rare anywhere. Colby gathered she had work of her
own to do without getting involved in American
activities like trapping each other, and in any event
nothing that happened in this household would ever
surprise her in the slightest. When, however, he
outlined just how the prisoner was to be allowed to
escape, her interest quickened. Yes, of course she
could understand one hundred francs spoken in
English. Also two hundred. Who knows, maybe he
would bring five hundred, if allowed to age a little
more.
No, Colby said, the essential was to harvest him as
quickly as possible; price was secondary. While he
wouldn’t dream of subjecting her to the humiliation
of taking the first offer, she must limit the
negotiations to a maximum of three minutes. She
agreed, though somewhat reluctantly. And now—
about splitting the take? It was all hers, Colby said,
and realized at once this was probably a tactical
error.
Her eyes narrowed and she was instantly on
guard. Why would the Americans go to all the
trouble to trap the pigeon and then toss the profits
away? Colby hastened to explain. This was merely
the opening move in a more complicated affair; the
pigeon had to be allowed to escape in order that the
further developments could unroll themselves.
The Wrong Venus — 51
Aaaah! One comprehends. Then the thing to do was
get him out forthwith, and perhaps they would set
the trap again. Exactly, Colby said.
Writing books seemed to be an interesting field in
America, she observed; one had a little difficulty at
times in following the process, but it was lively. It
was no wonder the Serie Noire published so many of
them. Well, if Monsieur Colby was ready, she would
throw out the first pigeon.
Colby thanked her and went back to the taxi. He
directed the chauffeur to go on to the next corner
and turn right. Here, in the Rue Mon Coeur,
Martine’s taxi was parked at the opposite curb, just
back from the corner so as to be out of sight of
anyone emerging from the house. They made a Uturn
and parked behind it. He got out and walked
forward.
“From Dudley’s description,” he said, “the chances
are he’ll head for the bar to write it. A nose like that
takes a lot of maintenance.”
She winked and nodded. He walked up to the
corner and looked down along the Rue des Feuilles
Mortes toward the taxi stand on the opposite side of
the Avenue Victor Hugo. There were two taxis in it
at the moment. Nothing stirred along the street. He
lighted a cigarette and waited several minutes.
Then suddenly the door of Number 7 burst open,
and a big, rumpled-looking man lunged down the
steps and turned toward the avenue with the
shambling run of a bear. He looked around once, but
Colby ducked back out of sight. Colby held up
circled thumb and forefinger to Martine behind him,
and looked again. Moffatt was crossing the avenue.
He got into the Citroën at the head of the taxi
station. Colby was already gesturing for his. It came
up abreast of him, and he got in just as the Citroën
disappeared from view.
When they emerged on the avenue, the Citroën
was a couple of blocks ahead. Colby leaned forward
and pointed it out to the driver. They settled in
behind it, not getting too close, and Colby turned to
The Wrong Venus — 52
look back. Martine’s taxi was turning in behind
them.
They closed up a little as they entered the great
interweaving whirlpool of traffic in the Etoile. There
were a half-dozen Citroën taxis in sight now, but
Colby kept his eyes riveted on the one Moffatt was
in. It turned down the Champs Élysées, taking the
extreme right lane. There was no doubt now Moffatt
was headed for the hotel, just as he had gambled.
When they turned into the Avenue George V,
Martine’s taxi was the second car behind them.
Moffatt’s taxi pulled up before the hotel entrance
and he leaped out before the doorman could even
reach it. Colby leaned forward and paid the driver as
his taxi came to a stop, and was out and crossing the
sidewalk by the time Moffatt had disappeared
inside. Bill Elkins, draped with photographic
equipment, was off to his right, boredly watching
traffic. He glanced at Colby with no sign of
recognition, a large young man with a broken nose
and an air of ageless disillusion.
Colby hurried in the entrance. Moffatt was at the
concierge’s desk, picking up telegraph blanks.
Which way would he go, toward the elevators or the
bar? Colby glanced behind him. Martine and the
wolfhounds were being assisted from the taxi by the
doorman and a chasseur, and Bill had already
converged on her. They were right on cue. Moffatt
turned away from the concierge’s desk, toward the
bar. Somewhere toward the dining room a chasseur
was paging Mademoiselle Loring.
