“I sense that. But why?”
“Why a dirty thing? Because they’d be bugs with you stomping them. And people aren’t bugs. Not even those people. Anyways, if you’d used it to kill folks, I couldn’t ever use it again to do something happy, like packing ice in around that ol’ scrawny girl up there.”
She bounced back away from him and said, “Sweetie, you got a tendency to treat that watch too solemn. Afore you know it, we’ll be bowing down to that darn thing, and then it will be the watch in charge instead of us. I say if there isn’t fun in something, the hell with it.”
“You think I should use it more—frivolously?”
“It would be good for you.”
“What should I have done to Charla then? What would you have done?”
“Hmmm. I’d want to scare that mean ol’ gal and unfancy her a little.”
“Like, for example, stripping her and stuffing her into a truck full of sailors?”
She kissed him quickly. “If you can even think up something like that, honey, it means you’re coming along just fine. Just fine.”
“That’s what I did.”
“What!”
“And the truck drove slowly away.”
She whooped, yelped, bounced, pounded his chest with her fist and laughed until she cried. And he got almost as much reaction from Joseph’s untidy fate.
Suddenly she sobered, and her eyes narrowed. She leaned toward him in the faint glow of street light. “Speaking of you a-takin’ the clothes off that fat little blonde woman, just how good did you get along with that Wilma girl and that Betsy?”
“I told you Wilma is in that motel in Hallandale. And I left Betsy at the Birdline.”
“Gals stashed all over town, huh?”
“It’s either feast or famine.”
“I’m all the feast you need, Yankee. I’m a banquet all day long, so when we go check on those gals, we both go. Wilma first, I guess. We have to make sure they stay put before they go wandering around messing things up.”
“And then what?”
“I was thinking about that,” she said quietly.
“We can run. You and me. A long, long way.”
“And leave a mess like this? The law would never give up.”
“What else is there to do?”
“That old uncle of yours left you in a real good mess. And I keep thinking maybe he had a reason. And maybe the reason is in that letter he left.”
“But I can’t get that for a year.”
“Maybe he left you a way to get it a lot sooner.”
Suddenly he realized what she meant. “Of course!”
“And he could have meant for you to get hold of it sooner than a year, Kirby.”
He pulled her close and said, “You’re a very bright girl, Bonny Lee Beaumont.”
Unreckoned minutes later she began to make languid efforts to untangle herself. “First,” she said regretfully, “let’s go check on all your other women.”
Fourteen
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, young Mr. Vitts, of Wintermore, Stabile, Schamway and Mertz received the anonymous, puzzling phone call. It preyed on his mind as the morning wore on. He knew it had to be nonsense, yet he knew he would not feel easy until he had assured himself that the packet entrusted to him was exactly where he had placed it, exactly where it belonged. At eleven, canceling his other appointments, he went to the bank. He signed the vault card, went with the attendant and operated his half of the double lock and took the japanned metal box to a private cubicle.
He opened the lid and saw the labeled packet Mr. Wintermore had entrusted to him, and felt like a fool at having wasted time coming to the bank to stare at it, just because some crackpot had told him it was gone.
And suddenly it was gone.
He shut his eyes tightly and opened them again and looked into the box. The packet was gone. He put a trembling hand into the box and fingered the emptiness. He slumped onto the small bench and closed his eyes. He knew he was overworked. A man who could not trust the evidence of his own senses had no business accepting fiduciary responsibilities. He knew he would have to go at once to Mr. Wintermore and confess that the Krepps packet had disappeared, and he had no idea where it had gone. He would ask for some leave, and consider himself fortunate if he was not forced to resign.
When he stood up, he moved like a very old man. The packet was back in the lock box. Had it been a cobra, he could not have recoiled more swiftly. It took him a few moments to acquire the courage to touch it, then lift it out of the lock box. At first it seemed to him to be of slightly different weight and dimension than he remembered, and it looked as if it had been resealed, but then logic came to his rescue. No one could possibly have touched it. He’d had a mild hallucination based on nervous tension and overwork. There was no need to tell Mr. Wintermore about it. Everything was entirely in order. He would try to get a little more rest in the future, a little more exercise and sunshine. He returned the box to the vault and walked back to his office, consciously breathing more deeply than was his custom.
Most of the documentation within the packet consisted of a detailed, witnessed, notarized certification of where the twenty-seven million had gone, affirming that O.K. Devices was primarily an eleemosynary operation, and because taxes had been paid on monies diverted to O.K.D., no claims for deductions had been in order.
Bonny Lee knelt on the bed behind Kirby and read over his shoulder as he read Uncle Omar’s personal letter to her.
“My dear Nephew: It is entirely possible that you will never be able to comprehend this letter. You will think it evidence of senility, unless you have discovered It, and made use of It to gain access to this letter—a matter you should find rather simple—well in advance of schedule.
“I have taken elaborate safeguards. One, of course, was my attempt to shape your mind and character so you would be capable of properly using It, but at no time did I feel that you had reached the point of development where I could merely hand It over to you, as though giving you the world and all that is in it. I decided to make it all so difficult for you, the very act of discovering the capacities and making use of them would be sufficient trial by fire to solidify those aspects of your personality which I felt too indefinite to make you worthy of such a strange trust.
