Chapter 14

Katie arrived back at Supermarine Aviation Works to find that the two S.6. Racers had already been transferred to Portsmouth, where they had passed their flight tests with high marks all around.  She also learned that the Italians, still unable to work the bugs out of their M.C. 67s, had asked for a second extension...and that this time their request had been flatly refused.

“They’ve had their chance.” was the general consensus...one with which Katie heartily agreed.

Such however was not opinion of Italy’s Undersecretary for Air, a lynx named General Italo Balbo, who protested the decision both loudly and vehemently at every opportunity.  Finally, when it became clear that the Royal Aero Club was not going to change it’s mind, the General announced stiffly, “The Italian team is going to England merely to perform a gesture of chivalrous sportsfurship.”; a left-pawed way of saying that the British team was neither chivalrous or sporting -- and implying that if either Supermarine S.6 won the Schneider, it would be entirely on account of them racing virtually unopposed.  

Almost completely unnoticed in the controversy was the inclusion of a late Italian entry in the field, a plane flying without official government sponsorship known as the Casadonte C-1 ‘Aquila’.

The night before the Schneider-Cup, disaster almost befell the British team.  A mechanic giving one of the S.6. engines a final checkover noticed a tiny gray spot on one of the cylinder heads.  A subsequent test revealed that the cylinder was close to failure, and the furs from Rolls Royce had to be rounded up from the pubs and hotels where they were enjoying their pre-race festivities.  The easiest solution of course, would have been simply to install a new engine...but the Schneider Cup rules expressly forbade this once the planes had been certified as race-ready.  Changing parts however, WAS permitted, and so everyone available on the British Schneider team, Katie included, was dragooned into assisting in what was essentially a total rebuild of the engine.  Somehow, they managed to get it done on time.

The next day, with more than a million spectators crowding the beaches near Calshot Castle, and thousands more offshore aboard a flotilla of boats, liners, and the battle-cruiser HMS Iron Duke, the British and Italian entries took to the sky for the running of the 1929 Schneider-Cup seaplane race.  Almost at once it became apparent that the Italian pilots, in their untried Macchi-Castoldi MC 67s, were gambling with their lives.  On the first turn, an exhaust pipe failed in the M.C. 67 piloted by Remo Cadrigher, filling his cockpit with smoke and fumes.  Struggling wildly with the controls, the chipmunk somehow managed to coax his aircraft back from the verge of a high-speed spin, and even completed another lap before bringing his plane in for an emergency landing.

The other M.C. 67 pilot, an Italian Greyhound named Lt. Giovanni Monti, fared even worse.  As he turned into the second lap, a pipe in his radiator system burst, scalding the arms and legs with hot water and filling his cockpit with steam.  Fortunately Lt.Monti was also able to bring his plane in for a safe landing.  After that, it all belonged to the Supermarines.

Except...

Except for the C-1 ‘Aquila’, a purposeful-looking plane with a long, raked nose; piloted by an unknown aviator known simply as S. Casadonte.   Though the remaining Italian entry never managed to catch either S.6., it remained in dogged pursuit of the British planes all the way to the finish line, racking up an impressive speed of 321.2 mph into the bargain.

When the planes touched down after finishing the race, Katie was astounded, and not a little envious to learn that the pilot of the C-1 ‘Aquila’ was a FEMME...an Ibiza Hound named Sofia Casadonte; the first female pilot ever to compete in the Schneider Cup.  When she subsequently learned that Sofia had designed much of L’Aquila herself, the pinto mare’s envy turned to awe.

And when she was told that Sofia was only 18 years old, Katie promptly experienced an overwhelming desire to run over and grovel at the canine femme’s feet.

Then the judges ruled that the second-place S.6., piloted by R.L.R. Atcherley had passed inside one of the pylons on the first lap, ‘cutting a pylon’ in air-race parlance, and knocked him down to third place, giving Sofia Casadonte the second-place finish.

That was when Katie’s feeling towards the Ibiza hound femme changed to umbrage on her behalf.  In wresting second-place away from the British team...in her very first competition and with an almost home-built race-plane no less, Sofia Casadonte had saved her country a world of face.  By rights, the Italians should be crowning her with laurel and singing her praises.

Instead, both General Balbo and Signor Castoldi were acting as though she didn’t exist, not even deigning to congratulate the young Ibiza hound on her remarkable accomplishment.

