Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 9, September 1982

Kemidov’s Treasure by James M. Reasoner

It was a crazy notion — and yet, was it possible The Black Bird had finally come to roost?

It had been a slow day, and Nicholas Lake was at the bookshelves, trying to decide on something to read. He was reaching for The Simple Art of Murder when the door to the outer office opened and Florence stuck her head in.

“There’s a man here I think you’ll want to see, Nicky.”

“Then send him in,” Lake replied. “And don’t call me Nicky.”

He sat down lazily behind the big desk as Florence ushered in the visitor. She said, “This is Mr. Kemidov. Mr. Kemidov, Mr. Lake.” Kemidov was a short, dapper young man in his mid-twenties. His hand, when Lake shook it briefly, was soft and moist. Shiny dark hair curled around his ears. There was an air about him that Lake didn’t care for.

“I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Lake. You come highly recommended. But...”

Lake laughed shortly. “But I don’t look like a private detective? Don’t worry; everyone says that. The world visualizes private detectives as either sleazy little men in trenchcoats or Humphrey Bogart. I’m neither one.”

Lake was a tall man with dark blond hair and a thin moustache. He had a fondness for Panama hats and white suits, and he didn’t mind in the least the fact that he looked like an anachronism.

Kemidov continued, “I would like to engage your services, Mr. Lake. I am a stranger to your city, and there is a delicate matter that must be attended to.”

“A delicate matter involving what?”

“Stolen property.”

Lake smiled slightly but said nothing.

“Perhaps I should give you the background?”

“By all means.”

“My full name is Victor Morris Kemidov. I am of Russian ancestry. My great-grandfather was General Boris Alexivitch Kemidov. He was forced to leave Russia in 1921 because of a misunderstanding with Lenin. He relocated in Istanbul, which was then known as Constantinople, of course.”

“Of course.”

“During his distinguished military career, my great-grandfather accumulated a great deal of wealth. After his move to Constantinople, he began to use that wealth to satisfy a lifelong passion of his. He gradually acquired one of the finest collections of antique jewelry in all of Europe.”

“And now it’s been stolen.”

“Yes. But that’s jumping ahead quite a bit.”

“Sorry.”

“My great-grandfather foiled the attempts of many thieves to steal his treasure. He left Constantinople in 1932 and came to this country. Keeping his collection a secret, he settled in California and married an American woman. He did not tell even her what was in the large trunk that he kept in the attic of their house. They had one son, and just before he died, the General passed on the secret to him. Since that time, the secret of the Kemidov treasure has passed down from father to son, and the Kemidov women have known nothing of it.”

“Sort of chauvinistic, don’t you think?”

“Mr. Lake, we Russians respect tradition. And the so-called Women’s Liberation is something my great-grandfather never heard of. He would have spat upon it if he had.”

“No offense meant. Where’s the trunk now?”

“I do not know for sure. That is why I wish to hire you. I have my suspicions, but I think someone else could handle this better than I.”

“Who do you think stole it?”

“I said that the Kemidov women have never known the secret. That is no longer true. My sister found out, and I strongly believe that she engineered the robbery.”

Lake carefully kept his face expressionless and said, “How about some details?”

“Of course. Our father died one week ago. Before he passed away, he told me about the Kemidov treasure. I have always kept a daily journal, and foolishly, I wrote down the story he told me, the story I just told to you. I had always wondered what was in the trunk in the basement of our house, but it was kept locked and my father told me that I would find out someday.”

After a pause, Kemidov went on, “My sister, who is three years younger than myself, is a graduate student at the university here. She flew back to our home for the funeral. The next day, I found her in my bedroom looking through my journal. She made a lame excuse about wanting to read about our father’s last days, but I know she was after the secret of the trunk. She left that same evening and came back here. Two nights ago, someone entered my house and stole the trunk.”

“And you think it was her?”

“I believe she was behind it, yes.”

“I take it you and your sister don’t get along too well?”

“There has never been much love between us. We hold entirely different philosophies.”

“I suppose you looked in the trunk after your father died?”

