The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  He walked up and down the office while the girl used the telephone.

  “No,” she said when she had finished. “Did—did you send her out in a taxi?”

  His grunt probably meant yes.

  “Are you sure she— Somebody must have seen her and followed her!”

  Spade stopped pacing the floor. He put his hands on his hips and glared at the girl. He addressed her in a loud savage voice:

  “Nobody followed her. Do you think I’m a —— damned schoolboy? I made sure of it before I put her in the cab, I rode a dozen blocks with her to be more sure, and I checked her another half dozen blocks after I got out.”

  “Well, but—”

  “But she didn’t get there. You’ve told me that. I know it. Do you think I think she did get there?”

  Effie Perine sniffed. “You certainly act like a —— damned schoolboy,” she said.

  Spade made a harsh noise in his throat and went to the corridor door.

  “I’m going out and find her if I have to dig up sewers,” he said. “Stay here till I’m back or you hear from me. For God’s sake let’s do something right.”

  He went out, walked half the distance to the elevators, and retraced his steps. Effie Perine was sitting at her desk when he opened the door. He said:

  “You ought to know better than to pay any attention to me when I talk like that.”

  “If you think I pay any attention to you, you’re crazy,” she replied, “only”—she crossed her arms and felt her shoulders, and her mouth twitched uncertainly—“I won’t be able to wear an evening gown for two weeks, you big brute.”

  He grinned apologetically, said, “I’m no damned good,” made an exaggerated bow, and went out again.

  Two yellow taxicabs were at the Post and Montgomery Street stand when Spade stopped there. Their chauffeurs were standing together talking. Spade asked:

  “Where’s the red-faced blond driver that was here at noon?”

  “Got a load,” one of the chauffeurs said.

  “Will he be back here?”

  “I guess so.”

  One of his companions ducked his head toward the east. “Here he comes now.”

  Spade walked down to the corner and stood by the curb until the red-faced blond chauffeur had parked his cab and got out. Then Spade went up to him and said:

  “I got in your cab with a lady at noontime. We went out Stockton Street and up Sacramento to Jones, where I got out.”

  “Sure,” the red-faced man said, “I remember that.”

  “I told you to take her on to a Seventh Avenue number. You didn’t take her there. Where did you take her?”

  The chauffeur looked doubtfully at Spade and rubbed his cheek with a grimy hand.

  “I don’t know about this.”

  “It’s all right,” Spade assured him, giving him one of his business cards. “If you want to play safe, though, we can ride up to your office and get your superintendent’s O.K.”

  “I guess it’s all right. I took her to the Ferry Building.”

  “By herself?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Didn’t take her anywhere else first?”

  “No. It was like this: after we dropped you I went on out Sacramento, and when we got to Polk she rapped on the glass and she said she wanted to get a newspaper, so I stopped at the corner and whistled for a kid, and she got her paper.”

  “Which paper?”

  “The Call. Then I went on out Sacramento, and just after we’d crossed Van Ness she knocked on the glass again and said take her to the Ferry Building.”

  “Was she excited or anything?”

  “Not so’s I noticed.”

  “And when you got to the Ferry Building?”

  “She paid me off, that was all.”

  “Anybody waiting there for her?”

  “I didn’t see them if they was.”

  “Which way did she go?”

  “At the Ferry? I don’t know. Maybe upstairs, or toward the steps.”

  “Take the newspaper with her?”

  “Yeah, she had it tucked under her arm when she paid me.”

  “With the pink sheet outside, or one of the white?”

  “Hell, cap, I don’t remember that.”

  Spade thanked the chauffeur, said, “Get yourself a smoke,” and gave him a silver dollar.

  Spade bought a copy of the Call and carried it into an office-building vestibule to examine it out of the wind.

