Nothing would suit but I had to see SAC, too. She fixed it with General Thomas Power, the commander in chief. The Air Force flew me out from Los Angeles. Joan, who’d meantime returned to New York, came on from there on a commercial flight that got in an hour ahead of me. I found her waiting at the airport, with the mayor of the city in tow. She hadn’t yet checked into the hotel suite we were sharing, so we went straight to SAC, where General Power took us through the most amazing setup you could dream of. Joan and I rode to town together in the chauffeured limousine Mr. Mayor had put at her disposal.
She had enough luggage and hatboxes with her to fill a department store. She carried a jewel case two feet long. “I always travel with it,” she told us. “By the way [this to the mayor] would you be kind enough to provide someone to guard my jewels? I’ll need two men—one for day and one for night.”
“Certainly, Miss Crawford,” he said, hypnotized. “Whatever you need, just ask for it.”
Our suite consisted of a living room and two separate bedrooms, one for Joan, and one for me. As soon as we’d checked in, she unpacked. For our two-day visit she brought twenty-two dresses, which she spread out all over her room, and fourteen hats. “I don’t know what I’ll want to wear,” she explained seriously when my eyebrows hit my hairline, “so I brought them along in case.”
We were no sooner unpacked than she rang for an iron and ironing board. The iron the bellboy brought wasn’t the kind she liked, so she sent him out to buy a new one. With it, she proceeded to press every one of the dresses and hang each in its cellophane wrapper in her closet.
“Would you like to see my jewels?” she asked. I nodded, speechless. She unlocked the case and—abracadabra!—it was like peering at Aladdin’s treasure, half a million dollars’ worth; trays and trays loaded with diamonds and emeralds and pearls, bracelets and necklaces and earrings.
“This is the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done,” I said. “Someday you’ll wake up with your throat cut.”
“But I always have it guarded,” she said, “and I keep it beside me on the plane.”
“Why isn’t it in a safety-deposit box?”
“I like to look at them,” she said, as though she were talking to an idiot.