“And you made the other secretary from that wood?” she asked.
“I believe I told Stone that, but it is not so.”
“Then where did you get the mahogany?”
“Therein lies another tale,” Barton said. Having begun to tell the truth, he was obviously relishing his own stories. “I traveled to Central America in search of exactly the right mahogany. After moving about for several weeks and asking a lot of questions, I heard a story about an early-nineteenth-century shipwreck in a river not far from where I stood. The ship had been carrying a cargo of mahogany logs timbered upriver, and the logs went down with the vessel.
“I bought scuba equipment, hired a boat and began searching for the wreck. It took me nearly two weeks, but I found it. I managed to raise a magnificent log and transport it to a sawmill, where I had it ripped into lumber. I then went on a search for the biggest piece of furniture I could find. I found a huge sofa, and I built a crate for it from the mahogany lumber.”
“Why?” Holly asked.
“Because it was illegal to export old mahogany, since it was considered a national treasure. I shipped the sofa back to the United States in the mahogany crate. Some weeks later, I got a call from the shipping company saying that my shipment had arrived and that it would be delivered the following day.
“When the truck arrived here, I went out to greet it in a state of great excitement, and there, on the back of a flatbed truck, was the sofa. No crate.”
“What did you do?” Holly asked, transfixed.
“I went, to put it politely, apeshit,” Barton replied. “I got the head of the shipping company on the phone. ‘Good Lord,’ he said, ‘that crate weighed so much that it would have cost another couple of thousand dollars to ship it to you, so we uncrated your sofa.’
“ ‘And where is my crate?’ I asked.
“ ‘Oh, some of my employees liked the wood and took it home.’
“I explained to the gentleman that, if he did not recover my mahogany at once, I would find him and do very bad things to him, and by God he did. It was delivered a few days later, and over the next year, we built our replica of the Goddard-Townsend secretary from that single, very old mahogany log.”
“What a story!” Holly said.
“Yes,” Barton agreed. “It’s a pity I can never publish it.”
“Barton,” Stone said, “you forgot an important detail in your story about the Saint-Gaudens double eagle.”
“Oh?” Barton asked innocently.
“What happened to the die that Finkel made for you? The one that the two replica double eagles were struck from?”
“Oh, that,” Barton said. “It was in a drawer of the secretary that was stolen.”
“I see,” Stone said. “And I think I’m beginning to get the full picture. And which of the secretaries was stolen? The original or the replica?”
Barton shrugged. “It hardly matters, does it?”
17
That evening Barton took Stone and Holly to dinner in Litchfield, ten miles away.
“I think you’ll like this place,” Barton said as Stone parked the car on the pretty street. “It’s called the West Street Grill.”
He led them inside, where they were greeted by and introduced to the owners, James and Charles, and given a booth in the center of the restaurant. They ordered drinks, and menus were brought. They had just ordered dinner when a couple stopped at their table.
“Good evening, Colonel,” the man said. He was tall and slim, with iron-gray hair. Stone thought he had seen him before. The woman was very beautiful, with shoulder-length chestnut-colored hair and a lithe and curvaceous body.
“Good evening, Ab,” Barton replied. “Charlotte, how are you?”
“Very well, Barton; we had a wonderful dinner.”
“May I introduce my friends Stone Barrington and Holly Barker? This is Abner Kramer and his wife, Charlotte.”
Hands were shaken all around.
Barton moved over a bit in the large booth and signaled Stone to do so as well. “Please sit and have a drink with us.”
The couple sat down, and brandy was brought for them.
“How have you been, Bart?” Kramer asked.
“Oh, I was under the weather for a few days, but I’m fine, now.”
“Are you ready to sell me that Goddard-Townsend secretary?”
“Oh, I’m not sure I’ll ever part with that, Ab. If you’re very nice to me, maybe I’ll bequeath it to you in my will.”
Kramer laughed. “I’m not sure I could wait another fifty years for it.”
“Well, maybe I can find you something to substitute until I kick off.”
“You’ll outlive me, Bart.”
“I promise not to do that, Ab. I’ve been telling Stone and Holly about your place up here, and they’ve expressed an interest in seeing it. Would it be convenient if I brought them by for a while tomorrow some time?”
“I’m afraid not, Bart; we’ve got the painters in as part of an extensive project, and the place is a mess. We only came up here for the night just to have a word with the painting contractor; we’ll go back tomorrow morning. It’s difficult to sleep with the smell of paint in the house, and the stuff has been custom-mixed to match the original eighteenth-century formula and takes forever to dry. Perhaps another time.”
“Soon, I hope,” Stone said.
“I’m afraid it may be a while before the house will be viewable.”
“I have a place in Washington, and I’m up here from time to time. I hope I’ll have another opportunity.”
“We’ll see that you do,” Kramer replied. “I know your name, I believe.”
“I’ve had the place here for a while, now.”
“No. I mean from New York. Are you an attorney?”
“I am.”
“Something about your involvement with the death of that Mafia guy… What was his name?”
“Carmine Dattila?”
“That’s the one. Dattila the Hun they called him.”
“I wasn’t involved with his death; I just represented the man who was accused of shooting him.”
“But he was never tried, was he? Was he innocent?”
“Innocent is too strong a word,” Stone replied. “Let’s just say that the D.A. decided that they didn’t have sufficient evidence – or perhaps the inclination – to bring him to trial.”
“That’s an interesting locution,” Kramer said. “Perhaps at our next meeting you would be kind enough to tell me the details.”
“I’d be happy to,” Stone said. “At least those details that don’t violate the confidence of my client.”
“The Colonel and I are both very interested in situations where a crime has been committed but gone unpunished,” Kramer said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll get home and try to sleep for a while in our paint-scented atmosphere.”
Stone shook both their hands. “It was good to meet you. I look forward to seeing your house when it’s back together.”
“And we look forward to showing it to you,” Kramer said. They shook the hands of Holly and Barton, then left.
“I wonder what he meant by that?” Holly asked.
“By what?” Barton asked, innocently.
“That business about both you and he being interested in unpunished crimes.”
“Oh, that was just a little joke,” Barton said. “He often talks that way when we’re together.”
“Barton,” Stone said, “is Ab Kramer the only one of your former men that you see in the ordinary course of things?”
“Yes, he is, I suppose, and I ran into him only because he bought a place here and asked me to advise him on some of the pieces he was collecting. He has a fine collection of American furniture, perhaps one of the dozen best in a private home.”
“A home he doesn’t want Holly and me to see,” Stone said.