Merchants of Menace

by Joan Aiken

  When Blacker finally woke, he found that he was lying on a narrow bed, indoors, covered with a couple of blankets. His head ached and throbbed with a shattering intensity, and it took a few minutes for his vision to clear; then he saw that the was in a small white cell-like room which contained nothing but the bed he was on and a chair. It was very nearly dark.

  He tried to struggle up, but a strange numbness and heaviness had invaded the lower part of his body, and after hoisting himself on to his elbow he felt so sick that he abandoned the effort and lay down again.

  That stuff must have the effect of a knockout drop, he thought ruefully; what a fool I was to drink it. I’ll have to apologize to Sir Francis. What time can it be?

  Brisk light footsteps approached the door, and Sir Francis came in. He was carrying a portable radio which he placed on the window sill.

  “Ah, my dear Blacker, I see you have come round. Allow me to offer you a drink.”

  He raised Blacker skillfully, and gave him a drink of water from a cup with a rim and a spout.

  “Now let me settle you down again. Excellent. We shall soon have you—well, not on your feet, but sitting up and taking nourishment.” He laughed a little. “You can have some beef tea presently.”

  “I am so sorry,” Blacker said. “I really need not trespass on your hospitality any longer. I shall be quite all right in a minute.”

  “No trespass, my dear friend. You are not at all in the way. I hope that you will be here for a long and pleasant stay. These surroundings, so restful, so conducive to a writer’s in­spiration—what could be more suitable for you? You need not think that I shall disturb you. I am in London all week, but shall keep you company at weekends—pray, pray don’t think that you will be a nuisance or de trop. On the contrary, I am hoping that you can do me the kindness of giving me the Stock Exchange prices in advance, which will amply com­pensate for any small trouble I have taken. No, no, you must feel quite at home—please consider, indeed, that this is your home.”

  Stock Exchange prices? It took Blacker a moment to remember, then he thought, Oh lord, my tongue has played me false as usual. He tried to recall what stupidities he had been guilty of.

  “Those stories,” he said lamely, “they were all a bit exaggerated, you know. About my foretelling the future. I can’t really. That horse’s winning was a pure coincidence, I’m afraid.”

  “Modesty, modesty.” Sir Francis was smiling, but he had gone rather pale, and Blacker noticed a beading of sweat along his cheekbones. “I am sure you will be invaluable. Since my retirement, I find it absolutely necessary to augment my income by judicious investment.”

  All of a sudden Blacker remembered the gist of that small paragraph in The Times. Nervous breakdown. Complete rest. Retirement.

  “I—I really must go now,” he said uneasily, trying to push himself upright. “I meant to be back in town by seven.”

  “Oh, but Mr. Blacker, that is quite out of the question. Indeed, so as to preclude any such action, I have amputated your feet. But you need not worry; I know you will be very happy here. And I feel certain that you are wrong to doubt your own powers. Let us listen to the nine o’clock news in order to be quite satis­fied that the detestable Unwin did fall down the hotel lift shaft.”

  He walked over to the portable radio and switched it on.

  Counter Intelligence

  Robert L. Fish

  When you finish this story and stop to consider what it was about, you realize what a masterful job of storytelling has taken place. Here you can appreciate the art of the artist.

  I have long since ceased to be amazed at bumping into Kek Huuygens anywhere in the world, or in any condition of finan­cial peak or depression. He is a charming fellow, brilliant and persuasive, who buys his share of the drinks when his pocketbook permits—and with the added attraction that he does not use his considerable talents at deception against his close friends. I have often wondered just how far Kek Huuygens might have gone in life had a policy of strict moral turpitude been one of his inviolate precepts.

  This time, I ran into him in Paris. My newspaper had trans­ferred me back there after an absence of almost eight years, and this particular day, I was walking morosely back from the office to my hotel, reflecting unhappily on the changes that had taken place in the city since I was last there. I was edging past a crowded sidewalk cafe when an arm reached out to detain me. I turned and found myself staring into Kek Huuygens’ smiling eyes.

