“NICKY?”
Nick Velvet had been far away in some private dream world when Gloria’s voice summoned him back. He put down his beer and asked, “What is it?”
“Nicky, how can a person vanish from the back seat of a car that’s traveling sixty miles an hour on an expressway?”
“He can’t,” Nick answered, picking up the beer again.
“But it’s right here in the paper, Nicky! People along the New York State Thruway report picking up a young longhaired hitchhiker dressed all in white. He gets into the back seat, fastens his seat belt, and talks to the people about God. Then, suddenly they look around and he’s gone! And the seat belt is still fastened!”
Nick grunted, only half hearing her. “If I was a detective I could solve it.”
“Don’t you get any cases like that in your government work, Nicky?”
“Not often.” Gloria’s mistaken impression of his government service helped cover his awkward absences, so he did nothing to correct it.
“What about—?” she began, but the telephone interrupted her.
It was for Nick, and he took it in the little den out of Gloria’s hearing. The voice was that of a man for whom he’d worked on two prior occasions. “Velvet? I have someone with an urgent assignment. Can you handle it?”
“If it’s in my line.”
“It is. The client is a young woman. Her father was a dear friend of mine. Could you meet her at the marina, where you keep your boat?”
It was a good place for a meeting. On a summer’s weekend one or two more people would attract no attention. “How soon?”
“One hour?”
“Make it two,” Nick said.
As he’d expected, the Saturday sailors were lounging on the grass in their trunks and bikinis, sipping beers or gin-and-tonics. No one noticed him as he worked around his cabin cruiser. He’d been there less than half an hour when a young woman in white slacks and a blue shirt approached him. “Nice boat,” she said.
“I like it.”
“You’re Nick Velvet?” She could have been past thirty, but her face and mane of blonde hair made her look younger.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Jeanne Kraft, I want to hire you.”
He glanced around to make certain no one could hear. “You know I never steal money or anything of value.”
She hesitated. “This is money, but—”
“Then I can’t do it.”
“—it’s only a penny. A Bermuda penny, to be exact.”
She took one from the pocket of her slacks and handed it to him. The penny had the identical size and copper color of an American cent, with a likeness of Queen Elizabeth on the obverse together with the words BERMUDA and ELIZABETH II. The reverse had some sort of pig with a curly tail, and the words ONE CENT with the date 1971. A deep gouge ran across the pig’s back, as if the coin had been scratched with a knife.
“What’s the pig for?” Nick asked.
“Early Bermuda coins—the first coins struck in North America—were called hog money because of the wild hog shown on them. I think it’s been a tradition on Bermuda coins ever since.”
“Is this some sort of rare coin that’s worth a fortune?”
“Not at all. It’s worth one cent in Bermuda and the same here, where it can be passed as an American penny.”
“And you want me to steal one just like this?”
“That’s right. The same date and the same sort of scratch on it.”
“Who from?”
“A man named Alfred Cazar. He’s in New York now, at the Waldorf. But he’ll be leaving in a couple of days to drive upstate.”
“Where upstate?”
“Saratoga Springs, for the August racing season.” She reached out her hand and took back the penny. “A man named Blaze will be with him. He’s a sort of hired traveling companion.”
“You know my minimum fee is twenty thousand dollars?”
“Yes. I have a down payment here.” She passed him an envelope. “You’ll get the rest when you deliver the duplicate of this penny.”
“Where can I contact you?”
“I’ll be in Saratoga too, at the Grand Union Motel.”
Nick smiled. “Then I’ll see you there, Miss Kraft.”
Making contact with Alfred Cazar proved to be the easiest part of it. Nick simply phoned his suite at the Waldorf and asked for an appointment, representing himself as a magazine writer doing an article on the Saratoga racing season. Because he might have to show his driver’s license later, he used his real name.
When he reached the room, a spry little man in his sixties met him at the door. “I’m Cazar. You must be Velvet.”
“That’s right.” Nick followed him inside, passing the remains of a room-service breakfast for two. He wondered if there was a girl in the next room, but then he remembered the male companion Jeanne had mentioned.
“Don’t know how you happened to pick me,” Cazar said as he finished knotting his necktie. “But it’s true—I’ve been goin’ up to Saratoga every August for the past twenty-four years. Used to be a lot different in the old days, of course. You’d get these big-money men and really high rollers from all over the country—bigwigs, Vegas stickmen, nomad hustlers—all comin’ to Saratoga for August.”
