“With the Guard,” said Chog. “Hounding me, they were, mercenaries hounding me, me with a reputation in this city.”
“Right. Mrs. Skargool got another note this morning, did you hear?”
“Good news, that must be good news. My friend’s return must be near. The two of us, Skargool and me, like brothers.”
“So you said,” I said. “I’m going to make the ransom drop tonight.”
“I must know the outcome as soon as possible.”
“As long as you mention it, you can hear it direct. Drop by Skargool’s house tonight around midnight.”
“Midnight. I surely will be there.” Chog smiled.
I went to Skargool’s myself and settled accounts with his wife. She was holding up remarkably well under the strain, tried flirting with me, more seriously this time, and everything. I took Turbot aside and discussed things with him, and then he took his sword and left.
I had never seen that morning’s note, so I examined it to pass the time. It was firepen on copper again. When I compared it to the first one, though, the script was slightly different. I showed it to Mrs. Skargool.
“You ever see this handwriting before?” I asked her.
She held it close to her face and studied it carefully, then looked up at me, her clear blue eyes wide and guileless. “No, no, I’m certain I’ve never seen this before,” she said. “Is it important?”
“Not really,” I said.
At dusk a messenger arrived with the last note. The messenger didn’t know anything, he’d just been handed the note on a street corner with an oolmite coin, and after handing it over he scurried quickly off into the dark without even asking for a tip. The note read:
Pack the money in two sacks. At eight the detective will take the sacks and walk to the corner of Avenue of the Fifth Great Flood and Brewer Street. He will come alone.
The intersection was in a shabby section of the wharf district. We prepared the loot, and at eight I left the house.
Tacked to a wall at Fifth Great and Brewer was a folded cloth. Inside the cloth was another copper plate. The inscription told me to go to the Haalsen Traders wharf, which was about a three-minute walk away. At the wharf, yet another note instructed me to go down a ladder and put the sacks into a dinghy moored at the base. It was about time to put the sacks down somewhere; twenty thousand zalous could get pretty heavy on you. The note also suggested I wait at the bottom of the ladder for the next half-hour or so. I put the bags in the boat, a cable tied to the boat drew tight and pulled the boat away into the shadows under the wharf next door, and I cooled my heels for a time. When I decided I’d rested long enough I climbed the ladder and went back to Skargool’s house.
As soon as I walked through the door Skargool’s wife pounced. I’d had trouble dragging a useful word out of her for two days, and now she’d finally decided to talk.
“Did you give them the money? Where’s the money now, didn’t you get it back? Where’s my husband? What -?”
“Shut up,” I told her. “I only want to say the whole thing once, and I’m not going to say it until everybody’s here.”
“Where’s my husband?”
“I don’t think he’s coming.”
She started to snarl and spit at me, but at this point I didn’t care. I knew her too well by now, not that there was that much to know. Kardu Chog the manager arrived, followed shortly after by Turbot. He gave me a very slight nod and sat down by the door.
“Now will you tell me -” said Skargool’s wife.
“Not yet,” I said. “That’s not everybody.”
The wife and Chog both started. “What are you talking about?” Chog said.
“What I said,” I said. “We’re waiting for somebody else.”
Mrs. Skargool looked around nervously, at everything and everybody except Chog.
Exactly at midnight, several minutes later, there was a final knock on the door. It was the guy from the insurance company.
I stood up and started to talk. “Skargool’s dead,” I said, mostly addressing his wife. “He was probably dead before you came to see me. Skargool was kidnapped by The Creeping Sword, but that’s about all anybody’s told me that’s been true.
“Chog, here, was the silent partner of Kriglag -”
Chog made a sudden lunge out of the couch.
“Stay,” the insurance agent said.
Chog stayed. His hand had frozen in the air, on the way into his opposite sleeve, and one foot was raised. I nodded at Turbot. He went and pulled a long knife out of Chog’s sleeve, then pushed him back onto the sofa. Chog was breathing, and his eyes were darting frantically, but otherwise he didn’t move at all. Turbot sat down too.
“Kriglag ran the wharves,” I continued, “and one of the things he ran was hot merchandise. A lot of the merchandise was stuff that Chog stole from his own warehouse. Skargool’s warehouse, really, but Chog was running it. Since Chog kept the records and Skargool trusted him, it took awhile for Skargool to catch on.
“By the time he did, Chog had another plan. Kriglag had told him about The Creeping Sword. The Sword was this idiot kid from upriver someplace, probably, and he had this idiot idea. He would kidnap a businessman who was both rich and nasty to his employees, but not so nasty that someone wouldn’t be willing to pay the ransom. I guess the Sword wanted to become some kind of folk hero, kidnapping only people who deserved it. If his victims didn’t show up again, either, nobody was supposed to be too upset. After all, they were bad people, right?
“All Chog had to do was run around spreading stories about how rich and how terrible Skargool was, and wait for the Sword to bite. I don’t know exactly how long it took, but he was right on the mark. The Sword showed up, right on cue.
“The thing was, Chog was following Skargool too, and when the Sword picked up Skargool, Chog followed the Sword. After the Sword wrote his first kidnap note, Chog came in and got rid of them both.
“That was it for The Creeping Sword, and that was it for Skargool. That’s about it for the case, too.” I waited until I could see the look of relief appear on the face of Skargool’s wife. That’s how much I didn’t like her. “Except for one thing,” I said to her, “the insurance. That was dumb, real dumb, taking out the policy yourself. I don’t know whether you love Chog or he loves you, or whether he made you think he does or you made him think you do, and I don’t care. I don’t even care if you deliberately set me up so I’d figure out about Chog and the Sword and think that was the whole story. What I do care about was the other thing on your husband’s mind, finding out that you and Chog were playing around behind his back, and probably figuring out the other reason he’d never noticed Chog stealing from him. You, keeping his attention distracted. It wasn’t just Chog, it was you too. Both of you conspired to kill Skargool and get the insurance and take over the business.”
She had frozen, like Chog, when I mentioned the insurance. The insurance man hadn’t bothered to interrupt, he’d just pointed a finger at her. I turned to him.
“Satisfied?” I said.
“Eminently,” he said. He pointed a finger at Chog and then at Skargool’s wife. Balls of flame materialized and consumed them. Then his form lit up in a quick flash followed by a column of billowing smoke. When vision returned a few seconds later he was gone, apparently dematerialized into the vapor. I think only I noticed the catch on the front door as it snapped shut, and the small puff of cold outside air. That was all right with me; I figure everybody’s entitled to their tricks of the trade.
“Who was that?” said Turbot.
“Either a magician working for the insurance company,” I said, “or some god, slumming.” Hopefully he wasn’t a god, and if he was I hoped I’d done well enough by him so now he’d leave me alone. As it turned out later, I’d done too well for my own good, but I still didn’t think I’d had a choice. We split the ransom money, which Turbot had stashed outside after he’d recovered it from the hiding place he’d found when he’d tailed Chog from the ransom pickup spot earlier, and went home.