Between new Nick Velvet stories we often wonder: what strange, unusual, but valueless thing will Nick steal next? As you know, Nick is a unique thief. He doesn’t steal money or jewels or art objects or anything else of value, and yet for stealing something worthless he demands and gets a minimum fee of $20,000.
Well, this time Nick “bends his rule a bit” — but only a bit. He is hired to steal a stone eagle that weighs 3000 pounds. One and one-half tons of stone might be worth something as stone, but not much. So why was it worth $20,000 to Hamish Blake? Again Nick Velvet has to be both a thief and a ’tec...
“That’s it, right across the street,” Hamish Blake said. “One-and-a-half tons of stone eagle.”
Nick Velvet peered out the window with some distaste. “It’s not exactly pretty, is it?”
“It’s not meant to be pretty, Mr. Velvet. It’s meant to represent the American eagle in full attack against the wrongdoers who would destroy our system of law and order.”
“And you want it stolen?”
Hamish Blake leaned back in his chair. They were seated in the front window of the High Court Restaurant, finishing a lunch more elaborate and fattening than Nick was accustomed to eat. “Please don’t use that word,” he advised Nick. “I am, after all, an attorney in good standing in this community.”
“What’s so valuable about that eagle? My fee is twenty thousand dollars, you know.”
“I know, Until recently the stone eagle stood on top of a pedestal on the grounds of my uncle’s country estate. He was Judge Norbert Blake. You must have heard the name.”
Nick shrugged. “My home is a thousand miles from here. I don’t follow your local papers with any regularity.”
“Nevertheless, he was an outstanding jurist well known throughout our state. When he died last year at the age of sixty-seven, still active on the bench, it was a blow to all right-thinking people.”
“How did the eagle end up here, in the center of downtown?”
“My uncle willed it to the city, to be placed in this public square in front of the county courthouse. I want it back, Mr. Velvet, and I’m prepared to pay your fee.”
“A three-thousand-pound eagle.” Nick thought about it. “You see, I don’t steal art objects or anything of value. Certainly that statue must be worth money.”
“For estate purposes it was appraised at $3000 — a dollar a pound, you might say. But I was told quite frankly that no dealer would pay even one-tenth of that amount for it. I’ll be frank, Mr. Velvet — you said it wasn’t pretty and I agree. In fact, it’s downright ugly, and poor art besides. The city accepted it only to honor my uncle’s memory. A decade or two from now I’m certain that some excuse will be found to dispose of it.”
“But you don’t want to wait that long.”
“No.”
“All right,” Nick said. “It’s bending my rule a bit about not stealing anything of value, but I’ll do it on one condition. I want your word that there is nothing of value hidden inside the statue — no jewels or money or incriminating papers or anything else.”
“There certainly isn’t, Mr. Velvet. If there were, it would be so much easier to remove them from the eagle where it stands. Someone with a short stepladder could come by in the middle of the night and get them with ease.”
“Very well. Where do you want the statue delivered?”
“Back where it was — on the pedestal in my late uncle’s garden.”
“Hardly the place to hide it from the authorities.”
“Let me worry about that,” Hamish Blake said. “How soon can you do it? I’d like it delivered, if possible, by Monday.”
Nick gazed across the street at the truly ugly stone bird. “Three or four days. I’ll need to locate the right equipment.”
“Fine. Here’s something in advance. You’ll have the rest when the eagle is back on its original perch.”
Nick downed the remainder of his luncheon coffee and stood up to shake hands. “You’ll hear from me,” he said.
Toward evening, when the work of the county courthouse had ended for the day and the last of the lawyers and judges and secretaries had departed, Nick Velvet walked alone in the grassy square before the old building. The bright June sun was still an hour from the western horizon, but already downtown was deserted.
Nick strolled once around the great stone eagle, assuring himself that it was not attached permanently to the granite pedestal. Apparently the city fathers were satisfied that the weight alone was enough protection against theft.
As he was leaving the scene, thinking about taking in a movie before returning to his hotel, a girl with long reddish-blonde hair emerged from a parked car and approached him. “I saw you admiring the eagle. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
For an instant he was taken aback. “I — yes, it’s quite nice.”
“Did you notice the plaque? It was donated to the city by my grandfather. Judge Norbert Blake.”
There’s always a beautiful granddaughter in these things, Nick thought. Aloud he said, “I’m a stranger in town, but he seems to have been an important man.”
“He was. He could have been a justice of the State Supreme Court if he’d wanted.”
