A WEEK LATER CHERRY, BOB, AND JEFF SAT ON THE veranda of the New Stanley Hotel, within view of Mount Kenya. Its snowcap glistened in the hot morning sun. Bob had just returned from police headquarters, and the three of them were cooling off with iced Cokes.
“Well,” Bob said with a sigh, “I sure am glad that’s over and done with at last. Now maybe we can get back to the normal business of running our hospital.”
“I hope so,” said Cherry. “I don’t care if I never see or hear of another diamond again.”
“Huh!” Jeff snorted, teasing her. “Maybe you feel that way now, but wait until you see a pretty one you’d like to wear.”
Cherry smiled, but she did not joke back. She noticed Bob looked sober and reflective. He said:
“I certainly did hate to see Long Jack tangled up in such a filthy business.”
“He seemed honestly sorry,” Cherry said. “He made no excuses for what he’d done—except to admit that he had been tempted by easy money.”
“There’s no such thing as easy money,” Jeff said. “Only some people, like our friend the hunter, have to find it out the tough way.”
“I hope it doesn’t go too hard with him,” Cherry said. “After all, he told the whole story to Jeff and me, and he said he was going to do the same with the police.”
“He did,” Bob said. “And after he talked, Ed Smith broke down and sang a little song himself. When the officials mentioned the fact that sentences might be lighter if all the diamonds were recovered, Ed told the name of his contact in the United States—the man who posed as the phony Abercrombie agent and took the first shipment from the MATS plane. So the FBI got on his trail, and it looks as if they’ll get back those stones, and very likely nab everybody else who was in on the deal.”
“How about Krynos?” Cherry asked. “Did they ever find him?”
“Not yet. But Interpol—the International Police Force—are looking for him, and it will be a miracle if he can run away from them for very long. Obviously he was a phony, too, and not a trader at all!”
Jeff spoke up. “I didn’t get taken into Miss Cherry-Sherlock-Holmes Ames’s confidence,” he said, winking at Bob, “so I came in on this late. And, I might add, in a very surprising way.”
“You were wonderful, Jeff,” Cherry said. “The way you stopped those men on the beach was simply marvelous. If all this had been a movie, I suppose I would have wound up falling in love with you.”
Jeff grinned sheepishly. “Well, it’s not too late. Why don’t you?”
“I may do it yet.” Cherry smiled. “So you watch out.”
Bob laughed. “O.K. When you kids decide to tie the knot, I’ll be the best man.”
Jeff realized that he was being kidded, and grew serious again. “What I don’t understand is how Ed Smith knew beforehand that you were going to send blood samples back to Washington.”
“He didn’t,” Bob said. “He explained that part of it when he spilled out the whole story to the police. But he was looking hard for ways to smuggle the stones out of Africa. Remember, the attempt to do it in the horns of the antelope Long Jack shot had gone wrong. So when Smith heard from Krynos that we were here on a medical mission, he decided to visit us—to see if he couldn’t make use of some angle of our activities.”
“And when he discovered, on his very first day at Ngogo,” Cherry said, “that Bob shipped blood samples in test tubes to the Foundation in Washington, well—”
“It was a pretty slick trick,” Jeff said.
“And if it hadn’t been for Cherry’s eagle eye,” Bob said, “he’d have gotten away with it too.”
“Oh, come on now!” Cherry protested. “My mother always warned me to beware of men who keep flattering a girl.”
“All right,” Bob said. “I agree with your mother. So I’ll never say another flattering word to you again. How about you, Jeff?”
This time, when Jeff smiled, there was a faint touch of a blush under his tan.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “It’s pretty hard not to flatter a girl like Cherry.”