by Howard Fast
Both Compton and Golden stared at him blankly.
“Doesn’t grip you, does it? Well, no accounting for humor—and I suppose your problem preoccupies you. No place for the light-handed touch.”
“Supposedly you will tell us where Margie is,” Golden said, not without a trace of contempt.
“No crystal ball, sir. We use the common sense God gave us—he does hand it out sparingly—and a fact or two. Just where could she be? Suppose we put two and two together and come up with seven. New math and all that. We leave the Embassy out of it. All odds that their noses are dirty, but they would hardly be scatological on premises, as the saying goes. And just what would they want with your Margie? The ardor that swarmed around Helen of Troy is no longer with us, and no one kidnaps for passion these days. Money only. You say she was snatched at the Plaza?”
“That’s right.”
“Ah—ah—two and two. Skinny kid, dark hair, pretty?”
“Right.”
“Good. We put the Plaza together with Dravina, and what do we get? We get the Countess Danya Hutsinger. Twenty-four years old or so. Brought here in nineteen forty-six—Brearley, Wellesley, the whole ivy-status circuit. She’s it, and those clowns put the finger on your Margie instead.”
“But even if they wanted this Hutsinger dame,” Hy Golden said, “I mean, instead of Margie—what have we got?”
“We examine it, young fellow. What has the Countess Danya that any small country desires? Oil, my lad, oil. There have been rumors for years that there is oil in Dravina—under the Hutsinger ancestral acres. In fact, my lad, some enterprising Dravinians, backed by some enterprising British pounds, have set up an outfit called Dravinian International—an oil exploration company that has so far come up with absolutely nothing. If my memory does not fail me, their stock was quoted yesterday on the London exchange at one and tuppence, which is in the neighborhood of fourteen cents. You know, they have offices right here—on Fifty-fourth Street and Park Avenue, I believe, in one of those great piles of glass and chrome. Do hand me that telephone directory, would you, Alan?”
Compton handed his cousin the directory, and while he thumbed through the pages, he said, “Of course, one can’t imagine a lot of idiots so gauche that they would kidnap the Countess and try to have her sign away her property or give them the oil rights or something of that sort—unless of course one deals with Dravinians. With them it is just possible. Ah yes—here we are. Just as I suspected, Fifty-fourth and Park. You know, all odds are that this is where your little Margie is right now. Unless——” He glanced at his watch. “Unless, of course, she’s at lunch. I don’t know how civilized kidnapings are these days. Is the victim taken to lunch or kept up on bread and water? I should judge that if the snatch is being done with any kind of finesse, she is at lunch with a minor scoundrel who has been mixed up in every dirty oil deal in the past ten years, a very slippery Scot who goes under half a dozen aliases, Stoddard, Burns, Macgiven, Macbain—oh, and a good many more. Can be quite charming and sincere when he so desires. Chairman of the Board of Dravinian International. There was a whole half-page footnote on him in Burroughs’ Oil and Dirt, Doubleday, nineteen sixty-three, page eighty-five, I believe. Now where would they be eating? There are two rather decent places on Fifty-fourth between Park and Lexington. There is Brussels—not quite all that it was, but still among the best. And there is Sardi’s East. On Fifty-third the Brasserie is excellent but hardly relaxing. It’s a bit of a walk to Argenteuil and one or two other spots, and I would be more likely to put it between Brussels and Sardi’s East.”
Hy Golden, openmouthed, stared in astonishment and respect. Alan Compton said, “Are you trying to tell us that if we go to the Brussels Restaurant, we will find Margie there?”
“You heard the reasoning. Can you pick any large holes in it?”
“Why not Sardi’s East?”
“This Gerald Stoddard or Macbain or whatever he calls himself now—he’d figure your Countess for a Continental type and pick a more Continental restaurant. Sardi’s is Italian more than anything else, and there has never been love lost between the Italians and the Dravinians.”
“Can I come back tomorrow and listen to you discuss the stock market?” Hy Golden asked hoarsely.
