NICK VELVET HAD BEEN home for weeks, in a state of brooding inactivity, when the summons came. It was from a man in Brooklyn whom Nick had once helped, and his voice was raspingly familiar on the phone.
“It’s for a friend of mine in Miami,” the man told him. “If you can fly down there tonight he’ll meet you at the airport.”
Nick hesitated only a moment. “I’ll be there. What’s his name?”
“He’ll be using the name of Mason.”
“How will I recognize him?”
“He’ll recognize you.”
Nick went upstairs to the fancy yellow bedroom and began to pack. After a while Gloria came in with two cans of beer. “You’re not going away again, Nicky?”
“I have to look over some new plant sites in Florida. Should be back by the end of the week.”
She leaned against the door frame, her long hair tumbling over the softness of her face. “I was hoping we could go sailing now that the weather’s warm.”
“We’ll go as soon as I get back,” he promised. “I won’t be long, really. I have to make some money for us, don’t I?”
“Sure, Nicky. Send me a postcard, will you? Something pretty, with an orange grove on it.”
He kissed her lightly on the lips and went downstairs with his suitcase.
The flight down the Atlantic coast was smooth and uneventful, and the skyline of Miami was much as he remembered it from his last visit during the 1972 political conventions. That time he’d stolen something for the staff of an unsuccessful presidential candidate, and he liked to think his action may have altered the course of the convention.
This trip started out in a much more prosaic manner. He was met at the airport by a beefy-cheeked man in a rumpled summer suit who ushered him into a waiting car. “Mr. Mason is sorry he couldn’t meet you in person,” the man said.
“Are we going to his home?”
“A hotel room. He conducts all his business in hotel rooms.”
“I see.”
The man, who said his name was Jimmy, spoke little until they reached their destination, a third-rate hotel north of the city and near the Hialeah racetrack. “Room 26,” Jimmy said. “I’ll wait out here for you.”
Nick found the door to Room 26 slightly ajar and pushed it open. He was utterly unprepared for the sight that greeted him—a man in garish clown’s makeup and wearing an old tuxedo sat in a chair facing the door.
“You’re Nick Velvet? Come in, come in!” The voice was obviously disguised.
“Mr. Mason?” Nick asked, stepping forward uncertainly. He could see nothing of the man’s face beneath the heavy layers of makeup. The skin was dead-white, with big red lips, red spots on each cheek, and a red rubber ball for a nose.
“Mason is the name I use. You’ll forgive the clown makeup, but I find it necessary at times to conceal my appearance and identity. I was told by a friend in Brooklyn that you’re an expert thief who specializes in the unusual.”
“I steal anything without value—never money or jewels. My fee is $20,000—in cash.” Nick’s eyes roamed the hotel room, searching for some clue to the man’s identity. All he saw was a briefcase pushed half under the bed. He thought the initials on it were JKS.
“Could you steal a circus poster?” the clown asked.
“Certainly.”
“It’s part of a collection owned by a retired old clown named Herbie Benson. He lives near Miami. I’ll give you the address.”
“Why is it worth so much to you? Is the poster a collector’s item?”
“Be curious on someone else’s time, Velvet.” The harsh words seemed, somehow incongruous with the grinning clown’s face. “Here’s a down payment, along with Herbie Benson’s address and a description of the poster I want. How long will it take you?”
“Seems fairly simple,” Nick replied. “This is Monday. Let’s say Thursday night, or sooner. I’ll come here with the poster.”
“Fine.”
Nick shook the man’s gloved hand and left the room. Jimmy, the driver, was lounging by his car, and Nick gave him the address of a moderately priced hotel on Biscayne Bay. Heading downtown, he opened the envelope and counted ten hundred-dollar bills inside. Then he put Benson’s address in his wallet and read over the description of the circus poster he’d been hired to steal:
Great National Circus Poster of the 1916 season, with five acrobats at top, rhinoceros and clowns at bottom.
