Cherry Ames Boxed Set 17-20

by Helen Wells

  Cherry felt her heart pounding.

  “What’s all the mystery, Cherry?” Jeff persisted. “Where did you find this rock?”

  “I’ll tell you later, Jeff,” she promised. “But just for now, don’t mention this to anyone for a while, as a favor to me. Will you? I have to do a little thinking.”

  She left Jeff shaking his head in puzzlement at the strange ways of women.

  For the rest of the day Cherry debated whether she ought to talk this crazy business over with Bob. Then she remembered their ride out from Nairobi on the first day they came to Ngogo. She had told Bob then of the suspicions that were plaguing her, and he had pooh-poohed them. Of course, now she had what appeared to be a real diamond to add to the bits and pieces of the puzzle that lay in the back of her mind waiting to be put together. But maybe she’d better wait a little longer, she decided, to see what might happen next.

  Cherry didn’t have long to wait.

  As she, Bob, and Jeff listened to the safari news that evening, she sat bolt upright when the announcer said:

  “Message for Dr. Robert Barton at Ngogo from the Abercrombie Foundation Laboratory in Washington, D. C. Query. What happened to the shipment of blood samples that you were supposed to have sent us by special MATS handling on the fifth? They have not arrived. Please advise.”

  “Now how about that?” Bob said, very much disturbed. He grew angry. “What happened? What went wrong?”

  Jeff tried to soothe him. “Look, when you have an air transport service that goes all around the world you’re bound to run into a few foul-ups.”

  “But blood samples, of all vital things! People are sick here!” Bob looked miserably at Cherry. “Whatever happened with that blood, it’s bound to hold up the analysis a few days.”

  Bob flipped the radio switch to “send.”

  “Please get this message off to the Abercrombie Foundation, in Washington, D. C., from Dr. Robert Barton in Ngogo. Will investigate error in shipment at once. Please check at your end. Thanks, Operator.”

  Cherry tossed and turned in her cot that night, trying to form a clear picture from the formless thoughts running through her mind. But nothing came—no picture developed. Finally, exhausted, she fell asleep just as dawn was breaking.

  “You look sleepy,” Bob Barton said as they all sat down to breakfast. “And I was going to ask you to drive into Nairobi. Will your nursing schedule today permit it?”

  “I’d rather not take time off,” Cherry said. “The ward patients! Kandi’s grandfather still has sweats and a high fever. You said yourself, Bob, that the teacher’s child may need emergency surgery. How necessary is it for me to go to Nairobi?”

  “It’s urgent,” Bob said. Cherry knew the doctor could not go today. “I want you to check with Major Welsh at MATS and see what he knows about our missing package of blood samples. I’ll lend you my Land Rover. You want Jeff to chauffeur you?”

  “He needn’t bother,” Cherry answered. In a way she was glad of an unexpected day off. “It might be fun if I just drove in by myself. Don’t worry. I know how to shift gears on a Land Rover.”

  “Yes, but watch out for the lions and rhinos,” Jeff teased. “What would you do if one charged you?”

  “I’d probably be just as scared as Long Jack Robertson said he was. But I don’t think that’s likely.”

  Driving into Nairobi all by herself was exciting. Cherry saw herds of zebras and giraffes cavorting across the broad plains. Once she passed a pride of lions, sunning themselves like a group of pussycats. Every now and then she fingered the yellow stone in the pocket of her jacket.

  Once in town, Cherry drove directly to Eastleigh Field. She found Major Welsh at the MATS office. He was a freckled, very young man—almost too young to be a major, Cherry thought, except that the entire United States Air Force was young.

  “Why, sure,” the major said when she had explained her mission. “I remember that shipment. It came in here on the morning of—let’s see…” He quickly leafed through a few papers attached to a clipboard “…on the morning of Tuesday the fifth. It was turned over to Captain Hagan, skipper of MATS 109, and he…”

  The major looked up from the clipboard. “Say, here’s a break. Hagan is here at the field right now in the 109, getting set for a takeoff to the States in the morning. Let’s take a run down to the flight line in my jeep, and we’ll get the details from him.”

