He was a great, red-bearded, unkempt Scotsman,
and only once can I remember to have seen him strictly sober; but
to hear him talk about painters and painting in his thick
Caledonian accent was to look into the soul of an artist.
He was as sour as an unripe grape-fruit, cynical, embittered, a
man savagely disappointed with life and the world; and tragedy
was written all over him. If anyone knew the secret of his
wasted life it was Dr. Kreener, and Dr. Kreener was a reliquary
of so many secrets that this one was safe as if the grave had
swallowed it.
One Sunday Tcheriapin joined the party. That he would gravitate
there sooner or later was inevitable, for the laboratory in the
garden was a Kaaba to which all such spirits made at least one
pilgrimage. He had just set musical London on fire with his
barbaric playing, and already those stories to which I have
referred were creeping into circulation.
Although Dr. Kreener never expected anything of his guests
beyond an interchange of ideas, it was a fact that the laboratory
contained an almost unique collection of pencil and charcoal
studies by famous artists, done upon the spot; of statuettes in
wax, putty, soap and other extemporized materials, by the newest
sculptors.
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