The King is Dead

13

The last thing Ellery saw was his father on the roof of the observation building waving his hat under a flapping Bendigo flag. The steward pulled and fastened the last black blind, and Bendigo Island disappeared. This time Ellery did not mind. He was thinking of people, not places.

The big trimotor took off.

There were three other passengers — Immanuel Peabody, with the inevitable briefcase; an eagle-nosed man in a wing collar and blue polka-dot foulard tie; and an old woman with a Magyar face and badly stained fingers who was wearing a silly-looking Paris hat. Peabody hurried into a compartment, already unbuckling the straps of his briefcase, and he remained invisible until the plane — its windows free again — circled Gravelly Point for a landing at the National Airport in Washington. The old woman in the hat chain-smoked Turkish cigarettes in a long gold holder and read a magazine throughout the trip. When she set it down to eat her lunch Ellery saw that it was not a copy of Vogue but a highly technical scientific journal in the German language, published, he knew, in Lausanne. Immediately the old woman in the silly hat ceased to be an old woman in a silly hat and became — he now recalled those Magyar features — one of the world’s most famous research chemists. The man in the wing collar he never did identify. Neither attempted to speak to him, but all through the trip Ellery was afraid one or both of them would. He was relieved when they got off the plane with Peabody at Washington.

The people Ellery was turning over in his mind were the Bendigos, particularly Abel. He had rather neglected Abel, he thought, but he could not quite settle on why this should seem a serious oversight. Abel’s attitude throughout the affair had been in the tradition of high politics, a puzzling mixture of the right words and the wrong actions. Like the camouflaged shore batteries of Bendigo Island, Abel effaced himself against his background; like them, he concealed a powerful potential. But a powerful potential for what?

And always Ellery came back to the question he had asked himself from the beginning: Why had Abel brought him into the case at all? It was a question as remarkably lacking in answerability as the riddle of the little gun that could not possibly have fired the shot, and yet had.

Ellery’s jaw shifted. There was an answer; all he had to do was find it. And as the plane flew farther north, he had the curious feeling that he was approaching the answer at the exact m.p.h. shown on the pilot’s instruments.

It was mid-afternoon when the big black and gold Bendigo ship set Ellery down at Wrightsville Airport. He waved to the pilot and co-pilot and hurried up the steps of the administration building lugging his bag.

Outside, the taxi man was someone he didn’t know, a smartly capped youngster with red-apple cheeks. The cab was a new one, bright yellow, with black-and-white-striped trim and a meter.

Gone are the Wrightsville owner-driven cabs of yesteryear, the dusty Chewy and Ford black sedans with the zone maps showing the quarter, half-dollar, and seventy-five-cent trip areas, and drivers like Ed Hotchkiss, who called John F. Wright by his Christian name, and Whitey Pedersen, who had started hacking back in the horse-and-buggy days, when the stone base of the Jezreel Wright monument in the Square (which was round) actually watered the buggy and surrey horses of the farmers-come-to-town instead of being planted with geraniums, as now, by the ladies of the Keep-Wrightsville-Beautiful Committee of the Civic Betterment Club.

“Where to?” asked the youngster with a smile.

Wrightsville Airport lies in the valley running north by west between the Twin Hills-Bald Mountain section and the foothills of the great Mahoganies. North Hill Drive is almost due south; it’s quite a climb, the road running southeast up the hump past the eastern terminus of “The Hill” (Hill Drive) and the western terminus of Twin-Hill-in-the-Beeches. Hill Drive is not to be confused with North Hill Drive, where the “new” millionaires have their estates. “The Hill” is the residential section of the real thing, the bluestocking families who go all the way back to the 1700s — the Wrights, the Bluefields, the Livingstons, the Granjons, the F. Henry Minikins. Twin-Hill-in-the-Beeches is the town’s newest “good” development (not the smartest, Skytop Road facing Bald Mountain farther north is the smartest). It’s full of fine, bright, sort of modern homes, though, built by well-to-do business people like the MacLeans (“Dunc MacLean — Fine Liquors”, on the Square next door to the Hollis Hotel; Dunc gets all the hotel trade), people who couldn’t crash any of the Hill Drive properties for all the cash in Hallam Luck’s vaults at the Public Trust Company. And don’t think the MacLeans and their crowd don’t know it; they don’t even try!

“The Hollis,” said Ellery, leaning back. The mere sound of the name made him feel as if he had come home.

Ellery checked in at the Hollis Hotel, and when he checked out sixteen days later he paid a bill for $122.25, $80.00 of which was for rental of his room. Laundry and pressing took up most of the balance. He ate one meal in the main dining-room, but he found it so full of the thunder of organizational ladies and business-group lunchers that he never went back.

High Village hadn’t changed much. About the only difference in the Square was that the old Bluefield Store on the north arc, where Upper Dade comes down from North Hill Drive, was gone, replaced by a fluorescent beauty of a shop with a brand-new purple neon sign outside saying It’s Topp’s For T-V. There were a few other changes, more minor than that, but those were chiefly on Wright Street, which had always been a “dead spot” for business.

Death had been there in the past year or so — Andy Birobatyan of the florist shop in the Professional Building on Washington Street was among the departed, Ellery sorrowed to learn. The flower business Andy had built up with his one arm (he had left the other in the Argonne Forest in 1918) was being run by his two-armed son Avdo, and not half so well, according to report. Ellery was inclined to salt this rumor, as Avdo was the one who had eloped with Virgie Poffenberger, Dr. Emil Poffenberger’s daughter, and made a go of it, too, though it ruined his father-in-law’s social standing, caused Dr. Poffenberger’s “resignation” from the Country Club, and subsequently the sale of his dental practice and his removal to Boston. And Ma Upham of Upham House had died of a stroke and her Revolutionary-type hostel had been sold to a Providence syndicate, causing a D.A.R. boycott and a series of fiery editorials in the Record.

Ellery spent his first evening and all of the next day lining up his sights: looking up old friends, greeting acquaintances, strolling along familiar streets, catching up on the gossip, and generally enjoying himself. It was not until he had been in Wrightsville for thirty-six hours that he realized why his enjoyment was so thorough. It was not merely the re-experience of old times in a place he loved; it was that he had just left a place he detested, called Bendigo Island, with its electrified fences and swarming guards and secret police with blank faces and robotized employees and its soft, curiously rotten, air. This, on the other hand, was Wrightsville, U.S.A., where people lived, worked, and died in an atmosphere of independence and decency and a man never had reason to look back over his shoulder. This air, even mill-laden, could be breathed.

It made Ellery all the more inquisitive about the Bendigos.

