“Ring twice.”
“Like the postman.”
“Beg pardon?”
“What time should I come?”
He thought it over. “Half past six, I should think.”
“That’s fine.”
“And you’ll bring the, uh, the item?”
“If you’ll have the, uh, cash.”
“Everything will be taken care of.”
Odd, I thought, hanging up the phone. I was the one running on four hours’ sleep. He was the one who sounded exhausted.
I don’t know exactly when the Sikh appeared. He was just suddenly there, poking around among the shelves, a tall slender gentleman with a full black beard and a turban. I noticed him, of course, because one does notice that sort of thing, but I didn’t stare or gawp. New York is New York, after all, and a Sikh is not a Martian.
Shortly before five the store emptied out. I stifled a yawn with the back of my hand and thought about closing early. Just then the Sikh emerged from the world of books and presented himself in front of the counter. I’d lost track of him and had assumed he’d left.
“This book,” he said. He held it up for my inspection, dwarfing it in his large brown hands. An inexpensive copy of The Jungle Book, by our boy Rudyard K.
“Ah, yes,” I said. “Mowgli, raised by wolves.”
He was even taller than I’d realized I looked at him and thought of What’s-his-name in Little Orphan Annie. He wore a gray business suit, a white shirt, an unornamented maroon tie. The turban was white.
“You know this man?”
Punjab, I thought. That was the dude in Little Orphan Annie. And his sidekick was The Asp, and-
“Kipling?” I said.
“You know him?”
“Well, he’s not living now,” I said. “He died in1936.” And thank you, J. R. Whelkin, for the history lesson.
The man smiled. His teeth were very large, quite even, and whiter than his shirtfront. His features were regular, and his large sorrowful eyes were the brown of old-fashioned mink coats, the kind Ray Kirschmann’s wife didn’t want for Christmas.
“You know his books?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You have other books, yes? Besides the ones on your shelves.”
An alarm bell sounded somewhere in the old cerebellum. “My stock’s all on display,” I said carefully.
“Another book. A private book, perhaps.”
“I’m afraid not.”
The smile faded until the mouth was a grim line hidden at its corners by the thick black beard. The Sikh dropped a hand into his jacket pocket. When he brought it out there was a pistol in it. He stood so that his body screened the pistol from the view of passers-by and held it so that it was pointed directly at my chest.
It was a very small gun, a nickel-plated automatic. They make fake guns about that size, novelty items, but somehow I knew that this one wouldn’t turn out to be a cigarette lighter in disguise.
It should have looked ridiculous, such a little gun in such a large hand, but I’ll tell you something. Guns, when they’re pointed at me, never look ridiculous.
“Please,” he said patiently. “Let us be reasonable. You know what I want.”
CHAPTER Six
I wanted to look him in the eyes but I couldn’t keep from staring at the gun.
“There is something,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I’ve got it behind the counter, see, because of a personal interest-”
“Yes.”
“But since you’re a fan of Kipling’s, and because your devotion is obvious-”
“The book, please.”
His free hand snatched it up the instant I laid it on the counter. The smile was back now, broader than ever. He tried the book in his jacket pocket but it didn’t fit. He set it back on the counter for a moment while he drew an envelope from an inside pocket. He was still pointing the gun at me and I wished he’d stop.
“For your trouble,” he said, slapping the envelope smartly on the counter in front of me. “Because you are a reasonable man.”
“Reasonable,” I said.
“No police, no troubles.” His smile spread. “Reasonable.”
“Like Brutus.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, he was honorable, wasn’t he? And I’m reasonable.” The book screamed at me from the counter top. “This book,” I said, my hand pawing the air above it. “You’re a stranger in my country, and I can’t let you-”
He scooped up the book and backed off, teeth flashing furiously. When he reached the door he pocketed the gun, stepped quickly outside, and hurried off westward on Eleventh Street.
Gone but not forgotten.
I stared after him for a moment or two. Then I suppose I sighed, and finally I picked up the envelope and weighed it in my hand as if trying to decide how many stamps to put on it. It was a perfectly ordinary envelope of the sort doctors mail their bills in, except that there was no return address in its upper left-hand corner. Just a simple blank envelope, dime-store stationery.
Rudyard Whelkin had agreed to pay me fifteen thousand dollars for the book he wanted. Somehow I couldn’t make myself believe this little envelope contained fifteen thousand dollars.
I opened it. Fifty-dollar bills, old ones, out of sequence.
Ten of them.
Five hundred dollars.
Big hairy deal.
I dragged the bargain table in from the street. Somehow I wasn’t eager to stay open a few extra minutes in order to peddle a few old books at three for a buck. I hung the Closed sign in the window and set about shutting things down, transferring some cash from the register to my wallet, filling out a deposit slip for the check I’d taken in on the Trollope set.
I folded the ten fifties and buttoned them into a hip pocket. And snatched up a brown-wrapped book from a drawer in the office desk, and let myself out of the store and went through my nightly lock-up routine with the steel gates.
For a few minutes I just walked, north on Broadway, then east on Thirteenth Street, then uptown on Third Avenue. The corner of Fourteenth and Third was aswarm with persons addicted to any of a variety of licit and illicit substances. Junkies scratched themselves, winos passed pints around, and a methadone enthusiast kept slamming the heel of his hand thoughtfully against a brick building. I straightened the knot in my tie-I’d put the tie on before leaving the store-and walked onward, resisting the temptation to give my hip pocket a reassuring pat.
Five hundred dollars.
There’s a big difference between five hundred and fifteen thousand, and while the latter sum represents a very decent return on a night’s labor, the former is small compensation for risking life and limb, not to mention liberty. So a five-hundred-dollar payment for The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow was like no money at all.
On the other hand, five hundred dollars was a princely sum for the Grosset amp; Dunlap reprint edition of Soldiers Three, which is what my turbaned and bearded visitor had taken from me at gunpoint. I rather doubt it was what he wanted, but you don’t always get what you want, do you?
I’d had the book priced reasonably enough at $1.95. And I had the Haggard copy of The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow all nicely wrapped in brown kraft paper and tucked under my arm, and wouldn’t Rudyard Whelkin be happy to see it?
It’s funny how things work out.
CHAPTER Seven
I was early, of course. My appointment with Whelkin wasn’t until six-thirty and I’d locked up the shop just a few minutes after five, not wanting to stick around in case the Sikh realized his mistake. I had a sign on the wall emphasizing that all sales were final, but I had a feeling he’d expect me to make an exception in his case. So I took my time walking uptown, and I was still twenty minutes early when I reached the corner of Sixty-sixth and Second. A bar on the corner looked inviting, and I accepted the invitation.