Nick put it back in the envelope with the money. At the hotel entrance he thanked Jimmy for the ride and checked into a room overlooking the bay. There were hotel postcards in the drawer, and he mailed one to Gloria.
The town of Snake Creek was north of Miami, along a canal that ran inland from North Miami Beach to the edge of the Everglades. It was a rural area, barely touched by the spreading suburbs of the city proper, and as Nick drove his rented car down the main street he might have been in any part of the South, far removed from the luxury hotels of Miami Beach.
Herbie Benson seemed much like the other retired residents of Snake Creek, and at first glance there seemed nothing about his sagging face and dull eyes to suggest a former circus clown. He lived in a small white house with peeling paint and steps worn to the bare wood by the passage of feet. He was a little man, aging like his house, and his weak eyes focused on Nick with difficulty.
“Do I know you?” he asked, standing at the front door behind the protection of the screen, a few strands of thin white hair drifting over his forehead.
“My name is Nicholas. I understand you were once a circus clown.”
The old eyes sparkled for an instant behind their thick glasses. “That was long ago. Nobody’s interested in old clowns any more.”
“I’m interested,” Nick said. “May I come in?”
“You’re not going to rob me, are you? Person can’t be too careful these days.”
Nick chuckled. “Do I look like a thief?”
The man studied him. “No, I guess not.” He unlatched the screen door. “Come on in.”
The little house was surprisingly cool after the warmth of the street. Furnished in a worn drabness that seemed to reflect the years of Herbie Benson’s life, it was still a place for pleasant relaxing.
Nick suddenly realized they were not alone in the house. There was a noise from the kitchen and a young tawny-haired woman appeared carrying a glass of fruit juice. “This is my granddaughter, Judy,” the old man said, wiping his old-fashioned spectacles with a soiled handkerchief.
Nick nodded and introduced himself. “Nicholas is my name. I have an interest in circus lore, mainly as a hobby. I couldn’t pass through town without stopping to see Mr. Benson.”
“He lives here alone,” she answered bluntly. “He shouldn’t be opening his door to strangers.” He guessed her age at about 23, and she wore the cool unsmiling expression one saw on so many other young faces these days.
“Now, Judy,” the old man started to protest.
“It’s true, Grandpa! What do you know about this man? If I weren’t here he could hit you over the head and steal everything in sight!”
“He looks honest, Judy.”
“I can assure you—” Nick began, but she waved him into silence. Her long tawny hair swirled as she turned and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Don’t mind her,” Herbie Benson said. “She just grows tired of all the circus talk sometimes.”
Nick sat down, feeling more welcome. “This is a nice little town you have.”
“I like it. Close to Miami, and not too far from Winter Haven and Sarasota, where a lot of circus people spend the winter.”
“You still see your old circus friends?”
“I see the ones that are left. I joined the circus back during the First World War, when I shoulda been in school.” His old eyes clouded for an instant. “Most of the people I knew are dead now.”
“You were a clown that long ago?”
“No, no, not at first. Believe it or not, Mr. Nicholas, my first circus job was carrying water for the elephants, just like in all the old stories. But I was a clown before I was twenty, and I stayed a clown for nearly forty years, till my first heart attack. I was there. I saw it all. I started with the Great National Circus in their final years, and then switched to Barnum and Bailey.”
Judy Benson came back carrying another glass of fruit juice. “This is for you,” she told Nick. Then she sat down, still unsmiling.
“Thank you. Your grandfather was just telling me about his early circus days.”
She eyed Nick in silence and Herbie Benson continued, “I think those early days with Great National were the best of all. They had a really big spread, with acrobats and lions and even a Wild West show. Come in here, I’ll show you some of their posters.”
“Grandpa,” Judy cautioned, but the old man was already on his feet, leading Nick into the next room.
It had been a dining room at one time, but when Nick passed through the swinging door he saw that it was now given over completely to the memories and trophies of a lifetime. There were garish circus posters and framed programs dating back more than 50 years, along with dozens of photographs of a sad-faced clown with groups of children or greeting some celebrity or simply alone in a circus ring. A cluster of limp balloons bearing the words Herbie the Clown hung over a picture of two clowns inscribed Herbie and Willie.
