Rogues on the River

by Alice Simpson

  The unpiloted boat, its helm securely lashed, drove straight on its course.

  “It’s going to strike the bridge!” shouted Florence.

  As the boat raced head on into one of the massive concrete piers, there came a deafening explosion. The entire steel structure of the bridge seemed to recoil from the impact. Girders shivered and shook, cables rattled. On the eastern approach, brakes screamed as automobiles were brought to a sudden halt.

  “Saboteurs! They’ve done it this time—they’ve dynamited the bridge!”

  Chapter Two

  Although one of the main concrete piers had been damaged by the explosion, the approaches to the bridge remained intact. Several automobiles drew up at the curbing, but others, their drivers unaware of what had caused the blast, sped on across.

  From our position beneath the bridge, I could see the entire steel structure quiver. The underpinning had been weakened, but whether it was safe for traffic to proceed, only an engineer could determine.

  “Oughtn’t we stop the cars?” I demanded, for the watchman seemed stunned by what had happened. His eyes were fixed on the opposite shore, at a point amid the trees where the pilot of the motorboat had crawled from the water.

  “Yes, yes,” he muttered, bringing his attention once more to the bridge. “No chance to catch that saboteur now. We must stop the autos.”

  Shouting as he ran, the watchman scrambled up the steep slope to the western approach of the bridge. Realizing that he would be unable to cope with traffic moving from two directions, Flo and I followed close on his heels. Our wet shoes provided poor traction on the hill. Slipping, sliding, clothing plastered to our bodies, we reached the bridge level with considerable difficulty.

  “You hold the cars at this end,” ordered the watchman. “I’ll lower the gate at the other side.”

  Florence and I stationed ourselves at the entrance to the bridge and forced the motorists to halt at the curb. Within a minute or two, a long line had formed.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded one irate driver. “An accident?”

  “Bridge has been damaged.”

  All along the line horns began to toot. A few of the more curious motorists alighted and came to bombard us with questions. During the excitement, one of the cars broke out of line and crept to the very end of the pavement.

  “Listen, Mister,” I said. “You’ll have to back up. You can’t cross—” I broke off as I recognized the man at the wheel. “Dad! Well, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Jane! What are you and Florence doing here? And in those wet clothes?”

  “Policing the bridge. Dad, there’s a big story for you here. A saboteur just blew up one of the piers by ramming it with a motorboat.”

  “I thought I heard an explosion as I was driving down Clark Street,” Dad leaped out of the car and wrapped his overcoat around my shivering shoulders. He took a blanket from his trunk and handed it to Flo. “Now tell me exactly what happened.”

  As calmly as I could, I told my father how the saboteur had dynamited the bridge.

  “This is a front-page story. Jane, you and Florence take my car and scoot for home. When you get there call the Examiner office. Have Editor DeWitt send a reporter to help me—Jack Bancroft, if he’s around. We’ll need a photographer, too—Shep Murphy.”

  “I can get the call through much quicker by running to the drugstore.” I jerked my head toward a cluster of buildings not far from the bridge entrance. “As for going home at a moment like this, never.”

  “So you’d rather risk a case of pneumonia? How’d you get so wet, anyhow?”

  “Sailboat.” I took the car keys from my father and pressed them into Flo’s hand.

  “But I don’t want to go if you don’t,” Flo objected.

  “You’re more susceptible to pneumonia than I am,” I said, giving her a little push. “Dash on home, and get into warm, dry clothing. And don’t forget to take off that life preserver before you hop into bed.”

  Florence reluctantly backed my father’s car to the main street and drove away.

  “Now I’ll slosh over to the drugstore and call the Examiner office. Lend me a nickel, Dad.”

  “I’m crazy as an eel to let you stay. You look like a drowned sewer rat,” my father muttered, fumbling in his pocket for a coin.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said, trying not to let my lower lip quiver. “It’s always nice to receive a sincere compliment on one’s appearance.”

  “You should have gone with Florence.”

