The wrong Venus

  “Normally, the man who’s in charge of our operation in Marseille would have come up to look into it, but he’d just had an accident in Istanbul, and was in the hospital. So my boss sent for me to come over. I’d have been here yesterday, but I was cooling another beef in Las Vegas. But never mind that. . . . While I was waiting for the plane in New York, I called Monsieur Dudley, who read me your note. So I called my boss. He was—uh—upset over the news, but I managed to convince him it might be better to let me handle it this way. Alone, you know what I mean?

  “The syndi—I mean, company—doesn’t want to get mixed up in anything that might cause a lot of stink and start rocking the boat—you know, unfavorable publicity—so seeing it was just a mistake on your part, we’ll buy a piece of your action, but not at anything like the price you’re talking about. As soon as I’m satisfied Mademoiselle Flanagan hasn’t been mistreated in any way, I’ll turn over to you thirty thousand francs—”

  “Thirty thousand francs? You think we are children?”

  “My advice, friend, would be to take it.”

  “This is—how do you call it—chicken food.”

  “And it will be paid only after I see Mademoiselle Flanagan myself.”

  “See her? Are you crazy?”

  “Wait a minute!” Colby said ominously. “She is all right, isn’t she? If anything has happened to her—”

  “Nothing has happened. She is quite well, and has already cost us a fortune in food and wine. But see her? You think you can come out here?”

  “What’s the problem?” Colby asked. “We just set up a Healy.”

  “A what?”

  “A Healy Pickup. . . . Listen, who’s in charge of your operation? Maybe I’d better talk to him.”

  “I am in charge.”

  “Oh? And you’ve never used a Healy? But never mind, I’ll explain it to you. You choose the time and place—it’ll be night, of course, and the best place is a country road.

  “I’ll be alone and unarmed, walking along the left side of the road, going in the direction you tell me. When you come up behind me, you already know there are no cars parked back in that direction, so you go on past for another mile or so to be sure there’s no muscle or any fuzz staked out ahead. Then you come back. I can’t see you, naturally, because your headlights are in my eyes. You stop. I turn around, facing away from the car, with my hands on top of my head. You cover, make the frisk, and put the blindfold over my eyes. None of this jerk routine of hitting me over the head, that’s for television. I get in the car. Leave the blindfold on after we get to your hideout. Mademoiselle Flanagan can tell me if she’s all right.

  “I give you the code word I’ve already arranged with Monsieur Dudley. You telephone here, give him the word, and he delivers the money. As soon as you pick it up, you fade with a Cicero Drop.”

  “A what?”

  Colby sighed. “A Cicero Drop is simply a Healy Pickup in reverse. You drive Mademoiselle Flanagan and me, still blindfolded, to some place in the country where it’ll take us an hour to walk to a telephone, and release us. I’ve never seen any of you, and I don’t know where I’ve been. No strain, no flics. I’ll bring the proof you’ve got the wrong woman, and I’ll also bring your letter so you can burn it yourself. And one more thing. You’ll have to tell me how you want the money delivered, before I go out there, so I can tell Monsieur Dudley. You got all that?”

  “Yes. But we want more than thirty thousand francs.”

  “You won’t get any more. Talk it over with your mob and call me back. And don’t take all night, I haven’t got much time.”

  “I will call you.” The line went dead.

  Colby replaced the instrument. Dudley was bursting with curiosity. “What’d he say, what’d you say?”

  “We may be selling him,” Colby replied. “But it’s a long way down from a hundred thousand to six.”

  For Dudley’s benefit, Martine repeated the gist of Colby’s end of the conversation. “Everybody knows that Cheek-ago is all gangsters,” she explained. “And les gangsters américains are the world’s best.” She smiled at Colby. “I loved the Healy Pickup. You’ve probably added a new word to franglais.”

  “Well, I always wanted to leave some monument.”

  “Do you think they’ll go for it?”

  “It’s hard to guess—” he began, when the telephone rang. It hadn’t taken them long to make up their minds. He picked it up, said, “Allo!” and was greeted by a burst of machine-gun French from a Parisian operator. New York was calling Madame Manning. He groaned, motioned to Dudley, and put his hand over the transmitter as he held it out.

