Now he sat in his own room, with his short legs propped up quite comfortably, as if he had been doing this sort of thing all his life — which he had — stroking his white Vandyke beard and letting a pair of ingenious mechanical contrivances do most of the work of eavesdropping for him. When Vicky had been on her balcony he had been able, while sitting just inside the doors leading to his own balcony, to see every move she made in the angled mirror of a periscope-like device attached to an extension of his walking stick. Then, when she had gone back into her room, he had turned his attention to the amplifier of his kingsized hearing-aid. A wire from the flat metal box led to a plug in his ear, bringing him the sound of even the most lady-like cough or discreet footstep from the other side of the wall.
For a short while he heard little more than footsteps. Then there were the relatively explosive sounds of a door opening and the eruption of female conversation. The first voice was not that of Vicky Kinian.
“Here I am, ready or not!”
Vicky Kinian’s words were slower paced and softer than her visitor’s.
“Good heavens, Freda, I don’t know how you did it. You look straight out of Vogue, and I still feel as if I’d just spent three days on a roller-coaster.”
The next few minutes of feminine chitchat held no special interest for him. He sat like a bored television viewer waiting for the “station identification” commercials to get off his screen, until the next-door conversation had turned to something less cosmically inane.
“I can line up dates for both of us if you’re interested,” the visitor — whose voice he recognized having heard on the plane the night before — was saying. “But I suppose you’re too wrapped up in your private scavenger hunt to care about a couple of mere cork ranchers.”
“Well, my scavenger hunt is the main thing I’m interested in at the moment, but I beat you to it in the date department: I’ve already got one for both of us — if you’re interested!”
“Good grief, a faster worker than Oliveiros!” the other girl exclaimed. “I knew I was slipping, but maybe I’d better rush for the altar before it’s too late. Who are the lucky guys?”
“It’s just one lucky guy,” Vicky Kinian said. “That man who sat next to me on the plane — Mr Jaeger. He invited us both to dinner.”
“Right. I remember: tall, blond, and foxy. He seemed nice enough, and who are we to turn down a free meal?”
The question seemed to be settled, and the listener’s experienced ears detected that both women were now on their feet.
“Well,” the visitor said, “what does your father’s letter want you to see first?”
Vicky Kinian read in a nervous, almost awed voice, picking her way carefully over the Portuguese words that were interspersed with the English.
“In Lisbon, go to Seguranca’s Antique Shop on Rua De Ouro at the corner of Viseli. They will remember me. Ask for the little box I paid a deposit on.”
“And?” the other girl asked.
“That’s all. He doesn’t explain.”
“Well, that must be one humdinger of a box to be worth all this trouble... or else it must have something pretty fancy in it.”
“Do you know where this place is?” Vicky Kinian asked.
“I thought I knew every antique shop in Lisbon, but that’s a new one on me. I can lead you to the spot with no trouble, though. Let’s go have a look-see.”
The goateed man had listened to the parting close of the door, placed his hearing-aid in his jacket pocket, and made a few notes on a small pad. Then he had hauled in his cane, slipped off its contrivance of angled mirrors, telescoped it back to its normal length, put on his hat, and set out for a bit of sightseeing in the vicinity of Rua De Ouro and Viseli.
4
Vicky Kinian and Freda Oliveiros stepped out of their taxi on to a sidewalk bordering a broad uncrowded intersection. During the ride from the hotel they had chattered about everything under the sun except the riddle they were on their way to solve, and now that they were brought face-to-face with the question mark they seemed to have nothing to say at all. Standing in the cool shadow of a large tree they let their eyes survey the complete three hundred and sixty degrees of the panorama. To the left was a café — round wrought-iron tables in the open air beneath a blue and yellow awning. Opposite where they stood was an apartment house, and then an office building of some kind. To their right was a bank. Behind them was a park.
“Something must be wrong,” Vicky said. “Are you sure this is the right corner?”
“Check your letter again.”
Vicky confirmed the address: Segurança’s Antique Shop on Rua De Ouro at the corner of Viseli.
“Well, there’s the corner, but there isn’t any antique shop,” Freda said. “Maybe it went out of business, unless it’s in a back room somewhere. Or maybe...”
“Wait a minute,” Vicky broke in. “Look at the name on that bank.”
In large letters carved into the stone pediment above the bank’s columned entrance were the words, BANCO ANTIGO DE SEGURANÇA.
“Segurança,” Vicky read carefully. “It’s the same word.”
“And antigo,” Freda carried on. “There’s your ‘antique’ shop all right. Segurança means something like ‘security’.”
Vicky was frowning as she glanced from the letter to the marble portico of the bank.
“But if it’s the bank why didn’t he just say so? Now that we’ve seen what he meant, it sounds like something out of a mystery story.”
“Well, at least we’ve solved the first clue,” Freda said cheerfully.
“We just followed his directions, but I’d hardly say we’d found any answers,” Vicky rejoined. “Why be so cryptic about a perfectly respectable-looking bank?”
“Search me, Vicky. But let’s face it — nothing about this whole deal is exactly on the up-and-up, or your father would just have left you a nice traditional will to his estates and acres, not to mention his millions.”
They were walking almost cautiously towards the bank as they talked. Vicky felt a strange reluctance to get too near the place. Somehow its marble massiveness reminded her of a mausoleum.
“He never had acres or millions,” she said. “He hardly even had thousands.”
“Well,” said Freda, “if you’ll excuse my delicacy, let’s be charitable and assume dear old dad handled things this way because he was in the cloak-and-dagger business and not because he was some kind of a nut. How does that letter go on?”
“They will remember me. Ask for the little box I paid a deposit on.”
They were at the foot of the wide stone stairway leading into the bank. Simultaneously they both stopped and exchanged looks of sudden realization.
“A safe deposit box!” they said almost simultaneously.
“Things are looking up, girl!” continued Freda. “Let’s go.”
They climbed the steps quickly and walked into the bank’s ornate cavernous main floor. Vicky questioned a woman at the first barred window. She was asked, in hesitant English, to wait. A few moments later an old man with rimless round spectacles perched on his pointed beak walked stiffly across the tiled floor to meet them. Against the background of bars and barrel-vaulted stone ceiling he looked very appropriately like some gnomish custodian of long-interred wealth.
“Senhorita,” he said as Vicky stepped towards him. “I am Valdez, Assistant Manager. May I help you? I am told it is a matter which goes back many years, and I am most qualified on such matters.”