The Falcon's Malteser

THE PROFESSOR

I was woken by the smell of lavender. Lavender? Yes—perfume. You’ve smelled it before, Nick. Where? I can’t remember, but maybe it was mixed with the raw meat and . . . I swallowed, stretched, opened my eyes.

“Blimey, you’re a sight!” Betty Charlady exclaimed.

I was half stretched out on Herbert’s desk in his office. I’d had to walk home the night before, and by the time I’d gotten in I’d been too tired to go upstairs. I’d looked at the second flight of steps. They led to a bed with a crumpled sheet and a tangled-up quilt. I’ll never make it, I’d thought, and so I’d gone into the office and collapsed there. And now Betty Charlady was standing in front of me, looking at me like I’d dropped in from another planet.

“What happened to you?” she demanded, shaking her head and sending the artificial daisies on her hat into convulsions.

“I had a bad night,” I said. “How did you get in?”

“Through the door.”

“It was open?”

She nodded. “You ought to lock it at night, Master Nicholas. You never know who might visit . . .”

I needed a hot bath, a hot meal, two aspirin, and a warm bed—not necessarily in that order. Instead I went up and washed my face in the sink while Betty made breakfast: boiled eggs, toast, and coffee. I looked at myself in the mirror. Somebody else looked back. His hair was a mess, there were bags under his eyes, and he had a nasty cut on his forehead. I felt sorry for the guy.

Ten minutes later, I was sitting down in the kitchen, eating. Betty had insisted on cutting my toast into triangles, which was pretty embarrassing. I’d been threatened, blown up, attacked—and here I was being treated like a kid again. But I suppose she meant well.

“Where’s Mr. Timothy?” she asked.

“Herbert?” I said. “He’s in jail. Accused of murder.”

“Murder!” she shrieked. “That’s a crime!”

“Well . . . yes.”

“No. I mean accusing Mr. Herbert of doing anything like that.” She sniffed. “Anybody could see he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

She was right there. Herbert ran away from flies. He was probably the only private detective in the country who was even scared of goldfish.

“So you’re doing all the detective work for him,” she said. I nodded. “Have you found anything out yet?”

Had I found anything out? Well, I’d found out that Beatrice von Falkenberg had strange taste in pets. I’d found out that if you stood too close to an exploding grenade, it made your ears hurt. I’d found out that the Fat Man still wanted to lose weight and that I was the weight he wanted to lose. But when you added up everything I’d found out, it would just about fit on the back of a postage stamp and you wouldn’t even need to write in small letters.

“No, Betty,” I said. “I haven’t found anything out. Not unless you know what a digital detector or a photo lighter is.”

“A wot?” she asked.

The scraps of paper that I had found in the dwarf’s room were still safely in my shirt pocket. The trouble was, my shirt pocket was still in the hotel. It had been blown off the shirt by the blast and for the life of me I couldn’t remember exactly what the words had been.

“I’m going to have a bath,” I said.

“I’ll run it for you,” Betty volunteered.

I shook my head. Any more encouragement and she’d be offering to scrub my back. “No, thanks . . . you go home. I can manage.”

“But what about the cleaning?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of Herbert’s ten-dollar bills. It hurt me to see it go, but there was no denying that Betty had done a good job. When she’d come, the flat had looked like a junkyard. Now it was more like an industrial slum. “Here you are,” I said. “Come back next week, after Christmas.”

“Ooh! Ta!” She took it. “Merry Christmas, Master Nicholas,” she burbled.

“Merry Christmas, Betty,” I said. ———

Sometime later, the doorbell dragged me out of a beautiful sleep. I looked at my watch. It said five to ten. It had said five to ten when I’d gone to bed. Either it had been a short sleep or I needed a new watch. I held it up to my ear and shook it. There was a dull ping and the second hand fell off. Well, that’s what comes of buying a secondhand watch.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater and made my way downstairs. The bell was still ringing. Whoever was down there was leaning on the button. I pressed the intercom to let him in, hoping he wouldn’t do the same to me. I don’t like being leaned on, and in the last few days I’d had more than enough of it. I went into the office and had just sat down when my client walked in.

Correction—he didn’t walk, he staggered. And I smelled him before I saw him. It must have been around lunchtime, but he’d been drinking since breakfast and he’d brought the stale reek of whiskey as his calling card.

I recognized him from somewhere. He was around sixty, small, fat, unshaven, owlish, with round glasses, dressed in a crumpled gray raincoat with bottle-size pockets.

He fumbled his way toward one of the chairs that Betty Charlady had repaired for us and sat down heavily, stretching out his legs. He was wearing green socks. I could see them through the holes in the soles of his shoes. I waited for him to say something, but he wasn’t in a hurry. He pulled a single cigarette out of his pocket, straightened it between his thumb and forefinger, and twisted it into his mouth. He lit it with a trembling hand. The match had almost burned itself out before he found the end of the cigarette. He wasn’t just a drunk. He was a nearsighted drunk. Suddenly I remembered where I’d seen him. He’d been at the Falcon’s funeral, standing—swaying—next to Beatrice von Falkenberg.

