Morniel snapped his fingers. “Tell you what. Anita has a couple of cats she asks me to feed whenever she’s away for a while, so she’s given me a key to her apartment. Suppose I whip upstairs and get it?”

“Fine!” Mr. Glescu said happily, taking a quick look at his forefinger. “But please hurry.”

“Will do.” And then, as Morniel turned to go up the stairs, he caught my eye. And he gave me the signal, the one we use whenever we go “shopping.” It meant: “Talk to the man. Keep him interested.”

I got it. The book. I’d seen Morniel in action far too many times not to remember that casual gesture of tossing it on the bed as anything but a casual gesture. He’d just put it where he could find it when he wanted it—fast. He was going upstairs to hide it in some unlikely spot and when Mr. Glescu had to take off for his own time—well, the book would just not be available.

Smooth? Very pretty damned smooth, I’d say. And Morniel Mathaway would paint the paintings of Morniel Mathaway. Only he wouldn’t paint them.

He’d copy them.

Meanwhile, the signal snapped my mouth open and automatically started me talking.

“Do you paint yourself, Mr. Glescu?” I asked. I knew that would be a good gambit.

“Oh, no! Of course, I wanted to be an artist when I was a boy—I imagine every critic starts out that way—and I even committed a few daubs of my own. But they were very bad, very bad indeed! I found it far easier to write about paintings than to do them. Once I began reading the life of Morniel Mathaway, I knew I’d found my field. Not only did I empathize closely with his paintings, but he seemed so much like a person I could have known and liked. That’s one of the things that puzzles me. He’s quite different from what I imagined.”

I nodded. “I bet he is.”

“Of course history has a way of adding stature and romance to any important figure. And I can see several things about his personality that the glamorizing process of the centuries could—but I shouldn’t go on in this fashion, Mr. Dantziger. You’re his friend.”