Cynthia Manson (ed) (32 page)

“I can’t. There’s something wrong
with the line in this department—it seems to be dead.”

Davidson had heard his name
mentioned, and came over to them quickly. He was a crew-cut American, tough and
lean. “It’ll be about my wife, she’s expecting a baby. Where’s the call?”

“We’ve got it in Administration, one
floor up.”

“Come on, then.” Davidson started
off at what was almost a run, and the girl trotted after him. Marston stared at
both of them disapprovingly. He became aware that one of his clerks, Lester
Jones, was looking rather odd.

“Is anything the matter, Jones? Do
you feel unwell?”

Lester said that he was all right.
The act of cutting the telephone cord had filled him with terror, but with the
departure of Davidson he really did feel better. He thought of the money—and of
Lucille.

Lucille was just saying goodbye to
Jim Baxter and his friend Eddie Grain. They were equipped with an arsenal

of weapons, including flick knives,
bicycle chains, and brass knuckles. They did not, however, carry revolvers.

“You’ll be careful,” Lucille said to
Jim.

“Don’t worry. This is going to be
like taking candy from a baby, isn’t it, Eddie?”

“S’right,” Eddie said. He had a
limited vocabulary, and an almost perpetual smile. He was a terror with a
knife.

The Canadian made the call from the
striptease club. He had a girl with him. He had told her that it would be a big
giggle. When he heard Davidson’s voice—the time was just after ten
thirty-four—he said, “Is that Mr. Davidson?”

“Yes.”

“This is the James Long Foster
Hospital in Chicago, Mr. Davidson, Maternity floor.”

“Yes?”

“Will you speak up, please. I can’t
hear you very well.”

“Have you got some news of my wife?”
Davidson said loudly. He was in a small booth next to the store switchboard.
There was no reply. “Hello? Are you there?”

The Canadian put one hand over the
receiver, and ran the other up the girl’s bare thigh. “Let him stew a little.” The
girl laughed. They could hear Davidson asking if they were still on the line.
Then the Canadian spoke again.

“Hello, hello, Mr. Davidson. We seem
to have a bad connection.”

“I can hear you clearly. What news
is there?”

“No need to worry, Mr. Davidson.
Your wife is fine.”

“Has she had the baby?”

The Canadian chuckled. “Now, don’t
be impatient. That’s not the kind of thing you can hurry, you know.”

“What have you got to tell me then?
Why are you calling?”

The Canadian put his hand over the
receiver again, said to the girl, “You say something.”

“What shall I say?”

“Doesn’t matter—that we’ve got the
wires crossed or something.”

The girl leaned over, picked up the
telephone. “This is the operator. Who are you calling?”

In the telephone booth sweat was
running off Davidson. He hammered with his fist on the wall of the booth. “Damn
you, get off the line! Put me back to the Maternity Floor.”

“This is the operator. Who do you
want, please?”

Davidson checked himself suddenly.
The girl had a Cockney voice. “Who are you? What’s your game?”

The girl handed the telephone back
to the Canadian, looking frightened. “He’s on to me.”

“Hell.” The Canadian picked up the
receiver again, but the girl had left it, uncovered, and Davidson had heard the
girl’s words. He dropped the telephone, pushed open the door of the booth, and
raced for the stairs. As he ran he loosened the revolver in his hip pocket.

The time was now 10: 41.

Straight Line brought the Jaguar
smoothly to a stop in the space reserved for Orbin’s customers, and looked at
his watch. It was 10: 32.

Nobody questioned him, nobody so
much as gave him a glance. Beautiful, he thought, a nice smooth job, really
couldn’t be simpler. Then his hands tightened on the steering wheel.

He saw in the rear-view mirror,
standing just a few yards behind him, a policeman. Three men were evidently
asking the policeman for directions, and the copper was consulting a London
place map.

