“Oh, it wasn’t this child,” Van Ryn laughed. “I was in my own automobile behind; I toured the Sports Bentley to South America with me. Anyhow, I was taking a spin out to the tennis-courts at the Jockey Club the second afternoon I was there, and just outside the town there was only this bird in the flivver in front of me. I was waiting to pass, when he swerves to avoid an oncoming car, and in swerving he knocked down a poor old man. Did he stop? Did he hell! He gave one look, saw the old bird lying in the ditch, and put his foot on the gas!”
“Brute,” Simon murmured.
“Brute’s the word,” Rex nodded. “Well, I don’t stand for that sort of thing, and I’ll not say Ford isn’t a big man, but he hasn’t turned out a car yet that can give the dust to a Bentley. I was after that guy as though I’d been a speed cop looking for promotion. In half a mile he’d got to take the sidewalk and the nearest light standard, or stop and have a word with me. He stopped all right, and started to jabber in Spanish or some lingo, but that cut no ice with me at all! I just happen to have been born a foot too tall for most people to try any monkeying, so I didn’t have much trouble with this little rat. When we got back they were picking up the old man.”
“Was he badly hurt?” the Duke inquired.
“Nothing serious; more shock and bruises than broken bones, but he was considerable upset, so we propped him up in the Bentley and I ran him down to the hospital. The Mexico negro — or whatever he was — I passed over to a real speed cop, who could speak his rotten tongue.”
De Richleau had been burrowing in his rucksack, and now produced a flat tin box, in which were packed a couple of layers of his famous cigars.
“Hoyo de Monterrey’s, by all that’s marvellous!” exclaimed Rex. “Well, I’ll say I never expected to smoke one of those sitting in the snow!”
“Unfortunately I had to leave most of them in Moscow,” said the Duke, “but I thought we would bring a few, and this — if ever — is an occasion!”
Simon chuckled as he carefully pinched the end of the long cigar which the Duke held out to him. “Thanks — d’you know, I believe if I meet you in the other world you’ll still have a box of Hoyos!”
“If I have not,” said De Richleau, puffing contentedly, “I shall send for my bill and move elsewhere!”
“Well, the whole party would have ended there,” Rex went on, “if it hadn’t been that I was bored fit to bust myself. So next afternoon, just to get away from all the sugar babies and card sharps in the hotel, I thought I’d go take a look at the old man.
“There he was, propped up in bed in the hospital, as wicked-looking an old sinner as ever you set eyes on; he spoke English better than I do, but he was a foreigner, of course; and, without being smarmy about it, he was grateful for what I’d done. You’ll have guessed, maybe, that he was the old Prince Shulimoff.”
Simon nodded. “I thought as much.”
“Yes, that’s who he was, tho’ he didn’t let on about it that first meeting. Just said he was a Russian émigré, down and out. We talked a bit, mainly as to what sort of damages he’d get out of our Dago friend. He was a gentleman all right — got all het up ’cause he couldn’t offer me any hospitality when I called. Well, then, you know how it is when you’ve done a chap a sort of kindness; you feel he’s your baby, in a way, and you’ve got to go on. So I saw the American representative about getting his case pushed on, and of course I had to call again to tell him what I’d done.”
“Was the Dago worth going for?” inquired the cautious Simon.
Rex shrugged his broad shoulders. “He wasn’t what you’d call a fat wad, but he was agent for some fruit firm. I thought we might sting him for a thousand bucks. Anyhow, in the meantime, I became great friends with old wicked face — used to go to the hospital every afternoon for a yarn with the old man. Not that I really cottoned to him, but I was fascinated in a kind of way. He, as was as evil as they make ’em, and a lecherous old brute, but I’ll say he had charm all right. He was worth ten thousand of those half-breed Cubans, or the pie-faced Yanks with their talk of how much better things were at home!”
“Surely,” remarked the Duke, “Shulimoff must have had investments outside Russia before the Revolution. How did he come to be in such a state?”
“He’d, blown every cent; got no sense of money. If he’d got a grand out of the fruit merchant he’d have spent it next day. But money or no money, he’d got personality all right; that hospital was just run for him while he was there. He tipped me off he was pretending to be a Catholic; all those places are run by nuns, and he knew enough about the drill to spoof them all; they fairly ran round the old crook! After I’d been there a few times he told me his real name, and then the fun started. He wouldn’t open his mouth if anyone who could speak a word of English was within fifty yards; but, bit by bit, he told me how he’d cheated the Bolshies.”
“Are you sure he was not amusing himself at your expense?” asked the Duke. “He seems just the sort of man who would.”
“Not on your life. He was in deadly earnest, and he’d only tell a bit at a time, then he’d get kind of nervous, and dry up — say he’d thought better of it — if the goods stayed where they were the Bolshies would never find them till the crack of doom; but if he told me, maybe I’d get done in after I’d got ’em, and then the something — something — something Bolsheviks would get them after all.”
“And where had he hidden this famous hoard?” De Richleau asked with a smile.
“You’ve hit it.” Rex threw up his hands with a sudden shout of mirth. “Where? I’m damned if I know myself!”
“But, Rex — I mean,” Simon protested. “You — er — wouldn’t risk getting into all this trouble without knowing where they were?”
“I’ve got a pretty shrewd idea,” Rex admitted. “They’re at Romanovsk all right, and I was getting right down to the details with the old prince, when — ”
“What happened? Did he refuse at last to tell you?” The Duke’s shrewd grey eyes were fixed intently on Rex’s face.
“No, the old tough just died on me! Rotten luck, wasn’t it? He seemed all right, getting better every day; but you know what old men are. I blew in one morning and they told me he was dead. That’s all there was to it!”
“Surely, my friend,” De Richleau raised his slanting eyebrows, “you hardly expected to find the jewels at Romanovsk on so little information. Remember, many people have been seeking this treasure on all the Shulimoff estates for years.”
“No, it’s not all that bad,” Rex shook his head. “When things blew up in Leningrad in 1917, Shulimoff didn’t wait to see the fun; he cleared out to this place here, bringing the goods with him. He thought he’d be safe this side of the Urals till things quietened down, or if they got real bad, he meant to go farther East. What he forgot was that he was the best hated man in Russia. The Reds sent a special mission to hang him to the nearest tree, and they did — as near as dammit! Took the old fox entirely by surprise. He’d have been a dead man then if some bright boy hadn’t cut him down for the fun of hanging him again next day! It was the old man’s cellar that saved him. The bunch got tight that night, and they’d locked him in the foundry without any guards outside.”
“The foundry? In the village was this?” asked the Duke.
“Lord, no, in his own house. He seems to have been a bit of a metallurgist — made locks, like Louis XVI, in his spare time, when he wasn’t out beating peasants or hitting it up with chorus girls from the Folies Bergère.