He cleared his throat, looked over my left shoulder, and said: «Yes?»
«I’m the man you sent for. The one Violets M’Gee recommended.»
«Violets? Gracious, what a peculiar nickname. Let me see, your name is —»
He hesitated and I let him work at it until he cleared his throat again and moved his blue-green eyes to a spot several miles beyond my other shoulder.
«Dalmas,» I said. «The same as it was this afternoon.»
«Oh, come in, Mr. Dalmas. You’ll excuse me, I’m sure. My houseboy is away this evening. So I —» He smiled deprecatingly at the closing door, as though opening and closing it himself sort of dirtied him.
The door put us on a balcony that ran around three sides of a big living room, only three steps above it in level. We went down the steps and Lindley Paul pointed with his eyebrows at a pink chair, and I sat down on it and hoped I wouldn’t leave a mark.
It was the kind of room where people sit on floor cushions with their feet in their laps and sip absinthe through lumps of sugar and talk from the backs of their throats, and some of them just squeak. There were bookshelves all around the balcony and bits of angular sculpture in glazed clay on pedestals. There were cozy little divans and bits of embroidered silk tossed here and there against the bases of lamps and so on. There was a big rosewood grand piano and on it a very tall vase with just one yellow rose in it, and under its leg there was a peachcolored Chinese rug a gopher could have spent a week in without showing his nose above the nap.
Lindley Paul leaned in the curve of the piano and lit a cigarette without offering me one. He put his head back to blow smoke at the tall ceiling and that made his throat look more than ever like the throat of a woman.
«It’s a very slight matter,» he said negligently. «Really hardly worth bothering you about. But I thought I might as well have an escort. You must promise not to flash any guns or anything like that. I suppose you do carry a gun.»
«Oh, yes,» I said. «Yes.» I looked at the dimple in his chin. You could have lost a marble in it.
«Well, I won’t want you to use it, you know, or anything like that. I’m just meeting a couple of men and buying something from them. I shall be carrying a little money in cash.»
«How much money and what for?» I asked, putting one of my own matches to one of my own cigarettes.
«Well, really —» It was a nice smile, but I could have put the heel of my hand in it without feeling bad. I just didn’t like the man.
«It’s rather a confidential mission I’m undertaking for a friend. I’d hardly care to go into the details,» he said.
«You just want me to go along to hold your hat,» I suggested.
His hand jerked and some ash fell on his white suit cuff. That annoyed him. He frowned down at it, then he said softly, in the manner of a sultan suggesting a silk noose for a harem lady whose tricks have gone stale: «You are not being impertinent, I hope.»
«Hope is what keeps us alive,» I said.
He stared at me for a while. «I’ve a damned good mind to give you a sock on the nose,» he said.
«That’s more like it,» I said. «You couldn’t do it without hardening up a bit, but I like the spirit. Now let’s talk business.»
He was still a bit sore. «I ordered a bodyguard,» he said coldly. «If I employed a private secretary I shouldn’t tell him all my personal business.»
«He’d know it if he worked for you steady. He’d know it upside down and backwards. But I’m just day labor. You’ve got to tell me. What is it — blackmail?»
After a long time he said: «No. It’s a necklace of Fei Tsui jade worth at least seventy-five thousand dollars. Did you ever hear of Fei Tsui jade?»
«No.»
«We’ll have a little brandy and I’ll tell you about it. Yes, we’ll have a little brandy.»
He leaned away from the piano and went off like a dancer, without moving his body above the waist. I put my cigarette out and sniffed at the air and thought I smelled sandalwood, and then Lindley Paul came back with a nice-looking bottle and a couple of sniffing glasses. He poured a tablespoonful in each and handed me a glass.
I put mine down in one piece and waited for him to get through rolling his spoonful under his nose and talk. He got around to it after a while.
He said in a pleasant enough tone: «Fei Tsui jade is the only really valuable kind. The others are valuable for the workmanship put on them, chiefly. Fei Tsui is valuable in itself. There are no known unworked deposits, very little of it in existence, all the known deposits having been exhausted hundreds of years ago. A friend of mine had a necklace of this jade. Fiftyone carved mandarin beads, perfectly matched, about six carats each. It was taken in a holdup some time ago. It was the only thing taken, and we were warned — I happened to be with this lady, which is one reason why I’m taking the risk of making the pay-off — not to tell the police or any insurance company, but wait for a phone call. The call came in a couple of days, the price was set at ten thousand dollars, and the time is tonight at eleven. I haven’t heard the place yet. But it’s to be somewhere fairly near here, somewhere along the Palisades.»
I looked into my empty sniffing glass and shook it. He put a little more brandy in it for me. I sent that after the first dose and lit another cigarette, one of his this time, a nice Virginia Straight Cut with his monogram on the paper.
«Jewel ransom racket,» I said. «Well organized, or they wouldn’t know where and when to pull the job. People don’t wear valuable jewels out very much, and half of the time, when they do, they’re phonies. Is jade hard to imitate?»
«As to material, no,» Lindley Paul said. «As to workmanship — that would take a lifetime.»
«So the stuff can’t be cut,» I said. «Which means it can’t be fenced except for a small fraction of the value. So the ransom money is the gang’s only pay-off. I’d say they’ll play ball, You left your bodyguard problem pretty late, Mr. Paul. How do you know they’ll stand for a bodyguard?»
«I don’t,» he said rather wearily. «But I’m no hero. I like company in the dark. If the thing misses — it misses. I thought of going it alone and then I thought, why not have a man hidden in the back of my car, just in case?»
«In case they take your money and give you a dummy package? How could I prevent that? If I start shooting and come out on top and it is a dummy package, you’ll never see your jade again. The contact men won’t know who’s behind the gang. And if I don’t open up, they’ll be gone before you can see what they’ve left you. They may not even give you anything. They may tell you your stuff will come to you through the mail after the money has been checked for markings. Is it marked?»
«My God, no!»
«It ought to be,» I growled. «It can be marked these days so that only a microscope and black light could show the markings up. But that takes equipment, which means cops. Okay. I’ll take a flutter at it. My part will cost you fifty bucks. Better give it to me now, in case we don’t come back. I like to feel money.»
His broad, handsome face seemed to turn a little white and glistening. He said swiftly: «Let’s have some more brandy.»
He poured a real drink this time.
We sat around and waited for the phone to ring. I got my fifty bucks to play with.
The phone rang four times and it sounded from his voice as if women were talking to him. The call we wanted didn’t come through until ten-forty.