I managed to grin at his solicitousness. “Matt, I was teethed on a fir tree. As long as I can see fairly well I’m all right. And I can see the road across the river.” I pointed through the trees. “Or I think I can.”
Matt Mulcahey patted my shoulder, gave me a grin, and plodded on into the trees. I sat on a rotting stump by the water and smoked a cigaret. All the strength was drained from me. Exhaustion made my arm shake so I had a hard time getting the cigaret to my mouth. I thought of my army training and was glad for it. Otherwise my endurance would hardly have been enough for even this much. I sagged back on the stump, completely relaxed, not letting myself think of anything until I was somewhat rested. By the time I was ready to go on I really could make out the road across the river.
I could hear no one ahead of me now. They would be too far in front of me for that. Except for Tiffin. He had taken the line that Delhart could have freed himself and struck off through the forest. Hilton’s insistence that Delhart was dead made no impression on Tiffin. I had heard him last bumbling about in the trees, a good distance from the river. With that in mind I stayed close to the water. I had no yen to run into him the way I looked and felt.
In the dull grey light I thought I saw something. I squinted toward the middle of the river. There the Teneskium was only about thirty feet wide but it had a deep and swift central channel. Here and there, though, it ran over rocks only a few inches under water. This was one such place. White water boiled up and shot spray into the air, making it difficult to see clearly. But the more I strained my eyes the more certain I was that a thick form was wedged out there, pushed this way and that by the current.
I reasoned that the others had gone by this spot when it was too dark to make anything out. I felt a little thrill. If this really was Delhart’s body then I would have another story. The thought made me feel a bit ghoulish. But daylight had taken away the last of my shudders.
I stepped ankle deep into the water, then knee deep, then the rocks shelved upward and I was ankle deep again. I could feel the edges of the current tugging at my legs. The water was icy, raw cold. But I had my eyes fixed on that formless shape ahead. I paid no attention to anything else. I was breathing hard and fighting the water that had reached my knees again. When I was only three feet away, I knew. It was Carson Delhart. He was caught between two barely submerged rocks on the edge of the deep central channel. I took a step forward, my hands outstretched.
One minute there was solid if slippery rock beneath my feet. The next there was nothing. Suddenly I was in complete emptiness. I had the sensation of leaving my stomach behind and rushing frantically away from it. I grasped for breath and flailed my arms, reaching for something, for any kind of support. It was the same awful feeling I had had during my one experimental parachute jump. I fought the emptiness, the awful helplessness.
Then the icy water closed over me, driving the breath back into me. I was whipped by the current, and dashed hard against a rough rock. The contact of the water brought me back to a semblance of sanity. My reactions were automatic now. I knew what I was fighting. The panic began to leave me.
I was in one of the cold, treacherous potholes that spotted the river. I kicked downward with my feet and my head broke water. I sucked in a mixture of air and foamy spume. I lashed out with my arms, struggling for a grip on a rock. My clothing and the leather jacket bound me. I reached again with my hands. They caught something. I could hardly see with my eyes full of spray. But I could feel. My fingers were hooked into soft cloth. When I realized what I had grasped I used my reserve of air in one lung bursting scream. But I couldn’t let loose. I had no strength to fight the current. And it was working on me and the ghastly thing I held. I could feel that heavy dead body pulse back and forth against my straining knuckles.
The next instant the body slipped off the rocks that held it and we took off downstream, in the main channel. I screamed once more and then I was fighting the river and holding Delhart’s remains on the surface with a strength I did not know I owned.
I had but one idea in mind by now. I had gone through too much. I wasn’t going to be cheated. I was going to make the river give up that body.
And I nearly gave up my life for that idea. I was taking in more water than air. The cold was numbing my muscles so that kicking with my legs became almost impossible. But before I got too waterlogged I had a better grip, a grip on the ghastly, clammy cold arm.
I had no reserve left when my feet found a blessed shelf of rock and somehow I pulled what had been Carson Delhart out of the sucking, insistent current and into the quieter shallows. I collapsed then, sitting neck-deep on the shelf of rock, my hands too cold to release their grip if I had wished it.
