The Magic Christian (10 page)

In any event, almost no one escaped the effects of the faulty life jacket; so it was—after they deflated—with a good deal of annoyance that they came back to the cabins, quite ready to hear Captain Klaus’ explanation of what had gone amiss.

Unfortunately though, the foghorn, which had been put to practice during the drill, was now evidently jammed. At any rate, it continued steadily during the Captain’s after-drill talk and completely shut out his voice, so that it was like looking at someone talk behind several layers of glass. The Captain himself didn’t seem to realize that he wasn’t coming through, and he went on talking for quite a while, punctuating his remarks with various little facial gestures to indicate a whole gamut of fairly intense feelings about whatever it was he was saying.

The business with the foghorn was more serious than at first imagined; it continued, blasting without let-up, for the rest of the voyage.

Quite incidental to what was happening during the drill, fifty crew members took advantage of the occasion to go around to the cabins, lounges, and dining rooms, and to substitute a thin length of balsa wood for one leg of every chair, table, and dresser on ship,

When the Captain finished his lengthy and voiceless discourse, he smiled, gave an easy salute and left the bridge house. It was about this time that all the furniture began to collapse—in half an hour’s time there wasn’t one standing stick of it aboard the
Christian.

Strange and unnatural persons began to appear—in the drawing rooms, salons, at the pool. During the afternoon tea dance, a gigantic
bearded-woman,
stark naked, rushed wildly about over the floor, interfering with the couples, and had to be forcibly removed by ship’s doctor.

The plumbing went bad, too; and finally one of the
Christian’s
big stacks toppled—in such a way as to give directly on to ship’s dining room, sending oily smoke billowing through. And, in fact, from about this point on, the voyage was a veritable nightmare.

Large curious posters were to be seen in various parts of the ship:

SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH

LET’S KEEP THE CLAP OUT OF CHAPPAQUIDDICK

as well as rude slogans, vaguely political, scrawled in huge misshapen letters across walls and decks alike:

DEATH TO RICH!

BLOW UP U.S.!

Due to the strain of untoward events, more than one passenger sought solace and reassurance from the problem-counselor, the ship’s distinguished doctor.

“Doctor, what
in the name of God
is going on here!” the frenzied passenger would demand.

The doctor would answer with a quizzical smile, arching his brows, only mildly censorious. “Fair-weather sailor?” he would gently chide, “. . .Hmm? Cross and irritable the moment things aren’t going exactly to suit you? Now just what seems to be the trouble?”

“‘Trouble’!?!”
exclaimed the outraged passenger. “Good Lord, Doctor, surely you don’t think my complaint is an . . . an unreasonable one?”

The doctor would turn his gaze out to sea, thin fingers pressed beneath his chin in a delicate pyramid of contemplation, wistfully abstract for a moment before turning back to address the patient frankly.

“Deep-rooted and unreasonable fears,” he would begin in a grand, rich voice, “are most often behind our anxieties . . .” and he would continue in this vein until the passenger fairly exploded with impatience.

“Great Scott, Doctor! I didn’t come here for a lecture on
psychology—
I came to find out what
in the name of Heaven
is going on
aboard this ship!”

In the face of these outbursts however, the doctor almost invariably retained his calm, regarding the patient coolly, searchingly, making a few careful notes on his pad.

“Now, you say that ‘the life jacket
over inflated,’
and that you were ‘stuck in the corridor’—that was your expression, I believe,
‘stuck in the corridor’
—and at that moment you felt a certain
malaise,
so to speak. Now, let me ask you
this
. . .” Or again, on other occasions, he might behave eccentrically, his head craned far to one side, regarding the patient out of the corners of his
eyes,
a sly, mad smile on his lips which moved in an inaudible whisper, almost a hiss.

Finally, the patient, at the end of his tether, would leap to his feet.

“Well, in the name of God, Doctor, the least you can do is let me have some
tranquillizers!”

But the doctor, as it turned out, was not one given to prescribing drugs promiscuously.

