Дональд Уэстлейк - Castle in the Air

“Precisely what I was thinking,” said Sir Mortimer.

Backing away, Jean continued his friendly smile as he said, “Well, I must be off. Au revoir. You needn’t offer me a lift, I have friends quite close by—”

Sir Mortimer and Andrew moved after Jean, who backpedaled more rapidly. “Here!” said Sir Mortimer. “Stop a moment there!”

“Hold on, now,” Andrew said.

Abandoning smile and all other pretense, Jean turned and ran. Sir Mortimer and Andrew pelted after him.

Having fruitlessly crossed Ile St. Louis, Eustace and Bruddy and Lida were now looking fruitlessly riverward from the Pont St. Louis, the bridge between the two islands. “Nothing,” Eustace said bitterly, and turned to see Vito and Charles and Renee trotting in his direction. “Vito!” Eustace cried in astonishment. “What’s happened?”

Racing toward Eustace, while Charles and Renee exchanged a nonplussed glance in the background, Vito cried out, “Where’s Rosa? Where’s Angelo? Have you seen them?”

“ More Italian!” cried Eustace.

Meanwhile, seeing no point in fleeing, Charles and Renee had also approached, and Charles said, “What are all you people doing here?”

“And more French!” cried Eustace.

The multiplicity of languages apparently caused something to snap inside Lida, who abruptly shouted out in Spanish, “The people’s money has been stolen!”

Simultaneously, Bruddy, in his version of English, was asking, “Where’d you lot come from?”

And now, briefly, everyone spoke at once, in a variety of tongues, until Eustace screamed, “Stop!” They all stopped, startled by the scream, and Eustace told them, “I’ve had enough! I can’t stand it any more!” Panting, struggling to regain control of himself, he said, “All right. Now we’ll find out what’s happening.” To Vito, speaking slowly and carefully and loudly, with elaborate hand gestures, he said, “Where’s Rosa? Rosa!”

And Vito replied with terrific excitement, “Yes, yes, Rosa! She stole everything!”

Eustace waggled his hands, crying, “Wait, wait, wait! Go slowly.”

“You idiot,” Charles said, “can’t you understand? The Italians stole it all!”

To Charles, Eustace said, “Will you wait? I’m having trouble enough not understanding Italian, without having to not understand French. Do you mind?”

Lida said, “Perhaps I could try in Spanish.”

“We’re standing here,” Vito said, “having a tea party, and our money’s gone!”

To Vito, Eustace said, “Will you wait? ”

“French and Italian and Spanish are all very close,” Lida pointed out, “so perhaps I could—”

“Ah!” said Eustace, clutching at straws. “Try it! Ask Vito, uh... What do I want to ask him?”

Bruddy said, “Where the flippin’ Germans are.”

“Yes,” Eustace said. “Exactly. Where are the Germans?”

To Vito, in her South American Spanish, Lida said, “Where are the Germans?”

In some astonishment, Vito said, “Are you talking to me?”

“The people from Germany,” Lida said.

“That’s not Italian you’re talking,” Vito told her. “Even in Sicily that wouldn’t be Italian.”

Eustace said, “What’s he saying?”

Shaking her head, Lida said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

“If you people,” Charles said, “are deciding something, I want to know what it is.”

Pointing at Charles, Eustace said to Lida, “Try it on him.”

“All right.” Approaching Charles, Lida said in Spanish, “The Germans. They stole the people’s money.”

Appalled, Charles said, “Good God, what a noise.”

Renee said, “I think it’s Spanish.”

To Lida, hopefully, Eustace said, “What are they saying?”

“Something in French.”

“I know it’s in French!”

Becoming more excitable again, now that no one was talking to him, Vito cried, “We must do something! Stop all the talk and do something!”

Renee said to Charles, “They’re deciding something behind our backs.”

Glowering at everybody, Bruddy said, “I’d like to take up a stick and just start laying about me.”

Vito then started yelling at Eustace while Charles started talking tough in the general direction of Bruddy. Eustace and Bruddy replied in kind, while Renee shouted alternatively at Charles and Bruddy. Lida appealed to everyone in a combination of Spanish and English. A general ruckus developed, in which all six shouted and nobody listened, and none of the six noticed the flat-bottom boat piled high with building blocks as it eased slowly around the end of lie St. Louis and moved underneath the bridge on which they pranced and danced, heading now north toward the Right Bank.

It was Lida who first saw the boat, with its two cheerfully oblivious occupants, moving away northward from the bridge, but it was quite some time before she could attract the attention of all the other screaming combatants. She caught Renee’s eye first, then she and Renee captured Eustace and forced him to look at the departing boat, and at last the other three gave off insults and imprecations, and a great silence settled on them all as they watched the boat glide on.

It was Eustace who broke the silence, with sudden efficient determination, saying, “Right. We’ve got it now. We’ll follow them. Bruddy, you take the Frenchmen and go along the Right Bank. I’ll—”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Bruddy said. “We don’t split up, not any more.”

Impatient, Eustace said, “You can trust me , Bruddy, I’m the one who organized this scheme. We have to split up. What if we all stay on the island, and they off-load the lolly on the Right Bank?”

“We’ll hurry over,” Bruddy said. “All together-like.”

“And we’ll be too late,” Eustace pointed out. “They’ll slip through our fingers.”

As Bruddy thought that over, frowning, Renee said quietly to Charles, “Can we at all get away from these people?”

“Not yet. We’ll need them to help with the Italians. Later, though.”

“All right,” Bruddy finally decided. “We split up, for the nonce. But you try a fast one, my lad, and you’ll be ever so sorry.”

“I’ve been sorry most of the day,” Eustace told him.

Dejected and footsore, Andrew and Sir Mortimer returned to the London taxi, having failed miserably in their attempt to overtake the fleet-footed Jean. “I must say,” Andrew commented, limping, “I’m not the runner I used to be.”

“I never was,” Sir Mortimer said, grumpily. “I have always despised athletics.”

They reached the cab, and as Andrew’s hand touched the door handle three caped gendarmes were suddenly among them; all around them, in fact; surrounding them, in fact. Andrew and Sir Mortimer, startled out of their funk, gaped at the gendarmes. “Yes?” said Sir Mortimer. “May I assist you?”

One of the gendarmes, at least, spoke English. “This is,” he asked, “your autocar?”

Irritable, Sir Mortimer said, “Yes, of course it is. Just give us the ticket and we’ll move on.”

“Ticket?” With a sad smile, the gendarme shook his head. “We do not talk about a ticket,” he said. “This, as it happens, is a thieved autocar.”

Sir Mortimer and Andrew looked blankly at one another. Then they looked blankly at the London taxicab. Then they looked blankly at the gendarmes.

“No,” said Andrew, “I’m afraid not. I couldn’t run another step.”

Forcefully Sir Mortimer told the gendarmes, “There is an explanation.”

With sudden wild hope, Sir Andrew looked at his confederate: “There is?”

Politely the gendarmes waited. Slowly the stern expression on Sir Mortimer’s face crumbled into despair. “But I’ll be blowed,” he said at last, “if I can find one.”