Pursuit Chapter 31

Chapter 31

“Well, you know why Raibassu goes out of his way to be so annoying, don’t you Mary?” Katie was saying, “It’s because the big lug doesn’t want me getting too attached to him...in case one of these days he has to give up his life to protect me.”

In the mirror, she saw Mary Spanaway grimace slightly.

“Huh, that’s rather morbid of him. Why do you allow Raibassu to think like that?” She snipped a thread and began to undo the first braid.

Braiding and unbraiding her mane had always been a job Katie quietly detested and she was more than glad for Mary’s help. Originally, she had planned to have Hsing assist her, but helping with her mane had been the goat-femme’s job back when she’d been Katie’s nanny. Letting Mary take her braids out again was good way to rekindle to old warmth.

“Because that’s the way the members of the Abyssinian Imperial Guard are trained to think.” she said, regarding their reflections, “They’re supposed to live their lives as if the next moment might be the one when they’ll have to sacrifice themselves.” She brushed at an ear. “And don’t think I haven’t TRIED to talk that damfool lion into changing his attitude...only how do you argue with 2500 years of tradition?”

Mary Fallon Spanaway’s face pinched into a wry smile.

“Speakin’ as one of the Irish...y’ DON’T.”

Katie’s mouth stretched slightly in a wicked smile. Whatever his reasons for speaking to her like that, she was not going to let Raibassu get away with it. In fact, she had already sent a message to his suite at the Tapotabo hotel....

Another braid came loose. Looking for her mane-comb, Katie noticed the pile of letters laying unopened on the dresser. She reached for the first one, and the letter-opener laying beside the stack ( She would have preferred to open them with her shikomi-zue; it would have been a good exercise, but she didn’t want to disconcert Mary; the goat-femme had never fully reconciled herself to that part of her character.)

“Are those business letters or fursonal?” her former nanny asked, a note of caution in her voice.

“Fursonal,” said Katie, looking up at the caprine from the corner of her one brown eye, “Why?” It was odd that the goat-femme should be so concerned about a few letters.

“Well, that’s the other reason I came here, Katie.” Mary said, stiffening slightly, “I wanted to ask that y’ please refrain from talking business with James while we’re in the Spontoons.” She sighed and shook her head , “I finally manage talk him into taking his first real holiday since his retirement -- an’ what happens? All the way over on the plane from Oakland he does nothing but talk about this....recession or whatever they’re callin’ it with this Wall Street lawyer sitting next to us, bull by the name o’ William Donelly or somethin’, I forget. I finally had to tell ‘im, ‘Now, you listen to me, Mr. James Spanaway, you’re going to relax and enjoy yerself on this holiday if I have to break both yer arms.’”

Katie might have laughed at this, but for the weary exasperation in her old nanny’s voice.

“Well, if Jim’s getting restless Mary,” she offered, “Maybe he might want to consider doing what Umberto Nobile did. He got bored real quick after he stepped down as TIDC’s senior skipper...even with that winery he bought in Sonoma. But ever since he took that part-time teaching job at Stanford, he couldn’t be happier. I’ll bet either NYU or the Columbia Business School would jump at the chance to have Jim as a visiting lecturer, if he made them the offer.”

“Oh, that’s an excellent idea.” said Mary, brightening. “I’ll be sure and mention it when I see him.”

Now it was Katie’s turn to sigh. There were a lot of her friends and associates retiring as of late -- Jim Spanaway, Umberto Nobile, Simon White of MacArran Distilleries. George Stafford was leaving The Observer in January, and Drigo Chavez had long since returned to his hometown of Mazatlan, Mexico...where he lived with his pretty, young wife and three children in what he described as ‘quiet splendor.’ Of the Old Guard, as Katie called them, only Eamon Mack remained.

Banishing her melancholy, Katie opened the first letter and began to read. When she was halfway through, she stopped, sniggering and then re-read it aloud for Mary’s enjoyment.

“Good Lord,” said the goat femme when she had finished, half amused, half irritated, “Don’t these lovesick twits EVER learn?”

“Apparently not,” said Katie, picking up another envelope and holding it up so that Mary could see the return address, “Look who THIS one’s from.”

Mary Spanaway craned her neck, then pulled back in surprise.

“What...Again?!”

“Again,” Katie chortled, inserting the opener in the envelope.

The letter was earnest, impassioned, and filled with such florid prose, it might well have been written in PURPLE ink. By the time Katie got to the last paragraph, both she and Mary were laughing themselves sick.

