The Master Key

EPILOGUE

In a pleasant suburb of Los Angeles, Major D. Kraft (US Army, Retired) lay back in a deckchair on the lawn of his garden. He puffed at a pipe as he scanned the newspaper, and then he saw, tucked away in the corner of an obscure page of foreign news, a small item concerning Japan.

He looked up at the sky, and fixed his attention on a small cloud. He was remembering a certain Japanese girl. Whenever he thought of her, his conscience was disturbed.

‘Well, I suppose worse things went on during the Occupation,’ he mused. ‘What the hell else could I do? I mean, my wife and I had lived apart so long… and then she suddenly arrives in Japan, and we start up all over. Besides, she was rich, and I had to think about my retirement. A major doesn’t get much of a pension, and anyway I didn’t want to stay in the army for ever. I needed a bit of security for a change.

‘In return, my wife just wanted me to get rid of my Japanese girl, but to bring the child I had had by her over here so we could bring him up as our own. Well, in fact I’d gone through a proper marriage with the Japanese girl, and I didn’t want to be up for bigamy, so it was pretty scary.

‘After I had collected George from the car, I took him straight to the airport and put him on the next plane Stateside. My wife had quite a job calming him down, but that was her problem.

‘Well, I went back to my Japanese home, and I guess I really meant to tell my Japanese wife the truth. But, hell, when I saw her face, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I just said, “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll call the police,” and I was just leaving when the phone rang.

‘Well, I answered it, and it was just one of my buddies inviting me round for a game of poker. My Japanese dame was looking at me, kind of worried-like, and that gave me the idea of the kidnap story. So I just said “OK” and put the phone down and told her that it was the kidnappers, and that if we called the police there was no way we’d get to see George again.

‘Well, then I nearly blew it. I mean, that kid trusted me so much, I got over-confident and ran those ads in the Japanese press, and then some pressman got hold of them and the shit hit the fan. So I had to keep up the story about how if I talked to the police or the press, the kidnappers said I’d never see George again.

‘I then just waited for time to pass, and when things quietened down, I divorced that Japanese wife and went back to the American one.’

He puffed at his pipe.

Just then a little girl ran along the pavement across the road. She was in tears.

‘George is teasing me again!’

Major Kraft looked up, and saw George’s school teacher leading his son towards him by the scruff of his neck.