by P. N. Elrod
Mutely, I handed over the beaded green bag. I didn’t trust myself to say anything yet as it probably would have been too obscene. While he rummaged for the leather case I got up and checked the alley exit, putting some distance between us for a minute. On top of everything else, the son of a bitch didn’t need a punch in the chops from a friend who was glad to see him alive.
Sled and the woman were long gone. It seemed like a good idea for us as well; their bartender friend might come out any minute, and we’d had enough excitement for one night.
Escott found and checked the case with its faded smudge of blue paper. “Philately is not a special interest of mine. I fear I am quite unimpressed, even if it is worth five thousand American dollars.”
“Yeah, well, let’s make tracks before that girl remembers and decides to come back.”
He saw the sense of it. “Would you help me up? I fear the bullet caught me near that knife wound, and things are still rather tender there. What rotten bad luck.”
“I’d say it was pretty good since it missed your head.” I got him to his feet and retrieved his cane.
“Heavens, are you all right? I saw you—”
“She was using lead, not wood, so I’m just peachy.”
He decided to ignore the sarcasm. I was justifiably annoyed with him and he knew the best thing was to let it run its course.
He leaned on my arm for support as we gingerly picked our way out of the alley. Though his was pretty fair, he didn’t have my night vision and relied on me to keep him afoot. We found his big Nash a block away. He insisted he could drive, so I shoveled him behind the wheel and took my place on the passenger side with a sigh.
“What went wrong back there?” I asked.
“She recognized me, for one thing, but that’s all right because I recognized her.”
“Okay, I’m holding my breath.”
He spared me a sideways look, started the car, and pulled into the street. “I can believe that. She still might have been willing to deal, but the whole business went wrong because of Swafford’s marked money. I should have checked it earlier.”
“You really think she would have chanced closing the deal after spotting you?”
“It was a possibility. Even knowing me, she might have taken the money and given you the chance to follow, but then the best-laid plans and all that. Swafford has his precious stamp and cash, but he’s going to hear a few words from me about it.” He suddenly swung the car in a wide turn. “I think we shall visit him now while I’m still angry.”
He didn’t look angry—a touch gleeful, but not angry.
“It’s after one,” I pointed out.
“Good, then it is unlikely we will be interrupting any of his other appointments.”
He drove to a suburb that had the kind of big houses with hot and cold running servants, precision-cut lawns, and cars that always started in the dead of winter. He picked out a lumpy stone specimen, sailed through the decorative iron gates, parked, and motioned me to follow. Some lights were showing through the downstairs windows, but they were only to discourage burglars and to keep Jeeves from tripping over the Chippendale while answering the front bell in the very early morning.
The bathrobed butler opened the door, decided we were strictly servant’s-entrance material, and was about to close it, but Escott got past him and requested to see Mr. Swafford.
“Mr. Swafford has gone to bed,” he informed us in chilling tones.
“Then I suggest you roust him or I shall have the unpleasant task of doing it myself.”
Both of them had English accents, but Escott’s was genuine, and the butler knew when he was outclassed. He sniffed at us, a bad mistake, because Escott still smelled like a stuffy church on Easter Sunday, and retreated upstairs. After a brief wait, Swafford came down under escort and gaped at us.
“Who the hell—”
“You engaged my services to recover your stamp,” Escott reminded him.
Swafford squinted, trying to peer through the disguise. “Escott?”
“And my assistant, Mr. Fleming.”
“What is all this, Escott?” he demanded in a small, thin voice that didn’t suit him.
“We merely came by to return your property and discuss some details on the case.”
“Then you have it? Where is it?”
“I see you have a library. Perhaps we shall be more comfortable there.” Escott led the way as if it were his own house. Swafford glared at his back and then at me, ineffectually. I just waited until he got tired of it, then followed him into the next room.
He was wide and stocky all the way down to his slippered feet, and even a fancy silk bathrobe had a difficult time making him look society smooth. My guess was he made his money the hard way and was using it now in an attempt to make people forget about the work. His library bore this out, and was done up like something out of a movie, with an eye to impress the audience. There was a Renoir over the fireplace, but its function was to hide the safe and not to express the owner’s tastes.
“Where’s my stamp?” Swafford asked, planting himself at one end of an acre of desk.
Escott was busy admiring the Renoir. “I rather like this one. What do you think of it, Jack?”
“Nice colors,” I said noncommittally, keeping an eye on Swafford. He was awake enough now to know something was wrong and to try dealing with it.
Escott drew out the envelope full of hundreds and tossed it on the desk. Swafford grabbed it up and counted them. While he did this, Escott discovered a gold-plated candelabrum on an overvarnished table and lit all five of its candles. He carried it to the painting.
“Yes, either by diffuse daylight or by candlelight, that was how it was meant to be viewed.” He placed the candelabrum on the desk. “I trust it is all there?”
“Yes, now where—”
“Then you may regard this case as closed.”
Swafford looked up slowly and tried some hard thinking. “What happened to the stamp?”
“You signed a contract with me for my services, you should have read it. A good contract is designed to protect both parties should one attempt to defraud another. You defrauded me of your trust. Our association is ended.”
