S
o now they had planned a last coup in which De Boer was to help, and then they would be done with him: the two of them, Spawn and Perona, would remain as honest citizens of Nareda, and De Boer had agreed to take himself away and pursue his banditry elsewhere.
It was a simple plan; it promised to yield a high stake quickly. A final fling at illicit activity; then virtuous reformation, with Perona marrying the little Jetta.
B
eneath the strong room at the mine, Perona and Spawn had secretly built a cleverly concealed little vault. De Boer, this night just before the midnight hour, was to attack the mine. Spawn and Perona had bribed the police guards to submit to this attack. The guards did not know the details: they only knew that De Boer and his men would make a sham attack, careful to harm none of them—and then De Boer would withdraw. The guards would report that they had been driven away by a large force. And when the excitement was over, the ingots of radiumized quicksilver would have vanished!
De Boer, making away into distant Lowland fastnesses, would obviously be supposed to have taken the treasure. But Perona, hidden alone in the strong-room, would merely carry the ingots down into the secret vault, to be disposed of at some future date. The ingots were well insured, by an international company, against theft. The Nareda government would receive one-third of that insurance as recompense for the loss of its share. Perona and Spawn would get two-thirds—and have the treasure as well.
S
uch was the present plan, into which, all unknown to me, I had been plunged. And my presence complicated things considerably. So much so that Perona grew vehement, this afternoon in the garden, explaining why. His shrill voice carried clearly to Jetta, in spite of Spawn's efforts to shut him up.
"I tell to you that Americano agent will undo us."
"How?" demanded the calmer Spawn.
"Already he has made Markes suspicious."
"Chut! You can befool Markes, Perona. You have for years been doing it."
"This meddling fellow, he has met Jetta!"
"I do not believe it." There was a sudden grimness to Spawn's tone at the thought. "I do not believe it. Jetta would not dare."
"You should have seen him flush when Markes mentioned at the conference this morning that I am to marry Jetta. No one could miss it. He has met her—I tell it to you—and it must have been last night."
"So, you say?" Jetta could see her father's face, white with suppressed rage. "You think that? And it is that this Grant might be your rival, that worries you? Not our plans for to-night, which have real importance—but worrying over a girl."
"She would not talk to me. She would not come out. He has no doubt put wild ideas into her head. Spawn, you listen to me. I have always been more clever than you at scheming. Is it not so? You have always said it. I have a plan now, it fits our arrangements with De Boer, but it will rid us of this Americano. When all is done and I have married Jetta—"
S
pawn interrupted impatiently. "You will marry Jetta, never fear. I have promised her to you."
And because, as Jetta well knew, Perona had made it part of his bargaining in financing Spawn. But this they did not now mention.
"To get rid of this Grant—well, that sounds meritorious. He is dangerous around here. To that I agree."
"And with Jetta—"
"Have done, Perona!" With sudden decision Spawn leaped to his feet. "I do not believe she would have dared talk to Grant. We'll have her out and ask her. If she has, by the gods—"
It fell upon Jetta before she had time to gather her wits. Spawn strode to her door, and found it fastened on the inside.
"Jetta, open at once!"
He thumped with his heavy fists. Confused and trembling she unsealed it, and he dragged her out into the sunlight of the garden.
"Now then, Jetta, you have heard some of what we have been saying, perhaps?"
"Father—"
"About this young American? This Grant?"
She stood cringing in his grasp. Spawn had never used physical violence with Jetta. But he was white with fury now.
"Father, you—you are hurting me."
Perona interposed. "Wait Spawn! Not so rough! Let me talk to her. Jetta,chica mia, your Greko is worried—"
"To the hell with that!" Spawn shouted. But he released the girl and she sank trembling to the little seat by the pergola.
Spawn stood over her. "Jetta, look at me! Did you meet—did you talk to Grant last night?"
She wanted to deny it. She clung to his angry gaze. But the habit of all her life of truthfulness with him prevailed.
"Y-yes," she admitted.
S
pawn! Hold!"
There was an instant when it seemed that Spawn would strike the girl. The blood drained from his face, leaving his dark eyes blazing like torches. His hamlike fist went back, but Perona sprang for him and clutched him.
"Hold, Spawn: I will talk to her. Jetta, so you did—"
The torrent of emotion swept Spawn; weakened him so that instead of striking Jetta, he yielded to Perona's clutch and dropped his arm. For a moment he stood gazing at his daughter.