“Escape into drugs?” he would ask, wagging his head slowly. “Mask our fears in an artificial fog?” And there was always a trace of sadness in his smile, as he continued, “No, I’m afraid the trouble is
in ourselves,
you see.” Then he would settle back expansively and speak with benign countenance. “Running away from problems is scarcely the solution to them. I
believe
you’ll thank me in years to come.” And at last he would lean forward in quiet confidence. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your . . .
your early childhood?”

When Captain Klaus next appeared on the screen, he looked as though he had been sleeping in two feet of water. Completely disheveled, his ribbons dangling in unsightly strands, his open coat flapping, his unknotted tie strung loosely around his collar, he seemed somewhat drunk as well. With a rude wave of his hand he dismissed bridge personnel and lurched toward the video screen, actually crashing into it, and remaining so close that his image was all distorted.

“We’ll get the old tub through!”
he was shouting at deafening volume, and at that moment he was attacked from behind by a ruffian type who was carrying a huge hypodermic and appeared to overpower the Captain and inject something into the top of his head, then to seize the wheel, wrenching it violently, before the screen went black.

Also, it was learned about this time that because of fantastic miscalculation on the part of the ship’s-stores officer, the only food left aboard now was potatoes.

Thus did the
Christian
roar over the sea, through fair weather and foul.

Guy Grand was aboard of course, as a passenger, complaining bitterly, and in fact kept leading assault parties in an effort to find out, as he put it, “What the devil’s going on on the bridge!”

But they were always driven back by a number of odd-looking men with guns and knives near the ladder.

“Who the deuce are those chaps?” Grand would demand as he and the others beat a hasty retreat along the deck. “I don’t like the looks of this!”

Occasionally the communications screen in each of the cabins would light up to reveal momentarily what was taking place on the bridge, and it was fairly incredible. The bridge house itself now was a swaying rubble heap and the Captain was seen intermittently, struggling with various assailants, and finally with what actually appeared to be a gorilla—the beast at last overpowering him and flinging him bodily out of the bridge house and, or so it seemed, into the sea itself, before seizing the wheel, which he seemed then to be trying to tear from its hub.

It was about this time that the ship, which, as it developed, had turned completely around in the middle of the ocean, came back into New York harbor under full steam, and with horns and whistles screaming, ploughed headlong into the big Forty-Seventh Street pier.

Fortunately no one was injured on the cruise; but, even so, it went far from easy with Grand—he had already sunk plenty into the project, and just how much it cost him to keep clear in the end, is practically anyone’s guess.

“T
O SPEAK SERIOUSLY
though,” said Guy Grand,
“does
anyone have news of Bill Thorndike? I haven’t had a word in the longest.”

Ginger Horton set her cup down abruptly.

“That . . . that damn
nut!”
she said.
“No
and I
couldn’t
care less!”

“Who?” asked Esther.

“Dr. Thorndike,” explained Agnes, “that extraordinary dentist whom Ginger went to—he and Guy were friends at school together; isn’t that right, Guy?”

“Yes, quite good friends too,” said Guy. “Poor fellow, had a nervous breakdown or something from what Ginger says. No, I haven’t had a word from him in the longest. How was he then, when you last saw him, Ginger?”

Grand had made this inquiry any number of times, and then had always glossed over Ginger’s account of the incident, as though he could not fully take it in.

“The
last time!”
she cried. “Why I only saw him once, of course—on
your
recommendation—and once too often it was too! Good God, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten
that
again? Why he was absolutely insane! He said to me, ‘These molars are soft, Mrs. Horton!’ or some such ridiculous thing. ‘We’d better get you onto a soft-food regime right away!’ he said, and then, without another word about it, while I was still leaning back with my mouth open, he dropped a
raw egg
into my mouth and rushed out of the room, waving his arms and yelling at the top of his voice. Raving mad!”

“Hmm—not like Bill Thorndike,” said Grand. “First-rate dentist, he used to be. You never went back to him then?”

“I
certainly did not!
I went straight to the nearest police station, that’s where I went! And reported him!”

Grand frowned a look of mild disapproval.

“I’m afraid that won’t help Bill’s standing with the Association any.”

