Thefts of Nick Velvet (16 page)

It had occurred to him during the drive back from New York that there might be a connection between the can of red paint in Roger Surman’s trunk and the red walls of the empty room. Roger had driven the car to the country house a few days before his operation to attempt the robbery himself. If the paint on the walls had been Roger’s target—the paint itself—he could have replaced stolen paint with fresh red paint from the can.

Nick had stolen strange things in his time, and taking the paint from the walls of a room struck him as only a little unusual. The paint could cover any number of valuable things. He’d read once of a room that had been papered with hundred-dollar bills from a bank holdup, then carefully covered over with wallpaper. Perhaps something like that had been done here, and then a final layer of red paint applied.

He got to work carefully scraping the paint, anxious to see what was underneath; but almost at once he was disappointed. There was no wallpaper under the paint—nothing but plaster showed through.

He paused to consider, then turned to the paint can he’d brought along. Prying off the lid, he saw his mistake at once. The red in the can was much brighter than the red on the walls—it was an entirely different shade. He inspected the can more closely and saw that it was marine paint—obviously destined for Roger Surman’s boat. Its presence in Roger’s trunk had been merely an annoying coincidence.

Before Nick had time to curse his bad luck he heard a car on the driveway. He left the room, closing the door behind him, and had almost reached his own car when two men appeared around the corner of the house. The nearer of the two held a snub-nosed revolver pointed at Nick’s chest.

“Hold it right there, mister! You’re coming with us.”

Nick sighed and raised his hands. He could tell by their hard icy eyes that they couldn’t be talked out of it as easily as Simone Surman had been. “All right,” he said. “Where to?”

“Into our car. Vincent Surman has a few more questions for you.”

Prodded by the gun, Nick offered no resistance. He climbed into the back seat with one of the men beside him, but the car continued to sit there. Presently the second man returned from the house. “He’s on his way over. Says to keep him here.”

They waited another twenty minutes in silence, until at last Surman’s car turned into the driveway. Simone was with him, bundled in a fur coat against the chill of the autumn afternoon.

“The gun wasn’t necessary,” Nick said, climbing out of the car to greet them.

“I thought it might be,” Vincent Surman replied. “I had you tailed from the hospital. You’re a thief, Velvet. I’ve done some checking on you. Roger hired you to steal something from me, didn’t he?”

“Look around for yourself. Is anything missing?”

“Come along—we’ll look.”

With the two gunmen staying close, Nick had little choice. He followed Vincent and Simone around to the storeroom door. “This is where I found him the first time,” she told her husband, and sneezing suddenly, she pulled the fur coat more tightly around her.

“He was back here when we found him too,” the gunman confirmed.

Vincent unlocked the storeroom door.

The walls stared back at them blankly. Vincent Surman inspected the place where the paint had been scraped, but found nothing else. He stepped outside and walked around, his eyes scanning the back of the house. “What are you after, Velvet?”

“What is there to take? The room’s empty.”

“Perhaps he’s after something in the kitchen,” Simone suggested.

Vincent ignored her suggestion, reluctant to leave the rear of the house. Finally, after another pause, he said to Nick, “All right. We’ll look through the rest of the house.”

An hour later, after they’d convinced themselves that nothing was missing, and after the gunmen had thoroughly searched Nick and his car, Vincent was convinced that nothing had been taken. “What’s the paint for?” he asked Nick.

“My boat.”

The dark-haired importer sighed and turned away. “Roger is a madman. You must realize that. He’d like nothing better than to break up my marriage to Simone by accusing me of some crime. Altamont was hired to prove I was hijacking Roger’s trucks and selling the goods through my import business. He hoped Simone would quarrel with me about it and then leave me.”

Nick motioned toward the gunmen. “These two goons could pass for hijackers any day.” One man started for him, but Vincent barked an order. Simone’s eyes widened, as if she were seeing her husband’s employees for the first time.

“You don’t need to hold them back,” Nick said.

This time the nearer man sprang at him and Nick’s fist connected with his jaw. The second man had his gun out again, but before he could bring it up Simone grabbed his arm.

“Simone!” Vincent shouted. “Stay out of this!”

