“Who is King’s wife?”
“The Queen. Who else?” murmured his father with a drowsy grin. “Queen Karla... well, almost. The General said Karla’s of real royal blood. From Europe. A princess, or grand duchess, or something.”
“Now tell me she’s a raving beauty, and I’ll take on Blue Shirt with one hand behind my back!”
“A knockout, the General said. He had to visit the island several times.”
Ellery muttered, “And the Court Jester? Of course, there’s a Court Jester.”
“Max is his name,” nodded the Inspector. “An ex-wrestler, big as a house. Follows King around, works him out, bodyguards him, keeps him laughing. Everything but the cap and bells. Shut up, will you? I’m an old man.”
And the Inspector shut the other eye, decisively.
Abel Bendigo joined them at lunch. He seemed less preoccupied. The two middle-aged secretaries did not appear.
The stewards had set the table for only two, and Ellery remarked that in an organization as perfectly oiled as this it seemed a mighty slip — or was one of them to be starved?
“I never eat lunch,” said the Prime Minister with a smile. “Interferes with my afternoon work. A glass of buttermilk sometimes, or yoghurt. But don’t let that stop you gentlemen. The chef was detached from my brother’s Residence staff especially for the occasion.”
The lunch was superb, and the Inspector tackled it with gusto. Ellery ate absently.
“Are your brothers as Spartan as you are, Mr. Bendigo?” asked the Inspector. “My, this is delicious.”
“Very nearly. King has simple tastes in food, as I have, and Judah—” Abel Bendigo stopped smiling — “Judah hardly eats at all.”
“Judah?” said Ellery, looking up.
“Another brother, Mr. Queen. Will you have some brandy? I’m told this is exceptional, though I don’t drink myself.”
“Judah,” said Ellery. “And Abel. The ‘King’ doesn’t seem to follow, Mr. Bendigo. Or was he a king in Israel from the womb?”
“I think,” said Bendigo, “he was.” And he looked up. The Queens looked up, too. Blue Shirt and Brown Shirt loomed there.
“What now?” asked the Inspector humorously. “The execution?” Nevertheless he quickly swallowed the last of his brandy.
Bendigo said slowly, “We’ve come about halfway, gentlemen. From here until we land these two men will remain with you. I’m sure you’ll understand, if not appreciate, the necessity to stick to rules. I regret it, but I must ask you to make no attempt to get your bearings. These men are under the strictest orders to prevent it.” He got up suddenly. “You’ll see me on the island.” Before either could open his mouth the Prime Minister had retired to his compartment again.
The twins did not move.
“Halfway,” muttered the Inspector. “That means about eight hours out. At, say, three hundred m.p.h., the island’s around twenty-four hundred miles from New York. Or is it?”
“Or is it?” said Ellery, looking up at Brown Shirt.
Brown Shirt said nothing.
“Because, of course, we can be flying around in circles... Funny way Bendigo put that parting crack of his, Dad. Why you’ll see me on the island instead of the more natural I’ll see you on the island?”
Hours later, in the middle of a nap, Ellery was answered.
He awoke at a touch to find himself in total darkness, and when he heard his father’s outraged exclamation he knew that they had both been blindfolded.
3
When the dark cloths were removed, the son and the father found themselves standing with Brown Shirt and Blue Shirt beside the big ship, on a great airfield.
The mid-afternoon sun rode an intense sky, and they blinked in the backwash of glare.
Abel Bendigo was close by, talking to an undersized man. Behind the undersized man stood a squad of tall soldiers, at attention. The undersized man had prim shoulders and large hips and he was dressed in a beautiful black and gold military uniform. The black cap he wore sported a linked-globe-and-crown insignia above the visor and the legend PRPD. This officer, who was smoking a brown cigarette, turned from time to time to stare at the Queens with the friendliness of a fish. Once he shook his head as if it were all too much for him to bear. However, he bore it — whatever it was — with resignation. The Prime Minister talked on.
They faced a camouflaged administration building. Men in black and gold suits moved above in the glassed circle of the control tower. Ground crews swarmed about a dozen large hangarlike structures, also camouflaged. Planes flitted about, field ambulances raced, commissary trucks trundled; all were painted black and gold. A very large cargo ship was just taking the air.
A high wall of vegetation surrounded the field, screening off the rest of the island. The vegetation seemed semitropical and much of it had the underwater look of Caribbean flora. And Ellery had never seen a sky like this in the North Temperate Zone. They were in southern waters.
He had the queerest feeling that they were also in a foreign land. Everyone about him looked American and the airfield buildings betrayed a functional vigor inseparable from advanced American design — Frank Lloyd Wrightism at its angriest. It was the air that was alien, a steel atmosphere of discipline, of trained oneness, that was foreign to the American scene.
And then there was the flag, flapping from a mast above the control tower. It was like no flag Ellery had ever seen, a pair of linked globes in map colors surmounted by a crown of gold, and all on a black field. The flag made him uncomfortable and he looked away. His glance touched his father’s; it had just come from the flagpole, too.
They said nothing to each other because the Shirts were so attentively at their elbows, and because there was really nothing to communicate but questions and doubts which neither could satisfy.
The Prime Minister finished at last, and the hippy little man in the splendid uniform waved the squad of soldiers away. They wheeled and marched to the administration building and disappeared. Bendigo walked over with his companion. The Shirts, Ellery noted, stiffened and saluted. But it was not Abel Bendigo they saluted; it was the hippy little man.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Bendigo said, but he did not explain why. “This is the head of our Public Relations and Personnel Department, Colonel Spring. You’ll probably be seeing something of each other.”
The Queens said a word or two.
“Anything I can do, gentlemen,” said Colonel Spring, offering a limp white hand. His eyes remained fishy. His whole face was marine — greenish white and without plasticity, like the face of a drowned man.
“Isn’t the question rather, Colonel,” Ellery asked “anything we can do?”
The underwater eyes regarded him.
“I mean, your P RP D seems to lean heavily to the military side. What are our restrictions?”
“Restrictions?” murmured Colonel Spring.
“Well, you see, Colonel,” remarked Inspector Queen, “there’s never any telling where a thing like this can lead. How free are we to come and go?”
“Anywhere.” The white hand fluttered. “Within reason.”
“There are certain installations,” said Abel Bendigo, “which are out of bounds, gentlemen. If you’re stopped anywhere, you’ll understand why.”
“And you’ll be stopped,” said the Colonel with a smile. “You’re going directly to the Home Office, Mr. Abel?”