“Naturally. I knew what to expect, and yet I was still stunned. There were many jewelled rings and necklaces and carved figurines and miniatures. I was going to have an art expert appraise it all, but it was stolen before I could do it. Still, I would guess its value to be in the millions.”

“And it’s been sitting around in dusty attics and basements for over fifty years,” Lake mused.

“Exactly. When it is recovered, I will definitely put it to better use.”

Lake let that pass and asked, “Where were you when the trunk was stolen?”

“I was out, attending a party given by friends.”

“You left the valuables there unguarded?”

“My servant was there, an old man named Mikhail. He was my father’s servant, too. The thieves hit him on the head. He died the next morning.”

Lake’s air of nonchalance vanished. He sat up straighter and said, “You told the police, I hope.”

“Of course. I simply left out any mention of the trunk. The police assumed that Mikhail surprised the intruders before they stole anything, and that after they struck him down, they fled in fear.”

“You must be pretty certain that your sister has the trunk.”

“I am positive. It would be just like her to steal it.”

“And you want me to recover it for you?”

“Yes. I don’t know how you would go about something like that, so I leave it entirely in your hands. I am prepared to pay whatever you wish for your services.”

Lake picked up the office phone and told Florence, “Draw up a contract for Mr. Kemidov. The usual fee.” When he had hung up, he said, “That’s a hundred dollar retainer and twenty-five dollars a day, plus expenses.”

Kemidov frowned. “So little? I thought it would be much more.” He looked around at the ornately furnished office.

“I have a legacy from my father, too, Mr. Kemidov. He was Robert Edwin Lake, and he left me quite a bit of money. I can afford to do whatever I want and not worry about showing a profit.”

Kemidov swallowed and said, “You mean you do this work for... for fun?”

Lake grinned. “You might say that. I see it as a continuing education.”

Kemidov shook his head, wrote out a check, signed the contract, and gave Lake some more details about his sister. He told Lake the name of the hotel where he was staying and then left the office with another limp handshake.

Florence popped back in after he was gone and said, “What do you think, Nicky? Is he for real?”

Lake was standing at the window, looking out at the sunshine. “He told me a story that’s either a romantic fantasy come to life or the biggest bunch of garbage to come along in a great while. It was just interesting enough that I want to find out which.”

Lake was lucky and found a parking place across the street from the university administration building. He piloted the Mercedes into it. As he got out, he glanced around at the campus where he had spent four years a decade and a half earlier. The diploma they had given him was stuck in a desk somewhere at home.

His suit and hat got a few curious looks from passing students as he walked toward the building, but he was used to that. He went through the massive front doors, past a row of columns that gave the building a Roman look, and down a long, high-ceilinged hall. His footsteps echoed hollowly. A sign with an arrow on it told him that the Registrar’s office was through a door on his left. Before he went in, he rechecked the notebook where he had written down all the information given to him by Victor Kemidov.

Something tickled the back of his brain, something about his client’s name.

For a long moment, he tried to grasp it but failed. With a mental shrug, he replaced the notebook in his pocket and went into the office.

A pretty co-ed was working behind the counter. She greeted him with a wide smile and said, “Could I help you, sir?”

“Is Anna Kemidov around?” he drawled. “I was supposed to meet her here.”

“No, sir, I’m sorry. Anna’s not working this afternoon. She’ll be here in the morning, though.”

“I could have sworn she said she worked in the Registrar’s office in the afternoons.”

“No, sir, her shift is 8:30 to 1.” The girl glanced at a clock on the wall. “In fact, I think she’s in a Political Science seminar right now.”

“Oh, yes, that’s over in...”

“Webster Hall,” the girl furnished.

“Of course, Webster Hall. I remember now. I had it backwards. Well, I’ll just run over there and try to catch her when she gets out. Thank you very much.”

“No trouble, sir.”

He stopped the first student he saw outside and asked where Webster Hall was. Following the directions, he found it to be a two story, red brick building that had been built in the Thirties by Roosevelt’s New Deal. Directly across the street was a fast food restaurant, so Lake went over and settled down by a window with a milkshake.

He had been there for perhaps a quarter of an hour when a steady stream of students began coming out of Webster Hall. He watched closely and spotted a short girl with long black hair. She walked down the street with two boys, and Lake paid for his milkshake and fell in behind them, some fifty yards back. Kemidov’s description of his sister had been very good.

