“I’M GOING TO PARIS,” Nick Velvet told Gloria one evening, as they sat on the porch drinking beer and listening to the vague rumblings of distant summer thunder.
“Oh, Nicky! When?”
“The end of the week. I’ve been commissioned by a big film processor to find a good plant location for them in northern France. Chances are I’ll be over there about a week.”
“Nicky, do you think I could go with you? I’ve never been to Paris. I’ve never been anywhere!”
He could almost see her features in the nervous glow of her cigarette—her eyes wide, and anxious as a child’s. “You know I couldn’t take you along, Gloria. But I’ll be back. I always come back, don’t I?”
“Yes.”
“And I’ll bring you something. A bottle of French perfume.”
“Will you, Nicky?”
“Sure,” he promised. The thunder was nearer, but it didn’t bother him. He was already thinking about the job in Paris.
This time the assignment had come to him through the mail, along with a certified check for $20,000. The letter was from a man who called himself J. Orchid, and that was the name signed on the check. “Please consider the enclosed certified check as total payment for the theft of one toy mouse, as described herein, which is at present being used as a prop in the filming of an American motion picture, Any Losers?, on a sound stage in Paris, France. Once the theft has been accomplished, not later than Monday, August 1st, you should remain in your room at the Empire Hotel in Paris until contacted about disposition of the mouse.”
That was all of it, except for a picture of the thing clipped from a toy catalogue. It showed a little wind-up metal mouse, about four inches long, that apparently ran around in circles. It was made in Japan, and sold for 98 cents in this country. Nick looked at the $20,000 check again. Twenty thousand dollars for a 98-cent toy mouse! The check seemed genuine enough. He wasn’t in the habit of doing business through the mail, but it seemed he could make an exception in this case.
It seemed he would have to, for there was no return address for Mr. J. Orchid. The letter had come to the box number Nick used for his business activities, and he could only suppose that the address had been passed on by one of his satisfied customers. The money could not be returned, and Nick would never keep it without fulfilling the assignment. Besides, he’d stolen stranger things than a toy mouse in his time—things like a live tiger from a city zoo in broad daylight, and all the water from a swimming pool. He was a specialist in the theft of the unusual. For $20,000 he would steal anything unusual—even a 98-cent mechanical mouse.
Nick Velvet flew to Paris on Friday morning, trading a New York heat wave for the splendid breezes of Paris in July. The city already was surrendering itself to the traditional month-long siesta that was August. The streets were relatively uncrowded, and signs were already appearing in shop windows and office doorways announcing the annual holiday period. Frenchmen would head south, for the most part, leaving the city in the grip of tourists and the coming heat.
But for Nick it was good to be back, good to watch the barges along the Seine and wander through the Left Bank bars where summer never came. By Saturday morning he knew all about the American film company that was in Paris shooting Any Losers? The picture was a Fleming-Archer Production, directed by a young Canadian named Lee Fitzwright, and starring Carol Young—a new starlet in the midst of a typical Hollywood press buildup. But the name that most interested Nick Velvet among the film’s credits was that of Mary Karls, who was in charge of props.
On Saturday evening Nick arranged to meet Mary Karls at a restaurant in Montmartre where she was dining with some of the cast. She was a woman in her late thirties, only a few years younger than Nick himself, but there was still about her a lingering aura of past glamor.
“Are you in the film they’re shooting?” he asked, when he caught her alone at the bar.
She turned on him with a questioning smile. “No. What makes you ask that?”
He smiled and lit her cigarette. “I recognized Carol Young in your party.”
“Oh, yes. She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?” Mary Karls settled down beside him, and he wasn’t surprised. She’d had just enough to drink to be interested, and interesting. “She’s worth a million dollars to Fleming-Archer Productions, and some day she may be one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.”
“You work with her?”
The woman nodded. “Prop girl, I guess you’d call me. A thankless task, but I get screen credit, at least. I was a script girl at Paramount once.”
“You must have been on the screen.”
She smiled at him through the cigarette smoke. “Once, when I was twenty-two. It was one of the last big Hollywood musicals—a picture called Bright Waves Tomorrow. I thought it was the beginning of a glorious career. My part on screen lasted exactly thirty-five seconds.”
