Suddenly her fingers stopped and she turned toward him. “Morning! You—you know what I was playing?”
He nodded. “La Golondrina.” Lightly he sang a few measures:
Sale en abril de la costa africana
La golondrina que de aqui se va …
Her mouth came open, and for a moment she seemed to be studying him curiously behind her dark glasses. Almost in a whisper she asked, “Jan, who taught you that?”
“My mother.”
“What was she like?”
“She—she—” He closed his eyes and clenched his fists in the effort to recall the vague and momentary vision that had come to him, but it was gone. Helplessly he shook his head.
“I just love the music; but—but what’s golondrina mean?”
“Swallow. The song tells how in April—”
“Jan! Don’t you realize your mother must have been Spanish?”
“Maybe so.” He shrugged. “What of it?”
“What of it?” she exclaimed. “My goodness, it’s a clue! You’re beginning to remember! If you can just—” She stopped abruptly as if listening, and her mouth worked soundlessly.
“W—what’s the matter?” he asked.
“I was just talking to Otis. He says the coast is clear and you can come and have breakfast with us.”
“You—you were talking to Otis? But how?”
“Oh, just sort of mentally,” she said lightly. “We’ve always been able to do it.”
“But great Jupiter, that—that’s amazing!”
She giggled. “Not a tenth as amazing as being able to teleport. Oh—Otis says Bill and Mr. Jackson Lane are here.” She hurried and opened the front door just as the chimes rang, admitting a frowning lawyer and a very tired Bill Zorn.
Heron Rhodes met them and ushered them through the house to the big round table in the kitchen. “Bill just got in,” Jackson Lane rumbled. “He didn’t learn much. I’m afraid Saturday wasn’t the best day to go to Marysville.”
“No day is a good day to go there,” Heron Rhodes said grimly. “Hecuba and I have tried to bring reforms, but when you have to deal with some of these unhallowed politicians …” He shook his head and asked, “What did you pick up, Bill?”
“Nothing about Brice Riggs, sir. Not a thing—and I got my nose into every file there. You’d almost think Brice Riggs never existed.”
“He existed somewhere. Our job is to find out where. Go on, Bill.”
Bill Zorn rubbed his tired eyes, and drank some of the coffee Hecuba poured for him. “Well, I did learn that Marysville is a sort of clearinghouse for unusual cases. Unofficially, that is. I mean, they’re so crowded that they’re glad to let private institutions, qualified ones who are doing research, borrow patients to study.”
“I know that,” Heron Rhodes told him. “We’ve ‘borrowed’ an occasional patient from them ourselves, every one of which we’ve helped. Did you get a list of the other borrowers?”
“Sure did.” Bill Zorn produced a small notebook, opened it, and slid it across the table.
The doctor adjusted his glasses and scowled at it. “Hm. I know all these places, and most of the people that run them. The one place I had my doubts about, the Orchard Nursing Home, isn’t even on your list. But Pine Ridge Sanitarium is—and that’s the most exclusive and expensive private asylum in this part of the country. I can’t imagine any hanky-panky going on there. Are you sure there are no other doctors like myself—private doctors, I mean—who could be borrowing patients?”
“I thought of that,” Bill Zorn said, “and I’m having a friend of mine check into it. That’s Joe Hinkle, who used to be on my basketball team in high school. I didn’t know he was working at Marysville, but I found him over in the bookkeeping department. He’s okay. And I told him just enough to get him anxious to help. So if there’s anything to be found, Joe’ll dig it up.”
“Excuse me,” said Jan, breaking in. “But what about Big Doc and the center? Did—did you happen to—”
“Oh, I told Joe about that,” Bill Zorn replied. “The only Center he could think of is the Geriatric Center next to the Glendale Hospital. But that’s for the elderly, and anyway the van was heading away from Glendale when I followed it. As for Big Doc, he’s going to keep his ears open.”
Heron Rhodes gave a nod of approval. “Let us pray he hears something soon.” He glanced at the lawyer. “What about those guards, Jackson. Could you find any?”