Anna Kemidov and her two companions walked across the campus briskly. She talked and laughed all the way. Lake hung back, admiring the tight fit of her jeans.

The trio’s destination was a garage apartment two blocks from the campus. Lake let them get a good lead, because he knew he would be conspicuous on the quiet, tree-lined street. When he saw for sure where they were going, he peeled off and went back to his car. Removing his hat and coat, he drove past the apartment once, not too fast, not too slow. He noticed with interest a large tree next to the garage.

After the one drive-by, Lake went home to his father’s mansion on the edge of town. He knew he would never be able to think of it as his own, but he didn’t care anymore. He did the job he had chosen to do, and that was all that concerned him.

That, and the blue Ford that trailed him all the way home from the university.

When the darkness had settled down completely, Lake drove back toward the campus. He left his Panama hat at home, and his white suit had been replaced by a black pullover and slacks. He parked several blocks from the garage apartment and walked quietly toward it in the night.

Lights shone through the windows of the apartment. Lake slid through the shadows and into the open garage beneath it. An old car bulked in the darkness. Lake took a tiny penlight from his pocket and moved the little beam around carefully. Footsteps moved across the room above him, and he heard the girl’s voice.

Junk was piled to the top of the rear wall. It was a welter of boxes, rags, old bicycle tires, and all the other things that accumulate in garages. He poked through it briefly, then the light picked up a door in a shadowed corner. He guessed that it probably let into a storeroom. The knob turned under his gentle touch.

The area inside was a storeroom, all right. There were more boxes, some of them covered with a canvas to one side.

The light struck highlights on the brass that was worked in elaborate patterns on the lid of General Kemidov’s trunk.

And when he opened it gingerly, the light illuminated the floating dust motes that were the trunk’s sole occupants.

Lake let the lid down softly and clicked the light off. More voices came from upstairs. He moved quickly but quietly outside and leaned for a moment against the big tree. A man came to the window of the apartment and looked outside, but Lake was deep in shadow. After a moment, the man moved away from the window.

Lake drew a pair of thin gloves onto his hands and reached up to grasp a limb. He climbed up to the level of the windows, being careful to keep himself on the other side of the tree trunk, He heard a clattering noise inside that he recognized as a mimeograph machine.

He found comfortable hand-and-footholds and eased his head to the side where he could see into the apartment. He saw a man operating the mimeo machine and another man drinking from a can of beer. They were the two who had been with Anna Kemidov in the afternoon. The one at the machine called out, “Hey, Anna, we need more paper.”

She came into view carrying an armload of mimeo sheets. She put them on a table by the machine and said, “I hope these posters do more good than the last ones did. People just laughed at them.”

“They won’t be laughing when the revolution comes.”

The one with the beer belched and said, “What revolution? This isn’t the Sixties anymore, man. These punks today don’t want to revolt. They want to study accounting and get drunk and feel nostalgic about the Fifties, when they were all of four years old. Some revolutionaries!”

“You’re a fine one to be talking, Allen,” Anna replied hotly. “At least we’re trying. Someone has to oppose people like my brother.”

The one at the machine laughed. “How is the little Czar these days, still as decadent as ever?”

Anna frowned. “I don’t think he even cared that our father died. All he was concerned about was the money he would come into. Well, his joy was short-lived, I would imagine.”

Allen the beer drinker asked, “Did he call you a Bolshevik this time?”

“He called me many things, none of them pleasant. Is that enough paper, Tom?”

“Should be,” Tom grunted, working the mimeo.

Lake’s hands were getting tired, and he let himself down out of the tree. He had not particularly liked Victor Kemidov, but it looked like the young Russian had been telling the truth. The trunk existed, that was for sure. And Anna and her friends certainly looked like they could use all the extra funds they could lay their hands on.

He slipped back to the car and headed for home. He watched the rearview mirror all the way, and when he pulled into the long drive that led to the mansion, he sped up to the house, jumped out of the car, and sprinted back across the well-manicured lawn. He fell onto his stomach behind the hedge that bordered the estate and found a small opening through which he peered intently. It was only a few seconds before a nondescript blue Ford drove by. Lake noted down the license number in his mind, figuring that he would check it out when he had the chance.