The bar was about half full. Moffatt had taken a
table near the far corner and was in conversation
with a waiter. The waiter departed. He undipped a
pen, bent over the telegraph blanks, and began
furiously writing. Colby sat down two tables away,
facing the entrance with his back to the reporter.
Moffatt paid no attention.
Martine slipped in with the quiet unobtrusiveness
of an ice-show finale, preceded by the wolfhounds
and followed by the camera-laden Elkins, turning to
The Wrong Venus — 53
call “Here, garsong” to the chasseur paging
Mademoiselle Loring, and then back to wave and
shriek a greeting to Colby. “There’s Lawrence now.
Are we late, darling?”
Colby stood up, leaned in over the wolfhounds to
kiss her, and asked, “Nadja, honey. How’d it go this
morning?” By now a waiter was hovering on the
perimeter of all this confusion, and the chasseur was
holding out the telephone slip. Colby took it, tossed
him a franc, glanced at it, and went on without even
a pause: “It’s Stillman, in London. I’ll call him
myself, after lunch. It’s about the Manning tie-in.
What’ll you have? And how about you, Bill baby?”
They sat down, Martine opposite him, facing
Moffatt’s table, and ordered Scotch. Martine took
out a cigarette. Colby lighted it for her. “Paris is a
doll,” she said. “I’ve looked at so many statues I feel
like a caretaker at Forest Lawn.”
“You get some pretty good stuff?” Colby asked
Elkins.
The latter shrugged. “The usual—the eternal
wonder of Paris, youth, innocence, dewy-eyed
enchantment—”
“You’d have died!” Martine laughed and tugged
the ears of one of the wolfhounds. “I was posing in
front of this kooky statue, and Dmitri wanted to lay a
dachshund. Talk about on water skis!”
“Now, this afternoon—” Colby began.
Martine interrupted. “I’m dying to hear about the
Manning thing.”
Colby shot a quick glance around the bar and
spoke in a lower tone, but one that could still be
overheard from Moffatt’s table. “We’re in, baby. It’s
so perfect I get gooseflesh.”
The tip of her shoe found his and pressed. They
had the Moffatt ear. She had removed her glasses,
and now she gazed at him wide-eyed. “She really fell
for it?”
“She? Oh, that bubble-headed girl from the Tulsa
paper.” Colby dismissed her with a wave of the
The Wrong Venus — 54
hand. “Honey, you’ve been out of touch all morning,
you haven’t heard the word. We did even better.
Before she could show up, we hooked a real mansized
chump with circulation.”
“Who?”
“Some joker named Muffett or Moffatt, from the
Los Angeles Chronicle. He just walked in on the
setup, cold, and went for it like some kid from the
Pleasanton Weekly Argus.”
“Oooooh, wonderful! And he’s already sent in the
story?”
“No, no, of course not. Dudley’s got him locked in
the house—”
“But why?” She shook her head in baffled wonder.
“Lawrence, it’s so complicated.”
He sighed. “Look, baby, honey, Nadja darling—the
Chronicle’s an afternoon paper, and there’s the
difference in time—”
“Doll,” Elkins said. “See? You’ve got this orange
here, and over here’s a candle, and the orange is
turning—”
“Oh, I know about that,” she said. “It gets late
earlier in Los Angeles than it does here. Or is it
early later?”
“That’s it! You’ve got it,” Elkins approved.
“Astronomers call it the Yogi Berra Effect.”
“Dudley’s selling him the clincher,” Colby
explained. “He’s pretending to hold him there so he
can make it onto a plane for Brazil before the story
breaks. Actually, of course, the idea is to keep him
from filing the story until just before deadline of
today’s final, so they won’t have time to check with
the embassy in Athens to see if some American
named Manning did die in the Cyclades. So they’ll
run the story without the check, because if Dudley’s
taking it on the lam it’s bound to be true.
“The wire services will pick it up, and the morning
papers can’t check with the embassy either, because
it’ll be closed. So the wire services and all the
papers that have Paris bureaus will be calling the
The Wrong Venus — 55
house here and sending men around. No answer.
Nothing. So it’s true, and Dudley’s flown the coop.
