“Ma’am, have you ever heard of the Lady Charleston?”
Canasta feigned a puzzled look. “Isn’t she the superheroine who solved all those crime cases eons ago?”
“She’s the one. I think she’s active again in the city.”
“So, what’s your question?”
“Have you seen anything of a woman dressed in mauve-and-red pajamas poking around the Docks and looking for trouble?”
She rubbed the side of her right finger under her chin. “Hmm. I don’t think so. I’ve been totally absorbed in my work. This one excursion is the exception. I thought I’d take a few pictures of the waterfront before I go home. You have the sea near you all the time, but I live inland.”
The cub reporter said, “If you were in my shoes, what would you make of all the ruckus with the crime families?”
“I hardly know anything about crime in this city, but I’d surely want to know the common denominator to the disturbances. In any case, I wouldn’t want to go beyond verifiable facts. Still, like you, I think a good story lurks somewhere in the plethora of disparate data.”
Ransom thanked Canasta for her courtesy and time. She breathed a sigh of relief. Nancy also felt the pressure level come down as the reporter moved toward where the chandler’s office was located.
“Canasta, don’t you think we have enough pictures for your purposes?”
“I do. Please drive me home again. On the way there, let’s stop somewhere to have the film developed and printed.”
The two women arrived at her parents’ estate in time for Nancy to prepare dinner and for Canasta to review the data she had collected at the chandler’s office.
While she was brooding over her harvest in the study, her father entered and sat down beside her. “Nancy tells me you took pictures of that boat the Germans use for their clandestine at-sea meetings.”
“That’s right. I should be able to pick up the results tomorrow morning. That way, I’ll have the prints and the negatives for British intelligence.”
“I have sobering news for you. Hal Burnside’s body was just discovered outside the chandler’s office. His throat had been sliced neatly. Blood was everywhere. The Germans were out to lunch at the time. They returned from their meal to find the corpse. None of the thousands he was carrying were on the body.”
Canasta asked, “Are you surprised that he was robbed as well as murdered?”
Her father shook his head. “I’m worried that the crime family war has now gone hot. With the money missing, there will be no way for the Germans to complete their transactions.”
She wrinkled her brow. “From my perspective, they have two-thirds of the valued items they were bartering. They have the diamonds and the gold. All they’ve lost is the hundred thousand dollars.”
Lady Charleston came into the study just as Canasta mentioned the dollars. “I don’t think you should go to the Docks tonight.”
“Why not?”
“This house is being watched by two goons across the street, and I’m sure the Docks are going to be watched too. Someone thinks Lady Charleston is prowling. I don’t want you to be caught in the police dragnet. Let’s listen to the five o’clock radio news.”
The WXTC evening news featured a story on the 1936 Olympic Games. That was followed by a sensational story about the murder of Hal Burnside. Mention of his murder was reported as being part of a gang war. It was followed by speculation about the possible reappearance of Lady Charleston in the city after twenty years. The fourth feature about the coming hurricane seemed anticlimactic by comparison, so Lady Charleston turned the set off.
Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang, and the mayor stood sheepishly on the steps with his Stetson hat in his hand. “I’m sorry to be visiting at dinner time, Ma’am, but I wonder whether you’ve heard the evening news on the radio?”
“Yes, Mayor, we’ve just heard it. What’s all this about a gang war in this city? If it’s true, it doesn’t give anyone in charge a good name, does it?”
The mayor reddened. “That’s why I’m here. I’m not making any accusations because I have no facts, but I do want to say I sincerely hope Lady Charleston has not decided to return to this city to do her brand of vigilante work.”
She shook her head. “Why would she do that? After all these years, what could she possibly do anyway?”
The mayor stood on one foot and then the other. He was nervously twisting his hat brim with his fingers. “Well, I’ve made my point. Now I’ve got to be going. If you or your husband do discover information the city can use to solve the recent cases of robbery and murder, I would deeply appreciate your sharing it with me—or the DA.”
When the mayor returned to his vehicle, he raised two fingers toward two policemen in his escort. They flashed their lights and sounded their sirens. The small motorcade departed in the direction of City Hall.
“Well, Canasta, that’s two,” Lady Charleston said. “As good tidings often come in threes, I expect we’ll have another visitor soon.”
As they were all sitting down to the diner, the doorbell rang again. On the steps this time was Horace Ransom, whose face was almost as flaming red as his hair.
“Don’t say a word. Since you’re here, Mr. Ransom, why don’t you stay for dinner?”
The cub reporter eagerly accepted her invitation, evidently hoping for a major scoop over the meal. Nancy set a fourth place across from Canasta, who was still dressed as the prim and proper maiden secretary with the scholarly glasses.
“Gosh, I struggled to bring everything together in the evening news. Did you listen?”
“We did listen, with interest. What do you mean by ‘everything,’ Mr. Ransom?”
“I mean Lady Charleston, ma’am. She’s the only explanation that covers all the bases.”
Canasta frowned and asked him, “How do you figure that, newshound?”
“I must have been two or three years old when Lady Charleston was forced into retirement. While she moved in the shadows of this city, a lot of good work was done by her. No thanks she got from the corrupt city government officials or the police.”
