“I see.”
“I told Eddie that I would not become his bride unless he shut off, once and for all, any connection with that awful man.”
“And he, of course, did?”
“Not at first,” she said, and blew her nose again. “At first, he told me to go to hell—he was still very much under his influence, you see. I was wise enough to see that, of course, and withdrew my objections until after we were married.”
“I see.”
“And do you know how that Irishman responded to my big-heartedness?”
“I have no idea.”
“He and the sergeant from the jungle showed up at the wedding,” she said. “Between them, they made indecent proposals to five of my bridesmaids.”
“Shocking!” the commissioner said. “It was then that you were finally able to sever the relationship?”
“No, I am ashamed to say,” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said. “I was blind with love at the time and let it pass. Besides, there were other considerations.”
“Oh?”
“There’s no accounting for tastes, you know,” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley replied. “Cynthia Forbes Robinson, one of my bridesmaids, eloped the day after my wedding.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“She eloped with the sergeant,” she said. “At the time I thought she was mad. It was only years later that I found out he owned a 200,000-acre ranch and 375 oil wells in Texas. Under the circumstances, I thought it best to let things ride awhile.”
“That’s understandable.”
“It was only when that awful man . . . I’m a lady and refuse to repeat what he said about me at Cornelius Dear’s second birthday party—suffice it to say that Eddie was brought to his senses, and that man was thereafter banished from our lives.”
“Forgive me, Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley, but I’m a police officer, and we deal with facts. What has all this to do with what you say is the kidnapping of your son and husband?”
“Grogarty did it!” she said. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face, which is to say, very obvious, indeed.”
“How is that?”
“Cornelius Dear has just returned home from college,” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said. “Tomorrow night, I was going to re-present him to society at my home. I invited all the eligible young women of San Francisco—and their parents, of course.”
“I still don’t follow you.”
“Grogarty, who has smarted all these years under his rejection by his betters, is going to ruin not only my party, but also Cornelius Dear’s and my poor Eddie’s reputations forever!”
“How’s he going to do that?”
“He’s going to deliver my poor little Eddie and Cornelius Dear to the party dead drunk!”
“Fiendish idea,” the commissioner said. “But how do you know this?”
“He said so,” she said. “Just two hours ago.”
“He told you this?” the commissioner said. “I thought you didn’t speak to him.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I had J. Merton Gabriel call for me.”
“I had spoken to Dr. Grogarty previously on this matter,” the lawyer interjected.
“Why did Mr. Gabriel call him in the first place?” the commissioner asked Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley.
“Because my poor little Eddie and Cornelius Dear were seen leaving the opera with him, that’s why!” she said. "Madame Butterfly had barely begun when Cornelius Dear was summoned from his seat in the belief that his medical skills were required. My poor Eddie was immediately suspicious, of course, and went after him. That’s the last time I saw either of them.”
“When they didn’t return by the time Madame Butterfly was over,” J. Merton Gabriel said, “Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley contacted me.”
“Why didn’t she contact the police?”
“I told you, we don’t want this in the papers,” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley snapped.
“And all I could find out was that both had been seen leaving the building. Colonel Whiley was being supported by Dr. Grogarty, and at first, Dr. Grogarty would tell me nothing,” J. Merton Gabriel said. “But two hours ago I telephoned Dr. Grogarty and ordered him to produce, instantly and forthwith, both of them.”
“And what did Dr. Grogarty say?”
“ ‘Tell Caroline not to worry’ is what he said,” Mr. Gabriel replied. “ ‘With a little bit of luck, I’ll have both of them back, dead drunk, in time for her party.’ “
“That’s all?”
“ ‘And tell her that I might just be with them, and just as drunk,’ is what else he said,” Gabriel concluded.
“So now you know why we’re here,” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said. “We want you to get them back for me as soon as possible ... and as quietly as possible.”
