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Show ' r, CARIBBEAN f p llf CONSPIRACY! Jill I BRENJDA CONRAD- J THE STORY SO FAR: Anne Heywood, beautiful diuehter of a wealthy New York newspaper publisher, toes to Puerto Klco on an assignment for her father's paper. Also on the Island are PeU Wilcox, a reporter on her father' paper, pa-per, now a U. S. Army Intelligence officer; offi-cer; Miguel Valera, a Puerto Rlcan educated edu-cated In the United States whose orders to report to an army camp were abruptly cancelled; Itichard Taussig, an engineer whose Identity as a German agent Is suspected sus-pected but not yet proved; and Russell Porter, a young American engineer, and hla wife, Sue. When she finds him trailing Mr. Taussig to a rendezvous, Miguel Valera tells Anne he Is a U. 8. agent, then swears her to secrecy. CHAPTER XII Pete Wilcox came out of the Bachelor Bach-elor Officers' Quarters on the road to Morro, above San Juan's most astonishing slum Ironically known as La Perla, and walked along toward Headquarters. The fact that by this time everybody on the Post knew he'd had the Provost Marshal and the Insular Police out looking for Anne Heywood when she was over at the Escambron dancing with Miguel Mig-uel Valera didn't particularly bother him. It was damned lucky Valera had run Into her. There were too many stories going around, and while most of them weren't true, tropical streets at night were no place for girls. He stopped at the bend in the wall to let a train of Army trucks go through the old military road along the rim of the hill above the ocean. A woman on the other side was watching him, and without warning of any kind made a dash across between a couple of olive-drab olive-drab motors. Pete held his breath. The driver swore, jammed on his brakes, and went ahead again. "Senor Wilcox!" Pete looked at her in surprise. She wasn't, as far as he knew, either friend or an agent "You know Miss Heywood American Amer-ican girl? Blonde?" Pete nodded. The girl's eyes darkened. He couldn't tell whether she was pleading plead-ing or angry or both. "Take her away," she said passionately. pas-sionately. "I don't know very good English. She must go back to America. Amer-ica. Understand?" Pete scratched the back of his head. "Yeah. I understand all right. Why?" The girl dropped her hands in despair. "I don't know how to say," she cried. "She have to go. Will get hurt." She broke Into a torrential flow of Spanish. Pete stood listening blankly. blank-ly. "You understand?" All he had got was that Anne was going around with Miguel Valera, that it was dangerous, that she was warning him so he could make her go back to America. She turned and hurried across the street, and disappeared round the corner without looking back. Pete stood watching her. "That," he said aloud, "is a big ! help." Pete hung up his sun helmet and went to his desk. There was something some-thing about the melodramatic business busi-ness of shooting a rival that was ludicrous, on the whole. Nevertheless Neverthe-less the girl had been in dead earnest ear-nest It worried him. At the same time it put him on a spot II he asked for any kind of protection for her after last night they wouldn't even wait till he got out to laugh. k And he couldn't very well warn her. Or could he? He glanced up as a soldier came out of Colonel Fletcher's office with a sheaf of papers. "The Colonel said you'd check these, sir." "Thank you." He glanced through them. On the fourth from the top he saw Miguel Valera's name in the second line of translation. "Tonight at 8:10 o'clock I was in Padilla Street. Miguel Valera y Del-gado Del-gado got out of his car and went Into Avenida Juan de Pinzon and waited there. I do not know why, but I saw an American lady come in the street alone. Miguel Valera y Delgado went down the street. I thought the American lady was lost but when I spoke she was afraid and ran after Miguel Valera y Delgado Del-gado and followed him in to the door of the stores of the sugar and coffee agents Albert Benoist It was dark and they were there a long time and came out together. I report re-port this not because I have per--. sonal antipathy to Miguel Valera y Delgado or because I wish to injure the good name of the American lady, la-dy, but because I have been instructed in-structed to tell what I know about Miguel Valera y Delgado by people who believe he is of the anti-American party." Pete put the paper down. He could get sorer at Anne Heywood, he