Well, if THEY wouldn’t give Sofia her due, Katie would.  As soon as the obligatory round of paw-shakes and picture-taking with the pilots and other members of the S. 6 design team were concluded, she went and sought out the young Italian aviatrix..

“Hello,” she said, offering a paw, “My name is Dame Catherine MacArran, and I’d like to interview you for the Daily Observer.”

Sofia’s eyes became as big as a flying-squirrel’s “THE Dame Catarina MacArran?” she asked..

Katie hit it off so well with Sofia during the course of the interview, that she ended up insisting that both she and her father ( who had come with her ) join her as house-guests for the remainder of their sojourn in Britain.  It was on the first morning of their stay that she learned from Giuseppe Casadonte the reason his daughter had been snubbed like that.

“General Balbo is annoyed because the only Italian plane to finish the race was not officially sanctioned by the Italian Air Ministry.” he said, then cocked his head slightly to one side and raised an ear, “You are aware, Signorina MacArran, of the embarrassment suffered by the American military when the Travel-Air Mystery Plane won the National Air Races?”

Katie was.  Three weeks earlier, to the immense chagrin of War Department, an unknown aircraft from a small civilian company, the Travel Air Mystery-Ship, had defeated every Army, Navy, and Marine entry to take the National Air Race Trophy -- AFTER cutting a pylon.  It had been a humiliating episode for the War Department, to say the least.

“And so perhaps you understand how it is that L’Aquila has become something of a mortification for Italy’s military establishment.” Giuseppe told her, sighing wistfully as only an Italian can, “As for Signor Castoldi, well...let us just say that he is no small misogynist.”

“I know what you mean.” said Katie, with a nod, remembering Ray Dole’s ire at being forced to accept a female pilot in HIS race to Hawaii.

Giuseppe, it turned out was an aircraft designer working for Savoia-Marchetti, and had been the guiding paw behind his daughter’s race plane.  In fact, the Aquila had been propelled by one of the Isotta-Fraschini engines originally intended to power the now-defunct S 65. ‘Push-Pull’ plane.

“I TOLD them they’d never be able to keep the engines properly cooled with such a fuselage.” Giuseppe related with yet another sigh.

The Casadontes spent a week with Katie in London, and the three of them had a grand time together.  Katie took them to Howden to see nearly completed R-100, where they met and were mightily impressed by Barnes Wallis.  That led to the only awkward moment of the Casadontes’ visit.  When Katie mentioned her flight over the North Pole in the Norge, Sofia coughed and informed her as delicately as possible, that the captain of the Norge, Umberto Nobile was currently in disgrace; he was being held fursonally responsible for the loss of his second Arctic airship the Italia, when she had gone down on the ice the year before.  Even worse, the Fascist Government had been deemed Noblie criminally negligent and even accused him of abandoning his crew when he had he had been taken out by a rescue plane weeks ahead of any of the others.

The architect of his downfall, as it turned out had been none other than General Italo Balbo

Katie was outraged.  Umberto Nobile might have possessed all the tact of a heavyweight boxer, but one thing he most certainly was not was negligent.  Even Roald Amundsen would have given the ginger tabby-cat that much...and in fact, he had given Nobile a whole lot more.  Three weeks after the Italia had crashed, the crusty Norwegian Elkhound had joined the crew of a French flying boat, to help them search for the missing airship. 

That aircraft was never seen again.

Furthermore, Katie was perfectly aware that Signor Nobile had suffered a broken leg in the crash; an injury that had been starting to turn gangrenous as the time of his rescue.

Which was why he had been ORDERED to leave his crew behind...by the very Fascist government that was now accusing him of running out on them.

During their inspection-tour of the huge airship, the Casadontes were both enthused and highly complimentary of her design...except in one area.  When they came around to the tail section of the R-100, Sofia Casadonte pointed upwards and frowned slightly.

“Forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, Dame Katie, but that sharply pointed tail-cone will not work.  It’s going to create a vacuum that will put undue stress on the R-100's aft section when she flies at speed.”

This observation earned her a patronizing smile from Neville Norway, the R-100's chief stress engineer, who happened to be standing nearby...and in turn earned the Australian rabbit a scornful look from Katie. 

“Christmas, Neville...if it was ME pointing that out would you be so condescending?” she thought, but did not say.