When the Ford was out of sight, Lake stood up and brushed himself off. He went into the house, telling Simpson the butler that he would not require his services anymore this night. Picking up the telephone in the library, he dialed the number of the hotel where Victor Kemidov was staying.

Kemidov came on the line and identified himself. Lake said, “Mr. Kemidov, this is Nicholas Lake. I’ve looked into the matter we discussed this afternoon, and it looks very much like your conclusions were correct.”

“You’ve located the General’s trunk?”

“The trunk, yes; its contents, no.”

“She has them. There is no doubt of that. Where is the trunk?”

Lake told him about the storeroom in the garage and the empty trunk. He left out the conversation he had overheard.

Kemidov’s tone was happy as he said, “Now you will go confront her, correct? Demand the return of my great-grandfather’s treasures?”

“That’s one way. I could offer to buy them back from her.”

“No! She and her so-called comrades must not profit from their lawlessness. Demand the treasure back! Right is on our side.”

Lake sighed. “I play whatever tune you call, Mr. Kemidov. I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you how it comes out.”

“Excellent. Good night, Mr. Lake.”

“Good night, Mr. Kemidov.”

As Lake cradled the phone, the unknown something that had bothered him earlier stirred again, and again it slipped away. For some unfathomable reason, he found himself staring at the bookshelves that surrounded him. They stretched from floor to ceiling, and the majority of the titles they contained were mystery novels.

He shifted mental gears and wondered why someone had been following him. There was no apparent reason for it, but then the best reasons were seldom apparent.

He puzzled over it for a time and then went to bed. The whole business kept him awake for quite a while, tossing and turning in the antique four-poster for which his father had paid sixteen thousand dollars.

When Lake came into his office the next morning, Florence was sitting at her desk reading the morning paper, a frown on her pretty face. As Lake hung up his hat, she said, “There’s something in here you should read, Nicky.”

He took the paper from her and said, “No one else in the world calls me Nicky, Florence. I’d appreciate it if you would make it unanimous. Where is it?”

“Down at the bottom of page four.”

He saw the headline POLICE RAID NEAR CAMPUS and felt a flutter in his stomach. The story went on, “Acting on information from an unidentified source, police raided an apartment near the university last night and arrested the three occupants on the charge of possessing stolen property. Arrested were Allen Cunningham, 25, Thomas Rowe, 25, and Anna Kemidov, 23. All three are students at the university. Police seized an antique trunk which was stolen three days ago from Ms. Kemidov’s brother, Victor Kemidov.”

There was more, but that was enough for Lake. He put the paper down slowly and turned toward the door of the inner office. Florence said, “The D.A.’s office called. They’ll want you to testify at the trial when it comes up. And a messenger delivered this just before you came in.”

She handed him an envelope with his name typed on it. He opened it silently and pulled out a folded piece of paper. A yellow slip fell to the desk as he opened it. He read the writing on the paper, then suddenly crumpled it and said softly, “Damn! He must have called the cops as soon as I hung up.” He dropped the wadded ball of paper on the desk and stalked into his office, slamming the door behind him.

Florence picked up the yellow slip and saw that it was a check for five thousand dollars, signed by Victor Kemidov. The paper, when she smoothed it out, was a note that read:

Inside, Lake paced back and forth furiously. He had been used. He knew it now, and he hated it. The payoff was just added insult. He let his anger boil for a moment more, then picked up the phone, dialed a number, and said, “Mr. Kemidov, Suite 4, please.”

The voice of the hotel operator came back, “I’m sorry, sir, Mr. Kemidov checked out an hour ago.”

Let down, cheated of a target for his wrath, Lake said, “Thank you,” and hung up. After a moment’s thought, he decided that there was one more thing he could do.

He went out and grabbed his hat, saying to Florence, “Those kids will need a good lawyer. Call Ned Flanagan and have him meet me at the jail.”

She said, “Right, Nicky.” But by that time, he was gone.

