I laughed this time. Out loud.
“Back to that again, eh? What are you interested in–stone ladies or expensive stones? Maybe you ought to marry The Violent Virgin, Harry. Duffy is the captain of the train. He could do it. Tell you what–if I find The Blue Green, we could set one of the pieces in a ring and have a regular wedding ceremony.”
He took a huge step toward me. One huge step. His eyes were hammering nails into a pine box. And I was inside the pine box.
“How I detest humorists! You’re a faker, sir. A cheap fraud. You make with the jest and the bon mot, but that intellect of yours is none the less greedy or Machiavellian than mine. Even now, you plan to escape. You think to trick me. You hide behind your laughter. Fraud, I say. Do not attempt your tricks with me. I would shoot you without compunction.”
He had me there. And I like guys that understand me.
“Okay, Harry. I’ll buy that. You’re right. But what do you do next?”
His eyebrows went up three floors. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. You haven’t got The Blue Green. You don’t know where it is. The Virgin is still in the baggage car. Bloody but unbowed. Okay. Spider and Dean are under wraps. That leaves me and you and Opal Trace. What’s your next move? Where do you go from here?”
He smiled. A big smile.
“Knowing you as I now do, Mr. Noon, it occurs to me that you are suggesting an alliance. A pooling of our mutual talents. If that is your meaning, please state it in honest, forthright terms.”
“You and Dean must have grown up together. Or got lost in the same library. Okay. I’d like to help you. Illegally or otherwise.”
That seemed to please him. He sat down across from me. His ridiculous blunt legs poked into the aisle like prows on ships. He rested his gun hand on one fleshy thigh. But the barrel was level with my stomach. He wouldn’t have to risk ruining his hat this time either. He had lost his rakish bowler somewhere in transit.
“Very well, sir. I will deal with you. Possibly because you are Miss Trace’s consort. Perhaps because it is she and she alone who holds the key to all our difficulties. Then we shall see if we can indeed bargain at all.”
“Sounds fair to me. Shoot. It’s cozy in here anyway.”
It was. The Mainliner was clickety-clicking, clack-clack along the rails in fine fettle. It looked like we might reach Chicago in time for the year two thousand, at that.
Harry smiled, dug into his vest pocket and drew forth a spaded silver cigar case. He extended it toward me. I took a thin, dappled stogie from it. He placed the case on one washboard-wide knee, selected one for himself, closed the case and replaced it in one of his roomy vest pockets. He also produced a lighter and lit us both up. He wasn’t letting me reach for anything. And all the time, his beady black eyes were riveted on me and what my hands and legs were doing.
“So be it, Mr. Noon. I will tell you the story from the beginning. A man such as yourself may see something in it that I, who am far too close to the matter, may have overlooked.”
“It’s a possibility,” I admitted.
“You will possibly not believe the story.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
“It is something that the wildest imagination could not conceive.”
“After Presley, I can believe anything.”
“You will scoff and sneer. Doubt. Call me a false prophet.”
“Who me?”
“You may even assign to me the mental stature of a moron. A complete idiot.”
“That’s the chance you have to take, Harry.”
“Very well, Mr. Noon, I will plunge right into the thing.”
“At the rate you’re going, you’ll finish the story in Chicago.”
“Bear with me, sir. The saga I am about to unfold has a curious fascination for me.”
“I believe it, Harry. I believe it.”
By now we had filled the compartment with blue cigar smoke. The trouble with Harry, besides being fat, was that he loved the art of conversation. Well, I don’t love the art of listening. Harry sensed my impatience and chuckled. He was enjoying himself.
“Quite so, sir. Quite so. I shall get on with it.”
I groaned.
“Look why don’t you cut a record and mail it to me? We could go on like this for hours. Ed and Harry. Fancy songs and snappy patter. Or is it snappy songs and fancy patter? See what I mean?”
Now I was funny. He laughed. Oh, how he laughed. His barrel-gut volumed with mirth. If there had been any pictures on the compartment walls they would have danced on their hooks. His eyes filled with water and his sides threatened to come apart they were shaking so hard.
