The Twisted Shadow. Edith Dorian
panting for the opportunity,” Judy assured him. “I can’t imagine anything sweeter than you and a couple of bushmasters romping around a kitchen.” She wagged her head regretfully, however. “Only I don’t recommend it. In the consular service you never can tell. Just when everything was legal, zoom, Dad’d be transferred, and considering St. Patrick, wouldn’t you look cute in Ireland!”
“Perish the thought,” Tim said with horror. “Let’s get out of here before you think of anything worse.”
The full moon was riding high when they sauntered down to the waterfront, and Judy nodded at the red beam of Pound o’ Tea Light streaking across the silvered waters.
“I won’t trade views for your gallows,” she said. “There are advantages to living here on the Foreside.” She pointed to a big white house facing the harbor. “I’m staying at Captain Dunning’s. He and his wife took me in because the captain’s on the library board. Mrs. Matt even feeds me, except when I stay through like tonight.”
“Don’t gloat,” Tim said sternly. “You’ll be on a low-calorie diet next winter when I’m still a fine figger of a man. I know. I’ve sampled Mrs. Matt’s cooking. She gave me a dish full of scalloped clams one night last week when Sandys Winter’s car broke down and I drove him over here for supper.” He cocked an eyebrow and studied Judy critically. “You know, if it’s a view you want, I ought to drive you over to Gibbet Ridge now while you’re still thin enough to fit into a Park Ford. Mr. Winter’s the man who really has one.”
“What’s so different about his?” Judy asked, laughing.
“It’s the combination he’s got,” Tim said. He waved his arm at the lobster boats and pleasure craft rocking at their moorings in the harbor. “The twentieth century on this side of him and the nineteenth on the other.”
Judy looked bewildered. “Don’t stop there,” she ordered. “You’ve lost me. Where does the nineteenth century come in?”
“In a couple of schooners,” Tim explained, “old fore-and-afters, the Ellen B. and the Flying Nancy, and a clipper called the Golden Falcon. Your Captain Matt’s grandfather was master of the Falcon, and Captain Matt supervised the job of getting the three of them shipshape again for Mr. Winter. They just got towed in and anchored off Bold Dick Beach ten days ago.” He squinted at his wristwatch in the moonlight. “It isn’t ten yet. We still have time to row around them. How about it?”
But Judy stared over at the Park car suspiciously. Maybe he didn’t wear snakes coiled around his waist but he’d already admitted he drove around with them. “It’s the company you keep,” she informed him. “And if you think I want to see anything enough to take a moonlight ride with Junior, the answer is a cinch: I don’t!”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Tim demanded. “Sometime you’ll catch on to how bright I am. I actually doped out your reaction to Junior yesterday. Besides, you hurt his feelings and he has to stay in bed.”
4 • The Ellen B.
TIM JOCKEYED THE CAR OUT OF ITS PARKING SLOT and they headed back up Ship Street for Gallows Road.
“Even Miss Leonard’s committee finally went home, I see,” Judy said as they passed the dark buildings on the Mall, “but at the rate this town’s concentrating on Bold Dick, he’ll probably walk’ before the summer’s over! What do you do if you meet a ghost waving a cutlass? Use a silver bullet on him?”
“And get strung up on their gallows by the irate citizens?” Tim asked. “Any time I meet Bold Dick I say ‘aye, aye, sir’ and knuckle my forehead in a hurry.”
“At least your uniform’s green, not scarlet,” Judy said with a comforting grin. “Maybe you’ll survive—which is more than the citizens are likely to do before this celebration’s over. Barry St. Leger is even putting on a musical version of Rogue’s Hour, book and lyrics by Runner and Harne, no less. They’re here already. He had them with him in the library tonight, working like mad on costumes and scenery.”
Tim whistled. “That’s something we see,” he announced with determination. “Don’t make any other dates for Bold Dick Week till I find out what night I can get us tickets. Right?”
Judy nodded but she looked a bit skeptical. “If you can get us tickets, you mean,” she amended. “This place is going to be snowed. Tourists will queue up outside that theater like the tail of a kite every time the box office is open.”
“Then I’ll wear my dirk in my teeth and elbow them aside,” Tim assured her.
“Or you could take a few lessons in pocket picking,” she suggested helpfully. “A dirk in your teeth must taste disgustingly metallic.”
“Then I might as well save energy and just lean on the theater door,” he said. “Unless its lock is different from all the others in this town, it’ll swing open and I can help myself. What could be simpler?”
“I know,” Judy agreed. “The lock on the library door would make a burglar laugh himself sick. I bet you could open it with a hairpin!”
“You probably could,” Tim said placidly. “The trouble with you, Miss Carrington, is that you’re a city slicker. Unless everything is nailed down, you expect the worst.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Just the same, that library owns the longhand draft of Rogue’s Hour and goodness knows how many other valuable manuscripts, Tim. I found eight of them tonight when I was straightening up. Stuck casually in file drawers! There weren’t any locks on them either, and the names on those manuscripts sounded like a course in American lit. You can argue all you want, but I still think it would make more sense if Mr. Winter had built in a few burglarproof cabinets instead of some of those office-workshops he put in that wing for Sinnett Harbor’s literary lights!”
“It would make sense to me, too,” Tim admitted. “I’m another city slicker. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if he put a few good locks on his own place either. Every time he goes away I wonder why he expects to find anything when he comes back.”
“And in his New York apartment he probably has one of those safety steel bars that run from a slot in the floor up against the door,” Judy exclaimed.
“Sure, he does,” Tim said, “but around here a locked door only means the family’s gone calling or the shop’s closed for the night. It isn’t supposed to keep out burglars. Sinnett Harbor’s never had any, so Mr. Winter doesn’t bother to worry. It’s the Ranger Station that gets the jitters. We haven’t seen anything yet in his house, except the kitchen sink, that couldn’t be peddled at a fancy price to some museum.”
“You mean you’re supposed to keep an eye on his place, too?” Judy asked in surprise. “I should think you’d have all you could handle with those cabins.”
“You wouldn’t get far selling that idea to the Chief Ranger,” Tim said drily. “When a man gives the land for a national park and then makes a will adding his house and its contents for a maritime museum, the Chief figures the whole works is our responsibility. You can’t hate him for that either. The three ships are our newest babies. They’re part of the museum project.”
“No wonder there’s a Winter-ish aura over Sinnett Harbor,” Judy said thoughtfully. “A park, a museum, and a library wing! He doesn’t exactly hand out peanuts, does he? What’s he really like, Tim? I’ve seen his picture often enough, but I’ve been wondering ever since I hit this place.”
“Maine Yankee covers it,” Tim said. “Salty and independent, though I guess he isn’t too rugged any more. He’s seventy-eight, and the Chief says he had some kind of heart attack in November. You’d never know it from him, though. He hates having people fuss over him. Not that that gets him anywhere with his housekeeper, Elvira Snow.” Tim’s grin grew wide. “Elvira inherited Mr. Winter. She was his mother’s last ‘hired girl’ and she says she aims