“I—I know how you feel. It got me the same way when he came to my room and told me how bad it would be for you if I didn’t behave. I could have …” Jan shook his head, and asked, “Does he know you can talk to Otis?”
“I don’t think so. I picked a lot of crazy things out of that snaky mind of his—things I’m still trying to put together—but not that.”
“Ask Otis if Nat Martin is still there.”
“He’s there, and so’s everybody else. When I was back there by the fence I told Otis we’d managed to get out of the house, but that the fence had us stumped. So they’re all waiting to see how we make out. Mr. Martin wants us to tell him anything we’ve learned that might give him a clue to where we are—traffic sounds, planes going over, something somebody may’ve said …”
“Tell Otis to ask him if he’s got another transmitter. If he has, I’m going back right away and get it.”
“Jan! Do—do you think you can—after all that’s happened to you?”
“I’ve got to! Ask him!”
Tensely he waited while she clenched her hands and called silently to Otis again. Presently she raised her head. “Yes,” she said, in a whisper so low he could hardly hear her. “They’ve got another transmitter. It’s a bigger one, with a much longer range.”
He was greatly relieved. “Okay. I’m on my way. I’ll be back just as soon as I can.”
It was only now, when he had stretched out on the padded floor of the van and closed his eyes, that doubt rose like an impenetrable gray wall to block him. His head still hurt, and the curious ringing in his ears hadn’t stopped. He’d always been strong, but after the drug and the shock and the crack on the head when he fell, he suddenly wondered if he had enough energy left for even a one-way trip, not to speak of a return. It seemed impossible.
But he’d done it before. He’d done it twice before in his memory—though never over such a distance. Still, distance shouldn’t matter, not even physical strength. Wasn’t it entirely of the mind? When he was very little, his father …
His father? He clenched his hands and closed his eyes tighter, trying not to think of his father. There wasn’t time for that now. He had to get to the Rhodes’ library, and the only way to do that was to concentrate on it until he could see it in every detail as if he were there—and to want to be there so badly that he could actually feel the blue Chinese rug under his hands …
Gradually the library sharpened in his mind. The chairs, the piano, the long shelves of books took on the reality of three dimensions. The ringing in his head became a whirling. There was a curious sharp sound as of air being displaced, and suddenly the rough texture of the van’s padding softened and became something else.
He knew he was there even before he heard the exclamations and gasps of relief from those who were waiting for him.
Unsteadily he sat up on the blue rug and opened his eyes. The room seemed to tip and spin slightly as he straightened, and he heard Nat Martin whisper hoarsely, “He actually did it!”
“I told you he would,” said Heron Rhodes. The doctor, gray and drawn, came over quickly and knelt beside him. “Thank God!” he breathed.
Otis and Hecuba followed. Otis, hollow-eyed, asked squeakily, “Is Ginny safe in that van?”
“I think so—at least till daylight,” Jan told him. “That transmitter, where is it? I’ve got to get back—”
“No,” Hecuba said firmly. “Not yet. What you’ve done has drained you. You’re white as a sheet. You couldn’t return now if you tried. Bill, bring him some of those cushions and prop him up so he can relax a while. And Jackson, a little coffee won’t hurt him. Bring him a cup.”
Bill Zorn made him comfortable with cushions, and the stocky lawyer brought him coffee, which he sipped gratefully. Nat Martin slipped a hand-sized transmitter into his jacket pocket and carefully buttoned it.
“Just so it’ll be there when you get ready to, er, take off,” Martin said. “Now, if you can answer a couple questions while you rest, we’ll be that much further ahead. I’ve got men ready to move as soon as we have some idea of direction. Ginny has described the building and the grounds, but it could be anywhere within a fifty-mile radius, and that covers a lot of territory. Did you happen to notice the license plate of any of the cars?”
