The Golden Gizmo Read online

  “Will you examine this abominable thing? The fine print—even with glasses I cannot read it.”

  Toddy repressed a smile; the print wasn’t particularly fine. “Sure,” he said. “What are we looking for?”

  “I thought it would be best to depart from one of the suburban stations. If you will select one, I will drive you there. I would take you all the way to Mexico, but to do so, I am afraid, might endanger both of us.”

  Toddy’s finger traced down the columns of print, and paused. “How about Long Beach?”

  “That should do, I think. When does the next southbound bus leave from there?”

  “Two o’clock.” Toddy glanced at his wristwatch. “About an hour from now.”

  “Then we had better be going. On the way I will tell you what you must do when you reach Tijuana.” Alvarado rose and reached for his hat. “You have money, I believe. Good!…Come, Perrito.”

  16

  Bathed, shaved and wearing the freshly pressed clothes and the new shirt the bellboy had brought up, Toddy sat on the bed of his San Diego hotel room and poured out the last of his breakfast pot of coffee.

  The bus had arrived at six o’clock. It was now almost eight. Except for Elaine’s death and his own precarious position, he would have felt pretty good. He actually felt pretty good despite those things. He had a sensation of being at peace with himself, of being able to relax after a lifetime of tension. He was not tired—he felt invigorated, in fact—yet there was a strong desire to sit here and rest. Just rest and nothing else.

  And he knew that the quicker he got out of this town, the better off he’d be.

  San Diego’s unique semi-tropical climate was not the only thing it was noted for. Nor its great aircraft plants, nor Navy and Marines bases. Among the denizens of the world to which Toddy belonged, it was also known as a swell place to steer clear of. Its vagrancy laws were the harshest in the country. To be “without visible means of support”—a surprisingly elastic category in the hands of local cops and judges—was a major crime. In the same month here a vagrant—an unemployed wanderer—and a woman who had murdered her illegitimate baby were given identical prison sentences.

  Despite the earliness of the hour, a crowd of holidayers was already waiting for the bus to the Mexican border. Toddy hesitated, thought for a moment of making the seventeen-mile trip in a cab. There’d been nothing about Elaine’s death in the morning papers; apparently, there was no alarm out for him. Still—he took his place in the waiting line—he couldn’t be sure. It was best to stick with a crowd.

  He stood up throughout the thirty-minute ride to the border. The bus unloaded, there, on the American side, and he made himself one with the mass which crowded through the customs station.

  He had no trouble in crossing the international boundary. The busy United States guard barely glanced at him as he asked his nationality and birthplace. The Mexican customs officers did not bother to do even that much. They simply stood aside as he and the others filed past.

  Toddy climbed into a Mexican taxicab, jolted over a long narrow bridge, and, a minute or two later, stepped out on Tijuana’s main thoroughfare. He strolled leisurely down it, a wide dirty street bordered by one- and two-story buildings which were tenanted mainly by bars, restaurants and curio shops.

  It was a bullfight day, and the town was unusually crowded. Americans jammed the narrow sidewalks and swarmed in and out of the business establishments. Most signs were in English.

  Toddy walked to the end of the street, to the turn which leads off to the oceanside resort of Rosarita. Then he crossed to the other side and walked slowly back. Near the center of town, he turned off onto a side street and strolled along for a few doors. He passed a curio shop, lingeringly, then paused and went back.

  He entered.

  The shop was stocked to the point of overflowing. Racks of beadwork, leather goods and trinkets jammed the aisles. It was almost impossible to squeeze past them. Once past, it would be impossible to be seen from the street.

  A fat Mexican woman was seated on a campstool just inside the door. She beamed at Toddy.

  “Yess, please? Nice wallet? Nice bo’l of perfume for lady?”

  “What have you got in the way of gold jewelry?” Toddy asked. “Something good and heavy?”

  “¡Nada! Such things you could not take across the border, so we do not sell. How ’bout nice belt? Nice silver ring?”

  “Oh, I guess not,” said Toddy. “Not interested in anything but gold. Real gold.”

