“What! You mean he has not appeared?”
“Oh, he appeared,” Kek said. “Only he was alone.”
A blast of pure venom exploded into the receiver.
“That idiot! The incompetent! I was told he was the best in the business! He told me—” There was a sudden pause. When Girard spoke again his voice was deadly. “I hope nobody is playing any tricks, here, M’sieu.”
“M’sieu! Nobody is playing any tricks. And your man is the best. When I saw him here in Barbados I recognized him instantly.” Kek’s tone brooked no nonsense, especially from someone several thousand miles away. “After all, M’sieu, one can scarcely call ‘incompetent’ the man who managed to — well, obtain one of the most valuable pieces of merchandise in the world, can one? From one of the most prestigious shops in the world?” His tone almost answered the question. “Obviously not.”
“Then what happened?”
“One of those things—”
“And why isn’t he calling me? Why you?”
“He has laryngitis,” Kek answered evenly. “He’s been sleeping on a boat for the past two weeks. In any event, M’sieu, the matter isn’t closed. Far from it—”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, if M’sieu will listen, that the matter isn’t closed. Your salesman merely asked me to get some additional information from you. With it he feels sure he will be able to complete the transaction to your complete satisfaction.”
“He had better,” Girard said. The very lack of emphasis in his voice constituted a greater threat than violence. “Time is running out. Well, what information does he want?”
“An address in Cap Antoine is all, M’sieu...”
“An address?”
“We are wasting time, M’sieu.” Kek asked his question and marked down the answer on a table napkin. He tucked it into his pocket. “Thank you. That should be enough.”
“I hope so. You’ll be in touch?”
“Without fail, M’sieu. Good-bye.”
Kek hung up the telephone, made a small grimace at it as if in memory of the man at the other end of the line, and came to his feet. He carried his bill to the bar, paid it after adding a substantial tip, and then paused. The bartender looked at him expectantly.
“Sir?”
Kek came to a decision. He unwrapped the candy dish and put it on the bar.
“Here. A present for your wife.” The bartender stared at him. Kek looked concerned. “You have one, do you not?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Then give her this with my blessings. It was meant for my fiancée, but she preferred another. Man, that is, not candy dish.” Kek sighed and carefully folded the paper, putting it in his pocket. “I shall keep the wrapping in memory. With luck, I may be able to use it soon...”
He nodded to the bartender and left the bar. Behind him the bartender examined the candy dish a moment, shrugged, and then slid it along the bar to serve among the other ashtrays.
8
“Paquet & company?” André was puzzled. “An architect’s office? What are you planning on doing? Retiring there and building?”
The two men were having an after-lunch brandy at a small restaurant just down the road from the Graves End yacht basin. Beachcomber, with both main and auxiliary gasoline tanks topped and with its normal supplies augmented by several bottles of the best cognac available in the neighborhood, bobbed gently at its dock within their sight.
“I’m planning,” Kek told him, “on seeing if you can break into architects’ offices with the same facility you exhibit with museum basements. This firm of architects happened to have handled the entire security system for the museum. Which includes the wiring job to those floor alarms that gave you such a start the other evening.”
André was watching him closely. Kek returned the other’s stare equably.
“I believe it was the poet Swinburne,” Kek went on, “who once said that even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea. In similar fashion, it occured to me that even the longest wire ought to wind, eventually, to a fuse box. If we can locate that fuse box from the plans...” He raised his shoulders in explanation, smiled at André, and finished his drink.
“It’s not a bad idea,” André agreed. “But there’s still the matter of the guards. What do we do about them? Do I knock their heads together? Of course,” he added, with less humor than he intended, “one of them might shoot me — might shoot us, that is — while I was handling his partner. And while you were figuring out what to do next. Five will get you ten the guards are armed.”
“I’ve enough bets at the moment. Maybe one too many.”
“They also probably have walkie-talkies to chat with their friends in the barracks next door.”
“Well,” Kek said, “we’ll try to figure out some method to keep us from being shot, if that’s all that’s bothering you.”
He rose, put money on the table, and led the way from the restaurant. The two men walked slowly back to the boat, the bright noonday sun hot on their faces, the cooling breeze from the ocean welcome on their skin. They climbed aboard and Kek ducked down into the small cabin. He dropped onto one of the bunks and spread out André’s map of Cap Antoine, the island’s only port. The street Girard had named was located once again; it paralleled the main avenue one block to the north. Kek raised his voice.
“André!”
The large man climbed through the hatchway. Kek turned back to the map, pointing.
“This is the place. Do you know where it is?”
André bent over the map, frowning. It took him a few moments to orient himself; then he nodded.
“Sure. I know where it is. If it’s the one I think it is, it’s the only four-story building in town.”
“And where’s the nearest point we can safely dock the boat?”
André shrugged. “We could come right in and tie up at the municipal pier, as far as that goes. Nobody pays any attention.”
“They just might,” Kek pointed out dryly, “if we came running down to the pier at top speed with the army behind us, making our getaway.”
“Oh.” André rubbed the foolish look from his face and studied the map again. One of his thick fingers came down. “Somewhere around here, I’d say. It would be maybe a mile or a mile and a half from the architect’s office. We can anchor offshore here, and take the dinghy in. The island’s generally rocky, but there’s a sand beach here and the trees come almost to the waterline. We can duck the dinghy and walk into town.”
“And the museum?”
“They call it the gallery, and it’s over here.” The finger moved, paused to point, and moved again, a short distance this time. “The barracks are on this side. They take up two full blocks, and they’re full of troops.”
“As barracks should be. We’ll try our best not to disturb them.” Kek thought for several moments while André waited. At last he looked up. “How’s the night life on the island?”
André brightened in memory. “Active. Gambling is legal on Ile Rocheux, which it isn’t in Barbados, so they get lots of folks from here going over by ferry to lose their dough. And of course they get plenty of cruise ships. The main street” — he bent over pointing it out on the map — “must have a bar every ten feet. Hostesses and slot machines in all of them. Tourism is their biggest business, I guess. Girard started it all; it’s probably the only thing of his the present administration kept.”
Huuygens looked at the man towering above him with amusement.
“You really made a study of the place, didn’t you? A pity you didn’t spend as much time planning your remarkable break-in at the museum.”
André was hurt. “It would have looked funny if I’d spent all my time in the gallery. And it would have looked even funnier if I hadn’t spent some time in the bars and at the casino. After all, I was supposed to be a visitor there, and I was there nearly two weeks.”