  Minutes later, the major’s jeep, with Cherry sitting in the seat beside him, pulled up alongside a big jet cargo plane that was loading at one of the hangars.

  “Will you please ask Captain Hagan to step out here,” Major Welsh said to one of the airmen.

  “Yes, sir!” The airman saluted briskly. A young redhead came out to the jeep.

  “Howdy, Major,” Captain Hagan said. “What’s the word?” Then he saw Cherry. “Well now!” He took off his cap. “Nairobi is improving all the time.”

  “At ease,” the major said, smiling. “This is Nurse Ames, from the Abercrombie medical project in Ngogo.” The redheaded captain nodded and grew serious. “Look, Bill, we’ve got a problem. On last Tuesday you took a small package from the Abercrombie mission in Ngogo to be sent directly to the Abercrombie Foundation in Washington. Is that correct?”

  “Right,” Captain Hagan said. “I turned it over to Sergeant Morrison—he’s our top crewman in charge of cargo—and he delivered it to its destination in Washington, D. C.”

  “Who gave it to you?” Cherry asked.

  “Well,” Bill Hagan said, “as I remember, he was a smallish type man with two cameras hung around his neck.”

  “That would be Ed Smith,” Cherry said. “Dr. Barton entrusted the package to him.”

  “Well, he gave it to us all right,” the MATS pilot said. “What is the problem?”

  “The problem is,” said Major Welsh, “that it didn’t get to Washington.”

  “That’s crazy,” Captain Hagan protested. “We flew it nonstop from here to Dulles Airport in Washington. But let’s see.” He stopped a passing airman. “Ask Sergeant Morrison to come here.”

  Sergeant Morrison arrived on the double and the captain outlined the situation.

  “Yes, sir,” Morrison said. “The package was a small box, wrapped in brown paper, tied with a string, and addressed to the Abercrombie Foundation. I remember it perfectly.”

  “And you delivered it?” the major asked.

  “Yes, sir. Just after we landed, a man came to the plane and identified himself as Abercrombie personnel. He said he had come to take the package at once—instead of having it go by messenger—and so I turned it over to him.”

  “You see, Miss Ames,” Major Welsh explained, “under normal circumstances, a package like that—which isn’t military equipment, and which isn’t classified as top secret—would be delivered to its destination by our MATS messenger service. Since our planes don’t operate on a tight hour-to-hour schedule as commercial airlines do, there would be no reason why the Abercrombie people would send a man out to get it. They would expect it on a certain day, but not at a specific hour.”

  “Excuse me, Major, Captain, but how did he identify himself?” Cherry asked the sergeant. “Did he show any credentials from the Abercrombie Foundation?”

  “Well now, ma’am…. No, I don’t reckon he did,” the sergeant said. “He just said Abercrombie, and that he was expecting the package—that seemed like enough identification to me. He signed for it, and I turned it over to him.”

  “What was his name?” Major Welsh asked. “You said he signed for it.”

  “I don’t remember right now, sir,” the sergeant said, trying to think. “You see, we were unloading a whole cargo. And that one little package—well, I could get the man’s name by going over the manifest for that day.” The captain said he had better do that at once.

  “Does the name really matter, Major?” Cherry said. “The right person didn’t get the package. That’s the important thing.”

  “You think some
impostor did?”

  Cherry murmured it was possible.

  “But what would he want with a package of blood samples from your medical unit?” Major Welsh asked.

  “That’s what we’ve got to find out.”

  Captain Hagan asked the sergeant whether any other person claiming to be from the Abercrombie Foundation had come for the package. The sergeant said No.

  The captain defended him—this was no error, but a clever trap. “I’m very sorry, but the sergeant and all of us did do our jobs,” Captain Hagan said. “We’ll trace the signature, and do anything we can to help. I hope that whatever has gone wrong will straighten itself out.”

  He saluted Major Welsh and went back to his job of supervising the loading of the 109.

  “Now what?” Major Welsh asked.

  “If you’ll just take me back to my jeep,” Cherry told him, “I’ll go on into town.” She felt very much disturbed.

  “Any time we can be of help to you, Miss Ames, just let us know,” the major said as he pulled up in front of the MATS building and handed her out of the car.