And that final paragraph was the real kicker.

“Son of a bitch!” said she pinto mare shaking her head in disbelief, “I knew Zog was a brazen bastard, but writing to me from his HONEYMOON suite? That beats ‘em all.”

“Perhaps he wants t’ start a harem?” Mary Spanaway suggested, chuckling acidly. King Zog of Albania was a Muslim.

“Well if Zog thinks he’s gonna get ME to join it.” Katie replied with an equal measure of caustic humor, “He won’t need to look very far for eunuchs to mind the place. Coz when I get done with that feline idiot, he’ll be fit for that job himself.”

King Zog I, formerly Ahmed Bey Zogu, was a tribal chieftain who had seized control of his country through a combination of arms and political chicanery, and later crowned himself king. A wildcat by species, Zog was a wastrel and a spendthrift whose household was costing his country a staggering 2% of it’s Gross National Product. Not exactly the most popular of rulers, he was supposedly so afraid of being poisoned that only his mother was permitted to prepare his meals.

In short, he was everything Katie could possibly NOT want in a lover. Though she had never once responded to any of his missives, Zog had doggedly persisted in his one-way correspondence all through the previous winter and spring. When he had married Countess Geraldine Apponyi of Hungary earlier that summer, Katie thought she had finally heard the last of him.

As an aristocrat herself, she should have known better.

“Hmmm,” she said, laying the letter aside, “I suppose this one will require an answer.” She reached for the gold-and-platinum bell on the dresser beside her, picked it up and rang it. A few seconds later, Hsing’s face peeked around the door.

“Yes, Your Grace?” said the pony in Cantonese, the language Katie preferred to have her use when speaking to her directly.

“Hsing? Go find Laurie and tell her to get her pad and pen ready; I’ll be ringing for her shortly.” (Laurie Bright, a chipmunk, was Katie’s private secretary.) “Oh, and set up a chair by the door for her, would you?”

“Right away, Your Grace.” said Hsing and disappeared once again.

Mary popped another braid and Katie reached for another letter.

“Long as I’m gonna have Laurie handy anyway...” she said.

None of the other letters were quite the gems that King Zog’s had been, but several were good for a laugh or two, at least. One that was not (nor was it unwelcome) was from a Mr. Roscoe Turner, currently in Cleveland Ohio, where he was preparing to compete in the Thompson Trophy race. Included in the letter was a picture of the big wolverine standing beside his new Laird-Turner Meteor race-plane, the Pesco Special. It was the first time Mary Spanaway had seen the Meteor and she let out a low whistle.

“Wooo, I’m no kind of expert on airplanes Katie, but if that plane's not a champion, I’m the Pope.”

“Damn straight, Mary.” Katie answered, passing her the photo for a better look, “Roscoe really did it. About the only thing I’d change on that plane is the fixed landing gear. Other than that...just wow! That’s one helluva racer he built.”

Actually Turner had not built the plane himself, but it had been built largely to his design, which in Katie’s mind was the next best thing...and it was a fast looking plane all right; the Laird-Turner Meteor was possessed of a long, silver fuselage and clipped wings, mounted at mid-level. It was powered by a Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp engine, then the biggest radial in existence. Katie also took note of the new tri-bladed, variable-pitch propellor. All in all, the Pesco Special reminded her a little of what a stretched Gee-Bee with a larger tail fin might look like.

And there, standing beside his plane, with one paw on the cockpit and that big, sparkling grin on his face was Roscoe Turner.

“Well, that one certainly looks confident, doesn’t he?” said Mary, returning the photo to Katie with a sniff. She had never entirely approved of her former charge’s liaison with the wolverine, and judging by the tone of her voice, she still viewed Roscoe Turner askance.

Which was why Katie almost kept her next words to herself.

“That’s only the front he’s putting on, Mary. Roscoe’s almost broke; he’s got creditors hounding him everywhere he goes. At the Golden Gate Races back in April, he had to disguise himself as a mechanic to avoid a process server. If he doesn’t win the Thompson, he’ll lose the Pesco Special and everything he has.”

Mary sniffed again.

“So I suppose he wrote you to ask for...”

Katie spun in her chair, looking directly at the goat-femme

“No Mary...not only did Roscoe NOT ask me for money in that letter, he wouldn’t take any if I offered it to him. In case you forgot he’s never once accepted a dime from me, ‘I’ve got my pride, Katie.’ is how he put it, remember?. It’s the same reason he turned down my offer to fly the Pony Express for me in the ‘35 Thompson. Roscoe either pilots HIS plane...or he doesn’t fly at all. He’s his own mustelid, period. And I respect him for that.”

