Vane Pursuit

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Yes, dear.” Helen was back at the purple diary. Peter left her to it and concentrated on his driving. He didn’t quite know what else to concentrate on.

  “Drat, I wish she’d left some kind of clue as to who this mastermind may be or at least what he looks like.”

  “He’s short, fat, bowlegged, and given to wearing fancy uniforms,” Helen replied absently.

  “Where does it say that?”

  “Woman on Horseback, William E. Barrett, Doubleday, 1952. Though there may have been an earlier printing in 1938. I must verify the reference.”

  “Don’t bother on my account. Your thesis being, I gather, that since Elisa Alicia considers herself a reincarnation of Ella Lynch, she’d naturally choose a paramour who’s a reincarnation of Francisco Lopez?”

  “Well, of course. Wouldn’t you? I can’t imagine what she ever saw in Guthrie. He’s too tall, too thin, too unpretentious, and much too good-looking.”

  “It’s obvious to me what she saw in him,” Peter replied waspishly. “Namely and to wit, a sucker. Guthrie was able to provide her with a respectable identity and a base of operations which has no doubt doubled as a hideout whenever she’s needed one, as I can’t imagine she hasn’t. God, I’ll be glad when he’s rid of that harpy.”

  “Yes, darling.” Helen had her nose in the diary again. “I wish I knew more Spanish obscenity. Those night classes I attended in California didn’t equip me for this sort of translation.”

  “ ‘Dash dash dash you, Harold Ramorez, what did you bite me for?’ “ murmured Peter.

  “I hope the sheriff in Hocasquam can interpret dashes,” Helen retorted.

  “He dashed well better had, though I’m sure he won’t be the final arbiter of this case.”

  “Who will?”

  “Quién sabe? I expect Maine and Massachusetts will just keep passing the buck from echelon to echelon until somebody sees the chance for juicy headlines and grabs it by the horns. Want to make a pit stop? Speak now or forever hold your—”

  “Peter. I’m getting enough scatology from Elisa Alicia. Yes, I’d like to stop. I feel like doing something mad and reckless, like buying a Pepsi-Cola and a bag of potato chips.”

  “Gad, woman! Turn you loose in the wilds of Maine and you come out a reincarnation of Pearl White. Very well, my love, I’ll stand you a Pepsi, but I’m damned if I’ll help you drink it.”

  “I wouldn’t let you anyway. You’re driving, don’t forget.”

  Guthrie, who’d been tagging Peter all the way from Sasquamahoc, pulled in directly after them. Somehow or other, the entire party wound up sitting at the counter eating banana splits. There was, Iduna reminded them, a lot of potassium in a banana.

  Thus fortified, they proceeded southward into Massachusetts and westward to Balaclava Junction. Iduna wanted to go straight home in order to get in a few preliminary cooking licks toward Daniel’s homecoming feast, so Catriona and Guthrie delivered her and her car to Valhalla, then walked across campus to the Crescent.

  By the time they got to the Shandys’, Helen and Peter had made their peace with Jane Austen, who was not a cat to hold a grudge beyond reasonable limits. Helen was opening the mail, which Mary Enderble had been scrupulously fetching from the mailbox and stacking on the dining room table. Peter was on the phone to the Balaclava County Fane and Pennon.

  “When did you last— That long, eh? Well, as soon as he calls in, please tell him Professor Shandy’s back home and wants very much to get in touch with him. He knows my number.”

  Peter gave it anyway and came back to join his wife and friends, considerably disgruntled. “Drat the fellow, why can’t he stay put once in a while? Even Swope’s editor doesn’t know where he’s gone or what he’s up to. The old coot sounds pretty teed off about it, I may add. Which reminds me, Catriona, you may feel a tad miffed when you get your phone bill. I owe you for a couple of long-distance calls.”

  He moved to take out his wallet, but Catriona stopped him. “Not to worry, Peter. I’ll take them off my expense account.”

  “Would it be unsporting of me to ask on what grounds?”

  “Research, naturally. You don’t think for one moment I’m going to let a plot like this go to waste, do you? I won’t tell it quite the way it happened and none of you will recognize yourselves by the time I get through, but you’ll be there in spirit. I think I’ll have a beautiful red-haired heroine with skinny hips and a perfectly flat stomach. The type who can eat a banana split without experiencing instantaneous tightening of the waistband.”

