Hot Water (14 page)

'Well, have you any objection?'

'Certainly, I've an objection. Just pushing your head into trouble, that's what you're doing. You haven't a chance, working alone.'

Medway bit her lip reflectively. She had started on this enterprise with a gay optimism, feeling that surely the time must come when Mrs Gedge would forget just once to lock up her trinkets. She had learned now that she was in the employment of a woman who never forgot a thing like that, and hope had begun to die.

'What's the idea?' she said. 'Do you want to team up with me?'

'Well, why not?'

'I don't know why not. I've nothing against a fifty-fifty strictly business proposition. But what good would you be? This thing isn't in your line. You can't bust a safe.'

'I can, too, bust a safe. Soup doesn't know it, and I didn't tell him, but if it's the ordinary sort of safe these women have, I can do it easy.'

'Who's Soup?'

'You remember Soup Slattery. We're in this thing together. The idea is that I let him into the house and he does the blowing. But that's all wet. Now I've found you, we'll double-cross him and keep the stuff for ourselves.'

Medway was impressed.

'Where did you ever learn to bust safes?'

'Plug Donahue taught me. It was just after you went away. He saw I was all shot to pieces and needed something to take me out of myself...'

'Never mind all that apple-gravy. Talk business. If you want us to work together on this job – fifty-fifty – I'm willing. I've seen for quite a while it was too big for me.'

Mr Carlisle breathed emotionally.

'If you knew what it meant to me, Gertie, to feel that you and I are once more ...'

'Say, listen,' said Medway, breaking in on what promised to be a speech of no small audience-appeal, 'here's something that's on my mind. Could a sap that says he's Senator Opal not really be Senator Opal?'

'Nobody would say he was Senator Opal unless he knew it could be proved against him,' said Mr Carlisle, who was not a supporter of the great law-maker's views on the suppression of the Demon Rum. 'Why, is that old pest here?'

'Him or somebody that claims to be him. And I found him just now snooping around in Mrs Gedge's room, where the safe is. And when I put it up to him, he had some story about being interested in antiques.'

Mr Carlisle reflected.

'I guess that's all there was to it,' he said, at length. Anyway, he can't be a ringer. These Gedges know Senator Opal. Mrs Gedge told me so. Nobody could slide in here made up for old Opal and get away with it. He was probably just rubbering around. But I'll tell you who is a ringer, and that's the fellow who says he's the Vicomte de Blissac.'

'What!'

'You see,' said Mr Carlisle, tenderly pointing the moral. 'You didn't know that, did you? How long has he been here?'

'He blew in this afternoon. I saw the butler showing him into the drawing-room, and he told me who he was.'

'Well, he isn't.'

'How do you know?'

'I've met the real one. I took a couple of thousand dollars off him once. You could have had half of that, Gertie, if you hadn't run off the way you did.'

'Never mind that. So that bird's a ringer, is he? And I suppose he's after the ice, same as we are.'

'Of course he is.'

'Well, what do we do about it? We can't have him messing around. We've got to push him out.'

'And how would you set about it?'

Medway frowned.

'I'm darned if I know.'

'Exactly,' said Mr Carlisle, once more pointing the moral. 'Maybe you begin to see now how much you need me.'

'What can you do?'

'What can I do?' Mr Carlisle's manner was airy. 'Why, simply go to his room to-night and hammer the stuffing out of him. If he's here to-morrow, it'll be on crutches.'

The little gasp which his companion gave at these brave words was the sweetest sound that Gordon Carlisle had heard in many a day. For it was the gasp of reluctant admiration. Her cold reserve seemed to have melted.

'You couldn't do that?'

'You see if I can't do it.'

'But the guy's as big as a house.'

'Tchah!' said Mr Carlisle carelessly.

'Well, this is new stuff to me,' said Medway. Her eyes, as they rested on his face, were shining with a light that had not been there before. 'I didn't know you were like this.'

'You've never got me right, Gertie,' said Mr Carlisle with affectionate reproach, 'never.'

'You'll really go and beat this great, husky guy up?'

'For your sake, Gertie, I'd beat up a dozen like him.'

Medway drew a deep breath.

