The Wrong Venus (6 page)

He sat at a big desk with his back to the nylon-curtained window, a man around fifty with a bony, almost cadaverous face and small glinting eyes the color of topaz. The corner of his mouth twitched as he talked, and he had a nervous habit of running a forefinger inside the collar of his shirt while he thrust out his jaw and craned his neck as though he were choking. He abandoned this long enough to wave for them to sit down, and then grabbed up a cigar from the ashtray in front of him. He puffed furiously three or four times, throwing up a screen of smoke like a beleaguered cuttlefish fleeing its enemies.

Colby looked curiously around the room. Besides the desk it contained several steel filing cabinets, an armchair, and a long deal table piled with unopened mail. On the floor in a corner at the back of the room there were two large cardboard boxes also filled with letters. There was another doorway opposite the one at which they had come in, and through it he could see another, smaller desk and the shattered remains of two chairs lying on the rug.

Martine sat down in the armchair, draping the mink across the back. Colby shoved some of the mail aside and perched on the corner of the table. Dudley was still barking into the telephone. On the desk in front of him were several cablegrams, some opened letters, a bundle of canceled checks three or four inches thick held together by rubber bands, an open ledger, and two stacks of what looked like typing paper held down by onyx paperweights. One was quite small, but the other appeared to be several hundred sheets. Colby looked at it with interest, turned, and met Martine’s eyes. She nodded. This was the famous manuscript.

“. . . all right, cable me the exact amount of the deposit G’bye.” Dudley hung up. He ground a palm across his face, picked up one of the cablegrams in a hand that trembled slightly, and muttered, “. . . three thousand . . . one thousand eight hundred . . . seven hundred . . . Mother of God. . . .”

Then in a continuation of the same gesture, he threw down the cablegram and stood up. “You really got rid of him? How did you do it? And you’re Crosby?”

“Mr. Colby,” Martine corrected. “Mr. Dudley.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, I mean Colby.” He held out his hand. “But how’d you do it?” he repeated.

“Shall I?” Martine asked.

“Sure,” Colby said. He perched on the corner of the table again, lighted a cigarette, and found an ashtray among the mass of letters. Martine told the story, and went on, “—at the moment, the only way Sabine Manning could get her name in the
Los Angeles Chronicle
would be to buy it. So now if you’ll write out a check for one thousand thirty-six dollars and fifty cents, we’ll get on to your real trouble.”

“For a job that took a little over an hour,” Dudley said bitterly. I’m in the wrong line of work.”

“We’re all in the wrong line of work,” she replied, “except Sabine Manning. Shell out, Merriman.”

Colby had been staring at the two piles of manuscript on the desk. He could resist it no longer. He stepped over, and asked Dudley, “Do you mind if I look at it?”

“No, go ahead. The thick one. The other’s Sanborn’s draft.”

“He’s already finished?” Martine asked.

“About an hour ago. He just left for Orly.”

Colby picked up the big stack of sheets, hefted it, and turned it wonderingly in his hands. “I always wanted to feel a million dollars.”

Martine smiled and gestured with the cigarette. “A million dollars less fifty pages. At the moment it’s not worth ten.”

The sheets were blank side up. Colby turned over the top one and looked at the number in the upper right corner. Three hundred and forty-seven.

“Call it four hundred when it’s finished,” he said, and did a rapid calculation. “Twenty-five hundred dollars a page.” Glancing down, he read the last two or three lines.

He balanced the page in his fingers and then put it carefully down on top of the pile. “Two thousand five hundred dollars,” he said reverently. And tonight he might get himself killed for two pages of it.

Dudley located the letter among the papers on his desk. It was written in longhand on cheap stationery, and contained little they didn't already know. Madame Manning had been kidnapped, they wanted one hundred thousand dollars, and she would be killed if the police were called in. They would telephone again, and there had better be someone who spoke French.

“Not much to go on, is there?” Martine said.

“No,” Colby replied. “Except it’s in longhand.”

“Plus the fact they got the wrong woman. Probably new at it?”

“Looks that way. Not that that makes ‘em any less dangerous.” There was more chance his idea would work, but greenhorns were also more likely to panic than professionals. If one of them hit the button, he and Kendall Flanagan would probably be dead.

“What do we do?” Dudley asked.

“The only thing we can do. Negotiate.”

