Harry Turtledove

The Maltese Elephant

(A Parody)

Illustration by George H. Krauter

Miles Bowman was a man built of rectangular blocks. His head was one, squared off with short-cut graying hair at the top and a sharp jaw at the bottom. His chest and shoulders made a big brick, his belly below them a slightly smaller one. His arms and legs were thick, muscular pillars. He trimmed his nails straight across at the end of his fingers.

His partner Tom Trencher, that smiling devil, was dead. In the hallway outside the office, a sign painter was using a razor blade to scrape BOWMAN & TRENCHER off the frosted glass. When he was done, he would paint Bowman’s name there by itself in gilt. Centered.

The phone rang. His secretary answered it. Hester Prine was a tall, skinny, brown-haired girl. She wore good clothes as if they were sacks. But when she spoke, any man who heard her had hungry dreams for days.

She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s your wife.”

Bowman shook his head. “I don’t want to talk to Eva.”

“She wants to talk to you about Tom.”

“I figured she did. What else would she call me about here? I don’t want want to talk to her, I told you. Tell her I’m out on a case. I’ll see her tonight. She can talk to me then.”

His secretary’s mouth twisted, but she took her hand away and said what Bowman had told her to say. She had to say it three times before she could hang up. Then she rose and walked over to Bowman’s desk in the inner office. She looked down at him. “You’re a louse, Miles.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said comfortably. His arm slid around her waist. He pulled her closer to him.

“Louse,” she said again, in a different tone of voice. She hesitated. “Miles, she wants to talk to you because—” She ran down like a phonograph that needs winding.

“Because she thinks I killed Tom.” His hand tightened on her hip. He smiled. His teeth were not very good. “Why would she think a thing like that?”

“Because you know she and—” Hester Prine ran down again. “You’re hurting me.”

“Am I?” He did not let go. “I know lots of things. But I didn’t kill Tom. Eva won’t pin that one on me. The cops won’t, either.”

Soft footsteps came down the hall. They paused in front of the office. The sign painter stopped scraping. Hester Prine twisted away from Bowman. This time he did not try to stop her.

The door opened. By then Bowman’s secretary was back at her desk. A woman walked into the office. The sign painter stared at her until the door closed and cut off his view. Then, with reluctant razor, he went back to work.

The woman was small and swarthy and perfect, with a heart-shaped face and enormous black eyes that could smile or sob or blaze or do all three at once, in the space of a couple of heartbeats. Her crow’s-wing hair fell almost to her shoulders in a straight bob. It was not what they were wearing this year, but on her it was right. So was her orange crepe silk frock with a flared peplum skirt.

She strode past Hester Prine as if the secretary did not exist and went into Bowman’s inner office. He got up from in back of his desk. “Miss Lenoir,” he said. He shut the door behind her.

“Your partner,” Claire Lenoir said in a broken voice. “It’s my fault.” Tears glistened in her eyes, but did not fall.

“Not all of it,” he answered. “Tom knew what he was doing, and you told him the guy he was tailing—the guy who’s been tailing you—was one rough customer. You don’t get into this business if you think everything is going to be easy all the time. Or you better not.”

Her hands fluttered. She wore two rings, of gold and emeralds. They glowed against her dark skin. “But—” she said.

Bowman waved dismissively. “You mean that story you told us before? That didn’t have anything to do with anything. If Tom and I had believed it, it might have, but we didn’t. So don’t worry about that. But you’re going to have to level sooner or later, if you want me to do whatever you really want me to do.”

The outer door opened. Hester Prine talked with someone—a man—for a few seconds. The phone on Bowman’s desk jangled. He picked it up. “A Mr. Nicholas Alexandria wants to see you right now,” his secretary said. “He says it’s worth two hundred dollars.”

“Have you seen the money?” Bowman asked.

“He’s got it,” she answered.

Bowman mouthed the name “Nicholas Alexandria” to Claire Lenoir. She started violently. The blood drained from her face, leaving her skin the color of old newspaper. She shook her head so her hair, for a moment, flew across her face. One strand stuck at the comer of her red-painted mouth. She brushed it away with an angry gesture.

“Send him in, sweetheart,” Bowman said placidly. He hung up the telephone.

The man who came through the door might have been born in the city that gave him his name. He was darker than Claire Lenoir. His nose curved like a saber blade. His mouth, a Cupid’s bow, was red but not painted. He stank of patchouli.

His eyes, hard and shiny and black as obsidian, flicked to Claire Lenoir and widened slightly. Then they returned to Bowman. “Your secretary did not say you had—this woman here,” he said in a fussy, precise voice.

“Did you ask her?” Bowman asked. Nicholas Alexandria’s eyes widened again. He shook his head, a single, tightly controlled gesture. Bowman said, “Then you’ve got no cause for complaint. I hear you’re two hundred dollars interested in talking to me.” He held out his hand, palm up.

Nicholas Alexandria’s finely manicured hand drew from the pocket of his velvet jacket a wallet of tanned snakeskin. He removed from it four bills bearing the image of Ulysses S. Grant, held them out to Miles Bowman.

Bowman took them, studied them, put them into his own wallet, and stuck it back in his hip pocket. “All right,” he said. He waved to a chair. “Sit. Talk.”

Alexandria sat. His red mouth contracted petulantly. “I might have known Miss Tellini would be here, when I wished to discuss with you matters pertaining to the Maltese Elephant.”

Bowman’s head turned on its thick neck. “Miss Tellini?” he asked Claire Lenoir.

“Gina Tellini,” Nicholas Alexandria said with a certain cold relish. “Why? Under what name do you know her?”

“It’s not important,” Bowman answered. He smiled at the girl. “Got any others?”

Her skin darkened. She looked away from him. Nicholas Alexandria said, “That is the appellation with which she was bom in the district of New York known as, I believe, Hell’s Kitchen, any representations to the contrary notwithstanding.” Gina Tellini spat something in Italian. Nicholas Alexandria answered in the same language, his diction precise. Her mouth fell open. His smile was frigid. In English, he said, “You see, I can get down in the gutter, too.”

Miles Bowman held up a meaty hand. “Enough, already,” he said. He waved to Alexandria. “You wanted to talk about the Maltese Elephant. Go ahead and talk.”

“You are already familiar with this famous and fabulous creature?” Nicholas Alexandria inquired.

“Never heard of it,” Bowman said politely.

Nicholas Alexandria gave another of his tightly machined head shakes. “I am afraid I cannot believe you, Mr. Bowman,” he said. He reached inside his jacket once more. His hand returned to sight with a snub-nosed chromed automatic. He pointed it at Miles Bowman’s chest. “Place both your hands wide apart on the desk immediately.”

“You stinking little pansy,” Bowman said.

Nicholas Alexandria’s red, full lips narrowed into a thin pink slash. His tongue darted out like a snake’s. The hand holding the automatic did not waver.

Bowman lowered a shoulder, twisted his body a little to one side. Then he spoke with savage satisfaction: “All right, Alexandria, now you’ve got a gun and I’ve got a gun. But you’ve got that cheap .22 and I’m holding a .45. You shoot me, I spend some time in the hospital getting patched up. I shoot you, pal, you’re not just history, you’re archaeology.” He laughed loudly at his own wit. “Now put your little toy away and we’ll talk.”

“I do not believe you have a weapon,” Nicholas Alexandria said.

“The more fool you,” Bowman answered. “My partner didn’t believe in packing a gun, and now the fool is dead. I’m a lot of things, but I’m no fool.”

