Flight to the Lonesome Place

by Alexander Key

  “No he won’t,” she said.

  “Who’s going to stop him?”

  “I will. I’ll put the eye on him.”

  “But—but you can’t. You’ll be getting off the ship before I do. You’ll be gone.”

  “No I won’t. Ramón—he’s Bernardo’s chauffeur—is supposed to meet us at the dock, but he’s always late. And if he isn’t late enough, I’ll do something brattish to—to hold things up.” She gave him a pinched, wistful little smile, and added, “I’ve just got to protect you, Boy Blue, because I’ve an awful feeling I’ll be needing your help soon.”

  He didn’t feel any better in spite of all she had told him, but he couldn’t help liking her more. If only she wasn’t quite so looped on magic, he thought suddenly, she’d really be a wonderful person.

  The curious haystack hills were clearly in view in another hour. She was pointing out to him the end of the mountain chain where he would have to go, when they were interrupted by Josip.

  “Young sir,” the steward purred,” the captain would like to see you right away.”

  Ronnie wondered grimly how much Josip had learned, other than his identity. At least no one else seemed to have had any second thoughts about him. The Blue Boy had hardly been mentioned in the dining salon; and apparently, because he ate at the Señora’s table, everyone assumed he was a member of her group.

  In his office the captain said, “I’ll be going on the bridge soon, and won’t see you till we dock. So I thought we’d better talk over a plan of action now. Then there’s the problem of your money.”

  Ronnie chewed thoughtfully on his lip. “If—if you’ve a steamship agent in Mayagüez, maybe you’d better turn that envelope over to him. It’ll be safer than if I carried it, and I can get it any time later if I need it.”

  “Good idea. But why Mayagüez? Have you given up the school idea and decided on the cottage?”

  “Yes, sir. And I thought I’d look up Black Luis.”

  “H’mm.” The blue eyes bored into him. “I like that. And son, please, keep in touch with me by way of the ship’s agent. It could be important. Also—” The captain thrust two envelopes across the desk. “You may need identification as Ron McHenry; these letters will take care of it.”

  The blue eyes fastened on him again. “Now, how do you feel about going ashore?”

  Ronnie swallowed. “I’m scared.”

  “Well, if we work things right, I’m sure you can get away safely. I’ve a simple little plan. It merely requires getting a cab to the dock.”

  Ronnie, a bit dazed, returned finally to his stateroom and began packing his belongings into his zipper bag. There wasn’t much. Just his extra shirt and a few articles of clothing he had washed out the night before, and his jacket, which he wouldn’t need in the tropic heat. He was tempted to leave it behind, then realized it might be useful if he ever managed to get out of San Juan. If …

  He could still feel the shock that went through him when he heard the captain’s plan. It was exactly the way he had dreamed it. Even the captain’s phrases were the same: Stay aboard … keep out of sight … little business … but it won’t take me ten minutes … I’ll bring a cab …

  It was one thing to have a startlingly real dream, but quite another to begin experiencing the reality of it. The rest would follow soon. The ship would dock right after lunch, and it was nearly lunchtime now.

  When the gong rang he forced himself to go down, though he had no appetite. Across from him Ana María Rosalita sat picking at her food, merely pretending to eat. Finally she smiled almost timidly, and whispered, “Please, I know how you feel, but you mustn’t be afraid. Didn’t I promise it would be all right?”

  Before he could reply, the Señora, whom he had not seen since they were passing Cuba, came in and took her place like a disgruntled gorgon. In her presence the tiny girl seemed to shrivel.

  In that moment something strange happened to Ronnie. Ana María Rosalita had troubles enough for anyone, yet she had put them entirely aside and thought only of trying to help him. Had he ever done that for anyone? He realized he hadn’t. And it came to him all at once that fear for his own safety would never give his courage a boost. Only concern for others would do that.

  He ignored the gorgon’s scowl and said, “Thank you, camarada. I—I know I’ll make it now. And don’t you worry about things, because I’m going to be near.”

