The Mysterious Mickey Finn (23 page)

‘One to one, by God,' he said, referring to the score. ‘They got Gring, we got this chap. Not much choice.'

Miriam was keeping carefully towards the bow of the
Deuxième Pays.
It was one thing to shoot a target, or a wounded steer, or even a portrait of Whistler's aunt. To have picked off a fellow creature, no matter how vicious, was new to her. She kept telling herself that doubtless she would get used to it, but definitely she had not as yet done so. She looked rather pitifully at Evans who immediately understood.

‘Throw a tarp over the stiff,' he said to Hjalmar, who was prodding the body thoughtfully and trying to remember about
rigor mortis.

‘I'll chuck him down into the cabin,' said Hjalmar. ‘If there's a leak, by God, we'll stuff him into it.'

‘
Norn de Dieu
,' Sergeant Frémont said. ‘You all forget I have a job and a family to support. I've got to list his papers.'

‘If you find a paper on that mug, I'll buy you a new uniform.

You'll need it, after that run through the briers,' Hjalmar said.

A quick search proved that Hjalmar's surmise was true. The deceased triggerman had no more papers than a jack rabbit might have carried. ‘How about thumbprints?' Hjalmar grunted, good-naturedly. ‘It's better to go back with them than nothing at all.'

‘We shall take back the entire body, if we get back ourselves,' the sergeant said. ‘I was reluctant at first, Mr Evans, to believe this case contained the dangers you hinted at. What has happened just now has caused me to change my mind.'

‘Just a mere hand grenade and Sho-Sho gun, and a trio of mobsters?' asked Evans, mockingly. ‘Before we get through, I'm afraid we'll run greater risks than those. I'm decidedly displeased with the situation. Our kidnappers have been warned and have taken the offensive. I had hoped to surprise them.'

‘If they knock off old Hugo, I'll tear out their livers and eat ‘em steaming,' Hjalmar said, and the look on his face seemed to indicate that he would be as good as his word.

‘I come not to bury Hugo but to save him,' Evans said. ‘We must beat those chaps to Frontville, or our philanthropic friend is doomed. But how shall we get there? By what means of locomotion, or propulsion? We have no Harley Davidson, our motor boat is aground.'

‘Look,' Miriam said. ‘There's a bunch of horses. Why not rope ‘em and cut right across the country?'

The answer was four splashes, as Evans, Hjalmar, Frémont, and Miriam herself, in the order named, hit the Seine again and made for the adjoining meadow.

H
EISS
and Lourde were enjoying their new-found freedom with certain reservations. They had passed through many trying experiences, such a rapid succession of them as had not ruffled the shady course of their business career since they had passed off a false Giotto mural in the pre-war days, only to discover that they had received in exchange an even more phoney Cimabue. To boot, the enormous frame of the Cimabue was not gilded according to specifications but covered with radiator paint.

The recent advent of Hugo Weiss, on the eve of what was to be a clearance sale of candlelight Grecos, had been the precursor of more disturbing events than Giotto and Cimabue had ever dreamed of. First, Gring's mission had failed and he had been murdered. Then after having their hopes raised by Arabs who simply ached to be fleeced, the Bedouins turned out to be U.S. Government agents. Then the police had swarmed all over the place. From the frightful grilling by Evans they had been miraculously saved by a summons from the prefect. They were at large at last but could it be a trap, they wondered. Abel took the affirmative, Dodo, with less conviction, the negative. There was no decision. For want of better occupation they strolled back to their place of what loosely, perhaps, could be termed business. It was empty, save for the water bugs and old masters.

‘I have a terrible feeling that I have forgotten something,' Dodo said, rubbing his arches which still throbbed from the sergeant's heels.

His timid remark brought Abel to his feet. ‘The cops have got the Grecos. They should be shipped to-morrow at the latest,' Abel said.

‘Maybe the prefect'll give 'em back. He wasn't as tough as I thought he'd be,' said Dodo.

‘You sap. That's part of the third degree. First one slaps us around, then another pulls a Florence Nightingale. They nab us, then turn us loose. They're playing with us like a cat with a mouse. . . .'

