Highbinders (20 page)

He had picked me up in the Volkswagen promptly at midnight, but because of our wanderings through West Kensington, we didn’t pull up in the alley behind 14 Beauclerc Street until nearly one. We coasted up to the back door of the locksmith’s shop with our lights and engine off.

I reached into the back seat for my sack of impromptu burglar tools and suddenly remembered one I had forgotten. “Shit,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot to buy a flashlight.”

“Here,” Styles said, “I have a pocket torch. One of these disposable things that you throw away when it burns out.”

“You always carry it?”

“No, I bought it late this afternoon. I noticed that you didn’t buy one at the ironmonger’s, but I didn’t want to say anything.”

“Thank you. I’m very sensitive.”

“Not at all.”

Holding my sack of tools in one hand and the small flashlight in the other, I got out of the Volkswagen and went around it to the back door of the locksmith’s shop. I was worrying about what tools I should use to pry open the door, especially since it was a locksmith’s door. I was also worrying about the murder squad from Scotland Yard and whether they had sealed the door. Homicide does that in New York sometimes. Seals the door. I ran the flashlight up and down the locksmith’s door. It wasn’t sealed. At least not from the outside.

“What’re you doing?” Styles whispered.

“Trying to decide what I should use.”

“Mind if I have a look?” he said. “I’ve locked myself out a few times.”

I could see that he was going to be a great help. He took the flashlight and ran it up and down the door, inspected the hinges, and then shined it on the locks. There were three of them. “Hmm,” he said and gave the doorknob a tentative sort of try. It turned easily and the door opened.

Robin Styles stood there as if expecting to be congratulated, or maybe even knighted, so I handed him his prize, the monkey wrench.

“I say,” he whispered, “what’s this?”

“A blunt instrument,” I whispered back. “The door’s open. That means somebody has gone inside and is, or is not, still there. If the somebody is still there, you may wish to bash him with a blunt instrument.”

“I’ve never done anything like this.”

“You virgins are all alike. Here. You can carry the tools, too.”

“What do you have?”

I showed him the huge screwdriver, the nearest thing to a legitimate jimmy that the ironmonger had.

“You seem to know the way,” he said. “I think you’d better go first.”

Well, why not, I thought. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test that I had once taken on a female psychologist’s dare showed that I had definite leadership potential. Most people who rate high on the schizophrenic scale do, and she’d said that I was right up there with the best of them, Huey Long, Pancho Villa, George Custer. People like that. The real crazies. But I’d rated very low on paranoia. “That’s your trouble,” she’d said. “You not only believe that there’s nobody out to get you, but you wouldn’t give much of a shit if they were.”

St. Ives, the born leader, stepped into the workshop of the dead locksmith and shined the light around. Nobody shot at me so I let my breath out and took one in, the first in a long while, it seemed. From the little light that the small torch made, the place looked much the same except for the floor near the anvil. There was no dead body slumped against it at an odd angle, but a thick white chalk mark outlined where it had once lain.

I crossed the shop and this time looked carefully behind the thick tan curtain that separated the work area from where the customers were served. There was nobody there.

“Up the stairs,” I whispered to Styles and we went up them slowly, I with my screwdriver, he with his monkey wrench, both of us poised to run like hell if there had been the slightest noise. There wasn’t and we came out into the kitchen which, from what I could see, was still as neat and tidy as ever.

I led Robin Styles through the small dining room into the sitting room. I found myself holding my breath again, but when the light from my flash picked out the Christmas tree, I let it out. It was still there.

“A Christmas tree?” Styles whispered, putting a lot of exclamation into it.

“That’s right.”

“But it’s May.”

“Maybe it was always Christmas in his heart,” I said and ran the light around the base of the tree. The packages still lay there, but they looked different, and I saw that they had all been unwrapped and then rewrapped by somebody who didn’t know too much about wrapping packages. The police, I assumed, looking for clues. I hoped they had found one.

I located a small table and put the flash on it so that its light shined on the tree. “Give me that sack of tools,” I said to Robin Styles and he handed them over.

