by Q. Patrick
“Hello, Miss Winyard. So you’re tonight’s blueplate special!” Her red lips curled in a slow, quizzical smile. “Sorry if I barged in at the wrong moment.”
“I didn’t come with Ivor if that’s what you mean.”
“You didn’t?” The remarkable blue eyes were skeptical. “Then where is he? I heard the speedboat leave the mainland quarter of an hour ago. Then the sound of the motor stopped.
“He’s out in the bay. I heard the boat as I came up.”
“You heard it?” Simon moved to the open window. Kay joined her and once again she heard that vague, obscurely eerie purr of a boat engine—somewhere. Simon swung round, her face queerly changed. “That sound doesn’t come from the bay. It’s close—very close. And the engine’s idling. There’s something phony about this.”
Abruptly she hurried out of the playhouse and started swiftly along the edge of the low cliffs to the left of the dock. Feeling dim apprehension, Kay followed.
It was a strange sensation, hurrying down that narrow winding path after Simon with no real idea of where she was going or why. The wind-stunted cedars made weird silhouettes around her in the moonlight.
Simon had stopped now. Kay caught up with her. Lying beneath them, gleaming white and symmetrical, lay a tiny sand beach. The drone of the engine was louder, concentrated in the small semicircle of the cove. Simon’s fingers closed over Kay’s wrist.
“Ivor’s boat. It’s beached. See it?”
Kay did see it, a vague blot of darkness at the shadowy rim of the water.
Simon started scrambling down the gentle slope of the cliff to the beach. Swept up into her mood of urgency, Kay followed. Soon they were on the soft, dry sand, running toward the speedboat.
It lay in the shallow water, half tilted over on its keel, its bow nosing into the sand of the beach. The aquaplane board, like a small, jagged mast, still thrust up from the stern. The rhythmic chugging of the engine echoed hollowly around the curved face of the cliffs.
Simon jumped into the boat, disappeared into the cabin, killed the motor, and re-emerged.
“He isn’t there. Why hadn’t he switched the engine off?” There was a strange challenge in her voice. “What do you know about it? What…?”
She broke off, her body going stiff as stone as she stared across the shining water of the cove.
“Look!” She grabbed Kay’s arm convulsively, spinning her round. “Look! There! You see?”
She was pointing to a spot in the water close to the speedboat, a few feet from shore.
And shatteringly Kay saw that thing, that indeterminate patch of black and white, half floating, half submerged in the silky water.
Simon had plunged into the sea, not waiting even to kick off her high-heeled shoes or to lift her long, trailing dress. Blindly Kay followed. The beach shelved steeply from the water’s edge. Simon, wading ahead, disappeared to her waist. Kay’s own skirt clung wet and heavy around her thighs.
At last they reached that thing. Simon was peering down at it, her hair falling in the water. Fighting back panic, Kay looked too.
She saw the white of a coat, the twisted travesty of an arm, and, dimly, staring up from beneath the shadowy water, the gray suggestion of a face.
Her hands, thrusting down, touched a cold surface. There was nothing in the world but that frightful deadness under her fingers.
Then Simon’s voice, remote and unreal, spoke the words that were hammering like pistons in her own mind: “It’s Ivor. My God, it’s Ivor. He’s dead!”
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About the Author
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick, and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966), Martha Mott Kelley (1906–2005), and Mary Louise White Aswell (1902–1984) wrote detective fiction. Most of the stories were written together by Webb and Wheeler, or by Wheeler alone. Their best-known creation is amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1939 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9698-3
This 2018 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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