It's What Up Front That Counts Page 15

  He had made a blackmail pitch to Smythe; he had threatened that unless Smythe began paying him off very heavily, he would set off another Profumo-like scandal. Smythe had refused to pay; probably he had claimed that he was not the same Christopher Smythe who had inherited the diamond mine fortune.

  As a matter of fact, he wasn’t the same Christopher Smythe. The financial statement with which The Coxe Foundation had supplied me listed Smythe’s net worth at approximately a quarter of a million dollars. But Blaine, of course, hadn’t had access to a financial statement; consequently, he remained convinced that Smythe was a multimillionaire, and he had refrained from setting off the scandal while he searched for new ways of getting Smythe to come across with the money.

  A short time later, Blaine had learned that Smythe and Whelan were connected financially via their mutual ownership of American publishing stocks. He now had had even more reason than before to hold back from setting off a scandal, and he had begun putting pressure on Whelan for money. But Whelan hadn’t been able to pay him off either, because Whelan’s net worth, according to The Coxe Foundation’s financial statement, was even less than Smythe’s. What Blaine hadn’t known—and what I did—was that Smythe and Whelan’s holdings in the publishing company amounted to less than a thousand dollars each.

  Any way you looked at it, Blaine was in a bind. He couldn’t set off a scandal without blowing all chances at the multi-million dollar payoff on which he had set his hopes. And yet, he couldn’t get Smythe and Whelan to come across with the money—because, although he didn’t know it, the money simply wasn’t there.

  Meanwhile, Smythe and Whelan’s hanky-panky with Andi and Diane had begun to attract attention—attention on the part of the Communists, attention on the part of the Friends of Decency, and attention on the part of The Coxe Foundation. Blaine probably didn’t know exactly who was tailing his girls or why; but he couldn’t have failed to recognize that the girls were being tailed, and in an effort to take the heat off while he continued to search for new ways of forcing Smythe and Whelan to pay off, he had pulled Andi and Diane out of circulation.

  That was when he found himself in an even worse bind. With Andi and Diane no longer able to earn money as hookers, Blaine’s personal income was cut drastically. Eventually his fortunes had sunk so low that he was forced to put Andi back to work—not as a hooker, where she’d be an easy target for the people who were tailing her, but rather as a performer at The Safari Club. He had told her, of course, not to turn any tricks, and he had kept a close eye on her to make sure that she wouldn’t.

  She had, however, turned one trick—with me. And that, it now seemed, was going to spell curtains for Blaine. When she took me up on my offer to get her and Diane out of the country, Blaine would find himself without any girls whose stories he could sell.

  Amendment: not when she took me up on my offer, but if.

  She hadn’t yet, and with every minute that passed, the “if” became bigger.

  By the time I had finished with the data on Smythe and Whelan which The Coxe Foundation had sent me, the time was one fifteen. Andi had been due to visit me at twelve thirty. Punctuality was hardly her strong suit, but if she was really going to take me up on my offer, she’d hardly want to waste any time getting to me.

  I waited. For fifteen minutes I paced the floor hoping against hope that the next minute would bring a knock on the door. Then I poured myself a Johnnie Walker Black and killed another half-hour sitting drinking it while I looked out the window. Still no Andi.

  Another half-hour passed. I was as fidgety as a cat in heat. To take my mind off my problems, I tried working the crossword puzzle in my still-unread evening paper. Fifteen minutes and only two crosswords later, I gave up on the puzzle and tried reading the paper.

  That’s when, as the saying goes, the proverbial mustard hit the fan.

  Good old Superspy Damon!

  I’d talked myself into believing that there was no missing link in my foolproof theory.

  I’d congratulated myself on wrapping up the case and tying the package with a neat pink ribbon.

  I’d hailed myself as a genius, as a man among men, as a king among kings.

  And I’d been so intoxicated by my heady brew of self-congratulation that I’d failed to notice the headline that screamed out from the front page of the paper in attention-demanding seventy-two-point type.

