Duncan Kyle - The King's Commisar

'Horace.'

'Er, yes.' Malory stopped burbling.

'We're talking about fifty thousand pounds a year, right? For sixty years, right? Horace, how long were you Senior Partner?'

'Thirty years, or so, I think. Yes, thirty-two.'

'You never questioned a sum like that - never?"

'Not me, no.'

A tap on the door heralded Mrs Frobisher, accompanied by a member of the security staff carrying an old, oaken, brass-bound box.

'M'key's on my watch-chain,' Malory said. 'The other's in your safe, I do believe.'

They fumbled with the keys, finally lifting the lid. 'It's like Captain Kidd's treasure's in this thing,' Pilgrim said. 'Why the melodramatics? What's wrong with a security file in a strong safe? No, don't say it - it's traditional.'

'There'll be a number on the paper,' said Malory.

Pilgrim looked. 'Twenty-eight.'

'Ah. Just a moment. Yes, here we are.' He extracted an envelope, glanced at it. 'Addressed to the Senior Partner. That's you now, old chap.'

Pilgrim took a stainless steel paper-knife from his desk, slit the envelope and removed a sheet of paper. He read it, then laughed sharply.

'Humorous, is it,' Malory said. 'That's unusual.'

'Don't know about that. It sure is melodramatic' Pilgrim handed him the paper. Malory took his half-lens spectacles from the top pocket of his jacket. 'Well, now, let me see.' He read the note and handed it back. 'Clear enough, I should have thought.' He removed his spectacles.

'Clear?' Pilgrim looked at Malory as though he might be mad. 'Let's have it again -'

He read aloud: '"At no time must this payment be missed. Nor is it to be questioned at any time, for any reason. Whatever the future circumstances of the bank, the payment must have priority. Failure to follow this instruction would have extremely severe consequences." Initialled with two Zs,' said Pilgrim, 'and undated. Who was that with the Zs?'

'Sir Basil,' said Malory.

'Who?'

'Zaharoff.'

Pilgrim's fingers drummed for a moment on the red leather of his blotter. 'Look, Horace, I've heard of him. Sure I have. I know he was important and able and tricky and mysterious and all that, but hell - he's been dead fifty years!'

'Forty-four,' Malory corrected. 'The twenty-seventh of November, nineteen-thirty-six. And do you know, Laurence, sometimes I still find it rather hard to believe. His soul, such as it was, goes marching on.'

'Sure does, and damned costly it is! Horace, why did he leave that instruction?'

Malory shrugged. He looked benign and unconcerned. There must have been a good reason. A very good reason.'

'And we -' Pilgrim's exasperation was mounting-'aren't even allowed to know about it. Not permitted to

- look what it says: "Nor is it to be questioned at any time, for any reason." Horace, it makes no sense at all! Even you must-'

"Evenme?' Malory enquired with soft malevolence.

Pilgrim at once raised an apologetic hand. 'I'm sorry, Horace. You worked for the guy, I know that. But it's the hell of a legacy, you'll allow, to commit your heirs and successors to payments like this without any explanation at all?

Malory had strolled to the window and was looking out towards the dome of St Paul's. After a moment he said, 'I suppose I can appreciate your feelings. But then you didn't know him.'

'He died six years before I was even born!'

'Quite. But I did, you see. And he was a most remarkable man. Oh, most remarkable. He was gifted with extraordinary foresight, you know, among many other things. Almost never wrong.' He turned. 'I tell you, Laurence, even now it would never cross my mind to countermand one of his instructions.'

Pilgrim was staring at Malory in clear puzzlement. 'Not after forty-four years!'

'No.'

'I'm sorry, Horace, but it certainly does occur to me.'

'So I see.' Malory pursed his lips. 'I can only advise against it. That's my role now, is it not, to advise? Well, I would suggest this sleeping dog be allowed to lie.'

But Pilgrim had the bone between his teeth. Everything in him : the poverty of his youth, the summa cum laude from the Harvard Business School, the years on Wall Street, dictated that no sum of this magnitude, indeed of any magnitude, or for that matter any sum at all, should be paid over to anyone without explanation. Not on anybody's say-so, and certainly not on the instructions of some long-dead mystery man.