  I looked down at my muddy feet. It was clear that I’d ruined yet another pair of shoes, and even if Mrs. Timms succeeded in salvaging my dress, I was certain to hear about what a disgrace I was to womanly dignity, letting my clothes get in such a state.

  “Let’s argue about what I should have done tomorrow, Dad,” I said. Right now we must work fast unless you want other newspapers to scoop the Examiner on this story.”

  While Dad remained behind to direct bridge traffic, I ran to the nearest drugstore. Darting into the one telephone booth ahead of an astonished customer, I called Editor DeWitt at the Greenville Examiner and relayed my father’s message.

  “Jack and Shep will be out there in ten minutes,” DeWitt promised. “Now what can you give us on the explosion? Did you witness it?”

  “Did I witness the explosion? I practically caused it.”

  As I launched into a vivid, eye-witness account of the bridge dynamiting, the rewrite man, on another telephone, took down everything I reported.

  “Now about the saboteur’s motorboat,” the rewrite man asked as I finished. “Can you give us a description of it?”

  “Not a very good one,” I admitted. “It looked like one of Halvorson’s rented boats with an outboard attached. In fact, Florence and I saw a similar craft earlier in the evening which was cruising not far from the bridge.”

  “Then you think the saboteur may have rented his boat from Halvorson’s?”

  “Well, it’s a possibility.”

  “You’ve given us some good stuff, Mrs. Carter,” the rewrite man said. “DeWitt’s getting out an extra. Shoot us any new facts as soon as you can.”

  “My father is on the job full blast,” I told the rewrite man. “He’ll soon have all the details for you.”

  I ran back to the bridge. My father no longer directed traffic but had turned the task over to a pompous motorist who thoroughly enjoyed his authority.

  “You can’t cross over, lady,” the officious blighter said as I passed by him. “This bridge is unsafe.”

  “I’m a reporter for the Greenville Examiner,” I lied.

  The man looked me over head to toe, drinking in my bedraggled clothing, plastered coiffure and ruined shoes. “A reporter?” He clearly did not believe me.

  Just then a police car, its siren shrilling, sped up to the bridge. Close behind came another car which bore a printed card “Greenville Examiner” on its windshield. It braked to a standstill nearby and Jack Bancroft and Shep Murphy leaped out.

  “Hello, Jane,” Jack greeted me.

  “I must say you’re looking especially elegant, this evening,” said Shep. “Wouldn’t you say your fiancée was looking unusually lovely, Jack?

  Jack was laughing, but he declined to comment as he reached out and pulled a strand of milfoil from my hair. “Might have known you’d be here. Where’s the Chief?”

  “Somewhere, sleuthing around,” I told Jack. “I lost him a minute ago when I telephoned the Examiner office.”

  Shep began unloading photographic equipment from the coupe.

  “Where’ll I get the best shots?” he asked me. “Other side or this?”

  “Under the bridge,” I told him. “None of the damage shows from above.”

  Shep slung the heavy camera over his shoulder and disappeared down the incline which led to the river bed.

  My father hurried up with the watchman in tow.

  “This is Clarence Sinclair, bridge guard,” Dad said. “Take him over to the drugstore, J
ack, and put him on the wire. We want his complete story for the Examiner.”

  “Not so fast,” a voice interrupted. “We want to talk to Clarence Sinclair.”

  The police detective, an Officer Bradshaw, began to question the watchman.

  “It wasn’t my fault the bridge was dynamited,” Mr. Sinclair whined. “I shouted at the boatman and fired two warning shots.”

  “He got away?”

  “Yeah. Jumped overboard before the boat struck the pier. Last I saw of him, he was climbing out of the river on the other shore.”

  “At what point?”

  “Right over there.” The watchman pointed out a clump of maples beyond the far side of the bridge. “I could see him plainly from the beach.”

  “And what were you doing on the beach?” Officer Bradshaw demanded. “Why weren’t you guarding the bridge?”

  “Ask her,” Clarence Sinclair muttered, eyeing me.

  “Mr. Sinclair helped my friend and me when our sailboat upset,” I told the detective. “It really wasn’t his fault that he was away from his post at the time of the explosion.”