On the second morning after his arrival he went to work in earnest. His object was to get a biographical picture of King Bendigo and his brothers Abel and Judah from conception, if possible, with the emphasis on King.

He consulted town records, he hunted up Wrightsvillians strange to him, he spent long hours in the morgue of the Wrightsville Record and the reference room of the Carnegie Library on State Street. He hired a Driv-Ur-Self car at Homer Findlay’s garage down at Plum Street in Low Village and he made numerous trips — Slocum Township, Fyfield, Connhaven, even to little Fidelity, in whose dilapidated cemetery he had an old grave marker to hunt up. Once he flew to Maine.

Especially helpful was Francis “Spec” O’Bannon, who was still in Wrightsville running Malvina Prentiss’s Record (Malvina, the eternal Rosalind Russell, retired from newspaper publishing when she married O’Bannon but retained her maiden name!); O’Bannon kept the Record morgue copiously supplied with bourbon while Ellery was dug in there. And, of course, there was Chief of Police Dakin, who was beginning to look more like Abe Lincoln’s mummy than Abe Lincoln; and Hermione Wright, who had never looked more radiant; and Emmeline DuPré, the Town Crier, who practically bayed for an entire afternoon; and many others.

Ellery had two whole weeks of it, digging up the pieces, jig-sawing them; crosschecking the testimony, establishing the facts, integrating them with world events, and finally arranging them in roughly chronological order. At the end he had a picture of “the oldest Bendigo boy” and his brothers which, kaleidoscopic as it was, delineated them with photographic brutality.

Excerpts from E. Q.’s Notes

DR. PIERCE MINIKIN

(Dr. Pierce Minikin is 86, retired from practice. Semi-invalid, cared for by Miz Baker, old Phinny’s widow, since Phinny died and the Record lost the best pressman it ever will have. Dr. Pierce is great-uncle to F. Henry Minikin, but two branches not on speaking terms for over a generation. Dr. Minikin has very small income from some Low Village property. Still lives in Colonial Minikin house on Minikin Rd between Lincoln and Slocum Sts. In bad shape, needs painting, etc. Dated 1743, squeezed between Volunteer Fire Dept and Slocum Garage, backyard overlooks Van Horn Lumber Yard. Old fellow a tartar with frosty twinkle and sharp tongue. Physically feeble, mentally very alert. We had several wonderful visits.)

“King” Bendigo? My dear young fellow, I knew that great man when he was mud in his father’s eye. Brought all three Bendigo boys into the world. From what I’ve heard, I owe the world an apology...

His father? Well, I don’t suppose anybody remembers Bill Bendigo in Wrightsville except a few old hasbeens like me. I liked Bill fine. Of course he wasn’t respectable — didn’t come from a high-toned family, didn’t go to church, was a regular heller — but that didn’t cut any ice with me, I liked my men hard and my women patients to bear down, haha! Bill was hard. Hard drinker, hard feeder, hard boss — he was a building contractor, built that block of flats over on Congress Street near the Marshes they’re just getting round to tearing down — and a hard lover? Boys at the Hollis bar used to call him Wild Bill. There’s many a story I could tell you about...

Well, no, can’t say I do. No, not Italian, that’s on their mother’s side. Don’t know how they got the name Bendigo, except that Wild Bill’s people were Anglo-Saxon. Came over from England around 1850...

Big man, six foot three, a yard wide, and a pair of hands on him could bend a crowbar. Champion wrestler of the Green. The Green? That’s before it was named Memorial Park. Boys used to grapple there Saturday afternoons. Nobody ever pinned Bill Bendigo. They used to come from all over the County to try. Handsome devil, too, Bill was — blue-eyed, with dark curly hair and lots of it on his chest. If you didn’t know about the English, you’d have said Black Irish...

The lover part. Well, now, I didn’t know all Bill’s secrets! But when he fell in real love it was all the way. Worshipped the ground Dusolina walked on. Little Low Village girl from an Italian family. Can’t remember her maiden name to save my life. Yes, I do. Cantini, that’s what it was. Her father’d been a track walker for the railroad, killed by an express train in ’91. No, ’92. Left a big brood, and his wife was a religious fanatic. Dusolina — Bill called her Lena — fell just as hard in love as Bill, and they had to elope because Mrs. Cantini threatened to kill her if she married a Protestant. Dusolina did, anyway; they were married by Orrin Lloyd, he was Town Clerk before Amos Bluefield. Orrin Lloyd was the brother of Israel Lloyd, who owned the lumber yard then — grandfather of Frank Lloyd who owned the Record up to a few years ago... Where was I?

Yes. Well, I was the Bendigo family doctor and when Dusolina got pregnant I took care of her. She had a hard time, died a few days later. Child was a great big boy, weighed almost thirteen pounds, I recollect that clearly. That was Bill’s first son — your great man. Bill took little Dusolina’s death hard, the way he took everything. Didn’t blame me, thank the Lord — if he had, he’d have crippled me. He blamed the baby. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Said the baby was a natural-born killer! And Bill said there was only one name for a natural-born killer, and that was Cain, like in the Bible. And Cain was what he had me register the baby in the Town Hall records. Only child I ever delivered by that name. That was in 1897, young man, fifty-four years ago, and I remember it as if it were yesterday...

SARA HINCHLEY

(Of the Junction Hinchleys. Trained nurse. Miss Sara is arthritic, getting anile, lives in the Connhaven Home for the Aged, private institution, where I saw her. Supported by her nephew, Lyman Hinchley, the insurance broker of Wrightsville. Was Jessica Fox’s day nurse during J.F.’s fatal illness in 1932.)

That’s right, sir, Nellie Hinchley was my mother. She died in... in... I don’t remember. Except for my brother Will — that was my nephew Lyman’s father — and myself, none of my mother’s children lived. They all died in infancy, and she had seven. We were very poor, so my mother did wet-nursing, as they called it in those days. She always had a lot of milk, and after she lost one she would...

Dr. Minikin told you that? Well, of course, she wet-nursed so many, and I was just a girl... Oh, that one! Let’s see, now... Mr. Bendigo’s wife died delivering his first child... yes... and Mama wet-nursed the baby for a year. He had a queer name... I don’t remember... But she did use to say he was the hardest she ever nursed. He’d just about suck the life out of her. What was his name?... Cain? Cain... Well, maybe it was. I don’t remember things as good as I used to... I think Mama stopped when Mr. Bendigo got married again. Or was that with the Newbold child?...