“The other safeguards are technical, and I fear so complete that the odds are against It ever being used by anyone after my death. The first device was extremely cumbersome, created nausea in the user, and was operative for but three minutes at a time. Over the years I simplified and perfected it. All technical notes regarding it have been destroyed. All you need know, if you have discovered Its capacities, is that it is permanently sealed, and uses cosmic radiation as a power source, accumulating it and storing it with such rapidity, no use is so excessive as to weaken It. Yet should any fifty-day period pass without its being used, the accumulation will over-burden the storage capacity and fuse the basically simple device beyond all possibility of constructive analysis. This is one safeguard. In addition, should any attempt be made to open the sealed mechanism, the same result will be obtained. Lastly, due to a microscopic diminution of the essential element of the device, through use, I estimate that it will last no less than twenty and no more than twenty-five years from the date of this letter.
“I might add here that I took into account one psychological safeguard. I have directed Wintermore to hand it to you personally, and he is the least likely man I know to either let it out of his hands prematurely, or to fiddle with it and thus accidentally learn its properties.
“If you have waited a full year to read this letter, my boy, you will have no idea what I am talking about.
“If, on the other hand, you have learned the properties of the object, and have used it to solve certain problems I set up for you, then you will realize why I have surrounded it with these safeguards. Morally, perhaps I should have destroyed it when I knew I had not long to live. But possibly it was vanity which kept me from doing so. If
you know what it will do, you can perceive the horrid burden of responsibility in having discovered the phenomenon, in having made selfish use of it, in having, I hope, partially atoned for such use, and having faced the dreadful image of a world where such a thing would be available to unscrupulous men.
“I even face the fact that some other person may be reading this letter, and you will never see it. In that event, it is possible I have indeed loosed a demon on the world.
“But if you have it, know what it is, and understand this letter, my boy, I need not charge you with any special duties and responsibilities. What you are will determine how you use it, and I have tried to shape you to that end. If the burden seems too great, all you need do is set it aside for fifty days.
“In these, my last words to you, I caution you about one thing, and one thing only. Keep it to yourself. Do not share its use with anyone. The man who owns it and can use it is the most powerful man the world has ever seen. It is not a power which can be safely shared.”
Wilma Farnham, with sufficient advance notice to attract the widest possible coverage by the news media, and the maximum attendance by the executive personnel of Krepps Enterprises, governmental authorities and assorted attorneys of all parties at interest, made the first public appearance, with hair, make-up and clothing selected by Bonny Lee Beaumont.
Wilma, carefully coached by Kirby and Bonny Lee, made an intricate deal with the opposition. Once it was agreed that, if she could present satisfactory documentation as to the disposition of the twenty-seven millions, all criminal charges against Kirby Winter would be dropped, and all civil charges would be limited to those which could be established on the basis of the documentation she would present, she calmly produced the detailed statements.
KREPPS GAVE IT ALL AWAY, the headlines said.
The incident of Bonny Lee’s little car was readily solved. Wilma swore she had borrowed it.
Betsy Alden was the next one to turn herself in. She had walked off the Glorianna an hour before the fire and had been for a time at the apartment of one Bernard Sabbith (verified by Mr. Sabbith) and had then gone to a downtown hotel and registered under a pseudonym (there was no law against it) and had remained there until she had discovered, at this late date, that the police wanted to talk to her.
ACTRESS CLEARED, smaller headlines said.
By the time Kirby Winter made his public appearance, the public imagination had gone bounding on ahead to new phenomena, as always—in this particular instance eleven young men in Coral Gables, insurance agents, store managers, stock salesmen and the like, whose discreet little wife-swapping club had worked like a charm for over two years until it had been discovered that one of them had been rigging the basis of selection by using a marked deck. They became suspicious of him when they noted that he was the only one who never ended up with his own wife. After having been disciplined with more enthusiasm than good judgment, he made full confession from his hospital bed.
The only residue of public opinion regarding Kirby Winter was a feeling of dull indignation that he had not, after all, stolen millions. He did not help matters by projecting a public image of a mild and rather wordy and tiresome man who wanted to talk of nothing but the Good Works of the late Omar Krepps. And the public has a minimum interest in Good Works. KREPPS HEIR TELLS OF GIVEAWAY, the very small headlines said.
Betsy Alden disappeared without further publicity. Sabbith took her back to New York with him. She has since been seen on major networks, telling why her clothes are fluffier, her drains are spotless and her nasal passages are open.
Wilma Farnham, after a few lessons from Bonny Lee, became a demure little ivoried odalisque with a weighty hairdo, bright blue contact lenses, a whispery voice and dresses which looked too tight to sit down in. Walton Grumby kept asking her to come to the K.E. offices and explain over and over what her duties had been with O.K. Devices. When he decided to go to Paris, Cairo and Rangoon to spot check the reported disbursement of cash, he took her along, just in case he happened to think of any additional questions.
