by Philip Craig
“Drunks,” a man nearby said, sitting down. “College kids trying to crash a party.” He grinned. “Wrong party, guys.” The others at his table laughed.
I watched the figures outlined against the lights dancing on the water. Maybe it really was a bunch of college kids out for a night of late-summer fun. Maybe not. The voices rose and fell and then fell some more. Calmer voices sank from my hearing. Slowly some sort of order was restored. I heard an outboard motor start up and saw a boat, crammed with more people than it could safely hold, move away from the dock out into the narrows. From it, derisive voices again were suddenly raised just before the outboard roared and the boat blundered away into the night.
I stared down there awhile and saw figures slowly coming back up over the silvery lawns. Then, as I turned to go back into the house, I heard a rattle of popping sounds off by the south fence of the estate.
“God,” said the man who had just sat himself down, “what next?”
“Firecrackers,” said the woman next to him. “These kids!”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest of their theories, but moved into the shadow cast by the wall of the dining room and stared at the corner of the house beyond which the pops were popping. The figures that had been slowly returning to their posts from down near the water began moving faster, in a crouch, coming back uphill.
More popping sounds from the south fence. Voices from beyond the corner of the house. A floodlight went on, illuminating the south lawn. I turned and walked back past the veranda diners to the north end of the house. I waited in another shadow, staring through the darkness, watching for movement from this side.
“What’s going on, for God’s sake?” asked a voice behind me. “All this commotion.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just some college kids using up the last of their Fourth of July fireworks.”
“Oh.” The voice went away. I kept looking into the night.
Nothing happened. After a while a man in a uniform came around the corner of the house and along to the veranda. I recognized him when a window light touched his face.
“Grady Flynn,” I said to him from the shadows. He started and raised his flashlight. “Don’t turn it on,” I said. “You’ll worry the guests. It’s me, J. W. Jackson. What’s going on?”
He came close and peered at me. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I thought it was a damned Uzi or something. I never heard an Uzi, but that’s what I first thought. Jeesus. You know what it was? It was firecrackers. Somebody tossed them over the fence and then ran off through the woods. Kids! Scared the hell out of me.”
“Nobody got onto the grounds from there or from the docks?”
“No. Bunch of drunks down there. Lots of noise. They had a keg and wanted to join the party. They went off somewhere else. Be lucky if that damned boat doesn’t sink out from under them. Must be a dozen people aboard. Harbormaster catches them, their asses will be in a sling.”
A bit before nine, Edward C. Damon conducted male cigar smokers to the library, and various ladies withdrew to the house’s many powder rooms. Willard Blunt and Emily Damon went up the grand staircase followed by the stares of the guests remaining in the ballroom. In not too long a time, the paste emeralds would make their appearance and the drama of the evening would approach its climax. My stomach was growling a bit, so I walked around and looked for college party crashers but found none. Manly laughter mixed with cigar smoke filtered out of the library. Royal or boardroom humor, no doubt. I couldn’t find Amelia.
I expected the pastes to show up in about half an hour, a time span adequate, I thought, for the ladies to return from the powder rooms and for the gentlemen to finish their cigars.
I wondered why Zee had to be in Boston the whole weekend.
About fifteen minutes had elapsed when I happened to pass an alcove off a hallway and heard an angry voice that surely was Helga Johanson’s. A man’s voice, touched by British accents, responded. I looked in.
There was a Venetian etching by Whistler on the wall. In front of it the Padishah of Sarofim stood eye to eye with Helga Johanson, one of her wrists caught in his hand, his other arm hooked around her waist. He seemed to be of amorous inclination. As I appeared, he started, then glared at me.
“Out!” he said, with an angry nod toward the door. “We wish to be alone!”
His tone was that of a man used to having such wishes instantly obeyed. I stepped closer, and Helga Johanson turned her head and saw me. She turned back and said in a low voice, “Let me go.”
