Ken Holt - Mystery Of Green Flame Part 12

"Si." He nodded at Ken. "The ambulance of this hospital. Perhaps you wish to speak with the man who drives this-this ambulance? He can maybe tell you about the part of the hospital where the rich people go."

"No, no," Ken said quickly. "We don't want to bother anybody. We just like to look at hospitals-they interest us very much. We have many good friends in the United States who are doctors," he added, hoping that this would sound to Roberto like a reasonable excuse for curiosity. "Would you like to come with us in our car, Roberto, and show us where this hospital is? We don't want to go inside. We just want to drive past."

Roberto was grinning. "I like very much to come in your car. But, meester, if you only drive past hospital you not see anything. Hospital is behind big wall- very high. Four metres high."

"Hmm. That is a high wall-more than twelve feet," Ken murmured.

"But there is hill near the hospital," Roberto said 134 .

quickly. "From top of hill I think you see hospital very good." He repeated the last phrase with a puzzled expression. "Very good? No-very well, I think. 'Very well' is better, no?"

" 'Very well' is perfect, Roberto," Sandy told him.

Ken was already moving to the door of the restaurant to pay for their breakfast. Roberto's description of the high-walled hospital excited him more than he wanted the boy to guess. He glanced once more at the ambulance driver, still busily polis.h.i.+ng his handsome white vehicle, and then he gestured to Sandy and Roberto and they all walked back along the sidewalk to get the convertible out of the munic.i.p.al patio.

If Roberto was curious about their sightseeing choice, he no longer showed any signs of it. He was too pleased to be riding in the bright red car to think of anything else. As Ken maneuvered it carefully through the crowded street, Roberto poked his head through the window and grinned happily at his friends. He didn't settle back in his seat until they had left the square and were moving along the narrow cobblestoned street into which Ken turned at the boy's suggestion. Then Roberto applied himself soberly to the job of guiding them, and pointed out the cross street up ahead on which Ken was to turn left.

The cross street was even narrower, and so steep that the convertible's powerful engine growled at the effort. At the end of a few hundred feet Ken could look back through the rear-view mirror and see the roofs of the buildings surrounding the square.

At Roberto's direction they turned right after a few blocks, along another cobbled street. This one was cut into the flank of the hill. They pa.s.sed three more streets, SNARED 135.

each steeply slanted downward. Roberto pointed his finger along the last.

"See?" he said. "There is the rich man's hospital."

Several hundred feet below them they could see the huge whitewashed wall that surrounded an area equal to a city block. On the side closest to them the wall seemed built into the hill itself, and inside the enclosed grounds, among towering trees, showed the red-tiled roofs of four buildings.

Ken swallowed his disappointment. The treetops and the red roofs told him nothing. "We can't see much from here."

"But this is not the place yet," Roberto told him. "We go more far-straight ahead to next corner and then turn." He pointed to the left, up the hill.

When the convertible rounded the next corner, and nosed upward again, it was riding on a rough dirt track. Now the houses of Rio Claro were all behind and below them. There were not even any burros in sight on this rocky empty hillside. The trail ended suddenly, after a sharp curve to the right, in a small flat spot. A clump of scrubby pine trees screened the tiny platformlike place on the downhill side.

"To see the hospital very good-no, very well-we must now walk," Roberto told them.

Ken parked the car alongside the trees and took the binoculars out of the glove compartment. Then they all got out of the car and started on up the hill to another platformlike spot from which they could look straight downward, past the car and the clump of pines, to the hospital grounds some thousand feet below.

Close to the front wall, on the farthest side of the grounds, were three small buildings. Behind them, run- 136 THE MYSTEKY OF THE GREEN FLAME.

ing almost the full width of the enclosure and dividing it into two equal parts, was the fourth and largest structure, a long, low building set with many windows.

"The big house," Roberto said, "is where the rich sick people live. Behind is their beautiful patio-the one I see one day when I am sick. I was living in the small house in the middle, near the gate. One day I was not feeling very sick and I take a little walk, but a doctor find me and make me go in my bed again, very quick. Very quickly," he corrected himself hastily.