I sat there alternately sobbing and screaming at the top of my voice. I was a fit case for an asylum when I heard an answer. Then someone came splashing toward me. I felt the pressure of the current leave the grisly thing I was gripping. My hands were forcibly removed from the dead man’s arm.
A man’s voice said, “You can let loose now, bub.”
I passed out, just like the Victorian ladies.
IX
THEY TOLD ME afterward that my fingers had to be pried from Delhart’s arm and that I left finger marks on it. And that I came to while being driven to the estate and talked about a felt hat. They thought I meant my hat. It was still on my head since I had pinned it to my hair after having had it snatched away by brush earlier in the search.
I don’t remember a thing about it. I only know I awoke feeling wonderfully warm and dry. I was in bed under heavy covers. The sun came through the window pane, splashing across the foot of the bed, a rich, yellow light that drove out all thoughts of the gloomy forest and the river and the horror I had experienced. It was good just to lie and look at the sunlight, feeling warm and dry and secure, and not thinking of anything.
I knew where I was. The room was strange to me but there was too much knotty pine and rustic furniture for me to miss guessing correctly. I had been brought back to Delhart’s estate and deposited in one of the guest rooms. And somewhere along the line I had lost every stitch of clothing.
But I couldn’t be content to lie and soak in such peacefulness. I had to sit up and crane to see through the French windows. I could see sunlight on the water. On Carson Delhart’s fishpond. My memory came back with a rush then and I had a good case of shudders. I shook until I felt like a malaria victim. But when it was over I felt better. I took a deep breath and yelled.
“Hey!”
I lay back down and pulled the covers to my neck. Inside of three minutes I had results. Footsteps clattered up the stairs, down the hall, and the door opened. A perfect stranger, quite male, came in with a steaming glass in his hand. He looked interestedly at me and grinned.
It was a friendly grin. My first impression was that he was a puppyish sort of person. He had tousled red hair and nice, wide blue eyes. His face was slightly on the long side without being dolorous. He stood a good six feet and was heavy in the shoulders. He walked with a slight limp, giving me the faintest impression of being stiff in the right knee.
“How’s God’s gift to the police force?” he asked. He had a deep, amiable voice. I liked him.
I drew one bare arm from the covers and reached for the glass. “Gimme.”
“Hot toddy,” he said. “I’ve been nursing it along and waiting for you to come around.” He handed me the glass. It smelled delicious.
“I can’t drink it unless I sit up,” I said. “And I’m not putting on any exhibitions.”
“You’re well again,” he decided. “The sheriff said we’d know. That you’d start squawking.” He turned around, opened a closet door and started poking inside. “Not much—here’s something.” He came back and threw an old-fashioned trench coat at me. “Your negligee, Godiva.” He gave me a view of his back. I didn’t move. He shrugged and went into the hall, shutting the door.
I set the glass on a night stand and crawled out of bed. My knees felt un
stable. I could see bruises on my feet and legs. I wouldn’t be in condition to wear sheer hose for some time. I put the coat on and crawled back into bed. The drink tasted wonderful.
“Bring me a cigaret,” I called out.
He popped in at once with a pack in his hand. “Swiped these off that secretary guy,” he told me. “I smoke a pipe myself.” After that little confidence, he lit my cigaret. “Can I stay now?”
I was enjoying myself. A queen handing out favors. “Yes.”
He drew a chair made of pine branches but well padded alongside the bed. He sat down and glared at me. “You have an evil mind,” he said severely. “I’m the man who parted you from the corpse. What a story! ‘Girl Reporter Captures Corpse.’ Or, ‘Beautiful Babe Saves Body’.”
“You’re not Irish enough to make me believe I’m beautiful,” I told him. Then it dawned on me. “You’re one of the descending horde,” I accused him.
“Like a plague of locusts. But the police have the situation well in hand. They’ve shut the door on us. The rest of the wage slaves are out prowling. But I brought you here and you’re my exclusive. So give.”
