The Maltese Cube (Chapter 6)

What happened before in Chapter 5

Sherlock give Mac some information about Pindler and Gassly. It seems these two can possibly be very dangerous. Mac was also informed that a former assistant named “Newton” may be the one who has the Maltese Cube in his possesion. Newton at one time worked for Mac and this may give Mac one up on Pindler and Gassly. This is the last chapter to be posted for this week. Chapters 7 and 8 will go up on Monday the 7th.

Chapter 6
Lisa Checks In

As I walked home, I went over the pieces of the puzzle in my mind. What was M. Bell’s reason for starting this? Was it as he said, simply trying to find out as much as he could about a rival’s strengths? Or was the real mystery he wanted solved about the Maltese Cube? He said it casually, like it wasn’t of much importance. Somehow I knew that the Cube was at the crux of all this. There were way too many people interested in its whereabouts for the mention to be a mere coincidence.

As this puzzle occupied my mind, I wasn’t paying too much attention to what was happening around me. Being late, there weren’t many people out and the ones skulking around had more important things to do than to pay attention to a shabbily dressed gumshoe.

I paused momentarily in front of a store window and realized that a little bell was going off in the back of my mind. I usually pay more attention to those feelings as they have saved my life on more than one occasion. I took a minute to check my surroundings. While most of the people on the street were moving on to whatever there destination was, I noticed that a woman in an off-white dress with gray shoes had also stopped in front of a closed storefront not far from where I was standing. When I took a step in her direction, she glanced up and turned toward me.

‘Are you Mr. Tosh?’ she asked hesitantly.

‘Depends who’s asking. Do we know each other?’

‘Not as such. But we do have mutual friends. Your services come highly recommended.’ She said glancing up.

‘Recommended eh?’ I said casually. ‘By who?’

She glanced up and I could see her biting her upper lip. Whatever her trouble was, it was causing her severe emotional stress. She glanced up and down the street and waited for a couple of sailors to get out of earshot before answering.

‘My name is Lisa Ecksell<b.(1). You may not know it to look at me, but once I was pretty famous.’

She said this with her chin upraised, as if daring me to contradict her. I stared at her, trying to place where I might have seen her before. Then I remembered some magazines that she graced the cover of back in the early eighties. Yeah, that was her. She was still pretty, but the years had not all been kind. I felt sorry for her at that moment. To have gone from being the toast of the town to skulking around with a lowlife private eye like me. Before I could go too far in that direction, my resolve hardened. Whatever this was about, I was too busy for the kind of games this dame was taking me too.

‘You still haven’t told me who our ‘Mutual Friends’ are. Until you come clean with what you want, I’m afraid our business is concluded.’

‘WAIT!’ She said hurriedly. ‘Don’t be so hasty. You’re right, I haven’t been very forthcoming and I’m sorry. Our mutual friend is’¦..Newton(2).’

‘You realize I can check this with a single phone call. I’ve known Newton for a long time.’ I said.

‘He’s not where you think he is.’ She said. ‘He’s obtained a certain item. An item that a lot of people want. Desperate people. Dangerous people. Only I know where he is.’

‘You mean the Maltese Cube, right?’ I said.

She hissed at me and glanced around frantically. ‘Are you insane? Or do you have a death wish that I don’t know about? People have died in pursuit of the cube. Don’t speak of it so casually.’

‘Have you seen the Cube? Do you know what it is and why so many people are desperate to get their hands on it?’ I asked.

‘Yes I know what it is. But I have no intention of speaking about it in the middle of the night out in the open. Is there someplace we can go to talk alone?’

‘We’re not far from my apartment. Is that good enough?’ As I said this, I began walking down the street. Lisa didn’t reply but fell in step behind me.

As we walked down the street, I could tell that Lisa was nervous. She glanced behind her repeatedly and continuously looked back and forth. What she was expecting or looking for I couldn’t guess and she wouldn’t say.

We walked into my building and I noticed that the light at the top of the stairs leading to my second floor flat was out. Burned out, or smashed I couldn’t tell. I put my fingers to my lips and motioned for Lisa to be quiet as we slowly and silently made out way to the next landing. Approaching my door, I saw that a light was on inside. As I never leave lights on when I leave, I knew that either someone had been or still was inside.

As silently as possible, I tried the doorknob. It turned freely in my hand. Unlocked! I cursed myself for not carrying a weapon and quickly turned the knob the rest of the way and burst into the room. I turned toward the lamp lit in the back of what serves as my living room when from behind I was hit in the head with what felt like a book as heavy as the ‘Idiot’s guide to Windows 2000’(3). Everything went black.

Notes for Chapter 6

(1) Lisa Ecksell – This refers to Apple’s first attempt at a personal computer with a Gui (Graphic User Interface) Operating system. No one else had anything remotely like it and for 1983 it was quite innovative. It also retailed for about $10,000, which guaranteed that very few people could afford one. The Lisa XL (Ecksell, get it?) first incarnation had two 400K 3.5 inch disk drives (the first personal computer to use these kinds of disks), a single button mouse, and a 12 inch monochrome monitor. For software it included the Lisa operating system (very similar to the soon to be released Macintosh OS), a graphics program called LisaPaint, a word processor called LisaWord. The OS had to be loaded via the floppy drives and then whatever programs you wished to run could be loaded (again through the floppy drives). Later versions included a then huge 20 Meg internal hard drive. Apple tried again with this form factor later, releasing it as the Mac XL, but the much cheaper Macintosh 128 with its 9 inch monochrome monitor and single 400K floppy drive (and the follow-up 512, 512K, and 512KE) won out.

(2) Newton ‘“ In case you missed the first part of this ever so exciting story, the Newton was a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) that Apple released to great fanfare in the mid 90s. Like most of Apple’s first attempts at new markets, it was a failure. While easy to use, it was also too big and too expensive (note a trend here?) to compete with the Palm OS and MicroSoft CE OS based products it was competing with. My personal opinion (for what it’s worth) is that Apple pulled the plug too soon. If it could have been made smaller and cheaper, I feel it could have dominated the market especially if Apple had licensed other companies (ala Handspring) to make them. At the time however, Apple was hemorrhaging money at a rapid rate and sacrifices had to be made. It’s too bad the Newton was one of those sacrifices.

(3) Anyone who has to deal with Windows in all their various flavors will realize that this is indeed a heavy book.