Highbinders (18 page)

At twenty minutes to three I was pushing a baby buggy containing an attaché case stuffed with £100,000 east on Mount Street toward South Audley Street wondering if, at thirty-eight, I really deserved all those smiles and encouraging nods that came my way.

I dawdled along, arriving at the park at five minutes to three. It was a nice little park with a large iron gate that made it look as if it should be forbidden to the public, but it wasn’t. It was shaped like a pot with the handle tapering off east toward Berkeley Square. It had always had a soothing effect on me and I had used it, years ago, as a place to compose myself after a fight with my ex-wife. I had got to know it rather well, there toward the end.

They had her dressed up as a nanny, sitting on the bench that she was supposed to be sitting on, the one that had been donated by the American woman out of gratitude for having been allowed to sit in a public park. The dressed-up nanny’s pram, I noticed with a twinge of envy, was bigger than mine, but it would have to be, if it were to hold a sword whose blade was thirty-four-and-a-half inches long.

Her head was turned, but when I pulled up beside her she looked at me and although somebody had dressed her up as a nanny, she didn’t look much like one, unless it was the nanny in a blue movie I had once seen. She still wore too much green eyeshadow and I don’t think that she had washed her face since I had first seen her, which was when she had opened the door of Tick-Tock Tamil’s establishment in Paddington.

“Hello, love,” I said. “Is the poor little tyke over his cold yet?”

“You’re not clever,” she said. “Where is it?”

“In a case under a blanket to keep warm.”

The two prams were drawn up side by side. She rose and moved over to mine, bending from the waist as if to peer in at its darling occupant. “Don’t try nothing,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” I said and bent over the pram. I pulled back a blanket, a pink one this time, and there it lay, wedged in at an angle. It didn’t look like a million pounds or so, but I was no judge. I heard a click then and I looked down. An open switchblade knife was in the girl’s right hand.

“Don’t try nothing,” she said again.

“All you have to do is count up to a hundred,” I said. “If you can’t go that high, I’ll give you a hand.”

“Clever bastard,” she said and went on counting the £1,000 packets.

I took the magnifying glass from my jacket pocket and examined the hilt just below the pommel. There were two tiny scratches there all right, shaped like the letters NN. I took the Polaroid shots from my pocket and compared them with the sword that lay in the baby buggy. They duplicated it in every detail.

I straightened up. “Okay,” I said. “I’m satisfied.”

She snapped the lid closed on the attaché case with her left hand and drew the blue blanket over it. Her right hand still held the switch blade. “I go first,” she said.

“Sure,” I said, my eyes on the knife. “I just noticed something though.”

“What?”

“You’ve got rubber baby buggy bumpers.”

“You’re balmy, you are.”

“No,” I said, my mouth and throat suddenly dry. “I just wanted to see if I could say it.”

She backed slowly away from me, one hand pulling the £52 pride of Harrods, the other holding the open knife down by her side in the folds of her dress that wasn’t quite a uniform. When she was about five yards away, she closed the knife and dropped it into the pram. She stared at me for a moment, as if to make sure that I wasn’t going to try something tricky. Then she turned the pram around and walked east, pushing her £100,000 toward Berkeley Square.

“Tell Tick-Tock I said hello,” I called after her, but she didn’t respond, she just kept on walking, her hips swaying a trifle too much for a nanny. Not too much for a Swedish
au pair
maybe, but too much for a proper nanny. I turned and pushed my pram toward South Audley Street, crossed the street, and moved on to Number 57 where the gray Rolls with old Tom at the wheel was waiting in front of Purdey, the gunsmith. I wrapped the sword up in the pink baby blanket as well as I could and climbed into the rear seat, leaving the pram at the curb.

“Everything all right, sir?” old Tom asked.

“It had better be,” I said.

G
ENTLEMAN JACK BROOKS WAS
working the door at the Belgravia mansion that housed the Brothers Nitry and when I asked him what had happened to the Portuguese maids, he said, “Gave them the afternoon off, sir, seeing that it’s a private family affair. They’re all waiting for you in the red room.”

He was right when he had said that they were all there. Eddie Apex was standing in front of the fireplace, gazing up at the fake Eakins. His wife, Ceil, was seated in one corner of the room, about as far away as she could get from Robin Styles who, elegant as ever, sat in a chair in the opposite corner looking relaxed to the point of languidness.