She turned on her husband, her eyes flashing. “I never knew you used hoods, Vincent! Maybe Roger knows what he’s talking about! Maybe you really are trying to ruin him by hijacking his trucks.”

“Shut up!”

Nick backed away, his eyes still on the two hoods. “I’ll be leaving now,” he said. “You two can fight it out.”

Nobody tried to stop him. As he swung his car around the others in the driveway he could see Vincent Surman still arguing with his wife.

The next morning Roger Surman was sitting, up in bed, just finishing a meager breakfast, when Nick entered the hospital room. He glanced at the paper bag Nick was carrying and then at his face. “I’m certainly glad to see you, Velvet. Sorry I didn’t have a chance to tell you what I wanted stolen.”

“You didn’t have to tell me,” Nick said with a grin. “After a couple of false starts I figured it out.”

“You mean you got it?”

“Yes, I’ve got it. I had a few run-ins with your brother and his wife along the way, but I got the job done last night.”

“How did you know? How
could
you know?”

“I talked to your detective, Altamont, and learned about the hijackings. Once I started thinking about it—the country place, the driveway leading to the storeroom—my reasoning must have followed yours quite closely. Vincent’s hired hijackers were bringing the loot there and leaving it in the storeroom for transfer to his own importing company trucks.”

The fat man moved uncomfortably under his blanket. “Exactly. I tried to tell Simone, but she demanded proof.”

“I think she’s got it now. And I think you have too. It wasn’t easy finding something to steal in an empty room—something that would be worth $20,000 to you. First, I considered the room itself, but you would have needed heavy equipment for that—and you told me you’d hoped to accomplish the theft yourself. That led me to your car, and I found the paint can in your trunk. Next, I almost stole the paint off the walls for you, until I ruled that out too. Finally, I remembered about the last shipment that was hijacked a few weeks ago. It consisted of bundles of valuable tobacco leaves, and certainly such a shipment would leave traces of its presence. Yesterday, out at the house, Simone walked into the storeroom and sneezed. Then I remembered something else I’d seen in your car.”

Roger Surman nodded. “The little hand vacuum cleaner. I was going to use it if I got past the alarms.”

Nick Velvet nodded and opened the paper bag he was still carrying. “I used it last night—to steal the dust from the floor of that empty room.”

N
ICK VELVET WAS A
thief, but the mere fact of his profession did little to explain him. He was a man first of all who liked the quiet life, the beer on the front porch with Gloria at his side and a sort of eternal summer evening in the air. Perhaps he’d been born a generation too late, unfit for the bustle of the Sixties. Perhaps that was why he took a special interest in the crystal crown affair.

“We understand you will steal anything,” the man with the monocle said. His name was Vonderberg, and he too was of another generation.

“Anything but money,” Nick Velvet replied. “My price is twenty thousand dollars, plus expenses. Thirty thousand for especially dangerous jobs.”

“This is not dangerous, but my people are prepared to pay you thirty thousand.”

“Nice of you,” Nick Velvet agreed.

“Are you familiar with the country of New Ionia? We are a very old and very small island in the Mediterranean, between the southern tips of Italy and Greece. We are a constitutional monarchy, with a ruling family that is centuries old and very, very tired.”

Velvet decided that
very
was Vonderberg’s favorite word.

“What is it you want stolen?” Velvet asked. His clients didn’t get billed for conference time, and he liked to keep it short.

“There is a crown, a very old relic of the days when the kingdom of New Ionia had little use for written constitutions. It is made of glass—a crystal crown that is displayed to the people once a year at the grand masked ball.”

“Valuable?”

The monocled man shrugged. “Inferior workmanship, like much of New Ionia. It might bring a few hundred dollars somewhere. But its value as a symbol is utterly incalculable. We are a very old people, as I have said. We believe in the nature of symbols. A pretender to the throne, armed with the crystal crown, would have half the country behind him. They believe it is destined always to go with the true ruler, somewhat like King Arthur’s sword in that stone.”

Nick Velvet grunted. “I never thought much of fairy tales. So you want the crown stolen. What’s so tough about that?”

