Keepers of the Secrets

'I'm asking you to stay here for a while. For today, anyway,' Doc said. 'If any of those invaders are now in the village, you could identify them for me.'

'And what would you do to them?' Cobbs asked.

Doc did not answer. He looked at the young English-man with all the intensity of his peculiar brass-shot grey-green eyes. Cobbs returned his stare with one just as unabashed though not as intense. Doc had been a practitioner of hypnosis for years and had been able to disturb many a man to the point of hysteria just by looking at him. But Cobbs was a tough and cool character.

Barbara Villiers, who looked devastatingly beautiful despite staying up all night, said, ‘I’ll stay if you think it'll help you any.'

'Babs!' Cobbs said reproachfully. 'You might at least consider my feelings in this matter. After all, we are engaged! And we agreed that I am the head of the family!'

'There isn't any family yet!'

'Fabulous!' Pauncho said, gri

Cobbs sneered at Pauncho and said, 'Discretion directs me to get out of here now! But I don't want you to think I'm a coward, and if my fiancee insists on behaving foolishly, then I'll stay too. But only long enough to look over the guests here and ascertain if we can identify any as the men we saw in the castle.'

Barney had opened his mouth to say something, then he thought better of it. He looked as if he would explode if he did not get to ask Doc Caliban something at once.

Doc, guessing what he wanted to say, turned away from the couple and winked at Barney. Barney went into the bathroom. Doc said, 'If you'll feel safer, you can sleep here in our beds. We'll make do on the sofa or the floor.'

'I would prefer we do that,' Cobbs said. To return to our own rooms now would be stupid. Of course, we have to go there to pack, but we can do that later.'

Doc suddenly spoke to the two in a somewhat musical speech, low-pitched and with many glottal stops and fricatives.

The two only looked startled. Doc spoke in English. 'Your profession hasn't taken you into the Central American jungles, then?'

'No,' Cobbs said. 'What was that for?'

Doc spoke to Pauncho, who listened intently and asked him to repeat several words. He and Barney had only recently learned the speech of the People of the Blue, a dialect of the 'red ski

Cobbs said, 'Look here! I don't like this mysterious conversation. If you have anything to say, speak English, man! We're not under suspicion, you know!'

'You're not i

Doc removed his jacket and his vest. Barbara Villiers stared and then said, 'I thought you looked awfully fat in the body, yet your face wasn't fat at all. And your friends looked incongruously bulky, too. Good heavens! You must be carrying enough weight in those vests to sink a battleship!'

Doc did not reply.

Cobbs and Villiers went into the large bedroom where he sprawled out on Doc's bed and she on Barney's. Barney came out of the bathroom and spoke softly in the speech of the People of the Blue.

'I sent out a message to Grandrith. His wife answered. She said he'd taken off for Africa a few hours before. She also said she might have to leave her rooms and go hide out in another place. She noticed a couple of suspicious characters hanging around in the street below. She said they might not be interested in her, but she's taking no chances.'

'You told her about the events of the past few hours?'

'Everything. She said she'd pass it on to Grandrith when she got a chance. He's supposed to send her another message as soon as he's ready to leave the plane on the coast of Gabon.' There, near the place where he had been born, Grandrith would proceed on foot through the belt of rain forest stretching over a good part of central Africa. He would live off the plants and the animals native to the land, killing them with arrows or his knife. He would avoid all human habitations; he would go like a shadow, like the demon of the forest as so many natives called him. Some used the name that an American writer had given him after accidentally finding out about him. On foot and almost naked, he would go faster than any human should through the silent closed-canopied, twilit rain forest where the only humans are the pygmies and where the pathetically few hairy and long-canined hominids, those beastmen of native legend, not long ago roamed.

Grandrith's wife, Clio, was staying in a slums district of London where she was operating a short-wave radio.

Caliban's cousin, Patricia Wilde, was also in London. She was on the trail of old Anana, the woman who headed the Nine. She believed that Anana lived at least part of the year in a town house in a wealthy residential district, and she was investigating a number of houses there. Caliban did not think she would have any luck, but at least it would keep her busy, and she did have a sharp nose for clues; she would have made an excellent private eye.

The phone rang. Doc was across the room like a bronze shark and had picked up the receiver before the second ring. Pauncho, speaking mainly in the language of the Blue People, said, 'I checked out their registration here, Doc, after greasing the desk clerk's palm. Cobbs and the redhead have been registered here for a week. But the clerk says they aren't round much. I just saw two guys that looked pretty mean to me, like they could take care of themselves and others, too, if they were paid enough. They've been registered here for a week. They're Germans, Heinrich Zelner and Wilhelm Gafustimm. Zelner moves slow and careful, as if he's hurting. They're in room 215. You want - ?'

Caliban asked for a detailed description. Zelner could have been one of the men he saw when he had looked into the room where the invaders were. He might have been wounded during the fighting.

'I'll be right down,' he said. 'Meet you outside their room.'

He checked the pockets of his vest, which had dried out very quickly after he'd come out of the Toll River. He was short of anaesthetic gas bombs, so he went into the bathroom and pulled a section of the wall aside. The short-wave radio and their supplies were stored here. Pauncho had cut out a piece of the wall and made a receptacle in less than fifteen minutes after they had moved in. His work on concealing the new door had been so skilful it would be doubtful that anyone would ever know about it until the i

The grenades were actually little plastic balls which shattered easily on impact. Their surface held a little nipple which could be squeezed off and a slender tube could be inserted into the hole created. Doc also took several of the tubes. Cobbs and Villiers seemed to be sleeping. The woman was heart-achingly beautiful.

'You stay here and keep an eye on them,' Caliban said to Barney.

'Why does that Pan satyrus always have all the fun?' Barney said, more to himself than to his chief. But this time he was surprised. Doc did answer.

'Pauncho'll be jealous because you'll be with the woman,' he said. 'He'd like the job of guarding her.'

'Some guard! But what good is that going to do me with that Cobbs fish... ?'

He stopped talking. Caliban had gone as silently and as swiftly as a wind-blown cloud across the face of the moon.

On the floor below, Pauncho came down the hall with the rolling gait of a gorilla unaccustomed to walking only on its hind legs. He was gri