  “Yes, why don’t you?” said Helen. “She’ll be an inspiration to us all. I’m going to make some tea and find out whether there’s anything to eat in the house. Unless you’d prefer to try the faculty dining room?”

  “You three go ahead over there if you’re hungry,” said Peter. “I’ve got to wait here in case Swope calls back.”

  Nobody wanted to leave him alone, so they all four crowded into the small kitchen and ate fried egg sandwiches, which Guthrie had suggested as the most incongruous follow-up to a banana split appetizer that he could think of. Helen was breaking out her emergency stock of ginger snaps to go with the tea when Cronkite Swope finally telephoned.

  “Gosh, Professor, I’m glad I caught you. Can you meet me in front of the soap works in fifteen minutes?”

  “Has it quit sudsing?”

  “Pretty much, but you’d better wear your old clothes.”

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  “I can’t tell you on the phone. Top secret maneuvers.”

  “How long is the secret going to take? We have out-of-town guests.”

  “I can’t tell you that, either. Maybe quite a while. I just don’t know. But you’ve got to come, Professor. We really need you. Besides, you’ll hate yourself if you don’t.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  What else could he say? But drat it, why now? Peter wouldn’t have minded a short rest after that long drive, and a chance to catch up on his cat patting. Helen was looking a trifle pinched around the mouth as he hung up the phone.

  “What was that about?”

  “Swope wants me to meet him over at Lumpkin Upper Mills right away. I’m sorry, everybody, but he’s all wrought up about something and he wouldn’t tell me what. I asked how long we’d be, but he doesn’t seem to know. Excuse me, everybody, I’ve go to run upstairs and change out of this dratted green shirt.”

  “Sure, Pete,” said Guthrie. “Say, is there any place around here where Cat and I can rent a car? She and I decided on the way down that we ought to be the ones to go to New Haven and see if we can spot Elisa. We’d stand a better chance than the police would of recognizing her, specially if Elisa’s in disguise, which I wouldn’t put past her. Besides, I’ve got a few things I want to say to that dame before they lug her off.”

  “You’d better be careful how you approach her,” Peter warned. “She might have a gun on her by now.”

  Guthrie snorted. “She wears her clothes so cussed tight a gun would stick out like a sore thumb. Don’t fret yourself about me, Pete. I’m not aiming to put Cat in any danger, nor myself either. What about that car?”

  Helen was already on the phone. “Charlie Ross has one he’ll rent you, but you’ll have to bring it back here,” she reported. “That will be fine, because then we’ll get to see you again. Peter will take you to Charlie’s. I’d go, but I have to prepare that written translation of the diary, which will take me the rest of the day, at least. Do be careful, all of you.”

  “Never mind us,” Peter retorted. “You be careful. I don’t like leaving you alone here with that passionate purple time bomb. I’m going to call Fred Ottermole to come and sit with you till we get back.”

  “Peter, that’s ridiculous. Elisa Alicia doesn’t know we have her diary, and I doubt if Paraguay knows it exists. Oh, all right, if it will make you feel any better. Fred can keep Jane company. He’s good with cats.”

  Peter made sure Fred Ottermole was available, the
n he ran upstairs, changed the green shirt for a sober gray and brown plaid, kissed his wife, tickled Jane’s whiskers, and steered his friends to Charlie Ross’s garage. Charlie had the rental car all gassed up and ready to go. While he was refilling the Shandy vehicle’s depleted tank, Peter bought a couple of peanut bars from the slot machine. He was not about to be caught foodless again in the midst of whatever escapade Cronkite Swope might be about to lead him into. Thus prepared, he told Charlie to put the gas on his monthly bill, and took off hell-for-leather toward Lumpkinton.

  From a distance, the soap factory’s ruins in their nest of grimy suds looked like a mouthful of neglected teeth with pyorrhea around the gums. Up close, they probably looked a good deal worse, but Peter didn’t stop to notice. Cronkite Swope had been standing right where he’d said he’d be. When he saw Peter’s car, he came running up the street, his camera on its strap thumping against his chest with every step. Profiting from sad experience, he’d eschewed his usual natty garb in favor of blue jeans and a plain gray sweatshirt that might actually have been Miss Binks’s. Peter pulled over to the curb. Cronkite leaped in beside him and fastened his seat belt.

