Оливер Блик - The Highbinders

“Where can I find him?”

“During the day he moves around a lot. After ten or eleven at night you can always find him at Shields.”

“What’s Shields?”

“One of our newer gambling hells. It’s on Curzon. All the cabbies know it.”

“Can I get in?”

Apex nodded. “I’ll fix it.”

“If you’re satisfied after talking to our client, Mr. Styles, does that mean you’re in?” Uncle Norbert asked.

“I’m in,” I said.

“Not too rich for you, eh?”

“As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be helping to restore a national treasure to France. What you do with your money is your concern. I’ll pay taxes on mine.”

“Well, that’s wonderful. Isn’t that wonderful, Ned?”

“Wonderful,” Ned Nitry said.

“I might need that hundred thousand ransom in a hurry,” I said.

“We’ve got it,” Uncle Norbert said.

“Have you got any pictures of the sword?”

Ned Nitry reached into a jacket pocket and handed me an envelope. I took out several color prints that had been taken with a Polaroid. One of them showed Eddie Apex holding the sword out as if he were about to lead the next charge on the Saracens. The others were close-ups of the sword, or at least as close up as the Polaroid could get and still focus. I could see the big diamond in the pommel and the Nitry brothers were right. It was as big as an egg laid by a healthy hen. It didn’t look like a diamond to me, but then I’m not too familiar with what rough diamonds look like.

“How do I identify the thing?” I said.

“Identify it?” Uncle Norbert said. He looked puzzled.

“That’s right. These pictures are okay, but suppose the thieves found themselves an old swordsmith around who could run them up a fake.”

“Not likely,” Ned Nitry said.

“I like to be sure.”

The Nitry brothers looked at each other. Then Uncle Norbert got up and came around the table to where I sat. He pointed to the photo that was the best one of the hilt and pommel. “You see right here?” he said, pointing to the hilt just below the pommel.

“Yes.”

“Well, get yourself a little magnifying glass. And use it to look right there. You’ll see a tiny NN scratched into the gold. But get the glass because you can’t see it with the naked eye.”

“That sounds as if you’d been expecting something.”

Norbert shook his head. “No, lad. It’s just habit. We always put our initials on the paintings that we substitute for the real ones so we won’t have a mix-up. They just look like scratches on the frames.”

I looked at my watch again. It was nearly two-thirty. “Well, I suppose I’d better go back and get to work.”

“Doing what?” Uncle Norbert asked.

“Waiting for the phone to ring.”

“What if the thieves call before you’ve seen Styles?”

“I’ll stall them until after I talk to him.”

“We don’t want any slips,” Ned Nitry said.

“There won’t be any.”

“I’ll have Tom run you back,” Apex said.

I shook my head. “I’d rather walk.” I rose. “By the way, Eddie. Where do you fit into the family business?”

He smiled. “I’m the customers man. We go after much of our business, you know. My job is to make ever so discreet calls on the stately homes of England. You’d be surprised at how many fake old masters are hanging on those stately walls. Shocking, really.”

“Eddie’s a wonderful salesman,” his wife said.

“That’s because he probably believes in what he’s dealing in,” I said.

“I deal in what I’ve always dealt in.”

“Greed?” I said.

“That’s right,” he said. “Greed.”

Back at the Hilton I made three phone calls, set up two appointments for later that afternoon, and then called down and asked room service to send up some hot chocolate.

While I waited I went over to the window and gazed out at Hyde Park. It looked green and inviting in the May sunshine as did the rest of what I could see of the city from my tenth-story room and I wondered why I had never grown fond of London. I decided that it may have been the language. If they had spoken something incomprehensible such as Bulgarian, I probably would have found it to be all very quaint and charming. But because they spoke English, they should know better, and what would have been quaint in Sofia was only inconvenient in London.

There was a knock at the door and when I opened it, it wasn’t the waiter with the chocolate, it was a man of about thirty-five dressed in a dark brown suit with blue shirt, striped tie, brown shoes, and cop written right across his thin, still face.

“Mr. St. Ives?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“My name’s Deskins.”

He was about to say something else, but I said, “Not Deskins of Scotland Yard?”

Something started across his face, surprise perhaps, but he caught it and brought it back before it got too far. “It shows, does it?”

“A little. Come in.”

He came in and looked around the way that all cops look around in hotel rooms, as if they knew that they could get the goods on you if they could just take a peek under the bed. After that he seemed to make a mental estimate of how much the room cost and then glanced at me as if trying to decide whether I could afford it.

“Would you like to see some identification?” he said.

“No.”

“I watch some of the Yank programs on the telly. ‘The FBI.’ I watch that sometimes. They’re always whipping out their identification.”

“It’s a rule they have,” I said.

There was another knock on the door. Deskins almost looked pleased. “Expecting someone?”

“That’s right.” I opened the door and the waiter wheeled in the hot chocolate in a silver pot that looked as though it held enough for four. Next to it was a plate of those cute little sandwiches with all of the crust sliced off.

“I didn’t order the sandwiches,” I said.

“No charge, sir. Compliments of the house.”

“Thank the house for me,” I said and signed the bill, adding enough tip to produce what sounded like a sincere thank you very much, sir, from the waiter.

“Like a cup?” I said to Deskins.

“Tea?”

“Hot chocolate.”

“Is it now? I haven’t had a cup of chocolate in years.”

“Neither have I.”

I poured two cups and handed him one. “Have a sandwich,” I said, prying up the bread on one to make sure it wasn’t tomato. It was ham. Deskins shrugged, picked up one, and took a bite of it. I hoped he had got the tomato. “Missed my lunch,” he said.

I took another sandwich, sat down in a chair, and waited. Deskins also took another one and sat down on the bed.

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re off the booze, Mr. St. Ives.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Strange thing, coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was just pulling up to the Magistrates’ Court this morning on Marylebone when you came out and hopped into that gray Rolls.”

“That’s pretty strange, all right.”

“So I said to myself, what would an American gentleman be doing coming out of Magistrates’ Court at ten in the morning and hopping into Eddie Apex’s Rolls?”

“How’d you know I was an American gentleman?”

“It shows.”

“I suppose it does.”

“So I went in and found out who you were and where you were staying and why you’d been in court. Drunk, you were, they said.”

“That’s what they said.”

“You don’t look like a boozer.”

“We come in all shapes.”

“Well, I’m a bit interested in Eddie Apex and his friends. Have been for years. So I called a colleague of mine in New York.”