  “You look around,” the woman beamed, placing her campstool in front of the door. “I get nice breath of air. You may find something more nice than gold.”

  Toddy nodded indifferently, and squeezed his way back through the racks. A few feet, and the display suddenly ended; and a Mexican man sat on a stool against the wall, reading a copy of La Prensa.

  He wore an open-neck sports shirt, sharply creased tan trousers and very pointed, very shiny black shoes. He was no more than five feet tall when he stood up, smiling, ducking his glossy black head in greeting.

  “Mr. Kent, please? Very happy to meet you!”

  He opened a door, waved Toddy ahead of him, and closed and locked it again. A courteous hand on Toddy’s elbow, he guided him down a short areaway and into a small smelly room.

  There was an oilstove cluttered with pots and pans, a paint-peeled lopsided icebox, a rumpled gray-looking bed. Toddy sat down at an oilcloth-covered table, smeared and specked with the remains of past repasts. His nostrils twitched automatically.

  “The ventilation is bad, eh?” The Mexican showed gleaming white teeth. “But how would you? The windows must be sealed. The disorder is essential. Think of the comment if one in this country should live in comfort and decency!”

  “Yeah,” said Toddy uncomfortably. “I see what you mean.”

  The Mexican moved back toward the icebox. “It is nice to meet one so understanding,” he murmured. “You will have bo’l of beer, yess? Nice cold bo’l of beer?”

  Toddy shook his head; he hoped he wouldn’t have to be holed up long in this joint. “I guess not. A little early in the day for—”

  “No,” said the Mexican. “You will have no beer.”

  There was not the slightest change in his humbly ironic voice. There was no warning sound or shadow. But in that last split second when escape was too late, Toddy knew what was coming. He could feel the gizmo’s swift change from gold to brass.

  The blow lifted him from his chair. He collapsed on the table, and the table collapsed under him. There was a muted crash as they struck the floor.

  But he did not hear it.

  17

  Tubby little Milt Vonderheim was not Dutch but German. His right name was Max Von Der Veer. He was an illegal resident of the United States.

  The only son of a good but impoverished Hessian family, he had been expelled from school for theft. Another theft landed him in prison for a year and caused his father to disown him. Milt learned the watchmaking trade in prison. He was by no means interested in it, but useful work of some kind was mandatory and it appeared the easiest of the jobs available. He was not sufficiently skilled at the time of his release to follow the trade.

  He was not particularly skilled at anything, for that matter. And, after an unsuccessful attempt at burglary, which almost resulted in his rearrest, he became a waiter in a beerhall. He fitted in well there. He was lazy and clumsy, but this very clumsiness, coupled with what seemed to be a beaming, unquenchable good humor, made him an attraction.…That waiter, Max, ach! Snarling his fingers in the stein handles, stumbling over the feet he is too fat to see. A clown, ja! You should hear him when he tries to sing!

  Since he could do nothing else, Milt put up with the gibing and jokes. He beamed and exaggerated his clumsiness, and made a fool of himself generally. Inwardly, however, he seethed. He had never been good-natured; he was sensitive about his appearance. He could have toasted every one of the beerhall customers over a slow fire and enjoyed doing it.

  Then, one day, the leader of a troupe of vaudevillians noticed Milt, and was impressed by what he saw. This awkward youngster could be valuable; he was a natural for low-comedy situations. He didn’t have to pretend (or so the leader thought). He was a born stooge and butt.

  Milt joined the troupe. Eventually, early in 1913, he came to America with it.

  That was the end of the good-natured business. That was the end of being the clumsy and lovable little brother of his fellow vaudevillians. Cold-eyed and unsmiling, Milt let it be known that he despised and hated them all. One more innocent joke, one more pat on his ridiculously potted belly—and there would be trouble. The funny business was strictly for the stage from now on.

  Milt got away with it for four months, during which he extorted three raises in pay. By the time he deliberately forced his dismissal, he had acquired a sizable sum of money and no small knowledge of the country, its language and customs.

