Cherry Ames 22 Rural Nurse (18 page)

“Shut up, Jake!” the heavy man growled. “Get a move on!”

The three men moved around the cave, picking up the heavy cartons and bags, stumbling a little on the cave’s uneven fl oor. Hal and Cherry drew back as far as they could, trying to keep out of their way. Floyd, struggling with a load of medicine jars, stepped back a few paces, and brushed against them.

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Floyd let out a howl. “Somebody’s in here, Benny! In back of us—right here! I touched someone!” Discovered, Hal sprang and gave Floyd a forceful shove toward Jake. “Cherry!” he yelled. “Run!” Floyd stumbled into Jake. Jake staggered, dropping the bags of ginseng. He yanked a fl ashlight from his pocket and set its beam probing along the cave wall.

“Cherry, huh?” Benny repeated in the half-dark. “So it’s the doctor and nurse!”

Hal aimed a kick at the spot of light shining in the darkness, but too late—the beam focused on Cherry, standing fl attened and white-faced against the damp cave wall.

“Couldn’t mind your own business,” Benny rasped, reaching for his gun. Hal kicked again and this time the fl ashlight went fl ying. Still lighted, it bounced off the cave roof, then fell to the ground near Cherry. It struck a rock, and the light went out in a tinkling of shattered glass.

In the half-dark, Benny crouched with drawn gun—

but the three indistinct fi gures blended together as Jake and Floyd descended on Hal from opposite sides, fi sts swinging. Hal sank quickly to the ground, and in the gloom the other two men traded hard blows before their gasps revealed them as allies. Cherry bolted for the cave opening.

Benny raced after her. Cherry stumbled, but regained her balance and kept running. A few more strides, and she was in daylight. “Help!” she yelled at the top of her

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lungs. She heard, away off in the distance, the high-pitched whine of a fast-moving car.

A moment later Benny had her by the arm. “Shut up!” he ordered. He dragged her roughly back toward the cave. “Save your breath. Nobody’s around the park today except Ezra. He won’t hear you—he’s calking boats at the far end of the park. And nobody driving on the highway’ll hear you, neither!” He thrust her into the cave.

Cherry saw Hal’s lithe, rangy fi gure weave in and out between the two older, heavy men. One of them gasped in pain, as Hal’s fi st found his jaw. The second tallest fi gure, Floyd’s, staggered back from the group. Jake swung, his fl ashy ring hitting Hal’s forehead and cutting it open just above Hal’s eye. Hal threw himself in a fury on Jake, aiming at the indistinct face before him with his clenched fi sts. Jake covered his face, then kicked viciously at Hal.

Hal dodged—and found Floyd’s arm crooked around his throat from behind, pulling his head back. The grip tightened.

“Good!” Benny croaked. “Hold him. Jake, grab his knees.”

Jake made a sudden lunge for Hal’s knees and wrapped his arms around them. With Floyd and Jake holding him that way, Hal was helpless. Benny walked slowly toward Hal, pistol hanging loosely in his hand.

“You’re not going to shoot him, are you?” Cherry gasped.

“No,” Benny said agreeably, “just rough him up a little, that’s all.”

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Cherry went cold, then desperately she searched with her foot on the dark fl oor of the cave. Her shoe touched the heavy metal fl ashlight.

She grabbed down for it, reached Benny’s back at a run, and swung the fl ashlight crashing against the side of his head. He lurched crazily, then levelled his pistol at Cherry, shaking with anger.

A new voice rang out. “Drop your gun!” it com-manded. “Put your hands up. Higher!” Benny held fast to his gun. A shot rang out, loud as a blast of dynamite in the echoing cave.

Out of the shadows of the cave walked two highway patrolmen, each levelling a gun. Paul Short walked beside them. One patrolman was Tom Richards. A ten-dril of smoke fl oated from his gun.

Benny cursed and slowly lifted his arms. Jake and Floyd stood dejectedly with their hands raised. Ginseng plants and jars of medicine littered the cave fl oor.

“The sheriff’s offi ce relayed your telephone message to us,” Richards said to Hal and Cherry. “We saw the open trap door. You shouldn’t have come here by yourselves.”