ADELAIDE PEAGUE

(One of Cain’s earliest living grade-school teachers. Now 71, retired on pension, keeps house for Millard Peague, her first cousin, of the locksmith shop at Crosstown and Foaming. Brisk and very bright, with a jaw like a ploughshare.)

I most certainly do, Mr. Queen! I’m not one to bow and scrape and forget the way it used to be just because a pupil of mine becomes famous, although frankly I don’t know what he’s famous for except that if he’s anything like the way he was...

No, not the Pincy Road school that Elizabeth Schoonmaker taught. The one I taught in is still standing, though of course it’s not a school house any more, it’s the D.A.R. headquarters...

He was an impossible child. In those days we taught the first four grades in the same room. The boys were hellions, and if a teacher didn’t go about armed with a brass-edged ruler she didn’t last a term... Cain Bendigo was the worst, the worst. He was the ringleader in every bit of mischief, and some of the things he did I simply cannot repeat. I’ll bet he remembers me, though. Or his knuckles do...

Yes, I suppose his name had something to do with it, although I’m not one of these advanced people who test everything by psychology. He did hate to have me call on him, and now that I think of it, it was probably because of course I had to use his name. Did you ever hear the like? He did take a lot of joshing because his name was Cain, and any time one of the other boys ragged him about it there was a fist fight. He was big and strong for his age and he would fight at the drop of a hat. In the four years I taught him he licked every blessed boy in school, just about, and some of the girls, too! There was no nonsense about chivalry in that child...

Oh, he stopped them making fun of it, yes. Toward the end of the fourth grade — when Opal Marbery inherited him, thank goodness! — no, she’s been dead for many years — toward the end, as I say, while he was still having plenty of fights, they weren’t about his name. But he and I had a feud over it to the bitter end. I always felt that it was a very unfair thing for a child to do. After all, I couldn’t help his name being Cain, could I? I had to call the little devil something...

URIAH SCOTT (“U.S.”) WHEELER

(68, principal of Fyfield Gunnery School. Kin to the Wheelers of Hill Drive. Kept referring to his family’s hero, Murdock Wheeler, Wrightsville’s last surviving vet of the G.A.R., who died in 1939, as if the old fellow had been General Grant himself. Was Cain’s teacher at the Gunnery School in 1911, when Cain was 14.)

My dear Mr. Queen, on the contrary I consider it an honor. I have always allowed myself to brag that I had a little something to do with shaping the character, and therefore the destiny of Mr. Bendigo. Although I’ve lived in Fyfield ever since coming to teach at Gunnery in 1908 as a very young man, I have always retained a soft spot in my heart for the town of my birth, and Mr. Bendigo is without doubt Wrightsville’s greatest living citizen. It’s high time indeed that someone like yourself collated the facts of his early life among us humble folk for posterity...

Yes, of course, about his name. Excellent point of character! His father enrolled him at Gunnery as Cain Bendigo — C-a-i-n — as nasty a trick to play on a future great man as I’ve ever heard of, haha! We used to joke about it in the Faculty Room. But he soon changed all that. A mere boy, sir, in a school in which discipline has always been preached and practiced as a cardinal virtue. My kinsman, Murdock Wheeler, who did distinguished service for our country in the Civil War, used to say...

He changed it! Just like that. One day he marched into the Administration Office and demanded that the spelling of his name be changed on the school’s roster from C-a-i-n to K-a-n-e. He had already begun heading his papers in his various classes with his first name in the revised spelling. He was confined to quarters for three days for his disrespectful tone and attitude. When he returned to classes, he immediately marched into the Administration Office and made the identical demand — in, I might add, haha, the identical tone! He was again punished, more severely this time. Nevertheless as soon as he was released, there he was again. His father was summoned to Fyfield. Mr. Bendigo senior, on hearing what had occurred, forbade the school authorities to alter the spelling of his son’s name. The boy listened in silence. When he came to my class that very day, his first action was to head a paper “K-a-n-e Bendigo”. It made a very pretty problem for us! — and I must confess it was a problem we never solved. He never wrote his name “C-a-i-n” again, to the best of my knowledge. And when he was graduated and saw that the name on his diploma was spelled “C-a-i-n” — the school had no choice, you see — he marched into Principal Estey’s office, tore the diploma in quarters before Dr. Estey’s nose, flung the pieces on the desk, and marched out again!...

CAIAPHAS TRUSLOW

(Town Clerk. ’Aphas succeeded Amos Bluefield as Clerk after old Bluefield’s death on Columbus Day eve in 1940. ’Aphas helpful throughout.)

Yep, here it is, Mr. Queen. William M. Bendigo and Ellen Foster Wentworth, June 2, 1898. My father knew Mr. Bendigo well. And Ellen Wentworth was the sister of old Arthur Wentworth, who was attorney for John F. Wright’s father. The Wentworths were one of the real old families. All dead now...

Well, yes, except for the two younger Bendigo brothers, but they don’t count, now, do they?...

About this marriage, that was Mr. Bendigo’s second. His first was...

They were married in the First Congregational Church on West Livesey Street. Reason I know is I was a choir boy at the ceremony. Way I heard it, Ellen Wentworth insisted on a church wedding just because her folks were against the match. She had a lot of spunk for a girl in those days. Wasn’t a soul there — not a soul in the pews, not even her family! No, there was one — Nellie Hinchley, who was holding Mr. Bendigo’s first child by his first wife on her lap...

Old Mr. Blanchard was pastor then — no, no, he’s been dead and gone for forty-two years — and he was so fussed he messed up the service. Mr. Bendigo got so riled at poor old Mr. Blanchard he puffed up to twice his size just holding himself in — and he looked like a mighty big man to us kids!...

Dr. PIERCE MINIKIN

...delivered the second boy, too. Different mother this time, one of the Wentworths. Ellen, her name was. Not as pretty as Dusolina. Dusolina was little and dark and had a face shaped like a valentine and big black eyes. Ellen was blonde and blue-eyed and on the skimpy side — looked a little bloodless. But she had breeding, that girl. And money, of course. Leave it to Bill Bendigo to pick up a bargain. There were lots of men from good families in Wrightsville tried to shine up to Ellen. But she wanted love. And I reckon she got it, haha!...

