I asked who Gibber was.
‘He has lived in the swamps as long as I can remember. I grew up knowing that Gibber was not quite right in the head…we have a saying here, Mr. Lime…such people as Gibber have too much swamp water in their bodies and it reaches their brains. It is bad.’
I said that there were liquids other than swamp water that were bad for the brain.
She ignored the interruption and went on: ‘Usually such people are kind, like children, but Gibber never was. He was always alone. Never had a friend, not even a dog…until Lieutenant Nugent.’
I thought over her story as Tiger rowed me back to civilisation. It was fantastically authentic. Certainly Nugent’s visits to an obscure swamp halfwit were highly suspicious. Up to this time I’d made no profit financially, but had collected numerous jolts and bruises. I felt that I should be remunerated for the same.
Accordingly I went to 23 Villano that evening for my rendezvous with Lola, and to ask a few questions: but as I stepped up on the porch, I happened to glance through the bamboo screening. There, silhouetted against the light from a single lamp, were Nugent and Lola. I ducked into the bushes and did a little evesdropping.
Nugents voice was cold and hard: ‘It’s none of your business where I’m going tonight. Does that answer it?’
‘Definitely.’ Lola spat out. ‘You’re going up to the old French Channel again, to see your old pal…’Gibber.’
‘Shut up.’
‘But you’re not only seeing Gibber, are you?’ She gave a humourless laugh. ‘Any old time Ross Nugent would waste his time in a swamp with an old man, when there’s a pretty girl near by…’
‘Lola.’ Nugent’s voice held menace in its tone.
‘Don’t try to fool me, lover boy…you’re just as interested in that Rita girl as you are in Gibber. Stay away from her or I might tell what I know and…
There was the sharp sound of a face being slapped, a quick gasp and then the sound of tears.
‘No, Ross…I won’t say anything…I promise. I only said I would because I’m so crazy jealous over you…Believe me, darlin’, please believe me…’
This was all I needed. I sensed a deal in the making, but before going after the business, I picked up my automatic at my hotel. Then I started in the direction of the old French Channel. I had obtained directions how to reach Gibber’s cabin…but I made the mistake of using Rita’s cabin as a landmark. I thought I saw her flitting in the shadows as I passed near the place and then familiar voices sounded. It was Tiger and Rita. They asked me where I was going, and I had no choice but to tell them.
Tiger was reproachful. ‘Gibbers…without me.’ he asked.
‘I thought it best, Tiger.’ I excused myself. ‘It might not be good for you to get involved. I have nothing to lose.’
He said that he wouldn’t miss it for anything; Rita wanted to come along as well, but Tiger stopped her with: ‘No, Rita, you’ve got a job to do, in case we don’t come back within two hours.’
‘What’s all this?’ I asked.
‘Just in case of trouble, Harry.’ he replied, ‘not that I’m expecting any…but just in case.’
Tiger’s presence changed my plans. I couldn’t make any sort of deal with the sergeant around…but there was nothing I could do about it at the moment. We made the trek to Gibber’s in virtual silence. The shack looked like something a lunatic would enjoy, broken down and festooned with moss. We peered at it from the edge of the clearing in which it stood, while the swamp made hungry sucking noises in the distance. And then, eerily and strangely, a voice spoke over our shoulders: ‘Lookin’ fer swamp spirits, folks?’
It was Gibber.
‘We’re friends, Gibber.’ I said when I had recovered my breath, ‘and we’ve come to talk to y°u.’
‘Night ain’t fer talkin’ friend.’ he croaked, ’too many spirits be about. You come back after sun-up, then I’ll talk to you.’
Suddenly a torch flashed into our faces. A voice said: ‘All right, Gibber, you can bring them in now/ It was Nugent.
It appeared as if the hunters had walked into their own trap. Our guns were removed by Gibber, while Nugent kept us covered with an automatic. Then Nugent spoke for the second time.
