A huge standing clock in the main hall chimed eleven times. The house was dark except for the subtly lit wall sconces along the staircase. The Albright butler-chauffeur walked noiselessly down the steps. He took a raincoat from the vestibule closet, opened the front door of the house, and marched erectly down the steps to the driveway.
About fifty feet from the house, he illuminated a flashlight and walked steadily, training the beam toward the entrance gateway ahead. There, at a box set in one of the pillars, he deposited the letters he held in his hand, and then he returned hastily to the protection of the great dark mansion. One could measure his receding figure by the trail of the dim lights that blackened as he passed: the flashlight, the porch light, and after two moments, two windows on the second floor. Except for the wall sconces that cast shadows through the windows, the house was now completely dark.
Harry emerged softly from the roadside. He moved quietly and surely toward the mailbox, his figure hatless and dark in a leather pilot's jacket. He rustled a moment before the mailbox, then in a second had it open. He shuffled through the four letters and slid them into the open buttons of his jacket. He looked at the house and strode casually, silently down the tree-lined road.
He stopped when he reached the car parked in the foliage. The evening was black except for the dashboard light and the bright small flame of the burner on the seat of the car. He removed the sealed envelopes from the inside of his jacket and held the first letter tentatively in his hand.
It was addressed to Mrs. John Hotchkiss in Miami, Florida. He moved the sealed envelope slowly over a small steaming cup on top of the burner. The envelope, so fastidiously sealed by Mrs. Aldrich's loving tongue and fingers, slipped open for Harry. He lifted the flap, and with an intense heavy-breathing attitude read all about the weather in Rye. He rewet the mucilage and slipped the letter into his pocket.
He then steamed all the letters rapidly, running his tongue along the tip of the flap when he had finished reading them. He worked with studious attention, resealing the letters with extreme care and with not a wasted motion. When he was finished, and none of Mrs. Aldrich's letters had ever been read with such intense interest, he blew out the burner flame.
He moved swiftly to the mailbox, replaced the letters, and walked back to the road. Standing in the shadows, he stared at the house.
Then he took a small metal tube from his jacket and, placing it to his mouth, blew soundlessly. He listened for a moment, then repeated the gesture. Finally he replaced the tube in his pocket, and stood staring at the house.
It was a bleak, drizzling morning on the road in front of the Albright estate. A thick hedgerow and a low stone wall bordered the two pillars and wrought-iron work at the gateless entrance to the drive. The iron grillwork formed an arch connecting the pillars on which the name Albright, dynasty of Rye, worked prominently into the design.
A mailman, riding a bicycle and wearing a slicker, came rolling along the road. He wheeled by a walking figure in the distance and pumped steadily up to the pillar holding the Albright's mailbox, stopped, took out the letters and put others in. As the mailman disappeared, the walking figure that he had passed in the distance neared the box. Harry, hatless, a raincoat slung over his shoulders, his face fatigued and darkened with a two-day beard, passed the box, passed the drive. He glanced casually toward the house, then doubled back to the mailbox. He lifted the lid, took out the letters, and shuffling through them rapidly, replaced all but three. Then he closed the box and walked off quickly.
That night the phone in Phillip's study rang steadily and an operator's voice piped, "Rye, New York calling Mr. Phillip Johns. Will you accept the call, sir?"
Harry's voice sounded weary and distant. He was calling from a diner. "They leave for Nassau on the 22nd," he said into the receiver.
"That's right." He listened intently to Phillip's directions. "That's right. OK. I'll be there tonight." He hung up the receiver and walked out of the booth. At the counter, he sat down and rested his head in his hands.
The jukebox was playing something very dissonant, very pleasant, very much like the way Harry was feeling, and he found himself listening to Anonymous The Pleasure Thieves Page 40
it. The curious waitress hovered over him. "Make it bacon and eggs,"
he said to her.
That night they met in Phillip's study. Harry lay boneless on the deep couch, the back of his hand resting on his closed eyes. His pilot's jacket was thrown carelessly over one end of the couch. Phillip sat opposite, attentive, dressed in his robe. Harry was holding court.
"The maid spends Thursday with her mother."
"Thursday," Phillip nodded seriously. He waited a moment watching Harry.
"Anything else?" he asked.
Harry shrugged and shook his head in answer. "Not yet."