  “Cut it short,” he whispered. If the kidnapers got a busy signal when they called back, the whole thing might collapse.

  “Hello! Hello!” Dudley snapped. “Who? . . . Oh, Thornhill? . . . Just fine. . . .” The haunted look was back in his eyes again. Martine leaned over. She cupped her hands and whispered in Colby’s ear. “Her literary agent—driving Merriman crazy about the manuscript—calls here every other day—wants to talk to Manning. . . .”

  Dudley was in front of the desk. “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of interrupting her. . . . Another week at the most. . . . What? What’s that?” They saw the haunted look begin to give way to one of sheer horror. “Rome? When? . . . Just a minute, somebody on the other line, I’ll get rid of him—” He cupped a hand over the transmitter. “Thornhill! He’s flying to Rome tonight, and he’s going to stop off here to see Miss Manning!”

  Well, it was interesting while it lasted, Colby thought. But this was the end. And they could kiss the six thousand dollars goodbye.

  Dudley was shouting into the phone again. “Look, Thornhill, I’d think it’d be as much in your interest as it is in hers to let her finish! . . . What? . . . Of course I realize. . . .”

  Martine grabbed the scratchpad and scrawled the word F L U across it. She held it up, gesturing.

  “. . . she doesn’t work at night, but she does have to rest sometime!” Dudley caught sight of the scrawl. “And besides, she’s got the flu.”

  Colby watched, fascinated. Martine had got up and was creaking her way around the desk, a middle-aged woman ravaged by grippe. Dudley broke off and stared too as she approached. She held a finger under her nose like someone trying to arrest a sneeze. She sneezed, and said, “Oh, Berribad, is thad Bister Thordhiud?” She gestured for the phone.

  “Wait—here she is now,” Dudley said in a faint voice. He collapsed against one of the filing cases, his face in his hands.

  “. . . doh, doh, id’s dod the grippe. Berribad exaggerades so; id’s just a head code, I thig. ... A little fever, bud dod buch, aroud a hundred and four. ... I’b stid workig. The doctor fusses, bud. . . ,”

  Watching her, Colby wanted to move back to keep from catching it himself. It wasn’t only the nasal voice and stuffed-up enunciation; she was I’ll in every line. She sneezed again.

  “Oh, Berribad, would you hadd be a kleedeggs?”

  Colby flipped open her handbag and passed her a handkerchief. She honked into it, and said, “Thagyou. . . . Dear Berribad’s bed so dice, keepig peopud frob botherig be. . . . The book is goig very dicely, dod bore that addother week ... To Robe? . . . Oh, I wish you could stob here.”

  Colby was suddenly aware of an altercation somewhere below in heated and rapid-fire French, full of volleying alors and vous alors! It seemed to be drawing nearer, and he thought one of the voices was Madame Buffet’s.

  “... it is a shabe,” Martine went on. “It would have bed so dice to see you, but perhabs id’s best. . . . Yes, I probise, right back id bed. . . . Goodbye.”

  She hung up, winked at Colby, and said, “He’s a regular old maid about his health.” Then she heard the commotion in the hall, and turned.

  The rolling barrage of French was coming this way. Sandwiched between vehement protestations by Madame Buffet, a man’s voice was raised in some maudlin lament that sounded like, “Bougie! I want my Bougie!” Colby steppe
d to the door, wondering what new crisis was about to enliven the literary scene.

  The man was in the lead, plowing ahead with Madame Buffet hauling back on his coat sleeve like some terrier attached to a bear, a swarthy, tough-looking spiv with the aura of North African alleys about him in spite of the tight silk suit and pointed shoes. He was almost certainly carrying a gun in a holster under his left arm, and was weeping into a large blue handkerchief.

  There was no doubt he looked and sounded drunk, but Colby felt the hair lift on his neck at the thought of that briefcase with fifty thousand francs lying on the table. He could have followed Dudley from the bank. He came through the doorway, still towing Madame Buffet, and searched the room with as piteous a glance as was possible from a man who looked as if he would cut your throat for two dollars, or less if your shoes would fit.

  7

  The room was swept by language, most of it from Madame Buffet.

