The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

Chapter Eleven

Kirby came up from far places, like blundering up cellar stairs in the dark toward the edge of light at the kitchen sill. He opened his eyes and the light was like a spray of acid. There was a slow regular pulsation over his ear, like a child trying to get a balloon started.

Somebody took hold of his chin and shook his head roughly, and he marveled that it did not come loose and fall off.

He squinted up into the oversized face of the big one, Rene.

“Look at some good knots, buddy,” Rene said jovially.

Kirby was sitting in an armchair. He looked down. There was a single strand of clothesline lashing both arms together, just above the elbows, pulling his elbows tightly together, making him hunch his back awkwardly. His hands, slightly numbed, were not restrained, but the arc of their movement was limited. A second strand lashed his knees together, just above the knees. Both lines were fastened with a single, competent square knot.

“Learn something every day, buddy. Never tie wrists. Never tie ankles. See them knots? You can’t get anywhere near either of them with your fingers or your teeth, and you got no way to wiggle out. You don’t know a thing about knots.”

“I guess you got loose,” Kirby said dispiritedly.

“And got Raoul loose. He was nearly loose anyway. So I got by the door and pow!”

“Yes indeed,” Kirby said. “Pow.” He looked around the empty room. “Where’s Miss Beaumont? And Miss Farnham?”

“Beaumont? That was the blonde, huh? She decided not to hang around.” Rene looked and sounded annoyed. He had a makeshift bandage on his wrist and long deep scratches on his throat. “When we tried to grab her, she went off like a bomb. Bit hell out of me. Scratched like a tiger. Kicked Raoul good, belted him one in the eye and went out the back, through the door you busted all to hell.”

Kirby struggled to force his mind into paths of logic. Rene sat on the couch. He seemed perfectly relaxed.

“Aren’t you afraid Miss Beaumont might summon the police?”

“Her? Nah. She won’t. She run right into the boss and a couple boys he picked up local. One good thump on top of the head settled her right down.”

Kirby moved his arms and was able to see his wrist watch. It was twenty minutes of five. “What’s going to happen now?”

Rene shrugged. “We just wait. The boss is figuring some kind of deal to get you and Wilma onto the Glorianna. Maybe they’ll take off with all the right clearances, then anchor off someplace, and we’ll get out to her in a small boat.”

“Oh.”

“It made the boss real happy to see you, Winter. I guess you’re the jackpot in this thing. The boss thinks everything is going to work out just fine from here in. It got pretty messed up for a while. Too much publicity. The boss hates publicity on a business deal. If, like they say, you got twenty-seven million hidden away someplace, I guess you’re worth a lot of effort.”

“Where would they take Miss Beaumont?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if too many people are still interested in the boat. They’d have to take her someplace else, and if the boss has gotten some more help lined up, maybe there’s another place lined up too. How about that twenty-seven million, Winter?”

“What about it?”

“That’s what the boss is after, hah?”

“I wouldn’t have any idea.”

“Anybody steals that much, they’re a pigeon for the first people that can get to him. Money like that isn’t any good unless you can keep it a secret.”

“I’m happy to have the benefit of your expert advice.”

Rene came slowly to his feet, walked over, leaned, reached and with calloused thumb and finger gave the end of Kirby’s nose a forceful quarter turn. It was contemptuous, degrading and astonishingly painful. The tears ran down Kirby’s cheeks.

“Talk nicer when you talk to me,” Rene said. “We got a long wait. You can make it easy and you can make it rough.”

Rene went back and sat down and began to pare his ridged nails with a pocket knife. After a few minutes had passed, Kirby said, “Excuse me, but did Joseph say when we might be taken away from here?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Locordolos.”

“I ain’t seen him. Just the boss was here. Mrs. O’Rourke.”

“Oh.”

Rene shook his head sadly. “And that Wilma got very snotty with the boss. That wasn’t so smart. The boss gave her a shot. A Syrette thing like out of an aid kit. Thirty seconds and she was snoring like a bugle.”

Raoul came wandering in from the direction of the kitchen. His left eye was puffed. He was spooning something into his mouth out of a can held in a big brown fist.

