Artists in Crime Read Online Free PDF

looked like a dago in an American talking picture. He came from one of the less reputable streets of Sydney and was astoundingly simple, cocksure, egotistical and enthusiastic. He seemed to have no aesthetic perceptions of any description, so that his undoubted talent appeared to be a sort of parasite, flowering astonishingly on an unpromising and stunted stump.
    Cedric Malmsley we have noticed already. Nothing further need be said about him at this stage of the narrative.
    The Hon. Basil Pilgrim, son of the incredible Primitive Methodist peer, was a pleasant-looking young man of twenty-three, whose work was sincere, able, but still rather tentative. His father, regarding all art schools as hot-beds of vice and depravity, had only consented to Basil becoming a pupil of Troy’s because her parents had been landed gentry of Lord Pilgrim’s acquaintance, and because Troy herself had once painted a picture of a revivalist meeting. Her somewhat ironical treatment of this subject had not struck Lord Pilgrim, who was, in many ways, a remarkably stupid old man.
    Francis Ormerin was a slight and delicate-looking Frenchman who worked in charcoal and wash. His drawings of the nude were remarkable for their beauty of line, and for a certain emphatic use of accent. He was a nervous, oversensitive creature, subject to fits of profound depression, due, said Troy, to his digestion.
    And lastly Garcia, whose first name — Wolf — was remembered by nobody. Garcia, who preserved on his pale jaws a static ten days’ growth of dark stubble which never developed into a beard, whose clothes consisted of a pair of dirty grey trousers, a limp shirt, and an unspeakable raincoat. Garcia, with his shock of unkempt brown hair, his dark impertinent eyes, his beautiful hands, and his complete unscrupulousness. Two years ago he had presented himself one morning at the door of Troy’s studio in London. He had carried there a self-portrait in clay, wrapped about with wet and dirty cloths. He walked past her into the studio and unwrapped the clay head. Troy and Garcia stood looking at it in silence. Then she asked him his name and what he wanted. He told her—“Garcia”—and he wanted to go on modelling, but had no money. Troy talked about the head, gave him twenty pounds, and never really got rid of him. He used to turn up, sometimes inconveniently, always with something to show her. In everything but clay he was quite inarticulate. It was as if he had been allowed only one medium of expression, but that an abnormally eloquent one. He was dirty, completely devoid of ordinary scruples, interested in nothing but his work. Troy helped him, and by and by people began to talk about his modelling. He began to work in stone. He was asked to exhibit with the New Phoenix Group, was given occasional commissions. He never had any money, and to most people he was entirely without charm, but to some women he was irresistible, and of this he took full advantage.
    It was to Garcia that Troy went after she had set the pose. The others shifted their easels about, skirmishing for positions. Troy looked at Garcia’s sketch in clay of the “Comedy and Tragedy” for the new cinema in Westminster. He had stood it on a high stool in the south window. It was modelled on a little wooden platform with four wheels, a substitute he had made for the usual turntable. The two figures rose from a cylindrical base. Comedy was nude, but Tragedy wore an angular robe. Above their heads they held the conventional masks. The general composition suggested flames. The form was greatly simplified. The face of Comedy, beneath the grinning mask, was grave, but upon the face of Tragedy Garcia had pressed a faint smile.
    He stood scowling while Troy looked at his work.
    “Well,” said Troy, “it’s all right.”
    “I thought of—” He stopped short, and with his thumb suggested dragging the drape across the feet of Comedy.
    “I wouldn’t,” said Troy. “Break the line up. But