'I'm sorry, Horace, but that way I can't work. We have to find out something.'

'I remind you,' Malory said with the utmost seriousness, 'of Sir Basil's instruction. '

'And I hear you. But the decision has to be mine, now.' Pilgrim paused. 'Look, Horace, I'll meet you half way. We'll keep it close and quiet, right?' He pressed the intercom button. 'Get Graves in here, will you, please.'

With a sigh, Malory sank into a chair. They waited in .silence for a few moments. A tap came on the door, and Jacques Graves entered.

'Just once more,' Malory said. 'Don't.'

Pilgrim ignored him. 'Sit down, Jacques. We have a little problem here.'

Graves sat obediently. He was a man of a little over forty, dark-haired, lightly-tanned, and he moved with easy, athletic grace. He had fluent command of several languages, and a wide understanding of finance and of people. Pilgrim, introducing him into Hillyard, Cleef, had described him as 'a high-grade troubleshooter'. Graves came originally from New Orleans French stock, but he was, in another of Pilgrim's phrases, 'International Man'.

He nodded to Malory. 'Sir Horace.' Even the accent was neutral.

'We have a payment situation here,' Pilgrim said, 'which makes no sense, at least to me. For sixty years Hillyard, Cleef has been paying fifty thousand pounds a year to a bank in Switzerland. There is no explanation. All there is-well, we have a kind of hereditary note to the Senior Partner that the payment must continue. Further, Jacques, it must not be queried.'

'Ouch,' said Jacques Graves.

'Ouch is right. Now, the instruction was given by Sir Basil Zaharoff one hell of a long time back - he died in 1936. Sir Horace has continued to, well, to honour that instruction. That was his privilege. I feel now, though, that maybe the time has come to ask a few discreet questions.'

'Three million paid,' Graves said.

'Right. So what we'll do is this. You're going to Switzerland, Jacques, first available plane. And what you do there is you go to the bank in question, the Ziirichsbank, and you ask them, very discreetly, whose account this goddam money goes into. Maybe they won't tell you, we all know it's against Swiss law to let these things out. But you do your best, Jacques. Understand?'

'Yes.'

'Your best best.'

'Sure.'

'But don't stir up any mud. I mean it. The word here is discretion. If the bank won't play, maybe there's some guy works there likes champagne or girls or motor-cars.'

'I'll be there in the morning. First thing,' Graves said.

When he'd gone, Malory tried once more. 'I really do wish you wouldn't.'

'Sure,' said Pilgrim, I appreciate that. But -' he shrugged - 'different people take different views. You coming in to lunch?'

Malory took the gold hunter from his waistcoat pocket. 'I think perhaps not. There's a man I must see at my club.'

In fact he ate alone, chewing lengthily at some overroasted saddle of mutton, and afterward sat for an hour with a half-bottle of claret. He was filled with foreboding. Jacques Graves took the afternoon plane. That night he stayed at The Palace Hotel in Zurich. The following morning at ten o'clock he telephoned the Ziirichsbank and spoke first to a telephonist, and then briefly to a Mr Kleiber. He introduced himself as a representative of Hillyard, Cleef, and arranged an appointment with Kleiber for eleven-thirty. By eleven-forty his conversation with Kleiber was ended, and he was waiting, in a room with a locked door, for 'something we have for you'. Kleiber had been unforthcoming. Graves's first sight of him had not been encouraging: Kleiber was in his thirties, fair hair cut en brosse, a man of medium height whose forehead, above heavy-framed glasses, still bore the residual marks left by ancient pustules of adolescent acne. He was dressed in grey, and it matched his eyes. He was a grey-looking man altogether, who did not offer to shake hands, merely gesturing to the chair which stood on Graves's side of the table. He then waited for his visitor to speak. Graves looked at him for a moment, familiar with the ploy. Without the lubrication of conventional politeness, any opening acquired a harsh quality. So he began with deliberate triteness. He said, 'You know Hillyard, Cleef, of course.'