Dr. Polperro was
really the person he represented himself to be, and had been always.
His picture, we found out, was the real Maria Vanrenen, and a
genuine Rembrandt, which he had merely deposited for cleaning and
restoring at the suspicious dealer's. Sir J. H. Tomlinson had been
imposed upon and cheated by a cunning Dutchman; _his_ picture, though
also an undoubted Rembrandt, was _not_ the Maria, and was an inferior
specimen in bad preservation. The authority we had consulted turned
out to be an ignorant, self-sufficient quack. The Maria, moreover,
was valued by other experts at no more than five or six thousand
guineas. Charles wanted to cry off his bargain, but Dr. Polperro
naturally wouldn't hear of it. The agreement was a legally binding
instrument, and what passed in Charles's mind at the moment had
nothing to do with the written contract. Our adversary only
consented to forego the action for false imprisonment on condition
that Charles inserted a printed apology in the Times, and paid him
five hundred pounds compensation for damage to character. So that
was the end of our well-planned attempt to arrest the swindler.
Not quite the end, however; for, of course, after this, the whole
affair got by degrees into the papers. Dr. Polperro, who was a
familiar person in literary and artistic society, as it turned out,
brought an action against the so-called expert who had declared
against the genuineness of his alleged Rembrandt, and convicted him
of the grossest ignorance and misstatement.
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