"We're still too low to see into that patio," Ken said. "Let's walk up the hill a little farther, shall we?"

"Is very high hill," Roberto said. "Is hard to walk."

"Look, Ken," Sandy said, "Roberto's right. And besides-"

Ken knew Sandy thought he was being incautious. If, by any chance, this hospital was the hide-out Phillips and Gonzalez were seeking, it was foolhardy to investigate it on their own. But they could not possibly be in any danger, he told himself, on this empty hillside. "Come on," he said. "We'll just go up a little farther."

A few minutes later they all came to a breathless halt.

"Is hard to walk, no?" Roberto said.

"Is hard to walk, yes," Sandy agreed feelingly.

Ken already had the binoculars to his eyes. "This is better," he murmured. "Mmm-two men sitting in the patio under one of the umbrellas. Can't see their faces very clearly, in the shadow, but they certainly look healthy enough from here. They aren't wearing bathrobes, anyway, and one of them is smoking a cigar."

He handed the gla.s.ses to Sandy.

"Ken!" The big redhead had stiffened almost the SNABED 137.

moment he lifted the binoculars to his eyes. "There he is-Mr. Green Flame!"

They looked at each other for a brief startled moment as Ken took the gla.s.ses back again. "You're right!" Ken breathed.

"You're right," Sandy said. His voice sounded a little shaken.

"Meester!" Roberto was tugging at Sandy's arm. "What you see there in hospital?"

"Uh-nothing, Roberto," Sandy told him quickly. "Just a man we met once."

"A friend?" Roberto looked pleased. "You wish to go see him? You will take me? Always I wish to see again the beautiful patio."

"No, Roberto," Sandy said gently. "We're not going to see him right now. Let's get out of here," he added in an urgent aside to Ken.

"Right," Ken agreed briefly. As they all started down the hill again, moving as rapidly as safety allowed on the steep slope, he said quietly to Sandy, "There was a doctor too-man in a white coat who came out of the big building and spoke to Green Flame. We'd better get right back to the munic.i.p.al building and try to get word through to Phillips and Gonzalez."

"We can't get there too soon for me," Sandy a.s.sured him.

They skidded down the last few feet onto the level area where the car was parked, a vivid spot of color in front of the sober pines.

Roberto was grinning. "Now we ride again. Is easier, no?"

"Is easier, yes," Ken agreed.

"Oh, much easier!" The harsh, amused voice that spoke the words paralyzed them all into instant immo- 138 .

bility. A man was standing between the car and the trees, leaning toward them over the convertible's hood.

"Oh, sure-a lot easier." The second voice, like an echo of the first, came from the second man whom they saw an instant later. He, too, was leaning forward over the car, resting his arms on the trunk at the rear.

And both men held guns-st.u.r.dy workmanlike automatics that were pointed steadily at the motionless trio.

CHAPTER XII.

BLACKOUT.

EVEN WHEN KEN opened his mouth, after what seemed like an interminable silence, he was not sure his vocal chords would respond. Both the men facing him had the hard, muscular bodies and the hard, cold eyes of professional thugs. But it was not so much panic at the sight of them and their guns that made his throat feel tight. It was the numbing realization that he was responsible for landing Sandy and young Roberto in this predicament.

The words he spoke were steadier than he had dared to hope they would be. They even managed to sound almost casual, as if surprise were his chief emotion. "What's this all about?" Ken asked. He put an arm about Roberto and thrust the boy slightly behind his own body and Sandy's big bulk.

"Leave the boy out where we can watch him," the man at the front of the car snapped. "And start toward your car, all three of you. You first." He nodded at Sandy.

"I don't get it, do you?" Sandy glanced at Ken. He, too, was doing an admirable job of sounding merely puzzled and surprised. Nothing in his expression told 139.

140 .

Ken that he blamed his friend for this unexpected and obviously dangerous development. "Do you think they've mistaken us for somebody else-or what?"