Her face and eyes were intensely honest, filled with an openness Nick found refreshing. He guessed her age at about 23 or 24, and noticed she wore no wedding or engagement rings. Her blouse and slacks looked casually expensive to his masculine eye. “That’s quite an eagle,” Nick commented.
“It’s more than just an eagle. It’s a symbol of everything my grandfather stood for — of law and justice and our great nation. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to that eagle.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Suppose you and I have a drink across the street at the High Court. You’re old enough to drink, aren’t you?”
“I’ll be twenty-five next week.”
“That’s sure old enough. Come on.”
She ordered a gin and tonic and settled into the booth opposite him as if they were old friends. “I feel as if I picked you up,” she said, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Nick agreed. “And I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Silke Blake.”
“Silk?”
“With an e on the end. Goes good with Velvet, doesn’t it?”
“So you know me.”
“Yes. My uncle hired you, didn’t he?”
“I can’t comment on that.”
“I understand you steal things — unusual things. Did he hire you to steal that eagle?”
“I told you I couldn’t comment.” He sipped his drink. “But suppose it were true. Why do you think he’d want a thing like that stolen?”
“I can’t imagine, unless it’s to discredit my grandfather in some way.”
“From what you’ve told me, that would be hard to do.”
“It certainly would. He was a fine man.”
“Tell me a little about him as a person. I guess I know enough of his legal career.”
“Well, I suppose that big house and the eagle tell you something about him. When I was young — younger — we used to call it the House of Usher, after Poe’s story. Grandfather was a great admirer of everything Poe wrote.”
Nick gazed across the street at the stone eagle, almost expecting it to take flight with a cry of “Nevermore.” He listened while Silke Blake recounted the usual childhood memories of idyllic summers and midnight swimming and moonlight treasure hunts. It might have been a feminine version of Huck Finn, and he could only conclude that was the way things were in the rural midwest.
“It sounds like a wonderful childhood,” he conceded, remembering his own grim youth on the pavements of lower Manhattan. “But it doesn’t really tell me much about your grandfather.”
She tossed her long silken hair, and he wondered if her name or the hair had come first. “All you need to know is that I loved him very much — and I won’t let anyone harm the memory of his name.” She finished her drink and stood up to leave..
“Don’t you have time for another?” he asked.
“One is sociable, two is friendly, and three is intimate, Mr. Velvet. We haven’t reached the friendly stage yet.”
“I’ll try again,” he promised.
Nick spent much of Saturday arranging for the helicopter with which he hoped to lift Judge Blake’s legal eagle from its base and transport it back to its proper perch. A phone call to Hamish yielded the information that there was a helicopter rental firm at a private airport outside of town, a company with which the judge himself had been friendly during his lifetime.
But once he’d rented the copter, Nick faced a new problem. He could fly the thing himself if necessary, but it would be tricky at night. And someone was needed on the ground to secure the cable around the statue.
It was not the first time Nick had been forced to hire an assistant. Once, while stealing the water from a swimming pool, he’d hired the entire Fire Department at $100 for each man on the pretense of filming a television movie. But as a general rule he liked to use as few hired hands as possible, being careful to keep them in the dark as to his true purpose.
He found the man he needed at the airport where he rented the copter. Jimmy Claus was his name, and money was his only game. “You want me to fly it?” he asked. “And for that you’ll pay five hundred bucks?”
Nick nodded, studying the slim long-haired man in his soiled T-shirt and jeans. “That’s it. But it won’t be easy. We have to move a statue from the city to a new suburban location, and because of traffic problems the move must be accomplished at night.”
“Which night?”
“I was thinking of tomorrow.”
“Sunday?”
Nick shrugged. “Fewer people around downtown. Less chance of accidents.”
“Where’ll you be?”
“On the ground guiding you and attaching the cable to the statue.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to use a truck?” Claus asked, growing a little suspicious.
“Too much danger of damaging the statue. With a helicopter we can lift it straight off with not even a scratch.”
The long-haired man squinted into the sun and thought about the $500. “Okay, no problem. Let’s take her up for a spin first, though, so I can look over the area by daylight. I don’t want to go crashing into any of them buildings.”
On Sunday morning Claus and Nick took the copter up and flew north to their goal. The city’s downtown was nearly deserted, and for a wild moment Nick considered the possibility of hooking the cable around the statue and flying off with it now. But he hadn’t scouted the Blake country estate yet, and to be seen flying haphazardly around town with a ton-and-a-half eagle hanging from a cable would surely bring police to investigate.