'Well,' she said, 'if you put that through, maybe I might overlook all what happened a year ago. I'm not saying I will, mind you, but I don't say I won't. You do it, and then we'll chat things over and see where we stand.'

''At-a-girl!' said Mr Carlisle devoutly.

No qualms disturbed him. He knew that he could rely on Soup Slattery.

N
IGHT
, sable goddess, from her ebon throne in rayless majesty stretched forth her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world. Down at the Casino Municipale brisk business was still being done, but up at the Château Blissac all was dark and silent. The hour was nearly one, and the Château Blissac had put the cat out and tucked itself in at about eleven-thirty. In all its broad grounds there was not a sound to be heard.

If there had been, it would not have been Soup Slattery who made it. Despite his impressive bulk, there were few men who could move with a softer tread when the occasion demanded it. He had found Mr Carlisle's rough chart of the house and was now consulting it with the aid of an electric torch outside the window which the other had left open for him.

The chart was clear. He switched off the torch and climbed silently in.

To those who, like the Vicomte de Blissac and Gustave, the cocktail blender at the Hotel des Etrangers, had seen Soup Slattery only in his moments of conviviality, it would have been a revelation to behold the stern purposefulness of his face as he mounted the stairs. He was about to confront a trade rival, and towards trade rivals his attitude had ever been one of dour-ness and austerity. He did not like them, and he let them see that he did not like them. This particular one he intended to cause to jump out of the window in his slumber-wear and not stop running till he reached Paris.

The door of Packy's room was locked, but locked doors meant nothing to Mr Slattery. A few seconds' expert manipulation of a small steel implement and the obstacle gave way.

The noise of this operation, though slight, woke Packy. He was not aware, however, that a visitor had arrived until there came the click of the electric switch and light flooded the room.

Even then, he did not immediately discover the intruder's identity. But recognizing sleepily that here was something hostile, he sprang from the bed and alighting on the heel of an upturned shoe spoiled any impressiveness the demonstration might have had by hopping vigorously.

Mr Slattery was a plain, practical man, not at all inclined to waste time watching classical dances when on a business trip.

'Stick' em up!' he said.

The implied suggestion that he was covering Packy with a gun was not based on truth. He never carried a gun on these expeditions, holding very sensibly that if you had one you might use it and that if you used it all sorts of unpleasantness might ensue. What he was pointing at Packy was the small steel implement.

But Packy was not concerned with the other's armoury. He had recognized him now and was greeting him as an old friend.

'Mr Slattery – or may I say Soup, how nice of you to drop in. Neighbourly, I call it.'

Mr Slattery was all confusion and apology.

'You! Say, I didn't know you were in here.'

'Oh, yes, this is my little nest. Come right on in and take a seat. You're just the man I wanted to see. I was planning to come to the hotel and have a talk with you.'

'I wouldn't of bust up your beauty-sleep for the world,' said Mr Slattery contritely. 'I've been given a wrong steer. I'm looking for the bird who's here calling himself Veecount D. Blissac.'

That's me. It's a long story...'

'It's really you?'

'Yes. You see ...'

'Say, listen,' said Mr Slattery, once more nipping the narrative in the bud.

He had seated himself on the bed, and was regarding Packy with a grave reproach. A moment before, he had been all remorse at the thought of having disturbed the night's rest of one who had saved him from the fate, so to speak, that was worse than death. But now other emotions had crept in. Personal friend though Packy might be, he was none the less a rival, and we have seen how Mr Slattery felt about rivals.

'Say, listen,' he said, 'I hate to throw a spanner into a guy's game that's been as swell to me as you have, but you and me have got to have a little talk.'

'Nothing I should enjoy more. You don't mind if I climb between the sheets again?'

'You steered those cops off of me, and I owe you a lot for that. Still and all, when it comes to you horning into this joint and aiming to gum the works for me and my business associate, well, that's something else again.'

Packy looked puzzled.

'I don't quite follow this.'

Mr Slattery shook his head in disapproval of this trifling.

'You can't kid me. I know why you're in this Chatty-o.'

'I'll bet you don't.'

'Come clean,' said Mr Slattery, like a rebuking aunt. 'Quit fooling. You're after that ice.'

'What ice?'

'Mrs Gedge's ice.'