“Well, I should hope
not!”
said Ginger Horton as strongly as she could.

“How Uncle Edward used to love raw eggs!” said Esther. “Do you remember, Agnes?”

“It’s hardly the same thing, Esther,” said Agnes.

“Well, he always had them with a sort of sauce,” Esther recalled. “Worcestershire sauce, I suppose it was.”

“It could have been some new form of deficiency treatment, of course, Ginger,” Agnes said. “I mean if your molars
were
soft . . .” But in the face of Ginger Horton’s mounting exasperation, she broke off and turned to Guy, “What do you think, Guy?”

“Bill always
was
up-to-the-minute,” Guy agreed. “Always onto the latest. Very progressive in school affairs, that sort of thing—oh nothing disreputable of course—but, I mean to say, as far as being onto the latest in . . . dentistry techniques, well I’m certainly confident that Bill—”

“He just plopped that raw egg right into my mouth!” said Ginger shrilly. “Why I didn’t even know what it was! And that isn’t all—the instruments, and
everything
else there were crazy! There was some kind of wooden paddle . . .”

“Spatula?” prompted Guy helpfully.

“No,
not
a spatula! Good Heavens! A big wooden oar, about four feet long, actually leaning up against the chair.”

“Surely he didn’t use that?” said Agnes.

“But what on earth was it
doing
there is what I want to know?” Ginger demanded.

“Maybe Bill’s taken up boating,” Guy offered but then coughed lightly to show the lameness of it, “. . .never cared for it though in school as I remember.
Tennis,
that was Bill’s game—damn good he was too; on the varsity his last two years.”

“I simply
cannot
make you understand what an absolute madman he was,” said Ginger Horton. “There was something else on the chair too—a pair of
ice tongs
it looked like.”

“Clamp, I suppose,” murmured Grand.

“
‘Better safe than sorry, eh, Mrs. Norton?’
he said to me like a perfect maniac, and then he said, ‘Now I
don’t
want you to swallow this!’ and he dropped a
raw egg
into my mouth, grabbed up a lot of those weird instruments and rushed around the room, waving them over his head, and then out the door,
yelling at the top of his lungs!”

“May have been called out on an emergency, you see,” said Guy, “happens all too often in that business from what I’ve seen of it.”

“What
was
he saying when he left, Ginger?” Agnes asked.

“Saying?
He wasn’t
saying
anything. He was simply yelling.
‘Yaahh! Yaahh! Yaahh!’
it sounded like.”

“How extraordinary,” said Agnes.

“What
was he saying?” Esther asked of Agnes.

“‘Yaahh, Yaahh,’” said Agnes quietly.

“Not like Bill,” said Guy, shaking his head. “Must have been called out on emergency, only thing I can make of it.”

“But surely the receptionist could have explained it all, my dear,” said Agnes.

“There
was
no receptionist, I tell you!” said Ginger Horton irately. “There was no one but him—and a lot of fantastic instruments. And the chair was odd too! I’m lucky to have gotten out of there alive!”

“Did she swallow the egg?” asked Esther.

“Esther, for Heaven’s sake!”

“What was that?” asked Grand, who seemed not to have heard.

“Esther wanted to know if Ginger had
swallowed
the egg,” Agnes said.

“Certainly not!” said Ginger. “I spit it right out. Not at first, of course; I was in a state of complete shock. ‘I
don’t
want you to swallow this!’ he said when he dropped it in, the maniac, so I just sat there in a state of pure shock while he raced around and around the room, screaming like a perfect madman!”

“Maybe it wasn’t an egg,” suggested Esther.

“What on earth do you mean?” demanded Ginger, quite beside herself. “It certainly
was
an egg—a raw egg! I
tasted
it and
saw
it, and some of the yellow got on my frock!”

“And then you filed a complaint with the authorities?” asked Agnes.

“Good Heavens, Agnes, I went straight to the police. Well, he could not be found! Disappeared without trace. Raving mad!”

“Bill Thorndike’s no fool,” said Grand loyally, “I’d stake my word on that.”