Wilful Impropriety (12 page)

“Indeed?” he said.

“And with that $100,000, I’m going to make you $10 million. I’ve got a proposition for you that will make all other propositions seem like mere suggestions by comparison.”

“That’s what you said last time,” Wildish said, drawing another mouthful of smoke.

“It’s magic . . .” Oesterlische began, “. . . which I know isn’t usually in your line. But this is fantastic magic. Exceptional magic. Magic that could make the railroads obsolete.”

“That’s hardly appealing to me.” Wildish’s eyes narrowed. “You should know better than anyone how much stock I hold in the railroads.”

“I’d advise you to get out of it, quick,” Oesterlische said. “In a year’s time, those certificates will be worthless.”

“Poppycock,” Wildish said. But his eyes narrowed by another precise degree. “Tell me more.”

Oesterlische described the scroll, and his lightning-quick trip to Boston and back. He left out all the troublesome details, like the fact that they didn’t actually know how to really make the scroll work. He painted visions of fairy transport achieved in a twinkling, travelers veritably blooming with delight at the opportunity to wave money at the providers of such a wonderful service. By the time he was finished, Wildish’s eyes, once suspicious slits, had widened to the size of California grapefruits, and his expensive Cuban cigar burned to ash in a brass tray, forgotten.

“How about side effects? Strange loopholes? Odd anomalies?”

“I’ve got Elden Marinus looking into that,” Oesterlische said offhandedly.

“Marinus? Why, he’s quite an up-and-comer! Charges exorbitant rates! How can you afford him?”

Oesterlische yawned extravagantly, did not answer.

“And you’ve got a license on this magic?” Wildish said. Despite his best efforts, eagerness was creeping into his voice. “You’ve got the rights?”

“The scroll is mine,” Oesterlische rolled the cigar between his fingers. “But I’ll need that money to get the ball rolling. A hundred thousand should do nicely.”

“You’re not getting a penny more than fifty,” Artemis Q. Wildish grunted, throwing open the heavy, leather-bound check register on his desk.

•   •   •

The party dragged on for hours after this extremely satisfying interview. Artemus Q. Wildish locked himself behind the closed doors of his den to smoke more Cuban cigars and drink whiskey and play poker with a select coterie of fat-bellied chums. Oesterlische would dearly have liked to join them, but his acceptance as an “Old Man” would have to wait until he was actually betrothed to Winifred. He would have to play the callow suitor until then, and speak with old women and priests, and pretend to thrill to the emotional appeal of poetry. It was frankly horrible, but Oesterlische was a young man of determin ation and purpose. Luckily, all the old women and priests got tired by midnight, and the party broke up, carriages heading home full of drooping egret feathers.

As he was fetching his coat to leave, he was surprised by Winifred, who grabbed him by his satin lapels and drew him into a private vestibule near the front door. She jerked the curtains shut behind them. He looked around, appalled at the thought that someone might have seen.

“How’d it go?” She whispered breathlessly, pressing her hands against his chest, leaning her body against his.

He lifted an eyebrow at her, surprised but not entirely un delighted by her zeal.

“Fifty thousand,” he said, drawing the check half out of his pocket. “As promised.”

She kissed him then, throwing her arms around his neck.

“Really, Winifred,” he said, enjoying the cool press of her diamonds against his throat. “At least let me get the ring first.”

She pouted up at him.

“So you
didn’t
make arrangements?”

“No, not tonight,” Oesterlische said. “I thought asking for $50,000
and
a daughter might be a bit much for your father to swallow. Let me put this money to work and start showing him a return on his investment.
Then
I’ll ask him for your hand.”

“Oh, Peter, you’re so wise!” she said. “You always handle everything so well.”

“Yes I do, don’t I?” Oesterlische said, glowing with warmth.

After untangling himself from Winifred’s embrace, Oesterlische skipped out into the chilly darkness, reflecting that while he’d walked in with almost nothing, he was walking out with both a $50,000 check
and
a $30 million fiancée in his pocket. A smattering of snow covered the dark gaslit sidewalks. He felt like scooping it up and letting it drift down over his head in a glittery cloud.