“The king’s personal guard is on hand during the masked ball. If a thief could somehow get into the ballroom, he certainly could never get out alive, especially not while carrying a fragile glass crown.”

Nick Velvet smiled. “There’s always a way. When is the blasted ball?”

“Next Monday evening, six days from now.”

“It’s a nice time of year for a Mediterranean vacation,” Nick Velvet decided.

New Ionia was a tiny spot of land fifty miles long and half as wide, stretched beneath the Roman sun as if awaiting a long-delayed visit from some far-off gods. It was May on New Ionia, and it might have been a season unique in the world. When Nick Velvet first stepped off the little ferry from Corfu, he looked up at the smooth blue of the sky and decided that surely it could never be dotted by clouds. New Ionia was a place unique, and perhaps the gods would never come because they were already here.

The city of New Ionia stretched along the southern coast of the island. It was a fair-sized place by any standards, with thirty thousand residents and one building five stories high. But while strolling through streets too narrow and shops too old, Nick Velvet wondered why anyone would really want to be king of it. New Ionia was a great place to visit, but he’d hate to rule it.

The monocled Vonderberg had instructed him to contact a Miss Vera Smith-Blue, since his first and most important task was gaining admittance to the annual ball.

Nick Velvet found Miss Smith-Blue in a little gabled office of what must have corresponded to an American Chamber of Commerce.

She was younger than he’d expected, and might even have been pretty without the glasses and severe hair style.

“My name is Velvet,” he admitted quite openly. “I’m something of a writer, and I’m most interested in your annual ball.”

“Oh?” She gave him a smile she must have reserved for visiting foreign writers. “Is this your first journey to New Ionia?”

“The first of many, I hope. It’s a beautiful island. But you must be British. Aren’t you?”

“By birth, but this is my home now. I firmly believe this to be the tourist haven of tomorrow. Each summer attracts more and more visitors. Soon we will be as popular and exclusive as Corfu. We only need a king or a cinema star to summer here.”

She’d taken off her glasses, and Nick Velvet ran appreciative eyes over the smooth lines of her face and figure. She wore a sort of tunic dress, pulled just a bit too tightly over firm breasts.

“About the ball, Miss Smith-Blue. What could you tell me?”

“Well, it’s the social event of the year on New Ionia. Upwards of a thousand people attend. It’s held in the grand ballroom of the summer palace, which is the only palace any more. Everyone’s in costume, of course, and the crown is displayed.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about this crown.” Nick Velvet settled back in his chair and lit a cigarette. “What can you tell me about it?” he asked.

“Here’s a pamphlet that tells the entire history. But if you want it briefly, it dates back to a Greek-Italian family who lived on the island in the seventeenth century. They had a Venetian glassblower form the crown, and presented it to the royal family. Of course it couldn’t be worn, but it was displayed once a year at the ball. It’s symbolic, I suppose. The people almost worship it. During the war, the Nazi invaders confiscated it as a sign of their authority, and as long as they held it, the people obeyed them. It was a most amazing thing.”

“Would it be possible for me to see the ballroom?”

“Sure. Why not?” She gathered a bunch of keys from one of her desk drawers.

The summer palace stood behind a high stone wall just on the outskirts of the city. At a quick glance it might have seemed something left over from a Hollywood movie of the Thirties, but as they left Miss Smith-Blue’s car and approached the gate, he could see the little touches of modern living. The iron gates swung open electrically at a touch from the uniformed guard, and Velvet was quickly aware of the waiting spotlights on the turreted roof.

“Who lives here?” he asked the girl.

“We are ruled by Prince Baudlay. He is abroad much of the time, but this is his home when he is here.”

“Will he be at the ball?”

“Of course.”

She led him through a maze of passages and into a final great room that reminded him of a mammoth high school gymnasium. There were even rows of seats along one side, for resting between dances. The place was oddly plain, but already workmen were appearing with ladders and hammers.

“So this is it.”

She smiled at the flatness of his tone. “You won’t even recognize it by next Monday.”

Nick Velvet took out a cigarette. “I heard someone speak of a king, but you only mentioned Prince Baudlay.”