  He got himself fired in San Francisco. Five days and five hundred dollars later, he had a new name and a number of sworn documents proving his American citizenship. His parents, these documents revealed, had been the proprietors of a San Francisco restaurant. He had been privately tutored by a Dutch schoolmaster. Parents, restaurant, schoolmaster—and the original records of his birth—had been destroyed in the great fire and earthquake. Milt’s English was not good—but what of that? Many legal residents of the country talked a poorer brand. For that matter, many legal residents of the country had no legal way of proving their right to be here except by the very method Milt used.

  Americans, it seemed, were not as exacting as Germans, and Milt easily found employment as a watchmaker. He pursued it just long enough to discover that his employer’s streak of larceny, while latent, wa
s virtually as broad as his own. At Milt’s suggestion—for which he took half the profits—the store owner filed hundreds of suits against merchant seamen for articles allegedly bought from him. Since the defendants had shipped out and were unaware of the notices of suit brought in obscure legal papers, judgment was automatic.

  Later he opened his own small side-street watch-repair shop. Until a certain day in 1942, he thought he was doomed to remain there, barely making a living, a foolishly cheerful-looking fat man who could not acquire the wherewithal and was rapidly losing the nerve for the gigantic swindles he dreamed of.

  One of these last was inspired by his own history. Perhaps there were many persons who had entered and remained in the United States under the same circumstances as his. If one had the means to ferret them out—! Ironically, he was pondering this very scheme on that day in 1942 when, looking up from his workbench, he discovered that others had thought of it also. Thought of it and acted upon it.

  Being Milt, he was not, naturally, at all discomfited by the discovery. His words and his expression were actually contemptuous.

  “Do not tell me, please!” He narrowed his eyes in mock thoughtfulness. “Ah, yes, I remember now. Madrid, 1911, was it not? Alvarado and his Animales. There was considerable debate, I remember, as to which was which.”

  “And, you, I recall you well, also,” said the chinless man. “A human swine—there would have been a novelty! Unfortunately, my pobres perros rebelled at the thought. But—enough! Listen to me carefully, Herr Von Der Veer, and do not interrupt!”

  He spoke rapidly for ten minutes, ending with a sharp-soft “Well?” that was a statement rather than a question. Milt took a drink from a brandy bottle before replying.

  “Let me see if I understand,” he said. “You have aligned your cause, unofficially, with that of the Reich where my father is now resident. And unless I accommodate you in this matter, certain unpleasant things will happen to him. He might possibly find himself in prison, that is right?”

  “Regrettably, yes.”

  “Fine,” said Milt. “Beat him well while he is there. Starve him also, if you can. He has such a great fat stomach I doubt that it is possible.”

  Milt smiled pleasantly. The chinless man blanched. “Monster!” he stammered, then recovered himself. “But there is something else, Herr Max. You are in this country illegally. A word to—”

  “Any number of people,” said Milt, truthfully, “will swear that I was born here. But why do we dispute, Señor Alvarado? That so-foolish man who leads your equally preposterous government—”

  “Silence!”

  “—may be moved by motives of idealism. You may be also. I am not so stupid. I want money. If you want this thing done, you will pay for it. It is as simple as that, and no simpler.”

  Thus, Milt, who like everyone else in the jewelry trade had begun dabbling in gold when the price went to thirty-five dollars an ounce—thus, funny-looking little Milt became a large-scale buyer for the Nazi government.

  His first move was to build up a group of house-to-house buyers who worked out of his shop. Their purchases, less perhaps an undetectable third, went directly and regularly to the mint, where he built up and still had a reputation as a man above suspicion. His next move was to rent numerous post-office boxes under different names; small boxes, such as individuals rent. Under those names, he inserted small newspaper ads in as many different sections of the country.

  There are thousands of such advertisers; little men, often with little knowledge of a highly exacting business. Because they are little, they feel obliged to place money ahead of good will. They grade and weigh “close”—the doubts which always arise are decided in their own favor. Because they lack the necessary training and wit—and despite their petty and pitiful efforts to do the opposite—they make disastrous buys. It is then obligatory, or so they feel, to be still “sharper” to make up for their losses.