Oh, Bill was wild the second time, too. Not because the mother of the child died, though Ellen never was very strong and soon after developed the heart condition that in a few years made her a semi-invalid. It was because for his second child he’d made up his mind to have a girl. And damned if the baby didn’t outsmart him this time, too! Turned out to be a boy again. Bill never did get over that. If he hated young Cain for being a mother-killer, he had nothing but contempt for the second boy for not turning out a girl. Wouldn’t spit on him. These days a doctor would send a man like Bill to a psychiatrist, I guess. Those days all you could do was take a buggy whip to him, only Bill was too big. So when he said to me, “Doc Pierce, my wife has birthed a sneaky little demon who spent nine months in the womb figuring out how to cross me up, and there’s only one name for a baby like that. You go down to Town Clerk Orrin Lloyd and you register this child’s name as Judas Bendigo,” I tell you, young fellow, I was horrified. Said I wouldn’t do any such thing and he could damned well put that curse on his own child himself. And he did. Bill Bendigo had a cruel sense of humor, and he was cruelest when he was mad...

Don’t know how he squared it with Ellen. She found out pretty early in married life that there was only one boss in Bill Bendigo’s house. Of course, having a heart condition... Often wondered what became of Bill’s second boy. Imagine naming a boy Judas!...

MILLICENT BROOKS CHALANSKI

(69, aunt of Manager Brooks of the Hollis Hotel. Married Harry Chalanski of Low Village. Chalanski was Polish immigrant boy whom M.B. tutored in English, fell in love with, helped through State U. Their son is young Judson Chalanski who succeeded Phil Hendrix as Prosecutor of Wright County, when Hendrix went to Congress. One of the happiest mésalliances in Wrightsville!)

No, I will not call him Judas. I taught that poor child on and off for four years when Adelaide Peague and I alternated with the lower grades in the old Ridge Road school, and I could never see him without a tug at my heart. He was a frail little boy with very beautiful eyes that looked straight through you. One of the quietest children I’ve ever taught, the soul of patience. His eyes were always sad, and I don’t wonder. He wanted to play with the other children, wanted it desperately, but there’s always one child the others pick on, and Judah was that one. I was convinced it was because of his name. The other children never let him forget it. You know how mean young children can be. I could see him cringe every time the hated name was flung at him in the play yard, cringe and turn away. He never fought like the other boys. He would just go very pale when he was taunted about being a “traitor” and a “coward”, go pale, and then walk away. His brother Cain, who was older, fought a lot of his battles, and it was Cain who protected him from the parochial school boys when they walked home from school.

...told his father what I thought of a man who’d give a child a name like that, while his mother sat by wrapped in lap rugs, not saying a word. Mr. Bendigo just laughed. “Judas is his name,” he said to me, “and Judas it’s going to stay.” But I’d seen the look in Mrs. Bendigo’s face, and that was all I needed. The next day I took the boy aside during recess and I said to him, “Would you like to have a new name?” His pinched little face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Oh, yes!” he cried. But then his face fell. “But my father wouldn’t let me.”

“Your father doesn’t have to know anything about it,” I said. “Anyway, we don’t have to change it much, just one letter, so that if he does see the new name on a report or something, he’ll think it’s simply a mistake. From now on, dear, we’ll just drop the s and put an h in its place, and you’ll be Judah Bendigo. Do you know what ‘Judah’ means? It means someone who is praised. It’s a fine name, and a famous one, too, from the Bible.” The child was so overcome he was unable to speak. He looked at me with his big, sad eyes, then his lips began to tremble and before I knew it he was in my arms, sobbing...

It didn’t take the other children long. Just about one term. I called on him by his new name as frequently as I dared. By the next year they were all calling him Judah, even his brother Cain. I don’t know how Mr. Bendigo took it, and I didn’t care. He was going through a lot of business troubles at that time, his wife was sick — I suppose he was too busy to make an issue of it...

Dr. PIERCE MINIKIN

Let’s see, remarried in ’98 — the second boy was born in ’99, which makes him two years younger than Cain Bendigo. The third boy was born five years after the second, which would be 1904. My Lord, Abel’s forty-seven!...

Don’t know, can’t say, but I’ll guess. My guess is the third one was an accident. I know I’d warned Bill about his wife’s health, and taking it easy, but Bill being what he was...

No, I don’t know why he named the third one Abel. Figured he’d keep his Biblical string running, I guess. I do remember he had no more interest in Abel than in the other two. Just had nothing to do with them. And Ellen was getting sicker, and after a while she developed a chronic whine, which was exactly what those three boys could have done without. The truth is the Bendigo boys grew up without any real love or affection, and whatever’s happened to them is no surprise to me whatsoever, young fellow, whatsoever...

MARTHA E. COOLYE

(67, Principal of Wrightsville High School.)

I’m not really that ancient, Mr. Queen. I was very, very young when I taught Cain Bendigo in the upper grades...

Student is hardly the word. I don’t believe he stuck his nose into a book ever in his life. Certainly not while I taught him. I don’t know how that boy got by...

Cain’s forte was violence. If there was a fight at recess, you could be sure Cain Bendigo was at the bottom of the heap. If a window was broken, you checked up on Cain first. If one of the girls came to you in tears exhibiting a braid which had been dipped in an inkwell, you knew in advance who had done the dipping. If you turned to the blackboard in class and jumped at a B-B shot on your backside, you looked for the peashooter in Cain’s desk...

He led the boys in everything. Except, of course, scholarship. He was ringleader of the worst boys in school. I was always having to haul him down to Mrs. Brindsley’s office to be disciplined...

Athletics? Well, of course, we didn’t have organized athletics in the lower grade schools in those days the way we have them today. But there was one game Cain Bendigo excelled at while I was his teacher, and that was the game of hookey... No, I didn’t say hockey, Mr. Queen. He was the champion hookey player of the school!...

CHARLES O. EVINS

(Director, Wrightsville Y.M.C.A.)

My father, George Evins, was truant officer for the town between 1900 and 1917. He never forgot Cain Bendigo. Used to call him “my best customer”. He called the Bendigo boys “The Three Musketeers”, which was funny because Abel, the youngest, was only seven when Cain graduated from grade school. I remember myself how Cain would go off with Judah and Abel after school to fool around in the Marshes, and that was unusual for a boy in the eighth grade — he and I graduated together. Usually we big boys kicked the little kids aside. Cain was the first to do the kicking, except where his little brother Abel was concerned. He fought a lot of bloody battles over Judah and Abel. Way I’ve figured it out, it was Cain’s way of getting back at his father. He hated his father with a burning hatred, and anything his father was against, he was for. Of course, he led the younger boys around by the nose, but they never minded. To Judah and Abel, Cain was God, and whatever he said went...

I’ve often wondered how Cain Bendigo turned out. I know he’s supposed to be a multimillionaire and all that, but I mean as a man. Even as a boy he was a contradiction...

WRIGHTSVILLE Record, July 20, 1911

(In 1911 the Wrightsville Record was published only once a week, on Thursdays.)

