Herbert?” I said expectantly. Actually, I knew what to expect now. I should have seen it coming.
“This case is getting out of hand,” he said. “I mean . . . it’s getting dangerous. The way things are going, I reckon somebody could soon get hurt.”
“You mean—like Johnny Naples?” I reminded him.
“Right.” Herbert stared at the ketchup, his lip curling. “And he wasn’t just hurt,” he went on. “I mean, he probably was hurt. But he was also killed.”
“You can’t get more hurt than that,” I agreed.
He nodded. “So what I’m saying is, maybe it’s time you split. You’re a good kid, Nick. But you’re only thirteen. This is a case for Tim Diamond.”
It was incredible. Maybe it was the shock of what had happened that day or maybe it was the milk shake, but Herbert was trying to get rid of me. “This is a case for Tim Diamond”—it was a line out of a bad movie, but Herbert really believed it. I could see him switching into his private-detective role even as he sat there, shoulders slumped, eyes hard. He’d have had a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth if cigarettes didn’t make him throw up.
“I figure I’ll send you to Auntie Maureen in Slough,” he went on. I shuddered. Auntie Maureen, my mother’s sister, had a semidetached house and a semidetached artificial hip. She was only fifty years old but was in need of round-the-clock nursing. Whenever I stayed with her, I ended up as her round-the-clock nurse. “Or you could always go to Australia and stay with Mum and Dad,” Herbert added.
I took a deep breath and pronged a forkful of french fries. Whenever Herbert got into these moods, I had to tread carefully. If I ever suggested that the great Tim Diamond needed any help from his thirteen-year-old brother, I’d have been on the next plane to Sydney faster than you could whistle “Waltzing Malteser.”
“It’s nice of you to think of me, Tim,” I said. “And I don’t want to get in your way. But I reckon I’d be safer with you.”
“Safer?” He took a bite out of his burger.
“Sure. I mean, the Fat Man could come for me in Slough. I might get kidnapped, or brutally beaten with Auntie Maureen’s artificial hip.”
“That’s true.”
“But I feel safe with you,” I continued. “Back in the Hotel Splendide, for example. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
Herbert smiled modestly.
“The way you fainted. It was . . . heroic.”
Now he scowled. “You’re not goofing on me, are you?”
“Me? No way.”
I felt it was time to bring the conversation to a close, so I took out the box of Maltesers and put them on the table.
“That’s what we should be worrying about,” I said. “Five million dollars, Herbert. And it’s our only clue.”
“I don’t get it,” Herbert said. Herbert never did.
“Look . . .” I spoke slowly, trying to make it easy for him. “Johnny Naples comes to England with the key to a fortune. That’s what the Fat Man asked us for—remember? A key. Now, all Johnny’s got is this box of Maltesers, but maybe he doesn’t know what it means either.”
“How do you know that?” Herbert asked.
“Because Snape told us that the dwarf had been in England for a whole month before he was killed. Maybe the Falcon didn’t have time to tell him everything before he died. Naples had a rough idea and came over here to look.”
“Go on.”
“All right. So Naples comes to England. He checks into the Hotel Splendide. And he starts looking. But unfortunately for him, there are lots of people interested in him. The same people who are now interested in us. But Johnny Naples still manages to find out what the Maltesers mean. He takes them with him—like you’d take a treasure map. So that nobody will see what he’s carrying, he buys an envelope to put them in. He goes from the hotel to Fulham. But then he sees that he’s being followed. So what does he do?”
“I don’t know,” Herbert said breathlessly. “What does he do?”
“He comes to us. He’s in the street and he happens to see your name on the door. You’re a private detective. That’s perfect. And maybe your name rings a bell.”
“No, Nick,” Herbert interrupted. “It’s the little button by the door that rings the bell . . .”
“No,” I groaned. “I mean Tim Diamond. Diamonds are what this is all about.”
“Oh—I see.”
