OCR Text |
Show r,iv CARIBDE AN ffpl II K CONSPIRACYgf ill , k BRENJDA CONRAD I Kl THE STORY SO FAR: Anne Heywood, beauciful daughter of a weaJthy New York newspaper publisher, eoes on an assignment to Puerto Rico where Pete Wilcox, a reporter on her father's paper, Is stationed as a rj. S. Army Intelligence officer. On the boat she meets a young Puerto Rican, Miguel Valera, and an engineer en-gineer named Richard Taussig, of whom she Is suspicious, although she does not know that he U actually a German agent ordered to destroy Puerto Rico's water supply. At the hotel In San Juan Anne's luggage Is searched, and she suspects Taussig. Anne and Mr. Taussig have been invited to dinner at the home of the Russell Porters. Sue Porter and Anne weut to school together. CHAPTER VII "It's early, Miss Heywood," Mr. Taussig said as they came into the lobby and Russell's car moved our of the drive. "Why don't we have a night-cap together?" "Oh, thanks a lot,' Anne said. "But I've really " "I'd like to talk to you, Miss Heywood," Hey-wood," Mr. Taussig said quietly. She closed her eyes. Just as she did the telephone on the table beside be-side her jangled stridently. It rang again before she could pull the mos-" quito netting out from under the mattress mat-tress and free her arm. "Hello," she said. "I'm sorry." It was Pete's voice that came from the other end. "I was just wondering about you . . . if you got home all right. I hope I didn't wake you up." "Of course," she said at last. "Don't tell me it's part of your job to check up and see the tourists are all properly in bed every night. What are you doing up at this hour yourself. your-self. Captain Wilcox?" "I've just been to a meeting of the Falange, my child," Pete said cheerfully. "It's called something else now, but it's the same old leopard leop-ard with the same old spots. Go back to bed. I'm putting you on the Clipper tomorrow, remember." "You mean you're taking me out to dinner tomorrow night.- I'll see you about six. Good night, dear." niacally across the narrow perilous causeway out the Bayamon Road from San Juan. On the right the garbage dump smoked with evil-smelling evil-smelling pervasiveness. Beyond it, in the shallow head of the bay, two dredges pumped softly and monotonously, monot-onously, filling the murky oozing swamp that stretched on the left of the road, making firm new land for the U. S. Navy. It was dotted with a couple of thousand oranges just then, where a truck had gone oft the road, and just behind it a station wagon like Mr. Taussig's had gone like a dive bomber motor-deep in the mud, its rear wheels still going around. A constant stream of khaki-colored khaki-colored Army trucks and open field cars trundled noisily past it, and private cars darting in and out, trying try-ing to pass what seemed to Mr. Taussig to be an already solid line into town. An accident would be easy enough, he thought up in the hills where there was no soft cushion of mud and slime. He frowned. There were certain complications he expected Anne put down the phone and wriggled back under the net. She sat up, crossed her legs under her and sat staring through her filmy gauze box at a lighted ship moving across the window in the silver ocean beyond the reef. "The Falange. Of course. I never nev-er thought of that." A whole new pattern wove itself quietly in front of her. For the moment she forgot Miguel and Richard Rich-ard Taussig and herself. Here was Mr. Taussig was looking at her intently. "All right," she said. "In the bar?" He waited for her to sit down, and signalled the waiter. He might be making a mistake, he thought. "I may as well come to the point at once, Miss Heywood," he said pleasantly. Anne's throat tightened. "All right," she said. "What is it?" The waiter put their glasses down on the table. Mr. Taussig raised his. "To our better understanding, understand-ing, Miss Heywood." Anne raised hers. She was aware of what Barbara had called the veiled scrutiny behind his impregnable impreg-nable lenses. " It is your interest in me that confuses me slightly, Miss Heywood." Hey-wood." Anne looked at him blankly. "What do you mean, Mr. Taussig?" "Oh, not interest d'amour, Miss Heywood. I don't mean that. I mean interest in my . . . shall we say, belongings? Last night, for example?" ex-ample?" Anne sat perfectly calm and completely com-pletely controlled while the whole bottom of a kind of lovely dream inside her dropped out in shattered fragments. Miguel had told him. "I was just returning the compliment, compli-ment, Mr. Taussig," she