Mary blinked in surprise. It was rare thing indeed when Katie gave HER the one blue eye.

Seeing this, the pinto mare realized that perhaps she was being a mite too harsh. After all, the goat-femme had only her own best interests at heart.

“I know Roscoe has reputation for not paying his bills, Mary.” she said, laying a hoof on the caprine’s shoulder, “and it’s not undeserved, I’ll give you that. But with me at least, he’s always been a straight shooter.” She took the hoof away, angling her head towards the window, as if the subject of their conversation might be standing out there, listening. “And we’re not going to get back together. That’s over and done with, and we both recognize it. We’re just friends now, that’s all.”

“I know that dear,” said Mary, whose expression said that she also was wondering if SHE’D gone a little overboard, “It’s just that...well...”

“Well, what Mary?” Katie queried, looking at her over a shoulder.

The goat-femme smiled wanly.

“Well he is a sweet-talker, Katie...and you are comin’ off a badly broken heart about now,” She paused, then added quickly, “But now yer remind me....well, seems ta me that a mel who wouldn’t take advantage of yer financial generosity’s not like to do the same in other way, is he?”

“No, he isn’t.” said Katie, pleased that Mary had gotten it. She turned to finish letting her former nanny take the braids out, the next two of which were removed in silence. Finally, Katie glanced up over her shoulder again, “Mary, I know what you want to say...and it’s all right. No, I’m NOT getting any younger.”

“And you’re also the last of the MacArrans.” said the goat-femme, dryly, “But that’s not it, dear. It’s that I know it’s somethin’ yer want so very much...even if yer lettin’ the world think otherwise.”

For some reason, Katie found herself becoming intensely interested in the array of cosmetics on the dresser. But there was no pretending with Mary Spanaway, much less herself. She sighed and sat back, regarding both of their images in the mirror once more.

“Well, you know what they say about me, Mary?   That if I had gotten married, I could never have accomplished all the things I’ve done.” she picked up an eyeliner and tossed it aside, “Well you know what I say? ‘Yeah, then what about Sophia Bianco? Did marriage ever slow HER down?’”

“Not the same thing, Katie.” Mary told her, popping another braid, “Her husband, Freddie Bianco’s also her co-star. An’ when’s the last time SHE flew in combat or built a gold mine in the jungle?”

“No...but she can still design race planes and fly them.” the pinto mare rejoined, and immediately regretted that she had. Unbeknownst to Mary Spanaway, the Little Engine was not just a racer, she was a pursuit-plane prototype. Could Katie have built a plane to THAT purpose if she’d married and settled down?

Not hardly.

“Well, I suppose that’s true, Katie.” Mary conceded, nodding. There was a lot more she could have said, but to Katie’s immense relief, she chose not to. For no reason that the pinto mare could fathom, it gave her another idea.

“What say you, Jim, and I have dinner together tonight?” she asked, “The boys in the race crew are probably just going want to hit the sack as soon as they get here, so I’ll be free this evening.”

“Oh, wonderful idea.” said Mary, “There’s a very nice restaurant attached to Shepherd’s Hotel -- called L’Etoile, so I’m told.”

“Sounds excellent,” said Katie, who had not forgotten Maggie Bronstiel’s caveat regarding a certain waiter at that restaurant. Why was it that the places with the best food tended so often to have the snottiest staff? She knew the answer, of course; it was a question that answered itself. No matter...Katie MacArran had her own way of dealing with discourteous waiters and waitresses.

The last of the braids popped free.

“There,” said Mary, and began to comb out Katie’s mane until it was pouring down the side of her neck in a long, flowing cascade of white on chestnut.

“Isn’t she a lovely girl?” Mary asked, leaning close over Katie’s shoulder, the way she had when Katie was filly.

But the piebald mare only smiled, ironically.

“Not a girl any more, I’m afraid.” she said, then turned and looked up at her former nanny again...but this time with a softer, more wistful expression. “I’m 33 years old, Mary.”

“Not so old either, I should think.” the goat femme responded, a slice of mild reproach sandwiched somewhere in her voice.

Katie sighed. When she had passed her 30th year, it had been with hardly a second thought. Even a year earlier, the drumbeat of time marching on hadn’t been so much as a distant echo. She had never expected the marking of another birthday to change all that; 32, 33...what was the difference?

Actually, there WAS a difference.

“33 years...that’s a third of a century, Mary.”