“But not any more?” Nick said.
“Not any more. The town’s pretty much had it. Hell, in New York State you got off-track bettin’ now. Who wants to go all the way to Saratoga for the action?”
Nick made a few notes. “Then why do you still go, Mr. Cazar?”
The little man grinned. “The springs are good for my arthritis. I bathe in them every mornin’ then go to the track in the afternoon. At my age it helps the body and the wallet both.”
From the beginning Nick’s only problem in stealing the Bermuda penny was in locating it. He doubted if the little man carried it on him—not if it had value to someone—and searching this suite of rooms for an object that small could be a near-impossible task. He had to get the man away from here, where the possessions to be searched would be limited to the clothes on his back and a suitcase. “I’d like to go with you to Saratoga,” he suggested now.
“Go with me? I’ll be driving up, in a rented car.”
“I could do part of the driving for you,” Nick offered. “To properly research my article I really should spend as much time with you as possible.”
“I have someone to do the driving,” Alfred Cazar said. He raised his voice and called, “Hugo, come in here for a moment!”
A bulky man who looked like an ex-prizefighter appeared in the doorway. Apparently he’d been listening from the next room and Nick didn’t doubt for a moment that he carried a gun under the jacket of his summer suit. “You want me, boss?”
“Hugo Blaze—Nick Velvet, a magazine writer. He’s doing a story on the season at Saratoga. Wants to drive up there with us.”
The newcomer shook Nick’s hand with a powerful grip. “Pleased to meet you.”
Close up, Nick was forced to revise his first impression. Hugo Blaze’s rough features were partly the result of pock-marks that made him look more sinister than he normally would. But his eyes were friendly, and Nick decided maybe he wasn’t carrying a gun under his jacket after all.
“Are you a gambling man?” Cazar asked Nick.
“At times,” Nick admitted. “But not so it interferes with my work.”
“The drive to Saratoga Springs, along the Thruway and the Northway, can be a boring one. You can come along if you’ll join me in a little wagering along the way.”
“Fair enough,” Nick agreed.
Cazar motioned to Blaze. “Hugo, bring along some of those sugar cubes from the breakfast table. We may want to picnic along the way.”
The drive up to Albany, in the air-conditioned comfort of the closed car, was quickly enlivened by Cazar’s betting games. “Now, Velvet,” he said from the back seat, “Call out any two-digit number.”
“Sixty-three,” Nick responded.
“Sixty-three. Fine! I’ll bet you twenty dollars even money that none of the first fifty cars to pass us will have a sixty-three as the last two digits of its license plate.”
It was difficult to see the plates on cars across the dividing mall, but they were going slowly enough so that fifty cars had passed them in the left lane during the first half hour. Cazar won his bet, and Nick passed a twenty-dollar bill to him in the back seat.
Hugo Blaze, sitting behind the wheel, smirked and said, “Never bet against the boss.”
Cazar patted Nick on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s stop at the next service area for lunch and I’ll give you a chance to win it back.”
The service area, about halfway to Albany, was nearly empty when they drove in. Blaze brought out a plastic cloth and spread it over one of the wooden picnic tables while Nick and Alfred Cazar went in to buy coffee and sandwiches. “You can drive the rest of the way to Albany if you want,” Cazar suggested. “Then Hugo will take over from Albany to Saratoga.”
“Fine.”
The little man eyed him speculatively. “You know, Velvet, you don’t seem like a writer. A guy I know told me once about a thief named Velvet. You wouldn’t be him, would you?”
Nick merely grinned. “You seem to be doing the stealing, the way you got that twenty off me.”
“I’ll give you a chance to win it back.” They’d reached the picnic table by the side of the parking lot where Hugo Blaze waited. “Hugo, have you got those sugar cubes?”
Blaze dug into his pocket and took out a handful of wrapped sugar cubes from the hotel. He unwrapped two of them and placed them on the tablecloth. “What’s that for?” Nick asked.
Alfred Cazar smiled. “Picnics always attract flies. You choose one sugar cube and I’ll take the other. I’ll bet twenty, even money, that a fly lands on my cube first.”
“You’ll bet on anything, won’t you?” Nick said, but he took a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet.
“Which cube?”
“The one on the right.”