He did not. Instead, his hand tightened on her wrist, and I saw her wince. He was not a small man.
“Get out!” he said to me, with another sharp nod of his head toward the hall.
Instead, I walked in. His eyes darkened with fury and surprise. I put a hand on his shoulder and shoved. He released Helga Johanson and staggered back, then, spitting out some word I did not understand, regained his balance and swung a bejeweled fist at my face. I caught it on my arm and put a short right into his body, just below the rows of medals that adorned his chest. The air drove out of his lungs, and he doubled over. I looked at Helga Johanson.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. Look out!”
I looked back at the Padishah and saw him groping at the holster on his belt. He was having trouble catching his breath. I grabbed his wrist, twisted the pistol from his hand, and pushed him back against the wall.
“You’ll thank me for this someday,” I said to him, “because now you still have both of your testicles in working order. American women have knees as hard as their fists, and you remember how hard one of those can be. And just in case you’re wearing your cast-iron jock strap, Ms. Johanson knows some other ways to make you walk funny for the rest of your life.”
He glared, gasping for air. I dropped the magazine from his pistol into my pocket, added the bullet in the firing chamber, and dropped the pistol on the floor.
“I’ll give your ammunition to Thornberry Security when I leave tonight. Meanwhile, I think we should all just forget this ever happened. After you, Ms. Johanson.”
Helga Johanson gave him a shriveling look, rubbed her wrist, and brushed out past me.
“This is twice you and your women have laid hands on my person,” he hissed.
“Let us hope there is not a third time, Your Majesty.” I bowed and followed Helga.
I caught up with her in the ballroom. She said some unladylike words, then gave a thin smile. “I hope he believes I’m as tough as you said I am, because I am, even though I can hardly walk in this damned skirt, let alone defend myself.” She took my arm, then, rather selfconsciously, I thought, released it. “You got there just in time to save him, though I don’t know what you did for friendly American-Sarofimian relations. I suspect he now regrets having sent his bodyguard away so he could be alone with me. Let’s have a drink. Isn’t this an interesting evening?”
At the bar we both had sodas with twists. I gave her the Padishah’s ammo, and she put it into her little evening purse. I was glad that Colonel Ahmed Nagy had been sent away by his master. I was not sure that Helga could have handled him. For that matter, I was not sure that I could have handled him. Colonel Nagy did not have a merciful face.
“How did that slimeball corner you, anyway?”
“I was in there looking at the etching on the wall. He followed me in. I believe he has overindulged in spirits, as they say. Besides, he’s used to being a Padishah. I’m personally inclined at the moment to throw my weight behind the revolution.”
“Dangerous talk, woman. We’re supposed to be busy here, cementing international relations. The Padishah thinks of you as one of my women. What do you think of that?”
“He also thinks I should be one of his. He lives in a fantasy world. I advise you not to do the same.” She glanced at the watch on her wrist. “Almost time for the pastes to make their appearance.”
Most of the guests apparently agreed. They had crowded into the ballroom and were glancing o
penly up the stairway. The Padishah himself, accompanied by Colonel Nagy, had also appeared, looking regal and only slightly ruffled. He was careful not to look at Helga Johanson and me. Colonel Nagy, on the other hand, looked at us carefully, his eyes hooded, his face passionless. I stared back at him. Some sort of electricity tingled between us. I felt as though I had touched a hot wire.
A ripple of applause drew my eyes to the staircase. There, Emily Damon, arm in arm with the gaunt, dignified form of Willard Blunt, descended, a necklace of gold filigree and green stones glittering at her throat.
The ripple became louder, and Emily Damon smiled and waved a graceful hand. A few steps from the bottom of the stairs she paused and lifted both hands. The applause and voices in the room silenced.
