The Oldest Confession

by Richard Condon

  Lawyer Chern was prompt. He arrived at Bourne’s at one minute to five o’clock, beaming. Bourne showed him into the long living room where Jean Marie sat glowering. Chern crossed to shake hands with him briskly, not noticing the dourness.

  “Well! I take it you were able to find some Spanish masters, hey?” He rubbed his hands and grinned some more.

  “Sit down, Mr. Chern,” Bourne suggested. Chern sat down and crossed his legs precisely, arranging the crease in his trousers with a certain degree of conscience.

  “You got the paintings—or a painting?” Chern asked, directly this time.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Oh, that is good. On which list?”

  “Schedule A.”

  “Oh, splendid! That is splendid.”

  He looked ingenuously from silent Jean Marie to silent Bourne. “May I see them?” They didn’t answer right off so he added, “Oh would you prefer to wait until the formal transfer at the bank?”

  Bourne cleared his throat nervously. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Chern, we had three of the paintings in our possession but at the very last moment before we were to have left Spain, they were stolen from us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I say we had three paintings listed on Schedule A but they were stolen from us just as we were leaving Spain.”

  “What is this?”

  “Yes. They were.”

  “But how could that be? You mean you had the paintings but that you do not have them now?”

  “Right.”

  “How could you wire me to rush to Paris then? I mean if there are no paintings to transfer how could you put me to this expense and inconvenience? I am a very busy man, Mr. Bourne. This is intolerable!”

  “We were naturally chagrined at the loss of the paintings. In fact, we still feel quite ugly about the entire thing and we had hoped you could help us,” Bourne said politely.

  “Help you? How could I help you?” Chern’s eyes narrowed.

  “It is clear when one studies the matter that you and your client were the only people who knew that we would have the paintings, Mr. Chern.”

  “Are you accusing me?”

  “If I haven’t, I will, Mr. Chern. Be sure of that. And bring the tone of your voice down, please.”

  “Yes,” Jean Marie agreed, “please modify the tone of your voice. It is quite unpleasant.”

  “I shall do more than that,” Mr. Chern stated flatly. “I shall refuse to stay here and be insulted.” He got up and strode across the room. As he passed Bourne, Bourne hit him with a heavy right hand. It was unexpected. Chern had no notion to prepare for it so he fell heavily into the fireplace with a clatter of brass andirons and lay there quite still. Bourne went to the low table in front of the sofa and saw to the tea saying, “I hate this kind of thing but because of motion pictures it is one of the few methods one can use, particularly in crime, to convince a man that one is in dead earnest.”

  “Ah, he’s such a stuffed shirt anyway,” Jean Marie said.

  Bourne filled a cup for Jean Marie and one for himself. They sipped in silence until Chern stirred. He sat up, although still sprawled, rubbed his jaw, and stared at them with sort of an amazed fear. “You hit me,” he said.

  “There can be no doubt about that,” Jean Marie said.

  “Will you have some tea?” asked Bourne.

  Chern got slowly and ungracefully to his feet. “Yes, thank you,” he answered thickly. “I don’t mind if I do.” He sat down, reached for a napkin which he spread on his knee then accepted the teacup from Bourne.

  “What is your client’s name?” Bourne asked conversationally.

  “I have no idea and that is the truth, Mr. Bourne. The bank contacted me on the client’s behalf. I have never met the client and I have never known his name.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mr. Chern, either you or your client have very neatly swindled us out of three hundred and thirty thousand dollars, which is shocking. We were deliberately sought out to do all of the painful work then we were fearfully duped. Only you and your client knew we were working on the assignment. I must keep repeating that. Furthermore, a professional criminal would not have stolen the paintings from us while they were still in Spain because of the peril involved in getting them out of Spain, if indeed they ever intended them to leave Spain. What the hell, Mr. Chern, did you expect us to just forget the whole thing? It’s not only the three hundred and thirty thousand any more. We have been grossly insulted, and a man has been murdered.”

  Chern went white. “Murder? Who? Who was murdered?”

  “The man who was employed to steal the paintings from us was murdered the following night, the night before last, according to a cable I received yesterday.”

  “My God, this is terrible!”

  “It certainly is,” Jean Marie said with bitterness.

  “You must see our point,” Bourne told Chern. “First off, we have to determine that you, yourself, were not the client. That could be, you know.”

  “It could be, but it isn’t.”

  “Don’t act. You could have designed the entire undertaking yourself, you could have organized Mr. Calbert and myself, as you did in truth, while pretending there was an imaginary client. With the plane connections between Zurich and Madrid you could have done all of the rest.”

  “The bank can establish the fallacy of that immediately, Mr. Bourne. They will tell you that I am not the client.”

  “I have never given you my present name, either. I gave you an entirely different name. The cable I sent to you yesterday was signed with the different name. Yet you call me by this name. And I was recognized in Madrid. Also my associate, Miss Lewis.”

  “I had to protect my client. I had you followed to Paris. I had your pictures taken as a matter of routine. It was my duty.”

  “You are now an accessory before and after the fact of murder, Mr. Chern.”

