“Not that,” Madelaine said dryly.
“I suppose not,” Sven said laughing. “But if he hasn’t gone to them yet, it might be possible for us to find him and make him give what he stole back to us.”
“Find him?” Madelaine repeated. “We’re not detectives. And I don’t suppose he wants to be found. There are so many places where he could have gone!”
“Well, if the navy didn’t pick him up, say with a plane or a sub, he must have got out of Descanso somehow. Let’s go check at the bus station.”
“That’s a good idea,” Madelaine answered. She was packing the remains of the lunch back in the box. “The dolphins can take us back to the cottage, and we can walk into town from there.”
Sven did not speak much Spanish, and the clerk at the ticket window did not speak much English. Nevertheless, after ten minutes or so, the clerk assured Sven positively that no such “North American gentlemen” had taken the bus out of Descanso in the last two days. He hadn’t, he said, had any North American passengers at all.
“No dice,” Sven reported to Madelaine, who was standing beside the pinball machine. “Let’s try the taxi company.”
Here they had better luck. The manager, an elderly man with gallant manners, said he had himself driven just such a gentleman as Sven described over the border and up to San Diego two nights before. The gentleman had been carrying a black medical bag.
“Do you know where he went after you left him in San Diego?” Sven asked.
“No, señor. He said nothing about his plans. I let him out downtown.”
“So we know he’s back in the United States,” Sven said as they walked along the rutted road in the direction of the cottage. “That’s something.”
“It’s a large area,” Madelaine answered. “He could be anywhere in it.”
A plane passed overhead and Sven, who was holding her hand, felt her fingers tremble within his. He glanced at her quickly, but she was smiling. “We were talking about Lawrence, Sven,” she said.
“Yes. Well, actually, his range of action is pretty limited. For one thing, he hasn’t much money, and for another, he’ll want to be near his contacts in the navy, the people he already knows. He’s probably somewhere along the California coast.”
Before she could answer, the postman turned out of the yard of the beach cottage and spoke to them. “Buenas diass señor, señorita. Postal card for you. In box.”
The card was a picture postcard, with a view of the Gate Bridge, and in the message space “Take care of yourselves,” had been neatly printed. The message was signed “E.L.”
“‘Take care of yourselves’,” Madelaine repeated slowly. “I wonder what he means by that.”
“It’s not what he means that’s important,” Sven said. “Look at the postmark, Maddy. The card was mailed from San Francisco.”
“You think that’s where he’s gone?”
“Yes. He’s probably staying in some cheap hotel there.”
“There are a lot of cheap hotels just in San Francisco,” the girl said thoughtfully. “And he may not have gone there. He might be in Oakland, or Emeryville, or even someplace down the peninsula.”
“I know. But we’ve got to try to find him. Perhaps he wants us to find him. There’s really no reason why he should have sent the card otherwise.”
She sighed heavily. “Oh, you’re right. But I hate being separated from you again. I couldn’t go with you, could I?”
He was counting the money in his wallet. “Two hundred and thirty bucks. I stole the doctor’s wallet when I knocked him out. He was carrying a lot of the stuff. And I got his credit cards.—Come with me? It would cost twice as much, and you couldn’t really help.”
He handed her five twenty-dollar bills. “The rent on the cottage is paid for a week. I’ll write or telegraph as soon as I find anything, or even if I don’t.”
While he was packing a few things in a cloth bag, she came down to the beach to tell us what they had decided to do.
“We don’t much like it, Maddy,” I said when she had finished.
“Neither do I, but I think he’s right. We might be able to get back what Lawrence stole.”
“I could take Sven on my back,” Djuna said. “Pettrus could go along to spell me. I could take him on my back.”
“It’s quicker this way,” Moonlight answered. “Sven will fly up from San Diego. Be patient, darlings. It’s only for a little while.”
We were silent. We knew that we would probably be able to keep in mental contact with Sven, and that reassured us. Sven called. “Good—bye, friends!” from the porch of the cottage and waved his hand to us. Then he and Madelaine set out at a fast walk for town again.
The bus station was crowded now; Sven had to stand in line for his ticket to San Diego. While she was waiting, Madelaine went to the newstand and bought a San Francisco paper. What she saw in the news summary on page one made her turn quickly to page two.
Her mouth came open. She ran to where Sven was standing, and thrust the paper at him. “Look, Sven, look!”
“Quake ‘Guilt’ Drives Navy Psychiatrist to Death Jump,” read the headline. “Claiming responsibility for the disastrous March earthquake and predicting worldwide catastrophe to come, Dr. Edward Lawrence, a former navy psychiatrist, committed suicide today by jumping from the window ledge of a Market Street hotel. Dr. Lawrence apparently stayed on the ledge outside his fifth-floor room until he attracted a crowd. To those who attempted to dissuade him from his death jump he insisted that he had been ‘solely responsible’ for the earthquake that shook the California coast last March, and that ‘millions would die’ in a coming catastrophe. When he was asked if he considered himself responsible for the predicted disaster, he answered, ‘I certainly do.’
“Police cleared the street below the ledge, and the fire department spread safety nets, while two psychiatrists and a minister attempted to persuade Dr. Lawrence to reenter his rooms. All persuasion failed, and Dr. Lawrence jumped from the ledge at 3:20 P.M. HE MISSED THE SAFETY NETS AND WAS INSTANTLY KILLED.
“Dr. Lawrence, a graduate of the Stanford University Medical School, was formerly employed…”
Sven’s eyes met Madelaine’s. She was deathly pale. “He’s done it,” she said. “Sven, Sven! How long will it take for the ahln devices to get to the poles?”
Chapter 18
Sven stared at her. “You mean—you think Lawrence has started the things on their trip to the poles?”
“Yes, of course. What else could it be?”
“But—he didn’t know where to start them from. Only the dolphins know that. Lawrence is no expert on ocean currents.”
“He did know, though. While we were still on the Naomi, before you came, the dolphins showed him on the chart. All he had to do was to remember two sets of coordinates.”
“But how would he get the things to the launching spots? He hasn’t got a boat.—Where were the spots, anyhow?”
“He could hire a plane. One place was a little south of here, about a hundred miles out, and the other was north of Fort Bragg. How long would it take for the ahln devices to reach the poles?”
Sven considered. Madelaine’s alarm still seemed to him excessive, but he was beginning to be convinced. “Two or three days to reach the edge of the Arctic ice, I guess. Quite a bit longer to get to Antarctica. We’re some distance from the equator here.”
“Then—we’ve got to warn people!” She started away from him, toward the telephone booth in the corner.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, leaving his place in the line before the ticket window. (Since Lawrence was a suicide, there was obviously no point in trying to find him.) “Who are you going to call?”