“Unfortunately, Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley,” the commissioner began, “and as I’m sure Mr. Gabriel will tell you, both your husband and your son are over twenty-one. If they choose to get drunk with Dr. Grogarty, there’s nothing, as much as I would like to help you, that the San Francisco Police Department can do about it.”
Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley drew herself up to her full height.
“Commissioner,” she said, pronouncing each syllable carefully, “I am prepared to pay any price, make any sacrifice, to have my husband and son restored—sober, of course—to me without any vulgar mention of their absence and return in the press.”
“Precisely what are you saying, Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley?”
“I happen to know, Commissioner,” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said, “that your mother, that sainted woman, as well as many other people of refinement, are distressed at your own choice of a wife.”
“Loving Seagull is a little hard to understand until you get to know her,” the commissioner admitted. “But how can you help me out with my mother?”
“You get my son and husband back to me, Commissioner, in the condition I described, and I personally will put your weird wife up for membership in the Opera Guild,” she said. “That will certainly shut up even your sainted mother.”
“Go home, Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley,” the commissioner said, “and put this small little problem from your mind. Boulder J. Ohio himself will take personal charge.”
He flipped the switch on his intercom.
“Get me Dr. Aloysius J. Grogarty on the line—immediately!” he snapped. Then he ushered Mrs. C. Edward Sattyn-Whiley and Mr. J. Merton Gabriel from his office.
As she left, Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley turned and smiled and offered a final word. “And if you don’t, Commissioner, I wouldn’t run for office—even for dog-catcher—again, if I were you.”
It took fifteen minutes to get Dr. Aloysius J. Grogarty on the telephone.
“Sorry it took so long to get back to you, Ohio,” Dr. Grogarty said, “but I was busy looking out the window at the birds. What’s on your mind?”
“I have a certain emergency matter of a delicate nature, Doctor,” the commissioner began.
“Not another dose of cl—”
“Nothing like that, sir. This is a genuine emergency.”
“Commissioner, I have nothing but the most profound respect for the San Francisco Police Department, those underpaid and overworked stalwart defenders of law and order, and I always place myself completely at their service whenever asked. You, Boulder J. Ohio, however, are nothing but one more lousy politician with his hand out, so get to the point —I’m a busy man.”
As delicately as he could, Commissioner Ohio explained why it was important that Colonel Whiley and Dr. Sattyn-Whiley be instantly sobered up and quietly and immediately returned to the Sattyn-Whiley mansion.
“Mind your own business, Ohio,” Dr. Grogarty said, and hung up.
The commissioner, of course, tried to call him back, to let him know that you just didn’t hang up on the police commissioner. The Grogarty Clinic informed him that Dr. Grogarty had just left for Antarctica.
Commissioner Ohio then called in his senior staff, all career policemen, and told them they had a little, ha-ha, problem. Colonel C. Edward Wiley a
nd Dr. Cornelius Sattyn-Whiley, celebrating the latter’s return, had taken one or two too many.
“Put out an all-points bulletin,” he ordered. “Find them! I don’t care how you do it, but when you find them, take them to the Sattyn-Whiley mansion. In strait jackets if necessary.” He had another thought. “And take whoever is with them with you.”
He had a delightful mental picture of Dr. Aloysius J. Grogarty—he who had dared to hang up on him, the source of all the trouble—being delivered to the Sattyn-Whiley mansion in a strait jacket.
Chapter Ten
At just about this time in San Carlos, the sunbaked capital of San Sebastian, after months of careful planning, S-Second of M-Minute of H-Hour of D-Day arrived for the leaders of the legitimate government of San Sebastian, who had been thrown out of office when the government had, six months before, been overturned by the People’s Democratic Fascist Republic.
With two-thirds of the nation’s armored forces behind him, and three-quarters of the nation’s air force in the skies overhead,* Colonel Jose Malinguez, leader of the junta, advanced on the Maximum Leader’s (formerly President’s) Palace, on horseback, and called for the unconditional surrender of the incumbents.