He ordered her a drink and introduced himself belatedly. “Nick Velvet’s my name. I do industrial development work. Picking plant sites, mostly.”
“Pleased to meet you, Nick.” She glanced down at the drink. “But I’m a very frank girl. I don’t want you to think you’re buying any more than the drink.”
He smiled. “And some conversation. I’m just a lonely American in Paris, but my intentions are honorable.”
“Good. Then we understand each other.” The rest of her party was leaving, and she went over to say a few words to them. Carol Young, looking like a beautiful blonde child, glanced in Nick’s direction, then quickly away when she saw that he was watching her. She seemed to be with an older man whom Nick guessed was the film’s director, Lee Fitzwright.
After they had departed, Mary Karls returned to the bar stool next to him. “They’re off to another bar. I might as well stay here. I want to get home early anyway.”
“Home?”
“The hotel. You know. I have to start work at six-thirty.”
“How’s the picture coming?”
“Good. It’s beginning to take shape.”
“I don’t even know what it’s about,” Nick said.
“Remember Lili? About fifteen years ago? It’s the same sort of thing. Lonely little girl growing up in Paris, with no friends and no playthings except a toy mouse that runs in circles when it’s wound up. Our director thinks it’s a symbol of modern life.”
“Carol Young is the lonely little girl?”
“She’s sixteen at the start, but she blossoms. You know Hollywood. She gets involved with some of the jet-set gambling crowd.”
“And she plays with a toy mouse?”
Mary Karls nodded.
“Where are you shooting?” He tried to sound casual.
“A big sound stage just outside of town. We rented it from Cintfilm. Of course we’re doing the usual Eiffel Tower exteriors, and some other spots around Paris. In three weeks we go back to Hollywood to finish the interiors.”
“Do you have a room where you keep the props?”
“On the sound stage? Sure. I have to lock everything up at night, although they have a watchman and a burglar alarm. Nothing worth stealing anyway. It’s a great place to shoot, though. Skylights all across the ceiling. Lots of natural light. Though sometimes we have to cover them over when the weather isn’t right for the scene we’re doing. All the dressing rooms and supply rooms are just little cubicles with walls and no ceiling. We had to put a canvas over Carol’s room because she was afraid some reporters would get up on the roof and take a picture of her through the skylight.”
“I’d like to come out and see it sometime.”
“Our producer, Mr. Archer, is dead against visitors to the set. Otherwise I’d invite you. He’s behind schedule already, and he’s afraid of any sort of delay.”
Nick sipped his drink. “How about another? These taste pretty good.”
“Sorry. My hotel is calling to me. It’s been fun, though, just talking to someone besides that crowd all the time.” She eyed him suspiciously. “I just had a thought. You’re not a reporter, are you?”
“Heavens, no! Do I look like one?”
“Well, no,” she admitted.
“Do you know a fellow named J. Orchid? Connected with the movie business.”
“Jason! You know Jason Orchid?”
“I’ve just heard the name.”
“My God, he threatened to kill Mr. Fleming and Mr. Archer, our producers. He claims he wrote the original screenplay for Any Losers? and they stole it from him. He’s a real nut.”
“Is he in Paris?”
“I hope not!” She gathered up her cigarettes and purse. “But I really have to be going now, Mr. Velvet. Thank you for the drink, and the conversation.”
“Thank you, Miss Karls.” He walked her to the door and saw that she got a taxi back to her hotel. Then he strolled for a time along the river, thinking about the toy mouse that ran around in circles.
The Cintfilm sound stage which had been leased by Fleming-Archer Productions was a great gray hulk of a building, and Nick Velvet quickly confirmed that it had both burglar alarm and resident watchman. He could not reach the watchman without tripping the alarm, and he could not tamper with the alarm system without first disposing of the watchman. It was a simple but foolproof setup.
Nick made it to the roof with little effort and looked down through the wired-glass skylight at a mass of darkened interior. He had no idea which was the room he sought, or where the mechanical mouse might be inside that room. He had pressed Mary Karls as far as he could without exciting her suspicions. Now he turned his attention to the skylight. In addition to a wire mesh inside the glass, each pane was equipped with a silvered border connected to the alarm system. And none of the sections of the skylight opened. There’d be no entry this way. But at least he might learn where he was headed.