“He has it,” Gina Tellini said. “I can see his hand on it.”

“You would say the same in any case.” Nicholas Alexandria’s eyes did not move toward her. To Bowman, he said: “Shooting through the front of your desk does not strike me as likely to produce the results you would desire.”

Bowman leaned back in his chair. One of his feet left the nubby, mustard-colored wool rug for a moment. It slammed against the inside of the center panel of the desk. The panel bowed outward. At the sudden crash, Nicholas Alexandria’s finger tightened on the trigger. Then it eased again. Bowman’s voice was complacent: “Cheap plywood, varnished to look like mahogany. A slug won’t even know it’s there.”

Alexandria’s mouth screwed tight, as if he were about to kiss someone he did not like. He slid the revolver back into the inner pocket of his jacket. As if he had never taken it out, he said, “Perhaps Miss Tellini did not see fit to tell you the Maltese Elephant—a Maltese Elephant, I should say—is in San Francisco now.”

“No, she didn’t tell me that,” Miles Bowman said. He looked Gina Tellini up and down. Now her eyes were as flat and opaque as Nicholas Alexandria’s. Bowman turned back to the man in the velvet jacket. “So what do you want me to do about it? Find this elephant and sell it to the circus?”

Nicholas Alexandria rose and bowed. “I see I am being mocked. I shall return another time, in the hope of finding you alone and serious.”

“Sorry you feel that way.” Bowman also got up. He came around the desk and stood towering over Nicholas Alexandria as he opened the door to let the slighter man out of the inner office.

Alexandria raised one finger. “A moment. Did you truly have a pistol?”

Bowman reached under his jacket. The motion exposed a battered leather holster on his right hip. He pulled out the Colt Model 1911A and let it lie, heavy and ugly and black, in his palm. It bore no frill, no ornament, no chromium. It was a killing machine, nothing else. Nicholas Alexandria stared at it. He let out a small, gasping sigh.

“I never bluff,” Bowman said. “No percentage to it.” He shifted the pistol in his hand. His fingers closed on the checkered grip. With a motion astonishingly fast from such a heavyset man, he slammed the Colt’s hard steel barrel against the side of Alexandria’s face. “Remember that.”

The blow knocked Alexandria back two paces. He staggered but did not fall. The raised foresight had cut his cheek. Blood dripped onto his jacket. Slowly he removed the silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. He dabbed at the jacket, then raised the handkerchief to his face. “I shall remember, Mr. Bowman,” he whispered hoarsely. “Rely on it.”

He walked past Hester Prine without looking at her, and out of the office.

Gina Tellini brought her hands together several times, clapping without sound. “Now I know you will be able to protect me—Miles.” She lingered half a heartbeat over his Christian name.

He shrugged. “All in a day’s work. You have anything you want to tell me about this Maltese Elephant?”

Those quicksilver eyes betrayed an instant’s alarm. Then they were her servants again. She shook her head. “I can’t, not yet,” she said huskily.

“Have it your way.” Bowman’s thick shoulders moved up and down once more. “You’re going to, or Alexandria will, or somebody.” He watched her. She stood very still, like a small, hunted animal. He shrugged a third time, motioned for her to precede him out of the inner office. “See you later.”

When her footsteps could no longer be heard in the hall, he turned to Hester Prine. “I’m going home.” He checked his wristwatch. “Quarter past seven already. Jesus, where does the time get to?” He set his hand on her shoulder. “Go on back to your place, too. To hell with all this.”

She did not look at him. “I have some more typing to do,” she said tonelessly.

“Have it your way,” Bowman said, as he had to Gina Tellini. He closed the outer door—now it read BOWMAN, in letters bigger than BOWMAN & TRENCHER had been painted—and strolled down the hall to the elevator.

As he walked, he whistled “Look for the Silver Lining. ” He whistled out of tune. The elevator boy looked at him as he got into the cage. He looked back. The elevator boy suddenly got busy with the buttons and took him to the ground floor.

He walked across the street to the garage where he kept his Chevrolet. He threw the kid on the comer a nickel. The kid handed him a copy of the San Francisco News. He tossed it into the front seat of the car. The starter whined when he turned the key. Coughing, the motor finally caught. He put the Chevrolet in gear and drove home.

The house on Thirty-third Avenue in the Sunset district needed a coat of paint. The houses to which it was joined on either side had been painted recently, one blue, the other a sort of rose pink. That made the faded, blotchy yellow surface look all the shabbier.

Bowman bounded up the steps two at a time. He turned the key in the Yale lock, mashed his thumb down on the latch. With a click like a bad knee, the door opened.

The interior was all plush and cheap velvet and curlicued wood and overstuffed furniture. “Is that you, honey?” Eva’s voice wafted out of the kitchen with the smell of pot roast and onions. She sounded nervous.

“Who else do you know with a key?” Bowman asked. He scaled his hat toward the couch. It fell short and landed on the fringe of the throw rug under the coffee table. He dropped the News onto the table.

Eva came out and stood in the kitchen doorway. He walked over, kissed her perfunctorily. They had been married thirteen years. She was ten years the younger. She was about the age Tom Trencher had been. Trencher wouldn’t get any older.

Eva’s short red curls got their color from a bottle. They’d been the same color when he married her, and from the same source. They went well with her green eyes. She was twenty pounds heavier now than when they’d walked down the aisle, but bigboned enough to carry the pounds well. She wore a ruffled apron over a middie blouse and a cotton skirt striped brightly in gold and blue.

Her smile was a little too wide. It showed too many teeth. “Do the police know anything more about— who killed Tom?” She looked at the point of his chin, not his eyes.

“If they do, they haven’t told me. I didn’t talk with ’em today.” He shrugged. “Get me a drink.”

“Sure, honey.” She hurried away. She opened the pantry, then the icebox, and came back with a tumbler of bourbon on the rocks. “Here.” That too-ingratiating smile still masked her face.

Bowman drank half the tumbler with two long swallows. He exhaled, long and reverently, and held up the glass to scrutinize its deep amber contents against the light bulb in the kitchen ceiling lamp. “This is the medicine,” he announced, and finished the bourbon. He handed Eva the glass. “Fix me another one of these with supper.”

“Sure, Miles,” she said. “We ought to be just about ready.” The pot lid clanked as she lifted it off to check the roast. She set it back on the big iron pot. The oven door hinge squeaked. “The meat is done, and so are the potatoes. I’ll set the table and get you your drink.”

Bowman buttered his baked potato, spread salt and pepper lavishly over the thick slab of red-brown beef Eva set before him. He ate steadily, methodically, without wasted motion, like a man shoveling coal into a locomotive firebox. Every so often, he sipped from the tall glass of bourbon next to the chipped china plate that held his supper.

Eva dropped her knife on the flowered linoleum floor. Bowman looked up for the first time since he’d seated himself at the table. Eva flushed. She flung the knife into the sink. Then she got up and took a clean one from the silverware drawer.

Before Bowman could resume his assault on the pot roast, she said, “Miles, honey, who do you think murdered Tom?”

“Had to be the guy he was shadowing,” he answered. He speared another piece of meat with his fork, but did not raise it to his lips. “Thursday, that was his name. Evan Thursday.” He ate the piece of meat. With his mouth full, he went on, “Couldn’t have been anybody else.” He swallowed, and smiled at Eva. “Could it?”

