“I’m afraid I don’t have too much time, M’sieu,” Kek said, and stopped in the foyer of the apartment, the door behind him still slightly open. “An early luncheon appointment. But we should be able to transact our business here without too much loss of time, if M’sieu doesn’t object—”
“The sooner the better,” Girard said in his harsh voice, and looked at the briefcase again with avid eyes.
“But before we do,” Kek went on evenly, “I should like to hear you repeat to me the exact terms of our wager, so there will be no possibility of any misunderstanding.”
The tiny eyes hardened, narrowing. “There’ll be no misunderstanding, M’sieu. I made a wager with you which I am prepared to keep, and which you had better be prepared to keep.”
“And the terms?” Kek asked quietly.
“The terms, as you know very well, were as follows: I bet you fifty thousand dollars of mine to five dollars of yours, that you would not—repeat, not—bring a Chang Tzu T’sien carving from the Ile Rocheux museum through American Customs and deliver it to me. Today! Now!” Suspicion twisted the pockmarked face. “Now, M’sieu, is your understanding any different?”
“No,” Kek answered with relief. “I’m pleased to say my recollection of our bet is the same as yours.” He sighed and reached into his pocket. “You know, M’sieu Girard, you are a very lucky man. You won.”
And he handed over five dollars.
“I think Girard was too stunned to say anything, or at least he didn’t say anything as I bid him fond farewell and got out of there.” Kek smiled at the memory. “I imagine he’s been saying all sorts of things ever since.”
Anita and André were staring at him in astonishment. Anita shook her head, bewildered. “But where—”
“The beautiful carving?” Kek sighed and shrugged. “On its way to the Ile Rocheux Gallery, sent by an unknown admirer—and repentant ex-professional thief—with the Metropolitan Museum as a return address if the post office cannot find Ile Rocheux, which wouldn’t surprise me. At times they have trouble finding Bridgeport, Connecticut. And I’m afraid the package was insured for far less than its full value. We’ll have to economize on little things like that, but little economies add up to big savings, I’m told.…”
“I’m glad,” Anita said simply. “I never did like the idea of your stealing the carving. You’re not a thief.”
“Not a good one, that’s sure. Besides, there are dangers involved, like getting shot. And the hours are awful. But the big reason for sending the carving back was that I couldn’t bear the thought of Girard leering at that lovely piece of ivory every day.”
“And, of course, if M’sieu Girard had possession of it,” Anita added shrewdly, “you’d never get a chance to see it again, whereas in Ile Rocheux, as a visiting tourist—”
“As visiting tourists we could see it. Yes, that thought also occurred to me,” Kek said, and smiled. He looked up at the waiter who had appeared at his side. “No, thank you, Michael. No drink for me this afternoon.”
André frowned in disbelief. “No drink before lunch?”
“Not today,” Kek said, and came to his feet as another man approached. “Ah, Max! Glad you could join us. Rose couldn’t come? Too bad. Well, Anita is showing my friend André the town this afternoon, so I thought that possibly after lunch we might have a little game of something.…”
Turn the page to continue reading from the Kek Huuygens Mysteries
Merry-Go-Round
“One million dollars …”
The man facing me was Kek Huuygens, and he bit his lip as if he had said something slightly nasty; his eyes dropped to stare moodily into his empty glass. It had contained Unterberg and Coca-Cola, a sickening combination he had ordered with the disclaimer that it was good for his stomach. He looked as if some solid food would have been much better. Until I ran into him in the street a few minutes before, I hadn’t seen Huuygens for fourteen years—not since 1944—but he hadn’t changed. And in the old days, Kek Huuygens had always been good for copy. So I merely forced a deprecating laugh.
“One thousand dollars?” I said it with just the proper amount of disbelief he would have expected. “I didn’t think that Kek Huuygens ever bothered with anything that small.”
“Not one thousand,” he said quietly. His eyes treated me with the scorn my subterfuge merited. “One million.” His finger tapped idly against the side of his glass with just the hint of apology; even in his present shabby state there was no doubt that the man was an artist.
I waved for the waiter. Huuygens acknowledged my hospitality with the faintest of nods.
The waiter came and replenished our glasses. Huuygens watched the pouring of his drink with almost clinical detachment, but once the waiter had turned his back, he drank deeply, eagerly, and then wiped his lips. He saw my look and smiled bitterly.
“Gaudy, but not neat, eh?” he said. “Not the man you used to know? Well, I’m not the man you used to know.”
I didn’t say a word. He studied me a moment in silence and then sighed. “I’m not even the man I used to know,” he said with soft regret, and added quietly, qualifyingly, “not within a million miles.”
I sipped my drink.
It all started in Brussels (Huuygens said after a pause, eyeing me with mild hatred for having placed him in my debt for the paltry sum of two drinks). The idea sprang into my head full-grown, out of nowhere. A brilliant, fantastic idea, and simple as all great ideas are simple. Ideas have been my ruin.… In any event, I had come to Brussels on a sort of vacation. Elsa, my wife—and I’m sure you remember her—wanted to visit her mother in Maastricht and also do some shopping, and I had at that time a little money and no particular reason not to bring her.
