Sitting up again, General Tortilla pondered his future, which was beginning to look shorter than his past, and much less imponderable. What to do?
Well, the first thing to do was get rid of the diamonds. They would definitely prove he’d intended to run away. Without them, he just might be able to talk his way out of all this.
To think was to act. General Tortilla at once ripped all the diamonds out of all the decorations spread all over his chest, and when he was done he had a thick fistful of diamonds. But what to do with them? Swallow them? No: it would take too long, and might be dangerous to the digestive tract.
Hide them, then. Looking this way and that in the narrow stall, General Tortilla discovered that at just about head height in the wall behind him one tile was loose. Swiftly removing it, he discovered behind it an open space just large enough for the diamonds. Swiftly placing the diamonds in the open space, he swiftly returned the tile to its original position and swiftly assured himself the tampering did not show. Perhaps, he promised himself, someday he would be able to return for those diamonds.
But what is this? Unknown to General Tortilla, he has placed the diamonds on a two-by-four cross-stud which slants down just slightly to the left. The diamonds having been jiggled when the general replaced the tile, they now begin to roll along the two-by-four, one at a time and then two and three and four, until all are rolling slowly down the slight incline of the two-by-four, only to be stopped by a pair of heavy nails incompletely driven through the piece of wood, so that a portion of each nail still jutted above the ligneous surface, just far enough to stop the motion of the diamonds.
But what is this? Within Stall Number 2, Carolina Weiss cocks her head. What sound is that she hears? A faint tock-tock-ing, like a one-handed clock, the noise coming from behind her. Turning her head, she noticed a loose tile, which she curiously removed.
“Well, well,” Carolina murmured to herself. “Shiny mothballs!” Having a moth problem with her valpack, Carolina promptly removed the diamonds from the space behind the loose tile and stuffed them into the valpack.
Meanwhile, the five swarthy men in London Fog raincoats with pencil moustaches have closed in on Stall Number 5, behind the door of which General Tortilla crouches, sweating behind his pencil moustache, waiting for the inevitable discovery.
The door is flung open! “Just finishing!” the General cries gaily, emerging. “It’s all yours!” He makes for the exit.
As one man, the five leap forward and knock General Tortilla flat.
From his closet, Mo Mowgli comes promptly forward, prepared to deal with this emergency just as efficiently as any man with agonizing problems at home to distract him.
From the urinals, Arbogast Smith approaches, not sure that felonious assault lies within his jurisdiction on this assignment, but feeling anyway that he should make his presence felt. Show the flag, as it were.
“It is not to be alarmed,” the five swarthy men say as one man. “Our companion has fallen. Is that not so, General?”
“Yes, of course,” General Tortilla cries, as the five swarthy men, moving as one man, help him to his feet. “Everything is all right,” he assures Mo Mowgli and Arbogast Smith, a false smile beneath his pencil moustache, but his eyes glazed with fear.
“I want to know what’s going on,” Arbogast Smith insists. “I am a police officer.”
“You are?” Mo Mowgli is astonished. “I thought you were a nut!”
“But we too are police officers,” the five swarthy men say, as one man. “We are in this country to observe norteamericano crime prevention methods.”
“If you’re police officers,” Arbogast Smith says, “let’s see your badges.”
“Badges?” echoed the leader. “We don’t got no badges. We don’t need no stinking badges!”
“Oh,” said Arbogast Smith. “I didn’t realize that.”
“You betcha,” the leader says. Moving as one man, they depart the premises, taking General Tortilla with them.
“As to you,” Arbogast Smith says to Mo Mowgli, “I expect you to maintain security as to my true identity.”
“I don’t plan to talk about you at all,” Mo assured him. “Count on it.”
8:00 P.M
1
The three men who entered the Bryant Park Comfort Station at seven minutes past eight that windy, cold, rainy night brought with them somehow a windy, cold, rainy aura of menace. Perhaps it was their cold unblinking eyes, perhaps the way their shoulders were set within their raincoats, perhaps the hands they kept in their coat pockets. Whatever it was, it hung around them like dark music, an aura of danger, of ... death.
One of the three was old, heavy, bald-headed, with the faint touch of an aristocratic sneer about his lips. A second was tall, elegant, with the wittily insouciant manner often attributed to Satan. And the third, a pugnacious stocky individual with thick curly black hair, had the style and expression of a fairly good club welterweight.
They strolled across the tile floor to Mo Mowgli’s office and stood looking in at him until, feeling perhaps the cold penetration of their eyes upon the back of his head, he turned and said, “Yes, gentlemen? What can I do for you?”
“I,” said the tall elegant one, “would like a copy of Swann’s Way.”
“That wouldn’t be here,” said Mo. “You want the library, around the corner.”
“In that case,” said the stocky one, “give us a copy of A Farewell to Arms.”
“That would be in the library, too,” Mo said. “Just around the corner.”
“Then,” said the bald-headed one, “you will give us Boris Godunov in a recent translation.”
“You’d have to go to the library for that,” Mo said. “You go out and around the corner.”
The stocky one said, “Everything we want’s in the library, is that it?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Mo.
“That’s a cute system you got,” the stocky one said. He seemed both violently amused and in some remote way angry.
“That’s all right, Norman,” the elegant one said. “He can’t help it, he just works here.” Looking at Mo he said, “Isn’t that right?”
“That’s right,” Mo said. Something was wrong here. He knew something was wrong here. But he didn’t know what it was.
“Sure, Gore,” said the stocky one. “It don’t matter to you that everything we want he don’t have. What do you say, V?”
The bald-headed one said, to Mo, “I want you to be certain it is a recent translation of Boris Godunov. The older translations are not good enough.”
“But I don’t have any of that,” Mo said. “It’s all around to the library, that’s where you want to go.”
“Tell us,” said the stocky one, “what time does the Greek come in?”
“No, no,” said the bald-headed one. “You’re thinking of something else.”
Arbogast Smith, having heard the last question and thinking that perhaps at last something was about to happen over which he had jurisdiction, came over at that juncture to say, “What’s this about Greeks?”
The elegant one took a pearl-handled pistol from his coat pocket and pointed it at Arbogast Smith. “You’ll go into the closet with your friend there.”