From there, it was back to London, and an endless round of dinner parties and soirees...and movies.  Sofia Casadonte was an ardent film buff who simply adored American cinema.  Every afternoon would find her and Katie in Piccadilly Circus, queuing up to see another film.  ( Katie’s fursonal favorite of the lot was the one British film they saw; Blackmail, directed by a young woodchuck named Alfred Hitchcock. )

On the day the Casadontes took their leave, Katie felt as if she was saying good-bye to a long lost sister. She had never met another femme with which she felt such a kindred spirit as Sofia Casadonte, and it was a feeling well reciprocated.  By the time the young Ibiza hound and her father boarded their channel ferry in Ramsgate, she and Katie had promised to write each other at least two dozen times
 
When Katie returned to London, the house in Kensington felt more empty than it ever had before...and Katie felt more alone than she ever had in her life.  From both Eamon Mack and Jim Spanaway came messages informing her that the sale of her stocks and other assets had been completed.  No one was surprised, no one protested...and a few furs ever sent her notes of encouragement. 

“Hope you take it back, all of it and then some.” said one, from Winston Churchill.

“If you only knew,” Katie murmured as she shredded it into the dustbin, “If only I could tell you...but you wouldn’t believe me, would you?”

For the rest of September and into October, with Katie now observing safely from the sidelines, the New York Stock Market was on a roller-coaster ride...up one day, and down the next.

Then, on Thursday, October 24, 1929 the market plummeted by an incredible 13 million shares...and this time, it did not bounce back up again. After minor fluctuations on Friday and Saturday, the market dropped even further the following Monday.

The next day, Tuesday, October 29, 1929 would be known forever after as Black Tuesday...the day of The Crash.

And it was only the beginning.  By the end of November, the average price on the New York Stock Market would plummet by a mind-boggling 62%.  Soon, orders for durable goods began to taper off rapidly, and factories by began to lay off workers.  Depositors started to lay siege to banks, farm prices commenced to drop out of sight, and destitute speculators commenced to drop from high-rise windows.

The Great Depression had officially arrived. 

What happened next for the two surviving members of the MacArran clan could best be likened to the classic tale of The Three Little Pigs.  Katie, with her assets safely ensconced in a house, not of brick but of stone, ( the stone facades of the Banks of Credit Suisse ) rode out the storm with minimal damage.  In fact, when the value of the Dollar and Pound began to drop against the Swiss Franc, she actually enjoyed a modest profit.

Colin, who had built his house not of straw, but of two even more flimsy materials, paper and air, did not fair nearly as well  Almost overnight, his stock portfolio became worth about as much as a starving artist’s sketchbook.

And that was just the overture.  On a freezing Saturday in February, 1930...more than fifty agents of the United States Treasury converged on an abandoned coffin works near Yonkers, New York.  Inside they found the remains of a hastily dismantled distillery works, but whoever had been running it, they had long since fled the scene.

One tantalizing clue had been left behind however; several boxes of labels bearing the distinctive logo of MacArran Scotch.  The Treasury agents forwarded these to the F.B.I., who confirmed what they had suspected from the beginning; the labels were not forgeries, but the genuine article, printed in England by the firm of Warnely and Trent...the principal supplier for MacArran Distilleries Ltd.

Three weeks later, in New Jersey, another distillery producing bootleg MacArran Scotch was raided...and this time the furs running the place were caught with their pants down.

A month after that, an indictment against Colin MacArran was unsealed in a Manhattan Federal District Courtroom.  The charge: violation of the Volstead Act, and evasion of the US Tax Code.

Unfortunately for the revenuers, Colin was in Britain at the time...and just as Katie had predicted, he was safe there.  Despite repeated pleas for his extradition from the US State Department, the House of Lords refused to even consider the matter.  This time, Colin MacArran wasn’t accused of a violent crime; he had allegedly broken a law which even the teetotalers amongst the peerage considered ridiculous in the extreme.  As for the other charge...a pox on all taxes anyway!

What Colin did not stop to consider was that his indictment gave the Treasury Department free reign to examine his other business dealings, specifically his management-by-proxy of Combs Mining Machinery.  A surprise audit of the company’s books revealed that the stallion had been skimming a hefty slice of the company’s income ever since taking control.  That was all it took.  At once, the law which had permitted the stallion to take control of his grandfather’s holdings in the company became null and void...and Ernie Shapiro was forced to flee to Mexico.

