"The hell you say!" yelled Godwin. Propping himself up on his left elbow he swung a right at Kaalund's jaw.
In a calmer moment, Godwin might have admitted that it was a silly thing to do. Although he had had occasion to learn boxing in the course of his employment, he was hardly in a position to land a real blow; nor was he, at 145 pounds, fairly matched with his vast opponent. But Godwin was anything but calm.
Sven Kaalund moved his big head and raised his right shoulder so that Godwin's fist bounced off the deltoid muscle as off a truck-tire.
"Yeow!" yelled Godwin.
A terrific pain had shot through his left wrist, doubling him up into a foetal position. It was gone in an instant, and Godwin relaxed. He now looked more closely at the other end of the handcuffs. Instead of a twin of his own cuff encircling Kaalund's wrist, the cable attached to his own cuff ended in a gadget something like a knuckle-duster, gripped in Kaalund's great fist. A guard ran across the back of Kaalund's hand: and on the other side of this object were buttons, on one of which Kaalund's thumb rested lightly.
"I told you to be good," said Kaalund in the tone of one reproving a child.
Godwin recognized the Kobik neuronic stimulator, the outstanding improvement in the art of inflicting pain since the time of Torquemada. Godwin almost wept with frustrated rage, but then pulled himself together.
"What are you?" he asked.
"Detective, first-class, of de police department of Julianehaab."
The door opened and a nurse said something.
"Han gar man inte uden Forskyndelse," said Kaalund. "Sage on Ophœveran at man kan ham snakkes."
The nurse disappeared. Not knowing Danish, Godwin could not follow the conversation. He relapsed into glowering silence while an interne took his temperature and blood-pressure and other bodily indices. When the interne (who like most Greenlanders showed a mixture of Danish and Eskimo descent) finished his task and departed, Godwin asked his man-mountain, "What now?"
"You shall yust for de boss vait."
"Who's he?"
"Prime Minister Gram. I do not know vat about you so important is dat the head of de whole country is coming to see you, but dat is how it is."
GODWIN stared out the big window at the bleak landscape, noting the dwarf willows and birches sparsely scattered over the craggy hills. The hospital must be located on the outskirts of Julianehaab, for there were only a few houses in sight. The melting of the ice-cap by the climatic engineers a century before, while it had made Greenland into a modern nation with a huge habitable area and a lusty and growing population, had not converted it from a miniature Antarctica into a tropical paradise. Instead the land had become something like a large insular combination of Iceland and Norway, with the damp climate of the former and the snag-toothed mountainous coast-line of the latter.
The door opened and in came & lean dark bald man with a long droopy nose. Sven Kaalund jumped up, saying,
"God Dag, Excellenz!"
The man replied in almost-perfect English: "Good-morning, Kaalund. Good-morning, Mr. Godwin. I am Anker Gram. How are you feeling?"
"Like plain and fancy mayhem,'' growled Godwin. "What is this? I'm an American citizen, and you can't go snatching me all over the world! I won't stand for it! My government will make a stink—"
"On the contrary, my dear Mr. Godwin, you will stand for it," said Anker Gram.
"Huh?"
Gram drew a brown paper envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket: an envelope of the sort that photographic service establishments send back prints and negatives in. Gram took out two prints and handed one to Godwin, saying, "Does this look familiar?"
The print was obviously one of those that Westbrook Wolff had taken eight months previously of Godwin and the red-haired girl lying nude on the beach near Point Conception. The color of her hair came out fine.
"Guk," said Godwin.
"And now this."
Gram extended the other print, a portrait showing the same girl, seated, clad in a shimmery evening-gown with a tiara on her hair. This picture was of the sort that actors like himself had made up in great numbers to send their fans, and true to form it bore in the lower right corner a facsimile of a longhand legend reading: Hjertlige Oensker, Karen af Greenland.
"What does it say?" said Godwin.
"Best wishes from Karen of Greenland."
"You mean Karen's a name? That— uh—she's—"
"Certainly; it is the Scandinavian equivalent of 'Catherine'. And the young lady, if you have not yet realized the fact, is Princess Karen, the only child of our king, Edvard III of Greenland."
"But—what—that is—I didn't know—"
"So she maintained her incognito throughout your liason? I knew she had entered the University of Southern California under the name of 'Karen Hauch', which is of course her true laic name: Agnes Brigitte Karen Leonora Margaret Arrebo-Hauch. She seems to have shown more prudence than—-"
"What d'you mean liason?" cried Godwin; "I never even saw the dame, except when that pic was taken!"
HE DESCRIBED the jape to Gram, who shook his narrow head. "It is a fine story, and from your air of virtuous indignation one might almost believe it if one did not know better."
"How do you know better? Was you there? All the evidence you got is that fool pic, which shows us acting a little unconventional, maybe, but—"
"Unconventional!" said Gram with a grin. "No, my fine American bird, you will never get anybody in Greenland to believe that, especially as your countrymen are a byword for uninhibited lechery. And since the medical evidence was inconclusive, and most of the population has heard a rumor of one sort or another, we find it necessary to act accordingly."
"How'd they find out?"
"That is simple. When the princess finished her roll of film she air-mailed it back to Julianehaab for developing and printing by her favorite photographer, Hans Tungak. When he saw the prints, he knew something was wrong and took up the matter with the government."
"So what?"
"We naturally sent a mission to the United States to escort the princess home before she could get into any more trouble. Incidentally they found who you were from the pictures and brought you also. That was perhaps not strictly in accord with international law, but since one of Tungak's assistants, who also saw the photographs, had talked, our hand was forced."
"But why? Even if I had done what you guys think, what good does it do to kidnap me to this god-forsaken piece of Arctic real-estate?"
Gram smiled thinly. "Perhaps you are familiar with the legendary American institution called a 'shotgun wedding'?"
"You mean you want me to marry the dame?"
"Precisely."
"I won't!" yelled Godwin; "I'm damn well gonna stay a bachelor until I feel like changing!"
"You will not find the position of consort difficult; your material wants will be well supplied."
"Hell with that! I got all the dough I need. In fact I was gonna quit the movie racket. I don't care if the Prince Consort brushes his teeth with a platinum toothbrush set with natural diamonds. I'm gonna do what / want when I want it, and I ain't gonna marry no lady wrestler ..."
Gram let him rave until he ran down, then said: "You forget, Mr. Godwin, we have means of coercion available. Has Kaalund demonstrated his special manacle yet?"
"Yeah."
"Well, either you shall go through the ceremony in a civilized manner, or we will have Kaalund stand beside you as best man, with his handcuff on your wrist so that should you balk he can apply the necessary stimulation. Would you like a cigar?"