But it was one of the circus posters that interested Nick. Yellowed with age and curling at the edges, there could be no doubt this was the poster he’d been hired to steal. Five stiff-bodied acrobats at the top flew through the air with awkward grace, with the one in the foreground sporting a Teddy Roosevelt mustache that made him seem the twin of the one high on a trapeze in the background. A slim banner beneath them read: The Flying Fantini Brothers.
In the lower portion of the poster a faded purple rhinoceros glowered out from a swampy setting of trees and ferns. “I never saw a purple rhino,” Nick said, recalling the famous verse by Gelett Burgess about a purple cow.
“These posters are real Americana,” the old man told him. “I’ve been offered a thousand dollars for my whole collection intact, but of course I would never sell.”
“How much would an individual poster be worth?”
“Alone? Not much—next to nothing, unless you came across some kind of a crank collector. They reprint these things too much nowadays. Who’d want to pay good money for an original when he could buy a reproduction at the local bookstore for a dollar or two?”
“You’ve got something there,” Nick admitted. He pointed to the 1916 poster. “This must have been early in your career.”
“The year before I joined Great National,” he answered with a trace of pride.
“You must have known a lot of clowns in your day.”
“All the big ones. Willie was a special friend.”
“Ever know one named Mason?” If a man wore clown makeup, it seemed logical to Nick that he might be a former clown.
“What circus was he with?”
“I don’t know. I could have the name wrong.” His eyes strayed back to the purple rhino and the clowns and the five acrobats. “You know, there’s something peculiar about that poster, but I don’t know what.”
“They’re funny-looking by today’s art standards, I guess, but I love every one of them.”
They chatted a while longer and then Nick rose to leave. Stealing the poster seemed so simple that he wondered why the mysterious Mr. Mason hadn’t simply hired the first crook he could find and pay him $50 to do the job. Herbie walked him to the porch and they shook hands. “You’ve brightened my day,” the former clown said. “I always like to talk circus. Come back sometime and I’ll put on my clown makeup for you.”
“I’ll do that,” Nick said, and waved goodbye.
He was just starting the car when Judy Benson came running out of the house. “Mr. Nicholas, could you give me a ride down to the store? I have to do some shopping for my grandfather.”
“Sure. Climb in.”
“Nice car you have.”
Nick nodded.
“You don’t talk like a southerner. Are you from this area?”
He pulled slowly away from the curb, aware that her sudden friendliness was in sharp contrast to her earlier coolness. “No, I’m from up north. Just driving through.”
“But this is a rented car, rented here in Florida. You’re not just driving through at all.” Her voice was suddenly accusing.
“I happen to live in New York and I don’t own a car. I flew down here and rented this one.”
She didn’t reply immediately but stared straight ahead. Finally she said, “My grandfather is a sick old man, Mr. Nicholas. His heart is very bad. If anyone were to swindle or steal his possessions, the shock would kill him.”
“Why do you tell me this?”
“Because another man came to see him only a week ago. He wanted to buy one of my grandfather’s posters, and then he just tried to steal it. Luckily I arrived in time and threatened to call the police unless the man left. After that I made Grandpa promise never to let anyone in the house unless I was there.”
“And you think I’m connected with this other man? What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. He had fat cheeks and wore a rumpled suit.”
Nick recognized the description of Mason’s driver, Jimmy. So the man in the clown makeup had made a previous attempt to get the poster. Still, why had he felt it necessary to hire Nick?
“I don’t know the man,” Nick said.
“All right, Mr. Nicholas. I hope you’re telling the truth, because there’s an unpleasant surprise waiting for the next person who tries to rob my grandfather.”
He ignored the threat in her words and said, “Tell me one thing. Why was this man so anxious to buy or steal the poster, when your grandfather is so sure it’s valueless?”
She turned her deep brown eyes toward him. “I haven’t the least idea, Mr. Nicholas.”