“Johnny Naples comes in and gives us the envelope. You remember how scared he was? He knew that he was being followed. So he gives us the package—which is what everybody wants—and promises to come back when the heat is off.”
“But he didn’t come back,” Herbert said.
“No. Because he got killed.”
“Not to mention hurt!”
“And now we’ve got the Maltesers. And if we can work out where he was going and what he was going to do with them when he got there, we’ll be rich.”
“That’s terrific!” Herbert exclaimed. As I had hoped, all thoughts of Slough and Auntie Maureen had left his head. Quickly, he finished his meal. Then he picked up the box. “Perhaps the diamonds are inside,” he suggested. “Covered in chocolate.”
“No,” I said. “I doubt if you could fit five million dollars’ worth inside, and anyway, I’ve already eaten six of them and they certainly didn’t taste like diamonds.”
“What do diamonds taste like?”
“That’s not the point, Herbert!”
“So what is the point?”
It was a good question. You can go and buy a box of Maltesers in any candy store, but to save you the money, let me just describe the box we had. It had the name of the candy written in white letters on a red background, surrounded by pictures of the chocolate balls themselves. This was on the top and on all four sides. On one side it also carried the inspiring message the lighter way to enjoy chocolates and on the other, the weight: 146g 5.15 oz.
There was more on the bottom. It read chocolates with crisp, light honeycombed centers and then there was the usual blurb about the milk solids and the vegetable fat that had achieved this miracle. In addition there was a guarantee: This product should reach you in perfect condition . . . and a line asking you to keep your country tidy.
After that, there was a red code number—MLB 493—and, in a red panel, best before 28-12-08. In the left-hand corner, painted in blue, was the bar code, the series of thick and thin lines that you get on all products these days. There was a number beneath that, too: 3521 201 000000. And that is about as complete a description of a box of Maltesers as you are ever going to find in a library or bookshop.
It was not very helpful.
The waitress hobbled over and we ordered two Granny-pies. We sat in silence, waiting for them to arrive. The question was, how could you hide the location of a fortune in diamonds on a box of candy—and for that matter, why choose a box of candy in the first place? The answer was in our hands and even then I might have been able to guess, for the truth is, I had forgotten one important detail. One thing that Johnny Naples had done had slipped my mind. I was still trying to work it out when Herbert spoke.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“No.”
We finished our dessert and asked for the bill.
“How about the little dots?” Herbert asked.
“Little dots?”
“Under the letters.” He pointed at the Maltesers. “They could spell out another message.”
“But there aren’t any little dots,” I said.
“They could be written in invisible ink.”
“I can’t see it.”
“That’s because it’s invisible.” He smiled triumphantly.
“Listen,” I said. “If Johnny Naples didn’t know what the Maltesers meant, he’d have had to find out—right?”
“Right,” Herbert agreed.
“So if we can work out where he went while he was in England, maybe we’ll find out, too.”
“Right.” Herbert frowned. “But he’s
dead. So where do we start?”
“Maybe here,” I said.
I took out the book of matches that I had found in the hotel and gave it to him. They belonged to a place called the Casablanca Club with an address in the West End. There was a map on the inside of the cover and three matches left.
“Where did you get this?” Herbert asked.
“I picked it up in the dwarf’s room at the hotel,” I said. “I thought it might be useful.”
“Yes.” Herbert considered. “We’ll go there tomorrow,” he said. “If we can work out where Johnny Naples went while he was in England, maybe we can find out what the Maltesers mean.”
I nearly choked on my milk shake. “That’s brilliant!” I exclaimed.
“Sure thing, kid,” Herbert said.
I didn’t remind him that I’d said exactly the same thing only a few moments before. But neither did he remind me about Slough or Mum and Dad. This might be a case for Tim Diamond, but as long as I played my cards right, it seemed there was still room for his little brother, Nick.
