Highbinders

by Ross Thomas

  Apex had risen and was smiling. “You haven’t met Ceil, have you?”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t. Hello, Mrs. Apex.”

  She crossed the room and held out her hand, still smiling. “I hope, Mr. St. Ives, that you won’t be disappointed to learn that I adore listening at keyholes.”

  “Nothing I like better myself,” I said, “unless it’s reading other people’s mail.”

  “Oh, do you like to do that, too?”

  “I also have a few other failings.”

  She let go of my hand and cocked her head to one side, studying me with those eyes that I saw were somewhere between blue and green. “And you’re going to be our go-between. How nice.”

  “I’m going to discuss it, at least.”

  Before she could say anything else, Jack, the ancient butler, wheeled in the tea trolley.

  “Oh, good, tea,” she said. “Over here, Jack, I think.” Over here was near a straight-backed chair that had been covered with a green material that I thought might have looked better on a snooker table. She lowered herself into the chair and then waited for the old man to roll the tea trolley over.

  “Thank you, Jack,” she said.

  “Will the gentleman be staying for luncheon, mum?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? We’ll all be going to Father’s for lunch.”

  “I’ll tell cook then, mum. She won’t like it, will she? But I’ll tell her.”

  “And I’ll tell Father hello for you. And Uncle Norbert, too.”

  “Yes, mum. You do that. Tell him I said hello. And your uncle, too. Him, too. And I’ll tell cook that there’ll be nobody for lunch. Nobody at all.” The old man stood there for a moment as if trying to think of somebody else he should tell, and when he couldn’t, he turned and moved briskly away with his spry step.

  “Poor old Jack,” Ceil Apex said.

  “How old is he?”

  “Jack? I don’t really know.”

  “He was a wedding gift,” Apex said.

  “He wasn’t either,” she said. “It was just that when Dad and Uncle Norbert moved into their new flat, there wasn’t room for Jack. Or Tom either.”

  “Tom’s the chauffeur,” Apex said. “He was a wedding gift, too.”

  “Of course, Tom’s younger than Jack,” Ceil Apex said. “At least ten years younger.”

  “Tom’s only seventy,” Apex said.

  “Jack’s not eighty.”

  “How old was Jack when you first remember him?”

  She thought about it as she arranged the teacups. “Well, he was getting on even then and that was twenty years ago—when I first remember him.”

  More like twenty-five years ago, I thought, as I sat there watching her pour the tea. I guessed her age at being around thirty, a year either way. She had one of those faces in which the bones are just right and she would look the same at forty as she did now and not much older at fifty unless her neck and throat started to go. Her hair was that light ash blond color that she could start frosting at thirty-five or so and nobody would ever know whether it was really going gray or not. Although her cat eyes were her best feature, she had a nice nose and a firm chin, perhaps a little too firm, and one of those wide, happy-looking mouths that seldom seemed to be still, even if she weren’t talking. She wasn’t a beauty, at least not in the accepted meaning of the word, but she had a face that would stay with you for a long time.

  “How do you like your tea, Mr. St. Ives?” she said.

  “With a little sugar.”

  Apex was still up so I sat there and let him hand me my cup and then we were all sitting there, sipping our tea and smiling at each other in the big house in Knights-bridge and except for our clothes, it might have been May of 1938.

  “You mentioned a sword,” I said.

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I?” she said.

  “Do you know much about swords, Phil?” Apex said.

  “Next to nothing. I know even less about any sword that’s worth one hundred thousand pounds. Unless it’s Excalibur.”

  “Or Durandel,” Ceil said and smiled.

  “Roland’s, right?”

  “See,” she said to her husband. “He does know something about them.”

  “Look at his face,” he said.

  She studied it for a moment. “Apprehension mingled with skepticism, I’d say.”

  Apex nodded. “He thinks I’ve come out of retirement.” He grinned at me. “Ceil knows all about what I once did to make ends meet.”

  “He was very good at it, too, did you know that, Mr. St. Ives?”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said. “But it doesn’t sound like him.”

  “What?”