I took out the long-nosed pliers and the saw and squatted down by the tree. I put the pliers down and started sawing away at the tree’s lowest branches. When I thought I had sawed enough of them off, I turned my head toward Robin Styles and said, “This thing rests in a big bucket. You hold onto the bucket while I pull.”

He knelt down and awkwardly grasped the lips of the big pail or bucket. I could think of no graceful way that he could have done it. I grasped the tree by its trunk and pulled. Nothing happened. I pulled again and metal scraped against the sides of the pail and the base of the tree moved up about six inches. I gave another mighty pull and it was free.

The branches had scratched my face and hands and were making them itch. I lowered the tree until it lay on its side. I picked up the flashlight and shined it on the base of the tree, the part that had been resting in the pail. Billy Curnutt, locksmith, had been a proper craftsman. A section of iron pipe about an inch and a half in diameter looked as if it had been run horizontally through the trunk of the tree. When wedged down into the pail, the pipe would have braced the tree firmly.

I ran the light up the trunk of the tree. Although almost invisible, a thin gray wire was wrapped tightly around the trunk. The wire was almost the same color as the bark of the tree, if a Scotch pine, which is coniferous, has bark, and I suppose it does.

I took the long-nosed pliers and started snipping the wire. Once I had it started it unwrapped easily. Then I held out my hand.

“What do you want?” Styles said.

“The monkey wrench.”

I took the wrench and tightened its jaws around the iron pipe that stuck out from the tree. I gave the pipe a tug with the wrench and felt it beginning to unscrew. After a few more tugs with the wrench I could unscrew it with my hand. When it came loose I slipped it off and in the light of the torch the ruby seemed to wink at us.

“It’s the bloody sword!” Styles said, forgetting to whisper.

“What did you think I was looking for, the candy canes?”

“It’s inside the tree.”

“I know it’s inside the tree. It just fits. Now you can help get it out.”

Styles held the tree’s trunk up while I pried off the cap that Curnutt had fashioned to cover the pommel of the sword. He had sawed off a thick section of the tree from the base to form the cap. Then he had sawed off another section, hollowed it out until it was large enough to conceal the sword’s hilt. He had then split the tree very carefully far enough up to sheath the entire blade. He had then wrapped the wire tightly enough around the split trunk so that no crack was visible. The two sections of iron pipe, of course, had concealed the sword’s crosspiece and had also served as a stout brace to hold the tree upright in the pail. Curnutt had even been so meticulous as to countersink the finishing nails that held the cap onto the base of the tree. He had covered the countersunk holes with plastic wood that had been dyed or colored the same as that of sawed pine.

Although the hilt and the crosspiece were now free, the blade was still inserted in the split trunk. I took the trunk from Styles’s hands and said, “You’ve got a pure heart, pull it out.”

He pulled and it slid out easily, as if he were drawing it from its scabbard. He held it up wonderingly and stared at it. “How did you know?” he said.

“You might keep a Christmas tree up through March or even April. But not through May, not unless you want a nine-foot-tall tinderbox in your living room. Curnutt was too careful and too neat for that. He had to be using it for something else and who would ever look inside a Christmas tree?”

“You would,” Styles said and there was nothing but admiration in his voice. I can take a compliment as well as anyone. I didn’t quite blush. Instead, I said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Here,” he said, handing me the sword that some people thought was worth three million pounds. “You take it. I’ll gather up the tools.”

“We should have worn gloves,” I said. “I should have thought of a flashlight and I should have thought of gloves. I can see I’ve got a great future as a second-story man.”

“I didn’t touch anything except the tree and the pail, did you?”

I tried to think. “The outside doorknob. I think we touched that:”

“We can wipe it off on the way out.”

Styles led the way to the stairs, carrying the bag of tools and the flashlight. I followed with the sword. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped, turned, and held the flashlight so that I could see the steps.

I started down the steps and his flashlight wavered. It wavered because a voice said, “Hold it right there, mate.” The voice sounded as though it belonged to a gun. It also sounded as though it belonged to Tick-Tock Tamil.