“Stock market, trotters, professional football—we have many resources. Just feel free. And it’s been a pleasure, Cousin Alan, a perfect pleasure.”
“Cousin Fenton, what can I say?”
“May the foundation stand.”
“May it always!” Alan said fervently.
As they left, Aunt Katherine Compton was so totally immersed in a crossword puzzle that she never noticed their departure.
“Nice family,” Hy Golden said enthusiastically.
“Well, depends on how you look at it.”
“I mean, what a mind! What a mind! A man like that, you’d think he’d rule the world.”
“Do you want to rule the world?” Compton asked Golden, who was signaling for a taxi.
“Not me.”
“Neither does he. It’s not his nature. He likes to read books and file things. The whole cellar is files and cross-indexes. He doesn’t want to be rich. This suits him. This and running. He runs in the park for recreation.”
They got in a taxi, and Golden told the driver to take them to the Brussels Restaurant on East Fifty-fourth Street.
“Suppose you asked him when the world would end?”
“He’d make a guess,” Compton said. “Oh, he’d certainly make a guess.”
“What a mind!” Hy Golden said. “What a mind!”
At the Brussels, still in the grip of Fenton Compton, Golden paid off the driver and then said to Compton, “I want to shake hands, Alan.”
“Why?”
“You know—the kind of things I have been thinking about you. I want to shake hands with you as a sort of tribute to your great-uncle who set up the foundation.”
“If you feel that way.”
They shook hands.
“Now we get Margie and remove her from danger,” Golden said.
“Maybe she’s not in danger.”
“We’ll see.”
“Wait a minute,” Compton said, laying a hand on Gold-en’s arm. “Just take it easy, Hy. Maybe Margie’s not in there. I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
“Your cousin Fenton said she was in there. I’m satisfied—she’s in there.”
“Well, my cousin Fenton is a remarkable man, but he’s also a sort of phony.”
“What do you mean, a sort of phony?”
“Anything you ask him, he’s got an answer for.”
“Because he knows—”
“No one knows that much.”
“He knows,” Golden said with the fervency of a disciple new to the sight of the master. “He knows.”
“In or out, mister,” the doorman said. “I can’t just hold the door open. Drafts and flies.”
They went in, Golden leading the way confidently. It was late in the lunch hour, and the tables had thinned out. They prowled all over the room, from table to table, but there was no Margie. As they stalked the tables, the headwaiter stalked them.
“Gentlemen?” the headwaiter asked.
Compton described Margie.
“Every day at least six like that. But today is a little warm for a mink coat.”
“She’s not here, so suppose we try Sardi’s,” Compton said.
“She’ll be here.”
“Because Fenton said so?”
“Right. She’ll be here. Anyway, I am hungry. You know, it is two hours past my regular lunch time.”
“Do you mean to tell me you can sit down there and eat a lunch, knowing that Margie may be in some kind of mortal danger?”
“All I know is that I got faith in your cousin Fenton Compton. He says Margie will eat lunch here. So here I stay.”
“If the gentlemen will check their coats,” the headwaiter said, “I am sure we can find a place for them.”
/> “And when this kid in the mink coat comes in, you will bring her straight to our table.”
“But of course.”
Compton ordered the Omelette Fines Herbes. Golden ordered Moules Marinière, Omelette au Blanc de Crabes, with Haricots de Lima, and mentioned Bananes au Rhum for dessert or perhaps Crème Brulée.
“You must be kidding,” Compton said.
“See, that’s what I mean. You connect everything up. Because I eat a reasonable lunch—”
“You call that a reasonable lunch?”
“I certainly do. And because I eat a reasonable lunch, your hostility immediately bubbles up. And what is your whole implication?”
“You tell me. What is my whole implication?”
“Your whole implication is that because I eat this kind of a lunch, I don’t care about Margie.”
“That’s my whole implication?”