  When Ronnie stood on deck a little later, bag in hand, his newly gained courage almost deserted him. The Cristobal Colón was now creeping through the narrow entrance into San Juan Bay. As he watched the grim old fort and the city wall slide past on his left, his heart started to pound, and everything around him seemed to begin moving in slow motion.

  It continued that way while the vessel rounded the point and inched toward her dock in the ancient part of the city. Even after she was tied up and the accommodation ladder lowered, the gangs of waiting stevedores swarmed aboard and started work as if attuned to a different rhythm than his own. From his vantage point in the deck shelter, where he could study the dock area without being seen, he watched the Johnsons go ashore followed by several crewmen carrying baggage. Behind them, very slowly, came the Señora and Ana María Rosalita. At last came the captain.

  Ronnie’s hands became unsteady as the captain vanished within the warehouse. His attention was now on the two men who had appeared at the edge of the nearest doorway. They were the same men he had seen in New Orleans. And they wore the exact clothing they had had on in the dream—workman’s apparel that allowed them to fit into their present surroundings without attracting attention.

  Their presence here in the flesh was bad enough. But it was the abrupt appearance of the third man that jolted Ronnie. The neat, trim figure that crossed the dock and began climbing the accommodation ladder was so changed as to be hardly recognizable as the Peter Pushkin he knew. But it was Peter with a haircut, and without the atrocious red beard.

  Ronnie swallowed, and fled.

  His flight took him inside and down two decks, straight into the arms of Josip.

  “Not so fast, young sir,” the cabin steward purred, seizing him firmly. “I know who you are.”

  “Lemme go!” Ronnie cried.

  “You’d better listen to me, boy! You need help—and I’m the one to hide you. For five hundred dollars—”

  In sudden fury, in which dream and reality seemed to have switched places, Ronnie kicked hard, and with his free hand swung his bag with all his strength. A quick jerk, and he twisted loose. In seconds he had scrambled down a ladder to the first deck, and was racing forward to where a cargo net had just been rigged.

  By the time he reached the startled winch operator he had money in his hand. It was enough money to open any stevedore’s eyes, and before the unloading gang quite realized what was happening, Ronnie had jumped into the net and was being swung over the vessel’s side.

  As the busy dock came up to meet him, he glanced back toward the men who had been watching for him. They were still there, but nearly two hundred feet away now. With so much activity going on, it seemed unlikely that they would catch sight of him from this distance. But suddenly the shorter man glanced up, went rigid, then snatched a weapon from under his shirt.

  This was the moment of terror when the dream had ended.

  Only, he was facing the real thing now, and the terror continued. For all at once the net stopped moving, and he found himself suspended in midair, a perfect target.

  It was only for seconds, while a moving truck crept past to the loading zone. In those seconds Ronnie felt himself turning to ice. But the expected shot failed to come. The man with the weapon, strangely, seemed to be having difficulty pointing it at him.

  Could it be that Ana María Rosalita was actually able to protect him?

  As the net started to move again he caught a vague glimpse of her, standing back in the shadow within the building. Then his feet touched the dock, and in the next instant he was clawing his way out of the net
and running.

  He dodged past stacks of boxes and a moving truck, darted into the warehouse, and slowed for a quick look over his shoulder. The man with the weapon was no longer in range of his vision, but he caught sight of the Señora and saw her strike the small figure beside her. It was a vicious blow that must have caught the tiny girl entirely off guard, for it sent her staggering to the floor.

  Ronnie gasped and stopped, his free hand clenching in a sudden flare of hate. Then he was aware of movement toward him out of the corner of his eye, and he whirled and began racing away between the piles of freight.

  There were two ways out to the distant street, as he had learned from a chart of the warehouse area in the captain’s office. His best chance, he decided, was to avoid the main entrance and dodge around to the side gate, which was hidden beyond mounds of building supplies.

  It took long anxious minutes even to bring the side gate in sight. By the time he was through it, and had made his way to the street, his sweat-soaked shirt was clinging to him and he was gasping for breath. Nor was it just a street he now found himself on, but a roaring avenue jammed with traffic.

