Harold Robbins Thriller Collection

by Harold Robbins

  The boy was first on the top of the stone wall; a moment later Fat Cat was beside him. They turned to help Marcel up. Awkwardly he scrambled up beside them. They dropped silently to the ground inside. He took a deep breath and dropped beside them. His knees buckled with the contact and he sprawled, but quickly got to his feet. Dax and Fat Cat were already running toward the house on silent feet. Quickly he followed.

  They went around the side of the building and before Marcel had caught up with them they were already on the roof of the veranda. First up the stone balustrade, then hoisting himself on his belly, Marcel gained the roof. Dax had already gone from there to the balcony.

  Fat Cat went up alongside him without a sound, then turned and helped Marcel up. His breath sounded like thunder in his ears. It was a miracle that they could not hear him inside the house.

  Dax put his mouth next to Marcel’s ear. “Wait here until we signal. If you see anyone, warn us.”

  Marcel nodded. The sick cold feeling of fear spread in the pit of his belly. He swallowed quickly. Dax had already turned away to join Fat Cat. They flattened themselves on either side of the balcony door, their eyes tightly shut, and for a moment Marcel thought they were praying. Then he realized what they were doing; they were accustoming their eyes to the darkness they would find in Ramírez’ room. Almost as one their hands moved, and Marcel saw the cold steel of their knives. He closed his eyes. Was he going to be sick? Somehow he fought the nausea down.

  When he opened his eyes they were both gone, though he had not heard a sound. He listened intently, his heart beating heavily. There was a faint grunt from inside the room, a squeal from the bed, and a bump as if something had fallen to the floor. After that, nothing.

  Marcel felt the sweat breaking out on his forehead. He had an impulse to flee, but his terror over what they might do if he did was greater than his fear of what might happen if he didn’t.

  Dax’s voice was a hoarse whisper from the room. “Marcel!”

  He paused in horror in the doorway. Ramírez and the woman, both naked, were lying on the floor. “Are they dead?” he asked in a shocked whisper.

  “No,” Dax answered contemptuously, “the traitor fainted. We had to knock out the woman. Get me something to tie them up with.”

  “What?”

  “Go through the dresser!” Fat Cat hissed. “The woman will have silk stockings.”

  Frantically Marcel opened the drawers. In a second he found what he was looking for. He turned. Fat Cat was stuffing one of Ramírez’ socks into the traitor’s mouth. “Let him taste his own stink,” he said with satisfaction.

  Marcel held out the stockings wordlessly. Quickly and expertly Fat Cat trussed and gagged them. At last he finished and got to his feet. “That ought to hold them for awhile.” He turned to Dax. “Now what?”

  “We wait until the traitor comes to,” Dax said quietly, “then we find out where the money is. It won’t be far off.”

  Dax looked at Marcel. “How much was it my father said he stole?”

  “Six million francs over the last two years.”

  Dax looked down at Ramírez again. “Most of it should still be here. He hasn’t had time to spend much of it.”

  Ramírez was the first to recover. He opened his eyes and saw Dax bending over him, a knife at his throat. His eyes widened in horror. For a moment it looked as if he might faint again, then he steadied and stared up at Dax.

  “Traitor, can you hear me?”

  Ramírez nodded. A muffled sound came from behind the gag.

  “Then listen carefully,” Dax continued. “We have come for the money. If we get it no harm will come to you or the woman. If not, you will spend a long time dying.”

  Another stifled sound came from behind the gag.

  Dax raised the knife so that Ramírez could see it. “I’m going to loosen your gag. One move out of you and you will die with the blood pouring from the hole between your legs where your genitals used to be.”

  Marcel held his breath as Dax loosened the gag. Fortunately Ramírez was no hero.

  “Now,” Dax whispered, “the money?”

  “It’s gone!” Ramírez whispered back huskily. “The gaming tables got it all!”

  Dax laughed silently. The knife moved swiftly and a thin line of blood traced a path down Ramírez’ belly. There was a look of horror on the man’s face at the sight of his own blood. His eyes rolled upward into his head and he slumped.

