The Case of the Vanishing Boy (2 page)

Another tree on a downward slope stopped him with a jolt and he fell to his knees, his head ringing. When his head cleared and he had got his breath, he managed to stand again, but instead of going on he stood still for a while, listening. No one seemed to be following him. Deciding he was safe for the moment, he slumped weakly to the base of the tree to take stock of himself.

What's the matter with me?
he wondered.
What am I running from? I'm afraid of something
—
but what?

Had he done anything against the law? Were the police after him? Was he a wanted criminal trying to escape? It didn't seem likely, for there was nothing in his pockets that he couldn't claim as his own, unless it was the twelve dollars he'd found in them. Where had the money come from, anyhow?

Remembering Ginny, he began to wonder if he hadn't been foolish in running away merely because he'd seen two policemen crossing the platform. Or had it been the men by the van?

None of it made sense. All he knew for certain was that his name was Jan, and that he was hungry. He must not have had anything to eat for some time, for his stomach was growling and he felt weak and a little dizzy.

The sudden flash and crack of lightning jerked him to his feet in alarm and drove him down the slope in a search for shelter. He could hear traffic ahead. Presently he found himself hurrying along a gravel path, with distant street lights and sudden bursts of lightning showing the way. The path took him to an alley behind a building. He reached the street beyond just as the rain began.

Jan lowered his head and dashed for the first sheltered entrance he could make out. In the slashing downpour he did not realize it was a small church until the door slowly opened and light spilled upon him. He shook the water from his jeans and faced the smiling scrutiny of a portly priest.

“Well, bless us both! I didn't know anyone was out here. Unless you were born a duck, come on in where it's dry!”

Jan entered hesitantly.

“You're scratched up a bit,” the priest went on. “I assume you had a fall, though not a bad one. Are you all right?”

“I—I'm okay, sir.”

“I don't believe we've met before. I'm Father Dancy.”

“I'm Jan,” he replied, taking the priest's outstretched hand. “Jan—Jan Riggs.” The last name slid almost naturally from his tongue, coming so easily that he wondered if it really could be his own. For some reason he didn't like it at all and wished he'd thought of something else.

“Riggs,” said Father Dancy. “Are you a newcomer in town?”

“Just passing through, sir. I—I got out to take a look around, and the rain caught me. Er, do you know where Heron Rhodes lives?”

“Rhodes? Rhodes? Oh, you must mean that Dr. Rhodes. He's a psychologist, I believe. He has a farm about five miles out of town.”

“How can I find it from here?”

“Well, this street in front of the church runs straight into the highway going west. The Rhodes property borders the highway. It has a stone wall running the entire length of the place.” The priest paused, eyeing him intently. “Do you know any of the family?”

“Just Ginny.”

“Ginny? Oh, the little blind girl. She's really and truly quite—” Father Dancy stopped abruptly, his attention caught by something in the rain beyond the open door. “Now what can Sergeant Bricker be wanting? I'm sure he isn't coming to confess anything.”

Jan glanced quickly through the door, and chilled as he made out a figure in a raincoat coming around the side of a police car at the curb. He managed to control an impulse to dash madly through the church in the hope of finding some way of escape at the rear. Instead he forced himself to say quietly, “Father, I'd like to use the washroom, if you have one here.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Down at the end of the aisle here you'll see a door on the right. The washroom is the second door on the other side.”

Jan sped down the aisle, and made it to a small door just as Father Dancy stepped forward to meet Sergeant Bricker. He caught a glimpse of the two as he eased the door shut behind him, then he leaped down the dimly lighted hall and jerked open the first door he saw, to a tiny office lined with bookshelves. Behind the desk was a window, and to the left of it a narrow door obviously used as a private exit.

In seconds he was in an alley outside, staring in dismay at the building in front of him and the high wall to the left that prevented him from reaching the area behind the church. The only avenue of escape was to the street. It meant going directly past Sergeant Bricker's car, which he could see through the lessening rain.

