Free Death Among the Sunbathers by E.R. Punshon

period the profits had been very large. Unfortunately, the elder Mr Keene, a little over-excited, imagining these were conditions that would last, much under the influence of what psycho-analysts would probably call a ‘victory complex’, had invested practically all those profits, almost all his working capital, indeed, in more pictures, of which nearly all, now that slump had replaced boom, remained in the cellars, insured at a figure far above present-day values. The famous Rembrandt, for example, for which it will be remembered the elder Keene, shortly before his death, gave a large sum at Christie’s, and concerning the authenticity of which a sharp discussion raged for a time in the columns of the art journals, still remained on the hands of his son, in spite of the fact that a South American millionaire had once paid a deposit on it. Even so, that square yard of painted canvas represented a capital of seven thousand lying idle.
    â€˜I’d like to burn the lot,’ Keene had once said viciously to that rare bird, a customer, who, as it chanced, was Mr Esmond Bryan, the head of the Leadeane Sun Bathing establishment.
    One of the sun-bathers, an artist by profession, who had read paragraphs in the papers about Parisian artists exchanging their work by barter for such mundane things as groceries, cutlets, and clothes, had offered Mr Bryan two or three landscapes as payment for his subscription to the Society of Sun Believers of Leadeane Grange, and for suitable bodily refreshment needed during his visits there – for the Leadeane Grange restaurant was famous among those who put food high in the list of the many, many things needing reform. Mr Bryan, by no means devoid of business instincts, even though it was said he carried on his establishment at a loss, had called at Deal Street, to ascertain the value of the proffered works. Keene’s bitter and perhaps exaggerated comment had been that he had two large cellars crammed with better work by better-known men, and that work of the quality offered could only be got rid of by giving it away with a pound of tea or else by waiting till the fifth of November, when no doubt material for bonfires would be in demand.
    â€˜Burning, that’s all that quality of work is good for in these times,’ he repeated, but all the same Mr Bryan, undismayed, made a small purchase, announced his intention of accepting the two pictures offered him as payment for a year’s subscription to the Sun Believers, and, in addition, for a shilling’s worth of carrot tea and minced potato peel, or of such other vitamin-crammed, blood-purifying, vitality-giving foods as might be on sale in the Grange restaurant, on each visit that the artist made during the year.
    Before leaving, Mr Bryan suggested that Keene would do well to pay a visit to the Grange, declaring that he would very likely find fresh clients among the sun-bathers, all of whom, Mr Bryan asserted with fervour, were devotees of beauty, fanatics of all true art and loveliness, and some of them even provided with that vulgarity of superfluous cash so convenient in his vulgar world. But this invitation, though it had been accepted, had so far had no result in the way of sales, though it had increased Keene’s appreciation of such things as roast beef and pork chops.
    Indeed, customers seemed to be growing every day rarer birds at the Deal Street establishment. On this morning of the day following the tragedy of the Leadeane Road, not one had crossed its threshold. The only visitors had been hopeful artists – tautology, all artists are either hopeful or dead – eager to add a few more to the innumerable canvases stacked in every corner of cellar and shop, various travellers and pedlars, one or two undisguised beggars, and a fashionable young lady selling tickets for a forthcoming charity ball and hinting not obscurely that the custom of herself and of her numerous wealthy and important friends