The Nitry brothers, Ned and Norbert, stood in the center of the red room about three feet apart. There was nothing relaxed about them. The jungle was peeking through their Belgravia facades and they both looked ready to pounce.

The man who stood between them didn’t look too calm either. He was nervously picking at the crumbs in a plate that appeared to have once held a slice of cake. He was concentrating on getting every last crumb, using his fingers to do so. He was Julian Christenberry, Ph.D., M.A., F.S.A., sage of Ashworth Road, and eminent authority on old swords worth a million pounds or so. He still looked as hungry as ever, but he stopped chewing when he saw the pink-wrapped bundle in my arms.

“You got it, lad!” Ned Nitry said, his voice cracking from excitement or greed or both.

“I got it,” I said.

“Put it over here,” he said, indicating a long, polished oak table. “Put it over here and let the doctor have a look. You’ve met the doctor, haven’t you?”

“We’ve met,” I said. “How are you, Doctor Christenberry?”

“Mmm,” he said, which I interpreted to mean that he was just fine.

I walked over to the table and put the bundle down. I drew back the pink baby blanket and listened to the sigh that ran through the room. They were all crowded about it now. Even old Tom and Gentleman Jack Brooks had tiptoed in and were standing a little to one side. The rest of them looked hungry, famished really, as if they couldn’t get enough of the sight of the sword.

“That’s it, right enough,” Norbert Nitry said.

“Move back so the doctor can have a look,” his brother said. “Everybody move back. You need more light, Doctor? Fetch another lamp, Jack.”

Everybody moved back and old Jack brought over a floor lamp and plugged it in. It may have been Doctor Christenberry’s finest hour and he played it for all it was worth, as if he knew he probably would never command an audience this large again and certainly never one so attentive.

He bent over the sword without touching it until his nose was no more than three or four inches from the tip, which was about as sharp looking as an ordinary carving knife. His nose traveled up the sword until it reached the pommel where the uncut diamond as big as an egg was. Doctor Christenberry said “Mmm” again, which this time I interpreted to mean that, yes, this object on the table is indeed a sword.

He straightened up and carefully turned the sword over so that he could see what was on the other side. Then his nose began its trip from tip to pommel again. After that he whipped out a tape measure and checked how long it was. Without being told to do so, Norbert Nitry produced a small scale, the accurate kind, the kind that uses polished weights, and Doctor Christenberry weighed the sword. He said “Mmmm” again, meaning this time, I thought, you can take away the scale, which Norbert Nitry did.

Doctor Christenberry stared at the sword as it lay on the polished table. Nobody said anything. The old man reached into his pocket, took out a large hand magnifying glass, and made a careful, minute examination of the blade and then the hilt. When he got to the tiny NN that was scratched into the hilt he said “Mmm” again and let the Nitry brothers have a look. They looked and then grinned at each other.

The old man put the magnifying glass back in his pocket and produced a jeweler’s glass. He screwed it into his right eye and made a careful examination of the two rubies that were stuck into both ends of the steel crosspiece. Then he went to work on the big, milky-looking diamond in the pommel. He examined the diamond for nearly five minutes, said “Mmmm” three times, and then unscrewed the jeweler’s glass from his eye and dropped it into his pocket. He turned to face his audience.

“This, without doubt,” he said and paused, “is the Sword of St. Louis.”

I think a faint cheer went up in the room from everyone but Doctor Christenberry and me. Norbert slapped his brother on the back. Eddie Apex embraced his wife. Robin Styles smiled and looked foolishly happy. Old Jack and old Tom did a couple of jig steps. I found myself thinking of Dickens at his stickiest, always toward the end, where good is rewarded and bad is punished, just as in real life.

“Let’s have that bubbly now, Jack,” Ned Nitry said, beaming, and old Jack went out and came back in wheeling a drinks tray. Ned Nitry moved over to me and put his arm around my shoulder. “I want to thank you, lad, for a damn fine job of work. When would you like your money?”

“You’ve already paid me twelve hundred and fifty pounds. That was the twelve and a half percent in advance that my attorney asked for.”

“That’s right. We paid that. And the way I’m feeling now, there just might be a bonus on top of the rest.”

“No bonus,” I said.

