by Irwin Shaw
He shrugged. “This is absolutely bizarre. If you want, you can search the apartment and see for yourself that …”
I reached into my pocket and took out Lily Abbott’s letter. “This was in your jacket,” I said. “I took the liberty of reading it.”
He barely glanced at the letter. “This is getting more and more mysterious, I must say.” He made a charming, deprecating gesture, too much of a gentleman to read another man’s mail. “No names, no dates.” He tossed the letter on a table. “It might have been written to anyone, by anyone. Whatever gave you the idea that it had anything to do with me?” He was beginning to sound testy now.
“Lady Abbott gave me the idea,” I said.
“Oh, really,” he said. “I must confess, she is a friend of mine. How is she anyway?”
“Ten minutes ago, when I saw her in the lobby, she was well,” I said.
“Good God, Grimes,” he said, “don’t tell me Lily is here in the hotel?”
“That’s enough of that,” I said. “You know what I’m here for. Seventy thousand dollars.”
He laughed, almost authentically. “You’re joking, aren’t you? Did Lily put you up to this? She is a joker.”
“I want my seventy thousand dollars, Mr. Fabian,” I said. I made myself sound as menacing as possible.
“You must be out of your mind, sir,” Fabian said crisply. “Now I’m afraid I must go.”
I grabbed him by the arm, remembering the walleyed man in the arcade in Milan. “You’re not leaving this room until I get my money,” I said. My voice rose and I was ashamed of the way I sounded. It was a situation for a basso and I was singing tenor. High tenor.
“Keep your hands off me.” Fabian pulled away and brushed fastidiously at his sleeve. “I don’t like to be touched. And if you don’t get out right away, I’m calling the management and asking for the police. …”
I picked up a lamp from the table and hit him on the head. The lamp shattered with the blow. Fabian looked surprised as he sank slowly to the floor. A thin trickle of blood ran down his forehead. I took out my paper knife and knelt beside him, waiting for him to come to. After about fifteen, seconds he opened his eyes. The expression in them was vague, unfocused. I held the sharp, needle-like point of the stiletto to his throat. Suddenly, he was fully conscious. He didn’t move, but looked up at me in terror.
“I’m not fooling, Fabian,” I said. I wasn’t, either. At that moment, I would have happily killed him. I was trembling, but so was he.
“All right,” he said thickly. “There’s no need to go to extremes. I took your bag. Now let me up.”
I helped him to his feet. He staggered a little and sank into an easy chair. He felt his forehead and looked apprehensively at the blood smeared on his hand when he took it away. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at his forehead. “Good God, man,” he said weakly, “you could have killed me with that lamp.”
“You’re lucky,” I said.
He managed a little laugh, but he kept looking at the stiletto in my hand. “I’ve always detested knives,” he said. “You must be awfully fond of money.”
“Average fond,” I said. “About like you, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t kill for it.”
“How do you know?” I asked. I stroked the blade of the little weapon with my left hand. “I never thought I would either. Until this morning. Where is it?”
“I don’t have it,” he said.
I took a step toward him, threateningly.
“Stand back. Please stand back. It’s … well …Shall we way that I don’t have it at the moment, but that it’s available? Please don’t wave that thing around anymore. I’m sure we can come to terms without further bloodshed.” He dabbed at his forehead again.
Suddenly the reaction set in. I started to shake violently. I was horrified at what I had done. I had actually been on the point of murder. I dropped the stiletto on the table. If Fabian had said at that moment that he refused to give me a cent, I would have walked out the door and forgotten the whole thing. “I suppose,” he said quietly, “at the back of my mind I realized that one day someone would come in and ask me for the money.” There was an echo there that I could not help but recognize. How had Drusack behaved in his desperate hour? “I’ve taken very good care of it,” Fabian said, “only I’m afraid you’ll have to wait awhile.”
“What do you mean—wait awhile?” I tried to keep my tone menacing, but I knew I wasn’t succeeding.
“I’ve taken certain liberties with your little nest egg, Mr. Grimes,” he said. “I’ve made some investments.” He smiled like a doctor announcing an inoperable cancer. “I don’t believe in letting money lie idle. Do you?”
“I haven’t had any money to let do anything before this.”
“Ah,” he said. “Recent wealth. I thought as much. Would you mind if I went into the bathroom and washed off some of this gore? Lily is likely to come in at any moment and I wouldn’t like to frighten her.”
“Go ahead.” I sat down heavily. “I’ll be right here.”
“I’m sure you will.” He got up from his chair and walked unsteadily into the bedroom. I heard water running. There was undoubtedly a door leading from the bedroom into the corridor, but I was convinced he wouldn’t leave. And if he had wanted to I wouldn’t have done anything to prevent him. I felt numb. Investments. I had imagined various possible scenes while on the trail of the man who had taken my money, but I had never thought that when I finally caught up with him our meeting would take the shape of a business conference.
Fabian came out of the bedroom, his hair wet and freshly combed. His step was firm now and there was no indication that just a few minutes before he had been lying on the floor, senseless and bloody. “First,” he said, “would you like a drink?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I believe we can both use one.” He went over to a sideboard and opened it and poured from a bottle of Scotch into two glasses. “Soda?” he asked “Ice?”