"Is it so? And all my efforts, goingfor nothing, just like your mother!" He no more than murmured it, and as Perona pushed him, he sank to the bench beside Jetta. But did not touch her, just sat staring. And she stared back, both of then aghast at the enormity of this, her first disobedience.
I never had opportunity to know Spawn, except for the few times which I have mentioned. Perhaps he was at heart a pathetic figure. I think, looking back on it now that Spawn is dead, that there was a pathos to him. Spawn had loved his wife, Jetta's mother. As a young man he had brought her to the Lowlands to seek his fortune. And when Jetta was an infant, his wife had left him. Run away, abandoning him and their child.
P
erhaps Spawn was never mentally normal after that. He had reared Jetta with the belief that sin was inherent in all females. It obsessed him. Warped and twisted all his outlook as he brooded on it through the years. Woman's instincts; woman's love of pleasure, pretty clothes—all could lead only to sin.
And so he had kept Jetta secluded. He had fought what he seemed to see in her as she grew and flowered into girlhood, and denied her everything which he thought might make her like her mother.
Spawn met his death within a few hours of this afternoon I am describing. Perhaps he was no more than a scheming scoundrel. We are instinctively lenient with our appraisal of the dead. I do not know.
"Jetta," Perona said to her accusingly, "that is true, then: you did talk with that miserable Americano last night? You sinful, lying girl."
The contrition within Jetta at disobeying her father faded before this attack.
"I am not sinful." The trembling left her and she sat up and faced the accusing Perona. "I did but talk to him. You speak lies when you say I am sinful."
"You hear, Spawn? Defiant: already changed from the little Jetta I—"
"Yes, I am changed. I do not love you, Señor Perona. I think I hate you." Her tears were very close, but she finished: "I—I won't marry you. I won't!"
It stung Spawn. He leaped to his feet. "So you talk like that! It has gone so far as this, has it? Get to your room! We will see what you will and what you won't!"
A
gain the crafty Perona was calmest of them all. He thrust himself in front of Spawn.
"Jetta, to-night you plan to see him again, no? To-night?—here?"
"No," she stammered.
"You lie!"
"No."
"You lie! Spawn look at her! Lying! She has planned to meet him to-night! That is all we want to know." He broke into a cackling chuckle. "That fits my new plan, Spawn. A tryst with Jetta, here in the garden."
"Get to your room," Spawn growled. He dragged her back, and Perona followed them.
"You lie there." Spawn flung her to her couch. "After this night's work is done, we'll see whether you will or you won't."
"She may not stay in here." Perona suggested.
"She will stay."
"You seal her in?"
"I will seal her in."
Perona's eyes roved the little bedroom. One window oval and a door, both overlooking the patio.
"But suppose she should get out? There is no way to seal that window properly from outside. A cord!"
A long stout silken tassel-cord had been draped by Jetta at the window curtain. Perona snatched it down.
"If her ankles and wrists were tied with this—"
"No!" burst out Jetta. And then a fear for me rushed over her. A realization, forgotten in the stress of thisconflict with her father, now swept over her. They were planning harm to me.
"No, do not bind me."
A
sudden caution came to her. She was making it worse for me. Already she had done me immense harm.
She said suddenly, "Do what you like with me. I was wrong. I have no interest in that American. It is you, Greko, I—I love."
Spawn did not heed her. Perona insisted, "I would tie her with care."
He helped Spawn rope her ankles, and then her wrists, crossed behind her.
"A little gag, Spawn? She might cry out: we want no interference to-night." He was ready with a large silken handkerchief. They thrust it into her mouth and tied it behind her neck.
"There," growled Spawn. "You will and you won't: we shall see about that. Lie still, Jetta. If I have need to come again to you—"
They left her. And this time she heard them less clearly. But there were fragments:
Perona: "I will meet him again. After dark, to-night. Yes, he expects me. For his money, Spawn, his pay in advance. This De Boer works not for nothing."
Spawn: "You will arrange about your police on the streets? He can get here to my house safely?"
"Oh yes, at the tri-evening hour, certainly before midnight, before the attack on the mine. You must stay here, Spawn. Pretend to be asleep: it will lure the fool Americano out in to the moonlight."