The highway patrolmen handcuffed Floyd to the two men. Richards prodded them at gunpoint out of the cave. At Inspector Short’s request, the other patrolman collected the medicine jars, ginseng, ledgers, and old book as evidence. Mr. Short affi xed a seal over the lid of one jar, signed and fi lled out the Food and Drug form on the seal.

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Then he came over to Cherry and asked if she were all right. “Yes,” she said, “and you certainly got here fast!”

Hal reported that the racketeers had two rowboats waiting at the riverbank, and a getaway car parked upriver. The highway patrolman turned to the Food and Drug inspector, and asked where he wanted to talk with the three men.

Mr. Short answered, “Well, the fi rst thing we have to do is to give them a preliminary hearing before the United States commissioner at Des Moines. He will decide whether they are to be held for a grand-jury investigation.”

It was decided they would all drive to Des Moines that morning. Before undertaking the long drive, Hal and the three prisoners would receive medical care from Dr. Clark at his house.

“Hal,” Cherry said, “you were terrifi c!” Hal smiled at her. “You were fairly terrifi c yourself!”
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c h a p t e r x v

The Whole Truth

cherry and hal spent a long afternoon as government witnesses at the preliminary hearing. They came home to Sauk to fi nd Aunt Cora waiting for them.

“I heard!” Aunt Cora greeted them. “The whole town heard! But only bits and pieces—Are you both all right? Thank goodness! Here’s some hot coffee. Now sit down, both of you, and tell me the whole story!”

“Yes, we’ve kept you in the dark too long,” Cherry said. They all sat down together.

Hal gratefully accepted a cup of coffee. “Well, Mrs. Ames, the whole truth came out this afternoon in the offi ce of a United States commissioner.” He exclaimed that the commissioner, the Food and Drug inspector, a United States district attorney, and a court-appointed defense attorney had questioned Floyd Barker, Luke Snell, Benny Pike, and Jake Dacey all afternoon to get the truth out of them.

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“How did this fake drug racket start?” Aunt Cora asked them. “How did it operate?” They told Aunt Cora that Floyd Barker had originated the scheme several months ago. It seemed that ever since Jane’s great-uncle abandoned the old farm, Floyd had hankered to own it—a place where he could get away from his mother’s lectures. He had hung around the deserted farm and had discovered the tunnel and the secret room. These had been blocked off for years.

Then one day Floyd discovered a big, wild patch of ginseng, a few miles from home. He recognized it, knew it was once used to make a home remedy, and looked it up in the ancient home-remedy book his mother had inherited. The book provided a simple ginseng formula for a “cure-all.”

It occurred to Floyd to compound a ginseng medicine himself and sell it. Floyd secretly dug up the wild ginseng and transplanted the whole big patch to the deserted farm. It required little nurture and Floyd believed he had a bonanza.

Meanwhile, Floyd contacted two shady men who operated small rackets in and out of St. Louis. They were Benny Pike and Jake Dacey. Floyd had done several small unlawful jobs for them earlier when they drove through the county on dishonest business. Floyd glowingly described the scheme for making easy money to the two racketeers.

The two men were interested in his plan—provided the patent medicine would sell. Floyd told them he

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would prove it by selling it to local people. On this proviso, the racketeers advanced Floyd a little money needed to buy jars and ingredients, and to pay the pedlar. The two men had misleading labels printed for Floyd in St. Louis; the printer was kept in ignorance.

Floyd shrewdly hired the door-to-door pedlar in order to cover himself. He instructed Old Snell to sell the remedy as secretly as he could. Within a few weeks it caught on with the rural people. Almost at once it made money.

Floyd spent some of this money for more supplies.

He gave a little to his mother, to keep her from asking questions. He kept some for himself and forwarded the rest to Benny and Jake.

Money made the St. Louis men grow still more interested. They promised Floyd, by telephone, that if the medicine continued to sell well for another month, their lawyer would fi gure out a way to market it more or less openly—and widely.

Floyd was well started on this project when Jane Fraser arrived to claim the abandoned farm. He had tried to persuade her not to come to Sauk, via his mother’s letters in which Mrs. Barker innocently quoted Floyd about the old place being worthless. At least Floyd wanted time—a delay in September so he could harvest, dry, and compound last summer’s ginseng crop and try out the remedy’s wider sales. Jane’s convales-cence gave him time.

