“It brought the end down noiselessly on the folded napkin in the hole. The jewels blazed like fire. My hand shook as I made one savage jab at the pile with the long hook and felt the ineffable resistance of the two necklaces being pulled out together. I was afraid I might have to hook one at a time, but I caught just the right loops, and they came forward almost noiselessly along the napkin to where my left hand waited.
“I touched the first stone. It was the big necklace, the smaller one being underneath. My heart leaped as I saw the big pendant on one side of the heap not far from the cabochon emerald. I laid down the wire and drew them out deftly with my fingers, the gems piling richly in my spread-out left hand, until the glittering pile was free. I thrust them with one movement of my clutching fingers deep into the left pocket of my trousers. The water was churning in my ears like a cascade.
“I shut off the tap and purposely knocked the soap into the tub to make a noise, and walked into the bedroom, grabbing my cravat off the rack as I went. That was a glorious moment. The bedroom was dark. The door was unlatched. The diamonds were in my pocket. The way was clear.
“I pulled up my shirt collar, stuck on the cravat, and fixed it neatly as I reached the chair where my coat and vest lay. I plunged into them, buttoned the vest with one hand, and reached for my long coat and cap with the other. In a second I was slipping noiselessly through the door into the hall, my cap on my head, my coat over my arm.
“I had to restrain myself from running down that hall. I was in flight. It was a great thrill, to be moving away, each second taking me farther away from the enemy in that salon. Even if they are investigating at this moment, I thought, I should escape easily.
“I was gliding down those six flights of steps gleefully, released from the most tense moments I have ever gone through, when suddenly a horrible thought assailed me. What if Berthier’s had posted a detective at the hotel door. I could see my plans crashing ignominiously. I stopped and reflected. The hotel has two entrances; therefore the third person, if he is there, must be in the lobby and therefore not far from the elevator and stairway.
“I thought fast, and it was a good thing I did. I was then on the second floor. I called the floor boy, turning around quickly as if mounting instead of descending.
“ ‘Will you go to the lobby and ask if there is a man from Berthier’s waiting? If he is there, will you tell him to come up to apartment 615 immediately?’
“I stressed the last word and, slipping a tip into the boy’s hand, started up toward the third floor. With the boy gone, I turned toward the second floor, walked quickly down to the far end, where I knew the service stairway of the hotel was located. As I plunged into this door I saw the boy and a stout individual rushing up the steps toward the third floor. I sped down this stairway, braving possible suspicion of the employees. I came out in a kind of pantry, much to the surprise of a young waiter, and I commenced a tirade against the hotel’s service that must have burned his ears. I simulated fierce indignation.
“ ‘Where is that good-for-nothing trunkman?’ I demanded. ‘I’m leaving for Genoa at five, and my trunk is still unmoved.’ Meanwhile I glared at him as if making up my mind whether I would kill him or let him live.
“ ‘The trunkmen are through there,’ said the waiter, pointing to a door. I rushed through.
“Inside this basement I called out: ‘Where in hell is the porter of this hotel?’
“An excited trunkman left his work. I repeated fiercely the instructions about my trunk, and then asked how to get out of this foul place. I spotted an elevator and a small stairway, and without another word was up these steps and out in a side street off the Rue de Rivoli.
“I fancied the whole hotel was swarming with excited people by this time, and I jumped into a cruising taxi-cab.
“ ‘Trocadero,’ I ordered, and in one heavenly jolt I fell back into the seat while the driver sped on, up the Seine embankment to a section of quiet and reposeful streets.
“I breathed the free air. I realized what a fool I was; then I experienced a feeling of triumph, as I felt the lump of gems in my pocket. I got out and walked slowly to my apartment, went to the bath and trimmed my beard to the thinnest point, shaving my cheeks clean. I put on a high-crown hat, a long fur-lined coat, took a stick, and sauntered out, myself once more, Mr West, the retired diplomat, who would never think of getting mixed up in such an unsightly brawl as was now going on between the hotel and the respected and venerable institution known as Berthier’s.”
West shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s all. Berthier was right. It was not so easy to rob a Rue de la Paix jeweler, especially of four million francs’ worth of diamonds. I had returned to my apartment, and was hardly through my dinner when the telephone rang.
“ ‘This is Berthier,’ came the excited voice. He told me of this awful Hazim person. He asked if he might see me.
“That night Berthier sat in my library and expounded a dozen theories. ‘It’s a gang, a clever gang, but we’ll catch them,’ he said. ‘One of them duped our man in the hotel lobby by calling him upstairs.’
“ ‘But if you catch the men, will you catch your four millions?’ I asked, fingering the pile of stones in my pocket.
“ ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘A necklace is so easy to dispose of, stone by stone. It’s probably already divided up among that bunch of criminals.’
“I really felt flattered, but not so much than as when I read the newspapers the next day. It was amusing. I have them all in my scrapbook now.”
“How did you confess?” I asked West.
“Simple, indeed, but only with the utmost reluctance. I found the police were completely off the trail. At six o’clock the next afternoon I went to Berthier’s, rather certain that I would be recognized. I walked past the doorman into the store, where Armand hardly noticed me. He was occupied with some wise men. I heard him saying: ‘He was not so tall, as he was heavily built, thick body, large feet, and square head, with a shapeless mass of whiskers. He was from some Balkan extraction, hardly what you’d call a gentleman.’
“I asked to see Berthier, who was still overwrought and irritable.
“ ‘Hello, West,’ he said to me. ‘You’re just the man I want. Please come down and talk with these detectives. You must help me.’
“ ‘Nothing doing,’ I said. ‘Your man Armand has just been very offensive.’
“Berthier stared at me in amazement.
“ ‘Armand!’ he repeated. ‘Armand has been offensive!’
“ ‘He called me a Balkan, said I had big feet, and that I had a square head, and that I was hardly what one would call a gentleman.’
“Berthier’s eyes popped out like saucers.
“ ‘It’s unthinkable,’ he said. ‘He must have been describing the crook we’re after.’
“I could see that Berthier took this robbery seriously.
“ ‘I thought you never fell for those old gags,’ I said.
“ ‘Old gags!’ he retorted, his voice rising. ‘Hardly a gag, that!’
“ ‘Old as the hills!’ I assured him. ‘The basis of most of the so-called magic one sees on the stage.’ I paused.
‘And what will you do with these nice people when you catch them?’
“ ‘Ten years in jail, at least,’ he growled.
“ ‘I looked at my watch. The twenty-four hours were well over. Berthier had talked himself out of adjectives concerning this gang of thieves; he could only sit and clench his fists and bite his lips.
“ ‘Four millions,’ he muttered. ‘It could have been avoided. That man Armand—’
“I took my cue. ‘That man Berthier,’ I said crisply, accusingly, ‘should run his establishment better. Besides, my wager concerned you, and not Armand—’
“Berthier looked up sharply, his brain struggling with some dark clew. I mechanically put my hand in my trousers pocket and very slowly drew out a long iridescent string of crystallized carbon ending in a great square pendant
.
“Berthier’s jaw dropped. He leaned forward. His hand raised and slowly dropped to his side.
“ ‘You!’ he whispered. ‘You, West!’
“I thought he would collapse. I laid the necklace on his desk, a hand on his shoulder. He found his voice.
“ ‘Was it you who got those necklaces?’
“ ‘No, it was I who stole that necklace, and I who win the wager. Please hand over the yellow diamond.’
“I think it took Berthier ten minutes to regain his composure. He didn’t know whether to curse me or to embrace me. I told him the whole story, beginning with our dinner at Ciro’s. The proof of it was that the necklace was there on the desk.
“And I am sure Armand thinks I am insane. He was there when Berthier gave me this ring, this fine yellow diamond.”
