Rogue Princess

Chapter 3

CLAUDE GODWIN stared. His imagination had been adding little by little to his unwanted fiancée's thews until he pictured her as a veritable female gorilla; and here she turned out to be not so big after all. She was better-looking than he remembered her even if not quite the beauty that the photographer had made her out in the portrait.

"Well!" she said. "So you are the terrible Claude Godwin!" She spoke with less accent than Sven Kaalund. though her English was not so flawless as the Prime Minister's.

"That's right," he said. "I suppose you want to see what your partner in sin looks like before it's too late?"

"You need not be so nasty, Mr. Godwin. After all it was your own doing that got us into this fix, and I am not' liking it any better than you."

"But you know nothing happened!"

"Are you sure?"

"I think you would have woke up," he said dryly; "so why didn't you tell 'em so?"

"I did but they did not believe. My poor father was terribly shocked by that photograph. So now I am stuck with you."

"What's so terrible about me?" he retorted, stung. "Lots of dames think a movie-star's a pretty good catch."

"Oh, I did not say there was anything really wrong with you. In fact one might say you were quite pretty." (Godwin winced.) "But you know what self-centered and immoral people actors are, and I could have had the captain of the U. S. C. football team; he was a big man."

"Is that so? Well, I could have—" began Godwin hotly, then thought better of what he was going to say. "But let's not fight over who got rooked the worse on this deal. I don't suppose you have any idea how to get out of it?"

"No-o", she said, with a glance at Kaalund, who was taking all this in. "We shall have to make the best of it; perhaps love will come after the first ten or twenty years."

Godwin realized that they could not make any serious plans for evading their fate in Kaalund's presence, and that Gram was determined to keep Godwin under close surveillance until he had accomplished his aims. While Gram's political objectives sounded no more wicked than most political maneuvers, the thought of being used as a passive pawn in this game made Godwin clench his fists with rage.

"Your sense of humor." he said, "is well-developed but gruesome. When they gonna let me outa this box?"

"Tomorrow, they tell me. And now I must leave to shop down-town for my—how do you say—torso?"

"Trousseau," said Godwin with a shudder. "You got the other already, worse luck."

"And to keep you from being bored by the wait, I am giving you these." She brought out of her handbag a white paper bag which she handed him, saying: "Ne les avalez pas; serrez-les entre les dents."

"Hey!" Sven Kaalund spoke up. "No languages I am not understanding! You speak English, Dansk, or notting else!"

Godwin blinked in bewilderment. He had a limited knowledge of French, dating back to an abortive singing career, and it seemed to him that she was telling him not to swallow the bag but to do something to it with his teeth.

"Thanks," he said.

"It is nothing. I shall be seeing you again, yes?"

"All too soon, I'm afraid. G'bye, Miss—uh—what shall I call you?"

"The people here say 'Your Highness' but that is too formal for your betrothed. And I do not know you well enough —for 'Karen', because we Greenlanders are not using first names everywhere as you do in the United States. So call me 'Miss Hauch'."

"Okay, Miss Hauch. S'long."

She was gone. Kaalund rumbled: "Let me see dat bag, Claude. I am here from being poisoned to stop you as veil as other tings."

Godwin wordlessly handed over the bag. Kaalund looked in and handed it back. "Gumdrops!"

Godwin took out a gumdrop. Now the pattern became a little clearer. She must have said something like "Do not swallow them; hold (or pinch) them between the teeth." If it had only been possible for her to repeat the sentence ... he gripped a gumdrop firmly between his molars. It softened and dissolved with the passing of the minutes. Now, if she had meant to convey a message in one of these things, it would be in some sort of capsule. He would have to eat his way through the entire bag to be sure.

When the first gumdrop had gone the way of all confections he took a second. Kaalund looked at him with a mouth-watering expression, but Godwin hard-heartedly ignored it and continued to consume the candies himself. It would hardly do to have the message-capsule eaten by his guardian. The detective muttered something about; "I see vat she meant by de kind of people actors is!"

Godwin continued devouring his way through the bag. When he had eaten over half the gumdrops, he came to one that felt a little different from the others. It had a hard core, and as the gelatinous outside dissolved away his teeth closed down upon this object, not much bigger than a vitamin pill. As he wondered whether he would have to hide the capsule under his tongue until Kaalund was asleep so that he could investigate it more closely, a buzzing sensation in his teeth startled him so that he almost dropped the thing out of his mouth.