“She hasn’t got—”

Colby interrupted. “That’s what I mean. Neither side has what he’s supposed to have. Sabine Manning hasn’t got a hundred thousand dollars, and they haven’t got Sabine Manning. So it’d be a standoff, except for the fact that the easiest way out for them is to kill her. She might identify them.”

“But we’re not going to the police,” Dudley put in. “We can’t.”

They don’t know that. I may be able to convince ‘em, but don’t bet on it. If we get her back, she can finish the novel—in how long?”

“Five days. Maybe less.”

“Your manuscript’s worth nothing the way it is, and it’s also worth nothing if any of this ever gets in the papers. So potentially she’s worth a million dollars to you if we can get her back alive and without any publicity. What’s Sabine Manning worth at the moment?”

Dudley gave a short, bitter laugh, and dropped into the chair behind the desk. He grabbed up and slammed down the bale of canceled checks, and waved the cablegrams. “If you find out, tell me. It’s my job to know what her net worth is from one day to the next, and you know how I do it? I look in tea leaves and chicken entrails—”

“Just calm down, Merriman,” Martine soothed.

“Checks!” he groaned. “Have you got any idea how long it takes a check to clear New York from some goat-infested rock in the Aegean that nobody’s even heard of since the Trojan War? Or how many of ‘em can be in the pipeline at any one time with that woman loose with two checkbooks and a yacht and a coin-operated stallion?”

“Can you make a rough guess?” Colby asked.

“Yeah. There’s a
Paris Herald-Tribune
just behind you on that table. Pass me the financial section.”

Colby removed the financial page and handed it over. Dudley took from the desk another ledger, a slide rule, and a scratchpad. Muttering to himself, he began making computations, consulting the cablegrams and yesterday’s closing Stock Exchange prices. Colby leafed through the rest of the paper, and was folding it to put it aside when his eye was caught by a name on the front page. MYSTERY GIRL SOUGHT IN TORREON SLAYING. It was local.

Could they mean Pepe? He quickly read the lead.

“Hey,” he said to Martine, “they got Pepe Torreon.”

“Yes, hadn’t you heard?” she replied. “He was killed in his apartment with something that looked like a bolt from a crossbow.”

“Sixty-seven thousand, four hundred eighty-one dollars and fourteen cents,” Dudley’s voice broke in, “at the close of business in New York yesterday afternoon. But the bank’ll be open again in another nineteen minutes.” He shuddered.

“How fast can you get hold of ten thousand?” Colby asked.

“There’s that much in the Paris account. She hasn’t got a checkbook for that one.”

“Good. We may be able to swing it for that, or maybe less. However, there’s another charge.”

“I know,” Dudley said wearily. “You and Martine.”

“Right. That’ll be five thousand.”

Dudley groaned, but reached for the checkbook. “Make it payable to Martine. She can give me her check later. The total amount is six thousand thirty-six dollars and fifty cents.”

Martine put the check in her purse. Colby looked at his watch. “You and Martine go to the bank. I’ll stick by the phone. Get fifty thousand francs, nothing bigger than hundreds and no new bills with consecutive numbers. Then stop at a kiosk or bookstore and get a good map of the city and a Michelin road map of France. Martine can go by her apartment on the way back and pick up her car.”

They left. The house was silent except for the humming of Madame Buffet’s vacuum cleaner somewhere on the lower floor. He paced the office, trying not to think of how hairy it could get if something went wrong. To take his mind off it, he leafed through a few of the manuscript’s sizzling love scenes, and turned up a page of Sanborn’s version to see what it was like.

He ought to get a bet down on her before the windows closed, Colby thought. There wasn’t much doubt it needed the Flanagan touch to whip it into final shape. After four o’clock he began to check the time every few minutes. It was four-twenty . . . four-thirty-five. ... At four-forty Dudley came in carrying the two maps and a briefcase bulging with francs. Colby checked the money. It was all right. As he was closing the briefcase they heard the tapping of heels in the hallway. Martine came in. She had changed into a severe dark suit that looked like Balenciaga, and in place of the mink was wearing a cloth coat that was probably easier to drive in. It was obvious from her expression that she had news.

“I just saw Roberto,” she said.

Dudley whirled.
“What?’

“I’m sorry. But it was Roberto. I was going up the Champs Élysées in a taxi, and he was on the curb waiting to cross. He saw me, too, and we waved, but I couldn’t stop.”

