‘The President coming?’ Edge asked.
The clerk was confused by the abrupt change of subject. He blinked rapidly. ‘No, sir. It’s the art auction. The new da Vinci is to be sold today, sir. Leonardo da Vinci was an artist’
‘Born in Florence, Italy,’ the half-breed added, and his knowledge startled the desk clerk. ‘Died in the sixteenth century - so how can there be a new painting, feller?’
The resentment of the enlarging crowd began to be voiced. Impatient and sweating, some of the cream of the city’s society started to berate the tense staff, demanding that the doors of the ballroom be opened.
‘You’re very knowledgeable about art, sir,’ the clerk congratulated. ‘I mean the recently discovered painting, Joseph and Mary at the Inn. The sale has been advertised all over the hotel - all over the city - for the entire week, sir.’
The bell captain had been to get the hotel manager and the man in the high collar, black tie and tail coat ordered the doors to be opened. Edge guessed that several million dollars on the hoof became sedate again to file into the ballroom.
‘I was otherwise engaged,’ the half-breed reminded.
‘Of course, sir,’ the clerk allowed.
Edge sighed as he returned his full attention to the man behind the desk. ‘Peaked at thirty grand before my cards turned sour.’
‘So I understand, sir.’
‘And started drinking when I dropped seven and a half in a pot to take me back under ten.’
The clerk nodded and started to chew on his lower lip again. ‘Are we talking towards a point, sir?’
Edge glanced briefly around the lobby again. The people who had formed a line had done so to get the best seats for the auction sale. Others were now crowding in through the open double doors and the high-ceilinged room seemed to expand in size as it emptied. ‘You have something else to do, feller?’
A gulp, as the eyes behind the spectacle lenses met the steady gaze from the ice-blue eyes. ‘I guess not, sir. But you did say at the outset there was just one question you wanted to ask.’
The half-breed nodded. ‘Just taking me a long time to work around to asking it. Lost that seven and a half grand at about ten o’clock, way I remember it?’
‘About then, sir.’
‘Clock in the bar showed ten after five when ‘I was wiped out.’
A nod. ‘You asked for a hot bath to be sent up to your room, sir. Then you went up yourself.’
‘I remember that, feller. It’s the seven hours in between I ain’t so clear about. I didn’t have enough of a bankroll left to last that long in a high stakes game. That question I wanted to ask... did I sign any markers, feller?’
An emphatic shake of the head that dislodged a side piece of the spectacles off one of the clerk’s ears. ‘Oh, no, sir.’ He took the glasses off completely and polished the lenses.
‘So what did I do? Sit watching while I was drinking?’
The clerk became more nervous than ever. ‘You might not like it, sir,’ he warned, setting his spectacles straight again.
‘My life ain’t never been a bed of roses,’ Edge countered.
‘It’s the reason I’ve been able to answer so many questions, sir. Most of the staff and many of the guests could tell you the same. The bar was packed and I daresay the whole of San Francisco knows the story by now.’
‘Guess I can’t blame you,’ Edge growled.
‘Beg pardon, sir?’
‘Took me a long time to get around to asking the big question. With nothing else to do, you can take your time giving the answer.’
The half grin which, as always, did not take the coldness from the blue eyes, encouraged the clerk to overcome his nerves again.
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Edge. But the fact is it was the other players who had to sign markers. At thirty minutes after three this morning you had won sixty-five thousand dollars cash and had markers for another twelve thousand.’ His voice suddenly quickened. ‘Last night - in the early hours of this morning - you seemed aware of what had happened, sir. After you had lost all that money, well... as I told you. I certainly admired the way you accepted the loss. And there was nothing but praise for you from everyone present, sir.’
Edge remained motionless for several seconds, a pensive frown deepening the lines of suffering inscribed into the dark skin of his face. The skin was drawn drum taut from his cheekbones to the jaw. His eyes narrowed to glittering blue slits. But, although he delved deeply into the back recesses of his mind, he could find no memory to be triggered by the clerk’s revelations.