Working quickly with a diamond-tipped glass cutter, he lifted a one-inch circle from the glass, careful not to disturb the wire mesh or the alarm tape. Then he took a small ball bearing from his pocket and let it drop through the hole, holding his breath until it hit, bounced, and clattered along the floor. Carefully he slid back to the edge of the skylight and waited. Almost instantly the place was flooded with light and the watchman came to investigate the noise of the bearing.
It had rolled off somewhere out of sight, and the tiny hole did not show in the mesh window. The watchman walked back and forth, puzzled, while Nick quickly mapped the floor area in his mind. The sound stage, about forty feet below, camera booms reaching almost to the skylight, microphones, banks of powerful lights, a retractable canvas to cover the skylight, and the row of little walled cubicles that served as dressing rooms. He spotted the covered one that would be Carol Young’s room, then let his eyes wander over the rest. Costumes, hairdresser, makeup—a layout quite primitive by the usual Hollywood standards.
Then he saw it, a room cluttered with odd pieces of furniture, lamps, pictures. Set decorations, in the trade term—or simply props. Surely the toy mouse would be there. Somewhere near, because they would probably be using it on Monday.
But he couldn’t see it, even with the aid of the miniature monocular that was part of his equipment.
Nowhere.
And the watchman was already walking back toward the light switch, ready to plunge the place into its slumbering darkness.
Nick watched the scene go suddenly black beneath him with a feeling of utter frustration. The mouse must be in a box, under something else, impossible to spot from above.
And yet there was no way for him to gain entrance to the building. A frontal assault, and damn the alarms, would have brought the police before he’d have time to locate his objective.
He slid off the roof and hit the ground feet first, with knees bent. All right, now what?
His frown turned slowly to a smile as he saw the warm glow of a public telephone booth halfway down the block.
In a moment he’d found Cintfilm and dialed the number. The voice of the watchman, gruff and sleepy, answered in English. “This is Lee Fitzwright,” Nick said, muffling his words. “I want you to check something for me. Unlock the prop room and make certain the toy mouse is there.”
“What?” the man mumbled. “I don’t know no mouse. I guard the place.”
“In the prop room. It’s the end room on the right. The mouse is a little metal thing about four inches long. Take it out of its box and leave it on the table. I want to be certain it’s there. Come back and tell me.”
“I can’t do that. I’m not supposed to touch things.”
“It’s very important to me. I’ll make it worth your while tomorrow.”
A hesitation. “I don’t know.”
“Did anything strange happen there tonight? Any noise?”
“Yes, there was something.”
“Go and check, then! I must know!”
A sigh. “All right. Hold on.”
But Nick was already sprinting from the phone booth back to where his rope still dangled from the roof. Above him he saw the glow from the lights as it hit the sky. Then he was in position again, in time to see the watchman unlocking the prop-room door. The watchman puttered around a bit, looking here and there, until finally he opened a small box and revealed the mouse. After studying it for a moment he put it back in its box, but left the lid off. All right, Nick breathed; good enough.
The watchman went back to the dead telephone, leaving the lights on. Finally he came back, shaking his head, and locked the prop-room door. He turned out the lights, and the place was in darkness again.
Now Nick worked swiftly. He edged out over the skylight until he was above the prop room. It was difficult to be certain in the dark, and he had to risk a quick flash of his flashlight to make sure. Yes, the mouse was directly under him, about forty feet below.
Another tiny circle of glass came carefully out, then a small but powerful magnet dropped through at the end of a vinyl fishing line. The line was safe—unbreakable and almost invisible, even if the watchman returned. He only prayed the mouse was made of a ferrous metal.
It wasn’t.
After ten minutes of grappling he knew the magnet wouldn’t work. Not by itself. He pulled it carefully up and added a glob of sticky adhesive, then lowered it very much like a boy fishing coins up through a grating with chewing gum. This time he felt the contact almost immediately. A quick flash of his light told him that the mouse was hooked.