“I’ll take it neat.”
“Capital idea,” he said. He slipped in and out of being British. White’s Club, the Enclosure at Epsom. He handed me the whiskey and I gulped it down. He drank more slowly and sat opposite me in the easy chair, twirling the glass in his hand. “If it hadn’t been for Lily,” he said, “you probably never would have found me.”
“Probably not.”
“Women.” He sighed. “Have you slept with her?”
“I’d rather not answer that question.”
“I suppose you’re right.” He sighed again. “Well, now …I imagine you’d like me to begin at the beginning. Do you have the time?”
“I have plenty of time,” I said.
“May I make one proviso before I start?” he asked.
“What’s that?”
“That you don’t tell Lily anything about… well, about all this. As you might have gathered from the letter, she thinks highly of me.”
“If I get my money back,” I said, “I won’t say a word.”
“That’s fair enough.” He sighed again. “First, if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a little about myself.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I’ll make it brief,” he promised.
As it turned out, it wasn’t as brief as all that. He started with his parents, who were poor, the father a minor employee in a small shoe factory in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was born. There was never enough money around the house. He had not gone to college. During World War Two he was in the Air Force, stationed outside London. He had met an English girl from a rich family. Actually, the family lived in the Bahamas, where they were reputed to have large estates. He had been demobilized in England and there, after a hasty courtship, had married the girl. “Somehow,” he said, explaining the union, “I had developed expensive tastes. I had no desire to work and no other prospects for leading the kind of life I wanted any other way.”
He had moved to the Bahamas with his new wife
and taken up British citizenship. His wife’s family weren’t miserly toward him, but they were not generous either, and he had begun to gamble to eke out his allowance. Bridge and backgammon were his games. “Alas,” he said, “I fell into associated vices. Ladies.” One day there had been a family meeting and the divorce had followed immediately. Since that time, he had made do with his gambling winnings. For the most part he had lived fairly comfortably, although with many anxious moments. During part of the winter season the pickings were not bad in the Bahamas, but he was forced to keep traveling. New York, London, Monte Carlo, Paris, Deauville, St. Moritz, Gstaad. Where the money was. And the games.
“It’s a hand-to-mouth existence,” he said. “I never got far enough ahead to take even a month off without worrying. I saw opportunities around me constantly that would have made me a rich man if I had even a modest amount of capital. I won’t say that I was bitter, but I certainly was discontented. I had just turned fifty a few days before the flight to Zurich, and I was not pleased with what the future might have in store for me. It is rasping to the soul to be committed to the company of the rich without being rich yourself. To pretend that losing three thousand dollars in one evening means as little to you as to them. To go from one great palace of a hotel to another while you’re on duty, so to speak, and to hide in dingy out-of-the-way boarding-houses when you’re on your own.”
The ski club group had been particularly lucrative. Almost permanent games had been set up from year to year. He had made himself well-liked, did a minimum amount of skiing to establish his legitimacy, paid his debts promptly, gave his share of parties, never cheated, was agreeable with the ladies, and was introduced to likely prey among the abundant Greek, South American, and English millionaires, all gamblers by nature, proud of their games and careless in their play.
“There was also the possibility,” he said, “of meeting widows with independent fortunes and young divorcées with handsome settlements. Unfortunately,” he said, with a sigh, “I am terribly romantic, a failing in a man my age, and what was offered I wouldn’t have and what I would have wasn’t offered. At least,” he said, with a touch of vanity, “not on a financially acceptable basis. I know that I am not painting a very heroic picture of myself …” he said.
“No,” I said.
“… but I would like you to believe that I tell the truth, that you can trust me.”
“Go on,” I said. “I don’t trust you yet.”
“So,” he said, “that was the man who tried to open a bag that was ostensibly his in the overpriced room at the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz and found that the combination didn’t work.”
“So you sent down for something to break it open with,” I said grimly, remembering my own experience.
“I had the desk send a man up. When he got the bag open, I saw immediately that it wasn’t mine. I don’t know why I didn’t tell him that the bag belonged to somebody else. Some sixth sense, perhaps. Or maybe the sight of the brand-new attaché case lying on top of everything else. People don’t usually pack a case like that in their luggage, but usually carry it by hand. In any event, I thanked the man and tipped him. …Incidentally, I didn’t have the heart to throw the case away. It’s in the bedroom and of course I’ll be pleased to give it back to you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. Without irony. “Of course,” he said, “when I counted the money, I realized that it had been stolen.”
“Of course.”
“It changes the morality of the affair a bit, doesn’t it?”
“A bit.”
“It also meant that whoever had carried it across the ocean would not go crying to Interpol to recover it. Would my reasoning seem inaccurate to you?”
“No.”
“I went through the bag very carefully. I hope you’ll forgive me if I tell you that I found nothing there to make one believe that the owner of the bag was in anything but the most modest circumstances.”
I nodded. “You can say that again, brother,” I said.
“I also found no indication of who the owner was. No address books, letters, et cetera. I even looked in the shaving kit to see if there were any medicines with a name on it.”
I laughed, despite myself.