“Absolutely. But just let me tell you this—I care a lot about Margie. A lot more than you would ever think—”
At that point the Moules Marinière arrived. Eventually they worked through to the dessert, and Golden settled for Crème Brulée. Compton took the Bananes au Rhum. But neither of them very much enjoyed their dessert. The clock informed them that it was past three, and Margie had not put in an appearance.
“Do you suppose he meant supper?” Golden finally asked.
“Who?”
“Fenton.”
“As far as I am concerned, my cousin Fenton is a bum. A creep. A lousy fink. Whose Diners’ Card does the lunch go on, mine or yours?”
“I’ll take it,” Golden said.
“I should hope so.”
While Golden was signing for the lunch, Compton got up and stalked out of the place. Golden finished as quickly as he could and then raced after Compton. He reached the street just in time to see Compton going into Sardi’s. By the time Golden got into the gloom of Sardi’s foyer, Compton was being informed by Albert that the young lady he sought had long since left.
“But how do you know it was Margie?”
“You said a black mink. Today is obviously not a day when the black minks come out in droves—no? We had two Lutetia, one emba, no darks. In this weather the darks do not come out, certainly not the blacks. This was black, like the one the Governor’s wife wears. You don’t see many like that.”
“She eats here?” Golden burst out.
“The Governor’s wife? Of course. Why not?”
“O.K., O.K. Thanks!” Compton snapped, and then he turned and just looked at Golden.
“Sure, blame it on me.”
“No. No, never. I wouldn’t blame you—not in ten thousand years. Why should I blame it on you?”
“It was your cousin Fenton—”
“You know, I never knew a big guy with brains. Never. That’s just the way nature does it—”
“You got brains, I suppose!”
“Please, please!” Albert said sternly. “Here nobody fights. In other places on the street—maybe. They get the Texas trade. Here we got a theatrical and television tradition. You want the little doll. She was with Mr. Macbain, and his office is across the street.”
“Who?” Hy Golden burst out.
“Mr. Gerald Macbain. His office is right across the street, and it is all odds that this little chick of yours is with him right this moment.”
CHAPTER 8
In which it is Margie alone against the field.
NOW THAT MARGIE had accepted the position and integrity of Gerald Macbain, she felt a glow of virtue. This “glow of virtue” feeling is more familiar to women than to men, for it rests upon the shaky proposition that in response to the love of a good woman a man will change himself, even though in this case love was only distantly in the offing, and Margie was simply beguiled by the openness and seeming helplessness of Macbain. Nevertheless, she persisted in seeing in Macbain the sinner reformed, the alcoholic made temperate, the wanderer made hearth-conscious.
The fact that the elevator starter nodded a greeting to Macbain made Margie feel even more secure. A man who operates this openly must be mostly honest, she told herself; and she had been long enough in the big city to accept the fact that even the most saintly of men dabbles now and then with a touch of larceny—if only to embroider a trifle on an income-tax statement.
They got into the express elevator for a zooming swoop to the twenty-second floor, where one whole end of the corridor was blocked by the expensive glass and chrome double doors of the Dravinian International Oil Co. However, the doors were locked, and as Macbain opened them with his key, he explained somewhat self-consciously that they had been forced to cut back on staff. He led Margie into the place. There was an excellent reception room, chrome, aluminum, virgin plastic, and two oversized non-objective paintings.
But no receptionist. Beyond this, a large room with six desks, unoccupied. In fact, the entire place was noticeably unoccupied.
“You certainly did cut back,” Margie said.
There were two large private offices. On the door of one it said, “General Cadium Alexander”; on the door of the other, “Gerald Macbain.” It occurred to Margie that Cadium was a name she had never come across before, but her curiosity was tempered with shock.
“I think I’d like to go,” she said. “The air is very stuffy here, isn’t it?”
“You mean because of the name of General Alexander there on the door?”
“The trouble is that when a girl trusts a man, she stops using her head. That’s what I notice most about my married friends, that they stop using their heads and depend on their husbands’ heads, and believe me, most of the time their husbands’ heads are absolutely no improvement.”
