Ken Holt - Mystery Of Green Flame Part 10

"But I'll bet they're plenty worried," Sandy said. "So they'll probably send somebody to Mendoza's house pretty soon to see if he returned safely." He looked at his watch. "If Mendoza had gone straight from the quarry he couldn't have reached home for another half hour yet, so we're probably in time to get up a guard."

"Exactly," Phillips said. "I suppose you'll want to get through to Rio Claro and put somebody on guard there right away?" He looked at Gonzalez and the Mexican nodded. "But let's not waste any time getting there ourselves," Phillips added. "It would be fine if we could be on hand to watch that somebody arrive. By 'we,'" he said, speaking specifically to the boys, "I mean Ramon and I. You two-"

"Oh, now look!" Sandy began.

Ken grinned. He had expected this. "Mort's right, Sandy," he said. "We're just tourists-remember? But I've been thinking, why don't we change our plans? Why don't we make a little side trip to Rio Claro? I hear the country's beautiful around there."

Sandy grinned too. "That's a great idea! After all, THE EMPTY TRAP 107.

there's nothing to stop us. Mexico wants tourists to see the whole country, not just-"

"All right. All right," Phillips gave in, while Gonzalez, already at the door, looked back at them, half amused and half concerned. "Come along as far as Rio Claro," Phillips continued. "But you've got to promise me that you'll follow whatever advice we give you there, about staying out of sight when we ask you to."

The boys gave him their word on that.

Gonzalez stepped into the outer room to get in touch with the Rio Claro police. They could all hear his conversation through the open door. He asked first if Men-doza had a phone and was told, after a brief pause, that he did not. Then he asked if there had ever been any reason to suspect the man of illegal activities. There was a pause then during which Ramon explained that they were consulting the policeman in whose beat Mendoza lived. The reply when it came across the wires was that little was known of Mendoza. He seemed to be a quiet man who lived alone with an elderly housekeeper. Apparently his business required him to travel occasionally, because he sometimes left town for several days at a time. But when he was in Rio Claro he stayed to himself, remaining in his house most of the time and not involving himself in local matters or local social life. Gonzalez asked that an un.o.btrusive guard be stationed near Mendoza's house immediately, and made arrangements to meet the officer who knew Mendoza's neighborhood best, at a certain corner near the outskirts of town.

"We expect to arrive in Rio Claro within three hours," he concluded.

While he conferred briefly with the Antiguo Morelos chief, after he hung up, Ken voiced to Phillips an idea that had just come into his mind.

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"I've been thinking that there might be a way to bait the trap at Mendoza's house," he said slowly. "If his car were left parked in front of his house, wouldn't that help to confuse anybody who came looking for him? They would a.s.sume at first that Mendoza himself had brought it back, and then-"

Gonzalez re-entered the room just then and Phillips said quickly, "Listen to this, Ramon. Ken's just had a good idea. Tell him, Ken."

Gonzalez smiled when Ken had finished. "I, too, think it is a good idea. Bueno. We shall take the car with us. And it is time to organize our journey, no?"

It was agreed that Sandy should go with Gonzalez in the gray coupe, and that Ken and Phillips would travel behind it in the boys' convertible.

Shortly after eleven o'clock the two cars moved away from the police station of Antiguo Morelos and turned westward a short distance down the highway. The smooth paved road seemed level enough for the first mile or so, but suddenly it began to twist and squirm its way up a mountain.

"Hang on," Phillips said grimly. "This is just the beginning." He was at the wheel, and Ken was glad not to be driving through this particularly difficult stretch of Mexican terrain. The taillights of the gray coupe, up ahead, were seldom visible for more than a few seconds at a time before they disappeared around another of the interminable curves. But even in the darkness Ken could see that the country was magnificent, and he promised himself that some day Sandy and he would return and drive along this road in daylight.

The weather had been comparatively warm in Antiguo Morelos, even at that late hour of the evening. But when they had been traveling for less than half an THE EMPTY TRAP 109.

hour Ken was reaching for his jacket and closing the window. The road was climbing high into the chilly alt.i.tudes. And it continued to climb, with occasional dips for variety, for what seemed to be endless hours.

