St. Ives, the born leader, stepped into the workshop of the dead locksmith and shined the light around. Nobody shot at me so I let my breath out and took one in, the first in a long while, it seemed. From the little light that the small torch made, the place looked much the same except for the floor near the anvil. There was no dead body slumped against it at an odd angle, but a thick white chalk mark outlined where it had once lain.
I crossed the shop and this time looked carefully behind the thick tan curtain that separated the work area from where the customers were served. There was nobody there.
“Up the stairs,” I whispered to Styles and we went up them slowly, I with my screwdriver, he with his monkey wrench, both of us poised to run like hell if there had been the slightest noise. There wasn’t and we came out into the kitchen which, from what I could see, was still as neat and tidy as ever.
I led Robin Styles through the small dining room into the sitting room. I found myself holding my breath again, but when the light from my flash picked out the Christmas tree, I let it out. It was still there.
“A Christmas tree?” Styles whispered, putting a lot of exclamation into it.
“That’s right.”
“But it’s May.”
“Maybe it was always Christmas in his heart,” I said and ran the light around the base of the tree. The packages still lay there, but they looked different, and I saw that they had all been unwrapped and then rewrapped by somebody who didn’t know too much about wrapping packages. The police, I assumed, looking for clues. I hoped they had found one.
I located a small table and put the flash on it so that its light shined on the tree. “Give me that sack of tools,” I said to Robin Styles and he handed them over.
I took out the long-nosed pliers and the saw and squatted down by the tree. I put the pliers down and started sawing away at the tree’s lowest branches. When I thought I had sawed enough of them off, I turned my head toward Robin Styles and said, “This thing rests in a big bucket. You hold onto the bucket while I pull.”
He knelt down and awkwardly grasped the lips of the big pail or bucket. I could think of no graceful way that he could have done it. I grasped the tree by its trunk and pulled. Nothing happened. I pulled again and metal scraped against the sides of the pail and the base of the tree moved up about six inches. I gave another mighty pull and it was free.
The branches had scratched my face and hands and were making them itch. I lowered the tree until it lay on its side. I picked up the flashlight and shined it on the base of the tree, the part that had been resting in the pail. Billy Curnutt, locksmith, had been a proper craftsman. A section of iron pipe about an inch and a half in diameter looked as if it had been run horizontally through the trunk of the tree. When wedged down into the pail, the pipe would have braced the tree firmly.
I ran the light up the trunk of the tree. Although almost invisible, a thin gray wire was wrapped tightly around the trunk. The wire was almost the same color as the bark of the tree, if a Scotch pine, which is coniferous, has bark, and I suppose it does.
I took the long-nosed pliers and started snipping the wire. Once I had it started it unwrapped easily. Then I held out my hand.
“What do you want?” Styles said.
“The monkey wrench.”
I took the wrench and tightened its jaws around the iron pipe that stuck out from the tree. I gave the pipe a tug with the wrench and felt it beginning to unscrew. After a few more tugs with the wrench I could unscrew it with my hand. When it came loose I slipped it off and in the light of the torch the ruby seemed to wink at us.
“It’s the bloody sword!” Styles said, forgetting to whisper.
“What did you think I was looking for, the candy canes?”
“It’s inside the tree.”
“I know it’s inside the tree. It just fits. Now you can help get it out.”
Styles held the tree’s trunk up while I pried off the cap that Curnutt had fashioned to cover the pommel of the sword. He had sawed off a thick section of the tree from the base to form the cap. Then he had sawed off another section, hollowed it out until it was large enough to conceal the sword’s hilt. He had then split the tree very carefully far enough up to sheath the entire blade. He had then wrapped the wire tightly enough around the split trunk so that no crack was visible. The two sections of iron pipe, of course, had concealed the sword’s crosspiece and had also served as a stout brace to hold the tree upright in the pail. Curnutt had even been so meticulous as to countersink the finishing nails that held the cap onto the base of the tree. He had covered the countersunk holes with plastic wood that had been dyed or colored the same as that of sawed pine.
Although the hilt and the crosspiece were now free, the blade was still inserted in the split trunk. I took the trunk from Styles’s hands and said, “You’ve got a pure heart, pull it out.”
He pulled and it slid out easily, as if he were drawing it from its scabbard. He held it up wonderingly and stared at it. “How did you know?” he said.
“You might keep a Christmas tree up through March or even April. But not through May, not unless you want a nine-foot-tall tinderbox in your living room. Curnutt was too careful and too neat for that. He had to be using it for something else and who would ever look inside a Christmas tree?”
“You would,” Styles said and there was nothing but admiration in his voice. I can take a compliment as well as anyone. I didn’t quite blush. Instead, I said, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Here,” he said, handing me the sword that some people thought was worth three million pounds. “You take it. I’ll gather up the tools.”
“We should have worn gloves,” I said. “I should have thought of a flashlight and I should have thought of gloves. I can see I’ve got a great future as a second-story man.”
“I didn’t touch anything except the tree and the pail, did you?”
I tried to think. “The outside doorknob. I think we touched that:”
“We can wipe it off on the way out.”
Styles led the way to the stairs, carrying the bag of tools and the flashlight. I followed with the sword. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped, turned, and held the flashlight so that I could see the steps.
I started down the steps and his flashlight wavered. It wavered because a voice said, “Hold it right there, mate.” The voice sounded as though it belonged to a gun. It also sounded as though it belonged to Tick-Tock Tamil.
I stopped on the second step from the top. Tick-Tock stepped into the light that came from Styles’s torch. Tick-Tock was all dressed up in a black turtleneck sweater and black slacks and black sneakers, looking every inch the well-dressed cat burglar. He also carried a very large flashlight, about two feet long, and a very large pistol, a revolver with a long barrel so that it would shoot straight.
The gun I saw was jammed into Styles’s kidney. “All right,” Tick-Tock said to Styles. “Move over against the wall there, nice and easy now.” Styles moved over until his back was against the wall.
Tick-Tock switched on his giant flashlight and shined the light up at me. It almost blinded me. “Okay, St. Ives,” he said. “Now just walk down the stairs, one step at a time, nice and slow.”
I didn’t argue. I started down the stairs, one at a time, holding the sword at something like port arms. The light still blinded me. I felt for the next step with my left foot, found it, or at least thought I did, and started to move my right foot. But my left foot had lied to me and it slipped off the riser. I started to fall and the only thing I thought of was to get rid of the sword so that I could use my hands to catch myself. I flung it away, but I kept on falling. There was a scream — a long loud scream and then I was at the bottom of the stairs, sitting on the bottom one really, looking down at the face of Tick-Tock Tamil who looked up at me.