"No sir! You'd make a better model than I."
"Can't! I'm running for king this winter!"
"Let's flip then."
WOLFF WON the toss. He cautiously climbed down and picked up the camera, while Godwin removed his clothes and piled them on the rocks. When he was as nude as the girl he climbed down and stood beside her.
"If she wakes up now we'll have some explaining to do," he whispered.
"Don't make me laugh or she will. Now lie down beside her. No, on your back; no point doing it on your stomach."
Wolff retreated a few paces, adjusted the camera, and took a photograph of the recumbent pair. The automatic film-winder purred faintly and stopped with a click at the next frame. Godwin started to rise, but Wolff motioned him back, took two steps, and shot a picture from another angle.
This time Godwin did get up. While Wolff replaced the camera on the girl's pile of clothing, Godwin climbed back up on the rocks and dressed with guilty haste. When he had finished, both men crept down off the promontory on the south side and hiked swiftly back the way they had come. When they had put enough distance between themselves and the girl they let out their pent-up mirth in raucous war-whoops, capering and slapping each other on the back. "Boy, wait till she gets those pix back from the drugstore!" "What I wouldn't give to see her face ..."
"Hey!" said Godwin suddenly. "Suppose she recognizes me? I may not be Hollywood's most popular actor, but my puss does get around. My agent says I packed 'em in at Julianehaab in The Honor of the Clan."
"What's Yooly-anna-hawp?"
"The capital of Greenland. Since the climate-control boys melted off the ice-cap, the Greenlanders have become the world's most fanatical movie-goers. There's nothing else to do on the long winter nights."
"You mean, not much else. But I wouldn't worry; your last few pictures all had you wearing a mustache, so they wouldn't know you without it."
They came to the place where they had first reached the beach and climbed back up the slope. When they were back in the car, Godwin drove slowly, peering ahead.
"Whatcha looking for?" said Wolff. "Her car. She musta parked somewhere; nobody lives along this stretch ... Ah, there it is!"
He slowed to a crawl as they came abreast of another parked automobile. This was a typical Hollywoodian vehicle: an enormous pink Cadillac convertible with imitation python-skin upholstery. Godwin said; "You'd swear that was a star's car, now wouldn't you? But I've never seen our sleeping beauty around the studios."
"Neither have I. She doesn't look to me like star-material, anyway; she might belong to some actor or producer."
Godwin speeded up, saying, "We could look up her license-number, but it's not worth the trouble. And what do I wanna get involved with strange dames for? I got enough trouble holding off the ones I know already."
"Well, you'd have a time convincing anybody who sees those pix you're not involved with her." At Godwin's look of alarm Wolff added; " 'S all right, Claude old boy. When the paternity suit comes up I'll testify for you; I'll say you're impotent."
"That would be a big help. But I'm not worried; I look different without my makeup, and I'm too short to run for king, like you; and some day I'll quit this racket anyway."
Westbrook Wolff did indeed intend to run for King of the United States of America, at the decennial contest to be held in Washington in December. For, following the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century, the world— in a frantic search for stability and security—had revived the obsolete institution of monarchy. The United States had done so in a more rational manner than most nations. Instead of the nation's entrusting the choice of the monarch to the vagaries of heredity, the king and queen were chosen from Hollywood's bravest and fairest for ten-year terms at a beauty-contest in which the U. S. Senate served as judges.
IN DUE COURSE, Claude Godwin returned to Hollywood. After several months of miscellaneous movie work he was chosen for the title role of Sabatini's Scaramouche, being remade for the eighth time in two centuries. When inevitable delays postponed shooting for a few days he let himself be talked into attending a party at the house of his leading lady, Gloria Malloy.
About twenty-three hundred Godwin surveyed the scene and found it not to his liking. In one corner, Gloria Malloy was giving the English actor, Beaumont, the lowdown on the sexual aberrations of Hollywood, in the process accusing practically every denizen of cinematographic jungle of being queer in one way or another. In another corner, Vakassian, the script-writer was complaining to Cuevas, the bit-player, about the crass materialism of the motion-picture industry. In the third, Gloria's husband, Lauder the cameraman, was making love to Cuevas's wife. The fourth was occupied by a roaring crapgame involving Finkelman the producer, Novalis the director, and McCarthy the sound-technician. McCarthy's girl had fallen into the swimming-pool and had been sent home in a taxi, while Novalis's girl had passed out and been carried upstairs to recover.
Claude Godwin had heard and seen it all before and found it boresome. Despite his almost complete lack of formal education, he liked to picture himself as a serious thinker, interested in world affairs and the latest advances in the arts and sciences. Inevitably, he found that very few cared to discuss such matters, and those few usually had some axe to grind and were willing to lecture him on their pet obsession but not to listen to his replies. "To hell with it," he said, and let himself quietly out the front door just as Gloria plunged into an account of the alleged necrophilia of Horton the singing-cowboy star.
The Studebaker was parked in the driveway behind Finkelman's all-chrome Mercedes-Benz. Godwin got in, started the engine, and pressed the button that actuated the parking-wheels, so that the car should sidle crabwise out of its space without the necessity of cramping the wheel. (This was now regular equipment on Super De Luxe Ultra Imperial models; on the plain Super De Luxe Ultra Special or standard line it was extra.)
Claude Godwin set the control lever on the steering-column for sidewise travel, stepped on the foot-brake, released the hand-brake, and started to let the foot-pedal up slowly, when he became aware that something was not normal. Some whisper of sound told him that he was not alone in his car; that there was, in fact, a man crouched behind the front seat ...
Chapter 2
WHEN HE came to Claude Godwin was lying on a bed.
As he opened his eyes, he gradually became aware, first, of the ceiling; then of the pajamas he was wearing; then of a large window through which he had a view of rather barren looking greenish-gray hills under a gray sky; then of something on his left wrist.
It was a handcuff, and attached to the handcuff was a tall, broad, moonfaced, 250-pound man with prominent blue eyes and a fringe of faded blond hair around a pink scalp covered with the fuzz that resulted from the persistent use of trichogenone, the hair-growing hormone.
"What the hell?" said Godwin.
"Yes?" said the man. "You are feeling better now, ha?"
"Better? Than what? Where am I? Who are you? Why was I snatched? How long have I been out? What's the idea of this bracelet?"
"Vun at a time. First, I am Sven."
"Sven who?"
"Sven Kaalund. But ve shall be friends be, yes? So you call me Sven; I am calling you Claude."
"Well, isn't that damned decent of you! And where am I?"
"Dis is de King Edvard Hospital in Julianehaab, in Greenland."
"Greenland!" Godwin shouted. "But why? What have I got to do with Greenland?"
The moon face smiled. "You vill everyting in time learn. Meanvile, please to be a good boy and do as you are told."