  His eyes ran swiftly over the front-page headlines, and over those on the second and third pages. Then paused for a moment under SUSPECT ARRESTED AS COUNTERFEITER on the fourth page, and again on page five under BAY YOUTH SEEKS DEATH WITH BULLETS. Pages six and seven held nothing to interest him. On eight, 3 BOYS ARRESTED AS S. F. BURGLARS AFTER SHOOTING held his attention for a moment, and after that nothing until he reached the thirty-fifth page, which held news of the weather, shipping, produce, finance, divorces, births, marriages, and deaths. He read the list of dead, passed over pages thirty-six and thirty-seven—financial news—found nothing to stop his eyes on the thirty-eighth and last page, sighed, folded the newspaper, put it in his coat pocket, and rolled a cigarette.

  For five minutes he stood there in the office-building vestibule, smoking and staring sulkily at nothing. Then he walked up to Stockton Street, hailed a taxicab, and had himself driven to the Coronet.

  He let himself into the building and into Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s apartment with the key she had given him. The blue gown she had worn the previous night was hanging across the foot of her bed. Her blue stockings and slippers were on the bedroom floor. The polychrome box that had held jewelry, and had been in the dressing table drawer, now stood empty on the dressing table’s top.

  Spade frowned at it, ran his tongue across his lips, strolled through the rooms, looking around, but not touching anything, then left the Coronet and went downtown again.

  In the doorway of the building where Spade had his offices he came face to face with the boy he had left at Gutman’s. The boy put himself in Spade’s path, blocking the entrance, and said:

  “Come on. He wants to see you.”

  The boy’s hands were in his overcoat pockets. His pockets bulged more than his hands need have made them bulge.

  Spade grinned, and said mockingly:

  “I didn’t expect you till five-twenty-five. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting long.”

  The boy raised his eyes to Spade’s mouth and spoke in the strained voice of one in physical pain:

  “You louse! Keep on riding me and you’re going to be picking iron out of your navel.”

  Spade chuckled. “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter,” he said cheerfully. “Well, let’s go.”

  They walked up Sutter Street side by side. The boy kept his hands in his overcoat pockets. They walked a little more than a block in silence. Then Spade asked pleasantly:

  “How long have you been off the ——lay?”

  The boy did not show that he had heard the question.

  “Did you ever—?” Spade began, and stopped. A soft light began to glow in his yellowish eyes. He did not address the boy again.

  They went into the Alexandria, rode up to the twelfth floor, and walked down the corridor toward Gutman’s suite. Nobody else was in the corridor.

  Spade lagged a little, so that, when they were within fifteen feet of Gutman’s door, he was perhaps a foot and a half behind the boy. He leaned sidewise suddenly and grasped the boy from behind by both arms, just beneath the boy’s elbows. He forced the arms forward so that the boy’s hands, in his overcoat pockets, lifted the overcoat up before him.

  The boy struggled and writhed, but he was impotent in Spade’s grip. The boy kicked back, but his feet went between Spade’s widespread legs.

  Spade lifted the boy straight up from the floor and then brought him down hard on his feet again. The impact made little noise on the thick carpet. At the moment of impact Spade’s big hands slid down and got a fre
sh grip on the boy’s wrists.

  The boy, teeth set hard together, did not for a moment stop straining against the man’s hands, but he could not tear himself loose, could not keep Spade’s fingers from crawling down over his own hands.

  The boy’s teeth ground together audibly, the sound mingling with the noise of Spade’s breathing, as Spade crushed his hands. They were tensely motionless for a long moment. Then the boy’s arms became limp. Spade released the boy and stepped back. In each of Spade’s hands, when they came out of the boy’s overcoat pockets, there was a heavy automatic pistol.

  The boy turned and faced Spade. The boy’s face was a ghastly white blank. He kept his hands in his overcoat pockets. He looked at Spade’s chest and said nothing.

  Spade put the pistols in his own pockets and grinned derisively.

  “Come on,” he said. “This will put you in solid with your boss.”

  They went to Gutman’s door and Spade knocked.

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE EMPEROR’S GIFT

  utman opened the door. A glad smile lighted his fat face. He held out a hand and said:

  “Ah, come in, sir. Thanks for coming. Come in.”

  Spade shook the hand and entered. The boy went in behind him. The fat man shut the door. Spade took the pistols from his pockets and held them out to Gutman.

