The Falcon's Malteser

I’ve never been that keen on eating them at all. I’ve got better things to spend my pocket money on. New pockets, for example. The old ones are full of holes.

The question was, why had Johnny Naples paid out five hundred dollars to have us look after a box of candy? Why had someone gone to so much trouble—wrecking the apartment—to get his hands on them? And how had the Fat Man gotten mixed up in all this? Chocolates were the last things he needed—he was on a diet. It just didn’t make sense.

We’d opened up the box. In for a penny, in for a pound (or 5.15 ounces, to be exact). The contents certainly looked like ordinary Maltesers. They smelled ordinary. And they tasted ordinary. Herbert had some sort of idea that they might be chocolate-covered diamonds or something. It was only after I’d eaten half a dozen of them that he changed his mind and suggested that they might contain some sort of newfan gled poison. If looks could kill, I’d have buried my brother.

“What we’ve got to do,” Herbert said, “is find Naples.”

For Herbert that was a pretty brilliant piece of deduction. The Fat Man had given us two days to get back to him. Johnny Naples had said he’d return in about a week. That left five days in which all sorts of unpleasant things could happen. The only trouble was, Naples hadn’t told us where we could reach him. We had no address, no telephone number.

Herbert echoed my thoughts. “I wonder how we could get hold of him?” he asked.

“We could try the Yellow Pages,” I suggested. “V for ‘ver tically challenged’?”

“Yes!”

I groaned as he reached for the telephone book. “I was only joking,” I said.

“Were you? Of course you were!” Herbert dropped the book and gazed out of the window.

Meanwhile, I was fingering the envelope. The Maltesers hadn’t told us anything, but looking underneath the flap, I found a small white label. The dwarf, in a hurry to seal the package, must have missed it. “Look at this,” I said.

Herbert took the envelope. “It’s an envelope,” he said.

“Yes. But look at the label.”

Herbert found it and held it up to the light. “Hammett’s,” he read. “Eighteen cents.” He frowned. “That’s cheap for a box of Maltesers.”

I shook my head. “That’s the price of the envelope, not the candy,” I explained. “Look—the price is handwritten, but the name is printed. Hammett’s . . . that must be the stationer’s or newsstand where he bought the envelope to put the Maltesers in.”

“That’s terrific!” Herbert exclaimed. “That’s great, Nick.” He paused. “But how does it help us?”

“If the dwarf wanted to buy an envelope, he probably bought it fairly near wherever he’s staying,” I said. “So all we have to do is find out how many Hammett’s shops there are in London, visit them all, and ask them if they remember selling an envelope to Naples.”

Herbert sighed. “They probably sell hundreds of envelopes,” he said. “And they must have thousands of customers.”

“Yeah. But how many of their customers are dwarfs?”

“That’s true.” He considered. “So how do we find Ham mett’s?”

“We look in the Yellow Pages.”

Herbert snatched up the book again. Then he turned and looked at me disdainfully. “That was my idea in the first place,” he said.

I didn’t argue. Arguing with someone like Herbert is a bit like hitting yourself with a brick.

As it turned out, there were six Hammett’s in London.

We found them under the section headed Newsstands and News Vendors. There were three south of the river, one in Notting Hill Gate, one in Kensington, and one in Hammersmith. By now it was too late to visit them all, so we decided to take the three in the south first and pick up some secondhand furniture from a friend with a shop near Clapham Common at the same time. It took us a couple of hours and a lot of wasted shoe leather, but at least that evening we were able to sit down again.

The next day was a Saturday. We left the flat for a second time, but struck out in Kensington and Hammersmith. That just left Notting Hill Gate. The last Hammett’s was a run-down place on the Portobello Road in the middle of a famous antiques and bric-a-brac market. The sun was shining and the market was busy with young couples shelling out for Victorian brass towel holders and Edwardian stripped-pine blanket boxes. The air was thick with the smell of french fries and overcooked kebabs. Outside the shop there was an old boy selling genuine antique license plates. Doubtless they had fallen off a genuine antique truck.

The shop was small and dark. That seemed to be the trademark of the entire Hammett’s chain. You probably know the sort of place: candy and chocolates on one side, newspapers and magazines on the other, with the dirty stuff on the top shelf. Herbert made straight for it, thumbing through a copy of Playboy, “looking for clues,” as he put it. Meanwhile, I took a quick look at the stationery and odds-and-ends section. This was the first branch we’d visited that actually stocked the right-size envelopes. I examined a price label. The handwriting was the same.

There was only one man behind the counter. He was about forty, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, his skin the unhealthy shade of white that comes from sitting in a dingy newsstand all day smoking. While Herbert continued his own private investigation, I took the envelope and went over to him.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but do you remember selling one of these envelopes to a dwarf?”

The man looked past me at Herbert. “Are you going to buy that?” he barked. Herbert pushed the magazine away from him and blushed. Then he came over and joined us. “Now, what do you want, son?” the newsagent asked.

“My brother’s a private detective,” I explained. “We’re trying to find a dwarf . . . greasy hair, suntan. We think he bought an envelope here a couple of days ago.”

“Yeah . . . I remember that.” The newsagent nodded. “A short guy . . .”

“Most dwarfs are,” I muttered.

“Came in here . . . last Thursday.”

It had been Thursday when Johnny Naples came to see us. I was beginning to get excited, but then Herbert had to pipe up. “Diamond’s the name,” he said. “Tim Diamond.”

“He didn’t tell me his name,” the newsagent said.

“No. I’m telling you my name.”

The newsagent frowned at me. “Is he all right?” he asked.

“Sure.” I scowled at Herbert. “Look—this is important. Did the dwarf buy anything else here? Like some Maltesers, for example.”

I could see that the man was beginning to have second thoughts about the state of my own sanity, but he knew I was serious. He considered for a minute. “He didn’t buy any candy,” he said. “But . . . now I remember. He had a box of Maltesers with him when he came in. I saw him put them in the envelope. What else did he buy? There was something . . .” He snapped his fingers. “It was a pair of scissors.” Now it all came back. “He was in a hurry. Nervous sort. Kept on looking out into the street. Like he was being followed or something. He bought an envelope and a pair of scissors. Then he went.”

“We need to find him,” I said.

“Is he in some sort of trouble?” the newsagent asked.

“He might be if we don’t find him,” I replied.

“But he won’t necessarily be if we do,” Herbert added unnecessarily.

The newsagent hesitated. He didn’t trust us. If I had been him, I wouldn’t have trusted us either. Just then the door opened and somebody else came in—to buy a pack of cigarettes or something. “Look, I don’t have time to waste with you two jokers,” the newsagent said. “You want to speak to the dwarf, you’ll find him at the Hotel Splendide at the bottom of the Portobello Road.”

“How do you know?” I said.

“I know the owner. He told me he had a dwarf staying there.”

“And what’s the owner’s name?” Herbert asked.

“Jack Splendide.”