  “Have a seat,” he said calmly, almost as if it had been but hours since we had met instead of at least three years—and that time across an ocean. He raised a beckoning arm for the waiter, his eyes never leaving my face. “The last time I saw you, I was unfortunate enough to have to ask you to buy me a drink. Allow me to repay you.”

  “Kek Huuygens!” I exclaimed delightedly, and dropped into a chair at his side. Besides being excellent company, Huuygens has always been good for copy, and one of the changes in Paris that had discouraged me was the very lack of copy; French­ man, in my absence, had seemingly become civilized. My eye­brows raised as my glance flickered over the figure across from me. The excellent cut of his obviously expensive suit, the jaunty angle of his Homburg, the trim insolence of his mustache, not to mention the freshness of his boutonniere at that late hour of the afternoon, all were in sharp contrast to his appearance the last time I had seen him in New York.

  His eyes followed my inspection with sardonic amusement. “What will you have to drink?”

  “A brandy,” I said, grinning at him. I allowed my grin to fade into a rather doubtful grimace; one thing I thought I had learned about Huuygens was how to jar a story out of him. I ran my eye over him again. “Illegality seems to be more profitable than when last we met.”

  He placed my order with the waiter who had finally appeared, and then returned his attention to me. “On the contrary,” he said with a faint smile. “I finally took the advice of all my well­-meaning friends and discovered, to my complete astonishment, that the rewards of being on the side of the law can be far greater than I had ever anticipated.”

  “Oh?” I tried not to sound skeptical.

  His eyes twinkled at my poor attempt at deception. “I shall not keep it a secret from you,” he said dryly. “I am forced, however, to ask you to keep what I am about to tell you a secret from everyone else.”

  I stared at him. “But why?” I asked unhappily.

  “In the interests of that law and order you are always extolling,” he replied even more dryly. We waited in silence while the waiter placed my brandy before me; he slipped the sau­cer onto Huuygens’ pile and disappeared. Kek’s eyes were steady upon my face. I shrugged, raised my glass in a small gesture of defeat, and sipped. Huuygens nodded, satisfied with my implied promise, and leaned back.

  Now that I realize the benefits that can derive from honesty (Huuygens said, smiling in my direction), I shall have to review America again in a different light. However, just after I last saw you, I had not as yet been converted, and since it becomes increasingly embarrassing to sponge on friends, I man­aged to return to France, where I have a cousin I actually enjoy sponging on. Immediately following the war, he and I were sort of partners in black market foodstuffs, but we split up when I realized that the man was completely dishonest. Besides, in those days, they were beginning to impose the death penalty for this particular naughtiness, and there are limits to the extent I will indulge in gambling—especially with my life.

  In any event, there must have been something about foodstuffs that attracted my cousin, because when I got back to Paris, I found he had turned to legality with a vengeance, and was the owner of a chain of what have become known through­out the world as supermarkets. I personally cannot understand the success of these sterile, automated dispensers of comestibles, all so daintily packaged in transparent plastic—especially in France, since it is obviously impossible to haggle with a price stamped in purple ink on the bottom of a tin. However, there it is; the fa
ct was that my cousin was rolling in money. And while he was far from pleased to add me to his ménage, even temporarily, there was very little he could do about it. Normally, I hate to stoop to threatening a man with his past, but in his case, it took no great appeasement of my conscience.

  For a while, I thought his wife would prove an even greater obstacle. She was built like a corseted Brahma bull, with a trailing mustache, an eye like a laser beam, and a voice that made me think of nothing so much as a shovel being dragged across rough concrete. However, he apparently explained to her the alternatives to my presence, and after that, she was actually quite innocuous.

