cleaners. He opened his eyes. He was in what appeared to be an underwater grotto. He blinked frantically. The water receded.
He was in a small legal office. A stout man who looked like an unfrocked Santa Claus stood before him. To one side, seated on a desk and swinging his legs carelessly, was a thin young man with a lantern jaw and eyes closely set on either side of his nose.
“Can you hear me?” the stout man asked.
The doomed man grunted.
“Can we talk?”
Another grunt.
“Joe,” the stout man said pleasantly, “a towel.”
The thin young man slipped off the desk, went to a corner basin and soaked a white hand towel. He shook it once, sauntered back to the chair where, with a suddenness and savagery of a tiger, he lashed it across the sick man’s face.
“For God’s sake!” Mr. Foster/Davis/Hook cried.
“That’s better,” the stout man said. “My name’s Herod. Walter Herod, attorney-at-law.” He stepped to the desk where the contents of the doomed man’s pockets were spread, picked up a wallet and displayed it. “Your name is Warbeck. Marion Perkin Warbeck. Right?”
The doomed man gazed at his wallet, then at Walter Herod, attorney-at-law, and finally admitted the truth. “Yes,” he said. “My name is Warbeck. But I never admit the Marion to strangers.”
He was again lashed by the wet towel and fell back in the chair, stung and bewildered.
“That will do, Joe,” Herod said. “Not again, please, until I tell you.” To Warbeck he said, “Why this interest in the Buchanans?” He waited for an answer, then continued pleasantly, “Joe’s been tailing you. You’ve averaged five Buchanans a night. Thirty, so far. What’s your angle?”
“What the hell is this? Russia?” Warbeck demanded indignantly. “You’ve no right to kidnap me and grill me like the MVD. If you think you can—”
“Joe,” Herod interrupted pleasantly. “Again, please.”
Again the towel lashed Warbeck. Tormented, furious, and helpless, he burst into tears.
Herod fingered the wallet casually. “Your papers say you’re a teacher by profession, principal of a public school. I thought teachers were supposed to be legit. How did you get mixed up in the inheritance racket?”
“The what racket?” Warbeck asked faintly.
“The inheritance racket,” Herod repeated patiently. “The Heirs of Buchanan caper. What kind of parlay are you using? Personal approach?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Warbeck answered. He sat bolt upright and pointed to the thin youth. “And don’t start that towel business again.”
“I’ll start what I please and when I please,” Herod said ferociously. “And I’ll finish you when I goddamned well please. You’re stepping on my toes and I don’t buy it. I’ve got seventy-five thousand a year I’m taking out of this and I’m not going to let you chisel.”
There was a long pause, significant for everybody in the room except the doomed man. Finally he spoke. “I’m an educated man,” he said slowly. “Mention Galileo, say, or the lesser Cavalier poets, and I’m right up there with you. But there are gaps in my education and this is one of them. I can’t meet the situation. Too many unknowns.”
“I told you my name,” Herod answered. He pointed to the thin young man. “That’s Joe Davenport.”
Warbeck shook his head. “Unknown in the mathematical sense. X quantities. Solving equations. My education speaking.”
Joe looked startled. “Jesus!” he said without moving his lips. “Maybe he is legit.”
Herod examined Warbeck curiously. “I’m going to spell it out for you,” he said. “The inheritance racket is a long-term con. It operates something like so: There’s a story that James Buchanan—”
“Fifteenth President of the U.S.?”
“In person. There’s a story he died intestate leaving an estate for heirs unknown. That was in 1868. Today at compound interest that estate is worth millions. Understand?”
Warbeck
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