Оливер Блик - The Highbinders

“How did they know it was the same sword?” I said.

“The blade was the finest steel that ever came out of Bordeaux,” Uncle Norbert said. “There and Milan and Passau, and Cologne and Augsburg. That’s where your good steel came from then. It was engraved with Latin, too, Cristus Vincit, Cristus Reinat, Cristus Inperat. That was the war cry of the Third Crusade. That was engraved on one side. On the other side was engraving in Arabic to show that it belonged to the Alexandria arsenal.”

“You seem to have its history down cold,” I said.

“That I do, lad. It’s our business to. Well, there was a Frenchman in Moscow who somehow either recognized the sword for what it was or just took a liking to it. At least they say he was a Frenchman. It was there in a church and he stole it and headed back for Paris. He got as far as Cologne where he was murdered and nothing more was heard of the Sword of St. Louis until it turned up in a shop on Shaftesbury Avenue where it went for twelve and six to our client’s old dad. In 1939, that was.”

Luisa, the Portuguese maid, came in and said something that sounded like, “Luncheon is served, sir.”

“Well, let’s have at it before it gets cold,” Ned Nitry said. “Bert can go on with it while we eat.”

We started filing out of the red room and down the hall and into a formal dining room filled with heavy furniture that seemed to be just as Victorian as everything in the house. But before we left the red room I went over and took a good look at the painting that hung above the mantel. It was the portrait of a man with a Van Dyke beard who was dressed in the style of the late 1890s.

Ned Nitry waited for me. “Caught your eye, did it?”

“It’s an Eakins or I’ll eat it,” I said.

“You’ll eat it then, lad. Not too many Eakins in England, you know. That’s a copy.”

“If it’s a copy, I’ll eat it.”

Ned Nitry smiled at me. “You’ve got a fair eye, don’t you?”

“I had to handle an Eakins once,” I said.

“You mean be a go-between to get one back?”

“That’s right.”

“How much did they want? The thieves, I mean.” He seemed interested.

“Not enough really. Only fifty thousand dollars.”

Ned Nitry nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Not near enough.”

Lunch was grilled lamb chops with too much fat on them; Brussels sprouts, which I hate; something that resembled paella, which I took to be the Portuguese contribution; thin red wine, and more of the tale of the Sword of St. Louis from Uncle Norbert who told it with his mouth full most of the time.

“Now, you might well ask how did the sword get from Cologne to a shop on Shaftesbury. And that we don’t know. It may be that a member of the BEF brought it back in eighteen or nineteen, but we don’t know that, do we?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t suppose we do.”

“Well, the old dad of our client collected the odd sword now and again, but mostly sword canes and rapiers and épées and that lot. And before he could do more than clean up the Sword of St. Louis a bit he went off to war and got himself killed later at Tobruk. In Africa. So for nearly thirty years the Sword of St. Louis just lay about collecting dust. Well, our client was only two or three when his dad got himself killed and he didn’t pay much attention to the sword collection until he came down from Oxford in sixty-one. Then he got a little interested and started collecting a few of his own, but it wasn’t until about three months ago that he paid much attention to the Sword of St. Louis.”

“He was a bit hard up, he was,” Ned Nitry said.

“That’s right,” his brother said. “He’s a gambling man, sad to say, and he owed a little money and he thought that maybe the old sword might be worth a bob or two. Well, it was a mess, from what I understand. The blade was all black with scale, but it wasn’t rusted because the scale somehow had helped preserve it. The crosspiece, the hilt, and the pommel were all black with scale or paint or both. Well, he worked on it careful-like, mostly on the blade until he got that in damn fine shape. Then he started in on the hilt and crosspiece. Well, the hilt turned out to be gold. Solid gold. And as you know, gold won’t rust. The crosspiece was steel, of course, but stuck into each end were two round red stones about the size of peas. Rubies, they are, real rubies.”

“They should be worth something, even if he couldn’t prove it was a Sword of St. Louis,” I said.

“Worth a bit,” Uncle Norbert said. “Worth a bit. But finally, our lad got to the pommel. You know what the pommel is?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s that piece at the end of the hilt that keeps your hand from slipping off. Well, like I said, it was about the size of a big Brazil nut or a small egg and it was painted black. So he starts cleaning that off, working careful-like again, you know, and underneath the dirt and paint and enamel and God knows what all, what do you think he found?”

“I don’t know.”

“Rock crystal. The pommel was made out of rock crystal. Some of them were back then. Not many, but some. But then he takes another look and it’s not rock crystal at all-Uncle Norbert paused in his story and looked around, smiling because apparently he enjoyed the way he had told it.

“All right,” I said, “if it wasn’t rock crystal, what was it?”

He leaned across the table toward me, his mouth full of lamb. “A diamond as big as an egg, that’s what it was. A perfect, uncut diamond as big as an egg and weighing 146.34 metric carats, that’s what it was that Louis had stuck on the end of his hilt and what do you think of that, Mr. St. Ives?”

“I think Eddie’s right,” I said. “I think it would be a real bargain at three million pounds.”

The Portuguese maid served the sweet, which turned out to be some kind of yellow pudding with dark things stuck in it. Raisins, probably. I chose to pass. The rest of them ate theirs and seemed to like it. When Ceil Apex asked if I would like coffee, I declined. There are some things that it is better not to risk in England.

After dessert they seemed to be waiting for me to say something so I said, “Why me?”

“Why you as go-between?” Ned Nitry said.

“That’s right.”

“That’s a fair question.”

“I’ve got a few more.”

“I’d think so. Well, to be plain about it, Mr. St. Ives, you weren’t our first choice. Eddie here was.”

“They wouldn’t go for it, though,” Apex said.

“The thieves?”

“That’s right,” Apex said. “They seemed to be all too familiar with my past exploits.”

“So we drew up a short list,” Ned Nitry said, “and read it to ’em over the phone. After a couple of hours they called back and said you’d do.”

“How’d you know I was into the go-between thing, Eddie?”

He smiled. “I’d heard it around.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” I said.

“Okay. Remember that pearl necklace you handled a couple of years ago back in Chicago?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that was a friend of mine, I suppose you could say. Or at least an acquaintance. He worked the states for a couple of years. When the insurance company called you in on the pearls, he was a little suspicious, so he checked you out. You’ve got an impressive reputation, my friend thinks. So when the thieves asked us about you, Ned told them to talk to this friend of mine. He must have given you a glowing report. He also told me that we should get in touch with you through your Mr. Greene, so I did.”

“All right,” I said. “When was it stolen?”

“Five days ago,” Uncle Bert said.

“From where?”