Cazar nodded. “Then I’ll move mine over here and we’ll see what happens.”
While they ate their sandwiches they kept an eye on the twin cubes of sugar, resting about a foot apart. Presently a fly appeared, attracted by the food, and swooped low over the table. But it flew off without landing on the sugar. A second fly came by, hesitated a moment, and then settled on top of Cazar’s cube.
“You win,” Nick said, handing him the money.
“Let’s try it again. I’ll give you the other cube this time, just to prove it’s honest. Another twenty?”
Nick showed his depleted wallet. “I can’t afford it.”
“Hell, I thought you were a gamblin’ man!”
“How about if we play for the change in our pockets?” Nick suggested. He emptied out his own pocket, placing a quarter, four dimes, a nickel, and eight pennies on the table.
“Seventy-eight cents? You want me to gamble for seventy-eight cents?”
“Sure. Give me a break—you’ve won forty bucks from me already!”
Cazar produced a little zippered purse which he emptied on the table. “Seventy-one cents. It’s the best I can do. Hugo, you got seven cents?”
The bulky Blaze flipped a dime onto the pile. But Alfred Cazar had another thought. He reached into a pocket of his wallet and extracted another penny. “My lucky coin—I’ll bet that, too.”
Nick could hardly believe it would be this easy. There, before his eyes, was the Bermuda penny he’d been hired to steal. Even the scratch was the same as on Jeanne Kraft’s coin. “That’s just a penny,” he said, hoping his voice was under control.
“A very special one, Velvet. But let’s get on with this. Your cube is on the left this time, and I’ll move mine down to the other end of the table just so the flies can make a clear choice.”
Nick held his breath and waited. Maybe, just maybe—
A fly came close, almost landed on his cube, then darted away toward the far end of the table. After a moment’s inspection it came to rest on Cazar’s sugar.
“Another win!” the little gambler chortled. “You don’t bet against Alfred Cazar!”
“It certainly wasn’t my idea,” Nick agreed.
“We’d better get back on the road,” Blaze suggested. “We want to make Saratoga before evening.”
While Cazar and Blaze went off to the men’s room, Nick drove the car up to the gas pump and had the tank filled. They were an odd pair, and he wondered if Blaze might be more than an employee. At times the two men seemed more like partners—gentle grifters plying their trade on the road to Saratoga Springs.
Presently he saw them returning to the car. Blaze got in front next to him and explained the automatic shift. He heard Cazar buckle his seat belt in back, then shut the door. “Come on, you two, let’s go!”
Nick pulled onto the Thruway, taking it easy until he got the feel of the unfamiliar vehicle. “It’s straight ahead about seventy-five miles to Albany,” Blaze advised him.
“Thanks.” Nick stepped up the speed to the legal 55, then gradually worked it to 60.
“How about another license-plate bet?” Cazar’s voice asked.
“I’m broke.”
“I thought I saw a ten in that wallet.”
“I need something for Saratoga. Hell, you’ll win more off me than I’ll get paid for this article.”
Blaze lit a cigarette and smoked in silence, but his boss wasn’t to be shut up. “Come on, Velvet, put up that ten!”
“No, thanks.”
Nick lapsed into silence and Cazar did, too. After a few more miles he glanced in the rear-view mirror but he couldn’t see the little man. “Don’t mind him,” Blaze said softly. “If you won’t bet with him he’ll probably doze off for a bit.”
“You been working for him long?” Nick asked, making conversation.
“A year or so. He’s a good boss. It’s easy work.”
They passed two cars and had a clear highway ahead. Before Nick realized it, his speed had slipped past 65, on the way to 70. That was when he heard the siren and glanced in the mirror. “Damn! State Police.”
Blaze cursed and put out his cigarette. “Take the ticket. Mr. Cazar will pay it.”
As the trooper strolled up and asked for his license, Nick glanced into the back seat for Cazar. “Where is he?” he asked Blaze. “Is he on the floor?”
Blaze peered over the seat back. “He’s not there. He’s gone! His seat belt is still fastened, but he’s gone!”
“What is all this?” the trooper asked.
“We lost a passenger,” Nick said. He got out on his side and yanked open the rear door. It was true. Alfred Cazar had vanished.
“You mean you forgot him somewhere?”
“He was in the car,” Blaze insisted, looking blank.
