The Mysterious Mickey Finn (12 page)

Jackson smiled. ‘I see it now,' he said. ‘By God, that's a good one. That's why they have sent all those paintings to the Louvre to be expertized.'

Evans shuddered. ‘You haven't heard the worst. I called on Hugo Weiss, and partly because of a favour I'd done him years ago, he agreed to visit Hjalmar's studio. Meantime we got the show ready. Fifty paintings by Stier, Sturlusson, Simon, Poularde, and one modest offering of my own, my only painting, in fact. Weiss showed up punctually, acted like the prince of good fellows, drank a half bottle of sherry, looked over the paintings one by one and finally not only reached for his cheque book to give Hjalmar another year's study but bought the painting which had been done by me. He wrote two cheques, one for the daily bread, the other as payment for the painting. With the painting under his arm he said good-bye and good luck, then descended the stairs. I descended with him and hailed a taxi, a taxi driven by a Russian soldier and gentleman I have trusted and respected for years. They drove away.

‘On returning upstairs I found that the cheques were for $2,500 apiece and again was foolhardy. I advised Hjalmar to cash them at once, that evening, so he took one to the Dôme, the other to the Coupole. Then we all lit out for the Hôtel du Caveau; that's off the beaten track, you know, and we didn't want to be disturbed. We had a little party. . . .'

Jackson could not refrain from breaking in again. ‘A little party ! Is that what you call it?'

‘Well,' Evans said, ‘I didn't stay until the end. Neither did Miriam.'

‘The end hasn't happened yet,' Jackson said.

‘Unfortunately not,' continued Evans. ‘Some time after dawn, I suggested to Miss Leonard that we get a breath of air.'

‘The only sissy,' Jackson muttered.

‘He is not a sissy,' Miriam said indignantly. ‘The smoke was getting in his eyes.'

‘Ah. Smoking was permitted, then,' Jackson said.

‘We took a little walk in the neighbourhood, then stopped in at St Séverin ... marvellous Gothic, St Séverin.'

‘Probably it looked better than usual,' said the reporter.

‘When we got back to the hotel, our friends and M. Julliard, the proprietor, were gone.'

‘But not forgotten,' added Jackson. ‘They were as far gone as any crowd I've seen since the garage massacre in Chicago, only your friends are more unlucky. They've got to wake up and face the world again.'

‘I've got to get them out, but that's a mere detail,' Evans said.

‘They'd be delighted to hear you say so, if any of them can hear yet,' said the reporter.

‘First, we've got to find Hugo Weiss. He's in real danger,' said Evans.

‘You think he's dead?'

‘I think he was kidnapped, and I've an inkling of what's behind it,' Evans said. ‘And it's no small potatoes involving a few fake signatures and $5,000 worth of perfectly good cheques. That's why I want your help....'

‘It's yours,' said Jackson. ‘I don't understand the disappearance as well as I did when you started talking, but count me in for whatever I can do. I interviewed Weiss when he got off the boat train and he was very decent about it. The man was tired, didn't want it advertised that he was in the city, and still he remembered his manners. The big shots are likely to be like that. Any guy who's always having rows with the press is sure to turn out to be a palooka.'

Miriam, thrilled but happy, was taking an independent shot at the sun, in an amateur way. ‘I may be wrong,' she said softly, ‘but isn't that damned chariot of Apollo on one wheel at the corner?'

‘You have spoken well, O woman,' said Evans. ‘And you, too, O reporter,' lapsing into the Bedouin mannerism again. ‘The next step, Jackson, depends on you. I want you to go into the gallery of Heiss and Lourde, just around the corner. You will find a pale inefficient-looking clerk who's none too bright, and two partners, one tall, the other short, respectively called Abel and Dodo. They will appear to be crazy, but actually they are only anxious.'

‘With your gift for understatement in mind, I know about what to expect A little party. ... Great snakes ! A little party.... Well, what do I do? Slug the tall anxious partner and sideswipe the other?'

‘Please,' Evans said. ‘If I had wanted strong arm work I could have sent Miriam, or Mademoiselle Montana. This requires finesse....'

‘I like that,' Miriam said.

‘There's work for everyone,' Evans assured her. ‘You, Jackson, are to enter this gallery, say you are an American....'