(* The armored forces and the air force of San Sebastian consisted, respectively, of three M4A3 tanks (acquired from the United States Army as surplus in 1940) and four DeHavilland “Beaver” aircraft on floats. The single-engine, six-passenger silver birds, which had a top speed of just over 100 miles an hour, had also been acquired from the U.S. Army. They had been used by a mapping and topographic team of the Corps of Engineers, and had been abandoned in San Sebastian when the pilots, feeling then unsafe, had refused to even try to fly them any more, much less try to fly them all the way back to the States. There were also, of course, the San Sebastian Artillery (two French 75-mm cannons, which could be taken apart so they might be carried on mule-back) and the San Sebastian Infantry (150 men strong) armed with Swiss rifles acquired in 1890 when the Swiss converted to weapons utilizing smokeless powder.)
At first there was resistance—or, at least, no acknowledgement of his presence at all—but when Colonel Malinguez fired a round from his lead tank’s cannon at the door of the palace (no damage occurred; the armored force had at its disposal only blank ammunition), the men who six months before had seized power came out with their hands raised high in surrender.
While members of the junta loaded their prisoners into trucks commandeered from the San Sebastian-American Jolly Jumbo Banana Company* for transport to the airport and exile from the country, Colonel Malinguez made his way to the basement of the President’s Palace in search of the former President of the Republic, Senor El Presidente General Francisco Hermanez—who, it had been learned, had been held in durance vile since the revolution.
Senor El Presidente was located by following a dense blue cloud of cigar smoke to its source, a small cubicle in the far end of the basement.
(* Except for semiannual sales of bat guano for approximately $26,500, the banana trade, which had the year before grossed $117,500, was San Sebastian's sole source of foreign exchange.)
“In here, my Colonel!” the officer with Colonel Malinguez said, as he raised the butt of his rifle and smashed at the door knob. The rifle stock snapped. As Colonel Malinguez and the officer stared at it with mute resignation, the door opened, and a rather portly gentleman, wearing riding breeches held up with suspenders and a sleeveless undershirt, peered out.
“It wasn’t locked,” he said.
“Senor El Presidente!” Colonel Malinguez cried. “The revolution has succeeded! You are free again!”
“Well, thanks for nothing, Jose,” the chap in the sleeveless T-shirt and riding breeches said.
“You don’t understand, El Presidente,” the colonel went on.
“I understand perfectly,” El Presidente replied. “But I’ve had a lot of time to think since I’ve been here in the basement. And I made up my mind, Jose, that I’m through begging. If we can’t make it with the bananas, then to hell with it. Let the People’s Democratic Fascist Republic worry about it. Where is he, anyway?”
“Where is who, El Presidente?”
“Gus.”
“Gus who?”
“Gus El Maximum Leader, that’s who,” El Presidente snapped.
“He has been exported to Costa Rica, El Presidente,” the colonel said.
“How, on a bicycle?”
“By aircraft of the San Sebastian Air Force, El Presidente.”
“And who’s going to pay for the gas?”
“El Chancellor of the Exchequer, of course, El Presidente, who else?”
“And what’s he going to use for money?”
“Swiss francs, El Presidente,” the colonel replied.
“The only Swiss francs in the country, the last time I looked, were in the National Museum.”
“We are about to solve our money problems, El Presidente,” the colonel said. “Under your leadership, of course.”
El Presidente looked at him with patient derision in his eyes. “You always were a little weird, Jose,” he said. “I always said that. This country was bankrupt when my grandfather, may he rest in peace, took over. And things, money-wise, have gotten steadily worse since.”
“There has been a new development, El Presidente,” the colonel said. “One of which you, since you have been in durance vile for these past six months, could not possibly have heard about.”
“The whole country has been repossessed?” El Presidente said. “I’ve been hoping for that. Then we’re on welfare? Who repossessed us? What did they do, draw straws to see who got stuck with us?”
