Stranger in a Strange Land

“So he is. Too fast, maybe. I’ve never seen muscle tissue develop so rapidly—I’m sorry I didn’t weigh him the day you arrived. Never mind, back to Ben—Cavendish reports that Ben dropped him and the lawyer, a chap named Frisby, at nine thirty-one, and Ben kept the cab. We don’t know where Ben went then. But an hour later he—or let’s say somebody who said he was Ben—phoned that message to Paoli Flat.”

“You don’t think it was Ben?”

“I do not. Cavendish reported the license number of the cab and my scouts tried to get a look at the daily trip tape for that cab. If Ben used his credit card, rather than feeding coins into the cab’s meter, his charge number should be printed on the tape—but even if he paid cash the tape should show where the cab had been and when.”

“Well?”

Harshaw shrugged. “The records show that that cab was in for repairs and was never in use Thursday morning. That gives us two choices: either a Fair Witness misread or misremembered a cab’s serial number or somebody tampered with the record.” He added grimly, “Maybe a jury would decide that even a Fair Witness could glance at a cab’s serial number and misread it, especially if he had not been asked to remember it—but I don’t believe it… not when the Witness is James Oliver Cavendish. Cavendish would either be certain of that serial number—or his report would never mention it.”

Harshaw scowled and went on, “Jill, you’re forcing me to rub my own nose in it—and I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all! Granted that Ben could have sent that message, it is most unlikely that he could have tampered with the daily record of that cab… and still less believable that he had any reason to. No, let’s face it. Ben went somewhere in that cab—and somebody who could get at the records of a public carrier went to a lot of trouble to conceal where he went… and sent a phony message to keep anyone from realizing that he had disappeared.”

“‘Disappeared!’ Kidnapped, you mean!”

“Softly, Jill. ‘Kidnapped’ is a dirty word.”

“It’s the only word for it! Jubal, how can you sit there and do nothing when you ought to be shouting it from the—”

“Stop it, Jill! There’s another word. Instead of kidnapped, he might be dead.”

Gillian slumped. “Yes,” she agreed dully. “That’s what I’m really afraid of.”

“So am I. But we’ll assume he is not, until we have seen his bones. But it’s one or the other—so we assume that he is kidnapped. Jill, what’s the greatest danger about kidnapping? No, don’t bother your pretty head; I’ll tell you. The greatest danger to the victim is a hue-and-cry—because if a kidnapper is frightened, he will almost always kill his victim. Had you thought of that?”

Gillian looked woeful and did not answer. Harshaw went on gently, “I am forced to say that I think it is extremely likely that Ben is dead. He has been gone too long. But we’ve agreed to assume that he is alive—until we know otherwise. Now you intend to look for him. Gillian, can you tell me how you will go about this? Without increasing the risk that Ben will be done away with by the unknown party or parties who kidnapped him?”

“Uh—But we know who they are!”

“Do we?”

“Of course we do! The same people who were keeping Mike a prisoner—the government!”

Harshaw shook his head. “We don’t know it. That’s an assumption based on what Ben was doing when last seen. But it’s not a certainty. Ben has made lots of enemies with his column and by no means all of them are in the government. I can think of several who would willingly kill him if they could get away with it. However—” Harshaw frowned. “Your assumption is all we have to go on. But not ‘the government’—that’s too sweeping a term. ‘The government’ is several million people, nearly a million in Washington alone. We have to ask ourselves: Whose toes were being stepped on? What person or persons? Not ‘the government’—but what individuals?”

“Why, that’s plain enough, Jubal. I told you, just as Ben told it to me. It’s the Secretary General himself.”

“No,” Harshaw denied. “While that may be true, it’s not useful to us. No matter who did what, if it is anything rough or illegal, it won’t be the Secretary General who did it, even if he benefits by it. Nobody would ever be able to prove that he even knew about it. It is likely that he would not know about it—not the rough stuff. No, Jill, we need to find out which lieutenant in the Secretary General’s large staff’ of stooges handled this operation. But that isn’t as hopeless as it sounds—I think. When Ben was taken in to see that phony ‘Man from Mars,’ one of Mr. Douglas’s executive assistants was with him—tried to talk him out of it, then went with him. It now appears that this same top-level stooge also dropped out of sight last Thursday—and I don’t think it is a coincidence, not when he appears to have been in charge of the phony ‘Man from Mars.’ If we find him, we may find Ben, Gilbert Berquist is his name and I have reason—”

“Berquist?”