“ONLY FIVE, TEN MINUTES, THEN OUT!” THE FARMER’S cruel face bent close to Cherry’s as Toni slowly helped her through the door. “I warn you!”
Toni stalled in the open doorway. He looked inside the hut and asked the farmer, “Where’s the guest?”
“Where do you think he is? In the middle room—and don’t go in there!” The farmer roughly shoved Toni. “Move! So I can close the door. Or we’ll all freeze to death.”
Cherry, pretending faintness, leaned heavily on Toni’s arm and delayed a minute longer.
“Help me! Help!” came the faint voice.
“Shut up!” the farmer shouted back. “And you two young dunces—in or out? Out.” He grabbed the door to close it on them. Toni jumped inside the hut, pulling Cherry with him.
The farmer slammed the door shut and locked it. Cherry saw the farmer’s wife staring at her. She was a slovenly woman, her hair unwashed, her clothes old and drab. She seemed intimidated by the sight of Cherry, and walked to one of the two cots in the room.
Toni, meanwhile, had walked into the middle room, ignoring the farmer’s yells and blustering.
“Oh, shut up, Otto,” Toni said good-naturedly. “Can’t I even go in and say hello to the guest?” Then Cherry heard Toni saying in a gentle voice, “How’s my friend? How’s His Highness today?”
In a cramped room where Cherry followed Toni, a man sat weakly on a cot. Cherry stared at him. Although thinner now, this middle-aged, heavyset man with brown hair and mustache seemed to be the man she and Marie had seen in Lugano—Jacob Lenk. So all the things she had surmised since Monday were pretty close to the truth!
“Why, Toni!” Jacob Lenk’s face lighted. “Have you come to help me? Today this wretched Otto and Martha took away my insulin! And I have not had a decent meal in days.”
Cherry stared again, this time at Toni. He had put his arm around the man. Jacob seemed to be pale and a little light-headed. “Strange,” she thought, “those are signs of low blood sugar—from too much insulin—the patient may act intoxicated.”
“I’ve seen this girl before,” Jacob Lenk told Toni. “Somewhere…Is she a friend of yours?”
“Yes. Yes. Don’t talk. Just rest.”
Cherry had not dared bring in the medical kit. She had an insulin ampule, a sterile plastic syringe, sterile cotton swabs, a small bottle of alcohol in her parka pocket, and a tiny bottle of brandy—whichever this neglected diabetic patient might need. But the farmer stood glowering in the first room, policing them. She whispered to Jacob Lenk:
“Why did they take away your insulin today?”
“What? What’s that?” the farmer asked suspiciously.
“Because he came here today,” Jacob Lenk whispered to Cherry.
Toni poked his head into the kitchen and looked around. Then he shrugged and gestured: “No one there. Are you sure, Your Highness?”
Jacob Lenk, afraid, began to sweat. Cherry asked him in a whisper when he last had had insulin. He whispered vaguely:
“Day before yesterday.”
“Did you test for sugar today?” Cherry asked.
He nodded. “Positive—but just a trace of sugar.”
Cherry was puzzled. If sugar was present, then Jacob Lenk was not suffering from low blood sugar. And if it was only a trace of sugar, then what was making him so sick and weak? Could it be an imbalanced diet? He needed lean meat, eggs, milk, leafy green vegetables, and the proper amount of carbohydrates.
On the floor beside his cot, Cherry saw with alarm a tin cup with some condensed milk in it, and a half-consumed chocolate bar. Too much sugar for a diabetic was in both these foods!
Dr. Portman’s voice came back to her prescribing the treatment: “Lots of fluids—hot tea, water—and stimulants. Administer the usual dosage of insulin if the test shows that sugar is present, or if the patient is in a state of coma.”
Thank goodness Jacob Lenk was not in a coma. Cherry asked him if he had any infection of the feet, or anywhere else on his body. She knew that gangrene could follow an infection or injury, especially to the feet.
Jacob shook his head. “No…but I don’t feel well. My insulin. I must—”
The farmer mumbled, “You got to go in a minute,” and walked away.
