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Show j,flx CARIBBEAN II IK CONSPIRACYltep 111 1 W BRENDA CONRAD V I " Don't mind him, Miss Hey-wood. Hey-wood. He's always like that." The girl reclining in the bamboo chaise longue moved her feet over. She looked up at Anne with a small dead-pan sort of face that didn't look stupid but certainly didn't look very bright. She had on a sea-green chiffon dress a little lighter than her eyes, and almost no makeup, and her hair, pushed casually casu-ally back, hung in a long bob around her neck. "Sue's busy with the guest of honor," hon-or," she said. Her voice had the same slow monotonous quality as her face. "My name's Barbara French. That's my husband over there erupting the soda all over everybody. ev-erybody. He always does. His name's Ben. Yours is Anne, isn't it?" Anne nodded and sat down on the cushion at the end of the long chair. "It's supposed to be a cliche to ask people how they like it here, but I'm interested," the girl said. "I like it," Anne said. She said "Thanks" to Ben, bringing her a Scotch and soda. "This is Anne Heywood, Ben. We're going to like her." "I hope she's going to like us," Ben said, grinning and sticking out his hand. "It's wet there's something some-thing wrong with Russell's soda." "It's probably got carbon dioxide in it," Barbara said. She looked up at him with her unsmiling eyes. "Sometimes it has." "Not often," Ben said. "One bubble bub-ble to a bottle. I'll be back. Say, where did Sue pick up that egg?" "In the bottom of last year's nest," Barbara answered calmly. THE STORY SO FAR: Anne Heywood, beautiful daughter of a wealthy New York newspaper publisher, goei on an assignment to Puerto Rico whert Pete Wilcox, a reporter on her father! paper, ll Itationed at a TJ. S. Army Intelligence officer. On the boat the meets a young Puerto Rican, Miguel Valcra, and an engineer en-gineer named Richard Taussig, of whom he li suspicious, although she does not know that he Is actually a German agent ordered to destroy Puerto Rico's water supply. At the hotel in San juan Anne's luggage Is searched. She suspects Taussig, Taus-sig, but when she goes to his room to Investigate she is surprised by a man she recognizes as Miguel Valera. Va-lera Va-lera warns Pete to send Anne home. CHAPTER VI It was half past five when Richard Taussig got out of the Army car in front of the Escambron Beach Club. He went through the cool lobby and turned left past the bar and out onto the boardwalk above the smooth saucer curve of the beach. It was pleasantly crowded and gay with laughing people sitting In white chairs under the long fringe of palm trees, with tall frosted glasses in front of them. A few people were swimming in the protected surf, and children were building forts and castles cas-tles in the clean white sand. Mr. Taussig walked along under the palms until he came to a curve where the boardwalk followed the beach. A girl in a white satin bathing bath-ing suit and a red cap was coming up the sand toward a man sitting alone, reading, at the end of the terrace. Two young men lying on the beach watching her with interest inter-est turned their heads the other way as she joined her father. "Perhaps Gongaro is smart to keep an eagle eye on her," Mr. Taussig thought, advancing, toward them. They tacitly assumed she'd marry young Valera, apparently. If he had Graciela around, he wouldn't be wasting his time on the Heywood girl himself, he thought, if he were Miguel, but apparently the cold northern lights were attractive if you were born under the Southern Cross. And there was no accounting for tastes, anywhere in the world. Mr. Taussig had been around long enough to know that. He smiled at Graciela and shook hands with Diego Di-ego Gongaro. "Have you seen your picture?" D6n Diego held out the paper, smiling broadly. Mr. Taussig looked at it and nodded. nod-ded. "United States papers please copy," he said. He tore the photograph photo-graph out and put it in his pocket. "How is Miguel getting along with the American girl?" he inquired casually, cas-ually, lighting the cigar Diego Gongaro Gon-garo held out to him across the table. ta-ble. "She's extraordinarily beautiful, of course," Mr. Taussig said placidly. placid-ly. "And very rich. Or her father Is, and she's the only child. She'd be