Downstairs: Dortmunder and Kelp running pell-mell out of the building, Kelp jingling like a Christmas sleigh, and both leaping into the cab of the cherrypicker, one on each side, pushing Zane into the middle, with Kelp behind the wheel. Dortmunder, looking up before entering the cab, saw the bucket descending from the sky, and told Kelp, “He’s done. Go.”
Kelp went. Throwing the cherrypicker into gear – he was becoming terrific at this looking-glass way of driving by now – he zipped down to Piccadilly and left toward Piccadilly Circus.
In the bucket, Chauncey couldn’t believe it when the world suddenly started reeling sideways while he was still descending. “Hey!” he said, releasing the controls – the bucket stopped moving down but continued moving over – and he clutched the rim in both hands as the upper stories of Sackville Street rushed past, “Good God!” said Chauncey, and he didn’t at all like the way the cherrypicker swayed when they made the left onto Piccadilly.
“Got to get down,” Chauncey told himself. They must be dangerously overbalanced this way. But he couldn’t force himself to release either of his handholds so he could operate the controls. Even his toes were making clutching movements, inside his shoes; especially when he looked out and saw Piccadilly Circus dead ahead. “Oh, no,” he said.
Oh, yes. Swayyyyy to the right went the bucket toward the Eros statue as the truck angled left, then swayyyyy to the left as the truck roared around the Circus and shot down the hill of Haymarket. The sharp right turn into Pall Mall at the bottom of the downslope nearly sent them tumbling wheels over bucket down Cockspur Street, but the cherrypicker righted itself and hastened on.
“We were on two wheels!” Kelp cried, in outraged astonishment. “What kind of vehicle is this?”
Dortmunder, looking back through the cab’s rear window, said, “He’s still up there. Why doesn’t he bring it down?”
“He’ll tip us over!” Kelp was really angry. “What does he think this is, some kind of joyride?”
Chauncey didn’t. Chauncey thought he was in Hell.
St. James’s Street; another right turn, this one uphill, and to Chauncey’s wondering eyes the traffic lights up on Piccadilly were red. Kelp didn’t apply the brakes till the last possible second, which meant the bucket tried to keep going, so the two wheels the truck was on this time were both in front. Briefly the cherrypicker looked like some kind of yellow dinosaur imitating a bucking bronco.
But then it dropped back, and in the sudden cessation of movement Chauncey’s hands clutched at the controls and dowwwwwnn came the bucket, reaching its bottom position just as the light turned green and Kelp whipped around the left turn into Piccadilly, steaming toward Hyde Park Corner. Midway, another set of traffic lights gleamed red, and no sooner had the cherrypicker shuddered to a halt than Chauncey clambered over the side, gripping tight the umbrella sheath, and ran up to climb into the cab on top of Dortmunder, who said, “What? What?”
“No more,” Chauncey said, sitting on Dortmunder. “No more.”
“We’re being serious up here,” Kelp told him angrily, “and you’re back there playing games.” And while Chauncey gaped at him, speechless, Kelp shifted into first and drove on.
Chapter 10
When Dortmunder awoke, Zane was already up and out of the room, but Kelp slept on, curled like a collie beneath the dresser. “Wake up,” Dortmunder suggested, prodding him gently with a bare toe. “This’s the day we go home.”
Kelp had learned to awaken cautiously, and not sit bolt upright. Rolling slowly out from under the dresser, he straightened himself with a series of snaps and creaks and moans, while Dortmunder went off to the bathroom to make himself pretty for the flight. One P.M., leaving Heathrow, due to arrive at four P.M. (eight hours later and five time zones earlier) at Kennedy in New York. Dortmunder actually smiled at his reflection while shaving, and as a result nicked himself pretty badly.
Wearing a patch of toilet paper on the cut, he dressed himself and went downstairs, where he found a cheerful Chauncey, completely recovered from his ride in the bucket, drinking coffee and reading the Times in the dining-room window seat. “Good morning,” Dortmunder told him.
Chauncey beamed over his paper. “Good morning? By God, Dortmunder, this is the sweetest morning of my life! You’ve made my day, you’ve turned me into a successful second-story man, and I’m delighted to have been associated with you.”
“Sure,” Dortmunder said, and reached for the coffeepot.
