Spy and the Thief (26 page)

The sky in the east was speckled with dawn when Nick Velvet edged his rented cabin cruiser toward the jagged Maine coastline early the following morning. It had taken him and Madge O’Donnell most of the night to make the trip by boat up the New England coast, and even then they knew they were probably hours behind Samuel Croft.

“I’ve got two brothers dead and a husband in jail,” Madge had argued. “If those jewels belong to anyone they belong to me.”

When her husband had realized his calendar was missing, he hadn’t reported it to the guards but he had got word out to his wife. Instinctively he suspected Samuel Croft, and Madge had followed Croft from his home that morning. She’d watched the meeting between Nick and the men, then she’d rammed Burma’s car when she realized what was happening.

“I still have to thank you,” Nick had told her as they cruised up around Cape Cod. “You probably saved my life.”

“Just get me what’s mine,” she answered.

They’d driven as far as Rhode Island before renting the boat, but it was still a long distance up the coast to the Maine islands. It was a journey that should have taken some 16 hours, but Nick shortened it by going through Buzzard’s Bay and the Cape Cod Canal. By dawn they were in sight of the island that Nick sought.

It was a tiny outcropping of rock, like so many of the Maine islands, and could not have been more than a few acres in area. In the morning light, lying low in the September sea mist, it looked absolutely deserted.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Madge asked.

“Lady, I’m not sure of anything.” Nick guided the craft carefully into shore, until the charts showed the water to be dangerously shallow. “We wade from here,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind getting wet.”

“I don’t see Croft’s boat.”

“Maybe he’s been and gone.”

He helped her into the hip-deep water and they waded ashore, with the mist giving a dreamlike quality to the scene. Nick felt the tug of unreality as the waters receded and they reached the dry rocky beach.

“Where would he have buried it?” she asked.

“You’re full of questions, aren’t you?” He looked around, taking in the rock and sand and scant vegetation. There was no building on the island, but here and there along the beach the remains of a campfire showed that the place was not completely neglected by picnicking yachtsmen.

Nick moved inland, toward the highest point of the island. He passed through some brush and a small clump of pine trees, and then he saw the marker. It was a wooden slat stuck into the earth. On it, crudely lettered, were the words:
Here lies my faithful dog Coco.

“Coco!” Madge O’Donnell exclaimed. “That was the name of the yacht they robbed!”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “It looks like we’ve found the buried treasure.”

He went back to the boat for a shovel, and ten minutes later they had uncovered the oilskin package. Nick opened it carefully, exposing a sparkling cache of jewels. There were diamond rings, a man’s diamond stickpin, and even some moldy twenty and fifty-dollar bills.

“The pirate’s treasure,” Nick breathed. “The loot of the yacht
Coco.
”

“Here’s the star sapphire. And the emerald—”

The high ringing crack of a rifle shot split the air, almost in the same instant that a bullet clipped through the underbrush at Nick’s side. “Down!” he shouted, pulling her with him.

He raised his head from the ground and saw a power launch riding the waves next to his rented boat. Croft and Burma were moving through the shallow water, both armed with rifles. The morning mist had hidden their approach until it was too late.

“Do you have a gun?” she asked Nick.

He slipped the silenced .22 from his jacket pocket. “I’ve still got Burma’s, but it’s no good at this range. Keep low. They might think they hit one of us.”

“Velvet!” Croft shouted, moving closer. “I know you’re there! Come out! There’s enough for everyone.”

Burma had moved over to the right to flank their position. Nick steadied the silenced target pistol and drew a bead on him. He waited till the ex-con was closer and then squeezed the trigger. There was a dull puff from the gun and Burma grabbed at his side. “Croft, I’m hit! Help, he shot me.”

Croft turned and fired two wild shots, but he had no target. Then Nick was up and running toward him, crouching low to make the smallest possible target. Croft whirled to fire again, but Nick got off a quick shot with his .22. The gray-haired man staggered and went down on one knee.

“Damn you, Velvet!” he snarled. “I’m bleeding!”

“A .22 doesn’t do much damage at that range. Burma was going to kill me with it, so you should consider yourself lucky.” He turned to the girl. “Hand me their rifles and then get the first-aid kit from the boat. You can be a nice nurse and bandage them up.”

