Not a very serious comment, but why did I feel that I should like to kill him?

Our choices made, we moved the things to a central table, and everybody had a look. The secretary asked us for descriptions that could be included in the information for the lawyers. She was a nice woman; I wished that she too could have something. Arthur Cornish asked Hollier about Gesner, and Hollier was unwontedly communicative.

“He was a Swiss, actually; not a German. An immensely learned man, but greatest as a botanist, I suppose. In these four volumes he brought together everything that was known about every animal that had been identified by scholars up to 1550. It is a treasure-house of fact and supposition, but it aims at being scientific. It’s not like those medieval bestiaries that deal simply in legend and old wives’ tales.”

“I thought old wives’ tales were your stock in trade, Hollier,” said Urky.

“The growth of scientific knowledge is my stock in trade, if that’s what you want to call it,” said Hollier, without geniality.

“Let’s see the Beerbohms,” said Urky. “Oh, marvellous! College Types; look at Magdalen, would you! What a swell! And Balliol, all bulging brow and intellectual pride; and Brasenose—huge shoulders and a head like a child’s! And Merton—my gosh, it’s a lovely little portrait of Max himself!—What’s the other one? The Old Self and the Young Self; Cosmo Gordon Long. What are they saying? Young Self: I really can’t decide whether to go on the Stage or into the Church. Both provide such opportunities. . . Old Self: You made the right choice; the Church gave me a role in a real Abdication. Oh Simon, you old slyboots! That’s really valuable you know.”

Of course it was valuable, but that wasn’t the point; it was authentic Max. How Ellerman would have loved it!

“It won’t be sold,” I said, perhaps more sharply than was wise. “I’ll leave it as a treasure in my will.”

“Not to Spook, I hope,” said Urky.

What a busybody the man was!

Arthur saw that I was being harried. He ran his hand appreciatively over the splendid back of the nude bronze. “Very fine,” he said.

“Ah, but do you see what finally decided me?” said Urky. “Look at her. Doesn’t she remind you of anyone? Somebody we all four know?. . . Look closely. It’s Maria Magdalena Theotoky to the life.”

“There’s a resemblance, certainly,” said Arthur.

“Though we can’t—or I’d better say I can’t—answer for the whole figure,” said Urky. “Still, one can guess at what lies under modern clothes. Who was the model? Being Canova, it was probably a lady from Napoleon’s court. He must have known her intimately. Observe the detail of the modelling.”

The bronze Venus was about twenty-five inches tall; the figure was seated, one foot resting on the other knee, lovingly tying the laces of a sandal. What was unusual about it was that the vulva, which sculptors usually represent as an imperforate lump of flesh, was here realistically defined. It was not pornographic; it had the grace and the love of the female figure Canova knew so well how to impart to his statuary.

It is hard for me to be just to Urky. Certainly he appreciated the beauty of the figure, but there was a moist gleam in his eye that hinted at an erotic appreciation, as well. . . And why not, Darcourt, you miserable puritan? Is this some nineteenth-century nonsense about art banishing sensuality, or some twentieth-century nonsense about a human figure being no more than an arrangement of masses and planes? No, I didn’t like Urky’s attitude towards the Venus because he had linked it with a girl we knew, and whom Hollier knew especially well, and Urky was seeking to embarrass us. What I would have accepted without qualm from another man, I didn’t like at all when it came from Urky.

“You agree that it looks like Maria, don’t you Hollier?” he said.

“I certainly agree that it looks like Maria,” said Arthur, unexpectedly.

“A stunner, isn’t she?” said Urky to Arthur, but with his eye on Hollier. “Tell me, just as a matter of interest, where would you place her in the Rushton Scale?”

We all looked blank at this.

“Surely you know it? Devised by W. A. H. Rushton, the great Cambridge mathematician? Well, it’s this way: Helen of Troy is accepted as the absolute in female beauty, and we have it on a poet’s authority that her face launched a thousand ships. But clearly “face” implies the whole woman. Therefore let us call a face that launches a thousand ships a Helen. But what is a face that launches only one ship? Obviously a millihelen. There must be a rating for all other faces between those two that have any pretension whatever to beauty. Consider Garbo; probably 750 millihelens, because although the face is exquisite, the figure is spare and the feet are big. Now Maria seems to me to be a wonder in every respect that I have had the pleasure of examining, and her clothes are plainly not meant to conceal defects. So what do we say? I’d say 850 millihelens for Maria. Anybody bid higher? What do you say, Arthur?”

“I’d say she’s a friend of mine, and I don’t rate friends by mathematical computation,” said Arthur.

“Oh, Arthur, that’s very square! Never mention a lady’s name in the mess, eh?”

“Call it what you like,” said Arthur. “I just think there’s a difference between a statue and somebody I know personally.”

“And Vive la différence?” said Urky.

Hollier was breathing audibly and I wondered what Urky knew—because if Urky knew anything at all, it was a certainty that the whole world would know it very soon, and in a form imposed on it by Urky’s disagreeable mind. But I did not see how, under the circumstances, Urky could know anything whatever about Hollier’s involvement with Maria. Nor did I see why I should care, but plainly I did care. I thought the time had come to change the subject. The secretary from Arthur’s office was looking unhappy; she sniffed a troublesome situation she did not understand.

“I have a suggestion to make,” I said. “Our old friend Francis Cornish’s will says that his executors are to have something to remember him by, and we have been going on the assumption that he meant the three of us. But isn’t Arthur an executor? You mentioned a picture that took your eye the first day we met here, Arthur; it was a little sketch by Varley.”

“It was named for the Provincial Gallery,” said Urky. “Sorry, it’s spoken for.”

“Yes, I knew that,” I said. There was no reason why Urky should be the only one to know best. “But I’ve been told you’re a music enthusiast, Arthur. A collector of musical manuscripts, indeed. There are one or two things not spoken for that might interest you.”

Arthur was flattered, as rich people often are when somebody remembers that they, too, are human and that not everything lies within their grasp. I fished out the envelope I had put handy, and his eyes gleamed when he saw a delicate and elegant four-page holograph of a song by Ravel, and a scrap of six or eight bars in the unmistakable strong hand of Schoenberg.

“I’ll take these with the greatest pleasure,” he said. “And thanks very much for thinking of me. It had crossed my mind that I might choose something, but after my experience with the Varley I didn’t want to push.”

Yes, but we knew him and liked him much better than when he cast longing eyes at the Varley. Arthur improved with knowing.

“If that finishes our business, I’d like to get along,” I said. “We’re expecting you at Ploughwright at six, and as I’m Vice-Warden I have some things to attend to.”

I took up my Beerbohms, Hollier tucked two big volumes of Gesner under each arm, and McVarish, whose prize was heavy, asked the secretary to call him a taxi. To be charged, I had no doubt, to the Cornish estate.

I left Cornish’s spreading complex of apartments, where I had often cursed the work he had imposed on me, with regret. Emptying Aladdin’s Cave had been an adventure.