“Heron, I could locate only two at the moment. They are retired policemen, and they promised to be here by six this evening. Guards—trustworthy ones—are hard to find right now, but I hope to have some more by Wednesday.”
“Oh, you’ve got to!” Hecuba urged. “I’ve the most awful feeling about what lies ahead.…”
“Stop worrying, my dear,” the lawyer rumbled. “We’ll get this cleared up soon. Yesterday, right after I left here, I went to see Roundtree—”
“That scuttling old turtle!” Heron growled. “Judas would have made a better judge.”
“Probably,” Jackson Lane agreed. “Anyway, I wanted to track down the authority that pressured him into issuing that court order for Jan. He swore it came direct from the superintendent’s office at Marysville. Maybe it did, but I told him we’d checked with Marysville, and no one knew anything about an escapee named Brice Riggs, and I further told him that this whole thing was beginning to look like a conspiracy, and that we might have to call in the FBI. That shook him up a bit. Then I went around to have a talk with that Sergeant Bricker.”
“Eh?” Heron Rhodes stared at him. “What in the dingalated tarnation did you go and see him about?”
“Sort of thought we could get his help.”
“His help! Why, that self-righteous rascal—”
“Easy, Heron.” The lawyer gave a deep chuckle. “We need his help, and I figured he’d be only too glad to give it when I told him a few facts. I soon had him crawling when I pointed out that Marysville knew nothing about Brice Riggs, and that he’d made an illegal entry here yesterday and had aided and abetted a very serious crime. It could cost him his job. So, he’s working for us now.”
“Doing what?”
“As acting chief of police,” the lawyer explained, “he’s got all the facilities of the police department at his fingertips. He can talk directly to any police department in the country and get any information they happen to have. Since only state residents are admitted to Marysville, it shouldn’t take him long to dig up something about Brice Riggs. The same goes for Jan’s fingerprints.”
“Well!” said Heron. “I hadn’t thought of all that. Maybe we can get somewhere now.” Then his long fingers began to drum upon the tabletop, and he shook his head. “I just wish I could remember why that name, Big Doc, seems to strike a bell. It worries me.”
Big Doc loomed in Jan’s tortured dreaming that night as a great dark, hairy ogre, with pudgy fingers and a soft but frightening voice. He awoke trembling, and heard the tall clock in the library ponderously strike four times.
He sat up, his fists knotted in the sheet, knowing that somehow the dream vision of Big Doc must be close to reality. Hate rose in him. Big Doc was a thief who had destroyed whatever he had been and stolen his memory. Hate boiled above his fear and washed away what remained of the night, so that it was almost daylight before he fell asleep again. He was awakened finally by the unaccustomed sound of the vacuum cleaner that Tillie McCoy, the maid, was using in the hall.
Somehow, with the help of books Ginny selected for him in the library, he got through the long day. Tuesday was much the same. If he could have been free to go outside and explore the farm, the waiting would have been easier, but he was practically a prisoner in his room, always forced to flee to it and lock the door to avoid being seen by a chance visitor or one of the servants. As the hours dragged, his uneasiness increased. As Hecuba Rhodes had said, something was bound to happen. But what?
Several times he crouched by his window, peering carefully
through the curtains at the courtyard behind the house. On one side was a stone addition that he judged was the research lab, while facing it across the walks and the flower garden was the garage. The buildings at the far end, he decided, had to be guesthouses. Through the trees he could glimpse barns and other stone structures in the distance.
It was not hard to guess who the people were who occasionally crossed the courtyard. The aproned woman who usually appeared in the middle of the afternoon had to be Agnes the cook, Angus McCoy’s sister, while the younger one was probably Tillie, his daughter. The short, sturdy bowlegged man, who twice came to talk to Heron Rhodes, was no doubt Angus himself. A second man dressed in workman’s clothes, who puttered watchfully about patching the stonework, must be one of the guards who had come Sunday evening. Jan wondered about the extra guards that Jackson Lane had been trying to get. So far they hadn’t arrived.
They had not arrived by Wednesday afternoon, when Ginny left for her music lesson.