But Cherry upset his plans when she took Jane to see the farm. All the previous day and early that 180
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Saturday morning he had been drying ginseng roots in the hidden room, on a kerosene stove and wire trays.

He was afraid that Cherry and Jane would notice the odor and heat, so he had tried to discourage the girls from going to the farm. Cherry did notice the heat and odor, and had expressed her curiosity to Jane, who in turn had mentioned it to Floyd and Mrs. Barker. After that, Floyd observed Cherry’s movements closely.

When she pulled samples of ginseng at the deserted farm, Floyd fi gured she wanted them for identifi cation.

He watched her take them, then stole the roots back from Cherry’s parked car, again hoping for a delay. But he overlooked one root on the car fl oor, and Cherry had had it analyzed.

Then Cherry visited the old farmhouse alone. She nearly caught him that day. He ducked into the hidden room just in time. At this point Floyd lost his nerve. He had the pedlar go into hiding.

Floyd telephoned the two men in St. Louis. He thought they had better move the racket to some other location, away from the alert nurse and doctor. Floyd also sent good news about sales—in fact, he sent another sizable sum of money. The medicine was selling so well that Floyd thought it time to expand the racket, within some loophole of the law.

Benny and Jake came to see how Floyd made the medicine, and to discuss producing and marketing it on a wider scale, with advice from their lawyer, a shady character who knew how to get around the law. The two St. Louis men, bolder than Floyd, called the pedlar out

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of hiding and sent him to sell the new drag in surround-ing towns. They wanted to fi nd out whether townspeo-ple, as well as rural people, would buy the new remedy.

Some did buy it. Next, the swindlers planned to stock the cure with druggists, if possible.

Floyd warned the two St. Louis men that Cherry was alert to the source of the remedy, the ginseng at the abandoned farm. But they fi gured: what if medical people fi nd it worthless? Though many patent medicines are helpful, plenty of worthless ones sell. They fi gured that Floyd’s racket could operate just within the law.

The swindlers were wrong. They underestimated the Food and Drug Administration.

“I heard,” Aunt Cora said, “that you two cornered those men today. How’d you fi nd them?” Cherry explained how the buffet, jutting way out into the dining room, had given them away. “Hmm,” said Aunt Cora. “You think they would have been more careful.” Hal said the men had admitted being careless, because they had been in a terrifi c hurry this morning.

During the night, all they had been able to do in the dark, using a dim light, was to move things from the concealed room down into the tunnel, and Benny and Jake took down the old barn door in the tunnel and shovelled the dirt out of the way. Once daylight came, Floyd had pulled all the ginseng up, while Benny and Jake went for two rowboats, hid them at the riverbank near the cave, and then left the car at another hidden location for the getaway.

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“What about that pile of dirt and the old barn door?” Aunt Cora asked. “Did Floyd blockade the tunnel?” Cherry answered her:

“Floyd said he found the tunnel that way when he was a boy. Apparently whoever lived there long ago closed off the tunnel so nobody’d wander into the cave and come walking into his farmhouse. Whoever it was, dug the dirt out of the tunnel walls to make room to wedge the barn door in there.”

“Well,” Hal said, getting to his feet, “those men com-mitted a federal offense, and can get three years in prison. They’re in prison now, awaiting trial. I guess you heard that, Mrs. Ames.”

She nodded. “I also heard that the Food and Drug Administration will seize any of the remedy that’s still available, and warn the public against it.” Cherry stood up, too. “Aunt Cora, if you’ll excuse us, Hal and I want to stop in to see Mrs. Barker.” Cherry and Hal did not know whether or not Mrs. Barker had heard of her son’s arrest. Had anyone been heartless enough to tell her? If not, Cherry and Hal wanted to break the news as gently as possible.

She knew. Jane had laid out supper on the kitchen table, but neither she nor Mrs. Barker was able to eat.

“A neighbor called me up and told me,” Emma Barker greeted Hal and Cherry. “It’s all right, children, you don’t have to wear such long faces.”

“We’re sorrier than we can tell you,” Cherry said.

“If it were anyone but
your
son—” Hal muttered.