“What you got now?” Rene asked disgustedly.

“Beans.”

“More beans for God’s sake?”

“Good.”

Raoul sat in a chair and finished the beans. He set the can aside, wiped his mouth on his forearm, stared blandly at Kirby for a few moments, then turned to Rene and began to speak in a language Kirby was able to identify after a few moments as the vulgar French of North Africa, larded with Spanish, Italian and Arabic words. Though he could follow it very imperfectly, he suddenly realized Raoul was suggesting to Rene that he be permitted to go into the bedroom and cure his boredom by amusing himself with the scrawny little sleeping chicken. Raoul accompanied this request with winkings so convulsive they distorted half his face.

To Kirby’s horror, Rene did not react with appropriate violence. In fact, he seemed bored. He asked some casual question Kirby did not catch. Raoul said something about who was to find out, in any case. And what harm could it do? It would pass the time.

As it seemed that Rene would shrug and nod approval, there was a curiously muscular convulsion in Kirby’s mind, like a gagging in the throat. The fat watch — the golden edge — had pulled reality too thin, had made it too easy to think of the submissive world as a stage for low comedy, for tricky effects, for narrow triumphs of virtue over the brute. The watch had dislocated the world, had made temptingly feasible all the traditions of fantasy, but here would be no slender triumph of virtue. Here, for Wilma Farnham, all the games could end, and he would be powerless to stop these two. For Kirby Winter the world settled suddenly back into its ancient grind of blood and pain, of small lonely disasters in the hearts of men.

He caught the sense of Rene’s next remark, something about waiting, something about how, if they had to stay here the whole night, then, orders or no orders, they would share the chicken, wait until she wakened and could be suitably instructed in obedience, and then cut cards for her.

Raoul shrugged and yawned and said that inasmuch as he had already lost money at cards, maybe now they could play again and this time make the chicken part of the stakes. For later.

Kirby’s eyes had finally stopped watering. The end of his nose felt as big as a biscuit.

The two men moved over to the coffee table. As Rene shuffled the pack he stared at Kirby and said, “How’d you put us out and tie us up?”

“I had help,” Kirby said.

“That figures. Did you use some kind of a gas, maybe?”

“Something like that.”

“The boss wondered. She’ll want you to tell her all about it. Anything she can use, she wants to know about.”

“Deal,” said Raoul.

The cards made small flapping sounds in the humid silence of the room. From all evidences, Kirby felt that it was a reasonably good guess that the watch might still be in the right hand pocket of the borrowed slacks. He bent his cramped back further, shoved his lashed elbows down beside his right thigh and ran his left elbow along his thigh. He felt the round bulk of the watch and thought he heard a tink of the heavy chain against the case.

“Don’t get smart,” Rene said, suddenly alert.

“Just trying to work a cramp out of my shoulder,” Kirby said humbly.

Raoul spoke in the crude patois of the African port cities. Kirby missed much of it, but he caught the essence. Don’t exercise yourself about the clerk type, my friend. He is too weak and scared and helpless to make problems for us.

The helplessness, Kirby realized, was the greatest danger. The gold watch could as easily have been a mile away, for all the good it could do him. Helplessness froze the mind, preventing any kind of creative scheming. It made one believe that Charla would manage to arrange everything just as she wanted it, in spite of the police search, in spite of all the alarms and publicity and public fascination with an amount of money beyond any rational comprehension. And in spite of anything he might do, he would find himself on the Glorianna with the crew of five and the three shattered young women. Or perhaps, all impudence gone, Bonny Lee was at this moment falling all over herself in her eagerness to tell Charla about the mysterious powers of the inherited watch. Soon they would come for it, test it, and perhaps quietly and efficiently crack the skulls of everyone connected with the venture and drop them off at the edge of the Gulf Stream, with suitable wires and weights.

The awareness of defeat, the anticipation of defeat, was like a sickness. He had only pride to fight it. This is the time, he thought, when I must become whatever Uncle Omar thought I could become, hoped I could become — or give up completely.

