The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale - Marc Brandel [44]
“I know it’s weak-minded of me,” he admitted, popping a jelly bean into his mouth. “But I can’t help it. I get so hungry.”
“Is Don still feeding you brown rice, Mr. Sebastian?” Pete asked sympathetically.
“It’s worse than that now, Pete, I’m afraid,” the mystery writer told him. “It’s … well, you’ll see for yourself what it is. Sorry, Bob. Go on. Oscar Slater blackmailed Paul Donner into forging those ten-dollar bills. How?”
“They had worked together in Europe,” Bob went on. “Paul Donner was a highly skilled engraver and he did the forging and the printing. Slater handled the distribution end. He had an organized ring passing counterfeit bills all over the continent.”
“Until the police caught up with him?” Hector Sebastian asked.
“They never did catch up with Oscar Slater,” Jupe told him. “He slipped away without a trace and with most of the profits. But the French police did get after Paul Donner. They had a warrant for his arrest. They would have sent him to jail for years. But he just managed to evade them and escape to Mexico.”
“He had made up his mind to go straight,” Bob put in. “No more counterfeiting. And he was going straight, running a small printing business in La Paz until –” Bob shrugged. “Well, until Oscar Slater happened to run into him there.”
“And of course Slater knew Donner was wanted by the French police.” Hector Sebastian nodded understandingly. “He knew the French would extradite Donner if they could ever find him.”
He slipped another jelly bean into his mouth. “That gave Slater a lot of leverage. He could force Donner to go back into their old counterfeiting racket.”
He chewed thoughtfully for a moment.
“But how did you guess those bills were counterfeit, Jupe?” he asked.
“It was mostly that crease under Paul Donner’s eye,” Jupe said. “I tried to think of all the people who use a jeweler’s glass. Then it suddenly struck me that Donner might be an engraver.”
“Pretty smart, Jupe.” Sebastian smiled. “It must have seemed to Donner like the best and luckiest thing that had ever happened to him when that charter boat went down with all those, forged bills on board,” he said. “Is that the way you figured it out, Jupe?”
“More or less,” the First Investigator admitted, trying to look modest. “I kept wondering, why was Slater so anxious to recover that box? And why was someone else trying so desperately to stop him?”
He pinched his lip.
“And then I realized the forger was the one who was taking all the big risks. Because forging, well, it’s like painting in a way. A first-class engraver can’t help having his own style. It’s almost like a signature on his work.”
He accepted another piece of candy from Mr. Sebastian.
“As soon as those forged ten-dollar bills started showing up in banks,” he continued, “the Treasury agents would recognize them as Paul Donner’s work. Then they’d be after him, too, as well as the French police. And it wouldn’t be long before they traced him to La Paz.”
There was a chopping sound from the kitchen. Hector Sebastian hastily slipped the bag of candy back into his pocket.
“And after that you put two and two together, Jupe,” he suggested. “And saw Donner must be the one who didn’t want that box found?”
“For a long time” – Jupe really did look modest now – “for a long time I kept putting two and two together and getting three. Three suspects. Oscar Slater and Paul Donner and the man who called us and offered a hundred dollars’ reward to get Fluke back into the ocean.”
He glanced at Bob.
“It wasn’t until Bob took Donner’s mask off on the beach that I realized suspect two and suspect three were the same person.”
“When Paul Donner called and offered you that reward,” Hector Sebastian said. “When he spoke in that peculiar way, saying ‘way–ul’ and ‘cay–us’ – do you think he was deliberately imitating Slater’s voice, trying to make you think it was Slater who was calling you?”
Jupe shook his head. “I don’t think he was, Mr. Sebastian. He was just trying to disguise