is in life. I’ve never known anything that can give me the thrill of finding a Grayson variant…the thought of not having that is almost more than I can bear. Now, with my wife gone, the notion of clearing out my Grayson room and giving it all away…and yet, I’ve always been a practical man. When something’s over, it’s over.”
“You could try taking pleasure in what you have.”
He gave me a bitter smile. “I think you know better than that. The thrill is in the hunt, sir.”
“Of course it is. And I wish I could help you.”
“But in the end you’re just what I feared most…Scofield’s man.”
“Not quite that. I wasn’t lying to you, I didn’t know who Scofield was.”
“But you do now, and that’s where you’ll go. I don’t blame you, understand, but I can’t help fretting over it and wishing money didn’t rule the world.”
We seemed to be finished. Then he said, “How did you find it? Was it Otto Murdock?”
I sat up straight. “What about Murdock?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. Obviously you know the name.”
“How does he figure into it?”
“The same way everyone else does. He’s been chasing it.”
“You mean the Grayson
“That, or anything else that’ll keep him in potato water for the rest of his life.”
“I understand he was a pretty good Grayson man once.”
“Second only to yours truly,” he said with a sad little smile. “Otto really had the bug, fifteen, twenty years ago.”
“And had a helluva collection to prove it, I’ve been led to believe.”
“Until he started selling it off piece by bloody piece to pay the whiskey man.”
“Where’d he sell it?”
He gave a little laugh. “That shouldn’t be hard to guess.”
“You bought it.”
“As much of it as I could. Otto was going through periods of trying to straighten himself out. Then he’d fall off the wagon and have to sell something. He sold all the minor stuff first. Then, just about the time he was getting to the gold-star items, along came Scofield with all the money in the world to buy them from him. I was like a duck shot right out of the water. Scofield paid him fifteen thousand dollars for a Ben-ton
I let a couple of heartbeats pass, then I said, “Have you seen Murdock recently?”
“Hadn’t seen him for years, till about a month ago.”
“What happened then?”
“He called me up one night and asked if I could get some money together.”
“Was he trying to sell you something?”
“That’s what it sounded like. I never could get him to be specific. All he’d say was that he was working on the Grayson deal of a lifetime. Stuff he’d known about for years but had never been able to get at it. Whoever owned it was unapproachable. But that person had died and now somebody else had come into it, somebody who didn’t know as much or care as much about it. He needed some money to approach her with.”
“How much money?”
“He wasn’t sure. He had seen this person once and he couldn’t tell if she was as naive as she seemed or was just taking him for a ride. My impression was, she wasn’t a heavyweight, but you only get one shot at something like that. Misjudge her and you lose it. Pay too little, lose it. Pay too much, you still lose it. What he asked for was five thousand.”
“He was going to try to steal it.”
“I figured as much. If he was going to pay five, it had to be worth fifty. God knows what a madman like Scofield would pay.”
“Why wouldn’t Murdock go to Scofield for the money in the first place?”
“Who knows what Otto was thinking? If this really was a once-in-a-lifetime Grayson score, you’d want to try to buy it yourself and
“So when he came to you for the five, what’d you tell him?”
“What do you think I told him? I said I’d need to know exactly what I’d be getting for my money. You don’t just hand over five thousand dollars to a man who’s fully capable of drinking it up in a lost weekend.”
Now he wavered. “I made a mistake. I can see it in your face.”