“And how do you think His Highness is looking today?” a man’s strong, sarcastic voice came from the kitchen.
Toni stiffened in alarm. He put his hand on the sick man’s arm and said, “Come on out, Jack. Join the party.”
The other man sauntered in from the kitchen. Hendrix was slimmer, tougher, younger than the mousy kidnapped man, Cherry realized, now that she saw them together. Toni said:
“Where did you hide yourself in there?”
“You’re careless, Toni. You should’ve stepped in and searched for me. I’ve been here since yesterday. You, Otto!” he said loudly to the farmer in the front room. “You call this being on the job? I said don’t let anybody in! So here’s this poor, poor girl who needs to get warm—”
“I was just now throwing her and him out,” the farmer whined. “Anyhow, it’s only Toni and his girl.”
“Some guard!” Hendrix turned to Cherry. “Hello, Nurse, what do you think you’re going to do here?”
Hendrix glanced coldly at her, then at the man whose name and appearance he had stolen. He was a close replica of his victim, heavy suit, wig, mustache. The cut on his left hand had healed by now, only a scar remained.
“Now I remember you,” the prisoner weakly said to Cherry, with a look of hope. “You’re the nurse who helped me in Lugano—one of the two young ladies—Nurse, I need—”
“You keep quiet!” Hendrix snapped. He waved away the farmer, who was listening with a nasty curiosity. “Get inside, Otto. If I want you, I’ll let you know. Toni! Who else came with you?”
“Nobody else, Boss,” Toni said.
Hendrix stared at him. “Huh! Well, you’d better not bring anyone else, or it’ll be too bad for you!” He said softly, “Toni, I ought to kill you! Bringing that nurse here when I told you nothing more for Jacob Lenk—”
Hendrix suddenly shifted his tactics. “Now look, Nurse. Don’t get any wrong ideas about what’s going on here. My friend Jacob Lenk came up here for a rest. Otto and Martha treated him good—good meals, a radio of his own. Right, Jacob? And Toni brought you insulin, regular. Fair enough?”
Jacob Lenk’s face wore a terrible, strained expression as if he wanted to cry out, “You lie!”
“All right, then,” Cherry took up Hendrix’s challenge, “you won’t mind if I give your sick guest some brandy, will you?” She took the tiny bottle out of her parka pocket and handed it to Jacob. “And I’ll just find an extra blanket to put on his bed—”
Hendrix sidestepped to block her, but Cherry streaked behind him into the front room. To distract the captors, she started tugging a blanket off one of the two cots. The farmer and his wife ran up, yelling objections. The wife yanked the blanket away from Cherry, and the farmer yelled:
“Boss! Boss!”
“Throw these kids out!” Hendrix ordered.
But Cherry was already unlocking the door. Otto, blustering, started to shove her through. Cherry clung as if glued to the opened door.
“Val!” she shouted. “Val! Joe!”
From behind the woodshed they raced past her and slammed into the farmer, sending him reeling to the floor. Joe Wardi pushed the wife away; she fell across one cot.
“Toni! Where are you?” Joe Wardi shouted.
Gasps answered. Cherry saw that Toni had come up in back and caught Hendrix’s neck in the crook of his arm. Hendrix’s back arched like a bow.
Suddenly Hendrix twisted hard to one side, ducked, and pulled free. He shoved Toni away, sprawling, and pulled a gun from his pocket. It was the same gun Cherry had held in her hand.
Toni leaped for the gun. Hendrix swung it, hitting Toni across the side of the head. The boy went down, dazed. Hendrix kicked him in the ribs. Jacob on the cot covered his face with shaky hands.
“Stop kicking him!” Val roared.
Hendrix pointed the gun at Val’s face. Val flushed with anger. Then he glanced at Cherry and his eyes asked, “Are you all right?” Satisfied that she was, he faced Hendrix.
“All right, you have the gun. But we are three, you are two.”
Hendrix said, “Two unarmed and one on the floor. Get up!”