“I will not,” I said indignantly. “It’s my story.”
“You’re still Adeline O’Hara, aren’t you?” He looked at me with mock anxiety.
“I am. And it’s my story.”
He pulled a stubby, battered old briar pipe out of his pocket with a flourish. “Power to the Portland Press,” he said. “I’m Jeff Cook.”
“Not the Jeff Cook!”
He looked the least bit smug. “The same.”
“Your stuff stinks,” I said meanly. But I felt a mixture of elation and anger. Elation because the Press had sent their crack police man down on my tip and anger because they had sent anyone.
“Okay,” he said. “You’ve had your fun. I’m serious, O’Hara. You have an inside here …”
“And I’m going to keep it.”
“Between us,” he said, ignoring me, “we can get better stories than those lone wolves. If it’s credit you’re worrying about, I’ll by-line this story on you and you can have the rest. We’ll sign the big ones together. How about it?”
What else could I do? Jeff Cook was young but he knew every trick in the business. He hadn’t made his reputation by missing any bets. Besides The Press had sent him down to cooperate with me. And he was right, together we could do a lot.
“You won’t cut my throat?” I asked.
“After what you did?”
“All right,” I said.
He dug a notebook out of his pocket, unscrewed a pen and waited. He was a whizz with shorthand. I told him all I knew up to date.
“So that’s what you meant about the felt hat?” I nodded again.
“That Glory Martin must be quite a gal,” he commented. “She’s still sleeping it off by the way. So is Miss Willow.”
I could feel myself blushing daintily. “Then,” I said weakly, “who put me in bed this way?” I was no modest violet, the WAC had seen to that, but even so …
He was laughing at me. “A Mrs. Larson. And you’re quite a heroine, O’Hara.”
“Even to Tiffin?”
He grinned wryly, “The sheriff tells me Tiffin seemed a little put out.” He pushed the cigarets at me and I took a second one. “You have a swell memory for detail.”
“It’s photographic,” I told him. “Now I want to know what’s been happening.”
He gave me the gist of it. My screams had brought out half the countryside. And by the time he had me in his car and the body drawn out of the water, Mulcahey had appeared, soaking wet. Jeff Cook drove Mulcahey back to the house and the deputy took a police car back, rounded up the others, and brought them and the body to the estate. Tiffin was mad because he had to swim the river to get back to the car.
Jeff Cook and a deputy he didn’t name brought me upstairs where Mrs. Larson took charge. She had me warm and dry and under the covers by the time the police doctor came in. He pronounced me safe from pneumonia.
“She being a strapping woman,” Jeff said, imitating Mrs. Larson.
The police had questioned Jeff after that, then stuffed themselves with food, withdrawn to the library and began interrogating witnesses. The rest of the press swarmed in and were turned away.
“So,” Jeff Cook finished, “they’re out prowling. Is there a phone I can use?”
“There’s one in the kitchen,” I told him, remembering it. “And tell Mrs. Larson I sent you. I’m hungry and I want my clothes, too.”
“Those rags?”
“Those rags,” I said firmly.
He disappeared and when he came back he had the clothes, nicely dried and very wrinkled, over his arm. He tossed them to the bed. “Mrs. Larson is dishing you some chow,” he said. He went out and I got up to dress.
I was still wobbly in the legs but I hoped a little food would fix me up. I could smell Mrs. Larson’s cooking as I tottered down to the kitchen. When I went in she was busily rattling pots and pans and Jeff Cook had just finished a call on the wall phone. He turned and gave me a grin.
“I sure handed them a real build-up on you, O’Hara.”
Mrs. Larson pointed to the kitchen table. “Eat that, dear. I fixed you some nice soft-boiled eggs and toast.” She clucked soothingly at me. “I was telling Big Swede that you’ve done everything so far and that those lazy men haven’t stirred themselves at all.”
I sat down, hiding a smile. Jeff Cook said, “Who’s Big Swede?”
