Chapter 35

My opportunity to settle the account did not present itself for more than twenty-four hours. Early the following morning, Myrtle was kicked out and crept upstairs. Winnie slammed the door and snored like a hog until ten o’clock--at which time he stamped downstairs and roared for breakfast.

After he had eaten, he went to his room again, shutting me outside, and dressed himself carefully in the manly tweeds he had been wearing on that first day in the Pond Club. He drove to the station--I assumed--leaving me behind at Pook’s Hill with two unhappy women. He did not return that evening at all and it wasn’t until late the following morning--that would be Saturday I figured, although I was already losing my human preoccupation with time--that I recognized the crunch of the Packard’s tires on the graveled drive. I was standing just inside the door as I heard his key fumbling in the lock.

It was Winnie and he was drunk.

“Oh, hullo, Ponto,” he remarked thickly. “So you’re the welcoming committee. Come on up with me, boy, and hear the dirt.”

I followed his uncertain steps upstairs and into the bedroom. It would not be long now.

“Ponto!” he announced. “Good old Ponto, Ponto! I’m going to tell you a great secret. You won’t tell anybody about it, will you? You can’t.”

I lay on the rug and panted at him.

“Yes, Ponto, if you’re going to play ball with me you got to be one tough dog. Took a run into New York today and is that one mad-house? Saw Virginia. You know, red-head. She knows her stuff. Had me right back on my five-yard line before I rallied and scored that touchdown. It was terrific. Called my office. We’re rich, boy, rich as hell.”

“Thissa tough game, dog. That Briggs gal says the F.B.I.’s still worrying about me. Is that a laugh, hey, Ponto? Is that a laugh! She says they wanna know do I remember the week before Easter. Hell! could I forget it? Maybe it’s lucky for me I drew that blank. Might of had tough job ducking the G-men.

“Aw, they’re nuts! I agree, Ponto, I must respectfully agree with you. Didja hear me contradict anybody? It’s a lead-pipe cinch, fooling those babies. Where was I the week before Easter? And sure I was tucked away in a Catholic Retreat at the Seminary of the Sacred Heart, doing the Stations of the Cross in St. Michael’s Church. Great institution--the Stations of the Cross. Wonderful institution. You can meet anyone and no questions asked. I gave the instructions that sent the Alaska to the bottom of the North Pacific and slipped the black spot to that sap Jacklin between the Scourging and the Crown of Thorns. Lucky thing I knew all about him. Helped. It was easy, Ponto, easy. Who’s to question a man doing Stations of the Cross if somebody else does ‘em at the same time?”

He paused and poured a brandy.

“Tha’ red-head’s a wonder, Ponto,” he told me. “She deals ‘em straight and plays ‘em close to her chest. For three weeks she followed my lead without a peep. I was out like a light. Can’t remember a thing but she never let on. I always said the way to act innocent was to be innocent. Not that she knows what it is all about. She thinks I’m playing the Black Market. She’s a racketeer at heart, she is, the tramp. That North Pacific job was no cinch, Ponto. All I had to do was to kidnap that guy Chalmis and substitute a ringer. Old Chalmis? We dropped him in the High Rockies on the flight to Seattle. The Navy was a bunch of saps, letting my men take that plane. Sure, we dropped the Navy boys too, along with Chalmis.”

I sat, ears pricked up, watching him. I could see the throb of the artery in his throat that marked the place for my teeth to meet.

“Virginia told me the G-men are looking for Von Bieberstein,” Tompkins said. “Hell, Ponto, even she doesn’t know what happened back in ‘35. Sure I was broke. Sure fifty thousand would bail me out. Sure Hitler put up the fifty thousand. He saved my hide. I made a killing all right. So I’m Von Bieberstein? So what, Ponto, so what! Want to make anything of it? Sure I lived up to my end of the bargain. Roosevelt had ruined me. What did I owe Roosevelt? Sure I took the job. And was that a laugh! The F.B.I. chasing all over the place for Kurt Von Bieberstein, and all the time it’s little old Winnie Tompkins, Harvard 1920 and good old one thousand per cent American stock. The poor boobs think they’ve licked Hitler, Ponto, but he’s really licked them. You wait’n see. I’ll still be Gauleiter of Westchester County, so help me!”

The moment had come. He was lolling back on his bed, his arms behind his head, his neck exposed. I gathered my muscles and leaped for his throat.