said. Her voice was calm and detached. She thought she saw him start, but she couldn't be sure. "May I ask what you mean by that! Miss Heywood?" he asked quietly. qui-etly. "You went through my bags yesterday, yes-terday, didn't you, Mr. Taussig?" He was staring at her in open and undisguised astonishment. Anne misunderstood. What if she was wrong? What if it hadn't been he at all? She didn't know she was only guessing, actually. He recovered his composure in an instant. If she had lied, he wouldn't have known . . . " What makes you think I did such an incredible thing?" "Your thumb prints, Mr.. Taussig," Taus-sig," Anne said. If she'd been wrong, he could deny it, and she would apologize. He thought quickly. His hands had been moist from the heat. He smiled. "I think you've jumped to a very hasty conclusion, Miss Heywood. You have a bag just like one of mine. The porter put yours in my room. I opened it, but I closed it at once, of course, and had the porter por-ter take it to your room and bring mine to me. You'll find there's usually usu-ally a simple explanation for most things. Miss Heywood." "Then I apologize profoundly, Mr. Taussig," Anne said. "I'm glad we talked about it" She got up and held out her hand. She could see the indecision in the cold blue gleam of his eyes fastened on hers. He wasn't sure whether she was telling the truth or not. And she knew he had lied. Anne lay in the luminous half-dark under the oblong tent of cheesecloth around her bed, trying to think without with-out feeling . . . trying to separate the things she knew from the things she suspected but did not actually know, without coloring them with her own emotions. "But I'm not wrong about it." she told herself. "I saw it. It's one ot the things I know . . . even if I don't know what it's all about." Actually there were only two other oth-er things she really knew, when she came down to it. One was that Taussig had opened her bag and gone through her letters and had not told the truth about it. The other was that Miguel had told him she was in his room. The rest of it was in that dangerous danger-ous border line of intuition and suspicion. sus-picion. That was what she had ts watch. Still, even Barbara French had recognized what she called Taussig's veiled scrutiny. Anne shook her head. It didn't do any good to go over every detail de-tail o( a day or two days the way she was doing. "Night's a magnifying glass anyway," any-way," she thought. She reached down, pulled the thin blanket up from the foot of the bed. and settled back into the pillows. She wasn't going to think about it, and she wasn't going to think about MigueL i and did not mind. He was used to accidents when necessary, though he ; preferred to avoid them. He was even used to the emotional equation equa-tion that women sometimes brought in . . . but not on the level that the girl in 110 across the hall had presented. pre-sented. He was more used to the kind of thing he was headed for now. The public car stopped on the side of the crowded road under an almond al-mond tree. " Caparra, senor." The driver pointed to" a low shedlike shed-like group of buildings just beyond a rickety fence. They looked more like subterranean mushroom sheds than the ruins of the villa of Ponce de -Leon, the first governor, who built his first capitol here four centuries cen-turies ago, before he abandoned it and Puerto Rico to go on his search for the Fountain of Youth, and found instead Florida and death. Mr. Richard Taussig was only superficially su-perficially interested in the blue and yellow tiles and in the story of the Indian Cacique and the great Con-quistadore Con-quistadore who is still heard, and even seen, clanking up the ghostly stairs in his battle armor. He tipped the caretaker enough to make him remember him but not enough to make him suspicious, and made his way along the shaded road under the i Indian almonds and flamboyants to i a roadhouse. There he drank a bottle of cool pale ale in the garden and read his guide book. That was for the record too, in case one was being be-ing kept. So far as he knew, no one had followed him; but devious-ness devious-ness and plausibility were a habit as much as a plan, and in the half-, world that Mr. Taussig operated in, overconfidence was more dangerous than wasted time. "I can get to Rio Piedras to the University out this way?" He tipped the waiter and pointed to the left fork of the road he had come on. "And to the Tuberculosis Sanatorium on the way?" The man nodded. "Si, senor. Gracias, senor." ."IfM walk along a public car will stop for me?" "Si, senor." 