In fact it was ten minutes to three when, at the foot of one of those brief zigzagging descents, they came into the town of Rio Claro. Immediately the highway pavement became the rough cobblestones of a city street. At the first intersection, just beyond the glow of a street light, Gonzalez pulled to the high curb and stopped. A man in uniform emerged from a doorway in one of the long row of silent darkened houses and stepped over to the gray coupe.

Phillips parked just behind, and he and Ken climbed stiffly out of the convertible and walked forward to lean on the door on the driver's side of the coupe. Gonzalez introduced them to young Pedro Montez, who was bending low to address himself to those seated inside the red car.

"Montez covers a beat in the part of Rio Claro where Mendoza's house is located," Gonzalez explained rapidly. "He tells us that a fellow officer is already on guard at a window opposite Mendoza's house-the same place we shall use for our own-how do you say? -stake out." At Phillips' nod he added, "He also tells us that he paid a call at Mendoza's house tonight, to see what he could learn." He turned his head to nod at Montez. "Good work, Montez. Now tell us what you learned during this visit."

Young Pedro Montez spoke concisely and to the point. "Not very much, Capitan. I spoke to his housekeeper. She was still awake, because she enjoys listening to the late music broadcast by the Rio Claro radio station. And she was not angry with me for disturbing 110 .

her, when I explained that I was seeking a lost dog, because she likes dogs. I was not lying, Capitan," he added with a brief smile. "In Rio Claro are many dogs, and each night I am seeking one or perhaps two dogs that have become lost."

After that apologetic digression he hurried on. "She knew nothing of the dog, but she was not unwilling to talk a little. She lives very quietly herself. And her employer also lives quietly, she says. Often he is out of town for many days. He is out of town now, she says. But she expects him to return home in time for breakfast. He seldom has visitors-in fact, she could remember none at all during the year he has lived here. This seems strange to her, but she is not really interested. Where there are few visitors, she says, there is little work. And only one other thing about Mendoza seems strange to her. His house is a new one, with a garage that opens directly from the sidewalk. But Mendoza never uses it. He parks his car always in the street. She thinks he likes maybe to show it off. And she thinks this is foolish as well as strange, because it is not such a new car that a man should be so proud of it."

Pedro Montez was a young man, and his eyes were bright and intelligent beneath his visored cap.

Gonzalez nodded at him approvingly, and there was silence for a moment as they all considered the young officer's report.

Sandy, trying to stretch in the cramped quarters of the coupe, broke the silence of the night with the sound of a dull blow as his fists struck the dashboard. "Sorry," he muttered apologetically, lowering his arms so that they could extend full length beneath the dash. "Ouch!" he said loudly.

"Sandyl" Phillips cautioned. "Keep it quiet."

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"Sorry," Sandy said again. Now his fingers were gingerly exploring the underside of the dash. "He's apparently holding his not-so-new car together with a paper i. clip.

"With a what?" Gonzalez asked curiously.

Ken, leaning on the door on Sandy's side of the car, pulled a tiny flash from his jacket pocket and thrust the light on. "That's right," he said. "It's a spring-type paper clip, held on here with a suction cup. Maybe it's-" He stopped suddenly. What he had been about to say as a joke struck him as a possible serious truth.

"Maybe," he said slowly, "this is a sort of post office for Mendoza and his friends. He has no phone. He never has visitors. And he parks his car in the street instead of in his garage. So maybe he sends and receives messages this way. Anybody pa.s.sing his house could open the car and remove a note, or leave one."

There was a long silence. Gonzalez broke it. "Bueno," he said softly. "Muy bueno. Which means," he translated with a smile, " 'Good. Very good.' In fact, very good indeed. I am glad you two came with us to Rio Claro-no, Mort?"

Then his voice picked up speed. "Now we shall really bait the trap, no? And we shall be able to see if someone comes to nibble at the cheese. Quickly. Let us establish ourselves."