  “SMYTHE,” the headline read, “COMMITS SUICIDE.”

  The Smythe in question wasn’t the gent from Kensington who had inherited the diamond mine fortune. It was none other than my Christopher Smythe, the M.P. He had cashed in his chips at four in the afternoon by firing a forty-five-caliber bullet into his head at point-blank range in the library of his home, to which he had retreated an hour earlier after telling his wife that he planned to work for most of the evening on a speech he was due to deliver in the House of Commons the following day.

  Two columns away from the Smythe story was another story—this one headlined in thirty-six-point type and accompanied by a photograph. I noticed it only after I had read to the “continuation” line on the Smythe story and was about to turn the page. When I did notice it, I couldn’t believe that I had carried the paper around with me for nearly four hours without noticing it before.

  The headline read: “PLAYGIRL KILLED IN AUTO MISHAP.”

  The photo was a head-shot of Andi Gleason.

  She had been killed, the story said, by a hit-and-run driver whose car had struck her while she was crossing the street in front of her apartment at five forty-five.

  It took me all of half an hour to believe that Andi was dead. And it took an hour more to get over my shock. Somewhere or other during the time I’d spent with her the previous morning, I’d taken a liking to her. And while a no-nonsense professional spy might not let his feelings get in the way of his work, I—an amateur spy who hated the business more and more with each mission—felt a very real personal loss and a sense of guilt. I was sure that the only reason Andi had been killed was because I had entered her life.

  I finally pulled myself together, and after a few dry runs during which I read every word in her obituary without one word registering in my brain, I reread the obit with comprehension and analyzed it. My analysis led me absolutely nowhere.

  Andi had been run down in the street. The police had no idea as to who ran her down, and they suspected that her death was accidental. The story identified her as a sometime prostitute and a stripper who was a favorite among the highly placed London gents who patronized The Safari Club. And that, except for a description of her injuries and a few biographical items that I already knew about, was all there was to it.

  Now I had to figure out who had killed her and why—and what connection there might have been between her death and Smythe’s.

  My first fleeting thought was that Smythe might have run her down, then shot himself—that he, realizing that she had gotten him into a jam that he couldn’t possibly get out of, killed her in a moment of passion, then killed himself because he knew that he’d eventually be identified as her murderer.

  An interesting theory, but completely contrary to fact. Smythe, according to the newspaper, had shot himself at four o’clock—almost two hours before she was killed. One theory down; how many more to go?

  I considered the possibility that Smythe had hired someone to kill her, then had suffered remorse and killed himself. But this was pretty far-fetched too. Smythe wasn’t a gangster; hs was a Member of Parliament. The modus operandi just didn’t fit.

  So, if Smythe hadn’t killed her, who had?

  Certainly not the Communists. Alive, she was potentially worth a great deal to them. D.ad she was worthless.

  Peter Blaine? Even less likely. With her dead, he had just lost his big chance to get at the twenty-four million dollars he believed Smythe possessed.

  Was it possible that Blaine had killed her after Smythe’s suicide—perhaps in a fit of anger, because he felt that she had failed to do he
r job with Smythe?

  Possible maybe, but far from probable. Even with Smythe dead, Blaine might have sold Andi’s story to the newspapers. In fact, Smythe’s suicide would make the story a lot more valuable than it had been while he was still alive.

  So Blaine hadn’t killed her either.

  The Coxe Foundation, maybe?

  Was it possible that Walrus-moustache, perhaps after learning through his own sources that the scandal was about to break, had ordered her killed because this was the only way to keep a lid on things?

  No. Plausible though the idea was, I refused to accept it. Walrus-moustache had said that he drew the line at murder—and I believed him.

  So back to the question: Who had killed Andi?

  I’d just exhausted my list of candidates and didn’t know where to turn next.

  Before I had read the newspaper, I’d thought I had my case all wrapped up. My theory had touched all the bases, and there’d been no missing links.

  Now there were missing links all over the place. There were so many damned missing links that I didn’t even have a theory anymore.

