Read Online Lively Game of Death by Marvin Kaye - Free Book Online Page B

the first impression I got: a youthful man of perhaps thirty-three or thirty-four, with deep-set eyes that seemed turned in on their possessor; his face, boyish and open in expression, was framed by a trim little college-professor beardlet. He was unobtrusively dapper, quietly polite and soft-spoken—or so I assessed him, and I turned out to be right.
    But the crinkles around the edges of his eyes, which I would have judged to be smile lines, were unaccompanied then by mirth or contentment. He looked hopelessly glum, at the nadir of some personal misfortune.
    I approached him and asked whether I could sit down. He nodded mutely.
    “You’re Pete Jensen, aren’t you?”
    He nodded a second time, then took a hearty swallow from the glass. I expected him to set down the drink and ask me who I was. But he showed no curiosity at all. Instead, he subsided within himself, taking no further notice of me.
    We sat there a long time. Somehow, I didn’t want to cut into his thoughts. There was something about Jensen so mannerly that it would have been brutal rudeness to disturb him.
    At last, he focused on me, still saying nothing. Then he drank again, set the glass down, and spoke in a mellow, apologetic manner, explaining that he was not feeling well and begged to be excused for ignoring me.
    I said it was all right, then explained that I had been trying to get hold of Sid Goetz, but had found his showroom locked; I thought maybe Jensen, being a next-door neighbor, might be able to help me.
    “Locked? On Toy Fair morning?” he asked, showing his first sign of interest. “Are you sure?”
    “Absolutely. I was just up there. Do you have any idea where Goetz could be?”
    “None at all.” He finished the drink in one long gulp. “Are you sure he’s not there? Did you try knocking?”
    I nodded. Jensen sat for a moment, saying nothing. Then he shrugged.
    “I have no idea where Sid is. Sorry I can’t be of more help.”
    It was the critical point in the questioning; there was no further reason for me to stay. But I held my breath, counting on Jensen’s gentility to get me over the hump. “Didn’t you used to be Goetz’s partner?” I asked him.
    No problem; he seemed willing, even eager to talk. “That’s why I’m here, drinking, instead of running my showroom.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Everything I’ve had to do with Sid Goetz and his ... and his company has been bad for me. You heard how he cheated me out of Swing Up, didn’t you?”
    “Swing Up? What’s that?”
    “Last year’s best damned preschool activity game,” Jensen explained. “I brought it to Sid two years ago, he liked it ... wanted to buy it outright. I wanted to hold onto it, though, so he made me a partner.” He shook his head ruefully. “Made me a partner, what a laugh!”
    “Why,” I wondered, “would you take a potentially valuable toy to a bastard like Goetz? Didn’t you know of his reputation?”
    Jensen shook his head. “I didn’t know the first thing about him. And I didn’t take it to him first. I had Swing Up around to every principal toymaker in the country. I got a list from one of the toy trade papers of the ‘Ten Top’ toy firms, and I went to all of them. They all turned Swing Up down. Told me I’m not Marvin Glass and—”
    “Who?”
    “Marvin Glass. They call him Dean of American Toy Inventors. You see,” Jensen remarked bitterly, “an independent hardly stands a chance against the professional inventors in this business.”
    I asked him how he’d come to hook up with Goetz.
    “Well, I went back to the same toy publication, asked for advice. And the publisher put me on to Goetz.”
    “Didn’t he know what a thief Goetz is?”
    “Maybe he did, but he didn’t say. All he told me is that Goetz Sales takes out a lot of ad space in their book, so they must be a comer.”
    “So Goetz made you a partner.”
    He nodded. “That’s what he called it, but even that, I have a feeling, was a swindle.”
    “Why