Three to Be Read

by Philip Wylie

  Some time after lunch Duff observed that Mrs. Yates was not strong enough to bear both her anxiety and the thronging people. He arranged with the police to get her moved to the home of the friend who had already taken in the youngsters. The police saw to it that neither the reporters nor the merely curious followed the Yates station wagon, and when Duff returned to the house, the crowd was thinning.

  Toward late afternoon he was alone. As far as he knew, not even the police or the FBI were keeping watch. The Yates place had served its final purpose where Ellings’ colleagues were concerned. And if Eleanor should happen to come back home somehow, he was there.

  He believed she was dead. So, he was sure, did the FBI. But Duff knew he would not give up hope until it was certain.

  He went upstairs and lay down exhaustedly. By and by he realized it was the afternoon of Harry’s funeral. They had all forgotten. No matter. He slept because a time comes when no one, whatever his anxiety, can stay awake longer. When he woke up, the sun was setting. He realized he had been dreaming about the events of the past weeks and remembered vaguely a jumble of faces, including the face of Indigo Stacey. He lay thinking about her, and it occurred to him that she represented another of the anomalies he’d sought the night before. Scotty had once said that Indigo had wanted to meet Duff even before their first date. Duff wondered why, as he had wondered at other times. He wasn’t the type for whom glamour girls fell on sight. Still, Indigo wasn’t an ordinary glamour girl. A White Russian—or at least her parents were that.

  He thought now about their history. Had Indigo’s father and her father’s brother necessarily been loyal to the Czar? Necessarily fled the Bolshevik revolution? Was it possible that a conspiracy against America could have been forming back in the days of Lenin and Trotsky? Could Indigo Stacey have had a special reason, related to everything else, for wanting to meet him? Had her “large passion” been an unsuccessful attempt to find out what he knew? Who—and where— was her uncle? Apparently, according to Mrs. Yates, her now-deceased father and her uncle had become successful businessmen.

  He phoned the house where the Yateses were staying. He said there was no news, but that he would like to ask Mrs. Yates a question. Her answers were tremulous.

  “Uncle?” she repeated perplexedly. “Why, no, Duff. He didn’t like Stacey for a name.

  He’s Stanton—a very important person in Miami. On directorates and owns businesses. As a matter of fact, he is a director of the trucking company Harry used to work for.”

  The telephone directory listed an Ivan L. Stanton, 4300 River Vista Drive, Miami Beach.

  Duff walked about in the darkening house. He thought of calling Higgins again and cast the thought aside. Stanton was too well known to be made a sudden object of suspicion.

  A connection between a young lady’s interest in a graduate student and the possibility that a leading businessman was also a criminal syndicalist would probably make Higgins believe Duff had lost the last of his senses. Besides, Eleanor would hardly be anywhere near the Stanton place, even if Stanton was connected with her disappearance and even if she was still alive. An immense underground organization could take the girl to any of a hundred places.

  And in that moment Duff had the last of his new ideas. He and the FBI had assumed they were dealing with many members of a secret society—scores, perhaps hundreds. That very assumption had made Higgins marvel that no trace of such a group had been uncovered.

  Why, Duff abruptly asked himself, would it take many people? A few could accomplish all that Duff suspected had been done, if they had time enough. At least one would have to be an engineer. But the fewer they were, the better their chance of undiscovered activity. And if one of them owned part of a trucking concern—

  Duff went to the barn garage. He backed out the Yates station wagon. There was nothing more he could do at the Yates house. The theory on which he was operating was tenuous, all but incredible, yet he had no other.

  Before driving away, he had a protective impulse. He returned to the house and wrote a note which he left on the dining-room table.

  Flagler Street was still Yuletide-gaudy in the twilight. Its red and green decorations made a gay tent. When he stopped for a traffic light, a newsboy intoned, “No trace of missing Bowl Queen! Read all about it!” He drove on. Down Biscayne Boulevard, across the Causeway.

  The inland passage gleamed with lights from big houses and the lights of Christmas trees. Many homes were strung with colored lights and many palms wore crowns of lights.