“Go on, please.”
“Well, those same people or their successors still have a cozy relationship with criminal families. My God, you’d have to be blind not to see how a great perturbation in the unnatural order of things in this city can only have been caused by her ... or some superpower like her.”
Canasta looked directly into Ransom’s ice-blue eyes. “Mr. Ransom, I thought the news started with facts, not myths or innuendoes. What hard facts do you have to substantiate your story?”
The reporter looked dejected as he moved his fork and knife over his beef pot roast. “We have a fresh body, brutally murdered in broad daylight.”
“Your point is?”
“The criminal gangs didn’t go to war because they were involved in their usual criminal ventures.”
“Your conclusion is that Lady Charleston rose from the grave to draw a knife around the neck of that poor victim?”
“That’s not what I mean at all. Now you’re trying to confuse me. Look, I went to the chandler’s office, as the two of you suggested. There I found the body. The Germans you mentioned were there too. They seemed just as confused as I was.”
“What did you make of what you saw?”
“We haven’t had a gangland figure slain in many years. Robberies, we’ve had aplenty. Assault and battery, yes. Breaking and entering, check! But why no murders?”
“Weren’t you talking about Lady Charleston during your last visit to this house before the body was discovered?”
“I had a weird feeling.”
Canasta said, “So if I have a feeling that a newshound, just to have a big scoop, killed a man with a knife in broad daylight—”
“Wait a minute! I had nothing to do with that killing.”
Canasta said, “Prove it!”
Ransom turned beet red and shook his head. “I don’t have to do that. Besides, I have t
o be going now. Thank you for having me to dinner.”
The reporter rose from the table and stumbled to the door where Nancy waited to usher him out of the house. She slammed the door after him.
“Thus always to news fabricators,” said Canasta’s father.
“Yet Ransom was not far from putting everything together neatly,” Lady Charleston said. “His intuition is good, but he has no skill pulling a true story behind it.”
Her husband said, “This evening, I’m going to listen to the encrypted news, straight from the five German spies.”
“When you decrypt their message, perhaps we should all review it together,” Canasta said.
After the dinner dishes had been washed and dried, Canasta went to the study to pore over her data. Her father went to his hobby room to copy the encrypted traffic. Lady Charleston took an after-dinner nap to clear her mind and let her powers of synthesis work on the whole situation.
After four hours, the evening message from the spies had been copied and decrypted. Canasta and her parents gathered in the study to review its contents. Canasta translated the message into English.
She announced, “According to their message, the German spies will be leaving this city in two days by boat. They verified their rendezvous with a German submarine will take place at midnight, four hundred yards off Myrtle Beach.”
Lady Charleston asked, “Canasta, when and where are you scheduled to meet your British spy?”
“We are to meet at nine p.m. tomorrow at the same place as before.”
“Do you have everything he asked you for?”
“Once I pick up the developed photographs tomorrow morning, yes.”
Lady Charleston said, “I want to go over all the materials you’ll be handing over. Also, I want to send an encrypted message too.”
The women spent two hours assembling the intelligence Canasta would deliver to the Brit, all except her photographs of the Marybell Lee. Those prints would be included in the package the next day.
Lady Charleston outlined for Canasta the contents of her private message to the British spy. In it, she requested the placement of a powerful bomb aboard the spies’ boat. Its detonation was to be set for the boat’s contact with the German U-boat.
“Mother, what a deliciously diabolical plan!” Canasta said. “Do you think what you’re asking is technically possible?”
Her father nodded and said, “This can be done if the British explosives experts arrange it. We’ll have to assume the Brits will deploy their first team for this job.”
The next morning at ten o’clock, Canasta picked up the photographs and included both the prints and their negatives in her package. Nancy, who drove her, noticed she was being observed in the shop by a stranger in a Zoot suit and bowler hat.
The man rudely jostled her just outside the establishment. He muttered, “Be warned. Your days are numbered.” Then he moved down the street.
Canasta mentioned the man in the suit to her mother, who seemed not to be perturbed by the news. In fact, the pattern was familiar to her.
“My dear, near the end of any mission, you can count on tensions to be drawn to the breaking point. Keep vigilant and persevere.”
That night at nine o’clock, Nancy dropped Canasta off at the entrance to Summerville Park, where Intrepid met her as they had planned.
“Did you bring what I wanted?” he asked.
Canasta handed the British spy the package and informed him, “It contains, in addition to the intelligence you requested, an urgent, encrypted message from my mother.” She then handed him the one-time pad that would allow decryption. “I expect this will be our last meeting.”
“Madam, let’s call it our penultimate meeting ... the next to last. We’ll meet again tomorrow at four a.m. at the ship chandler’s office. Please come in costume, and underneath it, wear a swimming suit.”
Canasta was confused, but before she could ask questions, Intrepid vanished, and Nancy returned.
“It seems, Nancy, that this is the beginning of a very long night.”
“Tell me about it,” the maid said sarcastically.
“I have another nocturnal adventure early tomorrow morning. We hadn’t planned on that.”
“I suggest you talk with your parents when we get to the estate.”
In the study, Canasta told her parents what Intrepid had told her.