‘You’re Harry Lime, eh? I’ve made it my business to learn your background/
I tried to turn on the old Lime charm, and suggested that I might prove helpful to him. Tiger gave a gasp of disbelief, and Nugent turned to him. ‘You don’t know who you tied up with, Dolan. Lime has more crimes to his credit that I’ll ever have! ’
‘But they all pale beside your chosen profession, Nugent,’ I intervened.
Nugent motioned to Gibber, and we were taken inside the shack. There, with an automatic pistol pointing straight at my stomach, I tried to make a deal.
’Tiger gave me the lead,’ I said. ‘I intended coming here alone tonight to make you a proposition for our mutual benefit.’
Dolan made an angry movement, but was restrained by Gibber. Nugent ignored him.
‘It won’t work, Lime,’ he said. ’This isn’t another confidence game. We only use blue chips in this one. The highest stakes are life…and death.’
‘I’m not interested in anything but the highest stakes.’
‘I don’t need you,* he replied. ‘You would be dangerous. You and Dolan will be liquidated tonight’
This looked bad. ‘Just what are your plans.’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘Dolan is on the Hyacinth Patrol. I thought Pd drop you and he into the channel so that you could observe their root formations at close range. Go and fetch the weights, Gibber.’
The Lime luck was running out. I’d gotten into this confounded predicament through no apparent fault of my own, and had undergone experiences that only a rank amateur would suffer. And now I was going to die because of it. The two-hour limit that we’d given to Rita was no good: we’d be counting hyacinth roots long before she summoned whatever aid Tiger had dreamed up. I idly wondered if my past life would march before me as I sank beneath the swamp scum.
Nugent was watching us. Presently he broke the silence. ‘Knowing as much as you do, you may be interested in this?’ He moved a partition in the shack’s wall, and a small cubby hole was revealed. In it was a radio set, with an operator hard at work.
‘Yes, it’s all very efficient, Lime,’ he commented. ’At the moment the operator is sending a message to our carrier miles out at sea, alerting the robot planes to bomb the Gatun dam.’
I listened to the chattering of the telegraph key as it talked to the carrier. Meanwhile Gibber came back to report that the weights were ready in the boat. I was beginning to sweat, and had almost made up my mind to try and make a break for it, when Nugent said: ‘You gentlemen will excuse me if I don’t go down to the boat with you?…I have business here.
Gibber and the others will see to it that you get a good launching.’
Tiger blurted out in futile fury, ‘If there’s any justice anywhere, you’d drop dead right here, Nugent.’
At that moment the radio set started to make a wailing note. Nugent drew himself up tensely. ’The warning note,’ he muttered.
Then it all happened at once. I was under the table, and Tiger was at the door. The lights went off. Nugent’s automatic fired at the shadows. Then the door flew open and a voice cried: ‘We’re here, Sergeant Dolan.’
It was the Hyacinth Patrol, and they gathered more than blossoms that night. Nugent and the other enemy agents were rounded up. The whole canal zone was alerted for attack, the enemy carrier was found and destroyed, and all this because little Rita went for aid the moment we started for Gibber’s cabin.
Three days later I was back in ‘Ptomaine Joe’s’ with Tiger. He was apologetic, ‘I…I can’t tell you how sorry I am…thinkin’ what I did about you, Harry…’
’Forget it, Tiger,’ I replied, ‘after all, how were you to know that I was trying to play for time.’
’The brass hats buttered you up plenty
, huh,’ he chuckled.
‘Yes. Most embarrassing. As a rule the authorities have anything but nice words for me.’
Tiger told me that they had created a Hyacinth patrol of the air, and that he had been made a gun crew on one of them. And then he asked me to be best man at his wedding to Rita. This was too much for me. I excused myself as politely as I could, and booked a passage on the next boat out.
Tiger’s request was a sentimental degradation that I could not stomach. [Yet as my; ship made its; way, through the locks, I seemed to hear the strains of Lohengrin. Then a formation of low-flying planes bearing gigantic hyacinths painted on their sides buzzed our ship—Tiger Dolan’s last salute…I raised my hand…
Good heavens, do you think that there’s a trace of sentimentality in me after all…?
