The Mystery of the Vanished Victim (14 page)

He pulled. The doors gave an inch, but an iron latch on the inside kept them from opening. Taking the pencil from his ever-present red notebook, Gully pulled on the doors with one hand. With the other, he slipped the pencil into the narrow opening between the doors and, with a quick flip, threw up the latch. He went straight through the second-floor living room, through the hall door, and hurried down the curving marble stairs.

“Where did you come from?” the receptionist gasped, turning in her chair at the sound of his steps.

“There isn’t time to explain. Have you the key to the attic, please?”

“To the attic? But why—?”

“
Please
. Prema and Balbir are locked in there!”

“But how—?” At the look on Gully’s face, the receptionist snatched a key ring from her desk drawer and handed it to him. He bounded up the staircase. “It’s the long, narrow key!” the receptionist called after him.

A moment later he was unlocking the attic door and Balbir and Prema rushed out.

“Are you all right, Prema?”

“Don’t worry about me!”

The three raced down the stairs.

“Where are Dhavata and Srigar?” Balbir panted. “They know what has happened to my father.”

“They’re driving the convertible,” Gully answered. “Our first stop is Police Headquarters.”

Outside, Gully hailed a cab, and they piled in.

“Centre Street. Police Headquarters!”

“And please,” Prema implored, “we’re in a terrible hurry.”

“You kids in some kind of trouble?” the cabbie asked, half turning around to look at them.

“No,” Gully said, “but somebody will be if you don’t step on it!”

The driver stepped on it. Once he had to slam on his brakes, and only Gully’s lightning grab saved Prema from cracking her head against the partition. A huge moving van blocked the street ahead of them. Behind them car horns honked in an angry chorus.

“We’ll never get through!” Prema moaned. “My father will be killed!”

The driver shifted into reverse, shot back about three feet, then swung the wheel hard. It was an almost impossible maneuver, but the taxi just managed to scrape under the van’s lowered, jutting tail gate. Ahead, the street was almost empty. After what seemed like hours, they pulled up at the police building.

“Inspector Queen—” Gully panted.

“Gone,” the policeman on duty said before Gully could get another word out. “He’s personally supervising the motorcade from the airport.”

“Can’t you get him on the radiophone?”

“Sure, but what about?”

Before Gully could answer, Sergeant Velie came into sight carrying some papers.

“Hello, Gully,” he said. “What are you trying to get the police department to do for you now?”

“Oh, this time,” the man on duty said, “he only wants us to radio his grandfather.”

“Sergeant Velie, listen to me! You’ve got to tell me what to do!” In a rush, Gully told Velie how the mynah bird had led to their being locked in the attic.

The sergeant’s eyes narrowed in a frown as Gully told him the whole story, with frantic interjections by Prema and Balbir. When they were finished, his great jaw jutted like the prow of an atomic-powered submarine.

“We’d better start with that locked room,” Velie said, quietly enough. “Let’s see if Balbir’s father is there after all. If he is, he can tell us once and for all what this is all about.”

Down the front steps the trio hurried behind Sergeant Velie’s long strides. He pulled open the door of a waiting police car. They piled into the back as Velie got in beside the uniformed driver.

“1385 East Forty-eighth Street,” Velie said. “Let’s go!” Siren screaming, the car jumped from the curb.

Gully sank back. At last, the police were going to act … act on the long list of facts he had accumulated in his notebook. But as the police car zigzagged uptown, he kept wondering if they might not be too late.

The car had hardly stopped when Sergeant Velie jumped out, the three teenagers following closely behind him. In the vestibule he punched the button marked “Johnson.” There was no answer. He buzzed for the superintendent.

“Yeah?” a surly voice questioned over the intercom.

“I want to see you—police,” Velie grimly retorted.

A minute later, the thin man in dirty dungarees and soiled T-shirt shuffled into the hall.

“What do you want?” the super asked sullenly.

“Open up Johnson’s door and be quick about it!”

“You got a warrant, copper?”

“If I have to go for a warrant, you may be held on a murder charge!” Velie roared.

The super paled. “All right, but I got witnesses you’re forcing me to do this—”

“Move!”

They ran up the rickety, poorly lighted stairs to the top floor. At Johnson’s door, the super knocked and waited. No answer. He looked around, but Sergeant Velie was glaring at him. Hastily, the man fished some keys from his pocket and turned one in the lock.