A few moments later, when he’d pulled it up to the glass skylight, he carefully cut a slightly larger hole, snipping the wire mesh in two places. Reaching through with his fingers, he turned the mouse and eased it out by its head. The hole was still only about two inches in diameter.
He smiled as he held it in his hand. Then he turned the key in its underside and watched the little wheels spin. The mechanical mouse was his. He’d earned Jason Orchid’s $20,000.
The theft had taken place on Sunday evening, and by Monday afternoon the English-language papers had the story on page one. Cat Burglar Steals Mouse! one headlined, and Nick chuckled. They’d found the hole almost immediately, and deduced the rest of it. Since the mouse had already been used in some scenes, it was essential to obtain an identical one before filming could be resumed—and this particular type was not sold in France. A substitute would have to be flown from New York. The co-producer, Archer, had phoned his partner Fleming in Manhattan to get one on the earliest plane. The article concluded with a detailed rundown on the recent financial reverses of Fleming-Archer Productions.
Nick read it all and then wound up the little mouse and let it run in circles on the coffee table. He relaxed in his hotel room all day, waiting for word from Orchid.
By evening nothing had happened. He began to wonder if anything would. Why pay him $20,000 to steal a toy mouse that Orchid didn’t even want? But the answer now seemed obvious to Nick. Orchid simply wanted to delay the production, adding to the producers’ financial woes. Mary Karls had told him of Orchid’s enmity, his threat to kill both Fleming and Archer.
When the mouse ran down for the hundredth time after midnight, Nick put it away and went to bed. He’d give Orchid till tomorrow noon to show up. Then he was checking out, mouse and all, and heading home.
He slept well, as he always did when he was traveling, and in the morning he paused only to look out at the early morning mists off the Seine. Then he packed his small suitcase and prepared to depart. There was no need to wait even until noon. The feel of the whole job was somehow wrong.
And there was no point in taking the mechanical mouse with him. He glanced around the hotel room for a likely hiding place, and finally settled on a convenient space in the back of the television cabinet, where it wouldn’t be found until the next time the set was repaired.
He picked up his bag, stepped into the hall, closed the door behind him, and faced two slender young men with badges already in their hands.
“Monsieur Velvet? Paris police. Please accompany us for questioning.”
At one time it had been the Sûreté. Now it was simply Paris Police Headquarters, an aging but imposing building that seemed constantly in a flux of activity. Nick Velvet sat on a straight-backed wooden chair and answered uncertain questions with vague answers. It was not his first encounter with the police, and he knew at once that they were unsure of themselves.
“The mouse,” one of them said. “Where is it?”
“I know of no mouse.”
“We have a copy of a letter, sent to us anonymously. In it a man named Orchid hired you to steal the toy mouse.”
“Then you only have to prove I really did take it. You haven’t found it yet, have you?”
The Inspector, an utterly patient man named Philippe, sighed and got to his feet. “We have not found the mouse,” he admitted. “Come with me. We will drive out to Cintfilm and see if they wish to press charges. I cannot tie up my entire department over a crime so petty as this—a five-franc toy!”
And so Nick traveled once more to the sprawling sound stage on the city’s outskirts. This time he entered through the door and confronted a milling group of confused people. He recognized Carol Young at once, despite the white peasant girl’s costume she wore and the change in her hair styling. Mary Karls was nowhere in sight, and he was at least thankful for that.
“Is this the man, Inspector?” someone asked, stepping forward. He was a tall man with ash-gray hair, whom Nick hadn’t seen in the Saturday night group.
The Inspector nodded. “This is Nick Velvet, Monsieur Archer.”
The producer nodded and turned to Nick. “That nut Orchid paid you to steal the mouse, didn’t he?”
“I’ve never met anyone by that name,” Nick answered truthfully.
The director, Fitzwright, joined the group. “If we’re going to keep to any sort of schedule, I have to get those cameras rolling.”
Mary Karls had followed the director from an inner office, and she gave a little gasp when she recognized Nick. She seemed about to speak, but then thought better of it and turned to Archer. “We’re ready for the mouse scene, if it’s arrived.”
The producer nodded and went into his office. “It was just delivered. Fleming must have gotten it on the first plane.” He returned in a minute with a small slim package not yet unwrapped.