  Boats were tied up at private wharves—speedboats, luxury fishing cruisers, houseboats, yachts. He passed No. 4300, a Spanish residence set back from the street, with a seagoing yacht of its own, brightly lighted trees in its yard and a wall all around.

  Duff turned into a side street and went back on foot, furtively. There were no pedestrians. For a moment, as he peered around the ornamental coral entrance posts at the big house, Duff had a feeling of hopelessness. The estate looked civilized, secure, and so remote from what tormented him that Duff considered turning back. Then, in the first real confirmation of his frantic weeks, he saw it: a little square of whiteness, of almost luminous whiteness, in the shadow. He made as sure as he could that he was not seen, crossed the drive and picked up a woman’s folded handkerchief, not dropped on the walk, but tossed, it seemed, toward the entrance post. His fingers shook as he saw the initials: E. Y.

  He found a rubber tree that overhung the wall and, after a look in each direction, disappeared in its foliage. He dropped onto the lawn. Moving from bush to bush, he reached the big house.

  The lawn lights intensified the shadows. As long as he didn’t expose himself to the red, green, blue and yellow shimmer, they would dazzle anyone looking out of the windows.

  Duff moved along the wall behind thick crotons.

  There were four men in the library, drinking cocktails. Dinner guests, Duff imagined.

  No women. There were three or four servants in the kitchen and pantries; they, also, were men. At the back of the house, a concrete driveway and a paving-stone walk led to the dock where the yacht was moored. Two decks, about eighty feet long. A motor was running somewhere aboard her; she showed lights.

  Duff barely managed to hide himself in time when a rear door opened and a man carried a carton of supplies to the ship. The man wore a white coat and Duff heard him speak to someone on board.

  “Last load?”

  “Yeah.”

  The yacht—he couldn’t see her name—was going to sail soon. He tiptoed into the darkness of overhanging vegetation; his eyes searched the nearby grass and shrubs and planks swiftly, not very expectantly, but with care. When he saw at the base of tree a second square like the one now in his pocket, he smiled, slightly, grimly. Perhaps she had struggled to cover what she had done; perhaps she’d managed it secretively. But she’d left two tiny markers.

  He didn’t risk retrieving the second one; he was already on the pier, near the yacht.

  Instead, he walked along the sea wall a short distance, stepped over a short stretch of water and clambered aboard the boat near the bow. He could hear men talking in one of the cabins, aft; a smell of cooking came from the galley. He hid behind a lifeboat lashed to the triangle of deck at the bow.

  The back door of the big house opened; men came down the walk. Duff had an instant in which he saw with horror a silent foot close beside him before there was a shocking flash and he lost consciousness… .

  He was in pain; the moaning sound he heard was his own voice. He was tied and gagged. And he was on a moving ship. He thought for a while that he was blindfolded and then he realized the place where he lay was pitch-dark. There had been a woman in the room because he could smell perfume. Presently he thought it was the kind Eleanor used. The engines of the boat slowed. ‘ Duff heard voices outside.

  “Hello, Coast Guard!”

  Thinly, the answer came. “Making a check of outgoing boats, Mr. Stanton!”

  “Come aboard! Taki
ng a little party for a cruise!”

  “No need to board you, Mr. Stanton! Go head!”

  The water roughened. Duff knew they were outside the bay. At sea. He heard a murmur in the dark and thought it was Eleanor’s voice. Excitement surged through him. If he could let her Know he was there—that the groaning she must have heard had been his! He tried to make a clearer sound, but the gag stifled him.

  He doubted his senses then. All this was hallucination, nightmare. But she continued to murmur, and presently he noticed her complaining had a single form. A long moan and two little moans afterward. He moved his mouth in what might have been a near-grin if he had not been gagged. Telegraphy had been a hobby of his, long ago. And he’d taught the Morse code to Charles, Marian and Eleanor. If she was using it, she was signaling his initial: D. He started a series of moans to spell out “Eleanor,” but he’d gone only as far as the second e when she signaled back, “Duff.”