Unfortunately for Katie and Grandpa Joe, instead of hiring back Jim Spanaway, which would have been the sensible thing to do, the Combs board of directors now chose to engage in an unseemly free-for-all amongst themselves for control of the company.

While all this was going on, on December 12, 1929, amid great fanfare, the airship R-100 took to the skies for the first time, flying to Cardington, where her sister ship, the R-101 was still under construction.  Among the complement of passengers on board were the airship’s principal designer, an elk named Barnes Wallis, his chief assistant, an Australian rabbit named Neville Norway, and another member of her design team, a piebald English Hunter/Mustang mare named Catherine, ‘Katie’ MacArran.  In the series of test flights that followed, the R-100 was found not only to meet, but to EXCEED her performance requirements.  Sturdy and stable in flight, she had a top speed of 81 miles per hour and a useful lift of 54 tons.

“Eat your heart out, Hugo Eckener.” Katie playfully told Neville Shute Norway at the conclusion of one of these test runs.

But she had spoken too soon.  Like every other dirigible that had ever been launched, the R-100 was not without it’s bugs...and during the course of the very next test flight, not one but two of them reared their ugly heads.

First, the widely spaced frames so prominent in the design caused the outer covering to flap during extended flights at high speed.  This could be remedied by the simply expedient of reinforcing the outer envelope cover, but not without considerable expense.

The other problem was far more serious.  Towards the end of that test run, the R-100's tail cone mysteriously collapsed.  A subsequent test showed that just as Sofia Casadonte had warned, it’s sharply pointed configuration tended to create a strong vacuum.  Working feverishly, around the clock, Barnes Wallis, Katie, and Neville Shute Norway produced a new, more effective tail-cone design for the airship in just over a fortnight.

But at a cost guaranteed to make the dirigible’s shareholders blanch.  In fact, Katie ended up have to shoulder most of that burden herself. Though this gave her an even larger controlling interest in the airship than before, it was an added expense couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Finally, with her teething difficulties behind her, The R-100's first official voyage was set for July 30, to Montreal Canada.  In the meantime, she would continue her test-flights and be fitted out as the rival to the Graf Zeppelin she was always intended to be.

In almost all aspects, she was considerably different ship than the German dirigible.  Whereas the Graf had enjoyed a straight profile, like that of a summer sausage, the R-100 boasted an elliptical shape, such as that of an American football.  Somewhat shorter than the Graf Zeppelin, 720 as opposed to 775, feet, the R-100 had a slightly larger diameter 133 as opposed to 120 feet.  She also carried only three engine pods in contrast with the Graf’s five...but each of these contained not one but two Rolls-Royce Condor engines, all of them mounted in a push-pull configuration.

During her time at Cardington, Katie made what would become another of the great friendships of her life.  Amongst the first assets which she had sold in response to Jim Spanaway’s warning had been The Boilermaker Special, and in April of that year, the plane’s new owner co-piloted her on a record-breaking flight to the Cape of Good Hope, returning to England by way of Karachi, then in British India.

Her name was Mary du Caurroy, she was a pine-marten, she was the Duchess of Bedford...and she was 65 years old. 

When Her Grace arrived back in London, no one in the crowd was more enthusiastic than Katie.  She had agonized for weeks about her decision to sell the Special...but now it turned out that her beloved plane had passed into the care of a more than worthy successor.

Mary of Bedford was a progressive, dynamic individual who refused to let her advanced years slow her down.  Already, she had made one pioneering flight to India, and was in the process of helping to organize the first all-femmes air-meet to be held in Britain, scheduled for the following year

Cardington, it so happened, was located in Bedford...and so during her time there, Katie was a frequent house-guest of the Duke and Duchess.  Very often, she and Mary du Caurroy would go flying together, and whenever they were on the ground, Her Grace would take  it upon herself to mentor Katie in the manners of the English gentry.  Though a great deal of what Mary had to teach her Katie already knew, much of it was wholly unfamiliar.  But soon, with the Duchess of Bedford’s help, her social graces had been polished to a high luster.

“Never know when you might need it dear,” the old mustelid once told her with an affectionate pat on the arm, “Given the life His Grace, the Duke of Strathdern leads and the company he keeps, I daresay it’s not impossible that you should unexpectedly find yourself elevated to the family title one of these fine days.”