  “Hi, Professor! Gosh, I’m glad you could make it. You’re just in the nick of time.”

  “For what?”

  “The invasion of Woeful Ridge. That’s what I couldn’t tell you on the phone. It’s top secret. The National Guard are moving in and the SWAT team are set to attack in precisely”—he glanced at his watch—”thirty-seven minutes. We’d better step on it. Cut through South Plum Street, why don’t you? I know a shortcut.”

  “My God!”

  That was all Peter had time to say until Cronkite had finished directing him through a spiderweb of back streets and out to the highway they had traversed together such an amazingly short time ago. Something in the vicinity of fifty years would have been a more reasonable lapse, Peter felt.

  Once they were on a straight road, he could relax enough to talk. “What are you talking about, Swope? Who organized this brouhaha? You make it sound like a full-scale military operation.”

  “It is one.”

  Cronkite was checking his camera as thoroughly as a mother cat washes her kitten’s ears. He’d got some memorable news photographs in the past; but this, he clearly felt, would be an opportunity to surpass them all.

  “What’s going to happen, Professor, is, first the National Guard unit cordons off Woeful Ridge. Then the Lumpkinton SWAT team moves up behind the ridge under riot shields. Then Chief Olson rides up in an armored car with a bullhorn on it and yells to the survivalists to surrender.”

  “Chief Olson? How in Sam Hill did that tub of lard get in on an operation like this?”

  “He had to be. I went over and talked to Mrs. Wetzel, the county district attorney, as you told me to. Mrs. Wetzel said we had to refer the case back to Chief Olson because that’s how the system works. But Olson’s been terrific. Honest, Professor, I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.”

  “Don’t tell me he was the one who thought of getting the National Guard involved.”

  “He sure did. Or maybe it was his wife. One of Mrs. Olson’s cousins is the local commandant over at Clavaton Armory. But it was Olson himself who thought of organizing a SWAT team. He got a couple of experts out from Boston to show them how and they’ve been secretly drilling ever since Tuesday afternoon. They’re only going to shoot rubber bullets. Olson doesn’t want any of the survivalists to get killed because he’s afraid they might turn out to be some of Mrs. Olson’s cousins.”

  “A point to consider,” said Peter. “And where do you and I fit into the scheme of things?”

  “Well, naturally, Chief Olson wants a representative of the press along to cover the story and I’m the only one who’s in on the secret. And he wants you because you were with me the first time. We have to show them exactly where the ammo dump is. That’s what Chief Olson calls it.”

  “Do we go in shooting rubber bullets?”

  “Oh, no. We ride in the armored car with Chief Olson and his driver. The only thing is, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to take any decent photographs through that bullet-proof glass. Do you think I’ll be allowed to roll the window down a little?”

  He damned well wouldn’t if Peter Shandy had anything to say about it. Peter was wondering what made Olson think he could drive his armored car all the way in to the cache, and just how effective those riot shields might be against real bullets, Cronkite must have noticed that Peter wasn’t sharing his enthusiasm. “What’s the matter, Professor? You’re not worried, are you?”

  “I admit to being a trifle concerned about what President Svenson’s going to say when he gets back from Sweden and learns we participated in a fracas of this magnitude without letting him in on it.” Better a liar than a branded poltroon, Peter thought—though in fact it wasn’t a lie at all because Svenson would be apoplectic.

  “Yeah, but if he were here they wouldn’t need the National Guard or the SWAT team,” Cronkite replied, also with perfect truth. “Then the raid wouldn’t have the same dramatic visual impact. I’m hoping to get some really good shots.”

  “I just hope you don’t intercept any good shots,” Peter retorted. “And myself likewise.”