“No, I don’t imagine it could,” she said quickly. She bent her head over her plate. A moment later, her fork clattered to the floor. Her lips twisted. “I’m as twitchy as a cat tonight.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Bowman said. He drank from the tumbler. Two ice cubes clinked against its side.

When supper was done, Bowman went out to the living room. He set what was left of his drink on the coffee table, then sat down on the sofa. The springs creaked under his weight. He bent over, grunting a little, untied his shoes, and tossed them under the table.

“Eva, get me my slippers,” he said.

“What?” she called over the noise of running water in the kitchen. He repeated himself, louder. The water stopped running. Drying her hands on a dish towel, Eva bustled past him into the bedroom. She came back with the towel draped over her arm and the slippers in her hands. “Here they are.” He slid them onto his feet. She returned to the dishes.

He smoked three cigarettes waiting for her to finish washing and drying them. When she came out, he handed her the tumbler. She washed it and dried it and put it away. He had opened the News by then, and was going through it front to back, as systematically as he ate.

Eva sighed softly and went over to a bookcase. She pulled out a sentimental novel and carried it into the bedroom. Bowman went on reading. When he came to the Ships in Port listing, he chewed thoughtfully on his underlip. He got up. In the clutter of papers and matchbooks in the top drawer of the hutch, he found a pencil. He underlined the names of four ships:

Daisy Miller from London

La Tórtola from Gozo

Admiral Byng from Minorca

Golden Wind from Bombay

After he read the advertisements on the other side of the page that held Ships in Port, he tore out the three-inch length of agate type and stuck it in his trouser pocket. Then he worked his way through the rest of the newspaper.

“Miles?”

Bowman looked up. Eva stood in the doorway that led to the bedroom. She was wearing a thin, clinging silk crepe de chine peignoir. Bowman had given it to her for their anniversary a few years before. She did not wear it very often.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “Aren’t you coming to bed?” She had not washed off her makeup and smeared her face with cold cream, the way she usually did at bedtime.

Bowman folded up the paper and tossed it on the floor. His fingers were stained with ink from the cheap newsprint. He rubbed them on the; thighs of his pants, rose from the couch. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said.

A hard fist pounded on the front door. Bowman sat up in bed. The pounding went on. “Who’s that?” Eva asked, her voice half drunk with sleep.

“Damned if I know, but I’m going to find out.” Bowman groped for the switch on the lamp by the bed. He flicked it, and screwed up his eyes against the sudden flare of light. He peered at the alarm clock on the nightstand by the lamp. Midnight. Scowling, he got out of bed. He had hung his holster on a chair. He pulled out his pistol, clicked off the safety.

“What are you going to do?” Eva asked. The cold cream made her round cheeks glisten like the rump of a greased pig.

“See who it is,” Bowman answered reasonably. “You stay here.” He slid into his pajama bottoms and padded out toward the door. For a bulky man, he was surprisingly light on his feet. He closed the bedroom door after him.

The pounding had slowed when the light went on. Bowman yanked the door open. He pointed the pistol at the two men on the front porch. A moment later, he lowered it. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “You boys trying to get yourselves killed? I knew cops were dumb, but this dumb?” He shook his head.

“We’ve got to talk to you, Miles,” one of the policemen said. “Can we come in?”

“You got a warrant, Rollie?” Bowman asked.

“Not that kind of talk, I swear.” Detective Roland Dwyer crossed himself to show he was serious.

Bowman considered. He nodded gruffly. “All right, come in, then,” he said, and turned on the imitation Tiffany lamp on the table by the door. “But if you and the Captain here are playing games with me—” He did not say what would happen then, but left the implication it would not be pretty.

“Thanks, Miles,” Dwyer said with an air of sincerity. He was a tall Irishman heading toward middle age. His hair had naturally the color to which Eva’s aspired. His face was long and ruddy and triangular, with a wide forehead and a narrow chin. He wore a frayed shirt collar and pants shiny with wear at the knees: he was, on the whole, an honest cop.

Bowman waved him toward the sofa. The Captain followed him in. Bowman quickly closed the door. The night was chilly, and had the clammy dankness of fog. Bowman sat down in the rocking chair next to the table that held the lamp with the colored glass shade. His voice turned hard: “All right, what won’t keep till morning?”

Dwyer and the Captain looked at each other. The latter was a short, pudgy man, a few years older than Bowman. He had a fringe of silver hair futilely clinging to the slopes of his pate, skin as fine and pink as a baby’s, and innocent blue eyes. His suit was new, and tailored in the English fashion. He smelled of expensive Bay Rum after-shave lotion.

After a brief hesitation, the Captain said: “Evan Thursday’s dead, Miles. One slug, right between the eyes.”

“So?” Bowman said. “Good riddance to him is all I have to say, Bock.”

Captain Henry Bock steepled his fingers. He pressed them so tight together, the blood was forced from their tips, leaving them pale as boiled veal. “Where have you been tonight, Miles?” he asked delicately.

Bowman heaved himself out of the rocker. He took two steps toward the Captain before he checked himself. “Get out of here,” he snarled. “Rollie tells me everything’s going to be jake, and you start with that—” He expressed his opinion with vehemence, variety, and detail.

Roland Dwyer spread his hands placatingly. “Come on, take it easy,” he said. “This guy gets iced, we have to talk to you. We think he shot Tom, after all, and Tom was your partner.”

“Yeah? Is that what you think?” Bowman made a slashing gesture of disgust with his left hand. “Looked like you were trying to pin Tom on me. Or do you figure I took care of both of ’em now?”

“Where have you been tonight?” Captain Bock repeated.

“At the office and here, dammit, nowhere else but,” Bowman said. “Ask my secretary when I left, ask Eva when I got here. You want me to get her out so you can ask her?” He glanced over to the closed bedroom door. “Only take a minute.”

“It’s all right, Miles,” Detective Dwyer said. “We believe you.” He looked over at Henry Bock again. “Don’t we, Captain?”

Bock shrugged. “Neither of those women is likely to tell us anything different from what Bowman says, anyhow.”

The Captain had spoken quietly. Bowman glanced at the bedroom door again. When he answered, he too held his voice down, but anger blazed in it: “And what the hell is that supposed to mean? You come round here with one load of rubbish, and now you start throwing around more? I ought to—”

“Shut up, Bowman,” Captain Bock said flatly. “What the women say doesn’t matter, not this time. Thursday caught his right outside Kezar Stadium, in Golden Gate Park. If you’d arranged to meet him there, it wouldn’t have been five minutes out of your way. ”

“And if pigs had wings—” Bowman stood up, opened the front door. “Get out,” he growled. “Next time you come here, you bring a warrant, like I said. My lawyer’ll be here with me, too.”

“I’m sorry, Miles,” Dwyer said. “We re doing our job, too, remember. You aren’t making it any easier for us, either.”

“Go do it somewhere else,” Bowman said.

The two policemen got up and walked into the building fog. They got into their car, which they had parked behind Bowman’s. The heavy, wet air muffled the sound of the motor starting. In the fog, the beams the headlamps cast seemed thick and yellow as butter.

Bowman shut the door and locked it. He went back into the bedroom, replaced the pistol in its holster. Eva was sitting up, reading the novel she’d abandoned earlier. “What—did they want?” she asked hesitantly.

“Somebody punched that Evan Thursday’s ticket for him,” Bowman answered.

“And they think it was you?” Eva’s eyes widened. “That’s terrible!”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” Bowman said, shrugging. “I didn’t do it, so they can’t pin it on me, right?” He lay down beside her, clicked off the lamp on his side of the bed. He yawned. “You going to look at that thing all night?”