He wondered if Bonny Lee’s little car was still out there. It would seem logical that they would leave it behind. It was rather conspicuous. For Charla, Bonny Lee would be a new factor in the equation. But he sensed that Charla adjusted with maximum speed and efficiency to all new factors. He was doubly grateful he had told Bonny Lee about the whole mess he was in. She would be in a better position to anticipate Charla’s moves. He hoped Bonny Lee had the good sense to play absolutely dumb. If there was the slightest hint she knew anything of value, Charla would not rest until she had found out what it was — as unpleasantly as possible.

If Bonny Lee’s little car was out there, one could assume the keys were in it, as Bonny Lee had known the probable necessity for leaving quickly.

Rene and Raoul were arguing over the play of one hand. Raoul seemed to feel he had been cheated.

“About that twenty-seven million,” Kirby said.

They both stared at him. “Yes?”

“It’s very boring and uncomfortable just sitting here. Maybe there’s some game three could play. For some of the money.”

“You’ve got no money,” Rene said. “We took it. We split it. Twelve hundred.” The rest of it, Kirby remembered, was tucked under Bonny Lee’s mattress.

“I could give you an I.O.U. against the other money.”

Rene looked contemptuous. “And the boss would pay us off on your I.O.U. Winter?”

“She wouldn’t. I would.”

“You won’t be doing anything.”

Here was the special moment of truth. Defeat was implicit in the length of clothesline around his arms, biting into his flesh. He smiled at the two men. “Don’t you wonder a little bit why I’m taking all this so calmly?”

Rene looked mildly uncertain. “You’re not like a lot of the jokers the boss has clobbered. I figured you’d try to make a deal with me. I wouldn’t buy, even if you did. But maybe I wonder why you don’t.”

“Deal,” said Raoul.

“Shut up. Winter, I don’t see how you got any edge at all. Three days aboard and you’d sign over your sister, if she asks you. She’ll pick you clean and then she’ll keep you for kicks or throw you away, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.”

“Deal,” Raoul said again.

“The best Mrs. O’Rourke can get from me is a partnership deal.”

“That’s going to surprise hell out of her.”

“I expect it to. I’ve got it all tucked away in photo and thumbprint accounts.”

Rene stared at him dubiously. “Thumbprint?”

“They’re number accounts, of course, but there’s no draw against them except on personal application. Six hundred different accounts in nine different countries, all set up the same way.”

Rene thought for a minute. “So if you dropped dead, what’s the deal to get it out then?”

“There isn’t any. Any time five years passes with no activity in any account, it’s automatically closed and the net is delivered to whoever I nominated, whichever person or organization in each case. So I’m no good dead to your boss, and there’s nothing she can force out of me that’ll give her access to what she wants.”

“But she doesn’t know this?”

“Not yet. And when she finds out, she’s going to have to treat us nicely, me and Miss Farnham and Miss Beaumont, and even Miss Alden.”

“What if they haven’t been treated so nice already?”

“Then I’ll reduce Mrs. O’Rourke’s participation, as a sort of penalty for greed and bad manners. You see, my friend, I’m going to end up in pretty good shape — assuming Mrs. O’Rourke is a logical woman.”

Rene stared at him with a corrugated brow. “So why hassle with her the way you been doing?”

“Why should I split with anybody? But now that she’s won this round, I might as well cut her in. There’s enough to go around, I’d say, wouldn’t you?”

Rene grinned like a yawning dog. “One half of one twenty-seventh would do me good for the rest of my life.”

“I wouldn’t gamble for that much. But whatever I did gamble for, I guess you can see I’d be in a position to pay off, if I should lose.”

“She say keep tied,” Raoul said. “Deal.”

“We can keep him tied, Raoul, and still bring him into the game.”

“Don’t like it,” Raoul said.

Rene switched to the rough argot, and reminded Raoul of what he had said about Kirby being no cause for worry, and reminded Raoul that they would be playing the stranger only for money, that they would keep a separate record of winnings and losses to determine who would have the little chicken first. Raoul shrugged his acceptance.