“What are you talking about? Explain.”
Escott gestured at the money. “That should be explanation enough. You had it marked and rather clumsily marked at that. The thief spotted it easily enough, realized I was not the philately expert, and gave me this.” He exhibited the new ventilation on his coat and vest. “You should have trusted me; your money and the stamp would have been returned as promised. Now you have only the money. You’ve forfeited the stamp.”
Swafford flushed a deep red that slowly faded to a muddy pink as he thought things over. “All right, what do you want?”
“A telephone call to have the charges against Ruthie Mason dropped.”
“What else?”
“First the phone call.”
“But it’s—”
“I know. Wake up your lawyer, that’s what you pay him for, have him set things in motion.”
“If I do this, will the stamp be returned? Do you have it?”
Escott dropped the case on the desk. It thumped once against the thick blotter before Swafford grabbed and opened it.
“Empty!” He froze. Escott held up a slip of paper folded into quarters. He waved it dangerously close to one of the candles.
“For God’s sake be careful. That’s worth five thousand—”
“Get on with the call,” Escott snapped.
Swafford got on with the call. Since he couldn’t argue with Escott he took it out on the lawyer, and before five minutes were gone another Chicago citizen had had his night’s sleep broken up. Knowing how fast some cops liked to work, it was a good bet that the lawyer would be tied up until well after breakfast. For that he would certainly gift Swafford with a whopping fee. Escott knew the art of a properly administered low blow. While Swafford was on the phone, Escott turned up some
paper and a carbon from the desk and wrote out several lines.
Swafford hung up. “There, I’ve done it. Ruthie will be out in the morning.”
“I doubt she’ll wish to continue her employment here. Should that be the case, she will need references, and good ones.”
“I’ll have my wife do that—it’s her job. The girl will have no trouble finding work.”
“I also suggest a decent monetary gift to counterbalance her precipitant arrest.”
“All right, you have my word . . . and there’s your witness.” He nodded confidently at me.
“Excellent. Now there is only the matter of my fee—”
“But you’ve been paid!”
“A retainer only. Under the terms of the contract I am within my rights to cover my expenses.” His thumb emerged from the hole in the vest and wiggled. “Had I not taken precautions, you most certainly would have paid for my funeral, since your interference nearly caused it.”
Swafford’s face closed in on itself warily. “How much?”
He indicated the twenty-five hundred-dollar bills lying on the blotter. “I think that should cover it, but this time they’re to be unmarked.”
“But that’s extortion,” he grumbled.
“Earlier tonight you seemed eager enough to hand it over for the return of the stamp.”
“At least then I might have gotten the stamp back.”
“You may have that chance now; it depends upon how quickly you can open your safe. Our thief threatened to burn this when the marked bills were found; it occurs to me to be a very good idea. What a lot of fuss over a bit of blue paper the size of my thumbnail. Would the world stop spinning if I should commit it to the flames, I wonder?”
Before he could wave it near the candles again, Swafford had the Renoir swung to one side and was spinning the combination with nervous fingers. There was plenty more in the safe than twenty-five hundred, and he must have been worried we were after that as well. He gave me a wall-eyed look, and with good reason—I was still dressed like a hard-nosed punk, and the cheap booze stinking up my dirty shirt added to the image. I shifted my weight forward and tried to look tough. He quickly drew out a bundle of bills and hastily shut the safe.
Escott stood very close to the candles, their light and shadows making his minute smile look evil. “Would you mind counting it, Jack?”
I didn’t. It made a tidy little pile: twenty hundreds and ten fifties: “It adds up right,” I said, and pocketed it.
“Good. Now you will sign this, Mr. Swafford. It is nothing more than a receipt for my services, with a promise to pay that sum to Ruthie by tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll find it as useful for your tax records as I do.”
Swafford signed it and threw the pen down. Escott tucked away the original. He considered the folded paper between his two fingers, then suddenly put it into the candle flame. Swafford’s eyes peeled wide and he choked, one hand raised as if he were taking an oath. The scrap burned down to nothing and Escott dropped the ashes onto the desk. He looked thoughtful.
“Odd, I had imagined five thousand dollars going up in smoke would look much more impressive.”
His former client was beyond speech and looked ready to have a coronary.
“Well, no doubt your insurance can cover it—oh, dear, you mean it is not insured? How careless of you to have something so very valuable and portable lying around uninsured. On the other hand there are taxes to pay on these things. But surely as a good citizen you pay your taxes?”
“I’ll sue you,” he whispered. “I’ll have your hide—”
“Next time, Mr. Swafford, I suggest you follow instructions to the letter when they are given to you. It is simply good business practice, especially when not doing so can cost you dearly. I hope this has been a lesson to you. Remember it.”
Escott swiftly crossed the room and we let ourselves out into the hall, leaving Swafford frozen in place by the desk. The butler was waiting and locked the front door behind us. Escott paused, counted to five, and went back to use the bell.
The butler was too sleepy to be annoyed. Escott extended his hand and gave him a folded paper identical to the one that had been burned. “I forgot to give this to Mr. Swafford. Please present it to him with my compliments.”
