"Well, yes," said the Countess Krak. "I'm going to meet my man, you see. He's been on this planet for months all by himself. He's the handsomest, most gorgeous man you'd ever hope to see. You get some idea when I tell you that his sister is considered one of the best-looking women in the whole Confederacy."

"Ah, yah," said Mamie Boomp. "One of them 'you all' southern belles."

"And he's considered one of the best-looking officers in the whole Fleet. For months he's undoubtedly been waist deep in the most beautiful and most gorgeously dressed women on the planet."

"Oho, a sailor, eh? Well, I don't blame you for wor­rying. Them Navy officers knock 'em dead. It's the uniform!"

"And that's the problem," said the Countess Krak. "If I show up looking like a frump, I'll be playing way at the back of the orchestra from there on out. He'll ignore me!"

"I get it. That first meeting after the long absence. Jesus, kid. That speeds this all up. I thought we had some time. You're telling me you got to do it all in a couple of hours before you meet the shore boat. Jesus, that's tough. Even a perm takes longer than that!" She thought it over, shaking her head. "Jesus. You get just one walk-on and you have to knock 'em from the orchestra seats right out into the lobby. And out of the balcony as well! Cripes, that's a tough spot! No soft music or even an M. C. with some funny jokes to give it a build­up." She was very pensive, rolling her diamonds around on her puffy fingers.

Suddenly Mamie dived at the mound of fashion magazines on the floor. She got out one called Ultra Ultra. She was thumbing through the ads. She came to the double centerspread and in triumph pushed it at the Countess Krak. "There! Bonbucks Teller! They're too rich for my blood but they're one of the top four women's stores in the world. And they got branches, see?" She pointed at the bottom of the posh display ad. "There's a branch right at JFK Airport where we're landing! They got everything and they are fast. There's just one problem: boy, do they cost the do-re-mi-an arm, a leg and your head! Have you got the loot, Joy? I mean, the MONey." She made the money motion with her thumb and two fingers.

"Money?" said the Countess Krak. "I've got that all figured out."

A new chill took me. I had been wondering how she could buy so many five-dollar magazines. Almost not daring to look, I felt in my pockets.

My fingers encountered, in my trousers, the sheaf of credit cards. I took them out and put them back as a pack: thank Gods, I still had that fatal deck.

I explored further. I usually kept my wallet in my hip pocket. I didn't want to reach for it. One's supply of adrenalin is limited to a finite number of severe shocks and when it is gone one begins to faint. I risked it. My wallet?

IT WAS GONE!

Oh, my Gods! Her sleight of hand must have been up to getting the wallet, too! The whole nine hundred dollars I had taken from their travel money was missing!

A pickpocket! The lowest, vilest sort of criminal, the type that even other criminals looked down upon! Oh, the police record had been right!

The Countess Krak was not only a jewel thief of wanted-poster proportions, she was also a Gods (bleeped) pickpocket!

I was utterly penniless again!

The fatal kiss of the Countess Krak!

Rage gave way to despair. I hung my head. The voice of Mamie Boomp still came through my cloud of utter despondency. She was making a list of "bare necessities": silk panty hose and bras, morning coats, cocktail dresses, evening gowns, suits, skirts and spare blouses with the most expensive Holland lace, shoes, boots and ermine house slippers, fifty assorted negligees, the jewels to go with it all and ending up with "various fur coats" including a full, evening, Blackgama mink hood and cape.

"This list," she concluded, "will last at least two months and carry you to spring. But at that time, of course, you'll need to reoutfit to hold on to your sailor.

Now let's get down to services, beginning with a new hairdo. I advise against the new style of shaving half the head and painting it all blue. You just don't have the time. Bonbucks Teller's beauty salon will advise it but I think that the new windblown style, gold aura, this one where they're using ruby dust, will go just fine with your com­plexion. Providing you wear enough blue-white diamonds to enhance the eyes. Now, as to fingernails, gold leaf seems to be catching on...."

As it continued, I began to pick up a sort of bitter hope. That emerald locket was worth, I thought, no more than fifty thousand dollars. My overtrained and presensitized ear was scenting that this "bare necessity" array was going to top that. At Bonbucks Teller, a Blackgama mink, the top, top of all minks, would probably, all by itself, be twice the value of that locket!

Hope rose. Regardless of my own loss, Heller was going to get roped into this far beyond any ready cash he had. He hadn't even been able to pay for all of Babe's tiara, now languishing forgotten at Tiffany's. This foreign nightclub tour "singer" and this vicious criminal, Countess Krak, were tailoring a disaster for him on which I could scarcely hope to improve. If IRS was wiping out Heller, this pair was going to go them one better and have him sleeping in the park and eating the leavings in garbage cans. Gods bless such stores as Bonbucks Teller! Gods bless fairies who designed and lured unwary and helpless males into shuddering bankruptcy. They were not just getting rid of competition: they were getting rid of men entirely! Via the bankruptcy court. And there was where Heller was being headed.

They landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in a screech of wheels and a roar that made troops bound for battle seem quiet by comparison and tame.

I still had a bastion on which one could normally count. The government men-immigration, customs and drugs-at JFK are the most nasty and unwelcoming brutes in the whole world. They resemble a bunch of corpses exhumed on a cold day. They make a foreigner's first introduction to America so hostile that a walk, naked, in absolute zero would seem warm by comparison.

I hoped they would find the locket, undeclared, and confiscate it and throw the Countess Krak into the mayhem of a Federal pen. She deserved it.

As the Countess walked in to the line of U. S. Citizens Being Readmitted on Probation, my hopes soared. They have the toughest, most silent man there that any mortuary could devise. He looks in a little book to see if you are an escaped criminal wanted for unpaid parking tickets and if he finds your name or number or if you come up on his computer screen, he makes a signal the entering person cannot see and Federal police do a vulture pounce from all sides.

The Countess and Mamie walked through, chattering about clothes, clothes, clothes and fashions, fashions, fashions.

Krak's idle eye even landed on the computer face once. It said, in answer to her passport number:

I. G. Barben drug runner

and the corpse made a tiny pencil symbol on the corner of a passport page and stamp, stamp, she was through!

At customs, the Federal police had person after per­son put his or her hands against the walls, legs outspread, while efficient and snarling frisking went on.

The Countess and Mamie walked on through, bags all chalked with okay to go, talking about fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes-babes in the lion's den without a glimmer of finding out any lions were around.

Gods! At those moments I was cursing the corrupt inefficiency of the bureaucracy, let me tell you! They not only didn't find the locket, they didn't even search her.

They stood at last Admitted and Inside The Country. Mamie Boomp had a baggage mound that almost compared to Krak's. But she was an efficient and seasoned traveller. She bopped two otherwise busy porters over the head with her Parisienne parasol and the baggage was promptly loaded on two separate handcarts.