He had her! He had Winifred Wildish! She’d promised to marry him! Of course, he still had to get her father’s approval, but once Marinus had the magic figured out, it would be nothing but smooth sailing.

Thinking of Marinus, Oesterlische turned his steps downtown, toward the warlock’s apartment. It was late, but warlocks in general, and Marinus in particular, were known to keep late hours. Oesterlische knew from experience that a friendly call at two in the morning would trouble Marinus far less than a business call promptly at nine.

When Oesterlische arrived at the Mazeppa, he was handled by three of the accustomed people—the doorman, the entry clerk, the elevator boy—but when he came to Marinus’s door expecting to encounter the fourth, Oesterlische’s heart dropped into his shoes. Marinus’s door stood wide open, and Oesterlische could see wreckage within.

He stepped inside, gingerly kicking aside the flotsam of destruction as he moved. Most of the smashing had been done in Marinus’s office—silk pillows had been disemboweled with knives, frondy palms had been toppled, and everywhere, papers and scrolls and vellums were scattered.

“Marinus?” Oesterlische called, but only silence answered. Hurrying out the way he came, fearing to be found standing there if the Japanese butler happened to suddenly return with the police, Oesterlische noticed something he hadn’t seen coming in.

Stuck to the front door with a heavy, thick-handled knife was a piece of paper—blank, save for one stark, paint-smeared mark.

A black hand.

•   •   •

With the silver-headed top of his cane, Oesterlische rapped on Astor Nussbaum’s door. Nussbaum came to the door bleary-eyed, blinking.

“For heaven’s sake,” he said. “Don’t tell me the Wildish reception lasted this late! How’d it go? Did you get the investment?”

“I got the investment,” Oesterlische patted his pocket. “But we’ve got problems. Marinus is gone. And the scroll, too. The whole place has been busted up. I found this on the front door.”

Nussbaum’s eyes widened as Oesterlische showed him the paper with the black handprint.

“Come in,” he said.

Nussbaum lived in a small, clean apartment in a part of town that had once been fashionable, and was at least still respectable, but hardly impressive. His rooms were small but tidily kept. He lit a coal-oil lamp and banked up the stove and put some coffee on. It was terribly cold—Nussbaum kept his blanket around his shoulders, and Oesterlische kept his coat and muffler on. They sat at the small table in what the landlady had probably called a dining room.

“The Black Hand,” Nussbaum said, grimly. “The men who were chasing me yesterday, before you rescued me into your club. They were Black Hand thugs. I owe them money. They must have followed us to Marinus’s.”

“Wonderful,” Oesterlische said. “I’ve got Artemus Q. Wildish on the hook for fifty grand to get the ball rolling . . . and now we have no ball.”

The memories of Winifred’s diamonds scratching at his throat came back to Oesterlische in terrible mockery. His marriage to Winifred . . . she had as good as said she would marry him if he obtained her father’s approval! But how the hell was he going to do that if he didn’t have the scroll?

The two men drank coffee, thick and boiled on Nussbaum’s coal hob. It was bitter but powerful, rather like the glare Nussbaum kept giving Oesterlische.

“This is all your fault, you know,” Nussbaum grumbled. “You and that weather-witching warlock of yours. None of this would have happened if we’d held onto the scroll, like I wanted to.”

“If you hadn’t surrendered the scroll, it might have been you who was kidnapped,” Oesterlische said. “As I see it, I’ve saved you from a terrible fate.”

Nussbaum pondered this grimly as he sipped his coffee.

“How much money you got on you?” he asked.

“What? Why, about a hundred dollars in cash.”

“You walk around with $100 in your pocket?” Nussbaum shook his head. “I know quite a few poor folk in this neighborhood who’d knock you down for less. It’s better that I take it off you.”

“That’s the finest explanation for a touch I ever heard,” Oesterlische said.

