Scarecrow. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ the farm were low enough to let her live on it without working. She was by profession a librarian, and had worked as such in South Africa, where she was born.

      "I'm writing to her, too. I'll send it." Her brother spoke shortly.

      "I don't believe you've paid up yet Mother ought to have given the money to me," Florence said in her most superior tone.

      "You'd have forgotten to settle, in your new campaign against Inskipp," he retorted.

      "My new campaign?" she asked loftily, arranging her hair.

      "My dear girl, I've known you for over thirty years, remember! Those letters to that old witch in Rennes, Mademoiselle—what was her name—the housekeeper who used to be at that awful boardinghouse in Paris when we were there. Don't you suppose I know you're up to something? And something which will pay Inskipp out?"

      There was a short silence, while Florence chose a walking stick. She was off for a long scramble.

      "Whatever you're at, has slowed up his output," Rackstraw said, lighting a cigarette.

      She smiled a slow, very unpleasant smile. By Jove, Flo was plain, Rackstraw thought as he caught it. How on earth she ever expected to marry—

      "He'll be writing better than ever soon," she promised in a curiously amused voice.

      "I didn't say anything about its quality—quantity, too, counts. As a matter of fact, in the last scene of his he got the love-talk far better than in his opening one."

      "Well, there you are!" said Florence, laughing a little under her breath.

      "What can you have done that makes him look as though he had been left a million?" persisted her brother. "And who is this friend of his called Mireille?"

      "How should I know? Mireille? Sounds a fancy name," she said innocently.

      He gave her a suspicious look, but she began to sing in her hard, nasal voice, and led the way through the garden. She and Blythe were walking over to Castillon. Rackstraw was off for Menton, there to be rowed out to the Baoussé Roussé, the famous Red Cliffs just over the Italian border where fifty thousand years ago paleolithic man lived—in bodily shape very much like his descendants, where the women wore shell bracelet jewellery very much such as can be bought at the local fairs.

      The other two might join him later on, and all three come home together, or they might not get so far. Rackstraw never waited for any one.

      Since Inskipp's resolute withdrawal, Florence had turned her attention to Blythe, with what success it was hard to say. Certainly Edna Blythe seemed pleased. Edna was an indolent person who spent long hours extended in a deck chair in the garden.

      Whenever visitors came in for a drink, and they were fairly frequent these fine days, and she was out in the garden, she would envelope herself in a Times until the visitors had been shown to their rooms. Once, Inskipp happened to pick up her paper after it had been serving her for some time as a screen, and was amused to find its centre neatly pierced by a large pinhole. So that wrapped-up aspect concealed quite a good observation hole; but he dropped the paper again without giving the matter a second thought.

      Blythe could be heard now calling. "Miss Rackstraw! Miss Rackstraw!"

      His sister looked up and chaffed them as they set out, lunch in their shoulder-bags, stout sticks in their hands. Florence laughed back at her, and waved her hand to Inskipp up in his window.

      He promptly sat down and started a letter to Madame de Pra far away in Rennes. A very humble letter, asking her if she could let him have a photograph of herself. He did not say that he had seen those in Florence's possession, but he did say how much he would like to have a picture of the writer of the enchanting notes which were his greatest joy in life. It took him quite half an hour to write, and he posted it in the nearest letter-box to the farm.

      It was while walking back that he caught sight of some one—a man—waving and shouting and running. Inskipp waited. A minute later he saw that the man was Blythe. He hurried to meet him.

      "It's Miss Rackstraw!" called Blythe, as soon as he got within talking range. "We must get something to carry her on—"

      "What's happened?"

      Then as Blythe, who looked very pale, did not reply, Inskipp went on: "Has she hurt herself?"

      "She's dead." Blythe spoke in a tone as though overwhelmed by the calamity. He looked ghastly. "I'll tell you all about it in a moment...As soon as I've seen Edna...When I get my breath...Back at the farm..." He seemed uncertain where to tell it.

      The two, without another word, hurried to the house. There they met Norbury mending the front gate. Blythe grasped his arm.

      "Get a stretcher of some sort. Miss Rackstraw slipped off a rock, and is lying dead in a valley near here. Where's Edna?"

      "Hold on a moment," said Norbury. "One at a time. Miss Rackstraw slipped? Where? How? But you need a whisky and soda."

      Blythe did. Drinking it, he pulled himself together. They were walking in single file, he said, Miss Rackstraw leading, along a narrow ledge of rock, when suddenly a huge roar sounded behind them—a roar like nothing on earth, said Blythe.

      Startled, Miss Rackstraw missed her footing. She plunged over the ledge before Blythe or the man who was leading a baboon by a strap, and who had sat down to rest by the roadside, could put a hand out to grasp her. Blythe had clambered down after her and found her quite dead with a broken neck, as well as broken back.

      "Good God!" muttered Norbury. "What a shocking accident. What became of the man and the beast?"

      "I told him to wait by the body. The baboon was on its way to the Château Grimaldi, of course."

      "I suppose you stopped at the Commissariat de Police to tell them about it? It was on your way here," Norbury said, hurrying back with them to the outbuildings.

      Blythe had not. He seemed to have no idea where the Castellar police station was.

      Norbury shook his head again, and said that they must go there at once. The police would attend to bringing up the body and getting into touch with the man who had the ape. "I suppose you can describe him?"

      Blythe said that he was afraid not, beyond that he was middle aged, very dirty, dressed in innumerable garments all more or less ragged, and that the baboon was a big one.

      Norbury pursed his lips over this, and again said that the only thing to do was to start at once for the police.

      "I want a word with my sister first." Blythe made for the stairs.

      "My dear fellow," said Norbury in his most peremptory manner, "you mustn't wait a moment! You must let the police know at once!"

      "I must tell Edna!" said Blythe in a dogged tone. "She was a great friend of Miss Rackstraw. I want her to be prepared. The shock, you know—"

      But Miss Blythe was not at the farm, and Norbury peremptorily refused to let Blythe try to find her outside. He dragged him almost by force to his car.

      Inskipp was genuinely shocked at the news, but then came the thought that now the' two photographs of Mireille were ownerless. He knew the drawer where СКАЧАТЬ