Deskins shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about it. He could have used a second fake sword. It would have fitted right in.”
“How?”
“All right, I’ll tell you.” He paused to take a swallow of his drink. “Wes Cagle was the one who set it all up to begin with, right?”
“He introduced Robin Styles to Eddie.”
“And you think Cagle bowed out after that?”
“Apparently not.”
“They had to pay that lad, Robin Styles, fifty thousand pounds, didn’t they?”
“That’s what Styles told me. The Nitry brothers backed him for that much at the tables.”
“And he was unlucky?”
“He wasn’t just unlucky. He was a lousy poker player.”
“He wasn’t that bad,” Deskins said.
“Oh,” I said. “I see. You leaned on somebody at Shields, did you?”
Deskins nodded. “A couple of the dealers that I’ve had a little trouble with before and who’re in my debt. They had their orders. They were to take young Styles for fifty thousand as quick as they could. It wasn’t hard. He didn’t play poker too well, as you say.”
“So where does the second faked sword fit in?”
“If it had been me, I would have used it to keep Cagle happy. They needed to steal the sword in the first place to make a single copy. Then they were going to return the real sword to the Nitry brothers for the one-hundred-thousand-pound ransom. After that, Eddie would switch the real sword for a faked one. Now guess who was supposed to keep the real sword until it was sold?”
“Cagle,” I said.
“Right. So Eddie and his wife planned to pull a double switch. They would hand over to Cagle the second faked sword, keeping the real one for themselves. Except that Eddie’s wife, if what you say is true, decided to cross her husband. She went to old Billy Curnutt with that torn jack and her story about how Curnutt shouldn’t hand over the sword to anybody except the proper Christian who had the other half of the torn playing card.”
“The one that Robin Styles had,” I said.
Deskins reached into his pocket and brought out a torn card, half of a one-eyed jack of spades. “They found this on Tick-Tock’s body. They didn’t know what it was so they turned it over to me.”
“You mean Ceil Apex was in with Tick-Tock? I don’t believe it.”
“She was out to get that sword for herself. She tore two one-eyed jacks, gave one-half to Styles and one-half to Tick-Tock and one-half to Billy Curnutt. I think Tick-Tock was the Christian, as you say, who got to Curnutt first and got the real sword.”
“Then what was he doing there that night?”
“He needed the faked sword. He knew that there were two of them and he needed one to turn over to Ceil Apex.”
“And he thought she’d think it was real?”
“Long enough for Tick-Tock to disappear with the real one. That’s all he needed. Maybe six hours.”
“So where’s the sword? I mean the real one?”
The look that came into Deskins’ eyes was dreamy. “Somewhere in Paddington,” he said. “We don’t know where Tick-Tock went after he left that place of his where you found him. But it’s someplace in Paddington. He never lived anywhere else. Cheap lodgings, probably, maybe even two or three to a room. You know how those coloreds are.”
“And that’s where you think the real sword is, huh?”
Deskins didn’t try to disguise it anymore. I don’t think he could have, even if he had wanted to. The greed spread across his face and settled down in his eyes. “It’ll turn up,” he said.
“Where?”
“Perhaps in Shaftesbury Avenue. Perhaps in the Fulham Road. Perhaps one of those wogs will need some cash one Saturday and flog it down on Shaftesbury Avenue for a quid or two.”
“And you’ve got a new hobby, haven’t you?” I said. “Sword collecting.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I’ve got a new hobby.”
I reached into my jacket pocket and took them out and handed them to Deskins. “Here,” I said. “These’ll help with your new hobby.” They were the Polaroid shots of the Sword of St. Louis that Ned Nitry had given me.
He stared at the color photographs and licked his thin lips twice. “So that’s what it looks like?” he said. “That’s what three million quid worth of old sword looks like.”
“That’s it,” I said.
“You don’t believe it, do you? You don’t believe that it’ll turn up?”
“No. I don’t. I believe that it’s at the bottom of the Thames in about ten feet of muck. Maybe twenty.”
Deskins shook his head. “It’ll turn up. It’ll turn up one of these days.”
“On Shaftesbury Avenue,” I said.
“That’s right. On Shaftesbury Avenue.”
They called my flight then and Deskins stuck out his hand and I shook it. “Well, good luck, St. Ives.”
“Pleasant dreams,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Eddie, the Adelphi Apartment-Hotel’s bell captain, greeted me warmly. “Where you been?”
“London,” I said.
“Whadja wanta go there for?”
“To look at the Queen.”
“Yeah, well, that lawyer of yours got here earlier, so I let him into your place. I don’t figure he’ll steal nothing.”
“Not enough to worry about anyway.”
Myron Greene had lunch ready, all spread out on the poker table. I was touched. He had bought some Filipino beer that I like, some thick roast beef sandwiches, potato salad, and even some Polish dills. “What’s the occasion?” I said.
“It’s May nineteenth.”
“What’s May nineteenth?”
“It’s the feast day of St. Ives.”
“I didn’t know you were Catholic, Myron. You don’t much look it.”
“He’s the patron saint of lawyers.”
“I didn’t know that”
“His emblem is the cat.”
“I didn’t know that either. And I don’t think you did until you looked it up.”
“My secretary looked it up actually,” Myron Greene said, pouring himself some beer. “After I got that letter of yours, I had her look up St. Louis and while she was at it, I decided to find out about St. Ives.”
“Well, thanks for the feast day.”
“St. Louis was real enough,” Greene said, “but according to a friend of mine at the Metropolitan Museum, his sword is nothing but rumor.”
I tried the sandwich. It was excellent. “Well, tell your friend that three million pounds’ worth of rumor is lying at the bottom of the Thames. That’s just my opinion though. Somebody else thinks it’s going to turn up any Saturday now in a secondhand store on Shaftesbury Avenue.”
“Maybe you’d better tell me about the rest of it,” Myron Greene said. “About what happened after you wrote me that letter.”
So I told him and when I was through, he said, “Well, you won nearly as much as your fee would have been. I didn’t know you played poker quite that well.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I was betting a cinch hand. That’s not real poker because you’re not gambling anymore. It’s a form of licensed stealing, something like an insurance company. But it’s free money, isn’t it? The tax people don’t have to know about it?”
Myron Greene sighed. “Hand it over, will you? Yesterday I got a call from our friend at the IRS. It seems that Inland Revenue in London has gone to a great deal of trouble to notify Washington of just how much you won. Our friend at IRS thought we’d like to know.”
“It really does go with death, doesn’t it?” I said. “Taxes, I mean.”
Myron Greene shifted in his chair and looked uncomfortable, the way that he always looks when he thinks that I’m going to try to say something profound. “What were you going to do with the money?” he said. “I mean the money that you weren’t going to tell the tax people about?”