BUSTED!
Johnny Naples was lying on the bed. He wasn’t dead yet, but the big red splotch on his shirt told me that his time was running out about as quickly as his blood. I went over to the window and looked outside. But I was too late. Whoever had climbed out had jumped the short distance to the overpass and run for it. Maybe they’d had a car waiting for them. Anyway, they were gone.
The dwarf groaned and I looked back again. Johnny opened his mouth and tried to speak.
“The falcon . . .” he said. Then a nasty, bubbling sound.
Then: “The sun . . .” And that was it. His eyes closed. The mouth stayed open.
Herbert had picked something up off the carpet.
“Nick . . .” he began.
It was a gun. And it was still smoking.
And he was still standing there, holding it, when the door crashed open. The man who had been drunk outside the Hotel Splendide was standing there and he had a gun, too. The Alsatian was with him, growling softly.
There were two more people behind him.
“Police!” he shouted.
Herbert fainted.
The man swung around to cover him. “You’re under arrest,” he said.
BOOKS BY ANTHONY HOROWITZ
THE ALEX RIDER ADVENTURES:
THE DIAMOND BROTHERS MYSTERIES:
For
Dursley McLinden
5/29/65-8/7/95
who played Tim Diamond in the film and in the TV series
Copyright © Anthony Horowitz, 1986, 1995
All rights reserved
THE PACKAGE
There’s not much call for private detectives in Fulham.
The day it all started was a bad one. Business was so slack it was falling down all around us. The gas had been disconnected that morning, one of the coldest mornings for twenty years, and it could only be a matter of time before the electricity followed. We’d run out of food and the people in the supermarket downstairs had all fallen down laughing when I suggested credit. We had just $2.37 and about three teaspoons of instant coffee to last us the weekend. The wallpaper was peeling, the carpets were fraying, and the curtains . . . well, whichever way you looked at it, it was curtains for us. Even the cockroaches were walking out.
I was just wondering whether the time hadn’t finally come to do something constructive—like packing my bags and going back to Mum—when the door opened and the dwarf walked in.
Okay—maybe you’re not supposed to call them dwarfs these days. Vertically challenged . . . that’s what it says in the book. But not this book. The truth is, this guy was as challenged as they come. I was only thirteen but already I had six inches on him, and the way he looked at me with cold, unforgiving eyes—he knew it and wasn’t going to forget it.
He was in his midforties, I guessed. It was hard to say with someone that size. A short, dark stranger with brown eyes and a snub nose. He was wearing a three-piece suit, only the pieces all belonged to different suits like he’d gotten dressed in a hurry. His socks didn’t match either. A neat mustache crowned his upper lip and his black hair was slicked back with oil. A spotted bow tie and a flashy gold ring completed the picture. It was a weird picture.
“Do come in, Mr. . . .” my brother began.
“Naples,” the dwarf, who already was in, said. His name might have come out of Italy, but he spoke with a South American accent. “Johnny Naples. You are Tim Diamond?”
“That’s me,” my brother lied. His real name was Herbert Timothy Simple, but he called himself Tim Diamond. He thought it suited his image. “And what can I do for you, Mr. Venice?”
“Naples,” the dwarf corrected him. He climbed onto a chair and sat down opposite my brother. His nose just reached the level of the desk. Herbert slid a paperweight out of the way to give his new client a clear view. The dwarf was about to speak when he paused and the nose turned toward me. “Who is he?” he demanded, the two
“Him?” Herbert smiled. “He’s just my kid brother. Don’t worry about him, Mr. Navels. Just tell me how I can help you.”
Naples laid a carefully manicured hand on the desk. His initials—JN—were cut into a gleaming ring. There was so much gold around that third finger he could have added his name and address, too. “I want to deposit something with you,” he said.
“Deposit?” Herbert repeated quite unnecessarily. The dwarf might have had a thick accent, but it certainly wasn’t as thick as my brother. “You mean . . . like in a bank?” he continued, brilliantly.
The dwarf raised his eyes to the ceiling, took in the crack in the plaster, and then, with a sigh, lowered them onto Herbert. “I want to leave a package with you,” he said briskly. “It’s important you look after it. But you must not open it. Just keep it here and keep it safe.”
“For how long?”
Now the dwarf’s eyes darted across to the window. He swallowed hard and loosened his bow tie. I could see that he was scared of something or somebody in the street outside. Either that or he had a fear of storm windows.
