“I have been to the airport,” he announced. “In fact, I had the pleasure of seeing our good friend. Sir Percival, getting his ticket as well. He shall be on our flight, but he will travel first class, of course.” He disregarded the Grrraaagh that came from Briggs at the hated name. “He sends his best, by the way.”
“What he can do with his best—” Briggs began.
Carruthers disregarded this. Instead he tapped his breast pocket.
“I also picked up our tickets. Our flight is at one this afternoon. It will give us ample time to complete our packing and have a leisurely drink at the airport before departure. Luncheon will be served aboard the aircraft, I have been reasonably assured.”
“At what price?” Briggs asked sourly.
“At no charge. You will also be both surprised as well as gratified, to learn that tipping is not only discouraged but is actually prohibited aboard aircraft.”
“A pity the bloody Sunderland didn’t have wings,” Briggs said darkly, thinking back on the nicking their pocketbooks had taken in that regard aboard the vessel. He forced his mind from the unhappy memory of the voyage, in favor of more important business. He cleared his throat, trying to sound insouciant and almost succeeding. “Why don’t I meet you two at the airport?”
Simpson looked up at him, surprised. “Aren’t we all going down together?”
“I think I’ll go ahead,” Briggs said lightly, and came to his feet. “I’m all packed, you know. I’ll just take my little airplane bag with me. I’d appreciate it if you could sling my other bag into the taxi with yours when you go down there.” He saw the questioning look that remained on Simpson’s face, and added a bit lamely, “I just want to do a little last minute sightseeing, you know. And possibly a little personal business.” He raised a hand. “Ta, then. See you at the airport around one-ish. No need to get there too early, I suppose—”
Billy-Boy smiled at him gently.
“Sit down, Tim,” he said quietly.
“But I’ve got this—”
“Sit down, Tim. There is no reason for any of us to get to the airport early, especially you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Carruthers said with a faint smile, “that I’ve been through your airplane bag, and I’m afraid I had to remove several items. So why not sit down and relax?”
Briggs paled. He tried to bluster, but the words wouldn’t come out. Simpson merely looked mystified, Carruthers turned to Simpson and explained. There was still a benign look on his pleasant, round face, and the smile remained on his lips, but the china-blue eyes were hard.
“Clifford,” he said, “do you know what our small reprobate friend here was attempting to do? He had a small placard in his airplane bag, apparently purchased in one of the novelty shops here. It reads: out of order.”
Simpson’s look of bewilderment merely intensified. “Oh?”
“Yes. Our friend Briggs has also been visiting the airport,” Carruthers went on coldly, “probably when we were napping. He has helped himself to some of those forms in the little box beside the contraption that dispenses air-insurance to any who wish it. Most of the forms, I imagine, if not all of them.”
Simpson looked at Briggs in astonishment.
“Our larcenous friend was planning on attaching his sign to the insurance-vending machine. He then intended to sell the insurance to anyone who approached, wishing that service. He intended to use the proper form put out by the company, but instead of allowing the coins to go into the proper slot, of course, he intended to collect the fees himself. The only thing out of order is Timothy Briggs,” Carruthers finished flatly. He turned to Briggs who was trying his best to look indignant at this violation of his privacy. “Tim, you utter idiot, have you considered what would happen if, perchance, the airplane might crash?”
“What?” Briggs asked defiantly.
“You know very well what! Bookmakers without proper funds to back them up probably furnish the River police with as much work dredging up their bodies as do paupers, or university students walking the Embankment railing after a night on the town!”
“You don’t think I intended to countersign the bloody forms with my own name, do you?” Briggs exclaimed hotly. “Or put down my proper address?” He seemed more upset by the implied charge of stupidity than by having been caught.
“Still,” Simpson said, having had time to digest what was occurring, “we’d be on the plane, too, so they could hardly hope to collect if it did crash, don’t you see? I mean from Tim, of course.”
While being incurably honest, Clifford Simpson was also logical. And while veracity was important to him, in his time he had been known to direct that honesty in advantageous ways. His conscience, in fact, would undoubtedly have caused any professor studying it to consider changing professions, or to babble.
“And if the plane didn’t crash,” Simpson went on, now caught up in the thing, “the passengers would have gotten their money’s worth. The insurance company couldn’t do any better than that for them, don’t you see? If the plane didn’t crash, that is.” He puffed on his cigar while he thought a moment more, and then nodded. “It really isn’t a bad idea at that, you know. If Tim got started right now, he could probably still get a few of them coming in to pick up their tickets—”
“Clifford, stop it! It’s fraud,” Carruthers said angrily.
“Of course,” Simpson said, agreeing readily. “But we don’t really know if the insurance company pays off either, do we? In case of a crash, I mean. After all, there are so few air accidents these days...” His voice became dreamy with memory. “I remember I wanted to use insurance fraud in a story I wrote many years ago — not about airplanes, of course, since there were only a few Spads and Camels about at the time — but I really couldn’t see what was so fictional about it, so I dropped the idea. I don’t imagine insurance companies are any less fraudulent these days—”
Carruthers’ large hand slammed down on the table, making their brandy glasses jump and causing a man at a nearby table, eating prawns with a toothpick, to stab himself painfully in the cheek. He looked at Carruthers reproachfully a moment and then forewent the toothpick to continue eating the prawns with his fingers.
“Now listen, you two reprobates,” Carruthers said, keeping his voice down but using a tone the others knew meant Billy-Boy was not — as Clarence W. Alexander would have put it — playing potsie. “I believe I went through this entire routine once before for you, aboard the Sunderland. There is to be an end to chicanery, do you understand? There is to be no more fiddling! I told you before of that fine American author who lost a book-club sale of an accounting of our activities in the Murder League because we were naughty. Should that same fine and worthy American writer at any time in the future put into print our adventures since then, would you wish to deprive him of a possible book-club sale, through the needless repeating of our errors? As ex-writers ourselves, would that be cricket?”
Briggs stared at him in amazement.
“We commit ten murders,” he said unbelievingly, “we push people from underground platforms—”
“We did, didn’t we?” Simpson said, remembering, and added his bit. “We tossed them over hotel railings—”
“We poison their beer—” Briggs went on.
“We cosh them with soap bars wrapped in washcloths,” Simpson said, getting into the spirit of the thing.