was thinking, than at anybody else in the world. At the moment however, he wasn't exactly sore. It was something he couldn't define. She didn't know what she was letting let-ting herself in for, of course. Nobody No-body but a Latin, maybe, would so instantly suspect the worst and say it either directly or by implication. But she was in a Latin country, and it was time she was finding rt out The phone rang as he was reach-pig reach-pig for it He took up the receiver. "Captain Wilcox speaking," he said curtly. ""This is Miss Heywood speaking, captain and wishing to apologize for last night." Pete caught his breath. Everything Every-thing inside him melted. It was what her voice always did to him. "Won't you even speak to me, Pete? I'm horribly sorry," she was saying. "I just wanted to tell you so before I go out. I'm going to the Valera Sugar Central to see them grind the cane." Anne had been sound asleep when the phone on the table rang noisily. She struggled through the entanglement entangle-ment of cheese-cloth, pulled the handpiece back under and said "Hello." Her heart gave a little leap. It was Miguel. "Did I wake you?" "It's a good thing you did. I'm supposed to be going to your sugar mill this morning. Did you know?" The darkness and the dream had gone. With the brilliant sunlight on the liquid cobalt world through the window she forgot the illusory terror of the night. It no longer had any meaning, as pain has none when it's gone. It was just something some-thing she'd dreamed because she'd eaten a lot of the lobster and clams and things all mixed up in saffron-colored saffron-colored oil and rice. "I heard it last night when I got home," Miguel said. "That's why I called. Why not put it off until to- "Tell him Mrs. Russell Porter is downstairs." morrow so I can go along? My father fa-ther and I have to go to Ponce on the south coast today. I'd like to be along to show you around." "That would be wonderful!" Anne said warmly. "Good. Then I'll see you tonight. About eight?" She put the phone back and sat mith her feet crossed under her, whistling softly. About eight That was twelve hours . . . which wasn't very long, really. She stretched her hands up and made little waves of thin convex ceiling of her cheesecloth cheese-cloth box. Just being alive was marvelous! mar-velous! And she didn't have to be disturbed about going out with Diego Di-ego Gongaro and Mr. Taussig. It was stupid to worry about things. They always worked out, somehow. She thought of Pete and glanced at the clock. It was too early to call him yet She ordered breakfast break-fast and got up to take a shower while she waited for it. At half-past eight the phone rang again. "That's him now," she thought, going over to the table. But it wasn't It was Graciela Gongaro. Her voice over the phone was high-pitched, high-pitched, so that it was difficult to understand her English, which was much less fluent than her father's or Don Alvaro's even. Finally Anne made it out. Don Alvaro and Miguel Mig-uel had found, before they left, that they wouldn't be able to get back, perhaps not for several days. Her father had asked her to call and tell Anne they'd decided to go ahead with the trip. They would call for her at eleven o'clock. For an instant Anne hesitated. Something of the feeling of the dream slipped across her mind, as a frail wisp of mist sifts across a country road early in the morning. It was gone as quickly. "All right," she said. 'Til be ready." She put the phone down, picked it up again and asked for Headquarters Headquar-ters at Fortress El Morro. Two hours later she stopped at the desk to get her mail. It wasn't eleven yet and being Spanish they'd probably be late anyway. She crossed the lobby and sat down to read her mother's letter. "Darling, Do you remember Sue Lattimer? I saw her mother at lunch at the Colony yesterday. She says Sue and her husband are down there where you are and that Sue adores , it She's so enthusiastic about the I country and the people and her hus- . band's work. Mrs. Lattimer her name's something else now but I've i forgotten it hasn't ever really forgiven for-given her for marrying. It was somebody Porter, wasn't it? And I gather she thinks Sue is just being perverse in being happy on thirty-five thirty-five hundred dollars a year. I must ; say the little I saw of Sue when you were at school together I never thought the child had it in her . . ." Anne's eyes fastened on her mother's moth-er's vigorous scrawl were a