Cherry Ames 09 Cruise Nurse (22 page)

“Sissy for shame, Cherry Ames. You’re a big girl now.” She snatched up the pillow and tossed it at Cherry. And there, in plain view, was the red hot water bottle. Brownie gasped. “For goodness sake, Cherry. What on earth were you doing with
that
last night? It was as hot as anything in my cabin. The air conditioning wasn’t working properly.” She reached for the rubber bag, but Cherry snatched it away just in time.

“I had a toothache,” she fi bbed nonchalantly, and carried the hot water bottle across the room to toss it up on the top shelf of her closet.

Brownie, admiring her new ring and wrist watch, said vaguely, “Thought you put an ice bag on your face when you had a toothache.”

“Sometimes you do,” Cherry admitted. “Sometimes heat is the only thing that helps.”

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Brownie yawned. “Well, I’d better scramble into uniform and get up on A deck. It’s Christmas for the passengers, but it’s just one more day to us poor slaves.” Cherry celebrated by taking a hot saltwater shower.

She took the hot water bottle into the glassed-in compartment with her. She was not going to let that little rubber bag out of her sight until she had delivered it in person to Jan Paulding. After that it was no longer Cherry’s responsibility. Jan could turn it over to the captain until the ship docked the next day in Willemstad.

Jan could have Henry Landgraf arrested, if she liked.

But Cherry doubted if Jan would do that. From the glimpse she had caught of them chatting together the evening before, in the Crane suite, they were now as thick as thieves.

And Henry? When he took one whiff of those violent “gardenia” bath salts, he would know that although he had played his cards close, poker-faced throughout, Lady Luck, in the form of Tim Crane, had deserted him.

Would he throw down his cards now and admit defeat?

Or would he deal another hand? Time was running out.

He had but one more day and one more night. Even he would have no way of knowing that the precious
ambre
blanc
was now shifting around inside the hot water bottle of the ship’s nurse.

Cherry slipped into her uniform and was just pinning on her cap when someone tapped on her door. For a moment she was frightened. Was it Timmy’s pirate?

Had he somehow discovered her juggling act of the night before?

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The other occupants of the women’s crew quarters had already gone off to their duties. Cherry was alone in her cabin in the dim, narrow passageway off the main corridor. It would be inviting disaster to open her door.

And then, frozen with horror, she remembered that she had not locked it when she came back from her shower.

The only thing to do was to brazen it out. Cherry squared her shoulders and said in a clear voice:

“Come in.”

It was Jan! She had fl ung a seersucker bathrobe over her pajamas. Cherry threw her arms around the tall young girl and cried hilariously, “Merry Christmas, darling. A very merry Christmas!”

Jan hugged Cherry and said, “I guess it’s just about the merriest Christmas I ever had. Oh, Cherry, I can hardly believe it. I’m going to college after all.” Cherry stared at her in amazement. How could Jan know that her precious ambergris was safe and sound? Before she could get out a word, Jan went on ecstatically.

“I don’t care if he is a—well, a shady character. He’s so
gallant,
Cherry. After we left the Cranes’ last night I invited him in to our suite. I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight, remember? Mother is simply wild about him. She hung on every word he said. And then it came out that I was Uncle Benedict’s niece, and just as I thought, he’s Uncle Ben’s ex-partner.” Cherry managed a weak: “Oh? Then what?”

“Well, then nothing much,” Jan admitted. “Not last night, anyway. We talked about everything but
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ambergris, of course. And he told us the most fascinating stories about some of the fantastic adventures he and Uncle Ben had had in all the most foreign spots in the world. He called him ‘Uncle Ben’ too, you see, and really thought of him as an uncle, because Henry hasn’t any family of his own. And until Mother and I told him, he thought Uncle Ben didn’t have any nephews or nieces. He read in the newspaper, stories when Uncle died, about his prominent brothers and sisters, but there wasn’t any mention of
me.”
Jan, her hazel eyes glowing, began to pace up and down the tiny cabin. “Don’t you see, Cherry? I know now that he was after that ambergris too, but he felt it
b
elonged
to him. After all, my uncle practically adopted Henry about sixteen years ago when he was only twenty-two. He was in some sort of trouble with the French police and Uncle Ben rescued him.” Jan dimpled. “Henry says the ‘trouble’ was simply that he couldn’t speak French then, but I’ll bet it was not quite so simple as that.”

