Borrower of the Night: The First Vicky Bliss Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

His squinty little black eyes shone like jet. Another chill explored my backbone. The old devil was smart, smart and hard as nails. With one halfhearted question Tony had set a bloodhound on the trail.
    Tony, who knew him better than I did, was thinking the same thing. His mouth had dropped open, and there were two parallel lines between his eyebrows. He caught my eye, and his mouth tightened. He looked away.
    “You’re not a dealer,” Myers went on. “Private collectors wouldn’t approach you. Which one are you planning to steal, and how do you propose to go about it?”
    George laughed. My jaw dropped, in its turn. I shouldn’t have been taken aback. I know enough about rabid collectors to realize they will stop at nothing, including homicide, to get what they want. A little matter of robbery doesn’t bother them a bit. It’s common knowledge that dozens of “lost” art treasures, stolen from the world’s great museums, now repose cozily in locked and hidden vaults, where the millionaire owners can gloat over them in secret.
    “Damn it, Tony,” I burst out. “Why can’t you keep your big mouth shut?”
    George laughed again, and Jake grinned at me. He looked more like a shark than ever.
    “Don’t blame him, honey. If you hadn’t stuck your two cents in, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to Tony. I know he goes off half-cocked all the time. But if there are two of you in this deal—and one of them is a girl like you—”
    “Oh—” I began; but before I could get the dear old Anglo-Saxon word out, George interrupted. His face was purple with amusement.
    “You’re the one who’s going off half-cocked, Jake. You know our moral laddy here; he isn’t going to steal anything. He’s a good boy. No; if I were to hazard a guess—and I always do hazard—I would say that our two experts have stumbled on an unknown work. Or,” he added, watching my face, “on a clue to such a work. Isn’t there a story…?”
    He let the word trail off suggestively.
    I was torn between self-reproach and admiration at the guy’s technique. He didn’t know a bloody thing about the legend of the shrine. He was guessing; but it was inspired guessing, the method of a skilled fortune-teller who uses his victim’s facial expressions as a guide to the accuracy of his surmises. And heaven knows my big, round, candid face was as readable as print.
    I tried to freeze the face, and I watched Jake, who had responded to the hint as a fish to the lure. His brow wrinkled as he searched his capacious memory. My heart sank. I didn’t realize until then how deeply my emotions were involved. It was my discovery, damn it, and nobody was going to take it away from me.
    “Nope,” Jake said finally. “Seems to me I did read something, once…. But I’ve forgotten. Can’t remember everything. Is that it, Tony? Found yourself a clue, boy?”
    I felt like sagging with relief. Jake had accepted George’s reasoning, and, as a result, he was less excited. A robbery made sense to him. A vague, unspecified clue to an unknown work was not in his line.
    His tone maddened Tony, as did George’s superior smile. He sat up straight in his chair and looked directly at Jake. His hair was hanging down over one eyebrow, but I must admit he had a kind of dignity.
    “Are you interested?” he said. “Yes or no.”
    “Sure I’m interested.”
    “That doesn’t mean you’re going to get it,” George said gently. He smiled at me. “It’s a matter of pride not to let Jake get things away from me.”
    “Now wait a minute,” I said indignantly. “Who’s offering what to whom? It’s just as much my idea as Tony’s, more so, because I saw the book first, and furthermore—”
    Tony let out a yelp, but I didn’t need that to know what I had done. I shut up, thankful I hadn’t said more. Jake, who was shaking all over, let out a loud “haw-haw.”
    “I should let you two go on arguing,” he said, when he had gotten his mirth under control.