Gobbo Piegare was an absolute master. If and when Lombar Hisst took over Earth, that stellar crook should be a candidate for Earth Apparatus staff.
At length, my stomach hurting with laughter, I called for breakfast and shortly began to laugh still more to see that the waiter now had a purple cheek and Karagoz wore two black eyes. Melahat, the housekeeper, looking like she'd been raped, stood in the door, wringing her hands and hoping that the kahve was just the right temperature. Musef and Torgut were doing their job properly. Oh, it was a lovely day. Cold and bitter outside but nice and gleeful within.
About four o'clock, I went into my secret room and uncovered the viewers. I sat down to enjoy any further discomfiture of Heller and Krak.
It was midmorning in Atlantic City. They were in bed in a palatial bedroom. The bed had a canopy of white gauze and bows. It must be the bridal suite. The furnishings were all decorated with flowers and were very posh.
Heller got up and went into the ornate sitting room. He pulled a drape cord and disclosed a big picture window. The room was evidently high up and the window overlooked a vast expanse of the cold, gray Atlantic Ocean. He looked at the slow and sullen swells rolling in upon deserted and forlorn amusement piers. There were several wrecks on the beach and black, oily smoke drifting around.
He went back into the bedroom and opened the drapes there, disclosing a stretch of desolate Boardwalk, deserted except for a TV crew that was shooting something.
Krak was sitting on the side of the bed, half-dressed, ruefully regarding the scars on the side of her white Moroccan boot, probably caused by her slide down the laundry chute. She looked up. "They certainly don't know how to make animals grow proper hides." She threw it down and went into the bathroom and spin-brushed her teeth.
With her mouth full of foam, she said, "Jettero, who is this 'Whiz Kid' they are talking about?"
Heller was picking through the suitcase. He sighed. He said, "He's the dumbest (bleepard) in a business deal that anybody ever met-begging your pardon, miss. You wouldn't want to know him."
She rinsed out her mouth and came back into the bedroom. "Will all this help us to get home?" she asked.
"We'll be lucky if we don't get booted off this planet and kicked the whole twenty-two light-years back home."
She went into a slight shock. She stood there, staring at him. "Oh, dear," she said. "And return as failures?"
I knew what she was thinking about: Those two forged "Royal Proclamations," which she'd given her word to keep from Heller, would not be valid if the mission failed. He would still be put onto dangerous assignments, she thought, and, as she was a nonperson, they could not get married.
"Oh, dear," she said again. She began to get dressed. Heller was still poking into the suitcase, looking glum. The Countess Krak got into her chinchilla coat, put on her white fur hat and picked up her pocketbook. At the door, she stopped and called back, "I'm going to see Mamie Boomp. We have a lot to talk about. See you later, dear." She left.
Well, one thing I didn't want to hear more about was fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes. What the homosexual designers were proclaiming would be spring styles was my idea of pure static. I didn't want to spoil my euphoria. I turned off her viewer. Heller's depression was the source of my extreme well-being.
He really understood he had plunged himself to ruin. The neat, gray flannel suit and silk shirt were a long way from how he felt, apparently. He dug, out of the bottom of the grip, a suit of workman's denim. They were the style for beachwear and maybe he had thought they'd have some time on the sand, as he looked at the cold, gray sea from time to time.
Slowly, he began to get dressed. The most recent denim men's styles required the material be torn, patched and grease-stained like true workmen's clothing. And although he might now be dressed in the beachwear height of fashion, my, didn't he appear a ragged wreck as he looked at himself in the mirror!
Then he sat for a long, long time, staring out the window at the cold, gray sea. What a treat for my eyes! Oh, how the mighty had fallen! He not only hadn't helped their precarious situation in New York, he had become the proud possessor of incalculable sums of utter ruin. I enjoyed it and enjoyed it. He was not only slowed down, he was going backwards!
He looked at his watch, at last. It registered nearly noon, Eastern Standard Time. I remembered that noon was the stated time of foreclosure. He looked at the door. Then he looked at the phone. I realized that he had been waiting around for news from Izzy.
He got up and went to the phone. He picked it up. No dial tone. Dead. He pushed some buttons for an outside line. Still dead.
Aha! I knew what had happened. The phones had been shut off by the phone company! A surge of pleasure raced through me.
Heller put it back on the cradle. Then he looked at the bathroom. The lights there had been on a little earlier. He went in and threw the switch. He threw another switch. Nothing happened. No lights!
Oh, wonderful! The light company had shut off the lights!
He turned on a water tap. Nothing happened! Oho, I gloated. The water company had shut the water off!
He went over to a radiator and felt it. Evidently it was ice cold. The furnaces were off!
He was in a super-posh Atlantic City high-rise hotel-casino. He was, in fact, the proprietor. And all the utilities were shut down tight!
I gloated. Given time, even the pipes would freeze!
Glory, glory! Fate was driving misfortune in with a sledgehammer!
He began to pace slowly back and forth, occasionally glancing at his watch and then at the door. Once he said, "Izzy, where are you?!"
Twelve-thirty came. The room must be getting cold, for he threw his trench coat over his shoulders.
He continued to pace. He continued to glance at his watch. Oh, I enjoyed every second of it!
One o'clock came. The Countess had not come back. No slightest sign of Izzy. Heller sank down in a chair. "Izzy, you have deserted me and I don't blame you one bit."
He saw some smoke rising from down the Boardwalk, quite a distance away. He went to the window. He couldn't see it very well. Some sort of a burning vehicle. There was smoke drifting also from the direction of the beach. He didn't bother to go into the sitting room and look. I guessed that it might be rioting and looting.
One-ten. A knock on the door.
Heller raced across and opened it.
A very mournful Izzy stood there. He looked even shabbier than usual. The Salvation Army Good Will overcoat was faded and shiny with wear. His briefcase was a mottle of scuffs with paper tears showing through. And he looked far sadder and more slumped than usual, a feat which was nearly impossible. Heller let him in.
"Oh, Mr. Jet," said Izzy. "I told you not to do anything foolish. I have never heard of such a catastrophe in the whole history of business. I have told you and told you to keep your name off corporations. Now you're in it up to your skull top. You should leave business to me."
Heller sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. "I know that now."
"You should have known it yesterday. Business is one of the most treacherous tools of Fate. But it is my fault. I saw a gleam in your eye and, when you have it, you always go out and get people to shoot at you. And now they've used submachine guns, cannons and even a hydrogen bomb. Oy, what rubble and wreckage!"
Heller said, miserably, "I know. I know. What is the state of affairs now?"
Izzy said, "There is a little bit of nonpessimistic news which I don't trust and bad news which is reliable. So I will give you the bad news first."