Prelude to Terror by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online

Great expectations; but not one of us could do more than dab and dribble. I quit when I realised I wasn’t a painter—never would be—not in the way I wanted. It takes more than ambition and self-confidence to make a man something he’d like to be. It takes talent, too. Sorry, that’s all the explanation I can give.”
    “So you joined the army.”
    “I needed a job and steady pay. It got my head together. I started looking at museums when I was in Europe. My escape, I suppose, from drill and regulations.”
    “Also, you learned German. Yes, that will be useful.”
    “Do you have to sound like a schoolma’am?”
    “I’m sorry.” She looked it, too.
    “A very attractive schoolma’am,” he said more softly. “Oh well, that takes care of 1961. Doesn’t it?”
    She nodded. He had been honest with her, and it must have been painful. She could fill in the gaps: “Shook off the family”—a bid for independence? No more assistance needed from Mother Grant? Pride wouldn’t let him take it when he had failed. Instead, he enlisted. “Drill and regulations.” So he was just an ordinary private. No connection with Intelligence.
    Something amused him. “How do I pay for the Ruysdael? Just sign a cheque on my Citibank account?” All four hundred and thirty-two dollars of it.
    “Oh, that’s arranged. Mr. Basset’s firm, Allied Electronics, has an office in Vienna, and—” The telephone rang. She rose to answer it very quickly. With relief, he thought. It was someone whom she knew well. She was saying, “I have an old friend of yours visiting me. Do drop in. He’d be delighted to see you, I’m sure.”
    “Delighted to see whom?” he asked as she returned to her chair.
    “Gene Marck. You met him with Mr. Basset in Arizona. He’s the adviser on our art purchases and insurance and increasing values. That sort of thing.”
    All I remember about him. Grant thought, was that he didn’t talk much, even less than Basset did. A watch-and-listen type. “Wasn’t he a new member of the staff?”
    “Yes. He had only been with us a few months.” She was rushing her words now. “He was an accountant with one of the big art dealers in Houston, did some business with Mr. Basset, and impressed him. Gene knows a great deal about the art field—the money side of it, that is.”
    Grant made no comment.
    “He will tell you how the Ruysdael payment can be made.”
    Yes, thought Grant, like everything else, that would be very nicely arranged.
    * * *
    Eugene Marck made his appearance, refused a drink, stayed for fifteen minutes, excused himself politely (he had just spent the day in Virginia, at Basset Hill, needed some sleep before tomorrow’s busy morning), and left for the Pierre, where he was staying. In the short visit, all very friendly, all very welcome to-the-team-my-boy, he cleared up the remaining points of business.
    First: Grant should leave for Vienna on the twenty-sixth of July. This wouldn’t pinpoint his arrival with the auction itself. It would take place in the earlier half of August, in one of the smaller Viennese auction rooms. Date, time, and location would be given him later.
    Second: Grant could talk about his forthcoming visit to Vienna; it might cause comment if he didn’t. Or if he didn’t have a good excuse for it, such as two or three articles to be written about the seventeen Brueghels in the State Museum. (Just a suggestion, Marck had added tactfully.)
    Third: Grant would receive plane tickets and hotel reservation within the next few days. Also a letter from Victor Basset authorising him to select a picture and bid for it at auction. Also a cheque for five thousand dollars. In Vienna, he was to keep a list of his expenses: he would be reimbursed on his return to New York.
    Fourth: Marck would be in Vienna too, but he would remain well in the background until the auction was over. Immediately on the acquisition of the Ruysdael, he would meet Grant in the private office of the auctioneer,