Fateful words...for even as the Duchess of Bedford spoke them, more trouble was brewing for Colin MacArran, and this time not in America but in Britain.  With the loss of his American operations, the Duke of Strathdern’s British distilleries had now become indispensable.  No one knew that better than his distillery workers, who promptly organized themselves into a trade union and submitted a list of demands to MacArran Distilleries Ltd.’s manager, an Ayrshire bull named Simon White.

These demands were anything but unreasonable...but when Simon White suggested to Colin that they at least hear the union out, the bull was treated to the spectacle of the Duke of Strathdern bringing his hoof down so hard on his mahogany desktop, the surface cracked.

“Negotiate with a pack of bluidy communists?  NEVER!”

“Then they’ll strike,” warned Simon, a bull not to be cowed, not even by Colin, “And nae just in Scotland.  They’ve got the distillery workers in England and Ulster ready to join them.  Don’t do it, Yer Grace.  Dinna reject them out of hoof like this, or we’ll both be sorry.”

“No...” snuffled Colin, his ears vanishing backwards into his scalp, “THEY’RE the one’s who’ll be sorry.  They’ve forgotten who distributes the products they produce.”

And on that cryptically menacing note, Colin stormed out the door without looking back...

Two weeks later, on the evening of Saturday, May 19, 1930...a border collie named Duncan Campbell, president of the MacArran Distillery Workers Union, left his home in Inverness for a round of snooker and some business talk at a local pub named the Jolly Welder, which ironically happened to be owned by one Dame Catherine MacArran.

Two hours passed with no sign of him, this despite the fact that the pub was only a fifteen minute walk from his front door.

By 9:00 he had still not turned up, and by 10 that evening, his fellow union members were combing the streets of Inverness, searching for him.

The next day, with Duncan Campbell still missing, the police were summoned.

Then, early on the morning of June 22nd, his remains were found stuffed in culvert beneath a railroad grade.  A subsequent autopsy revealed that he had died from a gunshot wound to the head.  But not before his left kneecap had been broken.

The MacArran Distillery Workers Union exploded.  In America, killing a union leader might be  par for the course, but in Britain it was tantamount to firing a slingshot into a hornet’s nest.  What made it even more heinous was the fact that Duncan Campbell had been shot to death; perhaps THE most un-British crime that could be committed.  Within days, every single one of Colin MacArran’s distilleries had not only been closed down, but had been looted of key machinery parts and had their offices heavily vandalized.

Meanwhile Simon White had already tendered an angry letter of resignation, and no amount of remonstrances by Colin could persuade him to change his mind.  Worst of all, rumblings of discontent were soon heard in every distillery in Britain...and then they began to spread to all the trade unions in the U.K. 

By the end of that week, both Houses of Parliament were in an uproar.  Everyone remembered the disastrous general strike of 1926, and if that sordid episode were repeated now, in the wake of the stock market collapse...

That was a scenario no one wanted to contemplate...least of all Colin MacArran, who promptly decided that a return visit to Havana would be a grand idea about now.

But before he could take ship, both he and Katie were summoned for questioning by Scotland Yard.  Through some sort of bureaucratic mishap, or perchance it was ‘accidentally-on-purpose’, they found themselves cooling their heels in the same tall, narrow corridor, at precisely the same time.

The first thing Katie noticed was how right Jim Spanaway had been about the changes in Colin’s appearance.  Had it not been for the familiar sneer he gave her as he passed her by, she would never have known it was him.  The once tautly muscled stallion now owned a hay-belly was so large, he almost resembled a pregnant mare, and had Katie not seen it for herself, she never would have believed it; a horse with JOWLS.

If Scotland Yard had hoped that bringing them together would provoke a revelation from one or the other, they were to be thoroughly disappointed.  The whole time they were sitting there, Colin spoke just one sentence to Katie, and his sister’s response was even more noteworthy for it’s brevity.

“At least YOU’VE not got control of Comb’s Mining Machinery.”

“Yet!”

The questioning of Katie MacArran was both perfunctory and brief.  Yes, she owned the Jolly Welder.  No, she hadn’t known Duncan White.  No, she had absolutely nothing to do with any of the MacArran distilleries, or any of her brother’s other business dealings, and here’s a copy of my father’s will to prove it.  Thank you, Dame Catherine...sorry to have taken up so much of your time.

Colin, on the other hoof, was detained for almost the entire remainder of the day...during which he was given a stern warning that a visit to Havana might NOT be such a splendid idea after all. 

