The Case of the Vanishing Boy

by Alexander Key

  Jan hesitated, studying the hall while he listened. He wondered how much time they had till daylight, and was rewarded by Ginny whispering, “I heard a clock somewhere below us strike three just before I found your room.”

  He hadn’t heard the clock with his door closed. In fact, in a closed place without windows he hadn’t heard much of anything but the soft flow of air from a ceiling vent. If it was only a little after three, he couldn’t have been unconscious quite as long as he’d thought.

  The house was quiet save for a faint snore coming from the other side of the nearest door on their right. There probably was a back stairway somewhere, and he wondered whether to risk hunting for it or to go straight on down and out the front way. The thought of the front entrance made him uneasy, but he decided on it anyway. It would be the quickest route to the street and safety—if there was a street.

  The thick carpeting of the hall deadened their footsteps. The great stairway, however, presented an unexpected problem. It squeaked.

  It made no difference how carefully and cautiously they proceeded downward, the heavily padded steps squeaked anyway. Then, within a few feet of the broad foyer, lighted by a single wall sconce, a telephone rang in the open reception room diagonally across from them.

  From where they crouched Jan could just see past the high arched doorway into the room’s interior. Someone must have been sitting by the phone, waiting for the call, for it was answered immediately. The voice was the same one that had phoned instructions to Heron Rhodes four and a half hours ago, and later given him orders at Midway Plaza. Only now the voice spoke in a foreign language that sounded like German.

  The person was still talking when a door opened suddenly on the right of the stairway and the bulky, white-jacketed figure of Big Doc strode with a sort of deliberate slowness across the foyer to the arched opening. Jan’s heart leaped violently at this unexpected turn, and he could feel Ginny’s fingers digging sharply into his arm. Big Doc had only to turn his head and glance in their direction, and they could hardly escape being seen. Yet to attempt flight back up the squeaky stairs would surely attract immediate attention.

  The speaker finished talking over the phone. Big Doc grunted and said softly, “Well, Helga?”

  “We are to leave,” came the voice of Helga. “We must pack immediately.”

  “But that is stupid, my dear! I warned you about calling them. I knew they would panic.”

  “It is not panic, Leopold. It is common sense. The boy alone was no worry until he escaped. No one knew about him. But the girl is a complication. Remember, we had not planned to take her till later; then she was to be flown directly to Kiev by way of Havana. But now we have the two together, and we must not endanger the project by remaining here an hour longer than necessary.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” the doctor protested, shaking his head. “I see little cause for alarm. We know the boy was unable to give the Rhodes bunch any information—Matilda took care of that. So how can they trace the girl? This is the perfect place for my work, and your people are completely upsetting it! They have no conception of the preparatory procedures and the time—”

  “Leopold!”

  “Yes, my dear?”

  The tall, mannish figure of Helga strode out of the room’s shadow and confronted the doctor in the doorway. She was a stern-faced woman with iron-gray hair, wearing a tailored pants suit.

  “Leopold,” she repeated coldly, “I am in charge on this side of the Atlantic. Let us have no arguments. I will inform the staff that they must pack immediately. As soon as you are ready, the patients must be sedated for travel. Then—”

  “But—but what of Matilda? How—”

  “That depends. Clausen has already been alerted that he is to have the helicopter ready, and the fueling stops arranged for. I will call him now and order him to bring it immediately. We will take Matilda if there is room on board. If not, possibly Jenna can have it shipped to us later. Anyway, your first model is still in Kiev.”

  Big Doc threw up his hands and turned away, muttering to himself. Jan gripped the step where he had crouched and concentrated on Big Doc, praying that the man would not look up or turn his head. Miraculously the doctor, still muttering to himself, passed within six feet of them without becoming aware of their presence. The stern-faced woman remained standing in the doorway a moment, frowning, then turned quickly and disappeared into the reception room.

  Jan rose and caught Ginny’s hand. “Let’s go!” he whispered. “The front door!”

