If A Body by George Worthing Yates

Author:George Worthing Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789129595
Publisher: Phocion Publishing
Published: 2019-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Ten

JUST as the lunch hour rush began and her hopes dwindled to a crumb, he swung jauntily down from a bus. He wore no traces of disaster, but instead a broad grin. A shy, conciliating grin; nevertheless, a grin.

“Waiting long, my dear?”

“Practically three hours.”

“Accosted by any passing gentlemen?”

“After three hours, I’m not in the mood for banter.”

“Naturally,” and he hesitated. The hesitation seemed guilty to Katheren. “I came as quick as I could, my dear—but that blasted informer has been polishing his technique. I asked Nick Leeds to inquire. Apparently the police know our itinerary as far ahead as Los Angeles, so—”

“Is that where you were—with Nick Leeds?”

“Oh, I did drop in at the hospital. Only for a moment. He and Ruth were leaving. What really delayed me was a development. Quite interesting. They’re my weakness, you know—developments.”

Her first flush of relief at the sight of him had subsided. Now, as a result of having worried about him in vain, and learning that his desperate flight for liberty had really been a dawdle over footling “developments,” she was overwhelmingly irritated.

“I’m not interested in the Shanley case, George. I don’t want to hear about it. I never want to hear about it in the future. That’s definite, I think.”

“Damn it all, my dear—”

“And I don’t particularly want to be called your ‘dear,’ everything considered. Cicely’s room was on our hotel bill. Are you formally supporting her now?”

“Oh, good Lord!”

“And the rather futile party in the Grill last night—that was on our bill too. It came to more than a hundred dollars. We’re practically broke. Those invitations, I gather, were more of your detective work?”

“All right, I’ll confess to that—but do listen to reason, Katheren! I wanted to have done with it for our own sake—”

“George, please! I’m not interested in the Shanley case. Can’t you understand that?”

Since two small children had stopped to listen to the quarrel, George shut up. They walked on to the Buick then, tacitly agreeing to an armistice.

Katheren drove, and drove fast. Unfortunately, Cicely ogled and snuggled. Katheren drove faster. Poor Cicely! Even her automatic efforts to snuggle further out of the wind were unfortunate.

George worked out a new route to avoid possible police traps in Olathe and Ottawa; by way of Topeka (on the road to Denver) and south to Emporia, then via the New Santa Fe Trail to Hutchinson and Dodge City, their original destination.

Katheren asked, “Do we meet the suspects there?”

“I wasn’t thinking of them particularly.”

“Of course you weren’t!”

“I was thinking of word from Gaillard.”

“Oh, I see,” and Katheren left it at that.

There were traces of recent rain along the road margins; bright puddles in the dark earth, and deep ruts. The road itself was none too smooth. The social going was even rougher. For the first five miles, Cicely tried to lighten the journey with sprightly chatter, a monologue showing off her exhaustive reading in the field of gossip columns, but even she had to give up in the face of that bleak silence.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.