The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (111 page)

“What were you looking for?” I asked him and grinned.

He looked sheepish, covered it with anger in his eyes. “I don’t know, but you said the answers . . .”

I stopped him with a nod of my head. “I found another corpse. Another statue. A murder. Maybe two.” I dragged on my cigarette long enough to watch the tension get the best of Bramble, and said, “Arrest Dr Bramble for the murder of Max Schweingurt!”

“Preposterous!” screamed Bramble.

“Sit down!” Reilly ordered him sharply. “This is worth looking into. Mike usually doesn’t talk unless he’s sure of himself. Give us the story, Mike. Why do you think Bramble is the murderer?”

Reilly seated himself where he could keep watch over both Bramble and the man I had caught just a few minutes before. Grady sat near the door, the entire room under his surveillance.

“First, let me explain what I have been doing since you three left this office for a look at the statue. I didn’t accompany you for a very good reason. While we were sitting here awaiting the arrival of the guard I was quite certain that someone sneaked up to that second door, there, and started to open it. Bramble’s facial reactions at that time corroborated my suspicions. So I decided to investigate. I realize I should have let you know my plans before I did anything. But I was afraid that if Bramble guessed he might be able in some way to tip off whomever had been on the other side of that door.

“So I went along to investigate. I found, on the other side of that door, a long hallway at the end of which is another door and stairway. At the bottom of those stairs is a dead man. He has been murdered. And ironically enough, he is lying near the very same statue beside which Max Schweingurt was murdered.” I paused to let that sink in.

“But . . . but . . . that’s impossible.” Reilly was almost explosive at this point. “We just examined the statue beside which Schweingurt was killed. It is out in the main part of the museum.”

“Yes? That is what everyone is supposed to think. But I am the second person, other than Dr Bramble and his friend here, to know that the statue in the museum is not the one which was purchased from Max Schweingurt. It was never inside Schweingurt’s galleries. The other person who made this discovery is in the basement, dead. I would be in the same position, too, if our friend who calls himself Leiderkrantz,” I nodded at the man, “had succeeded in his attempt to bludgeon me to death a few minutes ago.

“I didn’t find the answer for myself, really. I more or less got it from a telegram I found in the dead man’s pocket. And when I discovered the second statue of the goddess, the entire story seemed pretty clear.”

I could tell Reilly was ready with a hundred questions, but he was a fair man and was patient enough to let me tell the story my own way.

I read the telegram to them.

“The statue on the floor of the museum is the original. There is no doubt of that. Dr Bramble wouldn’t display any other but the original, of that I am sure. Therefore, the statue in the basement is a copy of the original, a very fine copy, we may be sure, since it had Max Schweingurt fooled for two years while it stood in his galleries. All this time, Dr Bramble knew the statue was in the gallery. But he evidenced no desire to own it for some time. We may, therefore, conclude that he always knew it for the copy which it was.

“Then, suddenly, Dr Bramble wanted to purchase that statue – the one we now know to be only a copy. Why? . . . He learned through a secret source that the original Athena was being smuggled from Greece and was to be placed in a museum in Mexico City. He wanted that original Athena – wanted it badly. He knew he would never be able to strike a bargain with the Mexican museum. They wanted it for themselves. So he schemed and finally hit upon an idea so perfect it almost worked. It was just a little too smooth, though, and excited the suspicions of the insurance company.

“Bramble’s plan was to buy the copy of Athena from Schweingurt, paying the high price and never letting anyone know the statue was not the original. After it had been placed here in the museum it would be ‘stolen’, it would simply disappear. Then the insurance company would get a ‘tip’ that the statue was in the museum in Mexico City, just after the time it arrived there. The statue would have been smuggled into Mexico. There would be no proof of its purchase and the museum would not be able to prove how it had gained possession of it. By putting some pressure to bear, the insurance company, completely innocent of any duplicity, could bring the original statue to Bramble.