Recovering in time he gripped the capsule more firmly. The thing contained a tiny sound-record player which had been actuated by the pressure of his teeth, and which was now playing off its record. The sound was transmitted through his teeth and skull so that he could hear it quite clearly though nobody else could. He heard, Mr. Godwin! Mr. Godwin! This is Karen Hauch. By now you know of Minister Gram's plans for us-I do not wish to marry you and I suppose you feel the same way. Our only chance of escape is by air, but I do not know if I can make arrangements; see if you can bribe Detective Kaalund.

The record stopped. Godwin bit it again without result. He had heard of these phonographic capsules; the only way to repeat the record would be to unscrew the casing and wind it up again with a microscopic screw-driver. After some thought Godwin swallowed the capsule.

That left the rest of the gumdrops. Although this was probably the only one with a message, there was a chance that another might contain a similar capsule with further plans of escape. He therefore did not dare hand over the rest of the bag to Kaalund, though he was already sated with the taste of gumdrops. He kept right on eating, remarking to the ceiling, "You know, Sven old man, my studio would pay plenty to get me back pronto. We were just gonna start shooting Scaramouche, and it'll raise hell with their plans if they gotta dig up a new star at this late date."

"Unh," said Kaalund.

"In fact I'm not exactly broke myself. If I chipped in, the guy who arranged to have me sent back to Hollywood would pick up a nice piece of lettuce."

"Ha. You tink I am vun of your corrupt American policemen, so you can bribe me to let you go, huh? Veil, dis is Groenland, Claude, and de sooner you learn de difference the better off you are. No more bribes, please."

Godwin stewed a while in silence, then said, "Say, don't they have anything to read in this dump?"

"Do you read Dansk?"

"No."

"Den it vould no good do yon. De newspapers and books in de hospital library is all in Dansk, except some in Eskimo."

The door opened again and the nurse spoke to Kaalund, who reported: "Another visitor, Claude. My, such a popular fellow ve got!"

THE VISITOR turned out to be a stout, eyeglassed young man who bounced in and said effusively, "I am glad to meet you, Mr. Godwin! I am Karl Bruun, the son of Viggo Bruun. We understand you wish to visit my father's laboratories?"

"I did say something of the sort to Gram."

"Would tomorrow morning suit you?"

"Okay, if they let me out by then. Do you work in this lab?"

"Only on my off-time. I am a whale-herd."

"A what?"

"I herd whales. The bowhead whale, once almost extinct, is one of Greenland's main economic assets."

"How do you do it? I mean, d'you chase 'em around with a motor-boat?"

"No, with a helicopter. I also have to be ready to drive off orcas. Just now, my relief has the machine out. We shall see you tomorrow morning, then. And by the way, lest you be bored while awaiting your release from the hospital, I brought you some gumdrops." Karl Bruun handed over another paper bag. "They taste better if you grip them between your teeth and let them dissolve slowly. I must be running: good-bye!"

Godwin glared into the bag. Another capsule message? He grimly popped the first into his mouth ...

This time he had to go through nearly the entire bag, while Kaalund glowered at him and made Danish noises in his throat. At last he came upon the one containing the capsule. The message said, Mr. Godwin? You know who this is. If you do not like your situation we may find it possible to cooperate, for there are those who would like to do, with that upon which the present stasis depends, that which you would like to do with yourself. If you agree, signify by saying, when you meet us, "The gumdrops were superb."

Now what did that mean? They (the Bruuns, he supposed) evidently wanted to help him somehow, but he could not make any sense of that long and involved third sentence. He would play along with them anyway to see what happened.

He finished the bag, crumpled it, and threw it into the waste basket just as the nurse announced another visitor. This was a tall blond young man, of pure Nordic type, with several scars crisscrossing his face who began, "Godwin? I'm Werner von Wittelsbach. My boss, Thor Thomsen, sent me to ask if you were comfortable."

"I'm doing about as good as you can in jail."

"Mr. Thomsen will be glad to hear it. By the way, he thought you might like these."

