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Show " i i fpv CARIBBEAN fpj JK CONSPIRACY! iiiiill ' W BRENJDA CONRAD i I'V&I THE STORY SO FAR: Anne Hfywood, beautiful daughter of a wealthy New York newspaper publisher, goes to Puerto Rico on an assignment for ber father's paper. Also on the Island are Pete Wilcox, Wil-cox, a reporter on her father's paper, now a V. S. Army intelligence officer; Miguel Valera, a Puerto Rican educated In the United States whose orders to report re-port to an army camp were abruptly cancelled; Richard 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 bis wife, Sue. Aware that she must get the story she was sent for Anne foUows Mr. Taussig to a secret rendezvous. Hiding Hid-ing in the shadows Is Miguel Valera. CIIAPTER XI Anne bent her head down and drew farther back into the darkness. dark-ness. Miguel's hand dropped hers, moved back to his hip pocket and rested there. Her heart beat faster. There must be four or five of them, she thought, trying to count the shuffling shuf-fling feet above her. Anne closed her eyes and took a long breath. She felt Miguel's taut body relax . . . and then go rigid again so instantly that she opened her eyes In sudden fright. A fifth man had joined the group. It was Diego Gongaro. Miguel's body was like a steel wire quivering under the impact of a sudden blow. His breath was coming com-ing so sharply that Anne thought the men outside must hear it. What had happened she didn't know. Then suddenly it came to her. He hadn't known his uncle was there. He hadn't even known he might be there. "Let's get out of here, quick," Miguel said quietly. They slipped through the tunnel and out into the street. He took her arm. As they started down the street, away from the direction she'd come in, Anne glanced back. There was no one in sight. They turned the corner. She got into the car, tired, desperately des-perately tired, all of a sudden. "Miguel," "Mig-uel," she said. "Wait a while, Anne." She sank back against the seat. It was probably just hunger, she thought, but it was funny how this see-sawing of emotions took it out of you. She felt like an old sponge. He maneuvered the car through the dark streets. They came out suddenly in front of the great Indian laurel tree in the Post Office Plaza. Anne sat up abruptly. She hadn't an idea how they'd got there so quickly. "Where were we, Miguel?" she asked. He looked at her sharply. "If you don't know where you were it's better for you not to know," he said evenly, after a moment. mo-ment. "I wish you could forget the whole thing." They were both silent for an instant. in-stant. Then he said, "You've got to promise me very seriously you'll never say a word about it to anyone." any-one." "What were you doing there? And in Mr. Taussig's room the other night?" "Then you did know," Miguel said without turning his head. His eyes were fixed on the ocean 'in front of them. "I'm sorry. I hope I didn't hurt you ... or frighten you too much. I think you'd better tell me all about it. I couldn't ask you before." be-fore." "It wasn't you that told Taussig I was there?" Miguel turned abruptly. "Does he know?" "He knows about me," Anne said. "I don't know about you." "Listen, Anne," he said earnestly. "You've got to tell me everything you know. It's more important than you think. Have you told Wilcox?" Anne shook her head. "He thinks you're a spy, or something. I did too. But you're not, are you? I didn't want to believe it Tell me you're not." 'Til tell you something no one here knows," he said slowly. "I'm trusting you, Anne. In a way I have to so you'll see you have to keep absolutely quiet ... to everybody, every-body, Wilcox and everybody else." "Does . . . your father know?" He shook his head. "The Commanding General knows there's somebody here he doesn't know it's me." He looked around and lowered his voice so that she could hardly hear him. " The War Department sent me down on a special mission. I can't tell you what it is, exactly. I wasn't sure until tonight that Taussig was mixed up in it. I don't know how much he is. And how far I succeed depends on no one knowing I'm doing it You see that, don't you?" "I thought we didn't use 'agents provocateurs' in democracies," Anne said. "Right now we're using whatever we have to." "Wouldn't it be better if G 2 knew' about you, so they wouldn't follow you around?" He shook his head. "It's better for them to. As long as certain people know G 2 is on my trail they won't