I explained the family to him. Mrs. Larson started to say something, glanced at Jeff Cook and shut her mouth tightly. I said, “You run along. I wanted to think up a few ideas and get the feminine angle on this.”
He took the hint, winked at me, and trailed off. Mrs. Larson poured coffee for both of us and sat down near me. I tried my eggs and then sipped the coffee. It was delicious.
“Mr. Delhart was lucky to get a cook like you, Ma,” I told her, “and that isn’t malarkey.”
“Poor man,” she said. She wiped at her forehead with the apron. I could see the feminine I’m-going-to-confide-in-you-look settle in her eyes.
“Many’s the things I’ve wished for him. But none as bad as this.”
“Wasn’t he nice to work for?” I prompted.
“To me he was nice,” she said. She settled herself more comfortably. “To some he was awful, Adeline.”
I knew from experience that Mrs. Larson was garrulous. If I waited long enough I would hear something. I encouraged her with a cluck of sympathy.
“He was awful to poor Miss Glory.”
That nearly did for me. I had never conceived Mrs. Larson to be broadminded about such things. Poor Miss Glory! “I don’t know her very well,” I murmured.
She leaned over the table, giving me a close-up of her broad Irish face. “He drove her to drink!” she announced dramatically. “He tortured the poor girl, Adeline, but there’s always circumstances.” She nodded her conviction. “That’s what I told Big Swede when he said she wasn’t good enough for our Tim.”
While I was trying to understand that one, she added, “Why, you see how much in love they are. The both of them.”
I nearly spilled my coffee.
X
UNFORTUNATELY Matt Mulcahey came in just then with a request for more coffee for the men in the study. And he stood there while Mrs. Larson got it ready. He sympathized with me over my experience and even told me how much Jocko appreciated my “capture” of the body. But when I hinted that it would be nice if I could sit in the study with the police it was no go. Jocko’s appreciation didn’t extend that far.
“Wouldn’t be fair to them other reporters,” Mulcahey said.
“They didn’t fish a corpse out of the river, either,” I pointed out.
“He’ll say no, Addy,” Mulcahey said. “That Cook fellow already tried to work you in. Jocko told him off.”
And that was that. It was annoying to know we couldn’t get in to hear the interrogation of witnesse
s. We had an inside track and wanted to keep it. But I realized Jocko could hardly do otherwise than refuse us if he wanted to keep in good with all the press.
However, I decided I could keep busy following the feminine angle. As soon as Mulcahey left with his tray of coffee, I asked Mrs. Larson to fix a light meal for Glory. I made a tentative move to get back on the subject Mulcahey had interrupted but for some reason she had clammed up on me. So I took the tray for Glory and left.
There was a deputy lounging by Glory’s door, a big, burly man I didn’t know.
“She ain’t up,” he informed me.
I juggled the tray to one hand and reached for the doorknob. He moved uncertainly toward me. I said, “Mrs. Larson said to get her to eat. Miss Martin is very delicate, you know.” I smiled at him in what I was hoping was the intimate manner of a flirtatious housemaid. Though how I expected to be mistaken for a maid in my outfit I don’t know. But it worked. He let me go in and came right behind me.
Glory was asleep with one bare arm and shoulder trailing out of the covers. I set the tray on the night stand and firmly pushed the deputy back.
“Naughty, naughty,” I said coyly.
He grinned fatuously, making his heavily jowled face look ridiculous, and took a look over my arm at Glory. “Aw.”
“She’s sick,” I said. I patted his cheek and kept on pushing until he was in the hall. I shut the door and turned the key in the lock. Then I went back to the bed.
She was pretty even in sleep. This was natural rest and not the slack drunkenness of the night before. She looked younger and fresher than her thirty years this way. I shook her gently.
She stirred. I shook her again. She turned in bed.
“Glory, Glory.”
Her eyes opened and she stared blankly at me. Then remembrance and recognition and fear leaped into her stare. She didn’t say anything. I said it. “Come up for air. There’s trouble ahead.”
“My little pal of the press,” she said thickly.
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