  This drunken species of camel—”

  “Where’s Bougie? What have you done with her?” the man sobbed, dabbing at his eyes again.

  “—pushed his way in. I keep telling him there’s nobody here named Bougie—” This much she had addressed to the still benumbed Dudley before remembering the futility of trying to tell him anything in French, even under optimum conditions. She swung around then and loosed the rest of the burst at Colby.

  “—and if he doesn’t get out we will summon the flics—”

  Dudley was still leaning against the filing cabinets. Martine was in front of the desk. It was the man himself Colby was watching. He still looked drunk, and maybe he was, but crying into that big handkerchief was one way to keep his face hidden, and there’d been no doubt about the holster. With Madame Buffet hauling back on his coat, it had opened just enough to reveal part of the strap over his shoulder. He was inside the doorway now, with Madame Buffet to one side and slightly behind him.

  “—and they can take him off in the lettuce-basket, him and—”

  The man reached back with his left hand then, and lobbed her into the room ahead of him. “—his merde of a Bougie!” she finished more or less in mid-air as she slammed into Martine.

  The right hand was stabbing into his left armpit just as Colby hit him under the ear and fell on him. They crashed to the floor on the other side of the doorway. The gun came free and slid across the rug, but the man had heaved up under him like a cat, and rolled, and they were on top of it again—or rather, Colby was on the gun and the man was on top of Colby. He was an alley-fighter’s alley-fighter, fast, powerful, and dirty.

  The thumbs were groping for his eyes when Colby managed to get both feet up into his stomach and kick out. The man shot upward and back, and was on his feet directly in front of the door to the inner office when Martine emerged from it with the remains of a chair. She swung from the ankles, like a circus roustabout driving a stake. It was good, heavy, Siamese teak, and made one of the most gratifying sounds Colby had ever heard. The man straightened slightly, and looked around with an expression of gentle wonder on his face. He stepped over Colby, as though headed for the door, took two more steps, and walked into the wall. With a peaceful little sigh, he slid down it, and lay still.

  The whole thing had taken only seconds. Dudley was still beside the filing cabinets, a stunned look on his face. Madame Buffet had taken refuge at the end of the desk. Colby scrambled over beside the man. He was out cold, and needed no further attention at the moment. Martine threw the remains of the chair back into the other room and picked up the gun. It was some kind of foreign automatic Colby wasn’t familiar with.

  “Watch it, watch it!” he called. “The safety may be off.”

  Martine examined it. “I’m not sure which way it goes.” She pointed the muzzle at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The report crashed back and forth, reverberating between the walls, and chunks of plaster began to rain down on Madame Buffet. Dudley buried his face in his hands again. Martine pushed the safety catch. “That way,” she said, and handed the gun to Colby.

  One final piece of plaster fell into Madame Buffet’s hair, and the room was at rest. “Excrément,” she said.

  “Call the cook,” Colby ordered, dropping the gun in his pocket. For the moment they were, miraculously, down to only one crisis again, but he had to get the room cleared before that phone rang. “Help him drag this guy out in the alley.”

  “Not in there?” she asked, indicating the back room.

  “No. We just get rid of him.”

  She started for the door, muttering. Who would ever understand Americans? A perfectly good two-hundred-franc pigeon walked in off the street and they threw him away.

  “You can take storage and handling charges out of his pocket,” Colby called after her. “Split with the cook.”

  She brightened and quickened her pace. He caught the man’s shoulders, dragged him into the hall, and checked his pulse. He was all right; it would take more than a girl with a teak chair to kill him. He hurried back. Martine was dumping plaster off the two maps and putting the scratchpad back in place.

  Dudley collapsed in the chair at the end of the desk. “And I could have been a pimp,” he said, “or a geek in a carnival sideshow—”

  “Was this type in the bank when you got the money?” Colby asked. The time lag puzzled him; why had he waited so long?

  “Who?” The other was still glassy-eyed, and seemed to be having trouble picking up the threads again. “Oh—no, I didn’t see him.” He looked at Martine.

  She shook her head. “I’m sure he wasn’t there.”

  There were grunts and mutterings in the hall as Madame Buffet and the cook began dragging the man toward the stairs.

  “But what was this thing he kept saying—this Bougie business?” Dudley asked. “I thought he was looking for somebody.”

