The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,17
and left it. We couldn’t figure it out.
Then we saw the man.
He was down the road at the next bend, but he was off a little to one side, in the trees. His back was to us, but he was standing real still among the trunks, watching the highway.
“Must be waiting for somebody,” Pop says.
Just then the man turned his head and saw us standing beside the trailer. He whirled around and started running towards us along the road. In spite of how hot it was, he had on a double-breasted flannel suit and was wearing a Panama hat and tan-and-white shoes. He kept watching us while he ran.
“What the hell are you looking for?” he barked at Pop when he came up.
Pop leaned against the side of our car. “Why, we was just passin’ and thought maybe you was in trouble, or something,” he says.
The man looked us over. Pop was dressed the way he always was around the tracks, in levis and old scuffed-up cowboy boots and a straw sombrero. It gives the clients, as Pop calls ‘em, confidence to know the man they’re dealing with is connected with a big gamble. In fact, that’s the way he got his business name. Stablehand Noonan, he prints on top of the sheets. Anyway, when the man sized us up a little it seemed to give him confidence too, because he kind of cooled off.
“Oh,” he says. “No. No trouble. I just stopped to cool off the motor.”
He lit a cigarette and kept on watching us like he was thinking of something. He was dark complected and had real cold blue eyes and a slim black moustache. His hair was black under the Panama hat. You could see he was hot inside that double-breasted flannel coat, and it looked funny out here among the pine trees. He carried his left arm a little awkward, out from his body somewhat, and when he raised his hands to light the cigarette the coat opened a crack at the top and I saw a narrow leather strap running across his chest. I figured he was wearing some kind of a brace. Maybe he’d had the polio.
“You live around here?” he asked Pop.
Pop nodded. “Back up the road a piece. Me and my brother own a big cotton plantation. You figure on visitin’ back in that direction? Kinfolks, I mean?”
The man’s eyes got narrow, like he was thinking. “Not exactly,” he says. “To tell you the truth, I was looking for a spot to camp for a few months. Some place where it was quiet and kinda off the beaten track, and a man wouldn’t be bothered too much by the tourists.”
I could see Pop beginning to think too. “Kind of a out-of-the-way place, you mean? Where you could sort of get away from the highway noise, an’ just lay around, and maybe fish, without nobody to bother you?”
“That’s it,” the man says. “You know of a spot like that around here?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Pop says. “My brother Sagamore and me might be able to rent you a little campground. We got a lake there, and lots of trees, but the place is kind of hard to get to and nobody ever goes in there.”
The man’s face lit up. “That sound fine,” he says.
“No traffic at all,” Pop says. “It’s on a dead-end road. You alone?”
Well, not exactly,” the man says. I noticed that all the time he was talking he kept looking around every few seconds to watch that bend of the road. “I’ve got my niece with me.”
“Niece?” Pop asked.
The man nodded. “Let’s get out of this hot sun.” He moved out of the road and we all went over and squatted down in the shade of the pine trees on the other side of the trailer. He faced so he could watch towards the highway.
He took another drag on his cigarette and tossed it away, and nodded towards the trailer. “Maybe I better introduce myself,” he says. “I’m Dr Severance. I’m a specialist in nervous disorders and anemia. My niece, Miss Harrington, is in there. It’s on her account I’m looking for a secluded place to camp. She’s an invalid, and under my care. She needs a long rest, in quiet surroundings.”
“I see,” Pop says.
“You understand,” the man went on, “I’m telling you this in the strictest confidence. Miss Harrington is from a very old and very wealthy New Orleans family. She’s a delicate and very sensitive girl who’s in