  “Oh, they’ve probably got extra bulletproof vests and stuff we can use.” Cronkite was beginning to sound a shade less-ebullient. “I know what you mean, though. It wasn’t much fun out there in the swamp, was it? Gosh, I hope Miss Binks is safely under cover. I couldn’t tell Olson about her, of course. I did sneak over last night and hide a note under her bicycle. I don’t suppose she goes there all that often, but I didn’t know what else to do. I knew I’d never find any of her rabbit holes, she’s got them so well hidden. Anyway, it seemed sort of intrusive even to try.”

  “Furthermore, you’d have been a damned fool to go prowling around those woods at night by yourself,” Peter growled. “Not to change the subject, but has Sam Snell come to any decision yet about reopening the soap factory?”

  “Yes, he’s decided to go off on his yacht and think it over. I tried to get an interview with him yesterday morning, but he was in a tearing hurry to get away and wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “His yacht. Where in Sam Hill does Snell keep a yacht?” Balaclava County was rather noticeably short on navigable waterways.

  “Oh, he belongs to a yacht club somewhere down around New Haven so he can hobnob with the rich Connecticut and New York bunch. He was yammering about having to meet some friends, and it must be well over a two-hour drive from here, I should think. I’ve never done it myself. Neither has he, of course. His chauffeur takes him.” Cronkite got enough venom into the word “chauffeur” to supply a colony of vipers.

  “M’yes,” said Peter thoughtfully. “And what’s happening in your family situation?”

  “It ought to be starting to perk up about now.” Cronkite reached under his sweatshirt and pulled out a copy of the Balaclava County Fane and Pennon, still smelling of fresh printer’s ink. “We’re an afternoon paper, you know, and we’ve just begun to hit the streets with the story you called in. How does that headline grab you?”

  Peter glanced over at the paper. “ ‘Arson Suspects Caught in Maine. Priceless Lumpkin Weather Vane Recovered in Wreck of Pirate Ship.’ Great Scott, what does it say?”

  “ ‘According to a reliable informant’—that’s you, Professor—’a Clavaton man apprehended in Maine on a charge of attempted murder is also the arsonist who set fire to the Lumpkin Soap Works, in an attempt to cover up the theft of the Praxiteles Lumpkin weather vane that has been a Lumpkinton landmark for the past century and a half. He and four accomplices were attempting to deliver the weather vanes to an undisclosed destination in a stolen boat when they were picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard working in cooperation with the Hocasquam police. The five are now in custody awaiting arraignment, and the famous old man in the tub, along with two other Lumpkin masterpieces valued at upward of $100,000 apiece, are being held as
evidence. More details will be reported as soon as they are available.’”

  Cronkite tossed the paper into the backseat. “I’m sure grateful to you for calling in the story. It would have been nice if we’d got in a few more details, but at least this ought to keep Brink from being tarred and feathered. Do you honestly think they’ve got the right guy?”

  “I know it for a positive fact. His name is Roland Childe and he comes from Clavaton. He answers Huntley’s description and he did exactly what your brother described him as doing. I expect we’re going to learn that one of the other four men had been planted in the factory as a workman. This man, whose code name is probably Argentina, Colombia, or Venezuela, most likely sneaked up to the roof under cover of darkness, detached the weather vane from its base, and lowered it over the side of the building to a confederate waiting below, who was either Childe or one of the other three. The four accomplices were all ratting like mad when I last saw them, so we’ll probably have the complete facts very soon.”

  “You were in on the pinch?”

  “I was, yes. So were my wife and Iduna Stott, whom you know, along with an old friend of theirs named Catriona McBogle and my college roommate, Guthrie Fingal, who also had his weather vane stolen. I’ll give you a complete eyewitness account as soon as you have time to write it down. By that time, if I’m not grievously mistaken, you’ll be able to write the final chapter for yourself.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The first things Peter and Cronkite saw when they pulled off the highway were half a dozen National Guard trucks parked as far off the dirt road into Woeful Ridge as they could get, which wasn’t quite far enough. Peter barely managed to squeak by.

  “How far in do you think we ought to go, Swope? I’d as soon not get my car trashed in the fracas.”

  “I can’t blame you for that, Professor, after what happened to mine. Look, there’s another bunch of transport trucks up ahead. They must have brought a whole battalion. Why don’t you pull in just behind them? We can walk the rest of the way. It’s not more than half a mile from here.”