J
etta could piece it together fairly well. They would have De Boer come and abduct me. Not tell him I was a government agent, with the micro-safety alarm which they suspected I carried, but just tell De Boer that I was a rich American, who could be abducted and held for a big ransom.
Perona's voice rose with a fragment: "If he springs his alarm, here in the moonlight, you can be here, Spawn, and pretend to try and rescue him. A radio-image of that flashed to Hanley's office will exonerate us of suspicion."
Perona would promise De Boer that the Nareda government would pay the ransom quickly, collecting it later from the United States.
Spawn said, "You think De Boer will believe that?"
"Why should he not? I am skilful at persuasion, no? Let him find out later that the United States Government trackers are after him!" Perona cackled at the thought of it. "What of that? Let him kill this Grant. All the better."
Spawn said abruptly: "The United States may catch De Boer. Have you thought of that, Perona? The fellow would not shield us, but would tell everything."
"And who will believe him? The wild tale of a trapped bandit! Against your word, Spawn? You, an honest and wealthy mine owner? And I—I, Greko Perona, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Sovereign Power of Nareda! Who will dare to give me the lie because a bandit tells a wild tale with no real facts to prop it?"
"Those police guards at the mine to-night?"
"Admit that they took your bribes? You are witless, Spawn! Let them but admit it to me and of a surety I will fling them into imprisonment! Now listen with care, for the after noon is going...."
Their voices lowered, then faded, and Jetta was left alone and helpless. Spawn went back to the mine to meet me. We returned and had supper, Jetta could dimly hear us.
T
here was silence about the house during the mid-evening. I had slipped out and followed Perona to his meeting with De Boer. Then Spawn had discovered my absence andhad rushed to join Perona and tell him.
But Jetta knew nothing of this. The hour of her tryst with me was approaching. In the darkness of her room as she lay bound and gagged on her couch, she could see the fitful moonlight rising to illumine the window oval.
She squirmed at the cords holding her, but could not loosen them. They cut into her flesh; her limbs were numb.
The evening wore on. Would I come to the garden tryst?
Jetta could not break her bonds. But gradually she had mouthed the gag loose. Then she heard my hurried footsteps in the patio; then my tense voice.
And at her answer I was pounding on her door. But it had been stoutly sealed by Spawn. I flung my shoulder against it, raging, thumping. But the heavy metal panels would not yield; the seal held intact.
"Jetta!"
"Philip, run away! They want to catch you! De Boer, the bandit, is coming!"
"I know it!"
Fool that I was, to pause with talk! There was no time: I must get Jetta out of here. Break down this door.
But it would not yield. A gas torch would melt this outer seal. Was there a torch here at Spawn's? But I had no time to search for a torch! Or a bar with which to ram this door—
A panic seized me, with the fresh realization that any instant De Boer and his men would arrive. I beat with futile fists on the door, and Jetta from within, calling to me to get away before I was caught.
This accursed door between us!
A
nd then—after no more than half a minute, doubtless—I thought of the window. My momentary panic left me. I dashed to the window oval. Sealed. But the shutter curtain, and the glassite pane behind it, were fragile.
"Jetta, are you near the window?"
"No. On the bed. They have tied me."
"Look out; I'm breaking through!"
There were loose rocks, as large as my head, set to mark the garden path. I seized one and hurled it. With a crash it went through the window and fell to the floor of the room. A jagged hole showed.
"All right, Jetta?"
"Yes! Yes, Philip."
I squirmed through the oval and dropped to the floor. My arms were cut from the jagged glassite, though I did not know it then. It was dim inside the room, but I could see the outline of the bed with her lying on it.
Her ankles and wrists were tied. I cut the cords with my knife.
She was gasping. "They're planning to capture you. Philip! You should not be here! Get away!"
"Yes. But I'm going to take you with me. Can you stand up?"
I
set her on her feet in the center of the room. A shaft of moonlight was coming through the hole in the window.
"Philip! You're bleeding!"
"It is nothing. Cut myself on the glassite. Can you stand alone?"
"Yes."
But her legs, stiffened and numb from having been bound so many hours, bent under her. I caught her as she was falling.
"I'll be—all right in a minute. But Philip, if you stay here—"
"You're going with me!"
"Oh!"
I could carry her, if she could not run. But it would be slow; and it would be difficult to get her through the window. And on the street we would attract too much attention.