Nick knew he could do nothing further that day, so he returned to his Miami hotel and spent the early evening on the beach, watching the yachts cruising over the blue waters of Biscayne Bay. At sunset he went in for a swim, and when he returned to the damp sand he found Jimmy, the man in the rumpled suit, awaiting him.
“So you been to see old Herbie?”
“Yes,” Nick said warily.
Jimmy smiled a lopsided sort of smile. “Mason thought you’d be better than me. He thought you could get the poster after I failed. But he was wrong, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried yet.”
The smile broadened. “He said you were pretty good. A unique thief-detective, he called you.”
“Anyone could climb through his window and steal that poster.”
“Yeah? You think so? You met the granddaughter yet?”
“I’ve met her.”
“She tell you what she does for a living?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“She’s with the circus, same as her grandfather used to be.”
“As a clown?” Nick asked, unbelieving.
Jimmy shook his head. “She has a sideshow act with a little circus that tours around Florida. She’s a snake charmer.”
“A snake—”
“That’s right, wise guy. Every night she puts her grandfather to bed and lets loose a sackful of rattlesnakes in that house. Still think you can just climb through the window and steal that poster?”
Nick Velvet drove to the hotel where he’d met Mason the previous evening. There were some things to be straightened out, among them his fee. For wrestling rattlesnakes Nick charged more.
As he went down the hall toward Mason’s room he saw a tall graying man with his hand on the knob. The man turned suddenly as Nick approached and asked, “Are you looking for Mr. Mason, too?”
“I am.”
“He’s not here. I’ve been knocking and no one answers.”
Nick tried the door. It was locked. “You a friend of his?”
“I’m a lawyer.” The man flipped a card from his inside pocket and Nick read:
Haskin Kimbell
Jeans, Kimbell & Sachs
Miami, Florida
“Pleased to meet you. My name is Nicholas.”
“Are you in Mr. Mason’s employ?”
“In a way, yes.”
The lawyer pursed his lips, hesitating. “Would you be the man he hired to get the circus poster?”
“Yes,” Nick admitted. “But I have to speak to him about our arrangement. A complication has come up.”
The tall lawyer glanced around. “Let’s go somewhere and talk. The downstairs bar, perhaps.”
The bar had a scattering of late-evening drinkers, but Nick and the lawyer easily found a booth where they could not be overheard. When the drinks arrived, Haskin Kimbell dropped the small talk and said, “Let’s get down to business, Mr. Nicholas.”
“What sort of business?”
“Do you have the poster?”
“I told you, there’s a complication.”
“It’s urgent that we obtain it.”
“We?”
Haskin Kimbell sighed. “I represent the sole surviving heir to the Fantini oil fortune.”
“Fantini?” Nick remembered the name on the poster—The Flying Fantini Brothers.
“They were acrobats in their younger days, traveling with the circus. But after one of them was crippled in a fall they left the circus and went into the oil business, drilling wildcat wells. It was in the early nineteen-twenties, a good time for wildcatters. They struck it rich and over the years built up a considerable fortune. The last of the brothers—so everyone thought at the time—died a year ago at the age of seventy-three. He left no family, no heirs, and an estate estimated at ten million dollars.”
“Is there a will?”
“There is, but it was drawn a decade earlier while his brothers were still alive. It left his entire estate to the brothers or brother who survived him. If none survived, the estate went to various charities.”
“And you say no brother survived?”
The lawyer sipped his drink. “So it was believed at the time. Now a man has appeared who claims to be the last surviving brother. His name is Anthony Fantini, and he is my client.”
“He must have offered you some proof.”
“Proof of events sixty or seventy years ago can be hard to produce. The brothers were born in Italy and came here in the early years of this century. The birth records in their Italian village were destroyed during World War Two, and no one alive today remembers the family. Unfortunately, the records of the Great National circus have also been lost over the years. In simple truth we don’t know with certainty just how many Fantini brothers there were. Four can be accounted for, but my client claims he is the fifth brother. If that is true he is entitled to the estate.”
“He must have something to support his claim.”