“I saw him get in,” Nick agreed. “We were talking to him!”
Nick bit his lip. His mind had a vision of the Bermuda penny—and his $20,000 fee—flying away from him. “I know! He’s a small man, and some cars have back seats that have access to the trunk compartment. That’s where he’s got to be!”
He unlocked the trunk, but it was empty except for a spare tire and a jack. Blaze was on his knees, peering beneath the car, and Nick joined him.
There was no trace of Alfred Cazar.
“Maybe he jumped out when we stopped,” Blaze said. “But we didn’t hear the door open.”
The trooper shook his head. “Nobody jumped out when you stopped. Now let’s quit the kidding around. I don’t care how many people vanished from the back seat—you’re still gettin’ a ticket for speeding!”
As the trooper wrote the ticket, Nick was forced to admit Cazar had vanished into thin air, from the back seat of a closed car going nearly 70 miles an hour.
For eleven months of the year Saratoga Springs had a quiet village atmosphere befitting its population of less than 20,000 people. Even the one-time fame of its waters and mud baths had declined in recent years, leaving it with the perpetual gloom of an off-season spa. Only in August, during the racing days, was there still a flash of the old glory. It wasn’t quite like the early days, when the racing season brought the country’s biggest mobsters to the spa for wide-open gambling. But enough remained on this fine August afternoon to give Nick a feeling of what once had been.
He dropped Hugo Blaze at the old Gideon Putnam Hotel and then drove on in search of a room for himself. It was difficult to find one without a reservation, but just then a room for the night was the least of his worries.
A few horse trailers were parked along Union Avenue, shaded by stately elms, and he discovered to his surprise that the racetrack was quite near the center of town. He might want to visit the track later, but right now he was more interested in seeing Jeanne Kraft. He parked in the lot next to the Grand Union Motel and went inside to find her.
She wasn’t in her room, but he located her in the hotel coffee shop, munching on a tuna-fish sandwich. “I’m glad you got here,” she said as he slipped into the booth. “Any trouble?”
“Depends what you mean by trouble. Alfred Cazar has disappeared and taken the Bermuda penny with him.”
“You mean he’s run off?”
“I mean he’s disappeared.” He told her everything that had happened. “This guy Blaze is at the Gideon Putnam Hotel, hoping he’ll get some word from Cazar. I’m supposed to see him there later.”
“It was a trick of some sort,” Jeanne Kraft said. “Cazar used to do some night-club magic, along with being a mimic and impressionist. He showed you the penny to watch your reaction. When you were interested, he must have guessed I hired you. He disappeared to keep you from stealing the penny.”
“But how? And where do I find him now?”
“That’s what I’m paying you $20,000 for.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t blame yourself entirely. He’s a clever man.”
“My only chance of finding him now is to learn what this is all about—what makes his Bermuda penny so valuable. Isn’t it about time you told me?”
“I—” She hesitated, glancing around nervously. “All right, I suppose I have to tell you. It started some years back, in Bermuda. My father, Jesse Kraft, was one of the wealthiest men in Hamilton. My mother was dead and I was the only child, so I was naturally very close to him. His one weakness was poker. He’d meet once a week for a high-stakes game with a half-dozen other wealthy men and whoever happened to be visiting the island. Sometimes these Friday night games would go on till Sunday morning.”
“Did he usually win or lose?”
“Mostly win. But one night there was a really big game with over a hundred thousand dollars on the table. My father was in it, and Alfred Cazar, and a Canadian named Brian Chetwind. They kept raising each other until everyone was forced to drop out. Then, when my father and Cazar raised Chetwind more cash than he had on him, the Canadian said he’d have to use IOU’s. Anyway, to make the story brief, by the end of the evening my father and Cazar were each in possession of a Bermuda penny on which the Canadian had scratched his mark with a knife. And each of these pennies was an IOU for $60,000.”
“Why a penny? Why not a traditional IOU?”
“The pennies were still new in 1971. Bermuda had only adopted a dollar-decimal currency a year earlier. Then too, Chetwind was an important Canadian businessman who couldn’t risk having his name signed to an ordinary IOU. Naturally the marked pennies had no legal standing as collectable debts, but then neither would regular IOU’s.”
“Why hasn’t the money been collected from Chetwind before this?”