  Back on the main street of Nairobi again, she drove to the headquarters of the Abercrombie Foundation. There she asked for Tom Gikingu. She was ushered into his office at once. As Bob had told her, Gikingu was a charming man, tall and lanky, immaculately dressed, with a humorous face and a clipped Oxford accent. He was, Cherry thought, the personification of the new sort of bright, youthful officials who had taken over the administration of most of the emerging African Governments.

  “Miss Ames!” he said, welcoming her with a smile. “How pleasant to meet you at last! Dr. Barton has told me all about the wonderful work you have been doing among my people. I have been planning to come down to see your hospital, and indeed had meant to do so this week. Please take a chair.” He adjusted his heavy horn-rimmed glasses. “Now what can I do for you?”

  Cherry decided that she had better not go into all the dark suspicions that were crowding her mind.

  “Just two small things, Mr. Gikingu, if it won’t inconvenience you too much.” She took the yellow stone from the pocket of her jacket. “This stone was found yesterday by one of the children in our village. Our engineer says that it might—well, that it just could be a rough diamond.” She handed it to him.

  Tom Gikingu examined the stone as carefully as Jeff had done the day before, turning it over and over, allowing it to catch the light that poured in through the Venetian blinds of the windows.

  “Well—well—well—” he said slowly. “You say this was found in Ngogo?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have never heard of any diamonds being found in that vicinity. Where was it discovered?”

  Cherry determined to tell the truth—but not the whole truth—at least not right now.

  “A small boy brought it to me. And since I was driving in to Nairobi this morning, I thought I had better turn it over to you so that you could have an expert examine it.”

  “Very interesting!” Tom Gikingu said. “I will have it appraised this afternoon. But you understand, Miss Ames, that if it is a genuine diamond, the State will have to impound it until a decision is made as to its disposition. I will be obliged to turn it over to the authorities.”

  “Certainly,” Cherry agreed. “That is why I brought it to you. And when your expert has seen it, can you send me a message by radio?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Gikingu said.

  “Oh,” Cherry said, as though she had just thought of something, “there’s one other thing. Are you familiar with Click magazine? It’s published in New York.”

  “I read it every week.”

  “Then I wonder if you would do me a favor.”

  The African made a slight bow with his head. “I am at your service, Miss Ames.”

  Cherry was impressed, and flattered, by the man’s courtly manner. “If it wouldn’t be asking too much,” she said, “could you cable the editor and inquire how long a photographer named Ed Smith has been connected with the magazine?”

  Gikingu made a note on a memo pad.

  “I will get the cable off right away. You will have your answers as soon as I can get them.”

  “I don’t imagine that it would be a good idea to send those messages to us over the regular safari radio newscast,” Cherry suggested. “At that hour, every safari party in Kenya and Tanganyika will be listening in.”

  Gikingu nodded. “You are perfectly right. It would never do to make any public statement about a possible diamond find—at least not until Government House has had an opportunity to make a thorough investigation.” He thought a moment. “I shall certainly have answers to both your questions by tomorrow morning. Suppose we say that I will radio you direct at exactly twelve noon.”

  Cherry got up from her chair. “Thank you very much for your courtesy, Mr. Gikingu.”

  “Not at all. I am always at your service,” Tom Gikingu said, bowing her out of the office.

  On the drive back to Ngogo, a dozen weird notions raced through Cherry’s mind. And slowly the pieces of the baffling puzzle began to put themselves together. But it was such a ridiculous solution that she couldn’t believe it. She would wait until she heard from Tom Gikingu tomorrow, she decided, before mentioning her theory to Bob. She needed more positive clues.

  She made herself stop thinking about the puzzle, and concentrated on the changing colors of the landscape as the red African sun descended across the westerly sky.

  Darkness was falling as she pulled the Land Rover up in front of the clinic. At the sound of the motor, Bob came out the door and down the steps.

  “Well,” he asked, “did the MATS people know anything about the missing shipment to Washington?”

  “They’re working on it,” she replied. She reported the conversation to him. Tomorrow would be time enough to tell Bob her crazy theory.

