“Where’d you get yours?” I said.
Styles looked uncomfortable. “I’m not really sure that I should tell you.”
“You’d better,” I said, “or Eddie Apex is going to be looking for a new go-between.”
“I don’t understand it really,” he said. “You see, this torn card was given to me just after I was first approached by Apex and the Nitrys. It was just a few days after that, before the sword had even been stolen. I was flushed with how rich I was going to be, so I really didn’t think much of it. I suspect that I thought that it was all part of the romance and intrigue that seemed to envelop the entire thing.”
“Who gave it to you?” I said.
“It was given to me one afternoon — when we were alone. And the person who gave it to me said that if anything ever happened and the deal for the sword didn’t come off, and somebody simply tried to hand me back the sword and advised me to go peddle it somewhere else, through legal channels, I suppose, I was not to do so. Not unless the matching half of this card was presented to me along with the sword.” He paused. “It was all — well, so melodramatic that I really didn’t pay much attention. But now you have the missing half. And I don’t understand.”
“Who gave you the torn jack?” I said.
He bit his lip and I don’t think he was much of a lip biter. “Well, it was Ceil. Ceil Apex. Eddie’s wife.”
“She was the one then, wasn’t she?” I said. “The woman that you had to have that afternoon that Eddie Apex told you how rich you were going to be. It wasn’t a whore. It was Eddie Apex’s wife. That must have added a touch of titillation.”
“It wasn’t that way. I’ve known Ceil for years. I knew her before she ever met Apex. We were very close, in fact, at one time. Very close, and then we just drifted apart — the way it happens. Then when we met at Apex’s, we both knew it was going to happen again. At least once, anyway. And when it did, she gave me the torn card and told me just what I’ve told you. But from the look on your face, I don’t think you believe me.”
“That’s just another one of the reasons that you shouldn’t play poker,” I said.
“Then you believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you.”
“Well, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
I took my half of the jack and put it back in my wallet. “I’m going to give you some advice. You do exactly what Ceil Apex told you to do.”
“You mean I shouldn’t accept the sword if they try to turn it back to me?”
“Not unless the other half of that jack of spades goes with it.”
“But you’ve got the other half.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The ringing phone awoke me at eleven o’clock that morning and on the other end was the aged Apex butler, Jack, once known as Gentleman Jack Brooks, notorious jewel thief and scourge of the Riviera.
“The pram cost fifty-two quid, sir,” the ex-scourge said.
“You must have bought the best.”
“Bottom of the luxury line at Harrods. That’s always the best buy, sir.”
“You downstairs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have everything else?”
“It’s all tucked into the pram.”
“Well, you’d better come on up.”
“Right away, sir.”
The tea and toast that I ordered beat Jack to my room. I was just pouring a cup when he knocked at the door and wheeled in what may have been the fanciest baby buggy in London. It was a glistening black with a convertible top, big wire wheels with white rubber tires, and little round clear plastic windows so that its small occupant could look out at the trees when the top was up.
Old Jack seemed proud of his selection so I said, “Very nice. Very nice indeed. Did they throw in a tape deck?”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Why don’t you have some tea while I count the money?”
“Thank you, sir. I wouldn’t mind a cup.”
This time the money was in a large attaché case that was tucked up all nice and warm under a pale blue blanket. I took the case over to the top of the TV set, opened it, and counted the money. It was all there so I tucked it back up in the pram.
“Everything all right, sir?”
“It’s fine. Thanks very much, Jack.”
“Oh. One more thing, sir. Mr. Ned asked me to give you this.”
He reached into his pocket and brought out a large, round magnifying glass. “You forgot it the last time out,” he said.
“So I did.” I took the glass and slipped it into my bathrobe pocket.
“I was just thinking, sir, on the way over from Harrods. I could have used a gentleman in your line of work once. Old Tom and I were talking about it the way a couple of old lags will; no offense, sir.”
“I’m flattered. You were one of the best. They never did tag you to that New Weston job you pulled in twenty-nine, did they?”
The old man stiffened and then relaxed. Then he smiled and I decided that he must have had a lot of charm and style at one time. “There’s only one person that could have told you about that, sir.”
I nodded. “Sammy Farro. I spent a couple of days with him after he got out of Dannemora in sixty-three.”
“I didn’t even know he was inside. Old Sammy.”
“He killed a man on Park Avenue in thirty-two. There was an emerald necklace that Sammy had his eye on. The man and his wife came home early, the man pulled a gun, there was a fight for it, and the man got shot. Danny got life. He did thirty years.”
“The New Weston Hotel,” the old man said in a dreamy tone. “We made a proper haul that night.”
“They tore it down,” I said.
“How’d he look when he got out?”
“Bad,” I said. “His mind was going, but he remembered you. He said some nice things about you.”
“Oh, he was a smooth one, Sammy was. Is he still about?”
“He died a year after he got out,” I said. “Alone in a room. They didn’t find him for a week.”
The old man put his tea down and rose. “Too bad you weren’t around back then, sir. We might have done some business.”
“We might have at that,” I said.
After Gentleman Jack Brooks left, I had room service bring up a typewriter. I sat before it in my bathrobe, unshaved and unwashed, and typed steadily for three hours, much like a suicide who never gets around to killing himself because he keeps thinking up new and compelling reasons why he should. I filled nearly ten pages of Hilton stationery and put them into an envelope that I addressed to Myron Greene. I wrote air mail and par avion all over it, mixed a weak whisky and water, and sat there in my bathrobe, thinking about whether what I had written made any sense. I thought about that until it was time to get dressed and go buy back the Sword of St. Louis.
At twenty minutes to three I was pushing a baby buggy containing an attaché case stuffed with £100,000 east on Mount Street toward South Audley Street wondering if, at thirty-eight, I really deserved all those smiles and encouraging nods that came my way.
I dawdled along, arriving at the park at five minutes to three. It was a nice little park with a large iron gate that made it look as if it should be forbidden to the public, but it wasn’t. It was shaped like a pot with the handle tapering off east toward Berkeley Square. It had always had a soothing effect on me and I had used it, years ago, as a place to compose myself after a fight with my ex-wife. I had got to know it rather well, there toward the end.
They had her dressed up as a nanny, sitting on the bench that she was supposed to be sitting on, the one that had been donated by the American woman out of gratitude for having been allowed to sit in a public park. The dressed-up nanny’s pram, I noticed with a twinge of envy, was bigger than mine, but it would have to be, if it were to hold a sword whose blade was thirty-four-and-a-half inches long.