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Show CARIBBEAN :f' - ; f CONSPIRACY! Sl iiiiid I'M liUENDA CONIUAl) J 'WJ New York fur the last two .veal's, iiml she worked nt II. She mav he takmu a viu'iilion. Captain Wilcox was on her father's paper too. lie may ln the reason for her fcoint,' down." lie stood rigidly for n moment, mut sat down. "Hero is her picture." He took it out of the briefcase. "It was taken two years unci. She Is even lovelier now. It is her color-lu color-lu ns much us nnytliiiifj. Her hair is reddish-wold, hor eyes nre almost nmber with cold flecks In them. I have been watchinj; her the last three days. I can't make out whether wheth-er the way she lauj:hs when people tisk her if she's oin down to sec Wilcox is because she is or Is not. At nny rate, watch her too. She is intelligent nnd keen, ns well ns beautiful. beau-tiful. I wish we hnd a few women like her." He took a green cloth-bound book out of the rack under the radio. "And here is a bon voyage present for you. It is "Puerto Rico: A Guide to the Island of Borinquen," kindly put out by tiie Government of the United States. It has all the proper Information nbout the history and monuments of the island. It also had a map on the back cover. Unfortunately Un-fortunately it was not as detailed as we wished, so I have taken the liberty of substituting another." He rifiled the pages until he came to the end of the book. "It is a scale map that you are to mark. A blue circle for major plants in civilian areas, a red circle for key stations in military establishments. establish-ments. Green where they supply both civilian and military, like the plant at Aguadilla for instance, which serves Borinquen Field and the town. Use blue and red crosses for minor units. Put the number of t'llAIM I K I j At three o'clock Tuesday it ft or-noon or-noon Anno lloywood hurried through the Minding snow toward a fashionable fashion-able dress shop on upper Kifth Avenue. Ave-nue. She pulled her beaver cap down tighter over her smooth reddish-gold hair and drew her beaver coat closer around her slim legs. It seemed so utterly eray to be buying buy-ing summer cottons in the middle of a winter blurard. At the same moment, two blocks away, a slow gray spider was silently silent-ly spinning its web ncross a dark corner of a cellar wall. And eighteen eight-een tloors above, in the lemon. and-gray and-gray French salon of an elegant ten-room ten-room apartment, two men raised their hands in a formal stiff-armed salute, and sal down at a sntin-wood sntin-wood table in front of the window. One of them was short and heavy-set heavy-set Behind his rimless thick-lensed spectacles his blue eyes were small and piercing and shrewd. The other oth-er man was tall and blond. They were both in their middle forties, and both had a kind of cynical arro--gance that neither made any attempt at-tempt to conceal. "Your orders are simple and direct." di-rect." the tall man said curtly. He opened a worn briefcase in front of him and took out a sheaf of papers. "The island of Puerto Rico can be put out of commission as an effective effec-tive base in half an hour, if you do your job the way you're expected to." "Even after the millions the Americans have poured into its defense?" de-fense?" The tall man ignored the question. "Puerto Rico is vulnerable at two points only: its gas-line supply and its water supply. The first will be taken care of. It's the second you are concerned with. The island is one hundred miles long and thirty-five thirty-five miles wide. Out of its 1,800,000 population half of them unemployed unem-ployed and starving to death it will be simple to find five hundred malcontents. mal-contents. They are to be placed where at a given signal the machinery ma-chinery of every unit of the water system can be completely demolished, demol-ished, and the island destroyed as a functioning base for the defense of the Panama Canal." "I shall need some help," the - short man said. "You will ha'e help c luscious and unconscious." The tall man picked up a sheet of paper and looked down the list of names typed on it. . "This in fact has been the most delicate part of the program." He smiled. "Diego Gongaro is the only man In Puerto Rico who knows you," he said. "He is there from our party in Spain. You can trust him. He has done the spade work. His brother-in-law, Alvaro Valera, is the shining knight behind whom you are to hide. He has the old aristocrats' dream of Spanish empire. He is honest and sincere. It is those qualities that you will have to use cleverly . . . but as he happens to trust his brother-in-law Diego Gongaro, that will be easy." He looked up, frowning a little. "There are three possible shall I call them obstacles or imponderables?" impondera-bles?" The small blue eyes across the table ta-ble narrowed slightly, watching steadily, waiting. "The first is Alvaro Valera's son, Miguel. He is twenty-eight, educated educat-ed at Gilman and Princeton, pro-American pro-American now. Or has seemed to be. Here is his dossier. He worships wor-ships his father. At one time he was an ardent Nationalist. He has a captain's commission in the reserve re-serve corps, and was under orders which the War Department cancelled can-celled last week without apparent explanation." "Do you know the reason?" "I have an idea. But Diego Gongaro Gon-garo will know and the fewer theories the-ories you go down with the more facts you'll pick up. This may help you." He passed two closely typed sheets of paper across the table. "The second is Captain P. G. Wilcox. Wil-cox. He is an American newspaperman newspaper-man now in the Military Intelligence Service. He is attached to the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff G 2 in San Juan. He is an ace newspaperman, news-paperman, and impatient with what I presume he regards as official red tape. For that reason he might even be of use to you." He looked across the table intently. intent-ly. "No," he said. "You're not likely to fool him for very long. Don't try. Just watch that he doesn't fool you. Here's his dossier." He got up and moved silently back and forth across the room, and came to a stop by the window. "Then there is a girl whom I haven't been able to figure out," he said slowly. "Her name is Anne Heywood. Her father is Bryson Hey-wood, Hey-wood, editor-owner of the Heywood newspapers. She is going to San Juan on Friday in the Santa Isabella. Isa-bella. That is why your plane reservations res-ervations were cancelled and you Bre going by