an excellent match ..." Graciela moved suddenly, catlike. "If you don't care what kind of a girl you marry," she said. There was an unmistakable malice in her voice. Mr. Taussig smiled secretly. He could see her sharpening one of woman's oldest weapons. "She's one of America's best families, fam-ilies, and a very nlie girl, I understand," under-stand," he said. "If nice girls go in other people's rooms in hotels . . . when they aren't there, then I'm sure she must be very nice," Graciela said calmly. Mr. Taussig almost started, in spite of the rigid control that was one of his chief characteristics. He blew a long ribbon of fragrant smoke between his soft lips. "Whose room? And how do you know?" he asked easily. "Yours," Graciela said. "I know because I went up to my cousin Luisa's room to borrow some powder, pow-der, and I saw her come out of her room and go to youn." " Mr. Porter is waiting, Miss Heywood." "Thank you." Anne put down the phone. Through the open transom she heard Mr. Taussig's bell ring almost at once. That meant that Russell Porter was picking them up together. She went quickly over to the dressing table and looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was too pale. She shouldn't have worn a white dress a red one would have been better. But it was too late now. She knew Mr. Taussig was waiting until he heard her door open. Her hands were cold, her knees were shaking a little. They drew up in the drive in front of a brightly lighted house perched up on stilts in a tropical jungle of flowers and trees. Concrete steps led up to a wide veranda that ran around three sides of it. Anne thought she'd never seen anything more charming. It was gay with brightly flowered chintz and bamboo bam-boo furniture as cool and airy as it was comfortable. "Oh, Sue, this is lovely 1" Anne cried. Sue Porter came eagerly forward. She kissed Anne on the cheek and held out her hand to Mr. Taussig. "This is Terry, Anne." She introduced a slightly pudgy young man in a crumpled white dinner coat, his black tie slightly askew. He scrambled to his feet. Then his eyes popped with pleasure. "By Jove, Sue you didn't tell me ahe was a knock-out," he exclaimed. "But they don't have to bankrupt the Island." "Foreign investors built up the sugar industry." "But they take all the money out of the country." (That was Barbara again.) "But they took the risk." "The natives won't work." "You couldn't work on a diet of rice and beans if any either. You couldn't cut a day's cane on a diet of beefsteak and spinach." (That was Barbara too.) "They don't raise any of their own food. It's all imported." "I don't see why we don't just pull out and give them back their Island. Just show 'em." "They'd love it." (It was Barbara Bar-bara speaking.) Sue looked helplessly at Anne. It had become a conversational free-for-all in which the guest of honor was unable to get a word in edgewise. edge-wise. He Sat smiling blandly. Only once or twice Anne, turning her head, caught the glint of the tall candles in, their crystal hurricane globes on his thick lenses. He was watching her there was no doubt of that, because he looked away again without ever really meeting her eyes. Each time she had a chill little feeling in the pit of her stomach. "They, thought we were awful, going go-ing without stockings. Now they all do it themselves." "I remember, my father nearly died .when he discovered I didn't have stockings on," Barbara said. "He hadn't noticed it the first couple cou-ple of months. My aunts in Boston still think it's awful." Sue smiled enchantingly. " Don't pay any attention to Barbara, Mr. Taussig. She's just being contrary." She put her napkin down on the table. This was the moment she'd been waiting for. The men could sit and talk, and Russell would have his chance. "Shall we let the men have their coffee here?" She started to get up, but Mr. Taussig was out of his chair. "Frankly, I prefer coffee with the ladies," he said blandly. Sue had not gone to Miss Oakley's Oak-ley's for nothing. "How wonderful!" She smiled brightly and led the way through the dining room back to the porch. Anne glanced at her watch. It was almost time to go. The party had settled into three groups, with Barbara and Terry and a silent young man .who became voluble only at the mention of a race horse