Read Ripley Under Ground for Free Online Page A

certain change of technique that you show in ‘The Clock.’ You know, of course, the picture I mean?” Murchison asked.
    Was that a casual or a pointed question, Tom wondered? “Of course,” Tom said.
    “Can you describe it?”
    Tom was still standing up. A slight chill went over him. Tom smiled. “I can never describe my pictures. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were no clock in it. Did you know, Mr. Murchison, I don’t always make up my own titles? And how anyone got ‘Sunday Noon’ out of the particular canvas is beyond me.” (Tom had glanced at the gallery program of twenty-eight Derwatts now on exhibit, a program which Jeff or someone had thoughtfully opened and placed on the blotter of the desk.) “Is that your effort, Jeff?”
    Jeff laughed. “No, I think it’s Ed’s. Would you like a drink, Mr. Murchison? I’ll get you one from the bar.”
    “No, thank you, I’m fine.” Then Mr. Murchison addressed Tom. “It’s a bluish-black clock held by— Do you remember?” He smiled as if he were asking an innocent riddle.
    “I think a little girl—who’s facing the beholder, shall we say?”
    “Hm-m. Right,” said Murchison. “But then you don’t do little boys, do you?”
    Tom chuckled, relieved that he’d guessed right. “I suppose I prefer little girls.”
    Murchison lit a Chesterfield. He had brown eyes, light-brown wavy hair, and a strong jaw covered with just a little too much flesh, like the rest of him. “I’d like you to see my picture. I have a reason. Excuse me a minute. I left it with the coats.”
    Jeff let him out the door, then locked the door again.
    Jeff and Tom looked at each other. Ed was standing against a wall of books, silent. Tom said in a whisper:
    “Really, boys, if the damned canvas has been in the coatroom all this time, couldn’t one of you’ve whisked it out and burnt it?”
    “Ha-ha!” Ed laughed, nervously.
    Jeff’s plump smile was a twitch, though he kept his poise, as if Murchison were still in the room.
    “Well, let us hear him out,” Tom said in a slow and confident Derwatt tone. He tried to shoot his cuffs, but they didn’t shoot.
    Murchison came back carrying a brown-paper-wrapped picture under one arm. It was a medium-sized Derwatt, perhaps two feet by three. “I paid ten thousand dollars for this,” he said, smiling. “You may think it careless of me to leave it in the cloakroom, but I’m inclined to trust people.” He was undoing the wrapping with the aid of a penknife. “Do you know this picture?” he asked Tom.
    Tom smiled at the picture. “Of course I do.”
    “You remember painting it?”
    “It’s my picture,” Tom said.
    “It’s the purples in this that interest me. The purple. This is straight cobalt violet—as you can probably see better than I.” Mr. Murchison smiled almost apologetically for a moment. “The picture is at least three years old, because I bought it three years ago. But if I’m not mistaken, you abandoned cobalt violet for a mixture of cad red and ultramarine five or six years ago. I can’t exactly fix the date.”
    Tom was silent. In the picture Murchison had, the clock was black and purple. The brushstrokes and the color resembled those of “Man in Chair” (painted by Bernard) at home. Tom didn’t know quite what, in the purple department, Murchison was hammering at. A little girl in a pink-and-apple-green dress was holding the clock, or rather resting her hand on it, as the clock was large and stood on a table. “To tell you the truth, I’ve forgot,” Tom said. “Perhaps I did use straight cobalt violet there.”
    “And also in the painting called ‘The Tub’ outside,” Murchison said, with a nod toward the gallery. “But in none of the others. I find it curious. A painter doesn’t usually go back to a color he’s discarded. The cad red and ultramarine combination is far more interesting—in my opinion. Your newer choice.”
    Tom was unworried. Ought he to be more worried? He shrugged