This particular day, I was free of Elsa and having lunch with a friend of mine—or at least, he was a friend at the time. Friends are cheap when one can buy one’s own drinks.… In any event, I was having lunch with this man and our conversation fell into the standard pattern of all luncheon conversations in those days. This was directly following the war, you understand, and restaurant talk in Europe followed the certain ritual of a tribal dance where each partner knows the steps of the other. We began by discussing the Belgian franc, moved almost with rhythm to the solidity of the Swiss currency—this coincided with the fish course—and came to the English pound-sterling with the trifle.
You must remember those days; you were with the Tribune in Paris then, as I recall. If you saw a man and a woman walking together, arms locked about one another’s waists, heads bent to touch in closest intimacy, you could be sure they were not talking about love. They were talking about foreign exchange, or documents, or passports, or permits, or—but I am getting away from my subject.
As I was saying, I was having lunch with this friend when suddenly he looked up, and then leaned across the table and said in a low voice: “Speaking of the tragedies connected with exchange”—we hadn’t been, but we would have been soon enough, with the brandy—“the perfect example just walked in. Don’t look now, but …” He hesitated a moment and then continued. “He’s the handsome, youngish-looking fellow the fat waitress is placing in that corner by the rubber plant.”
I looked over his shoulder into a faintly stained mirror in time to see a rather young, blond man being seated at the corner table. I turned my gaze back to my friend.
“And just what is his great tragedy?” I asked a bit lightly
“Five million dollars,” my friend answered seriously “Or at least, the equivalent of that sum in Belgian francs.’
Despite my normal equilibrium, I’m afraid my interest showed. Five million dollars in any currency was alway guaranteed to interest me. My friend smiled understandingly. “That’s Waldeck Klees, of Klees Imports. You’ve heard of him?”
Of course I had heard of him. I said as much, and then asked, “But I was given to understand that he had either sold or abandoned the company his father left him, and gone off to America.”
; “He would love to,” my friend said with a faint smile. “He would adore to. But the Belgian Government won’t allow him to transfer any of his francs to dollars.”
I stared across the table in amazement. “But certainly …”
My friend shook his head as he read my thoughts. “No,” he replied. “I know the people in the black market who made the offer, and the most they would give him is twenty-five per cent. Nobody knows what can happen to currencies here, and there is growing danger in such transactions.”
My eyes went back to the mirror, studying the young man. A tragic figure. Waldeck Klees … of Klees Imports.…
And that’s when the idea struck me. It came all at once, clear and complete. My face must have shown something, because my friend looked at me curiously, but I forced myself to smile, and finished our meal as quickly as possible.
When I got home that afternoon, Elsa was draped over a chaise longue reading a policier and eating bonbons. I have never been able to understand how she could practically live on bonbons and maintain that fabulous figure! But in any event, she was there and I sat down on the foot of the chaise longue and pushed her feet aside to make room.
“Chérie,” I said, “we are about to entertain at a cocktail party.”
“Why?” she asked with the little pout that never failed to intrigue most men, but which could irritate me beyond measure.
“Because I say so,” I told her bluntly. “The only thing is that it is absolutely essential that one particular man be there. And how you arrange this is completely in your hands.”
“Who?”
“Waldeck Klees. I’m sure you’ve heard the name.”
She thought a moment. Elsa could be quite smart at times, and she knew when not to argue. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve heard of him. I believe he’s a friend of the Fleurs.” She looked at me coolly. “When do you want the party and how many people do you want to invite?”
I smiled at her. “As soon as possible. And I should like it to be small—a friendly little group. I’m sure you know what I want.”
Well, I never even asked Elsa how she arranged it, but a week later, I found myself hosting a very delightful, intimate cocktail party. We were living then in the Boulevard Franklin Roosevelt, in one of those squatty little ultra-modern apartments that have sprung up like gold-plated sugar cubes along the park there. The flat, of course, was not mine. It belonged to a friend who was traveling, but there was no need for anyone to know that. And the servants, of course, had been hired for the evening.
I handled my duties as a host in a manner quite satisfactory, but still I managed to be alone when Elsa appeared with Klees, so that I was free to spend a few moments with him. I expressed my delight in meeting a person I had heard so much about, slipped my arm through his, stopped the butler to provide us with drinks, and led him off to an isolated corner. As we sat down, he glanced about.
“You have a very lovely establishment.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “We’ve been very happy here. However, we’ll be leaving for America in a few weeks. You see”—I smiled a bit apologetically—“I’ve finally managed to get my money out of Belgium in dollars.” I looked about the room. “It has really been a fine apartment, though. Tell me,” I went on, bringing my eyes back to him, “have you seen the Parisian Ballet? I understand that Marchand is wonderful.”
He denied having attended the ballet, accepted a replenishment of his drink, and leaned back thoughtfully.
“Legally?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The money,” he said quietly. “Were you able to get it out legally?”
“Of course.” I lifted my eyebrows at his implied suggestion. “I should scarcely have mentioned it otherwise. And of course, I couldn’t travel so freely if anything illegal were involved.”
“But just how …” he began, but I had already arisen and turned in the direction of some late guests who had entered.
