Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

O’Rourke started to laugh. Suddenly he turned on his heel and walked to the window.

He leaned there, breathing deeply of the night.

Campbell freed the hands of Kearton.

“Stand away from the window or you’ll get a flatiron dropped on the thick of your skull,” said Campbell.

O’Rourke said nothing. A shudder ran through the fat of his back.

“Stay there and get your head smashed in,” said Campbell. “A damned good thing for the force; a damned good thing for me... I never pulled seniority on you before. I wouldn’t be that much of a rat, but if I’d known that it would shut you up, I’d of slammed you with it a long time ago... Sergeant O’Rourke, you fool, step back from that window.”

O’Rourke said, without turning his head, without violence but with a trembling intensity of voice: “To hell with you. To hell with the Inspector. To hell with the New York police force. To hell with the whole damn thing!”

Campbell stared at the fat back.

He turned suddenly on Kearton.

“Well, if you’re going to do something, do it!” he snapped.

Kearton nodded, took the wet rag, and began to scrub at the bottom of the picture. He took another small phial from his pocket and poured a few drops of it on the paint. A sick, sweet odor entered the air. Campbell blew out his breath to get rid of the smell.

O’Rourke said: “A lot of four-flushing, half-witted, fat-headed, two-timing, calf-faced twicers! To hell with them all. To hell with everything. Seniority!”

He turned around and shouted: “Seniority! Hell!”

“I’ll have you broke!” shouted Campbell in return.

“You can’t break me. I’ve broke myself!” yelled O’Rourke. “I’ve resigned from the force.”

“I’ll have you fired before you resign. I’ll have you on the black list. You’ll get no pension. You’ll draw nothing but a laugh from the whole department.”

“And I’ll break your neck before—”

“Here!” cried Kearton.

He threw his arms into the air. “Here. Here! I’ve got it. I knew it! I’ve got it here! Look! D’you see? The real Granduca!”

Chapter XXIII Vial of Arsenic

O’Rourke came back with ghostly softness of step from the window. He stood staring at the work which went on under Kearton’s eager hands. Campbell, unable to contain himself, walked up and down the room, now and then flourishing a fist above his head, now stopping to stare at Kearton’s labors, now asking a question.

“You mean it’s real? You mean it’s the real Raphael? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes, yes, yes! Damn it, of course, yes! Don’t you see with your own eyes? It’s going to come up as clean as a whistle,” answered Kearton, relief in his voice.

“There was nothing in the picture all the time, eh?” demanded Campbell of O’Rourke.

A stare of consuming hatted answered him.

“Nothing but damn Scotch foolishness,” mused Campbell. “Sure there wasn’t anything else. Nothing except one of the most famous pictures in the world. Nothing but a Raphael.”

“You never heard of him before you come here,” said O’Rourke, tormented into speech.

“Raphael,” said Campbell, “is one of the prince of painters. The funny thing about him ain’t the color that he puts into a painting, but it’s the way he fills up the canvas.”

“What d’you mean fills up the canvas?” asked O’Rourke. “What would he do, anyway? Leave some spots of it bare?”

“Sure everybody fills a canvas, but they got different ways. Anyway, that’s wood, not canvas. But the way he filled it up was the great trick.”

“What was great about it?” asked O’Rourke. “Come on and tell us, if you know so much!”

“It was the way he done it that counted,” said Campbell. “A guy like you wouldn’t be able to tell, Pat. It takes a man with taste and an eye to understand things like that.”

“Lemme tell you something. You make me sick,” said O’Rourke. “You wouldn’t know how much. It takes a man with taste and an eye to understand things like that. But where you make me sick is in the stomach.”

Kearton was saying: “The way it was done was the clever trick. D’you see how it was done?”

He went on talking, in bursts, rapidly, while his clever hands went on with the work, using a loving speed.

O’Rourke forgot Campbell. He stepped up beside Kearton and said, ingratiatingly: “How did it happen, partner?”

“Why, the devil went into the Pitti and started copying the Granduca — no one would think anything of that — the picture’s copied enough every year.”

“What’s a pity?” asked O’Rourke. “What pity?”

“The Pitti Palace,” said Campbell, with a raised voice, “is one of the greatest depositories of art treasures in the known world. They gotta lot of stuff there from all over. Don’t butt in like this and show your ignorance. Leave the man alone to talk.”