"Jetta, try to stand. Stamp your feet. I'll hold you."
I steadied her. Then I bent down, chafing her legs with my hands. Her arms had been limp, but the blood was in them now. She murmured with thetingling pain, and then bent over, frantically helping me rub the circulation back into her legs.
"Better?"
"Yes." She took a weak and trembling step.
"Wait. Let me rub them more, Jetta."
Precious minutes!
"I'll knock out the rest of the window with that rock! We'll run; we'll be out of here in a moment."
"Run where?"
"Away. Into hiding—out of all this. The United States patrol-ship is coming from Porto Rico. It will take us from here."
"Where?"
"Away. To Great New York, maybe. Away from all this; from that old fossil, Perona."
I was stooping beside her.
"I'm all right now, Philip."
I rose up, and suddenly found myself clasping her in my arms; her slight body in the boy's ragged garb pressed against me.
"Jetta, dear, do you trust me? Will you come?"
"Yes. Oh, yes—anywhere, Philip, with you."
F
or only a breathless instant I lingered, holding her. Then I cast her off and seized the rock from the floor. The jagged glassite fell away under my blows.
"Now, Jetta. I'll go first—"
But it was too late! I stopped, stricken by the sound of a voice outside!
"He's there! In the girl's room! That's her window!"
Cautious voices in the garden! The thud of approaching footsteps.
I shoved Jetta back and rushed to the broken window oval. The figures of De Boer and his men showed in the moonlight across the patio. They had heard me breaking the glassite. And they saw me, now.
"There he is, De Boer!"
We were trapped!
H
ans, keep back! I will go!"
"But Commander—"
"Armed? The hell he is not! Spawn said no. Spawn! Where is Spawn? He was here."
I had dropped back from the window, and, gripping Jetta, stood in the center of the room.
"Jetta, dear."
"Oh. Philip!"
"There's no other way out of here?"
"No! No!"
Only the heavy sealed door, and this broken window. The bandits in the garden had paused at sight of me. Someone had called.
"He may be armed, De Boer."
They had stopped their forward rush and darted into the shelter of the pergola. I might be armed!
We could hear their low voices not ten feet from us. But I was not armed, except for my knife. Futile weapon, indeed.
"Jetta, keep back. If they should fire—"
I
got a look through the oval. De Boer was advancing upon it, with his barreled projector half levelled. He saw me again. He called:
"You American, come out!"
I crouched on the floor, pushing Jetta back to where the shadows of the bed hid her.
"You American!"
He was close outside the window. "Come out—or I am coming in!"
I said abruptly, "Come!"
My blade was in my hand. If he showed himself I could slash his throat, doubtless. But what about Jetta? My thoughts flashed upon the heels of my defiant invitation. Suppose, as De Boer climbed in the window, I killed him? I could not escape, and his infuriated fellows would rush us, firing through the oval, sweeping the room, killing us both. But Jetta now was in no danger. Herfather was outside, and these bandits were her father's friends. I would have to yield.
I called, louder, "Why don't you come in?"
Could I hold them off? Frighten them off, for a time, and make enough noise so that perhaps someone passing in the nearby street would give the alarm and bring help?
There was a sudden silence in the patio. The bandits had so far made as little commotion as possible. Presently I could hear their low voices.
I
heard an oath. De Boer's head and shoulders appeared in the window oval! His levelled projector came through. Perhaps he would not have fired, but I did not dare take the chance. I was crouching almost under the muzzle, so I straightened, gripped it, and flung it up. I then slashed at his face with my knife, but he gripped my wrist with powerful fingers. My knife fell as he twisted my wrist. His projector had not fired. It was jammed between us. One of his huge arms reached in and encircled me.
"Damn you!"
He muttered it, but I shouted, "Fool! De Boer, the bandit!"
I was aware of a commotion out in the garden.
"... Bring all Nareda on our ears? De Boer, shut him up!"
I was gripping the projector, struggling to keep its muzzle pointed upwards. With a heave of his giant arms De Boer lifted me and jerked me bodily through the window. I fell on my feet, still fighting. But other hands seized me. It was no use. I yielded suddenly. I panted:
"Enough!"
They held me. One of them growled. "Another shout and we will leave you here dead. Commander,look!"
