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Show 'j, CARIBBEAN ':f ImK CONSPIRACY :j Ml! I'M IJUENPA CONIAI y-JKl Kur mm Instant n rliill llnccr (nui'lii'il lu-r lu-n rt. Sho kIi'ii-(I Imi'U Inlii tlio Khiiilow if i simp ilour imil vv;il(ril. Hp luulu'l srrn Cut. ll I'linUln't s't thiit fiir imywiiy. nl" rpliiM. Tlio sIk.iuIi'iiiu-o of Ills thU-k-lcnsisl (jlassi's luuln't fully (u--ciinxd In Iht until slip saw lilm IH-rr niyopii'iilly Into the nilirnr hi'-liind hi'-liind tlu hnr before he turned imil S(Hke to her. Sho knew now that he hadn't seen her from the pier, or up the hill In front of the Forla-le.-.a. It was an armor of invisibility that gave her n quick Impulsive courage, or rather a foolhardiness verKing on sheer madness. Kven then she hesitated. The phosphorescent slow of the rlsinc moon softened the solid planes of the ancient Spanish facades presslnc close against the cramped sidewalks, side-walks, mid shimmered, darkly lh-tiid, lh-tiid, on the glazed cobblestones. The street was empty, and yet she had an eerie sense that it was not empty a sense of the shadowy substance of life rhythmically pulsating, of unheard un-heard voices and watching eyes and unseen feet echoing softly through the night. From some strident periphery pe-riphery diminishing waves of noise and color beat in until only their muted overtones seeped through Into the narrow street. It was the first time Anne had had the feeling that San Juan was a completely foreign city, as foreign as Paris or Marseilles Mar-seilles or Tunis. All the veneer that made it part of the New World was gone just then ... all except the disappearing figure of Mr. Richard VIIK STOHY SO f'AH: Anne Movwoott, bctunrnl dAlnilKrr i! nratlliv New wK HeMM'-ipcr v,,t,hsh,'r. tor to t'ncilo Rico on n Hlsniio'iil tor her t:(hi'r't rsper. A10 on the tNlsiut ttio Tele Wll-ro. Wll-ro. a reporter on her f:v(iier'i i:ier, now a V. S. Army InteUlRonee otlleer; Mltuel V4ler. a Puerto Kte:n Mturtrt In the I'niied Sute whose onter to report to an army eamp were abruptly caneellrrl; Kletiard Taussig, an engineer whose Identity a a lierman atent l UNerted hut not yet proved; and !tu-etl !tu-etl porter, a yonne American emlneer, and hl wile. Sue. Pete It itisplrloua of Mltuel Vler. hut hen they quarrel over him. Anne tlilukj It Is beealise Pete Is Jealous ot her friendship with Valera. CHAl'TKR X He sat completely stunned as she pot up and made her way through the crowded tables out onto the street. No one had more than glanced up, as they would naturally natural-ly glance up at hair like that in a Latin country. In a corner of his mind Fete was aware that she was like that. If she had to make a scene in public, nobody would be aware of it. There was something In breeding. Then suddenly he found himself getting very angry. If that was all the sense she had, to hell with her. He picked up his fork and took a mouthful of the tender aromatic dish in front of him. It stuck in his throat like a lump of wet dough, and he had to struggle to get it down. He had to get out of there, he thought, and go find her. She wasn't responsible re-sponsible for what she'd been sayingshe say-ingshe probably didn't even know what she'd been telling him. Anyway, Any-way, it wasn't safe for her to be out on the streets In the dark. Poverty and squalor and unrest did strange things to even innately kind and gentle gen-tle people. He signalled the waiter, paid the bill and got out as unobtrusively as he could. Not until he was on the sidewalk did he think of the man who had been watching them at the end of the bar. He looked back. Taussig was gone. He wasn't at any ot the tables. Some kind of deeply rooted instinct in-stinct stirred inside Pete. He turned and hurried up to his parked car. The man watching it got up from the running board and opened the door. "Did you see the young lady?" Pete asked, hoping to God the man understood English. "Xa senorita rubia?" he asked. Pete nodded. ; The man smiled and pointed up the street . Then he shrugged. She had gone up the street that was all he knew. Pete made that much out of his Spanish. Also that she was sharply and moved hack Into the shadow ii j : ii In. nil her terror forgotten, forgot-ten, aware only of a ntulilon nauseating nause-ating sinking of her heart. It was Miguel, lie was going to the same place that Taussig had gone to. She knew that even before he stopped at the arched entrance. She went forward a Utile, hesitating, hesitat-ing, aware that the Impulse lihe'd had to follow Mr. Taussig had not come In relation to Miguel. She didn't want to know any more now-all now-all she wauled to do was get away as