Wrightsville buzzed this week over a deed of heroism done by a 14-year-old boy.

Cain Bendigo, eldest son of William M. Bendigo, well-known High Village building contractor, risked his life last Saturday to save his brother Abel, 7, from drowning while the two boys and their brother, Judah, 12, were on a tramp through the woods in Twin Hills.

According to the young hero’s account, they had gone to the rocky pool at the foot of Granjon Falls, which is a favorite “swimming hole” of Wrightsville’s younger element. The 7-year-old boy, who does not know how to swim, was sitting at the edge of the pool watching his brothers when he somehow fell into the water, struck a jagged rock, and was borne unconscious by the fast current toward the rapids at the foot of the Falls. Cain, who was on shore, saw little Abel being swept away to certain destruction. Showing rare presence of mind for a lad of 14, Cain did not try to swim after Abel. Instead he raced alongshore and plunged in to meet his brother’s body rushing towards him. In rough water and fighting the strong current, Cain managed to struggle ashore with the little boy and, exhausted as he himself was, he worked over Abel until Abel regained consciousness.

Cain and Judah then carried Abel down Indian Trail to Shingle Street, where the three boys were picked up by Ivor Crosby, farmer, who was driving his team to Hill Valley. Mr. Crosby raced the boys back to town. Medical treatment was administered by Dr. Pierce Minikin of Minikin Rd, the Bendigo family physician. Mr. Minikin said Cain did a fine job of resuscitation. Abel was taken home shortly thereafter, little the worse for his experience.

Cain Bendigo was graduated from Ridge Rd Grade School this June...

SAMUEL R. LIVINGSTON

(84, Wrightsville’s elder statesman. Dean of the “Hill” Livingstons and all his life a power in local politics. In 1911 he was in his sixth year as First Selectman.)

The medal was ordered from a Boston house and it was a month getting here. We had the ceremony on the steps of the Town Hall. Everybody came out for it — it was like Fourth of July. They packed the Green solid and overflowed into the Square. Course, I’d picked a Saturday for it, when everybody was in town anyway, but the boy deserved it, he surely did...

That Cain Bendigo, he stood up straight as a soldier when I pinned the medal on him. The crowd called for a speech, which I thought was pretty rough on a boy of fourteen, but it didn’t feaze him one bit. He said he thanked everybody in Wrightsville for the medal, but he didn’t feel he really deserved it — anybody would have done the same. That made a real hit with the townspeople, I’m here to tell you, and I said to myself then and there, “Sam Livingston, that boy is going places.” And he surely did!...

WRIGHTSVILLE Record, August 17, 1911

...as follows: 24-jewel Waltham open-face watch with black silk fob, presented with the compliments of Curtis Manadnock, High Village Jeweller. A Kollege Klothes brand suit with new style accessories presented with the compliments of Gowdy & Son Clothing Store, The Square. Wright & Ditson tennis racquet, with press, New York Department Store. Ten-volume set of The Photographic History of the Civil War, Semicentennial Memorial Edition, just published by the Review of Reviews Co., New York, presented with the compliments of Marcus Aikin Book Shop, Jezreel Lane. Good-natured hilarity greeted the announcement that Upham’s Ice Cream Parlor on Washington St, High Village, would present the young hero with a full month’s supply of Upham’s Banana Splits Supreme at the rate of one per day. An Iver Johnson bicycle, presented with the compliments of...

(From the 1911 Files of Fyfield Gunnery School.)

COPY

FYFIELD GUNNERY SCHOOL

August 15, 1911

Mr. Cain Bendigo

Wrightsville

DEAR MR BENDIGO

It gives me the greatest pleasure to inform you that, for manifesting the high qualities of manly character which are prerequisite to matriculation in Fyfield Gunnery School, the Scholarship Board at a special meeting has voted to present you with a full four-year tuition scholarship, to take effect at the opening of the Fall Term next month.

If you will present yourself with your parent or guardian during Registration Week, September 8-15, with proof that you have duly completed your grade school requirements as prescribed by the laws of the State, arrangements for your immediate enrollment at Gunnery will be concluded.

With warmest good wishes, I remain,

Yours very truly,

(Signed) MELROSE F. ESTEY

MFE/DV Principal

BEN DANZIG

(54, prop. High Village Rental Library and Sundries.)

Cain Bendigo was certainly the big squeeze in Wrightsville the rest of that summer before he went off to Gunnery. I remember the rush he got from the girls, and it made the rest of us boys, who’d graduated from the Ridge school with him and were going on to just Wrightsville High, kind of jealous. But there was one kid in town who’d have got down on his hands and knees and licked Cain’s shoes if Cain had let him, and that was his little brother Abel. I never saw such worship. Why, that kid just followed Cain around all over like a puppy...

Judah? Well...

EMMELINE DUPRÉ:

(52, better known as the Town Crier. Teaches dancing and dramatics to the youth of the Hill gentry.)

Where was Judah during the accident? Why didn’t he help save Abel’s life? Those were the burning questions of the day, Mr. Queen. There was one boy in our class — I was in Judah’s class, so I’m in a position to discuss this intelligently — this boy, his name was Eddie Weevil, rather a nasty boy as I recall, it wasn’t long before he was being seen down in Polly Street and that sort of thing, but he did say he’d seen it, and after all even a chronic liar can tell the truth some time, don’t you agree, Mr. Queen? Well, Eddie was going around telling the boys in the seventh grade — that was just after Cain went off to Gunnery — that he’d been up around Granjon Falls that day and just happened to witness the whole incident. Eddie Weevil said Judah didn’t do anything. Didn’t even try. The pure craven. Eddie said Judah was closer to Abel than Cain and could have fished him out easily if he’d had half the spunk of a ground hog, but that he ran away and cried like a baby and let Cain do the whole thing all by himself...

Well, yes, he was asked that, but Eddie said the reason he didn’t come forward with his story at the time was he didn’t want to get Judah Bendigo in trouble. Of course, I don’t know, the Weevil boy may have made the whole thing up just to call attention to himself, but it was funny, don’t you think, that Judah didn’t have a word to say about his part in the rescue, and Cain didn’t either?...

REVEREND ALAN BRINDSLEY

(52, Rector, First Congregational Church on West Livesey St.)

I occupied the seat next to Judah Bendigo in the seventh grade. I think I was probably the only boy in the class Judah trusted. He never said much about himself, though, even to me. I do know that he suffered horribly during the first few months after the rescue incident. Somehow the rumor spread that he had funked the chance to save his little brother and had run away instead of helping, or something of the sort. Even if it had been true, it was unfair to condemn a twelve-year-old boy as a coward, as if physical bravery were the highest good. Not all of us have what it takes to be a hero, Mr. Queen, and I’m not sure it would be a good thing if we had. Judah was a highly intelligent, sensitive boy who’d been branded from birth with surely the wickedest name ever given a child, I mean his given name, which was Judas...