West settled back in his chair, holding his glass in the same hand that wore the gem.
“Not so bad, eh?” he asked.
I admitted that it was bit complicated. I was curious about one point, and that was his makeup. He explained: “You see, the broad low-crowned hat reduces one inch from my height; the wide whiskers, instead of the pointed beard, another inch; the bulgy coat, another inch; the trousers, high at the shoes, another inch. That’s four inches off my stature with an increase of girth of about one-sixth of my height – an altogether different figure. A visit to a pharmacy changed my complexion from that of a Nordic to a Semitic.”
“And the hotel?” I asked.
“Very simple. I had Berthier go round and pay the damages for plugging that hole. He’ll do anything I say now.”
I regarded West in the waning firelight.
He was supremely content.
“You must have hated to give up those Indian gems after what you went through to get them?”
West smiled.
“That was the hardest of all. It was like giving away something that was mine, mine by right of conquest. And I’ll tell you another thing – if they had not belonged to a friend, I would have kept them.”
And knowing West as I do, I am sure he spoke the truth.
FLIGHT TO NOWHERE
Charles Williams
1
It was incredible. There were no signs of violence or even sickness aboard the ship, and the Gulf itself had been calm for weeks. Her sails were set and drawing gently in the faint airs of sunset, her tiller lashed, and she was gliding along on a southeasterly course which would have taken her into the Yucatan Channel. Her dinghy was still there, atop the cabin, and everything was shipshape and in order except that there was not a soul on board.
She was well provisioned, and she had water. The two bunks were made and the cabin swept. Dungarees and foul weather gear hung about the bulkheads, and in one of the bunks was the halter of a woman’s two-piece bathing suit. And, subtly underlying the bilge and salt-water smells, there still clung to the deserted cabin just the faintest suspicion of perfume. It would have gone unnoticed except that it was so completely out of place.
The table was not laid, but there were two mugs on it, and one of them was still full of coffee. When the hard-bitten old mate in charge of the boarding party walked over and put his hand against the coffee pot sitting on one burner of the primus stove it was slightly warm. There had been somebody here less than an hour ago.
He went over to the small table where the charts were and opened what he took to be the log book, flipping hurriedly through to the last page on which anything was written. He studied it for a moment, and then shook his head. In forty years at sea he had never encountered a log entry quite like it.
“. . . the blue, and that last, haunting flash of silver, gesturing as it died. It was beckoning. Toward the rapture. The rapture . . .”
Before he closed the book he took something from between the pages and stared at it. It was a single long strand of ash-blonde hair. He shook his head again.
Putting the book under his arm, he picked up the small satchel which had been lying in the other bunk and jerked his head for the two seamen to follow him back on deck.
A few yards away in the red sunset the master of the American tanker Joseph H. Hallock waited on her bridge for the mate to come aboard.
Freya, of San Juan, P.R., it said under her stern, and the master of the tanker studied her curiously while he waited for the mate. She was a long way from home. He wondered what she was doing this far to the westward, in the Gulf of Mexico, and why a small boat from Spanish Puerto Rico should have been named after a Norse goddess.
The mate came up on the bridge carrying the big ledger and the satchel. “Sick?” the captain asked. “Or dead?”
“Gone,” the mate said, with the air of a man who has been talking to ghosts without believing in them. “Just gone. Like that.
“Two of ’em, as near as I can figure it,” he went on, sketching it tersely. “A man and a woman, though there wasn’t much in the way of women’s clothes except half a bathing suit. One or both of ’em was there not over an hour ago.”
“Well, as soon as you get that line on her we’d better go back and see,” the captain said. “Anything in the log?”
“Gibberish,” the older man replied. He passed over the book, and then the satchel. “Cap, you ought to be thankful you’ve got an honest mate,” he said, nodding toward the little bag. “Just guessing, I’d say there’s about fifty thousand dollars in there.”
