island with a heap of dry wood an’ two matches for a li’l bonfire, an’ with the c-cup, both pieces of it safe.
"Murder?"—Bauer laughed. "’S’n ugly word, eh?" He pursued with an uncertain finger an injured fly which crawled across his trousers leg. "Bah, they say this man kills for hate, that for love—all good, noble motives. But your true collector—you ’n’ me—kills for a c-cup. Killing’s natural—th’easiest thing in the world—when you’re preshed for time.
" 'N I was preshed for time, see? There was a ship out there—I saw the smoke. I got him into the dory, but it was a fight; there was life in the ol’ bird yet, though the sun’d laid him low. Leaky boat—not much chance for him—still I’d be sure. I choked him gently—oh, quite gently—like thish,"— Bauer demonstrated by crushing the fly very thoroughly between his thumb and forefinger—"till the breath was gone from him. Then I looked for th’other half of'the vashe—couldn’t find it. The smoke was close—couldn’t wait. P’raps he’s hid it in the rocks, I shay. So I shoves him off, an’ the tide carries him ’way from the ship’s smoke—bob-bobbin’ away.
"I runs up an’ sends my twigs a-blazin’ to the sky. ’N I searches everywhere for the c-cup—in every crack—an’ no luck! Guns shalute—ship’s comin’; li'l dory bobs off there a mere sun spot; still no luck. Can you beat it? All my work for nothing! ’Cause, see, I’d murdered him—an’ what for? Damn him, his skin’s too cheap—
"Say, you're not leavin’?. My one failure—I’ve had everything else: Lorna an’ thish here c-c’lection—everything! But this one li’l broken c-cup—too bad—too bad—"
I left him caressing the vase with his hands as. old "Tinker" Twining had caressed it with his eyes. But before I went, my gaze fell again upon the painting of Bauer’s wife, and I remembered the other man’s words for her: "A beautiful mind, and a light shining through her gray eyes that was like the haunting line of a poem."
"Body love and soul love," I muttered.
Bauer sought me out the following morning.
"What did I tell you last night?" he asked.
I told him briefly.
"Fiction!" he shrugged with an uneasy laugh. "I get to running on—You’ll—forget it?"
I was ready for him.
"Yes," I agreed, "I’ll forget it—on one condition: that you run down to the Cape with me to—pass judgment on an antique; to give me your honest, expert advice—free of charge."
He consented at once, the connoisseur in him groused.
VIII.
So we came down to the Cape on a clear blue morning after rains.
I made inquiries at the village concerning old "Tinker" Twining, and was prepared for what I found. I had come in time, a woman told me; she was troubled about him, though, since he would allow no one to stop in the house and care for him.
We took the trail over to the back shore; and I held Bauer off, answered his questions vaguely. It was a different day from that sullen one on which I had first walked this path: an exquisite morning, requiring you to capture the shine of each separate leaf—the upward-tossed, silver poplar leaves and the varnished oak leaves—if you would adequately describe it.
This meeting I had planned solely for the sake of the old scholar; if, in aiding Twining to clear his conscience, I also cleared the conscience of Max Bauer, that I could not help. But Bauer, T assured myself, had no conscience; one way or the other, it would not matter to him.
Still, it was a situation without parallel, I thought: two men, each living, and each believing himself to have murdered the other. And to bring those two men together, face to face, would be smashing drama!
But life is seldom as spectacular as we anticipate; my fireworks fizzled. Beyond a stretch of beach grass,—running silver under the sunlight—and humped up there precariously over sands, stood the same little rusty gray house. The door was half open, and the work-bench was deserted. We found the old man in a bedroom over the sea, lying in a black walnut bed under a patchwork quilt.
He was propped up on pillows, and the worn face was silhouetted against the ocean, blue today with pale sweepings, and flowing out to silver under the sun. The elderly scholar was delirious, his mind wandering over that old sin; he was still paying the penalty for a murder of the imagination.
"My friend," he muttered; "the man who was bound to me in friendship—certain death—"
"Listen!" I said. "This is Max Bauer, the man you thought you killed! You didn’t murder him; you only thought you did. He’s here safe—look!"
But the other did not grasp it; only repeated the name "Max Bauer," and turned away with a long shudder.
Then Bauer was chattering at my shoulder:
"Gooding—old. Cheever Gooding himself!"
"Perhaps that’s what you called him—the man you strangled—It’s no use—no earthly use; he’s still under the illusion—we can never make it clear to him now."
"But how—?" I turned impatiently at Bauer’s insistence, gave him curtly and succinctly, in four sentences, the clues he had missed.
He sat there. "So he tried to murder me! The old—skunk!"
And later, "B’God," he whispered, "how he’s gone! A shadow... ."
I looked at Bauer, sitting corpulent and gross.
"Yes," I replied, "a shadow."
But already Bauer’s eyes had roved from Twining to a thing on the quilt which he had missed in the patchwork colors, a thing of orange and black.
"Lord, it’s the missing half!" he exclaimed, and now there was genuine feeling in his voice.
I stood between Bauer and that object, guarding Twining’s treasure. And still I tried to give old Twining back his clear conscience.
"It’s Max Bauer," I insinuated, "Max Bauer."
I must have got it across, for as Bauer edged closer and as I seized the shard, the old man stared at that sensual, dark face with an expression of recognition. There must have come to him then some inkling of the situation.
"Yes," he whispered, "let him have it."
He took the fragment from me, held it up tenderly for a moment in his two frail, fine old hands, and then placed it in the thick hands of Max Bauer. Bauer closed upon it greedily.
"Murdered him!" moaned Twining,
"Murdered me nothing," chuckled Bauer, who could now, with the vase in his grasp, afford to be generous. " ’S all right, old man; we’re quits."
But Twining was fumbling for a piece of paper.
"This!" he breathed. "Tell them where—painting before sculpture—"
"But great Caesar, they’ve known all this for forty years!" exploded Bauer, scanning the written statement. "Why, they found fragments of another Euphronios in that same Persian dirt heap; some one else proved that very thing, and the Lord knows how many other things. Just fragments though, y’understand—not a perfect one like this." Bauer let
