The Case of the Vanishing Boy

by Alexander Key

  They speculated about it while the gloom deepened into twilight. Once Jan said, “How did Big Doc learn about my being of the Aragon strain? They told me about the book when I was back at the library.”

  “That’s easy. He knew who your folks were.”

  “But my folks are dead.”

  “Are you sure, Jan?”

  “Of course I’m sure! I—I—”

  “What is it?”

  “I almost had it. It slipped out of my mind.”

  “It’s strange, but a lot of little things are coming back to you. I think touching that live wire did it. It must have opened some channels that Matilda closed. Is it dark yet?”

  “Just about.”

  “Then it ought to be safe for us to start looking for that fence. But first I ought to have a stick. I’ll find a limb or something, and you cut it for me. Then we’d better tear this cot cover in half. It’s awfully tough, but if you’ll start the edge with the hatchet, maybe we can tear it.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “It’ll give each of us a half to wear. I know it’s soaking wet, but we’re wet too, and it’ll help to hold in our body heat so we won’t get chilled. Then, if we keep on the move …”

  The drizzling rain was still falling when they started in search of the fence, and the darkness was absolute. He might have been the blind one as he clung to her hand and hobbled along a half step behind her, the hatchet in his belt while he leaned on a stick he had been forced to cut for himself. His foot had swelled and now every step was torture.

  “Pain,” he suddenly remembered his father saying that last time, “is a devilish annoyance you can sidestep. The trick is to think of something else, something so interesting that it takes up all your mind. Then pain vanishes …”

  Pain didn’t vanish by any means, but the thinking helped, and he certainly had plenty to think about. He was so occupied with his curious chain of thought that he hardly noticed it when they began walking on a gravel path. It was only when Ginny stopped, and they went up a short flight of steps into a place away from the rain, that he came out of his mental canyon.

  “Where are we?”

  “Why—why, it’s the craziest place!” she exclaimed. “It’s a sort of tea house. An Oriental one, I mean, with cute little red-and-black tables and chairs, and Japanese lanterns and things.… What’s a tea house doing out here in the middle of these thick woods?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t like it. Let’s get out of here!”

  “But Jan, there’s a kitchen over there behind a screen, and I can see a refrigerator. I’ll bet it’s got something in it we could eat. Jan, I’m starving!”

  “Then keep on starving! Let’s get away from here. This place could be a trap. If they came and found us now when neither of us can move very fast …”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said meekly. “They’ve been here already, ’cause I can make out their wet footprints on the floor. That Helga may get a notion to sneak back.”

  She tugged him around and out through the entrance and back into the rain. After a few minutes she left the gravel path they were on and drew him into the woods.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, stumbling along blindly behind her on the uneven ground.

  “To the fence,” she said. “I’m just following my nose, but if we are surrounded by a fence we can’t miss it. Anyhow, I thought we ought to get off the path. Look behind you.”

  Far behind, vague in the rain and almost hidden by the trees, he could make out dim lights in the area of the tea house. Helga and company had returned.

  Gracias a Dios!” he murmured.

  “What did you say?”

  “Thanks to God—that was the way my mother always put it when she was thankful.”

  “I knew your mother was Spanish. What was her name?”

  “Teresa.”

  “And your father’s was Raoul. What was his last name?”

  “Riggs. No—it couldn’t be. Riggs is dead.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I—I—I can’t remember.”

  “But I’m sure you will.… think I see the fence ahead.”

  How she could distinguish anything in this utter blackness was beyond him. Even when the steel mesh of the fence was inches from his nose he would not have known it was there save by touching it.

  The lower edge, he was relieved to find, was not buried more than an inch or two. But when he tried to dig under it, he found the ground stony and hard, the dense clay scarcely softened by the rain. They wasted some time searching for an easier place to dig, and finally came back to where they had started. Only the fear of an electrified wire prevented Jan from trying to go over the top. He had all but forgotten his foot.

