Read Cherry Ames 09 Cruise Nurse Online
Authors: Helen Wells
Jan stood up and said quickly, “Oh, Mrs. Crane. I stopped by to get the nurse for Mother. She’s quite ill. Is it all right if Miss Ames leaves Timmy with you now?”
“Why, of course,” Timmy’s mother said. “We don’t own Miss Ames. I’m sorry about your mother. Let me know if I can do anything.”
“The Cranes may not own me,” Cherry thought amusedly, “but Jan Paulding acts as though she did.” Out in the corridor she said: “If your mother is sleeping, perhaps we can have a little talk in the other room.”
“That’s right,” Jan said. “She will be asleep. She always goes to sleep the minute the pain is relieved.”
“Why are you so sure the pain has been relieved?” Cherry demanded suspiciously.
Jan shrugged. “The doctor arrived soon after you, didn’t he?”
Cherry nodded. “So, to add to your other crimes, you lied to me?”
“I did not,” Jan insisted. “Dr. Monroe did stop by right after lunch. Mother sent for him because she broke her bottle of medicine. She was afraid she might get one of those headaches. He told her that if she did
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he would send you to her at once with aspirin and an ice bag if he himself couldn’t come right away.”
“I see.” Cherry thought for a minute. “What about Waidler, the steward? You told me you sent him for the doctor half an hour ago.”
“That was perfectly true too,” Jan said defi antly.
“That was at two o’clock. I told him to ask Dr. Monroe to stop in at two-thirty. It takes Mother that long to work herself up into a real state of excitement.” Jan led Cherry into Room 127, the living room of the suite. “You sound like an awfully hardhearted daughter to me,” Cherry said. She peeked through the door between the two rooms and saw that Mrs. Crane was sleeping peacefully.
Jan began to cry again. “You don’t know my mother or you wouldn’t say that. She—she
likes
being sick. You’ll fi nd that out before the cruise is over. Wait and see.” Cherry began to weaken. Either Jan Paulding was an accomplished actress or she was a thoroughly unhappy young girl. And the glimpse Cherry had had of Mrs.
Paulding had not made her feel that she was an admirable or sympathetic mother. Mrs. Paulding had been in pain, of course. But Cherry had nursed lots of other people in pain too. Very few of them had whined and moaned and groaned.
She drew a chair up to the sofa and patted Jan’s shaking shoulders. “Come on, honey,” she said gently.
“Crying isn’t going to do any good. Sit up and tell me all about it.”
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Jan sat up and wiped her streaming eyes with a brightly checkered handkerchief. “It’s the ambergris,” she blurted. “I
have
to fi nd it. Don’t you see? It’s the only way I can go to art school.”
Cherry didn’t see and said so. “You’d better begin at the beginning. You might start alphabetically with the letter A, for ambergris. All I know about it is that it’s used in the manufacture of perfume even though it’s supposed to smell horrible. It’s formed in the intes-tines of whales, isn’t it?”
A smile lighted up Jan’s teary face. “That’s all I knew about it, too.” She giggled. “Until Uncle Ben arrived.
Oh, Cherry, let me tell you about ambergris. Sailors call it ‘Fool’s Gold of the Sea,’ because they’re always fi nding something that
isn’t
ambergris. Real ambergris is absolutely priceless!”
Cherry glanced at her wrist watch. “It sounds fascinating, but I haven’t too much time. Maybe you had better give me the story of ambergris some other time.
Right now I just want to know what it—and you—have to do with Timmy’s bedroom.”
Jan sobered. “That’s a long story too, Cherry. Oh, I forgot to ask you—may I call you Cherry? Timmy does.”
“Almost everyone does soon after they meet me,” Cherry admitted.
Jan’s lovely face was now as bright as a summer sky after a sudden shower. “I like you, Cherry,” she said. “I liked you the minute we fi rst bumped into each other.
I’m sorry you don’t—well, approve of me.” She went on in a rush of words, and completely won Cherry’s
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heart. “I’m not really a cold-blooded thief. Honest, I’m not. And as for Mother, she really is a hypochondriac.
Her own doctor told me so. She
works
herself up into those headaches. She hypnotizes herself into having pain. She does it whenever she can’t have her own way. I’ve known it ever since I was a child. If Daddy wanted to go to the seashore and she wanted to go to the mountains, she’d have an attack. So we’d go to the mountains. Daddy let her get by with it, but I
won’t!
