don't weep on my shoulder—you give me a pain!"

WEIRD TALES

Bonze was still feeling a little sorry for himself. "I give Meyergold, the critic, a pain, too. Today, he came to the studio and said he didn't think I was ready, just yet, to have a show. He stayed about fifteen minutes. Damn him!"

ON the morning following his wife's departure, Jeremiah Van Orton engaged the services of a Mr. Moses Winkler, a student of biology, who was promised double payment if he could manage to get through his work without asking questions. He was led into a lady's boudoir and told that he must go over the entire room with a microscope in order to collect every human remain, no matter how small or apparently unimportant.

Mr. Van Orton watched every move he made. Somehow, Moses did not like the eagerness with which the old man greeted each new find. It made him quite nervous.

When Moses finished his work he was able to deliver to his employer a surprizing number of small envelopes, on each of which he had written a description of the contents. One held grains of dust from a nail-file; another, an eyelash. On a brush in the bathroom he had found a few flakes of skin. A minute drop of blood had been discovered on a handkerchief in the laundry basket. . . . The list went on.

Moses t was paid and dismissed. He was glad to go.

Van Orton added the envelopes to a collection he had made of all the photographs of his wife that she had left in the house. He looked long at the relics before locking them safely away.

"It is not a great deal," he muttered to himself, "but in Haiti I've known them to do it with less—much less,"

Within a month, old Mr. Van Orton had become the scandal of Sutton Place. Every day, from nine until six, a constant stream of handsome young women entered and left his house. Much to Gorham's bewilderment and disapproval, it had become his master's custom to sit in the drawing-room and interview the young ladies, one by one. Discreet inquiries elicited the fact that they were artists' models answering a newspaper advertisement.

"What," Gorham had asked the cook, "does the old reprobate want with a model? And if he wants a model, why is he so hard to satisfy? He must have seen two hundred of them already and he's not kept one over ten minutes."

It was the cook's considered opinion that Jeremiah Van Orton was an indecent, dirty old man who should be put away where he couldn't do any harm.

The procession of applicants ended when Gilda Ransome was ushered into the drawing-room. Gorham was called and told that no more models would be seen. He breathed a sigh of relief and stole a glance at the young lady who had been chosen from among so many. Gorham had a shock — for a second he had thought she was Mrs. Van Orton. It was a startling resemblance.

'ichael bonze sat in his studio window and looked at the dreary square with bare trees and muddy streets. It was a picture of his mood. His money was running low and he was thinking that he ought to be putting in a stock of canned baked beans instead of buying a half-case of gin. There was nothing he wanted to paint. He hated painting and art patrons and critics.

A sedate foreign limousine came splashing along the street below and stopped at the door to his studio building.

W. T.—3

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The sight didn't make him any happier. "Art patron!" he said with a wealth of exrreii.::: in bis voice.

Inane — ent there was a knock on the £:■:.- an; Mi±ael opened it to admit "e:r.r_ah Van Orton.

"You are Michael Bonze?" he asked.

Bonze admitted his identity, although, just then, he was not particularly proud of it. The caller presented his card with the question, "You have heard of me?"

"Yes." said Bonze; "I've heard you have quite a large collection of Flemish ra.naings. Will you take a chair?"

Van Orton launched into his business at once. "I have come to see you," he said, "because I want a special kind of painting which you do better than anyone I know."

"Thank you!" Michael murmured and crossed his fingers behind him.

"Not that I like the sort of painting vou do," the old man continued, "on the contrary, I dislike it intensely. It is dull, spiritless—I might say, insipid."

3fc do say 'insipid'!" said Michael.

;: -:

£:■?.' sir. at once!'

"Come, come aid Van Orton. calmly. "This b nc time ::: ;:mpliments.

I am n:: here to discuss art but to make vou a proposition which you will find highly beneficial, financially."

Bonze had a sudden vision of rows of canned baked beans, and he held his tongue.

Bar a -articular reason, which is none :: ": a: affair, I wish you to paint a life-size :.:: :<: a model I have selected. The r::e .-__■:.-:- "trr l:::ie difference, but I ragge : ±a: -■: a have her reclining on a chaise-lcngue. For background you may use drapery or anything you please—it is of no importance."

Bonze asked, "Would you mind telling me why I should have been chosen for this work?" W, T.—4

"Because your painting is so realistically accurate that not even a colored photograph can compare with it. I don't consider it art, but it will serve my purpose."

After all, a man had to have some pride. "I'm not interested," said Bonze.

No shade of disappointment crossed the old man's face. "No, no," he agreed, "of course not. But you would, perhaps, be interested in fifteen thousand dollars, a third payable now?"

Michael resisted an impulse to jump up and kiss the beneficent bald head. "Write the check and send me the model," he said. "I'll start today."

"Good!" said Van Orton. "But now I must lay down two important conditions. First, I will give you a number of photographs of a young woman who bears some resemblance to the model you will use. I want you to study the pictures very closely, because your painting must look more like them than like the model."

"But why," Michael protested, "why can't I simply paint a portrait of the subject of the photographs? It would be a lot more satisfactory and easier."

"If the job were as easy as that, I wouldn't be paying you fifteen thousand dollars." Van Orton reached in the pocket of his coat and withdrew ten or twelve little envelopes. "The second request that I must make is this," he continued. "Each of these packets contains a pinch of powder. They are plainly marked, 'hair, nails, skin, lips,' and so on. Now, when you mix your paints for these various details, you must add these powders as indicated. You are a man of honor?"

"Certainly!" said the very mystified painter.

"You will give me your word that this will be done according to my instructions?"

Michael nodded.

WEIRD TALES

"Very well. Here is my check for five thousand dollars. Hurry your work as much as you can with safety and let me know the instant it is done." Van Orton went to the door. "I brought the model with me in the car. I will send her up with the photographs. Good day!"

Bonze collapsed into a chair as the door closed.

Spring has come to Venice and the Piazza San Marco has a freshly washed and burnished look. Mrs. Van Orton sits at Florian's on the edge of the square, sipping a Pernod. She feels that God's in His Heaven and Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries.