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Updated: May 21, 2025
Naturally the chief point against Flechter, if it could be established, was his actual possession of the Bott Stradivarius when he was arrested. Upon this proposition Mrs. Bott was absolutely positive beyond the possibility of error. So were eight other witnesses for the prosecution.
"My good Stradivarius," he said, "my peerless one!" Once again he kissed it, and then, drawing his hand across his eyes, he slowly wrapped the violin in a velvet cloth, put it away in an iron box, and locked it up. But presently he changed his mind, took it out again, and put it on the table, shaking his head musingly. "He will wish to see it, maybe to hear it," he said half aloud.
The latter, who was always ready to purchase choice violins, after vainly trying for a long time to induce the Springers to bring it to New York, called with Farr upon Mrs. Springer and asked to examine it. To his utter astonishment she produced for his inspection Bott's long-lost Stradivarius.
I hate anarchists; I never could bear them; and now they take me for one! I shall live here all my days and my Stradivarius, my treasure Heaven knows where they have put it lying on the platform of the station, or perhaps broken, or stolen! I shall never see it again, never! Ah, it is cruel it is not to be borne! Don't speak, I tell you, I can't bear it! You shouldn't have coaxed me!
He hesitated; then, a little severely, he observed: "This is a fine instrument, boy, a very fine instrument." "Yes," nodded David, with a cheerful smile. "Father said it was. I like it, too. This is an Amati, but the other is a Stradivarius. I don't know which I do like best, sometimes, only this is mine." With a half-smothered ejaculation John Holly fell back limply.
What I mean is that if Stradivarius, Guarnerius, Amati, Maggini and others of the old-master builders of violins had ever had wire strings in view, they would have built their fiddles in accordance, and they would not be the same we now possess. First of all there are scientific reasons against using the wire strings. They change the tone of the instrument.
The Stradivarius instrument lay near his couch in its case; but I only saw the latter open on one occasion, I think, and was deeply thankful that John no longer took the same delight as heretofore in the practice of this art, not only because the mere sound of his violin was now fraught to me with such bitter memories, but also because I felt sure that its performance had in some way which I could not explain a deleterious effect upon himself.
How I opened the street door I know not, but even as I stepped out into the squalid alleys of Pennyfields the cloaked figure was beside me. A hand was laid upon my shoulder. "Listen!" commanded a deep voice. Clearly, with an eerie sweetness, an evil, hellish beauty indescribable, the wailing of a Stradivarius violin crept to my ears from the room above.
One "educative" reel they had seen had begun with scenes in a lumber camp high in the mountains of Galicia, where grow forests of the priceless pine that becomes, after years of drying and seasoning, the sounding board of the Stradivarius and the harp. Even then it must respond to a Player.
When Leon Kantor finally completed his program, they were loath to let him go, crowding down the aisles upon him, applauding up, down, round him, until the great disheveled house was like the roaring of a sea, and he would laugh and throw out his arm in wide-spread helplessness, and always his manager in the background, gesticulating against too much of his precious product for the money, ushers already slamming up chairs, his father's arms out for the Stradivarius, and, deepest in the gloom of the wings, Sarah Kantor, in a rocker especially dragged out for her, and from the depths of the black-silk reticule, darning his socks.
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