‘Worse,' Dodo said. ‘But what are we going to do? We can't lose the sales, our only big clean-up. You know it looked too good from the start. Six Grecos at a wallop. Now I ask you, what can any guy do with six Grecos all the same size. . . .'

‘Shut up. I got to think,' Abel said. It was evident that his thoughts, such as they were, did not incline toward the bright or cheery side. However, he said at last: ‘We got to get a set of new ones. That's what we got to do.'

‘All this grilling's scrambled your brains,' Dodo said. ‘Who can turn out six Grecos overnight?'

‘You know who,' Abel said.

‘He's never done more than three Old Masters a week,' Dodo said. ‘I'm not talking about guys like Millet with two peasants digging clams and just a couple of trees or steeples, brown like gravy. This man Greco's stuff is all complicated and cock-eyed. You can't
ad lib.
when you copy a guy like that.'

‘The new process. What about that?'

‘Do you think it would work? Can our man snapshot candlelight?'

‘He's got to,' Abel said. ‘I'll put the screws on that guy. He's been getting away with a lot of guff, his social standing, all that hooey. The higher his social standing is, the more harm I could do him if I opened my trap.'

‘He's got a great eye for copying,' Dodo said. ‘You got to hand him that. Give him a painting and he'll turn out another just like two peas in a pod. Naturally, such a talented guy is temperamental.'

‘Now that we've got his name I'm going to take him down a peg,' Abel said. ‘I've been kicked around enough.'

They jammed hats on their heads, Abel choosing a flat broad-brimmed derby and Dodo a rakish felt of what is known to the trade as ‘assignation green '. A good three minutes before the special agents of the minister of justice swooped down the boulevard Haussmann hoping to take them into custody again, the enterprising pair were walking rapidly in the direction of the avenue Pierre Premier de Serbie, a quarter where no dragnet had netted much of anything since the days of Millerand. In front of a large ornate apartment building characteristic of the 1890s, they paused, straightened their coat lapels, glanced uneasily up and down the silent street, and pushed the button which opened the front door. The
concierge
, taking a cursory look at them, snapped: ‘Service entrance'. Abel, however, had his dander up.

‘Service entrance be damned. We're not selling anything. We come to make a professional call,' he said.

‘What floor?'

‘The top.'

‘No one home,' the
concierge
sniffed.

‘Then we'll wait on the landing,' Abel said and shoved Dodo into an elevator built for two. The elevator clanked and thumped its way almost to the top floor, so near that Dodo was able to pry open the outside door and be boosted to the floor level, after which he braced himself against the framework and pulled Abel up after him. In response to their tug at the bell cord a man servant opened the door.

‘The master cannot be disturbed,' the servant said.

‘He's got to be disturbed,' Abel said. ‘We've got to see him right away.'

‘Out of the question. The master's orders are that while he is painting he cannot be interrupted,' the servant insisted. It was clear that he did not like the looks of Abel and Dodo. In the first place they were too young to be calling on the master. Furthermore they were not wearing ribbons of the Legion of Honour and they bore hats in their hands the like of which the servant had not seen since the day he had been obliged to fetch his master home from an exhibition of Toulouse-Lautrecs.

‘Good day,' the servant said, coldly, and started to close the door. It was Dodo who acted, in that instance. The heel trick of the Fakir Yenolob had been tried on Dodo so often that he had picked it up, so he brought down his heel smartly on the arch of the servant's foot and before the latter could regain his poise both Abel and Dodo had slipped past his guard and were in the hallway. The ensuing scuffle brought the master, palette and brushes in hand, to the doorway and he was none other than Paty de Pussy, vice-president of the
Societe des Artistes Français
and the author of the plan for the proposed
Hugo Schussschicker Weiss Institut Artistique de la Prudence et de la Sécurité.

‘What does this mean?' he demanded.

‘Stow it,
maître.
Climb down,' Abel said. ‘Tell this trained seal of yours to go hide himself. We got to talk to you.'

‘Adolphe, put them out at once,' Paty de Pussy said to the servant, who was nursing his foot.

‘He can't put us out,' Abel said. ‘Why not call the police? Dodo and I have just been released from the
préfecture.
Some of your swell friends would be surprised, if it got out that we were in your studio.'

