“I’ll have my fee now,” Nick said. “Thirty thousand.”
“I haven’t got it.”
Nick simply stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I haven’t got it. There is no fee. No money, no nothing.” He shrugged and started to turn away.
Nick grabbed him by the collar. “If you won’t pay for it, Max Solar will!”
“No, he won’t,” Terry said, speaking for the first time since Nick’s arrival. “Look here.”
Nick followed her into the back bedroom. On the rumpled bed where Nick had been held prisoner, the body of Max Solar lay sprawled and bloody. There was no doubt Solar was dead.
“How did it happen?” Nick asked. “What’s he doing here?”
“I called him,” Sam said. “We needed the thirty thousand to pay your fee. The only way we could get it was from Solar. So I told him we’d have the manifest here at seven o’clock. I left the front door unlocked and told him to bring $80,000. I figured $30,000 for you and the rest for us.”
“What happened?”
“Terry arrived about twenty minutes ago and found him dead. It looks like he’s been stabbed.”
“You’re trying to tell me you didn’t kill him?”
“Of course not!” Sam said, a trace of indignation creeping into his voice. “Do I look like a murderer?”
“No, but then you don’t look like a kidnaper either. You had the best reason in the world for wanting him dead.”
“His money would have been enough revenge for me.”
“Was it on him?”
“No,” Terry answered. “We looked. Either he didn’t bring it or the killer got it first.”
“What am I supposed to do with this manifest?” Nick asked bleakly.
“It’s no good to me now. I can’t get revenge on a dead man.”
“That’s your problem. You still owe me thirty thousand.”
Sam held his hands wide in a gesture of helplessness. “We don’t have the money! What should I do? Give you the mortgage on this house that’s falling apart? Be thankful you got something out of Max Solar before he died.”
Ignoring Nick, Terry asked, “What are we going to do with the body, Sam?”
“Do? Call the police! What else is there to do?”
“Won’t they think we did it?”
“Maybe they’ll be right,” Nick said. “Maybe you killed him, Terry, to have the money for yourself. Or maybe Sam killed him and then sneaked out to let you find the body.”
Both of them were quick to deny the accusations, and in truth Nick cared less about the circumstances of Max Solar’s death than he did about the balance of his fee, and he saw no way of collecting it at the moment.
“All right,” he said finally. “I’ll leave you two to figure out your next move. You know where to reach me if you come up with the money. Meanwhile, I’m keeping this manifest.”
He drove south, toward Manhattan, and though the night was turning chilly he left his window open. The fresh air felt good against his face and it helped him to sort out his thoughts. There was only one other person who’d have the least interest in paying money for the manifest, and that was Herbert Jarvis.
He headed for the Wilson Hotel.
Jarvis was in his room packing when Nick knocked on the door. “Well,” he said, a bit startled. “Velvet, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. Can I come in?”
“I have to catch a plane. I’m packing.”
“So I see,” Nick said. He shut the door behind him.
“If you’ll make it brief, I really am quite busy.”
“I’ll bet you are. I’ll make it brief enough. I want thirty thousand dollars.”
“Thirty...! For what?”
“This copy of the ship’s manifest for the S. S. Fiorina. The only copy that shows it’s carrying a cargo of rifles.”
“The business with the manifest is between you and Solar. He hired you.”
“Various people hired me, but you’re the only one I can collect from. Max Solar is dead.”
“Dead?”
“Stabbed to death in a house uptown. Within the past few hours.”
Jarvis sat down on the bed. “That’s a terrible thing.”
Nick shrugged. “I assume he knew the sort of men he was dealing with.”
“What’s that mean?” Jarvis asked, growing nervous.
“Who do you think killed him?” Nick countered.
“That computer programmer, Sam, I suppose. That’s his house uptown.”
“How do you know it’s Sam’s house? How do you know about Sam?”
“Solar was going to meet him. He told me on the telephone.”
It all fell into place for Nick. “What did he tell you?”
“That Sam wanted money for the manifest. That you were working for Sam.”
“Why did he tell you about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s take a guess. Could it have been because the check you gave him was no good? A man with Solar’s world-wide contacts could have discovered quickly that there was no money in South Africa to cover your check. In fact, you’re not even from South Africa, are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You told me you’re an artist, and since you volunteered the information I assume it’s true. But you said you have a studio in Capetown with a fine north light. Artists like north light because it’s truer, because the sun is never in the northern sky. But of course this is only true in the northern hemisphere. An artist in Capetown or Buenos Aires or Melbourne would want a studio with a good south light. Your studio, Jarvis, isn’t in Capetown at all. It would have to be somewhere well north of the equator.
“And if you lied about being from South Africa, I figured the check drawn on a South African bank is probably phony too. You reasoned that once the arms shipment was safely out to sea there was no way Solar could blow the whistle without implicating himself. But when he learned your check was valueless, he phoned you and probably told you to meet him at Sam’s house with the money or he’d have the cases of guns taken off the ship.”
“You’re saying I killed him?”
“Yes.”
“You are one smart man, Velvet.”
“Smart enough for a two-bit gunrunner.”
Jarvis’ right hand moved faster than Nick’s eyes could follow. The knife was up his sleeve, and it missed Nick’s throat by inches as it thudded into the wall. “Too bad,” Nick said. “With a gun you get a second chance.” And he dove for the man.
He remembered the address of Sam’s house and got the phone number from a friend with the company. Sam answered on the first ring, sounding nervous, and Nick asked, “How’s it going?”
“Velvet? Where are you? The police are here.”
“Good,” Nick said, knowing a detective would be listening in. “You did the right thing calling them. I don’t know why I’m getting you off the hook, but tell them Solar’s killer is in Room 334 at the Wilson Hotel on Seventh Avenue.”
“You found him?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “But he didn’t have any money either.”
It was one of the very few times Nick Velvet failed — that is, failed to collect his full fee.
From AUTOBIOGRAPHY, by A. A. Milne (Dutton, 1939): “Meanwhile my first free-lance contribution had been accepted. Sherlock Holmes had just ‘returned’ in The Strand Magazine after his duel with Moriarty. I wrote a burlesque of this, which I sent to Punch. Punch refused it, and I sent it to Vanity Fair.” A. A. Milne was paid 15 shillings for his “first story” — but remember, this was in 1903.
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