“I’ll bleed to death,” Croft moaned.

“There’s a Coast Guard station up the coast. We’ll deliver you there in fine shape.”

“How did you find this place, Velvet?”

Nick smiled. “The same way you did. O’Donnell told Burma the calendar had a clue to where the loot was buried. The calendar had no writing on it, just a lot of
X
’d-out dates. Only one date was different—it had a circle around it. April 25th. O’Donnell was raised a Catholic, went to a Catholic school, and on the Church calendar April 25th is the feast day of St. Mark. I remembered seeing an island called St. Mark on the map of the Maine coast, so I headed here.”

“How do we get them to the Coast Guard station?” Madge O’Donnell asked.

“You take them, in Croft’s boat. I’ll be in the other one.”

“But the jewels—”

Nick kept on smiling, and the gun in his hand and the rifles under his arm were casually pointed at the ground; but she got his message. “I’m keeping them. Croft never paid me the balance of my fee.”

“I
WANT YOU TO
steal a wooden horse,” the green-eyed man said to Nick Velvet.

Nick, whose business was theft and whose specialty was the unusual, hardly blinked at the words. “There’s something Homeric about the assignment,” he conceded, gazing out of the car window at the muddy waters of the Hudson, “And where would I find this stealable steed? Perhaps up the river a bit, in Troy, New York?”

The green-eyed man, whose name was Peter Fowles, merely frowned. “No, it’s not that sort of wooden horse. As a matter of fact, it’s a merry-go-round horse. I have a picture of it here.” He took out a color photograph of a garish carousel standing alone against a background of leafy trees.

Nick studied the picture, deducing from the trees that the photo had been taken some months earlier, at the height of the summer. One of the horses in the foreground had been circled in black ink. Its shape was identical with the other horses in the picture, but the horses varied in colors and markings. This one was an improbable blue, obviously meant to attract a highly imaginative child.

“This blue one that’s circled?”

“That’s it.”

“I charge twenty thousand dollars, you know.”

Peter Fowles nodded. “I know.”

“You could hire a couple of guys to steal it for fifty bucks,”

“I want you, Velvet.”

Nick shrugged. He was never one to turn down money. “What’s so valuable about it?”

“Nothing. It has no value. You only steal things that have no value, don’t you?”

“That’s right,” Nick answered. He tapped a slim finger on the photo. “Where is this thing located?”

“About two hundred miles from here, in a town called Cartier.”

“Near the St. Lawrence River.”

“You know the place?”

Nick shook his head. “No, but Jacques Cartier was the Frenchman who discovered the St. Lawrence. It seems likely that a town named after him would be near the river.”

“Actually, the merry-go-round is located in a large park that’s right on the river. It’s not an amusement park, but there are a few concessions scattered around, mainly for children. As you can see from the photo, the merry-go-round is off pretty much by itself.”

“This is November. Is it closed for the winter yet?”

“It will be closing any day now. But the park still gets a few late campers on sunny weekends.” Fowles leaned back in his seat. “I need the blue horse by next Monday morning. Can you do it?”

“Of course,” Nick said. They shook hands and Nick pocketed the photograph. The assignment-seemed simple enough, but from past experience Nick knew that the simplest of crimes can develop the most unexpected complications.

Cartier was such a typically midwestern small town that Nick would have expected it to turn up in Kansas or Nebraska or Iowa rather than in upstate New York. The main street—which was called Main Street—was a jumble of little shops and lunch counters. A single movie theater was playing a year-old western, and a red-white-and-blue banner across the intersection urged voters to Reelect Waggoner—A Mayor For The People! It was a week after election day, and Nick concluded that Mayor Waggoner had won. Otherwise the banner would probably be down by now.

Once past the center of town the area began to look more like a prosperous suburb. There was a medium-sized shopping center and a drive-in movie. There were also a couple of ski shops, reminding Nick that he was deep in snow country. The day was fair, however, and unusually warm for the second week of November.

As the river came into view through the nearly bare trees, Nick felt a twinge of remorse for the summer that had just passed. There had been too few days of sailing with Gloria, and too many of rather dull travel to, the jobs which earned him his more than comfortable livelihood.