HORSEPLAY
by
Peter Lyon
If I were an honest man, which I am not, this would be my sermon: ‘the man who is swindled is asking for it’. You can’t swindle a man unless he’s so full of larceny that, when he hiccoughs the breath that comes up is dishonest. This would be disconcerting to a man of my talents if I didn’t know that nine people out of ten are full of larceny.
Such a one was an American named Harris, who came to Paris for a holiday not long ago. Strictly in his honour I concocted a juicy little swindle called ‘Horseplay’.
My game of Horseplay began in the bar of the Crillon, and to start it, I had to call on a French pal of mine, Andre Janin. I pointed out a big man, sitting at a corner table: it was Harris. All Janin had to do was to get into conversation with him, and then, by the merest chance, to discover a wallet lying under the table. Harris and Janin would then trace the wallet to its rightful owner—me.
‘And all this is to establish what?’ asked Janin.
‘All this, my friend,’ I said as I got up to leave the field clear for him, ‘will result in Mr. Harris giving me thousands and thousands of American dollars. As you will see.’
Andre Janin did his job smoothly. He was sitting 122 down and talking to Harris in a matter of minutes, as though they were old friends. From not too near, I watched discreetly. Everything went according to plan. Just as they were getting up to go, they discovered the wallet.
Who did it belong to? The only way to find out was to look inside: thirteen ten-mille notes—(about four hundred American dollars)—a membership card to the Club de Turf, some sort of code jotted on a piece of paper, two race tickets, and a newspaper cutting that said that a mysterious racetrack plunger by name of Harry Lime had made over a million dollars at Belmont that season.
Another five minutes passed and they were at the door of my suite.
‘Are you newspapermen?’ I said brusquely. ‘If you are, I don’t want to see you. No interviews! ’
They explained what they had come for. I was full of apologies, and invited them in. Would they accept a reward? Of course they would not.
‘Well then, at the very least, you must both be my guests for an evening while you are here in Paris: drinks, dinner, a round of the hottest spots, maybe some girl friends, eh?’ I said as I ushered them into chairs. When they were settled I continued: ‘Meanwhile let’ me place a bet for you, just to cover your hotel bill while you are in town.’
At first they didn’t catch on, so I explained that I represented a large syndicate that 'regulated’ the winnings of races at French tracks. My instructions arrived by coded telegram, the cipher of which had been in my wallet. Consequently I was most grateful to them for returning it.
The light began to dawn on Harris. ‘You mean, the bets you place—the races have been fixed in advance.’ he asked.
I smiled at him understanding^. ‘Well, now, “fixed” is a very unpleasant word! But that’s about the size of it. That’s why it occurred to me that perhaps I could show my gratitude by placing a small bet for both of you, which would at least make you some cigarette money while you’re here in Paris/
I was interrupted by a pageboy at the door with a cablegram. I returned in a few minutes and said that I would have to go out, and place a bet. A cable had just brought me the day’s instructions.
‘We did not mean to stay as long as this…’ Janin was saying when I interrupted him.
‘No, no, please. Not at all. I insist you stay here. Here are drinks and cigars. I’ll be back in a matter of fifteen minutes at the most. Make yourselves at home, both of you.’
‘Put something on for us.’ Harris was calling out jocularly as I shut the door.
So I left this man Harris in my room with Janin. He sat there thinking of the possibility that he’d make some money on a sure thing—a fixed horse-race—with no risk whatever to his own pocketbook.
What’s wrong with that? Probably, like Harris, you might have felt you didn’t know, for sure, that I wasn’t some kind of nut. But at least you would have had to have admitted that I kept good whisky, good cigars, and rented a comfortable suite. And in twenty minutes or so I’d have been back with a big smile on my face.
Of course the horse had won. I paid them both eighty thousand francs.
Harris was delighted. Well, say, what do you know!’ he exclaimed.
‘My goodness, sir! Thank you!’ Janin muttered as he pocketed the bills.
‘Just like it grows on trees!’
Yessir, Mr. Harris, just like it grows on trees. Eighty thousand francs—about two hundred dollars—and you never lifted a finger. That’s living, man!’