Rene came over and picked Kirby up, chair and all. It was a shocking demonstration of raw power. He set the chair in front of the coffee table. With a flick of the seaman’s knife he severed the line around Kirby’s arms. With more line he deftly lashed Kirby’s left arm to the arm of the chair, put a fairly snug loop around Kirby’s throat and tied that to the back of the chair. Though it was pleasant to be released from the previous cramped position, Kirby realized he had gained less than he thought. His right arm was free, but it would be awkward, obvious and too slow to stick his right hand in the trouser pocket and hope to manipulate the watch in time. And even if he did, he would be almost as helpless in the red world. He had learned enough of the behavior of inanimate objects to know that the rope would become like stiff cables.

“All you need is one hand loose,” Rene said. He put two hundred dollars in front of Kirby. “You owe me two hundred, pal.”

“Want it in writing?”

“I can make you remember it.”

“I’d rather put it in writing. Have you got a piece of paper? I think I’ve got a pen right here.” With difficulty he put his hand in the side pocket of his borrowed slacks.

“Hold it!” Rene yelled.

His fingers touched the watch stem and he pressed and turned. The world was a murky red. They were caught in the cessation of time, staring at him. He took the gold watch out. He placed it on the table and tried to undo the knots binding his left arm, but knew he could not budge them. It was a strange impasse. Even if he could get hold of a knife, he doubted that he could saw his way through the rope. Objects had an obdurate toughness in this subjective space where time stood still. The silver hand moved. The gold hands of the watch were motionless at quarter to six.

He knew he would have to set himself up for a better opportunity, but did not know how he could manage it. But the watch would have to be in a more convenient and accessible place, yet without any impression of any blur of movement which would make them suspicious. He suddenly had a reasonable idea, and tucked the watch under his thigh, chain out of sight, stem pointing out. He put his right hand back in his pocket and, through the fabric, reached the stem of the watch with his middle finger and pressed it.

“I thought I had a pen but I guess I don’t,” he said and slowly took his hand out of his pocket and showed them it was empty.

“We don’t need it in writing. Stay away from pockets,” Rene said.

“He got nothing on him,” Raoul said.

“Neither did that guy had a razor in his hat brim, and he cut you up pretty good,” Rene said.

“Shut up and deal.”

They agreed on five card stud. Kirby held his own. Raoul lost steadily. He was the eternal optimist, confident the last card would solve all his problems.

“Your friend is very lucky,” Kirby said to Raoul.

“Deal.”

Kirby licked his lips and said, “And he has very quick hands.”

Raoul tensed. He leaned toward Rene, and spoke the argot with a speed Kirby could not hope to follow. Kirby let his right hand fall casually near the watch. He could hope for some small change, some small opening, but did not know what it might be. At the end of his gunfire warning, Raoul slapped a knife down on the table beside him, not within Kirby’s reach. Kirby had not seen him take it out or open the blade.

As Rene began protestations of innocence, Kirby thumbed them to murky stillness. He remembered what he had learned from Bonny Lee regarding the behavior of objects in motion. He leaned forward as far as he could. The loop bit painfully into his throat. He could not reach the knife. He took a playing card by one corner and found that by extending it, he could touch the knife. He began to scratch at the knife with the edge of the card, bringing it a millimeter closer each time, pausing to lean back from time to time to take a breath. At last he could grasp it. He released the card and it remained in the air. He took the knife and worried it, point first, blade up, under the double strand that held his left arm to the arm of the chair. When it was in position, he pulled up on it as hard as he could. It made no impression on the strands of line. He brought the watch over and put it in the fingers of his left hand where he could manipulate it as quickly as possible. He pressed, and when the silver hand jumped back to twelve, he turned the stem back immediately. In the instant of reality he heard a loud fragment of one word from Rene and felt a tug at his left arm. Now the knife was two feet above the level of his head. The strands had been sliced and were slightly apart. He peeled them back and freed his left arm. He put the watch in his lap and worked the stiffness out of his left arm. He pushed the loop out and was able to slump in the chair and work it up over his head, not without some further attrition to his bruised nose. He reached up, recaptured the knife and used the same procedure on the line around his legs just above his knees. Before he thumbed the watch stem, he looked at Rene and Raoul. Their glance had swiveled toward him and the first faint indication of astonishment was beginning to change their brute faces.