‘I've never yet been taken for a Chink.'

‘.... an American whose father has struck oil.'

‘Mr Evans has an oil fixation,' Miriam said. ‘You'll get used to that.'

‘I'm all attention,' Jackson said. ‘I'm a mug from Oklahoma. They'll be booking me as Mr Oklahoma within the hour, probably. . . .'

‘Say you came to Paris to get culture and by God, you mean to have it. Thump on the desk when you say by God, and scare the clerk. We want him to be nervous.'

‘I'll be nervous enough for both of us,' Jackson said.

Evans went on smoothly. ‘Look through what they show you, and ask if they haven't something with prairies and great open spaces…….I know for a fact that there's not a Remington in the place. Then mention casually that you were sent there by a couple of Arabs and let it drop that you just saw the same Arabs sitting on a
terrasse
in the place St Augustin. . . . Then, a moment later, when you're alone with the clerk....'

‘But the partners?'

‘They'll be running to the place St Augustin. Allowing four minutes for the run, ten minutes at least for the search, and six minutes for the trek back home ... they'll be out of breath and tuckered... you ought to have twenty minutes with the clerk. At the end of fifteen minutes we'll come in, Miriam and I, and I'll take over, but you'd better stick around....'

‘Wild camels couldn't drive me away,' Jackson said. ‘Well. I'm off, Caligari....'

‘Not so fast. You haven't had your most important instruction. As soon as Abel and Dodo are safely away, go to the clerk in a brusque free and easy way and say, loudly, like an Oklahoma rancher, “ Have you got any of these here Grecos? If so, son, trot 'em out and be quick about it.” Then you must take notice of the clerk's reactions, remember every word he says.'

‘But when he gives me one of them Grecos, whatever a Greco might be....'

‘Stall, and hold it firmly in your hands. Don't let it get away until I come in.... Of course, be careful not to tear it or punch holes through the canvas with your finger. Even a moderately-sized Greco is worth anywhere from $300,000 to half a million dollars…..'

‘Holy cats ! I'll be shivering all over. I'll make an aspen look like a billiard cue.'

‘Brace up, and get started. The longer you wait, the more anxious the partners will be.'

As soon as the reporter had gone, Evans turned to Miriam with a look on his face she had never seen before. ‘We have fifteen minutes, and I've got to think. Don't speak, turn off your sex appeal, try to be non-existent. Exactly a quarter of an hour from now, rouse me. If I can count on that I can really concentrate, without thought of the time.'

Obediently she moved away from him, so her robes were no longer touching his, and riveted her eyes on the
bistrot
clock while Evans went into a sort of trance. There were no outward signs, such as pallor, closed eyelids or twitching of muscles. He sat immobile and Miriam could feel the force of his intelligence like a strong electric current in the room, gaining in voltage relentlessly until it seemed that she could bear it no longer. In tension such as she never before had experienced she sat so stiffly that her muscles ached, eyes glued on the clock which never had moved so slowly. She was sure that hours were passing, but the hands indicated only seven minutes when a voice at her side said, ‘Relax, my dear, I'm sorry to put you through this, but it had to be done. Fortunately it didn't take long, and now I see better what's before us.' He glanced through the window, up and down the street. No detectives, plain-clothes men or other Arabs were in sight, so he said pleasantly to the waiter, who had been made drowsy by Evans' feat of concentration without knowing the cause, ‘Slip us two brandies, straight, and be quick.'

As she raised the liquor to her lips, her hand trembled so that she almost spilled a few drops, but the sight of Evans, raising his glass with the calmness and precision she had learned to expect from him, soothed her and she was able to swallow without choking although the brandy was rather bad.

‘It was almost too simple,' Evans said.

‘Your gift for understatement...' she murmured.

‘I was obliged to find out how Hugo Weiss was spirited out of Paris,' Evans said, apologetically. ‘Really, it should have come to me before.'

‘Can you tell me?'

‘Just you. No one else, not even Jackson, who will be of great assistance. It said in the paper that all railroad stations, bus lines, tramways, and air lines had been watched, that pedestrians and automobilists, even farmers and drivers of horse-drawn vehicles had been stopped and questioned. What other means is there for leaving Paris?'

‘You're sure they left?'