So they flew out to the suburbs empty-handed, dipping to tree-top height until Nick spotted the estate of the late Norbert Blake. When he’d verified the address and the description given him by Hamish, he tapped Jimmy Claus on the shoulder and said, “Set her down there, on that lawn.”
“This is the place?”
“Yeah.” When they had landed, Nick added, “Stay here. I have to see the man.”
Hamish Blake had appeared in the doorway to the terrace, holding a tall drink in one hand. He strolled down across the neatly trimmed lawn to intercept Nick. “What’s the meaning of this — landing that thing on the lawn!”
“Tonight, after midnight, we’ll be coming back. With a delivery.”
Hamish Blake grunted. “And the entire countryside will know how it was done.”
“You’re going to have it sitting in your back yard anyway, so it won’t be any big secret.” Nick gestured toward the house, where he could see an empty pedestal standing in the rose garden. “That where it goes?”
“Yes. Facing out, away from the house.”
“How will we find it in the dark?”
“There’s a spotlight up there under the roof. It lights up this whole area. I can turn it on whatever time you say.”
“Midnight tonight.”
Blake nodded. “Fine.”
“Will anyone else be here?”
“Just myself. I don’t want my wife involved in this. As soon as you return the eagle to its perch, the money is yours.”
“The police will find it.”
“I only need it for a day. Then they can have it back if they want it. But I’m relying on you to cover your tracks well enough so they don’t follow you out here immediately. You know about the television monitor?”
“The what?”
“The city is testing a half dozen television cameras in various downtown locations as a crime deterrent. One of them is on a light pole across the street from the courthouse and it monitors that whole area.”
“I must be getting old,” Nick admitted. “I never noticed it.”
“Any problem?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll see you at midnight.”
“Or shortly after. I have to wait till the streets are deserted.”
“I understand.”
They shook hands and Nick walked back to the helicopter.
Sunday night was cool and overcast after an early evening rain. By midnight, after a movie house down the block had disgorged a dozen or so paying customers, the area around the old courthouse was quiet and empty of traffic. Nick observed it from a doorway across the street, paying special attention to the small television monitor he now saw mounted on a light pole some twelve feet off the ground. Occasionally the camera would be moved in an arc by remote control, but mostly it stayed in one position. Whoever was monitoring the sets at police headquarters did so in a most haphazard manner. Nick figured he might have about five minutes before they realized something was amiss.
At ten minutes after twelve Nick switched on the little portable radio transmitter he carried. “Calling copter one. Do you hear me, copter one?”
There was a crackling in the speaker and then Jimmy Claus’s voice came through. “I’m here. Okay to come lower?”
“Come ahead.”
The sound of the helicopter grew closer. Nick switched off the transmitter and picked up a long wooden pole that rested against the wall next to him. He walked quickly across the grass of the square to a point just behind the light post supporting the television camera, then paused to remove a small can of spray paint from one pocket of his jacket. Holding the can away from him, he pushed down the aerosol button until the paint began to spray. Careful not to spray himself, he then taped the can to the end of the pole and lifted it high above his head. In an instant he’d spray-painted the lens of the television camera.
The helicopter was coming in low now, its sound reverberating among the buildings. Nick tossed away the paint can and pole and ran toward the stone eagle. With luck the man monitoring the set would fool with the dials for a while before he sent a patrol car to investigate.
He saw the cable snake out of the bottom hatch of the copter and waited to grab it. Then, following moves he’d rehearsed in his mind a dozen times, he looped the cable under the eagle’s rampant wings and locked it in place. He radioed Claus to start lifting.
Nick held his breath as the stone eagle wobbled on its perch, about to take flight. The ugly beak tilted in his direction, then swayed and lifted clear of the pedestal. In the distance he heard the first faint whine of a siren.
Jimmy Claus knew how to fly the copter with skill and daring. He went straight up, clear of the buildings and the city lights, then headed slowly away with his burden. Nick raced back to his rented car and drove off in the opposite direction. The siren was getting closer, but he was out of sight before the police car appeared.
Now if Claus could only set the statue down on its perch at the Blake estate as easily as he’d made off with it, the $20,000 fee was as good as in Nick’s pocket.
The spotlight on the rear of the Blake country home bathed the rose gardens in a sharply etched glow, showing the empty pedestal clearly. Nick parked his car in the driveway and searched the night sky for some sign of the helicopter’s running lights. “Calling copter one — do you hear me, copter one?”
“I’m up here,” came the reply. “Waiting for your signal. Okay to come in for delivery?”
“Come on down,” Nick said.