He swallowed and ran cautiously to the mouth of the alley, then flattened against the side of the church when he heard voices around the corner. The entrance, where he had stood hardly a minute ago, was only a few feet away.

“Are you sure?” Father Dancy was saying.

“No question of it! It has to be the Riggs boy.”

“
Riggs
, did you say? May the good Lord help him! He did tell me his name was Riggs, but it meant nothing for I hadn't heard of him. Honestly, I can hardly believe—”

“You can't go by looks these days. I've seen some angel faces whose deeds would make your skin crawl. Now, stay well away from me, Father, when I go after him. I understand he has a knife, and I don't want you too close if he turns violent.…”

Shock held Jan motionless. Something told him he ought to run, that his very life might depend upon it, but for long seconds he was incapable of movement. Then a rippling flash of lightning restored him to his senses and spurred him to flight.

It had been his intention to locate Ginny in the hope that her family could help him. But how could he do that now if he was a wanted criminal?

He put Ginny out of his mind and concentrated on escape. The rain helped, for there was very little traffic on the streets at the moment and the sidewalks were almost empty. The few people passing on foot paid no attention to him, for who looks at a running boy in the rain? But cars were another matter.

Several times in the next half hour he recognized the approach of a police car by the way it crept along and made use of a spotlight. He evaded each by hiding behind trees or shrubbery, or by slipping into an alley and hurrying to the next street.

Presently the houses thinned and the street lights were left behind. Then he was on a winding dirt road, moving uncertainly through the dripping dark while his eyes searched a little desperately for shelter. The patched blackness around him was formless, but parts of it seemed blacker than other parts, and instinctively he headed for the blackest patch of all for it made him think of a cave.

It was a cave of sorts, for entering it took him miraculously out of the rain. Then a final, feeble display of lightning showed him that he was in a shed housing farm machinery.

He sank down in a corner in his sodden clothes, as miserable, it seemed, as he had ever been in his life. Then he thought,
No, I've been in a worse spot than this. Much worse. A thousand times worse. But where?

His memory carried him back only to the Glendale station. Ginny said he'd been running, but he was unable to recall that part of it. Instead his mind leaped on to their arrival at the Westlake station, and he had a sharp vision of the two determined policemen crossing the platform to the train. He hadn't the least doubt now that they'd been looking for him.

But how had they known that Jan Riggs—if that was his name—would be on that particular train? He hadn't known it himself until a minute or two before he went on board.

Of course, someone could have spotted him at the Glendale station and told the police, and it would have taken only a quick phone call to tell the Westlake police to be on the watch for him. But that sounded too easy. And what of the men in white jackets by the van? His capture must be very important to somebody, to judge by all the effort being made to find him.

Suddenly his wet clothing felt icy and he began to shake with a chill. It was a dreadful feeling, made all the worse by the knowledge that there was something frightening in his life that was beyond his power to remember.

The headlights of a car swept through the rain and touched the front of the shed. They wavered on the unevenness of the road, then steadied and came directly for the shed's square opening. Jan stared at them, knowing all at once how it felt to be a trapped animal. The car stopped, and abruptly he leaped to his feet and darted behind one of the pieces of machinery.

Someone got out of the car, and he was astounded to hear a familiar voice call his name. It was Ginny.

“Jan!” she repeated. “Jan! I know you are here. Please come out—Pops and I have come to take you home!”

It was like a sequence in a dream. He hardly believed it, even when he stumbled from the shed, teeth chattering so that he could not speak, and glimpsed her in a rain cape with the car lights behind her. He was so glad to see her he almost cried. Then in the next breath a tall elderly man was throwing a blanket about him and helping him into the rear of the car, where a small boy sat watching owlishly.

They were well away from the shed before Jan managed to stammer, “How—how d-did you ever find me?”

“Promise you won't tell,” said Ginny.

“I p-promise.”