“You must be an extraordinarily healthy man,” Fabian said, approvingly.
“About the same as you,” I said.
“Ah,” he said, beaming, “you had the same experience.”
“Exactly.”
“I spent the next hour,” he went on, “trying to recall if there was anything in my bag which had my name on it. I decided there was nothing. I had forgotten about Lily’s letter, of course. I thought I had thrown it away. Even so, with her usual caution, I knew no names would be committed to the page. The next step was obvious.”
“You stole the money.”
“Let’s say I put it to use.”
“What do you mean, use?”
“Let me go step by step. I had never been in a position before to risk enough to make any coup really conclusive. In view of the circles in which I moved, the amounts I could risk were derisive. So that even when I won, as I have more often than not, I never reaped the full benefits of my luck. Do you follow me, Grimes?”
“Partially,” I said.
“For example, until now, I have never dared to play bridge at more than five cents a point.”
“Mrs. Sloane told me that you were playing with her husband at five cents a point.”
“That was true. The first night. After that we went up to ten cents a point. Then to fifteen. Naturally, since Sloane was losing rather heavily, he lied to his wife.”
“How much?”
“I’ll be frank with you. When I left St. Moritz, I had Sloane’s check for twenty-seven thousand dollars in my wallet.”
I whistled and looked at Fabian with growing respect. My own poker exploits in Washington dwindled to a pinpoint. Here was a gambler who really knew how to ride his luck. But then I remembered it was my money he was risking, and I began to get angry all over again. “What the hell good does that do me?” I asked.
Fabian put up his hand placatingly. “All in due time, my dear fellow.” I had never expected to be called a dear fellow by a man who had grown up in Lowell, Massachusetts. “I also did quite well, I am happy to say, at backgammon. Perhaps you remember that handsome young Greek with the beautiful wife?”
“Vaguely.”
“He was delighted when I suggested raising the stakes. A little over nine thousand dollars.”
“What you’re telling me,” I said harshly, “is that you ran my stake up thirty-six thousand dollars. Goody for you, Fabian; you’re in the chips and you can give me back the seventy and we’ll shake hands and have a drink on it and we’re both on our way.”
He shook his head sadly. “It isn’t quite as simple as that, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t abuse my patience, man. You either have the money or you don’t. And you’d better have it.”
He stood up. “I believe we both could use another drink,” he said. I glowered at him as he went over to the sideboard. Having refrained from killing him when I had the chance, any lesser threats had depreciated greatly in value. It also occurred to me as I watched his well-tailored back (not my clothes, but from any one of two or three other bags he probably traveled with at all times) that it might all be a lie, a cock-and-bull story to keep me tamped down until somebody—a maid, Lily Abbott, a friend, came into the room. There would be nothing to stop him then from accusing me of annoying him, dunning him for a loan, trying to sell him dirty postcards, anything, and having me thrown out of the hotel. As he gave me my drink, I said, “If you’re lying to me, Fabian, the next time I see you I’m going to be carrying a gun.” I had no idea, of course, of how you went about getting a gun in France. And the only guns I had ever fired were .22 rifles at shooting galleries at town fairs.
“I wish you would believe in me,” Fabian said as he sat down again wit
h his drink, after pouring soda into it with a steady hand. “I have plans for us two that will require mutual trust.”
“Plans?” I felt childishly manipulated, cunningly outmaneuvered by this man who had lived by his wits for nearly thirty years and whose hand could be so steady just a few minutes after he had escaped violent death. “Okay, go on,” I said. “You’re thirty-six thousand dollars richer than you were three weeks ago and you say it isn’t simple to give me back the money you owe me. Why not?”
“For one thing, I have made certain investments.”
“Like what?”
“Before I go into detail,” Fabian said, “let me outline in general what sort of a plan I’d like to suggest.” He took a long sip of his drink, then cleared his throat. “I suppose you have some right to be angry at what I’ve done …”
I made a small, choking noise, which he ignored. “But in the long run,” he said, “I have every reason to believe you’ll be deeply grateful.” I started to interrupt, but he waved me to silence. “I know that seventy thousand dollars in one lump seems like quite a bit of money. Especially to a young man like you, who, I can guess, was never particularly prosperous.”
“What are you driving at, Fabian?” I could not get over the feeling that moment by moment a web was being spun around me and that, in a very short time, I would be unable to move or even utter a sound.
The voice went on, gentle, almost-British, confident, persuasive. “How long would it last you? A year, two years. Three years, at the most. As soon as you surfaced, you would be the prey of conniving men and rapacious women. I take it that you have very little experience, if any, in handling large sums of money. Just the primitive—and if I may permit myself a small criticism—the fairly careless way in which you attempted to transfer your hoard from the States to Europe is plain evidence of that. …”
I certainly was in no position to contradict him about my ineptitude, so I remained silent.
“I, on the other hand,” he went on, thoughtfully twirling the ice in his glass and looking me frankly and directly in the eye, “have been handling considerable sums for nearly thirty years. Where you, in three years, say, would be stranded, penniless, in some backwater of Europe—I take it that you don’t think it would be healthy to return to America …?” He looked at me quizzically.