Not the wisest choice of words; Mary Fallon Spanaway was not having any of THAT.

“Well when yer get t’ the HALF century mark, then yer can call yerself a spinster.” she responded, archly. “Until then, stop feeling so bloody sorry for yerself.”

Katie instantly laid her ears back.

“I’m not...!” she started to protest, but this time the words melted away in her throat. Mary was right. Though Katie hadn’t spoken so much as a single word of self pity, it was exactly what she was feeling right now -- and the old caprine had seen straight through it.

Sometimes, having a friend who understood you could be chore.

“You know a good cure for feeling sorry for yourself?” she asked. Weak, but the best she could come up with on such short notice.

“Yes I do,” said Mary, smiling broadly, “Win that race!”

And the two of them hugged, warmly.

When Mary had taken her leave, Katie rang for Hsing again, and told her to begin drawing the bath. Then, after checking to make sure that the door from the bathroom to the hall was bolted, (“Blankety-blank LION!”) she jacked off her boots and got undressed, tossing her tunic, scarf and undies onto the bed for Hsing to collect later.

Before reaching for her bathrobe however, Katie spent a moment studying herself in the dressing mirror. No, it certainly wasn’t too late; she still had the looks.   Regarding herself in profile, and then over her shoulder, there was not a stretch mark or a hint of sag to be seen anywhere -- up front or in the back. And those...stripes were all but completely invisible now.

Katie knew she still had it...Hell, she looked better now than she had ten years ago. More fit, more healthy, and with an elegant sheen to her coat.

And she was also a lot wealthier than she’d been back then; her fursonal fortune now easily eclipsed that of her father and her grandfather’s estates combined...with the Barbara Hutton inheritance thrown in for good measure. In his wildest fantasies, her late brother Colin could never have imagined possessing such wealth such as she now had. (She might have been even more affluent if she wasn’t so generous with her subordinates, from Jim Spanaway right down the copy-kits at the Observer.)

And she was powerful. Powerful enough to swat Howard Hughes like a fly when once he’d pushed her too far. She was going to have to send that coyote a little reminder for that question he’d planted at the press conference. He was getting too big for his britches again...but never big enough to challenge her. He owned a movie production company, an aircraft company, and a firm that made oil-drilling equipment...and only the latter was consistently profitable. SHE had Combs Mining & Equipment, both the US and UK divisions, MacArran and Imperial Distilleries, Ltd, The London Daily Observer and the Daily Mirror, the Odenwald Brewing Co., International Air Cargo, Ltd., News Week Magazine, MacArran Aeronautics, and North American Aviation...and with the exception of North American, every single one of them had posted profits in the three previous quarters, even with Wall Street in the grip of the Recession.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the fact that Katie was also the bestselling author of Gold From Hell, and the silent partner in royalties from the sales of Zepps cookies and Republic corn muffins. There was a remark attributed to Lucky Luciano, supposedly made to Owney ‘The Killer’ Madden, while the former had been on the lam in Hot Springs Arkansas, “Nobody knows how much moolah that dame has, even Meyer (Lansky) don’t know...but it’s enough that nobody yiffs with her.”

And nobody ever did.

But all this was also the pinto mare’s Achilles’ heel where the opposite sex was concerned...though she had only just recently begun to realize it. Catherine MacArran, the 14th Duchess of Strathdern, air-race pilot, arctic and jungle explorer, successful entrepreneur, and decorated air-combat pilot, cast one helluva a long shadow. And mels didn’t LIKE standing in the shadows, especially when it was a female blocking the light. Certainly Carl hadn’t liked it. She knew now that it had contributed a great deal towards the end of their engagement.

That had been almost two years ago, and since then, Katie had been keeping to herself. She hadn’t even had a dinner date, much less a relationship with a mel since leaving Spain.

Now, however she felt she was ready to start seeing someone again. But before she took on a serious relationship, there was something she wanted to do first.

She wanted to have an affair, a wild, passionate, torrid affair, like nothing she’d ever even imagined before, something so daring it would have shocked her even to consider it only the year before. Though her heart had only just now mended to the point where she felt she could be with someone, she still had two years of physical needs to catch up on...and at thirty three years of age, she was just entering the period of life when a female becomes most sexually active. A whirlwind, tempestuous fling, with no strings attached....that was what she needed and wanted; one in the eye of the god of broken hearts.

