The Magic Talisman

by John Blaine

  THE MAGIC TALISMAN

  A RICK BRANT SCIENCE

  ADVENTURE, No. 24,

  The final book in the series

  By JOHN BLAINE

  Rick and his pal Scotty discover that there is more to life than just adventure, as they team up with Barby and Jan to solve the most remarkable mystery they have ever encountered, the mystery of The Magic Talisman.

  This book is a slightly odd wrap-up to the series, published twenty years after the penultimate book, featuring a fantasy tone unlike the earlier “science adventures” and containing a more emotional conclusion to the series.

  CHAPTER I

  A Corpse in Velvet?

  Under a gray windblown sky the early November surf beat with white-tipped hammer blows against the Page 1

  sea wall ofSpindriftIsland . Driven by winds from a storm far at sea, spray rocketed into the air like molten buckshot. Rick Brant looked up from the workbench in his second floor bedroom and watched the spray shoot high, to be caught by the wind and carried almost to his window.

  After a moment’s hesitation he unplugged the soldering iron with which he had been attaching a maze of hair-like wires to tiny terminals inside a rectangular aluminum tin. No use continuing, he decided, he’d only end up making a mistake. He pushed back his chair and bent to pet Dismal, the little curly-haired dog who napped under the bench. Diz thumped his tail on the rug and yawned.

  Rick didn’t know what had broken his concentration and made him feel uneasy. He felt tense, as though waiting for something to happen. For a minute or two the tall, athletic, brown-haired boy watched the surf from his window on the northeast corner of the island and tried to sort out his thoughts.

  It should have been a perfect day for working on his new gadget. His home island off theNew JerseyCoast was as quiet as it ever could be, because, of the eight scientists who made up the Spindrift Scientific Foundation, five were gone for several weeks. The other three, including Hartson Brant, Foundation president and Rick’s dad, were in the long, gray laboratory building on the island’s southeast corner, working long hours on a difficult problem for the U.S. Navy.

  Each of the Spindrift scientists had his own interests and activities, but when a project arose which required the special abilities of others in the group, it was given priority. This problem, an urgent matter of anti-submarine warfare, had taken big Hobart Zircon and little Julius Weiss, both of whom had rooms on the third floor of the big Brant house, to sea for many weeks with a Navy task force. John Gordon, a reserve Navy captain, was on submarine duty working on the same problem. The three were in daily communication with the island by secure scrambled radiotelephone. The other two scientists, Briotti and Shannon, were on field expeditions not connected with the Navy project.

  Usually Rick and Scotty were involved in Spindrift projects, but during the school year, each had more than enough of his own work to do.

  The momentary quiet, during which Rick had hoped to work, was due also to the absence of the three others who made up what friends called “the Spindrift four.” Donald Scott, whose room was next to Rick’s on the other side of a connecting bath, had gone to the mainland early. Rick’s sister, Barbara Brant, with Jan Miller, had borrowed the car he and Scotty owned jointly and they were visiting friends in Whiteside, a usual Saturday activity when nothing exciting was happening on the island.

  Rick tried to let his mind go blank, to see what might surface and give him a clue to his uneasiness, but he kept thinking about the girls. Could they have been involved in an accident?Possible, but not very likely. He and Scotty had taught them defensive driving, and both were excellent drivers with fast reflexes. There were few kinds of trouble they could get into in peaceful Whiteside. He couldn’t think of any that seemed at all probable, but the thought persisted that the girls were the source of the sudden tension.

  Being over-imaginative had its penalties, and Rick grinned at his own musings. These feelings of pending doomcame now and then and usually meant nothing. But even as he laughed at himself, the phone rang and he ran to answer it. By the time he reached the upstairs landing and the phone, his mother was calling from downstairs.

  “It’s Barby, Rick. She sounds pretty excited.”

  “Barby?” A torrent of words poured forth the moment Rick spoke her name. She was not only excited, Page 2

  but upset. “Slow down,” he pleaded. “I’m not getting it.”