“You kids stand over there against the wall,” the sergeant said quietly as the door swung open. Drawing his Police Positive from his shoulder holster, he lunged into the apartment.

No one was there.

The big sergeant catfooted over to the door of the inner room and noiselessly tried it. It was locked. He set his ear against the panel and heard a muffled drumming, as of heels on a wooden floor.

“My father! My father!” It was Balbir. The boy hurled himself at the door, sobbing.

“Step back, son,” Sergeant Velie said gently. He set a great shoulder to the door, seemed to draw himself in a little—and suddenly, as if by magic, the door squeaked and crashed free of the jamb.

Quick as the mammoth sergeant was, Balbir was quicker. The boy ducked under Velie’s arm and was first in the mysterious room. In a flash Balbir was across the room and tearing at the gag across the mouth of a man tied to a rusty cot whose legs had collapsed, apparently in his struggles to free himself.

The man was of Balbir’s complexion and facial characteristics; the resemblance was marked. His turban was awry and above the gag his face was lined with fatigue, but his liquid black eyes were fixed on the weeping, turbaned boy with love and compassion.

“Here, kid, let me,” Sergeant Velie said, for in his excitement the boy was all thumbs. The sergeant knelt and in no time at all had the prisoner’s gag off. Then, while Balbir rattled on to his father in Hindi, Velie undid Shamshir Singh’s bonds. His hands had been secured behind his back by strong rope that had then been passed completely around his body and the cot several times, and tightly tied. His legs had been similarly secured. In spite of the trussing, Shamshir Singh’s struggles had loosened his bonds sufficiently to enable him to inch his way lower on the cot; and when it had collapsed, his heels had actually been touching the floor.

It was a tiny, dirty, sparsely furnished room with a chipped sink in one corner. As Balbir’s father sat up, free at last, Prema washed out a glass she had found on the sink and ran to Shamshir Singh with some water. She said something to him softly in Hindi, and he glanced at her gratefully and drank the water.

“Father, this is Gulliver Queen,” Balbir said, as his father flexed his arms and then began rewinding the turban on his head. And Balbir explained who Gully was, and introduced Sergeant Velie, and told why Prema Jind was there.

“Enough, my son, enough,” Balbir’s father murmured. “I cannot take it all in at once.” He tried to rise, but he was still stiff, and the sergeant carefully helped him to his feet. “I thank you, Sergeant. And you, and you,” he said to Gully and Prema. “How good it is to see kind faces again.”

“Are you okay, Mr. Singh?” the sergeant asked. “Maybe I ought to send for an ambulance and have you checked over at Bellevue.”

“No, no, they did not harm me,” Shamshir Singh said. “This is a weakness that will pass quickly when my circulation is restored.”

“We need your help, Mr. Singh,” Gully said urgently. “Do you know anything of a plot to assassinate Dr. Jind or Prince Behar?”

“I do,” the Sikh said grimly. “The assassination plot is the reason you found me here.”

“Then Gully was right, Sergeant,” Prema cried. “My father’s life
is
in danger!”

“Tell us what you know, sir,” Velie urged.

“On my day off,” Shamshir Singh began, “after I finished a chess game in the park with my friend, he left. Two Jalpuris, one tall, the other short and thin—”

“Dhavata and Srigar!” interrupted Balbir.

“The two men approached me. They seemed friendly and talked of how hard I worked and how sure they were that I could use more money. I let them talk on till they suggested I should help them in a plot to kidnap Dr. Jind—”

“Just kidnap my father,” Prema said anxiously, “not kill?”

“Let me go on, Miss Jind,” Shamshir Singh suggested gently. “When I refused and told them I was going off to inform the police, they tried to stop me. I had borrowed the limousine and it was parked nearby. The tall man tried to grab me. I hit him and sent him sprawling into the bushes. I drove straight back to the embassy. But they must have followed me.”

“Gully was right again!” Balbir cried.

“I had just entered the house from the alley when they jumped me. The smaller man held a pistol at my back and forced me into my room. They closed the door. I knew too much, the taller man said. Their plot was to kill Dr. Jind—”

“Then my father is in danger—”

“Wait, Prema. We all want to save him. That’s why we must let Mr. Singh finish,” Gully said soothingly.