1 Mr. Taussig set out, walking slowly. slow-ly. The road was less crowded than the other branch. Nevertheless he walked past the blue stucco house set behind a great hedge of red and pink hibiscus, because a cart loaded load-ed with sugar cane was passing it just then. When the road was empty he turned back, went quickly through the tall gate in the hedge and closed it securely behind him. Diego Gongaro's car stood in the drive. Taussig glanced at his watch. He had allowed himself forty-five minutes to compensate for the temperamental tem-peramental disregard of time that was another complication of the Latin scene that irritated his pre- cise mind. He had not wanted to arrive at the house of Diego Gongaro's Gon-garo's mistress until Gongaro was there himself. He was disturbed about her, just as he was disturbed about Graciela. In fact, there were too many women in all this altogether altogeth-er for his liking. All except little Mrs. Porter. So far as he could see, she was the one simple aspect of his problem. His impulse had been to go see her that morning, but he had rejected it. It was best to let the first move come from her. He went up the steps, reached out to ring the bell beside the iron-grilled iron-grilled door, and stopped. From inside in-side he could hear loud and hysterical hysteri-cal weeping. It stopped abruptly, and a woman's shrill voice cried out in rapid Spanish: "But why? Why, Diego? Why not let all of that alone? Why endanger endan-ger yourself and me and your family? fam-ily? What is there to gain that " She stopped as suddenly as she had begun. A heavy chair moved, there were sharp steps on the tiled floor. Taussig stepped back, camel across the porch again, scraping his I rubber-soled shoes on the tile, and ; Gongaro came from an inner room i through the portiere made of col- i ored glass beads and short lengths of fine bamboo. He smiled cordial-i ly as he opened the grill. Whether he was unaware that his caller had heard the end of the scene, or was' simply unconcerned, Mr. Taussig could not tell. "Come in," he said. "I am happy to see that it is possible for you to be late also, my friend." ' (TO BE CONTINUED) "You went through my bags yesterday yes-terday didn't you, Mr. Taussig?" her story. It was what she'd come down to get. In the curious way that better newspaper people than she'd ever be stumbled into things, she had stumbled right into what she was hunting for, entirely without with-out knowing it. Diego Gongaro was Spanish. Don Alvaro was Spanish in everything but the place of his birth. The Falange was the conservative organization that had bound the old Spain and colonial Spaniards together, especially espe-cially during the civil war that had changed the mother country from a republic to a totalitarian power. It was through the Falange that the Axis dominated Spain . . . and it was the most important sometimes actual, sometimes only potential Fifth Column ' in Latin and South America. She tried to remember all the things she'd read about it. It was made up of the wealthier conservative con-servative which down here would usually mean anti - democratic groups. It was supposed to be the stronghold of the idea of Spanish Empire. At one time, when there was still peace in the world, it hadn't meant much more than the various foreign associations in the States had meant. Or people had thought it hadn't, including most of its members, mem-bers, probably. In times like the present it meant something very different. dif-ferent. That was why in Puerto Rico it had been disbanded ... or officially it had been. Apparently there were still remnants of it. Anne lay down again and closed her eyes. Don Alvaro was old Spain. Diego Gongaro's wife, who was Gra-ciela's Gra-ciela's mother, had been killed in the Spanish civil war. Miguel's orders or-ders had been cancelled by the War Department. Maybe it all added up . . . to what, she couldn't say. Maybe what it added up to was Richard Taussig. Except Miguel . . . not Miguel. It was all back again from where it had started. Richard Taussig gripped the open window ledge of the crowded station-wagon station-wagon with one hand and hung on to his guide book and his yachting cap with the other. He was in one of those new vehicles known locally as public cars that provide a vast network of cheap transportation for the Island and make taxi-drivers and chauffeurs a political bloc that no party dares to ignore. At the moment the car was careening ma- |