She has no right to ruin my life. I don’t want to make my debut next winter. I want to go to college. It takes years and years to become a good artist. I can’t afford to waste one year going to silly parties, dancing with silly men, and selling tickets to silly charity balls.”
“How old are you, Jan?” Cherry asked quietly.
“I was sixteen last month.”
“So you’ll be not quite seventeen if you go to college next fall,” Cherry said mildly. “That’s pretty young for college. The average age of a freshman is eighteen.
Seems to me you could compromise with your mother.
If she has her heart set on your having a debutante winter, why not give her a year of your life? After all, she
is
your mother. Even the most selfi sh mother makes plenty of sacrifi ces for her children. Few of us ever have a chance to repay our parents; this is your chance. I know I sound preachy, but you don’t want to leave something undone which you may regret when it’s too late to do anything about it.”
Jan hung her head. “When you put it that way, it makes sense. And I do love Mother. But even if I do 110
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AMES,
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give in and ‘come out’ at a big ball next winter, she won’t let me go to college the following year. Daddy left every single cent to her. I won’t inherit a penny when I’m eighteen. I’ll be dependent on her all the rest of my life.” She shuddered violently. “I’m desperate, Cherry.
I begged and begged her to at least let me take a business course at school, but she promptly had an attack.
So all I can do is speak French and Spanish, fence, and recite Shakespeare. How can I support myself with nothing but a fi nishing school background?” Cherry was beginning to understand the despair of this lovely young girl. She had a drive that must be given expression. Her mother was blindly selfi sh not to see it. Cherry said:
“I can sympathize with your desire for a career. I wanted dreadfully to become a nurse. I guess I was lucky having a family that encouraged me.”
“You are lucky,” Jan told her. “Nobody understands me. My aunts all say, ‘Don’t be silly, child. You’ll be married before you’re eighteen. It would be a waste of time and money to start in college.’ But,” she fi nished, “Uncle Benedict understood me. Oh, Cherry, he was the most wonderful old man! None of the other members of the family had anything to do with him. Because he was sort of an adventurer, you see.
As salty as the sea, with the most marvelous sense of humor. He didn’t mind being snubbed at all. Said his brothers and sisters were a bunch of stuffed shirts.
And they are.”
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“Was he the Uncle Ben who told you about ambergris?” Cherry put in.
Jan nodded. “He not only told me about it, he
gave
it to me. But then he died, and now nobody knows where it is. I’ve got to fi nd it. It must be somewhere in that stateroom.”
Cherry’s mouth fell open in surprise. “In Timmy’s stateroom? Why on earth would it be there?” Jan sighed. “I guess I had better begin at the beginning. It happened a few days before Thanksgiv-ing when I was all alone in the apartment. Mother had gone to the theater and the servants had the afternoon off. The doorman called up from downstairs and said there was a ‘peculiar character’ calling to see Mother.
Claimed to be her brother-in-law.” Jan grinned. “That made him my uncle. I was downright curious to see an uncle whom William described as a ‘peculiar character.’ So I said, ‘Send him right up, William.’
“I opened the door and there stood this big, raw-boned man with the most weather-beaten face you ever saw. He was wearing a rough coat that hadn’t been pressed in years and a thick navy-blue sweater and tight, blue serge pants, and, believe it or not, Cherry, knee boots! No hat, and there was melting snow in his bushy white hair, and his hands were rough and red. I wouldn’t have believed he was Daddy’s ‘black sheep’ older brother, except for his eyes. They were my grandfather’s own green, twinkling eyes. Granddaddy was a country banker. And although he was very rich, 112
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AMES,
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he drove around in a battered old Ford, and never put on airs. Everyone loved him.”
“He sounds like a wonderful person,” Cherry said.
“He was. And Uncle Benedict was an awful lot like him. His eyes twinkled at me and he said, ‘You must be my niece, Jan. Never would have thought Rob and Nellie could produce such a beauty.’ ” Jan blushed.
