Read Online The Blackbirder by Dorothy B. Hughes - Free Book Online Page B

“You have only just arrived, Miss Guille?”
    “This afternoon.”
    “Funny thing.” Blaike beckoned the wine boy. “You'll have a drink before we order dinner?” Julie refused. Popin said, “Bourbon, if you please.” Blaike gave the order. “Funny. Miss Guille and I traveled from New York together.”
    She scotched it quickly, her eyes warning the bearded man. “On the same trains.”
    Blaike laughed pleasantly. “Yes. Funnier still, I'd met her in Paris years ago, with her cousin, Fran Guille.” Popin didn't move an eyelash. “I didn't get it remembered until a while ago.” Blaike suggested from the menu. The starched white waitress wrote the order.
    Popin laid his fingertips together. He spoke modestly. “What I do not understand, Mr. Blaike, is how you happen to hear of my painting back there in New York.” His accent was definite, not definable.
    “I've always been interested in modern art. Cigarette?” He was playing the host, easily, practicedly. “A fellow I knew there told me about your work. With great enthusiasm, I might add.” He hesitated. “I'm on leave. R.A.F. Recuperation by travel, that sort of thing. I decided to drop off here and look you up.”
    He was lying. She knew that. It was no sudden decision to drop off here; he had come deliberately as the crow would fly. Popin knew he was lying. He asked with incredible gentleness, “Who was this fellow you know? Did he know me?”
    Blaike finished lighting Julie's cigarette. He blew out the match, laid it in the diminutive brim of the clay sombrero. He said, “His name was Maximilian Adlebrecht.”
    She was as quiet as the small painted burro on the wall. She made no waste gesture with her cigarette nor with an eyelash. He knew. He had known all the time. He was waiting, the way the mountains were waiting, for something, and she did not know for what. She could only wait too. She could not ask.
    Popin was turning the name unfamiliarly on his tongue. “Adlebrecht. Maximilian Adlebrecht.” He was apologetic. “One meets so many.”
    “Young fellow,” Blaike said. “Good broth, what?” He tested again. “He was here last autumn, I believe.”
    “A German?” There was a faint suspicion in the question.
    “Refugee,” Blaike said.
    “I do not know,” Popin decided promptly. He began to eat as if he were very hungry. He repeated, “One meets so many. He told you of my work?”
    “Yes. He was well pleased with it. I was hoping you'd be good enough to allow me a look at it.”
    “Perhaps it can be arranged,” Popin murmured. He put his napkin to his beard. His head tilted at Julie. “You too are interested in my work?”
    She wasn't certain what the answer should be. He was trying to convey to her something beyond the words but she knew too little to decipher the message. It was necessary to fence, neither rejecting nor accepting until she became wiser. “I'm afraid I don't know much about modern art. I was toured through quantities of galleries in Paris, of course, but no one bothered to explain to me what were the requirements of quality. As far as I could judge it was all based on fashion, and as tenuous as that.”
    Popin was smiling under his beard. “You do not know much, do you?”
    She shook her head “I'm the blank page.” Her eyes held his a moment. “Really a find for an artist. And certainly I'd like to see your work, Mr. Popin. But I warn you in advance my personal taste is Rembrandt.”
    “You could not go wrong.” He attacked his plate again.
    Blaike emerged from his. His eyebrows were puzzled. “You must have known Maxl in Paris, Julie.”
    “Paris is a large city.” She raised soft blue eyes at him, deliberately innocent eyes. “My circle was limited.” She was casual as a breath. “This— the fellow was Ritz Bar?”
    He wasn't. He'd been poor. Studio parties, free lectures, music— how had she happened to know him? The Russian choreographer? The Spanish guitarist? Some toast of the town who had