Toni got up resentfully, rubbing himself.
Hendrix leveled his gun at the intruders in the front room—conveniently herded together for his purpose. He kicked Toni in the shins.
“Get in there with them.” Hendrix motioned with his gun. “It’s loaded,” he warned them. “Otto, close the door.”
Val coolly said, “What are you planning?”
Hendrix grinned. “What do you think I’m going to do?”
Out of nowhere—out of this moment’s nightmare excitement—Cherry heard her own voice lightly saying:
“You know, Mr. Hendrix, I think you’re even better-looking without that mustache. Does it come off?”
He actually was flattered. “Yeah, it comes off because I only glue it on. Say, I thought all along you probably recognized me.”
Val said to Hendrix, “All we want here is the sick man. Will you let us take him with us peaceably?”
“What do you want with him?” Hendrix demanded.
“Have you no common decency?” Joe Wardi said. “So he can get medical care and get well.”
A dead silence fell. From his cot Jacob said rapidly, as if afraid of being interrupted, “He—he doesn’t want me to get well. I know too much. To murder me with a gun, it’s too—”
“You shut your mouth!” Hendrix yelled.
“—dangerous for him, so instead he lets me die of neglect. Kidnapped me, he and that man Shorty—”
Hendrix hit him in the face with the back of his hamlike hand. Val quivered, suppressing his reaction to strike back. Joe Wardi blew out an angry breath. The gun stopped them. Jacob sat dazed, then said:
“I’m not afraid of you, I’m going to die soon, anyway.”
“No, you’re not!” Cherry silently promised. Hendrix raised his arm to hit Jacob Lenk again. To divert Hendrix, she said:
“That—ah—green notebook you brought to Madame Sully that day we met on the stairs—”
Cherry was gambling, merely guessing. She had said the first thing that came to mind. Hendrix confirmed her guess by turning a sickly color.
“What about what notebook?” he bluffed. “Toni, did she see the—any notebook?”
Toni shrugged, deadpan, then shook his head.
Hendrix snorted. “I got to get things ready. Otto! You lunkhead!”
The farmer and his wife still stood in the front room, smirking at the rescuers’ plight. Otto hunched forward. “Yes, Boss, what?”
“That kitchen door—it’s locked and barred?” Jack Lenk asked.
“Yes, Boss, from the outside.”
“So you did one thing right. Now listen, Otto, where’s the—” Jack Lenk reached out to cuff Toni, who was fingering the iron climbing hook that hung on his belt. “A gun’s faster, Toni. A whole lot deadlier, too, Toni. Just the same, take that hook off you and hand it over.”
Toni did as he was ordered. Jack Lenk tossed the iron hook in a corner on the floor. He looked to see whether Val and Joe Wardi wore the same mountaineering hooks.
“Hand over the hooks!” Hendrix ordered them. “Otto, take their ropes away, too!”
Everything landed in a jangling heap on the floor. Cherry’s hopes sank. How far away were the police?
“Otto, where are our three pairs of skis?” Hendrix asked. “And the toboggan?”
“Everything’s in the shed, Boss,” Otto said.
“Go get them. Wait! First, get the box of kitchen matches, and the kerosene, and rags out of your wife’s cleaning pail. We’ll use sheets and blankets, too, so we’ll have enough rags.”
“Matches, kerosene, rope,” the farmer repeated. He went into the kitchen. “Should I bring some dry paper, too, to set this hut afire?”
“Yes. Bring kindling wood when you go to the shed,” Jack Lenk said. “When we leave, we’ll bar the front door from the outside, same as the back door.”
He waited while the farmer collected his lethal things in the kitchen. Cherry watched and listened numbly, as if none of this could really be happening to her, as if she must surely awake from this evil dream. Another part of her mind reasoned: Val is waiting for the farmer to go to the shed and leave Hendrix in here alone. She noticed Val and Joe tensely exchange glances. Hendrix stood with his leveled gun out of their reach. Toni sulked alone.
