Оливер Блик - The Highbinders

Somebody gasped and then there was a silence. It lasted for five seconds or so while their brains worked, while they figured it all out, while they realized fully what had happened, and who should be blamed.

Then the Nitry brothers, acting in concert without previous consultation, sprang at old Doctor Christenberry and started beating hell out of him.

“You old son of a bitch!” Ned Nitry screamed. “You said it was real! You said it was the goods!” The old man sank to the floor and Norbert Nitry was aiming a kick at his stomach when I pushed him away.

“Leave him alone,” I said. “He was bought the way you’d buy a watch. What did you expect? You were talking in millions and he was getting what, a few hundred pounds?”

“It’s a fake,”Norbert Nitry said, turning from the old man. “It’s a goddamned fake.” He looked at me. “You could have switched it,” he said. “He could’ve switched it, couldn’t he, Eddie?” He turned to look for Eddie Apex, but Eddie wasn’t there.

“Where’s Eddie?” Ned Nitry demanded. “Where’d Eddie go?”

“He slipped out, sir,” old Tom said. “Just before Mr. St. Ives broke the sword. Miss Ceil went after him.”

“Get me a drink, Tom,” Ned Nitry said. “Whisky. A large one.”

“Make it two, Tom, if you don’t mind,” I said.

With the drink in his hand, Ned Nitry stood in the middle of the room, glaring around, as if trying to decide whom he was going to beat up on next. Finally, he went over to the fireplace and picked up a bit of the smashed glass that had been posing as a diamond.

He looked at it for a moment and then tossed it into the fireplace. I was still holding the sword and wordlessly he stretched out his hand for it. I handed it to him, hilt first. He knelt down and hammered a pea-sized ruby that was stuck into the end of the crosspiece onto the slate. The ruby broke; shattered, really, just like the diamond that had turned out to be glass.

He looked at the sword and shook his head. Then he looked at me. “All faked?” he said.

“All.”

Ned Nitry shook his head again, looked around for someplace to put the sword, and then put it in the stand that held the fire tongs and the poker. He put it there idly, as if he never expected to see it again. He walked over to the window where old Doctor Christenberry still knelt on the rug, his head bowed. The old man was making an odd sound and I decided that he was crying again, or trying to, and couldn’t quite remember how.

“Who put you up to it, dad?” Ned Nitry said. “Who bought you?”

The old man raised his head. A couple of tears had made tracks down his face where he had forgotten to wash. “I don’t know,” he said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“It was just a voice. A voice over the telephone.”

“A man’s voice?”

“Yes, a man’s voice.”

“What kind of accent, English, American, or what?”

“There was no accent.”

“He had to have one or the other.”

“I couldn’t tell. I tried to, but I couldn’t.”

“I couldn’t either,” I said. “It was probably the same guy who called me. I couldn’t tell what he was and I tried.”

“How much did he pay you, dad?” Ned Nitry said. “How much did he pay you to lie to us?”

“A thousand pounds. He sent it round by taxi in an envelope.”

Ned Nitry turned to old Tom. “Get him out of here, Tom.”

While Tom was ushering the old man out, Ned Nitry turned to me. “How did you know, goddamnit? How did you know it was faked?”

“I didn’t know for sure,” I said. “I only suspected because I knew somebody who could have done it. In fact, he probably did.”

Ned Nitry got interested. “Who? Who did the fake?”

“A man called Curnutt, but it doesn’t matter now. He’s dead. He was murdered.”

“I read about him,” Bert Nitry said. “He was a locksmith, wasn’t he?”

“Among other things.”

“If you knew it was faked, why didn’t you tell us?” Bert said. “Why’d you pay out all that good money, if you knew it was a fake?”

“I didn’t know. I only suspected. I didn’t really know until I banged it down on the slate. If it had been a real diamond, I’d have looked like a fool, but that’s all. The slate wouldn’t have hurt the diamond. And as I said, I’d’ve looked a little like a fool, but not as much like a fool as you would, if you tried to sell it. I figured that there was a fifty-fifty chance that it would be the real thing. The thieves wouldn’t deal with an expert — and besides, the only one you had could be bought. So I spent your money. I don’t think I made a mistake. I think I gambled and I lost.”

“With our money,” Ned Nitry said.

“That’s right. With your money. So I still have sort of an obligation.”

“To do what?” Ned Nitry said.

“To get your sword back. Or rather Styles’s sword. You’d like all that lovely money, wouldn’t you, Robin?”

“You know damned well I would.”

“Good,” I said. “Then you can come along and help.”

I had a hard time breaking away from the Nitry brothers because they kept asking me questions for which I had only guesses as answers. Guesses or lies. So I kept telling them I didn’t know and that they should ask Eddie and no, I didn’t know where Eddie had gone off to sudden like that.

When we finally escaped from the Nitry mansion, Robin Styles and I caught a taxi. I told the driver to take us to the Avis car rental garage off Park Lane.

“What do you need a car for?” Styles said.

“To carry the sword in,” I said.

He didn’t seem too impressed with what I rented, a Volkswagen, but I had decided that what I needed was anonymous reliability rather than flash and speed. After I signed for the car, I told Robin Styles, “You drive.”

He got behind the wheel, checked the brakes, fiddled with the seat adjustment, tested the clutch a couple of times, seemed to check what gauges there were, and we were off. He drove very well, but then he did everything very well, except gamble.

“Where do you want to go?” he said.

“A hardware store,” I said.

“A what?”

I had to think a moment to make the translation. “An ironmonger.”

He knew of one on Edgware Road so we went there to make my purchases. I bought the largest screwdriver the shop had, a small handsaw, a pair of long-nosed pliers, and a monkey wrench, a request which had the shop assistant puzzled and me resorting to gestures until I remembered the English translation and asked for a spanner. It wasn’t all that bad though. I once had spent an entire afternoon trying to find a bottle of rubber cement. I never did find any, nor did I ever learn what the English call it. Elastic gum paste perhaps.

I also bought a cloth bag to carry my new tools in and when we got back to the Volkswagen, I tossed it into the rear seat. “I’m going to walk back to the hotel,” I said to Styles. “I’d like you to stay out of sight for the rest of the day. Go take a drive in the country. Find a girl. But stay away from your usual spots. Why don’t you just consider yourself as being temporarily in my employ for the next twenty-four hours or so, if you can stand it. Working, I mean.”

“It will take some adjustment,” Styles said.

“Well, here’s fifty pounds to help it along. For expenses. I don’t expect an itemized accounting. When you get your three-million-pound sword back, you can buy me a small castle someplace. Maybe in the Cotswolds.”

Styles took the fifty pounds and put them into his wallet. He looked at me, then at the bag of tools in back of the VW, and then back at me. “When do we do it?”