The Twisted Shadow. Edith Dorian
Judy cherished that comforting idea for less than seven minutes. The door latch clicked again, and she spun around to start back to the circulation desk, trying to look like a welcome mat and a time clock simultaneously. But she dropped the welcome part of the act in a hurry. Thirteen minutes to closing and she had to cope with Assistant Ranger Timothy Wade!
3 • Lipstick and Lobster Rolls
JUDY LOOKED POINTEDLY FROM RANGER WADE TO the clock. “This library closes at nine sharp,” she informed him. “You’ll have to hurry if you want a book. Snakes are classified under 598—over there in the stacks at the back of the room.”
Her tone was as warm and cordial as an icicle, but Ranger Wade chose to ignore it.
“Thanks,” he said blandly. “I’ll have a look.” He held out his palm with a cylinder of lipstick on it. “I thought I’d better stop by with this. You dropped it at the Station yesterday.”
Judy hastily thawed several degrees. “Oh swell, thanks,” she said happily. “I’ve been moaning over it all day.” Just the same she still had no intention of letting him keep her overtime. There was no sense in encouraging people to stroll in at the last minute or nobody’d ever get out of the place. “Don’t forget you have only seven minutes,” she said over her shoulder as she headed back to her books. “Please call if you need help.”
But when Miss Leonard hurried across the room five minutes later, Judy had finished her replacement job uninterrupted.
“Time to close shop,” the librarian said. “Just leave a light on the desk and put the latch on the door as you go, please, will you, Judy?”
“What about you and Miss Addison?” Judy asked. “It won’t kill me to stay if you need me, you know.”
But Miss Leonard shook her head. “Miss Addison’s already shooed one committee out the back door and escaped,” she told Judy, smiling. “The other may be around for another half hour, but I’m a member of it anyway so that’s my funeral. You trot along.”
Then, hearing footsteps in the stacks, she raised her eyebrows. “Some one still here?” she asked in surprise.
“One of the rangers,” Judy said.
“Well, don’t let him hold you up,” Miss Leonard advised her, and Judy laughed.
“Don’t worry, he won’t,” she said cheerfully as she settled behind the desk with both eyes glued on the clock, and Miss Leonard vanished, chuckling.
One minute to go. Half a minute. Nine! Judy banged three card drawers shut in rapid succession. That ought to do it, she thought with satisfaction.
It did. Ranger Wade dutifully reappeared with a book clutched in his hand and strode over to the desk.
“Anything in the regulations against my taking out another?” he asked. “You brought me three yesterday.”
“Nothing at all,” Judy said briskly, “the quota’s four. If you’ll just sign the cards, I’ll check it right out.”
But when he handed her the Nature Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians, she was annoyed again. Only this time it was herself she wanted to kick. She had meant to stick that away in the bookmobile at lunch hour for her snake-minded cub.
“Isn’t this a little elementary for you?” she asked in her best professional tone. “I was thinking of taking it over to a cub scout in the Park.”
“To the towhead with the grin?” the ranger asked. “He’s the one I’m getting it for. He’s working on a reptile badge.”
“Oh,” Judy said, and did another mental about-face. If she’d had any brains, she’d have known yesterday. This was a man she had to work with all summer! “Then if you’re the ranger who’s taking those kids on for nature badges, you’d better show me what books you want me to bring over there. Besides, I promised that towhead two snake books. Just wait till I find a pad and you can come pick them out for me.”
She rummaged hastily in the top desk drawer, and Ranger Wade looked up at the clock. “My ears are going back on me,” he announced. “I thought you said I had to be out at nine o’clock sharp!”
“Under normal circumstances,” Judy said calmly as she steered him toward the stacks. “But these aren’t normal. Once you get back in Junior’s clutches, you’ll probably never show up again. I’m surprised he let you out tonight.”
“Junior,” the ranger repeated, puzzled. “Junior who?”
“The slithering serpent,” Judy explained. “That pine snake or whatever you called him. How is he, by the way?”
“Doing as well as could be expected considering the scare you gave him,” Ranger Wade retorted, and Judy hoisted storm signals again.
The ranger, however, refused to be intimidated. “Look,” he said plaintively, “why don’t you declare a truce? I practically never carry serpents coiled around my middle. We could even go fifty-fifty: I forgive you for picking on Junior and me, and you forgive us for existing. Then we could go eat lobster rolls in peace and practice first names. After all, we have to work together.”
He sounded so absurd that Judy laughed in spite of herself. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. At least he had a sense of humor.
He grinned back at her cheerfully. “Here’s your pencil,” he said. “Come on and get this over with. I should never have mentioned those lobster rolls. I can feel myself starving.”
But he was still alive a half hour later when they settled on a couple of stools at the Whistling Clam with their sandwich rolls and coffee.
“I’m glad you made me stop and pick that stuff out,” he admitted. “It’ll make working with those kids all summer a whole lot easier. Your library’s okay on its wildlife collection, Judy.”
“It’s pretty much okay anyway as far as I can tell from just two days,” Judy said. “Miss Leonard seems to buy books as if the budget grew in the United States mint. That library rocked me right back on my heels when I first saw it. You see, my mother was born and brought up here, and I guess I thought the town was still the same—just a hundred year-rounders, not even any summer people.”
“Well, you weren’t any greener than I was,” Tim consoled her. “The national parks I’d met were out in the country with maybe a general store and a movie in a nearby village. I nearly flipped when I saw Ship Street.”
“That’s one thing I still don’t get,” Judy said frankly, “why you’re here, I mean. Back at the library you didn’t make Maine sound like good snake country.”
“But you’ve got to admit it’s swell summer country,” he pointed out, “and who’s a wildlife-management major to snoot any national park job in vacation? Right now I only think I’m a herpetologist. I start graduate work this fall.”
“Then you’re one up on me,” Judy told him. “I’ve got another year at Barnard before I start library school. I didn’t know about summer rangers, though. I figured you were ranging’ around here permanently.”
“No reason not to,” he agreed. “Plenty of wildlife-management majors go in for ranger work—only I’d be down in the Everglades where you don’t need a magnifying glass to find a snake!”
“Why not South America?” she asked. “Brazil maybe. Isn’t that supposed to be tops for snakes?”
“Got a plane ticket in your pocket?” he demanded, and Judy made a wry face.
“If I had, I’d use it myself,” she informed him. “My family’s down there and I haven’t seen them for two years! Dad’s in the consular service.”
But she shook her head vigorously at his barrage of questions. “There’s no use asking me about the place. Jaunting to Porto Alegre and back