The King is Dead Read Online Free PDF

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 vigour 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 colours 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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Isn’t the question rather, Colonel,’ Ellery asked ‘anything we can do?’
    The underwater eyes regarded him.
    â€˜I mean, your P RP D seems to lean heavily to the military side. What are our restrictions?’
    â€˜Restrictions?’ murmured Colonel Spring.
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜Anywhere.’ The white hand fluttered. ‘Within reason.’
    â€˜There are certain installations,’ said Abel Bendigo, ‘which are out of bounds, gentlemen. If you’re stopped anywhere, you’ll understand why.’
    â€˜And you’ll be stopped,’ said the Colonel with a smile. ‘You’re going directly to the Home Office, Mr. Abel?’
    â€˜Yes. Excuse us, Colonel.’
    The little officer rather deliberately ground the butt of his cigarillo under his boot heel. Then he smiled again, touched his visor with his delicate fingers, and turned curtly away.
    The Shirts