“No, dear.” Eva put down the book and turned off her lamp. Although she stretched out next to Bowman, she wiggled and fidgeted the way she did when she was having trouble going to sleep. Bowman shrugged once more, breathed heavily, then soon began to snore.

The telephone rang, loud in the night as a fire alarm. Bowman thrashed, twisted, sat up, and turned on the bedside lamp. The alarm clock said it was almost three. He shook his head. “I don’t believe this.”

The phone kept ringing. “Answer it,” Eva told him. She pulled the pale blue wool blanket up over her head.

Muttering, he walked into the living room. He snatched the earpiece off the hook, picked up the rest of the instrument, and barked his name into the mouthpiece: “Bowman.” The voice on the other end of the line spoke. “Now?” Bowman asked. “Are you sure?.. . Jesus Christ, it’s three in the morning... all right, if that’s the way it’s got to be.... Room 481, right? See you there... Yeah, fifteen minutes if the fog’s not too thick.”

He slammed the mouthpiece down on his goodbye, stalked back into the bedroom. Eva had turned off the light. He turned it on again. He unbuttoned the shirt to his pajamas and walked naked to the dresser.

“What’s wrong?” Eva asked as he pulled a clean pair of white cotton boxer shorts out of a dresser drawer. “Why are you getting dressed?” She sounded frightened.

“I’m going down to the station.” He got into the same trousers he had worn the day before. “Bock and Dwyer, they have some more questions for me.” He put on socks and shoes, got a fresh shirt from the closet, knotted a tie with a jungle pattern of hot blues and oranges and greens, shrugged a jacket over his wide shoulders. He ran a comb through his hair, then planted a curled-brim fedora on his head.

“Shouldn’t you call your lawyer?” Eva said.

“Nah, it’ll be all right.” He started out. At the bedroom door, he stopped and blew her a kiss.

The fog was there, but not too thick. He had the roads all to himself. Once his Chevrolet and a police car passed each other on opposite sides of the street. He waved to the men inside. One of them recognized him and waved back.

He turned right off Market onto New Montgomery. During business hours, no one could have hoped to find a parking space there. Now the curb was his to command. He walked over to the eight-story Beaux Arts building of tan brick and terra cotta at the corner of Market and New Montgomery. A man in uniform held the door open for him. He strode across the lobby to the bank of elevators.

“Fourth floor,” he told the operator as he got into one.

“Fourth floor, yes, sir,” the man answered. “Welcome to the Palace Hotel.”

Bowman stood with his feet slightly spread, as if at parade rest. He looked straight ahead. The elevator purred upward. When it got to the fourth floor, the operator opened the cage. Bowman stepped out while the fellow was telling him the floor.

A sign on the wall opposite the elevator announced:

← 401-450 451-499 →

Bowman went. The carpet in the hall was so thick that the pile swallowed the welt of his shoe each time his weight came down on it. He paused a moment in front of room 481, then folded his thick hand into a fist and rapped on the door just below the polished brass numbers.

It opened. “Come in,” Gina Tellini said. She looked as fresh as she had the afternoon before, but at some time between then and now had changed into a dark green velvet lounging robe of Oriental cut. The front of a Chinese dragon, embroidered in deep golds and reds, coiled across her breast.

Bowman stepped into the hotel room. Gina Tellini closed the door after him. As she started back past him, he said, “Thursday’s dead.”

She stopped in her tracks. A hand started to fly up to her mouth, but checked itself. “How do you know that?” she asked in a shaken voice.

“Cops—how else?” He barked mirthless laughter. “They want to put that one on my bar tab, too, along with Tom.” His lips thinned, stretching his mouth into a speculative line. “You could have done it. You would have had time, after you left the office.”

“No, not me.” She dismissed the idea in three casual words. “Here, sit down, make yourself comfortable.” She waved Bowman to a chair upholstered in velvet two shades lighter than her gown. She sat down on the edge of the bed facing him. The bed had not been slept in since the maid last prepared it.

“All right, not you,” Bowman said agreeably, crossing his legs. “Who, then?”

“It could have been Nicholas Alexandria,” Gina Tellini said. “He carries a gun. You saw that.”

“Yeah, I saw that. It could have been. But a lot of people carry guns.

I carry one myself. ‘Could have been’ doesn’t cut much ice.”

“I know. ” Gina Tellini nodded. The motion made the robe come open, very slightly, at the neckline. “But somebody besides Alexandria wants the Maltese Elephant.”

“Somebody besides Alexandria and you.” Bowman’s gaze focused on the point, a few inches below her chin, where velvet had retreated. “Thursday’s dead. Who else is there?”

“A man named Gideon Schlechtman,” she answered promptly. “Sometimes he and Alexandria work together, sometimes Alexandria is on his own, or thinks he is. But if he gets the Elephant, Schlechtman will try to take it from him.”

“I bet he will,” Bowman said. “And what about you and Alexandria and what’s-his-name, Schlechtman? I bet the three of you are one big happy family, right?”

“It’s not funny, Miles,” Gina Tellini insisted. “Schlechtman is—dangerous. If Evan Thursday is dead, that’s all the more reason to believe he’s come to San Francisco.”

“Is that so?” Bowman said. “All I have is your word, and your word hasn’t been any too real good, you know what I mean? And if this here Schlechtman is real and is in town, whose side are you on?”

“That’s a terrible question to ask.” Gina Tellini’s eyes blazed for a moment. Then sudden tears put out the fire. “You don’t believe a word I’ve told you. It’s so—hard when you don’t trust me. I’m here in your city all alone and—” The rest was muffled when she buried her face in her hands.

Bowman rose from the chair, sat down beside her on the bed. “Don’t get upset, sweetheart,” he said. “One way or another, I’ll take care of things.”

She looked up at him. Lamplight sparkled on the tracks two tears had traced on her cheeks. “I’m so damned tired of always being alone,” she whispered.

“You’re not alone now,” he said. She nodded, slowly, her eyes never leaving his. He slipped his left arm around her shoulder, drew her to him. Her lips parted. They kissed fiercely. When they fell back to the mattress together, his weight pinned her against its firm resilience.

The rumble of a cable car and the clang of its bell outside the window woke Miles Bowman. The gray light of approaching dawn seeped through the thick brocaded curtains of Gina Tellini’s room.

Moving carefully, Bowman slid out from under her arm. She stirred and murmured but did not wake. Bowman dressed with practiced haste. The door clicked when he closed it. He paused outside in the hall. No sound came from within. Satisfied, he walked back to the elevator.

More automobiles were on the street now, but not too many to keep Bowman from making a U-tum on New Montgomery. He turned right onto Market Street and took it all the way to the Embarcadero.

The Ferry Building was quiet. Its siren would not wail for another two hours, not until eight o’clock. Through the thinning fog, its high clock tower loomed, brooding and sinister. Man-o’-War Row and berths for passenger liners stretched south of the Ferry Building, commercial piers for foreign lines north and west around the curve of the shore. Bowman turned left, toward them, onto the Embarcadero. Between gear changes, his right hand grubbed in his trouser pocket. He pulled out the piece of newsprint he had tom from the San Francisco News.

He parked the car and got out. His nostrils dilated. The air was thick with the smells of rotting piles and roasting coffee, mud and fish and salt water. Sea gulls mewed like flying cats. He padded along, burly as the longshoremen all around but standing out from them by virtue of jacket and collar and tie.