“All these plans were carried out. But there was a slight interruption. Schweingurt, in his enthusiasm about the original Dionysus, a creation of the sculptor of the original Athena, confided in Bramble that the gallery would soon be displaying the Dionysus statuette. Bramble was horrified. He realized that if the original Dionysus were compared with the copy of Athena, Schweingurt would realize that the Athena was a copy and Bramble’s plans would be ruined.

“He sent a man of his own to Lisbon to do away with the European representative, Leiderkrantz, steal the original Dionysus and return to this country posing as Leiderkrantz.

“I was hired by Schweingurt to protect Leiderkrantz on his trip from the airport to the galleries. But the fake Leiderkrantz slugged me, contacted Bramble and switched the original Dionysus for a very good copy which had been stored in the basement of the museum. He then delivered the copy to Schweingurt.

“The two copies could now be compared as they had both been made by the same sculptor, which Bramble knew.

“But Schweingurt had found out that the man who had delivered the statuette was an impostor. He was suspicious. He made tests of the statuette and found that it was not the original. He called Bramble into conference and told him. Bramble insisted, in the face of contrary evidence, that the statuette was the original. Since the Athena had been the only work of its kind in this country, Schweingurt had always taken its value for granted. Bramble was apparently afraid that Schweingurt would become suspicious and would make tests disproving the authenticity of the Athena.

“He left the galleries but returned later, after the closing time. He either found Schweingurt comparing the Dionysus with the Athena and making tests which were disclosing the age of them both, or he may have already discovered that the Athena was a copy. He may have told Bramble since he knew Bramble would not be interested in buying anything other than the original. There would be a tremendous difference between the two and a reputable dealer would be bound by ethics to refund the money for an object which turned out to be other than represented.

“This meant the ruin of Bramble’s plan. But he wouldn’t give up too easily. He turned on Schweingurt and killed him. He stole the copy of the Dionysus which Schweingurt had held in his hands as he fell, dead, against the Athena. But as Schweingurt fell, the tip of the staff in the hands of the tiny figure was broken. In his haste, Bramble did not notice the break until he was away and it was too late to recover the lost piece. He had no way of knowing that it had been discovered by the police since the fact was never published.

“The Athena copy was delivered to Bramble as scheduled. The next night he hid it in the basement storeroom and reported it stolen. Then, to further the theme of murder for robbery and to try to definitely pin suspicion on someone, Bramble took the original Dionysus, which he didn’t wish any one to discover in his possession, and planted it in Maurice Cambelli’s room. It was he who tipped off the police.

“With the original Athena eventually brought to his museum and the original Dionysus discovered in Cambelli’s room, the two could be compared without any danger to Bramble. They were both the originals, as they were thought to be.

“The copy of the Athena is in the basement storeroom here. A laboratory test may bring out traces of Schweingurt’s blood on the base of the statue and prove that the copy is the one that Bramble actually bought.

“The insurance company smelled a rat and did a little investigating of Bramble. The investigator discovered the copy of Athena in the basement. As far as Bramble was concerned, there wasn’t a chance of his continued success in the deception. But . . .” I paused, swinging my body slowly in the chair. “This guy,” I pointed to the man we had known as Leiderkrantz. “This guy killed the investigator!” I shot the words out hoping to get some sort of reaction.

“Oh, no. You don’t pin that on me,” the fellow cried shakily. He waved his arm desperately at Bramble. “Bramble killed him. You’re not hanging no murders on me. I was just . . .”

He slumped in his chair, staring sightlessly at the wall. His face was the gray color of ashes and his lips compressed in a tight, bluish line. His thin shoulders were slumped in defeat.

Reilly turned to me.

“How did you know Bramble murdered Schweingurt? Why didn’t you think this Leiderkrantz fake did the job?” he asked.

I smiled wryly. “Only Bramble would have planted a sixty-five thousand dollar Dionysus to frame a murder motive. That meant that something even more valuable must be at stake – the original Athena.”

They had to lead Bramble by the arm when they took him away. He was completely dazed – he couldn’t comprehend how his perfectly planned plot could have backfired.

My name is Ordo Tupikos, and I was born in North Flat, Wyoming on November 9th, 1936. My father was part Greek and part Swede and part American Indian, while my mother was half Irish and half Italian. Both had been born in this country, so I am one hundred per cent American.

