“I would be.” By the flickering firelight. Nick could make out a tall man with a noble face and furry white sideburns. He looked to be a vigorous sixty or so and his handshake was a grip of steel. “Thank you for coming.”
“I’m keeping you from your firm’s Christmas party.”
“Nonsense. Business before pleasure, even on Christmas Eve. I want you to steal something for me, Mr. Velvet.”
“That’s my business. You understand the conditions? Nothing of value, and my fee—”
“I was told in advance. But it must be done tonight. Is that a problem?”
“No. What’s the object?”
Simpson’s face crinkled into a tight-lipped smile. “A Christmas stocking. I want you to steal the Christmas stocking hanging from the fireplace at my granddaughter’s. Any time after midnight.”
“Does it contain something valuable?”
“The gift inside will be valueless, but I want that, too.”
“Where does she live?”
“With her mother in a duplex apartment on upper Fifth Avenue.” He produced a piece of paper from his pocket. “Here’s the address. I warn you, the building has tight security.”
“I’ll get in.”
“Phone me at this number if you’re successful.” He walked Nick to the lobby, and as Nick started for the door he said, “Oh, and Mr. Velvet—”
Nick turned. “Yes?”
“Merry Christmas.”
After explaining on the phone to Gloria why he wouldn’t be home until well after midnight, Nick journeyed up Fifth Avenue to the address he’d been given. It proved to be a fine old building with a doorman, and a security guard seated behind a bank of television monitors. There would be a TV camera in each of the elevators, at the service entrance, and probably in the stairwell.
Nick walked around the block and thought about it. The most likely way to gain access to the building would be to pose as a delivery man. He could rent a uniform, buy a poinsettia, and walk right past the doorman as if he were delivering it to one of the apartments. It wouldn’t work after midnight, of course. He’d have to gain access to the building much earlier and find a hiding place out of range of the TV cameras.
Surprisingly—or not—as Nick again approached the front of the building, a florist’s van pulled up in front of the building. A young man got out, walked quickly around to the rear, and opened the doors. He brought out a huge poinsettia that almost hid his face and walked into the lobby with it. Nick stopped on the sidewalk to light a cigarette and pause as if in thought.
The doorman immediately took the plant from the young man, checked the address tag, and sent him on his way. He picked up the house phone and presently one of the building employees appeared to complete the plant’s delivery. Through it all, the security man never left his post behind the TV monitors.
Nick sighed and strolled away. A delivery wouldn’t gain him access to the apartment, not even on Christmas Eve. It would have to be something else. He glanced again at the note he carried in his pocket: Florence Beaufeld, it read. Apt. 501.
The name was not Simpson, he’d noticed at once. If the child was his granddaughter, that meant the mother she lived with was probably Charles Simpson’s daughter, separated, widowed, or divorced. Nick wondered why Simpson couldn’t go to the apartment himself on Christmas Day and perform his own stocking theft.
Nick wasn’t paid to think too much about the motives of his clients— that had gotten him into trouble enough in the past—but he did feel he should know whether Florence was the mother’s or the daughter’s name. The phonebook showed only one Beaufeld at that address: Beaufeld. F. It seemed likely that Florence was the child’s mother, Florence Simpson Beaufeld.
None of which would help him gain entrance to the apartment after midnight. He crossed Fifth Avenue and tried to get a better view of the building from Central Park. Assuming Apartment 501 was on the fifth floor, it had to face either the side street or the park. The other two sides of the building abutted adjoining buildings on Fifth Avenue and the side street. But the top stories of all three buildings were set back, so there was no access between them across the rooftops. No one could have reached the top of any of the buildings except Santa Claus.
The more Nick thought about it, the more convinced he became that it would have to be Santa Claus.
At eleven-thirty that night, he approached the front door of the building. The padding of the Santa Claus suit was warm and uncomfortable, smelling faintly of scented powder, and the bag of fancily wrapped gifts he’d slung over his shoulder weighed more than he’d expected. The doorman saw him coming and held open the portals for him. That was the first good sign. Santa was expected.
“Ho ho ho!” Nick thundered in the heartiest voice he could manage.
The doorman smiled good-naturedly. “Got a gift for me. Santa?”
“Ho ho ho!” Nick took out one of the gifts he’d bought to fill the top of the sack. “Right here, sonny!”
The doorman smiled and accepted the slim flat box. “Looks like a necktie to me. Thanks a lot. Santa. Which party do you want, the Brewsters or the Trevensons?”
“Brewsters,” Nick decided.
“Seventeenth floor.”
Nick glanced toward the security guard and saw him looking through the early edition of the following morning’s
The corridor on the fifth floor was silent and deserted, lit only by an indirect glow from unseen fixtures near the ceiling. There were only three doors, so he knew 501 was going to be a large apartment. He glanced at his watch and saw that it wasn’t yet midnight. Then he listened at the door of 501. Hearing nothing, he reached deep into his bag and extracted a leather case of lock picks. It took him just forty-five seconds to unlock the door. He was mildly surprised that the chain lock wasn’t latched, but the reason quickly became obvious. The woman of the house, Florence Beaufeld, was preparing to go out.
By the glow of a twelve-foot Christmas tree standing near the spiral staircase in the duplex, he saw a handsome brown-haired woman of around forty adjusting a glistening earring. It was her hair, done in an unusual style that evoked the idea of a layered helmet, that caught his attention. She finished adjusting the earring, straightened the neckline of her red-velvet dress, and picked up a sequined purse.
Nick slipped into the dining area, taking shelter in the shadows behind a china cabinet, as the woman stepped to the foot of the staircase and called out, “I’m going up to the Brewsters’ party, Michelle. Go to bed now, it’s almost midnight. And don’t peek at your gifts!” There was a mumbled reply from upstairs as Mrs. Beaufeld let herself out of the apartment.
Nick waited, sweating in his Santa suit, until he heard a grandfather clock chime midnight. Then he left his hiding place and moved silently across the carpeted floor toward the lighted Christmas tree. A fireplace was beyond the tree, along an inside wall, and above it was an oil portrait of Florence Beaufeld seated with a protective arm around a lovely young girl about eight years old. Below it, taped to the mantel, was a single red Christmas stocking, bulging with an unseen gift.
Carefully setting down the bag, Nick moved to the mantel. He reached out and took the stocking in his hand, carefully pulling the tape away from the wood. As he did, he heard the slightest of sounds behind him and turned to see a young woman in a short nightgown and bare legs standing at the foot of the staircase, a tiny automatic held firmly in her right hand.
“Get your hand off my stocking. Santa.” she said, “or I’ll send you back to the North Pole in a wooden box...”
Nick did as he was told. “Come now.” he said gruffly, “you don’t want to point that thing at Santa.”
She motioned slightly with the pistol. “Take off the hat and beard. I like to see who I’m talking to.”
He tossed the red hat on the floor and pulled the sticky beard away from his skin.
“Satisfied now?” he asked in his normal voice.
“Say, you’re not bad-looking. Who are you?”