  Do not think that I was pleased myself to be in this position of practically begging, but there was nothing else I could do. Even the most modest of schemes requires capital, and I was broke. And while I could bring myself to accept—and even insist upon—my cousin’s hospitality, I could not use my knowledge of his past to extract money from him. It would have been against my principles. However, the situation wasn’t all bad; my cousin had a fine cook, a nubile and willing housemaid, an extensive library and an excellent cellar, so I found myself settling in quite comfortably, and actually even in danger of vegetating.

  One evening, however, my cousin returned home in a preoccupied mood. Throughout dinner, a time he usually spent in alternately stuffing himself and listing his assets, he sat quiet and scowling at his plate, nor did he touch his dessert. Some­thing was obviously wrong, and on the offhand chance that it might involve me or my sinecure in his home, I nailed him immediately after dinner in the library.

  “Stavros,” I said—you must understand that while both of us were Poles, and I had long since adopted the fiction of be­ing Dutch, my cousin, for reasons I cannot attempt to explain, preferred the pretense of a Greek background. Maybe it was useful in his business. But I digress. In any event, I said, “Stavros, something is bothering you. Can I be of any assist­ance to you?”

  He began to wave his hand in a fashion to indicate denial, and then he suddenly paused and stared at me thoughtfully through narrowed eyes. “Do you know,” he said slowly, “pos­sibly you can. Certainly if there is some scheme here, some attempt to be over-clever, you would be the ideal one to ferret it out.”

  “Scheme?” I asked, and poured myself a generous brandy. I sat down opposite him. “What are you talking about?”

  He hesitated as if reluctant to take me into his confidence, but then the weight of his problem overcame his irresolution.

  He leaned forward. “Do you know anything about supermarkets?”

  My eyebrows raised. I was about to give him the same opinions I have just voiced to you, but then I realized it would serve no purpose. “No,” I said simply. “I know that people serve themselves from shelves and pass before a clerk who sums up their purchases. They pay and take the stuff with them. That’s all I do know.”

  He nodded. “And that’s all you should know. Or anyone should know. But somebody appears to know something else.” He paused a moment and then leaned forward again. “Kek, in the supermarket business, we are used to pilfering—small items that women put into their purses, or tuck into a baby carriage beneath the blankets; things that children steal and sometimes eat right in the store, or hide in their boots—”

  “Horrible!” I murmured.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But—and this is the important thing—we can calculate to the merest fraction of a percent the exact amount we will lose through this thievery. It is done scientifically, on computers, based on multiple experiences and prob­ability curves, and these calculations are never wrong.” He sighed helplessly. “I mean, they were never wrong before. But now—my God!”

  “Tell me,” I suggested.

  “Yes,” he said more calmly. “Well, in our largest store, the percentages have gone absolutely berserk! Stealing on a scale that is impossible! And the frightening thing is that we don’t know how it is done!” He pounded one fist against his forehead in desperation. “I have received the report from the detective agency today. I have had detectives pose as customers, as cashiers, as clerks unloading cartons or stamping prices on tins. I have had the store watched, day and night, both from the outside and the inside, week after week—and yet, it continues. I have done everything possible, and now, I am about to go out of my mind. If somebody has discovered a method of pilfering that our system cannot cope with...” He shrugged fatalistically and shivered.

  He did not have to spell it out for me. I reached for the bottle of brandy, nodding sympathetically. “And how does your system work?”

  He got to his feet and began to pace back and forth across the thick rug of the library. It was evident that the subject was close to his heart, and had he been delineating success rather than failure, his attitude could only have been described as enthusiastic.

  “This store has eight check-out counters,” he said. “At each is stationed a clerk who punches the keys of the cash register for each purchase. These figures are reproduced on a continuous tape within the register, and no one has access to this record except the head auditor in the main office. The manager of the store removes it…” He saw my eyes light up, and shook his head. “No. The manager removes a small box that contains the tape, but he cannot open this box. He sends the boxes in daily, together with the cash he has collected, and they always balance.”