My shirt was torn open. The electrode band about my chest was exposed! De Boer towered head and shoulders over me. I gazed up, passive in the grip of two or three of his men, and saw his face. His heavy jaw dropped as he gazed at my little diaphragms, the electrode.
He knew now for the first time that this was no private citizen he had assaulted. This official apparatus meant that I was a Government agent.
T
here was an instant of shocked silence. An expression grim and furious crossed the giant bandit's face.
"So this is it? Hans, careful—hold him!"
Jetta was still in her room, silent now. I heard Spawn's voice, close at hand in the patio.
"De Boer! Careful!" It was the most cautious of half-whispers.
Abruptly someone reached for my chest; jerked at the electrode; tore its fragile wires—the tiny grids and thumbnail amplifiers; jerked and ripped and flung the whole little apparatus to the garden path. But it sang its warning note as the wires broke. Up in Great New York Hanley knew then that catastrophe had fallen upon me.
For a brief instant the crestfallen bandit mumbled at what he had done. Then came Spawn's voice:
"Got him, De Boer? Good!"
Triumphant Spawn! He advanced across the garden with his heavy tread. And to me, and I am sure to De Boer as well, there came the swift realization that Spawn had been hiding safely in the background. But my detector was smashed now. It might have imaged De Boer assailing me: but now that it was smashed, Spawn could act freely.
"Good! So you have him! Make away to the mine!"
I did not see De Boer's face at that instant. But I saw his weapon come up—an act wholly impulsive, no doubt. A flash of fury!
He levelled the projector, not at me, but at the on-coming Spawn.
"You damn liar!"
"De Boer—" It was a scream of terror from Spawn. But it came too late.The projector hissed; spat its tiny blue puff. The needle drilled Spawn through the heart. He toppled, flung up his arms, and went down, silently, to sprawl on his face across the garden path.
D
e Boer was cursing, startled at his own action. The men holding me tightened their grip. I heard Jetta cry out, but not at what had happened in the garden: she was unaware of that. One of the bandits had left the group and climbed into her room. Her cry now was suppressed, as though the man's hand went over her mouth. And in the silence came his mumbled voice:
"Shut up, you!"
There was the sound of a scuffle in there. I tore at the men holding me.
"Let me go! Jetta! Come out!"
De Boer dashed for the window. I was still struggling. A hand cuffed me in the face. A projector rammed into my side.
"Stop it, fool American!"
De Boer came back with a chastened bandit ahead of him. The man was muttering and rubbing his shoulder, and De Boer said:
"Try anything like that again, Cartner, and I won't be so easy on you."
De Boer was dragging Jetta, holding her by a wrist. She looked like a terrified, half-grown boy, so small was she beside this giant. But the woman's lines of her, and the long dark hair streaming about her white face and over her shoulders, were unmistakable.
"His daughter." De Boer was chuckling. "The little Jetta."
A
ll this had happened in certainly no more than five minutes. I realized that no alarm had been raised: the bandits had managed it all with reasonable quiet.
There were six of the bandits here, and De Boer, who towered over us all. I saw him now as a swaggering giant of thirty-odd, with a heavy-set smooth-shaved, handsome face.
He held Jetta off. "Damn, how you have grown, Jetta."
Someone said, "She knows too much."
And someone else, "We will take her with us. If you leave her here, De Boer—"
"Why should I leave her? Why? Leave her—for Perona?"
Then I think that for the first time Jetta saw her father's body lying sprawled on the path. She cried, "Philip!" Then she half turned and murmured: "Father!"
She wavered, almost falling. "Father—" She went down, fainting, falling half against me and against De Boer, who caught her slight body in his arms.
"Come, we'll get back. Drag him!"
"But you can't carry that girl out like that, De Boer."
"Into the house: there is an open door. Hans, go out and bring the car around to this side. Give me the cloaks. There is no alarm yet."
De Boer chuckled again. "Perona was nice to keep the police off this street to-night!"
We went into the kitchen. An auto-car, which to the village people might have been there on Spawn's mining business, slid quietly up to the side entrance. A cloak was thrown over Jetta. She was carried like a sack and put into the car.
I suddenly found an opportunity to break loose. I leaped and struck one of the men. But the others were too quickly on me. The kitchen table went over with a crash.
Then something struck me on the back of the head: I think it was the handle of De Boer's great knife. The kitchen and the men struggling with me faded. I went into a roaring blackness.