Not with a married male, though. Unlike more than a few other female aristocrats she knew, Katie had never found the idea of adultery stimulating. Even worse, those were the kinds of affairs that sometimes came with CHAINS rather than strings; there was always the danger, remote but always there, that your lover would become so infatuated with you, he would opt to leave his mate for you permantely, never mind what you wanted.

So who should it be? Cedric McCradden? No, not him. She wanted it to be with someone...
honestly she had no idea who she wanted it to be with...not yet anyway. All she knew was that she wanted it to be with someone she’d never much as contemplate as a lover...until they actually met.

She turned and reached for her bath-robe.

The bath-water was hot, almost scalding hot...just the way Katie preferred it. Settling in with a luxuriant nicker, she rang the bell she had brought with her from the dresser. Presently, she heard Hsing’s voice again.

“Yes, Grace?”

“Hsing, turn on the radio please, if you would.”

“At once, Grace.” the pony replied. A moment later, she heard the speaker squealing and hissing as the vacuum tubes warmed to life.

Then a clipped voice was saying, “This is the BBC World News Service.”

Katie had chosen the BBC because it would be nighttime in Britain now. In New York it would still be late afternoon, what was known in the radio business as ‘the children’s hour’; Tom Mix, The Story Cat, Little Orphan Annie. There’d be no such thing as Fibber McGee, Bob Lope, or a music program just yet -- and no news, which was what Katie most wanted to hear. What was the latest on the Czech crisis?

It didn’t take her long to find out.

“In a speech broadcast by Berlin State Radio, Reich Minister Josef Goebbels accused the Prague government of a systematic persecution of the Sudeten MPs for their boycott of the Czech Parliament, claiming that they have been accosted in the street, roughed up by members of the Czech Communist Party, and on one occasion, severely beaten. Mr. Goebbels further alleges that these crimes have not only gone unpunished but un-investigated. ‘How long shall we permit the Czechs to abuse and brutalize furs of good German stock before we act?’ he was quoted as saying.”

Katie snorted derisively and began sponging her arms. From her long association with William Randolph Hearst, she knew a snowjob when she heard it.

By rights, Czechoslovakia should have been able to tell Adolf Hitler exactly where to stick his Third Reich and how far. The Czechs had treaties of alliance with both France and the Soviet Union, and a well trained army of 44 divisions. Their military was well-equipped too; in Plzen there was the huge Skoda Arms Works, the third largest in Europe and widely admired for the quality of it’s products. And as if that weren’t enough, the Czech frontier with Germany bristled with fortifications that made the Maginot Line look like a sand-castle.

Unfortunately, that frontier happened to be between Germany and the Czech province of Sudetenland -- whose inhabitants were mostly German, and who were demanding autonomy from Prague and a union with Germany in the mold of Austria.

Or that was Berlin’s version of what was going on. In actual point of fact, the only residents of the Sudetenland making that claim was a small but very noisy contingent led by a former Gym teacher named Konrad Henlein, but the German Nazis, being Nazis, were making it sound as if every German in the Sudetenland wanted Anschluss with Germany right NOW.

And it wasn’t just the Sudetenland Nazis. In the easternmost province of Ruthenia, Czechs of Hungarian background were also demanding union with THEIR homeland. So was Czechoslovakia’s sizable population of Poles. As for Prague’s so-called allies, Stalin was too busy purging his own country of any and all dissent to be bothered with the Czechs at the moment. And the French? They had already looked the other way when Hitler had remilitarized the Rhineland and forcibly annexed Austria, so what could Prague reasonably expect from the Quay D’Orsay?

Most recently Britain’s Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain had gotten into the act, joining with France to issue a mild rebuke to Berlin. When Katie had heard about it, she had almost laughed...almost. Privately, she considered Chamberlain a ‘milksop’... as well as a pompous ass with an overblown sense of his own abilities in foreign affairs. Look at the what had happened in the Foreign Office. One of the best and brightest, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, had resigned in protest because Chamberlain had insisted upon direct negotiations with Italy over the Czech problem, completely bypassing his authority. On the other hoof, Thomas Inskip, Chamberlain’s clearly incompetent Secretary of Defence was still on the job and still regularly consulted... and for no other reason than the fact that he slavishly echoed the PM’s own views on just about every subject imaginable.

There was a story George Stafford had recently told her about Neville Chamberlain, one that Katie thought almost perfectly summed up the character of the current resident at Number 10 Downing Street. On his weekends at Chequers, the PM’s favorite after-dinner activity was a game of musical chairs, a game which he always won.

He always won, because his guests always LET him win, ‘It means so much to him.’ was how one member of his clique had put it.