He worked it more quickly than before, freezing the knife at eye level this time. He peeled the rope back and got up and paced around the room, feeling the familiar drag of the inertia of his clothing, slipping his shoes off after tiring of the effort of moving them about. There were two heavy masonry pots on either side of the fireplace. Whatever had been growing in them had died and withered to naked sticks. With great effort and by degrees he positioned the two pots in midair, and, after estimates of the forces involved, about seven inches above the heads of the two men.

It would not do, he realized, to give the impression of having suddenly disappeared, not in front of two witnesses. So he got back into the chair right in their line of vision, before thumbing the watch stem. His discarded shoes clumped to the floor. The card fluttered down. The knife chunked deeply into a cypress beam overhead. The pots fell, thudded against thick skulls, smashed on the floor. Rene slumped sideways on the couch. Raoul bent slowly forward and bounced his forehead off the coffee table.

As soon as he ascertained they were both breathing, Kirby, profiting by experience, tied them precisely as he had been tied, finding it easier to operate in the brightness of real time, where materials were not as stubborn. Realizing they might untie each other, he added the refinement of the rope loop about the throat, fastening Raoul to an iron eye in the front of the fireplace, and Rene to a sturdy catch at the base of a window across the room.

Wilma was still in the oversized robe, face down across the bed, her head hanging over the edge. She snored rhythmically, insistently, beautifully. After ten minutes of proddings, slappings, pinchings, and an attempt to walk her, he knew that all he could hope to achieve was a temporary interruption of the snoring sound. She was a limp, warm, loose-jointed doll, and the most infuriating thing about the whole procedure was that she seemed to be smiling.

But, with or without her co-operation, he knew he had to get her out of the house. He had already given up more hostages than he could afford. He felt less regard for Wilma, but more responsibility. He pulled the robe off her and tried not to stare at her more than was necessary as he dressed her. Compared with Bonny Lee, as well as the girl on the beach, Wilma seemed to wear extraordinarily practical underthings, opaque and designed for long wear. She kept slipping away, toppling over and picking up the rhythm of the snoring again.

After a few attempts to brush her wild brown hair, he looked in bureau drawers until he found a bright scarf. He put it around her head and knotted it under her chin. He noticed that someone had stepped on her glasses, bending the frames and powdering both lenses. This place was not safe, but he could not think of a place which might be. In any case, he would need money.

Rene stirred as Kirby was recovering the money from his pockets. He opened blurred eyes, shook his head, winced.

“How the hell’d you do that?” he asked weakly.

“I had help.”

Rene closed his eyes. “You seem to get it when you need it.”

Kirby found the rest of the money and the keys to the rental car in Raoul’s pockets. Raoul kept sleeping. Kirby found his pulse. It felt solid and steady. He thumbed Raoul’s eyes open. They were crossed. He wondered if that had any special clinical significance.

He went in and picked up Wilma and hung her over his left shoulder, his arm around her legs. As he walked back into the living room, he thought he heard a sound outside. He darted his hand into his pocket and made the world red, made it safe for a quick reconnaissance. He eased out from under Wilma’s folded figure and made a quick tour of the area and found nothing amiss. The Sunbeam was in the drive. The keys were in it. He was hidden from the world by all the Wellerlys’ tropical shrubbery. Just as he was about to bring reality back so he could move the car out of the way, he remembered Wilma. He hurried back in. It would have made a strange and awkward fall for a sleeping girl. He fitted his shoulder into her middle and once again brought the un-tinged world back.

“Mrs. O’Rourke isn’t going to like this at all,” Rene said.

“My friends sneaked up on you. What could you do?”

“She’ll think of something we could have done.”

He took Wilma out and put her on the floor in the back of the rental sedan. He backed the Sunbeam around the sedan, out of the way. He got into the rental car, put on the sunglasses and the baseball hat and drove out. He drove swiftly east to Route 1, a half-mile away, and parked at the first convenient motel.

There was an old man at the desk. He had a ground floor vacancy.