“I liked him right off. Not so much for the compliment as for the way he said it. Completely outspoken and frank in a deep, hearty voice. My other uncles fl atter me in such a namby-pamby way I hate it. Well, anyway, Uncle Ben and I got on together from the very beginning. In less than an hour I was weeping on his shoulder about wanting to be an artist and how Mother wouldn’t let me. He didn’t say anything that day, but I saw a lot of him after that. Mother didn’t approve, but I went ahead and met him away from home. We went for long walks through Central Park, and rode on the top of open buses even in bitter cold weather. And he told me about his different experiences and scrapes.
Then one day he got to talking about ambergris. Said that it didn’t smell awful at all but had the most delicate, exotic fragrance with a nice seaweedy smell too.” Jan leaned forward excitedly. “Uncle Ben said that during all the years that he roamed the seven seas he was always on the lookout for ambergris. Then one day when he and a pal were wandering along a beach in the Persian Gulf, they found a chunk of it. The most perfect type of fossil ambergris, or, as it’s called,
ambre
blanc,
because it’s white. It had been lying there on
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the shore for centuries, perhaps. They knew from its texture and fi ne odor that it was not Fool’s Gold this time. So they divided the lump into two equal parts, and came right back to America to sell it.” Cherry was so fascinated by this romantic tale that she forgot momentarily that she was a cruise nurse.
“Go on,” she urged Jan as the tall young girl got up and began to pace nervously up and down the room.
jan came to rest beside cherry’s chair. “when Uncle Ben told me he’d actually found some priceless ambergris, naturally I was dying to see it. But he wouldn’t show it to me then.”
“Oh,” Cherry put in. “Then he didn’t sell it when he came back to America?”
Jan shook her head. “No, his pal sold his share in New York for about fi ve thousand dollars and began to live like a king. Uncle Ben said his partner was much younger than he. Young enough to be his son. Uncle Ben was in his seventies, but the two of them had been traveling around together for years and years.”
“Why didn’t your uncle sell his share in New York?” Cherry wanted to know.
“I’m coming to that,” replied Jan. “Uncle Ben suddenly got the notion that he’d like to settle down. He felt as young as ever, but for some reason he began to 114
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think about taking root somewhere. Ages ago, he had bought some property in Curaçao, but he left the running of it to his lawyer in Willemstad, the capital city.
Squatters have been living rent free in the lovely old Dutch mansion at Piscadera Bay. So I imagine everything has been allowed to go to rack and ruin. Uncle made up his mind to use the money he got from his ambergris to fi x the property up. He said it wouldn’t take much to make it salable. Then, at the height of the tourist season, he would sell it for a fancy sum. It would make a swell site for a club or inn, he said.”
“I can imagine that,” Cherry said. “But how do you fi t into the picture?”
Jan began to pace again. “After Uncle Ben sold the property, he was going to buy himself a smaller place on the island. The rest of the money he was going to give to me so I could go ahead and become an artist.
He was awfully mad when he heard that Daddy had left everything to Mother. Daddy inherited from my grandfather, and Uncle Ben felt I should have been the sole heir. He himself was disinherited when he ran away from home as a boy. He didn’t mind that at all.
But he got so worked up about me he made out a will at once making me his sole heir, and sent it to his lawyer in Willemstad.”
Jan smiled. “He was an old darling, Cherry. Eccentric as anything. No matter how much money he made throughout his checkered career, he never once had a bank account. Didn’t believe in them. He had an old-fashioned money belt which he kept on him day 116
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AMES,
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and night. And yet for all of that, he wouldn’t do a thing without fi rst consulting his lawyer down in Willemstad. He wouldn’t even sell his ambergris until Mr. Camelot said the price he was offered was right.”
“Did he ever show you the ambergris?” Cherry asked.
Jan shook her head. “No, although I found out later that he had it with him whenever we went for those walks and bus rides. Finally one day he let me smell a pinch of it. It has the most delicate, out-of-this-world aroma, Cherry; like nothing else I ever knew. Then just about two weeks ago, Uncle Ben kissed me good-bye and sailed away on this very same ship to Curaçao. The next thing I knew he was dead.” Jan tensely rubbed her eyes. “Mr. Camelot sent me a cable saying my uncle had been stricken at sea with pulmonary thrombosis and had died without regaining consciousness shortly after being taken ashore at Willemstad.” Cherry sat up straight. “Pulmonary thrombosis!” Jan’s uncle, then, must have been the passenger so many people had mentioned during the past few days!