Blackmailer

by George Axelrod

  I felt as if I had heard this conversation before.

  “What is the book?” I asked.

  I stood tensely, waiting for him to answer, knowing what he was going to say.

  “A novel,” Walter said, “that was completed by Charles Anstruther, just before his death.”

  Suddenly my head began to ache.

  “Listen, Walter,” I said weakly. “Have you got a drink around this place?”

  Walter opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of brandy. He poured several inches into a glass and handed it to me.

  I sank into the armchair. I felt tired. My hangover had returned with full force. I did not seem to be able to follow what was going on.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Walter said. “If you look around you’ll find all sorts of amusing things. Books, magazines, pictures. Or, if you like, there’s the radio or records. Or the television. The switches are right there by your arm. If you press the red switch at the end you might provide yourself with some live entertainment. I’ll be out of the shower in less than ten minutes. Cigarettes in the box. Liquor in the cabinet.”

  He turned and disappeared into the bedroom. In a moment or two I could hear the faint sound of a shower.

  I sank back in the chair and sipped the brandy. I didn’t think. I didn’t move. I sat there and let the warmth of the brandy spread through my body.

  Then, for the first time, I looked around the room, taking notice of my surroundings.

  Walter’s sitting room was dominated by a gigantic picture on the wall opposite the bedroom door. Walter claimed it was a Titian and worth a quarter of a million dollars. I guess it was.

  The room also included a small piano, an entire wall of bookshelves, and a fireplace. Inside a glass cabinet was Walter’s famous collection of antique dueling pistols, all very deadly-looking.

  I slumped in the chair, admiring the Titian and listening to the sound of Walter’s shower.

  Beside the arm of the chair was the amplifier for Walter’s record player and radio. On top of it was a complex row of buttons and gadgets. It looked like the instrument panel on a B-29.

  Even if I wanted to play records, I thought, it would take me a week to figure out how.

  Experimentally, I pushed a button. Just at random, to see what would happen.

  I waited.

  Across the room, at eye level, a section of bookcase slid noiselessly to one side, revealing the largest television screen I’d ever seen outside a saloon.

  Very neat. Very mechanical.

  I pushed the button again and the bookshelves slid back into place.

  Then I noticed the red button at the end.

  The brandy, on top of an empty stomach on top of half a bottle of bourbon from the night before, was beginning to have a strange effect.

  I felt light-headed.

  I felt cool and detached and whimsical.

  I drained the rest of the brandy in my glass.

  Then, for the second time, I noticed the red button on the end. I leaned over and pushed it.

  I sat expectantly, waiting to see what would happen.

  I half expected the floor to open up and half a dozen dancing girls to appear.

  Or a symphony orchestra to slide out from under the couch.

  Even so, I was caught off guard.

  Silently, moving on oiled hinges or ball bearings or whatever they were, the enormous two hundred and fifty thousand dollar Titian began to slide along the wall.

  I watched it, fascinated.

  Behind the picture was a glass window about eight feet high and five feet wide.

  On the other side of the window, about six feet from the tip of my nose, was Janis Whitney.

  She was wearing only the bottom half of what I think they call a bikini bathing suit. She was looking straight at me, brushing her hair.

  I waited for a startled expression to appear on her face, but her expression did not change. She continued to stare directly at me. Her lips moved as she counted strokes.

  I am not very quick about things like this.

  It took me about that long to figure out why her expression did not change. As far as she was concerned she was all alone in the next room, brushing her hair before a large, conveniently placed mirror.

  I’d read about one-way glass.

  They use it at places like the Yale Nursery when they want to study the behavior of the infant and child in the culture of today without the infant and child tumbling to the fact that the culture is watching him.

  They use it at Klein’s to keep an eye on shoplifters.

  And Walter used it.

  I wondered how many of Hollywood’s most beautiful female stars had, at one time or another, admired themselves in the mirror of Walter’s number one guest room.

  Janis Whitney reached one hundred and stopped brushing.

  She looked down and examined the fastenings of her swimming suit. They were held in place by a knot on her right hip. She began to loosen the knot.

  I reached for the red button. I reached for it, but I didn’t push it.

  Janis Whitney stood for a long time admiring herself in the mirror.

  She was something to admire. Soft dark hair, cut short, framing her head. Green eyes and a wide mouth with perfect teeth.

  Her skin was very white. She had firm, full breasts, and her body, while it was slim, was not a boyish, dancer’s body. It was softer, and more feminine. Her hands and feet, I noticed, were extremely small.

  She smiled at her reflection in the mirror.

  So did I.

  Then, abruptly, she turned and in a second was out of range of the mirror.

  When she returned she was wearing a green linen dress.

  She stood close to the mirror with her mouth open, examining her perfect teeth. Then, using her little finger and a brush, she began to put on her lipstick.

  I’d had enough.

  I pushed the red button again and watched as the picture slid back into place.

  I got up out of the chair.

  There were no push buttons on Walter’s liquor cabinet. It worked manually. What you did was reach in, pull out a brandy bottle, pour the brandy into a glass and drink.