ship. We don't know why she's going. She has had a Job on her father's paper here in "I don't know why Mr. Taussig reminds re-minds mo of nn udder in touii.'it's clothing," Anne said. "Or why he serins to follow me around." Miguel Valera's dark eves were fixed on the shore line coining luminously lu-minously Into view. "I heard htm nsk the captain why you were coining to Puerto Hico," he said, without moving. Anne glanced nt him quickly. There was something n little odd in the even tone of his voice that disturbed dis-turbed her. It disturbed her too that Mr. Taussig should be wondering wonder-ing nbout her, because she had been wondering n little nbout Mr. Taussig. Taus-sig. She didn't know, exactly, why either ei-ther of them should make her feel the wny she did. It had all seemed plain enough sailing the day Jim llawley, who was managing editor of her father's paper In New York City, culled her In. "Look, sister you've been asking for a good job, nnd I've got one for you," he said cheerfully. "There's a story In Puerto Rico. The place is a hotbed, and Uncle Sam's pouring half a billion dollars In. It's got everything . . . old Spain, new money, mon-ey, glamour, poverty, love, hatred, everything. Go get it. You can kill a flock of birds with one stone. You can get a tropical tan and maybe earn your pay for once. You might even do a service for your country you can't ever tell." And as Anne started out he'd looked over the half-moon of his glasses. " And whila you're down there, make up your mind about Pete Wilcox, Wil-cox, will you?" And it was funny about Pete, Anne Heywood thought. He was the only man she knew that she'd thought seriously se-riously about marrying, even if she hadn't been able to make up her mind, not finally. Everybody thought that was why she was down here now. But it wasn't. It was pride. It was the business of showing them all Jim Hawley, and her father, and Pete himself that she could use her own head and stand on her own two feet. It had been like a dose of vitamins, vita-mins, carrying her confidently up to that moment. With the yellow masses of the ancient weathered rock of EI Morro looming ahead of her now, and the gay excited clamor of the people crowding around them against the rail, all the confidence was seeping out of her. She looked up at Miguel Valera. There was something in his dark eyes, fixed on the stained and pitted fortress rising sheer from the white pounding pound-ing surf, that silenced the casual remark re-mark she was about to make. " You really love Puerto Rico . . . very much, don't you?" He looked at her gravely. "Very much. My father says it is only a country whose people suffer suf-fer deeply whose people love it deeply. deep-ly. I don't know. It's true that with all the poverty and squalor and overpopulation over-population that your magazines are so full of, our people won't leave the island. And when they do they always return. Our country is an emotion, with us." He smiled. "But we're Latins, and Latins are an emotional people. You're Saxon. Our standards, our backgrounds, our customs, differ as much as our languages." lan-guages." Next to them along the rail a fat middle-aged woman in stifling ornate or-nate black was clinging to her husband's hus-band's arm. Their faces were streaked with tears as they watched the narrow entrance of the harbor, under the time-worn fortress, opening open-ing its rockbound arms to bring them home. "But the human heart doesn't differ dif-fer very greatly, does it?" Anne asked. For a moment Miguel Valera was silent. Then he said quietly, "If you have learned that, Miss Heywood, Hey-wood, you have learned a great deal. It is something most people never learn. I should have thought you were one of them. Perhaps you will learn even more." Without turning her head Anne could hear Mr. Taussig. His voice was moistly oleaginous, his information informa-tion precise and pedantic, in a way that reminded her of the courier-guide courier-guide who had taken them through Notre Dame in Paris. A sudden little panic of loneliness made Anne catch her breath quickly. quick-ly. "I should have told Pete I was coming," she thought. It had all seemed so simple in New York. Facing Fac-ing it now the noisy teeming city, the babble of a language spoken so rapidly that the little she knew was hopeless she had the sudden sense of being an outsider with no right to be there at all. And underneath it there was a vague chill feeling of apprehension, like the sound of a stealthily opening door in an empty midnight house. "I'm being an utter fool," she told herself sharply. She looked down again at the gay welcoming faces on the dock, trying to revive the determination de-termination that whatever this turned out to be, it was to be her job. "But I do wish I'd cabled him, just the same," she thought. TO BE CONTINUED) She didn't know, exactly, why either ei-ther of them should make her feel the way she did. men stationed at each in red figures, fig-ures, and the number we have at each in blue figures. You may even enjoy taking the tours that this book suggests. Do so in any event. Now if you have any questions?" The deep violet-blue on the southern south-ern horizon was slowly taking form and substance as the ship ploughed steadily forward, feathering the co-" bait sea. Anne Heywood leaned on the damp salt-sticky rail, watching it. In the east, already suffused with pale green and yellow and pink, a single star still shone, a precise clean candle lighting the sun's way up over the last step into the dawning dawn-ing world. She heard a step on the deck behind be-hind her, glanced around and smiled. "That's it, isn't it?" She nodded into the opalescent distance. dis-tance. The man beside her stood for an instant, gravely intent. "Yes," he said. "That's it." " 'Puerto Rico patria de mis amores, Jardin de flores . . .' " He stopped and turned to her with a smile. "The Isle of Enchantment, we used to call it. Now they call it The Gibraltar of America." "And we're spending how many millions to make it that?" Anne Heywood asked lightly. She glanced around. "Mr. Taussig would know, I suppose. He seems to be a one-man one-man information bureau." A short heavy-set man in a light-green light-green tropical suit with tennis slippers slip-pers and a yachting cap had come out on deck. A carnera and a pair of binoculars were slung over his shoulders. The black sun glasses attached at-tached to his thick-lensed spectacles hid his pale blue eyes without making mak-ing him any more attractive. |