  “The coward has fainted again.” Fat Cat looked at Dax. “We could be at this all night.”

  Dax went over to the washstand and picked up the pitcher. He came back to Ramírez and emptied it. Ramírez came up sputtering.

  At the same time the woman began to roll around, bumping the floor. “Hold her still!” Dax ordered. “She’ll have the whole house down on us!”

  Fat Cat leaned over the woman and slapped her face. Despite her trussing she tried to kick him. Fat Cat grinned. “At least she has the courage the traitor lacks.” He sat down heavily, straddling her hips, and with one large hand spanned her throat, effectively pinning her to the floor.

  “Where is the money?” Dax asked again.

  Ramírez didn’t answer. He was staring at Fat Cat and the woman. His head spun around as Dax swiped at him with the butt of the knife. “It’s gone, I tell you!”

  Fat Cat looked over at the traitor. “She seems like a nice little piece even though she’s a bit small in the tetas.”

  Ramírez remained silent.

  Fat Cat looked over at Dax. “It’s been a long time. I’m a three-day virgin.”

  Dax didn’t take his eyes from Ramírez’ face. “Go ahead,” he said quietly. “Fuck her. And when you’re finished, let Marcel fuck her too.”

  The protest rising in Marcel’s throat was never uttered. He saw the tawny jungle look in Dax’s eyes. The woman began to struggle as Fat Cat forced her legs apart with one knee. He opened his fly. “Be happy, little one,” he murmured. “Now you will see what a real man is like. Mine is not a miserable worm like that one’s.”

  The words burst out of Ramírez’ throat. “There! The safe in the wall behind the bed!”

  “That’s better.” Dax laughed. “Now, how is it opened?”

  “The key is in my pants pocket.”

  Dax already had the trousers off the chair over which they had been carelessly thrown. He held up a key ring. “Is this the one?”

  Ramírez nodded. “Behind the picture on the wall.”

  Quickly Dax crossed the room. He moved the picture, and inserted the key in the black metal safe. “It does not work!” he said angrily, coming back to Ramírez.

  Ramírez tore his eyes away from Fat Cat. “That is the car key. There is another.”

  Marcel couldn’t keep himself from staring. Until now rape had been only a word he had seen in the newspapers. He felt dizzy with a strange excitement. It was nothing like the fornication he had experienced. It was cold and savage and brutal. Fat Cat had already entered the woman. Marcel saw her entire body shuddering under the impact.

  “Marcel!”

  He tore his eyes away from the two of them and walked over to Dax. The safe was filled with stacks of neatly packaged banknotes. “My God!” he whispered.

  “Don’t stand there gawking! Get a pillowcase and help me pack this money.”

  Marcel couldn’t keep from glancing back over his shoulder as he held the pillowcase for Dax. He looked at Ramírez. The traitor was staring at Fat Cat and the woman. It wasn’t until he ran his tongue over his lips that Marcel realized what he was thinking. The money had been forgotten.

  The whole world had gone mad. Nothing in it made sense anymore. Dax, after one perfunctory glance at the writhing pair, paid them no further attention. It was as if what was happening was a perfectly ordinary occurrence. Marcel was in the throes of a private sexual excitement all his own; his legs felt weak and they trembled, as they hadn’t since the first time he had been with a woman.

  “Bueno!” Dax�
�s voice was filled with satisfaction. The pillowcase was almost full. Quickly he secured the open end with a silk stocking. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at Fat Cat. “Don’t take all night,” he said casually. “We still have to get out of here.”

  He looked at the other key on the ring and was about to throw it away. “Do you drive?” he suddenly asked Marcel.

  Silently Marcel nodded.

  “Bueno. There’s nothing like a pleasant drive in the cool of the night.”

  The baron leaned across his desk. “How much did they recover?”

  “Almost four and a half million francs,” Marcel replied, coming back to the present again.