be suspicious. And they'll know it sooner or later." "But isn't it dangerous working alone?" "It's important" Miguel said. "Now begin at the beginning." Anne hesitated. "If a member of my family seems to be involved," he said quietly, qui-etly, "don't hide it. I wouldn't " "It's just your uncle," Anne said quickly, as if his uncle didn't matter. mat-ter. "You don't think your father fa-ther . . ." His voice was a little unsteady. "I hope not. My father means very much to me. Go on." There were only a few cars in front of the Escambron when Miguel Mig-uel pulled in to the curb. As they got to the door a car coming along the road stopped so suddenly that it sounded as if the brakes had been torn from their linings with an anguished an-guished shriek. "The way you people here punish cars," Anne said without turning. Miguel looked back. The man at the wheel was not a Puerto Rican. He was Captain Peter Wilcox of the United States Army. He was sitting sit-ting there starng at them. Miguel hesitated for an instant, turned and followed Anne inside. After all, it was a Saxon who said whatever it was about love and war. Furthermore Further-more he had the sharp impresson that Captain Wilcox was drunk. Mr. Richard Taussig had never taken the doctrine of the Master Race particularly seriously, nor did he regard himself, per se, as an example ex-ample of it He was a realist and a business man, and his business was Empire, or rather the undermining of existing empires leading to their sSTr I They slipped through the tunnel and out into the street. destruction in the interests of what he referred to as World Order but thought of merely as New Empire for Old. He had spent too many years in too many ends and corners and crossroads of the world to think that any one nation was in itself superior to all others and especially ordained by God for world domination. domina-tion. He was, however, aware that the desire for world domination, exclusively ex-clusively and without regard for existing ex-isting concepts of law and ethic, and the acceptance of any and every ev-ery means .to attain it, were the most powerful weapons the human mind could forge. A realist by nature, na-ture, he had become a cynic by necessity, and an eminently successful success-ful opportunist by scientific application applica-tion of whatever means came to hand. He did not object to men or governments who respected the virtues of honesty, tolerance and sincerity. sin-cerity. On the contrary, he preferred pre-ferred dealing with them, because they were always the slowest to recognize the Indian sign of the Double Cross, and by the time they did recognize it it was' too late. On the other hand, and Mr. Taussig Taus-sig was thinking of it as he crossed the Granada lobby toward the newsstand, news-stand, they were unknown and frequently fre-quently unpredictable aspects, imponderables, im-ponderables, he called them, that had to be recognized and dealt with. Sometimes it took the form of the honesty and unselfishness of a particular par-ticular individual. More often, in his experience, it was what he'd tried to warn Diego Gongaro about that morning. He had in fact wondered won-dered many times whether the emotional emo-tional equation, coming in with its attendant jealousy, wasn't actually more trouble than it was help. Gra-ciela's Gra-ciela's rage against the American girl had been a help, certainly, but Miguel Valera's apparent entanglement entangle-ment with her was anything but Young Wilcox's too. Wilcox fortunately fortu-nately wasn't particularly important impor-tant If he had a roving commission commis-sion and was in his own country, it would be a horse of another color. As it was, his hands were tied, first by Army regulations and second by his unfamiliarity with either the people peo-ple or the terrain. Miguel Valera was different. He was, as far as Mr. Taussig could see, potentially much more useful than his uncle, slightly tarred by his connection with the wax in Spain. Perhaps he should have taken a chance and let Gongaro bring him to their meeting that night Gongaro was positive his nephew was in complete com-plete agreement with them. His devotion de-votion to his father would make him ready to put Don Alvaro's passive ideas Into action if he could be shown the way. But Mr. Taussig wasn't so sure. It was the emotional equation coming com-ing in again. He'd seen him with Anne Heywood on the ship and seen them together in San Juan. He'd seen the