Mooney found a buyer for the drugs; and there was a few thousand dollars there, which helped, for although the quantity was not large, the drugs were chemically pure. He found a fence to handle the jewels and precious metals; and he unloaded all the ones of moderate value - not the other diamond, not the rubies, not the star sapphire.
He arranged to keep those without mentioning it to Harse. No point in selling them now, not even when they had several thousand dollars above any conceivable expenses, not when some future date would do as well, just in case Harse should get away with the balance of the kit.
Having concluded his business, Mooney undertook a brief but expensive shopping tour of his own and found a reasonably satisfactory place to eat. After a pleasantly stimulating cocktail and the best meal he had had in some years - doubly good, for there was no reek from Harse’s nauseating concoctions to spoil it - he called for coffee, for brandy, for the day’s papers.
The disappearance of the truck driver made hardly a ripple. There were a couple of stories, but small and far in the back - amnesia, said one; an underworld kidnapping, suggested another; but the story had nothing to feed on and it would die.
Good enough, thought Mooney, waving for another glass of that enjoyable brandy; and then he turned back to the front page and saw his own face.
There was the hotel lobby of the previous day, and a pillar of churning black smoke that Mooney knew was Harse, and there in the background, mouth agape, expression worried, was Howard Mooney himself.
He read it all very, very carefully.
Well, he thought, at least they didn’t get our names. The story was all about the Loyal and Beneficent Order of Exalted Eagles, and the only reference to the picture was a brief line about a disturbance outside the meeting hall. Nonetheless, the second glass of brandy tasted nowhere near as good as the first.
Time passed, Mooney found a man who explained what was meant by the Vale of Cashmere. In Brooklyn, there is a very large park - the name is Prospect Park - and in it is a little planted valley, with a brook and a pool; and the name of it on the maps of Prospect Park is the Vale of Cashmere. Mooney sent out for a map, memorized it; and that was that.
However, Mooney didn’t really want to go to the Vale of Cashmere with Harse. What he wanted was that survival kit. Wonders kept popping out of it, and each day’s supply made Mooney covet the huger store that was still inside. There had been, he guessed, something like a hundred separate items that had somehow come out of that tiny box. There simply was no room for them all; but that was not a matter that Mooney concerned himself with. They were there, possible or not, because he had seen them.
Mooney laid traps.
The trouble was that Harse did not care for conversation. He spent endless hours with his film viewer, and when he said anything at all to Mooney, it was to complain. All he wanted was to exist for four days - nothing else.
Mooney laid conversational traps, tried to draw him out, and there was no luck. Harse would turn his blank, pale stare on him, and refuse to be drawn.
At night, however hard Mooney tried, Harse was always awake past him; and in his sleep, always and always, the little metal guardians strapped Mooney tight. Survival kit? But how did the little metal things know that Mooney was a threat?
It was maddening and time was passing. There were four days, then only three, then only two. Mooney made arrangements of his own.
He found two girls - lovely girls, the best that money could buy, and he brought them to the suite with a wink and a snigger. ‘A little relaxation, eh, Harse? The red-haired one is named Ginger and she’s partial to men with light-coloured eyes.’
Ginger smiled a rehearsed and lovely smile. ‘I certainly am, Mr. Harse. Say, want to dance?’
But it came to nothing, though the house detective knocked deferentially on the door to ask if they could be a little more quiet, please. It wasn’t the sound of celebration that the neighbours were objecting to. It was the shrill, violent noise of Harse’s laughter. First he had seemed not to understand, and then he looked as astonished as Mooney had ever seen him. And then the laughter.
Girls didn’t work. Mooney got rid of the girls.
All right, Mooney was a man of infinite resource and sagacity - hadn’t he proved that many a time? He excused himself to Harse, made sure his fat new pigskin wallet was in his pocket, and took a cab to a place on Brooklyn’s waterfront where cabs seldom go. The bartender had arms like beer kegs and a blue chin.
‘Beer,’ said Mooney, and made sure he paid for it with a twenty-dollar bill - thumbing through a thick wad of fifties and hundreds to find the smallest. He retired to a booth and nursed his beer.
After about ten minutes, a man stood beside him, blue-chinned and muscular enough to be the bartender’s brother -which, Mooney found, he was.
‘Well,’ said Mooney, ‘it took you long enough. Sit down. You don’t have to roll me; you can earn this.’
Girls didn’t work? Okay, if not girls, then try boys ... well, not boys exactly. Hoodlums. Try hoodlums and see what Harse might do against the toughest inhabitants of the area around the Gowanus Canal.
Harse, sloshing heedlessly through melted snow, spattering Mooney, grumbled: ‘I do not see why we. Must? Wander endlessly across the face of this wretched slum.’
Mooney said soothingly: ‘We have to make sure, Harse. We have to be sure it’s the right place.’
‘Huff,’ said Harse, but he went along. They were in Prospect Park and it was nearly dark.
‘Hey, look,’ said Mooney desperately, look at those kids on sleds!’
Harse glanced angrily at the kids on sleds and even more angrily at Mooney. Still, he wasn’t refusing to come and that was something. It had been possible that Harse would sit tight in the hotel room and it had taken all of the persuasive powers Mooney prided himself on to get him out. But Mooney was able to paint a horrible picture of getting to the wrong place, missing the Nexus Point, seventeen long years of waiting for the next one.
They crossed the Sheep Meadow, crossed the walk, crossed an old covered bridge; and they were at the head of a flight of shallow steps.
‘The Vale of Cashmere!’ cried Mooney, as though he were announcing a miracle.
Harse said nothing.
Mooney licked his lips, glancing at the kit Harse carried under an arm, glancing around. No one was in sight.
Mooney coughed. ‘Uh. You’re sure this is the place you mean?’
‘If it is the Vale of Cashmere.’ Harse looked once more down the steps, then turned.
‘No, wait!’ said Mooney frantically. ‘I mean - well, where in the Vale of Cashmere is the Nexus Point? This is a big place!’
Harse’s pale eyes stared at him for a moment. ‘No. Not big.’
‘Oh, fairly big. After all -’
Harse said positively: ‘Come.’
Mooney swore under his breath and vowed never to trust anyone again, especially a bartender’s brother; but just then it happened. Out of the snowy bushes stepped a man in a red bandanna, holding a gun. ‘This is a stickup! Gimme that bag!’
Mooney exulted.
There was no chance for Harse now. The man was leaping towards him; there would be no time for him to open the bag, take out the weapon...
But he didn’t have to. There was a thin, singing, whining sound from the bag. It leaped out of Harse’s hand, leaped free as though it had invisible wings, and flew at the man in the red bandanna. The man stumbled and jumped aside, the eyes incredulous over the mask. The silvery flat metal kit spun round him, whining. It circled him once, spiralled up. Behind it, like a smoke trail from a destroyer, a pale blue mist streamed backwards. It surrounded the man and hid him.