Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 2. Whole No. 363, February 1974

The Theft of Nick Velvet
by Edward D. Hoch^[1]

A new Nick Velvet story by Edward D. Hoch

Nick Velvet’s 19th caper — and in at least two respects you will find this exploit different from the 18 previous adventures. But as before Nick is still accepting assignments to steal only the valueless — that is, things valueless to most people and certainly not worth Nick’s fee (in this case) of $30,000; and Nick is still forced to detect before he can collect...

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“It’s for you, Nicky,” Gloria yelled from the telephone, and Nick Velvet put down the beer he’d been savoring. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in late winter, when the snow had retreated to little lumps beneath the shady bushes and a certain freshness was already apparent in the air. It was a time of year that Nick especially liked, and he was sorry to have his reverie broken.

“Yes?” he spoke into the phone, after taking it from Gloria’s hand.

“Nick Velvet?” The voice was deep and a bit harsh, but that didn’t surprise him. He’d been hearing that sort of voice on telephones for years.

“Speaking.”

“You do jobs. You steal things.” A statement, not a question.

“I never discuss my business on the telephone. I could meet you somewhere tomorrow.”

“It has to be tonight.”

“Very well, tonight.”

“I’ll be in the parking lot at the Cross-County Mall. Eight o’clock.”

“How will I know your car?”

“The place is empty on a Sunday night. We’ll find each other.”

“Could I have your name?”

The voice hesitated, then replied. “Solar. Max Solar. Didn’t you receive my letter?”

“No,” Nick answered. “Your letter about what?”

“I’ll see you at eight.”

The line went dead and Nick hung up the phone. He’d heard the name Max Solar before, or seen it in the newspapers, but he couldn’t remember in what context.

“Who was that, Nicky?” Gloria appeared in the doorway, holding a beer.

“A land developer. He wants to see me tonight.”

“On Sunday?”

Nick nodded. “He needs my opinion on some land he’s buying near here. I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour.” The excuses and evasions came easily to Nick’s lips, and sometimes he half suspected that Gloria knew them for what they were. Certainly she rarely questioned his sudden absences, even for days at a time.

He left the house a little after 7:30 and drove the five miles to the Cross-County Mall in less than fifteen minutes. There was little traffic and when he reached the Mall ahead of schedule he was surprised to see a single car already parked there, near the drive-in bank. He drove up beside it and parked. A man in the front seat nodded and motioned to him.

Nick left his car and opened the door of the other vehicle. “You’re early,” the man said.

“Better than late. Are you Max Solar?”

“Yes. Get in.”

Nick slid into the front seat and closed the door. The man next to him was bulky in a tweed topcoat, and he seemed nervous.

“What do you want stolen?” Nick asked. “I don’t touch money or jewelry or anything of value, and my fee is—”

He never finished. There was a movement behind him, in the back seat, and something hit him across the side of the head. That was the last Nick knew for some time.

When he opened his eyes he realized he was lying on a bed somewhere. The ceiling was crisscrossed with cracks and there was a cobweb visible in one corner. He thought about that, knowing Gloria’s trim housekeeping would never allow such a thing, and realized he was not at home. His head ached and his body was uncomfortably stretched. He tried to turn over and discovered that his left wrist was handcuffed to a brass bedstead.

Not the police.

But who, then? And why?

He tried to focus his mind. It seemed to be morning, with light seeping through the blind over the window. But morning of which day? Monday?

A door opened somewhere and he heard footsteps crossing the floor. A face appeared over him, a familiar face. The man in the car.

“Where am I?” Nick mumbled through a furry mouth. “What am I doing here?”

The man leaned closer to the bed. “You are here because I have stolen you.” The idea seemed to amuse him and he chuckled.

“Why?” The room was beginning to swim before Nick’s eyes.

“Don’t try to talk. We have no intention of harming you. Just lie still and relax.”

“What’s the matter with me?”

“A mild sedative. Just something to keep you under control.”

Nick tried to speak again, but the words would not come. He closed his eyes and slept...

When he awakened it was night again, or nearly so. A shaded lamp glowed dimly in one corner of the room. “Are you awake?” a girl’s voice asked, in response to his movement.

Nick lifted his head and saw a young brunette dressed in a dark turtleneck sweater and jeans. He ran his tongue over dry lips and finally found his voice. “I guess so. Who are you?”