“My father and Cazar met him here at Saratoga in August of ’71, but he persuaded them to let the gambling debt ride. He promised they could double their money through investments he’d make in Canadian mines. Since they had none of their own money to lose, they agreed. This August full payment is to be made. Each of the two shares is now worth something like $130,000.”
“A goodly sum,” Nick admitted. “But where’s your father?”
“Some months back, when the full value of their shares became known, my father was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Miami Beach. I’m convinced he was murdered by Alfred Cazar.”
“For the penny?”
“For the penny. Chetwind knows both men were inveterate gamblers. If Cazar produced both pennies, with the story that he’d won my father’s in a poker game, Chetwind would accept it without question.”
“But you have the penny,” Nick said. “You showed it to me.”
“My father had it hidden where Cazar couldn’t find it. But the very fact that both my father’s body and his home were searched told me that Cazar was behind the crime. If I can’t bring him to justice any other way, I’ll at least turn the tables on him—by stealing his Bermuda penny.”
“I don’t kill people,” Nick warned her.
“I didn’t ask you to kill him. I asked you to steal the penny.”
“He might not surrender it while he lives. He’s already proven to be a very clever customer.”
Jeanne Kraft eyed Nick with something close to disdain. “Those things he pulled on you were tricks and nothing more. If you fell for them, you deserved to lose your money.”
“What do you mean ‘tricks’?”
“The license-plate bet. It’s not a 50-50 proposition at all. You can find the mathematics of it in any good book on gambling. Try Scarne’s Complete Guide to Gambling and it’ll also tell you how he worked the sugar-cube stunt.”
“You mean that was a trick, too?”
She nodded. “Sometime before the bet the two sugar cubes were doctored. A drop of insecticide was placed on one side of each cube. To start with, both of these sides were facing up. Then, after you chose your cube, he turned his over while positioning it. The flies were kept away from your cube, but landed on his.”
“I’ll be damned,” Nick said.
“It’s so simple when you know how.”
“But what about his vanishing trick in the car? Any ideas about that?”
Jeanne Kraft shook her head. “I’ve never heard that one done before.”
But Nick had. He’d heard about it quite recently, in fact. Gloria had read something in the newspaper about it.
“I have to find a phone,” he said.
“What about the penny?”
“When are you meeting Chetwind?”
“Tomorrow morning at the racing museum. Ten o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
Nick took a room for himself at the Holiday Inn and phoned home to Gloria. “Nicky, what’s happened?” she asked, alarmed to be hearing from him. He wasn’t in the habit of calling while away.
“Nothing. I’m okay. I just need some information. Remember that newspaper article you read about the hitchhiker vanishing from the back seat of a car?”
“Yes?”
“Get it and read it to me, will you?”
She left the phone and returned after a few minutes. The newspaper article was just as she’d first reported it—a bizarre account of a white-clad hippie hitchhiker who vanished from the back seats of autos after speaking of religion and judgment. The source for the story was given as a Professor Trout, folklorist at State University in Albany.
“Thanks, Gloria. That’s what I wanted.”
“Will you be home soon?”
“Maybe by tomorrow night, the way things are going.”
“Be careful.”
“I always am.”
He hung up and put through a call to the State University. Professor Trout was not on campus during the summer, but he managed to obtain a home phone number. With one more call he had the man on the wire.
“I know,” Trout said, speaking briskly. “It’s the damned article. The phone’s been ringing here all week. I suppose you have a disappearance to report too.”
“In a way,” Nick admitted. “But I have a couple of questions to ask you first. The paper says you’re a folklorist.”
“That’s right.”
“Meaning you don’t really believe any of these happenings?”
“Not exactly,” Trout answered carefully. “Folklore is often based on distorted truths.”
“I just want an answer, Professor. Are these reports about vanishing hitchhikers to be believed?”
“Oh, yes, as far as they go. You have to realize that the original reports came from young people—kids pretty well into the drug culture.”
“Oh? Does that explain how he disappeared?”
“I think so. These kids often drive when they’re high on something—just as adults do, unfortunately. Since many hallucinogens give one a distorted time-sense, it’s quite likely a driver picked up a hitchhiker, talked with him, dropped him off somewhere without realizing or remembering it, and then really believed he simply vanished from the car. Once a story like that gets started, you always receive accounts of people with similar experiences.”
“That’s the only explanation you’ve come up with?” Nick asked, unable to conceal his disappointment. He knew he hadn’t been high on anything when Alfred Cazar vanished.
