Death Has Many Doors by Fredric Brown

Author:Fredric Brown [Brown, Fredric]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Noir Fiction
ISBN: 9781596541283
Google: vok1PwAACAAJ
Goodreads: 595195
Publisher: blackmask.com
Published: 1988-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

I STRUGGLED again and this time, as the woman stepped back, I got to a sitting position. I was facing the water and ahead of me, past the woman, I could see the beached canoe and I could see the shirt, shoes and slacks that the woman had shed at the edge of the water. She must, I realized, be a really expert swimmer; she must have brought me out of the water while the men in the canoe went out farther to get Dorothy.

“Are you all right?” she asked, watching me. She didn't seem to be aware that she wore practically nothing and that I wore less. I wasn't aware of it then, either. I turned to where the other voices, the men's voices, came from.

About five yards up the beach, they were working on Dorothy; she was lying on her stomach, her face turned toward me and supported by the crook of her elbow. One of the men was straddling her, applying artificial respiration. Something in the way he did it gave me the idea that he knew what he was doing.

The big woman dropped on her knees on the sand beside me and put her hand on my shoulder. She said, “Take it easy; there's nothing you can do. Bill — that's my son — went for help and for a pulmotor; there's a Coast Guard station four miles away and they've got one. He took your car; ours is shut in the garage and he could get going in yours quicker.”

I managed to get to my feet and to stagger over to where the two men were working on Dorothy. The one who was applying respiration didn't look up. The other one looked at me and shook his head.

“She's gone,” he said. “We don't think there's a chance, but we'll keep on trying. We won't stop this till the pulmotor gets here.”

The woman had joined me; she took hold of my arm. She said, “Put your clothes on. You're shivering because you're suffering from shock.”

I was, I realized; my teeth were clicking like dice in a dice box. And she must have been right about its being from shock; she herself wasn't shivering at all.

She led me a little way and I saw my clothes lying on the sand where her son must have swept them off the fender of the car before starting it.

“Put them on,” she said. “Hurry up.”

She talked to me as though I was a child. When I didn't make any move to obey she picked up my trousers and handed them to me. “Put them on. And your suit coat. Don't worry about the accessories. Then come to the house. I'll start some coffee.”

She watched to see that I started dressing and then went away, picking up her own clothes where she had dropped them, but not bothering to put them on.

Once I started dressing I kept on, automatically, and t was something to do. When I finished I walked back through the sand to where the men were working on Dorothy.

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