  “Oh, Rick, it’s Scotty!”

  “What about him?” Rick held his breath.

  “You know the old Mirella estate north of Whiteside on the shore road?”

  “Yes. What about Scotty?”

  “We turned in there, Jan and I, and we got to the front door and...oh, Rick! What will we do?”

  “Easy, Barb. What happened?”

  “Scotty was there with another man, and Rick-they were carrying a dead body into the house!”

  “A what?”

  “A body!I know it’s unbelievable, but it was, it was! It was a corpse. And Scotty saw us. He put a finger to his lips, then waved us off. You know...a real beat-it-quick kind of wave. So we stepped on it-I was driving and went right around the driveway circle and out again, and we hurried here to the landing to call you, and Rick you’d better come quick because I don’t know what Scotty’s into, but it’s awful!”

  “Be right there. Sit tight.” Rick hurried downstairs to his mother. Dismal bounced after him to keep from being left behind just in case a snack was in the offing. “I don’t know what it’s all about, but Barby’s upset about Scotty carrying a body into the old Mirella estate. I’ll go and see what’s up.”

  Mrs. Brant shook her head. “I’m sure Barby misunderstood what she saw. I can’t imagine it’s really serious or Scotty would have found a way to phone us.”

  Rick grabbed a jacket and gloves, then ran for the boat landing. As he rounded the comer of the house, he caught a quick glimpse of his plane, the Sky Wagon, staked down at the runway’s end near the lab.

  “I’m a dope!” he exclaimed. If only he’d put his brains in gear instead of just reacting, he could have told Barby to meet him at Whiteside airport, only a few hundred yards off the highway they would take to the Mirella estate. It would have saved a lot of time.

  The Spindrift fleet had grown to several boats of assorted sizes, and Rick saw that the fastest one, used mostly for water skiing and joy riding in calm weather, was still at the dock. He cast off all but a bow line, unsnapped enough of the cover to let him into the cockpit, turned the key and started the engine. Pulling forward by hand, he reached the remaining bit to which he was tied, cast off, shifted into forward and fed gas. Although the ocean outside was rough, the trip to Whiteside Landing was in the lee of Spindrift, and Rick kept the boat at top speed, ignoring the bounces and the spray.

  Scotty’s trip to the mainland had been to give their good friend Jerry Webster a hand fixing up a second-hand motorcycle the Morning Record reporter bought through a want ad in his own paper. Rick couldn’t imagine how that could have led to Scotty lugging a corpse into the Mirella estate. The only thing about which he was certain was that Scotty had a sound and sensible reason for doing whatever the girls had seen him doing. The big ex-Marine was rock solid, not the least bit given to wild or erratic actions.

  Originally, Scotty had rescued Rick from what might have been a bad beating, and was hired by Hartson Brant as a guard. He had just left the Marine Corps, and was still in uniform. As time passed, Scotty Page 3

  grew naturally into a member of the family. He was one of the most helpful and considerate people Rick had ever met, and one of the most mechanically skilled. The Spindrift folks had come to depend on him to keep the island’s machin
ery running. He and Rick had become closer than brothers, sharing fun and adventure, and the Brants treated him exactly as they treated Rick and Barby. It was adoption without the formality of court action.

  Dr. Brant pointed out once to Rick and Barby that the most positive evidence of Scotty’s stability and depth of character was that he had developed into the person they all cared for so deeply after the kind of childhood that too often produced addicts, drop-outs and criminals. Scotty didn’t know who his parents were because he recalled only a succession of the kind of foster homes where kids are taken in solely for the money it brings.

  Lack of parental care and neglect had in one important way, been an opportunity, not an obstacle. He learned to read early, loved books, and lost himself in written worlds. Even more, he loved to work with his hands, and he had acquired skill after skill, through observation, reading, and sometimes helping workmen for a few kind words, a bit of teaching, or a small payment. By the age of fourteen he was very big for his age, well-muscled from working for fun or money, and street-wise. He was placed by social welfare with a carpenter’s family to learn a trade, but the man turned out to be a drunken bully, and Scotty, as he once told Rick, had the choice of leaving or hurting him badly. So, a few days short of his fifteenth birthday, he decided to join the Marines, even though he was two full years short of enlistment age.