  So, for minutes, they alternately made sounds. In that time Eleanor stated, “Heard a noise at sinkhole. Looked. Was grabbed. Brought here. By whom?”

  He prepared to reply in the dark, but to his dismay, a third voice spoke, “Very darn ingenious’“ And all the lights went on.

  It was a big cabin with two bunks and modernistic furnishings. On a tubular chair sat a man of about sixty—tall, gray-haired, wearing a white dinner jacket—one of the men Duff had seen in the house drinking cocktails. Beyond him on the other bunk Duff could see a female knee and the brown dress Eleanor wore.

  “I’m Stanton,” the man said.

  Duff made a sound. Then, realizing Stanton had listened in on their conversation, Duff moaned in code, “Ungag us.”

  The man bent over Duff. His expression was cold. He had high cheekbones, rather pale gray eyes—features that spelled his Slavic ancestry— features vaguely familiar through newspaper photographs of important Miamians giving parties, heading charity drives.

  Stanton stared at Duff a moment and then spoke, “I’ve been waiting for you to come around ever since we cleared the Coast Guard.” He paused. “Your—visit—wasn’t precisely expected. But we took no chances. You were seen coming over my wall.” He turned to Eleanor. “I think you both know why you’re here, in a general way. My yacht is heading for an island in the Bahamas. A small one, uninhabited and far from any others. We won’t be spotted there, even from the air, because that island”—he smiled chillily—“has been arranged so that my yacht’s hidden when she’s in. It has been a transshipment point for cargo from—another country. Cargo brought here by me. Your interrogation won’t begin till we reach that island, a while before daylight. I’m glad we have Miss Yates along. We’d intended to question her. But it will be more effective to use her as a means to get the truth out of you, Bogan.”

  Duff could feel his muscles freeze. “What truth?” he painfully signaled.

  Stanton leaned over him for a moment, bracing himself on the far partition for support as the yacht rocked heavily. His face was passive. He might have been talking about the weather, which was warm, clear and breezy. “Through the unfortunate fact that you got onto Ellings’ part in our work, Bogan, my value to my cause has suffered.” He was silent as, apparently, he thought of his cause. He shrugged. “Ellings believed for some time that he had you—and the FBI—fooled by the device he’d had prepared for just such a meddlesome discovery as you made. But when we found his stratagem hadn’t been entirely effective, we had Ellings destroy himself. And went on with our—assignment.”

  The ship heaved and he balanced again. “You and Miss Yates will also be destroyed.

  But it is necessary for us to learn, before your deaths, precisely how much information about my activities the FBI has. This will be painful—as painful as certain trained men on board can make it—for you both. We cannot judge whether our work is accomplished and will stand up or whether it must be done over by others, until we have made certain that neither one of you—and you especially, Bogan—has held anything back. Anything. That means the last hours will be—rugged—for you both.”

  He went out. Minutes later three men carried Duff to another stateroom. Its light was extinguished. Sweat-soaked, Duff lay in the darkness, trying to get his mind to work at all.

  Here and there in American cities the bombs had certainly been planted and were waiting for an unknown zero hour. The FBI, the Army, all intelligent services, surely knew that now. But not at what sites, in what cities.

  After torturing and killing Eleanor and him, Stanton would be able to decide whether to flee the country or to go back to his palatial home, his business affairs, his social prominence and his underground activity. What he had to know was whether the FBI had connected him in any way with Ellings or with the gigantic man—evidently Stanton’s own disguise—or with the sinister boxes.

  Duff clamped his teeth on his gag. He writhed in the ropes that rawly confined him.

  He thought that the torture had already begun, not with the physical pain of lying there, but with the knowledge of what was to happen to the girl. For the rest of his life he was to dream occasionally about that long night of agony.

  Toward morning the ship entered calm water, slowed, reversed and touched a dock.

