The Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald Page B

came up with a useful inspiration. I leaned forward, adjusting my face to maximum leaden sincerity, and I secretly apologized to Gretel. "Mr. Broffski, I was able to be with Gretel for a little time every hour, while she was dying. Toward the end there, she came sort of half-awake, and she said, 'Blue airplane. Blue airplane.' I thought she was out of her head from the fever. If she wasn't, then she was trying to tell me something, I don't know what it was, and then when I heard from somebody at the funeral that a blue airplane had landed here the week before she died, I thought... well, it wouldn't be any harm in asking, because you were her friends."
     
     
"No harm! No harm at all!" Broffski said. "She was one terrific personality. She had star quality around here. Now I know why you're asking, but I still don't see what it has to do with anything. Herm knew who came in, and it seems as if whoever it was wanted to keep a real low profile."
     
     
"I wonder why," Morse Slater said, frowning.
     
     
'who knows?" Broffski said. "Maybe some kind of deal he wasn't ready to tell us about. So if somebody is still interested, they'll contact us. If they do, I hope it's better than that Brussels deal of his."
     
     
"Brussels?" Meyer asked politely.

 
     
"Twenty acres, undeveloped, on the west side of the property," Slater said. "We're holding a ten per cent deposit in an escrow account. The purchaser is something called the Morgen Group. Morgen with an 'e.' "
     
     
'fascinating name," Meyer said.
     
     
"What's so fascinating about it?" Broffski asked.
     
     
'It's an obsolete land-measurement term which used to be used in Holland and in South Africa A morgen is approximately two acres, and the translation, of course, is 'morning.' It derived from ap
     
     
The Green Ripper proximately how much land one man could plow with horses in a single morning."
     
     
Broffsti stared at him. "You got a lot of stuff like that in your head? What line of work are you in?"
     
     
'Em economist. Semiretired."
     
     
"The address is a bank in Brussels. I tried to pick it up where Herm left off, and I made four phone calls to that bank. They deny any knowledge of the Morgen Group. All they would say is I should write to that name care of the bank, and if there was a Morgen Group, it would probably be delivered to them. I sent a cable, and the call-back on it said it was undeliverable. I wrote, and we're waiting."
     
     
Meyer nodded and said, '`The Morgen Group is probably equivalent in law to what we call a blind trust here. And Brussels is quietly taking the place of Switzerland. Their secrecy is guaranteed by Belgian law. They have number accounts and investment services and they have no reverse interest, as the Swiss do. Thus, with a blind trust, there is a double layer of legal confidentiality. Impenetrable."
     
     
'Cathy so secret?" Broffski said. "Harm told me that a bunch of Belgians wanted to build their own hotel-club on the twenty acres, so the members could come here on vacation."
     
     
"Maybe it was going to be a front for something," Slater said.
     
     
Broffski looked across the desk at Slater, a look of annoyance and derision. "Sure. Right here in our back yard they are going to build a warehouse for the drug business. Or a studio to make porn movies.'9
     
     
"Sorry," Slatersaid. But he didn't look sorry.
     
     
Broffski sighed. "Well, there isn't anything I can do about it. The land sits there. Eleven months from now we can take the money out of escrow and put the land on the market again. Or develop it. Whatever." He stood up and reached across the desk. "Sorry we can't give you any more help." He shook hands, and we went out with Morse Slater.
     
     
"Can we look around the property?" Meyer asked.
     
     
"Certainly," he said, and gave us a brochure with a map of Bonnie Brae, showing the existing roads and the ones to come later. He pointed to the area on the map where the Belgians had planned to buy and