THE CASABLANCA CLUB
We were woken up at nine the next morning by the engineer who’d come to fix the phone and we just had time to fall asleep again before we were woken up by Betty Charlady, who’d come to fix the apartment. She had brought with her a bag of tools and was soon assembling Herbert’s desk, hammering away at the wood with a mouth full of nails. It seemed incredible that she should do all this for a lousy ten dollars a day, but I assumed I brought out the motherly instinct in her. Strange how I could never do the same for my mother.
While Herbert got dressed and shaved, I nipped out for eggs, milk, and bread. We hadn’t had time to cash the check and money was running low, so I had to squeeze more credit out of the supermarket owner. The owner, Mr. Patel, is a decent old stick. He also owns a decent old stick, which he tried to hit me with as I ran out without paying, but at least I was able to rustle up a decent breakfast for Herbert and me, and a cup of tea for Mrs. Charlady.
After breakfast, Herbert rang the Casablanca Club and I discovered that it would be open that night—although to members only. Betty Charlady was screwing a chair back together in the office at the time and she must have overheard the call, because when she came into the kitchen she was scowling.
“Wassis Casablanca Club?” she asked.
“It’s in Charing Cross,” I said. “We’re going there tonight.”
“You shouldn’t do it, Master Nicholas,” Betty muttered. “At your age.”
I handed her a cup of tea. She took it and sat down, her eyes searching across the table for a biscuit. “It’s part of our investigation,” I explained. “A client of ours may have gone there, so we have to go there, too.”
But Mrs. Charlady wasn’t impressed. “These London clubs,” she said. “They’re just dens of innik-witty.” She shook her head and the gray curls of her hair tumbled like lemmings off a cliff. “You go if you have to. But I’m sure no good will come of it . . .”
Nonetheless, Herbert and I made our way to the Casablanca Club that same night, arriving just after twelve. There’s a corner of Charing Cross, just behind the station, that comes straight out of the nineteenth century. As the road slopes down toward the river, you leave the traffic and the bright lights behind you and suddenly the night seems to creep up on you and grab you by the collar. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the Thames water gurgling in the distance, and as you squint into the shadows you’ll see figures shuffling slowly past like zombies. For this is down-and-out territory. Old tramps and winos wander down and pass out underneath the arches at the bottom, wrapped in filthy raincoats and the day’s headlines.
The Casablanca Club was in the middle of all this. A flight of steps led down underneath a dimmed green bulb, and if you didn’t know what you were looking for, there was no way you’d find it. There was no name, no fancy sign. Only the tinkle of piano music that seemed to seep out of the cracks in the pavement hinted that in the dirt and the dust and the darkness of Charing Cross, somebody might be having a good time.
We climbed down to a plain wooden door about fifteen feet below the level of the pavement. Somebody must have been watching through the spyhole because it opened before we had time to knock.
“Yes?” a voice said.
Friendly place, I thought.
“Can we come in?” Herbert asked.
“You members?”
“No.”
“Then beat it!”
The door swung shut. At the last moment, Herbert managed to get his foot in the crack. There was a nasty crunching sound as his shoe, and possibly his foot, too, got chewed up in the woodwork, but then the door swung open again and I managed to push my way through and into the hall. A bald man in a dinner jacket gave me an ugly look. If he ever wanted to give anyone a pretty look, he’d need major plastic surgery.
“We’re friends of Johnny Naples,” I said.
The man shrugged. “Why didn’t you say so before?” he asked.
“You didn’t ask,” I said.
He opened the door again. Herbert was writhing on the concrete outside, clutching his mangled foot. “Instant membership—ten bucks,” the bald man said. He glanced at me. “You’re underage,” he muttered.
“You don’t look too good yourself,” I replied.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-five.”
“Twenty-five?” He sneered. “You got a driver’s license?”
“No. I got a chauffeur.”
I walked on, leaving Herbert to find the money and pay. In the dim light I could have been any age. Anyway, I was taller than Johnny Naples had ever been and they’d allowed him in.