“If you will come with me, El Presidente?” the colonel said, making a gesture and a little bow toward the door.
“Where?” El Presidente asked suspiciously.
“To the San Sebastian Hilton,” the colonel said. “Formerly the Democratic Fascist House of the People. And before that, of course, the San Sebastian Hilton.”
“What are we going there for?” El Presidente asked. But even as he spoke, he slipped into his riding boots and pulled his tunic on.
Fifteen minutes later, after passing through downtown San Carlos through hordes of recently liberated San Sebastianites, who shouted and screamed and threw over-ripe bananas at the Presidential Jeep, the colonel and El Presidente arrived at the San Sebastian Hilton.
Colonel Malinguez led El Presidente into the cocktail lounge, where six gloriously uniformed men were gathered around an electronic Ping-Pong game.
“Colonel,” Colonel Malinguez said to the next-to-largest of these men, whose uniform seemed to be an unholy marriage of that worn by the British Navy at the Battle of Trafalgar and that worn by doormen of better-class New York City high-rise condominiums, “I have the honor to present General Francisco Hermanez, recently liberated El Presidente of San Sebastian.”
“Welcome back from the slammer, General,” the man said. Instead of offering his hand, he offered a half-gallon bottle of Old White Stagg Blended Kentucky Bourbon. “Have a little snort,” he said.
“Who is this man?” El Presidente inquired, somewhat haughtily, but taking the bottle nevertheless.
“Senor El Presidente, I have the honor to present Colonel Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux, Louisiana National Guard.”
“So, the Americans repossessed us,” El Presidente said. “I could ask for nothing more. How soon, Colonel, can we expect to start receiving foreign aid?”
“Colonel de la Chevaux—” Colonel Malinguez began.
“You can call me ‘Horsey,’ El Presidente,” the man interrupted.
“—has a little business proposition for us,” Colonel Malinguez finished.
“What kind of a business proposition?”
“The colonel is in the oil business, El Presidente,” Colonel Malinguez said. He was facing away from Colonel de la Chevaux, so that Colonel de la Chevaux could not see him wink. “He believes that beneath the fertile ground of our beloved country
are untold oil reserves.”
El Presidente looked at Colonel Malinguez with new-found admiration. Perhaps he wasn’t as stupid as he appeared. There was no oil whatever in San Sebastian. The entire country had been diligently searched half a dozen times, and there hadn’t been enough oil to grease a Timex watch. And yet here was a Yankee, just about begging to be fleeced.
“And what is the nature of your proposition, Colonel?” El Presidente inquired, helping himself to another belt of the Old White Stagg.
“The standard proposition,” Horsey de la Chevaux replied. “We’ll give you a little earnest money. Then, completely at our expense, we’ll look for oil. If we find oil, we’ll take ten percent for our share. We’ll pay all marketing expenses, of course.”
“I see. You mentioned earnest money. What sort of figure did you have in mind? Just a rough figure, of course. In a business proposition of such magnitude, we could not come to a hasty conclusion, but we’ll listen to your proposition.”
“Well, I thought a couple of million for openers,” Colonel de la Chevaux replied.
“You just made yourself a deal, Colonel,” El Presidente said very quickly.
“Just to see where we stand,” Horsey went on, “two million for the right to drill six holes on 160 acres I happened to smell... I mean see.”
“At the current rate of exchange, Colonel,” El Presidente said, “two million bananarios* would come to something around $2,500.”
(* The San Sebastian currency system is based on the bananario. There are 100 pennarinos to one bananario. The currency has been not listed on any foreign-exchange market since 1937, when it became apparent that no one was willing to exchange hard cash of any variety for bananarios, no matter how favorable the rate.)
“I was talking about dollars, El Presidente,” Horsey de la Chevaux said. “I’ll give you two million dollars for drilling rights on the 160 acres I have in mind. You would give an option to drill more, once we get our feet wet.”
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