The News listed ships in order of the piers at which they were docked. The Daisy Miller was tied by Pier 7. Shouting dock workers loaded wooden crates onto her. Stenciled letters on the sides of the crates declared they held sewing machines. They were the right size for rifles. Bowman shrugged and walked on to Pier 15, where La Tortola was berthed.

A handful of sailors worked on deck, swabbing and painting under the watchful eye of a skinny blond man in a black-brimmed white officer’s cap and a dark blue jacket with four gold rings circling each cuff. He saw Bowman looking at him. “What do you want, you?” he called. He had a German accent, or maybe Dutch.

Bowman put hands on hips. “Who wants to know?”

“I am Captain Wellnhofer, and I have the right to ask these questions. But you—” The captain’s face had been pale. Now it was red and angry.

“Keep your shirt on, buddy,” Bowman said. He looked down at the scrap of newspaper in his hand. “This here the boat that’s supposed to get another load of fodder today?”

Captain Wellnhofer’s face got redder. “Do you not know in your own language the difference between a boat and a ship? And we have no need for fodder now. You are mistaken. Go away.”

The Admiral Byng was docked at Pier 23. Nobody aboard her admitted any need for fodder, either. Bowman grimaced and hiked on to Pier 35, which held the Golden Wind. “Halfway to Fisherman’s damn Wharf,” he muttered. The only men visible aboard her were little brown lascars in dungarees. None of them seemed to speak any English. Bowman held a couple of silver dollars in the palm of his hand. A lascar hurried to the rail with a sudden white smile. Bowman tossed him one of the coins. He asked the same question he had before. The lascar didn’t understand fodder. “Hay, straw, grain—you know what I mean,” Bowman said.

“You crazy?” the lascar said. “We got tea, we got cotton, we got copra. We take away steam engines, petrol engines. You think maybe we feed them this grain?” He spoke in his own singsong language. The other lascars laughed.

“Yeah, well, just for that, funny guy—” Bowman jammed the other silver dollar back into his trouser pocket. The lascar’s Hindustani oaths followed him as he strode down the pier toward the Embarcadero. He paused at the base of the pier to scribble a note: Expenses—Information —$2. Then he walked back along the curb of the harbor to his automobile.

He parked it in the garage across the street from his office. Lounging against the brick wall not far from the entrance was a burly middle-aged man with the cold, hard, angular features of a Roman centurion. With its wide, pointed lapels, padded shoulders, and pinstripes, his suit stood on one side or the other of the line between fashion and parody. Bowman looked him over, then started up the steps.

The lounger spoke: “You don’t want to go in there. You want to come with me.”

“Yeah? Says who?” Bowman dropped his right hand from the doorknob. It came to rest at his side, near waist level.

“Says my boss—he’s got a business proposition to put to you,” the fellow answered. He stood straighter. One of his hands rested in the front pocket of his jacket. “And says me. And says—” The hand, and whatever it held, moved a little, suggestively.

Bowman came down the steps. “All right, take me to your boss. I’ll talk business with anybody. As for you, pal, you can get stuffed.” He spoke the words lightly, negligently, as if he didn’t care whether the hard-faced man followed through on them or not.

The hard-faced man took a step toward him. “You watch your mouth, or—”

Bowman hit him in the pit of the stomach. His belly was hard as oak. Against a precisely placed blow to the solar plexus, that proved irrelevant. He doubled over with a loud, whistling grunt. His suddenly exhaled breath smelled of gin. While he gasped for air, Bowman plucked a revolver from his pocket and put it in his own. He hauled the burly man back to his feet. “I told you—take me to your boss.”

The man glared at him. Hatred smoldered in his eyes. He started to say something. Bowman shook his head and raised a warning forefinger. The burly man visibly reconsidered. “Come on,” he said, and Bowman nodded.

The seventeen-story white brick and stone Clift Hotel on Geary Street was five blocks west of the Palace. The hard-faced man said nothing more on the way there, nor through the lobby, which was decorated in the style of the Italian Renaissance. He and Bowman took the elevator to the fourteenth floor in silence. He rapped at the door to suite 1453.

Nicholas Alexandria opened it. His chrome-plated pistol was in his hand. “Ah, Mr. Bowman, so good to see you again,” he said in a tone that belied the words. His left hand rose to a sticking plaster on his cheek. The plaster did not cover all the bruise there. “Won’t you come in?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Bowman said, and stepped past him. The suite was furnished in spare and modem style. Gina Tellini sat on a chair that looked as if it might pitch her off at any moment. She sent Bowman a quick, nervous glance, but did not speak. Nicholas Alexandria closed the door, sat on a similar chair beside her.

The couch opposite them was low and poorly padded enough to have come from ancient Greece. On it, hunched forward as if not to miss anything, sat a thin, pale, long-faced man with a lantern jaw and gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore a suit of creamy linen, a Sea Island cotton shirt, and a burgundy silk tie whose bar was adorned with a small silver coin, irregularly round, that displayed a largeeyed owl.

“Schlechtman?” Bowman said. The pale man nodded. Bowman took the revolver out of his pocket. He handed it to him. “You shouldn’t let your little chums play with toys like this. They’re liable to get hurt.”

The hard-featured man who had unwillingly brought Bowman to the Clift Hotel flushed. Before he could speak, Gideon Schlechtman held up a hand. His fingers were long and white, like stalks of asparagus. “Hugo, that was exceedingly clumsy of you,” he said, his voice dry, meticulous, scholarly.

He glanced a question at Bowman. Bowman nodded. Schlechtman returned the revolver to Hugo. The burly man growled wordlessly as he received it.

Bowman said: “Your bully boy tells me you want to talk business.”

Schlechtman shifted so he could draw a billfold from his left pocket. From the billfold he took a banknote with a portrait of Grover Cleveland. He set it on the black lacquered table in front of him. Four more with the same portrait went on top of it. “Do you care for the tone of the conversation thus far?” he enquired.

“Who wouldn’t like five grand?” Bowman asked hoarsely. His eyes never left the bills. “What do I have to do?”

“You have to deliver to me, alive and in good condition, the Maltese Elephant currently in this fair city of yours,” Gideon Schlechtman replied.

“If you’ll pay me five thousand for it, it’s worth plenty more than that to you,” Bowman said. Schlechtman smiled. He had small white even teeth. Gina Tellini caught her breath. Bowman went on: “I ought to have something to work from. Give me two grand now.”

Gideon Schlechtman pursed his lips. He took one bill from the top of the stack, held it out to Bowman between thumb and forefinger. Bowman seized it, crumpled it, stuffed it into the trouser pocket where he kept his keys. Schlechtman neatly replaced the rest of the banknotes in his wallet. The wallet returned to the pocket from which it had come. Nicholas Alexandria sighed.

“All right,” Bowman said. “Next thing is, everybody here knows more about this damned elephant that I do. Even Hugo does, if Hugo knows anything about anything.”

“Why, you lousy—” Hugo began.

Again Schlechtman held up his hand. Again Hugo subsided into growls. Schlechtman said, “Your request is a fair one, Mr. Bowman. If you are to assist us with your unmatchable knowledge of San Francisco, you must also have some knowledge of the remarkable beast we seek.

“Though the Maltese Elephant has of course been known since haziest antiquity to the human inhabitants with whom it shares its island, it was first memorialized in literature in the Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, which was translated from Punic to Greek in the fourth century, B.C. Hanno’s is a bald note: θηρίδιον ὁ ἐλέφας Μελίτης ἐστίν.”