quickly as she could. Sho look two more unsteady slops, and became be-came aware then, with n shock of abject fright, that the man who'd been watching her was beside her, saying something, she didn't know what. All she knew was that the shadows were suddenly alive and horrible . . . und then she was running, run-ning, breathless, her heart pounding, pound-ing, running toward Miguel, into what it didn't matter, so terrilled that she could not hear her own footsteps or those behind her, over-1 taking her before she could reach the door . . . und Miguel, and safety. safe-ty. She put her hand out, fumbling 1 for the knob. There was none nothing but a blank painted wall, a narrow rectangle set in one of the leaves. It gave as she pushed against it, and she stumbled in and thrust it to behind her, pressing the weight of her body against it. She closed her eyes, listening desperately. des-perately. There was no sound, nothing, noth-ing, either inside or out . . . only the pounding of her heart in her ears. She opened her eyes and looked ahead of her. The faint silver sil-ver light from the sky sifted down into a shadowy inner courtyard beyond be-yond the dark tunnel of the archway. arch-way. The only sign of life was a cat walking slowly across the cobbled cob-bled yard, its eyes like red coals as it passed into the dark. She could see another arched passage on the other side of the court, with an iron grille in front of it Perhaps the two men had gone through there. She hesitated, not daring to go forward, not knowing. A faint fresh odor of cigar smoke seeped through the heavy musty dankness of the tunnel. Her heart skipped a beat. There was no mistaking mis-taking it . . . and they were there, then. Instantly everything changed again. She took a step forward, her hand touching the cool, smooth patina pa-tina of the stone wall, and crept along beside it, slowly and soundlessly, sound-lessly, until she got almost to the end. She could see the stone stairway stair-way leading up to the first-floor gallery. gal-lery. The cat came silently out from the dark recesses and went up the steps. The fragrance of the cigar ci-gar smoke was plainer now, but as Hi- Xi A yWmi beautiful. "Ai bonita kept going round and round in his mind as he drove through the narrow streets and dimly lighted alleys. A couple of soldiers with the armband of the Military Police had seen her crossing cross-ing Allen Street, but the two standing stand-ing on the corner of Brau Street had not seen her. "Maybe she took a taxi, sir," one of them suggested helpfully. Pete nodded. Of course it was what she would do, he told himself. him-self. Nevertheless he drove on around the Plaza again. She was probably out at the Granada by this time. She wasn't a child. She might even have gone back to the restaurant res-taurant He drove down the hill again. The man on the curb watching watch-ing the cars shook his head. She hadn't come that way. Pete turned left at the next corner cor-ner and started out toward the Granada. Gra-nada. Anne went blindly up the street. It was true, she thought all of it was true. But not what she'd been saying to Pete Wilcox. Miguel Valera was a Puerto Ri-can. Ri-can. That meant that he was a citizen citi-zen of the United States. And whatever what-ever his devotion to his father, in times like these, with his country putting everything it. had into defense, de-fense, if he wasn't for it he was against it. They had cancelled his Army orders, and they wouldn't have done that without reasons. They were probably watching him, furthermore, and Pete Wilcox was probably one of those doing it That was why he was at the meetine the far as Anne could see there was no light anywhere. Her body went suddenly tense as she heard a sound somewhere above her as if somebody had moved a chair across the floor. She slipped to the other side of the tunnel, measured meas-ured the distance between her and the stone stairway, and crept silently silent-ly along the wall under the shadow of the overhanging eaves. She put her foot out gingerly to be sure The cobbles under the steps were smooth and solid. She took another step forward and put out her hand . . . and for an instant everything reeled horribly. Her hand touched something soft and alive, and when she tried desperately to tear it away it was caught. "Miguel!" She tried to scream, but her voice was strangled in her paralyzed throat. "Anne! Anne! It is Miguel!" She didn't know how long it was before the sound got through to her. All she knew was that she'd stopped struggling, and that he was holding her tightly against him for a moment, mo-ment, before he released her. She