“I said I would have no part of it. I kicked over a chair, diverting their glances. Then I was able to knock the pistol from the smaller man’s hand. There was a wild fight in the room. While the big man pinned me, the smaller one touched my neck and I felt myself faint.”

“The same trick Srigar used on us,” Balbir observed.

“When I came to, I was in a strange hallway. A mustached man helped me into a room. I was flung down on a bed and my hands and feet were tied. I was given something to drink and then gagged. The next day, I was forced from the room and into a car by the same man. But before I got in, I managed to slip off my bracelet.”

“That’s what led us to you—finally,” Velie remarked.

“I was brought here and kept as you found me. The man with the mustache unbound my hand—one hand only—twice a day so that I might eat, but I found no opportunity to release myself and get away. Always he aimed a pistol at my head while I ate.”

“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Singh,” the sergeant said. “I mean that they didn’t kill you.”

“That was their intention, Sergeant Velie,” Balbir’s father said grimly, “but not until their plot against Dr. Jind should prove successful. To kill me before then would have presented them with the problem of … disposing of me prematurely.”

“Oh, don’t,” Prema moaned.

Shamshir Singh glanced at her compassionately. “Also, they wished information from me. About the ambassador—in particular whether he would use the white convertible for the motorcade if something should ‘happen’ to the official limousine. The mustached man went so far as to threaten the life of my son,” the big Sikh placed his hand lightly on Balbir’s shoulder, “if I did not tell.”

“Did you, Father?” Balbir asked. “Did you?”

“Oh, hush, Balbir,” Prema said. “Of course he did, and who would blame him?”

“No!” Balbir said fiercely. “My father would not do that!”

“My son,” Shamshir Singh said in a quiet voice, “I told.”

At the stricken look on Balbir’s face, the Sikh smiled. “I told, for I knew from what I overheard that the men Dhavata and Srigar had taken my place at the embassy. What could I know about Dr. Jind’s habits that they could not discover by themselves, without my telling? But what they could not know, I did not tell.”

“Did anyone else come here?” Gully asked.

“Yes, this morning, another man. I could hear him talking. He spoke without an accent.”

“The man the detective saw!” Gully concluded, his eyes gleaming in triumph.

“They were making plans to leave at one o’clock. They remarked that the day was perfect for their plan.”

“But what’s their plan?” the sergeant demanded.

“That I do not know,” Shamshir Singh sadly said. “They were too careful to let me overhear them.”

“But we overheard enough!” Gully exclaimed. “We heard the mustached man say he’d use a telescopic gunsight to do the shooting and that the unexpected way of firing would also be their method of escape.”

Sergeant Velie growled, “You sound more like that uncle of yours every day. What do you mean, Gully?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Gully cried. He rushed toward the door. “But there’s no time now to explain, Sergeant. I’ll tell you in the air. Come on!”

“In the
air?
” the sergeant cried, bewildered. “Where are we going, Gully?”

“To the police heliport! Hurry!”

W
HILE
Gully, Prema, and Balbir were piling into the squad car, Sergeant Velie said quickly to Shamshir Singh, “Look, Mr. Singh, I don’t know what the inspector’s grandson is up to, but he seems to have been right all along, and there’s no time to argue with him now—”

“What is it you wish me to do, Sergeant?” the tall Sikh asked.

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’d better get into a cab and go to Police Headquarters.
And stay there
. Understand?”

“I understand, Sergeant.”

“Don’t even contact your embassy. We can’t take the chance that somebody else there is in on this plot.”

Shamshir Singh nodded, and Sergeant Velie jumped into the squad car. As they roared off, Gully and Balbir looked back and saw Balbir’s father step to the curb and hail a taxicab.

“Now,” the sergeant said to Gully. “You want to go to the police heliport, we’ll go to the police heliport. What I want to know is—why do we need a whirlybird?”

“What is that?” Balbir asked blankly.

“A helicopter,” Prema explained. “Yes, Gully, why?”

“I said I’d explain in the air,” Gully said through his teeth, “and that’s just what I’m going to do. Sergeant, I can’t take the chance that you’ll call this off. We’ve
got
to get into the air to save Dr. Jind! In the air I’ll tell you.”