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"What the hell are you doing there?" "I'll tell you about it sometime.
Right now I need a favor." There was silence at the OTHER@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ end.
"I'm Sober, Chief," Hal said.
There was another silence. "Then I'm listening," the Chief said
finally.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Inspector Brian Candy arrived from Scotland Yard with a tweed suit, a
pair of socks that did not match, two assistants, a gray van filled
with equipment, and a businesslike approach to his trade which Hal
found both familiar and comforting.
Candy climbed the three flights of stairs to Hal's room on the top
floor of the inn and arrived without being out of breath. Quite a
feat, Hal thought, considering the man's size. Candy was well over six
feet tall and as broad as a bull. He nearly filled the room with his
girth and quiet energy. "Constable Nubbit has already filled me in
with most of . . . what he knows," Candy said graciously.
Hal snorted. "About this case? Or was he still going on about auld
Eamon Carpenter's dead cow?" Candy ducked his head and sneaked a
smile. "He was kind enough to meet us on the road. My men have gone
to the meadow to make the castings you suggested." Hal looked out the
window. "It's been raining for forty minutes," he said quietly.
Candy tightened his lips. "Unfortunate," he said. "Still, they may
find something." At least he's not lying to me, Hal thought. "Thank
you for coming," he said. "No thanks necessary," Candy said. "When my
superintendent gets rung up by one of his old friends in the FBI and he
tells me to march, I only ask how far. Now suppose you tell me what's
going on here." Hal nodded. He was perched on the windowsill and saw
Candy take not one, but three ballpoint pens from inside his jacket
pocket and lay them on the table in front of him as he opened up a
large spiral-bound notebook and looked up at Hal like a man with all
the time in the world.
As Hal went over the details of the morning ambush, he studied Candy's
broad face. It was a face he liked instinctively, beefy and hard, with
a bushy mustache and auburn hair that Hal guessed had, in childhood,
earned him the nickname Red. He gave the impression of earnest
competence, and it was easy for Hal to see him as a member of a
regimental boxing team somewhere; probably a middle-weight in those
days, with a technically correct, plod-ahead style that--so unlike the
flashy antics of American boxers--quietly piled up points and won him a
lot of bouts by decision.
The only thing that belied that impression was Candy's eyes. They were
dark and quick and darting, the eyes of a casino pit boss watching a
new dealer work.
They were not the eyes of a man Hal wanted to lie to. Still, he wasn't
about to tell anyone, let alone a police officer, about Camelot
revisited and Merlin the magician disappearing in a puff of smoke while
holding the Holy Grail. There were some things he had to keep to
himself if he hoped to get any cooperation from the authorities.
So he gave a truthful story, but carefully, not the whole truth. He
described how he had met both Taliesin and young Arthur Blessing and
his aunt Emily on a bus while on tour. Very matter-of-factly, he told
how he had disarmed someone who was trying to kill the boy.
Candy looked up sharply and Woczniak knew why. If there was someone in
custody who had been involved in an earlier attempt against the boy,
the mystery was almost solved already.
Hal shook his head. "No survivors, I'm afraid," he said. "The bastard
bit down on a cyanide pill and was dead before the cops could question
him." Recognition dawned in the inspector's eyes. "Right you are. I
read the reports on that this morning. Didn't realize you were talking
about the same boy. Some photographs and fingerprints were sent to
headquarters, but they haven't arrived yet." "Of course not," Hal
said. 'Constable Nerdnick sent them." "The prints should be
identified tomorrow. I'll have the results called in to me as soon as
they come in. We'll be working out of the constabulary. "Can you keep
the locals out of the way?" Candy smiled.
"I think so." He checked over his notes. "The boy was willed this
property by his mother, you say. Was she British?"' He was looking at
Emily, but she only stared straight ahead. She had said nothing since
Candy's arrival. "Emily?"' Hal prompted gently Her eyes panicked, then
focused on the Scotland Yard detective. "I'm sorry,'' she said. Candy
nodded sympathetically and repeated the question. "No, she was an
American," Emily answered. "Dilys--that's Dilys Blessing--was included
in her . . . in Arthur's father's will. But since she wasn't alive at
the time of the man's death, the property went to Arthur. That was a
stipulation in the will." Candy wrote constantly, but never took his
eyes off Emily.
"What was the father's name?" he asked. Emily's face worked.
Finally she pulled herself together enough to answer. "Abbott," she
mid. "Sir Bradford Welles Abbott. He was never married to my
sister."' "I see," he said noncommitally. "I understand you saw
nothing of the episode this morning? She shook her head numbly. "I
went to the meadow to see what was taking them so long. I arrived too
late." "It's just as well,'' Candy said quietly, then turned back to
Hal.
He's good, Hal thought with admiration. Candy had sensed that Emily
was walking a thin wire and didn't push her too hard. In the end, he
would get more out of her that way, Hal knew. "And the old man who was
with you?" the inspector asked. "Taliesin.
Odd name. Welsh. Where is he?" "He took off,'' Hal said. ``Took
off?." "The perps left with Arthur, and he chased them," Hal said.
"On foot?"
"Right." "Might he have been working with the kidnappers?"
"No. They .
. ." They cut off his head. "They wounded him. He was hurt."
"Badly?" "No. I don't think so." "What was his first name?" ``I
don't know,'' Hal lied. The last thing he wanted was for Scotland Yard
to begin a manhunt for the old man. It would' waste what little time
there was to find Arthur. "I met him on the bus." Do you know
anything about him?
Where he worked, where he lived?" Hal shook his head, and folded his
arms across his chest in an unconscious gesture of defiance. Candy
looked at Emily, but she was no longer paying any attention to the
inspector or his questions. "Excuse me," Candy said. "I need to make
a telephone call." When he left the room, Hal let out a slow sigh of
relief. Then he spotted the beer in an old metal bucket beside the
small table where Candy had been sitting. Anticipating the inspector's
arrival, Mrs. Sloan must have placed it there. There was even ice in
the bucket. Slowly Hal walked over to it. There were three bottles.
He took out two. He had wanted a drink all day, and especially wanted
one now. The bottle was cold and sweating. He could imagine the taste
of it on his cigarette-dried throat. "Care for a beer?" he asked
Emily, but she didn't hear him. He sighed and put back both bottles.
He couldn't risk it, not while Emily was in such bad shape. What was
it they said about drunks--that one drink was too many and a thousand
weren't enough? If he had one now, he knew, he would have a thousand.
And when he woke up, stinking and lost, Arthur would be dead and Emily
would be in a nuthouse. No, he wouldn't have one. Not yet. Not just
yet. Soon he heard Candy's heavy footfalls coming back up the stairs.
"I thought the Yard might have made some headway with the dead man's
prints, but they've got nothing so far," he said. He added, "They're
still working, though. if the fellow's ever been arrested and booked
anywhere in Britain or the Continent, we'll know about it." . And
what if he hasn't? Hal thought. But he already knew the answer to
that.
"Suppose we go on to the kidnappers," Candy suggested. "You say they
were Arabs?" "That's my guess. But it may have just been their
clothes." "Fairy-tale costumes," Candy said noncommitally. Hal
nodded.
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