  “Just part of his drunk act,” Colby said. “Bougie’s not even a name. It’s French for sparkplug.”

  “Or candle,” Martine said.

  They looked at each other. At that moment the telephone rang.

  Colby picked it up. “Allo.”

  “So you have been talking to the police! Maybe you want to get back a dead woman—!”

  It was what he’d been afraid of. “Hold it,” he interrupted. “And don’t say cop to me. That was long-distance from Chicago. They want some action. And I’ve got another job—”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got to get some of our office staff up from Marseille and catch a plane to Istanbul. That man that was in the accident needs a transfusion.”

  “I regret your troubles, but they have nothing to do with us.”

  “Who said they did? I’m just trying to tell you, they want me to turn this over to Decaux. I can’t stooge around here forever.”

  “Decaux? Pascal Decaux? You know him?”

  “I’ve met him,” Colby said indifferently. Martine was watching with fascination. Decaux was a killer, probably the deadliest hoodlum in France. “He does the odd job for us, and he can handle this pay-off. He may charge you a commission—”

  “We have decided,” the other broke in, almost eagerly. “Have you got a map there?”

  “Of course. City, and a Michelin Grandes Routes.”

  “The Michelin. Take National Route Ten to Rambouillet—”

  “Right,” Colby said. He was tracing it with the pencil. Marline and Dudley watched.

  “—at Rambouillet, change to Route Three-oh-six to Maintenon. Turn north there, on the route to Dreux. After four kilometers there is a road on the left, not shown—”

  Colby made a mark on the map, and began writing the rest of it on the scratchpad.

  “Take this road. Three kilometers ahead you will cross a small wooden bridge. Get out there and start walking in the same direction at exactly nine p.m. Your driver can return the way you came, or go ahead to one of the intersecting roads and turn left to get back onto D Twenty-six west of Maintenon.”

  “Check. Now, about delivering the money, so
I can tell Monsieur Dudley.”

  “Use the same road. Tell him to keep driving straight ahead until at one of the intersecting roads he will see a wine bottle lying at the edge of the gravel. If the bottle is on the right, turn right. On the left, turn left. After the turn, he is to drive at thirty kilometers an hour straight ahead, watching the left side of the road. When he sees two wine bottles lying at the edge of it, he will throw the money out, and keep going on at the same speed. If he is followed, or stops, or if there are any police in the area, you and the girl will be killed.” The line went dead.

  Colby repeated the instructions to Dudley and Martine. She smiled admiringly. “I think it was Decaux that swung it,” she said. “That was a nice touch.”

  “I thought it might throw a little scare into ‘em, even if it did mean stooping to the truth. I have met him, I interviewed him once.” He went on. “There was nothing said about more money, but they may be saving that till I get out there. They’ll have two of us then, and a bluff can work both ways. Except that if only thirty thousand francs was drawn out of the bank, it means sweating it out for another twenty-four hours, till tomorrow night. So it gets easier and easier to settle for the thirty thousand and run.”

  “The old pressure routine,” Martine said. Then she went on soberly, “But there’s still no guarantee they won’t kill you both after they get it.”

  “There never is. It just depends on how well we’ve sold them we’re not going to the police. Is there a safe here?”

  “Yes,” Dudley replied. “In that back room.”

  “Put the money in there. And make sure all the outside doors are locked, so that joker can’t get back in. Martine will take the gun in the car, both trips. She’ll drop me, and then come back here. When they call, you answer. The code word is “bingo.’ Put thirty thousand francs in the briefcase, all the small bills and the rest in hundreds. You and Martine deliver it, and then come back here and wait for us to call. If we do, your troubles are over. If we don’t, ours are.”

  * * *

  The car was a Jaguar, an XKE roadster, and Martine drove it in the French manner, with the hell-for-leather elan of the cavalry charge at Agincourt, and the same fine contempt for consequences. Traffic was heavy until they were out of the city, calling mostly for great agility and a certain fluency in verbal exchange with other drivers, but presently the spaces between cars began to lengthen and there was more scope for California roulette. At least, Colby thought, it took his mind off tonight; there didn't seem to be any great chance he'd live to see it.