Then he heard the familiar beat of the rotor blades as Claus brought the helicopter in low, traveling slowly to minimize the sway of the cable-held eagle. Nick watched the statue’s descent for a moment, then glanced around to see that Hamish Blake had appeared on the lawn behind him. “How’s it going?” Blaked asked, then suddenly there was the crack of a rifle shot and the simultaneous shattering of the spotlight. The lawn and rose garden were plunged into darkness.
“Damn!” Nick didn’t bother to seek the source of the shot. He was on the radio to Jimmy Claus. “Copter one — trouble down here. Take her up!”
“I can’t see a thing.” Jimmy crackled back.
“Hang on.”
At Nick’s side Hamish Blake was bellowing into the darkness. “Who’s there? Damn it, who are you?”
The voice that replied was female, and Nick recognized Silke Blake at once. “It’s just me, Uncle Hamish. Looking after Grandfather’s good name, which is more than anyone else in the family ever did.”
“Why did you shoot out the light?”
She came forward, dressed in tight jeans and a black turtleneck sweater and carrying a .22 rifle at her side. “So you couldn’t bring that statue down here. I knew you were up to something, hiring Nick Velvet like that!”
Nick grabbed the rifle from her and she offered no resistance. “Well, the copter can’t stay up there forever and he’s sure not taking the eagle back to the courthouse. It’s either bring it down here or dump it in the river. Which do you want?”
“You can’t land without lights,” Silke answered smugly.
“If it goes in the river, you’re out twenty grand, Velvet,” Hamish Blake growled. “I want that statue right down here!”
Nick clicked on the walkie-talkie unit. “Copter one, do you hear me?”
“Right here,” came the reply.
“Do you have any emergency flares aboard?”
“I think there are a couple in the supply pack.”
“Drop them and then come in as we planned.”
The copter circled one more time and the two flares burst over the night sky. In their eerie light Jimmy Claus descended again and maneuvered the great stone eagle toward its perch.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Silke warned, but she made no further move to stop them.
Nick fetched a ladder from the tool shed and climbed up to guide the bird onto its pedestal. “This how you want it?” he called down to Hamish Blake, working fast before the twin flares burned themselves out.
“A little more toward the front. It must be lined up exactly— That’s it! Yes!”
The eagle settled down slowly until the position was just right. Then Nick unhooked the cable and instructed Claus to haul the cable in. “All finished,” he told Blake.
“Now what are you going to do?” Silke demanded of her uncle.
The flares were dying and the man’s rough-hewn features were sinking into shadow. “Do? Why I’m going to pay Mr. Velvet his money.”
The helicopter circled one more time and came in for a landing on the far lawn.
Nick counted through the wad of hundred-dollar bills, then stowed it away in his inner pocket. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” he said, shaking Blake’s hand.
“And you, sir.”
“The hour’s late. I think I’ll be riding back with Jimmy in the helicopter.”
Until then Jimmy Claus had stood at the fringe of the group, barely acknowledging Blake and Silke. But now, as Nick turned to leave, his right hand came out of his jacket holding a Berretta 9mm Luger. “I’m not quite ready to leave yet,” he said. “Kick that rifle over this way, Velvet.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” Hamish Blake stormed. “Who is this man?”
“Nobody you know,” Claus told him. “Just a poor guy who spent six years in jail because of Judge Norbert Blake!” He spat out the name. “This is what you call restitution time!”
Nick remembered where he’d found Claus. “You gave me the name of the airport,” he told Blake.
“My uncle had friends there.” He faced Jimmy Claus, unmindful of the gun. “If you work there, it’s because Judge Blake got you the job after prison. You’ve had all the restitution you’ve got coming!”
“Not all. I went to prison while Judge Blake went to this big country estate. Don’t you think we all knew what sort of a judge he was? The ones with money to slip him got off. The poor ones, like me, got six years.”
“That’s not true!” Silke Blake shouted. “My grandfather wasn’t like that!”
“Maybe he wasn’t to you, but he sure was to me! I came up for sentencing for stealing an airplane. It was a second offense, so he slapped me with ten years. I was lucky to get out in six. The same morning a stock broker who’d swindled people out of more than a million bucks was sentenced. Your good Judge Blake gave him three years suspended.”
“Are you accusing him of taking bribes?” Nick asked quietly.
“Damn right I am! Big bribes, too! Everyone in stir knew about Judge Blake.”
Silke tried to lunge at him then and Nick had to restrain her. He had no doubt that Claus would use the Berretta if necessary. The whole assignment was turning into a nightmare, and he had only himself to blame for having hired Claus in the first place.
