"What in the world are you talking about?"
"You asked what I have here, and I'm telling you."
"If they're stolen, where did you get them?" Martha asked.
"In a pawnshop on Canal Street."
He saw that the stolen binoculars now had the Old Man's attention. With a little bit of luck, that would end the questioning about the Navy Cross.
"Why do you think they're stolen?" Martha pursued.
The moment Clete saw the binoculars in the pawnshop he knew they were stolen. For one thing, there was a burnished area (freshly painted over) by the adjustment screw where the Navy customarily engraved USN and the serial number. For another, the price was right, and finally the pawnshop proprietor was exceedingly reluctant to provide a bill of sale. He reduced the price even further on the condition that Clete take possession without paperwork.
Instead of a sense of outrage at the theft, Clete felt a certain admiration for the thief. It had been his experience as an officer of the Naval Service that the three most difficult things to steal from the Navy were pistols, binoculars, and aviator chronographs.
When he was in Washington, where he had spent most of the last six weeks, he would not have been at all surprised if some dedicated, and outraged, Marine Corps supply officer had shown up at Eighth and Eye (Headquarters, USMC, is at Eighth and I Streets in Washington, D.C.)-or for that matter, had burst into OSS Headquarters in the National Institutes of Health Building-and demanded either the return of his Corps-issued Hamilton chronograph or pay-ment therefore, since he was no longer in a flying billet.
The first time he was shot down, he parachuted into the waters off Tulagi and was rescued by a PT boat. As they roared back to the "Canal," her skipper suggested to him that if he put the Hamilton into his pocket, it might be con-sidered "Lost In Combat."
Since a small gift of a government-issued chronograph to a fellow officer of the Naval Service whose vessel had plucked him from shark-infested waters seemed appropriate, Lieutenant Frade took that Hamilton off his wrist and gave it to him, together with his saltwater-soaked.45 Colt automatic and its holster.
He was, of course, issued another Hamilton chronograph and another.45, but only after a dedicated supply officer (literally during a Japanese strafing raid on Henderson Field) offered him the choice of either paying for both, or sign-ing a two-page document swearing, under pain of perjury-the awesome pun-ishments for which were spelled out in some detail on the form-that they had really and truly, Boy Scout's Honor, cross my heart and hope to die, been lost in combat.
He had paid. The Hamilton on his wrist now was still on some supply offi-cer's books somewhere.
"Look here," Clete said. "You can see where someone ground off 'USN' and the serial number."
Martha looked, and then the Old Man looked.
"If you believed them to be stolen, why did you buy them?" the Old Man asked, incredu
lously.
"I wanted them," Clete explained reasonably. "You can't just walk into the optical department of Maison Blanche and buy them anymore. The Navy takes all that Bausch and Lomb can make."
"The morality of the question never entered your mind?" Martha asked, with a tolerant smile.
"Oh, but it did. Since they had already been stolen, I decided the higher morality was to make sure they were put to use by a bona fide commissioned of-ficer of the Naval Service, such as myself, rather than, for example, by some tout watching the ponies run at the racetrack."
"You have a screw loose, you know that? Your deck of cards is at least four or five short of the necessary fifty-two. A genetic flaw from your father's side," the Old Man said, and then had what he thought was a sudden insight. "You're pulling our leg, right? Taking advantage of an old man and woman who trust you?"
"Pulling your leg about what?"
The Old Man looked at him suspiciously, then changed the subject.
"Tell me about the Navy Cross," he demanded. "The Senator said the cita-tion was very vague."
"You really want to know?"
"No. Not really. Why should I care how my only grandson earned the na-tion's second-highest award for gallantry?"
"I'd like to know too," Martha said.
"Well, there I was, cruising along at ten thousand feet, with nothing be-tween me and the earth but a thin blonde..."
"Oh, God!" Martha said.
"Spare us your vulgar sense of humor, if you please," the Old Man said sternly, but unable to keep a smile from his lips. "You will have to excuse my grandson, Mr. Needham. He frequently forgets we tried to raise him to be a gen-tleman."