Testimony of Barron “Broadway Barry” Minsky
Installment II 
(Taken in the presence of Inspector Osamu Levene of the Spontoon Islands Constabulary, Mick and Maura Charlton, Mr. Bernie Wister and Cheebles)

I was telling you, Mr. Mick Charlton the Thin Guy, that it seemed like there was no safety in this man’s Manhattan or the who U.S. of A. for Good Time Larry Lemberg and Miss Muriel Murgatroyd, or anybody that helped them. The notorious Heinie Schmitz is not known for his forgiveness. You are a more than somewhat smart guy, one of them ratiocinators, who would never have gotten himself into such a foolish situation.

As I was saying, we are able to dump the sky-flivver in Sealth City for a good sum and book a ferry over to the Rain Coast Commonwealth. It seems like this Commonwealth is a syndicalist social democracy, which I am not sure what it is in the strong daylight. Whatever, it does not offer the type of political and social climate that is conducive to the practice of our skills. Therefore, we are scouting out the possibilities of a scheduled flight headed for the Nimitz Sea district and the Spontoon Islands. Casino Island in the Spontoons sounds like it has just the type of atmosphere we need.

So it is happening that I find this hard to figure, whether to go with a big unit like the Pan Nimitz Airways or some little small-time operation which might attract less notice. I’m finding this Victory Airpaths Cooperative at the Port of Victory Metropolitan Air & Sea Syndicate (Victory had been the British Columbia provincial capital of Victoria). Their pilot, Smilin’ Ken Fletch, does a weekly run to Tillamook and the Nimitz Sea, and will have room for Good Time Larry, Miss Muriel, Howie the Hulk and me. It happens that this Smilin’ Ken was also in the flying corps during the Great War and was by way of being a minor ace and heroic type. That is, until he decided that “fighting against fellow workers was stooging for the ancien regimes and war-profiteer corporate power elites”. Smilin’ Ken is by way of being a Wobblie.

After the War, he drifted around and flew for Red Rosa and the Munich Commune, other people’s movements in Central America and, of all things, the U. S. of A. Mail. Eventually he ends up on Vancouver Island after a General Strike in Sealth City and finds the political and social atmosphere more than somewhat congenial.

This is how we end up on Casino Island living the life at the Sun King Sports Hotel and doing some book on the competitions at the Stateside tracks and local dolphin races. I am also doing fairly comfortable in the card game area in the casino. Miss Muriel gets a job in the Sun King Club chorus because of her experience at Miss Mississippi Guidon’s Five Hundred Room, and starts to hear about the shrine of the Wabb’ai Tiki. This Wabb’ai Tiki which is an ancient idol of great power of good luck (only I am hearing that people have only been in the Spontoon Islands a short time and make up a lot of this Custom, Myth and Ritual for the marks) that has good emerald eyes the size of one of Mindy’s serving platters.

There is also a problem coming along now that Miss Muriel is cooling on the attractions of Good Time Larry. This is even though he is still giving her plenty of jewelry, pricey native knickknacks and tchotchkes. Good Time Larry is nice enough, says Miss Muriel, and much nicer than Heinie Schmitz, but she starts to think that she wants that True Love that she reads about in the magazines and sees in the flickers. She is looking at Good Time Larry and seeing no great prize in the game of life. Howie the Hulk is just a shtarker with a brain of pure muscle. Me she regards as a “regular baa-lamb” but with otherwise little of this True Love potential.

Miss Muriel has got her eye on a yachtsman out of California with a nice mixture of Old Money and New Money (from real estate and the flickers) and a sprinkling of good looks and personality: Thomas Samothrace Jones, III.  This fancy dan Jones the Third is a flicker producer with Perfecto-Zizzbaum Motion Picture Corporation in Hollywood, with the courtesy rank of a virtual brother-in-law. Jones the Third falls for Miss Muriel too and thinks she is “an unspoiled dove” despite all the doll’s life experiences.

This all leaves Good Time Larry at loose ends socially and thinking that perhaps he ought to be moving on. He is posing as the flicker director Helmut von Shtupnagel and marches around in his idea of what this joe would wear. This is including polo shirt, jodhpurs, riding boots, riding crop, sunglasses and pith helmet. It is making Good Time Larry look more like Walt Dizzy going off to play polo than like von Stroeheim ready to direct.

Good Time Larry has set his pith helmet at this ritzy doll Her Serene Highness Zelda, Prinzessin von Gornisht, who is fine if you like the type of doll who might have eaten her last three consorts (two millionaires and the Prinz). I prefer the more modest model of doll who might have fewer potatoes in the brick but will not pull a Black Widow act on you after the wedding night. This H.S.H. Zelda is having a little too rapacious nature for my taste and all the potatoes in the world would not make up for it.

It is this point that Miss Muriel hears from one of the native dolls in the Sun King Club chorus line, a Miss Ippolita Gonsalves-Shabup’pi, that a big conference is coming in to the Marylebone Grand. It is the first big convention of top master detectives from the U.S. of A. and around the world and is sure include high power brains like Hercule Parrot, Mr. Moto, Don Carlos Chan of Mixteca and a bunch of Oxford dons, spinster dolls and tough private peepers.