The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything (23 page)

"And bring her here?"

"Of course not! Take her to that beach apartment and phone us here that they have her."

"But what if she goes back to the house?"

"Rene has been instructed. They will hold her there."

"This is a tiresome country, Charla," Joseph said. "In any reasonably well-managed country all of this would be restricted to a few officials, and you would know the price of the officials in matters of this sort. Here they scream delicate matters over the air and spread them all over their vulgar newspapers, and every moron on the street becomes a potential problem. We should never attempt any sort of business matter here. It was always better elsewhere, particularly in Spain, when Juan March would help with the arrangements."

"Don't whine, darling. We had no choice. Now Winter and the Farnham woman are in our custody. And Betsy will be given no further chance to become a problem. And even if we fail to pick up that Beaumont girl, who will believe her? And even if they should, we'll be well out of reach. We'll have all the time in the world to find out everything, and plan how to make use of it. Believe me, it will work just as smoothly as it would have the way we first planned it, before all this dreadful hue and cry began. Kirby Winter was troublesome for a time, but that is ended."

"I do not care for this business of the packing cases," Joseph said.

"Then how else can we bring them aboard so easily? Daniel will drive the truck out there at eleven, and we'll have them stowed aboard a little after midnight, sleeping sweetly. If that police search completely overlooked that hull compartment, darling, why do you think the customs people will find it tomorrow? And we can show them the packing cases, filled with completely innocent supplies, to prove what came aboard in the night. Darling Joseph, when those two innocents awaken, they'll be in cozy beds, far at sea, without any idea how it was done or where they are being taken. And after all business details have been attended to, I think Miss Farnham might find the crew's quarters educational. Unless you have any amusing ideas."

"Her picture didn't enchant me, Charla dear."

"She's a bloodless, stilted, self-important little wretch, dear, with a quick temper and a natural talent for virginity, but she did appear slender and seemed to move well. I rather doubt that even with your talents you could debauch her."

"Is that a challenge, my dear?"

"I could, of course, but it would be a different sort of venture entirely."

"I'll decide after I have had a look at her."

"You're losing your sense of adventure, Joseph."

There was a low laugh, a rustle of moment, and Charla's heels were swung up and out of sight. "It is much more likely, my dear," he said, his voice slightly muffled, "that as I grow older I find it increasingly difficult to settle for anything less than the best the world can provide."

"Yet you continue to make comparisons."

"To reassure us both. Just as you do."

"How sweet! How very sweet!"

Kirby, with sweaty fingers, put a halt to whatever was going on, as well as to the rest of all concurrent cultural phenomena. He wormed his way out from under the bed. Charla had emerged from the robe. She had her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her lips smiling and parted. Her attitude made the business suit look particularly incongruous. He went over to the door and turned and looked at them again. He decided he could risk a fraction of a second to get the door open, without being noticed. He managed it and then, in the redness, pushed the door open far enough to slide out. Once he was in the corridor he braced himself and pushed it shut again. He could not latch it, but he could shut it almost all the way. He used other seconds of real time to test the doors of the other four staterooms. Three were empty. One was locked.

He considered the problem, and then spent five nervous moments in real time, ready to turn it off if he heard anyone approaching. When five minutes were up, he turned back to red. The master stateroom door had not been latched. He pulled it open. The business suit was not on the floor. It was arranged on a chair with a meticulous neatness. After one electrified glance at the bed, he decided he was cured of all lingering fragments of the Charla obsession. He had been uneasily apprehensive of making his invisible intrusion upon some scene of an evil so unspeakable it would fry his brain like grease on a skillet. But of all possible visions the one he had not expected had been that look of low comedy, like clowns belaboring each other with inflated bladders, like Harpo honking his cane, like a massive pratfall in a still shot from a Keystone Komedy. And what made it even more intensely ludicrous was the obvious air of deadly seriousness of the participants.