After a partial recovery from a wide spectrum of traumatic nervous disorders, Joseph Locordolos was permitted to return to the Glorianna. Criminal charges were dropped and he settled civil actions out of court at considerable expense. His visa was cancelled, as were the visas of the five crew members. They were ordered to remain aboard the Glorianna until repairs had been completed. Joseph did all in his power to delay the repairs, hoping that Charla would reappear before he would be forced to leave port. He was very worried about her. He kept wondering what horrid thing Winter could have done to her, if perhaps he had killed her and hidden the body. When he thought of Charla dead, it made tears come to his eyes.
On the eighth day after the fire, Charla came calmly aboard. It was mid-morning. She walked into the main lounge and said, “Hello, Joseph.” She sat down. He had jumped to his feet. He looked at her with consternation. She was perhaps fifteen pounds lighter. Her cheeks were hollow. Her eyes looked enormous. Her lovely flaxen hair had been cropped quite short. She wore a cheap little blouse and a cheap little skirt and she carried a big vulgar red purse.
He ran to her, knelt beside her chair and flung his arms around her and sobbed into her neck. “Oh, my poor darling, what has happened to you!”
“How are you, Joseph?” she asked. Her voice had a formless, faraway quality.
“How am I?” he cried. “I am terrible!” He sprang to his feet, and, pacing back and forth, he described the outrage that had been perpetrated upon him. “They were like tigers! Veritable tigers!” he declared. “And he did it with that devil’s device, the same thing his uncle used upon all of us, but never so—exuberantly. My God, the expense it has been! I still can’t sleep. I keep waking up. In my sleep I see that tattoo.” He knelt beside her again. “We must have that device, Charla. We must have it. That soft fool should have killed us when he had the chance. Listen, my dearest. I have purchased information. He went from here to New York. He is with Bonny Lee Beaumont, the girl who escaped from you. An entertainer. They plan to go to Paris.” He stopped and looked at her closely. She seemed dazed. “Darling, you are not listening!”
She was staring at the paneled wall of the lounge. “Do you know what AWOL means, dear?” she asked.
“How should I know what that means?”
“Absent without official leave. Oh, they were very disturbed, you know. To have thirty-three of them go AWOL all at once, with an official vehicle.” She turned her head and looked mildly at him. “The vehicle was the truck, you see. They were on their way from Port Everglades to Key West. That’s where their destroyer is. Key West.”
Joseph struck himself in the head with his fist. “What are you talking about? Where have you been?”
“Suddenly I was in a truck, with a lot of sailors.”
“How hideous!”
“A destroyer is the smallest seagoing combat ship. It is generally from three hundred to four hundred feet long and displaces from two thousand to three thousand tons. Destroyers are used mainly to screen other ships, to picket certain areas and to escort ships.”
“Charla!”
“Destroyers are long-range, high-speed, hard-hitting ships. For protection they rely on watertight compartments and speed. Sailors call destroyers ‘tin cans’ because of their thin metal hulls.”
He grabbed her and shook her until her teeth chattered, but the moment he released her, the sing-song recital was resumed.
“The most common type of destroyer in the U.S. Navy is known as the 692 Class or ‘long hull,’ developed during World War II. They have two main engine groups of high-pressure steam turbines that total over sixty thousand horsepower. Engines, boilers and other machinery for propulsion occupy nearly three-fourths of their length below the main deck.”
He bent over in front of her and looked into her eyes. He saw for the first time a horrid benignity there, a calmness, a curious smugness—as though all searches were ended, all fires quenched.
“No, dear,” she said calmly, sweetly.
“What?”
She stood up and yawned and stretched. He noticed that in spite of the way she had leaned down, her color was excellent. She started toward the hatch. “I just came aboard to get some clothes and some money.”
He followed her. “But where are you going?” he pleaded.
She turned and gave him a blank stare. In a tone of voice which indicated she thought it an incomparably stupid question, she said, “Back to Key West, of course.”
“But Charla!”
“They’re waiting for me, dear. Destroyers are armed with torpedoes in tubes on deck, multipurpose five-inch guns, and depth charges.”
She went into the stateroom. He heard her in there, humming. He could not remember the name of the song. It had something to do with anchors. He stood in the doorway. She started to change her clothes. But as soon as she was undressed, Joseph had to turn abruptly away and go to his stateroom, and lie down. When he heard her leaving, he called, “I’ll wait for you in Nassau!”
After she left, he wondered how long it would be before she turned up. He hoped it would be a reasonable length of time—long enough for him to adjust to her brand-new tattoo.
And at the moment Charla was clambering expertly into the waiting gray jeep, Kirby Winter, thirty-five thousand feet over the Atlantic, was lifting a glass of champagne to the angel lips of his white-headed wench and drowning quite happily in her rogue eyes.
By John D. MacDonald
The Brass Cupcake
Murder for the Bride
Judge Me Not
Wine for the Dreamers
Ballroom of the Skies
The Damned
Dead Low Tide
The Neon Jungle
Cancel All Our Vows
The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything Page 23