  “King Arthur’s sword would be a little gamey even for you, wouldn’t it, Eddie?”

  This time he laughed. “I might have worked it for five hundred quid now and again, but not for a hundred thousand.”

  “But there is a sword?” I said.

  Apex nodded.

  “And it’s been stolen?”

  “From my father,” Ceil Apex said. “And uncle.”

  “And the thieves want a hundred thousand pounds to hand it back?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So it’s worth how much?”

  Apex thought about it. “At a million pounds, it would be a steal; at two million pounds, an irresistible bargain.”

  “It’s hot then, isn’t it?” I said. “I mean there wouldn’t be all this hush-hush about it, if it weren’t hot.”

  Apex glanced at his wife. They smiled at each other. “Well, I suppose you could say it’s hot, but the rightful owners not going to do much complaining.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Apex said, “he’s been dead for about eight hundred years.”

  Chapter Seven

  CEIL APEX’S FATHER AND uncle lived in a mansion. Although not a term to be used indiscriminately, the four-story, dark stone building took up nearly a third of a block on Groom Place, virtually within hailing distance of Belgrave Square. Of course, Groom Place is a short street and from its name, I assumed that it may not have been too fashionable at one time, perhaps a few centuries back, but to me the big stone house was still a mansion and I suspected that it was to most people who are at all interested in the opulent.

  Neither Eddie Apex nor his wife had been willing to tell me anything more about the sword that was supposed to be an irresistible bargain at two million pounds. They had insisted that I wait until lunch so that I could hear it from the two men it had been stolen from.

  “This is what you call a flat?” I said to Ceil Apex as we got out of the Rolls with old Tom’s help and walked up a short flight of stone steps.

  “Oh, they don’t have the entire place,” she said. “They have only the first two floors. Some big-rich Greek has the other two, but he’s seldom there. There’re separate entrances, of course.”

  “I was worried about that.”

  She laughed. “After Eddie and I were married it gave Father and Uncle Norbert an excuse to splurge a bit. I’m afraid they might have overdone it.”

  From the outside the building was nothing spectacular, just a big, square, four-storied structure with a flat roof. It was built out of a dark red, almost purplish stone and architecturally I thought it was a bust. But someday, I kept telling myself, I was going to move out of my “deluxe” efficiency in the Adelphi and into some place decent and even perhaps a bit posh. So I kept up with real estate trends in some of the world’s high rent districts, places such as New York’s upper East Side, Paris, Rome, St. Thomas, and Aspen, Colorado. I also, more out of horrified curiosity than real interest, kept abreast of rents and land values in London’s West End, at least in its more fashionable sections such as Mayfair, Belgravia, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, and Kensington. In my high cost of shelter race, London won going away, with New York in place and Paris in show. Rome was a close fourth and St. Thomas and Aspen tied for fifth. And I kept on renewing my lease at the Adelphi.

&nb
sp; So I didn’t even try to guess what it cost Ceil Apex’s father and uncle to live where they did. I assumed only that they were extremely wealthy, perhaps even rich. After all, the rich were the only ones who could afford English Eddie Apex as a son-in-law.

  There was no superannuated butler to open the door for us at the house on Groom Place. Instead, there was something young and curvy, dressed in a black dress that may have been a uniform, but whether it was or not, was at least three sizes too small, and perhaps three or four inches too short. She had a round olive face and dark eyes and a very white smile which she turned on at the sight of Ceil Apex. She also bobbed up and down in something that resembled a curtsey.

  “Hello, Luisa,” Ceil Apex said.

  “Miss Ceil; welcome,” the girl said, or something that sounded very much like that.

  Ceil Apex turned to her husband. “Ask her where Father and Uncle Norbert are.”

  Apex started speaking to the girl in a language that I at first took to be Spanish, but which I finally decided was Portuguese. He would speak Portuguese, of course. At one time there had been some fat prospects in his line of work in Rio.

  It was a brief, animated conversation with much giggling and eye-rolling on the part of Luisa and some expressive Latinate gestures from Apex who, I decided, plunged right into whatever role he played.