‘You were obviously very drunk, sir,’ the bespectacled man with the stained white collar said, and his voice seemed to come from a very long way off. ‘But you were self-controlled. By all accounts you played as well as any of the other gentlemen engaged in the game. It was purely a matter of changing fortunes.’
Edge gave up searching his mind and the voice of the clerk and other sounds in the hotel lobby reached his ears at a normal level again. ‘No sweat, feller.’
‘I’m sorry it had to be me who gave you the bad news, sir. But as I remarked earlier, most people in the hotel could have told you what—’
‘Yeah,’ the half-breed muttered, glancing along the desk to where the two Chinese bellboys were standing at rigid attention again, their oriental faces bleakly inscrutable below pillbox hats and above the high-buttoned tunics of their uniforms. ‘Could even have checked with the yellow pages.’
Chapter Two
It seemed that every spare chair in the Palace Hotel had been carried into the ballroom and even this was not enough to seat all those interested in the sale. The chairs were arranged in tight-packed rows down the length of the long room with its mirrored walls and carved ceiling hung with crystal chandeliers.
As he ambled up to the threshold and halted to rake his hooded eyes over the crowded room, the half-breed guessed there were better than a thousand people inside. Three quarters of them were seated and the remainder stood at the rear and sides. At the front there was a raised platform covered with red velvet set against a backdrop of drapes of the same colored material. On the platform a short, fat man in a city suit stood at a lectern, flushed and sweating with excitement. Nearby, on an easel, was a three-foot square, gilt-framed canvas painted in oils. To either side of the painting stood a uniformed officer of the city’s police force. Several other uniformed lawmen were positioned around the room. All of them wore grim expressions and had the flaps of their gun holsters unfastened.
The big room smelled of feminine perfume and male cigar smoke. The blue haze hanging around the unlit chandeliers seemed to swirl and billow to the rise and fall of a body of sound formed by countless conversations.
It looked as hot in the big room as Market Street had appeared to be from the seventh floor window. But, by standing on the threshold, Edge was able to experience a certain degree of coolness that was held between the marble walls of the near deserted lobby.
‘Sure don’t look like somethin’ worth a million bucks, does it?’
Edge had been aware of the man who had come to stand beside him in the doorway. Now he looked at him and saw he was tall and skinny, with a crooked mouth and sandy hair that was receding badly. A pasty complexion made the man’s small, widely spaced eyes look darker than they probably were. He was about thirty and looked uncomfortable in a dark grey city suit that was still stiff with store newness. A bulge at the left breast was in the shape of a small pistol in a holster.
‘Lots of things ain’t what they seem, feller,’ the half-breed answered, and returned his narrow-eyed gaze to the distant painting as the fat man at the lectern raised his hands to call for silence.
Edge had never seen a da Vinci painting before, even in reproduction. The knowledge he had aired to the desk clerk was just about the full extent of what he knew about the artist, this drawn from long ago lessons learned almost without effort during the brief period of his schooling away from the Iowa farm where he had once had roots. And the clerk was not
the first person to be surprised by the half-breed’s familiarity with a subject that would not normally be regarded as of interest to an obvious drifter.
In fact, art and most of the other finer things of life no longer interested the man called Edge: unless, in some way or another, his survival depended upon them. Or, as in this case, there was a possibility he could use them to gain a less crucial victory over his ruling fate.
The sandy-haired man vented a short laugh while the room was still quietening in response to the auctioneer’s request. ‘Like you ain’t the kind that’d be expected to lose better than seventy grand and walk away smilin’, Mr. Edge?’
The half-breed continued to peer at the painting. Done in subdued colors, it depicted a desperate-looking Joseph and a radiant Mary in conversation with a harassed innkeeper. The lighted entrance of the stable was in the left background.
‘Liquor causes men to do strange things, feller,’ he answered without looking at the man.
‘So that points up another strange thing, Mr. Edge. Man like you ain’t the kind I’d figure to be getting himself liquored up in a big money poker game.’