“There we see eye to eye, Jan Paulding,” Cherry muttered. “My guess is that the ‘trouble’ had something to do with breaking and entering. He may have reformed after Uncle Ben ‘adopted’ him, but he hasn’t forgotten any of his old tricks.”

But Jan wasn’t listening. “Those blue, blue eyes of his! They’re as blue as the Caribbean Sea.”

“And just as hypnotic,” Cherry mumbled.

Jan laughed. “That’s right. Anyway, he didn’t leave until midnight, and then it was Christmas. And I just
knew
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anybody as gallant as that wouldn’t steal anything on Christmas Day, Cherry.”

“Christmas Day or Christmas Eve,” Cherry said tartly, “it’s all the same thing. And he did steal your ambergris, Jan.”

“I know.” Jan shrugged. “But you can’t call it stealing.

Not really, Cherry.”

Cherry gasped. Was Jan going to do a complete right-about-face of character and go sentimental?

Hypnotized, was she going to let Henry Landgraf keep the ambergris simply because he had felt
he
was her uncle’s rightful heir?

Cherry’s mind reeled. And how in the world did Jan know that the ambergris had been stolen?

Jan herself answered that question. “Don’t look so shocked, Cherry. He only did it as a Christmas surprise for me. Honestly, you could have knocked me over with a feather when Waidy arrived this morning with that package.

“ ‘Merry Christmas, Miss Jan,’ he said. ‘Compliments of Mr. Landgraf.’ And then when I tore off the paper and saw that milk-of-magnesia bottle, I just tucked it in my bathrobe pocket and came racing down here to you.”

With a fl ourish, Jan produced from her bathrobe pocket a cloudy blue bottle. The very one Cherry had fi lled with Charlie’s bath salts on Christmas Eve! Jan unscrewed the top and then she wrinkled up her dainty nose.

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“Oh, Cherry,” she wailed, “this isn’t ambergris! It hasn’t got a delicate fragrance at all. It’s more like that ghastly perfume you have to breathe on crowded buses.” She crumpled down on Cherry’s bunk and burst into tears. “That horrid man! He’s played a trick on me.”

Jan did not spend much time in idle tears. She was angry, indignant, chagrined. Jumping from Cherry’s bed with clenched fi sts, she moaned, “Oh, what a miserable fool I’ve been! I let him soft soap me into thinking him a romantic pirate with a heart of gold.

And then—then—!”

The young girl now was pacing up and down within the narrow confi nes of Cherry’s stateroom. She kept clenching and unclenching her hands, striking one tight fi st against the other.

“What does he think I am—a child?” she raged.

“Does he think I don’t know the difference between dimestore junk and real ambergris? That cold-blooded thief wasn’t satisfi ed to steal what was going to pay for my education—what he knew my uncle whom he professed to idolize had left for me—but then he tried to make me think he had restored it to me as a Christmas present—”

Cherry made an effort to calm the girl’s violence.

“Jan,” she cried, “stop it! You’ll make yourself sick. Calm down! Your precious ambergris is safe—”

But Jan wasn’t listening. She continued her tirade.

Her voice rose almost to a scream.

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“He’s the meanest man in the world! He would steal pennies from a poor box and then slip a note in their place ‘blessed are the poor.’ I’m going to the captain and I’m going to have Henry Landgraf exposed for the miserable sneak thief he is. Oh, I wish I knew—” Cherry had had enough of Jan Paulding’s hysterical outburst. She arose and putting her two hands fi rmly on the girl’s shoulders, forced her down to a sitting position on her bed.

“That’s enough, Jan! You’ve had your big scene. Now you are going to hear what I’ve been trying to tell you ever since you came into my stateroom. I’m glad you’re over your schoolgirl crush on this highhanded young man. What I tried to tell you was that your ambergris is safe.”

Then, having quieted the trembling young girl, Cherry told her of last night’s adventures. Jan listened, wide-eyed, without interruption.

“So you see,” concluded the smiling cruise nurse,

“you’ve got nothing to worry about, darling. I have your ambergris safe and sound. See? It’s right here in my hot water bottle. Take a whiff and prove it for yourself.”

Cherry unscrewed the top of her hot water bottle and held it under Jan’s nose. One sniff was all she needed.

With a glad cry she hugged Cherry until the latter cried, “Stop, you’re bashing in my ribs!”