  The next day, a few minutes before noon, Cherry turned on the radio. Bob was busy in his lab and Jeff was nowhere in sight. At precisely twelve o’clock the speaker began to buzz and a voice said:

  “KBC calling Nurse Ames at Ngogo. KBC calling Nurse Ames at Ngogo. Come in, please.”

  Cherry flipped the switch to “send.”

  “This is Nurse Ames at Ngogo. Go ahead please.”

  “Just a moment, Miss Ames, while I connect you with the Nairobi telephone.”

  Then an Oxford-accented voice came on. “Miss Ames, this is Mr. Gikingu speaking. I am replying to your questions of yesterday. One: The stone you brought me was genuine. The government mineralogists say it is a very valuable specimen. I have turned it over to them awaiting further information from you. Two: The following cable arrived this morning from the editors of Click magazine in New York. Quote: The photographer, Ed Smith, is unknown in this office. He is not now and never has been associated in any way with Click. Unquote.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Gikingu,” Cherry said.

  She put the microphone back on its cradle and turned off the set. Then, as an afterthought, she picked the mike up again and called KBC.

  “Can you please put me on the telephone to Keeler’s Camera Store? I’d like to speak to someone in the developing lab.”

  In a moment a man’s voice answered.

  “I am calling about some film that Mr. Ed Smith left with you,” Cherry said. “He’s a photographer with Click magazine in New York. When will it be ready for him to pick up?”

  “One moment,” the voice said. “Please hold the wire.” In a minute or two the voice was back. “Did you say Mr. Ed Smith?” it asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Sorry, miss,” the voice said. “There must be some mistake. We haven’t been doing any developing work for anyone of that name.”

  “Thank you,” Cherry said, and cut the connection.

  Outlandish as it seemed, it appeared that at last she had the answer to all the topsy-turvy events that had been going on ever since she and Bob had first arrived in Africa.

  CHAPTER XI

>   The Test Tubes

  ONLY MINUTES AFTER HER RADIO CONVERSATION WITH Nairobi, Cherry stepped into Bob’s laboratory and closed the door behind her. He was alone, busily at work with a rack of test tubes that contained blood samples.

  “Bob, I need to talk to you,” she said. “Will you sit down for a minute?”

  The young doctor frowned and cocked his head to one side, but he took a seat on the bench beside her. “Now what’s all this about?”

  “You’ve never thought that I was crazy, have you? Out of my head, or anything like that?”

  Bob laughed. “Well, no, I hadn’t. Maybe not until just now, anyway.”

  Cherry took a deep breath. Then she plunged in. “I think I know what happened to the missing blood samples that you sent to Washington.”

  Bob sat bolt upright. “What?”

  “And I know that Ed Smith doesn’t have anything to do with Click Magazine—and that he probably isn’t even a photographer at all.”

  Bob was too flabbergasted to speak.

  Then Cherry told him about her interview with Major Welsh and Captain Hagan at Eastleigh Field; about the diamond that Kandi had found in Smith’s tent; about the message from Tom Gikingu on the radio; and about her radio conversation with the clerk at Keeler’s.

  “It all sounds too outrageous to make any sense,” she hurried on. “But do you remember your friend Long Jack Robertson telling us that story about smuggling diamonds in the antelope head, the first day we met him in Nairobi? I think Ed Smith, and that funny little man, Krynos, and the pilot of the orange-colored airplane that sprayed the bush for us are all mixed up in some kind of diamond racket. The trouble was that I couldn’t figure out how we came into it, but now I think I know about that too.”

  Bob sat listening incredulously, his mouth hanging slightly open.

  “When you went to town to see Mr. Giginku and stayed overnight,” Cherry continued, “the safari news had a story about an illegal diamond mining operation down across the border in Tanganyika. Then, about a week later, Jeff and I saw Mr. Krynos at the airport talking to the pilot, and we saw him take what looked like a briefcase from the plane. The next day Mr. Krynos showed up here, and shared the same tent with Ed Smith. And then, to top it all off, the package of blood samples that Smith took to the airfield was picked up in Washington by a man who said he was from the Foundation but obviously wasn’t.”