leaned back against the cold stone wall, trembling convulsively, trying to keep from being sick. She couldn't see him, but she could feel his body close to hers, and his hand holding her wrist, steadying her. "Sssh!" he whispered. Then he said between his teeth, "That damned cat." It was against her ankles, purring softlv. She was numblv aware nf it The cat came silently oat from the dark recesses . . . Taussig at the intersection below her, and the cigarette ads plastered in the window in front of her. She crossed the road, went down back the way she'd come, turned the corner and slipped into the shadowed shad-owed rectangle cast by buildings against the rising moon. Mr. Taussig Taus-sig was going along on the sidewalk now, almost at the end of the block, looking up at the doorways. As Anne started to go farther along, he turned and came back. She stepped deeper into the shadow. A man came around the corner, looked at her and walked on, looking back twice before he turned into a doorway. door-way. Anne stepped back still more, with a vague feeling that she might be running a serious risk, and yet a definite feeling that she couldn't go . . . not until she'd at least seen where Taussig was going. He had stopped and gone back again. Anne saw him look at a shuttered balcony over an arched entrance that must have been for a carriage or coach in the old days. Then he was gone almost at once, and she saw the dark oblong close behind him The man who hart night before ... She stopped short, suddenly aware that the street was almost dark, empty except for a few people sitting sit-ting in unlighted doorways, and that she had no idea where she was. "They must think I'm crazy," Anne thought. She started walking again, listening to the hollow echo of her heels on the pavement. The people she passed in the doorways stopped talking as she went by. All movement or sound seemed to be centered in herself. If she put her hand out she knew she could touch the rich pregnant silence all about her. She came to a corner, looked along the street with no sense of familiarity, crossed over and went up a hill toward the light on the next Intersection. It was noisier now. She hesitated, looked back, and stopped abruptly. A man was going along the street she'd just crossed. His white trou-ser trou-ser legs flapped around his ankles as he walked. It was Taussig, and he was going along quickly, in the street, looking first to one side, then to the other, as if he was afraid of something that might spring out of the dark opened doorways. passed her came out on the sidewalk side-walk again. He was standing there, looking at her. She realized with a little shock that in spite of everything every-thing Mr. Taussig's presence in the street had been an unconscious protection. A sudden panic of terror gripped her, constricting her throat, making her body taut and as cold as ice. The eerie spell of the ancient streets was gone, an acute sense of physical danger had taken its place. She had. an almost overwhelming impulse to turn and run as fast as she could, and controlled it sharply. It was the most dangerous thing she could do. She clenched her fists tightly to make her hands stop trembling, trem-bling, and forced herself to move quietly and at a reasonable pace toward the corner. Perhaps if she crossed the street out of the shadows shad-ows . . . She took a step toward the curb and stopped. A man she hadn't noticed before was moving along the other side of the street, going quickly in the direction di-rection Taussig had gone. He had come out of no door she'd seen or heard open. But it wasn't that so much as a vague sense of familiarity familiari-ty .. . She caught her breath and of its eyes like tiny burning opals shining up at her. Miguel's grip on her wrist relaxed; his hand slipped down, taking hers, holding it tightly. "Be quiet." His voice was hardly a breath against her hair. "They're coming." Anne turned her head in the dark A little gasp broke from her throat as the meaning of it came to her in a blinding flash of understanding. understand-ing. Miguel was watching them too-Watching too-Watching Taussig. That's what he had been doing in his room. She put her hand up to her cheek It was wet, the tears pouring out of her eyes and running down her checks. "Sssh!" Miguel whispered gently. gent-ly. Suddenly Miguel's fingers contracted con-tracted sharply on hers. They were coming now. She held her breath and waited. A door opened, there was the sound of footsteps on the wood floor of the gallery, and of quiet voices. They were coming down the stairs, their heels grating on the worn stone. (TO BE CONTINUED) |