little misty suddenly. Poor little Sue hating it like poison, and too proud and too loyal to Russell to let her mother know it. Anne looked up, not quite sure she was seeing properly. prop-erly. Sue herself was crossing the lobby toward the desk. j "Is Mr. Taussig in?" she asked brightly. "Tell him Mrs. Russell Porter is downstairs." She turned and saw Anne. Her face flushed a little. "Oh, hello, Anne!" She turned quickly to the telephone operator. "Never mind. Thanks." Her smile as she came over to Anne was too bright to be altogether convincing. "How are you, darling, What an adorable dress, and I love your shoes! I haven't had any really decent clothes since my trousseau wore out. What are you doing? Why don't you come out to the Club and play golf with us, and have lunch?" "I'm going out to Valera Central to see how they make sugar," Anne said. "Mr. Taussig's going too." Sue's transparent little girl's face fell. "Oh, really? When will you be back?" "This afternoon some time, I suppose." sup-pose." "Why don't you bring him over to our house to tea?" Sue brightened instantly. "Not me, angel," Anne replied. "Frankly, I don't like your friend Mr. T. And the less I see of him the better I like him." "Oh, Anne you're being perfectly perfect-ly foul!" The tears sprang to her eyes. "He thinks you're splendid . . . intelligent and beautiful. He said so the other night. And even if you don't like him, couldn't you be nice to him just for us? It's so horribly important. I don't think he's very attractive either, but " "Sssh," Anne said. Mr. Taussig was getting out of the elevator.' He didn't see them until he got to the desk. Then he turned and came over beaming cordially. "Good morning, Mrs. Porter." He held out his hand. "I've been trying try-ing to find a moment to pay a party call to thank you for one of the pleasantest evenings I've had for a long time." He hardly more than noticed Anne. She sat watching Sue being cornflower-eyed and breathlessly eager. ea-ger. She'd hoped Anne would play golf that morning, but it was wonderful, won-derful, really, having such a marvelous mar-velous chance to see a sugar mill "And if you're not too awfully late getting back, Mr. Taussig, why don't you bring Anne over for tea?" It seemed to Anne to have the most convincing spontaneity. "I'm afraid Miss Heywood is too popular to waste much of her time on me," Mr. Taussig replied urbanely. urbane-ly. "But I shall certainly come. With Miss Heywood, or without her, if I may." "That would be lovely!" Sue cried. Mr. Taussig turned to Anne. "And you, Miss Heywood are you ready for an educational tour of the Island's Is-land's chief industry?" It was wonderful, Anne was thinking. think-ing. Mr. Taussig was a perfect emulsion of paternal kindness and gentleman of all the world. He probably felt that way too, she thought . . . just as he could stop and pick up a cat and stroke it while he was doing business in a deserted store on an empty street . . . business busi-ness that whatever it was was sufficiently suf-ficiently nefarious to interest an un-der-cover agent from the War Department De-partment in Washington. On second thought she'd tell Miguel about him and Sue. Sue was hell-bent for . . . call it collaboration, she thought Like a butterfly collaborating with a boa constrictor. Mr. Taussig could be charming, however, when he put his mind to it. She was aware of that as the big i shiny black limousine, with Graci-1 ela between them and Diego Gongaro Gon-garo in the folding seat in the middle mid-dle of the car, sped, it seemed perilously peri-lously fast, through the narrow curving curv-ing road, canopied with flamboyants flamboy-ants and Indian almonds, toward Central Valera. He was not only charming, he was amazingly well informed. He knew the names of all the trees the silk-cotton tree, the lignum vitae, the violet tree, the candle-tree, the Tabeuia. He knew all the flowers too, and when they stopped at the market for a moment mo-ment in Rio Piedras he knew the Jobo and the sour sop, the star apple ap-ple and the custard apple. He knew the guinea grass in the fields, the different kind of pclms and the water wa-ter hyacinths in the river under a narrow bridge. He knew all about the economic struggle of the Island, the value of cane crops, coffee, pineapple, pine-apple, grapefruit and tobacco. Graciela, restive under the flow of information that fascinated Anne, stared straight ahead of her, her hands folded in her lap. TO BE CONTINUED) |