“You and the missus, aye?” He peered beyond Kirby. “Whare is she?”

“Taking a nap in the back. She’s very tired.”

Kirby signed the register and paid cash for the night. He drove to the unit, parked close, unlocked the door and went back and lifted Wilma out. When he got her into his arms and turned, the old man was standing there. “She sure God is tired, mister. Wouldn’t be sick, would she?”

“She’s just a heavy sleeper.”

“I don’t want nothing funny going on. I run a nice place here. Where at’s your luggage, mister?”

“In the back end.”

“Now I just want to see you got some luggage.”

“Let me take her in first.”

“Better set her down, because you got no luggage, you’re not bringing her into my place.”

Kirby propped Wilma on the seat. He had to admit that the look of her didn’t inspire confidence. She looked drugged. And was.

He went to the trunk and unlocked it and, as with his left hand he began to raise it, he twisted himself out of normal time. Forty feet away a man was unloading his car. He had put a row of suitcases on the paved parking surface in preparation for carrying them inside. Kirby went over and took two of the smaller items. He pushed them back to the sedan, shoved them into the trunk. He took the same position as before, lifted the trunk lid the rest of the way.

“I like for everybody to have luggage,” the old man said in apology.

“Sure,” Kirby said. He went to pick the girl up again. This time she slipped her arms around his neck.

“Soooo sleepy,” she mumbled. “Sooo terr’ble sleepy.”

The old man carried the bags in. Kirby plumped Wilma onto the nearest bed. She began to snore immediately.

“Sure a sleeper,” the old man said.

After he was gone, Kirby held the door open and turned the world red and silent and took the small suitcases back. The man stood in an attitude of perplexity, finger pointing, obviously counting the items of luggage. Kirby pressed them against the ground behind him and went back into the room. When he thumbed the stem of the watch, the door swung shut. He took off Wilma’s shoes. He wrote a short note to her. “You are safe here. I’ll come back when I can. Don’t leave the room and don’t phone anyone under any circumstances. Put the chain on the door. I’ll knock five — pause — three, rapidly.”

He brought the room key with him, and made certain the door was locked. He drove to a public phone booth in a shopping center parking lot, phoned the police number in the front of the book and reported that it sounded as if somebody was trying to break into 210 Sunset Way, at the rear, and the Wellerlys’ were out of the country. When the first question was asked, he hung up.

He drove south toward Miami. It was quarter of seven. He had the feeling he was wasting too much time. And he felt guilty about the time he spent in the real world. When the world was red, time was stopped, and then, if bad things were happening to Bonny Lee, they stopped too. He could keep time at a standstill by walking the entire way, but he had to measure his own energies on the scale also. The sun was almost down. He could not afford to let the day end, because he could not be certain he would be able to see well enough in the combination of darkness and faint red light.

In his haste, he made a miscalculation. The woman ahead of him spurted ahead as though to make a red light before it changed, then changed her mind and jammed her brakes on. He piled the rental into the back of her plum-gray Continental, in a scream of rubber and expensive metallic clangor. As he sat dazed, she came yawping out of her car, her face red and ugly with anger. His door had sprung open. Off to the right he saw a cop striding toward the scene.

He grabbed the watch and stopped all the noise and motion. It took an effort of will to remember that, when the world was red, there was no need for haste. The rear end collision had happened in the center lane of three lanes of southbound traffic. Other cars had stopped all around them. He got out and checked the other cars. The first car in the left lane was a convertible. A conveniently small man sat behind the wheel. He had his fingertips on the wheel, and he was staring over at the accident, at the tall woman, stopped in the middle of a yelp. Kirby climbed in and levered the small man up and out from under the wheel. He shoved him out beyond the car, climbed down, took his ankles and towed him back to the rental and, with the increasing ease of experience in such matters, worked him into proper position, his fingertips on the steering wheel, his head still looking back over his right shoulder. He knew that maximum confusion would serve his purposes. He put his baseball cap on the small man, and wedged the man’s tweed hat on his own head. As a final touch, he removed the policeman’s service revolver, worked it snugly into the hand of the irate woman, pointed it up into the air, and gave a final solid pressure to the trigger finger. He clambered into the convertible, slid under the wheel, and turned the city back on, looking toward the little group as he did so. The woman fired into the air, hauled her hand down and stared at it. The cop started at the sound of the shot and began pawing his empty holster. The little man snapped his head around, stared with utter disbelief at the crumpled car, the cop, the woman with the gun, leaped out and began to run. The light changed and Kirby drove on, reasonably confident it was a matter that would never be completely straightened out.