Phillip sat a moment, then turned in his chair and opened a drawer of his desk. He took out a small calendar and looked at it. "The 22nd is on a Monday. That gives us six days. The jewels must be in the house." He sounded like a policeman making a report. "It would be better for us to pull the job on Thursday. Fewer people in the house, nobody hurt. I don't like to work with too much company."
Harry swung his legs around to a sitting position. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small crumbled package of Lucky Strikes. The metal whistle clung to the folds of the package. Phillip looked swiftly at the whistle.
"No dogs?" he asked.
"No dogs," Harry repeated.
Phillip dropped the whistle into a drawer. Coming closer, Harry saw the Luger pistol lying cushioned at the bottom of it.
"You've got a gun, Phillip," he said with feigned innocence.
"Yes," Phillip spoke sharply, "to protect my property, a very proper purpose for a gun. I also have a permit to use it for that one proper purpose."
Harry balanced the heavy gun in his palm. "Nice," he hummed.
"Guns sure frighten people, don't they?" He tilted the pistol back and forth in his hand, pleased with the weight.
"We don't need to go in heavy, Harry."
"Sure," the younger man agreed. He handed the gun butt-first to Phillip. "Sure."
Harry bent sideways in the front seat of the car, the just-steamed envelopes at his side. There were three letters, all from the educated hand of Mrs. Albright. The capital letters were formed with the flourish of a matron who likes jewels. They were all dull. It should really spark her life to have the house cleaned out. She'd probably write seventy-five special deliveries the day after the robbery. But Harry wouldn't be reading her mail anymore. The third letter, in the flamboyant back-hand script said:
Henry and I are thrilled at the idea of a costume party. Positively enchanting. I can hardly wait. I promise I'll come as something extravagant. I must say I'm glad you live so near. It would be so embarrassing if someone saw us. We'll see you on the 18th, at 8
o'clock. You'll just never recognize us.
Affectionately,
Julia.
Harry reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small calendar.
His finger traced the row, 16 … 17 … 18…, and then up to the day. It was Thursday.
***
Early that evening they girded themselves for battles. Harry wore trim-fitting denims and a cotton shirt. He tightened the laces on crepe-soled shoes. Phillip bent over his desk, an open bottle of transparent nail lacquer at hand. From the bottle he applied the final coat of liquid to the underside of his fingertips, holding them under the lamp to dry.
Harry, slipping into tight black gloves and flexing his fingers with pleasure, turned to Phillip and watched the female act of putting nail polish on the wrong side of the fingers. "Progress," he scoffed.
Phillip was absorbed in gingerly touching his fingertips against his thumb to test the dryness of the lacquer. "Yes, there's been some progress, my boy," he said, glancing with good-natured disdain at the gloves on Harry's hand.
They were ready to go. Phillip, wearing a long sleeved cotton shirt and ascot, slipped into his coat. Harry picked up a wide webbed-cloth belt from the couch – a do-it-yourself kit, fitted compactly with short thick tools. He took off the dark Burberry, spread it on the couch and attached the belt inside. Then he put the coat on. He walked to the telephone and his gloved finger dialed a number. A trained recorded voice announced, "At the tone, the time will be … seven thirty one … exactly." The two men checked their watches. Then Harry, with school-boy enthusiasm, clapped his sheathed hands together. Phillip snapped off the light and the two men left the house.
They walked swiftly to the Oldsmobile parked a few doors away.
Phillip wore a fedora and carried a black briefcase under one arm.
Harry got behind the wheel and the two bourgeois gentlemen took off for the suburbs.
In the car, Phillip commented, "If she goes as something extravagant, she'll wear copper." Harry staring straight ahead into the dark, smiled wryly.
They parked the Olds about one hundred yards from the mansion gateway. At six minutes to eight, a chauffeured limousine slowed at the entrance gate of the Albright estate to check for oncoming cars.
The chauffeur was dressed in cap and dark uniform. In the back of the car, sitting as though on stuffed cushions, were the two extravagant Albrights: she a kerchiefed Gypsy, he a cigar-smoking pirate.
"Copper," Harry said. They both watched the moving car soberly.
"What speed do you make it?" Phillip asked.
"Thirty-five," said Harry.
