“Gotta run,” said Silvers again, using his confidential whisper. “A harem girl wants to share a ham sandwich with me behind the sultan’s tent. See ya.”
Silvers hurried away and Gunther said soberly,
“He is strangely amusing.”
“That’s a good way of putting it,” I said, moving toward Wilde who was holding his sword out at arm’s length.
“Mr. Wilde,” I said.
He turned his head and looked first at me and then at Gunther.
“You won’t remember me,” I said. “I used to be a guard at Warner’s. I met you one day on the set of High Sierra.”
“I remember,” he said with a smile. “You were talking to Humphrey Bogart.”
“Right, I was a private investigator by then. You’ve got quite a memory.”
“A gift and a curse,” he said, tucking the sword under his arm.
“A little while ago,” I said. “A man was here. You had words.”
“Yes,” said Wilde very seriously.
“Mind telling me what he wanted?”
“Five minutes,” someone called from behind me.
Wilde nodded. Bright lights came on.
“He had made an appointment to see me this morning,” Wilde said. “Said it would take no more than a minute or two and involved an old friend from college who was in trouble. He gave me the name of the friend. I agreed to see him.”
“What did he want?”
“To blackmail me,” he said. “He showed me photographs, all fakes, of me doing things I’ve never done with people I’ve never met.”
“And?”
“I asked him if he could imagine what it felt like to have a very sharp blade pierce his stomach and come out through his back. He repeated his threat, said he could handle a saber. I told him that they were frauds, that he was a blackmailer and that I was going to call the police.”
“He backed off?”
Wilde furrowed his forehead and said,
“Yes, but he gave up much too easily.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“That he could always get back to me. His exact words were, ‘I’ve got a much better fish to catch and a bigger hook.’”
“And he was gone?”
“They were gone,” said Wilde.
“There was someone with him?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“No,” he said. “The lights were on on the set, much as they are now, and he stayed back there in the shadows. But I did see his hands. I got a very good look at his hands. A fencer learns to look at his opponents’ hands.”
“Hands?”
“For scars, bruises, length of fingers, dexterity,” he said. “The man who tried to blackmail me did have a fencer’s hand, his right.”
“You mean you’d recognize the other man if you saw his hands again?” Gunther asked.
Wilde looked down at him and said, “I’d recognize both of them.”
“Let’s get this shot,” came a man’s voice.
“Thanks,” I said.
Gunther and I left the stage and went out the door into the morning. We had an hour to get to Marty Leib’s office. Plenty of time. At least, there would have been plenty of time if a lean blonde guy in dark slacks and a white long-sleeved pullover shirt hadn’t been standing outside the stage door, waiting for us with a gun in his hand.
“Missed you the other night,” he said. “Won’t make that mistake again.”
He had nice teeth and a nice smile to go along with his big gun. It had to be the guy who shot Gwen and me with the pellet gun. I looked around for someone, anyone.
“It’s bad luck to kill little people,” he said, looking at Gunther, “but I’ll just have to chance it.”
The stage door opened behind us. The gunman looked over my shoulder at whoever was coming out the door. He lost his smile and then it came back again.
I turned my head and saw Wilde and the guy he had been sword fighting with. They were both carrying swords and talking. Wilde seemed to be demonstrating something he wanted the other man to do. It took them a beat to look up and see the man with the gun pointed at Gunther and me.
The blonde lost his smile. Gone were his flashing teeth. Two shootings, maybe. But four, including a movie star on a studio lot? Probably not.
Wilde looked decidedly angry as he stepped toward the blonde, who started to back away. The man Wilde had been dueling with on the sound stage matched Wilde stride for stride.
“Hold it there,” said the blonde.
Wilde did not hold it. Sword in his right hand, he moved toward the gunman who looked over his shoulder and then back at Wilde. The blonde fired one shot into the air. No one came running. This was Columbia. People were shooting guns a good part of the day. The difference was that this gun had real bullets, one of which cracked into the brick wall of the sound stage.
Wilde grabbed the sword from the hand of the other actor and threw it to the blonde, who managed to catch it and move between Gunther and me.
“I think you said you knew how to use a saber,” said Wilde with an undercurrent of anger I was glad was aimed at the blonde and not at me.
Wilde ignored the gun as he continued to move forward.
“Don’t be crazy,” said the blonde.
Wilde ignored him, now within ten feet of the man.
“Blackmail, guns, threats,” said Wilde. “You’re not very good with any of them. How are you with a sword?”
“You’re crazy,” the blonde said.
Wilde turned sideways and swished his sword, cutting the air and then hitting the blonde’s arm with the flat of the blade. The gun flew and skittered on the concrete.
Wilde leaped forward with another swish of the sword and a thrust. The blonde decided it was a good time to defend himself. I don’t know anything about fencing or sword fighting, but I’d seen plenty of it when I worked at Warner Brothers. My favorite at it was Basil Rathbone, who invariably died after a thrust by Errol Flynn, though Rathbone was the better fighter.
The blonde was pretty good.
The stage door opened again and Phil Silvers came out.
“What’s up?” he shouted, adjusting his glasses to watch the battle. “Hey, they’re not kiddin‘. I’ll give you six to one on Cornel.”
The blonde was backing up and trying to keep away from Wilde’s pointed jabs.
“The blades are not sharp?” asked Gunther.
“No,” said the actor at our side. “But the points aren’t blunt enough to keep them from doing a hell of a lot of damage.”
Sword blades clanged just like in the movies. I’ll give this to the blonde. He was almost holding his own.
“Ten to one,” said Silvers. “Last offer.”
Wilde lunged forward, swung his sword hard, and knocked the sword out of the blonde’s hand. The blonde was only a few feet away from his gun now. He bent quickly and picked it up.
“That’s it,” he said, panic in his voice. “Stop there or so help me, I’ll blow a hole in you.”
Wilde, sword pointed at the man, stopped.
We all recognized the sound of desperation in the blonde’s voice. He backed away, motioning for us to stay where we were. We stayed. He ducked around a building. Wilde started forward. The gunman, whom we couldn’t see, fired off a shot.
We didn’t follow.
“Is anyone hurt?” Wilde asked, turning to face us.
We were all fine. Wilde nodded, said “Good” and moved through us back toward the sound stage.
“Is he something, or is he something?” said Silvers, looking at Gunther.
“He is indeed something,” said Gunther.
We asked Dave on the way out if he had seen a blonde guy leave the lot. He had. The blonde was driving a prewar black Ford and there was someone else in the car with him.
“Other guy was wearing a hat, pulled over his face, you know? Didn’t get a good look at him. Sorry.”
As we pulled away, Gunther said, “What have we learned?”
“We know what our killer looks like without the beard and turban.”
“If he is the killer,” Gunther said. “Which, if I am correct, is a reasonable supposition but not yet a certainty, in spite of our experience here. Remember, there was a second man.”