  His foot had hardly touched the thick carpet of the foyer when he was jolted by the abrupt ringing of an alarm in the hall upstairs. For an instant he froze, uncertain, but all at once realized they had only seconds to escape and raced to the door, dragging Ginny with him.

  The alarm was still ringing when his trembling hand began fumbling with the unfamiliar lock. Ginny thrust him aside and in the next breath had the huge door unlocked and was tugging it open.

  Even as they slipped through and drew it shut, Jan was all too aware that they had passed the open reception room in full view of the stern Helga, and he expected momentarily to hear shouts and signs of pursuit. Yet as they raced across the large old-fashioned porch and down to a driveway, he heard nothing but the muted ringing of the alarm for a brief moment before it stopped. In its place there came the vague sound of a voice that seemed to be making an announcement over a loudspeaker.

  It flashed through Jan’s mind that the alarm had been rung to awaken the staff, and that Helga was now giving orders for the evacuation. She must have been too engrossed in her task to notice that an escape was taking place under her nose.

  He could hardly believe their luck. In another minute or two they would be on a street or a road somewhere and could start looking for help or a telephone.

  Glancing back, he saw lights snapping on in the house, though the place was nearly hidden by the foliage lining the curving drive. Ahead the drive was lost in blackness, and Ginny was forced to lead the way.

  She had gone only a few yards when she stopped abruptly before the almost indiscernible outlines of what seemed to be a great wrought-iron gate. After tugging at the latch she whispered despairingly, “Oh, Jan, it—it’s locked!”

  The blackness of the night, the locked gate, and the absence of street lights or any sound of traffic sent his hopes tumbling. No stars shone through the canopy of leaves overhead, and the low rumbling of thunder warned him of approaching trouble. With the discovery of weeds underfoot he realized this entrance had not been used in a long time.

  He tugged at the gate and muttered, “We ought to be able to climb it.”

  “It’s too tall,” she said. “There’s an arch above it. We can’t get through.”

  Feeling his way, he found a stone wall, stood on his toes reaching upward and asked, “How much higher is it?”

  “Maybe about a foot. But there are wires running along the top. Barbed wires. I—I don’t think we’d better try to climb it.”

  “We’ve got to climb it,” he said, wondering how she could possibly see in the dark. “If I can get on top, I can put my jacket over the wires and pull you up, then drop you on the other side.”

  He leaped upward, caught the edge of the wall, damp with dew, and easily drew himself to the top. But when his bare hand touched one of the wires he was given a powerful shock that sent him flying backward. His head struck something and he fell into nothingness.

  There was a roaring in his ears when he regained consciousness. His head hurt, and his mind was full of confused pictures of Big Doc and Matilda. Then he became aware of a frightened Ginny fussing over him, rubbing his hands and shaking him. 118

  “Oh, Jan! Jan! Say something! Are you all right?”

  He struggled up on an elbow, and rubbed his head slowly. It still hurt, and the roaring was still in his ears, but Big Doc was fading. “I—I’m all right,” he muttered. “At least nothing seems to be broken. That—that’s a live wire up there!”

  “
Those awful people!” she whispered angrily.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Not long. Maybe a minute. Do you feel like walking now?”

  He didn’t, but he wobbled to his feet anyway. “You’ll have to lead me—I can’t see a thing. We’ve got to find the other entrance. It must be at the back of the house.”

  “I’ll follow the fence,” she told him. “There’s a corner just ahead.”

  “How in the world can you tell?”

  “It—it’s sort of like radar,” she murmured, as she drew him carefully along the wall. “I mean, I can see exactly what’s there—the outlines and all. But it’s hard to make out how far away it is, and I never know about holes and things. That’s why I miss my cane.”

  She stopped and whispered, “We’re at the corner. The wall ends, but a high steel fence goes to the left, past the house. We can’t climb it—it sticks out at the top, with barbed wire on it.”