“I want you to know that this is not the real thing!” She touched the necklace and smiled, and there was laughter. She gestured again, and silence returned. “This wonderful paste necklace will be placed in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution as a memento of the century and a half when the Sarofim emeralds were in the keeping of an American family, my family, and as a remembrance of the return of the emeralds tonight to their rightful owner!” Applause. Smiles from Damons and the Padishah. Silence once more. “And now, if you will help me, Willard, I will give this necklace to my beloved sister, Amelia, who will accept it on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution.”
Blunt bent his tall frame and unfastened the necklace, and I saw Amelia come forward, smiling but pale. Emily Damon fastened the necklace about Amelia’s neck, and the applause rose again. I left Helga Johanson and shouldered my way through the crowd. I heard Emily Damon’s voice say, “There you are, my dear. And now, ladies and gentlemen, and you, Your Royal Highness, if you will be patient with me, I will return in a few minutes.”
I was wondering if Amelia had heard something about Zee. Was that why she was so pale? I got close to her and found her surrounded by women admiring the necklace. She saw me and gestured, and I found her arm. She smiled at the ladies and allowed them to touch the famous pastes, but then put a hand to her stomach.
“You will forgive me, friends, if I allow myself to be conducted to the library by this young man. I’m not feeling well and I must lock away these glass jewels so that they’re not humiliated by the real thing.” Expressions of sympathy emanated from the women and men nearest to her. Smiling and nodding, her arm in mine, she moved toward the library. A sort of path opened before us as the crowd turned its attentions back to the stairway. Helga Johanson, wearing a concerned frown, joined us as we left the room.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Muleto.”
“There’s a loo just this side of the library, I believe. I’ve got to make a quick stop.”
“I’ll go in with you, Mrs. Muleto,” said Helga.
“Thank you, my dear. Don’t worry, J.W., I’ve just got a bit of a bellyache. Too much champagne, probably. We’ll be right out.”
They passed into the room, and I leaned against the wall and thought that men and women surely had different attitudes toward going to the toilet. For women it’s a social event. They go together, chatting and making an occasion of it. At a party or a restaurant a woman will say, “I’ve got to go to the ladies’. Would anyone else like to come?” And all of the other women at the table will jump up and say, “Yes, yes, we’ll come too.” And off they’ll go together. For a man, going to the toilet is a lonely bit of work. Men do not invite other men to join them in the John. I was still weighing this curiosity of gender when Amelia and Helga came out again.
Amelia smiled. “I’m much better now. We’d better hurry this necklace into the library safe so we can be back in time to see Emily’s grand entrance!”
We opened the library door and went in. The smell of cigar smoke was still heavy in the air though the room was empty. Amelia waved a hand as if to fan the odor away as we crossed to the safe. She opened the small silver purse she carried and took out a scrap of paper.
“The combination,” she said. “Edward entrusted it to me for the occasion.” She knelt and spun the dial on the ancient safe. I admired the statue on top of it and noted that it was not of a goddess at all, as I had earlier guessed, but of Pandora looking dreamily at a small box in her hand.
The safe door swung open. Amelia lifted her hair from her neck. “If you will, J.W.”
I undid the clasp, and the necklace slid into her hands. She held it for a moment, then placed it in the safe, closed the door, and spun the knob. Then she rose, found matches by an ashtray, and lit the scrap of paper containing the combination. The paper flamed in the tray and became ash. Amelia smiled and we went out. “Just in time to catch Emily descending,” she said.
But Emily Damon did not descend the stairs wearing the fabulous necklace. Instead, Jason Thornberry appeared at the top of the stairs and hurried down. Helga Johanson, seeing him, moved swiftly away from Amelia and me and met him. They talked and threw glances around the room. My eye caught hers and she gestured. I touched Amelia’s arm and crossed the room. Helga’s voice was low and urgent.
“There’s been a robbery! The emerald necklace is missing! It was there when Mr. Blunt took the pastes out of the safe, but it’s gone now!”