In fact, as he said himself over a final whisky: ‘Just think, Janin, the only limit is the capital you’ve got to put down on a race!’
How about that?. You see what I mean about nine out of ten being larcenous?
And, of course, before the afternoon is over, another cablegram was delivered, and another bet successfully placed.
At this stage, Harris had some three hundred thousand francs of my money in his pocket, but I didn’t need to worry too much. He wouldn’t run away. He was too anxious to get some more of this money that just grows on trees.
Overnight, I left him in the company of my friend Janin, and went to prepare the appearance of the Club de Turf. Of course, it was a phony—staffed by my pals, and all set up just to separate Mr. Harris from some of his American dollars. All I needed was a set of rooms, a few comfortable chairs, a bar, a blackboard for the odds, a dozen telephones, desks where bets may be laid, and a horse-race betting-room had come into existence. Well, not exactly a horserace betting-room. Rather the Club de Turf!
The next day they both came back to my suite. I said that I was delighted to see them. When they had both been given drinks, I continued: ‘Yes, sir, I’m glad to see you. I need someone I can trust, and after the way you two returned my wallet yesterday, I know you’re both dependable.’
‘Well, anything I can do…’ offered Harris.
‘You can do me a favour. And pick yourself a little change at the same time. Here’s my problem. The manager over at the Club de Turf is getting suspicious of me, I’m afraid. He’s just been telling me I’ll have to place my bets somewhere else.’
Harris gave a nervous laugh. ‘Well, I don’t wonder.’
‘Now, if you two will take this guest card,’ I went on, ‘it will get you into the Club and you can place a bet for me. I’ve got a horse in the fifth race. I’ll give you a blank cheque.
’On credit. My credit, of course. Besides, you still have the few hundred thousand you won yesterday.’ On my instructions, Harris gave his three hundred thousand to Janin, which made the total six hundred thousand in cash. Then I went on:
’This is very important. Do exactly as I tell you, Janin. When the time comes to bet, you make out and sign this cheque for fifteen million francs.’
Harris whistled in astonishment.
‘Don’t let these figures unsettle you, Harris. It just sounds a lot of money. Translated, it means only fifty thousand American dollars. Place the cheque, together with your cash, on Dancing Cloud in the fourth race at Chantilly.
The odds should be about four to one. That should net us about…well, more than two hundred thousand American dollars.’
‘What a way to make money.’ exclaimed Harris.
Janin, however, was more cautious. ‘I don’t have fifteen million francs in cash.’ he said. ‘And I don’t like the idea of putting my name to a cheque for fifteen millions.’
I reassured him. ‘Your guest card assures you credit And when you win, you take back the cheque. Where’s the trouble?’
He asked what would happen if we lost.
Harris laughed. ‘Don’t be a dope, Janin! You can’t lose! It’s a sure thing! ’
That Harris. It was a pleasure swindling him. The smarter the sucker, the quicker he’ll tumble. And now it was up to Janin to guide him to the Club de Turf.
Even though I say it myself, the Club de Turf really looked the part. A cashier stood behind a wicket-window paying out huge bundles of francs on pretended bets to the pretended club members. The whole fancy front certainly impressed Harris, whose breath came faster and whose eyes were shining brighter; for he was about to make a huge profit on a sure, crooked wager.
I watched what happened from a concealed hiding-place. The pair of them went up to the cashier, presented the cheque and the cash, and placed it on Dancing Cloud. For a horrible moment, Harris thought that the bet was not going to be accepted, but after the clerk had examined their guest card, they were issued with their ticket for a bet of fifteen million, six hundred thousand francs.
They went down and sat in .their chairs. Janin kept saying to Harris that he was worried about putting his name to such a big cheque. Harris tried to reassure him, but I could see that his palms were sweating.
Well, to cut a long story short, Dancing Cloud won the race. Janin sighed with relief, and Harris pretended that he had been certain of the result the whole time. Then they went over to the window and presented their ticket. The cashier started to count out a large bundle of notes. Just as he was pushing the money over towards them, the manager came up.
The Lives of Harry Lime v1.0 Page 10