“You can call me Terry. I’m supposed to be watching you, but it’s more fun if you’re awake. I didn’t give you the last injection of sedative because I want someone to talk to.”

“Thanks a lot,” Nick said, trying to work the cobwebs from his throat. “What day is it?”

“Only Monday. You haven’t even been here twenty-four hours yet.” She came over and sat by the bed. “Hungry?”

He realized suddenly that he was. “Starving. I guess you haven’t fed me.”

“I’ll get you some juice and a doughnut.”

“Where’s the other one — the man?”

“Away somewhere,” she answered vaguely. She left the room and reappeared soon carrying a glass of orange juice and a bag of doughnuts. “Afraid that’s the best I can do.”

“How about unlocking me?”

“No. I don’t have the key. You can eat with your other hand.”

The juice tasted good going down, and even the soggy doughnuts were welcome. “Why did you kidnap me?” he asked Terry. “What are you going to do with me?”

“Don’t know.” She retreated from the room, perhaps deciding she’d talked too much already.

Nick finished three doughnuts and then lay back on the bed. He’d been lured to that parking lot and kidnaped for some reason, and he couldn’t believe the motive was anything as simple as ransom. The man on the telephone had identified himself as Max Solar, and asked if Nick had received his letter. Since kidnapers rarely gave their right names to victims, it was likely the man was not Max Solar.

“Terry,” he shouted. “Terry, come here!”

She appeared in the doorway, hands on hips. “What is it?”

“Come talk. I feel like talking.”

“What about?”

“Max Solar. The man who brought me here.”

She giggled a bit, and her face glowed with youth. “He’s riot Max Solar. He was just kidding you. Do you really think someone as wealthy as Max Solar would go around kidnaping people?”

“Then what is his name?”

“I can’t tell you. He wouldn’t like it.”

“How’d you get involved with him?”

“I can’t talk any more about it.”

Nick sighed. “I thought you wanted someone to talk to.”

“Sure, but I wanted to talk about you.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “What about me?”

“You’re Nick Velvet. You’re famous.”

“Only in certain circles.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the opening of a door. Terry scurried from the room and Nick lay back and closed his eyes. After a moment he heard Terry return with the man.

“What in hell is this bag of doughnuts doing on the bed?” a male voice demanded. “He’s conscious, isn’t he? And you’ve been feeding him!”

“He was hungry, Sam.”

There was the splat of palm hitting cheek, and Terry let out a cry. Nick opened his eyes. “Suppose you try that on me, Sam.”

The man from the car, still looking bulky even without his tweed topcoat, turned toward the bed. “You’re in no position to make like a knight in shining armor, Velvet.”

Nick sat up as best he could with his handcuffed wrist. “Look, I’ve been slugged on the head, kidnaped, drugged, and handcuffed to this bed. Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?”

“Shut him up,” Sam ordered Terry, but she made no move to obey.

“You kidnaped me to keep me from seeing the real Max Solar, right?” Nick was guessing, but it had to be a reasonably good guess. The man named Sam turned on the girl once more.

“Did you tell him that?”

“No, Sam, honest! I didn’t tell him a thing!”

The bulky man grunted. “All right, Velvet, it’s true. I don’t mind telling you, since you’ve guessed it already. Max Solar wrote you on Friday to arrange an appointment for this week. He wanted to hire you to steal something.”

“And you kidnaped me to prevent it?”

The man named Sam nodded. He pulled up a straight-backed wooden chair and sat down by the bed. “Do you know who Max Solar is?”

“I’ve heard the name.” Nick tried to sit up straighter, but the handcuff prevented him. “How about unlocking this thing?”

“Not a chance.”

“All right,” Nick sighed. “Tell me about Max Solar.”

“He’s a conglomerate. He owns a number of companies manufacturing everything from office machines to toothpaste. Last year while I was in his employ I invented a computer program that saved thousands of man-hours each year in bookkeeping and inventory control on his export and overseas operations. The courts have ruled that such computer programming cannot be patented, and I was at the mercy of Max Solar. He simply fired me and kept my program. For the past year I’ve dreamed of ways to get my revenge, and on Friday Terry supplied me with the perfect weapon.”

Nick listened to the voice drone on, wondering where it was all leading. The man did not seem the type to resort to kidnaping, yet there was a hardness in his eyes that hinted at a steely determination.

“I’m a secretary at Solar Industries,” Terry explained. “My office is right next to Max Solar’s, and often I help his secretary when my boss is away.”