“I’ll take it,” Mary said.
“Wait.” Archer still had the package in his hand. “Fitz, let’s have Carol open it and get a picture for the papers. It’ll make great publicity. After all, it’s her mouse in the film.”
The director called to somebody and in a few moments a camera was produced. They’d all but forgotten Nick’s presence, and he could have walked away without being missed. But instead he was staring at the little package, at the neat row of air-mail stamps and the label addressed to Archer. There was something …
“How’s this?” Carol Young asked, posing prettily as she began to tear off the wrapper.
“Great,” Archer said. “Snap it while I make a phone call.”
“Then we get to work,” Fitzwright reminded them.
Inspector Philippe cleared his throat. “I wish to know whether you will press charges against Monsieur Velvet.”
Carol Young ripped away the last of the paper and started to open the box. Then Nick Velvet moved, more on instinct than anything else. He threw himself at the girl, knocking the little box from her hand and sending it sliding across the studio floor.
Already the Inspector was reaching for his gun, and Carol Young had started to scream. Archer turned in the office doorway and started back.”
“Don’t anybody touch it,” Nick said. “There just might be a bomb in it.”
Some time later Inspector Philippe faced them with a sad and drawn face. “You were quite correct, Monsieur Velvet. The little box contained a bomb which would have exploded two seconds after the lid was opened. Now you can tell us how you knew that.”
Nick relaxed against the wall with a cigarette. “It was only a guess. I noticed there was no customs declaration on the package—only the label and stamps. Even if it could have reached here so quickly, it would have had to pass through customs. If the package did not come from Mr. Fleming in New York, it was at least a good possibility that it came from the mysterious Jason Orchid, whom I understand threatened to kill Fleming and Archer. A bomb was my first guess, and it was correct.”
“It could have killed Carol!” Archer gasped.
The Inspector stepped forward. “I fear, Monsieur Velvet, that you are now an accessory to an attempted murder.”
Nick smiled slightly. “I believe you’d have a difficult time proving that, even if Mr. Archer wanted to press charges.”
“What’s that mean?” the producer asked.
“Could I speak to you alone?”
Archer looked annoyed, then waved Inspector Philippe and the others from the room. “What’s on your mind, Velvet?” he asked after the door was closed.
“I’ll make it fast, Mr. Archer. Someone sent the Paris police a copy of Orchid’s letter to me. Obviously that someone must have been the sender of the letter, and just as obviously it wouldn’t have been Orchid. Wherever he is, Jason Orchid has been made the fall guy for this whole business.”
“What?”
“The fall guy. He couldn’t possibly have planned it all. He couldn’t have known, for instance, that you’d ask Fleming to send you another toy mouse by air mail. It would have been much more logical to postpone those scenes till you got back to Hollywood to shoot the rest of the interiors. No, only you—and possibly Fleming—knew what action you’d take when the mouse was stolen.”
“You mean I tried to kill myself?”
“Not at all. You tried to kill Miss Carol Young.”
“That’s, insane!”
“Is it? A rising young actress, yes, but not yet famous enough to pay her own way. You’d naturally have a big insurance policy on her for the period of the filming—say, a cool million dollars. Carol Young dead—or even badly injured—would be worth more to you at this stage of her career than even the finished picture. And one million dollars would pull Fleming-Archer Productions out of its current financial difficulties.”
“Can you prove any of this?”
“A dozen people saw you hand her the box and then walk quickly away when she started to open it. To make a phone call. To whom, Mr. Archer? To your New York partner, or wasn’t he in on it? Of course you made the bomb at this end, so you’re the one who’ll take the rap.”
Archer pressed both hands against the desk top and stared down at them. “What do you intend to do?”
Nick Velvet smiled. “I intend to sell the toy mouse back to you for $20,000.”
“Why, that’s—”
“Now, now, no ugly words, Mr. Archer. Besides, it’s the only choice you have. And if I hear of any injury to Miss Young before you finish the picture—even a splinter in her finger—you won’t even have that choice.”
That evening at the airport, as they were announcing his flight, Nick Velvet suddenly remembered the perfume he’d promised Gloria. He chose the most expensive bottle in the airport shop, and then bought two because he could afford it.