“It’s good to sit down,” he said.

“You tired?” I asked.

“No. It’s just that I keep falling over when I stand up. Or bumping into things.” He sucked in smoke. “You see, sir, I got this problem . . .”

“Drink?” I muttered sympathetically.

“Thanks. I’ll have a large Scotch.”

I shook my head and slid an ashtray toward him. He flicked the cigarette and scattered ashes across the top of the desk. “Who are you?” I asked.

“The name’s Quisling,” he said. “Quentin Quisling.”

“Your parents liked Qs,” I said.

“Yeah—bus queues, shopping queues . . . but that’s not why I’m here. You may have heard of me, sir. I used to be called the Professor.”

Sure I’d heard of the Professor. That had been another of the names on Snape’s blackboard. What had Snape told me? The Professor had been the Falcon’s tame scientist, something of a whiz-kid. But a year ago he’d gone missing. Looking at him now, I could see where he’d been. On the skids. Professor Quisling might have been smart once, but now he looked like a scarecrow grown old and sick. He had the skin of a five-year-old cheese and he spoke with a wheezy, grating voice. He puffed smoke into the air and coughed. Cigarettes were killing him while booze was arranging the funeral.

“I wanted to see your brother,” he said.

“He’s not here.”

“I can see that, sir. I don’t see much. But I can see that.” He pulled a half bottle of whiskey out of his pocket, unscrewed it, squinted, and tilted it toward his throat. The liquid ran down the side of his neck. He groped for the cigarette and found it. “All right,” he said. “I’ll split it with you. Fifty-fifty.”

“The cigarette?” I asked.

“That’s very funny, sir. I can see you have a sense of humor.” He screwed the cigarette between his lips and coughed. It was a horrible cough. I could hear marbles rattling in his lungs. “You know who I am?” he asked.

“You just told me.”

“I used to be the Falcon’s brains.” He stabbed at his chest with a bent thumb. “He wanted something fixed, I fixed it.”

“Lightbulbs?” I asked.

“Oh no, sir. I invented things for him. Things you wouldn’t understand.”

“So what happened to you?” I asked.

“This happened to me.” He waved the bottle. “But I know what you’ve got, sir. Indeed I do. I saw you at the funeral and I figured it out. A packet of Maltesers, would it be? Well . . . I know what to do with them. Together we could make money.”

“What are you suggesting, Professor?” I said.

“You give them to me and you wait here.” He smiled at me with crooked, sly eyes. “I’ll come back tomorrow with half the money.”

I nodded, pretending to consider the offer. In fact I was amazed. Here was a guy who was killing himself as sure as if he had a noose around his neck. He couldn’t afford a decent pair of shoes and he was dressed like a dummy in a thrift shop. But he thought he could pull a fast one on me just because I was a kid and he was a so-called adult. For a moment he reminded me of my math teacher. You know the sort. Just because they can work out the angles in an isosceles triangle, they think they rule the world. I decided to string him along.

“I give you the Maltesers,” I said. “And you come back with half the loot?”

“That’s right, sir,” Quisling said. He finished the half bottle and lobbed it toward the wastebasket. It missed and smashed against the wall. He didn’t seem to notice.

“But what do the Maltesers do?” I asked.

“They open the—” He stopped himself just in time. “I’ll tell you when I bring the money,” he said.

I knew that once I’d given him the Maltesers I’d never see him again. But I’d had an idea. I pulled open the drawer of the desk and took out the box that I’d hidden there a few days before. “This is what you want,” I said. He reached forward hungrily, but I didn’t let go. “You will come back?” I queried Quentin Quisling.

“Sure, sir. I’ll come back. On my mother’s grave.”

The old girl probably wasn’t even dead. “When?” I asked.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said.

I lifted my hand and he snatched the box away.

“In the morning,” he repeated.

The door slammed shut behind him.

I waited thirty seconds before I followed him. He wouldn’t see me behind him. With his eyesight he wouldn’t see me if I stood next to him. And if Quisling really did know where the Falcon’s diamonds were hidden, he would lead me to them. The box of Maltesers I’d given him would, of course, be useless. But perhaps I’d let him keep them—after he’d led me to the end of the rainbow. That was the way I’d planned it, but of course that was far too easy, and when nothing can go wrong that’s when everything always does. I’d reached the front door. I’d turned around to lock it behind me. I could hear an engine turning over—a van parked close by. There was a movement in the street. I glanced up just in time to see something short and unpleasant come thudding down. It hit me behind the ear. I was out like a light.