Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

He was a handsome gorilla in a Brooks Brothers suit, but a gorilla just the same. There’s something about the breed that you can’t miss. They smell all right, and they look all right, and there’s nothing you can isolate ordinarily as a unique physical characteristic that identifies one of them definitely as a gorilla rather than as a broker or a rich plumber, but they seem to have a chronic quality of deadliness that a broker or a plumber would have only infrequently, in special circumstances, if ever. This one was standing in the doorway watching me, and he had got there without a sound. He smiled. He was plainly prepared to treat me with all the courtesy I was prepared to make possible.

“Mr. Hand?” he said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“I have a message from Mr. Silas Lawler. He would appreciate it very much if you could come to see him as soon as possible.”

“I just went to see him yesterday.”

“Mr. Lawler knows that. He regrets that he must inconvenience you again so soon. Apparently something important has come up.”

“Something else important came up first. I was just getting ready to go out and take care of it.”

“Mr. Lawler is certain that you’ll prefer to give his business priority.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what to do. You go back to Mr. Lawler and tell him I’ll be around this evening or first thing tomorrow.”

“Mr. Lawler is most urgent that you come immediately. I have instructions to drive you there and bring you back. For your convenience, of course.”

“Of course. Mr. Lawler is notoriously considerate. Suppose I don’t want to go.”

“Mr. Lawler hopes you will want to accommodate him.”

“Let’s suppose I refuse.”

“Mr. Lawler didn’t anticipate that contingency, I’m afraid. He said to bring you.”

“Even if I resist?”

“As I understood my orders, Mr. Lawler made no qualifications.”

“Do you think you’re man enough to execute them without qualifications?”

“I think so.”

“In that case,” I said, “we’d better go.”

I got my hat and put it over the place where the lumps would have been if I hadn’t. Together, like cronies, we went downstairs and got into his car, which was a Caddy, and drove in it to Silas Lawler’s restaurant plus. In the hall outside Silas Lawler’s private room, we stood and listened to the piano, which was being played. What was being played on it this time was not something by Chopin, and I couldn’t identify who it was by certainly, but I thought it was probably Mozart. The music was airy and intricate. It sounded as if it had been written by a man who felt very good and wanted everyone else to feel as good as he did.

“Mr. Lawler doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s playing,” the Brooks Brothers gorilla said.

“You can’t be too careful with artists,” I said. “They’re touchy.”

“Mr. Lawler’s a virtuoso,” he said.

He didn’t even blink when he said it. It was obviously a word he was used to and not something special for effect. I wondered if they were granting degrees to gorillas these days, but I didn’t think it would be wise to ask. There wouldn’t have been time for an answer, anyhow, for the virtuoso stopped playing the music by Mozart, or at least not Chopin, and the gorilla knocked twice on the door and opened it, and I walked into the room ahead of him.

Silas Lawler got off the bench and walked around the curve of the grand and stopped in the spot where the canary usually perches in nightclubs. He didn’t perch, however. He merely leaned. From the same chair in which she had sat yesterday, Robin Robbins looked across at me with a poker face, and I could see at once, in spite of shadows and cosmetics, that somebody had hung one on her. A plum-colored bruise spread down from her left eye across the bone of her cheek. There was still some swelling of the flesh too, although it had certainly been reduced from what it surely had been. She looked rather cute, to tell the truth. The shiner somehow made her look like the kid she said she never was.

“How are you, Hand?” Lawler said. “It was kind of you to come.”

“Your messenger was persuasive,” I said. “I couldn’t resist him.”

“Darcy, you mean. I can always depend on Darcy to do a job like a gentleman. He dislikes violence almost as much as I do. I’m sure you didn’t find him abusive.”

“Not at all. I’ve never been threatened half so courteously before.” I turned my head and looked down at Robin Robbins. “Apparently you weren’t so lucky, honey. You must have run into an interior gorilla somewhere.”

“I fell over my lip,” she said.

Lawler laughed, and I could have sworn that there was a note of tenderness in it. “Robin’s impetuous. She’s always doing something she later regrets, and I’m always prepared to forgive her eventually, although I sometimes lose my temper in the meanwhile. Isn’t that so, Robin?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “We love each other in spite of everything.”

“I won’t deny that Robin’s been punished,” Lawler said, “but I’m afraid I must charge you with being partially responsible, Hand. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for taking advantage of her innocence.”

“I am,” I said, “I truly am.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think we need to be too critical. Robin, I realize, is even harder to resist than Darcy. For different reasons, of course. She’s told me what the two of you talked about yesterday after leaving here together, and she understands now how foolish she was. Don’t you, Robin?”

“Sure,” she said. “I was foolish.”

“She wants me to ask you to forget all about it, don’t you, Robin?”

Sure,” she said. “Forget it.”

“You see?” Lawler shrugged and shifted his weight against the piano. “Robin and I are really very compatible. We are never able to keep secrets from one another for very long.”

“That’s sweet,” I said. “I’m touched.”

He was looking directly at Robin for the first time now. “Wouldn’t you like to apologize to Mr. Hand for causing him so much trouble, Robin?”

“I apologize, Mr. Hand, from the bottom of my heart,” she said.

“I liked it better when you told me to go to hell,” I said.

Lawler stood erect and stopped looking at Robin in order to look at me. “That wasn’t a very gracious response, Hand. However, let it pass. I also want to apologize to you.”

“What for?”

“I’m afraid I was a little unreasonable yesterday. I understand now that you were hired to investigate the matter we discussed, and you’re naturally concerned about your fee. I have no right to ask you to sacrifice that, of course. What do you think it will amount to?”

“That depends on how long the job lasts. I get twenty-five dollars a day and expenses.”

“Very reasonable. I’ll pay you five thousand dollars to drop the case. That should be adequate.”

“Bribery?”

“Don’t be offensive. Compensation for the loss of your fee.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Really? I figure that it comes to two-hundred days’ work. What do you think would be fair?”

“Make it a million, and I’ll take it.”

“Your joke isn’t very funny, Hand. It’s bad taste to joke about a serious matter.”

“I’m not joking. You see, I’ve got to be compensated for more than the loss of a fee. I’ve got to be compensated for the loss of my integrity, such as it is. I don’t figure a million’s too much for that.”

“Nonsense. You’re wasting your time, anyhow. I assured you of that. Is it ethical to go on accepting a fee under false pretenses?”

“I explained to my client that it might not come to anything. Probably wouldn’t, as a matter of fact. We’re both satisfied.”