I
was dimly conscious of being inside the cubby of the car, with bandits sitting over me. The car was rolling through the village streets. Ascending. We must be heading for Spawn's mine. I thought of Jetta. Then I heard her voice and felt her stir beside me.
The roaring in my head made everything dreamlike. I sank half into unconsciousness again. It seemed an endless interval, with only the muttering hiss of the car's mechanism and the confused murmurs of the bandits' voices.
Then my strength came. The cold sweat on me was drying in the night breeze that swept through the car as it climbed the winding ascent. I could see through its side oval a vista of bloated Lowland crags with moonlight on them.
It seemed that we should be nearly to the mine. We stopped. The men in the car began climbing out.
De Boer's voice: "Is he conscious now? I'll take the girl."
Someone bent over me. "You hear me?"
"Yes," I said.
I found myself outside the car. They held me on my feet. Someone gratuitously cuffed me, but De Boer's voice issued a sharp, low-toned rebuke.
"Stop it! Get him and the girl aboard."
T
here seemed thirty or forty men gathered here. Silent dark figures in black robes. The moonlight showed them, and occasionally one flashed a hand search-beam. It was De Boer's main party gathered to attack the mine.
I stood wavering on my feet. I was still weak and dizzy, with a lump on the back of my head where I had been struck. The scene about me was at first unfamiliar. We were in a rocky gully. Rounded broken walls. Caves and crevices. Dried ooze piled like a ramp up one side. The moonlight struggled down through a gathering mist overhead.
I saw, presently, where we were. Above the mine, not below it: and I realized that the car had encircled the mine's cauldron and climbed to a height beyond it. Down the small gully I could see where it opened into the cauldron about a hundred feet below us. The lights of the mine winked in the blurred moonlight shadows.
The bandits led me up the gully. The car was left standing against the gully side where it had halted. De Boer, or one of his men, was carrying Jetta.
The flyer was here. We came upon it suddenly around a bend in the gully. Although I had only seen the nose if it earlier in the evening. I recognized this to be the same. It was in truth a strange looking flyer: I had never seen one quite like it. Barrel-winged, like a Jantzen: multi-propellored: and with folding helicopters for the vertical lifts and descent. And a great spreading fan-tail, in the British fashion. It rested on the rocks like a fat-winged bird with its long cylindrical body puffed out underneath. A seventy-foot cabin: fifteen feet wide, possibly. A line of small window-portes; a circular glassite front to the forward control-observatory cubby, with the propellors just above it, and the pilot cubby up there behind them. And underneath the whole, a landing gear of the Fraser-Mood springed-cushion type: and an expanding, air-coil pontoon-bladder for landing upon water.
A
ll this was usual enough. Yet, with the brief glimpses I had as my captors hurried me toward the landing incline, I was aware of something very strange about this flyer. It was all dead black, a bloated-bellied black bird. The moonlight struck it, but did not gleam or shimmer on its black metal surface. The cabin window-portes glowed with a dim blue-gray light from inside. But as I chanced to gaze at one a green film seemed to cross it like a shade, so that it winked and its light was gone. Yet a hole was there, like an eye-socket. An empty green hole.
We were close to the plane now, approaching the bottom of the small landing-incline. The wing over my head was like a huge fat barrel cut length-wise in half. I stared up; and suddenly it seemed that the wing was melting. Fading. Its inner portion, where it joined the body, was clear in the moonlight. But the tips blurred and faded. An aspect curiously leprous. Uncanny. Gruesome.
They took me up the landing-incline. A narrow vaulted corridor ran length-wise of the interior, along one side of the cabin body. To my left as we headed for the bow control room, the corridor window-portes showed the rocks outside. To the right of the corridor, the ship's small rooms lay in a string. A metal interior. I saw almost nothing save metal in various forms. Grid floor and ceiling. Sheet metal walls and partitions. Furnishings and fabrics, all of spun metal. And all dead black.
We entered the control room. The two men holding me flung me in a chair. I had been searched. They had taken from me the tiny, colored magnesium light-flashes. How easy for the plans of men to go astray! Hanley and I had arranged that I was to signal the Porto Rican patrol-ship with those flares.
"Sit quiet!" commanded my guard.
I retorted, "If you hit me again, I won't."