  The logical next move would be to hunt up Diane Dionne and try to spirit her out of the country. But even if I succeeded, there’d be no way of insuring that Blaine, and/or whoever else might have proof of a relationship between Andi and Smythe, couldn’t set off a scandal.

  Meanwhile, it was damned unlikely that I’d succeed. I had a list of places where Diane had been known to frequent. But after what had happened to Andi, Diane probably wouldn’t want to touch me with a ten-foot pole, especially if Blaine had told her, as he almost certainly had, that Andi had spent her last night on earth with me.

  Or had he told her? Perhaps not. The theory that made him the mastermind of the Smythe-Whclan caper had just been missing-linked to hell. The new mastermind could have been anyone from my old pals, the Communists, to my new pals, the Friends of Decency—or even some third party I’d never dreamed of. For all I knew, Blaine might have been following me when I left Lady B-B’s mansion only because the doorman at The Safari Club had told him that I’d been looking for him!

  What I needed now was a new theory. But I didn’t know where to start constructing one. Several facts were indisputable:

  (1) Christopher Smythe and James Whelan had been in a position to know something about Country X’s B-bomb.

  (2) Christopher Smythe and James Whelan had been carrying on affairs with Andi Gleason and Diane Dionne.

  (3) Andi Gleason and Diane Dionne appeared to have been trying to shake down Smythe and Whelan for cash.

  (4) The Friends of Decency appeared to have briefly investigated the possible connection between Smygthe and Whelan and the two playgirls, then to have moved out of the picture.

  (5) The Communists appeared to have investigated the possible connection between Smythe and Whelan and the two playgirls, and now appeared to be still very much a part of the picture.

  Those were the facts.

  Now to string them together and come up with a plausible explanation of everything that had happened, and why.

  But I couldn’t.

  There were just too many damned things that had happened, and no theory could take all of them into account.

  If the Friends of Decency had been behind the Smythe-Whelan caper, why hadn’t they set off the scandal which could have been their only possible motive in setting up the affair?

  If the Communists had been behind the caper, why had Andi Gleason been killed?

  If Philip or someone like him had been behind the caper, why had Andi been killed?

  Was it possible that Andi’s death actually had been accidental, as the police believed? I doubted it. A girl who’s deeply involved in itrgiue of this sort doesn’t just amble out into the street and get herself run down by a car. That’s asking too much of coincidence.

  Yet, if Andi’s death hadn’t been accidental, who had killed her and why?

  And why had Christopher Smythe committed suicide?

  I was right back where I started from—a lot of facts, a lot of suspects, and no way to string them all together.

  What I needed was more information.

  There’s an old saying to the effect that if you can’t get what you want you’ve damned well better make do with what you’ve got.

  At this point I had only two leads—Diane Dionne and Peter Blaine. Neither one of them seemed very promising. But they were all I had, and my only move was to play them for whatever they were worth.

  Stuffing all the material The Coxe Foundation had sent me into my suitcase and locking it, I left the room. Rumpled Suit wasn’t waiting for me in the Eros lobby, but he was waiting across the street, sitting behind the wheel of the familiar Austin-Healy. I trotted off in the direction opposite the one the car was facing, ran down a side street, and hailed a cab for Trafalgar Square. If the Austin-Healy had attempted to follow me, it hadn’t made its U-turn soon enough, because neither it nor Rumpled Suit was anywhere in sight when I got out of my cab. Satisfied that I had shaken my tail, I hailed another cab—this one for my true destination, 14 Williamson Mews, London W1, the address on Peter Blaine’s business card which the doorman at The Safari Club had given me the night before.

  The building was a rundown brownstone that contained eight apartments. I pressed Blaine’s buzzer, but got no reply. After buzzing him for a minute or two more, I pressed all the other buzzers. Finally I got an answering buzz, pushed the door open and went inside.

  Blaine’s apartment was on the top floor. I walked up the creaky stairs and rapped on his door. No answer.