Anna Kemidov, Allen Cunningham, and Thomas Rowe sat on one side of the table, Lake and white-haired Ned Flanagan on the other. Lake began by saying, “My name is Nicholas Lake; I’m a private investigator. Your brother hired me, Miss Kemidov, to recover some property of his that he thought you had stolen.”

Anna glared and said, “We didn’t steal anything! I didn’t even know the trunk was missing.”

Lake went on, “That’s not the point. You’ll still need a good lawyer, not only to face the theft charges, but there will probably be a murder charge, or at least manslaughter, because of Mikhail’s death. Mr. Flanagan here is one of the best attorneys in the country, and I’m going to hire him on your behalf.”

The three young people were still trying to digest Lake’s statement about murder charges. They looked aghast and terrified at the thought. Allen Cunningham stammered, “B-but we didn’t have anything to do with it, man.” Anger came onto his face. “Hey, it was you turned us in to the cops, wasn’t it?”

Lake clasped his hands together on the table. “No. I found the trunk in the storeroom last night, and I reported it to my employer, Victor Kemidov. He expressed no interest in contacting the police at the time; all he wanted to do was recover his goods. He changed his mind, though. It’s possible that he planned to turn you in all along, as soon as he knew for sure that you had the trunk. I got a check from him this morning that smelled of payoff and a guilty conscience. Now if you’ll just tell the whole story to Mr. Flanagan, I’m sure he’ll be able to prepare a good defense.”

Anna looked puzzled. “Why are you doing this, Mr. Lake?”

“Because I have the inescapable feeling that your brother used me,” he replied in a level voice. “I don’t like the feeling.”

“So now you try to make up for it with your money?”

“I don’t blame you for being bitter, but I’m just trying to help.”

Anna stared down at the table for a long minute, then raised her eyes to meet Lake’s. “If you really want to help, there is something I must tell you. Alone.”

“Anything you can tell me, you can tell Mr. Flanagan.”

“No. You helped get us into this trouble. Now you can get us out.”

Lake’s features grew taut, but he said evenly, “All right, if you feel that way, I’ll do whatever I can.” He nodded to Flanagan.

When the lawyer had left the room and the two boys had been taken back to their cells, Anna Kemidov looked intently at Lake and said, “My brother and I have never been close, but still I hate to say this about him...”

Ten minutes later, Lake came out of the room and found Flanagan in the hall. He asked, “Has bail been set?”

“Yes. They said they couldn’t raise it.”

“Take care of it. Then take them to my house and keep them there. I’ll be relying on you to keep them out of trouble while I’m gone, Ned.”

“You going somewhere?”

“Yes, I’m going to take a little trip.” He went over to a public phone, dropped coins into it, and called the office. “Florence? Listen. Kemidov’s address is on that check, isn’t it? Good. Call Alex and tell him to get the jet ready. Then call Chief Wilkins here and tell him I’m going to need to talk to the chief of police there. See if he knows him and can put me in touch. And I need to talk to Harvey at DMV. Got all that?” He paused for a moment. “Good. But don’t call me Nicky. You’re not Nora Charles, for God’s sake.”

As he said that, a strange expression came onto his face. He had finally caught a glimpse of the elusive thing that had been bothering him. He thought he knew where he had heard the name Kemidov before. As he hung up the phone, he shook his head and muttered to himself, “No, it couldn’t be. Too far out. No chance.”

But somehow, he wasn’t convinced.

In the next nine hours, Lake talked to his friend Harvey Cooper at the State Department of Motor Vehicles, paid a visit to Chief of Police Joseph Wilkins, flew across several states in his private jet while he reread sections of one of his favorite books, talked to another chief of police and several vice squad officers, and drove a rented car down a dark street lined with huge trees and old mansions.

Lake brought the car to a stop in a particularly dark stretch of road, next to a high brick wall. He had killed his lights and motor a block earlier, and the car made little noise as it coasted to a halt. He eased the door open, slid out, and eased it shut. He was wearing the same black outfit he had worn the night before, and it made him almost invisible as he glided through the darkness beside the wall.