“Well, what about Jamaica, then?” asked Colin, petulantly folding his arms.

“British soil, yes that should be all right.” said the inspector in charge, a serval named Tommy Valentine, “But it would be very unwise of you to set hoof anywhere off of British territory while you’re on holiday, Your Grace...very unwise indeed.”

At the same time this was going on, another even more acrimonious question and answer session was talking place, this one in a posh suite of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City.  During the course of this meeting, two of the participants came within a whisker of shooting it out right there in the living room.

“You stupid yiff, Siegel!  What the yiff did you let happen over in England, you dumb cocksucker?”

“Hey, yiff you Dutch!  You don’t talk to me that way!”

“Oh yeah?  Whaddaya gonna do about it....BUGSY?”

“Why you little motheryiffer.  I’ll kill you right....”

“AWRIGHT, SHADDUP, BOTH OF YAS!” snapped the voice of an ermine named Salvatore Lucania...known more commonly these days as Charlie ‘Lucky’ Luciano.

“Just tell us what the happened, Benny.” said the smallish, gray rat seated on Luciano’s left.

As always, Meyer Lansky was able to assert a calming effect on his friend, and the wolf began to explain what happened:

“Moe and Philly were only supposed to slap the guy around and kneecap him.  But after getting seasick all the way to England, and the warm beer, and all that shit, by the time they finally grabbed the asshole, they were so pissed off they just couldn’t stop themselves from killing him.”

That was all it took to get Dutch Schultz out of his chair again.

“I want both of their hot, yiffing heads on sticks...now!”

“It’s already taken care of, Dutch.” said Luciano, coldly regarding the schnauzer out of his slightly drooping right eye.  “Now sit the yiff down.”

“Anybody hear anything from that limey jerk-off, Colin.?” queried a voice like a metal file scoring iron pipe.  It was an Italian Spaniel named Francesco Castaglia...known to his associates as Frank Costello.

“Plenty.” said Meyer Lansky, in that same moderated tone, “He’s pissed as Hell over the way Moe and Philly went overboard...and who can blame him with every one of his distilleries closed down?”

“Yeah?” said Dutch Schultz, no longer yelling, but hardly mollified.  “Well guess what Meyer?  I ain’t too happy about it either.  I figure I got a month, maybe two months supply of Scotch left, not counting what’s in the pipeline.”

“Which is why I called this meeting.” said Lucky Luciano, getting to his feet, “How do we deal with this?”


On July 29, 1930, the airship R-100 lifted off from Cardington for her first major demonstration flight, a voyage across the Atlantic to Canada.  Amongst the 44 furs aboard were Katie, Neville Shute Norway, and taking the mare up on her offer, a white-furred cat-femme named Lady Grace Hay-Drummond-Hay, covering the flight for Hearst papers.

With her trial runs completed, the R-100 was now boasted an outstanding level of passenger accommodations.  Even Lady Drummond-Hay, unswerving champion of the Graf Zeppelin grudgingly conceded that “flying aboard the R-100 both surprises the passenger and surpasses his or her expectations in all regards.”

Katie herself, put it more earthy terms, “This makes the flying on the Graf look like traveling in steerage.”

That was not an exercise in hyperbole. The R-100 boasted a spacious, two story dining area,  a mezzanine lounge, and even hot water for washing.  After rising in the morning, the passengers could enjoy, in the words of Neville Norway, “a normal breakfast, served in the Christian way.” meaning English rather than continental style.

Arriving in Montreal Canada, where the R-100 was to remain for a fortnight as a tourist attraction, Katie was met by Jim and Mary Spanaway, the latter of whom took one look at the massive airship and said, “Faith...yer helped t’ build THAT?”

But then Jim Spanaway took Katie aside and told her that a messenger had come to their hotel that morning, bearing greetings from one Mr.Samuel Bronfman and requesting a meeting with her that very evening.

“What the heck does HE want?” Katie queried, her ears working back and forth.  She knew the name of course.  What her father had been to Scotch, Sam Bronfman was to Canadian Liquor.

“No idea,” said Jim, with a shrug, “But my gut instinct tells me you should definitely go and see him.”

“Okay,” said Katie, “But I want you there, too.”

They met in a small, private dining room in the back of Le Senateur, a popular restaurant in the Old Town section of Montreal.

