LITMIR.BIZ

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      Rodman Bishop’s deep voice brought all of us back to our senses. “We don’t have to worry. George won’t leave the dock—wild asses couldn’t drag him into a boat tonight.”

      A terrible forked streak of lightning split the dark night. Jim and Andy went out through the windows. The rest of us looked at each other, breathed again and turned back to where we’d been. All except Rosemary. She sat erect in the white leather chair, as frozen as an icicle.

      “Let’s not play any more,” Lucy Lee said abruptly. “I’m going outside.”

      Dikranov stood up and bowed formally. “Shall we go out on the porch, Rosemary?”

      “No . . . thanks,” Rosemary said quickly. Her voice was strained, almost harsh. Then she caught herself and said quite naturally, “You stay and talk to Dad. I’ll go out with Lucy Lee. Come on, Grace.”

      We went, Bill Chetwynd coming with us. From the porch we could hear the sudden burst of applause that went up, and in another minute a saxophone blared. We knew that Rex Brophy’s Band Wagon had arrived. I looked at my watch. It was just eleven.

      Rosemary and I ran across the lawn. Lucy Lee had disappeared. Even when the lightning flashed so that we had a momentary picture of the entire scene we couldn’t see her white little figure in it. We could, however, see a small boat with two figures in it bouncing on the dark waves, and on the dock two other figures in white flannels and dark jackets, running down, shouting.

      “Is her boat out?” Rosemary whispered.

      “Unless they brought it in tonight. They all thought the storm had died down for good.”

      We picked our way down the rock steps aided by the flashes of white light. Not that we needed it. Either of us could have gone from one end of April Harbor to the other in the dark with our eyes closed.

      Suddenly, in front of us, was Lucy Lee, sitting on a step. Just sitting there.

      “What’s the matter, Lucy—hurt your ankle?” Rosemary asked quickly.

      Lucy Lee shook her head.

      “Go on down. I’m all right.”

      Rosemary went on. I stayed.

      “What’s the matter, Lucy Lee?”

      She laughed . . . a ghastly tear-stained laugh.

      “I’m just being a silly fool. Don’t mind me. Go on down.”

      I sat down beside her.

      “Look, precious,” I said. “You are being a silly fool. It’s all right if you can’t help it, but for Heaven’s sake don’t let everybody on the place know it.”

      She didn’t say anything, just sat, a white-faced stricken child, with a thunderstorm playing havoc with her life.

      “I’ll go back up,” she said suddenly. “Mother wants to go home early anyway. Tell Andy, will you? Not that he’ll care, but it . . . sort of keeps up the joke.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      I watched her long white dress disappear up the hill, and went down to the float. A drop of rain hit my shoulder, and another. It was dark, but I could make out Andy with his flashlight, trying to untie a motorboat down by the No. 4 landing. I didn’t see Rosemary or Jim. Not until another flash of lightning came, and then I wished I hadn’t. It would have been easier the next day, and a lot easier when the State’s Attorney began asking me questions. I don’t imagine either of them had realized that meeting in the dark there where they’d spent so many intimate growing-up years would simply annihilate in one mindless instant all the bitterness and tragedy of those intervening years.

      I ran on to the end of the pier where Andy Thorp was. He had given up trying to release the motorboat and was standing there dully, staring out at the tiny light bobbing up and down where Sandra and George Barrol were.

      “No use,” he mumbled. “She can handle it if anybody can. I should have gone with her.”

      “She won’t try it, she can’t! Not in this sea.”

      “She’ll go, all right,” he said.

      “She’s a fool!”

      “I guess she thinks Rosemary’s trying to get him back,” he said doggedly. “He doesn’t deserve a woman like her.”

      I stared at him.

      “And I’m not saying I do,” he went on.

      “Well,” I said, “of course, there is Lucy Lee.”

      “I’m not saying anything about Lucy Lee. I guess it’s not her fault she’s sort of all washed up.”

      It wasn’t a particularly appropriate time, of course, to go into Andy’s domestic and emotional difficulties. Not with Jim pounding along the dock towards us and Sandra and George out there in the squall, lightning flashing and the rain beginning to come down in torrents. The trouble with Andy is one of the great troubles with American colleges. He’d been one of those All-American everythings, from marbles to football, to whom just the mere fact of being out of college for a couple of years is deflation enough for one ordinary twenty-five-year-old ego. Andy got the depression slapped on for good measure. Whenever I look at him, I hope my sons will be bandy-legged and cross-eyed so they can’t be All-American anythings, and will escape the dreadful letdown and go into the world and not onto it.

      “You’d better put this on.” He pulled an oilskin coat out of the motorboat and put it over my head.

      Jim was coming. He was alone.

      Even then I don’t think any of us thought Sandra was in any real danger.

      “You going out, Jim?” Andy shouted through the rain.

      “No.” His voice was curt to the point of rudeness. “I’ll stand by if she needs help. Rosemary’s gone to have ’em put the lights on. Sandra can manage a boat better than we can.”

      He came back towards us.

      “That sounds pretty damn offhand to me,” Andy said. He was trying hard to control a sudden anger. “If she was my wife—”

      “You wouldn’t even be down here,” Jim said angrily. Which was the first time I knew he had even noticed Andy and Lucy Lee lately.

      “Yeah? What about yourself? I guess everybody here knows how you’d feel about it if she never got back in!”

      “Andy . . . Jim!” I cried. “Shut up, both of you!”

      I put my hand on Andy’s arm. He shook it off angrily. “You keep out of this, Grace!” he snarled. They stood there face to face, staring at each other for an instant in the crashing storm and the rain and the lightning.

      Then from above the twin beams of the great searchlights flashed out across the rain-lashed inlet. I didn’t look for Sandra just then. I was looking at Jim. His tortured face was turned towards the water.

      “So you’d be free . . .” Andy said deliberately.

      Jim turned back.

      “Steady,” I said. “Andy doesn’t know what he’s—”

      “The hell I don’t. You think I’m too dumb to know what’s going on? What do you suppose she brought her dago fancy man down here for!”

      I don’t think I’d have stopped it if I could. Jim took one swift step. His fist shot out. Andy’s knees buckled like an accordion and down he went. He stayed there motionless a second, more surprised than hurt, and then leaped to his feet. Jim Gould stood square to meet him, back to the bay.

      Then suddenly across the rain-driven water came a high-pitched scream of terror, and with it a man’s voice shouting, “Help! Help!”

      We looked. A white sail, half unfurled,

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