The house was shabby inside and very untidy. It looked as if renovations had started and stopped; the bedroom downstairs was crammed with timber and had no floorboards. The other rooms weren’t much better. The stairs were sound though, and I picked my way up them using a thin torch beam to negotiate the bends. Henry was in the front room asleep all alone in a double bed. He lay on his back and snored; lank dark hair fell forward on his face which was fatter than in the photograph I had seen.
I sat on the edge of the bed, put the muzzle of the. 38 in his mouth and rapped hard against one of his back teeth. He jerked awake and I dug the gun in between his front teeth and upper lip. His eyes were wide in shock. I kept the gun wedged firmly in and worked the slide to cock it. The sound in the quiet room was like a door falling in. It must have sounded even worse to Henry.
‘Where’s the scroll, Henry? I’ll take this out to let you tell me. If you don’t I’ll put it back and when the first train goes by you get a bullet going upwards.’ A train rumbled past; the house shook and rattled. I grinned at Henry. ‘You get the idea?’
He nodded and terror shone from his eyes.
‘Okay. Make it quick, you get one chance.’ I took the gun out and saliva ran down from his mouth. I held the small dark hole level with his right eye.
‘Under the bed,’ he said shakily, ‘Box…’
‘Get it!’
I eased back, and he came up trembling and having difficulty moving his limbs in the right sequence. I followed him with the gun like a movie camera panning as he rolled forward and scrabbled under the bed. He pulled up with a heavy metal box with a hinged lid. I gestured for him to open it; he put his hand inside the neck of his T-shirt and drew up a small key on a chain. The fingers holding the key shook and he scratched around the lock before he got it open and took out the scroll. It looked like the real thing-right dimensions, light fabric rolled around a slender piece of wood. I nodded and he put it back in the box which I tucked under my arm.
‘Who’re you? You want bread?’
I shook my head. ‘No questions, Henry. No answers.’
He lay back on the bed and didn’t show any signs of getting braver. Maybe he could reconcile himself to losing the scroll so I thought I should tell him just how bad things were.
‘I’ve got the books too,’ I said, ‘and the plates and the negs.’
There was a new level of fright in the dark eyes now. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I’ve been paid… I paid out…’
I smiled at him. ‘I know you did, mate. I was there. I was sorry to see you do that.’
‘They’ll kill me.’
‘I suggest you take a trip, Henry. No one’s going to miss you.’ I levelled the gun at his chest and got off the bed. ‘Roll over on your front and stay there until you hear the next train. That way you can think about your next move and I won’t have to shoot you.’
Down the stairs and out the front door. A train rushed past as I made the turn out of Terminal Street. It was well after midnight but it’s never too late for good news. I rang Kangri’s number and he answered, sounding strained and tired.
‘I’m sorry to call so late.’
‘It’s all right, Mr Hardy. I cannot sleep.’
‘You can now, I’ve got the scroll.’
He made a yipping sound and I would have liked to have seen his face. There might even have been a smile on it. I drove out to Vaucluse through the drizzle and ran the Falcon up the drive and in beside the Jag. Kangri was there waiting for me, wearing his suit. Mrs Tsang was there too, in a dressing gown. I managed to give her an encouraging nod when Kangri was examining the scroll.
‘Wonderful, Mr Hardy. Undamaged. Wonderful. Thank you. A bonus, most certainly.’
I said a bonus would be nice and dragged out the box I’d opened. I handed him one of the books.
‘My God,’ he said, ‘Appalling. Who…?’
I shook my head. ‘Sources, Dr Kangri. Don’t ask.’ I gave him the plates and other stuff.
‘The boil is lanced, then?’ he said.
‘Yeah.’ I got out the other boxes and stacked them by a wall.
‘I will get you a cheque.’ He rushed off towards the house.
Mrs Tsang wrapped her elaborately embroidered dressing gown tightly around her and looked up at me.
‘Henry?’
I nodded. ‘He’s okay, untouched. But he’s in big trouble with his partners. I think he’ll be going away for a while.’
Kangri came back and handed me a cheque. He was almost bubbling and he forgot himself enough to put his arm around Mrs Tsang as he spoke to her.
‘We will burn this rubbish, eh, Mrs Tsang?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
I said goodnight and backed out leaving them standing close together, caught in my headlights. A gilt dragon coiled around Mrs Tsang’s slim body.
Dr Kangri’s bonus was pretty quickly spent and when his book came out it was in a limited edition and cost a thousand bucks a copy. But I’ve still got the uncaptioned copy of Tibetan Love Positions — it’s one of my more stimulating souvenirs.
‹‹Contents››
The Mae West Scam
Mr Joseph Thackeray was a literary agent. That made both of us agents, me being a private enquiry ditto. The first thing Mr Thackeray did after informing me of his profession and seating his narrow frame in one of the sagging chairs in my office, was ask me how much I charged.
‘One hundred and twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses.’ I said. ‘How about you?’
He looked annoyed. ‘Ten per cent of my client’s earnings.’
‘Handy if you’ve got David Williamson-have you?’
He looked still more annoyed. ‘No, but I’ve got Carla Cummings, at least for now. Are you always this flippant, Mr Hardy?’
‘Yeah, always, don’t tell me you take agenting seriously?’
His prim little mouth pursed up, and he brushed wispy hair back from his high forehead. The narrow shoulders and the silly bow tie made him look like a lightweight but he had an incongruously deep and forceful voice. I’ve got better shoulders and don’t wear bow ties; my voice isn’t much but then, I do most of my agenting on the street rather than on the phone.
‘I certainly do,’ the strong voice from the weak face said. ‘I consider myself a facilitator of literature.’
‘At ten per cent.’
He drew in a deep breath, which made his Adam’s apply move in his scrawny neck but made his voice more resonant. ‘I’ll persist because I’m told you’re good at this sort of thing. Talented, someone said; although I can’t think how the word applies.’
‘Let’s hope you will see when we’re through. You’ve got a problem with Carla Cummings?’
‘I can see you listen when you’re being spoken to, that’s good. Yes, a problem.’
It was the first approving word he’d spoken; we were getting along famously already. I leaned back in my sagging chair and let him tell it.
Carla Cummings was a country girl, born in Dubbo, who’d worked as a nurse and written thirty novels before her thirty-first was published. She was only thirty herself at the time, so she’d averaged better than three unpublished novels per year for ten years. The Crying Gulls made it all worthwhile. The book was a three-generation family saga set on the north coast of New South Wales. According to Cummings’s own account in the many interviews she gave after the paperback rights were sold for two million dollars, she’d constructed the book to make it ideal for abridgement, extraction and serialisation. It was abridged, extracted and serialised everywhere, and the hard cover edition sold out and was reprinted three times. It was a million dollar movie property, and heartily loathed by every reviewer who touched it.
‘She hasn’t written a word since she finished Gulls,’ Thackeray said.
‘Can’t see what I can do about writer’s block.’
‘That’s only part of the problem. She’s drinking, she’s neurotic, gambling, falling out with everyone.’
‘With you?’
‘Especially with me.’
‘You’re worried about your ten per cent.’