'Mrs Gedge's jewels?'

'Ah.'

'Nothing of the kind.'

'Brother!'

'Nothing,' repeated Packy, 'of the kind. I want to get back a letter.'

'A letter?'

A compromising letter which a friend of mine wrote to Mrs Gedge and which, when she returns, will be in her safe. That is the safe I want you, if you will be so good, to open for me.'

Many men in Mr Slattery's place would have rejected this story as thin. But Mr Slattery was a movie-fan and he knew all about compromising letters. Anything to do with them or with the missing papers or the stolen plans he was prepared to accept without question, especially when told to him by one whom he esteemed as highly as he esteemed Packy. He softened visibly.

'Is that the straight up-and-up?'

'It is.'

'You're not stringing me?'

'Certainly not.'

'Why, then everything's fine. I naturally thought you was after that ice.'

'You can have the ice.'

'Boy, I'm going to do just that little thing. And when I collect it, I won't forget the important documents.'

'"t". Not "ts". One only. A single letter.'

'I'll get it for you. You shall have it.'

Packy patted his shoulder warmly.

'Your words are music. I knew I could rely on you. I don't mind telling you that if you had failed me I should have been pretty badly stymied. You see, owing to a defective education, I couldn't even begin to open a safe myself. How do you, by the way? I've often wondered.'

Mr Slattery was delighted to lecture on his favourite theme.

'Well, first,' he said weightily, 'you get your soup.'

'What's soup?'

'Why, it's soup. Stuff you make out of dynamite. Get your dynamite, crumble it up, put it in a sack, fill a can half full of water, and boil. The grease sinks to the bottom, you drain off the water, and what's left is the soup. Put it in a bottle and there you are.'

'In how many pieces?'

Mr Slattery smiled tolerantly.

'It won't explode. 'Course, you don't want to play football with it.'

'I see. No, that might be a mistake. All right, we're through with the soup course. What then? We are now approaching the safe. What does our hero do?'

'Well, there's two kinds of safe. The tough kind is the sort that's got a keester in it.'

'And a keester is—?'

Mr Slattery was no Thesaurus.

'Well, hell, it's a keester. I don't know what else you'd call it. A sort of extra pete built inside the real pete.'

'A kind of inner compartment?'

'That's right. When it's one of those you're up against something. First, you've got to blow the door open to get at the keester. Then you've got to knock off the pressure bolt. Then you've got to wedge something into the top edge of the keester door. Then you've got to push in something thicker. Then you've got to plug in gauze. Then you wet the gauze with the soup and touch it off. It's no cinch, whatever way you look at it.'

'So I should imagine. Let's hope Mrs Gedge's safe is not that kind.'

'Couldn't be. Not in a house. You find those in banks and that. The kind of pete a dame would have in her house would be one of the ones you borrow a hairpin to open. Or, if nobody's got a hairpin, just eat some garlic and breathe on the lock. Or, if you don't want to do that, find the combination. Where is this pete?'

'In the Venetian Suite on the floor below.'

'Anybody there?'

'Not at the moment.'

'Then let's go down take a look at it,' said Mr Slattery. 'Now's a good time to find out if it's one of those easy ones. Sure to be, though. You don't get keesters in a joint like this. Ask me, it'll be one of those four-letter combinations, and opening those is like shelling peas.'

There is something about Milady's bedroom, even when unoccupied, which tends to cast a certain awe upon the intruder. So Packy, at least, found. The Venetian Room was a large, ornate apartment on the first floor of the Château, with french windows which opened on a balcony looking down upon the drive. Packy, as he accompanied Mr Slattery across the threshold, was strongly conscious of a desire to be elsewhere. He had never met Mrs Gedge, but the picture he had formed of her in his mind was that of a tough baby. And, unreasoning though he knew it to be, he could not altogether repress a fear lest at any moment this formidable woman might suddenly bound out at them from behind the heavy curtains that draped the windows.

Fortunately, for such an occurrence could not have failed to prove a source of embarrassment, his apprehensions were not fulfilled. Great woman though she was, Mrs Gedge could not be simultaneously at the Carlton Hotel in London and in the Venetian Suite of the Château Blissac. No sudden roar, as of a tigress defending her cubs, came to break the stillness. Mr Slattery was enabled to conduct his investigations undisturbed.