It got to the point where it was too much for me to bear. Some of the boys began to call him “coward” to his face, rough him up in front of the girls, dare him to fight, challenge him to “swimming” races — you can imagine. Judah merely hung his head. He never replied. He never struck back. I used to beg him to come away, but he would stand there until they were through, and only then would he turn his back. I realize now what courage — what truly great courage — this must have taken...

Dr. PIERCE MINIKIN

Judah as a boy was what the fancy fellows these days would call a masochist. He enjoyed punishment...

REVEREND ALAN BRINDSLEY

It subsided eventually. It took about six months, I’d say. Then the whole thing was forgotten. By everyone, I’m sure, but Judah. I’m sure he remembers that Golgotha to this day. You say you’ve seen him recently. Does he brood? Is he lonely still? What’s happened to him? I always detected something Christ-like in Judah. I was sure he would leave the world a little better than he had found it...

WRIGHTSVILLE Record. November 28, 1912:

BENDIGO’S 4 TOUCHDOWNS

CRUSH HIGH 27—0

WRIGHTSVILLE Record, June 12, 1913

BENDIGO’S HOMER IN 9TH

BEATS SLOCUM 6—5

WRIGHTSVILLE Record, April 30, 1914

GUNNERY TAKES TRACK-FIELD

MEET WITH 53 POINTS

Big Ben Breaks 3 Marks, Scores 29 Points

WRIGHTSVILLE Record, February 11, 1915:

KANE BENDIGO KO’S JETHROE IN 4TH

Gunnery Star Takes State Junior Light-Heavy Title

“DOC” DOWD

(76, Director of Athletics at Fyfield Gunnery School 1905–1938; retired, now living in Bannock.)

Kane Bendigo was the finest all-round athlete produced by Gunnery in the thirty-three years I directed the school’s athletics... PRINCIPAL WHEELER (OF FYFIELD GUNNERY)

I’m sure my memory can’t be that much off, Mr. Queen...

I’m astonished. Graduated forty-ninth in a class of sixty-three! I could have sworn the records would show he stood far, far higher than that. Of course, Gunnery’s scholastic standards have always been extremely stringent...

WRIGHTSVILLE Record, July 1, 1915

SEN. HUNTER CONSIDERING

WRIGHTSVILLE APPOINTEE TO U.S.

MILITARY ACADEMY

If Kane Bendigo Named, Will Be First Wrightsville West Pointer Since Clarence T. Wright in ’78

Dr. PIERCE MINIKIN

There was a lot of pressure put on Bob Hunter to name the boy, I remember. He wanted to, too — it would have been good politics, because Bob was always weak in Wright County. But in the end he had to say no. The boy’s marks just wouldn’t stand up. And, as Bob told me himself, he couldn’t let Bendigo take the entrance examinations because if he failed that would be a nice big Senatorial black eye. So he gave it that year to a boy from up Latham way...

Kane was furious, deathly mad. I was in the Bendigo house on a professional call to his stepmother when the news came. His face got black, I tell you. The only way he showed his disappointment in action was pretty mild, I thought, considering that look on his face. He kicked the cat through one of the stained-glass side windows of the vestibule. That cat never was the same again, haha!...

WRIGHTSVILLE Record, July 29, 1915

KANE BENDIGO TO ATTEND

MERRIMAC U. THIS FALL

CHET (“IRON MAN’) FOGG

(By long-distance phone to his home in Leesburg, Va. Fogg was football coach at Merrimac University from 1913 to 1942, when he retired.)

I never made any bones about it, and I don’t today. Kane Bendigo put Merrimac U. on the college athletic map. He was real big-time, the kind of athlete a coach dreams about. He was as good as Jim Thorpe any day. There wasn’t anything Kane couldn’t do, and do better than anybody else. He ran wild in the backfield the two seasons he played Varsity. He played baseball like Frank Merriwell — or was it Dick? — anyway, whichever one was Superman, that’s the one he played like. He made track records that still stand. He was a natural-born boxer, and he slugged his way to the state college heavyweight championship — and if he’d ever gone into his senior year, my money would have been on him to take the national. No college wrestler ever took a fall over him, though that’s one he used to say he owed to his old man — the only thing, he’d say, he did owe “the old bastard”. And if you’ll look it up, you’ll find that in 1918 he was named by Collier’s magazine the most promising all-round college athlete in the U.S., even though by that time he was in the Army...

That’s right. He left to enlist in the middle of his junior year — around Christmas of 1917, I think it was...

WRIGHTSVILLE Record, October 10, 1918

KANE BENDIGO WINS NATION’S

HIGHEST MILITARY AWARD

Wrightsville Hero of Saint-Mihiel Gets Congressional Medal of Honor

WRIGHTSVILLE Record, September 4, 1919

WAR HERO FETED;

ANNOUNCES PLANS

Kane Bendigo, Wrightsville’s Congressional Medal of Honor hero of the late conflict, was given a roaring welcome today when he returned to the city of his birth after being mustered out of the U.S. Army...

After the reception, Mr. Bendigo granted an exclusive interview to the Record. Queried as to his postwar plans, Mr. Bendigo said: “I have had all sorts of offers to go back to college, and a dozen pro offers in various fields of athletics, but I am through with that stuff. I am going into business, where I can make some real money. I saw too many young fellows die in France to waste any part of my life on rah-rah stuff or working for somebody else. When my father was killed last year in that construction accident, he left a sizable estate. Most of it is in my stepmother’s name, but she and my brothers have agreed to let me handle the money and I know just what to do with it. I am going into business for myself. I have something all lined up...”

Excerpts from E. Q.’s Digest

Between January 1920 and November 1923 K.B. had four business failures. He went into the manufacture of sports equipment in Wrightsville and at the same time tried to run his father’s contracting business. Result: Both went into bankruptcy. His next venture was to take over a factory that manufactured metal containers. He ran this into the ground in a little over a year filing a petition in bankruptcy in January of 1922. He then negotiated a deal whereby he took over the Wrightsville Machine Shop in Low Village for the manufacture of light machinery. By November of 1923 this had flopped, too. His main trouble, as I was able to piece it together, seems to have been that he always bit off more than he could chew. He constantly made grandiose plans, over-extended himself, and fell flat on his face. What he did have, as evidenced by the record, was the ability to charm hard-boiled New England monied people into loosening up...