“What other possibility is there?”
“None, I suppose,” Nick answered with a sigh. “Thank you, Professor.”
Though it was late afternoon, Nick walked a mile east on Lincoln Avenue to the Saratoga Race Course. The day’s races were just finishing as he reached the gate, and he stood aside to watch the faces of the people as they exited. Happy, sad, glowing, disgruntled—their faces told their day’s fortunes. He watched one man empty his pockets of losing tickets and walk on, while another immediately pounced on them to search for an overlooked winner.
He’d come in hopes of catching a glimpse of a reincarnated Alfred Cazar, but the little man was nowhere visible in the crowd. Finally, as the departing throng thinned, he gave up and headed back to the red-brick Gideon Putnam Hotel to see Hugo Blaze.
The bulky man was in his room, and when he let Nick in he motioned him to a chair. “I’m on the phone,” he explained. “Won’t be a minute.”
Nick heard him talking to New York, apparently reporting to someone on the disappearance of Alfred Cazar. When he hung up, Nick asked, “Any word of him back there?”
“Not a thing. He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.”
“Are you going to stay here?”
Blaze shrugged. “Why not? My salary is paid for another two weeks, and my job was to accompany him up here. I can only assume he’ll turn up.”
Nick nodded. “Let’s get something to eat.”
All the while they were dining in the elegant and spacious room downstairs, Nick’s thoughts were somewhere else. Cazar had the Bermuda penny, and Cazar had disappeared. There was no way to steal it unless he could find the man, and that seemed impossible.
“Saratoga has changed a great deal these past years,” Blaze was saying. “The gambling casino is now a museum, and most of the big old hotels are gone. They even issue health warnings about the mineral water.”
“There must be someplace you can find a decent poker game,” Nick suggested.
“Oh, sure. You interested?”
“I might be.” Nick was remembering the Canadian, Brian Chetwind, and his liking for poker. If he planned to meet Jeanne in the morning at the racing museum, the odds were he was already in town. And he might well be found at a high-stakes game.
So after dinner they took the rented car and drove up North Broadway to a rambling white guest house on the edge of town. “This place was here at the turn of the century,” Hugo Blaze explained. “And there was gambling here then.”
He led Nick inside, through sitting rooms still lush with opulence of another era. Finally, in the rear, they passed through a double door into a large game room. Here seven men sat around a green-topped poker table moving their stacks of chips in and out of play like the money moguls they probably were. Nick noticed a craps table at one side of the room too, but for the moment all the action was on poker.
Nick studied the faces of the men at the table, trying to decide if one might be the Canadian. He listened to the names they called each other, but there seemed to be no Brian at the table. “This the only game around?” Nick asked Blaze.
“It’s the best game around. There’s usually one in the back room at the Orange Dollar, too.”
“Let’s try that.”
The Orange Dollar was an old-fashioned roadhouse a bit farther along North Broadway. The back-room poker game was noisier and more crowded here, and Nick knew at once he’d found the right place. “Raise you, Chetwind,” one of the players was saying as he entered, addressing a tall man who sat with his back to the door.
“You going to stay around here?” Blaze asked Nick.
“I think so, for a while.”
“I’m going off to the track. Rather lose my money on a horse than a deck of cards, any day.”
“Racing at night?”
“They’ve got a harness track that operates at night. I told you this was a swinging place.”
After Hugo Blaze left, Nick remained watching the poker game. One busted player offered his chair, but Nick shook his head. He hadn’t come to gamble, only to speak to Brian Chetwind.
After about an hour the Canadian cashed in his chips and rose from the chair with a wide stretch of his arms. “Enough for now. I’ll see you birds tomorrow.”
He sauntered over to a little bar at one end of the room and Nick joined him there. “You’re Brian Chetwind, aren’t you?”
The Canadian was tall and handsome, with gray hair fashionably styled across his forehead. He looked like money. “That’s me. Do I know you?”
“Nick Velvet’s the name. I’m doing some work for an acquaintance of yours—Jeanne Kraft.”
The tall Canadian nodded. “Lovely young lady. Terrible thing about her father.”
“I understand you’re meeting her tomorrow.”
“That’s correct. We have a business deal to close.”
“And Alfred Cazar?”
“Cazar? You know him, too?”