And the young man thrust forward a third bag of white paper. As Godwin took it, von Wittelsbach said: "He suggests you go through the gumdrops before you start on the big piece."

Godwin, locking into the bag, saw that it did indeed contain a number of gumdrops and, at the bottom, something that looked like a small chocolate-bar wrapped in aluminum foil.

"Thanks," he said with notable lack of enthusiasm.

THE FACE of Werner von Wittelsbach, who was standing by Godwin's bed, now underwent a noticeable change. Up to now the young man had behaved with the correct and colorless affability of any well-brought-up man sent on such an errand. Now, however, there was a glitter of animosity in his eye and a hostile edge to his voice as he said, "So you are the so-called Saxon Pretender, eh?"

"The—? Oh, that. So they tell me, though I think it's a lot of fertilizer. And you're the—uh—Jacobite Pretender, huh?"

"I am the rightful King of Great Britain. We shall see, sir, whose claim prevails."

Thereupon von Wittelsbach brought his heels together with a click, bowed, and stalked out. Godwin had never seen anybody click heels outside of actors playing parts in movies about Old Vienna; he did not suppose that anybody actually did it in the twenty-second century. Yet there it was.

"Herregott" said Kaalund. "Are dey trying vith gumdrops to poison you? You better not eat dem all; dey make you sick."

Godwin glowered at his jailer and went grimly to work on the gumdrops, though by now the taste almost nauseated him. This time the one with the capsule was the third one he ate. The message ran, Claude Godwin! If you wish help in achieving your objective of escaping from Greenland, hide the chocolate bar in the parachon tomorrow morning and leave it there. That is all for the present.

Godwin sighed. Everybody seemed anxious to help him to escape except Kaalund and Gram, the ones who really mattered. And why should they want him to leave a chocolate bar in the time-viewing machine? Was Thor Thomsen trying to sneak a message to the Bruuns, too? Or was it a bomb to blow up the machine? That seemed unlikely; if Viggo Bruun were a man of any sense, he would have at least one complete set of plans of the parachon in a safe place. Fie might, even have filed applications for patents, in which case the machine's principles of operation would eventually become public knowledge. There was no such thing as a secret invention anymore; even if there were, .why should Thomsen wish to blow up such a marvelous machine?

Anyway, Thomsen had been the only one to sign off at the end of his message so that Godwin would not have to eat all the other gumdrops to make sure they had no capsules in them. Accordingly Godwin removed the chocolate bar from the bag and tendered the rest of the gumdrops to Kaalund, saying, "Like some?"

"Tank you."

"Keep the whole bag."

"Tanks; I told you you vould not feel good if you ate too many."

THE DETECTIVE went through the rest of the gumdrops like a devouring flame. In a few minutes they were all gone. An orderly came in and spoke. Kaalund said, "He vants to know vat you vish for lunch."

"Tell him thanks, but I don't want any lunch."

"I told you! But dat is no reason vy I am starving." He spoke at length in Danish to the orderly who went out and returned with a tray heaped with enough food for two ordinary men. Kaalund fell to with his free hand while Godwin, bored and restless, stared gloomily out the window.

"Sven," Godwin asked, "if the climatic engineers had such success in melting the ice-cap off Greenland, why don't they do the same with Antarctica? That's a lot bigger than Greenland."

"Sure," said Kaalund with his mouth full of Smoerrebrod, "but so much vater vould de level of the de oceans raise maybe ten, tvelve meters, and vat vould happen to all de seaports? De melting of the Greenland cap raised it about a meter and a half, and some cities like New Orleans raised a awful stink."

Kaalund finished and summoned the orderly to remove the tray.

"You know, Claude," he said, "I am not feeling so good neither. Maybe I should not be eating on top of dose candies ..."

The orderly removed the tray. Godwin, glancing at Kaalund, felt a shock of alarm. The man's ruddy round face had taken on a mottled hue, and sweat glistened on his forehead.

"I got a fordoemme belly-ache," muttered the sufferer. "I must telephone for my relief to come qvick so I can .... Ow!" The big man grunted and doubled over. "Hey, Claude, push de button! Somebody is poisoning me!"

With a bellow of pain the detective rolled out of his chair to the floor.