Some of the people in the ballroom - obviously those who would not be bidding - seemed reluctant to have the sale begin, using the occasion to exchange social gossip. An irate group at the front joined the sweating auctioneer in yelling at the talkative ones to be quiet.
‘What makes you bother, feller?’
‘About what?’
‘Me.’
Edge looked at him again, and the sandy-haired man did not flinch under the cool-eyed stare. He smiled sheepishly. ‘Guess I take my job kinda serious, Mr. Edge. I’m a detective, workin’ for the Grovers right now. Not the police kind,’ he shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘But no matter what kind, a detective has to be a student of human nature.’ The smile faded and his face became set in grimly serious lines. ‘If he aims to be a good one. And I do.’ The smile came back faster than it had gone away. ‘No offence, but what happened last night, that just didn’t sit with the kinda man I had you figured for.’
‘Stick to your studies, feller,’ the half-breed said as the ballroom finally became gripped by a tension-filled stillness. ‘You’re making good progress.’
The detective expressed puzzlement for a moment, sure he had spotted an odd look that was lack of understanding in the half-breed’s eyes. Then the deep voice of the auctioneer captured the attention of everyone in the huge room, including the two men at the doorway.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. May I say what a pleasure it is to welcome you here to what is most certainly one of the greatest occasions that has ever come to pass in the world of art.’ He had taken up a gavel in his right hand and he waved it in the general direction of the painting. ‘Under this hammer today comes this most illustrious painting. Most of you will have read in the newspapers how this canvas came to be discovered...’
The auctioneer enjoyed hearing the sound of his own voice. Having acknowledged that most of his audience were aware of the story, he launched with relish into telling it to them again. But if anyone but the tall, lean half-breed with the rifle and trail gear was bored by the words of the deep-voiced fat man, it did not show. All listened in absolute silence, as enthralled as children hearing a favorite fairy tale.
The painting had been found by a fur-trapper in an abandoned homestead on a high slope of the Cascade Mountains. Apparently brought along the Oregon Trail many years ago by settlers from the east, it had not been considered worth packing into the wagon when the homesteaders moved out to put down roots elsewhere. The trapper had traded the canvas with a Blackfeet Indian. Then it had passed to an Indian agent in Montana, from him to the wife of an army major at Fort Laramie, thence to a trail hand in Wyoming who had carried it south into Texas.
A Texan rancher named Kane had bought the painting from his trail hand for ten dollars. And it was Munro Kane who had the canvas evaluated by art experts and learned its true worth.
All this had happened within the space of a year. And less than six weeks had elapsed between Kane learning of his good fortune and this day when he hoped to raise close to a million dollars from a buyer more interested in great art than he was.
‘The bidding is certain to be high, ladies and gentlemen,’ the sweat-drenched fat man at the lectern said. ‘So I am aware that most of you in this fine room are merely bystanders. I can well understand your curiosity. But I would request that you obey the etiquette of such an occasion as this. So that such bidders as Mr. Yancy, Mr. Plummer, Mr. Grover and Mr. Kirby may participate in the sale without distractions.’
Edge listened to all this with impatience concealed behind impassiveness, then responded with a mere narrowing of his eyes when the name Grover was mentioned.
The detective met the half-breed’s mildly quizzical gaze and nodded. He kept his voice to a low whisper. ‘Drew Grover figures it’s a cinch he’ll get the picture. Me and my partners are hired to guard it when it’s shipped to New Orleans.’
Edge was about to ask a question, but the auctioneer’s gavel thudded hard on to the lectern.
‘Very well, I see no reason why we should not begin at once. May I have an opening bid, please?’
There was some coughing and shuffling of feet, scraping of chair legs and waving of fans. Then an expectant hush fell over the room.
‘One hundred thousand dollars!’ a man with a New England accent called, his voice lacking conviction.
‘Double it. Two hundred grand!’ This bidder’s voice was gruff.
The auctioneer grinned. ‘You didn’t really mean that opening to be serious, Mr. Plummer? Any advance on Mr. Yancy’s bid, ladies and gentlemen?’
‘Quarter of a million!’ A woman.