For a few more minutes he conferred with young Pedro Montez, and then his plans were complete. Phillips, with the two boys, were to take over the watch in the upper room of the house directly across the street from Mendoza's. The owner of the house was an aunt of Pedro Montez and she had agreed to this arrangement for her nephew's sake. Gonzalez, after parking the gray coupe in front of Mendoza's house, would watch from 112 .

a vantage point outside, in a narrow pa.s.sageway that ran alongside the same house where Phillips and the boys would be stationed.

Five minutes later, after the convertible had been parked safely behind the Rio Claro police station, Pedro Montez led Phillips and the boys upstairs in his aunt's home to a neat bedroom, floored with red tile and containing one huge bed. The officer already on duty there, stationed at the big window hung with a Venetian blind, sprang to attention and reported that no one had entered the Mendoza house since Pedro Montez himself had left it. Then Montez a.s.sured them that his aunt would provide breakfast for her unexpected guests, and he and his fellow officer departed.

Phillips and the boys stood together at the window for a moment. Through the slits in the blind they could see Gonzalez parking the gray coupe just across the street, sliding out of the car, and melting away into the darkness. The trap was baited. In the paper clip under the coupe's dashboard was a blank sheet of paper which Phillips had torn from his notebook and which Gonzalez had slipped into place. The paper was carefully folded to conceal the fact that it was blank. There was nothing to do now but wait to see if anyone came to spring the trap.

"Of course," Phillips said finally, "our victim may not come until tomorrow night-if he ever comes at all. So why don't you two get some sleep?"

"But you-" Sandy began.

"Don't worry about me," Phillips a.s.sured them. "I'm used to round-the-clock vigils."

Neither Ken nor Sandy attempted to argue further with him. The bed looked enormously attractive. Within ten seconds both of them were asleep.

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The next thing they knew they were simultaneously leaping into wakefulness, roused by an explosive bang. As Ken came to his feet he asked, "Was that a gun?"

The room was filled with a hard early-morning light. Phillips stood at the window beside a second figure, shrouded in a serape. It was a moment before the boys recognized the man as Gonzalez.

"Relax," Phillips was saying wearily. "It's just an elderly truck backfiring its heart out."

Yawning widely, both the boys joined the men at the window. Ken's watch pointed to seven thirty. "Nothing happened?" he asked "Nothing," Phillips said. "And now that it's light we don't really expect any action. It looks as if we're going to have to wait out another day. Ramon just came up to join me for breakfast," he added, pointing to a loaded tray on top of the bureau.

Sandy automatically reached for a roll, but Ken resisted the idea of food. What he really yearned for was more sleep. But having reached the window he automatically glanced downward.

The noisy truck was in sight, bucking and jolting over the cobblestones and backfiring at irregular intervals. It came to a final halt directly below them, almost in line with the gray coupe opposite. Instantly the driver, muttering audible complaints, jumped from his cab and jerked up its battered hood. He was poking gingerly inside when a second, newer truck braked to a stop behind him, unable to pa.s.s in the narrow street. The newcomer's horn tooted loudly. The driver of the stalled vehicle shouted an angry reply.

Gonzalez was chuckling. Phillips leaned forward for a better view. Within a few brief seconds the street below had become a noisy bedlam.

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A loaded bus had added itself to the halted procession and its driver and several pa.s.sengers were climbing down to gather around the broken-down truck and offer eager advice. Six laden burros and their two masters approached from the opposite direction. The masters, brandishing leafy branches which they used as switches, entered the general discussion with enthusiasm. The burros began placidly to crop at the stalks of gra.s.s growing between the cobblestones. A handful of children appeared out of nowhere, bright-eyed and curious. Several doorways along the street opened and women emerged with brooms, ostensibly to sweep the sidewalk but obviously interested in the lively argument now joined by all of the men present. More pa.s.sengers alighted from the bus and surged forward. Two boys on bicycles, balancing huge flat baskets of rolls on their heads, casually braked their machines to a halt and walked to the broken-down truck, still carrying their big burdens.

"In Mexico," Phillips told the boys, "every breakdown becomes a fiesta-a fine free-for-all."

Gonzalez, above the remarkably effective disguise of his enveloping serape, said, "But of course. We Mexicans are masters of the art of finding fun and excitement in trifles."