Katie snorted at the memory. THIS was supposed to stand up to the likes of Adolf Hitler?   If Chamberlain really thought that all the Fuhrer wanted was autonomy for the Sudeten Germans, she had some land in Florida to sell him. Through Winston Churchill, whose private intelligence network was often far more reliable than the official channels, and through her editor George Stafford’s equally efficient network of investigatory reporters, she had learned that Hitler would settle for nothing less than a triumphant march into Prague, period.

And it wasn’t just Chamberlain but his entire cabinet who were living in a dreamworld where Hitler was concerned. When Katie had heard of the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax’s reaction to the Austrian Anschluss, (“Horrible, Horrible...I never thought they’d do it.”) she had remarked to Zeke Bronstiel, “Remind me to get that idiot in a poker game some time.”

Only later did she learn that Halifax had known all along that ‘they’d do it.’

Incredible, simply incredible. Even now, Whitehall was still swallowing Hitler’s promise that the Sudetenland was to be his ‘last territorial demand in Europe.’ Never mind that he had made almost the exact same promise after the march into Rhineland and the annexation of Austria.

She took the sponge and began to wash her breasts. The news continued.

In Spain, Nationalist forces had broken through the Republican lines at the Ebro river. Once they reached the Mediterranean, a foregone conclusion according to the announcer, the government seat at Barcelona would be cut off from the rest of the country.

Katie sighed, and snuffled sadly. By now, it was obvious to everyone that the Republican cause was doomed... except the Republicans. Why the heck had she ever let herself become involved in the Spanish Civil War anyway? It was one of the few regrets she had...except that what she had learned there had later served her well in China.

She lifted one of her legs out of the water and began to lather it.

As if in response to this last thought, the next piece was a brief bit of news from China, which surprised Katie considerably. Usually, the BBC paid little if any attention to the Sino-Japanese conflict. According to the story, the Imperial Japanese Army was closing in on Canton, the last major port city still in Chinese paws. The reason the BBC was taking an uncharacteristic interest in the affair was that Hong Kong’s governor had issued a stern reminder to Tokyo not to violate the neutrality of the British crown colony, (which was located fairly close to Canton.) That made her wonder if the Governor was doing anything to accommodate the Chinese refugees who must be fleeing from Canton to Hong-Kong in droves about now. She would make it a point to ask Shang when next she saw him.

Katie took the sponge and began to wash her tail.

The rest of the news was domestic, followed by sport. This included, Katie was pleased to hear, a brief report on the upcoming Schneider cup, one in which she herself was given several notes of praise.

The water by now was becoming tepid, and almost opaque with soap. Katie reached forward and pulled the plug, letting the water almost drain away completely before replacing it again and opening the taps once more.

As the tub began to refill with hot water, she settled back and snuffled contentedly. On the radio, the news had concluded and the announcer was saying, “We take you now to Edinburgh, Scotland, where maestro Peter Leigh-Mackay leads the Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, the Pastorale."

Katie’s ears shot up at once. Though she had never learned to like opera, she simply adored the symphony, and had boxes at both Carnegie and the Royal Albert Hall.

And the Pastorale was one of her favorite pieces, along with Mendelssohn’s Scottish Suite and two more recent pieces, Ferde Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite, and George Gershwin’s wonderful new composition, Rhapsody in Blue.

She grabbed the bell and rang it. When Hsing arrived, Katie immediately told her to turn up the volume.

Then she settled back in the water, letting the strains of Beethoven’s music carry her away to a land of soft, rolling hills, greystone walls, and green fields. Ah, now this was the way to relax. All she needed to make it complete was a fine cigar. However, Katie MacArran strictly rationed herself to no more than two cigars a day, and she had already had one before launching from the Republic; she wanted to save her second smoke for after dinner.

Oh, well...there was always the next best thing. She picked up the bell and rang it again, feeling slightly guilty for making Hsing keep bustling back and forth like this.

“Hsing?” she said when the housemaid arrived, “Bring me a beer would you please? No glass, just the bottle will do.”

“Yes Grace,” said the pony, with just a trace of weariness in her voice. That told Katie she’d best get everything in one package.

“But first,” she said, “There’s two stacks of letters on then dresser. Go bring the smaller one to Laurie and tell her I’ll ring twice when I’m ready to start dictating the replies. Then after you bring me my beer, you can go ahead and have your lunch, ‘kay?”

“Yes, Grace. Thank you.” Hsing’s voice replied, this time with touch of gratitude.