  Scotty’s research was done atBeaufort,South Carolina , and nearby towns where recruits arrived by train and bus to be taken to the famousParris Island base where raw civilians were turned into Marines.

  Listening to Marines who had completed training and were waiting for transportation home on leave, occasionally buying one a cup of coffee and asking questions, he found out how the system worked.

  More important, he found out how it didn’t work. It was not unusual for a recruit to arrive ahead of his enlistment papers, and now and then the papers never did show up, to the enraged and colorful comments of the first sergeants and the base sergeant major.

  The boy waited patiently until a night train brought a large contingent of recruits from northern cities, and when they were loaded on buses for Parris Island, Scotty, small canvas bag in hand like the others, joined them. When his name wasn’t read at roll call, he stepped forward and announced his presence.

  No, he didn’t know where his papers were. He had just been told to get on the train, nothing about papers.

  Pending correction of the bureaucratic foul up, he was processed with the rest, handed clothes and gear, and placed with a recruit platoon. He completed the grueling training as one of the top three in his platoon, and the base sergeant major, uttering vast and picturesque descriptions of the recruiting service bureaucrats, made out a service record for Private Donald Scott, USMC, giving his age as seventeen, and noting in his report to Headquarters, Washington, that he had fired “Expert” with both rifle and pistol, and had earned favorable notice from his drill instructor, a tough veteran not noted for kindly comment.

  When Scotty was discharged after a three year hitch, he was a sergeant who had been urged to reenlist, and had he not fallen in with Rick and found a warm and loving home at Spindrift, he would certainly have done so.

  After a time at Spindrift, with the Brants’ enthusiastic support, Scotty began to fill the gaps in his education. By hard work, sometimes carrying a double load, he caught up and would graduate with Rick fromWhitesideHigh School , holding a proud 3.9 average. In theFall , he planned to go for a university degree in mechanical engineering.

  Page 4

  Rick was anxious to get to the Mirella estate and find out what his pal had gotten into, and he kept the boat at top speed. As soon as he rounded Spindrift and started across North Cove, he saw the slender figures of the girls. They ran down the pier to meet him, and Jan Miller, a lovely brunette, caught the line he tossed and made fast. Like his sister, Jan was about a year his junior. Barbara Brant, an equally attractive blonde, began talking the moment he stepped to the pier.

  “Hold it.” Rick held up his hand. “We’ll talk in the car. I’ll drive.”

  Barby handed him the keys and he slid into the driver’s seat, adjusted the seat and mirror, and started the car. Jan got in next to him with Barby on the window side. As Rick put the car in gear and moved out of the parking slot, he turned briefly to the girl at his side.

  “How about it, Jan?”

  “It’s as Barby told you on the phone. We pulled into the estate just in time to see Scotty helping to carry a body from a panel truck.”

  “Start at the beginning,” Rick urged.

  “You tell, Barb,” Jan requested.

  “All right.Well, we went to Helen’s, only we took the long way because Grace asked us to drop her off, so we didn’t go by the Mirella estate.”

  “Why is that important?

  “Because maybe Jan would have wanted to turn in there on the way up instead of on the way home.”

  Rick glanced at Jan but didn’t interrupt.

  “We started home early because Jan and I have decorations to make for Thanksgiving. So we had plenty of time when we got to the Mirella place and Jan said we should turn in. I was driving, so I did.”

  Rick looked at Jan again. She obviously was not listening, her eyes straight ahead. Clearly, something was bothering her, something other than seeing Scotty with a body.

  “We couldn’t see anything from the road,” Barby went on, “and when we turned into the driveway the trees kept us from seeing anything until we got near the house. Then we saw a panel truck and a motorcycle that must have been Jerry’s. Scotty and a man were carrying something from the truck.”

