The Melting Man

'More or less. You're damned frank about it, aren't you?'

'I'll be even franker. Jimbo's the simpler of the two brothers — twins actually. God knows what the people he works for make of him. He should have known that my price for a double-cross like that would be in the region of ten thousand. I'm happy in my work with you. It gives me a change of scene, luxury living, new faces — some of 'em pretty and feminine — and a life expectancy that would have me booted out of any insurance office. Take a look at this.'

I reached into my pocket and tossed it across to him. It was the size and shape of a half grapefruit, but a good deal heavier.

He held it in one gorilla paw and said, 'What's this?'

I said, 'It's a magnetic limpet bomb, thermo-activated. There's a little sliding pointer on the side which you can set against the scale to any temperature. The temperature readings are calibrated in Fahrenheit, Centigrade and Reamur. No detail overlooked. At the moment it's set to "safe". It was stuck on the side of my car engine in Geneva, set to a reading that would have blown me sky-high after a couple of kilometres.'

'Boyo, what a damned useful gadget.'

'You can keep it. But if I'd taken cash to double-cross you, why would they want to knock me off? Waste of money. They were annoyed because I wouldn't double-cross you. I suppose you've now paid Jimbo good money to double-cross them, whoever they are?'

'Yes, I have.'

I shook my head. 'You'll have him all mixed up. He isn't the kind to carry a double disloyalty in his mind without getting the wires crossed. All right, am I back at work?'

He reached round and put the bomb on the console affair behind him. Then he slewed his big head back at me, lowering it like a bull sighting on the middle point of a matador's cummerbund, and heaved a great sniff of air out of his nostrils.

'What the hell goes on?' he said. 'I just want that car back.'

I said, 'You're going to get it. It was pinched by a crook called Otto Libsch.' I paused, watching him closely as I mentioned the name. It had, I was sure, meant something to Julia. It could mean something to him. If it did he didn't show it. I went on, 'He had a respray job done on it and some weeks after used it to carry out a payroll hold-up somewhere in France. Since then, neither he nor the car has been seen. But I'll lay you ten to one in hundreds — pounds not francs — that I find the car in the next few days. On?'

'No.'

'It's nice you have such confidence in me. Am I reinstated?'

'Temporarily, yes. But by God — you put one foot wrong and—'

'You're jumping the gun,' I said. 'If you want me back, there's a condition on this side. No, two conditions.'

'Nobody makes conditions with me.' He said it with a rumble like a runaway steamroller. As I knew better than to argue with a steamroller I began to get up to leave.

He waved me down. 'Let's hear them.'

I sat back. 'First, I don't want to be badgered with questions about how I traced Otto and the car. And I don't want your stepdaughter Zelia badgered. Like she says, she knows nothing. Secondly, I want to know what's in the secret compartment of that car and who the people are who are employing Najib and Jimbo Alakwe. This I have to know for my own protection. What do you say?'

He stood up slowly and gave me a warm smile. You wouldn't believe it possible, but suddenly that big brute of a face was transformed. He was a solid, bearlike father-figure reaching out his arms with a benign smile, ready to take and comfort the world's weary and sick at heart, the oppressed, the poor and the homeless. It didn't impress me at all, because I knew that he would take them all and make a profit out of it somehow.

'What I say, Carver, is that I've obviously been mistaken in you. Just get on with the job. I've complete trust in you, boyo. And as far as Zelia's concerned, I'll never mention the car to her again.'

'Good.'

He shook his head. 'I'll never understand why you haven't made a million for yourself already. You've got all the gall in the world.'

'What I haven't got is an answer to the second condition. What's in the car and who wants it?'

'Ah, yes, that. Well, that's a little more difficult. Delicate, in fact.'

'Try.'

He chewed the end of his cigar for a while, working up in his mind the lie he was going to tell me. After the write-up he'd just given me he knew it would have to be good. He wasn't long about it.

'In the car,' he said, 'is a very considerable parcel of bonds. Gold bonds. To be exact they're Imperial Japanese Government external loan bonds of 1930, sinking fund 5½ per cent, which are due for final redemption in May 1975, but these bonds are ones that have been drawn for redemption in January of next year. Naturally no further interest accrues to them after that date, but their redemption value is around twenty thousand pounds. Originally they belonged to me. But I was passing them over to a friend in return for services rendered. You with this, so far?'

'Yes. But I shall check that there are such bonds, naturally.'

'Do that, you careful bastard.' He grinned.

'And the friend?'

'He is an important figure in the opposition party of one of the new African states. At the material time this opposition party was the ruling party. Times change. The present ruling party considers that the bonds belong to them since, they argue, the favour done for me by my friend when he was in power was done in his official, not private, capacity.'

'What do you think of that argument?'

'I don't care a damn. I promised him the bonds, and he gets them. And that's all the damned details you're going to get about it.'

I said, 'Where do these bonds have to be delivered for redemption?' It was a quick one but he was up to it, the answer rolling out smoothly.

'The Bank of Tokyo Trust Company, 100 Broadway, New York, NY 10005. Naturally you'll check that, too. But do it on your own time, not mine. Now get the hell out of here and find me that Mercedes.'

I stood up. 'And where is the secret compartment in the car?'

He puffed his cheeks out like a grotesque cherub, exploded air gently, and said, 'That's no affair of yours. You're all right in my book so far, but not so far that I would trust you with twenty thousand pounds' worth of bonds.'

I looked sad, but only for the record, and I went towards the door, past the bobby who had flagged him down for drunken driving, past the Syrian diamond merchant who had switched stones on him, past a slick looking South American type who'd probably sold him a salted gold mine, past men and women who once, for a brief while, had got in his way, shaken him down, held him up, and had eventually lived or died to regret it. And not for one moment did I believe a word about the bonds… that is, that that was what was in the car. Imperial Japanese Bonds existed all right. He'd just used the fact to get rid of me. And I'd accepted it. Why not? A job is a job, and this one paid well, and when I got the car somebody — I wasn't sure who yet — was going to pay well for whatever was in the secret compartment.

I went back to my room, panting up the spiral stairway to my turret, anxious to pack and be away. Waiting for me was Miss Zelia Yunge-Brown.

She was sitting in a chair by the window, in a blue anorak and a blue skirt and wearing heavy walking shoes, looking as though she'd just come back from a long tramp through the pine woods.

I said, 'So you finally decided to come ashore?'

'Yes,' She put up a hand and ran it through one side of her dark hair and did a little brow-knitting act; no smile on her face, but not, I thought, as cold and glacial as she had been at our last meeting.

She stood up as I dumped my case on the bed and began to pack my pyjamas which some flunkey had already laid out.