A gate with iron grillwork marked the entrance to the estate behind the wall. It was padlocked, but Lake had to try only three of the keys he had on the ring in his pocket before it snapped open. He swung the gate back carefully, trying to minimize the squealing of rusted hinges.

Once he was inside, he left the gravel drive and padded silently across the lawn. The grass was long and unkempt, and Lake figured that in the daylight, the whole place would look rundown.

It was too dark to make out much detail about the house. He could tell that it was huge and rambling and had two or three stories. A light was burning in an upstairs window, but the bottom appeared dark and deserted.

The penlight proved useful again in locating a door. Like most old houses, this one had an entrance directly into the cellar. The lock on it was old and brittle, and Lake opened it easily. The light showed him a flight of wooden steps which he descended carefully. Unseen cobwebs brushed against his face.

When he reached the concrete floor, he moved the beam of light around rapidly. He saw an old furnace, some gas cans, a pile of cardboard boxes, and a lot of dust and cobwebs. It looked like a normal cellar.

Somewhere in it was a fortune.

There were only a few places to look, and Lake started with the boxes. The first four he opened were empty. When he lifted the lid of the fifth, the light was bounced and refracted back in myriad patterns by the jewels within. Lake whistled softly between his teeth.

He reached into the box and came up with a handful of necklaces and bracelets that were dripping with precious stones. He sifted them through his fingers and let them trickle back down into the box. He played the light around over the dazzling display.

Suddenly, when the light reached a far corner, it picked up a different reflection. Something underneath a jewelled tiara was giving off a dull black gleam. Lake’s breath caught in his throat as he reached for the object.

He could feel his heart beating fast and strong in his chest. His fingers touched the cool, slick enamel and closed around it. He lifted it up.

Nicholas Lake held in his hands a small black statuette, carved in the image of a falcon.

He let his breath out slowly, wondering if the crazy ideas running rampant through his mind could possibly be true. They had to be; he held the proof in his sweating palms.

There was a click, and light showered down on him. He nearly dropped the bird as he spun around in surprise. Victor Kemidov stood at the top of another flight of stairs leading up into the house. “Mr. Lake, this is going to cause no end of trouble,” he said. “Why didn’t you just deposit my check and forget about the whole thing?”

Lake’s racing pulse slowed down a bit as he drew a deep breath. “Because I don’t like being played for a sap,” he replied. “I don’t like being used to help frame three kids for a murder they didn’t commit. I don’t like real murderers getting away with their crimes.”

“My, there certainly are a lot of things you don’t like.” Kemidov gestured with the pistol he held. “Put the falcon down, and please be careful with it. Just how much do you actually know, anyway?”

“Enough. Your sister told me she had seen notations in your diary of payments to someone with the initials A.L. She assumed that A.L. was a gambler or a loan shark. Evidently, you’re quite a wastrel in her eyes, Kemidov.”

“She always was a commoner at heart. GO on with your story.”

“Earlier today I talked with the chief of police here and several members of the vice squad. They told me about a man named Alvin Litton, a small-time gangster who has been seen with you several times.”

“And he is a man who has much better judgment at picking horses than do I. But I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to interrupt. How does the rest of it go?”

“I wasn’t sure of that, and I’m still not. But when Anna told me about your money problems, that made me consider other alternatives to her guilt.

“If you owed money to someone, your inheritance of the treasure would more than take care of it. You would have no reason to steal from yourself, since you could convert the legacy to cash legally and pay what you owed, and you would have even less reason to frame your sister and her friends for the theft of the trunk.”

Lake was calculating distances and angles as he went on, “But an old man named Mikhail died, and murder was a completely different matter. If you were implicated in that somehow, the safest thing for you to do would be to throw all the blame on someone else. Down at police headquarters, they already knew about the connection between you and Litton. Without my handy discovery of the chest in that garage, they would have started shining a very bright light into your dealings, and I don’t think you could have stood that.”

Kemidov’s teeth gritted and his fist tightened on the pistol. “Damn Mikhail! If he hadn’t come snooping down here, everything would have been fine. He carried on so when he. saw us unloading the trunk, said priceless works of art should not be used to pay filthy gambling debts. We were both traditionalists, Mikhail and I, but he knew nothing of modern expediency. Still, Alvin should not have hit him so hard just to quiet him down.”