"You'll have plenty of time for questions later." It was again the first man who spoke, and before Ken had a chance to answer. "Joe!" He addressed his companion in an unmistakable tone of command. "Go around in back of them and bring them down here. And make it fast. Those planes might decide to snoop around here some more, and this red car sticks out like a sore thumb."

"Sure, Al." The second man moved around the rear of the car and came toward them.

"Meester!" Roberto's small voice sounded at Ken's elbow. "These men are your friends?"

"No, Roberto," Ken said quietly. "We don't know them." He raised his voice slightly and spoke directly to the man named Al. "Whatever you've got in mind," he said, "you surely can't want to involve this youngster * -L TT ' .

in it. Hes- "Shut up! I told you to save the gab until later. Hurry it up, Joel"

Joe had stepped behind them now. He prodded Sandy's back with the gun, and with his free hand he gave Ken a shove. Instinctively Ken put his arm around Roberto again, and they all moved forward in a line. Out of the corner of his eye Ken saw Sandy's big fist close around Roberto's small brown hand, still clutching the end of the length of sugar cane.

Ken clenched his jaws tightly. He and Sandy had been in tough spots before, though he suspected they had never been in a tougher one than this. It was only too clear now that their suspicions of the hospital were accurate, and that their journey to the hill had exposed "Leave the boy out where we can watch him," the man snapped.

142 .

them to the men who used that building for their own illegitimate purposes. For himself-and for Sandy too, he knew-the knowledge that they had discovered the hide-out gave a quality of triumph even to their present danger. But Roberto was an innocent bystander. And yet, Ken told himself, it would be useless to shout at the boy to run for safety. These men meant business, and there would be no cover for a small boy das.h.i.+ng headlong down the barren hillside that fell away below them. No, there was nothing he could do right now to save Roberto.

"But we'll manage it somehow," Ken promised himself under his breath. "We've got to!"

When they reached the car, Roberto asked, his voice smaller than ever, "Now we go back to the plaza?"

"Now you go where we take you!" Joe's eyes, curiously lifted at the outer corners, glinted with amus.e.m.e.nt as he raised his free hand to cuff the youngster. But Sandy swiftly interposed an arm to forestall the blow, and Al said, "Cut it out, Joe! We've got no time to play around." To the others he said, "Get in-all of you, before you get hurt." He jerked open the car door and motioned them into the rear seat, where Roberto squeezed himself between the two boys. "You drive, Joe," Al added. He himself took the other front seat, sitting at a right angle to the back so that he could keep his gun trained on his captives.

Ken instinctively winced when Joe raced the motor violently. A moment later the car was slithering down the hill. As it bounced onto the first stretch of cobblestone, Al ordered the three on the back seat to duck their heads. "Lower!" he snapped. "I want you out of sight/As the car swung around a corner the cathedral clock BLACKOUT 143.

boomed out the hour of nine, and the boys could catch s.n.a.t.c.hes of bra.s.sy music from the square. Suddenly Joe braked to a halt, tapped the horn b.u.t.ton several times, and then, a moment later, moved the car forward once more. But this time he stopped within a few hundred yards and cut the motor. Ken guessed that they had entered the main gate in the hospital wall.

Al opened the door. "All right. Get out of there now."

One glance was enough to tell Ken that they were in the patio which they had looked down on a few minutes earlier. Directly behind them a pair of doors in the long building stood wide open, permitting them to look through the driveway-like corridor that cut through the structure and on out to the far side, through another pair of open doors. The car had driven through that pa.s.sage, Ken realized. But even as Ken looked, a white-coated attendant shut the far pair of doors and closed off his brief view of the front part of the enclosure, the part occupied by the three smaller structures devoted to the children's clinic.

"O.K. Let's move." Al was again emphasizing his order with his gun. "Straight ahead." He motioned them toward a small gla.s.s door set some distance farther along in the wall of the long building.

Ken glanced quickly toward the rear of the patio before he obeyed. The whitewashed stone wall was, as he had realized from above, almost a part of the hill that rose so steeply behind it. Purple garlands of bougainvillaea draped its full length, except at one point near the center where garage-sized doors stood half-open, swung inward into what appeared to be an underground garage cut into the hill itself. But he had no chance to see anything inside that shadowy interior before Al herded him along with the others.