D
e Boer came in, carrying Jetta. He put her in a chair near me, and she sat huddled tense. In the dim gray light of the control room her white face with its big staring dark eyes was turned toward me. But she did not speak, nor did I.
The bandits ignored us. De Boer moved about the room, examining a bank of instruments. Familiar instruments, most of them. The usual aero-controls and navigational devices. A radio audiphone transmitter and receiver, with its attendant eavesdropping cut-offs. And there was an ether-wave mirror-grid. De Boer bent over it. And then I saw him fastening upon his forehead an image-lens. He said:
"You stay here, Hans. You and Gutierrez. Take care of the girl and this fellow Grant. Don't hurt them."
Gutierrez was a swarthy Latin American. He smiled. "For why would I hurt him? You say he is worth much money to us, De Boer. And the girl, ah—"
De Boer towered over him. "Just lay a finger on her and you will regret it, Gutierrez! You stay at your controls. Be ready. This affair it will take no more than half an hour."
A man came to the control room entrance. "You come, Commander?"
"Yes. Right at once."
"The men are ready. From the mine we might almost be seen here. This delay—"
"Coming, Rausch."
B
ut he lingered a moment more. "Hans, my finder will show you what I do. Keep watch. When we come back, have all ready for flight. This Grant had an alarm-detector. Heaven only knows what eavesdropping and relaying he has done. And for sure there is hell now in Spawn's garden. The Nareda police are there, of course. They might track us up here."
He paused before me. "I think I would not cause trouble, Grant."
"I'm not a fool."
"Perhaps not." He turned to Jetta. "No harm will come to you. Fear nothing."
He wound his dark cloak about his giant figure and left the control room. In a moment, through the rounded observing pane beside me, I saw him outside on the moonlit rocks. His men gathered about him. There were forty of them, possibly, with ten or so left here aboard to guard the flyer.
And in another moment the group of dark-cloaked figures outside crept off in single file like a slithering serpent, moving down the rock defile toward where in the cauldron pit thelights of the mine shone on its dark silent buildings.
T
here was a moment when I had an opportunity to speak with Jetta. Gutierrez sat watchfully by the archway corridor entrance with a needle projector across his knees. The fellow Hans, a big, heavy-set half-breed Dutchman with a wide-collared leather jerkin and wide, knee-length pantaloons, laid his weapon carefully aside and busied himself with his image mirror. There would soon be images upon it, I knew: De Boer had the lens-finder on his forehead, and the scenes at the mine, as De Boer saw them would be flashed back to us here.
This Gutierrez was very watchful. A move on my part and I knew he would fling a needle through me.
My thoughts flew. Hanley had notified Porto Rico. The patrol-ship had almost enough time to get here by now.
I felt Jetta plucking at me. She whispered:
"They have gone to attack the mine."
"Yes."
"I heard it planned. Señor Perona—"
Her hurried whispers told me further details of Perona's scheme. So this was a pseudo attack! Perona would take advantage of it and hide the quicksilver. De Boer would return presently and escape. And hold me for ransom. I chuckled grimly. Not so easy for a bandit, even one as clever as De Boer at hiding in the Lowland depths to arrange a ransom for an agent of the United States. Our entire Lowland patrol would be after him in a day.
J
etta's swift whispers made it all clear to me. It was Perona's scheme.
She ended, "And my father—" Her voice broke; her eyes flooded suddenly with tears "Oh, Philip, he was good to me, my poor father."
I saw that the mirror before Hans was glowing with its coming image. I pressed Jetta's hand.
"Yes, Jetta."
One does not disparage the dead. I could not exactly subscribe to Jetta's appraisal of her parent, but I did not say so.
"Jetta, the mirror is on."
I turned away from her toward the instrument table. Gutierrez at the door raised his weapon. I said hastily, "Nothing. I—we just want to see the mirror."
I stood beside Hans. He glanced at me and I tried to smile ingratiatingly.
"This attack will be successful, eh, Hans?"
"Damn. I hope so."
The mirror was glowing. Hans turned a switch to dim the tube-lights of the room so that we might see the images better. It brought a protest from Gutierrez.
I swung around. "I'm not a fool! You can see me perfectly well: kill me if I make trouble. I want to see the attack."
"Por Dios, if you try anything—"
"I won't!"
"Shut!" growled Hans. "The audiphone is on. The big adventure—and the commander—leaves me here just to watch!"