“Yes,” Nick admitted. “I drove up here with him from New York.”
“Glad he’s here. I’ve been looking for him.”
“I’ll be frank, Mr. Chetwind. I know something of your dealings with Cazar and the late Jesse Kraft. I know about the two Bermuda pennies.”
“I see. And what is your interest?”
“I’m looking after Miss Kraft’s interests. It’s important that I know if Cazar has contacted you today.”
“I told you I’d been looking for him, didn’t I?” Chetwind was growing impatient. “If you’re some sort of strongarm man hired by Miss Kraft, you can be assured that I intend to pay my debts.”
“Nothing like that,” Nick said. “She’ll see you in the morning, Mr. Chetwind.”
He left the Canadian and went outside. Hugo Blaze had taken the car, and it was necessary to hire a taxi to drive him to the Grand Union Motel where Jeanne was staying. During the ride he couldn’t help considering a possibility which hadn’t occurred to Jesse Kraft’s daughter. There was someone besides Alfred Cazar with a motive for killing Kraft and stealing his Bermuda penny.
Brian Chetwind would have the strongest motive in the world—if he wasn’t able to pay off his debts.
Nick hadn’t really expected Jeanne Kraft to sit in her room all night, but it was frustrating nonetheless when she failed to answer his knock. There were too many places where she might be—the harness track, the concert, the summer theater, or even one of the mineral baths.
He was about to walk away when he heard a sound, very low, from the other side of her door. “Jeanne? Are you in there?” he called.
The low sound was repeated, and now he recognized it as a moan. He tried the door but it was locked. “Jeanne!”
“… help me …” she said from the other side of the door, her voice little more than a whisper.
“Can you reach the knob to open the door?”
There was a few moments’ pause, then the door opened. Jeanne Kraft was sagging against the wall, holding her head. “He was waiting for me, Nick. He hit me.”
“Who hit you?”
“I didn’t see him, but it must have been—” Her eyes caught sight of the purse on the floor, its contents scattered across the rug. She dropped to her knees and pawed through the purse, then gasped out, “Cazar! He stole my Bermuda penny!”
“You’re sure it’s gone?”
“Of course I’m sure! I had it hidden inside the lining here.”
“Sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”
Her face was a picture of dejection. “So now he’s got both pennies.”
“Or neither.”
“What?”
“Have you considered the possibility that Chetwind might have killed your father, made Cazar disappear from that car, and assaulted you—all to keep from paying his gambling debts?”
“But he’s a wealthy man!”
“Is he? I was with him tonight. He left a poker game quite early, and it wasn’t the biggest game in town.”
“I still think it was Cazar. If only you could find him!”
“To know where he is I have to know how he pulled that vanishing act,” Nick said. “Believe me, I’ve been thinking about it ever since it happened. Funny thing—it’s almost as if the wrong man disappeared. If it had been Hugo Blaze who vanished instead of Cazar, I’d know how it was done.”
But she wasn’t listening. She sat looking at her purse and shaking her head. “What will I do now, Nick?”
“Meet Chetwind as planned tomorrow morning, just as if you still had the penny. In. fact, I think we’ll both go meet him.”
The town awoke slowly, perhaps with a hangover from the night before, and Nick and Jeanne had the coffee shop almost to themselves for breakfast. “What happens at the museum?” he asked. “It would seem a pretty public place for a meeting.”
“At ten each morning they show films of the previous day’s races. I’m to meet Chetwind there, but we’ll probably go elsewhere for the actual exchange.” Then, remembering, she added, “Of course, I no longer have anything to exchange.”
“Let me worry about that. If Cazar has both pennies, he’ll show up for the meeting, too. If he doesn’t have them, that puts the finger on Chetwind.”
“And you’ll get them back for me? Both of them?”
“Both of them,” he assured her. “And it won’t cost you anything extra. Two for the price of one.”
By ten o’clock there was a fair crowd at the National Museum of Racing, across Union Avenue from the track itself. Nick let Jeanne walk ahead of him and enter the darkened area where films of the previous day’s races would be shown. He stayed near a display case, looking over past racing trophies while he kept an eye on the main entrance.
He’d only been watching a few moments when Brian Chetwind hurried through the doors, heading straight for the film without a glance to his right or left. A minute later Hugo Blaze strode in.
