Face to the Sun

by Geoffrey Household

  This wouldn’t do at all. I was slightly suspect. I guessed that she had been prompted by the proprietress to find out whether the suitcase was full of clothes or empty. There was nothing for it but to re-equip myself from top to toe, then pack what I was wearing plus a few extras and leave my one piece of baggage unlocked.

  Meanwhile, what was I to do with the three jewellery cases which would not fit in any of my pockets? The laundry bag was the obvious answer. If they found it temporarily missing from the bathroom they could think what they bloody well pleased.

  What was certain was that I had to economise until I could lay my hands on the reward. At least another £150 had to be spent. When I had found the £600 in the black crocodile bag I was nearly crazy with relief for it seemed to me that my troubles were at an end. They were not; they were just beginning. I was sitting on a vast sum of capital which I dared not use. All jewellers and pawnbrokers would have been warned to look out for those unmistakeable treasures.

  I dressed, put the black bag and its contents into the laundry bag and started off to the shops. My first purchase was a largeish briefcase with a formidable lock to which I transferred the valuables, less one emerald ear-ring which I kept to identify myself as the correct possessor of the jewellery and able to return it. After depositing the briefcase at a bank, I bought smart trousers and a gentlemanly coat, a dressing-gown, a few paperbacks, paper and envelopes to fill up space, and set off with my parcels to Gower Street, managing to reach my room unseen. With the laundry bag now holding the foul remains of my forty-eight hours’ distress and my suit laid out for cleaning, I could now face the landlady and search the advertisement columns of the more expensive dailies for the expected offer of a reward.

  Chapter Two

  It was the third day of living with my criminality, and I was becoming accustomed to it. Half of me was ashamed; the other half not without pride in ac­complishing, as an amateur, an act which would have dismayed a professional. An act, yes. It irrevocably separated the self which had stolen from the self which would not dream of doing any such thing. Right and wrong had little to do with it. My pride was in action.

  I rang for breakfast and the newspapers. When the girl arrived I gave her my suit to be cleaned and my wash to be washed with proper geniality. She did not seem to have noticed the temporary absence of the laundry bag. Clad in my new dressing-gown like any mature student on a postgraduate course at London University round the corner, I opened the paper for a leisurely look through the advertisements. I was amazed to see, occupying a quarter of the front page, a picture of my lady of Harrods in her resplendent youth. She was Juana Romero, daughter of a Mexican father and a Californian mother.

  It was not the theft of the jewellery which was news, but the victim. In her youth she had been a famous film actress; the toast of the two Americas they called her. One reporter only had recognised her married name from the police reports, and he deserved his scoop. The beautiful brown eyes had been swimming with tears as she told him of her loss. She had been dreaming of her past without a thought for the bag at her little feet. In her time she had been squashed into shape by the arms of Rudolph Valentino himself – the reporter put it more delicately – for her figure was then of the type which fascinated teenagers, Hollywood producers and the American military. She had been, wrote the emotional hack, the envy of all women. I doubt it. The exuberant display probably started the later craze for weight reduction. And there she was on the front page in a ‘revealing’ swimsuit; it hadn’t a chance of being anything else.

  She had married the Father of her Country. He was then only a colonel, but the pair of them were so popular that the cathedral had been packed with the press, the generals and the politicians, all of them haunted by a foreboding of what this marriage of celebrities might bring about. It took him three more years to reach the top by a revolution rather less bloody than usual. She had done well for her husband and herself. The paper listed her loss as the tiara of emeralds and diamonds, the ear-rings and necklace. She had not said a word of the golden sun. I remembered my earlier conjecture that it could have been acquired from a museum. Now that I knew who she was, that was indeed possible.