“You’re a wonder, Cherry,” said Jan, her voice deep with emotion. “I’ll be grateful to you all my life. How wonderful that you were able to beat Henry Landgraf
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at his own game. What are we going to do now—go to the captain?”

Cherry thought a minute. “For the present,” she said, “I believe we ought to leave the ambergris right there in my hot water bottle. You run along now, dear, and try to act as though you had the stuff in the bottle just as Mr. Hijacker Landgraf gave it to you. A Merry Christmas, Jan!”

Jan stooped and planted a kiss on one of Cherry’s red cheeks, then darted away, slamming the door behind her. Cherry stood stock-still for a minute, then she slowly went over and locked the door. The ambergris, she realized now, was
not
safe in her hot water bottle—

not as long as Henry Landgraf remained aboard the
Julita.
She doubted if it would be safe anywhere on the ship—in the purser’s safe, even in the captain’s cabin—now that the thief knew that someone had switched the contents of that milk-of- magnesia bottle which he had slipped under Timmy’s bed.

He would start searching again, of course. Clever questioning of Timmy would lead Mr. Henry Landgraf straight to the door of the ship’s nurse’s cabin. And after that her offi ce and then the dispensary. There probably wasn’t a spot he would overlook.

Quickly Cherry made up her mind. There was no time to lose. Taking the hot water bottle she hung it casually from one of the shower valves where it looked about as conspicuous as the soap dish.

After breakfast she sent Merry Christmas radiograms to her family and the Spencer Club. What a story she 216
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would have to tell them after this cruise! Midge’s eyes would probably pop right out of her head, and Charlie just wouldn’t believe a word of it. Neither would Gwen.

Cherry could almost hear her sniff: “That’s enough, Ames!

You read that yarn in your little patient’s pirate book.” And then Cherry thought of Timmy—
and
the one perfect place to hide the precious
ambre blanc.
There was just one place on the whole ship where Mr. Henry Landgraf
wouldn’t
look. Simply because he had already searched it carefully—the drawer in the Crane suite which was crammed full with Timmy’s toys!

Timmy, Cherry felt sure, would spurn those toys now that Santa Claus had brought him so many new ones.

He probably wouldn’t even open that drawer until his new Christmas presents had lost their charm.

Mrs. Crane greeted Cherry with: “Merry Christmas, dear. Tim has a present for you. Please excuse me, but I’m late for breakfast.”

Timmy, almost lost under billowing waves of Christmas wrappings, scrabbled around and fi nally came up with a thick, square box. He yelled, “I know what it is, but I won’t tell. I never tell secrets.” He thrust the box behind him impishly. “You’ve got to guess, Cherry. I won’t give it to you ‘less you do.” Cherry laughed and said to Mrs. Crane, “You shouldn’t have bought me a present, but it was awfully sweet of you just the same.”

“It’s twin presents ’cause you had a birthday yesterday,” Timmy interrupted, “and it’s red and very fuzzy-wuzzy.”

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“I give up,” Cherry sighed. “Unless it’s a red Teddy bear.”

Tim let her open it then. Nestling in the tissue-lined box, bearing the label of the ship’s little novelty shop, were two lovely angora wool sweaters; one with short sleeves, its twin a cardigan.

Cherry was so pleased she could only stutter her thanks. But as she tucked the scarlet sweaters back in the box, her eyes fell upon the abandoned and neglected Fuzzy-Wuzzy on the fl oor.

Timmy was saying proudly, “Mummy bought ’em last night. But I didn’t tell anybody what was in that box—not even Henry, or Waidy or Jan or Kirk. I always keep secrets.”

As he fi nished speaking in his piping voice, he dived under the bedcovers. Quickly Cherry crossed the stateroom and picked up the battered panda. Lifting the lid of the sweater box she buried Fuzzy-Wuzzy under the sweaters and hastily replaced the cover. It was not an instant too soon, for Timmy was emerging from the covers.

With a hurried “Back in a minute, Tim,” Cherry sped to her room. Behind the locked door she went feverishly to work. Quickly she ripped the seam of Fuzzy-Wuzzy and removed most of the wadding. In its place went the red-rubber hot water bottle with its precious contents. Then with needle and thread Fuzzy-Wuzzy’s yawning incision was sewed up again. She hefted the panda critically. Was it heavier than it had been before? It seemed about the same.