The argument in the street was now reaching a peak. Each partic.i.p.ant clearly had his own idea of what should be done, and was willing to suggest it over and over, paying little or no attention to the ideas expressed by anyone else.

Ken pushed closer to the gla.s.s. The broken-down truck was piled high with firewood, completely concealing the gray coupe beyond it. "We can't see Mendoza's car at all," he muttered. "This would be a fine time to-"

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"What fools we are!" Gonzalez was already sprinting for the door, his serape flying out behind him.

The engine of the broken-down truck roared into life just as Ramon's feet began to pound down the stairs. The driver banged down the hood, grinning widely, and leaped back into his cab. There were loud laughter and joking shouts of congratulation from the crowd. The truck lurched forward just as Gonzalez emerged from the house.

For a moment the truck could make little progress. The burros were in its way, and it was necessary for their masters to wave their switches menacingly, and to prod them with their hands and elbows, before they moved at all.

Ramon was trying to cross the street, but the crowd good-naturedly buffeted him from every side, holding up his pa.s.sage. There was a general movement to follow the crawling truck, and for a moment Gonzalez was carried along with it. Then the truck suddenly swung around the last of the burros in its way and roared down the street. The second truck, behind it, followed immediately. Gonzalez was unable to duck in front of it. And he was foiled in his attempt to detour around its rear because the bus was also in motion by then, following the other two cars.

But finally Gonzalez broke free and raced to the gray coupe. An instant later, from the far side of the street, he gave one black angry glance up toward the window.

Its meaning was all too clear. The paper hidden in the clip beneath the dashboard was no longer there.

CHAPTER X.

ON THE TRAIL AGAIN.

TEN MINUTES LATER all four of them-Gonzalez and Phillips, Sandy, and Ken-reached an ancient stone building facing the Rio Claro plaza. Gonzalez led the way through the wide doorway and across the stone-paved courtyard inside to the room directly opposite. The fortresslike structure was the munic.i.p.al building, and the room they were entering was the office of the local chief of police.

Gonzalez had already used Sefiora Garcia's telephone to speak to the chief-while Ken and Sandy and Phillips gulped cups of milk and coffee-and the chief was waiting for them. Phillips, trying to control the anger he felt at their failure to notice the person who had taken the paper from Mendoza's car, briefly translated to the boys the points which Gonzalez and the chief covered in their rapid discussion.

Scouting planes, which had reached Rio Claro that morning at dawn, and which had been circling the whole surrounding area ever since, were now moving in to circle the town itself. Pedro Montez, the young officer the boys had met the night before, was out with a 116.

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small crew whose purpose was to locate the truck which had caused the apparently purposeful traffic jam before Mendoza's house.

"If the truck is still in the city, they will find it," the chief promised. His hair was black, but there were deep lines of age in his seamed and leathery face. "Do you want them to arrest the driver?" he added.

Gonzalez and Phillips answered with a firm "No!" almost simultaneously.

"What we want to do," Gonzalez went on to the chief, "is to learn where the truck goes. Perhaps it may lead us directly to the place we search. If it leaves the city, we will radio word to the scouting planes and they can follow its course into the hills. In this dry weather any vehicle traveling along the small unpaved roads will st.i.t up a cloud of dust that can easily be detected from the air. And if the truck goes out of town along the paved highway, our motorcycle patrols will spot it."

"You're sure the truck breakdown was a deliberately planned incident?" Ken said.

"Do you ask me to believe that it was just a coincidence that the truck stalled directly in front of the car we were watching?" Gonzalez stared at Ken through the cloud of smoke from the thick cigar clamped between his lips.

"It didn't look like a coincidence," Ken admitted. "But why should anybody go through all that hocus-pocus? If they knew you were watching the place, they must also have guessed that you're holding Mendoza. And in that case they would know that any note in the car was a phony and not worth picking up. But if they don't suspect anything at all-if they a.s.sume Mendoza is still in the clear-why not just follow their usual custom? They probably don't always stage a perform- 118 .

ance like that when they want to collect a message left in the paper clip."