As soon as he realized he was within reasonable walking distance of the Marina, he pulled over to the curb and stopped and then stopped the final slant of sunlight. He shoved his shoes inside his shirt, took the dark glasses off, and headed toward the Marina. Walking among the pink silent people was like walking through a stone orchard. Sometimes, in his haste, he brushed against them. They were rigid, unreal. A man stood lighting a pipe. The flame looked fashioned of pinkish brass. A woman huffed cigarette smoke from her mouth and it was unmoving in the air, like some strange semi-transparent plastic plume.

He went through the Marina gates and out onto the large central dock. The bay ripples were stilled, molten lead that had set and been oiled and polished and was touched with the red reflections of sunset.

The Glorianna was there, at the end of the T, not quite as large as he had expected her to be. Eighty feet, perhaps. A bald, mustachioed man stood forward, looking toward the city, stopped in the act of coiling a heavy line. The Glorianna had so much cabin space in ratio to deck space, she looked slightly ungainly, but she seemed to have enough beam and freeboard to be a good sea boat. He went up the gangway and onto the deck. She was pale and trim, spotless, luxurious, comfortable. He could find no one else topsides. All hatches were closed, so he assumed she was air-conditioned. He tried to get in, but in the red world he was insubstantial in relation to the objects in stasis. He was like a mouse trying to open a refrigerator.

When he had determined which was the most plausible entrance to the stateroom, he spent just long enough out of the red world to work the latch and pull the door halfway open.

He went in, leaving it open behind him. He went down the several steps of the short ladderway to the narrow passageway between the port and starboard staterooms. The master stateroom seemed to be forward, dead ahead. The door was ajar. By putting his shoulder against it he was able to slowly force it far enough open to be able to sidle in. Charla stood in the burgundy murk, in quarter profile, a glass in her left hand, gesticulating at Joseph with her right. She wore a short loose robe and her hair hung glossy to her shoulders. Joseph leaned against the paneled wall near the bed, his arms folded, his expression skeptical. He wore a dark business suit, white shirt, figured tie.

Kirby walked over and stared at Charla from close range. It startled him that he could have forgotten how perfect in texture, how remarkable and how sensuous her face was. It shook him slightly. He had thought he had gained enough sweet insulation from Bonny Lee to be immune to this older woman. But being this close to her made his knees feel loose and uncertain. He felt compelled to proclaim his newfound freedom from the obsession she had so quickly established, and so he leered at her and said, “Hi, sweetheart,” and reached a hand toward her and fondled her. It was an unsuccessful performance. The leer didn’t fit his mouth. The words were dead, as though he had spoken them directly into a wad of insulation. And the remarkable breasts felt like plastic bowls behind chain mesh.

He was about to turn and go in search of Bonny Lee and Betsy when he realized that something might be gained by listening to them. If they were here alone, it was unlikely either of the girls were being harmed. He searched the luxurious cabin for a suitable hiding place. On a less roomy craft, the area under the bed would have been used for stowage. But it was empty under there, and there was room enough. With the watch in hand, he could halt the scene if suddenly there was any hint of danger. He wiggled into the constricted area and, once he was concealed, bent the edge of the hanging spread back the way it had been.

The instant he depressed the stem of the watch he heard a great staccato torrent of a language he could not understand. The sound stopped abruptly. She said something in the rising inflection of a question, and walked over and slammed the door. She said something in the firm voice of command.

He answered casually, indifferently.

“If I say we speak English, Joseph, we shall speak English. Why did the door swing open? Rene is the only one with fluent English and he’s ashore. I didn’t get where I am by trusting anyone.”

“Even yourself,” Joseph said.