  Their progress with the hatchet was heartbreakingly slow. Jan began to worry if they would get through by daylight. Once, while resting his tired hands, he asked, “Did you tell Otis about the tea house?”

  “Tried to,” Ginny panted, taking a turn with the hatchet. “But I was too late. He’d folded up again. I was hoping Pops would know about it. I’m sure we’re on somebody’s estate, and Pops has been on most of the big places in this part of the country …”

  The hole deepened and began to accumulate water in the bottom. The worst part was digging out the other side, for it meant getting down on one’s knees in the muddy hole, chopping upward with the hatchet, and finally raking out the debris in the form of mud with their hands.

  Time passed and they worked silently, mechanically, but a little more desperately, shivering now with cold and fatigue. The rain finally stopped, though Jan was not aware of it in his battle with the mud. A subtle change came over the blackness. With a sudden shock he realized he could see. Daylight—and possible discovery—was almost upon them.

  “I think we can squeeze under it,” he said. “I’ll go first, and then pull you through.”

  It took some squirming, but somehow they made it, taking most of the mud with them to the other side. Here they dropped their cot-cover capes, heavy with mud, and set off as fast as they could through a surprisingly park-like woods. Jan’s first concern was to get as far away as possible from the danger area of the fence. And somewhere ahead, surely there would be houses, people to help them, a telephone.

  Ginny noticed the picket fence before he did. Too weary for speech, she pointed to it. Then he made out the neat cottage behind it, and in the distance the winding lane with more cottages half-hidden by well-tended shrubbery. At the moment it seemed almost too good to be true.

  Ignoring his throbbing foot, he dropped his stick, caught Ginny’s hand and began hobbling toward the first cottage as if it were a changeable mirage that might suddenly vanish unless he got to it in time. It was not yet sunrise.

  Just as they reached the fence, two tall, elderly and impeccably dressed gentlemen in cutaway coats and striped trousers came down the cottage steps, canes under their arms, and headed for the gate. White-haired, with long horsey faces, they might have been diplomats on their way to an embassy meeting. At the gate they paused to pull on gloves, but instantly froze and white eyebrows climbed at the sight of their visitors, soaked through and spattered with mud from head to toe.

  “I say, Roderick old boy,” drawled one, in a voice that was definitely English, “d’you see what I see?”

  “I am not at all sure what you see, brother Reginald,” drawled the other. “I never am. What do you think you see?”

  “It is quite beyond me. Quite.” White eyebrows climbed higher and eyes sharp and curious as a lizard’s fastened on Jan. “I say, m’lad. Where are you from, and what do you want?”

  Jan had been struggling for speech since he reached the fence, not sure whether he was in his right mind or merely seeing double. After their ordeal in the rain, everything had taken on a nightmarish quality.

  Then he realized he was looking at twins. “I—we—we’ve just dug our way under the fence,” he gasped. “We—”

  “If you
’re from the other side of the fence,” interrupted the second twin, “you must return immediately. You are not allowed here. It is strictly forbidden.”

  “Strictly,” affirmed the first twin, frowning at an old-fashioned gold watch on the end of a chain. “We’d better be taking our constitutional, Roderick. We have only twenty minutes.”

  Jan swallowed. “But—but you don’t understand! We’ve got to get to a telephone! We—”

  “No, m’lad. Not in Elysium. The telephone has been outlawed as an abomination. Only the duchess—”

  “Rank has its privileges,” murmured the other twin. “But hers is strictly for official calls. Now Roderick—”

  “Did—did you say Elysium?” Ginny stammered, her hand tightening in Jan’s.

  “I did. And I must impress upon you that it is a strictly restricted community.”

  “Strictly restricted,” affirmed the other twin. “Now, if you will pardon us, we have very little time—”

  “Please, won’t you help us?” Jan burst out, exasperated. “Can’t you see we need help? We were kidnapped! We escaped and we’ve been in the rain all night, digging under the fence! Please, won’t you at least help Ginny? Can’t you see how wet and cold she is?”