“And when the old man turned out to be dead, you and Litton hatched your plan to frame Anna. You waited several days to fly out so that Litton would have time to transport the trunk, probably in a rented truck.”

Kemidov walked slowly down the stairs, keeping the gun lined up on Lake. “Perfectly correct, Mr. Lake. We hid the treasures in the unused furnace while the police made their investigation of the supposed break-in. I must say that it was none too thorough, since at the time I reported nothing stolen. It was only later, after Mikhail had died in the hospital, that I discovered the ‘missing’ trunk. But this is all ridiculous, Mr. Lake. You can prove none of this. You are no threat to me, now that I think about it.”

Lake pointed to the glittering pile in the box. “What about that?”

“If you choose to go to the police with this story of yours, by the time they secured a search warrant, those baubles will no longer be here.”

“Someone was keeping track of my movements back home, someone in a rented car. I checked the number. I wonder what would happen if I got a picture of Litton and showed it to the people at the rental agency?”

Kemidov’s mouth set in hard lines, and he said, “I could just shoot you down and save myself a lot of trouble, you know. You are the intruder here, you broke and entered. Your death would be messy, no doubt, but it could be handled if need be.” He sighed. “I hoped that I had judged you correctly and that you would accept my check quietly.”

Lake smiled sardonically. “You thought I was a spoiled rich boy playing private eye, is that it? Well, maybe you’re right, Kemidov, but some people take their games very seriously.”

“Another check perhaps? I could use your testimonay at my sister’s trial.”

“No. But there is one thing I’d very much like to know.” He bent slowly and carefully so as not to alarm Kemidov and plucked the black bird out of the box. “Is this... possibly... what it looks like?”

Kemidov smiled and chuckled. “Who knows, Mr. Lake? I believe Dashiell Hammett was a private detective himself at one time, with many underworld contacts. Perhaps he heard of my great-grandfather. Perhaps his fiction of the Maltese Falcon was more fact than anyone knew. The figure itself exists, of that there is no doubt.”

“But the business about it being made of gold and encrusted with jewels...?”

“I intend to find out in the near future. But now I must deal with you.”

“I’d like to know now,” Lake said, and he let the bird slip from his fingers. It landed on the concrete floor with a shattering crash as Kemidov let out a cry of surprise. His eyes grew wide as he stared at the finest jewels of Asia, sparkling amidst shards of black enamel.

Lake’s eyes never left the gun as he took a quick step and slapped it to the side. Kemidov’s finger contracted. The gun exploded, but the bullet buried itself harmlessly in the cellar wall. Lake bunched his shoulders and drove his left fist deep into the Russian’s stomach. Kemidov’s breath puffed out, his face turned white, and the gun fell to the floor, landing on rubies and emeralds. Kemidov folded up and fell over, all of the fight gone out of him.

Lake stooped and picked up the gun. Diamonds rolled under his feet as he headed for the stairs, looking for a telephone.

The next day, Lake leaned back in his office chair and smiled at Florence. “He was too paranoid,” he said. “If he had left things like they were and not tried to frame Anna, he might have bluffed his way through it. The frame was really Litton’s idea; like most criminals, he tried to cover every possible source of danger.”

“What happens now?” Florence asked.

“Well, Anna, Tom, and Allen go free, that’s the most important thing. Kemidov and Litton will face criminal conspiracy and manslaughter charges. Hopefully, they’ll stick, although the D.A. down there wasn’t too happy with me. Said I could have blown the whole case by taking things into my own hands. I didn’t like being Kemidov’s pawn, though.”

Florence started to go back to the outer office when she paused and asked hesitantly, “Nicky... Do you think it was the real one? The real Maltese Falcon?”

Lake got a faraway look on his face. “I don’t believe very much in coincidence. But I’m afraid the answer to that one went with Dashiell Hammett to his grave.”

“What was it again? The thing that Bogart said when... Who was it that played the policeman?”

“Ward Bond,” Lake supplied.

“When Ward Bond asked him what it was?”

“The stuff that dreams are made of,” Nicholas Lake mused. “And don’t call me Nicky.”