‘Positive. With two such resourceful men as Hugo Weiss and Lvov Kvek on their hands, to say nothing of a Citroën taxi, our precious band could not hope to stay in Paris and remain hidden. It just could not be done, and such experienced thugs as the ones in question would know better than to try it,' Evans said. ‘With all ordinary means of transportation and exit closed to them, what remained?'

‘The river,' Miriam said. Evans at first was crestfallen, then looked at her admiringly.

‘That's what I concluded,' he said.

‘I'm sorry I guessed,' she said. ‘You see, there's a river on my father's ranch and whenever a steer was missing, we looked for his body downstream.'

In the ordinarily hushed premises of Heiss and Lourde a strange scene was unrolling, as the French say, while Old Masters stared disapprovingly from the walls. A man, obviously from North America, wearing a black French hat and carrying an army raincoat over his arm in a way that might have concealed any number of weapons, had entered, tossed his raincoat into a Louis XIV chair, planted the palms of his hands on the desk, eyed the clerk with determination and shouted:

‘Ah'm Tom Jackson, pardner. What's your moniker, if that's a fittin' question in this man's country?'

The clerk had begun to burble, and in the back room where they were lurking and peering nervously through the peepholes expecting an influx of Arabs, Abel Heiss and Dodo Lourde began to wince, then to fidget and to bumble.

‘Well, let it pass. Let it pass. It don't matter what a man was back East, it's what he is to-day, hombre. Ah say it's what he is to-day,' and with that Jackson gave the desk a trial thump, to test its resonance.

The clerk was still speechless.

‘Ah want a few yards of this here art, something pretty that a man can look at when he's in from the range, a good bunch of cattle and an alkali stream, or maybe buffaloes and a couple of Indians. Say, buddy, did you ever see Custer's Last Stand? If you'd seen that, you'd know what Ah want, and when Ah wants a thing, stranger, Ah wants it pretty bad. By the way, you speak English, don't you?'

At this the clerk shook his head to indicate a negative reply and ducked, expecting that the shooting would surely commence. Jackson, however, refrained from violence and repeated the essential part of his request in French, making a hash of the word ‘shorthorns', but otherwise intelligible.

‘Perhaps this isn't the place,' he said. ‘A couple of Arabs sent me in, said you had art to burn.'

The mention of Arabs brought Abel and Dodo into sight with such dispatch that Jackson was the one who ducked that time.

‘Hold everything, strangers,' he said. ‘Ah come on a peaceable errand. Mah friend the sheik, he says, Tom, when you get a hankering for old paintings, just you mosey over to see Heiss and Lourde. There you can't go wrong....'

‘Exactly, exactly, the sheik ...' blurted Abel, while Dodo wrung his hands, which had had several thorough wringings that day and were due for a couple more.

‘Just a little something with shorthorns ...'

‘The Fragonard portrait of the old Comte de Sartrouville. The count was a famous cuckold,' Abel said.

‘You speak English, pardner, but you don't get mah drift. What Ah mean is cattle, steers ...'

‘You mean livestock,' Dodo said, glad of a chance to be helpful. ‘We've got some Corot sheep that would send you running to a restaurant, mister.'

‘Never mind the mister, call me Tom,' said Jackson, and then belatedly wondered if he should be using his right name. ‘Mah friend the sheik, now he's democratic. Ah saw him sitting right there in one of the open air saloons, big as life, and his boy friend with him ... Ah says to him...'

Abel had begun a sort of rigadoon or St Vitus dance and Dodo was hopping from side to side. The former was the first to be able to speak. ‘The sheik. Where is he? Where was it you saw him?'

‘Why, do you all know the sheik? He was a-sittin' right there in one of them
cafés,
down here in the place St Augustin, not ten minutes ago. He says to me ...'

Whatever it was that the Arab had said to Jackson was lots to the ears of Abel and Dodo who had crashed through the doorway side by side and were well around the corner.

‘It must make a man nervous, having so much art around the place,' Jackson said. Then he approached the terrified clerk, whose teeth were chattering, banged on the desk so heartily that a Second Empire inkwell jumped half a foot, fixed his antagonist with a glittering eye and said:

‘Pal, Ah'll tell you what Ah'll do. Ah'll compromise. If you ain't got no prairies or animals, Ah'll buy one or two of them Gonzos ....'