“The office has his name on it—true, but he hasn’t been there half a dozen times since this place was set up. Will you please trust me?”
“Will you let me call Mr. Potnik?”
“Of course.”
“And then the police?”
“I said I would.” He held the door to his office open. It was about eleven feet by eleven feet, modern desk, two modern chairs, files, vinyl flooring, indirect lighting, windows—it was just what an office of an international oil company should look like.
“Except I will pick up the phone and find there is no dial tone.”
“What on earth makes you say that, Margie?”
“I know because it’s par for the course,” Margie replied, moving gingerly into the room. “Then I run around from phone to phone. No dial tone. They are all cut off.”
“It may be a great joke to you, but for me it’s not quite that humorous. If this Montoso person is dead, I could be involved. If you were to charge Alexander and his bunch with kidnaping, then I become an accessory to the fact, don’t I? So you see, it’s no great bit of humor—”
“Then why did we come here?”
“Well, why not? These are my offices.”
“All of them. I can believe that, because I don’t see hide nor hair of anyone else except the name of that Alexander creep, and I suppose he’s just here for atmosphere?”
“This is the last place he’ll come, believe me. Why don’t you phone your boss?”
“I told you—no dial tone. Then I’ll be so nervous I won’t be able to talk.”
“For heaven’s sake, here,” Macbain declared, lifting the telephone and handing it to her. Margie lifted it to her ear. It had a definite and real dial tone, and a moment later she was calling the number of M.P. Creations.
Elsie May answered the phone and said.
“Who? Margie? I don’t believe it. I just don’t, but I can’t tell you how good it is to hear your voice, because the buyer from Dallas was nobody else but Joey Montoso, the Cleveland torpedo, and now he’s dead.”
“He is? You’re sure that he’s dead, Elsie?”
“Just as sure as I am sitting here and my name is Elsie May. I am going to give you to Mr. Potnik, because he is absolutely worried sick—”
“Who is dead?” Macbain demanded.<
br />
“Joey Montoso.”
“No, no—Mr. Potnik,” Elsie said. She didn’t buzz him, as she would have in the normal course of things. Margie heard her shouting, “Mr. Potnik, Mr. Potnik, I got Margie on the telephone!”
“How did he die?” Macbain demanded.
“I don’t know.” Margie told him. “I didn’t have a chance to ask her, but I told you before that I thought he was dead or something like it—”
“Who is dead?” Mr. Potnik’s voice pleaded. “Margie, darling, don’t get nervous. Don’t get excited. Everything is going to be all right, whatever those idiots say. I said to them, my Margie is an angel. An absolute angel. So just don’t talk to me about murders or thefts.”
“Thank you, Mr. Potnik,” Margie replied, her eyes suddenly wet.
“The last thing in the world these idiots know about is a decent human being,” Mr. Potnik said firmly.
“Thank you, thank you. You know, Mr. Potnik, the only other person in the world who has that kind of faith in me is my father. He’s a druggist—we still say that instead of pharmacist the way it is in New York, or like on Madison Avenue uptown they say chemist—but my father is just a simple, ordinary druggist, but he has such understanding, Mr. Potnik—”
“I know, Margie—I know. Believe me, a child like you is absolutely a reflection of the father. There is no doubt in my mind about that.”
“I want very much for you to meet him some day.”
“Of course. Naturally, Margie.”
“I mean, it will be a case of absolute mutual respect.”
“There is no doubt in my mind about that, Margie. But what I asked before is who is dead?”
“Joey Montoso.”
“Who is Joey Montoso?”
“The buyer from Dallas.”
“From Dallas, Texas?”
“Of course Texas, Mr. Potnik. Did you think they moved it?”
“Moved what, Margie?”
“Dallas.”
“Why should they move it?”
Macbain burst out, “Are you sure that Montoso is dead? Find out who killed him.”
“I know who killed him,” Margie replied impatiently. “Didn’t I see it with my own eyes? It was the chauffeur and those hoodlums in the pinstripe suits—”
