The Melting Man

I went down to Miggs's place. It was hard work for a man in my lackadaisical state but I stuck to it, the whole of four hundred yards.

Behind his garage Miggs had a gymnasium. His charges were salty, but his appointment book was always full. Miggs had once been a sergeant in the Commandos. After a work-out with him, a really fit man would discover he was aching in about a dozen muscles he never knew he had. For special clients — and he had quite a few of them — he ran a course in unarmed combat which comprised some very fancy ways of killing a man swiftly and silently.

He was finishing a session when I got there, so I went and sat quietly in his office. He came in, his red face shining from a shower, took one look at me and said, 'My God — a young man in an old man's body. You'd better let me book you in for a dozen sessions. Special price for you.'

'I'm happy the way I am. I like to put it on around September. Live off my fat during the winter. Bears do it. What about a drink?'

He opened a cupboard and brought out the whisky.

We sat and drank and he shook his head sadly at me, his eyes running disappointedly over me as though he were a sculptor and I his first clay mock-up for a Greek athlete which had gone wrong everywhere it possibly could.

'A job is just what you need. But before you get stuck into it, you report here for a few days.'

'A holiday is what I need — and what I'm having.'

'A holiday can wait — but good money can't. You take the job. There could be a lot to make on the side, too. That's what you like, isn't it? Anyway, the cropped-headed bastard has got more than he knows what to do with — not that he throws it around without being sure of a return. These millionaires never do.'

'What I like,' I said, 'is someone who doesn't talk in riddles, and a higher percentage of whisky to my soda.' I pushed my glass towards him and he obliged.

'Didn't you get my message?'

'No.'

'I phoned your Mrs Meld last night and gave it to her.'

'Today is Monday. I spent the weekend at Brighton and came straight into the office this morning off the train. Do I gather you've been trying to fix me up with a job?'

'Have done. He said he'd send a car for you at three today.'

'Presumptuous.'

'Not when it's a millionaire. His son was killed alongside me in Italy. He's always had a soft spot for me and gives me all his car business. Makes Jack Barclay and those types mad because it's all Rolls and Bentley stuff and he changes on whim four or five times a year sometimes. I delivered a Facel Vega to him yesterday — he's giving it to his daughter as a birthday present.'

'I always wanted a millionaire daddy. What do you think of Ireland for a holiday?'

'Nothing. All those bars they call Select which turn out to be a table and three chairs in half a grocer's shop. And then their screwy attitude to the weather. You step out of your hotel into driving rain and wind and the doorman says, "It's a grand day, sor." In addition I don't like Guinness or John Jameson.'

'Ireland's out then.'

'So take the job. I gave you a good write-up. Honest, reliable, intrepid and the soul of discretion. Quick in a tight corner, resourceful, and a contempt for all hazards.'

'Nice. Add a pair of wings and I'd be Batman. I presume you're talking about Mr Cavan O'Dowda?'

'Didn't I say?'

'No. But don't bother. I don't want any job. I'm going on holiday.'

'You take the job.'

'Which is?'

'Somebody stole one of his cars.'

I laughed. Anyone at Scotland Yard would have done, too. By now it would have been cannibalized — number filed off the engine block and restamped, gear-box changed, number on the chassis plate changed — resprayed and up for auction with a phoney log-book in some car mart, or sitting abandoned around Hackney after a couple of villains had used it for a job.

I said, 'Let the police worry. Not that they will.'

'There's more to it than that. It wasn't stolen in England.'

'Where?'

'Abroad somewhere. He didn't say. And I don't think it's the car he's really worried about, though he pretended it was.'

'I don't want a job. September I always take a holiday.'

'Just go and see him. After all, I said you would, and if I let him down he might take his business from me.'

'I'd weep if I didn't know you were lying.'

'Just see him. If you turn him down, that's okay. But I gave you the build-up of all time. The daughter was there, the Facel Vega one — you should have seen her eyes shining as I painted your picture. Though I must say, I thought you were in better shape than you are. Still…'

'Thanks for the drink.' I reached for the door.

'You're going?'

'To have lunch. I've been instructed not to miss it.'

'You disappoint me.'

'I disappoint me, sometimes. But I need a holiday. Sometimes a man has got to get away.'

'What for?'

'I'll send you a postcard and let you know.' I went.

And there it was. A man should always know what he wants to do and, if he can, why he wants to do it. And what I didn't want to do was to chase some stolen car. Let O'Dowda buy another car. And if there was more to it than just a stolen car, well, let someone else worry about it. That's what Scotland Yard, Interpol, the Deuxieme Bureau and the Garda Civile were for. Yes, eleven months of the year I worked, if it was there to work at, but come September, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, I took a holiday. But not this September.

At four o'clock that afternoon I was sitting in a Rolls-Royce going like a hot knife through butter along the A21, heading down into Sussex.

The explanation was very simple and touchingly human. Herrick had the lines for it of course, not only because he had her name right, but because he was a Devonshire man like me and, contrary to the ploughboy school of thought, Devonshire men are great romantics, particularly when as in silks a woman goes and all that about how sweetly flows the liquefaction of her clothes to finish with the real punch line — 'O, how that glittering taketh me!' It took me, in twenty seconds dead.

* * *

At two minutes to three I had my heels on the desk and was reading for light relief the August copy of The Criminologist — for some reason the Forensic Publishing Co. Ltd always sent me complimentary copies. I was well into an article on 'The Forensic Aspects of Dust' when the intercom buzzed like a tired hornet and Wilkins came on.

'Mr Cavan O'Dowda's car has arrived for you.'

'Send it away.' I switched off.

Analyses of ordinary household dusts, I read, show a fine line-up of materials like silica, oxides of aluminium and iron, magnesia, lime, titanium oxide, alkalis—

The buzz came again.

Wilkins said, 'Mr O'Dowda's driver would like to see you.'

'Tell Mr O'Dowda's driver,' I said, 'that I made no appointment to go to his employer. Tell him — if he's interested in personal details — that I don't want a job. I want a holiday. Tell him—'

Wilkins cut me off, fearing no doubt some more telling expression.

Three seconds later the door of my office opened. I looked up, and of course that was fatal. I was hit straight between the eyes.