  Caution held them to silence as they crept nearer the house. When they were opposite it, the light from an upper window gleamed through the trees and edged a section of the barbed wire topping the fence. Seeing it, he knew it would be impossible to help Ginny over it, even if it weren’t electrified, and he wondered how he’d managed to get over it himself the first time he’d escaped. Or had he gotten out by some other means?

  In a sudden astonishing flash of memory it came to him that he hadn’t climbed the fence at all. He’d wished himself on the other side, just as he’d wished himself out of the van and back in the Rhodes’ library after his capture. He’d picked a distant spot on a hill he’d glimpsed from some upper window in the house, and—early in the morning of the day he’d wound up at the Glendale station—he’d smacked Bolinsky, his guard, with the base of a table lamp and wished himself to the hill. It had been an awful day, and he’d been so afraid he wouldn’t reach the Glendale station in time …

  In time for what? …

  The urgent tugging of Ginny’s hand drew him back to the present. Then he heard it, somewhere in the distance—the distinctive chopping sound of an approaching helicopter.

  They began hurrying along the fence, trying to make their way quietly through shrubbery and tangles of vines and weeds, yet knowing that the time left to them to make good their escape was rapidly running out. Just as they reached a second gate, a high steel one like the fence, they were startled by a sudden blaze of lights that disclosed a broad space of lawn behind the house. It also lit up the rear driveway and the corner of the gate where the two of them were standing.

  Jan’s first reaction was to give Ginny’s hand a jerk and drop down beside her in the tangle of ivy at the edge of the fence. For an unpleasant moment he thought their absence had been discovered and that the lights meant the beginning of a search. Then he realized they had been turned on to guide the helicopter’s landing.

  He looked hopefully up at the gate and made out the short length of chain securing it to the fence. If it wasn’t locked …

  “It’s locked,” Ginny whispered, instantly picking up his thoughts. “I found the lock, and it’s closed tight. Do—do you s’pose we could dig our way under the wire somewhere?”

  “We’ll just have to,” he whispered back, and twisted around in the ivy so he could feel the lower part of the fence. The steel links went down into the ground. They would have to search for a low spot; then maybe, if he could locate something to dig with …

  He raised up and quickly studied the area in front of him. Immediately ahead, and joined to the house by a covered walkway, was a long structure that blocked part of the lighted circle. It looked like an old coach house or stable that had been turned into a garage. Surely he could find a shovel or something inside …

  “Stay here,” he ordered, “and keep the vines over you. I’m going to get a shovel.”

  Before she could protest he darted forward to the nearest corner of the building and crept cautiously around the end of it away from the house. As he reached the far corner he heard the helicopter closing in somewhere behind him. He hesitated, peering around the edge, and saw that the place was indeed a garage and raced inside.

  His head still hurt and it was hard to keep his thoughts straight, yet he must concentrate on finding what he needed and getting out of here before the helicopter set down. The landing lights outside clearly showed him everything in the place—three cars and a familiar white van, and an untidy workbench in the rear. There was no sign of a shovel or any sort of garden tool.

  He sped to the workbench and snatched up the first thing he saw that he might possibly dig with. It was a heavy hatchet. Whirling, he ran to the door with it, then stopped abruptly and backed away.

  The helicopter was coming down directly in front of him, and someone was approaching swiftly from the house.

  11

  CHESS

  He crouched behind the van and watched the stocky pilot swing down to the ground after the rotors stopped, and speak to someone who had come out to meet him. With a cold little ripple of shock he realized that the man from the house was Bolinsky, the muscular guard he’d attacked with a lamp base.

  Just why he suddenly knew Bolinsky by sight and name was beyond him, yet little fragments of memory were crowding upon him, insisting that his mind receive them. But he had no time now. He thrust them away and tried to think, for all at once it had come to him that this was like the final part of a desperate game of chess; he and Ginny were bound to lose unless he thought of all the possible moves ahead and chose exactly the right ones.