in one of them in the center of the porch. Behind them Ben was with Sue and Russell talking to Mr. Taussig. Taus-sig. The others were playing some kind of game inside the living room. Anne was listening to Terry- and Barbara arguing the distance to a place she'd never heard of. She was listening more intently to the conversation behind her. Mr. Taussig Taus-sig was saying it couldn't be done. Anne had missed what it .was. Russell Rus-sell Porter was insisting that it could. "We're doing it," he was saying. "Right here, now. It's a wonder Colonel De Voe didn't show it to you this afternoon." "There was so much to see," Mr. Taussig said. "Our time was limited. limit-ed. My point is that it's one of those engineering dreams that's a practical impossibility. If you can do it you're a wizard, my boy." "That's just what he is, Mr. Taussig!" Taus-sig!" Sue cried. "Darling, why don't you show him those drawings you have, with all the specifications in them. Then he'd believe you." It seemed to Anne that there was an abrupt little silence. She couldn't be sure, because Terry was trying to beat down Barbara's monotonous resistance to something by banging on the table. "I tell you it's crazy!" he was shouting. Then she heard Russell Porter saying, "I'd like to, Mr. Taussig, but they're not supposed sup-posed to be shown around. You know how it is." "Certainly," Mr. Taussig said. "And very wisely, in my opinion." "But Russell ..." "Run along, little girl, and look after your children. I hear one of them squalling." The interruption was affectionate, but firm. Anne watched Sue's face as she went a , little blindly but still smiling toward the living room. She was almost in tears. Barbara got up too. She held her hand out to Anne. "You're coming to the Club tomorrow, to-morrow, aren't you? Five o'clock?" Her expressionless green eyes were fixed past Anne on the three men in the corner. "Russell's all right," she said. Anne started. A faint smile, if such a brief shadowy shad-owy thing could be called a smile, moved in Barbara's face. " Ben, we have a home of our own," she called. "Good-by, Russell. Rus-sell. It's been nice. Where's Sue? Can we take Anne home?" Sue came gaily out of the house. "But darling it's early!" "No, it's late." Mr. Taussig came forward with Ben and his host. "This has been delightful, Mrs. Porter," he said. He took her hand and smiled. "I like iit man of yours," he added, lowering his voice. (TO BE CONTINUED) "If you don't care what kind of a girl you marry." "Ben's with Electrical Products," she added, as he went back to the bar. "He's nice." "Have you been here long?" Anne asked. "Three years." "Do you like it?" "Love it. I hate to think of going home not until the children have learned Spanish so well they'll never forget it" "Sue says she hates it." "Sue hasn't learned that great big fish used to be little tiny fish' tucked safely under the edge of a rock where the big fish wouldn't eat them up," Barbara answered. " Is it me her barracuda doesn't like . . . or is it you?" "What do you mean?" "The guest of honor. But it must be you. He's looking the other way. It was what they call 'veiled scrutiny' scruti-ny' in books, I think." Anne turned away. She had almost al-most decided that Miguel hadn't told him. She wasn't so sure now. Not if Barbara was right . . . and Barbara was probably pretty generally gen-erally right. "I think our hostess is ready," Barbara said. She pulled herself up out of the deep cushioned chair. Sue had come out on the porch. "Come along, children," she said. "Anne, you didn't meet everybody, did you how awful!" "She's coming to the Club tomorrow tomor-row and she'll meet everybody then," Ben said cheerfully. "They'll all look different anyway." Anne sat at Russell's right at the foot of the table. Terry was next to her. Barbara was on the other side next to Mr. Taussig at Sue's right. "Of course it will ruin the Island," Is-land," Sue was saying. " She's talking about the law to prevent corporations from owning more than five hundred acres of land," Terry said, tackling his lobster lob-ster thermidor. Anne listened. She couldn't distinguish the voices behind be-hind the scraps of conversation that pelted around her ears like rain on a tin roof. "But something has to be done, doesn't it?" (That was Barbara.) |