“It’s Greek to me, by God,” Bowman said.

Schlechtman continued his lecture as if Bowman had not spoken: “Aristotle, in the Historia Animalium 610a15, says of the Maltese Elephant, ὁ ἐλέφας ὁ Μελιταῖος μεγέθει ὅομοιος τῇ νήσῳ ἐν ᾗ οἰκεῖ. And Strabo, in the sixth book of his geography, notes Maltese dogs shared a similar trait: πρόκειται δὲ τοῦ Παχύνου Μελίτη, ὅθεν τὰ κυνίδια τε καὶ ἐλεφαντίδια, ἅ καλοῦσι Μελιταῖα, καὶ Γαῦδος, Gaudos being the ancient name for Malta’s island neighbor.

“The Maltese Elephant retained its reputation in Roman days as well. In the first century B.C., Cicero, in his first oration against Verres, claims, Et etiam ex insulolae Melitae elephantisculos tres rapiebat. More than a century later, Petronius, in the one hundred thirty-second chapter of the Satyricon, has his character Encolpius put the curled and preserved ear of a Maltese Elephant to a use which, out of deference to the presence here of Miss Tellini, I shall not quote even in the original. And in the fifth century of our era, as St. Augustine sadly recorded in the Civitas dei, Res publica romanorurn in statu elephantis Melitae nunc deminuitur. So you see, Mr. Bowman, the beast whose trail we follow has a history extending back toward the dawn of time. I could provide you with many more citations—”

“I just bet you could,” Bowman interrupted. “But what does any of ’em have to do with the price of beer?”

“I am coming to that, never fear,” Gideon Schlechtman said. “You were the one who complained of lack of background. Now I have provided it to you. In the foreground is the presence on Malta since 1530 of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. During the great siege by the Ottoman Turks in 1565, a Maltese Elephant warned of an attack with its trumpeting. Since that time, it has come to be revered as a good-luck totem not only by the Knights but also by the great merchants who, under the British crown, are the dominant force on Malta today. The return of one of these beasts to its proper home would be... suitably appreciated by these men.”

“Yeah? If they’re so much in love with these elephants of theirs, how’d one of ’em go missing in the first place?” Bowman demanded.

“Evan Thursday knew the answer to that question, I believe,” Schlechtman answered. “He is, unfortunately, in no position to furnish us with it. Unless, that is, he conveyed it to Miss Tellini. Her involvement in this affair has been, shall we say with the charity Scripture commends, ambiguous.”

“He didn’t,” Gina Tellini said quickly. “I have a cousin on Malta, in Valetta, who—hears things. That’s how I found out.”

Bowman shrugged. “It’s a story. I’ve heard a lot of stories from her.” His voice was cool, indifferent.

Her flashing eyes registered anger, with hurt hard on its heels. “It’s true, Miles. I swear it is.”

“Her word is not to be trusted under any circumstances,” Nicholas Alexandria said.

“As if yours is,” Gina Tellini retorted hotly.

Bowman turned back to Gideon Schlechtman. “The five grand is mine provided I find this Maltese Elephant for you, right?”

“Provided we do not find it first through our unaided efforts, yes,” Schlechtman said.

“Yeah, sure, I knew you were going to tell me that,” Bowman said, indifferent again. “But if you thought you could do it on your own, you never would’ve dragged me into it.” He started for the door. Passing Hugo, he patted him on his hip. “See you around, sweetheart.”

Hugo slapped his hand away, cocked a fist. Beefy face expressionless, Bowman hit him in the belly again, in the exact spot his fist had found before. Hugo fell against an end table of copper tubing and glass. It went over with a crash.

At the door, Bowman looked back to Gideon Schlechtman. “A smart man like you should get better help.”

He closed the door on whatever answer Schlechtman might have made. Waiting for the elevator, he peered back toward suite 1453. No one came out after him. The elevator door opened. “Ground floor, sir?” the operator asked.

“Yeah.”

Bowman stepped into his office. Hester Prine stared up from her typing. Relief, anger, and worry warred on her face. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “Your wife has called three times already. She asked me if you were under arrest. Are you?”

“No.” Bowman hung his hat on the tree. “I’d better talk to her this morning. Anybody else call?”

“Yes,” she said in her lascivious voice. She looked down at the pad by her telephone. “He said his name was Wellnhofer.” She spelled it. “He said he’d already talked to you once today, and he wanted to see you by ten. I was sure you’d be in—I was sure then, anyhow.”

“What did he sound like?” Bowman asked.

“He had an accent, if that’s what you mean.”

Bowman did not answer. He went into his inner office, closed the door. He sat down in the swivel chair, lit a cigarette, and sucked in harsh smoke with quick, savage puffs. After he stubbed it out, he picked up the phone and called. “Eva?.. Yeah, it’s me. Who else would it be?.. No, I’m not in jail, for God’s sake... What do you mean, you called them up and they said they didn’t have me?.. What time was that?... I was gone by then... No, I didn’t see any point to coming home when I had to go in to the office anyway. I ate breakfast and did some looking around. Now I’m here. All right?”

He hung up, smoked another cigarette, and went back out of his private office. From his pocket he took the silver dollar he had not given to the lascar sailor. He dropped it on his secretary’s desk. It rang sweetly. “Go around the comer and get me some coffee and doughnuts. Get some for yourself, too, if you want.”

“I thought you already ate breakfast,” she said. She picked up the cartwheel and started for the door.

Bowman swatted her on the posterior, hard enough to make her squeak. “I’m going to have to soundproof that door,” he said gruffly. “Go on, get out of here.”

He returned to his office, pulled the telephone directory off its shelf, pawed through it. “Operator, give me McPherson’s Agricultural Supplies.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “McPherson’s? Yeah, can you tell me if you’ve filled any big, unusual orders for hay the last couple of days?.. No? All right, thanks.” He went through the book again. “Let me have the manager.” He asked the same question there. He received the same answer, and slammed the earpiece back onto its hook.

The outer door opened. Hester Prine came in with two cardboard cups and a white paper sack. Grease already made the white paper dark and shiny in several places.

“I thought maybe you were Wellnhofer,” Bowman said.

“No such luck.” Hester Prine took a half dollar, a dime, and a nickel from her purse and gave them to Bowman. He dropped them into his pocket. She opened the bag and handed him a doughnut whose sugar glaze glis-tcned like ice on a bad road. He devoured it, drained his coffee. She pointed to the bag and said, “There’s another one in there, if you want it.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Bowman was reaching for it when several sharp pops, like firecrackers on Chinese New Year, sounded outside the office building. Down on the street, a woman screamed. A man cried out. Bowman snatched the doughnut from the bag. “That’s a gun,” he said, and ran for the stairs.

He gulped down the last of the doughnut as he burst out into the fresh air. The man who lay crumpled on the sidewalk wore a navy blue jacket with four gold rings at each cuff. His cap had fallen from his head. It lay several feet away, upside down. The brown leather sweatband inside was stained and frayed.

“I called the cops,” a man exclaimed. “A guy in a car shot him. He drove off that way.” The man pointed west.

Bowman squatted beside Captain Wellnhofer. The seaman had taken two slugs in the chest. Blood soaked his shirt and jacket. It puddled on the pavement. He stared up at Bowman. His eyes still held reason. “Warehouse,” he said, and exhaled. Blood ran from his nose and mouth. With great effort, he spoke through it: “Warehouse near Eddy and Fillm—” He exhaled again, but did not breathe in. He looked blindly up at the pale blue morning sky.