  I did all those things.

  Walter was still in the shower. I could hear the sound of spraying water.

  Suddenly a recurrence of the feeling I’d had when I read about Jean Dahl’s accident swept over me.

  Someone had killed her here in Walter’s house not twelve hours before.

  And no one seemed to give a damn.

  Least of all Walter.

  Suddenly, Walter’s dawdling in the shower offended me.

  I stood listening to the sound of the shower and the sound drove me into a frenzy.

  I turned and almost ran through the bedroom and toward the bathroom.

  Chapter Seven

  The bathroom door was ajar and steam was billowing out.

  Walter’s bathroom was enormous. It was done in black and white marble. There were long rows of thick, soft black towels with fancy white monograms.

  The stall shower was at the far end. I crossed to it and jerked open the door. I reached in, found the hot water tap and turned it off with three or four fast twists.

  Walter bellowed when the ice-cold water hit him.

  He leaped out of the shower splattering water on the gleaming marble floor. He sputtered angrily. I grabbed his wet, skinny shoulder and shook him.

  “I’ve had enough,” I said. “I’ve absolutely had enough.”

  “This is an outrage!” Walter squealed.

  “I’m sick of this,” I said. “I’m sick of this crummy fake mansion. I’m sick of cheap dirty tricks like that sliding picture. Walter, I swear I’m going to find out what’s going on if I have to beat you to a bloody pulp right here in this marble outhouse.”

  Then Walter stopped sputtering and began to giggle.

  “Richard,” Walter said, “you’re making yourself perfectly ridiculous. Now let go of me an
d hand me a towel. Please.”

  I handed him a towel and with as much dignity as a bald, skinny, naked man can muster, he turned on his heel and walked out of the bathroom. I followed him back into the bedroom.

  “I’m sorry, Walter,” I said. “But I’ve got to talk to you.”

  Walter pulled on his silk robe, tied it with its thick black silk rope, then sat down in the armchair and looked up at me with an amused expression on his face.

  “Walter,” I said, “I’m going to find out what’s going on here, and I’m going to find out right now.”

  Walter sighed. “I have already told you, Richard, that I know very little about any of this. When the lights went on last night, I was standing at the top of the stairs.

  “Several people had gone down the stairs in spite of my protests. As it was pitch black, however, I had no way of knowing who they were. Then, about thirty seconds after the lights went on, I heard Max calling me from the foot of the stairs.

  “As I came down I saw Max leaning over Miss Dahl’s body. It was a shocking sight. There was blood on the side of her head. I said, ‘Max, what is it?’ And he said, ‘Walter, I think the kid is dead.’ That’s all there was to it. From the way she was lying, it seemed perfectly obvious that she had fallen down the stairs, hitting her head on something as she fell.

  “I had no reason to doubt that she had fallen. Now, Richard, as I understand it, you say you saw her the instant the lights went on. And that she was lying on the far side of the hall by the door.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I saw her and so did Janis Whitney. I’m going to ask you about her in a minute. But first, I want to ask you about your friend Max Shriber.”

  Walter giggled nervously. “Hardly my friend, Richard. My associate. My business associate. As a matter of fact, Max is handling some of the details of the little business matter I mentioned to you a few moments ago.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said. “I’d never even heard of Max Shriber until the other day, when I got a registered letter from him. The letter said he had been engaged by Anstruther’s literary executors to represent a new Anstruther novel.”

  “That is correct.”

  “And where do you come in?”

  Walter smiled. It was a modest, self-effacing smile. “Before he died, Charles was kind enough to appoint me his literary executor.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I guess I have come to the right place. You’re behind all this.”

  “If you mean that I, in effect, am the one who offered the book to you, you are absolutely correct.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t understand anything. Most of all I don’t understand where Jean Dahl fits into this.”

  “What makes you think she fits into this at all? So far as I can see, we are dealing with two separate problems. A girl has an unfortunate accident at a party…”

  I tried to interrupt but he refused to be interrupted.

  “…Oh, I know you have some hysterical idea that she was murdered. And, for that matter, maybe she was. But why on earth should that have any connection with the matter we are talking about?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. Another thing I’m trying to find out is why, if you are Anstruther’s literary executor, did you offer the book to us? Any one of the big publishing houses would pay almost anything to get it. Conrad, Sherman can’t afford to give you any big advance. Tell me honestly, Walter, is there really an Anstruther book-and is your offer really genuine?”

  “All right, Richard, I shall try to answer you. First of all, yes, there is a book. And secondly, yes, the offer is most assuredly genuine. I would like to have The Winding Road to the Hills by Charles Anstruther published under the imprint of Conrad, Sherman.”

  “But why?” I said. “Why us?”

  Walter lit a cigarette. “Let me see,” he said, “how to explain.” He let the smoke trickle out through his nostrils. “First, I suppose I must tell you that the term ‘literary executor’ is a bit of a euphemism. In actuality, I own Charles Anstruther’s book outright.”