“She wasn’t—?” Dudley swallowed and tried again. “You didn’t see—?”

“No. There was a woman with him, but it wasn’t Miss Manning. Much younger. But if she’s not with him, where is she?”

Colby frowned. Maybe she was dead. Could somebody be forging the checks? “Are you sure it’s her signature?” he asked Dudley, and then realized it was a superfluous question. If Dudley was forging it himself he must know it when he saw it.

“Oh, it’s hers. Nobody could fool a bank with that many.”

“And they’re all cashed in the Aegean area?”

“Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. And always in seaports. That’s why we thought she was still on that yacht with Roberto.” His eyes had taken on a haunted look. “God, she might walk in here any minute.”

“We haven’t got time to dream up new disasters,” Colby broke in. “We’re going to get plenty of argument over the identification, so I’ll need Kendall Flanagan’s passport and something with Manning’s picture on it. How about book jackets?”

“There’s a couple that have it.”

“And she and Flanagan don’t look anything alike?”

“That doesn’t scratch the surface,” Martine said. “Kendall’s fifteen years younger and a blonde.”

“Okay. Let’s clear this desk.”

They cleaned it off and unfolded the maps. Colby set a scratchpad and pencil within reach, and sat down. “No English,” he said to Dudley. “If he hears things going on in a language he doesn’t understand, he may spook.”

“Is your French as good as Martine’s?” Dudley asked. “Maybe she ought to do the talking.”

“Hers is too good; she has no accent at all. He’ll know I’m an American, which is just what I want. We need leverage.”

Dudley looked questioning, but said nothing further. Martine pulled over the armchair and sat down at Colby’s right. All three were looking at their watches. It was five to five . . . two minutes to five. . . . Colby could feel the old tightness in his chest the way it was over Korea just before the jump, and didn’t like it. Everything depended on his getting the upper hand, and he had to keep any trace of nervousness out of his voice.

The telephone rang. They all started. He took out a cigarette, and let it ring twice more before he picked it up. “Allo.”

“Allo! Allo! Do you speak French?” It was a young man’s voice, and sounded excited and angry.

“Yes.” Colby leaned back casually in the swivel chair. It squeaked. He clicked the cigarette lighter near the mouthpiece and fired up the cigarette. “I speak French.”

“Well, at last. Who are you?”

“My name is Colby. I work for a friend of Sabine Manning, in Chicago.”

“Aha! But if you’re from Cheek-ago, how do you speak French so well?”

“I speak French with an accent. You know that.”

“Yes, truly, an accent. But not so bad. Not like Cheek-ago.”

“I lived in France for many years,” Colby said. “I was the agent for my—ah—company, in Marseille.”

“What company?”

“You ask too many questions,” he said, suddenly brusque. “We’re wasting time, and you’ve already made enough mistakes.” He saw Martine, at the end of the desk, smile and hold up crossed fingers.

“What do you mean, mistakes?” This sounded like bluster. Good.

“You snatched an American, and not one of your mob speaks English. You didn’t half case the job, so you got the wrong woman—”

“She’s not the wrong woman. Don’t try—”

“Suppose you let me finish,” he broke in curtly. “And then on top of everything else, you sent the note in your own handwriting. You might as well have signed your name. But don’t worry about it,” he added in the weary tone of one long accustomed to coping with subordinates’ blunders. “I’ll get it back to you.”

“We have Madame Manning—”

“Mademoiselle
Manning is forty-three years old, a brunette, and is in the Aegean islands. The woman you have is a twenty-eight-year-old blonde named Kendall Flanagan. Surely she’s told you this.”

“So she says. But everybody knows writers use other names on their books.”

“You don’t think I’d be stupid enough to tell you this unless I intended to furnish proof, do you? We’re wasting time arguing about it. However, I’ll explain the whole thing to you, just once, and then I’ll tell you what I’ve been authorized to do.

“This young lady is a friend of Mademoiselle Manning, and also a friend of the man I work for in Chicago. For—uh—health reasons, she had to leave Chicago for awhile, so Mademoiselle Manning, who as I said was away in the Greek islands, offered her the use of her house here in Paris. When she disappeared four days ago, Monsieur Dudley, the man you tried to talk to, was very worried, knowing about her delicate health, so he cabled my boss in Chicago.

“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?”