Free African Pursuit by David Alric Page B

his eye again, listened to this exchange with interest. That was it! The nurse’s remark had triggered a hidden memory. He had held Julian, the pilot, hostage at gunpoint and was about to force him to help load the crate full of ore onto the plane when all had gone black. But that meant… with dawning horror Luke realised that he must have failed in his attempt to obtain ore from the crater. Without fresh ore all his research data were useless and his dreams of power and riches would come to nothing. He obviously needed to work out a very careful plan.
    A fortnight later Luke sat in his room waiting for his first visitor. He was now feeling much better but he found the continuous presence of the guards intensely irksome and couldn’t wait to escape. With any luck that would be very soon, especially as the detective in charge of his case was due to come and interrogate him the next day and he told himself he had better things to do than to waste time telling a pack of lies to some half-witted local plod. His request for his clothes and shoes to be returned had been politely refused – even the police seemed to have worked out that it would make it easier for him to escape if he were dressed – but he had at least established that his possessions had been kept and were in a locker outside his room. His request to telephone his housekeeper for some personalitems such as a toothbrush and dressing gown had been approved, though the call had been carefully monitored. His housekeeper, Frau Schadenfreude, was an elderly German widow who had worked loyally for the professor for years and, despite her name, she had refused to believe any of the scandal she had read about him in the newspapers. She seemed delighted to hear his voice and listened carefully as he told her where his spare washbag and new dressing gown were to be found. She was very impressed when he told her that he had bought the gown in London’s Savile Row. She would have been even more impressed to know that the ‘dressing gown’ was, in fact, the very first invisibility robe that the professor had stolen from Lucinda on the day he had pushed her off the cliff. After using it to assist some criminals to escape from jail and then create a second robe, he had concealed it in his flat against just such an eventuality as this one.
    When his housekeeper arrived at the hospital the guard searched the bag she had brought with her and after confiscating some nail scissors and tweezers from the washbag allowed her to see the professor. The soft invisibility helmet, an essential part of the kit, was masquerading as a shower cap in his washbag but the guard didn’t seem to appreciate that the Professor’s thinning wisps of grey hardly necessitated such an item.
    During his period of convalescence Luke had perused the newspapers and read the accounts of his capture. Apparently the family he had intended to maroon in the crater, including Julian the pilot he had intended to murder, had returned safely to civilization. None of the accounts he had read referred to the exact location of the crater, simply using phrases such as “a remote jungle valley” or suchlike. There was no mention anywhere of invisibility robes or of prehistoric animals and the professor rightly concluded that the family had decided to keep these secret. He himself was described as“recovering in hospital from a serious injury, under constant police supervision.” Because of the severity of his injury he had, apparently, been transferred from the Amazon hospital where he was first taken to a top neurosurgical centre in Rio. According to the news articles he would, when fit, be questioned concerning the murder of Dr Lucinda Angstrom, the attempted theft of a plane, the taking of a pilot hostage and the intent to leave a family abandoned in a remote location where they were unlikely to survive.
    His chat with his housekeeper confirmed all he had gleaned from the newspapers and he thanked her for her