  “You own it?”

  “That is correct. I bought all rights from Charles Anstruther a week or so before his tragic demise. Now, now, Richard, stop looking so skeptical. I didn’t murder Anstruther and steal his book. It is all perfectly correct. Not only legal but ethical as well. Anstruther was a friend of mine of long standing. He came to me with his new book and said-and I give you now only the essence of his thinking-that he needed a great deal of money immediately. We examined the situation together and we saw that if he allowed his book to go through normal channels, he would of course realize a tremendous amount of money. But first there would be delays. It would take perhaps five years to realize the full value of his property. And secondly, the tax situation being what it is, his profits would be considerably reduced. Now then, you can begin to grasp the problem. Anstruther needed a large sum of money at once. So I was able to make him see that it might be advisable to sell the book outright under what is known as a capital gains setup. In this way the taxes would be greatly reduced and he would get his money at once.”

  I walked over to the liquor cabinet and poured myself another drink.

  “Go on,” I said. “Let’s hear the rest of it.”

  “He agreed, and I set about trying to find a purchaser. Anstruther wanted one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This was just a bit more money than I could comfortably raise at the moment, so I investigated, made some discreet inquiries among my connections and found several people who might be interested in investing in so valuable a property as the new Charles Anstruther book. In short, Richard, a corporation was set up, capitalized at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the purchase was made. You still look doubtful, Richard. I can show you the canceled check made out to Charles Anstruther. I can show you the contracts drawn up between Anstruther and me. I, as president of the corporation, signed all the documents. I assure you, Richard, that I have too much sense to become involved in any sort of nefarious dealings. I have too much to lose.”

  I thought this over. In spite of everything, it sounded possible. Maybe it really was all right.

  “O.K.,” I said. “But why do you want us to publish the book? Why not one of the big houses? You know as well as I do we’ve never tackled anything more complicated than a volume of Triple-Cross-O-Grams. We don’t have the distribution setup for a thing like this.”

  “Now, Richard,” Walter said, “to get to the heart of the matter. The proposition that I would like to make with you is a very simple and very fair one. But it is a slightly unorthodox one. I don’t want you to get excited. Or begin screaming and throwing things about. I just want you to listen. And listen carefully.

  “First, you must admit that under ordinary circumstances Conrad, Sherman could never hope to publish such an important and valuable book as this, for the good reason that you have neither the prestige to attract such a work nor the cash to pay for it.

  “Second, if this book comes out under your imprint, it will bring tremendous prestige to your company. It undoubtedly will lure many other authors into the fold. It might well be the beginning of a new era for your firm. Textbooks and volumes of puzzles are all very well. But to be Charles Anstruther’s publisher, even posthumously, is quite a different matter.”

  “You make it sound great, Walter,” I said. “Now where’s the catch? How much of an advance do you want? A piece of the company? What?”

  “Richard, why are you so continually antagonistic? I don’t want an advance. I just want the use of your name. The use of your offices. The use of the normal facilities you have. Very simply I propose to give you the book to publish. I propose to pay all the advertising and exploitation costs. I propose to retain complete authority on such subsidiary rights as reprints, magazine serialization, foreign publication, television and motion picture rights. For your trouble, which, I may say, will be a good deal l
ess than if you were publishing a new book of puzzles, I propose to offer you ten percent of all profits realized from printed matter. That is to say, reprints, twenty-five cent editions, translations, regular sales, book clubs, whatever. And five percent of any subsequent motion picture sales.”

  It was coming at me so fast that I couldn’t function.

  “In other words, Richard, I am asking you to front for my corporation.”

  I tried to think clearly.

  “None of the big publishers would give you a deal like that,” I said.

  “Of course not,” Walter said. “That’s why I asked you. At no expense to yourself you are being cut in for ten percent of what may well amount to a million dollars in profits. Plus the tremendous prestige of publishing what will unquestionably be the most talked-of book of the year. Naturally, the terms of our agreement will be confidential. For all anyone on the outside can know, you are publishing the book in the normal way.

  “As for me, I am eliminating a middleman, as it were. I, as president of my corporation, have a responsibility to my stockholders. I could, of course, eliminate you too. I could publish the book myself-form a subsidiary company, The Heinemann Press, perhaps. But that would only attract attention to myself. I would just as soon have the book published in as normal a fashion as possible. There is certainly nothing dishonest about this deal. As a matter of fact, it is done all the time. In reality, I am publishing the book and paying you a commission for certain services rendered. The use of your name, and so forth. The only thing is, Richard, I want the book for the late spring. So you must decide quickly.”

  I was somewhat overwhelmed.

  There was something wrong with the whole thing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. The only thing I could think of to ask was, “Where does Max Shriber figure in this?”

  “Max,” Walter said, “Max is one of my stockholders. Or partners, if you prefer.”

  “Who else has a piece of this book?”

  “That, Richard, I am afraid I am not at liberty to divulge. Not until you have agreed to take the book. Once the papers are signed and you too are a partner, then everything will be open and aboveboard.”