Edith wandered in, rubbing her hands together in front of her apron and grinning as she asked some sort of question.
“I think we’ll have kippers this morning Edith,” Chauncey told her. “Enough for four, there’s a good girl.”
Edith went off, whickering, as Kelp came in, looking stiff and happy. “Never again under that dresser,” he said. “It’s like a pardon from the Governor.” Seating himself, pouring some coffee, he said to Dortmunder, “Whadawe do with the goods we picked up last night?”
“Well, we don’t bring it all through US Customs,” Dortmunder said, “that’s one thing for sure.”
“According to the Times,” Chauncey said, “you took eighty thousand pounds in merchandise from Parkeby-South last night.”
Kelp said, “We’re written up in the paper?”
“Right here.” Chauncey passed it across.
Dortmunder said, “Eighty thousand pounds? What’s that in dollars?”
“Roughly a hundred fifty thousand. How much of that would you get from a fence?”
“Maybe ten per cent.”
Chauncey was surprised. “That’s all? Fifteen thousand?”
“You don’t get top dollar when you’re peddling stuff on some police list.”
“I’ll give you a check myself, right now, for ten thousand dollars,” Chauncey suggested. “Is that enough?”
“Not a check,” Dortmunder told him.
“Yes, I see.” Chauncey frowned, thinking it over. “This cash-only existence of yours can be difficult.”
Kelp said, “It says here we were obviously English and well educated and trying to disguise our background with fake Australian accents.”
Edith came simpering and bobbing in with four plates of hot buttery filleted kippers with lemon wedges, and they all set to, while Kelp went on reading the Times’s exhaustively detailed account of the robbery. He said, “Who’s Raffles?”
“Beats me,” Dortmunder said.
Chauncey said, “Dortmunder, how about this? I’ll phone my accountant this afternoon and tell him to convert ten thousand dollars into cash, for you to pick up next Monday. You’ll have a password so he’ll know you’re the man who should get the money.”
“Fine,” Dortmunder said.
“If Zane doesn’t come down soon,” Chauncey said, “his kippers will get cold.”
“That’s probably the way he likes them,” Dortmunder said.
Kelp said, “Can I keep this paper?”
“Of course.” Chauncey finished his last mouthful of kipper, swallowed coffee, and got to his feet, saying “I have to look at it. I have to see it again.” And he went through into the living room, where the umbrella sheath had been left last night, in the closet by the front door.
Kelp said, “Did I hear right? He’ll give us ten grand for that stuff?”
“That’s what he says.”
“So it didn’t turn out so bad after all. With what we got before, that adds up to–” Kelp did some figuring on his fingers. “–twenty-three thousand apiece.”
“Twenty-three thousand dollars a year is not good wages.”
Dortmunder said, and from the other room came a sudden cutoff howl, as though somebody had wounded a yak. Dortmunder and Kelp stared toward the doorway, and Chauncey staggered back into the room, his face white, ghastly looking in the frame of yellow hair. From his dangling right hand hung the painting, still partly curled, dragging on the carpet.
“Not something else,” Dortmunder said, and went over to take the painting out of Chauncey’s lax hand. But when he looked at it, everything was fine: Folly continued to lead man to ruin.
Kelp, coming over, holding in his right hand a fork with kipper impaled on it, said, “What’s up?”
“Fake,” Chauncey said. His voice was hoarse, as though he’d been punched in the throat.
Dortmunder frowned at him. “This is the fake? This is the one you brought there?”
“Different,” Chauncey said. “A different fake.”
“What?” Dortmunder shook the canvas in irritation. “You saw this damn thing a week ago, why didn’t you see then it was a fake?”
“That one was real.” Chauncey was recovering now, though his face remained bloodless and his eyes unnaturally wide. “It was real, Dortmunder.”
“You mean there’s two fakes?”
“Last night,” Chauncey said, “I held the real painting in my hands.”
“Impossible.” Glowering at the painting, Dortmunder said, “You screwed up somewhere, Chauncey, you didn’t–” And then he stopped, frowning in a puzzled way at the painting, holding it closer to his face.
Chauncey said, “What is it? Dortmunder?”
Turning back to the dining table, Dortmunder spread the painting on it and pointed at one of the figures behind Folly: a buxom farm girl, carrying a basket of eggs. “Look.”