The farmer and his wife left the hut, locking the door after him. As the lock clicked, Jack Lenk said, “You’ll be tied up and locked in. Except you, Your Highness. You go in the toboggan with us. I want to make absolutely sure what happens to you. Want to see it with my own eyes.”
His voice was so evil that Cherry shivered. He said, “Toni, light a cigarette for me. Here—” He took a cigarette from his pocket, handed it to Toni who lit it, and returned it to him burning-end first—and then Toni grabbed for the gun. Instantly Val and Joe moved in to help Toni. Hendrix crouched, backed, and the gun stayed in his hand. The cigarette, having burned a raw red spot on his gun hand, lay smoking on the floor. He let it burn there, and leveled his gun once more.
“I’m still boss here! Go on into the kitchen,” Hendrix said. “All of you except His Highness. Hurry up!”
They trooped silently through the small middle room and stood huddled in the narrow kitchen.
“Hey, Boss,” Toni pleaded, “can’t I just sit on the cot with him, huh?” Without waiting for permission, he stepped in and sat down beside Jacob, who smiled a little at him.
Hendrix sneered, “Ain’t that sweet. I didn’t know you two poor jokers were such friends. Jeepers, you only saw each other those two Sundays—”
But he let Toni stay. A key scraped in the lock. Cherry hoped it was the police.
The farmer and his wife came back in. Both carried armsful of wood and old newspapers. Kerosene, rags, and matches waited in the middle room. Hendrix looked to see what they were bringing.
In that off-guard instant Toni sprang for the corner, seized an iron climbing hook, and went for Hendrix. The hook caught Hendrix across the face. His gun spat fire with a roar. The bullet missed Toni. One of the small windows shattered.
The farmer ran in to help. Joe Wardi grabbed him and backed him again into the front room.
“Drop that gun!” Val yelled and his fist smacked against Hendrix’s jaw. Hendrix staggered back, then leaped forward to thrust his knee up into Val’s belly, doubling him up. Toni rushed at Hendrix, but Hendrix kicked him away, and took full aim at—to Cherry’s horror—the sick man on the cot.
“I’m getting rid of you!” Hendrix yelled.
Joe Wardi came up fast from behind and hit Hendrix a tremendous blow between the shoulder blades. Stunned, Hendrix’s arms froze. Val grabbed his gun arm and twisted it back. The gun slipped out of the scarred left hand and clattered onto the floor.
“All right, all right, all right,” Hendrix said. He wiped his bloodied face with his sleeve.
Outdoors a whistle blew. Another whistle answered. Both sounded near and piercing. Cherry heard men’s voices and the clank of metal equipment of some sort. It sounded like a snowcat, a tractor-like vehicle. As the police entered the hut, Cherry heard Jacob groan. He swayed back on his cot.
Toni reached the sick man even before Cherry did. “Have you the—the insulin?” the boy asked her.
“Yes. In my pocket.” Cherry helped Jacob to lie down, and covered him with the blanket. “Toni, I left the medical kit on the far side of the woodshed. Would you bring it?”
Toni was collared by a police officer. “He must stay here, miss. I will have someone bring you the medical kit.”
The policeman went through the crowded front room where Hendrix and the farmer sat on the cots, with wrists outstretched. The police were putting handcuffs on them. The farmer seemed to have a superficial leg wound, Cherry noticed.
“Toni,” said Jacob weakly, “you are in trouble. Poor, bad Toni. You were good to me. You were my friend.”
“Sh,” Cherry said. “Tell me again, Jacob, when did you last have insulin?”
He thought, lying on his cot, staring at the low ceiling. “Day before yesterday. They should have given it to me today with breakfast.”
Toni looked shocked, worried.
Cherry smiled and nodded at him. “Just to be very sure, we’ll ask Jacob his dosage, shall we?” In discussing with Dr. Portman, they had decided to accept the patient’s word for his correct dosage and diet. She took the syringe in its sterile wrappings from her parka’s roomy pocket.
Val, smeared with dirt and blood from the fight but composed, brought the medical kit. “Cherry, can I help you—and Toni?”