She gave a happy little laugh. “We'd have found you sooner, only we had to go home first and get Otis. Otis can find anything.”

3

WANTED

The car swung past a shopping area at the edge of town, stopped briefly at a traffic light, then started cautiously down a sloping residential street where torrents of rainwater overflowed the gutters. The rain had almost stopped. Jan, peering through the car window, was startled to see a building on his left that seemed vaguely familiar.

Suddenly the truth hit him. “Hey,” he burst out. “I was here earlier this evening—at that church we just passed. I was talking to Father Dancy when Sergeant Bricker came, and—and I had to run. But I heard enough to learn I was a wanted criminal.”

Heron Rhodes, who had hardly spoken except for a mumble or a grunt, pulled the car to the curb and braked it.

Now he said, “If you were a criminal, son, you wouldn't be confessing it quite so soon, and anyhow Ginny would have known it. You'd be surprised how far off she can spot a phony or a rat. Er, did you find out why you were wanted?”

“No, sir.”

“Hm. Tell me everything you said to Father Dancy, and everything you heard Bricker say about you.”

Jan had no trouble repeating every word of it, for it would have been impossible to forget it.

Heron Rhodes grunted. “After you learned where we lived, why in double tarnation did you run off in the opposite direction and hide?”

“Because, well, I mean if I was really as dangerous as that policeman seemed to think, I—I sure didn't have any business going to you and Ginny for help.”

The old man snorted. “I'll give you a top grade for ethics, and a big zero for judgment. You should have hightailed it straight to the farm. We'd have picked you up on the way, and no one would have known beans about it. But now we're in for trouble.”

“But why, Pops?” said Ginny.

“Because, pet, we've lost some time, and I can't possibly learn all I need to know from Jan before we have Bricker to worry about.”

“But I still don't understand. How can Sergeant Bricker—”

“Because,” said Heron Rhodes, sending the car swiftly down the street, “this happens to be the only white vintage Rolls in the county. Everybody knows it, especially the police. They know when I arrived at the station to meet you, and when we left after the excitement over Jan. They saw us come back into town with Otis, and they already know we're headed for home with another person in the back seat, because we passed a cop at the top of the hill, and he waved to me. Bricker knows Jan sat with you on the train, and that he asked the priest where you live. It won't take him long to put it all together, then he'll be burning up the road to the farm.”

The car ran a red light, whirled into a highway that was fortunately empty, and began to fly. Heron Rhodes snatched up the car phone, called a number, and said, “We've got him, Hecuba, and he needs hot soup and a change of clothes. Lay out some of those things you picked up for our Tremaine cousin. They ought to fit. And we'll have to work fast. That devilish Bricker has his nose on the trail, and he may be out to see us.”

It seemed they had gone much farther than the five miles the priest had mentioned when Jan finally glimpsed a stone wall on the left. And a very long stone wall it was, for he guessed they drove beside it for at least a half mile before Heron Rhodes swung through an open gateway. At the end of a winding lane the car stopped before a large, rambling old stone house nearly hidden in the trees.

A tall white-haired woman in a green smock, whom Ginny called Aunt Heck, met them at the door. She was nearly as tall as Heron Rhodes, and had the same sharp nose and lively, intent face. She gave Jan's arm a friendly squeeze, and said, “Heron, I put his things in the little bedroom off the library. Why don't you help him change, then bring him to the kitchen. We'll all have something to eat together while we talk.”

“Good thought. I want to give him a quick once-over anyway.”

“Can I watch?” said Otis, speaking for the first time.

“You may not. But you may help with the questions later.”

Jan was thrust across the broad entrance hall, through a huge room lined with books, and into a small bedroom dominated by a towering four-poster. An assortment of new clothing was laid out on the bed.

While he stripped down and toweled dry, Heron Rhodes went over him hurriedly, prodding and tapping and giving an occasional grunt.

“You're kind of scratched up, son. That happen this evening?”

“Yes, sir. I banged into a tree when I was running through the woods.”