  He watched Bolinsky and Clausen, the pilot, hurry toward the house, then ran to the door—only to stop in abrupt indecision. What was he planning to do? Find a low place and dig a hole under the fence with a hatchet? How long would it take? Even now Big Doc must be climbing the stairs to administer the sedatives Helga had ordered him to give. Or he could be there this very moment, furiously trying to open one of the doors from which the keys had been taken. Unless duplicate keys were handy, the doors would be broken open—and immediately the whole staff would be sent on a frantic search of the house and grounds. Could he and Ginny tunnel under a buried fence without being discovered by the searching staff?

  Jan wavered; the ringing was still in his head, and it was hard to keep his thoughts together. Then he looked at the helicopter, and it suddenly came to him that there was only one good chess move he could make at this moment. The fence could wait.

  Abruptly he dashed from the garage and raced as fast as he could across the lighted area to the open door of the machine. He had no memory of ever having been in a helicopter before, and he was surprised at the size of this one, but he wasted not an instant looking around. Three quick steps took him to the pilot’s seat, where he began swinging the hatchet as fast and as hard as he could. In a matter of seconds he had destroyed the compass and half the instrument panel, and everything that looked important including the radio. Before he smashed it he wondered if he should try to use it and call for help, but instantly discarded the idea because he was totally unfamiliar with the instrument, and his location was still a mystery.

  He was racing back to the garage when he heard the alarm go off in the house again. It was followed by the muffled but angry sound of a voice giving orders over the loudspeaker.

  For a second he thought he’d been seen. Then it came to him that the locked doors had been opened and their escape discovered. Time had run out.

  Even so, he did not hesitate when he reached the first car, which happened to be the van. Destroying the rear tires of the cars took longer than disabling the helicopter, though he managed it quickly enough when he learned the trick of slashing at the sidewalls with the hatchet’s sharp point.

  The final tire collapsed with a satisfying rush of air before he heard a door slam at the rear of the house. It was followed by voices and rapid footsteps on the gravel outside, but by now he was moving swiftly through the back of the garage, wondering how he could reach Ginny without being seen.

  The
problem was solved for him when he rounded the corner of the van, for he came face to face with her.

  In a frightened whisper she said accusingly, “W-what on earth are you doing?”

  Instead of answering he put a hurried finger to his lips, cautiously opened the van’s rear door, and ordered her inside with a jerk of his head. He followed her in and very carefully pulled the door closed. When it clicked shut he wasn’t sure whether it automatically locked or not, but at least they were safe for the time being.

  He listened a moment, and when he could hear no one near, he said quietly, “I couldn’t find anything but this hatchet to dig with, so I figured I’d better wreck the helicopter and do something to the cars. Now they’re stuck here and can’t take us away.”

  “Oh—of course!” she whispered, picking up his thoughts. “Thank goodness you pulled it off! We couldn’t have dug under the fence in time without being seen—they’ve got lights on all around the grounds. I’m so thankful they haven’t got a watchdog here, or we’d be sunk.”

  “Big Doc hates dogs,” he told her.

  “How—how do you know that?”

  “It just came back to me—like some other things. I’m still wondering how you got out of your room.”

  “That was easy. They didn’t take my glasses, and there was a piece of paper lining the drawer of my table. I stuck the paper under the door, punched the key out on it with the earpiece of my glasses, and pulled the key to me with the paper. I had a little trouble because of the carpet, but I fished the key under the door.” She stopped and listened a moment, then said uneasily, “What are we going to do now?”

  “Can you talk to Otis?”

  “Yes. I thought sure he’d fall asleep before this, but he’s still wide awake.”

  “Has he told you about Nat Martin?”

  “Yes, and the transmitter. I told him they’d found it on you and smashed it.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Big Doc came to my room and showed it to me—in the dark. He knows all about my eyes.” In the vague light coming through the small opening in the partition behind her, he saw her clench her small fists and beat them on the padded floor. “That horrible man! He’s been spying on us for months. He knows all about the Rhodes family. He—he said if I didn’t behave and do as I was told, that things would go badly for me and worse for you. Oh, if I’d just been able to do like Pops, and point my finger …”