When Silke had calmed down, Hamish Blake asked, “So what do you want?”
“In prison we heard the judge was putting away a nice nest egg for himself. I often thought about latching onto some of it for myself, especially after he died, but until yesterday I never saw a way to do it.”
“There’s no way to do it now,” Nick assured him.
“I think there is. I didn’t fly that copter for the sport of it, you know. Statues don’t get moved in the middle of the night. You were stealing that stone eagle, and I think the reason is because it’s full of the old judge’s loot.”
“There’s nothing in the eagle,” Hamish Blake said with a sigh.
“Then you won’t mind me breaking it open to see.”
“No! You can’t touch it!”
Jimmy Claus twisted his lips in a sneer. “You all just stay right where you are.” He picked up the rifle and backed through the terrace door, heading down to the statue.
“Stop him!” Hamish Blake pleaded with Nick. “My God, stop him! He’s going to smash the statue!”
“So you lied to me — there is money in it!” Nick said.
“There’s no money, nothing. But if he smashes it—”
Nick went down the lawn after him. “Claus, wait a minute!”
“What is it? Stay back!”
“I’ve got almost twenty thousand in cash here in my pocket. Take it and leave these people alone.”
“I don’t steal from you, Velvet. You’re one like me. We stick together. I just want the judge’s money.”
He raised the rifle high over his head, about to bring it down on the stone beak of the eagle, but Hamish Blake stopped him with a shout. “Smash that and none of us will find the money!”
Jimmy Claus hesitated. “What do you mean?”
All at once it was clear to Nick. “He means it’s a treasure hunt, just like Silke used to have as a child. I should have guessed it when I learned Judge Blake was an admirer of Poe. It’s like The Gold-Bug, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Hamish admitted. “Something like that.”
“The stone eagle is necessary to find the treasure, and you didn’t realize it till after it had been given to the city. That’s why it was worth twenty thousand for you to have it back here in the rose garden, even just for a day.”
Claus put down the rifle and pulled the Luger from his belt. “All right, show me how the statue tells where the money is!”
“There’s no money!” Silke insisted, almost frantic now. “My grandfather did not take bribes!”
Hamish Blake ignored her latest outburst and drew a folded piece of paper from his inner pocket. It was too dark on the lawn to read it, so they moved back to the lighted terrace. There, looking over Blake’s shoulder, Nick read the neatly typed message:
For those who seek my treasure, let them dig where the shadow of the eagle’s beak falls. Dated this 24th day of June at two o’clock and signed by Judge Norbert Blake. There was a squiggle of a signature.
“Your uncle signed it?” Nick asked.
“Yes. That’s his signature. I found this in a box of his papers some months back. By that time the stone eagle was already gone.”
“It had to be that eagle? There’s no other eagle around?”
“That’s the only one. He must have assumed someone would read this before the statue was presented to the city.”
Even Silke was interested in the message. “But surely you could take a good guess as to where the shadow would fall,” she said.
Nick gazed out at the moonlit lawn. “I think you’ve taken many guesses, Hamish, but they haven’t been good ones, have they? All those rose gardens are places where you’ve dug. The roses were planted later to disguise all the recent digging.”
“That’s right,” Hamish admitted. “Last week I decided I really needed the statue back.”
“To see where the shadow would fall at two o’clock on the twenty-fourth of June,” Nick said, completing the thought for him.
Silke gave a low gasp. “That’s tomorrow!”
“Today,” Nick corrected. “It’s after midnight.”
Jimmy Claus motioned with the gun. “Everybody into the house. It looks as if we’re going to have a long wait.”
And so they waited. Hamish Blake was nervous at first, trying to talk it all away with words of bland explanation. “Of course I don’t believe any of the stories about Norbert taking bribes. I don’t expect to find a chest full of money or anything like that.”
“Then why did you pay Velvet the twenty grand to steal the statue?” Claus demanded, still keeping the gun at hand as he lounged by the kitchen table.
“Stop it, both of you!” Silke said. “I don’t want any more talk of this. It seems that we’re waiting, and so wait we will — if only to prove that my grandfather was an honest man.”
And wait they did. Shortly after dawn, Silke prepared breakfast, and by nine o’clock Jimmy Claus and Hamish Blake were talking about a split of whatever they found. Nick walked out to the terrace, rubbing the sleep from his tired eyes, and stared down at the great stone bird. The day was partly overcast, but there was enough sun to follow the eagle’s shadow across the rose garden.