Bowman was getting to his feet when a car pulled to a screeching stop in front of him. Out sprang Detective Dwyer and Captain Bock. Bock looked from Bowman to the corpse and back again. “People have a way of dying around you,” he remarked coldly.

“Go to hell, Bock,” Bowman said. “You can’t pin this on me. Don’t waste your time trying. I was upstairs with Hester when the shooting started.” He pointed to the man who had said he had called the police. “This guy here saw me come out.”

“What were you doing up there with Hester?” Dwyer asked, amusement in his voice.

“Eating a doughnut. What about it?”

“You’ve got sugar on your chin,” Dwyer said.

Bowman wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Bock asked several questions of the man who had called the police. His mouth curling down in disappointment, he turned back to Bowman. “Do you know the victim?” he asked.

“His name’s Wellnhofer,” Bowman answered willingly. “He was coming to see me. He had a ten o’clock appointment.” He looked at his watch. “He was early. Now he’s late.”

“You were down there by him when we drove up,” Dwyer said. “Did he say anything to you before he died?”

“Not a word,” Bowman assured him. “He must have been gone the second he went down.”

“Two in the chest? Yeah, maybe,” Dwyer said.

“Are you going to take a formal statement from me, or what?” Bowman asked. “If you are, then do it. If you aren’t, I’m going back upstairs.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of Wellnhofer’s body. “A hole just opened up in my schedule.”

“You’re a cold-blooded so-and-so,” Dwyer said. He and Captain Bock walked over to their car and put their heads together. When they were done, Dwyer came back to Bowman. “Go on up, Miles. We’ve got enough from you for now. If we need more later, we know where to find you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bowman said bitterly.

Hugo pushed the room-service cart to the door of Gideon Schlechtman’s suite in the Clift Hotel. He opened the door, pulled the cart through, left it in the hall. Then he closed the door and returned to the others in the ever so modem living room.

To Schlechtman, Bowman said: “Much obliged. Lobster and drawn butter, baked potato. I usually like my liquor hard, but that wine was tasty, too.”

“That was a Pouilly-Fume from the valley of the Loire, Mr. Bowman, and a prime year, too,” Gideon Schlechtman replied, steepling his long, thin, pale fingers.

“Didn’t I say it was good?” Bowman asked equably. “Now, before we go any further, we have to figure out who gets thrown to the wolves. There’s three bodies with holes in ’em lying on slabs in the morgue. That kind of business gets the cops all up in arms. They’re going to be looking for somebody to blame. If we give ’em somebody, they won’t do any real digging on their own. Cops, they’re like that.”

“Whom do you suggest, Mr. Bowman?” Schlechtman enquired.

“Hugo’s just hired muscle,” Bowman answered. “Turn up a flat rock and you’ll find a dozen like him. Dwyer and Bock’ll see it the same way.”

The hard-faced man snarled a vile oath. He yanked out his revolver and pointed it at Bowman’s chest. Schlechtman raised his hand. “Patience, Hugo. I have not said I agree to this. What other possibilities have we?”

Bowman shrugged. “Alexandria there’s a squiff. With three strapping men dead, that might do. Rollie Dwyer, he’s got seven kids.”

“You are an insane, wicked man,” Nicholas Alexandria cried shrilly. His hand darted inside his coat. Lamplight glittered from his chromed automatic. He aimed the little gun at Bowman’s face. Hugo still held his pistol steady.

“Nicholas, please.” Schlechtman held up his hand again. “We do have a problem here which merits discussion. Everything is hypothetical.” He turned back to Bowman. “Why not Miss Tellini?”

“We could work the frame that way, for Tom and Thursday, anyhow,” Bowman said. “A guy plugged Wellnhofer, though. We’d have to drag in Hugo or Alexandria any which way.”

Gina Tellini sent Bowman a Bunsen burner glance. “Why not Schlechtman?” she demanded.

“Don’t be stupid, darling,” Bowman answered. “He’s paying the bills.”

“Whoever finds the Maltese Elephant can pay the bills,” she said.

“If we find the Elephant, we shall be able to pay the attorney’s fees to keep us from the clutches of the intrepid San Francisco police, as well,” Gideon Schlechtman said. He pointed to Hugo and to Nicholas Alexandria in turn. “Put up your weapons. We are all colleagues in this matter. And, as the saying has it, if we do not hang together, we shall hang separately.”

“You’re the boss,” Hugo said. He put the gun back in his pocket. His muddy eyes raked Bowman once more. Nicholas Alexandria bit his lip. Purple and yellow bruises still discolored his cheek. He had taken off the sticking plaster that covered the dried-blood scab on the cut Bowman’s pistol had made there. At last, the little chromed automatic disappeared.

Schlechtman smiled. The stretch of lips was broader and more fulsome than his rather pinched features could comfortably support. “Shall we be off, Mr. Bowman?” he said.

Bowman got to his feet, went to the window, pulled aside the curtain. He looked at the night, than at his watch. “Give it another half hour,” he said. “I want it good and dark, and the fog’s starting to roll in, too.”

“How fitting,” Schlechtman remarked. “This whole business of the Elephant has been dark and foggy.”

At the hour Bowman had chosen, they left suite 1453 and rode down to the Clift’s elegant lobby. Outside, the fog had thickened. It left the taste of the ocean on the lips. Defeated street-lamps cast small reddish-yellow puddles of light at the foot of their standards. Automobile headlamps appeared out of the mist, then were swallowed up once more. Walking in the fog was like pushing through soaked cotton gauze.

Hugo looked around nervously. His hand went to the pocket where the revolver nested. “I don’t like this,” he muttered.

“We’ve got three guns with us—at least three,” Bowman amended, glancing from Schlechtman to Gina Tellini. “You don’t like those odds, go home and play with dolls.”

“You’re pushing it, Bowman. Shut your stinking mouth or—”

“After the Elephant is in our hands, these quarrels will seem trivial,” Gideon Schlechtman said. “Let us consider them so now.”

They walked four blocks down Taylor to Eddy, then turned right onto Eddy. “It’s a mile from here, maybe a little more,” Bowman said. He lit a cigarette. Fog swallowed the smoke he blew out.

As they passed Gough, shops and hotels and apartments fell away on their left. The mist swirled thickly, as if it sprang from the grass in the open area there. A few trees grew near enough streetlamps to be seen. “What is this place?” Hugo said.

Bowman rested a hand on his pistol. “It’s Jefferson Square,” he answered. “In the daytime, people get up on soapboxes and make speeches here. Nights like this, the punks come out.” He peered warily into the fog until they left the square behind. Then, more happily, he said, “All right, three-four blocks to go.”

He turned right on Fillmore, then left into an alley in back of buildings that fronted on Eddy. The alley had no lights. Gravel scrunched under the soles of his shoes.

“I don’t trust him,” Nicholas Alexandria said suddenly. “This is a place for treachery.”

“Shut up, dammit,” Bowman said. “You make me mess up and you’ll get all the treachery you ever wanted.” He walked with his left hand extended. Like a blind man, he brushed the bricks of the buildings with his fingertips to guide himself. “Stinking fog. Hell of a lot easier to find this place this afternoon,” he muttered, but grunted a moment later. “Here we are. These are stairs. Come on, everybody up.”

The stairway and handrail were made of wood. They led to a second-floor landing. The door there wore a stout lock. Gideon Schlechtman felt of it. “I presume you have some way to surmount this difficulty?” he asked Bowman.