Toni smiled from ear to ear. He had an open wound on his face, but he glowed because Val had forgiven him.
“Yes, you both can help,” Cherry said, “by going away while I give Jacob an injection.” The sick man was too exhausted to give it to himself, as he usually did. She glanced up at Toni and handed him some medicated gauze pads from the kit. “Use these until we can clean up your face,” Cherry said.
Now she gave her full attention to Jacob. She inserted the hypodermic needle into the vial of insulin and drew out the proper dosage. Then she wiped the site of injection near Jacob’s shoulder with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol, pinched up the skin at the injection site, quickly inserted the needle, and injected the insulin. Holding the skin firmly with the cotton, she withdrew the needle and gently wiped the site of injection with alcohol.
Jacob Lenk gave an audible sigh, obviously relieved at getting his insulin. Normal color began to seep back into his face and he seemed less lethargic. His breathing grew deeper and steadier.
She tried to ignore the distraction of the three prisoners being hustled outdoors. Police waited in the snow with skis and toboggans. The snowcat rolled up closer to the hut.
“Feeling better now?” she asked Jacob, after letting him rest—as much as anyone could rest in the midst of men moving around and orders being given.
“Yes, thank you, miss. Better.” Jacob struggled to sit up. “Where’s my watch? Mr. Hendrix gave it today to Otto’s wife—she is wearing it under her sleeve—my watch! He gave it to her as payment for taking care of me. Please don’t let them—please—” Jacob ran out of breath.
“I’ll get it for you,” Toni said, starting off. Once again, a policeman halted him, but did listen to Toni’s plea. In minutes he had recovered the watch.
“You see,” Jacob said to Cherry and Toni, “how special this watch is? How many things it tells you—not only the time, but also the day, month, year, and here is a chronometer and here is a stopwatch device and here is a sweep second hand, even an alarm to wake me—
“Swiss watches are my hobby. I am proud to tell you that my factory, the Gold Ribbon, assembled this watch for me, in honor of my long service with them, just before they transferred me. Just before I went to Lugano—and got kidnapped.”
“Toni Peter!” The captain of the police called out. “You are under arrest and will come with us.”
Toni slowly got up. “Maybe I’ll see you again, Cherry, Jacob.” He looked around for Val, but he was not in sight. “Tell Val—Well, never mind.”
“I will put in a good word for you,” Jacob promised. Cherry thought she might, too, when the time came.
“Thanks,” Toni said to Jacob. “Helping you is the first decent thing I’ve done in a long time.” He walked away beside a policeman.
By the time Cherry gave Jacob all the fluids—water and hot tea—he could comfortably drink, the hut and slope had grown quiet. Everyone had gone except one policeman who would stay with the rescue party. Jacob wanted very much to stay with Cherry rather than go to the big, impersonal hospital in Morten, and the police had agreed. The remaining policeman and Joe Wardi half carried Jacob to the snowcat, covered him warmly, then strapped him in. Cherry gave him a stimulant—a little brandy—to help him endure the journey back, which would have to be via highways and would take quite a long time.
Val said that Madame Sully now was under house arrest at the chateau, in the custody of Eric the “waiter.” Simultaneously, the Italian police in Rosalia had arrested Marco at the garage—on the radioed advice of Swiss police. Shorty, Hendrix’s companion in the kidnapping, had also been taken into custody in Rosalia. He was wanted by the police on other charges.
Hendrix, Otto, Otto’s wife, and Toni were on their way to prison in Morten. Later all seven of them—Marco on extradition—might be transferred to one central prison, near the court where their smuggling case and Hendrix’s kidnapping case would be heard.
“Poor Toni,” Cherry said that evening. “Prison.”
“He asked for it,” Val said. “But I feel sorry, too. Cherry, I nearly forgot to tell you! The key man of this ring—the one who supplies the watchworks—is still at large! The police think they know who he is. But they want to ask Jacob some questions. So Dr. Portman and you have to get him into good enough condition to talk to the police. Soon.”