Note historic parallel: About the time Kane Bendigo was broke and discredited, apparently a total failure, a man in Germany named Hitler was lying wounded in prison as the result of the collapse of his ambitious Beer Putsch march on Munich. Both were at the nadir of their careers...

Abel had had a brilliant scholastic record, and at 17 (Sept. 1921) entered Harvard on a scholarship. He quit college at the end of his junior year (June 1924). Note that between November of 1923 and June of 1924, Kane was licking his commercial wounds. But he wasn’t entirely idle, he was back at his old charm routine. He must have been, because coincidentally with Abel’s leaving Harvard to join him in Wrightsville, we find Kane starting a new enterprise with the financial backing of such a goulash as John F. Wright, Richard Giannis, Sr, the then-young Diedrich Van Horn, and old Mrs. Granjon. Kane took over an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town and went into the manufacture of shell-casings for the U.S. Navy. Abel went in with him...

At this time Judah was in Paris studying music at the Conservatoire...

Mrs. Bendigo, mother of Abel and Judah and stepmother of Kane, died in 1925...

...prospered from the start. The small plant mushroomed into a large plant, the large plant became two large plants. The expansion was incredibly quick. Apparently Abel’s native business brilliance exactly complemented Kane’s charm, drive, and unbounded ambition. They went more and more deeply into the field of munitions. The further they expanded, the smaller dwindled the group which had financed them. One after another Kane bought out his original backers. At this time the company was known as The Bendigo Arms Company (it was in the early thirties that the company name was quietly changed to Bodigen), and Kane was apparently determined to give himself exclusivity in fact as well as in title. There is reason to believe that Kane did not gain total control without a struggle, as the profits and dividends were beginning to be considerable. Talked with old Judge Martin, Samuel R. Livingston, one of the Granjon sons, and with Wolfert Van Horn. The Judge recalls John F. Wright’s battle only vaguely, and Livingston was mysterious. Van Horn cagey but transparent. Convinced me that Kane brought lots of pressure to bear and used methods the victims never talked about as a matter of pride. Considering Wolfert Van Horn’s own business reputation, this shows genius of the lowest order...

By 1928 all the inside outsiders were outside looking in, and the Bendigos owned all the shares in the parent company, which now had six immense plants in operation...

October 29, 1929, was the turning point. On the ruins of the stock market Kane Bendigo built his fabulous fortune. He had sold out all his holdings early in October, at the peak highs, after buying everything in sight on dangerous margin at the lows. The crash made him a multimillionaire. Just how much he made cannot be determined; there is reason to believe his profits ran to hundreds of millions of dollars. This was the effective beginning of the Bendigo empire. Kane was 32. Abel was 25!!!!!...

They began expanding immediately. Bought out a very large munitions company. In rapid succession several smaller ones. These plus what they already had became the nucleus of the gigantic overall organization, of which The Bodigen Arms Company today is only a part...

In the summer of 1930 the Bendigos left Wrightsville. It had become like a whale trying to maneuver in a pond. They had to get to where they could move around. They built a whole city in southern Illinois, an industrial city of 100,000 population. Their main offices were in New York. They began to open branches in foreign countries...

Some of the original Bendigo plants are still operating in Wrightsville, although the ownership is so tangled up it would take an army of experts to work its way through...

There is no evidence that either Kane or Abel Bendigo has set foot in Wrightsville since that day. Dr. Minikin, who recalls the old days with far greater clarity than the recent past, “thinks” Judah was back during the mid-thirties for a few days, alone, but I have found no one who remembers having seen him, and a search of the register records of the Hollis, Upham House, and the Kelton for that period has not turned up his name... William M. Bendigo’s grave in the little Fidelity cemetery is untended, overgrown, and almost obliterated. Ellen Wentworth Bendigo is buried in the Wentworth family plot in the Wrightsville cemetery...

June 22, 1930; Government of Bolivia overthrown.

Aug. 22–27, 1930; Peruvian government ditto.

Sept. 6, 1930; Argentine government ditto.

Oct. 24, 1930; Brazilian government ditto.

ITEM: Between January and June of 1930 all plants of The Bodigen Arms Co. (year name-change effected) worked on double shift. Sales almost exclusively South American.

NOTE: It is clear, in the light of this and certain other evidence, that Bendigo provided the explosive force which blew up four South American governments within five months...

NOTE: Bendigo did not cause the revolutions. He merely made them possible...

NOTE: Obviously, these were King Bendigo’s practice sessions, trying out his muscles. Small stuff — in one of the insurrections there were a mere 3000 casualties...

Jan. 2, 1931; Panama Republic overthrown.

Mar. 1, 1931; A second overthrow of the Peru government.

July 24, 1931; Bye-bye existing régime of Chile.

Oct. 26, 1931; Ditto Paraguay.

Dec. 3, 1931; Ditto Salvador.

NOTE: Five more tests of power. What might be called the build-up of the body beautiful, with biceps and chest expanding rapidly. But this is mere gym work, with set-ups; he’s about ready to step out into the big time...

In 1932 we find peaceful consolidation, improvement, and further expansion. The organization is unwieldy. There is weeding out of personnel all along the line. Companies are merged, finances consolidated and redistributed, soft spots strengthened, production streamlined, new industries absorbed. The speed of K.B.’s empire building is stupendous; there is only one precedent in modern times, and it stumbles by comparison. This is the kind of industrial story that could never be invented in fiction. No one would believe it...

June 4, 1932; Another revolution in Chile.

This was apparently the result of an error in calculation, or overzealousness on the part of some Company super salesman. It was immediately remedied by...

Jan. 30, 1933; Adolf Hitler named Chancellor of Germany.

The global phase, to which the other was the merest preliminary, begins here.

Finding Capt. Mike Bellodgia has been a stroke of greatest good luck. The famous round-the-world flyer was put under contract by K.B. toward the end of 1932. He had one job — to fly King Bendigo. He was King’s personal chief pilot for almost thirteen years — until, in fact, a bit after the end of World War II, when Bendigo was persuaded that Bellodgia was getting too old to be trusted with his precious passenger.

Bellodgia is still bitter about it, probably the real reason why he allowed me to take a look at his diaries, although we both pretended he believed my story that I was there in the interests of posterity. I flew up to Maine, where he now lives, and spent several days with him. He lives very handsomely, I must say — Bendigo was generous with him to the point of prodigality, and Bellodgia is financially secure for the remainder of his days. Bellodgia remarks dryly that he earned it; he says that never once in thirteen years of flying Bendigo all over the world did he have to make a forced landing or develop serious engine trouble.