Well, Straight thought, he can’t see
anything of me except my back, and in a couple of minutes he’ll be gone. There
was still plenty of time. Payne and Stacey weren’t due out of the building
until 10: 39 or 10: 40. Yes, plenty of time.

But there was a hollow feeling in
Straight’s stomach as he watched the policeman in his mirror.

Some minutes earlier, at 10: 24,
Payne and Stacey had met at the service elevator beside the Grocery Department
on the ground floor. They had met this early because of the possibility that
the elevator might be in use when they needed it, although from Lester’s
observation it was used mostly in the early morning and late afternoon.

They did not need the elevator until
10: 30, and they would be very unlucky if it was permanently in use at that
time. If they were that unlucky—well, Mr. Payne had said with the
pseudo-philosophy of the born gambler, they would have to call the job off. But
even as he said this he knew that it was not true, and that having gone so far
he would not turn back.

The two men did not speak to each
other, but advanced steadily toward the elevator by way of inspecting chow
mein, hymettus honey, and real turtle soup. The Grocery Department was full of
shoppers, and the two men were quite unnoticed. Mr. Payne reached the elevator
first and pressed the button. They were in luck. The door opened.

Within seconds they were both
inside. Still neither man spoke. Mr. Payne pressed the button which said 3, and
then, when they had passed the second floor, the button that said Emergency
Stop. Jarringly the elevator came to a stop. It was now immobilized, so far as
a call from outside was concerned. It could be put back into motion only by
calling in engineers who would free the Emergency Stop mechanism—or, of course,
by operating the elevator from inside.

Stacey shivered a little. The
elevator was designed for freight, and therefore roomy enough to hold twenty
passengers; but Stacey had a slight tendency to claustrophobia which was
increased by the thought that they were poised between floors. He said, “I
suppose that bloody thing will work when you press the button?”

“Don’t worry, my friend. Have faith
in me.” Mr. Payne opened the dingy suitcase, revealing as he did so that he was
now wearing rubber gloves. In the suitcase were two long red cloaks, two fuzzy
white wigs, two thick white beards, two pairs of outsize horn-rimmed
spectacles, two red noses, and two hats with large tassels. “This may not be a
perfect fit for you, but I don’t think you can deny that it’s a perfect
disguise.”

They put on the clothes, Mr. Payne
with the pleasure he always felt in dressing up, Stacey with a certain
reluctance. The idea was clever, all right, he had to admit that, and when he
looked in the elevator’s small mirror and saw a Santa Claus looking back at
him, he was pleased to find himself totally unrecognizable. Deliberately he
took the Smith and Wesson out of his jacket and put it into the pocket of the
red cloak.

“You understand, Stace, there is no
question of using that weapon.”

“Unless I have to.”

“There is no question,” Mr. Payne
repeated firmly. “Violence is never necessary. It is a confession that one
lacks intelligence.”

“We got to point it at them, haven’t
we? Show we mean business.”

Mr. Payne acknowledged that painful
necessity by a downward twitch of his mouth, undiscernible beneath the false
beard.

“Isn’t it time, yet?”

Mr. Payne looked at his watch. “It
is now ten twenty-nine. We go—over the top, you might call it—at ten thirty-two
precisely. Compose yourself to wait, Stace.”

Stacey grunted. He could not help
admiring his companion, who stood peering into the small glass, adjusting his
beard and mustache, and settling his cloak more comfortably. When at last Mr.
Payne nodded, and said, “Here we go,” and pressed the button marked 3,
resentment was added to admiration. He’s all right now, but wait till we get to
the action, Stacey thought. His gloved hand on the Smith and Wesson reassured
him of strength and efficiency.

The elevator shuddered, moved
upward, stopped. The door opened. Mr. Payne placed his suitcase in the open
elevator door so that it would stay open and keep the elevator at the third
floor. Then they stepped out.

To Lester the time that passed after
Davidson’s departure and before the elevator door opened was complete and
absolute torture.