So the morning papers will run it. Boy, the
headlines! Best-selling Author Dead. Fraud
Suspected.
“Then about this time tomorrow, when somebody
finally does get in the house, here’s Manning typing
away to beat hell on another door-stopper, laying
‘em three to a page. What’s all the uproar? Of
course she didn’t answer the phone, she never does
when she’s working. And her secretary was off last
night.
“Other writers? Here? Dudley? What drunk poured
that one out of a bottle? Dudley’s not even in Paris;
he’s in New York.
“So all the papers that ran the original story will
run a retraction, and there’ll be fifty to a hundred
that didn’t run it the first time that will now because
they can’t resist the temptation to quote Mark Twain
—”
“Isn’t that the living end?” Martine caught Elkins’
arm and cooed with admiration. “Who’s Mark
Twain?”
“The book goes on sale day after tomorrow,” Colby
went on, “right in the middle of it, with a big ad
campaign. And in our shy little way we break down
and admit that Rumford Productions has bought the
motion-picture rights and that it’s going to be your
first starring vehicle, and it just happens we have all
those stills of you and Manning discussing the role
in the old book-lined study around the famous
typewriter—” He paused, shaking his head with
wonder. “Brother. It gets you, right in here.”
Martine’s eyes were suddenly filled with bathos.
“But, Lawrence, what about this poor Mr. Muffett?
He might have kiddies. Won’t he lose his job?”
“So we’ll send him a Christmas basket, Colby said.
“Look, he’ll get another job. . . .”
A chair scraped behind him, and then a shoe. I
hope the waiter didn’t leave a bottle on his table, he
thought. Then he was looking up into a beefy face
The Wrong Venus — 56
dominated by its landmark of a nose and very nasty
expression. Moffatt was standing at his left, leaning
over the table with the telegraph forms in his hand.
“I was just wondering if I couldn’t buy you
charming people a drink,” he said. “I’m Moffatt of
the Pleasanton Weekly Argus.”
Colby stared in confusion. “What? Moffatt? Now
wait a minute, let’s don’t get excited—”
Moffatt grinned evilly. “Aw, come on, let me
sweeten your drink for you, Lawrence baby.”
He ripped the telegraph forms to shreds, wadded
them, and shoved them into Colby’s glass. One strip
still dangled over the side. He lifted it between
thumb and forefinger, dropped it in, and poked it
down carefully into the whiskey and ice.
“Now, look—!” Colby protested.
“And I’ll tell you about the Chronicle? Moffatt
rasped. “Sabine Manning and your friend Dewy-Eyes
wouldn’t get two lines back in the truss ads if they
jumped off the Eiffel Tower with Mao Tse-tung. See
you around, Lawrence baby.”
He went out. Martine and Colby looked at each
other, and she closed one eye in a solemn wink.
“I knew I should have had my silicone injection,”
Elkins said. “He didn’t ask me to dance.”
* * *
They paid off Elkins and returned the wolfhounds to
the Boulevard Raspail. It was three-ten P.M. when
they entered the office on the second floor of the
house at 7 Rue des Feuilles Mortes. Dudley was on
the phone, talking to his stockbroker in New York.
He covered the mouthpiece and looked up with the
expression of a prisoner watching the jury file in.
Martine held up circled thumb and forefinger. He
closed his eyes for a second, sighed, and spoke into
the telephone again, a man running eternally across
a river in desperate leaps from one sinking ice-floe
to the next.
The Wrong Venus — 57
“. . . all right, sell that fifty shares of DuPont and
one hundred of Eastern Airlines, and deposit the
proceeds to her account at Chase Manhattan. She
seems to like the color of their checks this week, or
she’s used up the Irving Trust checkbook—”
He sat at a big desk with his back to the nyloncurtained
window, a man around fifty with a bony,
almost cadaverous face and small glinting eyes the
color of topaz. The corner of his mouth twitched as
he talked, and he had a nervous habit of running a
forefinger inside the collar of his shirt while he
thrust out his jaw and craned his neck as though he
were choking. He abandoned this long enough to
wave for them to sit down, and then grabbed up a
cigar from the ashtray in front of him. He puffed
furiously three or four times, throwing up a screen
of smoke like a beleaguered cuttlefish fleeing its
enemies.