Jan shook his head. “It was too dark in the back of the garage. Anyhow, I was moving too fast. Maybe Ginny—”
“She didn’t either. Otis has already asked her, and I’d rather not have her leave the van to look. What about traffic? Did you hear any? Or any unusual sounds?”
“I did hear traffic, but it was a long way off. Nothing else.”
“What direction was it? North of the house? South?”
“I—I don’t know. It was to the right when we faced the front porch.”
“You couldn’t see any stars?”
“No, sir. It was black dark.”
“Eh? Had it rained?”
“No, sir, but it sure sounded like it was going to. I could hear thunder off somewhere.”
Martin suddenly looked thoughtful. “We had a thunderstorm here over an hour ago, but now the stars are out. Otis, ask your sister if it’s raining there now.”
In the short interval of silence while Otis called to Ginny, the uncertainty Jan had felt about his ability to return now deepened and changed to dread. What if he couldn’t make it back? What would happen to Ginny? The answer came swiftly, unbidden, but before he could voice it, Otis burst out in a reedy voice, “Ginny says it’s rainin’ tadpoles there! an’ she can’t open the van door. She just tried it, ’cause she wanted to read the license plates, but she can’t budge it. It musta locked itself when it was closed.”
“Don’t worry about her,” Nat Martin told him. “She ought to be safe till we get there.” Abruptly he stood up and glanced at Bill Zorn. “We’d better go, Bill.”
Bill Zorn looked startled. “Go where?”
“East,” said Martin. “That’s where the weather front is moving. If it’s raining where she is, that would place her roughly thirty miles to the east and maybe a bit north, give or take a few miles. If we leave now, we’ll be that much closer when Jan gets back there with the transmitter. Time’s important.”
“They can’t get away very fast,” Bill said, rising swiftly. “Not after Jan sabotaged all their transportation.”
“Don’t kid yourself. Those people have means. The moment they discover what Jan did, they’ll send their pilot out in a cab to get another ’copter. If one isn’t available right away, they’ll hire cars and take Ginny with them. What worries me is that they must have a front they’re operating behind.”
“A front?” said Heron Rhodes, uneasily. “How do you mean?”
“Take that phone call Ginny told us about. It would seem to be a direct overseas call, but I doubt it. It’s too risky. You’d need a front that naturally would be receiving calls from abroad. Jan, did that woman start talking immediately when she answered the phone, without identifying herself?”
“Yes, sir. She didn’t say who she was. She started in talking and asking questions, real fast. In German, I think.”
“Then it was a local call, probably an extension,” Martin said. “In other words, there’s another place nearby that would often have overseas calls. A very respectable place. Does that ring any bells, Doctor?”
“A respectable place? Why, the two most respectable and exclusive sanitariums in the country are in that general direction. There’s Pine Ridge, which has no equal on earth. Then there’s Green Springs, with wealthy patients from everywhere.”
“We can forget Pine Ridge,” said Jackson Lane. “You helped found it. But Green Springs is something else. You tell him about it, Bill.”
“Well, Mr. Lane and I checked out all those institutions,” Bill Zorn said, “but this one gave us a turn. Green Springs is supposed to be run by an American corporation, but most of the stock is owned by a highly suspect German group, and they give the orders from an office in S
witzerland. On top of it they have strong political connections in Washington.”
Heron whistled softly. “God preserve us!”
Even Nat Martin looked shocked. “That’s not good. In fact, it frightens me. With such a setup, Green Springs could swallow Ginny and that whole bunch, and have them out of the country before we could get permission to do a thing. We’ve got to get there before they find Ginny.”
Martin caught up his bag and jerked his head at Bill Zorn. “Let’s get going, Bill!”
Jan struggled upright and watched them hurry away. “I—I’d better get going, too,” he said. “They’ll need that transmitter signal to find the house. It may not be anywhere near the Green Springs grounds.”
“Stay where you are,” Hecuba ordered. “There’s time enough. You’re not ready to leave yet, and something tells me you shouldn’t.”
