The Philosophical Strangler(28)

Greyboar, alas, responded with nothing more dynamic than a glance in my direction. “Choke him?” he mused. “Blackmail? Whatever are you talking about, Ignace?”

He turned his gaze onto the stranger. “Surely this fine gentleman’s no blackmailer,” he rumbled. “And if he were, so what? What crime have we committed to fear blackmail?”

The stranger glanced at me and laughed. “Too many for Ignace to count, I venture to say.” The quick laugh was followed by a pleasant grin and a casual wave of the hand.

“But you may rest easy, Ignace,” he announced. “You may have, but I most surely did not, mistake the emphasis in Greyboar’s words. Where you heard ‘what crime have we committed,’ I heard the important words: ‘to fear blackmail.’ ”

He transferred his cheerful grin to the strangler. “I dare say you’re not troubled by blackmailers often. And certainly not for long.”

Greyboar cracked his knuckles. Several of the patrons in The Trough flinched and stared up at the ceiling.

“No,” he said. “Not often. And not for long.”

“Then what d’you want?” I demanded.

Again, he was unfazed by my hostility. He simply responded with his suave smile and said:

“I am in a bit of a predicament, sirrahs, as a result of the recent demise of the Baron be Butin. Some time ago, the Baron commissioned me to do his portrait.” He glanced down at the canvas. “As you can see, I had almost finished the work when word came that the Baron had shuffled off this mortal coil.”

Comprehension dawned. I sneered. “So you lost the commission? Never got your money?”

He nodded. Again, I shot to my feet like a rocket.

“Extortion!” I pronounced. “Choke him, Greyboar! Burke him, I say! He’s a filthy rotten extortionist!”

This time, Greyboar simply chuckled. The stranger frowned.

“Whatever are you talking about, my good Ignace?”

“I’m not your good Ignace! I know what you’re up to! You lost out on your commission because Grey—because some unknown desperado choked the Baron, and now you’re trying to squeeze the fee out of us!”

The artist’s frown deepened. As if he didn’t understand what I was saying, which was ridiculous, because it was plain as day—

Greyboar interrupted. “I regret your loss, sirrah, but I’m afraid I don’t see what I can do about it. Alas, it’s in the nature of my trade that third parties often wind up taking a loss, through no fault of their own.” He shrugged. “You just have to be philosophical about it. The way I look at it, for every third party unfairly injured there’s another third party unfairly rewarded. Heirs and such, for instance.”

For a moment, a steely glint came to the strangler’s eyes. “But I’m afraid I can hardly be called upon to make good such losses to third parties. Put me right out of business, that would.”

He waved his great hand airily. But the steely glint remained. “And I’m afraid, should such a third party insist, that I would have to—reluctantly, you understand—come to the conclusion which my friend and agent Ignace came to, as is his unfortunate habit, much too precipitously.”

Very steely glint. What people call The Stare, in fact. “Extortion.”

I was astonished. This Benvenuti fellow was one of the very, very, very few men I’d ever met who didn’t seem in the slightest bit intimidated by The Stare.

He actually laughed! A real, cheerful, happy-go-lucky type of laugh, too. Not the least little quaver or tremor in the thing.

“You misunderstand!” he exclaimed. “I am not seeking financial restitution for my loss. Oh no, not at all. The idea’s grotesque! No respectable craftsman such as yourself could be held responsible for unforeseen losses to third parties which arise as the natural result of his enterprise.”

The Stare faded, replaced by a puzzled frown.

“But you said—”

The stranger nodded vigorously. “I said that you could be of assistance to me in my predicament. But—my fault entirely—I failed to make clear that the quandary is of an artistic rather than pecuniary nature.”

Seeing the puzzled frown still on Greyboar’s great looming tor of a brow, the artist explained:

“The Baron’s estate, you see, has already made clear that they will not pay me for the portrait under any circumstances. Indeed, they refuse even to compensate me for my expenses. The commission, they say, was undertaken by the Baron, who is now deceased. The estate therefore bears no responsibility for it.”

A steely glint came into his own eyes. “At the same time—you seem to have some peculiar legal customs here, if you’ll permit an Ozarine to say so—the estate claims that the portrait is part of the estate and must therefore be delivered up. The completed work, mind you. Else I shall be liable before the law for embezzlement and breach of contract.”