  I shall call the lady’s country the Republic of Malpelo, for it would be shameful to brand a charming and impoverished little state with meekly tolerating a Father of the Country. Fatherly methods of government are much the same in Africa and Latin America, and I had learned them by experience. I had been surprised that the African had bothered to denounce corruption and supposed that it was for the benefit of international financiers, for nobody within the country would ever have believed that the American firm had won that contract on reliability alone. All the same I liked that great, black, bemedalled bugger until the last time I came in contact with him. He had passed through Sandhurst and remained an officer and a gentleman with a respect for power and none at all for life. He was at his best when he had an excuse to appear British and would chat to me as if we were sitting in a London club while I was stimulated by the added thrill that I might be about to leave Government House on a stretcher for a faultlessly arranged post-mortem. He should have known that I was accustomed to fatherly administration and trusted me to keep my mouth shut; it had been quite unnecessary to give me twenty-four hours’ notice to leave the country.

  So my earlier instinctive conjecture of the reason why the lady of Harrods had not revealed the loss of the golden sun to the police had not been far wrong. It must be well known to historians of the Spanish Conquest and had to be returned, minus the tasteless central emerald, to the shrine from which it had been borrowed. Of course the loan might have had an indefinite term. Requests from a Father of the Country are generally obeyed without argument.

  The natural explanation was that her husband didn’t know that she had taken it abroad. In Malpelo she probably wore it only for prestige – a gala night at the opera, for example, or a party for the generals of the Republic on Independence Day. It emphasised her unity with Malpelo and her position as official Mother of the Country. The folly of taking it with her to Europe would have been due only to feminine vanity: the vision perhaps of an invitation to dinner at Buckingham Palace. The sun would certainly have made a spectacular lid to her cavernous cleavage.

  I had been wondering how on earth I could return her jewels and collect a reward without walking straight into a police trap. The position now was somewhat different. I was the only person in London – apart from her daughter – who knew she had with her a national treasure and had lost it. Obviously she did not want to risk the unpredictable anger of a Father of the Country. Nor did I. So our interests were the same: to keep the British police right out of it. Besides the romantic story of her past, that obliging paper had given me the essential information that she was staying at Claridge’s. There I had to contact her. I spent the morning in the British Museum examining Andean exhibits. There was nothing resembling my sun, but I came across a casual reference to a golden disk which had been the banner and supreme god of the Inca Empire. So again I gave myself a very satisfactory lunch in the hope that claret and a brandy would continue to provide inspiration. They did. My sun could be a miniature or model of the god.

  Wearing gloves I tore off the headline of the news­paper report and wrote on the back of it in small capitals and with my left hand:

  I SEE THAT THERE WAS ONE LOSS WHICH YOU DID NOT MENTION.

  WHAT AM I TO DO WITH IT?

  REPLY TO HARRY. BOX 715, SAME PAPER.

  I posted this to Miss Juana Romero at Claridge’s, choosing her maiden name since I was pretty sure that she would receive a number of such letters from cranks or former friends or lovers, inspired by the newspaper article. She would read these from curiosity or in the hope of running across an old companion, and if the police had advised her to show them all suspicious communications she could pocket mine before handing them over.

  Two days later I opened the paper eager to see if feminine ingenuity had any proposal for excha
nging the sun for money which would ensure there were no police witnesses.

  HARRY. ASK FOR LADY MCMURTRIE.

  On the face of it that offered no guarantee and was detestably risky. Lady McMurtrie’s could be packed with detectives. But in my sudden excess of nervousness I had forgotten that on no account must police be allowed to know of the loss of the golden sun. She had been intelligent enough to understand that this opening move was to arrange time and place for a meeting where the transaction could be completed in a privacy essential to us both.

  I spruced myself up, took the plunge and asked at Claridge’s desk for Lady McMurtrie.

  ‘I believe she is expecting me,’ I added.

  I was shown up to a room on the fifth floor. I recognised Lady McMurtrie at once. She had been at that table in Harrods. When the door was opened, she sprang forward with every appearance of greeting an old friend with delight. As soon as it was safely shut again she stood with reserved neutrality facing me. She was one of those striking women, tall and fair with a faultless figure but too stern to be immediately desirable. It was evident that she was also a woman of courage and character. I might have come to knock her out and add to my loot.