  Other police officers were searching for the escaped saboteur. Several members of the squad went beneath the bridge to inspect the damage and collect shattered sections of the wrecked boat.

  Dismissed at last by the detective, Father, Jack and I crossed the bridge to join in the search. Clarence Sinclair, whose answers did not entirely satisfy police, was detained for further questioning.

  “Jane, tell me more about this fellow Sinclair,” my father said. “I suppose he did his best to stop the saboteur?”

  I shrugged.

  We followed a trail of moving lights until we came to a group of policemen who were examining footprints in the mud of the river bank.

  “This is where the saboteur got away,” I whispered to my father. “Do you suppose the fellow is still hiding in the woods?”

  “Not likely, a job of this sort would be planned in every detail.”

  Dad’s words were confirmed a few minutes later when a policeman came upon a clump of bushes where small patch of oil stained the crushed grass and tire tracks were clearly visible in the soft earth.

  Dad, Jack and I did not remain long in the vicinity. Satisfied that the saboteur had made his get-away by car, Dad was eager to report his findings to the Examiner office.

  My father telephoned DeWitt and then joined Jack and I in the press car. As Shep Murphy climbed aboard the driver’s seat with his camera, an automobile bearing a News windshield sticker, skidded to a stop nearby.

  “Too bad, boys,” Shep taunted the rival photographers. “Better late than never.”

  Already news vendors were crying the Greenville Examiner’s first extra. Once well away from the bridge, my father stopped the car to buy a paper.

  “Nice going,” he declared in satisfaction as he scanned the big black headlines. “We beat every other Greenville paper by a good margin. A colorful story, too.”

  “Thanks to whom?” I demanded, giving him a pinch.

  “I suppose I should say, to you,” Dad admitted. “However, I see you’ve already received ample credit. DeWitt gave you a by-line. Well, Miss Hortencia Higgins received ample credit, anyway.”

  Hortencia Higgins was my nom de plume from my days producing such serialized masterpieces of sophisticated prose as “Evangeline: The Horse Thief’s Unwilling Fiancée” at the rate of pennies per page for Mr. Pittman’s All-Story Weekly.

  “Did he really?” I took the paper from my father’s hand and gazed affectionately at Miss Higgin’s name in print. “Nice of him. Especially when I didn’t even suggest the idea.”

  “This is the way I like a story written,” my father said, reading aloud from the account which bore Miss Higgin’s name. “No flowery phrases. No sensationalism. Just a straight version of how your sailboat upset and what you saw as it floated down toward the bridge.”

  “It’s a pretty drab account if you ask me,” I protested. “Completely lacking in imagination. I could have written it up much better myself. Why, the rewrite man didn’t even tell how Florence and I happened to upset.”

  “A detail of no importance,” Dad said. “I mean, in connection with the story,” he corrected hastily as I flashed him an injured look. “What did cause you to capsize?”

  “A blue bottle, Dad. It had a piece of paper inside. I was reaching for it and—oh, my aunt!”

  “Now what?”

  “Turn the car around and drive back to the bridge.”

  “Drive back? Why?”

  “I’ve lost that blue bottle. Florence had it, but I know she didn’t take it home with her. It must be lying somewhere on the beach near our stranded sailboat. Oh, please Shep, turn back around.”

  Chapter Three

  “Keep going,” my father ordered Shep. “We’re not turning around for an old bottle. Jane, for a minute you had me worried. I thought you meant something important.”

  “But Dad, the bottle is important. It contains a folded piece of paper, and I’m sure it must be a message.”

  “Of all the idiotic things. At a time like this when you should be worried about your health, you plague me about a silly bottle. After Shep and I get dropped at the office, Jack is driving you straight home.”

  “Oh, all right,” I said, trying hard to disguise my chattering teeth and failing miserably. “Nevertheless, I’m curious about that bottle, and I mean to go back and find it tomorrow. What I’d really like to know, though, is why someone wants to blow up the Seventh Street bridge bad enough to try it a second time.”

