“You were right. He sold, and I bought Imperial today. As much as I could lay my hands on.”
“Then you’ll leave Caldwell alone?” I asked.
“Why leave him alone?” The Professor smiled. “After all, he’s got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, just floating around.”
“But you said—”
“I said I’d think about it. And I have. You’ll get the full story tomorrow night. Make it nine, sharp.” He stood up. “Goodbye, Roberts.”
Judson Roberts nodded goodbye. Eddie Haines just sat there, wondering if she’d call, when she’d call, when he’d see her again. There were definitely two of us to consider, now. Eddie Haines and Judson Roberts. Just a couple of the boys. Eddie Haines hadn’t been around very much lately. He was stuck on Ellen Post, but he never came around any more. Judson Roberts was always available, though. He was everywhere. Seen in the best places these days. A fast, smart operator, this Roberts. He knew how to handle himself and everybody else, too.
Telling the old ladies at the lectures, “Remember the first principles of Y-O-U. Your Opportunities, Unlimited. Cultivate yourself. Allow the seeds of your personality to take root and flower. If your soul is thirsty, drink deeply.” Straight out of the old seed catalogue, that’s the way Judson Roberts worked.
Sitting down with the shy ones, explaining, “There is a homely wisdom in the expression, ‘a diamond in the rough.’ For the personality is a jewel, and like a jewel it must be cut and polished. Experience is the cutting edge that brings out the facets of personality. The more facets, the more brilliance.” Courtesy of Mootbeck’s Cut-Rate Diamond Supply Co. The whole spiel.
And Judson Roberts wasn’t just a spieler. He got around. He knew more about human nature than a towel girl in San Diego. A deep thinker, this Roberts. There was always study and analysis and observation, the sort of thing that helped his personality to flower like a beautiful cluster of poison ivy; gave him more facets than a rhinestone garter.
Sometimes he played God. Sometimes he went out into the streets and worked on his cold readings. He got so that he could size up a stranger at a glance. He lectured, he autographed copies of Y-O-U. He dressed well, he was in the chips, he looked like a million.
Of course, there were little wrinkles forming around the corners of his eyes these days. Once in a while, when he get angry, his mouth crawled out from under his mustache—and it was the kind of mouth that bites the heads off canaries. But why worry? Everything was sailing along smoothly now. Sailing along on the S.S. Schizophrenia—passengers Judson Roberts, first class, and Eddie Haines, steerage.
That’s the way it was, and that’s the way I thought about it that night and the next day, until Ellen Post finally did call me up at the office.
She was at her beach house, at Malibu, and would Mr. Judson Roberts care to run down tomorrow afternoon?
“I’ll be seeing you,” said Eddie Haines.
Fourteen
Eddie Haines had a date for tomorrow afternoon. But Judson Roberts had a date for tonight—nine sharp, at his house.
They joined me around the big table in the dining room: the Professor, Rogers, and Dr. Sylvestro. I had all my notes on Caldwell ready, and they kept passing them around and making notes of their own.
I sat there and watched my companions: little Rogers with his hypersensitive twitchings; the Professor, an ivory Buddha in a black suit; Dr. Sylvestro, a gaunt gargoyle whose specialty was stony silence.
The Professor finished reading and sat back. We all watched him.
“You’ve done a good job,” he said.
“Thanks. As I told you, I’m actually helping the man.”
“Fine. And now we’re ready to take over.”
“I see he’s sold his stock,” Rogers commented.
“Right.”
“That leaves our string-saving friend in possession of a cool hundred and fifty thousand in cash, does it not?” Sylvestro’s deep voice rolled out. I stared at his unnaturally pallid face, at the unnaturally red lips. He sat there smirking like a vampire, saying, “You have plans for that money, Hermann?”
The bald head inclined slowly. “Naturally. In fact, my plans are already in effect. When Jake gets here—”
I was sweating, but I had to make one last try. “Look, Professor. What about my idea? Buy Imperial stock and cash in. Then let me play along with Caldwell for a while. He’s going into real estate and he trusts me. I’ll be able to advise him, check every move he makes. Who knows, if we wait we may make as much or more without any risk. Now suppose you were to arrange a tie-up with some promoters who own beach property, and we could split the profits—”
A fat hand rose and pushed the rest of the sentence back down my throat.
“That is too slow and too uncertain. I have found a better way. With your friend, Eve England.”
“Eve? But I paid her off, she went away.”
“Before Caldwell broke with her, before the payoff, there was a lapse of several days during which he continued to see her. You know that.”
“Yes.”
“But what you do not know is that Rogers also contacted Eve England for me—right after you did.”
I sat up. “Meaning you didn’t trust me to handle the deal?”
“No. We checked on you, naturally. That is my policy. But we had something else in mind. We anticipated this situation.” The Professor got his monocle into position, held me with his glittering eye. “Has it ever occurred to you, my friend, that if a man is willing to pay five thousand dollars he may be willing to pay a great deal more?”
“I don’t get it.”
“Let Jake tell you. That sounds like his ring.”
I got up and answered the bell. It was our Neanderthal friend, all right—the man whose forehead was voted most likely to recede.
“How’s tricks?” he grunted.
“You’re the mystic, you tell me,” I suggested. “Come on in and sit down.” Our little family circle watched impatiently as he extracted an envelope from the pocket of his sports shirt.
“Here they are,” he said.
The Professor opened the envelope. Five small photographic negatives and an equal number of prints shuffled fanwise through his fingers. His face bore the blank stare of a professional poker player who holds a winning hand.
“Well,” said Rogers, “what’d he get?”
“See for yourself.”
Rogers grabbed at the photos. Sylvestro got up and leaned over his shoulder.
“Hey!” Rogers whispered. “How the hell did you manage to get this?”
“The babe cooperated.”
“I’ll say she did! But where were you?”
“Closet. I used that new-type flash the Professor got me. No light, see? When she heard how much she could get out of the deal, she fixed me up. Got ’em all the night before Caldwell told her he was through.”
“Boy, what a masochist!” Rogers breathed. “Look at those ropes and—”
Sylvestro’s gargoyle grimace deepened. He beckoned to me. “Care to look?”
I looked, then hastily turned away. I hoped the Professor wouldn’t see my face. I heard myself saying, “But what are you going to do with this?”
Jake knew. “We’re going to shake down your pal Caldwell for about fifty G’s, to start with. Either that, or we take these pictures to his wife. And then we get another fifty, with duplicate negatives. And then another—”
“Never mind.” The Professor silenced Jake and retrieved the photographs. “I think you understand our plan now,” he said. “Jake will go to him later tonight. Come on, gentlemen, let’s be on our way.”
They filed out—Jake, Rogers, Dr. Sylvestro. I just sat there, waiting. The Professor lingered behind.