“A great deal. He knows everything about the family’s early life. The one thing we’re lacking is convincing evidence there were five Flying Fantini Brothers instead of four.”
“The circus poster!”
“Exactly. The number of Ringling Brothers, for example, can easily be certified as five because a group portrait of them appeared on early Ringling posters. Likewise, that Great National poster can prove there were five Fantini brothers. Shortly after I took the surviving Fantini’s case, this man named Mason approached me with an offer. He claimed to know of this old circus poster which would prove there were five Fantinis. He offered to deliver it for what might be called a finder’s fee.”
“How big a fee?”
“Six figures. Recently he told me he’d hired you to get the poster. I came here tonight to see if he had it yet.”
“My agreement is for delivery by Thursday or before.”
“Then you can get it? You know where it is?”
“I’ve seen it,” Nick admitted. “But tell me about Mason. What does he look like?”
The lawyer seemed puzzled. “Haven’t you met him?”
“Not in the flesh.”
“He looks fairly ordinary. Middle-aged, gray hair. Nothing unusual.”
Nick decided not to mention the clown makeup. “All right. I’ll have the poster by Thursday morning. You can meet me in Mason’s hotel room if you wish.”
“Fine.”
“One last thing. You mentioned a fall that crippled one of the Fantinis. Surely there must be newspaper accounts of it. Even if the circus records are lost, the papers would tell you if there were four or five brothers.”
Kimbell shook his head. “I’ve been over all that—everything. There were some brief newspaper accounts, but none mentioned the number of brothers. I even checked back issues of trade papers like Variety and Billboard, but they only added to the confusion. It seems when the brothers first started out, there were only three because the others were still too young. I’ve found mention of three Fantinis and four Fantinis, but nothing about my client—the fifth and youngest of them. He was only with Great National that one season, so that poster is the only proof in existence.”
“There were only boys in the family? No surviving sisters?”
“All boys. Born a year or two apart just before the turn of the century. My client was seventeen when he joined the act, and of course he’s well into his seventies now.”
“So you really need the poster.”
“I really need it.”
“I’ll get it,” Nick promised.
He spent most of the next day in his hotel room experimenting with a variety of grease paints and makeup kits. Finally, around dinnertime, he gazed into the mirror and was satisfied. He washed off the makeup and ate a quick dinner alone. Then, as the long evening shadows began to fall across the bay, he put the materials he’d need in a paper bag and carried them down to his rented car. Less than an hour later he was back in Snake Creek.
Herbie Benson’s house was dark except for a single light in an upstairs bedroom. Nick parked down the street and worked quickly to apply his makeup. It was more difficult in the car than it had been in his hotel room, but after a half-hour’s work he was satisfied. As a final touch he stuck on the round rubber nose and then walked quickly down the street to the house.
He rang the doorbell twice before Herbie appeared at an upstairs window. “I can’t come down!” he shouted. “Go away, whoever you are!”
Nick stepped into the glow from a street light. “Herbie! Don’t you remember me?”
“Who is it?”
“Herbie, I used to work with you years ago. Don’t you remember Willie?”
“Willie? Is that you, Willie?”
Nick had remembered the clown on the photograph with Herbie and had tried to duplicate his makeup. With Herbie’s age and poor eyesight in Nick’s favor, he thought he could bring it off. “Come down and open the door, Herbie. I have to talk to you.”
“I can’t come down. She’s turned the snakes loose.”
“Then I’ll come up.”
Nick boosted himself onto the porch railing and from there to the drainpipe and the porch roof. In a few moments he was at the old man’s window. Herbie squinted, reached for his thick glasses and put them on. “You look different. You sure you’re Willie?”
“Who else would come to see you with a clown outfit on?” Nick climbed quickly through the window. “Remember the old days? The good times we had?”
“You’re not Willie.” The voice was firm. “You’re too young.”
“I’m Willie’s son. He sent me to you. He needs something from you, Herbie, and he needs it pretty bad.”
“What’s that?”
“One of your circus posters, Herbie.”