As he manipulated the soft lead sheathing that was Joseph Locordolos' sedate business suit, he realized that all reports to the contrary, as a spectator sport this activity was not even likely to replace tournament chess. As he pried pockets open, groping for keys, his tendency toward a howl of helpless laughter was smothered by a shocking thought. Suppose when he and Bonny Lee—would it have appeared as—

And, with a certain wry despair he realized it might seem the same. Thus he took another step toward joining the human race, the sweaty, ridiculous, pretentious, self-deluding, aspiring, flesh-trapped march of man.

The keys, six of them, were on a gold ring. He hung them in midair while he kneaded the suit back into orderliness, flattening it by leaning on it with open palms. 'He took the keys and swung the dead weight of the door open and shut again, without looking directly toward the sportive Charla and fun-loving Joseph.

It had to be a small key, and the second one he tried worked. He swung the door open. Betsy stared at him in complete astonishment. She had evidently been standing, looking out through the heavy glass of the sealed porthole. Her tan hair was rumpled, her face pale and without make-up. She wore a pale orange corduroy coverall arrangement, with short sleeves, a zipper down the front and a big silver buckle. It was a bad color for her and did not fit her properly.

"What in the world—"

He touched his fingers to his lips, closed the door and started to lock it with the key and then saw the oblong bolt and slid it into its socket. When he looked at her again she was trying to smile at him, and the tears were streaming out of her eyes. She came to him and he held her in his arms. She trembled and held him tightly, but made no sound of crying. She had a faintly sour smell and he wondered if it was the odor of pain and fear.

Finally she turned away and took a lurching step toward the deep bunk, turned and sat heavily, bent over and put her head between her knees. In a few moments she straightened up, smiling almost shyly. "Sorry. I almost fainted. I never faint." Her face twisted. "I guess it took a lot out of me. She—hurt me so."

He sat with her on the bunk, half facing her. "It was my fault."

"No," she said flatly. "Mine. I had to get cute. I had to try all the angles. I thought I could con her. I couldn't believe she'd ever really—do anything to me. And when I realized she was, I was going to be terribly brave. Joan at the stake. But in such a shamefully short time I was begging and babbling and betraying everybody. I'm so sorry, Kirby. I'm so ashamed. I told them where to find you and Wilma. Please forgive me."

"You should have told before she hurt you."

"And I would, the next time. It's such a simple way she does it, too. Just one of those damned electric reducing machines. She just ties those pad things on where you want them least, and revs the current up until you feel your own muscles beginning to tear you up. And not a mark, afterward. She's monstrous, Kirby. How did you get here? Where are they?"

"Keep your voice down, Betsy. They're just down the corridor, in the big stateroom. I think everything is going to be all right."

"Wilma didn't have a clue. My God, Kirby, she's a dreadful little prig. Terribly loyal. But she doesn't believe there really is any special thing they're after, unless she has it and doesn't know it. Where is she?"

"In a safe place for now, for a while, anyway. They had her for a time. Two of the men from the crew. Rene and Raoul."

"I remember Rene. Raoul is a new one, I guess. Rene is tough and quick and powerful and completely loyal to Charla. I never liked the way he'd look at me."

"They had both of us, in that house where Wilma was, but we—got away from them."

She looked startled. "Got away from them and—you got aboard and got into this cabin? That's very good indeed, Kirby. Maybe I made a low estimate."

"Joseph and Charla don't know I got away from them yet. They were going to bring me and Wilma aboard tonight in packing cases."

"Are you sure you didn't save them half the trouble?"

"I don't think so. I think it's going to be all right. You see—I found out what they're after."

"You did?"

"And I haven't any good ideas about how I can solve a lot of these damn legal problems, but I think I can get you off this boat."

"What is it? A handy dandy thought control machine? Or does it just melt big holes in the sides of boats?"

"You're sounding more like yourself."

"So I'm a little skeptical. Show me."

"It has—certain limitations, and I don't know how it works, and maybe I don't know how to get maximum use out of it yet. But I'll demonstrate it. It—it may frighten you, Betsy. It may frighten you quite badly because it—offends all reason. You'll try not to get hysterical if—it frightens you?"

