J.T. Edson - Blonde Genius

“Huh!” Spender snorted disdainfully. “I don’t know why Fiorelli had to bring his minders with him.”

“You have to excuse these Continental chaps. Maxie,” Miss Benkinsop pointed out. “They just don’t appreciate the British way of life.”

“There’s talk that some of them want to appreciate it too much,” Spender warned grimly.

“I don’t follow you,” Miss Benkinsop said, although she bad a shrewd idea of what was coming next.

“Is it true that the Mediterranean Syndicate wants to take over the school?” Spender demanded.

“It has been mentioned. But, of course, I refused.”

“How did he take that?”

“In what way?”

“If he’s been threatening you—!” Spender began.

“He hasn’t I assure you,” Miss Benkinsop hastened to reply. Then, wanting to change the subject, she continued. “By the way, I understand that Amanda took you for a trial spin in the Escort she’s been customising for you.”

“Not half!” Spender enthused, all thoughts of the attempted take-over bid fleeing from his mind. He showed that the test run had been something of an experience for him. “It touched two ton in top gear. And in that ultra-powerful extra-low gear she’s rigged up, it’d tow a tank, Or rip the bars out of any jewellers window I’ve ever Seen.”

“I trust you’ll only use it for towing tanks,” Miss Benkinsop said severely.

“You can count on it,” Spender grinned. “Payment in the usual way?”

“Of course. Into Amanda’s numbered Swiss bank account.”

“I don’t suppose Amanda would like to come as my boss driver, would she?”

“Certainly not. The very idea, Most unladylike. What, may I ask, is wrong with Mr. Tracy?”

“Tommy?” Spender answered, grinning a little at the headmistress’s indignant response. “Oh, he’s good. But that girl—I tell you, Amanda, when she hit one-fifty on that narrow back toad, I thought Tommy was going to shi—make a mess in his pants. He looked a bit green all the way back, but he admits he’s never seen a driver to touch Amanda.”

Which, Miss Benkinsop silently concluded, was no mean compliment coming as it did from the man all of the Profession—and police officers in four countries—regarded as the finest escape and flight driver in the world.

Having ascertained that he and his men were the only occupants of the toilet, Fiorelli entered one of the cubicles. Sitting down, he darted a glance and grin at a drawing in the wall and its inscription, “BENKERS IS SUPER”. Then he extracted the walkie-talkie and raised it to his mouth.

“Gus. Do you read me?”

“Loud and clear,” Saunders answered. “How much longer have I got to wait?”

“Give us another five minutes, then go to it,” Fiorelli advised, “Don’t forget, the safe’s behind the Regency portrait.”

“I heard her ask you if she could open the window—”

“Yeah, she did. It’s still open.”

“That’s the best news I’ve had all night,” Saunders commented.

“I can believe it,” Fiorelli admitted. “I suppose you heard what she’s planning to do in the morning?”

“Good luck to her with it,” Saunders scoffed. “By then, I’ll be right out of her or Spender’s reach.”

“You can count on it, Gus boy,” Fiorelli assured him. “Good luck. Over and out.”

Clicking off the receiver, Fiorelli stepped from the cubicle, He handed the walkie-talkie to Schulze. Having no further need for the instrument, he did not want it on his person. Something told him that the School Swot was a remarkably observant and astute girl. If she should happen to have seen the bulge, she might deduce what was causing it. In which case, she was intelligent enough to form the correct conclusion.

“You go outside and keep watch on Saunders, Carrela,” Fiorelli instructed.

“Do I have to, boss?” the tall, swarthy enforcer asked, sounding more like a little boy who had been told to take a second bath in a day. “I was looking forward to the last—”

“I’ll let you watch the movie of it,” Fiorelli interrupted. “Screw off.”

“Sure, boss,” Carrela said sullenly.

“Get the document case from out of the car,” Fiorelli went on. “Put all the stuff he gets in it. Lock it and bring me the key, you’d better let him know why you’re doing that, then send him to Wings’s plane.”

“You want me to take him to the airstrip?” Carrela asked.

“I don’t think you’ll need to,” Fiorelli replied. “After what he heard tonight all he wants to do is get out of the country.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Entering the main body of the gymnasium building, on her way to deliver Miss Benkinsop’s message, Amanda Tweedle found everything just as she had known it would be. Parents and guests, the fathers in dinner jackets—with only a few clad in lounge suits—and mothers resplendent in their newest, most elegant cocktail dresses and finest jewellery, had left their seats in the rows which surrounded the four sides of the square Debating dais. During the interval before the Main Debate was traditionally the time for socialising; meeting old friends; forming new alliances or mergers; and exchanging the latest gossip.

“And I was only telling Izzy last week,” the plump, yet magnificently jewelled wife of a well-known wholesale buyer for the Wise Shopping trade was saying as the School Swot approached. “ ‘Izzy,” I said. “You’ve got to go down to the Nick and tell the Super to stop sending those awful young detective constables around to turn our drum over.’ ”

“Is that what he does?” the woman to whom the words were directed inquired.

“Every time,” confirmed the aggrieved wife. “My life, that such a thing should happen to us. Now that cat Alma’s putting it about that we’ve gone down in the world and don’t even deserve a visit from a sergeant.”

“I shouldn’t let what Alma says worry you, Rachel dear,” the other woman consoled. “You’re still ‘second row’ and she’s never got beyond the fourth.”

“We finally got that sneaky son-of-a-bitch who was ripping in the tops,” a corpulent visitor from the United States remarked to a gentleman who organised games of chance in the United Kingdom. “Miss Benkinsop sent us the tip-off that put us wise.”

“How’d he do it?”

“Used to bring the rigged dice in in his mouth. When he picked up our dice to shoot—and he only did it once each night—he’d spit the top in and hold back one of our straight cubes. After that, he’d just stand back and let his partner make all the bets.”

“How’d you get him?”

“Like I said, we sent Miss Benkinsop movies of the crowds that we’d taken on our closed circuit television. She had the answer to us next morning. So I had a floorwalker come up behind him and slap him on the back, just as he was making the switch. I’ve never seen a more surprised bunch of crap shooters, when not two but three dice went bouncing across the felt.”

“What did the man who’d been doing it do?”

“Just looked down and said, ‘Look, boys, fifteen the hard way.’”

Appreciating the humour of the story’s punch-line, Amanda smiled in passing. As every student of American Indoor Pastimes was aware, the game known as “shooting craps” was played with only two dice. To make an even number the “hard way” entailed throwing, for example, two threes to make a six, or two fives to add up to ten. Under normal conditions it was impossible to make an odd number “the hard way”.

While the American gentleman’s problem had originally been addressed to Miss Benkinsop, it had been Amanda’s scrutiny of the accompanying television playbacks which had supplied the solution.