The Erection Set

“Oh, it’s there all right. Cameron’s instructions were to deliver to you stocks whose total worth was ten thousand dollars within a certain period after I contacted you. Provided you met the requirements, of course. Had you returned home in forty-six, you would have received five thousand shares. They had quite a market value in those days. However, the situation has changed. Wall Street is wallowing in an all-time low. Ten thousands dollars now represents twenty thousand shares. The remaining five will be split equally between Alfred and Dennison. It was a rather strange provision in Cameron’s will and he certainly didn’t foresee the drop in the economy or the current inflation. The only reason he held back those shares of stock from Alfred and Dennison was to let them mature further before handling a greater interest in the business.”

“But it’s still only ten grand,” I said.

“There’s a little more.”

“Oh?”

Hunter spun around in his chair, pulled a file drawer open and extracted a stiff yellow folder. He handed the contents across the desk to me. “Nothing much, but part of my obligation. Your grandfather once purchased a large tract of land in New Mexico, speculating that a government irrigation project would be instituted in the area. The bill never passed Congress and the land is still there ... beautiful, rocky and arid. It’s a snake collector’s paradise and tourists take pictures of it. He left it to your mother and now it’s yours.” He tapped the paper in front of me and handed me a pen. “If you can find a sucker you might get him to take it off your hands at a quarter an acre. That would net you an even thousand dollars. At least it’s something. Taxes are negligible and paid to date.”

I scratched my name on the papers and shoved them back to him. “Thanks a lot,” I said. “Now how about my ten grand?”

“You just signed a notification of availability for it. Delivery may take place to you, Alfred and Dennison simultaneously at a formal meeting at Grand Sita, your former palatial residence. Let’s say day after tomorrow?”

I scowled in disgust. “Do I have to?”

Leyland nodded. “I’m afraid so. Besides, think of the reunion you’ll have.”

“Like meeting a pack of cobras,” I said.

A ghost of a smile crossed the old man’s face, but I didn’t catch what he said. I asked, “What?”

He shook his head and smiled. “The day after tomorrow. We’ll leave from here. Four P.M.”

REFLECTIONS: LEYLAND HUNTER

“Like meeting a pack of cobras,” Dog had said, and didn’t hear me when I answered, “But who’s the mongoose?”

Dogeron Kelly, the kid they could never figure out or pin down. He didn’t give a damn for anything then and he sure doesn’t now. Anybody else would take him for just another big guy who had been around the world and had seen and done as he damn well pleased, a guy who wasn’t anything and didn’t want anything.

But me, I’m old in the trade. Too damn many court-rooms. Too damn many times looking through wire screens at clients and watching their minds work. There are types and types, but they all fall either on one side of the fence or the other. Dogeron Kelly was walking around behind a disguise. He was a predator in camouflage, always stalking, but so much at home in whatever world he lived in he was completely at ease.