Presently the park came into view, and then the carousel itself. It was larger than it had appeared in the photo—a great behemoth of a merry-go-round with gilded cherubs and mirrored panels. The horses that circled endlessly were painted in a variety of bright colors, and he saw the blue one almost at once. The paint on all of them was a bit weathered. It was the season’s end, and they would have to wait till spring for fresh coats.

“Can I help you?” a girl’s voice asked. Nick turned and saw a young blonde in paint-streaked jeans leaning against the fender of his car, watching him.”

He smiled at her. “I was thinking of going for a ride.”

“Closed for the season,” the girl said promptly.

“You run it?”

“My dad does.”

Nick held out his hand. “My name is Velvet. I sell carnival supplies.”

“Never saw you before,” she said, ignoring the hand.

“I’m new to this territory.”

“We have no need of carnival supplies. All there is here is the merry-go-round.”

“Oh.”

She relaxed a bit and introduced herself. “My name is Dorothy Defoe. Most people call me Dot”.

Nick broadened his smile. He needed to get a closer look at those horses. “Couldn’t I take just one ride? I’m sure your dad wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh, I guess it would be all right. I’m just on edge today.” She sprinted off to the carousel, showing long attractive legs.

Nick followed and hopped aboard as she started the music.

“Why?” he asked. “What’s the matter with today?”

“It’s these damned kids around here!” He smiled again at the words. She couldn’t have been more than twenty herself.

“Kids are kids. What did they do?” The merry-go-round was picking up speed, whirling him around in a blur of color.

“Well, they broke in here sometime last night and stole one of the horses—one of those on the other side. Did you ever hear of such a wild thing?”

One of the horses had indeed been stolen, apparently sawed away from the brass pole that ran up through its middle. Nick bent to examine the traces of the sawing. Was it possible there had been two blue horses on the merry-go-round and that someone had beaten him to his prize? “What color was it?” he asked Dot Defoe.

“Color? Oh, the color’s not important.”

“I was just wondering.”

“I guess it was a sort of brown—a horse color, you know. But I can’t imagine what they wanted it for. Sawing it off like that probably ruined it, anyway.”

The merry-go-round had slowed to a stop, and Nick stood patting the smooth painted wood of the blue horse. “Probably just kids, as you say. Thanks for the ride.”

“Sure. You going to show me some samples now?”

Nick smiled and hopped to the ground. “I’ll be back, sometime when your father’s here.”

“Tomorrow will be the last day. Then we’ll go for the winter.”

“You live around here?”

She tossed her blonde hair like a rangy colt. “Not far away. You askin’ for a date?”

“Maybe.” He was almost old enough to be her father, but that fact of chronology didn’t bother him. Taking Dot Defoe out was part of the job, and if he enjoyed doing it, so much the better. “Where do people go in the evening around here?”

“Sometimes across the river to Canada,” she said. “There are some swinging places in Kingston.”

“Fine. Suppose I pick you up here tonight and we’ll swing together.”

She grinned impishly. “You’re a fast worker, Mr. Velvet. Let’s make it seven o’clock.”

He met her at the merry-go-round at seven and they drove across the border to Kingston. It had been years since his last visit to Canada, but he remembered the friendly look of the place, the inviting little bars that offered solace from the cold. In one of them, over a glass of Canadian whiskey, he asked, “Do you know a fellow named Peter Fowles?”

“Mr. Fowles? Certainly—he’s a business associate of my father’s. In fact, he’s the one who financed the merry-go-round in the first place, three years ago.”

“It seems older than that.”

“Mr. Fowles bought it from one of those Coney Island amusement parks that went out of business. He paid to have it shipped up here and reassembled in the park. It was very good of him to do it.”

“Why should he be so good?” Nick asked casually. “Is he an old friend of your father’s?”

“Not exactly. They had some sort of business deal together once, and I got the impression that Mr. Fowles felt he owed my dad something.”

“Something like a merry-go-round?”

“It’s been profitable for him, really! I don’t know why, because we never seem to do that much business, but he’s making enough to put me through college.”