12
MATILDA
Jan, leaning back against the cushions with his eyes closed, trying to relax, had almost succeeded when the tall clock beyond the piano began to strike. He jerked upright, hands clenching nervously as he counted the deep notes. Four o’clock.
He glanced at Hecuba. “It’ll soon be daylight,” he said. “Hadn’t I better …”
“Not yet,” she told him. “I don’t know why I’m making you wait, but something says you must. Anyway, Bill and Mr. Martin still have a long way to go.” She looked at Otis, seemingly asleep in the big chair where he had spent most of the night, hesitated, and said quietly, “Wake up, Otis. I know you must be tired, but …”
The small boy opened his owlish eyes, now ringed with dark circles. “I—I ain’t asleep,” he muttered. “I’m just talkin’ to Ginny to keep her comp’ny. It’s awful hard bein’ where she is, all ’lone. She says the rain’s almost stopped, an’ she can hear somebody hollering, sorta like he’s mad. She thinks they’ve found out about the helicopter.”
It suddenly occurred to Jan that his work with the hatchet would be taken as proof that he and Ginny hadn’t gotten away, but were still hiding somewhere, either in the house or on the grounds. That meant the search for them would go on more furiously than ever, and that soon someone was bound to open the van door.
All at once the old doubts poured over him in a wave of torment. What if he couldn’t make it back to Ginny? Why, he might never see her again. Not ever. They’d get another helicopter and take her away, and by the time Matilda got through with her …
“No!” he protested aloud. “I’ve got to get back!”
“What’s the matter, son?” Heron asked in quick concern.
“I—I was just thinking ahead … about Matilda …”
“Matilda?” Heron raised his eyebrows. “Where does she come in?”
“She’s Big Doc’s machine—the one he’s been putting me in to blank out my memory. Ginny didn’t say anything about her?”
“No. Good lord! A machine—a devilish mind blaster! I’ve heard rumors of the thing. Seems that Viennese specialist whose name I can’t recall—”
“Was it Leopold something-or-other?”
“Leopold … Leopold … By jingo, it was Leopold! Big, bald, pointed beard, soft voice—Leopold Zworkin. That’s the rascal!”
“That’s Big Doc.”
“If only I’d remembered it earlier,” Heron growled. “I could have had him traced and located. But it helps to know he’s Zworkin. It’s like being able to name a disease. Name it, and no matter how bad it is, you feel you can deal with it.”
“Well, he knows all about everyone here, especially Ginny. Did she tell you? He’s been having her watched for a long time. He and that woman—he called her Helga—planned to kidnap her later and take her straight to Kiev. Then I ran away …”
Heron Rhodes looked at him grimly. “Kidnap her later? Take her to Kiev? Grief and Moses, you were right, son. That rascal of a Zworkin knew all along she could see in the dark.” He stood up, snapping his long fingers. His mouth began to twist in rising fury. “Why, that rotten, cripple-headed creep!” he suddenly exploded. “If I ever get my hands on him …”
“Don’t touch him,” Jackson Lane ground out softly, deadly serious. “Just point your finger at him, the way you used to do at those blackbirds. And I hope I’m there to see it.”
“I would like to see it myself,” Hecuba said vindictively. “What I cannot understand is how that Zworkin creature found out about us in the first place. We’ve been so careful to keep our peculiarities a secret.”
“It had to be the book,” Heron told her.
“But there was no clue to our identity,” she said. “It was just the history of a family, and it went back hundreds of years. How—”
Heron said, “If some interested government wanted to locate the living descendants of that family, they could do it without too much trouble.”
“What book is this?” Jackson Lane asked curiously.
“It’s called The Aragon Strain,” Hecuba replied. “There’s a copy of it over on the shelf behind you. It’s a history of our maternal ancestors and their peculiarities. The family originated in Aragon, so the researchers used that name to protect the members of it, and to identify them as a group. There are not too many left. The last Aragon male, a direct descendant, died only a short time ago.”