  Desperately he began trotting along the edge of it, watching for an empty cab. The first five rushed past, ignoring him. But the sixth saw him in time to slow down and stop, and he scrambled gratefully inside.

  “Take me to—to Arecibo,” he said finally, when he could find breath to speak.

  6

  MARLOWE

  FROM HIS BRIEF STUDY of the road map the captain had given him, Ronnie guessed Arecibo to be about fifty miles to the west, or roughly halfway to the Beach of the Three Brothers. It was a fairly large town, he knew, so it ought to be a good place to switch cabs. The next most likely spot for a change would be Aguadilla, on the west coast.

  There were a number of smaller towns, but it seemed better to avoid these. The fewer the people where he stopped, the greater the chance of being noticed and remembered. With three searchers after him, not counting Josip, things were bad enough already. Especially when one of the three happened to be Peter Pushkin.

  Ronnie’s hand trembled as he found his handkerchief and began mopping his hot face. Peter! The only seemingly false note in last night’s dream had been Peter’s appearance in it. But the sudden reality of Peter, striding across the dock in disguise, had given him a jolt he would feel for a long time.

  Or maybe the present, neatly trimmed person was the real Peter, and the red-bearded tutor had been a disguise. It seemed more likely. But why would a disguised Peter Pushkin take a job as tutor to the Blue Boy? Why?

  Why had Peter allowed the company to offer such a huge reward when he knew it would put the Blue Boy in danger? And why had Peter been so conveniently absent that terrible night at the hotel? Yes, and what was he doing on the dock at the same time with the two gunmen? Did it just happen that way?

  After his exertion in the heat, Ronnie’s head had begun to itch annoyingly under the wig, but he forgot it momentarily under a chilling new thought.

  There was a simple, easy, and speedy way the Blue Boy could be found and caught. All the hundreds of police stations throughout Puerto Rico were under the head of the main station in San Juan. Peter had only to go to the main station, tell the right kind of a story, and in a few minutes every police car on the island would be watching for a cab carrying the runaway Blue Boy.

  But did Peter know this?

  With his eye on the driver, Ronnie loosened his wig and ran an unsteady hand through his hair. It helped only briefly. Then he tried to ignore his discomfort by concentrating on the road ahead. They were out of San Juan now, going through lush, mountainous country that made him think of Hawaii. He had thought the traffic would ease a little with the city behind them, but if anything, it was worse and the pace even madder. Suddenly his attention went to the curious little cone-shaped mountains rising close on either side. They were in the haystack hills.

  Almost instantly his eye was caught by a white slash in the jungle-covered side of the nearest cone. It was a large shallow cave, and the white was the exposed limestone. In the next few minutes he counted nearly a dozen such caves, and realized there must be hundreds of them in the region.

  Could Black Luis be hiding in such a cave?

  He was still thinking about this a half hour later, and wondering about Marlowe, when the cab roared over a series of bridges and came to an abrupt stop on the edge of a sprawling town.

  That this was Arecibo he knew without asking, for he had glimpsed the name on a sign farther back. But something seemed to be holding up traffic in the distance.

  “What’s wrong ahead?” he asked uneasily.

  “We’ll never know,” the driver said, shrugging. “It is the police again. They stop us and look us over once in a while, but they tell us nothing. They like their little secrets. But it could be Communists.”

  “Communists?” said Ronnie, hurriedly reaching for his money.

  “Yes. They come from Santo Domingo, do their wickedness, and go back this way to maybe escape on a boat at Aguadilla.”

  Ronnie pressed the fare and a generous tip into the driver’s hand, and reached for the door. “I think I’ll walk the rest of the way. It’s only a block or two.”

  The man winked. “You don’t like the police, eh?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Ronnie, winking back. “It’s just that I’m a Communist, a very dangerous one, and I’ve orders to blow up all the police stations on the island.”

  “Good! A worthy task! And if the police should ask me, I will tell them only that my fare was a student, home on vacation. I will not mention that I picked him up near the docks, and that his face was very pale for an islander.”