My father, whose first name was Samos, joined the United States Navy on February 17th, 1942, and he was drowned in the Coral Sea on May 15th, 1943. At that time we were living in West Bowl, Oklahoma, my mother and my two sisters and my brother and I, and on October 12th of that year my mother married a man named Eustace St Claude, who claimed to be half Spanish and half French but who later turned out to be half Negro and half Mexican and passing for white. After the divorce, my mother moved the family to San Itari, California. She never remarried, but she did maintain a long-term relationship with an air conditioner repairman named Smith, whose background I don’t know.

On July 12th, 1955, I followed my father’s footsteps by joining the United States Navy. I was married for the first time in San Diego, California on March 11th, 1958, when I was twenty-one, to a girl named Estelle Anlic, whose background was German and Welsh and Polish. She put on the wedding license that she was nineteen, having told me the same, but when her mother found us in September of the same year it turned out she was only sixteen. Her mother arranged the annulment, and it looked as though I might be in some trouble, but the Navy transferred me to a ship and that was the end of that.

By the time I left the Navy, on June 17, 1959, my mother and my half-brother, Jacques St Claude, had moved from California to Deep Mine, Pennsylvania, following the air conditioner repairman named Smith, who had moved back east at his father’s death in order to take over the family hardware store. Neither Smith nor Jacques was happy to have me around, and I’d by then lost touch with my two sisters and my brother, so in September of that year I moved to Old Coral, Florida, where I worked as a carpenter (non-union) and where, on January 7th, 1960, I married my second wife, Sally Fowler, who was older than me and employed as a waitress in a diner on the highway toward Fort Lauderdale.

Sally, however, was not happy tied to one man, and so we were divorced on April 12th, 1960, just three months after the marriage. I did some drinking and trouble-making around that time, and lost my job, and a Night Court judge suggested I might be better off if I rejoined the Navy, which I did on November 4th, 1960, five days before my twenty-fourth birthday.

From then on, my life settled down. I became a career man in the Navy, got into no more marriages, and except for my annual Christmas letter from my mother in Pennsylvania I had no more dealings with the past. Until October 7th, 1974, when an event occurred that knocked me right over.

I was assigned at that time to a Naval Repair Station near New London, Connecticut, and my rank was Seaman First Class. It was good weather for October in that latitude, sunny, clean air, not very cold, and some of us took our afternoon break out on the main dock. Norm and Stan and Pat and I were sitting in one group, on some stacks of two-by-fours, Norm and Stan talking football and Pat reading one of his magazines and me looking out over Long Island Sound. Then Pat looked up from his magazine and said, “Hey, Orry.”

I turned my head and looked at him. My eyes were half blinded from looking at the sun reflected off the water. I said, “What?”

“You never said you were married to Dawn Devayne.”

Dawn Devayne was a movie star. I’d seen a couple of her movies, and once or twice I saw her talking on television. I said, “Sure.”

He gave me a dirty grin and said, “You shouldn’t of let that go, boy.”

With Pat, you play along with the joke and then go do something else, because otherwise he won’t give you any peace. So I grinned back at him and said, “I guess I shouldn’t,” and then I turned to look some more at the water.

But this time he didn’t quit. Instead, he raised his voice and he said, “Goddamit, Orry, it’s right here in this goddam magazine.”

I faced him again. I said, “Come on, Pat.”

By now, Norm and Stan were listening too, and Norm said, “What’s in the magazine, Pat?”

Pat said, “That Orry was married to Dawn Devayne.”

Norm and Stan both grinned, and Stan said, “Oh,
that
.”

“Goddamit!” Pat jumped to his feet and stormed over and shoved the magazine in Stan’s face. “You look at that!” he shouted. “You just look at that!”

I saw Stan look, and start to frown, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Had they set this up ahead of time? But not Stan; Norm sometimes went along with Pat’s gags, but Stan always brushed them away like mosquitoes. And now Stan frowned at the magazine, and he said, “Son of a bitch.”