  The door had a single lock, the type which, as all second-story men know, can easily be picked with a credit card or some similar plastic or cellophane device. I had taken out my American Express card and had fitted it into the crack above the latch when a burly guy in a sleeveless undershirt materialized in the hallway behind me.

  “What’s your act, Jack?” he scowled.

  I quickly sized him up. He wasn’t carrying a weapon, and while he could easily have disposed of me with his bare hands, he didn’t appear to be getting ready to make a move toward me.

  “I’m Peter Blaine’s friend,” I said, forcing a feeble smile. “Do you know where he is?”

  He planted his hands on his hips. “You’re his friend, are you? Then why’re you trying to pick his lock?”

  “He said I could stay over in his apartment tonight,” I adlibbed glibly. “But he wasn’t here when I got here, and I got tired of waiting out in the street.”

  Sleeveless Undershirt seemed uncertain whether to buy the explanation. “Look, Jack,” he said after a moment, “I don’t like the idea of having somebody ring my doorbell and wake me out of a sound sleep at two in the morning. Now, I don’t care who’s friend you are, you better get the hell out of here or I’m going to call the cops.”

  His request, all things being considered, was reasonable enough. In fact, I was damned lucky to get away without a broken nose. Smiling profusely, I apologized for having wakened him, then backed down the stairs.

  On the main floor, I opened the door leading to the street, then closed it, but I stayed inside the building. Sleeveless Undershirt evidently had been waiting in the hallway for me to leave, because after I had closed the door I heard his footsteps retreat back into his apartment and the apartment door slam shut.

  I gave him fifteen minutes to fall back asleep. Then, taking off my shoes, I tiptoed back up the stairs and had another go at Blaine’s door. A few flicks of my American Express card later, it slipped open and I was inside the apartment.

  The joint was a real rathole. It consisted of a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen and a bath, each messier than the other. Unwashed socks and underwear littered all the floors, and there were dishes thick with bits of decaying food in the kitchen. The furniture looked like it had come from a junkyard. And there was dust all over the place so thick you could write your initials in it.

  I went through all the drawers and
closets. Blaine, I promptly discovered, was a collector of dirty pictures. There were literally hundreds of photos of nude girls—some in conventional poses, others in more exotic poses with whips, chains, leather clothes, etc. And still others engaging in sex acts with men.

  In one closet I found a stack of negatives and some photo developing equipment, along with a few reams of mimeographed circulars and several boxes of correspondence. Among his other activities, Blaine evidently ran a mail-order pornography business.

  I carefully examined all the men in the photos. None resembled Christopher Smythe, James Whelan or anyone else whose face I recognized. But in a strongbox with a broken lock that I found in another closet, there was a batch of newsclips about Smythe and Whelan. Among them were all four of the clips which I had singled out from the shipment The Coxe Foundation had sent me.

  “Ah, soooooo!” I whistled under my breath, à la Charlie Chan, Maybe my theory hadn’t been so far off base after all!

  Suddenly the wheels in my brain whirred into action, and I had a new theory. Actually, it was just the old theory in new clothes, and with a few new twists. But the new twists explained away most of the old unexplainables.

  There were still a few holes in the theory, still a few missing links of the sort which I had come to expect all spy theories should have. But I had the feeling that I was on the right track, and that if I just kept going in the same direction I’d get to the bottom of the Smythe-Whelan affair damned soon.

  Another look at the strongbox lock convinced me that I was on the right track. The lock was broken all right. But it had been broken—more precisely, jimmied—only recently. Amidst the old scuffs and rust marks which covered its surface were some brand-spankin’-new silver scratches, especially around the latch.

  My brain was now spinning a mile a minute. I knew how the Commies had entered the picture and approximately when. I also knew that they didn’t have any inkling about Smythe and Whelan’s connection with the B-bomb. Within the past forty-eight hours they had come to suspect that there was something very big at stake in the Smythe-Whelan affair, something much bigger than they had ever dreamed. But they still didn’t know just what. And if I moved fast enough, they wouldn’t find out