The Paper Grail by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online Page A

right collector. He peered at them, unbelieving. He knew what they were now, although he hadn’t known when he saw them years ago—three of Ruskin’s Tintern Abbey photographs.
    Ten years ago Howard had eyes for nothing but the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and he had struggled through Ruskin’s
The Seven Lamps of Architecture
and his rambling lectures on the Pre-Raphaelites. He was fascinated at least partly by his knowledge that Michael Graham himself was the great-grandson of James Graham, the Pre-Raphaelite photographer. But there had been more to his study than that. John Ruskin had been a curiously enigmatic figure—a sexually impotent genius surrounded by a cabal of artistic zealots who were strangely loyal to him and to his fierce esthetic desire to embody nature in art.
    Anyway, it made sense that Michael Graham possessed these photographs. He had probably been willed them. Fancy themhaving hung on the wall all these years, gathering dust. The house was a treasure trove of collectible stuff.
    He was suddenly aware that Mr. Jimmers was regarding him from the doorway. He held a glass in one hand and a wine bottle in the other. Howard would rather it was a beer bottle, but right now that didn’t seem to matter half as much to him as did the letter in his pocket. “I was wondering about the Japanese sketch,” Howard said, getting straight down to business. Mr. Jimmers knew why he had come; he might as well say what he meant.
    “So was I,” Mr. Jimmers said. “What do you know about it?”
    “Nothing. Not beyond Mr. Graham’s having offered it to the museum.” He pulled the letter out of his coat and held it up.
    “And you’ve come up after it, have you? After all this time? What compelled you? Was it greed, or something else? I’ve always been a student of compulsion, and I see something in your eyes that intrigues me.”
    Howard gave him a look that wasn’t meant to be intriguing. What was this? Suddenly he was being interrogated. Suspicions were being aired.
    “This thievery nonsense,” Mr. Jimmers continued, “this imaginary glass bauble gone from your pickup truck—that could easily be a clever ruse, couldn’t it? An effort to throw suspicion elsewhere, to make it look as if you, too, were the victim of these thieves.” He nodded shrewdly and then nodded again in the general direction of the wall. “It’s been stolen, hasn’t it?”
    “What? My truck?” Howard took a panicked step toward the door before realizing that Mr. Jimmers wasn’t talking about the truck or the paperweight. He meant the sketch. “Stolen? When? I’ve been a week on the road …” Howard found himself speaking in a tone of denial, explaining himself, laying out an alibi.
    “A week? Driving up from L.A.? A day would have done it. Eleven hours, say. What if, my mysterious stranger, you’ve been skulking around up here for days?” Mr. Jimmers raised his eyebrows theatrically. “I’m thinking that you might be the one to shed some light on the business of the missing sketch, and perhaps on poor Graham’s murder, too.”
    “Murder!” Howard almost shouted.
    For the space of twenty seconds Jimmers stared at him, letting the idea soak in. Then suddenly he laughed out loud, bending a little at the waist and slapping his knee. Apparently he had only been fooling, playing a little game with the bumpkin from downsouth. He was suddenly cheerful. He ran his hand through his hair, frazzling it, and then strode toward Howard, holding out the glass, his face stretched into a toad-like grin.
    “Cheer up,” he said. “You can’t trust anyone nowadays, can you? They’ll rob you from east to west if they get a chance. ‘Beard them in their den,’ that’s the byword around here. And if you can’t, then beard them somewhere else.” He winked like a conspirator and pulled at the strap of his suspender, letting it snap against his chest. “Come along upstairs,” he said, taking the bottle and glass with him.