Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie [72]
‘That is always said on these occasions,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, smiling.
‘Well, and haven’t I been right?’ demanded Mr Cobb. ‘I don’t believe if you were to sell your collection, Mr Satterthwaite, that a single picture would fetch less than you gave for it.’
‘I will buy this picture,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I will give you a cheque now.’
‘You won’t regret it. We believe in Bristow.’
‘He is a young man?’
‘Twenty-seven or-eight, I should say.’
‘I should like to meet him,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Perhaps he will come and dine with me one night?’
‘I can give you his address. I am sure he would leap at the chance. Your name stands for a good deal in the artistic world.’
‘You flatter me,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and was going on when Mr Cobb interrupted:
‘Here he is now. I will introduce you to him right away.’
He rose from behind his table. Mr Satterthwaite accompanied him to where a big, clumsy young man was leaning against the wall surveying the world at large from behind the barricade of a ferocious scowl.
Mr Cobb made the necessary introductions and Mr Satterthwaite made a formal and gracious little speech.
‘I have just had the pleasure of acquiring one of your pictures–The Dead Harlequin.’
‘Oh! Well, you won’t lose by it,’ said Mr Bristow ungraciously. ‘It’s a bit of damned good work, although I say it.’
‘I can see that,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Your work interests me very much, Mr Bristow. It is extraordinarily mature for so young a man. I wonder if you would give me the pleasure of dining with me one night? Are you engaged this evening?’
‘As a matter of fact, I am not,’ said Mr Bristow, still with no overdone appearance of graciousness.
‘Then shall we say eight o’clock?’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Here is my card with the address on it.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Mr Bristow. ‘Thanks,’ he added as a somewhat obvious afterthought.
‘A young man who has a poor opinion of himself and is afraid that the world should share it.’
Such was Mr Satterthwaite’s summing up as he stepped out into the sunshine of Bond Street, and Mr Satterthwaite’s judgment of his fellow men was seldom far astray.
Frank Bristow arrived about five minutes past eight to find his host and a third guest awaiting him. The other guest was introduced as a Colonel Monckton. They went in to dinner almost immediately. There was a fourth place laid at the oval mahogany table and Mr Satterthwaite uttered a word of explanation.
‘I half expected my friend, Mr Quin, might drop in,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you have ever met him. Mr Harley Quin?’
‘I never meet people,’ growled Bristow.
Colonel Monckton stared at the artist with the detached interest he might have accorded to a new species of jelly fish. Mr Satterthwaite exerted himself to keep the ball of conversation rolling amicably.
‘I took a special interest in that picture of yours because I thought I recognized the scene of it as being the Terrace Room at Charnley. Was I right?’ As the artist nodded, he went on. ‘That is very interesting. I have stayed at Charnley several times myself in the past. Perhaps you know some of the family?’
‘No, I don’t!’ said Bristow. ‘That sort of family wouldn’t care to know me. I went there in a charabanc.’
‘Dear me,’ said Colonel Monckton for the sake of saying something. ‘In a charabanc! Dear me.’
Frank Bristow scowled at him.
‘Why not?’ he demanded ferociously.
Poor Colonel Monckton was taken aback. He looked reproachfully at Mr Satterthwaite as though to say:
‘These primitive forms of life may be interesting to you as a naturalist, but why drag me in?’
‘Oh, beastly things, charabancs!’ he said. ‘They jolt you so going over the bumps.’
‘If you can’t afford a Rolls Royce you have got to go in charabancs,’ said Bristow fiercely.
Colonel Monckton stared at him. Mr Satterthwaite thought:
‘Unless I can manage to put this young man at his ease we are going to have a very distressing evening.’
‘Charnley aways fascinated me,’ he said. ‘I have been there only once since the tragedy. A grim house–and a ghostly one.’
‘That’s true,