From his window Jan watched her small, slender figure move lightly across the courtyard beside the sturdy bulk of Angus, who was driving her to Glendale in Hecuba’s station wagon. Only her white cane and dark glasses gave indication of her blindness, and again he wondered by what magic she could make out the world, and how strange it must appear to her.
It was when the station wagon was gone that a sudden, deeper uneasiness came over him. Hecuba had been worried about the lack of guards, but having the extra guards didn’t really matter. What mattered was something else, something they’d overlooked. What could it be?
He tried to shake off the feeling, but it clung to him and grew worse with the evening. In the library, while they were waiting for Ginny’s return, he caught Heron Rhodes studying him with some concern. Heron told him, “Don’t let Big Doc get you down, son. We’ll settle with him soon. My word on it.”
He shook his head. “It—it’s not what you think,” he managed to say. “I mean, well, I—I have an awful feeling that we’ve missed something. It’s kind of like a chess move that could get you checkmated.”
Heron’s eyes sharpened on him. “Evidently you know how to play chess. Hm. Now think, son. What sort of move would it be?”
“Sort of a round-the-corner move, like you’d do with a knight. It—it has to do with Ginny.”
Hecuba gasped. “Ginny? Oh, my heavens! Otis, call your sister—see if she—”
“Aw, she’s okay,” Otis said with mild disgust. “I been talking with her right along. She’s just left, an’ she’s going over now to get in the car.” He glanced at Jan, and said aloofly, “If you’re so smart, see if you can beat me at a game of chess.” Without waiting for a reply he trotted over to a gaming table beyond the piano and took a box of chessmen from a drawer.
Otis was about to dump them on the table when his small body stiffened and his owlish eyes became great marbles of fear.
“No!” he gasped. “No! No!”
The chessmen dropped from his nerveless hands and spilled upon the carpet. Suddenly he ran to Hecuba and clasped her tightly, sobbing, “They’ve got her! Men in the car! I can’t hear her, Aunt Heck—they’ve got her!”
Heron Rhodes shook his head once, then sprang to his feet and snatched up the phone on the desk. His finger spun the dial once. “Operator!” he barked. “Quick—this is an emergency! Get me the Glendale police!”
7
HOSTAGE
The tall clock in the library struck a deep and somehow doomful note, then slowly it struck another, and another, and another.… Jan counted the strikes without realizing what he was doing. Ten o’clock. Four hours had passed since Ginny had been kidnapped.
He chewed on his lip and looked again over at Otis, who was huddled miserably in the recesses of one of the big leather chairs. Heron Rhodes, grimly pacing the floor in front of him, stopped and looked also, silently asking the question they had been asking for hours. The small boy shook his head.
Heron muttered, “We won’t hear from her till the drug wears off. They must have given her as big a dose as they gave Angus. The stupid fools! Half would have been more than enough!”
The Glendale police had found the Rhodes’ station wagon on the edge of town, with Angus, drugged and suffering from a blow on the head, lying on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Angus, Jan had been told, had no idea what had happened. The farm manager had gained consciousness hardly an hour ago, and was able to say only that someone had called to him by name from a passing car, and when he turned to see who had spoken he was suddenly struck from behind.
All this seemed rather odd to Jan. How could Big Doc have known about Angus, or that Angus would drive Ginny to Glendale on Tuesday? Unless, of course, Big Doc had become familiar with the establishment of Heron Rhodes long before that chance meeting with Ginny on the train last Friday. But why would Big Doc have ever had any interest in Heron Rhodes?
Somehow it didn’t make sense. Unless …
Jan shook his head and looked across the room at the desk where Jackson Lane and Bill Zorn were waiting for the first message from Big Doc. They had come immediately when Heron called, and were followed quickly by Sergeant Bricker, who had brought a recording apparatus to attach to the phone.
In their concern for Ginny, it seemed that no one had thought to tell Bricker about his return. At the sight of him the sergeant, after a shocked stare on entering, had demanded, “How the devil did you manage to get away from those people and come back here?”
“I just managed,” he’d told Bricker, and Heron Rhodes had added, “For safety’s sake we thought we’d better keep it quiet. And please, Sergeant, we want to keep this quiet, too. Don’t let it get out to the papers.”