  He paused and then raised a finger in a slight gesture, as if equating one thing with another. “At the same time, we have our constant inventory controls of the stocks, and these are also in the hands of people not connected with the individual store, and people of utmost confidence. And we also employ an outside firm of auditors to spot-check these stocks from time to time. Of late, I have had them checking daily.” He raised his two hands, palms upwards. “A comparison of the register tapes and the inventory records indicates the unseen losses which, as I say, are completely calculable. At least, in every store in the chain except this one.”

  “But, surely,” I said. “A dishonest clerk…”

  He shook his head. “We follow the established procedures of the American supermarkets, and to steal from a supermarket on a large scale is far from being as simple as it may appear to you at first. Believe me.”

  Knowing him, I believed him. “What can I do to help you?”

  He frowned. “I honestly don’t know. But someone has apparently discovered a means of pilfering, of swindling us, that we cannot resolve. And since your experience—” He paused and then raised one hand apologetically. “I would not consider asking your help just in return for your—your—” He wanted to say “sponging” but couldn’t bring himself to it; he was never the bravest of men, “Your presence as a guest in my house…” It was weak, and he knew it. His voice firmed, but with bitterness behind it. “If you can discover what is going on and put a stop to it, there will be a reward.”

  “How great a reward?” I asked quietly. The thing was begin­ning to intrigue me.

  He bit his lip. “One-five-ten thousand francs!” he said.

  “They have been doing a job on you, haven’t they?” I said gently.

  “Yes,” he replied simply. “They certainly have.”

  “Tomorrow, then, I shall be a customer in that store,” I said, and reached over for the bottle of brandy. I admit there was a bit of bravado in my tone, but he said nothing.

  And so we left it at that...

  Kek Huuygens paused in his tale and peered at me across the table. “Speaking of brandy,” he said politely, “your glass is empty.” He raised a manicured hand for the waiter. “As I recall, on our last visit, I was placed in your debt to the amount of two drinks.”

  I stared at him. I was still irritated at having been sworn to secrecy. “If we are all now to be firmly committed to a policy of honesty,” I said a bit shortly, “it was actually three.”

  He smiled at me with evident enjoyment of my position.“Then it shall be three. I trust you.”

  The waiter came and replenished our glasses. Ke
k Huuygens sipped his drink and then leaned back again, remembering.

  The following day was a Saturday (Huuygens continued evenly), with weather pleasant enough to allow me to walk, which, considering my financial situation, was just as well. I had offered to do the shopping for the cook in order to appear at the market in the proper guise of a customer, but it seems that owners of supermarkets do not buy at retail. However, I am sure that had she accepted, the funds she would have doled out would have been calculated to a sou to accord with the list she would have furnished. I’m afraid my status in that household was no great secret.

  My cousin was then living—and still lives, as a matter of fact­—in the Avenue Michelet in St. Ouen, and since the store in question was located in Clichy, the walk really wasn’t too bad. As I strolled along, I put my mind to work on various means of swindling a supermarket, based on the system of security I had had outlined to me the evening before. But I soon abandoned this exercise. To hear my cousin describe it, all standard methods had been thoroughly investigated, and I knew him well enough to know that the scheme would have to be incredibly simple to have escaped his detection.

  I am quite serious. I was sure that under the weight of that study, any complicated scheme would have been bound to be discovered; and besides, I have always preferred simple schemes myself. They are the only ones with any chance of success. So I gave up all thought of the matter until I could see the arena of battle in person, and just walked along enjoying the lovely weather.

  When I first set eyes on the supermarket, my first thought was that I had taken a wrong tum somewhere and had ended up at the aerodrome of Bourget, because the place looked like nothing so much as a hangar set in the middle of a huge concrete apron. That, of course, was the car park. I had seen similar installations in the States, but I had had no idea that my cousin’s wealth extended to properties of such dimension. For a moment, I felt a twinge of sympathy for the person or persons who were draining a portion of that wealth away, but then I thought of the reward, as well as of my need for it. With a shrug, I pushed through the swinging doors that led to the interior.