  “I am not, sir!”

  “Will the bank reveal the name of your client?”

  “I doubt that very much. In fact, we all know the answer is no. You know Swiss banks as well as I do.”

  “I agree that they would not reveal the name to me. But you are a lawyer practicing in Zurich. You must have done a good deal of work with the bank in the past because they chose you to represent this anonymous client so vitally interested in Spanish art.”

  “They know me, naturally.”

  “And I say that when you, a responsible Swiss attorney, go to a Swiss bank which has charged you with representing a principal who has turned out to be a thief and a murderer, they will tell you the name. They have a responsibility to you, Mr. Chern. And you have a responsibility to us.”

  “I am sorry, I cannot agree. I could go to the bank and I could talk myself blue in the face. They will tell me that I cannot charge a man I do not know, cannot identify, and cannot prove exists, with a murder and a theft. They will tell me that a bank cannot be concerned with the personal, peripheral activities of anyone.”

  “Do you agree that you have a responsibility to us?”

  “I do not. As a legal agent I drew up an employment agreement between you and my client. At no time had I any responsibility to you.”

  “You agree that you have a responsibility to observe the letter of the agreement?”

  “I do.”

  “When will my good will deposit of one hundred thousand Swiss francs be returned to me?”

  “When I have filed with the bank and the bank has advised my client that you wish to withdraw from the project.”

  “I should imagine he would give me permission to withdraw. After all I was helpful to him.”

  “You read the agreement before you signed it.”

  “And do I get the remainder of the expense money?”

  “I repeat, Mr. Bourne. You know the agreement. You have not delivered a painting. Therefore the remainder of the expense money will not be paid.”


  Bourne grinned sardonically: “That means your client has acquired a Velázquez, a Zurbarán and a Greco—peak works of each master—for fourteen thousand two hundred and thirteen dollars and thirty-two cents.”

  “You have an excellent memory,” Chern said in sincere praise.

  “Yes.” Bourne closed his eyes and rested for a moment.

  “About forty-seven hundred dollars apiece,” Jean Marie said. “Hah!”

  “That is not my affair,” Chern said stiffly.

  “Then you must be persuaded to make it your affair,” Bourne said.

  Chern placed the teacup carefully on the low table. “How do you mean persuaded!” he asked anxiously.

  “Exactly what you are thinking,” Bourne answered gravely.

  “But, Mr. Bourne, you know Swiss banks, The protection of the anonymity of their clients is their great hallmark.”

  “The protection of a murderer?”

  “They have protected genocides! A Swiss bank is a building and vaults and locked books! Personalities do not exist for Swiss banks.”

  “How did you correspond with your client?”

  “I wrote to the bank.”

  “To what name?”

  “I wrote to Mr. Pierre Traumer referring to an account number. Return information would come through Mr. Traumer.”

  “What account number?”

  Bourne stared at him until he took out a small book and read off the number which Bourne noted in his own small book.

  “Have you been paid?” Bourne asked.

  “Yes. I was also to have received a certain bonus if the paintings were any of those appearing on Schedule A.”

  “So you were cheated, too. Well—I can see that we could discuss this for many hours, even days, and not get anywhere,” Bourne said, stolidly, getting up, and causing Jean Marie to notice again what a huge man he was. “Mr. Chern, I have decided to lock you up in the cellar of this house. There is a water tap down there, but—”

  “No!” Chern made that word into a terrible sound. It was such an agonized no, such an hysterical objection that Bourne and Jean Marie exchanged quick glances, then Bourne continued, “I am going to keep you down there for three weeks or so and then we can—”

  “Mr. Bourne, please! I beg you! I fear rats greatly. And darkness. I had an experience during the war. I have not always been a Swiss. I was in the German army. Mr. Bourne, no! You cannot! I can do nothing to help you. I know nothing. You must see that!” The words jammed and crowded out of him. He could not back away any further because the wall was pressing him behind and Bourne towered in front of him. He began to talk unevenly again but the sound was cut off when Bourne’s hand closed over his mouth; gripping cheeks, mouth and jaw in a huge vise, the other hand sinking into the material of his right trouser leg and lifting. Bourne carried him like a sack, out of the room. Chern’s china-blue eyes stared at something an eternity away as he disappeared. Jean Marie, watching, shivered.

  All Bourne would say in reference to the incident when he returned from the cellar was, “I have never seen a man so afraid of the dark.”

  “I don’t much like rats, myself,” Jean Marie told him.

  Mr. Sam Gourlay, editor of The Populace, turned out to be a jolly man who had a lovely time living, in fact, a lovely time just breathing. He had khaki hair and purple cheeks through which the tracery of tiny crimson veins could be seen. Eve fell quite in love with him within the first fifty seconds at the Ivy, a carved mahogany restaurant, even though he was some forty years older than she.