  “I’m glad,” the baron said quietly. He stared down thoughtfully at his desk. “That’s quite a lad. Has there been any discussion about which school he will attend?”

  “I heard the consul mention the public schools. But that was before the money was recovered.”

  “Unfortunately it won’t be of much help,” the baron said. “It will hardly cover the personal loans the consul made in order to pay the bills.” He tapped the pencil on his desk. “I want you to suggest that the boy attend De Roqueville.”

  “But that is the most expensive school in Paris!”

  “It is also the best. My own son goes there. I will pay the tuition, make all the arrangements. The boy will be offered a scholarship.”

  The feel of the ten-thousand-franc note in his pocket was very reassuring to Marcel as he left the baron’s office. His finances were looking up. The grocer had not been the only one to make a deal with him for the collection of bills.

  But there was still one unanswered question plaguing him. He still knew no more about why the Baron de Coyne was interested in the consul and his son than he had the morning of that first telephone call.

  79

  The buzzer on his father’s desk sounded harshly. Dax came back from the window and picked up the intercom. “Oui, Marcel?”

  “Your friend Robert is here.”

  “Merci. Ask him to come in.” Dax put down the receiver and turned toward the door.

  Robert entered and crossed the room, his hand outstretched. “I came as soon as I heard the news.”

  They shook hands European fashion, just as they always did on meeting or parting, even if they had seen each other earlier that morning on the polo practice field. “Thank you. How did you find out?”

  “The steward at the clubhouse,” Robert said. “He told me about the phone call.”

  Dax’s lips twisted wryly. Paris was no different from a small town at home. By now the news would be everywhere, and soon the newspapers would have their reporters at the door.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Dax shook his head. “There is nothing anyone can do. All we can do is wait.”

  “Was he ill this morning when you left the house?”

  “No. Had he been, I would not have come to practice.”

  “Of course.”

  “Father was not very strong, as you know. Ever since we came to Europe he has been subject to very severe colds. It seemed that no sooner was he over one than he contracted another. It appeared that he had no resistance. Marcel found him slumped over the desk. He and Fat Cat carried him upstairs and called the doctor. The doctor said it was his heart, then they called me.”

  Robert shook his head. “This is no climate for your father. He should have lived on the Riviera.”

  “My father never should have come here at all. The strains and tensions were too much for him. He never really got his strength back after the loss of his arm.”

  “Why didn’t he go back then?”

  “He had a strong sense of duty. He remained because he was needed. The first credits he worked out with your father’s bank saved our country from bankruptcy.”

  “He could have gone home after that.”

  “You don’t know my father.” Dax grimaced. “That was only the beginning. He knocked at every door in Europe to get help for our country. The snubs and rebuffs turned him into an old man. But he kept on trying.”

  Dax took out a thin brown cigarette and lit it. “You know,” he said somberly, “the early years here did him no good either. The previous consul had left a mess and my father cleaned it up. He paid all unpaid bills himself, even though it broke him. To this day he doesn’t know that I know that everything went to pay those bills—our home in Curatu, his savings, everything he had. The only thing he did not touch was our hacienda in Bandaya, and that was because he wanted me one day to have it.” He dragged deeply on the cigarette and let the smoke trickle slowly from his nostrils.

  “I never knew that,” Robert said.

  Dax grinned wryly. “If that scholarship at De Roque had not turned up like a miracle, I’d have attended public schools. As it was, my father deprived himself of things he needed so I would be dressed properly and there would be gasoline enough in the car so Fat Cat could drive me home for the weekends.”

  Robert de Coyne looked at Dax. Strange that none of them at the school had ever guessed it. There were some poverty-stricken ex-royalty there but everyone knew who they were. They were there because they brought social standing to the school. But Dax was South American and everyone assumed that South Americans were rich. They owned tin mines and oil wells and cattle ranches. They were never poor.

  Suddenly, many of the things that had happened during those early school years became clear to him. For example, the incident toward the end of that first week at school. Thursday afternoon, between the last class and dinner. Free time. In back of the gymnasium. They had stood in a small semicircle around one of the new boys.