  “Here. You shouldn’t let the lad run around with these. He’ll get himself hurt.”

  The fat man laughed merrily and took the pistols.

  “Well, well,” he said, “what’s this?” He looked from Spade to the boy.

  Spade said, “A crippled newsboy took them away from him, but I made him give them up.”

  The white-faced boy took the pistols out of Gutman’s hands and pocketed them. The boy did not speak.

  Gutman laughed again.

  “By Gad, sir,” he told Spade, “you’re a chap worth knowing, an amazing character. Come in. Sit down. Give me your hat.”

  The boy left the room by the door to the right of the entrance.

  The fat man installed Spade in a green plush chair by the table, pressed a cigar upon him, held a light to it, mixed whiskey and carbonated water, put one glass in Spade’s hand, and holding the other in his own, sat down facing Spade.

  “Now, sir,” he said, “I hope you’ll let me apologize for—”

  “Never mind that,” Spade said. “Let’s talk about the black bird.”

  The fat man cocked his head a little to one side and regarded Spade with fond eyes.

  “All right, sir,” he agreed. “Let’s.” He took a sip from his glass. “This is going to be the most astounding thing you’ve ever heard of, sir, and I say that knowing that a man of your caliber in your profession must have run across a lot of things.”

  Spade nodded politely.

  The fat man screwed up his eyes and asked:

  “What do you know, sir, about the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, later called the Knights of Rhodes and other things?”

  Spade waved his cigar. “Not much, only what I can remember from history in school—Crusaders or something.”

  “Very good. Now you don’t remember that Suleiman the Magnificent chased them out of Rhodes in 1523?”

  “No.”

  “Well, sir, he did, and they settled in Crete. And they stayed there for seven years, until 1530, when they persuaded the Emperor Charles V to give them”—Gutman held up three puffy fingers and counted them—“Malta, Gozo, and Tripoli.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, sir, but with these conditions: they were to pay the Emperor each year the tribute of one”—he held up a finger—“falcon in acknowledgment that Malta was still under Spain, and if they ever left the island it was to revert to Spain. Understand? He was giving it to them, but not unless they occupied it, and they couldn’t give it or sell it to anybody else.”

  “Yes.”

  The fat man looked over his shoulders at the three closed doors, hunched his chair a few inches closer to Spade’s, and reduced his voice to a husky whisper:

  “Have you any conception of the extreme, the immeasurable wealth of the Order at that time?”

  “If I remember, they were pretty well fixed,” Spade said.

  Gutman smiled indulgently.

  “Pretty well, sir, is putting it mildly.” His whisper became lower and harsher. “They were rolling in wealth, sir. You’ve no idea. None of us has any idea. For years they had preyed on the Saracens, had taken God only knows what spoils in gems, precious metals, silks, ivories, the top-cream luxuries of the East. That is history, sir. We all know that the Holy Wars to them, as to the Templars, were largely a matter of loot.

  “Well, now, the Emperor Charles had given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of showing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles, for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers. And, remember, they had fine ones, the finest out of Asia.”

  Gutman stopped whispering. His sleek dark eyes examined Spade’s face, which was placid. The fat man asked:

  “Well, sir, what do you think of that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The fat man smiled.

  “These are facts, historical facts; not schoolbook history, not Mr. Well’s history, but history nonetheless.” He leaned forward. “The archives of the Order from the twelfth century on are still at Malta. They are not intact, but what is there holds no less than three”—he held up three fingers—“references that can’t be to anything else but this jeweled falcon. In J. Delaville Le Roulx’s Les Archives de l’Ordre de Saint-Jean there is a reference to it, oblique to be sure, but still a reference. And the unpublished, because unfinished at the time of his death, supplement to Paoli’s Dell’ origine ed instituto del sacro militar ordine has a clear and unmistakable statement of these facts I am telling you.”

  “All right,” Spade said.