“I’m not putting the touch on you. This is business. I can bribe a lot of people downtown with $100. I’ll poke around, see what I can find out. That’ll make a start, anyway.”

“What makes you think you can manage that?” Oesterlische said. “You don’t seem to have too cozy an arrangement with the underworld. Last I saw, the underworld was chasing you up Fifth Avenue.”

“I think I can muster the discretion required to make effective enquiries . . . I have so much at stake here, you see.” He gave Oesterlische another sad look, that Oesterlische thought was most unbearably reproachful.

“I will find out how we might go about getting it back. I’ll meet you after work tomorrow and let you know what I find out.” Nussbaum heaved the blanket off his shoulders and reached for his heavy overcoat. “Now I’d better get out there and see if I can find people while they’re still drunk.”

•   •   •

Oesterlische didn’t tumble into his bed until five a.m. He slept until noon, at which time he was unceremoniously launched upon by his mother, a hard thing for a fellow to have to endure before he’d even had his first cup of coffee.

“There’s a letter for you from Miss Wildish,” his mother trilled in the drawn-shade darkness of his room. Through sleep-gummed eyes, he could see her waving a pink envelope in his face. “Delivered this morning!”

No doubt it was the perfumed thank-you note he’d expected. But Oesterlische had no time to bother his mind with flowery sentiment from his almost-fiancée. He left his mother to brood over its potential contents all day—it would provide her with ample intellectual amusement, and he felt generous in giving it to her.

Oesterlische was employed at the firm of Rudnick & Culpepper—to say that he worked there, however, was to somewhat overstate the issue. Mr. Rudnick and Mr. Culpepper understood that the young men they employed as Junior Brokers—well-bred young men of taste and distinction—had to be given some leeway. Thus, when Oesterlische slid into his seat at one p.m., fully intending to stay for an hour and then make a hasty break for it, no one raised an eyebrow other than the slightly less well-bred young men in ink-stained sleeves to whom the work actually fell.

Oesterlische sat at his desk and stared at his shiny black desk phone. He thought about the situation, thought about the similar shiny black desk phone that Wildish had on
his
desk. Bringing the two desk phones together in any kind of communicative arrangement was completely out of the question. He imagined the conversation that would occur between them, then knocked such awful fantasies out of the air. He couldn’t call Wildish. He couldn’t tell him that he’d lost the scroll. He’d already had one failure. Fail one time and it could be dismissed as a mistake. Fail a second time, and it started to look like a habit. No, there was nothing else for it. He had to get the scroll back.

There was the sound of a commotion near the reception desk. Oesterlische saw, with a sudden rush of joy, that the commotion was in the shape of a large, loud warlock. It was Elden Marinus. He looked quite a bit the worse for wear—there was a huge goose egg over his eye and scratches along the side of his face. When Marinus saw Oesterlische, he brushed aside the receiving clerk imperiously and came to tower over Oesterlische’s desk.

“What kind of insanity have you mixed me up in?” Marinus bellowed. “Rough trade! Wharves and warehouses! I am not accustomed to being engaged by clients with one foot in the camp of thuggery!”

Oesterlische shushed him, all too aware that his powerful voice was carrying into the offices of the partners. While they understood young men of taste and distinction, they most certainly did not understand the bellowings of warlocks.

“Come on, quiet down,” Oesterlische murmured. “We’ll go have a drink.”

“He thinks he can buy me off with a drink!” Marinus said even more loudly, looking around the office for some sane man who would sympathize with his plight. “A man whose shady dealings have led me to such a pretty pass!” And suddenly Oesterlische realized that Marinus meant for his voice to carry—it was subtle revenge for the dirty trick Oesterlische had played him before. Oesterlische stood swiftly, took Marinus’s arm, gave it a jerk. He put his lips close to Marinus’s ear.

“All right, you’ve made your point,” he growled. “Now do you want a drink or not?”

Marinus turned his head, looked down at Oesterlische with a mean, silky smile.

“Why, yes.” He said. “I suppose I
would
like a drink.”