Nick hesitated only an instant. The whole caper had been one big gamble from the beginning, with license plates, sugar cubes, horses, and cards. Now it was time for him to gamble. “Blaze!” he called softly. “Over here.”
Hugo Blaze paused, hesitated, then walked over to the display case where Nick stood. “What’s up?”
“In here,” Nick said, motioning toward the men’s room door. “It’s important.”
Hugo Blaze stepped inside, looking puzzled, and Nick followed him. A moment later Nick came out alone and headed across the lobby toward the film showing. Jeanne Kraft was just emerging with Chetwind.
“Nick, what can I do? He’s ready to pay off, but he needs the coins!”
“Wait here a moment,” Nick told the Canadian. Then he steered Jeanne back across the lobby to the men’s room door.
“In there?”
Nick nodded. “I want you to meet Mr. Hugo Blaze.”
He opened the door wide enough so she could see the unconscious man sprawled on the tile floor. “But—but, Nick, that’s not Blaze! That’s Alfred Cazar!”
Nick Velvet smiled. “I just won a bet with myself. And here, young lady, are your two Bermuda pennies.”
Nick and Jeanne left Saratoga by car later that day. For them the season was over. “Look!” she exclaimed, holding up for Nick the thick packets of bonds that Brian Chetwind had given her. “They’re worth more than a quarter of a million on today’s market!”
“He’s an honest man.”
She nodded agreement. “That’s more than I can say about Cazar. But how did you know he was Blaze? And how did they work that disappearance from the car?”
“When I first met the older man in his hotel room at the Waldorf, he simply said he was Cazar and I believed him. But right from the start I felt there was something funny. Blaze kept calling him ‘boss,’ overdoing the supposed relationship.
“The fake Cazar showed me the Bermuda penny for two reasons—to see if I was interested, and to fool me as to its location. When I revealed my interest, they knew I’d been hired by you, and they used a clever dodge like the old shell game. The fake Cazar simply slipped the penny to the real Cazar and then the fake Cazar disappeared. I couldn’t steal it if I thought it had vanished along with him. The penny was only inches away from me all the time, yet it was safer than in a bank vault.”
“But how did the fake Cazar disappear?”
“They’d just given me the job of driving a strange car. I saw them come back and heard the fake Cazar in the rear seat. Fastening his seat belt. Then he slammed the door.” That should have told me something. It’s far more natural to close the door before you fasten the belt. But back-seat belts aren’t connected to any buzzer system, and I simply assumed he was still in the car.
“Meanwhile, the real Cazar—or Blaze—was distracting my attention by explaining the car’s automatic shift. I started up, with Cazar’s voice talking to me from the back seat, and drove away. In reality my back-seat passenger was left behind, probably crouched behind a gas pump. His work was done, and he probably got a cab or hitched a ride back to New York.”
“But the voice!”
“You told me yourself that Cazar had been a night-club entertainer—a mimic and impressionist. I suspect he knew a little ventriloquism, too. While he sat in the front seat calmly smoking a cigarette, he was imitating the absent man’s voice in such a way that it appeared to come from the rear. I couldn’t see him in my rearview mirror, but I certainly believed he was there.
“I suppose the article in the newspaper the other day about the vanishing hitchhiker gave them the idea for the stunt. Its main purpose was to send me off after a phantom Cazar while the Bermuda penny made a safe trip to Saratoga Springs.”
“But what put you onto Blaze—or Cazar—this morning?”
“Remember, I told you last night the wrong man had disappeared. I was considering the possibility I’d been duped by a ventriloquist and mimic. Cazar fitted the bill, but he was the one who vanished. I couldn’t believe both men in the car had that talent.
“But then I remembered how quickly Blaze left me last night when we stopped by a poker game where Chetwind was playing. He couldn’t risk the Canadian seeing him and calling him by his real name. This morning Blaze showed up when I was expecting Cazar, and I took a gamble. I slugged him in the men’s room and went through his pockets. He had both Bermuda pennies, ready to hand over to Chetwind.”
“Will he come after me now?”
“I doubt it. He’s a gambler and he knows when he’s beaten. Besides, he won’t want the police digging into your father’s death. If he does give you any trouble, have him arrested for assaulting you in your room last night.”
“How can I ever thank you?”
Nick had an answer. “You can start by paying me the balance of my fee. Then we’ll go on from there.”
THE END