Katie lay back in the water once again, enjoying the music. If was a fine rendition of the Pastorale, though in her humble opinion, no one performed it better than the NBC Symphony Orchestra with Arturo Toscanini conducting.

The door opened and Hsing entered, bearing a frosty bottle of beer on a tray. It was a label Katie didn’t recognize, something called Anchor Steam. After taking the bottle and dismissing her maid, she took a tentative sip and found it quite to her liking. A quick examination of the label revealed that Anchor Steam Beer came from a small brewery near San Francisco. That made sense. Frisco was the closet American city to the Spontoon archipelago, and the largest port of exit for cargo on it’s way to Asia or Australia by way of the Spontoons.

Katie was a quarter of the way through the bottle when the music concluded. She let the tub drain a second time, then refilled it and rang the bell twice. Presently she heard footsteps in the bedroom, and the sound of the radio being turned off.

“That better not be you, Raibassu.” she called, already knowing it wasn’t. The big cat would have left the radio on, the better to mask his approach.

“No.” said the chipper voice of her private secretary, “It’s only me, I’m afraid. Are you ready to begin, Your Grace?”

One thing Katie had always liked about Laurie Bright was that chipmunk femme had the incredible knack of knowing just what her employer wanted without having to be told... like turning the radio off as soon as she came in and making sure to ask if Katie was ready to start dictating before seating herself.

The pinto mare took another sip of beer.

“Yes, let’s begin with...To the Honourable Joseph P. Kennedy, United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, London, England.”

“My Dear Ambassador Kennedy,

I read your rather passionate letter with much interest. You ask me where I have been all your life.”

“The answer is: For the first 17 years, I wasn’t even BORN.

Yours, Sincerely
Catherine MacArran,
14th Duchess of Strathdern, OOB, OBE, Etc...Etc. You know the drill.”

She had Laurie read the letter back to her, then nodded and moved on.

“To Mr. Errol Flynn, Hollywood California.”

“Dear Mr. Flynn:

Your very fervent letter could not have been more timely. Yes, I would love to go flying with you. As a matter of fact, I’m leaving on a bombing mission over China shortly and I’m short a payload. How much do you weigh?”

Please RSVP Catherine MacArran, 14th Duchess of Strathdern...blah, blah, blah...the rest of it you know, Laurie.”

Laurie did, and in seconds was ready for the next letter.

“To Mr. Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA”

“Dear Biddle, I don’t want to be diddled.

Signed, Catherine MacArran...include ALL my titles in the signature of this one Laurie.”

“Yes, your Grace.”

They moved on to the next letter.

“To his Royal Highness, Crown Prince Paul of Greece. Aboard the motor-yacht, Phorcas...Spontoon Islands Lagoon.”

“Your Highness:

I found your very ardent note of yesterday to be nothing short of enchanting. Yes, yes...by all means, let us meet. Let us meet at the famous ruins of the Main Island tomorrow evening. I invite you to come prepared for a night of wild abandon, and to arrive at exactly the stroke of midnight.”

“And if I’m not there by 12:15, just go ahead and start without me.

Yours sincerely, Duchess...”

Katie stopped and pricked up her ears for a second.

“Laurie?” she queried, her voice tinged with reproach, “Laurie, are you laughing?”

“N-No, Your Grace.” came the slightly choked reply.

“You’re NOT?” Katie answered, sinking lowering in the tub and grumbling, “Damn...I must be getting rustier than I thought. Okay, here’s the piece-de-resistance:”

She raised the bottle and sipped once more.

“To his Royal Majesty, King Zog of Albania,”

“Your Majesty:

I have received this day, your most fervid, impassioned, and enamored missive, and I feel obliged to respond at once.”

“Sadly, King Zog, I must inform you that I cannot accede to your request for a liaison...as you have not made clear to me whether or not you have been granted permission for such a rendezvous from your master, the Emperor Ming.”

There was more to say, but Katie was obliged to wait until her secretary had picked herself up off the floor before continuing.

“In the meantime, I also regret to inform you that your previous letters to me seem to have disappeared, every single one of them.. Lost, strayed, or stolen, I can find no trace of them anywhere. I can only hope, as I’m sure you will, that they have not fallen into the clutches of the press. One can only imagine the scandal if say, the Beaverbrook or the Hearst papers were to get their paws on them.”

“Oh, and please give my sympathy, I beg your pardon, my REGARDS to your lovely new bride, the Countess Apponyi. Oh, and that’s not a correction, Laurie; write it verbatim.”

“Didn’t think it was, Your Grace.” came the answer from the other room.