  “What was that all about?” his wife said as we followed the maid down a long, wide hall.

  “They’re in the red room,” Apex said.

  “That wasn’t all she said.”

  “I asked her if she were getting any.”

  “And she said she was, I trust.”

  “She said that life was very full.” Apex looked at me. “Maybe you understand now why we’re saddled with old Tom and Jack. Ceil’s dad and uncle are a couple of aging goats. When they moved here they hired four of these Portuguese bints to look after them. The old boys run a regular harem.”

  “You’re just jealous, darling,” his wife said.

  “You’re right. I am.”

  At the end of the long wide hall that was lined with heavy oiled furniture and dim old paintings, the girl opened a door and stood to one side, smiling warmly at all of us. I thought that she probably smiled most of the time.

  The red room was just that. Red. The walls were red plush and the curtains were red velvet and there was a dark maroon carpet on the floor and on it rested a lot of curved, ornate furniture that must have gone back to Victoria’s time. All of the furniture, except for some massive oak and mahogany tables, seemed to be upholstered in various shades of blending reds. There were also some paintings that looked vaguely familiar and there was one above the mantel that I especially wanted to take a closer look at once the introductions were over.

  “Mr. St. Ives,” she said, “this is my father, Ned Nitry, and my uncle, Norbert Nitry.”

  I shook hands with Ned first and then with Norbert. Both of them had Ned’s daughter’s eyes, except that where hers were blue-green, theirs were a tawny brown, so I suppose it was their bone structure she had and not their eyes. And while she had the look about her of a half-wild cat, they had the look of a couple of lazy lions who were getting a little long in the tooth, but not so much so that they couldn’t make their authority felt when they thought it was worth the effort.

  “Do sit down, Mr. St. Ives, do,” said Ned Nitry and I sat down in a low plush armchair with an oval back.

  Norbert Nitry moved over to a drinks tray and said, “Well, what’re we having, a touch of whisky? Whisky’s your drink, Eddie. What about you, Mr. St. Ives?”

  “Whisky’s his drink, too, Bert,” Apex said.

  “Water or soda?”

  “Water,” I said.

  “And sherry for my girl and gin and it for Ned and me,”Norbert Nitrysaid, mixed the drinks deftly, and served them around.

  We sat there in the mansion in Belgravia and tasted our drinks and the scene was fine but the accents were all wrong. At least, the Nitry brothers’ accents were. They were both in their sixties, probably their early sixties, but it was hard to tell which was the elder. They were both of medium height and plump, if not fat, although it didn’t show in their faces too much because of those bones. They were closely barbered faces, a healthy pink, and although their hair might have been thinning on top it was thick and gray and long above the ears. They resembled each other enough to be taken for brothers, but not for twins. Ceil Apex’s father, Ned, had a mouth that was a bit thinner and a bit firmer than his brother’s. A bit harder really. Despite the careful barbering and the tendency toward plumpness, there was nothing soft about either of those faces with their tired lion eyes, blunt noses, lump chins, and those tight, wide mouths that twenty years ago might have been tough. Or just mean.

  And although their tailor, probably the same one patronized by Eddie Apex, had done wonders for their figures, nobody had done anything for their accents which to me sounded more like Lambeth than Belgravia. I’m not that good on English accents. I can distinguish between Manchester and Mayfair, but not between Oxford and Sandhurst, if, indeed, there is anything to distinguish. The people who had sat on those same red plush Victorian chairs seventy-five or eighty years ago would, without a qualm, have called the Nitry brothers’ accents lower class. I’m not sure what they would have been called today. Working class maybe. Such accents in England were supposed to be a handicap to one’s upward economic mobility although they didn’t seem to have bothered the Nitry brothers any.

  “Well,” Ned Nitry said, “Eddie tells us that you’ve already done a job of work for us.”

  “I spent a night in jail, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Doped your drink, did they?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m not surprised. They’re probably a nasty lot.”

  “You’re talking about the thieves.”

  “Correct. The thieves.”

  “What did they steal from you?”