Ned Nitry took his arm from around my shoulder. “No bonus?” he said.

It was as good a time as any. I walked over to the table where the sword still lay. I picked it up by its hilt. It had a nice heft. They had all turned toward me—Eddie and his wife near the door where the drinks tray was; Robin Styles before the fireplace with Norbert Nitry; old Doctor Christenberry by the window, a big glass of sherry already in his hand, probably because it had more nutritive value than champagne; old Tom and Jack hovering around the drinks tray.

With the sword in my right hand, I looked at Ned Nitry who was still standing next to me. “How much do you think this thing will really bring?” I said. “I mean cut out all the crap. What do you think the top price is?”

“What is it, lad?” Ned Nitry said. “Is it a bit more money that you’re wanting?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t want any more money. I just want to know what a realistic price for the thing is.”

“Well, why not?” Ned Nitry said. “We’re all friends here. We’ll all share, even you, lad, if that’s what’s bothering you. With the way the market is now and inflation and all, why, it’ll fetch close to—three million quid.”

Still holding the sword in my right hand, but letting the flat of its blade rest against my shoulder, I walked over to the fireplace where Robin Styles stood. “Did you hear that?” I said to him. “Three million pounds. Your cut will be two million. Tax free, or almost. It’ll take a long time to lose all that, even with your luck.”

“You’re going to tip ’em off, the authorities, aren’t you, St. Ives?” Ned Nitry said. “All right. If it’s only a little blackmail, we don’t mind paying, do we?” He looked around the room. He got a nod from his brother. Nobody else nodded. Nobody else said anything.

“I only get paid for what I do,” I said.

“Well, you’ll get paid for fetching us the sword back. Do you want it now? Is that it? Get him his money, Bert.”

“Don’t bother,” I said. “I didn’t earn it.”

I was standing by the slate hearth of the fireplace. Slate is an attractive stone, not too hard, easily workable, and makes a right nice roof. I knelt and banged the pommel of the sword down on the slate as hard as I could. The diamond as big as an egg shattered just like a glass doorknob would shatter.

Somebody gasped and then there was a silence. It lasted for five seconds or so while their brains worked, while they figured it all out, while they realized fully what had happened, and who should be blamed.

Then the Nitry brothers, acting in concert without previous consultation, sprang at old Doctor Christenberry and started beating hell out of him.

“You old son of a bitch!” Ned Nitry screamed. “You said it was real! You said it was the goods!” The old man sank to the floor and Norbert Nitry was aiming a kick at his stomach when I pushed him away.

“Leave him alone,” I said. “He was bought the way you’d buy a watch. What did you expect? You were talking in millions and he was getting what, a few hundred pounds?”

“It’s a fake,”Norbert Nitry said, turning from the old man. “It’s a goddamned fake.” He looked at me. “You could have switched it,” he said. “He could’ve switched it, couldn’t he, Eddie?” He turned to look for Eddie Apex, but Eddie wasn’t there.

“Where’s Eddie?” Ned Nitry demanded. “Where’d Eddie go?”

“He slipped out, sir,” old Tom said. “Just before Mr. St. Ives broke the sword. Miss Ceil went after him.”

“Get me a drink, Tom,” Ned Nitry said. “Whisky. A large one.”

“Make it two, Tom, if you don’t mind,” I said.

With the drink in his hand, Ned Nitry stood in the middle of the room, glaring around, as if trying to decide whom he was going to beat up on next. Finally, he went over to the fireplace and picked up a bit of the smashed glass that had been posing as a diamond.

He looked at it for a moment and then tossed it into the fireplace. I was still holding the sword and wordlessly he stretched out his hand for it. I handed it to him, hilt first. He knelt down and hammered a pea-sized ruby that was stuck into the end of the crosspiece onto the slate. The ruby broke; shattered, really, just like the diamond that had turned out to be glass.

He looked at the sword and shook his head. Then he looked at me. “All faked?” he said.

“All.”

Ned Nitry shook his head again, looked around for someplace to put the sword, and then put it in the stand that held the fire tongs and the poker. He put it there idly, as if he never expected to see it again. He walked over to the window where old Doctor Christenberry still knelt on the rug, his head bowed. The old man was making an odd sound and I decided that he was crying again, or trying to, and couldn’t quite remember how.