But he wasn’t fooling me. The gun in his hand was targeted in on my navel like the Norden bombsight. He was stalling for a good reason. He wanted to see what kind of a guy I really was. Also, he wasn’t all there. The Violent Virgin-Blue Green had him all right. Right by the fat buttocks. It wasn’t very comforting to know he was just slightly off his rocker. He might just slip his cable any old day now. Or minute.
I waited for him to close shop on the chuckles. He did. Almost as suddenly as he had begun. That was part of the treatment too. I was curious about what he’d have to tell me of the stone lady and the hot rock. And he knew it too. He could tell by my eyes.
“Settle back in your seat, Mr. Noon. I am ready to begin.”
If I’d had 21 guns, I would have fired a salute.
“Hooray,” I said weakly. Even his cigar was beginning to get me now. Duffy’s cigarillo was a candy cigarette by comparison.
Then he let me have it. The mad fairy tale about a world famous piece of statuary known to one and all as The Violent Virgin.
For a stone dame, she sure got around. And men died for her, fought for her, lived for her. And guys like Harry set their clocks by her. As he sat back archly with his gun on me, a look of reverence shone in his tiny eyes. A curl of cigar smoke wisped above his fat skull like a blue halo as he began. But he was miles away from being an angel.
His story removed any lingering doubts I may have had.
I sat slightly spellbound. The Virgin’s story put Treasure Island to shame.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fat Harry told the story in his own inimitable way. Largely, grandly. With gestures and wild, intellectual enthusiasm. And for all of a half hour, I felt just like the cigarette-chewing Bogart listening to the mammoth Sydney Greenstreet discuss the history of the Maltese Falcon. It was a weird sensation. I had to fight a tendency to look over my shoulder to see if John Huston was setting up his cameras. Weird–it was nuts. It was Sam Spade and the Fat Man all over again. But it wasn’t a fabulous black statuette of a falcon this time. It was a six foot statue of a female in the altogether. And I hadn’t even seen her yet.
But Harry told me all about her.
Height: 6 feet to the inch. Plus a six inch marble base. Solid marble throughout. Sculptor: a Twentieth Century genius named Nordsvak. School: Modern. Value: priceless. The finest statue of a female nude since the antiquity of Venus de Milo. Or Aphrodite as every museum in the world knows her.
The statue was executed in 1940 by Nordsvak and dazzled the world of sculpture as no other statue had in eons. Then the Nazis rolled over the little Balkan country of Akaria and executed Nordsvak, because he wouldn’t tell them who had posed for the statue but was curiously insistent that the woman had been a lovely Jewess. So The Violent Virgin became a war prize. Hitler was supposed to have kept it in his favorite room in Berchtesgarden until he did his Berlin fire act. Then the U.S. Army stepped in and ended the war in Europe and returned the statue to Akaria. The Akarians rejoiced. At last, they had the greatest work of the great Nordsvak where it belonged. In the peaceful, beautiful country where it had been created. A fittin’ and proper tribute to the young genius who had died too soon. Akarian history was intact.
But then the museums started bidding. The Louvre, the Metropolitan, the Nationale. Even Bond’s Clothing Store wanted to
replace the Pepsi-Cola bottle with it. And the Akarian National Debt was such that wet tears for Nordsvak dried up pretty fast. But the museums were all out-bid by a multimillionaire named Kovin. Eccentric as hell but as loaded as heaven. He paid half a million dollars for six feet of solid marble. A naked, screaming dame whose outstretched arms were defiantly pushing off some invisible despoiler of her virginity, imagined or otherwise.
Enter Simpson Carleton Stanley. Dean to me. A college professor with a string of degrees in world cultures like the fine arts and languages. Dean becomes a personal confidant of the rich Mr. Kovin. Dean has a young toady with him at all times. Spider to me. Sort of a bodyguard, chauffeur, errand boy and what-have-you. What they have (Dean and Spider) is more than a passing interest. Rich, relative-less Mr. Kovin goes over a cliff in South Wales, smashing a 16 cylinder Duesenberg and every bone in his 65 year old body. Leaving a nice will that leaves a nice, world famous statue to his friend and adviser, Simpson Carleton Stanley, who will know what to do with The Violent Virgin.
Dean does know what to do with her.
