"How much difference would it have made if I didn't get back?"

"Maybe none, to us," she whispered. "We could make us up some reasons why it was a thing to do. But it would have been a dirty thing."

"I sense that. But why?"

"Why a dirty thing? Because they'd be bugs with you stomping them. And people aren't bugs. Not even those people. Anyways, if you'd used it to kill folks, I couldn't ever use it again to do something happy, like packing ice in around that ol' scrawny girl up there."

She bounced back away from him and said, "Sweetie, you got a tendency to treat that watch too solemn. Afore you know it, we'll be bowing down to that darn thing, and then it will be the watch in charge instead of us. I say if there isn't fun in something, the h.e.l.l with it."

"You think I should use it more, frivolously?"

"It would be good for you."

"What should I have done to Charla then? What would you have done?"

"Hmmm. I'd want to scare that mean ol' gal and unfancy her a little."

"Like, for example, stripping her and stuffing her into a truck full of sailors?"

She kissed him quickly. "If you can even think up something like that, honey, it means you're coming along just fine. Just fine."

"That's what I did."

"What!"

"Andthetruckdroveslowlyaway."

She whooped, yelped, bounced, pounded his chest with her fist and laughed until she cried. And he got almost as much reaction from Joseph's untidy fate.

Suddenly she sobered, and her eyes narrowed. She leaned toward him in the faint glow of street light. "Speaking of you a-takin' the clothes off that fat little blonde woman, just how good did you get along with that Wilma girl and that Betsy?"

"I told you. Wilma is in that motel in Hallandale. And I left Betsy at the Birdline."

"Gals stashed all over town, huh?"

"It's either feast or famine."

"I'm all the feast you need, Yankee. I'm a banquet all day long, so when we go check on those gals, we both go. Wilma first, I guess. We have to make sure they stay put before they go wandering around messing things up."

"And then what?"

"I was thinking about that," she said quietly.

"We can run. You and me. A long, long way."

"And leave a mess like this? The law would never give up."

"What else is there to do?"

"That old uncle of yours left you in a real good mess. And I keep thinking maybe he had a reason. And maybe the reason is in that letter he left."

"But I can't get that for a year."

"Maybe he left you a way to get it a lot sooner."

Suddenly he realized what she meant. "Of course!"

"And he could have meant for you to get hold of it sooner than a year, Kirby."

He pulled her close and said, "You're a very bright girl, Bonny Lee Beaumont."

Unreckoned minutes later she began to make languid efforts to untangle herself. "First," she said regretfully, "let's go check on all your other women."

Chapter Fourteen.

On Wednesday morning, young Mr. Vitts, of Wintermore, Stabile, Schamway and Mertz received the anonymous, puzzling phone call. It preyed on his mind as the morning wore on. He knew it had to be nonsense, yet he knew he would not feel easy until he had a.s.sured himself that the packet entrusted to him was exactly where he had placed it, exactly where it belonged. At eleven, canceling his other appointments, he went to the bank. He signed the vault card, went with the attendant and operated his half of the double lock and took the j.a.panned metal box to a private cubicle.

He opened the lid and saw the labeled packet Mr. Winter-more had entrusted to him, and felt like a fool at having wasted time coming to the bank to stare at it, just because some crackpot had told him it was gone.

And suddenly it was gone.

He shut his eyes tightly and opened them again and looked into the box. The packet was gone. He put a trembling hand into the box and fingered the emptiness. He slumped onto the small bench and closed his eyes. He knew he was overworked. A man who could not trust the evidence of his own senses had no business accepting fiduciary responsibilities. He knew he would have to go at once to Mr. Wintermore and confess that the Krepps packet had disappeared, and he had no idea where it had gone. He would ask for some leave, and consider himself fortunate if he was not forced to resign.