I stopped on the second step from the top. Tick-Tock stepped into the light that came from Styles’s torch. Tick-Tock was all dressed up in a black turtleneck sweater and black slacks and black sneakers, looking every inch the well-dressed cat burglar. He also carried a very large flashlight, about two feet long, and a very large pistol, a revolver with a long barrel so that it would shoot straight.

The gun I saw was jammed into Styles’s kidney. “All right,” Tick-Tock said to Styles. “Move over against the wall there, nice and easy now.” Styles moved over until his back was against the wall.

Tick-Tock switched on his giant flashlight and shined the light up at me. It almost blinded me. “Okay, St. Ives,” he said. “Now just walk down the stairs, one step at a time, nice and slow.”

I didn’t argue. I started down the stairs, one at a time, holding the sword at something like port arms. The light still blinded me. I felt for the next step with my left foot, found it, or at least thought I did, and started to move my right foot. But my left foot had lied to me and it slipped off the riser. I started to fall and the only thing I thought of was to get rid of the sword so that I could use my hands to catch myself. I flung it away, but I kept on falling. There was a scream—a long loud scream and then I was at the bottom of the stairs, sitting on the bottom one really, looking down at the face of Tick-Tock Tamil who looked up at me.

Tick-Tock’s wrinkled, young-old face was working itself about, the mouth twisting down and then up, the eyes closing and opening. His hands were working, too, I noticed in the light from the torch that Styles still held. Tick-Tock’s hands were working on the blade of the Sword of St. Louis which had gone right through him, just below his breast bone. He was trying to pull the sword out, or maybe just trying to make it hurt less. He looked up at me again and said, “It hurts. It hurts bad.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say or anything to do. So I did nothing. I just sat there on the bottom step and stared down at Tick-Tock. He tried a grin, or maybe it was a grimace, and when he was through with that he said, “I always was an unlucky bastard.” Then he died. I knew he was dead because I saw him die and because I could smell him.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Robin Styles said.

“He’s dead,” I said. I stood up carefully. There was nothing broken, but there was a lot that was bruised. I held out my hand and tried, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.

“Here,” Robin Styles said, “let me.” He planted his left foot firmly on the dead Tick-Tock’s chest, wrapped his right hand around the hilt of the sword, and pulled it out. Then he methodically wiped its bloody blade on Tick-Tock’s black turtleneck sweater. He did it all with one easy flowing motion, gracefully and well, as he did almost everything. He handed me the sword again. “Here,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

We hurried to the door that led to the alley. It was open. We had left it closed. I used my palm to smear its knob. “Wait a second,” I said to Styles. “There may be somebody else out there.”

“I’ll go first and get the engine started. I left the keys in the ignition. Then you can hop in the other side and we’re off.”

It sounded like a sensible plan, even to a suddenly deposed leader. Anyhow, it was the only plan there was. Styles dashed for the Volkswagen and got the door open. When the door opened, of course, the interior light came on and somebody shot at him. He had a choice. He could slam the car door shut and duck back into the shop with me, or he could gamble on making it inside the car with the interior light staying on until he got behind the wheel and closed the door.

He gambled on getting into the car and, as always, he was a rotten gambler. Whoever was shooting at him shot three more times, using the interior light of the Volkswagen to aim by. It must have been all the light that was needed because Styles was hit three times.

The first shot seemed to strike him in the shoulder and the second one in the leg. By then whoever was shooting had zeroed in and the third shot slammed into his side. Still on his feet somehow, Styles staggered toward me, then fell back against the car door, closing it, and extinguishing the interior light. Then he started sliding down the outside of the Volkswagen until he landed, with a kind of a plop, in a sitting position on the alley pavement, his back against the car. He held his side as well as he could with one hand because it seemed to hurt the most.

His face was very white in the gloom and I could just see the smile that he made his mouth stretch itself into. And then very casually, he said, “Sorry. I really hate to let a chap down.”

Like almost everything else he did, he died well, sitting there, trying not to make a fuss about it.