The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime - Michael Sims [79]
“I perform for your club Tuesday night. One thousand dollars they will pay me—the monkey who sees without eyes! My friend, it is good to be a monkey, even for such as these, who—but——” He paused and laid his hand on his companion’s arm. “If I could but see the color that is called blue once! They tell me it is cool. They cannot make me feel how cool it is. You will go to sea with me next summer and tell me about it—eh? Will you not, my friend? But three of these—what you call the fifty little millionaires—you will tell me why they are called that—three of these came to me in my hotel and would grasp my hand. And why not? I would grasp the hand of the devil himself if he but offered it. They are surprised. They would blindfold my poor eyes—my poor eyes, Godahl!—blindfold them again, and again offer me their hands—thinking Malvino a charlatan. Ha-ha! Again I must shake hands with them! One wears a ring, with a great greasy stone. See! I have it here with me. It is bottleglass. Yet would this barbarian wear it until I in pity took it from him.”
Godahl burst into a laugh. So this was the thief! Colwell, one of the so-called fifty little millionaires who gave the Pegasus Club its savor—who exhibited their silk hats and ample boot-soles in the plate-glass windows every Sunday afternoon—had been crying over the loss of a ringstone—a garish green affair for which he had paid hugely abroad.
“I am a marvelous man—eh, friend Godahl?”
“Indeed yes!” agreed the other, smiling.
“Malvino the Magician sought Godahl, his friend, this afternoon. Petroff—my manager—he walks ten steps behind me, in the crowd. He taps three times with his stick. Three steps to the right. Ha!—There is Godahl! The canaille applaud; even Godahl must smile. My friend, Tuesday night Petroff is too clumsy. You will be my manager; but you must be somewhere else.”
“Indeed not!” cried Godahl warmly; and to himself: “What does he drive at?”
“Indeed yes!” said the blind man, laying his hand again on the other’s arm. “I ask it of you. You will be in other places. If you but say yes you will take me to sea in June and tell me what is the color blue. Listen! First, Malvino will play the monkey. Then I am to be locked in a room for five minutes. At the end of five minutes, if I am gone, that which I have is mine—even to their fat wallets—fat wallets like this one of yours, which I now return intact.”
Godahl accepted the return of his wallet absentmindedly. “It is what Mr. Colwell calls a sporting proposition. See! I have it in writing. It is in addition to the one thousand dollars. That I already possess. Now these fifty little millionaires, friend Godahl—are they all like the three who come to me in my hotel? The one with the slippery stone in his ring—the stone that I have—that one had eight thousand dollars—forty thousand francs—in one wallet—in one-thousand-dollar notes. Does the American nation make new money especially for such as these? The notes were new, the imprint still crisp, like the face of my watch. Forty thousand francs in one wallet! I know, because I had the wallet as he talked. No, my friend. I have it not now. I put it back. Ha-ha! What? And there are fifty of them like that. I am to carry away what I can find! Godahl, it is told that the very servants of the club own rows of brick houses and buy consols at correct times. But fifty little millionaires! And Malvino is to be locked in a room, alone! I have it in writing.”
A passing street lamp looked in and caught Godahl in the act of blinking.
“Godahl, my friend, if you will tell me what I must know, then I will teach you what you wish to know. You wish to know many things—eh? I can tell, for I always feel your eyes when you are by. Tell me now, every inch of the way—play it is the lake front in that city of Chicago.”
Godahl chuckled. He did not love the fifty little millionaires. Those marvelous fingers! Malvino was playing with them in the air now in his earnestness. They could rob