144 .

Ken blinked his eyes to accustom them to the cool dimness of the building. He felt the smoothly polished tile floor beneath his feet, and then became aware of the comfortable furniture that lined the walls of the broad corridor they were following. He sniffed. The air was fragrant with flowers and with the scent of a rich cigar. It occurred to him, briefly, that he had never before been in a building that smelled less like a hospital. The fresh antiseptic odor that usually characterized such places was noticeably absent.

"To the left-through that door," Al ordered.

Joe moved ahead to open the door and watch their progress through it. The room they entered was large and luxuriously furnished. Deep leather chairs stood in front of the fireplace at one corner, and part of the gleaming floor was occupied by a billiard table and several bridge tables. Bookshelves and a rack overflowing with magazines lined one wall.

"Stand there." Al's gun indicated an open s.p.a.ce before a leather-topped desk. Then he stood close to Sandy, and Joe ranged himself alongside of Ken. Roberto stood between the two boys, not quite so frightened now as he had been. His bright eyes were darting around the handsome room, eagerly absorbing sights which were strange to him.

Through a door beyond the desk three men entered the room, all dressed in slacks and gaily colored sport s.h.i.+rts. Behind them came the white-coated doctor Ken and Sandy had seen from the hill. His stethoscope dangled from his pocket, and he carried a small medical bag in one hand. The man who followed him was apparently an attendant. He, too, wore a white coat, but was only a short jacket, in contrast to the doctor's BLACKOUT 145.

longer garment, and the jacket's short sleeves revealed powerful tanned arms.

Ken sensed the first three men ranging themselves behind himself and Sandy. The two men in white stood to his left, beyond Joe. No one spoke. And the faces Ken had glimpsed, as the men entered, all seemed curiously expressionless. The room had a quiet waiting quality that was more ominous than the loud crack of a gun.

Then another man came in, looked briefly at the boys, and seated himself at the desk facing them. He was short and plump, with round blue eyes in a round pink face. His neat dark business suit and dark tie, his gleaming white s.h.i.+rt, and almost silvery white hair all gave him the blandly important air of a bank director or an industrial executive. His voice, when he spoke, was also bland but somehow suggestive of limitless power.

"Now suppose you tell us," he said quietly, "why you were up on that hill spying on this hospital."

For a moment Ken thought that, after all, he might have been mistaken. The man sounded as if he sincerely wanted an answer to his question-as if he might merely be the director of a private hospital desirous of providing complete privacy for his patients.

"We'd like to ask a question too," Ken said. His voice was also quiet and reasonable. "We'd like to know why we were brought down here by force. If that hill belongs to you, and we were trespa.s.sing, we apologize. But I don't see why-"

"Oh, come now." The smile showed a mild impatience. "If you really want to carry on this nonsense- this pretense that you don't know what I'm talking about-that's your privilege, of course. But you might 146 .

as well know that we're aware of all your activities."

"What activities?" Sandy's voice was a harsh croak. "We're tourists. And we-"

"George! Come in here, please." The white-haired man interrupted Sandy as if he were unaware of him. The quiet command was spoken over his shoulder, toward the door.

The person who entered the room, in response to his order, was the tall, thin man whom the boys had first seen at the Laredo customs station-the man whose lighter gave a green flame.

The man behind the desk asked him a brief question.

"You're certain of your identification, George?"

For the first time since he had spoken to them over the lunch table in Monterrey, the boys heard George's voice. It was easy and decisive. He even smiled at them slightly as he spoke.

"Absolutely certain," he said. "There's no difficulty about that." He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lighted it. The flame of his lighter was now a clear bright yellow, and when he flicked it out he grinned mockingly at the boys.

"Good." The white-haired man turned toward the boys again. "Now tell us where that other young man is-the one who was riding with you in your car."

"Right now he's probably looking for us," Ken said, wis.h.i.+ng desperately that this were true. "We have an appointment to meet him at-"