“What did the inscription say?” Yenta inquired.
“ ‘A Royal Muff for a Royal Muff. Love, Diver.’ ”
“ ‘Diver’?”
“It was a pet name the Queen who originally received it bestowed upon her husband, the Shah. Legend has it that she was so overexcited by the gift, that the Shah, who was a good deal older than she, was tickled to death by her reaction.”
“We will do everything in our power to recover it, Highness," Captain Maldemerde assured her. ‘The ship will be searched from bow to stern.”
“Such a search will upset the passengers,” Mister Jewish pointed out to the Captain after the Queen had left in a muff-less huff.
“The passengers. of course, must not be disturbed. Confine the search to the crew’s quarters.” The Captain revised the order.
“That will be very bad for the men’s morale, Captain.”
“So? If they complain, put them on half rations! On my ship, morale is a matter of discipline, Mister! Remember that!”
Mister Jewish was still biting his tongue as I followed Chief Purser Yenta out of the wheelhouse. We strolled the deck awhile, but the wintry air was still quite cold. It drove us indoors, to the glassed-in shuffleboard court.
Ogden and Binny Stanford were playing the deck game. The MENSA blonde, taking advantage of the fact that the area was heated, was clad in a bikini. Those Las Vegas customers certainly got their money’s worth if she was an example of what the chorus had offered!
Binny bent over for a shot at the puck. Suddenly, the elastic securing the bottom part of her bikini snapped. The small triangle of cloth fell to the deck. Binny Stanford was revealed as a natural blonde with a neatly etched pelvic structure and a cushy derriere that might have been too large if not for the fact that it was sculpted like a work of classical Greek art.
Everybody within eyeshot froze—-even her husband. Binny looked down, looked up, saw the eyes riveted on her, evidently decided she was damned if she was going to let them rattle her, and took her own sweet time about bending over to retrieve the fallen bikini bottoms. When she did stoop over, an audible sigh swept over the shuffleboard court.
Binny pulled them up slowly, held them at her hip, and craned her head down to examine the tie that had parted. Then she strode over to Chief Purser Yenta and confronted him with the evidence. I wondered how he was able to concentrate on it, considering all the alluring-—if irrelevant—flesh jiggling around it.
“This was no accident!” She showed Yenta the elastic tie. “Someone cut this with a razor blade.” She held up the two ends to demonstrate how neatly and deliberately they’d been severed. “Just enough so it would hold until some strain was put on it,” she added.
“Come on, Binny.” Her husband came over. “Why would anybody do a thing like that?”
“Simple deductive logic -- a quality in which you are deficient,” she told him haughtily, “informs me that someone would do ‘a thing like that’ maliciously to embarrass me. The same powers of reasoning, which you are doubtless incapable of grasping, instruct me that the only one with such a motivation is you!”
“Don’t be silly!” Ogden Stanford objected.
“This is just the sort of practical joke your feeble mind would devise!” Binny turned back to Yenta. “Will you please inform the Captain that I would like him to perform the divorce ceremony at the earliest opportunity?”
Before Ogden Stanford could respond to that, all hell broke loose. First, suddenly, an ear-splitting siren sounded a repeated “WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP”! Then various bells clanged. Finally, the Captain’s voice sounded hysterically over the loudspeaker.
“MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!”
“He must want that radio operator pretty damn bad!" I remarked to Yenta as the Stanfords, along with the other players and spectators bolted from the shuffleboard court to the deck.
Yenta and I followed, reaching the deck just as a new voice spoke over the P.A. system. “ALL HANDS ON DECK! ALL HANDS ON DECK!” It was Mister Jewish, his tone calmer than the Captain’s had been, but still filled with urgency. “EMERGENCY STATIONS! EMERGENCY STATIONS!”
“A lifeboat drill?” Chief Purser Yenta was puzzled. “But there’s none scheduled. What’s that crazy Captain up to now?”
“Passengers will please stay calm.” Over the loudspeaker, Mister Jewish was speaking in a lower, smoother tone now, trying to cool it. “Stay calm and go to your lifeboat stations. Put on your life preservers and proceed to your lifeboat stations in an orderly manner. Crew members will assign you your positions in the lifeboats. I repeat. Stay calm and put on your life preservers and. . . .”
“This must be the real thing!" Yenta looked scared.
There was pandemonium on deck now. Sailors were scurrying every which way. Passengers were milling around in terror. No matter which way you looked from the deck of the ship, there was nothing to be seen but the open and turbulent sea.
The close-packed, shoving mob pushed Yenta and me through the swinging doors to one of the salons. Four men were seated at a card table there. Otherwise the room was deserted.
They were playing bridge. The design on the tabletop around which they were seated was in the form of a compass. “Please!” The man seated “North” greeted our tumbling entrance. “I’m trying to concentrate!”
“There’s an emergency!” Yenta informed them.
“One heart,” West said.
“You’d better put on your life jackets!”
“One spade,” South responded.
“Gentlemen! You really must get to your lifeboat stations!”
“You said ‘one spade’?” East studied his cards.
“One no-trump,” he decided.
“This ship is in distress!”
“Double!” North snapped.
We may have to abandon ship!”
“Re-double.” West responded calmly.
“The ship may be sinking!”
“Hmmm.” South looked so serious for a moment that it seemed as if Yenta had gotten through to him. Then—“Two diamonds,” South bid.
“You’ll all drown!”
It was no use. They ignored him. East passed. North bid four spades. West passed. South bid no-trump, asking for honors. North’s response was reassuring, and South went on to a grand slam in spades. When West doubled, North redoubled.
“It looks like I’m dummy.” North laid down his hand.
“Then why not leave now?” I suggested. “Before the ship sinks!”
“With my partner about to play a grand slam re-doubled?” North snorted. “You must be mad!”
“The hell with them!” I told Yenta. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Just a minute.” Yenta was peering over South’s shoulder. “A diamond lead is down one trick,” he whispered to me.
I left him standing there and plunged back into the midst of the panicky mob outside the salon. On the aft deck, the ship’s orchestra was playing “Nearer My God to Thee.” Some officers were trying to maintain order-with only partial success—as they directed people to their places in the lifeboats. Crew members were lowering those boats that had already been filled.
The figure of a woman jumped from the deck into an overcrowded boat halfway lowered to the water below. The deck lights picked up the features. Click-click! I recognized Captain Maldemerde in drag.
“Women and children first!” Mister Jewish was standing beside one of the lifeboats and pulling men out of the loading line.
“What about my wife?” A couple materialized in front of Mister Jewish. A large blanket was wrapped around them. It was pulled away by the throng jostling them from all sides. The man was revealed with his hands under the girl’s buttocks, supporting her; the girl’s legs were wrapped around his hips; they were genitally joined, face-to-face. I recognized the unfortunate honeymoon couple.