“We can’t be too careful in this matter. Please don’t make bad jokes. We tried the utmost care with Krepps, and failed miserably, several times. I must have whatever it is which gave him such strength, Joseph.”

The bed creaked as Joseph sat on it. With his cheek against the rug, Kirby could look out and see Charla’s bare feet. They moved over to stand in front of Joseph, as Joseph said in an ironic tone, “What do you expect? A device to read minds? A cloak of invisibility?”

“He read our minds, Joseph. He guessed our plans. He was a devil! Winter has whatever it is. But he is less of a man than the old one was. Now we can get it before he learns to use it well.”

“Whatever it is. And if he knows what it is.”

“I’m convinced he does. I told you the things he said.”

“He could have been bluffing.”

“But it will be nice to be certain, one way or the other.”

Joseph sighed audibly. “It is still a most delicate matter. I would feel much better if that damned girl hadn’t been so quick and so clever. What if she informs the police? That will complicate matters.”

Charla laughed and sat beside Joseph. Kirby could have reached and touched her bare heel. “That one is not interested in the police. The way it was done, I was reminded of myself, long ago. Naturally those idiots you hired were not expert, but even if they had been competent she might still have—”

“Just how did she manage it?”

“One of them had a place he thought would be safe, to keep her there until we could bring her here, or at least prepare her to be brought here so she would be quiet and humble and answer properly if she were asked questions. He told me about the place. It seemed adequate. I should have been warned by the way she eluded Rene and Raoul, but I was concerned for her. She seemed totally unconscious. When I held a cigarette near her hand, there was no movement. I was planning how best to handle it if she were seriously hurt. The apartment we would use was over on the beach. It is on a canal. We could park behind it, out of sight, so no questions would be asked. I had them use care lifting her out of the car. Suddenly there was a veritable explosion, and I sat down rather painfully, and one of your idiots was rolling around groaning and hugging himself and the other was blinded by blood from his clawed forehead running into his eyes. The girl was running. She ran forty feet and dived over a low wall into the canal. By the time I reached the wall she was almost around a bend, swimming very strongly, leaving me with her cheap purse and a bruised seat. No, Joseph, that one will not go to the police. She knows who Winter is. She has the smell of money in her nostrils now, and when she has composed herself, she will think of some way to make the money come true. The police won’t assist her in that. I do not know if Winter has known her long, but I would say she has possibilities, that one, hah? We could find her useful, I think. More than poor Betsy ever was. With Winter as a lure, possibly we can trap her. I found her address in the purse, so I sent your idiots to watch it and intercept her should she return to her place.”

“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.”

“Nobility confuses me,” Charla said. “Isn’t it the traditional disease of adolescence? Aren’t you rather old for it, Kirby?”

“I’m having a delayed adolescence, Mrs. O’Rourke. But you can check it out, if you don’t believe me. Cut the hole in the door. The minute the chunk falls out, I start battering this gizmo to bits.”

There was no answer, no faint hiss that preceded each speech.

“You’ve got her worried,” Betsy whispered.

“She should be worried,” Kirby said in a normal tone. “I mean every damn word of it. I can’t get out of here. Okay. So nobody gets to use it.”

Charla spoke again. “It would make me terribly angry, Kirby,” she said with a tone of gentle regret. “I think both of you would have to die in the most unimaginable agony. You see, Betsy would have to share your heroics. And Miss Farnham. And Miss Beaumont. It’s quite a heavy responsibility upon you, dear Kirby. I know it will trouble you.”

When the hiss stopped Betsy asked in a thin and shaking voice, “What if he gives it to you, Charla?”

“Freedom, my dear. And a generous gift of money. I shan’t be small about it.”

He whispered to Betsy. “She won’t want anybody around to tell what she has.” Betsy sat quite still, then gave a nod of dreadful comprehension.

Charla laughed softly. “Or, if that seems to be too good to be true, I can at least promise something so quick and so painless you’ll never know what happened. We have a lot of time for you to think it over, dears. No one will come aboard until we ask for clearance. So do talk it over for a bit.”

“Charla?” Betsy called. “Charla!”

The speaker remained silent.