“Right,” said Katie, and then resumed her dictation

“Until then, I remain faithfully yours,

Catherine MacArran, 14th Duchess of Strathdern...etc., etc. Oh, and Laurie? Before you send that letter, do me a favor and perfume it.”

“Perfume it?” came the chipmunk’s confused reply, “But Your Grace, if the Countess Apponyi gets a whiff of...oh, riiiight.”

“Riiiigggght,” said Katie, grinning sardonically. “All right, now the last two letters are serious.”

She cleared her throat and began to dictate, this time in a warm, nostalgic tone.

“To Mr. Roscoe Turner, Cleveland Ohio.”

“Dear Roscoe:

I just finishing reading your letter. Here’s hoping this one reaches you before the flag drops on the Thompson Trophy.”

“First of all, thanks so much for your words of encouragement. By now you probably read what I said about you in the press-conference I held earlier this morning. When I delivered those words, Roscoe, I was certain this was going to be your year to take the Thompson again...but now I’m twice as certain. You’re going to do it, big guy. You’re going to win the Thompson again, the first pilot ever to do it twice.”

“I only wish I could be there to see it...but as you know, I’m still fursona-non-grata around the Nationals these days. And besides that, I have a race of my own to get ready for. Oh, and fair is fair, Roscoe. Enclosed with this letter is a picture of MY new race-plane, The Little Engine...Er, see that one’s included in the envelope will you, Laurie?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Katie nodded to herself and continued.

“By the way, I really liked what you said in response to the rumor that some of the other pilots are planning to gang up on your plane and box you in.” (The wolverine had told a reporter, “I’ll chew up their tails with this big fan of mine and bail out.”) “That’s telling ‘em, Roscoe..and if anyone tries it, you give them one for me.”

“Yours, always with deepest affection,”

“Katie.”

She spent a few quiet seconds reliving old memories, then cleared her throat again, this time speaking in a voice as crisp as oat-straw.

“To Colonel and Mrs. Antonio Lanthrop Terry III.”

Katie paused here, taking a final swig of beer and then holding the bottle aloft as if in contemplation of the label.

“I have received the letter from your attorneys regarding the incident with your son at the Stork Club in New York this past March, together with your court summons and your demand for a public apology. Let me say, here and now, that I am truly and deeply sorry for the black eye and bloody nose that I gave to Antonio IV. If I had known that Antonio the Lesser, as I now think of him, was YOUR son, I would also have broken one of his ribs and turned him into a mezzo-soprano.”

“I feel confident in saying this, as by the time this letter reaches you, my attorneys will have presented you with the depositions taken from the various witness to the incident...every one of which, you will no doubt have observed, supports MY version of the events.”

“Yours, Sincerely
Catherine MacArran, 14th Duchess of Strathdern...etc., etc.”

Katie set the bottle down, her voice becoming steely.

“P.S., the NEXT time you try to drag me into court on such frivolous grounds, I will not just beat you...I will destroy you.”

She stopped here for a moment, listening to Laurie shifting uncomfortably in her chair. It had been some time since Katie had repeated the words she’d first spoken to her brother when he’d attempted to usurp her share of their father’s legacy; what her employees sardonically referred to as ‘The Curse of the Duchess’. With her friends and associates, Katie MacArran could be generous to a fault...but those who crossed her and heard the Curse pronounced upon them never heard it a second time. Just as she had with Colin, Katie never promised to destroy an enemy and then let the commitment go unfulfilled; she couldn’t afford to.

It was a hard and bitter home truth. If you were a female either running and/or owning a business, there was exactly one way to earn respect -- you had to be totally merciless with your enemies, no slack, no quarter, no kidding. Otherwise, they would eat you alive. In the world of business, chivalry in a stallion was viewed as weakness in a mare. A magnanimous gesture from a male was seen as a concession from a female. If a femme gave someone an even break, it was SHE who was the sucker. It was just the way things were and it was why, after all this time, Katie still refused to let up on Lord Casterley. A femme in business in the 1930s had to have nerves of steel, a heart of granite, and the instincts of a barracuda.

And she had to let the world know about it at frequent and regular intervals.

And Katie WAS capable of being completely and utterly ruthless. It was one of the most important lessons she had taken away from New Guinea -- a place where you lived by the law of the jungle, or you didn’t live at all.

next

Aircraft Reference:
The Laird-Turner Meteor:
http://www.airracinghistory.freeola.com/aircraft/Laird%20Turner%20Meteor.htm