  Barby shuddered. “We weren’t sure it was Scotty until we got close because he was partially shielded by the truck, but by the time we pulled up he and the man had carried the...the thing clear and we could see that it was a body. We...well, I’m not sure what Jan thought, but at first I wondered if it was a store window mannequin or something like that.”

  Rick asked, “What did you think about the body, Jan?”

  “ What..oh, the body? I didn’t think anything, Rick. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Not thinking? Rick’s feeling of something very wrong deepened. Jan had a quick intelligence and curiosity. He couldn’t imagine her going blank in any situation, much less one like that.

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  “Well, I changed my mind in a hurry,” Barby continued. “It was a body, all right. Its eyes were open and it was limp.”

  “Clothing?

  “It was dressed kind of funny, all in black. It looked like velvet.”

  Rick shook his head. A corpse in velvet! What had Scotty gotten into?

  “Well, the man with Scotty saw us, and his eyebrows sort of went up, but he didn’t say anything. He was young, maybe in his twenties, with dark hair that was kind of long, and he was rather nice looking.”

  Rick smiled. Corpse or no, Barby’s powers of observation hadn’t been impaired by shock.

  “He didn’t look like the type to be hauling dead men around. Anyway, Scotty had the thing by the legs, and when he saw us he let go of one leg and it sort of thunked down, very limp. The other man had the body by the armpits, and it was bent almost double. The head was lolling back and we could see its eyes. It stared right at me. Honest, I felt kind of sick.”

  “How did Scotty look?”

  “Surprised, at first, then he frowned, and when he let the leg drop he put a finger to his lips, then waved hard. You know, motioning for us to beat it, quick. So we did. That’s all, Rick. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” What was Scotty doing at the Mirella estate anyway? Who was he helping? Barby’s recital hadn’t contained enough information for a guess.

  The shore road was narrow, and Rick trailed a truck until it was safe to pass, then turned to Jan. “Why did you want to go into the estate?

  The girl shook her head. “I don’t know. Suddenly I just felt as though I should go there. I can’t tell you why. It was an
urgent feeling that hit me all of a sudden, as though someone were calling me.”

  “How did you feel when you got near the house?

  “Sort of breathless.It was like waiting to get some kind of message.”

  “Did you get a message?”

  “N...no, not exactly.But for a moment before we took off, I had the warmest feeling, as though someone was glad I had come.”

  “How do you feel about going back?”

  For the first time, Jan smiled. “Good. I’m glad we’re going back.”

  “In spite of Scotty lugging a dead man around?”

  Jan sat up straighter. “Do you know, I haven’t been taking that very seriously? I’ve been so...well, preoccupied with the strange feeling that I didn’t get half as excited as Barby did.Maybe not as excited Page 6

  as I ought to be. Anyway,” she finished calmly, “if Scotty’s in trouble you’ll get him out of it.”

  “Of course he will,” Barby said emphatically.

  Rick wished he shared their faith. Because he had been pretty lucky a few times, the girls had developed the flattering but inaccurate view that he and Scotty could accomplish just about anything.

  It wasn’t long before the early winter darkness closed in and he didn’t want to have to hunt for Scotty and a limp corpse in a dark house. He speeded up. So far as he knew, the Mirella estate hadn’t been occupied in years. Suddenly it occurred to him that a limp corpse must be a fresh one. Didn’t rigor mortis set in a short time after death? He hadn’t had much experience with newly deceased victims, but he had read his share of detective mysteries.

  The estate was on the shore side going north. He turned into the driveway, passing through iron gates that usually were closed. Rick had flown over the estate many times, but he had never been into the place at ground level. He looked around with interest. Just inside the gate was a large gatehouse. The driveway was black-topped, wide enough for two cars. So far as he could see, the estate was ringed by a six-foot chain link fence topped with barbed wire and overgrown with vines. An extensive planting of arbor vitae along the driveway effectively concealed the mansion. The car emerged from the wooded area to a vast expanse of still green, neatly trimmed lawn. Obviously, someone had been taking care of the place.