“Nah, we’re all going to stand around here and wait for the Sun to come up.” Bowman pulled a small leather case from his inside jacket pocket. “Move. I’ve got picks.” He worked for a few minutes, whistling softly and tunelessly between his teeth. The lock clicked. He pulled it from the hasp and laid it on the boards of the landing. He opened the door. “Let’s go.”

Bowman waited for his comrades to enter first. When he went in, he closed the door. It was no darker inside than out. The air was different, though: drier, warmer, charged with a thick odor not far from that of horse droppings. Again, he ran his hand along the wall. His fingers found a light switch. He flicked it.

Several bare bulbs strung on a wire across the warehouse ceiling sprang to life. He pointed from the walkway on which he and the others stood down to the immense gray-brown beast occupying the floor of the warehouse proper. Its huge ears twitched at the light. Its trunk curled. It made a complaining noise: the sound of a trumpet whose spit valve has not worked for years. “There it is, right off la Tórtola.” Bowman stood tall. “The Maltese Elephant.”

Gina Tellini, Schlechtman, Nicholas Alexandria, and Hugo stared down at the elephant. Then their eyes swung to Bowman. The same expression filled all their faces. Hugo drew his pistol. He pointed it at the detective. “He’s mine now,” he said happily.

“No, mine.” The chromium-plated automatic was in Nicholas Alexandria’s right hand.

Gina Tellini fumbled in her handbag. “No, he’s mine.” She, too, proved to carry a small automatic, though hers was not chromed.

“I am sorry, but I must insist on the privilege.” Gideon Schlechtman had worn a .357 magnum in a shoulder holster. His stance was like an army gunnery sergeant’s, left hand supporting right wrist. The pistol was pointed at a spot an inch and a half above the bridge of Bowman’s nose.

Bowman stared down the barrel of the gun. His eyes crossed slightly. His right hand stayed well away from the gun at his belt. “What the hell is the matter with you people?” he demanded. “I find your damned elephant, and this is the thanks I get?”

“Let’s all fill him full of holes, boss,” Hugo said. His fingered tightened on the trigger.

“No, wait,” Schlechtman said. “I want him to die knowing what an ignorant idiot he is. Otherwise he would not understand how richly he deserves it.”

“This stupid ox? It is a waste of time,” Nicholas Alexandria said.

“Possibly, but we have time to waste,” Gideon Schlechtman replied. “Mr. Bowman, that great lumpish creature down there—in that it bears a remarkable resemblance to you, eh?—is an elephant, but not a Maltese Elephant, not the Maltese Elephant we have sought so long and hard.”

“How do you know?” Bowman said. “An elephant is an elephant, right?”

“An elephant is an elephant—wrong,” Schlechtman answered. “A Maltese Elephant is easily distinguished from that gross specimen by the simple fact that a grown bull is slightly smaller than a Shetland pony.”

“Yeah, and rain makes applesauce,” Bowman said with a scornful laugh. “Go peddle your papers.”

“The old saw about he who laughs last would seem not to apply in your case, Mr. Bowman,” Schlechtman said. “I spoke nothing but the truth. For time immemorial, Malta has been the home of a rare race of dwarf elephants. And why not? Before man came, the island knew no large predators. An elephant there had no need to be huge to protect itself. Natural selection would also have favored small size because the forage on Malta has always been less than abundant; smaller beasts need smaller amounts of food. The Maltese and their later conquerors preserved the race down to the present as an emblem of their uniqueness—and you tried to fob off this great, ugly creature on us? Fool!”

The elephant trumpeted. The noise was deafening. The beast took a couple of steps. The walkway trembled, as if at an earthquake. Nicholas Alexandria nearly lost his balance. Almost involuntarily, Gina Tellini and Hugo glanced toward the elephant for an instant. Even Gideon Schlechtman’s expression of supreme concentration wavered for a moment.

Bowman jerked out his .45 in a motion quicker than conscious thought. “Come on,” he snarled. “Who’s first? By God, I’ll nail the first one who plugs me—and if you don’t shoot straight, I’ll take out two or three of you before I go.”

The tableau held for perhaps three heartbeats. The elephant trumpeted again. The door to the warehouse opened. “Drop the guns!” Detective Roland Dwyer shouted. His own pistol covered the group impartially. Behind him came Henry Bock, and behind him two men in uniform. All were armed. “Drop ’em!” Dwyer repeated. “Hands high!”

Nicholas Alexandria let his little automatic fall. It clattered on the walkway. Then Hugo threw down his gun. So did Gina Tellini. At last, with a shrug, Gideon Schlechtman surrendered.

Bowman stepped back against the wall, the heavy pistol still in his hand. Captain Henry Bock might have had something to say about that. Before he could speak, Dwyer asked Bowman, “Just what the hell is going on here, Miles?”

Bowman pointed to Gina Tellini and said: “She’s the one who fingered Wellnhofer. Had to be: I visited the docks right after I saw her, and I had the list of ships I was going to check in my trouser pocket then.”

“How’d she have a chance to find out what was in your trouser pocket without you knowing it?” Bock demanded, leering.

“You said you loved me,” Gina Tellini hissed.

“Loved you?” Bowman shook his head. “You must have heard wrong, sweetheart. I’m a married man.” He went on talking to Detective Dwyer: “She may have fingered Tom for that Evan Thursday item, too. I don’t know that for a fact, but you knew Tom. He wouldn’t have been easy to take down, not unless somebody recognized him who wasn’t supposed to. Or she may have shot him herself. Tom would go after anything in a skirt.”

“Yeah, ” Dwyer said. One of the uniformed policemen behind him nodded.

“I figure laughing boy here probably canceled Wellnhofer’s stamp.” Bowman jerked a thumb at Hugo. “Gina and Schlechtman knew each other pretty well, and Hugo’s Schlechtman’s hired gun.”

“So who did Thursday?” Roland Dwyer asked.

“Could have been Hugo again,” Bowman answered, shrugging. “Or it could have been sweetheart here” —he grinned at Nicholas Alexandria, who returned a hate-filled glare— “on account of I’m not sure if Hugo was in town yet.”

Dwyer pointed to Gideon Schlechtman. “What about him?”

“The hell with it,” Captain Bock said. “He’s in it some kind of way. We’ll take ’em all in and sort it out later. ” He gestured to the uniformed policemen. They advanced with their handcuffs. The one who cuffed Gina Tellini shoved her lightly in the middle of the back. She stumbled out of the warehouse. The others glumly followed.

You almost got too cute for your own good, Miles,” Detective Dwyer said. “If that witness hadn’t heard Wellnhofer spill to you—and if he hadn’t decided to tell us about it—you wouldn’t have had yourself a whole lot of fun, didn’t look like.” He stared down at the elephant. It pulled hay from a bale with its trunk and stuffed it into his mouth. “What the devil were you doing here, anyway?”

“Who, me?” Bowman replaced his Colt in its holster. “I was just on a wild elephant chase, Rollie, that’s all.”

“Yeah?” Dwyer’s eyes swung to the door through which Gina Tellini had just gone. “You going to tell Eva all about it?”

“I’ll tell her what she needs to know: I got paid.”

Dwyer shook his head. “You’re a louse, Miles.”

“That’s what everybody tells me.” Miles Bowman laughed. “Thanks,” he said.

Content

Harry Turtledove
The Maltese Elephant
(A Parody)