‘Thank you, Mrs. Grover.’
Edge had not rested his burdens while he watched the sale get underway and he used the barrel of the Winchester to tap the sandy-haired detective on the shoulder as he turned his back on the hot stuffiness of the crowded ballroom. Then nodded a request that the man should follow him out into the lobby.
‘Three and a half hundred grand, damnit!’ the gruff-voiced Yancy countered in a growling tone.
The detective seemed reluctant to leave his vantage point. For a few moments, he held his position and watched as the tall half-breed sank on to an elegant sofa and rested his gear beside him, the rifle across his thighs.
‘Won’t be your problem until the Grovers buy it, feller,’ Edge called across the twenty feet of open space.
The lobby was now completely deserted of guests except for Edge, who had in fact ceased to be one at midday. Half a dozen bellboys and the captain and the clerks behind the desk were listening intently to the high money bidding in the ballroom. As a bid of four hundred thousand was made by Mrs. Grover, the detective frowned and moved out of the doorway to sit in a winged chair close to the sofa.
‘You’re right,’ he allowed, mopping at his sheened high forehead with an already damp handkerchief. ‘Anyway, Phil’s still in there keepin’ an eye on things.’
Edge had taken out the makings and was rolling a cigarette. ‘He one of your partners?’
‘Yeah. Phil Marlow. My name’s Samuel Spade. Lou Archer is across the bay at the railroad depot.’
Edge lit the cigarette. ‘That’s it?’
‘What?’
‘The whole outfit? Three fellers.’
‘We got the best damn detective agency on the West Coast, mister!’ Spade defended.
Edge hung the cigarette at one corner of his mouth and held up a hand. He made it into a fist, then began to spring up fingers. The fur-trapper, the Indian, the Indian agent, the major from Laramie, the trail hand.’ He made another fist and started again. ‘Maybe the people who left the picture in the shack. Even the losers in the sale. A whole bunch of outlaws between here and New Orleans.’ He drew against the cigarette and expelled smoke as he took it away from his lips. ‘People who figure they got better claim to the picture than the Texan. People who don’t
like losing. People who’ll always be around to make a try for easy money.’
Spade listened attentively, now as disinterested in the auction as Edge. He nodded and showed a wan smile. ‘I’m the brains of the agency, Edge. And I shoot pretty good, too. I ain’t much in the brawn department, I know that. But Archer and Marlow more than make up for that. Sorry, but we don’t need any help.’
‘The Grovers are happy, feller?’
Spade stabbed himself in the chest with his thumb and broadened his smile. They came to us. Not the other way around. It ain’t just me that says we’re the best outfit on the coast. We got ourselves a reputation from San Diego to Portland.’
A low buzz of conversation had started in the ballroom, heavy with excitement. The voices of the bidders and the auctioneer’s acceptance of their offers were muffled. The gavel rapped often against the lectern, sometimes just once and occasionally twice - urging the counter-bidders to speed the sale along.
‘Different brand of country from San Francisco to New Orleans, feller,’ Edge pointed out.
Spade pushed himself up from the chair, his pale face set in lines of mild irritation. ‘Nothin’ me and my partners can’t handle, mister!’ he growled. Then his dark eyes expressed a mixture of confusion and sadness. A combination which, on the thin face of the balding detective, showed as just a sliver away from pity. This ain’t you, Edge,’ he said, the hardness gone from his tone. ‘Why didn’t you stop when you were ahead for Christsake? That wasn’t you and this ain’t you even more. Not beggin’ ain’t!’
Spade saw the first flicker of the cold fires of anger flare into the blue eyes in the dark face. And he felt the clutch of fear in the pit of his stomach as the lids narrowed to blot out all but the narrowest threads of glinting light. He turned then, very quickly, and his lanky frame retreated to the doorway of the ballroom. It was almost a scuttling run, on stiff legs and with his back held rigid.
‘One million dollars!’ a man yelled, the size of the bid causing a perfect silence to shroud the enormous room.
Edge: Slaughter Road (Edge series Book 22) Page 2