The result of these evidently gratified him. He inspected the safe and smiled amiably. It was, it appeared, as he had foreseen, one of the easier, more likeable types of safe. He also spoke with cordial approval of the french windows and the balcony, which, he pointed out in the devout voice in which men call attention to the benevolent acts of Providence, might have been placed there expressly to afford the cracksman a nice, smooth getaway.

And it was at this point, just when everything was going so capitally and the whole atmosphere was so redolent of quiet contentment, that the jarring note intruded itself. For some moments, Mr Slattery had been glancing idly about the room, and now, abruptly, something in its aspect seemed to wipe the genial satisfaction from his face. He stiffened, and his eyes grew wider. It was as if he had seen a serpent in the way.

'But this is a woman's room!'

He spoke in a hoarse, agitated whisper, lowering his powerful voice to such an extent that it sounded like gas escaping from a leaky pipe. But neither this peculiar mode of address nor his care-stricken aspect for the moment conveyed to Packy a sense of anything untoward. He replied calmly, paying no attention to these portents.

'That's right. Mrs Gedge's.'

Mr Slattery shivered.

'Brother,' he said, much moved, 'I hate to break it to you, but if that's so the proposition's cold.'

Packy stared.

'Cold?'

'It's off. You'll have to let me out. I can't do it.'

'What!'

'No, sir,' said Mr Slattery, apologetically but with the utmost firmness, 'I just can't do it. You don't get me busting no woman's room.'

Packy gasped, aghast at this unforeseen exhibition of temperament in one on whom he had looked till now as the most level-headed of his sex.

'Why not?'

'Because,' said Mr Slattery, 'you bust a woman's room and what happens? She wakes up and gets set to scream. And what happens then? You either have to do a dive out of the window and prob'ly break your dam' neck, or else you've got to go and choke her. I never choked no woman yet, boy, and I don't aim to begin.'

The sentiment was one which would have caused Sir Galahad or the Chevalier Bayard to shake hands warmly with Mr Slattery, so instinct was it with the best spirit of chivalry. One dislikes to have to state, therefore, that it awoke in Packy only a disgusted exasperation.

'But, good Lord, you must have had to burgle a woman's room occasionally in the course of your distinguished career. How long have you been cracking safes?'

'Years and years.'

'Well, then.'

'No,' said Mr Slattery. 'You see, brother, up till a few years back I've always worked with a partner. The best inside worker a safe-blower ever had. Julia, her name was, and she's quit me now, but in the old days we were a team.'

'I don't see what Julia has to do with it.'

'She used to get herself invited to these swell homes,' explained Mr Slattery. 'Having class. And if the pete was in a dame's room she'd slip in before I got there and put a sponge of chloroform under her nose, so that by the time I arrived everything was hotsy-totsy. Boy, you don't know how I've missed Julia since she walked out on me. I've felt like a little child without its mother.'

He was plainly suffering from the wild regret, of which the poet speaks, for the days that are no more, but Packy was in no frame of mind to offer condolences. His mood was regrettably self-centred. He brooded morosely.

'Then you won't get that letter for me?'

'I can't. Say, whose letter is it, anyway?'

'Senator Opal's.'

'No.' Mr Slattery shook his head regretfully. 'If it had been yours, maybe I might have stretched a point. But I don't go busting no beazels' rooms for any Senator Opal.'

'And those jewels? You're really going to pass them up?'

'Don't talk of them,' begged Mr Slattery. 'Just to think of them gives me a pain. But there it is. I'm sorry.' His face lightened. 'But, say, listen. You fix it so's Gedge sleeps in here, and the deal's on again.'

The implication that he was in a position to dictate their sleeping arrangements to his host and hostess increased Packy's annoyance.

And how do you suggest that I do that?'

'Well, hell,' said Mr Slattery, 'I don't see where it's so difficult. Here's this pete, full of ice. Just being there, it makes it dangerous for a dame to sleep in the room. You tell this Gedge dame she's apt to get her head pushed in one of these nights if she goes on laying with it up against a pete full of stuff, and she'll see it. If she's like most dames.'

'From what I hear, she isn't.'