Chapter 29

“Nonsense!” Germaine said emphatically. Hers was the authoritative tone of a mother assuring her child that the lightning cannot possibly hit the house in a thunderstorm.

“I don’t see how you can call it nonsense,” I told her. “There he stood in my office, a little man with a big Adam’s apple, telling me that God was on my track. I’m used to being followed by the F.B.I., but now this!”

She stretched out in her chaise longue before the bedroom fire until I thought of the Apostle who stated that the Lord delighteth not in any man’s legs. Obviously, he had never seen my wife’s gams.

“He sounds like a religious maniac,” she observed.

“He admitted it, Jimmie. He was even proud of it. When he was standing there he seemed to make more sense than most things that happen in Wall Street. He could be right.”

Germaine giggled. “If God finds you, Winnie,” she said, “I hope He doesn’t arrive when--I mean, it might be rather embarrassing?”

“Again the one-track mind,” I remarked. “You don’t suppose that sex is any news to the Old Man, do you? He invented it, darling.”

“You know, Winnie,” she replied dreamily, “sometimes you are almost a poet. Just the same, if He came after me I’d like to have Him find me with a new hairdo.”

“So far as I am concerned,” I told her, “it’s just as well the Old Man didn’t catch up with me on some recent occasions. He might have received a false impression of my eligibility for the Club.”

“Pooh!” Germaine remarked with great decision. “He’d better not try any nonsense with you if I’m around. You’re my Winnie and you’re going to Heaven right along with me if I have to cheat the Customs.”

I yawned. “I hope Saint Peter will be suitably impressed and not like those tough guys at the Port of New York. What I’d really like to get at is all this business about Von Bieberstein. I’d never heard of him till last week and now it’s got me jittery. Who he is God only knows and He hasn’t tipped off the F.B.I.”

“I’m not very religious, darling,” my wife said, “but from what I remember from Sunday School, God wasn’t supposed to be a tattle-tale. He’ll take care of Von Bieberstein, if there is such a person.”

I laughed. “If there isn’t, the F.B.I.’s going to look awfully silly when they come to write the history books. J. Edgar Hoover would turn over in his job at the very thought.”

“You know,” she continued drowsily, “I think that Von Bieberstein is just a name they’ve given to all the things they can’t solve. Like luck. You know the way people say, ‘Bad Luck!’ Well, the F.B.I. says ‘Von Bieberstein’ every time a ship sinks or a factory makes the wrong kind of shell. You wait and see, Winnie, and you’ll find out I am right.”

“Speaking of luck,” I asked, “What’s the news from the kennels? Has Ponto met his fiancee yet or haven’t the banns been published?”

“Dalrymple seemed to think that it would be very easy to equip him with a suitable girl friend,” she said demurely. “It appears that there’s a war-time shortage of sires or something, so I gather that there’s no particular problem in Ponto’s love-life. Dalrymple said we could come and get him the end of the week--Friday or Saturday. Poor dear. I think we ought to put orange blossoms in his dog-biscuit when he gets home.”

I laughed. “That’s one load off my mind. I hope you’re right and that it will steady him down. They say that the responsibilities of marriage do wonders for a young dog. It makes him respect property, maintain the social order, and vote the straight Republican ticket.”

“Idiot!”

“Yes, I’m thinking of running Ponto in the next election. He’d make a mighty fine Governor and he’d be sure to leave his mark in the Senate. Who knows, we might even elect him President.”

Germaine stretched again, with considerable candor. “Darling,” she announced, “you’re dithering. Let’s go to bed.”

“Not until we get this religious argument straightened out,” I objected. “I think I owe it to Mr. Smith to make some kind of move. The politicians and the psychiatrists have failed me. There’s only religion left. And besides, I still have half of my drink to finish.”

I put another birch-log on the fire and watched as the flames brightened and cast a flickering glow on the canopy of my wife’s bed.

“My idea’s this,” I told her. “It’s very undignified to sit around waiting for the Old Man to look me up, if He’s really trying to find me, as Smith says. I think I’d better start a search party of my own. There are no doubt a lot of things He’ll want to ask me about, but there are some points on which, damn it! I’m entitled to an explanation.”

“You talk such rot, darling,” she murmured. “Wise gods never explain anything. It’s take it or leave it. You just wait. You’ll see.”

“I’d like to know who Von Bieberstein is, just to get ahead of A. J. Harcourt. If the Old Man won’t tell me that, at least I’m entitled to know who I am.”

“You’re my Winnie,” she repeated half-asleep. “I’ll see that you get past the immigration authorities. I’ll smuggle you in under my skirts, like Helen of Troy. St. Peter’s far too respectable a man to try to see what I’ve got there.”

“Now you’re maudlin,” I told her. “From what I know of Greek costumes, Helen of Troy couldn’t have smuggled a Chihuahua into Troy under what she wore. Anyhow, these saints have X-ray eyes that can spot a sin right through skirt, girdle and brassiere. Besides, I weigh too much. I’m much more like the unforgivable sin. Suppose I just pretend I lost my passport.”

“It will be all right, darling,” Germaine assured me. “And if they won’t let us into Heaven, God knows they’d be delighted to put us up in Hell. It would raise the value of real estate overnight. I can just hear the Devil arguing with prospective tenants. ‘We have such nice people in the next bed of coals. They’re from Westchester and the name’s Tompkins’.”