“What in hell is this bag of doughnuts doing on the bed?” a male voice demanded. “He’s conscious, isn’t he? And you’ve been feeding him!”
“He was hungry, Sam.”
There was the splat of palm hitting cheek, and Terry let out a cry. Nick opened his eyes. “Suppose you try that on me, Sam.”
The man from the car, still looking bulky even without his tweed topcoat, turned toward the bed. “You’re in no position to make like a knight in shining armor, Velvet.”
Nick sat up as best he could with his handcuffed wrist. “Look, I’ve been slugged on the head, kidnaped, drugged, and handcuffed to this bed. Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?”
“Shut him up,” Sam ordered Terry, but she made no move to obey.
“You kidnaped me to keep me from seeing the real Max Solar, right?” Nick was guessing, but it had to be a reasonably good guess. The man named Sam turned on the girl once more.
“Did you tell him that?”
“No, Sam, honest! I didn’t tell him a thing!”
The bulky man grunted. “All right, Velvet, it’s true. I don’t mind telling you, since you’ve guessed it already. Max Solar wrote you on Friday to arrange an appointment for this week. He wanted to hire you to steal something.”
“And you kidnaped me to prevent it?”
The man named Sam nodded. He pulled up a straight-backed wooden chair and sat down by the bed. “Do you know who Max Solar is?”
“I’ve heard the name.” Nick tried to sit up straighter, but the handcuff prevented him. “How about unlocking this thing?”
“Not a chance.”
“All right,” Nick sighed. “Tell me about Max Solar.”
“He’s a conglomerate. He owns a number of companies manufacturing everything from office machines to toothpaste. Last year while I was in his employ I invented a computer program that saved thousands of man-hours each year in bookkeeping and inventory control on his export and overseas operations. The courts have ruled that such computer programming cannot be patented, and I was at the mercy of Max Solar. He simply fired me and kept my program. For the past year I’ve dreamed of ways to get my revenge, and on Friday Terry supplied me with the perfect weapon.”
Nick listened to the voice drone on, wondering where it was all leading. The man did not seem the type to resort to kidnaping, yet there was a hardness in his eyes that hinted at a steely determination.
“I’m a secretary at Solar Industries,” Terry explained. “My office is right next to Max Solar’s, and often I help his secretary when my boss is away.”
Sam nodded. “Solar dictated a letter to Nick Velvet, asking for a meeting today. Terry brought me a copy, with a suggestion for revenging myself on Solar.”
“You knew who I was?” Nick asked the girl.
“I had a boy friend once who told me about you — how you steal valueless things for people.”
Sam nodded. “I figured up in the suburbs you probably wouldn’t get Solar’s letter till Monday — not the way mail deliveries are these days — but just to be safe I used his name when I phoned yesterday. See, I had to kidnap you and hold you prisoner till after the ship sails.”
“Ship?”
“Solar was hiring you to steal something from a freighter that sails from New York harbor in two days.”
“It must be something important.”
“It is, but only to Max Solar. It would be worthless to anyone else.”
Nick thought about it. “That’s not quite correct,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You can revenge yourself on Solar by holding me prisoner, or you can hire me to steal this object and then sell it back to Solar.”
“Why should I hire you? I have you already!”
“You have me physically, but you don’t have my services.”
“He makes sense,” Terry said. “I hadn’t thought about that angle. If Nick steals the thing, you can sell it to Solar for enough to cover Nick’s fee plus a lot more. You’d be getting back the money Solar cheated you out of.”
Sam pondered the implications. “How do we know you wouldn’t go to the police as soon as you’re free?”
“I have as little dealing with the police as possible,” Nick said. “For obvious reasons.”
Sam was still uncertain. “We’ve got you now. In forty-eight hours Max Solar will be in big trouble. Why let you go and take a chance on ruining our whole plan?”
“Because if you don’t, you’ll be in big trouble too. Kidnaping is a far more serious crime than blackmail. Unlock these handcuffs now and hire me. I won’t press charges against you. I steal the thing, collect my fee, and you sell it back to Solar for a lot more. Everybody’s happy.”
Sam turned to Terry. When she nodded approval he said, “All right. Unlock him.”
As soon as the handcuff came free of his wrist Nick said, “My fee in this case will be thirty thousand dollars. I always charge more for dangerous assignments.”
“There’s nothing dangerous about it.”
“It’s dangerous when I get hit on the head and drugged.”
“That was Terry. She was hiding in the back seat of the car with a croquet mallet.”
“You knocked me out with a croquet mallet?”
Terry nodded. “We were going to use a monkey wrench, but we thought it might hurt.”
“Thanks a lot.” Nick was rubbing the circulation back into his wrist. “Now what is it Max Solar was going to hire me to steal?”
“A ship’s manifest,” Terry told him. “But we’re not sure which ship. We only know it sails in two days.”
“What’s so valuable about a ship’s manifest?”
They exchanged glances. “The less you know the better,” Sam said.
“Don’t I even get to know your names?”
“You know too much already. Steal the manifest and meet us back here tomorrow night.”
“How do I find the ship?”
“A South African named Herbert Jarvis is in town arranging for the shipment. He’d know which ship it is.” Terry looked uneasy as she spoke. “I could go through the files at the office, but that might arouse suspicion. They might think it odd I took today off anyway.”
“Shipment of what?” Nick asked.
“Typewriters,” she said, and he knew she was lying.
“All right. But there must be several more copies of this ship’s manifest around.”
“The copy on the ship is the only one that matters,” Sam said. “Get it, and we’ll meet you here tomorrow night at seven.”
“What about my car?”
“It’s in the garage,” Terry said. “We didn’t want to leave it at the Mall.”
Nick nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow with the manifest. Have my fee ready.”
The house where he’d been held prisoner was in the northern part of the city, near Van Cortlandt Park. It took Nick nearly an hour to drive home from there, and another hour to comfort a distraught Gloria who’d been about to phone the police.
“You know my business takes me away suddenly at times,” he said, glancing casually through the mail until he found Solar’s letter.
“But you’ve always told me, Nicky! I didn’t hear from you and all I could imagine was you were hit over the head and robbed!”
“Sorry I worried you.” He kissed her gently. “Is it too late to get something to eat?”
In the morning he checked the sailing times of the next day’s ships in The New York Times. There were only two possibilities — the Fairfax and the Fiorina — but neither one was bound for South Africa. With so little time to spare, he couldn’t afford to pick the wrong one, and trying to find Herbert Jarvis at an unknown New York hotel might be a hopeless task.