  Ronnie hastily plucked another bill from his pocket and thrust it into the other’s hand. “Thank you, friend. You must not frighten the poor police. My paleness is caused by a dreadful disease, and I’ve just escaped from the most unspeakable place—”

  “Get along with you!” chuckled the driver, and Ronnie slipped gratefully away and hurried down a narrow, balconied side street away from the traffic.

  The police might not be looking for the Blue Boy, but it was a chance he couldn’t take. Cold-eyed Peter should not be underestimated, ever.

  Around the corner on the next street, Ronnie paused in the shade under an overhanging window covered with grillwork and considered what to do. When he was in San Juan in January he had wanted badly to visit Arecibo and see the giant radio-telescope in the mountains on the other side of town. But there hadn’t been time. He had a new film to make, studies to finish, and engagements waiting in Miami, New York, and Buenos Aires. Now here he was actually in Arecibo, and still there was no possibility of gratifying one of his greatest wishes. At the moment it was of far more importance that he do something about his furiously itching scalp, which had suddenly become unbearable. And he was thirsty. All the way from San Juan his thirst had been growing. When he had soothed his burning head, he wanted to sit in a cool place and drink tall frosted glasses of ice-cold water.

  It was the memory of a paragraph he had read about a well-known café here that drove him doggedly up the hot street, then back over the main route. He found the café on the corner, and studied it a moment before entering, noting that it had a side entrance opening upon a parking lot where cabs could be hired. Inside he hesitated, knowing he was taking a risk. Everyone crossing the island stopped here. Surely Peter would, if he came in this direction.

  But his parched throat and the blessed coolness from air conditioning lured him on. He went into the lavatory first, and washed his hot face and managed to partially cool his burning scalp. Then he found a seat at the long serpentine counter. The place was crowded, even though it was now the middle of the afternoon, and every waiter was rushed. When one finally came, he ordered a lime drink, for which he suddenly had a craving, and a glass of ice water.

  “And please,” he begged, “bring the water first.”

  The waiter brou
ght the drink first, and apparently forgot him. Ronnie took an eager swallow from the too-green mixture in the glass, and set it down, revolted. Instead of being made from fresh limes, which grew all over the island, it was artificially flavored. And worse, it was sickeningly sweet.

  All this time he had been keeping a wary eye on the entrance. Now he glimpsed a short, slender figure coming into the crowded foyer. He went rigid and stared. It looked like Josip, but with so many people between them he couldn’t be sure. Then he made out the man’s bristling yellow hair, and part of his face. It was Josip.

  In his sudden wave of rage, frustration, and despair, Ronnie almost cried out and jumped from his seat. His first inclination was to defy Josip. But almost instantly his very logical mind was cutting through emotion, seeing the dangers, and deciding on the best course to avoid them. In the next breath he was forcing himself to swallow more of the unpleasant lime drink while he drew money from his pocket and tossed it on the counter. Then, bag in hand and head lowered, he was off the stool and moving swiftly to the side door.

  In the parking lot he started for the nearest taxi, but abruptly changed his mind when he saw an island bus taking on passengers. He raced to it and barely managed to get aboard before it pulled away.

  Paying his way to Mayagüez, he settled down in a rear seat and tried to compose himself. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that Josip had seen him leave the dock area, and had managed to catch a cab in time to follow him. The steward’s job, he knew, was only temporary, and Josip was due to leave the ship at San Juan. Ordinarily such a man would have stayed in the city. But here he was in Arecibo, which meant he must have taken a cab to get here. Would Josip have spent the money to come this far by cab unless he had visions of reward?

  Suddenly Ronnie was dismayed by another thought. What if Josip had run into Peter on the ship, and made a deal with him? It was entirely possible.

  Ronnie began to regret his impulse to get on the bus. At first it had seemed safer, for passengers on a crowded bus are seldom remembered. But suppose Josip, or someone with Josip, had seen him dash outside and jump aboard?