  He liked the photographs Bourne had sent along, explaining how tired he got of the steady run of pornography which crossed his desk, pictures all right for English Sunday publication, but impossible to syndicate on the Continent or anywhere else in the world. He bubbled that the world rights to these photographs would bring a pretty packet, and that in three or four months she would indeed have a surprise on her hands when the first accountings from the sale of the pretty pictures came in. It was a confusing kind of an oration until she remembered Bourne’s designation of the man as a professional Scotsman and realized that he was doing this delightful waltz to prevent her from thinking of making a claim for immediate payment. It was merely his way of determining whether she was amateur or professional.

  She thought he would cause her to be beatified when she told him that she wanted no money at all for the pictures then thought she might be the death of him from sudden stroke when she said she had an entirely different kind of a fee in mind. He recovered his joy at once however when she explained that she merely wanted to meet a distinguished British criminal, through The Populace staff, and that would be her fee.

  He patted her hand and said that he could arrange everything. He told her that Merton, his crime editor, would grumble and carp at sharing his contacts with anyone, because, after all, criminals were Merton’s profession and a wonderful living it had been for him for twenty-six years, what with the tastes of the English reading public, but he was sure he could arrange everything for her.

  He did not ask her why she wanted to meet a leading English criminal. He took it for granted entirely that all visiting young women would head directly for criminal leaders upon entry into any country. He did ask whether she leaned more toward meeting a top murderer or a champion thief. She told him that her preference was to meet the very top echelon of highly organized general crime; professional, diversified crime which covered a wide area of enterprise. He understood at once.

  “I should think someone like Jack Tense would be what you’d need,” he said thoughtfully. “He’s a leader. We’ve serialized him four times in all. We’ve done ‘Race Course Gangs’ with him. And a series on safe cracking, which he did a lot of when he was first starting. Then we did six installments on ‘King of British Crime Bar None’ over his name, sort of an autobiography; then, of course, he’s published his recommendations on juvenile delinquency with us.”

  “He sounds exactly right!”

  “Yes. I think he is.”

  “Would you say he had internationl connections?”

  “Oh, definitely yes,” said the jolly editor. “He was very, very big during the war. Spied for both sides and made a fortune. Would have been knighted, except for his record.”

  “My!”

  “You know, that might not make a half-bad series. ‘Crime Is An International Business,’ I’d call it.”

  As it turned out, Mr. Merton did raise cain about being asked to share a contact as lucrative and as important as Jack Tense. First he claimed that Tense wouldn’t talk to anyone but him, which Mr. Gourlay had characterized as sheer nonsense. Then he offered someone named Albert Nickels whom Mr. Gourlay said was nothing but a common slasher. Then he claimed Tense was out of the country, an allegation which he didn’t even bother to refute when he used the excuse that Tense was working on a book and that if he were to take time out to talk to every Tom, Dick, and Judy who came along he’d never get the work finished. There was more talk like that, but when he’d felt he’d made his point he finally relented with the proviso that in the event Eve ever wrote anything concerning the encounter it could not be offered for sale without first being sent to Dorrance Merton of The Populace for first refusal and with the further understanding that he had the full right to edit all of the copy and to pre-empt any or all of it for British publication without payment to Eve.

  “Would that include fiction?” Eve asked innocently, “or only material which would be of interest to your newspaper?”

  “Most definitely fiction!” Mr. Merton exploded. “Any kind of fiction, first and foremost. My dear Sam, if this young woman has fiction in mind out of this proposed meeting with Tense I am afraid I will have to warn him of her intent.”

  “But it is not my intent. I merely asked. Besides I won’t be with Mr. Tense for more than a half hour. After all, I couldn’t get very much of a novel out of him in a half hour, now could I?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Mr. Merton answered hotly.
“I did his ‘King of British Crime Bar None’ and his recommendations for juvenile delinquency without seeing him at all.”

  In the end it was all straightened out with Eve agreeing to every condition Mr. Merton had made. Merton called Jack Tense and made an appointment with him for the Red Giant pub in Belgravia Mews for two o’clock the following afternoon. The Red Giant is a simple workingman’s pub run by a handsome Irish fellow who sings when feeling spirited. It is difficult to reach because of the Jaguars and Bentleys which sprawl all over the Mews, driven there by the Red Giant’s simple, workingmen customers.

  Eve sat behind a table in the pub with Jack Tense beside beside her and they both sipped ale. Tense was a slender middle-aged man with fearfully hard dark eyes and a wrenched pale mouth. He wore a Tattersall vest which held a heavy gold chain to match many of his teeth. His hair could have been arranged with machine tools. He did not believe a word of Eve’s story about being a lady novelist, and in every way did his best to cooperate in no way at all, most indirectly and enigmatically.

  At last, when it seemed as though he were going to leave in the next instant, she decided to be more explicit with him.

  “All right, Mr. Tense. Here it is. We got away with three Spanish paintings in Madrid and we were hijacked the day the paintings were to leave the country to get the money.”

  He smiled for the first time. “That’s more like it, ducks,” he said, signaling for two more ales. “What kind of paintings?”

  “Masters.”

  “Genuine?”

  “Quite.”

  “Worth how much?”

  “That depends on who bought them.”

  “I know.”

  “About fifty thousand quid,” she lied.