“Some old friends,” I explained apologetically. “If you’ll excuse me …”
Somehow, I never managed to be alone with him the rest of the evening. Elsa passed some time talking to him, and I smiled vaguely at him several times from various small groups, but my duties as host prevented my getting together with him. When the party finally broke up, I shook hands with him and thanked him for having accepted our invitation. He nodded.
“We must have lunch together soon,” he said, holding my hand.
“I should be delighted,” I answered. “I’ll give you a ring.” He stared at me a moment and then went off to join the others at the lift.
Well, of course he called me about two days later, and after consulting a mythical appointment calendar, I arranged to see him a few days later at his club. His club was one that I knew by name and one which I had always dreamed of being invited to join although, of course, I never was. It was a small building located in one of those lovely winding streets running off the Grand’ Place, and boasted the finest cuisine in all Brussels—which is saying quite a bit.
In any event, we settled ourselves comfortably in the bar before the fire, and Klees wasted no time in getting down to business.
“I will tell you quite frankly why I wanted to meet you,” he said. “You claim you have a method for getting money out of Belgium in dollars—and legally. I should like to hear how you were able to accomplish it.”
I managed to look a bit upset, as if embarrassed by a host taking unfair advantage of a guest’s position. “I simply happened to mention it in passing.” I protested, “to explain our reason for leaving our apartment …”
He looked me right in the eye. “You mentioned it for no such reason,” he said with complete calm. “The apartment is not yours. The servants were hired for the evening. I have spent the last few days checking on you, my friend. You are a Pole by birth, passing yourself off as a Dutchman, and you have actually been an American citizen by naturalization for a year or so. Your wife is a Belgian, a former actress.… And I am also convinced that the purpose of that obviously spurious cocktail party was simply to intrigue me with a suggestion for getting my money out in dollars.”
His face was suddenly split in that infernal boyish grin of his.
“Well—I’m intrigued. It was what you wanted, what you were aiming for. So please, let us waste no more time with these pointless dramatics.”
If I looked startled, believe me, it was not all acting. Still, I could not help but point out that had I approached him—at his home, say—I would have been thrown out by the butler.
His big hand waved this aside.
I became all business. “How much do you want to transfer?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Five million dollars’ worth of francs.”
I nodded. “It will take some time. Six or seven months, at least.”
He frowned. “You bring it out in dribs and drabs?”
“Oh, no,” I assured him. “When it comes, it comes at once, issued by the Belgian Government through one or more of its banks.” He stared at me. “But it will be expensive,” I added.
“Just how expensive?”
I matched his forthrightness. “It will cost you one million of those five million dollars,” I said evenly. “That will be my fee. Also …”
“One million dollars?”
“Much cheaper than the black market,” I pointed out. “And safe.” He merely stared at me, so I continued. “There will be certain expenses involved, as well. These would also fall to your account.”
“Naturally,” he said drily. He leaned against the cushion of his chair in deep thought. I passed the time in slowly sipping my martini. At last he nodded.
“Very well,” he said. “If you can demonstrate to me how this money can be legally transferred from Belgian francs to dollars within a reasonable period of time, you can consider me interested.”
I studied the face before me. This, of course, was the only flaw in the scheme—if you can call it a flaw: the fact that I would have to d
isclose the scheme without any guarantees. Still, it was obvious that the details would have to be divulged; and also, I thought I could trust the man.
I pushed my glass aside and leaned forward, speaking slowly. He nodded from time to time as if in appreciation of the brilliance of the idea. When at last I finished, he leaned back, pursing his lips as he considered every phase of my plan.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes. It is certainly possible. Very clever. Of course it places me a bit more in your hands than I like to be …”
“True,” I admitted, since, of course, it was perfectly true and we both knew it. “Still, there is no other way to do it. You can’t be in two places at the same time. And if I were to cheat you, I could end up in prison for stealing; whereas, if I don’t cheat you, I end up with a million dollars and no trouble.”
He nodded and pushed himself to his feet. “Well, we shall have to think about it,” he said, and turned in the direction of the dining room. “Shall we eat?”
I frankly admit that the next two days were nervous ones for me. By the evening of the second day, I had just about come to the conclusion that either Klees had decided not to go along with the idea, or was going to make the move with somone else. For the tenth time, I was on the verge of calling him, when he finally rang through on the telephone and asked me to meet him for lunch.
To make a long story short, Klees agreed with the scheme—although he still wasn’t happy about my cut—and three days later Elsa and I were on the Ile de France on our way to the States. Not first-class, but still …
(Huuygens paused and then quite blatantly waved an arm for the waiter. I waited while his drink was poured; he raised his glass in a mock salute and drank deeply. When he resumed speaking, I thought he was changing the subject, but as he continued, I soon saw the connection.)
You know (Huuygens continued), this America is the most amazing country! If one is too old for the draft, or has the type of job that does not require social security, he can easily pass his entire life without any official identification whatsoever. And if this lack disturbs one, it is the easiest thing in the world to arrange whatever documentation one’s ego prefers. There are Diner’s Club Cards, Hotel Credit Cards, Gasoline Credit Cards—well, I could go on half the night.
The Wager Page 18