Sam nodded. “Solar dictated a letter to Nick Velvet, asking for a meeting today. Terry brought me a copy, with a suggestion for revenging myself on Solar.”

“You knew who I was?” Nick asked the girl.

“I had a boy friend once who told me about you — how you steal valueless things for people.”

Sam nodded. “I figured up in the suburbs you probably wouldn’t get Solar’s letter till Monday — not the way mail deliveries are these days — but just to be safe I used his name when I phoned yesterday. See, I had to kidnap you and hold you prisoner till after the ship sails.”

“Ship?”

“Solar was hiring you to steal something from a freighter that sails from New York harbor in two days.”

“It must be something important.”

“It is, but only to Max Solar. It would be worthless to anyone else.”

Nick thought about it. “That’s not quite correct,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You can revenge yourself on Solar by holding me prisoner, or you can hire me to steal this object and then sell it back to Solar.”

“Why should I hire you? I have you already!”

“You have me physically, but you don’t have my services.”

“He makes sense,” Terry said. “I hadn’t thought about that angle. If Nick steals the thing, you can sell it to Solar for enough to cover Nick’s fee plus a lot more. You’d be getting back the money Solar cheated you out of.”

Sam pondered the implications. “How do we know you wouldn’t go to the police as soon as you’re free?”

“I have as little dealing with the police as possible,” Nick said. “For obvious reasons.”

Sam was still uncertain. “We’ve got you now. In forty-eight hours Max Solar will be in big trouble. Why let you go and take a chance on ruining our whole plan?”

“Because if you don’t, you’ll be in big trouble too. Kidnaping is a far more serious crime than blackmail. Unlock these handcuffs now and hire me. I won’t press charges against you. I steal the thing, collect my fee, and you sell it back to Solar for a lot more. Everybody’s happy.”

Sam turned to Terry. When she nodded approval he said, “All right. Unlock him.”

As soon as the handcuff came free of his wrist Nick said, “My fee in this case will be thirty thousand dollars. I always charge more for dangerous assignments.”

“There’s nothing dangerous about it.”

“It’s dangerous when I get hit on the head and drugged.”

“That was Terry. She was hiding in the back seat of the car with a croquet mallet.”

“You knocked me out with a croquet mallet?”

Terry nodded. “We were going to use a monkey wrench, but we thought it might hurt.”

“Thanks a lot.” Nick was rubbing the circulation back into his wrist. “Now what is it Max Solar was going to hire me to steal?”

“A ship’s manifest,” Terry told him. “But we’re not sure which ship. We only know it sails in two days.”

“What’s so valuable about a ship’s manifest?”

They exchanged glances. “The less you know the better,” Sam said.

“Don’t I even get to know your names?”

“You know too much already. Steal the manifest and meet us back here tomorrow night.”

“How do I find the ship?”

“A South African named Herbert Jarvis is in town arranging for the shipment. He’d know which ship it is.” Terry looked uneasy as she spoke. “I could go through the files at the office, but that might arouse suspicion. They might think it odd I took today off anyway.”

“Shipment of what?” Nick asked.

“Typewriters,” she said, and he knew she was lying.

“All right. But there must be several more copies of this ship’s manifest around.”

“The copy on the ship is the only one that matters,” Sam said. “Get it, and we’ll meet you here tomorrow night at seven.”

“What about my car?”

“It’s in the garage,” Terry said. “We didn’t want to leave it at the Mall.”

Nick nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow with the manifest. Have my fee ready.”

The house where he’d been held prisoner was in the northern part of the city, near Van Cortlandt Park. It took Nick nearly an hour to drive home from there, and another hour to comfort a distraught Gloria who’d been about to phone the police.

“You know my business takes me away suddenly at times,” he said, glancing casually through the mail until he found Solar’s letter.

“But you’ve always told me, Nicky! I didn’t hear from you and all I could imagine was you were hit over the head and robbed!”

“Sorry I worried you.” He kissed her gently. “Is it too late to get something to eat?”

In the morning he checked the sailing times of the next day’s ships in The New York Times. There were only two possibilities — the Fairfax and the Fiorina — but neither one was bound for South Africa. With so little time to spare, he couldn’t afford to pick the wrong one, and trying to find Herbert Jarvis at an unknown New York hotel might be a hopeless task.

There was only one sure way to find the right ship — to ask Max Solar. He knew that Sam and Terry wouldn’t approve, but he had no better choice.