“On the other hand, Jackson also found Anderson a necessity, for Jackson, with all his honesty, perhaps because of it, had no knack for making one dollar become two. Left to himself he would, entirely without meaning to, lose every cent entrusted to him and would then quickly be forced to kill himself as a dubious form of restitution. Anderson’s hands were to money, however, as fertilizer is to roses, and together he and Jackson were a winning combination.
“Yet no paradise continues forever, and a besetting characteristic, left to itself, will deepen, widen, and grow more extreme. Jackson’s honesty grew to such colossal proportions that Anderson, for all his shrewdness, was occasionally backed to the wall and forced into monetary loss. Similarly, Anderson’s acquisitiveness burrowed to such infernal depths that Jackson, for all his morality, found himself occasionally twisted into questionable practices.
“Naturally, as Anderson disliked losing money, and Jackson abhorred losing character, a coolness grew between the two. In such a situation the advantage clearly lay on the side of Anderson, who placed no reasonable limits on his actions, whereas Jackson felt himself bound by a code of ethics.
“Slyly Anderson worked and maneuvered until, eventually, poor honest Jackson found himself forced to sell out his end of the partnership under the most disadvantageous of conditions.
“Anderson’s acquisitiveness, we might say, had reached a climax, for he acquired sole control of the business. It was his intention to retire now, leaving its everyday running to employees, and concerning himself no further than was required to pocket its profits. Jackson, on the other hand, was left with little more than his honesty, and while honesty is an admirable characteristic it has small direct value in a hockshop.
“It was at this point, gentlemen, that I entered the picture. — Ah, Henry, thank you.”
The glasses of brandy were being passed around.
“You did not know those people to begin with?” Rubin asked, his sharp eyes blinking.
“No,” Bartram said, sniffing delicately at the brandy and just touching it to his upper lip, “though I think one of you in this room did. It was some years ago.
“I first met Anderson when he entered my office in a white heat. ‘I want you to find what I’ve lost,’ he said. I have dealt with many cases of theft in my career and so I asked, naturally, ‘What is it you have lost?’ And he answered, ‘Damn it, man, that’s what I’ve just asked you to find out:’
“The story came out rather raggedly. Anderson and Jackson had quarreled with surprising intensity. Jackson was outraged, as only an honest man can be when he finds that his integrity is no shield against the conniving of others. He swore revenge, and Anderson shrugged that off with a laugh.”
“Beware the wrath of a patient man,” quoted Avalon, with the air of precision-research that he brought to even his least portentous statements.
“So I have heard,” said Bartram, “though I have never had occasion to test the maxim. Nor, apparently, had Anderson, for he had no fear of Jackson. As he explained, Jackson was so psychotically honest and so insanely law-abiding that there was no chance of his slipping into wrongdoing. Or so Anderson thought. It did not even occur to him to ask Jackson to restore the office key — something all the more curious since the office was located in Anderson’s house, among all that knickknackery.
“Anderson recalled this omission a few days after the quarrel when, returning from an early evening appointment, he found Jackson in his house. Jackson carried an attaché case which he was just closing as Anderson entered — closing with startled haste, it seemed to Anderson.
“Anderson frowned and said, ‘What are you doing here?’
“ ‘Returning some papers which were in my possession and which now belong to you,’ said Jackson, ‘and returning the key to the office.’ With this remark he handed over the key, indicated papers on the desk, and pushed the combination lock on his attaché case with fingers that Anderson could swear trembled a little. Jackson looked about the room with what appeared to Anderson to be a curious, almost a secretively satisfied, smile and said, ‘I will now leave.’ And he proceeded to do so.
“It was not until Anderson heard the motor of Jackson’s car whirring into action and then retreating into the distance that he could rouse himself from a kind of stupor that had paralyzed him. He knew he had been robbed and the next day he came to me.”
Drake pursed his lips, twirled his half-empty brandy glass, and said, “Why not to the police?”
“There was a complication,” said Bartram. “Anderson did not know what had been taken. When the certainty of theft dawned on him he naturally rushed to the safe. Its contents were secure. He ransacked his desk. Nothing seemed to be missing. He went from room to room. Everything seemed to be intact as far as he could tell.”
“Wasn’t he certain?” asked Gonzalo.
“He couldn’t be. The house was inordinately crowded with every variety of object and he didn’t remember all his possessions. He told me, for instance, that at one time he collected antique watches. He had them in a small drawer in his study — six of them. All six were there, but he was nagged by the faint memory of having had seven. For the life of him he could not remember definitely. In fact, it was worse than that, for one of the six present seemed strange to him. Could it be that he had had only six but that a less valuable one had been substituted for a more valuable one? Something of this sort repeated itself a dozen times over in every hideaway and with every sort of oddment. So he came to me—”
“Wait a while,” interrupted Trumbull, bringing his hand down hard on the table. “What made him so certain that Jackson had taken anything at all?”
“Ah,” said Bartram, “that is the fascinating part of the story. The closing of the attaché case, and Jackson’s secretive smile as he looked about the room, served to rouse Anderson’s suspicions, but as the door closed behind him, Jackson chuckled. It was not an ordinary chuckle — but I’ll let Anderson tell it in his own words, as nearly as I can remember them.
“ ‘Bartram,’ he said, ‘I have heard that chuckle innumerable times in my life. I have chuckled that way myself a thousand times. It is a characteristic chuckle, an unmistakable one, an unmaskable one. It is the acquisitive chuckle; it is the chuckle of a man who has just obtained something he wants very much at the expense of someone else. If any man in all the world knows that chuckle and can recognize it, even behind a closed door, that man is myself. I cannot be mistaken. Jackson had taken something of mine and was glorying in it!’
“There was no arguing with the man on this point. He virtually slavered at the thought of having been victimized and, indeed, I had to believe him. I had to suppose that for all Jackson’s pathological honesty he had finally been lured, by the once-in-a-lifetime snapping of patience, into theft. Helping to lure him must have been his knowledge of Anderson. He must have known Anderson’s intent hold on even the least valued of his belongings, and realized that the hurt would extend far deeper and far beyond the value of the object taken, however great that value might have been.
“There you have the problem. Anderson wanted me to find out what had been taken, for until he could identify a stolen object and show that that object was, or had been, in the possession of Jackson, he could not prosecute — and he was most intent on prosecution. My task, then, was to look through his house and tell him what was missing.”
“How would that be possible, if he himself couldn’t tell?” growled Trumbull.