The Case of the Vanishing Boy by Alexander Key Page B

there are wires running along the top. Barbed wires. I—I don’t think we’d better try to climb it.”
    â€œWe’ve got to climb it,” he said, wondering how she could possibly see in the dark. “If I can get on top, I can put my jacket over the wires and pull you up, then drop you on the other side.”
    He leaped upward, caught the edge of the wall, damp with dew, and easily drew himself to the top. But when his bare hand touched one of the wires he was given a powerful shock that sent him flying backward. His head struck something and he fell into nothingness.
    There was a roaring in his ears when he regained consciousness. His head hurt, and his mind was full of confused pictures of Big Doc and Matilda. Then he became aware of a frightened Ginny fussing over him, rubbing his hands and shaking him. 118
    â€œOh, Jan! Jan! Say something! Are you all right?”
    He struggled up on an elbow, and rubbed his head slowly. It still hurt, and the roaring was still in his ears, but Big Doc was fading. “I—I’m all right,” he muttered. “At least nothing seems to be broken. That—that’s a live wire up there!”
    â€œThose awful people!” she whispered angrily.
    â€œHow long was I out?”
    â€œNot long. Maybe a minute. Do you feel like walking now?”
    He didn’t, but he wobbled to his feet anyway. “You’ll have to lead me—I can’t see a thing. We’ve got to find the other entrance. It must be at the back of the house.”
    â€œI’ll follow the fence,” she told him. “There’s a corner just ahead.”
    â€œHow in the world can you tell?”
    â€œIt—it’s sort of like radar,” she murmured, as she drew him carefully along the wall. “I mean, I can see exactly what’s there—the outlines and all. But it’s hard to make out how far away it is, and I never know about holes and things. That’s why I miss my cane.”
    She stopped and whispered, “We’re at the corner. The wall ends, but a high steel fence goes to the left, past the house. We can’t climb it—it sticks out at the top, with barbed wire on it.”
    Caution held them to silence as they crept nearer the house. When they were opposite it, the light from an upper window gleamed through the trees and edged a section of the barbed wire topping the fence. Seeing it, he knew it would be impossible to help Ginny over it, even if it weren’t electrified, and he wondered how he’d managed to get over it himself the first time he’d escaped. Or had he gotten out by some other means?
    In a sudden astonishing flash of memory it came to him that he hadn’t climbed the fence at all. He’d wished himself on the other side, just as he’d wished himself out of the van and back in the Rhodes’ library after his capture. He’d picked a distant spot on a hill he’d glimpsed from some upper window in the house, and—early in the morning of the day he’d wound up at the Glendale station—he’d smacked Bolinsky, his guard, with the base of a table lamp and wished himself to the hill. It had been an awful day, and he’d been so afraid he wouldn’t reach the Glendale station in time …
    In time for what? …
    The urgent tugging of Ginny’s hand drew him back to the present. Then he heard it, somewhere in the distance—the distinctive chopping sound of an approaching helicopter.
    They began hurrying along the fence, trying to make their way quietly through shrubbery and tangles of vines and weeds, yet knowing that the time left to them to make good their escape was rapidly running out. Just as they reached a second gate, a high steel one like the fence, they were startled by a sudden blaze of lights that disclosed a broad space of lawn behind the house. It also lit up the rear driveway and the corner of the gate where the two of them were