look in Miguel's face. He'd seen it in other men's faces and knew what it meant. Mr. Taussig bought a newspaper and made his way across the lobby to the desk to get his key. It was extraordinary, he was thinking, how Anne Heywood got in the way. Not only tangibly with Miguel and little Mrs. Porter, but intangibly too. The fact that she was at all serious about him was in effect a potential surveillance that he couldn't afford to risk. He stopped in front of the counter. The clerk put his hand up in the pigeon-hole numbered 110, and turned back. "No, she hasn't come in." The girl standing there hesitated, apparently reluctant to go. Mr. Taussig glanced her over with an appraising eye, wondering what she wanted with Miss Heywood. She was Puerto Rican, dark and fullblown full-blown at that brief attractive stage before avoirdupois and middle age set in at thirty. She was expensively expensive-ly dressed, almost too much so, and obviously nervous and ill at ease. She was also obviously determined. The clerk handed Mr. Taussig his key and two call slips, said "Good evening, sir," in English and turned I back to the girl. His attitude was interesting, Mr. Taussig thought. It was as if he had to be polite to her but nevertheless wanted to get her out as quickly as possible. "You can leave a message for her," he said. "She's usually very late." The girl moved away without answering, an-swering, wandered over to the arcade ar-cade and sat down, looking around with a kind of moody defiance in her set face. She apparently had made up her mind to see the American girl and was not going to be stopped. "Who is that young lady?" Mr. Taussig inquired, with a slight frown as if he knew her very well but couldn't quite place her at the moment. mo-ment. ' The clerk looked at him politely but blankly. "I don't know her name," he said, with exactly the effect ef-fect of saying "It's none of your business, sir." Mr. Taussig looked at the slips in his hand. Mrs. Russell Porter had called him at six-thirty. Mrs. R. Porter had called at eight-thirty and left her telephone number. There were two more slips for calls in his room that had been left earlier. It was working out very nicely, on the whole. Mr. Taussig glanced back at the girl by the door. She was sitting tight. He looked at his watch. It was not quite ten, and this might be interesting. The girl obviously had something on her mind she intended getting off before she went away. On the other hand, time seemed to be important. She kept looking nervously at the clock and comparing it with the gold watch pinned on her dress. Then she got up abruptly and went to the writing desk. Mr. Taussig Taus-sig watched her chewing the end of the pen, writing, crumpling up what she wrote and stuffing the paper pa-per into her bag. Suddenly, in something some-thing like despair, she threw the pen down and hurried out without having hav-ing written anything. Mr. Taussig went slowly over to the arcade. She was going quickly down the drive. He saw, indistinctly indistinct-ly because of his short-range vision, that a car stopped for her to get in and went off toward Santurce, not San Juan. He went over to the elevator. There was something about the incident inci-dent that disturbed him without bis being able to say exactly what it was. It was another of the intangibles intangi-bles that seemed to make action imperative, before they became tangibles tan-gibles to disrupt his plans. He walked slowly down the hall to his room. A letter that he had been writing in his head from time to time since he talked to Gongaro in the morning was going through his mind again. It was very clear to him. Tomorrow night he would put it on paper for the morning Clipper. "My dear friend," the letter would say. "Thank you for the Guide Book to this beautiful and historic island. It has been interesting and invaluable. "Have you heard of the tragic thing that happened here today? A beautiful American girL Miss Anne Heywood, met her death by a frightful fright-ful accident at the Central Valera. My efforts to save her very nearly resulted in the loss of my own life, which I should gladly have given to save hers. "She and I were the guests of Senor Alvaro Valera on his sugar plantation outside of San Juan. Senor Se-nor Valera was not with us, only the foreman of the mill and Senor Diego Gongaro. Senorita Gongaro was also along, but she did not go through the plant with us. Thank God she was spared that" (TO BE CONTINUED) |