  The end result of all this is that the little men acquire a bad or at best “uneven” reputation. They buy less and less gold. Usually, in a few months or a few years, they are out of business.

  It would be a physical impossibility to check on all these small mail buyers, and the federal authorities see no need to do so. Before gold can be diverted into the black market, it must first be acquired. And the little men just don’t buy it, not a fraction of the quantity needed to pay them for the risk.…That is, of course, none of them bought it but Milt’s little men. Gold poured in on the little men. They bought pounds of it every day.

  Milt had expected to get out of the gold traffic when the Nazis had become unable to buy. But the chinless man gave no sign of ceasing operations, and Milt was far too wise to express a desire to quit. Angrily he realized that, in effect, he was jeopardizing his liberty and perhaps his life for nothing. He could never spend his wealth in the United States. He would never be allowed to leave the United States to spend it. He was getting old. Unless he withdrew from the ring soon, it would be too late. The things money bought would have become meaningless.

  Mixed with his anger was a kind of apathy, a dread dead feeling that whatever he did mattered little. Even if he could get away…well, what then? How would a man of his age occupy himself in a strange new country? Alone, completely alone, with no one to care whether he lived or died.

  He had been unable to deposit his money in a bank and afraid to place it in a safe deposit box; such might attract attention, and what if he should have to leave town in a hurry? So, unobtrusively, he had had a small but excellent safe sunk into the floor beneath his workbench. It could be cracked, of course, as the best of safes can be. But what knob-knocker or juice worker or torch artist would suspect that Milt had anything worth getting?

  None did. The idea was laughable. Milt used to laugh, smile a little sadly to himself, as late at night sometimes he examined the stacks upon stacks of large-denomination bills. So much money…for what?

  So he had gone on, reasonlessly, because there was nothing else to do, and fate in time had brought Toddy and Elaine Kent to him. Elaine! There was someone like himself, a woman who thought as he did. With someone like her, with her and the money, life would at last be what it should. And why not have her? It was only a question of ridding her of her fool husband, and if she kept on drinking, making trouble—and if that was not enough, if Toddy would not leave her or permit her to leave…

  Night after night Milt had brooded over the matter; cursing, thinking in circles, guzzling quart after quart of beer. And, finally, Toddy had stumbled upon the house of the talking dog; and from then on thinking almost ceased to be necessary. Every piece of the puzzle had fallen into place at the touch of Milt’s stubby fingers.

  True, there had been one slight hitch, a hair-raising moment when all seemed lost. But that was past, now. Nothing remained but the pay-off. There was no longer danger—or very little. Things had not worked out quite as he had planned, but still they had worked out.

  The phone rang. Milt answered it, casually, then grinned with malicious pleasure:

  “Yes, I did that, Señor. Something you should have done yourself.…Why? Because he was dangerous, a menace to us. At least that was my honest opinion. I have not acted out of venom—as our superiors will most certainly feel that you have.…Eh? Oh, you are mistaken, mein Herr. You have but to consult your morning paper—The News. The others did not see fit to carry the item. And if that is not enough for you…

  “If you demand stronger proof”—Milt’s voice dropped to a wicked caress—“pay me a visit.”

  18

  A chilling, icy, weight enveloped Toddy’s head. He tried to move away from it, but couldn’t. It kept moving with him. From far away, in a dim fog-muted world, came the sound of voices.…A man and a woman, talking, or a woman and two men.…The voices came closer, some of them, then lapsed into silence. Something squeezed his left wrist, released it, and regrasped his right arm. The arm moved upward, and a probe dug painfully at the flesh. Then, fire flooded his veins and his heart gave a great bound, and Toddy bounded with it.

  Eyes closed, he bounded, staggered, to his feet, and the icy weight clattered from his head. Then he was pressed back, prone, on the bed; and he opened his eyes.