Suddenly, the cultural professor is no longer cultural. The Virgin is rented and leased to all kinds of museums, exhibits, world fairs. Even the Olympics, as the symbol of truth and beauty in the world today. Dean, of course, cleans up at the box office and Mike Todd is green with envy. And the Almighty Dollar rolls ever onward in the world of Art.
Dean is happy, Spider is well-fed. And The Violent Virgin becomes the most famous art exhibit since Sally Rand’s fans. The art critics scream prostitution but Dean continues to escape destitution.
Enter Harry Harper Henderson. Fat Harry. A slick, smooth sharpie from the word go. World-traveling confidence man and intellectual giant with a palmed card. Harry sees The Violent Virgin on his travels throughout Europe and falls in love with her. Also, he falls in love with a lovely hunk of expensive ice known to one and all as The Blue Green. But The Blue Green belongs to a wealthy widow named Myrtle Redleaf who is almost seventy but only ten years old in the head. She has to be because she believe’s Harry’s careful protestations of love eternal and honeymoons with him to the Riviera. Harry only loves two things however. The Virgin and The Blue Green. He does something right away about one of them.
On the wedding night, he skips from the marital bed with The Blue Green clenched in one hot fat fist. But not before Myrtle screams her head off and the gendarmes arrive. Harry shoots one dead, runs like a mad horse over another, and flees into the moonlight night like a big-bottomed bird. Making himself a love cheat, a thief and a murderer, all in one night.
But Harry still wants something else, The Violent Virgin. He has the fervor and the insanity of the true collector. But it’s all illegal. He approaches Dean and Spider in their hotel suite in Paris, makes a bid for the lady, is turned down and leaves. But with forged passport and the help of his crooked friends, he follows Dean and Spider across the ocean to New York. And on up to Maine where the boys plan a nice two weeks vacation among the snow and frost. The Virgin meanwhile is being shipped to Chicago for a large slice of the profits at an exhibition to plug a forthcoming sex movie starring Marilyn Monroe. Something called The Naked Woman. It’s great exploitation for Twentieth Century Fox and more coin of the realm for dear old Dean.
Enter Opal Trace. A lovely, shapely, flesh-and-blood woman who is on dope and down and out. Dean takes a fatherly interest in the stranded showgirl, makes her his personal secretary. But his fatherly interest rapidly turns incestuous and Dean descends on her lustfully. Also, he is willing to share her in a neat; cozy arrangement with Spider. First Dean, then Spider, then Dean. Then Spider again. Romantic stuff like that. Opal’s new world crumbles and she feels stranded all over again. This time in a cabin in the Maine wilds.
Enter Harry again, complete with gun and bowler and love-sick for his statue. It’s such a lonely cabin in the Maine woods. He tries to bargain with Dean and Spider since he has not brought a small truck with him to cart the statue away. But he has been silly enough to bring The Blue Green with him.
Opal sees her chance, sets fire to her upstairs room while Harry is gun-talking Dean and Spider. In the ensuing fire, she jumps Harry on her way out, knocking him unconscious. Dean and Spider are tied hand and foot and cannot interfere.
Harry wakes up, The Blue Green is gone from his pocket and so is Opal Trace. The house is burning down around his ears and Spider and Dean are still tied up, but Harry is so enraged and upset about losing one goodie while he is looking for another, that he becomes indecent. He takes off after Opal, leaving Spider and Dean in the burning cabin, determined to track her down. He knows about the Chicago destination of the Virgin. He watches the station and is rewarded by having Opal Trace show up with a tall bodyguard. Ed Noon to you.
The presence of Dean and Spider on the train only points up the ability of Maine fire departments. The whereabouts of The Blue Green has Harry baffled. Opal has to have it. Unless Spider and Dean have duped him. But how could they? They were tied and bound at the time.
Which brings us up to date with the explosion in the baggage car and Harry still looking for his precious doodad. Thinking it might have been in the crate with the Virgin. And wondering just what to do next. Corpses on the caper are just an unfortunate necessity.
When Harry had ended his long-winded tale, he stared at me for a long time. Both our cigars had died an honorable smoker’s death long ago.
“Well, sir,” he rumbled cheerily. “What do you think of that? Is that or is that not, a story to rival the search for the Holy Grail? And the Fountain Of Youth? Come, sir. Your honest opinion, if you will.”