Colby looked curiously around the room. Besides
the desk it contained several steel filing cabinets, an
armchair, and a long deal table piled with unopened
mail. On the floor in a corner at the back of the room
there were two large cardboard boxes also filled
with letters. There was another doorway opposite
the one at which they had come in, and through it he
could see another, smaller desk and the shattered
remains of two chairs lying on the rug.
Martine sat down in the armchair, draping the
mink across the back. Colby shoved some of the mail
aside and perched on the corner of the table. Dudley
was still barking into the telephone. On the desk in
front of him were several cablegrams, some opened
letters, a bundle of canceled checks three or four
inches thick held together by rubber bands, an open
ledger, and two stacks of what looked like typing
paper held down by onyx paperweights. One was
quite small, but the other appeared to be several
hundred sheets. Colby looked at it with interest,
turned, and met Martine’s eyes. She nodded. This
was the famous manuscript.
“. . . all right, cable me the exact amount of the
deposit G’bye.” Dudley hung up. He ground a palm
The Wrong Venus — 58
across his face, picked up one of the cablegrams in a
hand that trembled slightly, and muttered, “. . .
three thousand . . . one thousand eight hundred . . .
seven hundred . . . Mother of God. . . .”
Then in a continuation of the same gesture, he
threw down the cablegram and stood up. “You really
got rid of him? How did you do it? And you’re
Crosby?”
“Mr. Colby,” Martine corrected. “Mr. Dudley.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, I mean Colby.” He held out his
hand. “But how’d you do it?” he repeated.
“Shall I?” Martine asked.
“Sure,” Colby said. He perched on the corner of
the table again, lighted a cigarette, and found an
ashtray among the mass of letters. Martine told the
story, and went on, “—at the moment, the only way
Sabine Manning could get her name in the Los
Angeles Chronicle would be to buy it. So now if
you’ll write out a check for one thousand thirty-six
dollars and fifty cents, we’ll get on to your real
trouble.”
“For a job that took a little over an hour,” Dudley
said bitterly. I’m in the wrong line of work.”
“We’re all in the wrong line of work,” she replied,
“except Sabine Manning. Shell out, Merriman.”
Colby had been staring at the two piles of
manuscript on the desk. He could resist it no longer.
He stepped over, and asked Dudley, “Do you mind if
I look at it?”
“No, go ahead. The thick one. The other’s
Sanborn’s draft.”
“He’s already finished?” Martine asked.
“About an hour ago. He just left for Orly.”
Colby picked up the big stack of sheets, hefted it,
and turned it wonderingly in his hands. “I always
wanted to feel a million dollars.”
Martine smiled and gestured with the cigarette. “A
million dollars less fifty pages. At the moment it’s
not worth ten.”
The Wrong Venus — 59
The sheets were blank side up. Colby turned over
the top one and looked at the number in the upper
right corner. Three hundred and forty-seven.
“Call it four hundred when it’s finished,” he said,
and did a rapid calculation. “Twenty-five hundred
dollars a page.” Glancing down, he read the last two
or three lines.
She gave a little moan of ecstasy under
the pressure of his lips and the age-old
feel of the weight, the sweet, smooth,
hard, nipple-pressing, thigh-clasped,
thrusting male weight of him that. . . .
He balanced the page in his fingers and then put it
carefully down on top of the pile. “Two thousand five
hundred dollars,” he said reverently. And tonight he
might get himself killed for two pages of it.
The Wrong Venus — 60
6
Dudley located the letter among the papers on his
desk. It was written in longhand on cheap
stationery, and contained little they didn't already
know. Madame Manning had been kidnapped, they
wanted one hundred thousand dollars, and she
would be killed if the police were called in. They
would telephone again, and there had better be
someone who spoke French.
“Not much to go on, is there?” Martine said.
“No,” Colby replied. “Except it’s in longhand.”
“Plus the fact they got the wrong woman. Probably
new at it?”
“Looks that way. Not that that makes ‘em any less
dangerous.” There was more chance his idea would
work, but greenhorns were also more likely to panic
than professionals. If one of them hit the button, he
and Kendall Flanagan would probably be dead.