  The two gentlemen looked at each other, bewildered. “Kidnapped?” said one. “All night in the rain? Did you hear that, Roderick?”

  “I heard it, Reginald. They escaped. That does form a bond. We are all escapees from an impossible world. We’d better get Jeeter. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Jeeter isn’t here, Roderick. Don’t you remember? You sent him over to the club with that beastly dish of bloaters. You would eat bloaters for breakfast!”

  In their bewilderment their hands fluttered helplessly. It suddenly came to Jan that this elegant but elderly pair, notwithstanding their lizard-bright eyes, were not entirely competent, and that the arrival of Ginny and himself had thrown them completely off their accustomed orbit. Then he heard Ginny, shivering at his side, give a frightened gasp.

  “Oh lordy!” she whispered. “There’s the white van!”

  A quick turn of his head and he glimpsed the white van, far down by the last cottage, just turning into the lane. His hand tightened on Ginny’s and on the instant he thrust open the gate and drew her into the yard beside the bewildered twins. He did not even question whether or not it was the same white van that had come to haunt him; he knew by the coldness knotting within him that it was, and that Helga was probably at the wheel.

  “If you can’t help us,” he cried, “at least you can hide us in the house somewhere! Those people in that van—they’re after us!”

  Without waiting to see what the reaction of the Englishmen would be, he ran for the steps, pulling Ginny with him. As he burst into the cottage he prayed that the shrubbery crowding the yard had hidden them from anyone down the lane.

  Inside with Ginny, he started to close the door, but the twins were already hurrying up the steps. “I say,” said one, entering. “We do want to help, really. Beastly thing being kidnapped, and having to dig in the rain all night.”

  “Utterly beastly,” echoed his brother. “So we’ll do what we can, time permitting. We’ll give up our constitutional to help, but breakfast at the club with the duchess is another matter. We must be there on the dot.”

  “On the dot,” said his twin, glancing at his watch. “It takes but two minutes to walk to the club. That leaves us sixteen minutes—”

  “Fifteen minutes, Roddy old boy,” corrected the other, glancing at an identical watch. “You always were a bit slow. That’s why I inherited the title, being born three minutes ahead of you. Er, ah, permit me to introduce myself,” he added, turning. “I am Sir Reginald Weems, Bart. And this is my brother, Sir Roderick Weems, a mere knight. Er, by the way, how did you earn your knighthood, Roddy? It slips my mind.”

  “It slips mine too, at the moment,” said Sir Roderick. “But it was something utterly dashing I did. I was always nipping about, doing utterly dashing things in those days. But time is passing. If we would help our young visitors—by the way, you have names?”

  “I—I’m Jan, sir—and she’s Ginny Rhodes.”

  “Only fourteen minutes now,” Sir Reginald reminded them, still holding his watch. “What can we do for you in fourteen minutes, my friends?”

  Jan rubbed his eyes and looked from one brother to the other. He had the curious feeling that reality had departed and that he and Ginny were trapped in some netherworld from which there was no hope of escape.

  “I—I—before you go,” he stammered, “could you give us something to eat? We—we’re pretty beat, and we haven’t had a bite since yesterday morning.”

  Again that look of helplessness came over the long horsey faces of the Weems brothers. “Dear me,” said Sir Roderick. “If only Jeeter were here …”

  “Jeeter isn’t here,” Sir Reginald reminded him. “What are we to do?”

  There was a moment of pained silence. Then a great light seemed to dawn in Sir Reginald’s eyes. His long face lit up, and he smiled.

  “I say, Roddy, I have a ripping idea! Perfectly ripping! Why don’t we take our friends to breakfast with us? D’you suppose her grace would mind? Really, I think she’ll be amused.”

  Sir Roderick looked scandalized. “But look at them! They are hardly presentable!”

  “Oh, dash it all, a bit of water and some of Jeeter’s uniforms should do the trick.”

  “Of course! He is quite small, and those old navy things ought to be just right. I’ll get them and you show them the baths.”