“You’re to show up at the chandler’s office at four o’clock in your costume?”
“So it seems, but that’s nearly the time the five Germans plan to launch their boat for their rendezvous. They will motor to the rendezvous with just enough time to meet their submarine, make their exchanges, and start home again.”
Lady Charleston said, “I fear our five Germans will be replaced by five others. The whole charade will continue when those new spies arrive.”
“Don’t worry, Mother. I shall not let that happen.” Canasta said this with her head thrown back and fire in her eyes.
“Canasta, we don’t plan to lose you in this nasty business.”
“Aren’t you the one who advised me to have no fear?”
At three a.m., Canasta donned the garments of Lady Charleston. She hugged both her parents before she departed for the Docks. Arriving fifteen minutes early for her meeting with Intrepid, she saw that the chandler’s office had been left open. She went inside and saw Intrepid tied up and bleeding in a chair in the middle of the room. She heard the snap of a gun being cocked behind her and froze.
“Raise your hands, Frau Murray,” a voice ordered.
She did as the man asked and turned slowly to see the man in the Zoot suit aiming a Luger at her chest.
“I warned you about what was going to happen to you soon. You either did not listen, or you’re as impulsive as your mother used to be. No matter, we have ten minutes before the others will arrive for our planned outing to Myrtle Beach. Your friend Intrepid will unfortunately not be accompanying us. He has told us everything we needed to know. Don’t blame him for his weakness. No one could have stood as much pain as he suffered this night.”
Intrepid groaned and said, “Everything is proceeding according to plan.” Then he fainted.
“Indeed, the man is correct. But the plan was devised by the Third Reich, not by British intelligence. You’ll know the whole plan because you are a vital part of it. After we reach the submarine, you will be taken on a lengthy sea voyage to the Fatherland, where you will meet the Führer. You perhaps did not know it, but he is a great fan of Lady Charleston. Don’t even think about trying to escape. I have no specific instructions on whether to deliver you dead or alive. I frankly don’t care which way you want to go.”
The five German spies came to the chandler’s office with sacks to harvest the contents of their safe as well as the radio equipment. They even took down their antenna. When they were ready to depart, the man in the Zoot suit led the five men and Canasta to the place where the Marybell Lee was moored. Intrepid was left in the chandler’s office, unconscious and tied to the chair.
At five a.m., the Marybell Lee shoved off and headed seaward. It was a fine day for sailing or motoring on the deep. The man in the Zoot suit kept his gun trained on Canasta while they sat in the prow. The German spies were seated along the gunwales on either side. Powerful motors thrust the heavy craft to its destination while hungry seagulls dipped and swerved behind the boat watching for scraps to be jettisoned.
The Germans made the fatal assumption that Canasta Murray knew no German. They were garrulous and boastful about their accomplishments while in Port Charleston. Canasta’s phonographic memory recorded everything the spies said. She had no idea how she was going to get out of her predicament, but she was determined to make the best of her situation. The more the spies spoke about their work, the more she knew she had to survive to tell what she was learning.
“Franz, you killed that tall, thin courier with your knife. Yet you got clean away! Even the radio news reporter thought the man lost his life in a g
ang war.”
“Yes, Heine, it was a neat piece of work. I managed to salvage the money too!”
“Maybe we can all split the money. No one would ever know where it went.”
The man in the Zoot suit said, “Swine! You are even stupider than you look! The Führer knows all and sees all. For your impudence, you will probably be tried and shot.”
“Wait a minute, Wilhelm. We are five to your one. Do you think you can suppress an attack by all of us at once?”
“Oskar, remember that if I am not alive when we get to the submarine, you will all be shot. Those are the orders. No one can rescind them.”
The Germans were sullen after this reminder.
Heine said, “What about the woman? Did your precious orders dictate anything about her?”
“If you’re thinking of raping this woman, you’re foolish. The Führer has his own designs on her. She is, after all, a superheroine, the kind of strong woman he would like to promote throughout the Reich. Again, you’re thinking is warped and short-sighted. Touch one hair of her head, and you will seal your fates.”
The Marybell Lee plowed through the waves as it pressed northward to its rendezvous. At breakfast time, the men feasted on bread and sausage grilled on the boat’s stove.
Canasta accepted both food and water, as she wanted her strength to be at its peak when the time came for her to act. She could not guess when her chance would come, so she vowed to be ready at any time. She was surprised not to be seasick despite the rhythmical pitching and yawing of the boat.
In English, the man in the Zoot suit said, “So, Frau Murray, I understand Lady Charleston is now a family tradition. How do you feel about becoming the model for all the women of the Third Reich?”
She shook her head. “I have no ambition to be a model for anyone. You warned me that I would perish soon, but you haven’t said anything about yourself. What if I told you that you and your five friends would soon be food for sharks along the Carolina coast?”
“I’d say the odds of that happening are slim. We are six strong, and though you are a superwoman, you are only one ... and a woman at that. I don’t think we have anything to worry about. One shot from this gun would end any resistance you might muster. Then, too, we six Germans are supermen. That’s what the Führer calls us, so it must be true.”
Guardians of Time Page 12