I cleared my throat.
“Mad Comics would buy it in a minute. I hope you’ve got that yarn copyrighted.”
“So be it.” His eyes narrowed. “But you wanted to help. What do you make of my story?”
“It’s so easy it scares me, Harry. The solution, I mean.”
“Pray be clearer, Mr. Noon.”
I sighed. “There’s only one person in the whole wide world who can tell us where The Blue Green is. And that person is on this train.”
Harry almost erupted on his seat. His fat quivered expectantly. His eyes gleamed like a monkey’s.
“Who, sir? Who?”
“Opal Trace,” I said, rising to my feet slowly. “Come on. Let’s go talk to her.”
Harry was all for it. He could hardly wait. And he didn’t have to wait long. Compartment B was just down the corridor. He’d been smart enough to get himself stationed as close to his quarry as possible.
I tapped on the door softly, saying, “Open up, Opal. It’s me–Ed.”
The gun in Harry’s hand nudged my spinal column again and his huge bulk had me blocked off from any sudden, fast moves. I wasn’t going anyplace. I was dead tired.
Something rustled behind the door and the panel moved inward. A beautiful face, topped by gorgeous red hair, was inches from my own. A subtle aura of perfume, something that had to be called Tabu or Playgirl or My Surrender wafted into the corridor.
“Come in,” Marlene Kelly’s rich contralto said invitingly. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
We went in, me first and Fat Harry right behind. Harry closed the door and doffed an invisible bowler to the ladies. But he didn’t put his gun away. Etiquette to one side, he had me and the ladies covered. Even brown Schnapps was under the gun. Funny-looking, beautiful Schnapps who was curled up on the seat by the window, his classic head nestling sleepily between his stubby forelegs. His gaudy collar glittered, the glass studs imbedded in the leather gleaming under the lights of the compartment.
Opal Trace was huddled in her seat, her hands squeezing her elbows like she was cold. Her lovely hair was as shiny as ever but her creamy face was red and puckered. She looked like she could use some sleep too. And her big, unblinking eyes were staring at Marlene Kelly.
In the other cushioned chair, Marlene Kelly was quite a lady to see. Trim, erect figure, properly filled out in the four nec
essary places. Decked out in the richest skirt and jacket ensemble I’d seen outside of Bergdorf-Goodman’s. The deep red hues of her duds matched the glowing sunset of her flaming hair. She’d changed her clothes since the baggage car uproar. The cigarette holder she was easily holding in one long-fingered hand would have looked silly with somebody else. But not her. She was made for fancy cigarette holders and boxes at the opera and block-long Caddies. She had what they like to call poise.
“What are we having–a reunion tea or something?” I asked. I didn’t get it. Finding Marlene Kelly in company with Opal Trace didn’t make sense. Neither did Miss Kelly’s new attitude. She didn’t look high-handed anymore and she wasn’t calling me names like she had. Her quizzical hazel eyes were almost glad to see me.
“Who’s your gun bearing acquaintance, Mr. Noon?” She pointed the cigarette holder at Harry. Harry bowed in spite of his bulk.
“Friend of mine. He likes to play with guns. Harry, meet Marlene Kelly. The Lipstick Queen.”
Harry smiled. “Quite, quite. A pleasure indeed, Miss Kelly.”
Opal Trace’s head lolled on her shoulders. The poor kid was still dead beat.
“Ed–what’s going on? Everything’s so mixed up and I’m so tired. What took you so long? Where’s Spider and Dean?”
“Later, baby. Right now, Harry has the floor. He wants to talk with us.”
Opal shook her head. “God, I’m sick of all this. Guns and people killing people. Leave me alone, Harry …”
You couldn’t be left alone by Harry if he had business with you. He bulled forward a step and rumbled in his throat. His tiny eyes circled the compartment, went from me to Marlene Kelly then back to Opal then back to Kelly again.
“Forgive me, Miss Kelly. But what is your interest in this matter? I’ve heard of you, of course. Your product is international. Every lovely woman of my acquaintance employs ‘Cleopatra’s Needle’, your world famous lipstick. But pray what are you doing in Miss Trace’s company? Miss Trace is of great interest to me. Her friends therefore are no small matter.”
The Case of the Violent Virgin Page 9
