Mooney found a buyer for the drugs; and there was a few thousand
dollars there, which helped, for although the quantity was not large,
the drugs were chemically pure. He found a fence to handle the
jewels and precious metals; and he unloaded all the ones of moderate
value--not the other diamond, not the rubies, not the star sapphire.
He arranged to keep those without mentioning it to Harse. No point in
selling them now, not when they had several thousand dollars above any
conceivable expenses, not when some future date would do as well, just
in case Harse should get away with the balance of the kit.
Having concluded his business, Mooney undertook a brief but expensive
shopping tour of his own and found a reasonably satisfactory place to
eat. After a pleasantly stimulating cocktail and the best meal he had
had in some years--doubly good, for there was no reek from Harse's
nauseating concoctions to spoil it--he called for coffee, for brandy,
for the day's papers.
The disappearance of the truck driver made hardly a ripple. There were
a couple of stories, but small and far in the back--amnesia, said one;
an underworld kidnaping, suggested another; but the story had nothing
to feed on and it would die.
Good enough, thought Mooney, waving for another glass of that enjoyable
brandy; and then he turned back to the front page and saw his own face.
There was the hotel lobby of the previous day, and a pillar of churning
black smoke that Mooney knew was Harse, and there in the background,
mouth agape, expression worried, was Howard Mooney himself.
He read it all very, very carefully.
Well, he thought, at least they didn't get our names. The story was all
about the Loyal and Beneficent Order of Exalted Eagles, and the only
reference to the picture was a brief line about a disturbance outside
the meeting hall. Nonetheless, the second glass of brandy tasted
nowhere near as good as the first.
* * * * *
Time passed. Mooney found a man who explained what was meant by the
Vale of Cashmere. In Brooklyn, there is a very large park--the name is
Prospect Park--and in it is a little planted valley, with a brook and
a pool; and the name of it on the maps of Prospect Park is the Vale of
Cashmere. Mooney sent out for a map, memorized it; and that was that.
However, Mooney didn't really want to go to the Vale of Cashmere with
Harse. What he wanted was that survival kit. Wonders kept popping out
of it, and each day's supply made Mooney covet the huger store that
was still inside. There had been, he guessed, something like a hundred
separate items that had somehow come out of that tiny box. There
simply was no room for them all; but that was not a matter that Mooney
concerned himself with. They were there, possible or not, because he
had seen them.
Mooney laid traps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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