Big Ben struck one. According to my watch, it was five minutes fast.
“There he is,” Herbert said.
I didn’t see him at first. At least, I saw him but I didn’t see him. A pink Rolls-Royce had pulled up at the curb, ignoring the blasts of the cars trapped behind it. A chauffeur got out, strolled round to the back, and opened the door for one of the thinnest men I had ever seen. He was so thin that, as he moved toward us, he was like a living skeleton. His clothes—an expensive Italian suit and fur-lined coat—hung off him like they were trying to get away. Even his rings were too big for his pencil fingers. As he walked, he kept adjusting them to stop them from sliding off.
I looked from him to Herbert and back again. “That’s the Fat Man?” I asked.
Herbert nodded. “He’s lost weight.”
He reached us and stopped, swaying slightly as if the wind was going to blow him away. Close up, he was even more peculiar than far away. Hollow cheeks, hollow eyes, hollow gut. The man was a drum with skin stretched so tight over bones you could probably see right through him when the light was behind him.
“Mr. Diamond?” he said.
“Yes,” Herbert admitted.
“I’m the Fat Man.”
There was a long silence. Herbert was too afraid to talk, but I don’t like long silences. They make me nervous. “You don’t look fat to me,” I said.
The Fat Man chuckled unpleasantly. Even his laughter was hollow. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Nick Diamond,” I told him, adopting my brother’s name. “I’m his kid brother.”
“Well, my dear boy, might I suggest that you keep your young mouth closed? I have business with your brother.”
I kept my young mouth closed. The Fat Man didn’t bother me, but I was interested to know what his business was. Meanwhile, the chauffeur had followed him from the Rolls, carrying a folding chair and a tub of corn. The chauffeur was wearing glasses that were so dark they didn’t show his eyes, but rather two reflections of yourself. He unfolded the chair and handed his master the corn.
“Thank you, Lawrence,” the Fat Man said. “You can wait in the car.”
The chauffeur grunted and walked away. The Fat Man sat down, then dug a hand into the tub and threw a spray of kernels across the concrete. The pigeons came at us in a rush. He smiled briefly.
“You look well,” Herbert muttered.
“Thank you . . . Timothy, if I may so call you.” The Fat Man was genuinely pleased. “My doctor advised me to lose weight.” He shrugged. “One must bow to the voice of reason—although some might say I have taken it a touch far. For the past year I have eaten nothing but yogurt and have shed two hundred and ninety-five pounds. I have, however, retained my old nickname for professional purposes.” The hand dug again, scattering more corn for the pigeons. “On the subject of which,” the Fat Man continued, “I will be brief. You were visited yesterday by an old friend of mine. A small friend. I am led to understand that he might have entrusted you with something, something that I want. Something that I’m willing to pay for.”
Herbert said nothing, so I chipped in. “How much?”
The Fat Man smiled at me a second time. He had dreadful teeth. In fact he was pretty dreadful all over.
“You seem a bright lad,” he said. “I’m sure the nurses will just adore you in the emergency room.”
I shrugged. “We don’t have it,” I said.
“You don’t?” His eyebrows lifted themselves toward his bald head. At the same time, he fed the pigeons.
“Our place was turned over last night,” I explained. “Perhaps you know about that already. Whoever did it took what you’re looking for.”
“That’s right!” Herbert agreed. “That’s what happened.”
The Fat Man looked at us suspiciously. He was pretty sure that we were lying. But he couldn’t be certain. A pigeon landed on his head with a flutter of gray feathers. He punched it off, then threw corn at it. At last he spoke. “Taken?” he murmured.
“Absolutely,” Herbert said. “When we got back from the movies, it wasn’t there. Otherwise we’d love to give it to you. Really we would.”
I groaned silently. We’d have been all right if only Herbert had kept his mouth shut. But he couldn’t have convinced a six-year-old and I could tell that the Fat Man had seen right through him. I glanced nervously at the chauffeur, who was watching us from the front seat of the Rolls. Was he armed? Almost certainly. But would he try anything in the middle of Trafalgar Square?
“Very well,” the Fat Man said, and suddenly his voice was colder than the winter wind. “We shall play the game your way, my friends. If you want to find out what the bottom of the Thames looks like on a December night, that’s your affair.” He stood up and now his face was ugly. Actually, it had been ugly before he had even started, but now it was even worse. “I want the key,” he growled. “Perhaps, soon, you will find it again. Should such a happy event take place, I’m confident you won’t be foolish enough to keep it from me.” He dipped two fingers into his top pocket. When he pulled them out again, he was holding a card, which he gave to Herbert.
“My number,” he went on. “I am a patient man, Timothy. I can wait all of forty-eight hours. But if I haven’t heard from you in two days, I think you may wake up to find that something very unpleasant has happened to you. Like you no longer have any feet.”
“Why do you want this . . . key so badly?” I demanded.
The Fat Man didn’t answer me. We’d hit it off—him and me. The way he was looking at my head, I figured he’d like to hit that off, too. But then his eyes wandered. He jerked his hand, sending the rest of the corn flying. The pigeons were all around him, bowing their heads at his feet.
“I hate pigeons,” he said in a faraway voice. “Flying rats! London is infested with them. I hate the noise they make, day and night, the filth that they leave behind them. The government ought to make them illegal. And yet they’re encouraged! It makes me sick to think of them scuttling across the pavements, infesting the trees, carrying their germs and diseases—”
“So why do you feed them?” I shouldn’t have asked, but I had to know.
The Fat Man laughed briefly, mirthlessly. Then he spun the empty carton in my direction. “Poisoned corn,” he said.
He walked back to the car and got in. A few feet away, a pigeon suddenly gurgled and keeled over on its side. A moment later, two more joined it, their feet sticking up in the air. By the time the Rolls-Royce had reached the corner of Trafalgar Square and turned off toward Hyde Park, we were surrounded by corpses.
“Do you think he’s trying to tell us something?” I said.
Herbert didn’t answer. He wasn’t looking much better than the pigeons.
OPENING TIME
Before the bus had even arrived to take us back to Fulham, we both knew that we were going to have to open the dwarf’s package. We hadn’t had it twenty-four hours, but already our apartment had been ransacked and we’d attracted the poisonous attention of the biggest crook in the country. Okay—so Johnny Naples had paid us five hundred dollars. He made us promise not to open the envelope. But promises are easily broken. So are necks. I knew which I wanted to see get broken first.