Samuel Bronfman, ‘Mr. Sam’ as he liked to be called, was not a formidable-looking individual.  He was a lemming, with a roundish head and large lips that almost belied that fact that he was a rodent.  There was, however, no mistaking the severity of his eyes.  Throughout the entire course of their meal, he refused to respond to any of Katie’s inquiries as to the reason for their meeting.  Only when the last dish had been cleared did he lean across the table and get down to cases.

“I have been asked by, shall we say, certain mutual acquaintances in America to come here and talk to you.  As I’m sure you’re aware, the MacArran distilleries have been closed by a series of strikes, and...” Abruptly, his eyebrows raised, “I’m sorry...you find that AMUSING?”

Now, Katie demonstrated to the lemming that he wasn’t the only one in the room with a penetrating stare.

“And as I’m certain you’re aware Mr. Bronfman,” she said, regarding him with her singular blue orb, “those distilleries are wholly the concern of my elder brother, not me.  I have nothing to do with them and may I say, nothing but contempt for Colin.  For all I care, he can go rot in Hell.”

In response to her last statement, a peculiar change of expression overcame Samuel Bronfman’s face.  He actually seemed...pleased.
 
“Well, let me ask you a hypothetical question,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “If you DID have control of the MacArran Distilleries...what would you do to make things right again?”

Katie responded with a brief horse-laugh.

“You’re talkin’ to the wrong mare about that, Mr. Bronfman.  Hell, I can’t even DRINK the hard stuff.  Much less do I know anything ‘bout how to make or market it.”

But the rodent would not be put off.

“Indulge me,” he said, smiling a little,  “Purely for speculative purposes, you understand.”

Katie did understand.  For the first time since sitting down, she grasped the REAL purpose of this meeting. 

And that was why she hesitated for a second before answering.

“I’d get Simon White back at all costs.  For the most of the past year, he’s been the one making  the real decisions concerning the MacArran distilleries, not my brother.”

Samuel Bronfman was not a rodent easily surprised...but then Colin MacArran was a stallion whose actions frequently surprised a lot of furs

“What?” sais the lemming, eyes flaring wide, “You mean to tell me that Colin...His Grace that is, hasn’t been involved in managing his own distilleries for almost a year now?”

“No,” said Katie, “Colin’s been running things in name only ever since he opened those bootleg operations in the States.  That’s why if I had any say about this mess, I’d get Simon back, by hook or by crook, and give him full authority to take care of everything.  Other than that, your guess is about as good as mine.”


On their way out of the restaurant, Jim Spanaway took Katie abruptly by the arm.

“My God, Katie.” he whispered, in a halting, breathless voice, “Do you realize what you just DID?”

Katie looked at the hoof holding her arm as though it were a spot of lint, then grabbed it and plucked it disdainfully away.

“No, Jim.” she said, in a voice as flat as a concrete slab, “I have NO idea what I just did.”  And fixing him in the gaze of her blue eye, she added, “Do you?”

The mountain goat regarded the wall-paneling. “No.” he said, in a hoarse croak, “I...I don’t.”


Ten days later, Colin MacArran, the 13th Duke of Strathdern, in the company of Josslyn Hay and two female companions, attended a showing of the Marx Brothers film, The Cocoanuts, at the Crown Cinema in Kingston, Jamaica.  Though almost everyone agreed afterwards that there had been a fur in a dapper, grey suit seated behind them, no one could recall exactly what he looked like, or even what species he had been.

What they would remember was that he got up and left immediately after the conclusion of a scene involving Chico and Harpo:

Chico: Right now I'd do anything for money. I'd kill somebody for money. I'd kill YOU for money.

[Harpo looks dejected]

Chico: Ha ha ha. Ah, no. You're my friend. I'd kill you for nothing.

[Harpo smiles].

The first thought when the house lights came up, was that like his father before him, Colin had suffered a cerebral aneurysm.  A subsequent autopsy revealed that the stallion had been killed by, ‘a sharp object, thrust into the cerebral cortex by way of the right ear.’

By then, Harry ‘Pittsburgh Phil’ Strauss, one of Murder Incorporated’s most notorious killers, was already safely back in New York.

And the R-100 was well on her way back to Britain.



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Sofia Casadonte ( Sophia Bianco ) and Giuseppe Casadonte are the property of Stuart McCarthy; used here with his kind permission