Capt. Bellodgia’s diaries are really not diaries at all but personal logs. He doesn’t seem to realize what he has, and I have not enlightened him.

By juxtaposing Bellodgia’s record of King Bendigo’s flights, destinations, dates, and lengths of stay with historical events, it has been possible to place Bendigo pretty accurately in his true perspective between Hitler’s ascension to power in Germany and the end of World War II...

In 1933 the Reichstag voted absolute power to Hitler. The following day a German newspaper which had been the most powerful pro-Nazi propaganda organ was sold to a German. It had been owned by Kane Bendigo for two years. The conclusion is evident: With Hitler’s position secure, Bendigo no longer needed the newspaper...

On Oct. 14, 1933, Germany quit the League of Nations and withdrew from the Disarmament Conference. On Oct. 12, 13, and 14 of that year Bendigo was in Berlin, spending most of his time at the Chancellery. He flew back to his New York headquarters on the night of Oct. 14...

On Apr. 27, 1934, an anti-war pact — previously agreed on at the Pan-American Conference in Montevideo — was signed in Buenos Aires by the U.S. and certain Central and South American countries; Mexico and others had signed on Oct. 10, 1933. The record of Bendigo’s air trips at this time is illuminating; they tripled in number. The Bendigo munitions works now spread to South America and Europe, were working around the clock. The Bodigen Arms Company, then, in the midst of peace talks and pacts was playing the world short...

On June 15, 1934, the U.S. Senate ratified the Geneva Convention for the supervision of international trade in arms, ammunition, and implements of war. Bendigo was not in Washington, D.C. at any time during June 1934...

On Aug. 1, 1934, he flew back to Berlin. He remained there for nearly three weeks, until Aug. 20. During those three weeks President von Hindenburg died and the offices of President and Chancellor were consolidated in the single office of Leader-Chancellor. One of Der Fuehrer’s first acts in his new official capacity was to decorate Herr Kane Bendigo in a strictly private ceremony. The next day Bendigo left Berlin...

On Jan. 10, 1935, Italy resumed fighting in Ethiopia. Between 1934 and the middle of 1936 the Company made huge shipments to Italy...

On Mar. 16, 1935, Hitler broke the Versailles Treaty, ordered conscription in Germany, and began expansion of the German Army. Only one month before, the Company had acquired four more giant plants in widely scattered locations. In Mar. 1935 these were running at full capacity...

On June 5, 1936, Leon Blum, leader of the Socialist Party in France, formed the first Popular Front ministry. Within six weeks a far-reaching program of social reform was introduced, including (July 17) nationalization of the munitions industry. Bendigo was in and out of France frequently between the end of July 1936 and June 1937, when the Blum cabinet was forced to resign. Contiguity of additional Bendigo visits to France with significant dates — November, when the Cagoulards were frustrated in their revolutionary plot against the Republic; Mar. 1938, when the Chautemps government fell; Mar.-Apr. 1938, when Blum’s second ministry failed, to give way to the cabinet of Édouard Daladier — indicates that Bendigo from the very beginning worked to defeat the Popular Front and its social and nationalization program...

In 1937 the Japanese renewed fighting in China, Hitler repudiated German war guilt, Italy withdrew from the League, civil war raged even more violently in Spain. The Bodigen Arms Company in 1937 enjoyed its greatest year to that time...

On Mar. 11, 1938, Hitler’s troops crossed the Austrian frontier. Sept. 29–30, 1938 — Munich. Mr. Kane Bendigo, the ordinarily tireless, was “forced” to desert the arduous cares of business for a “rest”. He took a one-month vacation. The month: Sept. 1938. The place: A small hotel in Pfaffenhofen. Pfaffenhofen is some 50 kilometres from Munich...

In Mar. 1939 the Spanish war ended. In a private ceremony in Madrid, El Caudillo decorated Señor Kane Bendigo for unnamed reasons...

Czech Bohemia and Moravia... Memel... Lithuania... Albania...

Aug. 1939: Bendigo’s connexion with the events leading up to the diplomatic revolution which shook the world, the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, remains obscure. Certain entries in Bellodgia’s diaries are strongly suggestive. That it was to Bendigo’s advantage to see the Soviet power temporarily neutralized so that Hitler might feel free to invade Poland and risk British and French declarations of war is childishly evident. K.B. had several sessions with Hitler and von Ribbentrop in early August, and there is reason to believe that he had a meeting with, or was present at a conference which was attended by, Molotov...

Sept. 1, 1939: Poland. On Sept. 3 Prime Minister Chamberlain announced in Parliament that a state of war existed between Great Britain and Germany: “Hitler can be stopped only by force.”

King Bendigo could have told Mr. Chamberlain that some time before...

The picture is monotonous and unmistakable. It clearly shows this man riding the rollers of history. It must be emphasized again that Bendigo does not cause events; he insinuates himself into their midst and diverts them to his purposes.

It is of no interest to him whether a Hitler comes to power, or a Stalin; he has done business with both. His dealings with the Soviet have been far more obscure than those with the Nazis, but only because there is virtually no data on them available. That they have been considerable and far-reaching is not to be doubted.

Bendigo is completely above loyalties or duties, isms or ologies. Patriotism to him is a device, not an ideal. His politics are fluid; they flow in every direction at once...

A Few Further Excerpts from the Notes

In the bombing of Rennes in 1940, 4,500 persons were killed. Bancroft Wells, the philanthropist, heading a committee of distinguished people, formally asked Mr. Kane Bendigo to act as honorary chairman of an international committee dedicated to the future restoration of the historic cathedral. Mr. Kane Bendigo accepted with an indignant speech denouncing “the barbaric practices of the enemies of civilization...”

On May 10, 1941, London suffered its worst air-raid of the war — 1,436 lives lost. King Bendigo left London in his private plane on May 9. Inevitable speculation: Did he have advance information?...

Dec. 7, 1941: Capt. Bellodgia records a rare item. For the one and only time in his long association with King Bendigo, Bellodgia was privileged to see the great man howling drunk. “He kept beating his chest like Tarzan in the movies — it was positively embarrassing. Also kind of out of place, I thought, seeing that Pres. Roosevelt had only just announced the Jap attack on Pearl Harbor...”

I was curious to see — purely as a point of character — exactly when and under what circumstances he met, wooed, and married Karla. The four-day period of their courtship in Paris provided the clue, and Karla had intimated that it was just after the war... I worked it out. They met in Paris on July 25, 1946, and they were married on July 29. On July 29, 1946, the first peace conference of World War II began — in Paris.

Between busy seasons, as it were.