"That gives us seven minutes." As the Albright's car disappeared along the bend, Harry lunged the car ahead into the gravel drive. He roared up to the entrance. The house, for the first time, was ablaze with lights. It gave the feeling of a ghostly party, the silence screaming against the brightness.
They left the motor running, swinging both doors as they climbed out. The radio blared through the open door. It was a bleak windy night, and they pulled their coats tight against the cold. They stood before the great entrance door together. Somebody was coming to the ghost party. Harry reached into his coat as Phillip looked behind and around the grounds. With a sharp twisting movement, half obscured by Phillip's body, Harry opened the door. The blaring music accompanied them as they entered the silent house.
Inside, the mansion was frighteningly bright. Every light in the house seemed to be burning. They moved in unison, swiftly up the stairs taking them by two's.
At the landing, they turned abruptly and sprang to a door at the end of the hall. Harry quickly opened it, revealing a master bedroom. He strode across the room and yanked open the door of a huge dressing closet. Phillip started moving about the bedroom as Harry entered the large adjoining dressing room and brutally cleared a chair and a small table from one corner.
In a second, he cased the walls and floors for hidden drops, and then, finding none, turned to the bureau. With one yank, the top drawer was out and clanging against the corner wall. One glance, while going for the next, showed him the scattered contents. In ten seconds the bureau was a gaping hole.
He breathed heavily, sweating profusely. This was his work. There was a wildness and intensity about him, revealing the radical change in his usual, graceful, disinterested motions.
He moved clockwise around the room, overlooking nothing and never touching the same thing twice. Armfuls of clothes, hatboxes and shoe-filled racks were torn from the closet and thrown to the corner.
Systematically, he wrecked the place, panting. "Where are they?
"Where are they?" despising Mrs. Albright's purposeful sadism in hiding her jewels.
Phillip worked like a doctor in a contagious ward. He disturbed nothing, touched as little as possible. He moved through the bedroom opening drawers and fastidiously feeling their contents with outstretched lacquered fingers, going over the walls and floor, looking for the safe. On the dressing table he found the jewel box. Not what they were looking for. Not the real goods. But he dumped the contents on the table top and swept them into his briefcase.
Harry was finished with the closet. He moved like lightening and with an impersonal fury. His motions were monstrous and crude, but thorough. He turned to the last wall and picked up a small bureau.
Holding it face down he dumped all the drawers at once into the near corner. "Good thing, or bad thing," he thought, "that the maid had Thursday off." He wanted to kill, to ravish someone in his frustration.
"Where are they, where are they?" Mrs. Albright was giving them a good game.
He rifled through the contents on the floor. His forearm leaned against the radiator. He automatically withdrew his arm, then, after an instant's pause, touched the radiator in several places. It was cold. He reached behind it and in a second groping, his hand brought out a black steel safety-box.
Lock down, he smashed it open against the radiator in three powerful blows. Phillip entered and stood over him. Harry removed a decorative box of finely inlaid wood. He handed the box to Phillip and buttoned his coat as Phillip looked inside the box and nodded. "The game is over, Mrs. Gypsy."
They left the bedroom, glancing at the havoc behind them, and walked swiftly down the hall. They turned at the landing and passed a long table with an oddly shaped, cloth-draped form at the far end.
Phillip paused and raised the cloth. Beneath it, a small hexagonal wire cage held two sleeping love birds. They moved briskly down the staircase, not running. Harry paused before opening the door, and in the silence, Phillip heard his breathing. He pulled open the front door and they were assaulted by the screaming music of the car radio. In a second they were inside the vehicle and swerving away from the lighted house. They sent up a spray of gravel as they drove jet-like down the drive.
They turned onto the tree-lined road. Nothing like living in the country. Their faces were grim. They turned the bend where the Albright limousine had disappeared six minutes before. Phillip reached into the glove compartment for a towel. He passed the towel over his forehead and handed it to Harry. Harry wiped his steaming face. They saw head-lights ahead, and a car swung around the bend. It swished by them and in a brief glimpse, they saw the wheel. Phillip moved his head to watch it in the rear mirror. It relaxed them to see the Albright car heading home. Perfect form, a plump round circle.
"The end of a perfect evening," Harry commented.
"What are you talking about, my boy?" Phillip checked his watch.
"It's only a little past eight o'clock. The night is young."