His carousing ways ceased. He developed a routine of going to a movie and then to bed early, declining all invitations for poker and parties. He went for days without speaking to anyone, taking his meals in his bungalow, burrowed behind drawn blackout curtains. Despite this deep despondency, he did manage to keep writing, a historical yarn about the Romans, and he finished his Venus tale.
His only break from this self-imposed incarceration was a painful stay at Queen's Hospital, due to the flaring up of an old bladder condition. For three weeks he was shot full of derivatives of the poppy flower, fed an anesthetic that burned from his lips down his throat into his lungs, got filled full of sulfathiazole until he thought it would run out of his ears, and had a wire inserted in his favorite organ.
Upon his release, he began to imagine he was having small strokes and heart attacks, but didn't much care.
He felt he was going to die. He wondered if maybe helping that process along wasn't worth considering.
A note accompanying a revision of his will-in which he thanked his loyal secretary Ralph Rothmund for his longtime friendship, telling him what a pleasure it had been to work with him-apparently got his three children worrying about his mental state, alone on this Pacific island, and Hully had come to his rescue. God bless that kid, claiming this was a "vacation." They had moved into new digs near the beach at the Niumalu, a bedroom with bath and sitting room (Hully bunking it on a hideaway couch). Burroughs picked up the pace of his writing, even as he and his son enjoyed late, leisurely breakfasts, long lunches, afternoons of driving, horseback riding, fishing, sunbathing and, most of all, tennis.
He and Hully-and Jack, too, for that matter-had always enjoyed a friendly rivalry, where sports were concerned… swimming, riding, wrestling, tennis. Maybe Florence considered him immature, but Burroughs preferred "young at heart," and enjoyed trying to keep pace with his athletic offspring.
Hully had extended the friendly competition to quitting drinking, and losing weight. Burroughs knew his son feared his father was becoming an alcoholic, and privately had his own fears in that regard. So he had quit-and quit smoking, as well. Hully was down to 177 pounds, a loss of ten, and Burroughs had dropped sixteen pounds, down to 182.
After getting back from seeing Frank Teske off, the father and son had eaten a light lunch in the Niumalu dining room, after which Burroughs headed into the bungalow, to get some writing done-he needed to get his hero, Carson Napier, out of one jam and into another. He and Hully would play a round of tennis in the late afternoon on the court on the Niumalu grounds-Burroughs had prevailed yesterday, two sets to one… a spirited game that had exhausted him, though he was damned if he'd let his boy know just how tired he was.
In the sitting room with its pale plaster walls, near a churning window fan, Burroughs was at his typewriter, working on his new Venus story, when two sharp knocks at the bungalow door drew his attention away from the gargantuan beasts threatening his spaceman. He rose from the typing stand-wearing a white sportshirt, white slacks and tennis shoes (ready for his game with Hully)-and saw a familiar face through the screen door.
"I know you're a teetotaler now," Adam Sterling said, holding up frosty bottles of soda pop, "but I'm assuming that doesn't include root beer."
A broad-shouldered six-foot two, his brown hair graying at the temples, strong-jawed, deep-tanned Sterling might have been a hero out of one of Burroughs's own books-in fact, he looked a little like Herman Brix, that poor bastard who almost died playing Tarzan in the Guatemalan jungle for Florence's ex-husband.
"I can use something wet right now," Burroughs said through the screen. "You want to sit outside and chug those things?"
Sterting wore a white linen suit and a light blue tie; he'd apparently come from his office in the Dillingham Building in downtown Honolulu.
"No, Ed," he said, and he was almost whispering, "I'd like you to ask me in."
"Well come on in, then," Burroughs said, opening the door. "But it's stuffy as hell in here."
Stepping inside, Sterling said quietly, "Actually, Ed, I need to talk to you-in private. This isn't even for Hully's ears-he isn't around, is he?"
"No, he went down to the beach for a swim. Probably looking for his next girlfriend."
Sterling nodded, but-oddly-he took a quick walk around the one-bedroom bungalow, making sure he and the writer were indeed alone. Burroughs watched this not knowing whether to be amused or insulted.
Finally, they sat on the couch and sipped their root beers and Burroughs wondered what the hell was on the FBI man's mind.
"How goes the writing?" Sterling asked him.
He grunted. "Sometimes I think plots are like eggs."
"How so?"
"A hen's bom able to lay just so many eggs, and after she's dropped her last one, she can sit on her nest and strain and grunt and never squeeze out another. I'm starting to think a writer is born with just so many plots."
A smile creased Sterling's face. "Why, have you been straining and grunting?"
"Hell, yes, and rearranging my feathers; but I'll be damned if I can squeeze out a new plot, and these old ones are starting to smell."
Sterling shrugged. "I thought that last Tarzan, the one about the secret treasure, was swell."
"That was a movie, Adam-I didn't write that."
"Oh. Sorry."
"It did stink, though."
The FBI man took a swig of root beer. "You going to the luau tonight?"
"Those damn things … They expect you to eat dried octopus and raw fish and disinterred pig, and then there's that library paste they try to disguise under the alias of poi."
"Yeah, but are you going?"
"Haven't turned down an invite yet." Burroughs looked sideways at his friend, eyes slitted and amused. "Christ, Adam, I thought I was the worst conversationalist on the planet, till I heard this sorry attempt on your part. Can the small talk-what's this about?"
Sterling sighed, sat forward, hunkering toward him. "Ed, I need to take you into my confidence."
"Be my guest."
"This is very unofficial."
"Okay."
"I've been here at the Niumalu for about three months, now. So has somebody else."
Burroughs thought about that, gestured with a motion of his head. "That German next door, the big spender-Otto Kuhn. He and his wife moved in maybe a week before you." "That's right. He's why I moved in, Ed."
"Really!" Burroughs got up from me couch, pulled his typing chair over and sat, so he could face his Mend; this was getting interesting. "Don't tell me we have a Nazi at the Niumalu."
"Something like that. He's really just a goddamned beachcomber pretending to be a retired gentleman of substance. But… he was an officer in the Kaiser's Navy during the Great War, that much we know."
Burroughs arched an eyebrow. "He's trying to start a real estate business, I understand."
"That's just talk-before that it was selling furniture; for a while he studied Japanese at the University of Hawaii."
Now the writer was leaning forward. "Why does a German in English-speaking Hawaii want to learn Japanese?"
"Our boy Otto has frequent dealings with the Japs-he took one trip to Tokyo in '30 and another in '36. We suspect he's in their employ. My contacts confirm as much."
"Your contacts."
"Ed, you put our Mend Colonel Frank Teske on his steamer today. I don't have to tell you he thinks war is imminent… that this island will be under attack, momentarily."
"What do you think, Adam?"
"He's right and he's wrong-war is imminent Washington isn't having any luck negotiating with the Japanese. But Frank's wrong, too-the threat on our remote little island is not from the sky, but on the ground."