When he hung up he realized, with a start, that Rita had come out of the bedroom and had listened to the whole conversation; she had been pacing irritably back and forth, wearing only a black silk slip, her blond hair falling loosely over her bare, slightly freckled shoulders.
“Tell the police,” she said.
Well, he thought, it probably would be cheaper to offer them two thousand or so. They’d accept it; that was probably all they wanted. Little fellows like that thought small; to them it would seem like a lot. They’d put in their new business, lose it, be broke again inside a month.
“No,” he said.
“Why not? Blackmail’s a crime.”
It was hard to explain to her. He was accustomed to paying people; it was part of the overhead, like the utilities. If the sum was small enough… but she did have a point. He mulled it over.
I’ll give them two thousand, but I’ll also get in touch with that guy at the Civic Center I know, that police inspector. I’ll have them look into both Frink and McCarthy and see if there’s anything of use. So if they come back and try again– I’ll be able to handle them.
For instance, he thought, somebody told me Frink’s a kike. Changed his nose and name. All I have to do is notify the German consul here. Routine business. He’ll request the Jap authorities for extradition. They’ll gas the bugger soon as they get him across the Demarcation Line. I think they’ve got one of those camps in New York, he thought. Those oven camps.
“I’m surprised,” the girl said, “that anyone could blackmail a man of your stature.” She eyed him.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “This whole damn historicity business is nonsense. Those Japs are bats. I’ll prove it.” Getting up, he hurried into his study, returned at once with two cigarette lighters which he set down on the coffee table. “Look at these. Look the same, don’t they? Well, listen. One has historicity in it.” He grinned at her. “Pick them up. Go ahead. One’s worth, oh, maybe forty or fifty thousand dollars on the collectors’ market.”
The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them.
“Don’t you feel it?” he kidded her. “The historicity?”
She said, “What is ‘historicity’?”
“When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn’t. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?” He nudged her. “You can’t. You can’t tell which is which. There’s no ‘mystical plasmic presence,’ no ‘aura’ around it.”
“Gee,” the girl said, awed. “Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?”
“Sure. And I know which it is. You see my point. It’s all a big racket; they’re playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it’s the same as if it hadn’t, unless you know. It’s in here.” He tapped his head. “In the mind, not the gun. I used to be a collector. In fact, that’s how I got into this business. I collected stamps. Early British colonies.”
The girl now stood at the window, her arms folded, gazing out at the lights of downtown San Francisco. “My mother and dad used to say we wouldn’t have lost the war if he had lived,” she said.
“Okay,” Wyndam-Matson went on. “Now suppose say last year the Canadian Government or somebody, anybody, finds the plates from which some old stamp was printed. And the ink. And a supply of—”
“I don’t believe either of those two lighters belonged to Franklin Roosevelt,” the girl said.
Wyndam-Matson giggled. “That’s my point! I’d have to prove it to you with some sort of document. A paper of authenticity. And so it’s all a fake, a mass delusion. The paper proves its worth, not the object itself!”