The old man let out his breath. “I couldn’t! That’s what the snakes are for! She said that guy tried to steal my collection. She leaves the snakes every night and comes back to pick them up in the morning.”
“But you could get through the snakes, couldn’t you, Herbie?”
“Oh, sure. But Judy would be awfully upset.”
“Even if you did it for an old friend?”
“Well …” He hesitated, and Nick saw him eye the clown makeup with something like nostalgia. “You did a nice job of putting that on, but the mouth’s too crooked.”
“Think you could fix it?”
“Sure. I’ll show you how. Us clowns gotta stick together.”
He sat Nick down on a straight-backed chair and got out a couple of jars of grease paint. After a few minutes of work he was satisfied. “There now, that’s lots better! You look like a real clown now.”
“About the poster—”
“Sure, your dad can have it—I got plenty of them. Which one does Willie want?”
“The Great National, from 1916.”
“Yeah. That’s the one the other fellow wanted, too. Kind of a popular poster, isn’t it? Come on down with me.”
“But the snakes—”
“They won’t hurt you.”
Nick followed him gingerly down the stairs, watching and listening. As he crossed the dark living room behind the old man he heard a warning rattle and his hand went for the little pistol under his arm.
“I said not to worry,” Herbie insisted. “They’re carnival snakes. The poison sacs have been removed. Think she’s dumb enough to work with the real thing?”
Nick relaxed, realizing it was true. “They certainly do their job, keeping prowlers away.” By the glow of the street light he saw a diamondback rattler slowly uncoil and slither away under a table.
Old Herbie removed the 1916 Great National poster from the wall and started to roll it up. “Say hello to your dad for me.”
“Can I pay you for it?”
“It’s not worth anything alone. Take it—a gift from a fellow clown. It was your father who helped me put together most of this collection.”
“Did you know these fellows—the Fantini brothers?”
“No, they left the circus just about the time I joined.”
“But you probably heard some talk about them. Wasn’t one of them crippled in a fall?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
Staring at the poster, Nick asked Herbie one more question—but he was already sure what the answer would be.
In the morning he dressed quickly and retrieved the poster from its hiding place in the closet. He was just opening the door of his room when Judy Benson stepped off the elevator.
“Not so fast, Mr. Nicholas. Back inside!”
He was about to ignore her command when he saw the .22 automatic come out of her purse. “What is this?”
“Back inside,” she repeated.
“How did you find me?”
“I checked the license of your rented car and found it was assigned to the rental agency at this hotel. Then I just asked at the desk for Mr. Nicholas’ room.”
“What do you want? And what’s the gun for?”
“I came for the poster you stole from my grandfather.”
“He gave it to me. Didn’t he tell you?”
“You tricked him, claiming to be the son of an old circus friend. He’s an old man, Mr. Nicholas, and very gullible. Someone came to him in clown makeup, so he believed what he was told. But now you’re dealing with me, and I have a gun.”
“Are you really a snake charmer?” Nick asked. “You don’t look like one.”
“I’ve been around carnivals all my life, and I know a con man when I see one. My snakes may have failed to stop you, but I won’t!” She raised the gun in a threatening gesture.
“All right. But you should know what you’re getting into.”
“Meaning?”
“This poster is part of a swindle to obtain a ten-million-dollar inheritance. Let me show you.” He started to unroll the poster.
“No tricks now!”
“No tricks.” He held up the poster for her to see. “Notice the illustration of the acrobats. The Flying Fantini Brothers. There are five of them, and this poster will be the main item of proof to establish one Anthony Fantini as the rightful claimant to the Fantini oil fortune. But do you notice anything peculiar about these acrobats?”
Before she could answer there was a knock on the door. Judy Benson slipped the gun into her oversized purse as Nick opened the door a crack. The door was shoved back into his face as the beefy-cheeked Jimmy forced his way in. He wore the same rumpled suit, but now he carried a heavy automatic in his hand. The lawyer Haskin Kimbell was right behind him.