"I think the whole business was just one more proof that this gang is smart," Phillips said grimly. "They don't take chances. I don't think they can know anything definite about Mendoza's arrest yet, but they do know there was some sort of trouble last night as the helicopter took off. So they probably reasoned that any note left in Mendoza's car last night might be bait in a trap. They had to get it, in case it was a legitimate message. But they wanted to get it in a way that would cover their tracks."

Ken nodded. "And now, of course, they do know it was a trap because all they got was a blank piece of paper."

"Exactly," Gonzalez said. "And that is the reason we now wish to move very quickly, because they are already alerted to danger."

The telephone rang and the chief gestured to Gonzalez to accept the call. Gonzalez scooped up the phone and listened briefly. When he put it down he explained that Pedro Montez had traced the truck. It was now unloading its cargo of firewood at the rear entrance of the Virrey Hotel. "He will let us know the moment it leaves that place," Gonzalez said. He shook his head with reluctant admiration. "The hotel expected the wood to be delivered this morning. They are indeed clever, these men. They are careful to use a truck which has a legitimate purpose in town today-not one whose very presence would be suspicious."

"Does that same truck bring wood to the hotel regularly?" Phillips asked.

Gonzalez nodded. Young Pedro had checked that fact ON THE TRAIL AGAIN 119.

too. "But the hotel management knows nothing about the driver. He is simply a man who offered, a year ago, to deliver firewood regularly, and he has appeared once a week since. Apparently he lives somewhere in the hills outside of town, but the hotel does not know where."

"The hotel itself couldn't be the hide-out, could it?" Ken asked.

Before anyone could answer him, a knock sounded on the chief's door and a moment later a small, elderly man entered with two huge ledgers. The chief performed courteous introductions. The little man was the munic.i.p.al tax collector and he had brought his records to the office at the suggestion of Gonzalez. Gonzalez immediately explained to him that they wished to know about all the buildings in the town which might conceivably be used as headquarters for a criminal hide-out. It would be a fairly large building, Gonzalez pointed out, big enough to accommodate several persons and an adequate staff of servants. It would also, Gonzalez added, be a comfortable-probably a luxurious-place. The men who employed the services of the hide-out undoubtedly could afford the best and expected it.

At first the little man was indignant at the possibility that the town of Rio Claro might harbor such a place, but Gonzalez skillfully smoothed his ruffled temper and urged him to compile a list of the buildings meeting the requirements he had outlined. Still looking somewhat insulted, and rather sleepy, the little man sat down at a desk with his two big books.

"Do his records cover the countryside outside of town?" Phillips asked.

Gonzalez shook his head regretfully. "But the job is worth doing, nevertheless. I do not believe the hide-out 120 .

is here, as I have said before. From now on, however, we too will miss no chances. Eh? As to the tax records for the country about here-I am told it would take weeks to go through them, and that in any case they are doubtless not very accurate."

"I can see the advantages of locating a hide-out out in the country," Ken said hesitantly, "but wouldn't it have disadvantages too? You said it probably was a luxurious place. Would it be easy to get luxuries out there-things like electric current for pumps and refrigerators, for example?"

"Why not?" Gonzalez shrugged. "They could use a gasoline-engine generator. Ten barrels of gasoline would keep it going for a month, and they could truck that in even over a bad road-or use burros if neces-saiy."

"I suppose so," Ken said. "But a big modern house like that, even in isolated country, would certainly be noticed by somebody, wouldn't it?"

"It probably is not a modern house," Gonzalez said. "This was silver mining country, in the old days of the Spanish conquistadors, and wherever there were Spanish silver mines there were always haciendas-estates for the Spanish owners or managers. The buildings were like the one you are in now-stone walls several feet thick. Such walls stand for years. This munic.i.p.al palace was once such a hacienda. It is perhaps three hundred years old. It costs money to make such a building modern and habitable," Gonzalez admitted, "especially if it has been abandoned for a long time, as have many of the haciendas in the hills. But if one has money, it is quite possible. From the outside, such a building would look ancient and uncomfortable. But inside it could be as modern as one of your big hotels." He ON THE TRAIL AGAIN 121.