“Besides,” André went on quietly, “I wanted to see you and Anita again. It’s been too long a time for old friends.”
Kek refused to be diverted by sentiment, at least at the moment. “I hope Girard paid you in advance, is all.”
“Just half,” André said, then brightened. “But I got a tourist’s visa good for the States, which is something. Plus passage on the Andropolis...”
“As things stand right now, the States is about the last place I’d suggest you visit,” Kek told him dryly. “Girard’s there.” He shook his head, but it was half-humorously. He and André Martins had had many adventures together, and the truth was the large man had saved Kek Huuygens’ life twice, whereas Kek had only saved André’s once. Which, Kek thought, considering it, left a certain debt without a doubt. Secretly, Kek was very happy to see André again, but not in the circumstances. There was still the matter of the wager, and now it appeared there was also the matter of André’s fee, whatever it was. Plus, most likely, André’s neck. Problems, problems! He took the bottle and poured two more drinks.
“All right. What happened?”
André looked embarrassed. “They had the place wired,” he said accusingly. He sounded as if wiring a treasure in a museum was cheating, by any standard a person wished to choose. “All around the thing.”
“Wired?”
André took his drink and sipped it, a sure sign he was beginning to relax.
“Look. I didn’t have to rap any guards on the head, because they didn’t have any guards. They didn’t need any. The museum is right next to the army barracks, and the place is wired.”
“You mean they have burglar alarms? How inconsiderate!”
“Not just burglar alarms,” André said patiently. He considered finishing his drink and then decided to postpone it. He put down his glass and started to trace lines on the table with a finger the size of a sausage. “There’s this basement door, you see, down in a sort of a well, like the entrance to a cooling cellar on a farm, you know? Sort of a hatchway. It leads from the back of the museum, where they have a sort of driveway, down to a basement, which is full of junk.”
“You have a wonderful descriptive sense. Go on.”
André disregarded this. “I opened the basement door in about one minute. Who ever installed that lock should be ashamed; they haven’t used a lock of that type in any civilized country in twenty years. Then—”
“Then the alarm went off in the police station next door.”
“It’s an army barracks, not a police station,” André said patiently, “and no alarm went off, because that’s not the way the place is wired. If you’d only let me get a word in edgewise—”
“Sorry.”
“Well, all right,” André sounded only partially mollified. “Where was I? Oh, yes — in the basement. As I said, the basement is full of junk, stuff it would take ten guys to lift, junk like that. And a workshop, where they fix stuff, I guess. Anyway, maybe because it’s only junk, or because it’s too heavy to swipe, but they never bothered to wire the door—”
“Maybe they ran out of money before they— Oh, sorry.”
André looked at him chidingly. “Anyway, there’s a hallway that goes from this basement room to some steps that go up to the main floor of the museum. I listened hard and didn’t hear a sound, so I started to go up the steps and then I turned on my flash. That’s safe enough because the place doesn’t have any windows—
“Probably afraid of burglars.”
“—and there in the middle of the room was this glass case. All by itself. It’s about two feet square and three feet high and it’s on a table so it comes about to your chest. And that’s where they keep the carving that Girard wanted. I knew because of course I’d been there three or four times during the day to look the place over—”
“They call it ‘casing the joint’,” Kek said, and then dropped the banter from his voice. “Did they have guards in attendance when you were there during the day?”
“Oh, sure, during the day. One man in each room plus a man at the front entrance, to see people didn’t touch anything, or swipe anything either, I guess, because of course during the day the alarm system is off. Anyway, when I was there during the day I saw there was this metal strip inside the glass all around the edge, which I figured was an alarm, but that didn’t worry me, because I wasn’t planning on opening the case from the top. I had a glass cutter, and I intended cutting the case inside the strips, see?”
“Ingenious.”
“I figured it was like taking candy from a baby. So that night, when I was inside, like I said, I went up the steps and flashed the light around, and it was quiet as a grave. So I started toward the case—”
“And all hell broke loose.”
André stared. “How did you know?”
“It came to me in a vision. They had the place wired with floor alarms.” Kek sighed. “And you’re a bit outsized to dangle from the roof à la Rififi.”
“You couldn’t there, anyways,” André said, taking his companion literally. “It’s too high in that room and it’s smooth; nothing to hang from. And I saw a movie once where a guy walked on the ceiling with magnets, but that wouldn’t work, either, because it’s marble.”
“Things are rough all over,” Kek said. “You’re lucky you got away in one piece.”
“I know it!” André responded fervently. “When that alarm went off I jumped a mile, and then I beat it the way I came in. I was in the junk room downstairs when I heard the soldiers come busting in the front door upstairs.”
A thought struck Huuygens. “Did anyone see you?”
“Me? No.”
“Did you close the door of the basement behind you?”
“Sure. If they came after me, I wanted to hold them up as long as I could.”
Kek frowned. “Then maybe they don’t even know there was an attempt.” He turned abruptly. “Bartender, do you have today’s paper?” He waited until it was handed him and then started to leaf through the pages. “Ah! Here we are. I thought it might make the Barbados papers.”
“What’s it say?” André sounded eager.
Kek sighed and folded the paper. “It doesn’t mention you by name, if that’s what you want to know. But the authorities in Cap Antoine, capital of Ile Rocheux, do not understand the reason the alarm went off and, not wanting to take any chances, have stationed two guards around the clock to guard the famous museum. For the time being.”
“Which means until they shift the carving,” André said disconsolately, and picked up his drink, downing it.
Huuygens shook his head. Of all the inept burglary attempts in the history of crime, this one had to go to the head of the class.
“Damn it, André, didn’t Girard tell you about the alarm system?”
André’s face reddened again.
“I think he was starting to, but — well, I wanted to prove I knew my job, so — well, I interrupted him before he could say anything. I told him there wasn’t anything about the precautions museums took against burglaries that I didn’t know, and to prove it, I told him—” André paused and swallowed. He avoided looking at Huuygens. “Well, I told him I was the one who broke into the Louvre and stole the ‘Mona Lisa’ that time it was taken. Remember?”
Huuygens stared. “You told him what?”
“I told him—”
“I heard you! And he believed it?”
“Well, he believed the guy I was with, and the guy had told him he could trust me—”
“Because he didn’t want his back broken,” Kek said hopelessly. “I know.” He shook his head sadly.
There was a moment’s silence; then André spoke. He sounded truly repentant.