When he stood up, he moved like a very old man. The packet was back in the lock box. Had it been a cobra, he could not have recoiled more swiftly. It took him a few moments to acquire the courage to touch it, then lift it out of the lock box. At first it seemed to him to be of slightly different weight and dimension than he remembered, and it looked as if it had been resealed, but then logic came to his rescue. No one could possibly have touched it. He'd had a mild hallucination based on nervous tension and overwork. There was no need to tell Mr. Wintermore about it. Everything was entirely in order. He would try to get a little more rest in the future, a little more exercise and sunshine. He returned the box to the vault and walked back to his office, consciously breathing more deeply than was his custom.

Most of the doc.u.mentation within the packet consisted of a detailed, witnessed, notarized certification of where the twenty-seven million had gone, affirming that O.K. Devices was primarily an eleemosynary operation, and because taxes had been paid on monies diverted to O.K.D., no claims for deductions had been in order.

Bonny Lee knelt on the bed behind Kirby and read over his shoulder as he read Uncle Omar's personal letter to her.

"My dear Nephew: It is entirely possible that you will never be able to comprehend this letter. You will think it evidence of senility, unless you have discovered It, and made use of It to gain access to this letter, a matter you should find rather simple, well in advance of schedule.

"I have taken elaborate safeguards. One, of course, was my attempt to shape your mind and character so you would be capable of properly using It, but at no time did I feel that you had reached the point of development where I could merely hand It over to you, as though giving you the world and all that is in it. I decided to make it all so difficult for you, the very act of discovering the capacities and making use of them would be sufficient trial by fire to solidify those aspects of your personality which I felt too indefinite to make you worthy of such a strange trust.

"The other safeguards are technical, and I fear so complete that the odds are against It ever being used by anyone after my death. The first device was extremely c.u.mbersome, created nausea in the user, and was operative for but three minutes at a time. Over the years I simplified and perfected it. All technical notes regarding it have been destroyed. All you need know, if you have discovered Its capacities, is that it is permanently sealed, and uses cosmic radiation as a power source, acc.u.mulating it and storing it with such rapidity, no use is so excessive as to weaken It. Yet should any fifty-day period pa.s.s without its being used, the acc.u.mulation will overburden the storage capacity and fuse the basically simple device beyond all possibility of constructive a.n.a.lysis. This is one safeguard. In addition, should any attempt be made to open the sealed mechanism, the same result will be obtained. Lastly, due to a microscopic diminution of the essential element of the device, through use, I estimate that it will last no less than twenty and no more than twenty-five years from the date of this letter.

"I might add here that I took into account one psychological safeguard. I have directed Wintermore to hand it to you personally, and he is the least likely man I know to either let it out of his hands prematurely, or to fiddle with it and thus accidentally learn its properties.

"If you have waited a full year to read this letter, my boy, you will have no idea what I am talking about.

"If, on the other hand, you have learned the properties of the object, and have used it to solve certain problems I set up for you, then you will realize why I have surrounded it with these safeguards. Morally, perhaps I should have destroyed it when I knew I had not long to live. But possibly it was vanity which kept me from doing so. If you know what it will do, you can perceive the horrid burden of responsibility in having discovered the phenomenon, in having made selfish use of it, in having, I hope, partially atoned for such use, and having faced the dreadful image of a world where such a thing would be available to unscrupulous men.

"I even face the fact that some other person may be reading this letter, and you will never see it. In that event, it is possible I have indeed loosed a demon on the world.

"But if you have it, know what it is, and understand this letter, my boy, I need not charge you with any special duties and responsibilities. What you are will determine how you use it, and I have tried to shape you to that end. If the burden seems too great, all you need do is set it aside for fifty days. "In these, my last words to you, I caution you about one thing, and one thing only. Keep it to yourself. Do not share its use with anyone. The man who owns it and can use it is the most powerful man the world has ever seen. It is not a power which can be safely shared."

Wilma Farnham, with sufficient advance notice to attract the widest possible coverage by the news media, and the maximum attendance by the executive personnel of Krepps Enterprises, governmental authorities and a.s.sorted attorneys of all parties at interest, made the first public appearance, with hair, make-up and clothing selected by Bonny Lee Beaumont.