The captain pursed his lips in a silent whistle as he opened the bag to stare briefly at the bundles of American currency. He looked outward at the Freya, where the men were making the towline fast, and frowned thoughtfully. Then he opened the big journal at the page the mate indicated and read the last entry.
He frowned again.
The rapture . . .
When there was no longer any light at all and they had given up the search for any possible survivors and resumed their course, the captain counted the money in the presence of two of the ship’s officers and locked it in the safe. It came to eighty-three thousand dollars. Then he sat down alone in his office and opened the journal again . . .
2
It was a hot, Gulf Coast morning in early June. The barge was moored out on the T-head of the old Parker Mill dock near the west end of the waterway. Carter had gone to New Orleans to bid on a salvage job and I was living on board alone. I was checking over some diving gear when a car rolled out of the end of the shed and stopped beside mine. It was a couple of tons of shining Cadillac, and there was a girl in it.
She got out and closed the door and walked over to the edge of the pier with the unhurried smoothness of poured honey.
“Good morning,” she said. “You’re Mr Manning, I hope?”
I straightened. “That’s right,” I said, wondering what she wanted.
She smiled. “I’d like to talk to you. Could I come aboard?”
I glanced at the spike heels and then at the ladder leaning against the pier, and shook my head. “I’ll come up.”
I did, and the minute I was up there facing her I was struck by the size of her. She was a cathedral of a girl. In the high heels she must have been close to six feet. I’m six-two, and I could barely see over the top of the smooth ash-blonde head.
Her hair was gathered in a roll very low on the back of her neck and she was wearing a short-sleeved summery dress the color of cinnamon which intensified the fairness of her skin and did her no harm at all in the other departments.
Her face was wide at the cheekbones in a way that was suggestively Scandinavian, and her complexion matched it perfectly. She had the smoothest skin I’d ever seen. The mouth was a little wide, too, and full lipped. It wasn’t a classic face at all, but still lovely to look at and perhaps a little sexy. Her eyes were large and gray, and they said she was nice.
It was hot in the sun, and quite still, and I was a little uncomfortable, aware I’d probably been staring at her. “What can I do for you?” I asked.
“Perhaps I’d better introduce myself,” she said. “I’m Mrs W
ayne. Shannon Wayne. I wanted to talk to you about a job.”
“What kind of job?” I asked.
“Recovering a shotgun that was lost out of a boat.”
“Where?” I asked.
“In a lake, about a hundred miles north of here—”
I shook my head. “It would cost you more than it’s worth.”
“But – ” she protested, the gray eyes deadly serious. “You wouldn’t have to take a diving suit and air pump and all that stuff. I thought perhaps you had one of those aqualung outfits.”
“We do,” I said. “In fact, I’ve got one of my own. But it would still be cheaper to buy a new shotgun.”
“No,” she said. “Perhaps I’d better explain. It’s quite an expensive one. A single-barreled trap gun with a lot of engraving and a custom stock. I think it cost around seven hundred dollars.”
I whistled. “How’d a gun like that ever fall in a lake?”
“My husband was going out to the duck blind one morning and it accidentally fell out of the skiff.”
I looked at her for a moment, not saying anything. There was something odd about it. What kind of fool would be silly enough to take a $700 trap gun into a duck blind? And even if he had money enough to buy them by the dozen, a single-barreled gun was a poor thing to hunt ducks with.
“How deep is the water?” I asked.
“Ten or twelve feet, I think.”
“Well, look. I’ll tell you how to get your gun back. Any neighborhood kid can do it, for five dollars. Get a pair of goggles, or a diving mask. You can buy them at any dime store. Go out and anchor your skiff where the gun went overboard and send the kid down to look for it. Take a piece of fishline to haul it up with when he locates it.”
“It’s not quite that simple,” she said. “You see, it’s about three hundred yards from the houseboat to where the duck blind is, and we’re not sure where it fell out.”
The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction Page 4