He took it without comment and locked the door with a solid and final click.
Escott was still chuckling as we drove away.
“One of these days it’ll be one of your own clients bumping you off for that kind of showboating,” I said. “That’s no way to attract business, either.”
He shrugged. “His sort of business I do not need. Swafford nearly got me killed tonight. I thought I’d give him something equally unpleasant in return. For his sort, being deprived of money by his own folly is the worst kind of torture imaginable.”
“Okay, he goofed in a big way, but then I nearly got you killed when I got optimistic about her brains and let her go too soon.”
“An accident, nothing more. In the dark she could have just as easily shot her partner.”
“She also could have run, but didn’t. The lady wanted blood, Charles. She tried to kill us both.”
“Through no fault of your own,” he insisted. “I’ll admit to underestimating her professionalism, but I place no blame upon you or your actions tonight. Even if things had gone according to plan, I daresay she might have tried to kill me anyway. Had you not been along, I would certainly be lying in that alley this very minute.”
I shook my head. “I’m too dangerous to have around; I’m only an amateur to this gumshoe business—”
“ ‘Gumshoe’? Really, Jack.” He looked pained.
“All right, private agent, then. I’m supposed to be a journalist.”
“I don’t hold that against you.”
I let that one pass.
He tilted the rearview mirror, stretched his upper lip, and peeled the tiny moustache off, rubbing the area with evident relief. “That’s better, these things drive me mad. Would you mind opening your window? You may not breathe, but it’s still a habit with me.”
I cranked it down. “Between your cheap perfume and my cheap booze, it’ll take a week to air this buggy out.”
“Possibly. I hope it washes off.” His nose twitched.
“The suit?”
“My skin. I’m considering the suit might be better off in the furnace.”
“Isn’t that a little extravagant?”
“You’re right, I’ll see if I can’t have it fumigated and repaired, as this is an amusing persona; it’s based on someone I saw once—the best disguises always are.” With one eye on the road and the other on the mirror, he carefully removed his wig, lifting first from the base of his neck and bringing it forward.
“But she still saw through it.”
“Not right away. She knew my name from Swafford’s household, but had never seen me close up and had no reason to make the association. If he hadn’t marked the bills . . .”
“So who was she? You got Swafford so upset he forgot to ask.”
“Dear me, you’re right. She was his wife’s new personal maid, the one with the unimpeachable references.”
I recalled a photo of the house servants he showed to me earlier tonight when he asked me to help him. The idea was to keep my eyes open should any of them walk into the bar where the exchange had been set up. “That little thing? She’s hardly more than a kid.”
“Yes, a mere child of twenty-seven, with a demure manner and a youthful complexion. The Swaffords were correct to suspect one of the servants, but I fear their accusations against Ruthie were purely racial in origin. The other girl worked and waited until someone new had been hired onto the staff; Ruthie came along, the stamp was stolen, and she got the blame. The thief’s real name is Selma Jenks, and she’s done this sort of thing before.”
“You got a police blotter for a brain?”
“Just about. Anyway, Ruthie called Shoe Coldfield’s sister for help and Shoe called me. Swafford may
have hired me to recover the stamp, but I really consider Ruthie to be my true client.”
“I wondered how you got the job. Swafford isn’t your type.”
“Too shady?”
“Too rich.”
It was close to two when Escott turned the car into the alley behind his house and eased into the glorified shed that served as a garage. The interior was too narrow to open the car door very wide, and rather than struggle squeezing through, I disappeared and sieved out. I was sitting on the back bumper when Escott finally emerged.
He gave a start and caught himself with a sigh. “Damn, but that’s—”
“I know—unnerving. Sorry.”
“Quite all right. Let’s go inside, I’m in need of something liquid and soothing.”
“Like a bath?”
“Yes, that, too.”
He cursed sedately as he struggled with the rusty lock on the back door. It finally gave way and we walked into his large high-ceilinged kitchen. His house was a big, roomy place; a three-storied pre-fire relic that in its better days (or worse) had been a bordello. As his time, money, and health allowed, he was gradually cleaning, painting, and restoring it into a livable home. But the kitchen was not high on his priority list and still retained an air of cobwebby disuse in the corners. Except for replacing the old icebox with a streamlined new refrigerator that crouched and hummed between sagging cabinets, he’d pretty much ignored the room.
In silent and common consent we peeled off our coats and dropped them on the battered oak table that had come with the house. An invisible cloud of booze and dead lilies filled the room and grabbed my throat.
Escott suppressed a cough. “Horrible stuff, that. Should I ever assume that persona again, I shall substitute something less lethal.”
“Why use anything at all?”
“Attention to detail is the key to a good disguise.”
“I think you poured on too much detail this time. You must have gotten perfume mixed up with cologne.”
His brows went up. “There’s a difference?”
“A lot, I think.”
“What is it, then?”
Now I was stuck. “Uh . . . maybe you’d better ask Bobbi. She knows more about that kind of thing. All I know is there’s a difference; one’s stronger and you need less, or something like that.”