"That's a luxury I don't think I can afford, Kirby Winter."

"All you need to know is the objective results."

"You mean it has something to do with that old—"

He stopped the flow of rational time, wondered whether he should get her used to it by degrees, then decided she was mentally strong enough to cope. He slowly pulled her rigid body out of the bunk, forced her over to a chair, leaned his weight on her thighs and pushed her down into it. Then he went over and stood by the door and picked time up where he had left it.

"—watch?" she said. She gave a leap of violent surprise, turned deathly pale, shut her eyes tightly and opened them again and stared at him. "My word," she whispered. "I didn't know what to expect, but this is—" She frowned. "Did I black out somehow?"

"No time passed at all. It was instantaneous."

"You moved me to here, and you to over there. What is the range?"

"Let's say it's about as far as I can carry a kitchen stove."

"You carried me somehow?"

"With difficulty."

"While time took time out?"

"Exactly."

"You could carry me past someone and they wouldn't notice?"

"No more than you would."

She nodded her head, quite slowly. "Your revered uncle, my friend, had quite an edge. An edge, in fact, so filled with interesting possibilities, it makes that twenty-seven million you gave away look like candy for the children. Why didn't he use it to—make himself king of the world? He could have managed it. Like a man with a rifle in the dawn of history."

"Maybe being king would have bored him. Being Santa Claus was more his style. Or maybe he had to keep what he had from being too obvious, or other men would have started looking in the same direction."

She nodded again. "Charla was convinced there was something to look for." She lost her thoughtful expression and stared across the room at him with a look of fearful intensity. "One thing we do know, Kirby Winter. A thing like that must never belong to my aunt. Never. She's bought every kind of immunity they sell, and she uses it all without mercy."

Suddenly there was a hurried sound in the corridor, a mutter of voices, and then a sound of heavy hammering.

Above the bunk there was a hiss and click of electronic circuits, and then Charla's voice came into the room, the low purring tones vastly amplified.

"My darlings!" she said. "How terribly fortunate I left that circuit open! And how glad I am we had the patience to listen. Dear Joseph even had the presence of mind to begin taping it after the first few words. We can play it back for clues, you know, but possibly we have enough. How did you put it, dear? A way to make time take time out. I have suddenly lost my respect for Omar Krepps. With that ability, he did very little with it, comparatively. While I'm talking I can't hear you, of course. That sound you must have heard was a timber being wedged between your door and the opposite side of the. corridor. Apparently your miracle will not melt prison walls. I hope not. So at least we have created an impasse, have we not? And it will give us all time to think."

Kirby shuddered and looked at Betsy. Her eyes were closed and she was biting down on a bloodless lip. "I didn't know," she whispered. "I didn't know. But, knowing her, I should have guessed."

He went over to her and put his lips close to her ear. "All we have to do is get them to open that door."

"It is really quite amusing," Charla said, "that what I should have been looking for is actually that old gold watch you showed me, Kirby dear. The little telescope is a rather nice disarming touch. Really, I expected some sort of procedural thing, notes and formulae, something like that. But this really seems far more practical, a portable, useful, innocent-appearing device. What did you say, Joseph? Excuse me a moment, darlings."

"Damned witch," Betsy said distinctly.

Charla spoke through the concealed speaker again. "Joseph has had a fruitful idea. We shall have a hole burnt in your steel door, darlings, just large enough for the watch, and then you can pass it out through the hole. Otherwise I think you might find things becoming highly unpleasant."

When the hiss of the circuit stopped, Kirby said, "Before I'll do that, Charla, I'll take the end of the chain and I'll slam it against the inside of this steel door until I'm damned well certain it's unusable, unidentifiable junk."

"Dog in the manger?" Charla asked.

"Precisely."

"You bluff well, Kirby."

"No bluff, Charla. I'm infected by a chronic disease called a sense of responsibility. I'm a very noble fellow. I'd rather destroy it than have you have it to use."