  “The bridge bombing has to be a connected with the explosion at the Maxwell Implement factory,” said Dad, “I’m just having a bit of trouble working out how.”

  “Has any reporter from the Examiner yet succeeded in interviewing Mr. Maxwell about the explosion?” I asked.

  “No, he’s refusing all questions from the press, and I don’t know why.”

  “Perhaps he’s just a very private man,” I suggested.

  “Perhaps,” my father said. “There was a scandal surrounding the death of the first Mrs. Maxwell a few years back. I expect the press coverage at that time may have made him suspicious of newspapermen.”

  “What happened to the first Mrs. Maxwell?”

  “She died of cancer.”

  “What’s so scandalous about that?”

  “There were rumors surrounding her death. The official line was that she dies as a result of her illness, but some people said she took her own life.”

  “Why?”

  “There were whispers that she found out that Mr. Maxwell had been less than faithful to his marriage vows.”

  “Is there any evidence to suggest that was true.”

  “After his wife’s death, Mr. Maxwell remarried within the month.”

  “That is rather soon for a grieving widower to tie the knot again.”

  “I thought it was rather excessive,” said my father.

  I refrained from pointing out that some people might think that he and Mrs. Timms—who’d been a widow herself for the last twenty years—carrying a torch for each other for the last dozen years without letting on to a living soul they were devotedly in love with each other was also a bit excessive.

  I’d spent most of my teens and early twenties hoping my father and our housekeeper would light a fire under a pot together and ended up feeling rather a fool when I discovered they’d been carrying on a clandestine love affair right under my nose since before I’d cut my wisdom teeth.

  Still, there was no use trying to put bug in Dad’s ear about making an honest woman of Doris Timms. My father was showing no signs of proposing marriage to Mrs. Timms, and if our beloved housekeeper had been this patient with Dad all these years, I supposed it was not my place to go sticking my nose in.

  Shep and Dad got out at the newspaper plant, and then Jack drove me home.

  Lights glowed from the living room windows, and I could see Mrs. Timms hovering over the r
adio.

  “I was just listening to the news about the dynamiting,” she said as Jack and I came in from the kitchen. “Why, Jane Carter! Whatever have you—"

  “I guess I am a trifle damp.” I sat down on the davenport and began to strip off my shoes and stockings.

  “Not here,” Mrs. Timms protested, glancing over at Jack.

  Sometimes I think Mrs. Timms forgets that I’m a woman of experience, rather than a teenage debutant.

  “I assure you,” I said to Mrs. Timms, “Jack is not scandalized by the sight of my bare ankles. You seem to be forgetting that Mr. Bancroft and I are engaged to be married.”

  Mrs. Timms turned slightly pink but refused to back down. “Go up and take a hot bath while I fix you a warm drink,” she ordered. “I knew you shouldn’t have gone sailing at night.”

  “But Mrs. Timms—”

  “Scoot right up to the bathroom and get out of those wet clothes. You’ll be lucky if you don’t come down with your death o’ cold.”

  I looked over at Jack, who was standing there still wearing his overcoat and holding his hat in his hand.

  I blew him a kiss, then, carrying a muddy shoe in either hand, I wearily climbed the stairs. By the time I settled down in a nice bubbly hot bath, Mrs. Timms appeared with a glass of hot lemonade.

  “Drink this, then get into bed, and I’ll fix you up with the hot water bottle.”

  “But I’m not sick,” I protested. “I just got a minor dunking, that’s all.”

  “You will be sick tomorrow,” Mrs. Timms. “Your father telephoned from the office and told me how you’d to stay at the bridge while police searched for the saboteur. I declare, I don’t know what he was thinking of, not sending you home right away.”

  “Dad and I are a couple of tough old news hawks. Well, I suppose I’ll have to compromise with you.”

  “Compromise?” Mrs. Timms asked suspiciously.

  “I’ll drink the lemonade if you’ll let me skip the hot water bottle.”

  “Indeed not,” Mrs. Timms insisted. “Now jump into bed, and no more arguments.”