Funnily enough, the first waiter who saw me mistook me for the dwarf in the half-light. “Mr. Naples!” The words were two drops of oil squeezed into my ear and I was led to a table at the front of a large room. There was such a thick haze in the air that my eyes had more water in them than the house whiskey. I loosened my tie and sat down. It felt like there was more smoke in the air than there was air in the smoke. Another waiter passed. “Good evening, Mr. Naples.”
He put a silver bucket and two glasses on the table. I leaned forward. There was a bottle of champagne in the bucket, surrounded by ice cubes, already uncorked. “With the compliments of the house,” the waiter said. I scratched my head. The dwarf must have been quite a regular here. Came regular, drank regular . . . I wondered what else he did regular at the Casablanca Club.
I looked around me. There were perhaps a hundred people there, sitting at tables or crowding around the bar, where three black-tied waiters shook cocktails behind a curving marble counter. The air was filled with the hubbub of conversation, as thick and as indistinct as the cigarette smoke. There was a dance floor at one end, but tonight there was no band, just a black pianist stroking the ivories with fingers that looked too stubby to sound so good. Right in front of my table there was a stage about the size you’d expect a stage to be in a run-down drinking club. The place had no windows and no ventilation. The smoke had smothered the light, strangled the plants, and it wasn’t doing a lot for me either.
I ignored the champagne and poured myself a glass of water out of the ice bucket. Herbert joined me, muttering about the ten bucks and a moment later a spotlight cut through the clouds and the crowd fell silent. A figure moved onto the stage, a woman in her fifties, who dressed like she was in her thirties, with jewelry flashing here and there to keep your eyes off the wrinkles. She was attractive if you didn’t look too closely. At one time she might even have been beautiful. But the years hadn’t been good to her. They’d taken the color out of her hair, put a husk in her voice, hollowed out her throat, and slapped her around a bit for good measure.
Fumes from all the cigarettes were still swirling around me and I was beginning to understand what passive smoking was all about. Spend too long in here and I’d start wheezing and my fingers would turn yellow.
The pianist had come to the end of a tun
e, but as the woman moved forward he began another and she sang almost as if she didn’t care what she was doing. She sang two or three songs. When she finished, she got a smattering of applause, and as the talk started up again, she moved down to our table and sat opposite me. Only when she was close enough to see the pinks of my eyes (the whites had gone that color in all the smoke) did she see who I was.
“You’re not Johnny,” she said.
“We’re friends of his . . .” I said. I let the sentence hang in the air. I needed her name to complete it.
“Lauren Bacardi,” she said. “Where’s Johnny?”
I looked at Herbert. From the way she was talking, the little guy had obviously meant something to her and I didn’t know how she would take the news. I hoped he’d think of a gentle way to tell her. You know, with a bit of tact.
“He’s dead,” Herbert said.
“Dead?”
“Yup.” He nodded. “Dead.”
She took out a cigarette and lit it. I guessed she needed something to do with her hands. After all, to smoke in the unique atmosphere of the Casablanca Club, you didn’t actually need to light another cigarette. “Was he . . . killed?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. I drank some iced water. It tasted like the metal bucket it had come from. “You knew him?”
She smiled sadly. “We were friends.” Her eyes clouded over. Or maybe it was just the cigarette smoke. I thought she was going to get up and walk out of our lives. The way things turned out, it would have been better if she had. But the pianist had slid into a bluesy number and she needed to talk. “Johnny and I knew each other for ten years,” she said. “But we never met. Not until a month ago.
“We were pen pals. He was in South America. I was over here. Maybe you’ll laugh at me, but we kind of fell in love by mail.” She flicked ash onto the carpet. “We wrote letters to each other for ten years and he never even mentioned that he was a dwarf. I only found out a month ago, when he came over, and by then I’d more or less agreed to marry him. The little rat . . .”
She puffed at her cigarette. The smoke in the room grew a little thicker. Herbert waved a hand in front of his face. I knew how he felt.
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