“Why, I never dreamed of such a thing!” the lawyer rumbled, shaking his head. “Say, do you suppose Jan has some of that Aragon blood in him?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Heron admitted. “If we had his last name—and Sergeant Bricker said he hoped to have some word on that in the morning—it wouldn’t be hard to trace. However, you mustn’t forget that abilities like Jan’s can crop up in any family. In fact, they are always cropping up, but in this curious age of non-belief people are afraid to admit—”
Heron stopped abruptly as a strangled sound came from Otis. “What’s the matter, son?”
“They—they’ve found her!” the small boy cried tearfully. “They’ve just opened the van door!”
“It’s all right,” Hecuba spoke quickly, almost with relief. “Now Jan can return with the transmitter and not be caught with it. Jan,” she went on, turning to him, “is there any place in that room where you can hide the thing? You’ll have to go back to the room, because they’ll surely be watching for you at the van. They are bound to guess you went for another transmitter.”
He nodded and said, “There’s a good place in the lavatory. I’ll put it in there the first thing.”
He thrust the cushions aside, lay flat on the rug, and closed his eyes. This time he had no doubt whatever about his ability to return. He had to do it, no matter what, for the only important thing in the world right now was Ginny.
The moment he closed his eyes, the bare little windowless prison of a room came sharply to his mind, and he willed himself there with all the power he could summon. And almost instantly, it seemed, the soft wool rug beneath him changed, and became a rumpled sheet upon a cot.…
Jan opened his eyes and tried to sit up, but was only barely able to do so. He fell back, surprised at his weakness and suddenly alarmed because of it. The door to the hall was open and he could hear voices somewhere below. What if someone came before he could hide the transmitter?
He fumbled with the button on his jacket pocket, drew out the transmitter, and managed to slide it under the mattress beneath him. Then slowly he thrust himself up on an elbow and swung his feet off the cot.
Strength was flowing back into him now, though he felt a little lightheaded from lack of food and sleep. He took a deep breath and stood up, went to the door and removed the skeleton key that someone had used to open it, and closed it and locked it on the inside.
The light was still on in the lavatory. Hurrying in, he found the wrecked transmitter in the other pocket of his jacket, and with the thin, broken edge of it was able to pry open the hinged plywood panel in the rear wall.
Behind the panel he had expected to find a recess of some kind, hopefully one large enough to crawl into in
an emergency. Certainly there would be a place to conceal the new transmitter. But there wasn’t. The place was an open shaft full of pipes, and there was not a spot where anything the size of his hand could be safely wedged so it wouldn’t fall down through the walls.
Should he take a chance and leave the transmitter under the mattress? If it remained there only twenty minutes, that should be long enough for Nat Martin’s direction finder to track it down.
Something told him this was a poor chess move, for the mattress was the first place where a searcher would look. Anything could happen, and Nat Martin might need far more than twenty minutes to pinpoint the mansion, especially if it was out in the country, hidden on a big estate.
The smart thing would be to hide the transmitter in another room, or a closet that no one would think of looking at first.
He took it from under the mattress, went quickly to the door and tried to peer through the small circle of glass into the hall. Seeing nothing, he realized the glass was the one-way kind; a person could look in but not look out. Listening a moment, he very carefully unlocked the door and eased it open a few inches. The hall was empty, and gray daylight and a vague streak of dawn pink were showing through the window at the end of it.
The window gave him an idea. If he could raise it a little, why not slide the transmitter out on the ledge beyond it?
Swiftly he started down the hall. Before he could reach the window he heard voices below and hasty footsteps on the stairs. He raced back to his room and barely managed to close and lock the door before the footsteps reached the landing.
He was trying desperately to think what to do when a heavy hand shook the knob. “It’s locked,” someone muttered. “Didn’t you say you left it open, George?”
The Case of the Vanishing Boy Page 9