The Girl, The Gold Watch And Everything Part 40

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 doc.u.mentation 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 doc.u.mentation 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 pa.s.sages 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 disburs.e.m.e.nt 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, "h.e.l.lo, 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 G.o.d, 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 Cla.s.s 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.

"Listen to me, my dear. We shall leave tomorrow. We shall go to Na.s.sau, Charla, and from there we shall fly to Paris. And there we will find this Kirby Winter and we, "

"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 Na.s.sau!"

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 gla.s.s of champagne to the angel lips of his white-headed wench and drowning quite happily in her rogue eyes.