Thornberry’s face was expressionless. “I don’t want anyone to leave, and that goes particularly for any of these reporters. You take the front door and make sure no one goes by you. Stay there until you’re relieved!” He dipped his head and spoke into his lapel mike, giving orders to someone not at hand. Marks, the Outside Man? Then he and Helga moved away and I moved to the door and tried to look impressive.
The crowd whispered and looked confused. Across the room the Padishah was receiving a message from his secretary. The message, I took it from the look of consternation on the royal face.
“What’s going on?” asked the grandfatherly ex-television anchorman. He still had a nose for the news.
I told him what I’d heard. He grunted, and his eyes lit up. “Better than the average party.” He grinned and walked away. At the top of the stairs a man wearing clothes at least as nice as my own appeared and stood with crossed arms. The troops were being positioned.
Three reporters made gallant efforts to pass me, but were denied and rushed off elsewhere looking for unguarded phones or exits. I didn’t have to shoot a single one of them.
9
There was a large crowd at the Damon place that night: a hundred guests, two dozen servants and as many security people, the reporters and camera people, a band, which had arrived just in time to be impounded, and, of course, Damons and Sarofimians. Fortunately, it was a very large house which could hold everyone and had no more exits than there were security personnel to guard them.
The upshot was that everyone was steered inside, where Edward C. Damon himself, too shaken to be truly ambassadorial, gave the news to them all (except, it turned out, two young couples who were discovered, in the subsequent search of the house, more or less au naturel, in dark corners of upstairs maids’ rooms). The guests were shocked and thrilled at their host’s revelation and were much abuzz as they rapidly tried to calculate which of them had been upstairs and therefore more or less near the emeralds sometime during the evening. Some of the ladies had, for several of the powder rooms were upstairs, and many thought themselves more a part of the drama because of that.
“Who’d have thought my bladder would be responsible for my practically being right there when the emeralds were stolen!” exclaimed a distinguished-looking dowager to her friend, paying me and my nearby ears no attention whatsoever.
“It’s very exciting!” agreed her friend. “Do you suppose they’ll search us? Gracious!”
I imagined searching her and decided I’d let someone else do it. On the other hand, I would be glad to volunteer to search Helga Johanson.
Jason Thornberry then was introduced, and both his appearance and profession provoked further small cries of interest. Chief of Security! Imagine! What a handsome man!
Thornber
ry explained himself and informed the crowd that indeed the emerald necklace was missing from its rosewood box in the safe in the master bedroom. His aura of authority combined with his distinguished appearance and calm speech was in sharp contrast to Damon’s nervousness.
“Now he should be an ambassador,” whispered one gentleman to his wife, and she eagerly agreed.
Thornberry explained that a thorough search of the house had already begun and that everyone, particularly those who had been in the upper rooms, would be asked to give statements to him privately in the library.
Everyone? Moil Hands touched chests. Questioning looks were exchanged. Thornberry smiled comfortingly. Most would, of course, have nothing to contribute, but someone, perhaps, may have seen something of importance that could be of help. Often, witnesses were not even aware that they may have observed something, but a trained inquisitor could, by asking the right questions, sometimes produce valuable information that would otherwise be lost. Best to ask those questions immediately while memories were still fresh.
It was logical. It was also romantic. A robbery! And not an ordinary one, but theft of the Stonehouse emeralds! Thornberry strolled into the library, and a line of eager guests formed at the door.
A bit later, sirens were heard, adding to the drama, and almost as soon as they stopped, the door behind me opened and in came the Chief and a corporal of the state police. The Chief gave me an I-thought-I-told-you-not-to-let-this-happen look, and the two of them followed my pointing arm into the library.
An hour later, as the line crept forward, much of the good humor was gone. Some people’s feet hurt, some were feeling the drinks they had had earlier. Helga Johanson, noting this, collected the band members and disappeared into the ballroom. Moments later the sound of music followed her back out into the hall. Tired eyes looked at her, and she stepped forward and took the grandfatherly retired newscaster by the arm.
“Come along, everyone,” she said. “If we must wait, we can dance while we do it!”
