The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,32
the trail. So I figured she must have forgot something, maybe her bathing suit, and had gone back after it. So I started back, thinking I would meet her along the trail. But when I got clear back to the trailer I still hadn’t seen a sign of her. It sure was peculiar, I thought.
Dr Severance was still lying in a canvas chair with his drink. He looked at me, and says, “Well, it’s the champ. Where’s Miss Harrington?”
“That’s just it,” I says. “I thought she came back here. I lost her on the trail.”
“Lost her?” he asked. “How?”
“Well,” I says, “I thought she was right behind me when I was talking to the rabbit hunter.”
He barked at me. “Rabbit hunter? Where? And what did he look like?”
“Down the trail there,” I says. “A couple of hundred yards. He was a big man with a scar on his face, and he was wearing a Panama hat and had a tommy gun.”
He came up out of the chair and threw the drink away from him all at one time, and his right hand shot inside his coat. I had to jump back real fast or he’d of run right over me. By the time I could turn around he was twenty yards down the trail.
I started to follow him, because I was still worried about what had become of Miss Harrington, but just then I saw Pop and Uncle Sagamore coming up towards the trailer.
“Where’d he go in such a hurry?” Pop asked.
I told them about Miss Harrington disappearing and about the rabbit hunters. They looked at each other.
“Well sir, is that a fact?” Uncle Sagamore says. “Two rabbit hunters with machine-guns. It’s sure lucky you got a month’s rent in advance, Sam.”
“But we got to look for Miss Harrington,” I says, or started to say when Pop motioned for me to be quiet.
It seemed like they was listening for something. They just stood real still and whenever I’d start to open my mouth one or the other would shake his head at me.
Then, all of a sudden, there was two shots down the trail, just two shots real close together and then it was all quiet again. Pop and Uncle Sagamore looked at each other, and started to walk slow down that way. I started to follow them, but Pop shook his head.
“You’d better go back to the house,” he says.
“But Miss Harrington—” I says. I felt like crying, I was so worried something had happened to her. Maybe she’d fell and hurt herself.
“Never mind Miss Harrington,” Pop says. “You go on to the house.”
They was crazy if they thought I was going back to the house when I din’t know what had become of her. So the minute they was out of sight in the trees I cut downhill and started running through the bush just below the trail. In a minute I was ahead of them. I turned to my left and got back on the trail and went running along to the place where I’d seen her last. But before I got there I happened to look uphill and there she was, standing in a little open place in the trees. Dr Severance was with her. He was looking down at something on the ground.
I was relieved to see she was all right. I cut off the trail and ran up that way. But just before I got there he waved his hand at her and I heard him say, “Go on back to the trailer. I’ll take care of these yokels.”
She left and started walking away through the trees, and I turned and was going to run over that way to her but just then I saw Pop and Uncle Sagamore coming. If they saw me here Pop would give me a tanning for sure for not minding him. I looked around real fast, trying to see if I could get away by running in the other direction and then circling back, but there wasn’t much chance. There was some thick bushes just to one side of where Dr Severance was, though, so I dived into them and hid.
Now that I knew she was all right I wasn’t worried any more, so I began to be curious about what Dr Severance was doing. I parted the leaves a little where I was lying, and I could see him. He was only about ten feet away, still looking down at something lying at his feet.