  “All right. Grand Master Villiers de l’Isle d’Adam had this foot-high jeweled bird made by Turkish slaves in the castle of St. Angelo, and sent it to Charles, who was in Spain. He sent it in a galley commanded by a French Knight named Cormier or Corvere, a member of the Order.” His voice dropped to a whisper again. “It never reached Spain.” He smiled with compressed lips and asked: “You know of Barbarossa, Redbeard, Khair-ed Din?”

  “No.”

  “A famous admiral of buccaneers sailing out of Algiers then. Well, sir, he took the Knight’s galley, and he took the bird. The bird went to Algiers. That’s a fact. It’s a fact that the French historian Pierre Dan put in one of his letters from Algiers. He wrote that the bird had been there for more than a hundred years, and that it had been carried away by Sir Francis Verney, an English adventurer who was with the Algerian buccaneers for a while, when he left Algiers. Maybe it wasn’t, but Pierre Dan believed it, and that’s good enough for me.

  “There’s nothing said about the bird in Lady Frances Verney’s Memoirs of the Verney Family during the Seventeenth Century. I looked. And it’s pretty certain that Sir Francis didn’t have the bird when he died in a Messina hospital in 1615. He was stone broke. But, sir, there’s no denying that the falcon did go to Sicily. It was there and it came into the possession of Victor Amadeus II some time after he became king in 1713, and it was one of his gifts to his wife when he married in Chambery after abdicating. That is a fact, sir. Carutti, the author of Storia del Regno di Vittorio Amadeo II, vouched for it.

  “Maybe they—he and his wife—took it along with them to Turin when he tried to revoke his abdication. Anyhow, it turned up next in the possession of a Spaniard who had been with the army that took Naples in 1734, the father of Don Jose Monino y Redondo, Count of Floridablanca, who was Charles III’s chief minister
. There’s nothing to show that it didn’t stay in the same family until the end of the Carlist War in 1840. Then it showed up in Paris at just about the time that Paris was full of Carlists who had had to get out of Spain. One of them must have brought it with him, but whoever he was, he didn’t know anything about its value. It had been painted or enameled over, the chances are during the Carlist trouble in Spain, to look like nothing more than a fairly interesting black statuette. And in that disguise, sir, it was kicked around Paris for seventy years, by private owners and dealers too stupid to see what it was under its skin.

  “For seventy years, sir, this marvelous item was, as you might say, a football in the gutters of Paris, until in 1911, a Greek dealer named Charilaos Konstantinides found it in a curio shop. It didn’t take Charilaos long to discover what it was, and to acquire it. No thickness of enamel could conceal value from either his eyes or nose. Well, sir, Charilaos was the man who traced most of its history, who identified it as what it is. I got wind of it, and finally got most of the story out of him, though I have been able to add a few details since.

  “Charilaos was in no hurry to convert it into money at once. He knew that, enormous as its intrinsic value was, a far higher, a terrific, price could be obtained for it once its authenticity was established beyond doubt. Possibly he planned to do business with one of the modern descendants of the old order. There are, or were at that time, several: the English Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the Prussian Johanniterorden, and the Italian and German Iangues of the Sovereign Order of Malta.”

  The fat man raised his glass, smiled at its emptiness, and rose to fill it and Spade’s.

  “You begin to believe me a little?” he asked as he worked the siphon.

  “I haven’t said I didn’t.”

  “No.” Gutman chuckled. “But how you looked.” He sat down, drank generously, and patted his mouth with a white handkerchief. “Well, sir, to keep it safe while pursuing his researches into its history, Charilaos had re-enameled the bird, apparently just as it is now. One year to the very day after he had acquired it—that was perhaps three months after he had admitted his find to me—I picked up the Times in London and read that his establishment had been burglarized and him murdered. I was in Paris the next day.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “The bird was gone. By Gad, sir, I was wild. I didn’t believe anybody else knew about it. I didn’t believe he had told anybody but me. A great quantity of stuff had been taken, which made me think that the thief had simply taken the falcon along with the rest of his plunder, not knowing what it was. Because I assure you that a thief who knew its value would not burden himself with anything else. No, sir, at least not anything less than crown jewels.”