At ten the phone rang. It was the Chief of Police, informing Hamish of the theft of his uncle’s statue. Did he know anything about it? Did he have any clue as to who might do such a thing? Hamish replied, no, certainly not.
“They’ll check on the helicopter,” Hamish said when he’d hung up. “They’ll see it out on the lawn, and then they’ll see the statue there, too.”
“We’ll move the copter,” Claus decided. “Come on, Velvet, give me a hand.”
The helicopter was wheeled under some fruit trees and hidden by branches from the road. Then they went back to wait some more, and by now Claus had tucked the pistol back into his belt. They were all anxious to see what two o’clock would bring.
Shortly after one a reporter phoned to ask Hamish about the missing statue. They were playing up the robbery in the afternoon papers. Could he come out for an interview? No, Hamish told him, that would be impossible.
“It’s nearly two,” Silke said.
“We’d better find it,” Hamish grumbled. “Between the reporters and the police we don’t have much time before they discover it’s out here.”
Jimmy Claus nodded. “Let’s get some shovels and start digging.”
They dug in the rose garden.
And found nothing.
“Daylight Saving Time,” Hamish suggested. “Try over to the left.”
Still nothing.
“Deeper,” Claus ordered. “We didn’t go deep enough.”
“We’re still in the rose garden,” Nick pointed out. “In the area where Hamish has already searched.”
Claus cursed. “He probably found it himself already.”
“But then he wouldn’t have needed the statue.”
“There’s nothing to find!” Silke insisted again.
Claus climbed into the deepest hole himself, turning his back to Nick. “I’m going to find his treasure if I have to dig clear through to China!”
That was when Nick hit him with the shovel.
Toward evening Nick flew the helicopter back to the airport. Jimmy Claus was tied up in back, and Silke sat by his side in the copilot’s seat. “What are you going to do with Claus?” she asked.
Nick glanced back at the bound man. “Release him, probably. I guess we’re all convinced there’s no treasure, and we can’t very well turn him over to the police and have the whole story come out.”
“My uncle was ready to make a deal with him.”
“There’s nothing to deal with. By tomorrow someone will have spotted the eagle anyway, and Hamish will have a lot of explaining to do. They might not be able to arrest him for taking back his uncle’s eagle, but they can certainly ask him some embarrassing questions.”
“You never believed that about the bribes, did you?”
Nick studied her face. “Of course not,” he said.
“Where are you going now?”
“I have one piece of unfinished business. Then maybe we could have a late dinner somewhere.”
“What business?”
“My rented car is back at your uncle’s place.”
“You’re going all the way back there?”
“I don’t want the car found and traced to me. I’ll hire a taxi to take me back.” He settled the copter to a perfect landings “Will you wait for me here at the airport?”
“Sure.”
He kissed her lightly on the cheek, then climbed back to untie Jimmy Claus.
It was dark by the time he returned to the Blake estate, but Hamish was still in the rose garden, refilling holes by the light of an electric lantern. “Find anything?” Nick asked him.
“You know I didn’t. What about Claus?”
“I gave him a good scare. He won’t be back.”
“And Silke?”
“She won’t be back either.”
“Then why did you come back?”
“For the treasure,” Nick said.
“There is no treasure.”
“There’s always a treasure for men like Norbert Blake. We just weren’t looking in the right place.”
“And where’s that?”
“The treasure hunt in The Gold-Bug was at night, and even Silke told me of moonlight treasure hunts when she was a child. Judge Blake dated his note at two o’clock, but he didn’t say day or night.”
“There are no certain shadows cast at night. Even the moon would be in a different position each June 24th.”
“He only specified shadow — not sun or moon. You’re forgetting the most obvious source of light in this garden — the spotlight Silke smashed with her rifle shot last night.”
Hamish’s mouth dropped open. “I never thought of that.”
“Suppose we replace the bulb,” Nick suggested. “The light will be at a much lower angle than the sun today, which means the shadow of that eagle’s beak will end up far away from the rose garden — probably almost to those trees there.”
It took them just ten minutes to dig up the suitcase and to find the packets of hundred-dollar bills wrapped carefully in waterproofed cloth. Hamish was just beginning to count them when the police car pulled up the drive, targeting him with its headlights. They had come to find the statue, and found the treasure instead.
Nick slipped into the woods, leaving Hamish to explain it all the best he could. There’d been no time to grab a packet of the money for himself, but at least he still had his fee. And Silke was waiting for him at the airport.
He guessed he’d wait a while before telling her about the suitcase.