  “Righto! But we’ll have to hurry,” said Sir Reginald, who was still holding his watch. “No time for showers and primping. Just wipe off the worst, and into your togs.”

  Jan’s feeling of unreality grew as he stripped off his sodden jeans in one of the bathrooms and splashed water on his face. None of this made sense, least of all the impeccable Weems brothers. What strange sort of place was Elysium, where a duchess invited friends to a formal breakfast this early in the morning?

  His fresh clothing, a middy blouse and a pair of bell-bottomed trousers of a generation ago, fitted him well enough. He had just finished dressing when there came a tap on the door, and Sir Reginald said, “Time’s up, m’lad. Punctuality is the mark of breeding, so we must be on our way.”

  Jan hurried into the living room, overcrowded with old furniture and glass cases of butterflies. Ginny, in too-long trousers rolled to her ankles, was already there. As he entered, she put her finger to her lips and pointed to a window.

  He peered through the curtains, and his heart contracted.

  The white van and Jenna’s station wagon, filled with Big Doc’s white-coated helpers, were coming to a stop in the lane.

  15

  BREAKFAST

  Big Doc and Helga got out of the van, opened the gate and started grimly up the walk. Bolinsky, Harry and George poured from the station wagon, came swiftly through the gate and fanned across the yard as if heading for the rear of the cottage. Inside, Jan retreated to the turn of the hall with Ginny and stood waiting uneasily for the doorbell to ring.

  When it did, Sir Reginald answered it.

  “Yes?” he said coldly, as he opened the door.

  “We are searching,” came the equally cold tones of Helga, “for two young escapees from the other side of the fence. We have reason to believe they came here.”

  “Here? Escapees? You must be out of your mind, woman. Just who are you?”

  “I am in charge of the new therapy center over there. I must warn you, these escapees are extremely dangerous—”

  “That, my good woman, is your worry, not ours. Now get along with you! You know the agreement: No motored vehicles over here, no wearers of white coats, no intrusions. This is Elysium, and we’ll not be intruded upon.” Sir Reginald paused, then exclaimed, “By my word, if you had escapees, you should have gone to our constabulary about them. Why didn’t you? Eh? Answer me that! There is something deuce
dly wrong here. By Jove, I think I’ll call the constabulary myself!”

  Sir Reginald slammed the door, but instead of leaving he stood behind it waiting, eyes twinkling. He had not long to wait. There were hurried voices outside, the sound of footsteps, then motors taking off. The old man chuckled, but his mirth died as he looked at his watch.

  “My word, we are late! Come, come! Out the back way, fast!”

  Jan took Ginny’s hand and followed the brothers into a flower garden at the rear of the house, then down a narrow path that led past other flower gardens in the rear of other neat cottages. The morning sun was still only a thin gleam through the trees when they reached another lane. Before crossing it, the brothers crouched behind a shrub like overgrown boys playing cops and robbers, and peered with exaggerated caution to right and left.

  “I see the blighters!” Sir Roderick suddenly exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. Jan knew it was the younger brother who spoke, only because, a minute before, he had made the rather startling discovery that Sir Roderick wore tennis shoes, in contrast to the other’s entirely proper attire.

  “Where are they?” growled Sir. Reginald.

  “Down below the club, making a turn. We’d better wait till they are out of sight. No use taking chances.”

  “Righto! They are rascals, no doubt of it. They know the rules, and they left in a flash when I mentioned the constabulary.”

  “You—you really have a police force here?” Jan asked hopefully.

  “Oh, no, no. We want nothing to do with the police. Heaven forbid! Our constabulary is quite private, made up of our own men. Our valets and helpers and what-not. Jeeter is a member. When there is a spot of trouble, one merely presses a button, and they come on the run.” Sir Reginald chuckled. “What those blighters didn’t know is that the entire staff of the constabulary is at the club, waiting to serve us. Ha!”

  “But it isn’t funny, old boy,” said the brother in tennis shoes. “There’s deviltry afoot! Our young friends are still in danger! That blighted female who professes to be from the therapy center—”