  Men came for him, blindfolded him and heaved him onto a stretcher. He felt the open air on his face. His bearers walked on planks and then on sand for a little way, and finally down half a dozen steps. A door slammed. He was dumped out on a cement floor. Soon the door opened again and the men moved in once more. He heard Eleanor murmur as she was tipped onto the concrete, and he heard the heavy door shut again. He tried to communicate with her as he had before, and was frightened because he got no response. She had probably fainted.

  Nearby, in an adjoining room or cell, he heard steps, grunts, thumpings, as men moved objects about. A sick stretch of time went by and then the door came open, clanged shut. Hands ripped his blindfold away. He saw plain chairs, bare tables, two kerosene lamps, four men including Stanton, Eleanor’s form on the floor and four bare walls. An underground storage room on the island, probably camouflaged above, Duff thought. “

  Start with the girl,” Stanton said to his men. “She’s out,” he added, after shaking her.

  “Or pretending.” He gave her a terrific slap—a slap that knotted Duffs nerves. “Out,” he said.

  “Open up the case. Get the ammonia.”

  One of the men fiddled in a case that Duff could not see. He smelled ammonia.

  Eleanor muttered.

  Someone took the gag from Duffs mouth. He worked his jaws and tried to lick his lips with a dry, numb tongue.

  Stanton came to him, stood over him, suddenly kicked him. “All right. Start talking.

  From the beginning, and tell everything you know. The first run through it, we won’t hurt you—unless you hold out.”

  Duff found that he could hardly speak at all. They poured a glass of water and gave it to him. Then a second. And he began to tell them the now-overfamiliar story, starting with the first instant of suspicion. He talked slowly, carefully, using time, yet without any real hope that delay would help. He told nearly all the truth because he knew that if they began to do to Eleanor such things as he had read they did, he would try to stop them with the truth anyway—or with lies or by any other method. If he had been alone, he would have held out to the end or as near the end as his sanity lasted.

  There was nothing in anything Duff knew to suggest that Higgins had traced a connection to Stanton. And only one way Higgins might learn. That Stanton was a director of the trucking company would seem, to the FBI man, irrelevant. Some big shot had to own it—some man exactly like Stanton. That Harry Ellings and Stanton had been allied in evil would not occur to any reasonable person.

  Duff finished.

  “That’s it?” Stanton asked. “All?”

  “All.”

  Stanton turned to a corner of the room that Duff couldn’t see. “Got that water boiling?”

  Duff said, “I couldn
’t add anything if you tore us both apart inch by inch! You must know that! Why not simply—kill us both?”

  Stanton smiled a little. “Just to be certain. And besides, I owe you something special.

  Because of you, they’ll find the one in New York!”

  Duff began to pray.

  And the door opened. Daylight showed.

  “Boss!” a scared voice called.

  “Hold it!”

  Stanton left. He did not return. Ten minutes later the door opened and a man shouted,

  “All out! Taking off! Leave ‘em lay! A damn Coast Guard plane went over twice!”

  Time passed. Duff thought he heard the ships engines. Then silence.

  A while after that the chamber was filled with reddish light, a thunderous blast. A pressure wave banged Duff against the floor. The concrete walls cracked. Sand gushed into the room. It turned furnace-hot. He thought he was dying and realized, seconds later, that he could see sunlight in the swirling, wrecked chamber.

  He rolled across the floor. He got his arms up against a sharp edge of rent metal. It took fifteen or twenty choking minutes to free his hands, as long again to untie his legs. Then he crawled to Eleanor. She was half covered with sand and her nose bled.

  They began digging feebly with bits of debris. Before long they had made a way out.

  The room where they had been was under the island sand. Around them now were barren dunes and coral escarpments, blue sea and blinding sun. In front, in the painful sunshine, they saw a tall stand of mangrove and the well-hidden mooring where the yacht had been tied.

  They looked out to sea and spotted the yacht, hull down.

  The island was small—not a mile around—and except for the concealed pier, the now-smoking storage cellars, a few palms, patches of weed and water birds, there was nothing but tropical ocean. Eleanor stood with him for a moment and then collapsed.

  Duff carried her away from the wreckage of the underground chambers. “More dynamite might go off.” It was the first thing he had said.