  ‘What are you?’ she asked. ‘British?’

  ‘Harry. Box 715.’

  ‘Any other – well, identification?’

  ‘Yes, an ear-ring. But if I produce it you have only to ring for the hotel detective.’

  ‘My dear man, is it likely that I would?’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I am Juana’s daughter. She will be here in a minute. Now, tell me who else is behind this blackmail.’

  ‘No one. You do not recognise me? I passed you twice in Harrods.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that you were working alone?’

  ‘I assure you, Lady McMurtrie, I had no idea what the black crocodile bag contained. Neither of you were paying any attention to it. I was starving and so I stole. I expected only money. When I found the sun and read that your mother did not report its loss to the police I realised its value and, I must admit, was a little frightened. A dictator has a long arm.’

  ‘Yet you look to me like a man of honour.’

  ‘If I could afford to be a man of honour, I would give your mother what she needs, for she is in worse trouble than I, if I am not mistaken.’

  ‘And if we allow you to keep the tiara?’

  ‘Useless, I cannot sell it, or even a piece of it, without being immediately arrested.’

  There was a knock of distinctive rhythm on the door.

  ‘Well, here is my mother.’

  La Presidenta sailed in. It was clear that she, too, was unaware that she had ever set eyes on me before. She was dressed to kill – this time in deep crimson. She had not forgotten that she was once Juana Romero to whom nothing that she badly wanted could be denied. She was more subtly provocative than in Harrods and for a man whose taste was for dimension rather than delicacy she may still have been enticing. I bowed respectfully.

  ‘Lady McMurtrie found it hard to believe that I did not know what your bag contained when I picked it up,’ I said. ‘But if I did know I must also have known that you had come to England with the sun, and known that it was in the bag. Doesn’t it seem to you more likely that you put it down where it was a temptation and that you yourself gave away its importance by not mentioning the disastrous loss to the British police?’

  ‘I’d rather have my tiara back,’ she replied.

  ‘Even if it meant that Cayetano could accuse you of making away with his precious model?’ her daughter asked her with gentle irony.

  ‘I have never submitted to blackmail, Carlota, and I will not start now.’

  Lady McMurtrie must have been well accustomed to putting the brakes on her mother’s obstinacy since early days in Hollywood.

  ‘Then Harry will hand the sun to the British police anonymously which will do none of us any good,’ she said, and coming straight to business, added to me, ‘What is your asking price?’

  The intrinsic worth of the sun seemed to be surpassed by its political value. As I had no idea what that was, I quoted low.

  ‘Shall we say two hundred thousand pounds for the lot?’

  La Presidenta swelled with such indignation that I listened for some complex of underwear to explode. Her daughter, knowing that my price was very reasonable for the tiara alone and much less than she expected for the sun, waved her down and did not attempt to haggle. I think that from then on she believed my story.

  ‘In cash, I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘I flatly refuse to carry that amount about with me,’ Dona Juana protested. ‘I will give him a cheque on my personal account with a Swiss bank.’

  ‘A banker’s cheque would be preferable, Doña Juana, though I am quite sure that your own would be honoured. But to whom would it be made out? Naturally I do not want to identify myself.’

  I certainly did not. The further this conversation developed the more clearly I saw that I had not worked out the details. Honesty is said to be the best policy. Like hell it is! Dishonesty demands far more experience and technique. If it had not been for the admirable Lady McMurtrie, the Presidenta might have handed me over to the police in a rage.

  ‘And now, how and where am I to return your bag with all its contents and receive the money at the same time?’

  ‘Here in this room, of course.’

  ‘Good. Then I will arrive with a suitcase and the bag inside it. If anything is missing you can pick up the telephone and have me arrested. If you do not pay I shall walk out with my suitcase and inform the police where the sun is.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn if you do,’ she retorted. ‘I am entitled to wear it.’

