Stolen Away

“When did she die?” I asked.

“Last month.”

It was the first she’d mentioned it, but I found that telling. She’d jumped on the Lindbergh bandwagon within weeks of her mother dying. Evalyn-a woman in mourning, her emotions frazzled, looking to do something meaningful with her rich, empty life-made easy prey for a shark like Gaston Means.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” I said.

“Another victim of the Hope diamond curse?” she wondered aloud wryly. “She was a Christian Scientist, actually…wouldn’t stand for medical help. Thank God I’m a heathen.”

“You never liked this house anyway,” Inga said.

“True,” Evalyn said. “I don’t like its history.”

“What history?” I asked.

Evalyn leaned back. “A man and wife lived here, a long time ago. They fought continually-he beat her for her supposed faithlessness, and on nights when the wind was blowing a certain way, her screams could be heard for miles, it’s said. Finally he knocked her over the head and put her down a well, here.”

“I wonder if it’s safe,” I said.

“The house?” Inga asked.

“To drink the water.”

Nobody in the backseat laughed, but I caught Evalyn’s tiny smile in the rearview mirror. That dry wit of mine again.

As we drew nearer to the house, I could see that its windows were boarded up.

“Looks deserted,” I said, pulling up near the garage and stables in back. This surprised me, because she’d said the phones would be working.

“It is deserted, virtually,” she said. “There’s an elderly caretaker I’ve kept on.”

“Does he like growing weeds?” Inga asked sarcastically.

“The place does look a little raggedy,” Evalyn said to her maid, “but winter hasn’t quite left us. Gus’ll tend to things in due time, I’m sure.”

Inga grunted. She was very pretty, in a peasanty sort of way, but she was sour; the kind of woman whose time of the month was all month.

I helped the mistress and her maid out of the car-Inga wore her black-and-white uniform under a simple wool overcoat, while Evalyn wore a mink coat over a dark brown angora frock trimmed white, her belt white, her beret brown with a white band. I got the suitcases, including my traveling bag, out of the trunk; there were four bags, all of which I managed to carry. Neither woman made a move to help me, including waiting for me to put the bags down so I could open the side door, which was unlocked. Evalyn had called the caretaker in advance.

But that didn’t mean anything homey was waiting for us. We moved from the smallish kitchen through the big, dark, cold house where only the occasional piece of furniture remained, in every case shrouded with a sheet. The air, was stale, musty, but the house wasn’t dirty; caretaker Gus had done some work. The bedrooms were on the second floor. The third floor was closed off.

Evalyn did not allow me to switch on any of the lights.

“Means’s instructions,” she said, “as per the kidnappers’ orders, are that lights are forbidden. The idea is that Far View should continue to look unoccupied.”

“Cold in here,” Inga said, patting her arms, though still in her overcoat.

“The furnace isn’t in working order,” Evalyn said.

“The fireplaces are,” I said.

She waggled a jeweled finger. “Means said not a single light-including the fireplaces.”

“Where is Means?” I asked.

“He said he would come,” Evalyn said. “Let’s go to the kitchen. Inga, see if you can whip something up for us.”

Inga grunted.

We huddled around the wood-burning stove-which Evalyn permitted us to get going-and I held a flashlight for Inga, who morosely prepared a meal that did not include Maurice’s filet of sole with Marguery sauce or his patented parfait. Canned pork and beans was the extent of it; that and coffee. But it tasted fine to me. Evalyn seemed satisfied by the fare, as well-though I had a feeling it was the evening’s main course that she found filling: intrigue.

We were sitting drinking coffee, shivering despite the blankets around us Indian-style, when the lights of a car coming up the driveway slanted through the cracks of the boarded-up windows.

Several minutes later a big man-both tall and fat-entered; he wore a dark heavy topcoat, under which a blue bow tie peeked, and a homburg, which he immediately removed, revealing himself to be nearly bald. He had a flashlight in one hand. He clicked the flashlight on and held its beam under his chin.

“It’s me,” he said. “Hogan.”

Gaston Bullock Means had a puckish smile and a deeply dimpled baby face. Washed with the flashlight light, that face was at once sinister and benign.

Then the light was suddenly in my face; I squinted into it, grinding my teeth, remaining servile.

“Who’s this?” Means said.

“My chauffeur,” she said. “His name is Smith. I’ve just hired him.”

“Nobody’s name is Smith,” Means snapped.

“Look in a phone book,” I said, pulling my head out of the light. “You’ll find you’re mistaken.”

He dropped the beam to the floor, where it pooled whitely. “His credentials are sound, Eleven?”

Evalyn, a.k.a. Eleven, said, “Indeed.”

“All right, then,” he said to me, grandly, “henceforth you’re Number Fifteen.”

Inga spoke up, huffily. “I thought I was Number Fifteen.”

“Ah, yes…that’s right. Smith-you’re Number Sixteen.”

“Swell.”

He walked over to Evalyn, but did not sit, though there was an extra chair immediately handy. “Can I speak candidly in front of these people?”

Sure he could-we had numbers, didn’t we?

“Yes,” Evalyn said. “I brought only this skeleton staff, as per your request.”

“Good. Good.” He snapped off the flashlight and sat. He was an enormous man, as big as the wood-burning stove. “I have good news for you, Eleven. The Fox was waiting for me when I got home last night.”

“The Fox?” she asked.

“My old cellmate. The leader of the kidnap gang. The Fox. That’s how his men know him.”

The bad guys had their own code names, too, it seemed.

Means leaned forward conspiratorially. “He asked me if I had the ransom money. I told him I did. I told him to wait outside until I made sure my family was asleep, and then I would let him in, and let him see his money.”

I probably shouldn’t have spoken up, but I did. “Wasn’t that foolish?” I asked.

“Foolish?” Means looked at me as he might regard a buzzing fly.

“Foolish,” I said. “What was to keep him from stealing the money?”

He lifted his chin nobly. “The Fox was my cellmate. There is such a thing as honor among thieves!”

No there isn’t.

“Oh,” I said.

“I took him downstairs, to the basement, and took the cardboard box of money from its hiding place and piled the bills on a table. I let him examine them for himself. He was pleased right off the bat that the denominations were small and the bills old and worn, the serial numbers nonconsecutive. In other words, Eleven, the Fox is convinced that you’re going to play fair. He counted the money twice, and was delighted to find it totaled precisely one hundred thousand dollars.”

I spoke again. “Where’s the money now?”

“No longer in my home,” Means said irritably. “Locked in a safe, pending further developments.”

“Inga,” Evalyn said, sensing Means’s growing irritation with me, “get Mr. Means some coffee.”

Inga did.

“That’s ‘Hogan,’ Eleven. Always Hogan.” Means sipped his coffee with great satisfaction, saying, “We should