“What do we do?” Dudley asked.
“The only thing we can do. Negotiate.”
“She hasn’t got—”
Colby interrupted. “That’s what I mean. Neither
side has what he’s supposed to have. Sabine
Manning hasn’t got a hundred thousand dollars, and
they haven’t got Sabine Manning. So it’d be a
The Wrong Venus — 61
standoff, except for the fact that the easiest way out
for them is to kill her. She might identify them.”
“But we’re not going to the police,” Dudley put in.
“We can’t.”
They don’t know that. I may be able to convince
‘em, but don’t bet on it. If we get her back, she can
finish the novel—in how long?”
“Five days. Maybe less.”
“Your manuscript’s worth nothing the way it is,
and it’s also worth nothing if any of this ever gets in
the papers. So potentially she’s worth a million
dollars to you if we can get her back alive and
without any publicity. What’s Sabine Manning worth
at the moment?”
Dudley gave a short, bitter laugh, and dropped
into the chair behind the desk. He grabbed up and
slammed down the bale of canceled checks, and
waved the cablegrams. “If you find out, tell me. It’s
my job to know what her net worth is from one day
to the next, and you know how I do it? I look in tea
leaves and chicken entrails—”
“Just calm down, Merriman,” Martine soothed.
“Checks!” he groaned. “Have you got any idea
how long it takes a check to clear New York from
some goat-infested rock in the Aegean that nobody’s
even heard of since the Trojan War? Or how many of
‘em can be in the pipeline at any one time with that
woman loose with two checkbooks and a yacht and a
coin-operated stallion?”
“Can you make a rough guess?” Colby asked.
“Yeah. There’s a Paris Herald-Tribune just behind
you on that table. Pass me the financial section.”
Colby removed the financial page and handed it
over. Dudley took from the desk another ledger, a
slide rule, and a scratchpad. Muttering to himself,
he began making computations, consulting the
cablegrams and yesterday’s closing Stock Exchange
prices. Colby leafed through the rest of the paper,
and was folding it to put it aside when his eye was
The Wrong Venus — 62
caught by a name on the front page. MYSTERY GIRL
SOUGHT IN TORREON SLAYING. It was local.
Could they mean Pepe? He quickly read the lead.
Police investigating the bizarre slaying
five days ago of Jose (Pepe) Torreon,
South American millionaire, playboy, and
political exile—
“Hey,” he said to Martine, “they got Pepe
Torreon.”
“Yes, hadn’t you heard?” she replied. “He was
killed in his apartment with something that looked
like a bolt from a crossbow.”
—are intensifying their search for an
unidentified girl described only as being
tall, blonde, and apparently Anglo-Saxon
—
“Sixty-seven thousand, four hundred eighty-one
dollars and fourteen cents,” Dudley’s voice broke in,
“at the close of business in New York yesterday
afternoon. But the bank’ll be open again in another
nineteen minutes.” He shuddered.
“How fast can you get hold of ten thousand?”
Colby asked.
“There’s that much in the Paris account. She
hasn’t got a checkbook for that one.”
“Good. We may be able to swing it for that, or
maybe less. However, there’s another charge.”
“I know,” Dudley said wearily. “You and Martine.”
“Right. That’ll be five thousand.”
Dudley groaned, but reached for the checkbook.
“Make it payable to Martine. She can give me her
check later. The total amount is six thousand thirtysix
dollars and fifty cents.”
Martine put the check in her purse. Colby looked
at his watch. “You and Martine go to the bank. I’ll
stick by the phone. Get fifty thousand francs,
nothing bigger than hundreds and no new bills with
The Wrong Venus — 63
consecutive numbers. Then stop at a kiosk or
bookstore and get a good map of the city and a
Michelin road map of France. Martine can go by her
apartment on the way back and pick up her car.”
They left. The house was silent except for the
humming of Madame Buffet’s vacuum cleaner
somewhere on the lower floor. He paced the office,
trying not to think of how hairy it could get if
something went wrong. To take his mind off it, he
leafed through a few of the manuscript’s sizzling
love scenes, and turned up a page of Sanborn’s
version to see what it was like.
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