The whole thing had seemed so easy
when Mr. Payne had outlined it to them. “It is simply a matter of perfect
timing,” he had said. “If everybody plays his part properly, Stace and I will
be back in the lift within five minutes. Planning is the essence of this, as of
every scientific operation. Nobody will be hurt, and nobody will suffer
financially except—” and here he had looked at Lester with a twinkle in his
frosty eyes—”except the insurance company. And I don’t think the most
tender-hearted of us will worry too much about the insurance company.”

That was all very well, and Lester
had done what he was supposed to do, but he hadn’t really been able to believe
that the rest of it would happen. He had been terrified, but with the terror
was mixed a sense of unreality.

He still couldn’t believe, even when
Davidson went to the telephone upstairs, that the plan would go through without
a hitch. He was showing some costume jewelry to a thin old woman who kept
roping necklaces around her scrawny neck, and while he did so he kept looking
at the elevator, above which was the department clock. The hands moved slowly,
after Davidson left, from 10: 31 to 10: 32.

They’re not coming, Lester thought. It’s
all off. A flood of relief, touched with regret but with relief predominating,
went through him. Then the elevator door opened, and the two Santa Clauses
stepped out. Lester started convulsively.

“Young man,” the thin woman said
severely, “it doesn’t seem to me that I have your undivided attention. Haven’t
you anything in blue and amber?”

It had been arranged that Lester
would nod to signify that Davidson had left the department, or shake his head
if anything had gone wrong. He nodded now as though he had St. Vitus’s Dance.

The thin woman looked at him,
astonished. “Young man, is anything the matter?”

“Blue and amber,” Lester said
wildly, “amber and blue.” He pulled out a box from under the counter and began
to look through it. His hands were shaking.

Mr. Payne had been right in his
assumption that no surprise would be occasioned by the appearance of two Santa
Clauses in any department at this time of year. This, he liked to think, was
his own characteristic touch—the touch of, not to be unduly modest about it,
creative genius. There were a dozen people in the Jewelry Department, half of
them looking at the Russian Royal Family Jewels, which had proved less of an
attraction than Sir Henry Orbin had hoped. Three of the others were wandering
about in the idle way of people who are not really intending to buy anything,
and the other three were at the counters, where they were being attended to by
Lester, a salesgirl whose name was Miss Glenny, and by Marston himself.

The appearance of the Santa Clauses
aroused only the feeling of pleasure experienced by most people at sight of
these slightly artificial figures of jollity. Even Marston barely glanced at
them. There were half a dozen Santa Clauses in the store during the weeks
before Christmas, and he assumed that these two were on their way to the Toy
Department, which was also on the third floor, or to the Robin Hood in Sherwood
Forest tableau, which was this year’s display for children.

The Santa Clauses walked across the
floor together as though they were in fact going into Carpets and then on to
the Toy Department, but after passing Lester they diverged. Mr. Payne went to
the archway that led from Jewelry to Carpets, and Stacey abruptly turned behind
Lester toward the Manager’s Office.

Marston, trying to sell an emerald
brooch to an American who was not at all sure his wife would like it, looked up
in surprise. He had a natural reluctance to make a fuss in public, and also to
leave his customer; but when he saw Stacey with a hand actually on the door of
his own small but sacred office he said to the American, “Excuse me a moment,
sir,” and said to Miss Glenny, “Look after this gentleman, please”—by which he
meant that the American should not be allowed to walk out with the emerald
brooch—and called out, although not so loudly that the call could be thought of
as anything so vulgar as a shout, “Just a moment, please. What are you doing
there? What do you want?”

Stacey ignored him. In doing so he
was carrying out Mr. Payne’s specific instructions. At some point it was
inevitable that the people in the department would realize that a theft was
taking place, but the longer they could be kept from realizing it, Mr. Payne
had said, the better. Stacey’s own inclination would have been to pull out his
revolver at once and terrorize anybody likely to make trouble; but he did as he
was told.