  “Didn’t Eddie tell you?”

  “He said they stole a sword. Offhand, I can’t think of many swords that’re worth anywhere near two or three million pounds.”

  “Well, Bert’s our sword expert,” he said, turning to Uncle Norbert. “Tell him about the sword, Bert.”

  Bert took a swallow of his gin, leaned his head back, and looked at the ceiling with the practiced gesture of the expert tale spinner. “Know much about the swords that were used in the age of chivalry, Mr. St. Ives?” he said, sounding the “ch” in chivalry like the “ch” in church.

  “Your son-in-law exhausted my knowledge earlier today,” I said. “I know about Excalibur and Roland’s sword, Durandel, but the rest of what I know I got mostly from Prince Valiant.”

  “Valiant? I can’t recall a Prince Valiant.”

  “He’s in a comic strip but the guy who draws him seems to be fussy about details.”

  “Well, no matter,” Bert said. “Arthur and Roland are long before the time I’m talking about. Long before. I’m talking about the time of the Crusades from about 1099 up to 1250. That’s A.D. Anno Domini.”

  “There must have been a lot of swords around about that time,” I said because he had paused in his tale as if waiting for some comment and it was all I could think of to say.

  “Ah, and what swords!” Uncle Bert said, warming to his subject. “Proper swords, they were, some with three-foot blades and perfect balance and weighing no more’n two or three pounds and sharp as carving knives, sharper than today’s, in fact, and just the thing for slicing through chain mail and armor plate.”

  I remembered a film that I had seen as a child. It had been about the Crusades, probably the first one in 1099, and there had been a confrontation between the English and the Saracens. I guess they were the Saracens. At any rate, the Englishman was showing off his sword. He took an iron bar, about an inch thick, and with a mighty blow of his sword, slashed through it. The Saracen, an oily type, I recall, smiled disdainfully and said something such as, “You will still los
e, Englishman. Your swords are not sharp enough.” And with that he drew his own, a wickedly curved job, tossed up a silk scarf, and let it float down upon his upturned blade which sliced it neatly in two.

  “Have you ever heard of the Sword of St. Louis, Mr. St. Ives?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there are stories and stories about it. Some true, I’d say, but most not. But before he became a Saint, Louis was King of France, King Louis the Ninth. That’s fact. And in 1250 he led his Crusade into Egypt. That’s fact. And that same year he was defeated and captured by the Saracens at Mansourah. And that’s fact. But what happened to his sword?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nobody does,”Norbert said. “Not really, they don’t. Some say he buried it. Some say he painted it black and gave it to one of his knights for safekeeping. Nobody is quite sure what the knight did with it, but most think he flogged it.”

  “To whom?”

  “Nobody knows; probably another knight. But we don’t hear anything else about it, not even rumor, for nearly a century. Then it supposedly turns up in 1368, still in Egypt, but this time in the Hall of Victories in the Alexandria arsenal. It might have been taken by the Mameluke Sultans from somebody fighting with the king of Cyprus, Peter of Lusignan, who was also king of Jerusalem, titular king anyhow. He got defeated trying to take Cairo in 1365.”

  “Then what?” I said.

  “Then nothing. Not for another two centuries when it shows up in Constantinople in 1573. After that, there’s a rumor about its being in Moscow in 1731. The dimensions are right anyhow. The blade’s exactly thirty-four and a half inches long; the weight’s right, three pounds, two ounces; the crosspiece is straight, but curved down slightly at the ends; the hilt is solid metal painted black, and the pommel is about the size and shape of an oversized Brazil nut.”

  “How did they know it was the same sword?” I said.

  “The blade was the finest steel that ever came out of Bordeaux,” Uncle Norbert said. “There and Milan and Passau, and Cologne and Augsburg. That’s where your good steel came from then. It was engraved with Latin, too, Cristus Vincit, Cristus Reinat, Cristus Inperat. That was the war cry of the Third Crusade. That was engraved on one side. On the other side was engraving in Arabic to show that it belonged to the Alexandria arsenal.”