“Come in,” Nick said, hiding his surprise and rubbing his cheek where the door had hit him. “It’s good to see you both again, and especially to see that you’ve decided to skip the clown makeup this time, Mr. Kimbell.”
“We came for the poster,” Kimbell said. “When Jimmy saw the girl come up here, he thought you were double-crossing us.”
“Not a chance. The poster is all yours, as soon as I collect the rest of my fee.” He was careful not to look at Judy Benson.
“All right,” Kimbell agreed, but the gun was steady in Jimmy’s beefy hand. Then, almost as an afterthought, the lawyer asked, “How’d you know I was Mason?”
“When I went to his hotel room Tuesday night I caught you as you were leaving. You pretended to be knocking on the door, looking for Mason yourself, but you didn’t fool me. Mason had a briefcase in his room with the initials JKS on it. They weren’t the initials of a person, but of your law firm—Jeans, Kimbell and Sachs. But your clown makeup did give me the idea of how to steal the poster from Herbie, so I have to thank you for that.”
“I’m taking back that poster,” Judy Benson said suddenly, her hand reappearing with the gun. “You’re all a bunch of crooks!”
Jimmy swung around quickly and hit her arm, sending her pistol flying across the room. The familiar smile was on his face as he pushed her onto the bed. “Stay there or you’ll get hurt.”
Haskin Kimbell looked distressed. “Give me the poster, Velvet.”
“I was about to show Miss Benson something peculiar about it,” Nick said. He didn’t like to see girls pushed around, and just then he wasn’t feeling too kindly toward Kimbell and his goon. “In fact, there’s been something peculiar about this whole business.”
“What’s that?” the lawyer asked.
“Three questions: Why did you go to the trouble of creating a mythical middleman in clown makeup rather than simply hire me yourself to get the poster? Why have it stolen in the first place when you could have asked Herbie Benson to lend it to you for the court hearing? And finally, why not simply have Herbie testify as to the number of Fantini brothers?”
“All right, why?”
“Because this poster is deceiving. Because there never was a fifth Fantini. Because your claimant to the fortune is an impostor, carefully coached by you, Kimbell. I asked Herbie last night how many brothers there were and he told me four—as I knew he would. The records you found listed three or four brothers—but never five. Only this poster showed five brothers, and that’s why you couldn’t have Herbie in court where someone could ask him about it. You had to steal the poster, and you created Mason to do it so that if the truth came out you’d be in the clear.”
“You mean the poster is a fake?” Judy asked from the bed.
“No, it’s real enough. But in the style of many such posters it duplicated performers to give the impression of a great number. Notice the Teddy Roosevelt mustache on this man in the foreground and the man up here. The two men look alike, yet there were no Fantini twins—you told me yourself they were born one or two years apart, Kimbell. These two look alike because they’re the same man, shown in two different poses, once alone and once with his brothers.”
“Could he prove the existence of a fifth brother merely with this poster as evidence?” Judy asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. But for ten million dollars it was worth a try. Right, Kimbell?”
“It’s still worth a try,” the lawyer said. “But now we have to get rid of you two. Jimmy—”
“There’s another gun in my purse,” Judy shouted to Nick.
At first her words baffled him. The oversized purse was on the floor almost at Jimmy’s feet. There was no way Nick could reach it first.
“Hold it!” Jimmy said, leveling his gun at Nick. He kicked over the purse, spilling its contents across the floor, and bent to inspect a drawstring pouch. “It’s a snake!” he yelled, his voice close to a high-pitched scream.
That was when Nick moved.
Later, when he was alone with Judy, Nick said, “You really are a snake charmer.”
“That was just a little ground snake, but it scared him enough for you to get hold of his gun.”
“And the rest of my fee from Kimbell.” He handed her the poster. “You can take this back to your grandfather now. I think Kimbell’s decided to forget all about his scheme.”
“What kind of thief does that make you, returning the loot?”
“A good thief,” he said. “Don’t you think I should get a reward?”
“I think so,” she agreed with a grin. “Have you ever been kissed by a snake charmer?”