  His dark eyes had looked at them impassively. “Why do I have to fight one of you?”

  Sergei Nikovitch looked around with an expression of disgust. “Because,” he explained patiently, “next week we have to draw lots to see whose room you will share for the remainder of the school term. If you do not fight, how are we to know whether to accept you or reject you?”

  “Do I also have the same right?”

  “Only if you win. Then you can choose your roommate.”

  The new boy had thought for a moment, then nodded. “It seems stupid to me but I will fight.”

  “Good,” Sergei said. “We shall be fair about it. You can decide which one of us to fight, that way you will not have to face someone bigger. But you are not allowed to choose anyone smaller.”

  “I choose you.”

  Sergei had a surprised look on his face. “But I am a head taller than you. It would not be fair.”

  “That is why I chose you.”

  Sergei shrugged hopelessly. He began to take off his jacket. He looked around at the others as Robert de Coyne had gone up to the new boy.

  “Change your mind,” he had said earnestly. “Fight me instead. I’m your size. Sergei is the biggest and best fighter in the class.”

  The new boy smiled at him. “Thank you. But I have already chosen. This business is stupid enough as it is. Why make it worse?”

  Robert had looked at him in surprise. That was the way he had always felt, but this was the first time he had ever heard anyone dare to say it. Still, it was the custom. He felt an instinctive liking for the new boy. “Whether you win or lose I shall consider myself fortunate if I draw you for a roommate.”

  The new boy looked at him with sudden shyness. “Thank you.”

  “Are you ready?” Sergei called.

  The boy slipped out of his jacket and nodded.

  “You have your choice again,” Sergei said. “La boxe, la savate, or free-for-all.”

  “Free-for-all,” the other said, only because he wasn’t quite sure what the other two meant.

  “Bien. It is over when one of us gives up.”

  Actually it was over before that. It was also the finish of that custom at De Roqueville School. It all happened so quickly that it ended while the boys were still waiting for something to happen.

  Sergei had reac
hed out his arms in the conventional wrestler’s position and begun to circle the new boy, who turned with him, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Then Sergei grabbed for him, and the other’s movements became a blur of speed. The flat of his hand struck aside Sergei’s outstretched arm and as that arm fell limply to his side, the new boy struck again. He seemed to half-spin, which gave his flattened hand additional power as it lashed into Sergei’s ribs. There was barely time to see the expression of surprise on Sergei’s face as he doubled over, then the other circled behind him and hit him at the base of his skull with the knuckles of his closed fist. Sergei crumpled to the ground.

  The new boy stood over him, then turned to them. They stared back unbelieving. This one wasn’t even breathing heavily. They watched him go back and pick up his jacket from where he had folded it neatly on the ground. He started to walk away, then turned.

  “I choose you for a roommate,” he said to Robert. Then he glanced at Sergei, still lying silently on the ground. “You’d better get help for him. His arm is broken and so are two of his ribs. But he’ll be all right. I didn’t kill him.”

  The doorman at the Royale Palace was an imposing sight. A tall man, six foot seven in his boots, his high Cossack hat made him seem even taller, and the pink and blue uniform with the golden epaulets and braid across the chest gave him the appearance of a general out of a Franz Lehár operetta.

  And he ran his post at the hotel entrance like a general. The luggage racks were neatly folded away in a hidden corner and woe betide any bellhop who neglected to replace them in that exact manner. His stentorian heavily accented voice had been known to summon a taxi from as far away as three blocks.

  It was said about him that at one time he had actually been a colonel in the Cossacks, though this was never proved. All that was known was that he had been a count, a distant cousin of the Romanovs, and one wintry day in 1920 he had appeared full blown in the hotel doorway. He had been there ever since. Count Ivan Nikovitch was not a man to invite confidences or even discussions of a personal nature. The sight of the saber scar, half hidden in his cheek by the thick, carefully trimmed black beard, was quite enough to discourage that.