  Her daughter closed her eyes in resignation.

  ‘Then why, dear mamma, didn’t you declare its loss to the police and the newspaper man?’

  ‘Well, I had an emerald set in the centre. But that won’t harm it. It’s only glued.’

  ‘Nonsense! You were afraid of what Cayetano would say if he knew that you had taken it abroad and that you had allowed it to be stolen.’

  Lady McMurtrie sat down for the first time, crossed her delightful spidery legs and took over the negotiations with the aplomb of a slightly crooked company director.

  ‘Now, mamma, when you draw out two hundred thousand, what are you going to say it was for?’

  ‘Good grief! He doesn’t care what I spend.’

  ‘No, so long as he knows what you spend it on. Well, I suppose we could say you lost it at one of the gambling clubs. But I think you must pay Harry cash. He will have trouble in opening a bank account with a false name and address.’

  The telephone rang and Carlota answered it.

  ‘It’s Hector, mamma.’

  ‘Oh God, what does your husband want?’

  ‘He wants to know if the Punchao was in the bag that was stolen. You never said it was, so do you have it?’

  ‘Why should he think I have?’

  ‘Because he knows you, dear … No, she hasn’t got it, Hector. At least not yet. It was in the bag that was stolen and we are just negotiating with the thief … No, I don’t know what she is going to do with it … She is terrified that on his return from the northern frontier Cayetano will find out that she took it with her to London and she can’t see any way of putting it back in time. You had better come up to London … No, not Claridge’s. Keep away from us … All right, the Hyde Park.’

  ‘Where did the President keep it?’ I asked when she put down the telephone.

  ‘In his private office where he could discuss it with the goldsmiths. He lets me wear it on state occassions. Tell Harry what it all means, Carlota. Cayetano never talks politics with me and he does with you.’

  ‘I don’t know if you have any sympathy for dictators,’ Carlota said to me. ‘They have ideals of their own and they work very hard to realise them.’

  ‘I have had dealings with one, Lady McMurtrie, and as you see I escaped wi
th my life.’

  She remarked drily that I certainly wouldn’t in Malpelo, and gave me a thumbnail sketch of General Cayetano Heredia. I could see that she admired his ruthless energy. Her attitude had some resemblance to mine towards the Father of his Country.

  ‘The golden image of the sun,’ Carlota explained, ‘was the High God of the Inca Empire. It disappeared, melted down or dispatched to Spain, within a hundred years of the Conquest. This in your hands is a small replica of the original which came to rest in the Museum of Malpelo, though there is no record of how it travelled so far from Peru. It is known as the Punchao del Dia, the Moment of Daybreak.’

  She went on to tell me that the sun was to be the symbol of Heredia’s government like Hitler’s swastika. It was to demonstrate that he represented the Indian and the Spaniard alike. A replica of it was to be everywhere – on the flag, over the gateway to the palace, behind his presidential seat in the assembly and at times on the bosom of his wife.

  ‘The Mother of the Country,’ I murmured.

  She answered coldly, putting me in my place, that her mother could play that part to perfection, whenever she pleased. The Punchao had to be copied in a variety of sizes and frames. That was why he kept it readily available for conferences, designers and goldsmiths. The disks and the rays had to be standardised, which was infernally difficult.

  ‘I think I should have doubled my price,’ I said.

  That was only a jest. Two hundred thousand pounds would be tricky enough to bank; to hold out for more was merely greedy.

  But Doña Juana was near hysteria. She would lose all her influence over him. He would think up some vile indignity to punish her. She demanded that I should give her the sun then and there. She would pay me by a cheque on her Swiss bank for any amount.

  ‘And cancel it tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, you beast! What shall I do, Carlota?’

  ‘Fly to Zurich and draw cash. We’ll be back here by dinner-time and leave not a trace behind us. And you – call with the sun and tiara about eight.’