‘This is an outrage,' Paty de Pussy said, but less aggressively. ‘It was distinctly understood that all transactions were to take place through an intermediary. . . .'

‘You don't read the papers,' Abel said disgustedly. ‘The intermediary's dead. He was murdered at the Café du Dôme.'

At that Paty de Pussy dropped his mask of hauteur and showed himself capable of some very quick embarrassment and anxiety. ‘Go, Adolphe,' he said, ‘go soak your foot in mustard water until I call for you. '

He beckoned Abel and Dodo into the spacious studio, closing nervously all the doors and even the skylight. His hands were trembling, his manner betrayed the deepest agitation. It was not the death of Ambrose Gring that had upset him so, but the fact that Gring had been overdue in the Avenue Pierre Premier de Serbie with the payment for six candlelight Grecos not only forged with extreme skill but having been painted on the old fifteenth-century canvas that had baffled the experts of several countries.

‘Gentlemen,' Paty de Pussy implored. ‘Set my mind at rest, if you can. When M. Gring was found dead, did he have on him any considerable sum of money?'

Abel caught on at once and spat disgustedly on the Aubusson carpet. He could put up with avarice in the lower classes but when a man who had never known want showed such a passion for money Abel had no sympathy for him.

‘You mean your pay?'

‘My . . . er . . . emolument,' Paty de Pussy said.

‘Nothing doing. That batch of Grecos haven't been paid for, and they won't be paid for, either. . . .'

Paty de Pussy rose and started waving his arms. ‘Not paid for. You mean. . . not paid for. This is a swindle. I've fallen into the hands of bandits and assassins.
Canaille.
'

‘The cops have confiscated all of them,' Abel said.

Paty de Pussy wilted into a Louis XIV chair. ‘I'm disgraced. I'm a ruined man.'

‘Take it easy,' Dodo said. ‘We haven't squealed on you. What do you think we are?'

The master was too frightened to be reassured: ‘You've come to blackmail me,' he said.

‘Not at all. If you'd let us talk, we'd tell you why we came.'

‘Do so. I beg of you, do so,' the master said.

‘Nobody's wise to them Grecos except a mug named Evans, a stranger to all of us. He's out of town to-day and I've got it on good authority that he won't come back. Not to-day or any other day. See?' Abel said.

‘I refuse to have anything to do with murder, unless it is political murder and therefore justifiable,' Paty de Pussy said, drawing himself up to his full height.

‘Calm yourself,' said Abel. ‘I ain't asking you to do no rough stuff. What we want is another batch of Grecos, six of 'em. And we want ‘em the first thing to-morrow morning.
If
we get 'em, you won't be exposed. We won't even tell the cops we know you. You won't be charged with grand larceny and conspiracy. Your name won't be mixed up in no murder case. You'll be sitting pretty. See? But, on the other hand, if you should act upstage, or stall or anything, well, I wouldn't be able to promise you the guillotine, maybe, but whatever France has short of that, you'd get. And what headlines. Scion of French aristocracy ringleads mob. Salon prize winner baffles art world with forgeries. Juicy? Eh?'

‘Eiffelturish,' murmured Dodo, rubbing his hands. ‘Listen, Abel. Wouldn't it almost be worth it to expose him? Think of the show there'd be. In court, in the Santé. Society broads fainting in the crush at the courtroom. Just think of what M. Pussy's mug would look like, in two column cut, with inserts of real and fake Grecos on each side.'

Paty de Pussy had reached the end of his resistance. Perspiration had wilted his collar and was trickling down his back and the calves of his legs. His hands were trembling so badly that Abel had to call a halt.

‘Lay off, Dodo,' he said. ‘If he gets the shakes he won't be able to do anything but Pissarros or Van Goghs. We got to have Grecos, and no mistake.'

‘You know how them Greeks are,' Dodo said. ‘So crooked they can't paint a guy with a straight face. All right. No more mental cruelty, if you say so. But let's get down to business.'

‘Yes. To business,' Abel said. Then he added kindly to Paty de Pussy: ‘You see? We're tender-hearted. We don't want you to lose your fees, neither for the half-dozen you've already turned in nor the six you're going to do to-day. What the hell. It won't hurt you to work all night for once. Got a blue light?'