“What’s her old man’s name?”
“Willoughby. Sir Colin Willoughby.”
He went to the sink and washed off his hands.
“Hell, I know them,” he said. “Met them once.. . my God, it would have been the summer of ‘34. Longchamp racetrack, I think. Her husband was a soldier.. . no, he was a test pilot. Got killed.”
“That’s right, she’s a widow. Well anyway, it just isn’t like the old days.”
“The old days? You just turned thirty, my dear, how old can the days be?”
“Oh, you know what I mean. The old gang was fun. You would have liked them. From the time I was six until I was sixteen, it was a wonderful trip. We went for Thanksgiving and came back at Easter. Had our own little schoolhouse, our own teachers. Nobody was ever in a hurry. Everybody was friendly and got along. Oh, they used to have silly little spats. I remember once, Uncle Billy and Vincent got in this awful argument because Vincent parked his yacht in front of the Vanderbilt place and spoiled the view. Silly stuff like that.”
“Uh huh.”
“You know, Vannie, I keep forgetting how stinking rich you are.
“Look who’s talking!”
“No, I’m talking about rich-rich. The Astors, the Vanderbilts, those guys own the part of the world with the grass. And your old man’s one of them. How many of these rich guys were in the ‘old gang’ as you put it?”
“Well, let’s see, there was Cornelius Lee, Mr. Morgan. .
“J. P. Morgan?”
“Junior,” she nodded.
“Jesus! How about King Midas, did he drop by?”
She giggled. “No, but there were the Goodyears, Ed Gould, Jr., Charlie Maurice, the Rockefellers, Mr. Jim Hill . .
“Plus these royal social climbers. Lady Penelope and Whatsisname the Third.”
“Hardly social climbers, my dear. Willoughby’s a Knight, Kee.”
“Hell, half the plumbers in England are Knights,” Keegan said.
“Well, I will say they were both incorrigible name-droppers. And the new fiancé isn’t much better.”
“Really? What kind of names does he drop?”
“How about the Prince of Wales.”
“You mean Edward, the one that quit?”
“Yes.”
“How does one go about dropping the name of the former King of England?”
“We were admiring his cigarette lighter and he casually pointed out that it was a gift from the prince.”
“What kind of lighters does Prince Edward give out as gifts?” Keegan asked, sticking his hands back into the stuffing.
“Gold, of course.”
“What else? I’d like to know—just in case I do Eddie a favor.”
“It was a Dunhill, I think,” Vannie said. “Yes. That’s right. A Dunhill. With a wolf’s head on the top. It was really quite. .
Keegan couldn’t hear her anymore. His heart was pounding too loud.
“Listen,” he said, his voice demanding, his expression intense. “This guy with the lighter, does he have three scars on the side of his face?”
“Three scars?” She stared into space for a long time, trying to picture him. “He has a beard,” she said. “I couldn’t tell. Kee, what’s gotten into you?”
“Jesus! This old gang you were talking about that used to go down to Jekyll, how many were there Vannie? Exactly?”
“Exactly? Let’s see, there was Uncle Joe and
“My God, do you have to count them all?”
She closed her eyes, counting faces in her mind, and shook a hand at him. “Just a minute, just a minute . . . uh, twenty-five
twenty-six.. . and old Crane, the toilet man we used to call him. His cottage has all gold fixtures in the bathrooms and..
“There were twenty-seven of them?”
“As close as I can remember
But Keegan wasn’t really interested in the answer. His mind was racing now. Twenty-seven millionaires, he thought. On a remote island off the coast of Georgia.
“My God, that’s it!” Keegan cried out. “That’s got to be it. What’s his name again?”
“Who?”
“The one who’s marrying he stopped again. “Jesus,” he said aloud, “they must be in on it, too. They set it up! They’re the connection!”
“Kee.. .“
“Christ, it was probably Willoughby’s idea!”
“Francis, whatever are you talking about?”
Twenty-seven of the richest men in America, he said to himself. My God, could that be it?
He wasn’t thinking about their names anymore, he was thinking about associations: steel, railroads, shipping, newspapers, the stock market, oil, automobiles, coal, banking, real estate. You name it, they were there.
Twenty-seven of the richest, most powerful people in the United States. People who controlled almost every facet of business and banking in the country. Isolated on an island two miles wide and five miles long.
Twenty-seven!
Twenty-seven millionaires! Siebenundzwanzig was going to neutralize America—and how better than to take these twenty- seven men and hold them hostage on that island!
But. . . that wouldn’t work. Couldn’t. One man could not hold the whole island captive. Stupid notion, he thought.
Unless he planned to take them off the island. .
He dug out an atlas and found Brunswick, Ga. The island was a mere spot on the map. For the next thirty minutes, Keegan was on the phone. But at one in the morning on the night before a holiday, he could not raise Smith and finally gave up.
No one else would believe him. He had no credentials. And that left him only one choice.
Dryman had been asleep about fifteen minutes when Keegan burst in the room with Vanessa close behind. He had a mug of black coffee and two aspirin in hand.
“H.P., it’s Keegan. Wake up.”
Dryman was dead to the world. He didn’t even groan. Keegan shook him roughly.
“Dryman!” he yelled. “Reveille!”
“Huh,” the pilot muttered without opening his eyes.
“Coffee in bed,” Vanessa said sweetly.
Dryman rolled over and peered through one half-open eye.
“Wha’time’sit?”
“It’s late,” Keegan said. “Here, wash these aspirin down with this coffee. You’ll feel much better.”
“G’way. S’a holiday.”
“Listen to me, H.P. Wake up!”
“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled.
“Are you awake?”
“I’m awake.”
“H.P. I know what Twenty-seven means. I know who he is, where he is and what he’s going to do.”
Dryman’s bleary eyes began to clear. He stared at Keegan.
“You been in the champagne.”
“You heard me right, pal. He’s on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia. He calls himself John Ward Allenbee, the Third.
“Uh huh. And what’s he going to do?”
“He’s going to take the twenty-seven richest men in America hostage.”
“Aw Christ, Kee. That’s bullshit. It’s one-thirty in the damn morning and you want to pull practical jokes.”
“I couldn’t be more serious. You remember me telling you Vannie had been invited on a Thanksgiving trip with a bunch of rich boys?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they’re not just rich boys! They control shipping, railroads, oil. . . My God, if and when we do go to war, these men will run our war machine. And they’re all on one island off the coast of Georgia. Think about it, H.P. They’re sitting out in the ocean with no protection and our Friend Twenty-seven is right in the middle of them.”
“How did you come up with .
“Listen, Captain, I can’t get Smith. Everybody with any muscle is off for the holidays. The FBI would laugh me off the face of the earth if I told them this. If I call down there, they’ll hang up on me. We’ve got to fly down there.”
“Damn it, Kee, it’s all over. We’re out of it. You don’t even have any credentials. All you’ve got is this cockamamie story. I’m on furlough and I’ll be a civilian in another month. And we ain’t got no airplane! Are you forgetting I had to give Delilah back to the Air Corps?”