When Nick entered the familiar office Norton greeted him with a cool expression. “What is it, Velvet? I told you our deal was off.”
Nick opened the briefcase and set the ashtray on the banker’s desk. “One ashtray, as ordered.”
Philip Norton sat and looked at it. “Where did you find it?” he asked at last.
“Where Parson Maybee hid it — in a tropical fish tank in his office.”
“The fish tank!”
“Sounds as if you took a look yourself.”
“I’ve been out there, yes.”
“Too bad the bank went for that half-million loan before I had a chance to recover this for you.”
Norton’s face reddened. “That loan had nothing to do with the theft of my ashtray.”
“What is this door that your fingerprints unlock? What’s behind it, Mr. Norton?”
“Good day, Mr. Velvet. Our business is at an end.”
“Not quite. You owe me twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“I told you the deal was off. Your delivery came too late.”
“Nothing was said about a time limit. I delivered in less than a week’s time.”
“Sorry, Velvet.”
“I’m not leaving without my money,” Nick said, but the banker must have anticipated trouble. Almost at once, in answer to some silent alarm, the door behind Nick opened and a uniformed guard entered.
“Show Mr. Velvet out,” Norton said.
Nick stood up. “I’ll send you a bill,” he said and walked out with the guard.
All the way down in the elevator he thought about it. The situation was not unlike that in the old Gothic novels — a hidden room with a nameless secret that must be kept locked away. Except that this hidden room wasn’t in a cliffside mansion but in a 56-story Lexington Avenue building.
Parson Maybee had learned the secret, or at least he’d acquired the key to unlocking the secret. That had earned him a half-million dollar loan for a new church. There was little doubt in Nick’s mind now that Maybee was something of a con man, but the jury was still out on whether Maybee or Norton was the bigger villain of the piece. Whichever was the case, it began to look as if Nick would never collect his fee — not unless he could pull off an especially tricky maneuver.
He thought that was something he just might be able to do, with a little help from Lawn Larson.
She listened carefully as Nick talked, chain-smoking the cigarettes she wasn’t allowed on camera. “Let’s get this straight now. You want me to do an interview with Philip Norton, the president of First City Savings?”
“That’s right,” Nick said. “In his office at the bank. It must be in his office. I’m sure you can arrange that.”
“What’s in this for me?”
“A story. A damn good story, if my suspicions are correct. At the very least you’ll be following up on the Parson Maybee thing. After all, it’s Norton’s bank that’s granting the loan.”
“You’ve convinced me,” she decided after a moment’s thought. “But where do you fit in?”
“I’m going along,” Nick said with a smile. “Find a job for me.”
“That’s impossible. The union—”
“Nothing is impossible.”
By Wednesday, Lawn Larson had arranged the interview, and Wednesday afternoon she arrived at Norton’s office with a cameraman and a sound technician. The latter was Nick Velvet, wearing a wig and a bushy mustache that hid his mouth. It was not an ideal disguise, but he relied on the fact that with Lawn in the room the banker wouldn’t be looking at anyone else.
“I really don’t have much time, Miss Larson. Just what did you want to ask me?”
“It’s about the loan your bank is making to Parson Felix Maybee’s Church of the One True Hope.”
“I can’t discuss decisions of the loan department.”
“But isn’t it true that you personally approved the application?”
“The church is a tax-exempt religious institution. As long as it remains so there’s no reason to deny the loan.”
“Will you say that on camera?”
He looked distastefully at the man with his shoulder-mounted television camera and shrugged. “Sure. I have nothing to hide.”
They started filming, and Nick busied himself with the sound equipment. Even when he leaned over Philip Norton’s desk to adjust a microphone the banker never gave him a second look.
By the time they packed up and left, twenty minutes later, the banker’s glass ashtray was safely stowed in the box with the sound equipment.
Nick telephoned the bank later that same afternoon. When Norton came on the line, Nick said, “You can have your ashtray back when you pay my bill. That’s twenty-five thousand, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Velvet! How in hell did you—?”
“I should charge double, since I had to steal it twice.”
“Keep the damned ashtray! It can’t hurt me now.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Nick said, and hung up.
The following morning he went once again to Parson Maybee’s office on Long Island. The monkish minister received him with a smile, rubbing his pudgy hands together in anticipation of the contribution to come. “Happy to see you again, Mr. Velvet. Have you discussed the donation with your client?”
Instead of answering, Nick strode over to the tropical fish tank. “Water level seems down a bit from last week,” he observed.
“What?”
“As if something had been removed from the tank.”
Maybee eyed him suspiciously. “Just who are you, Velvet?”
“I’m the man who took Philip Norton’s ashtray from your fish tank.”
The parson dove for his desk drawer, but Nick was too fast. His foot kicked the drawer shut, catching Maybee’s wrist in it and bringing a yelp of pain. “You won’t need that pistol, parson. I’m after Norton, not you.”
“What do you want?” Maybee asked when Nick had freed his hand.
“Information. You used the ashtray to force Norton into approving the loan for your church.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that strongly.” He was rubbing his wrist and looking frightened.
“I want the full story, and if I don’t get it I’m going to the press with what I know. I’m sure that TV reporter, Lawn Larson, would be interested in learning about the secret vault which can be opened only by Philip Norton’s fingerprints.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s my business to know things.”
The parson pondered his position. “Are you accusing me of some impropriety?”
“Only stating the facts. If blackmail is an impropriety, then I guess I’m accusing you of it.”
Maybee hunched over his desk. “Let me tell you something — he’s guilty of a hell of a lot more than I am!”
“What, for instance?” Nick asked. He knew he had the man now.
“Last year a woman joined our church — an elderly widow looking for salvation. We get ’em all the time. If I was running this church in California I’d he after the kids, but here in New York it’s the rich old widows you go after. Only this time I discovered somebody had gotten to her first.”
“Philip Norton?”
A nod. “He got friendly with her, see? He was her banker, and a handsome devil besides. Her husband had left some things, mainly a collection of rare coins and stamps valued at more than one hundred thousand dollars. She wanted them to go to her children after she died, but not before. The problem was what to do with them. Around the house they weren’t safe from thieves, and in a safe-deposit box they’d be found and taxed when she died. Her banker Philip Norton provided the perfect solution. As a close personal friend as well as her financial adviser, he offered to keep the collection in his private vault at the bank, and to pass it on to her heirs after her death, thus avoiding both inheritance and gift taxes. Since she trusted him completely, it was a perfect solution. He placed a letter in his files identifying the collection as her property — in case he died first, he said — but he was careful not to give her a copy. She told me she never asked for one.”