“You have my word on it, Doctor. I—I’ll do everything I can to make up for my blunder. All we need now is a yard full of reporters to foul things up.” Bricker frowned and said, “Er, there almost has to be a connection between what happened to this young fellow, and Ginny being snatched. Don’t you think so?”
“It would appear that way, Sergeant. But so far we haven’t heard a word from the kidnappers.”
“Well, I’m sure you will soon. I’ll fix the phone, then I’ll have to hurry back to meet Nat Martin. He’s on his way out from the city now. Did Mr. Lane tell you about him?”
“Something was said about a State Bureau man you knew.”
“Mr. Lane figured we’d better call him in. It’ll be unofficial. Martin’s the best there is—used to be with the FBI, and they still consult him.”
Bricker had made speedy work of attaching the recorder. On the way out he’d paused uncertainly and said, “I’m sorry, young fellow, about turning you over to those guys the other day. But honestly, I thought—”
“It—it’s all right, Sergeant,” he’d told Bricker. “A man has to do what he believes is his duty.”
Bricker, obviously grateful, had suddenly grinned and given him a pat on the back. “Boy, did you put up a scrap!”
That had been two hours ago.
The matronly cook, Agnus McCoy’s sister Aggie, came in with a large tray of sandwiches and snacks that she placed on a table beside a stack of paper cups and plates. Behind her appeared Hecuba with a fresh pot of coffee.
Hecuba, whose eyes were looking haunted, said, “Thank you for helping, Aggie. This may be an all-night session, so maybe you’d better go home and look after Angus.”
“That I will, ma’am, though it’s not Angus what worries me.” The cook shook her head, dabbed at her eye with a corner of her apron, and started away after giving Jan a quick sidelong glance full of curiosity. “You need me later, ma’am, just you call me and I’ll be right over.”
“Thank you so much, Aggie.” Hecuba went around and touched Otis on the cheek. “Young man, it’s long past your bedtime.”
Otis thrust out his jaw. “I ain’t goin’ to bed. I ain’t goin’ no place till I hear from Ginny.”
Heron Rhodes said, “Oh, leave him be. We may need him.”
“Of
course,” Hecuba murmured. “I sometimes forget those two are telepaths. They’re so quiet about it.”
Heron sank down on the sofa beside Jan. He rubbed his eyes and muttered, “You handled Bricker just right, son. He’s not a bad sort, but it wouldn’t do for him to know too much about us.” He was silent for a while, then his hands clenched and he said slowly, “You see what’s coming, don’t you?”
Jan nodded. “I—I see it. Ginny is just a hostage. They’ll use her to get me back.”
Heron nodded. “It has to be that.”
“Well, I’m ready to be traded. Any time.” He tried to make his voice sound confident, but it was far from the way he felt.
“You’re very brave, son.”
“I’m not brave. But I have to do it. There’s no other way to get Ginny back.”
“Hm. But even, if we make the trade, they might not return Ginny. Have you thought of that?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been thinking of it. I’ve a feeling that once Big Doc—whoever he is—gets his hands on me, he’ll try to keep both of us.”
“What makes you feel that way?”
Jan chewed on his lip a moment. “Well, it’s several things. If they believed Ginny was really blind and couldn’t see anything, why did they bother to drug her?”
“Hm!” Heron looked startled. “Go on, son.”
“Then there’s Angus. There’s no reason why they should even know him, especially if they’re interested only in me. But they knew him—they even called him by name—and, well, how could they possibly have learned ahead of time that he was going to drive Ginny to Glendale today? She usually takes the train. Anyway, if the extra guards had come, they would have driven her.”
“I see.”
“So, well, it sort of looks like Big Doc knew a lot about the Rhodes family before I ever came here.”
“Good lord! I hope to heaven you’re wrong!”
“I sure hope I am too. But when you think about it, Ginny would be just as valuable to Big Doc as I am. I mean, what she can do is amazing. If he’s found out about her, and figures he knows how to control her …”
The Case of the Vanishing Boy Page 5