Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1944-09-15
CHAPTER I


sour honey, which were so trivial as
facts but so vital to Zorie Corey's
fears, were among the things that
made it hard for her to put a proper
valuation on the events themselves.
There were moments of terror
which, when she awoke in the night,
she could now contemplate with
amused detachment. And there were
moments Of lesser danger which,
even in retrospect, could bring
scream into her throat.
Perhaps Paul Duncan could have
explained all of it, in his clever,
analytical way. Some of it he did
try to explain, because, in his jeal-
Gus heart, he adored her. And some
of it was better left unexplained
and even aforementioned. It might
have FASTENED her recovery if she
could have wiped from her memory
that night in mid-Pacific when she
fell down and down through endless
blackness, with that soft, terrifying
whisper in her ears-"Ah-nah! All
nah!"
And she could have we'll forgotten,
too, the jaSmine-scented dawn when
she stood beside stunted tree three
thousand feet above the green and
purple depths of the tropical canyon
with an automatic pistol kicking in
her hand, although it would always
seem that it had happened not to
her but to an unbelievable girl who
had stepped out of her just long
enough to attempt murder.
Yet all of it fitted into the one
bright romantic pattern of intrigue
and adventure which she would al
ways cherish, even unimportant tri-
f1es-the quarreling of the minah
birds just at dusk and again just at
dawn; the annoying habit Grand
father Duncan had of saying, "You
UNDERSTANDING" and the metallic
luster of moonlight on palm fronds
leaping in the trade-wind; the CLEAN
in Pierre Savoyard's eyes whenever
he ate meat; and the pride that
Amber, the girl from Martinique,
took in herself; and the strange ur-
banity of the man who called him.
self Winthrop Lanning.
Her memory of the rest of that Or
deal was vague.
But she was never vague about
Stephen Decatur Duncan, with his
languid manner, his knocking blue
eyes and his treachery.
Probing about in her mind on
these sleepless nights, in a BACKED
out room on an island at war, she
saw herself, on that dismal after
noon in early December, in a drowsy
little university town, sitting at her
desk and wishing, among other
things, that she was not so meek.
She was privately very certain
that her wishing had started it and
that every step she took that day
was an unerring step in the direction
of her destiny.
From her typewriter desk, in the
English Department, Zorie Corey
could look out across the small cam
pus and over some of the rooftops of
this town in which she had grown up
and of which she was now, she told
herself, helpless victim. She had
just uttered the fraudulent wish so
often voiced by youth when it is
overcome by sense of Illustration
she wished she'd never been born.
She then uttered three wishes, all
related, in row. She wished she
wasn't so meek. She wished she had
courage. She wished she'd had the
gumption to tell the wife of her dis
tinguished employer to jump in the
river.
my dear Miss Corey" Mrs. Fol-
some, in her gushing way, had said
over the telephone few minutes
previously, would you mind terri
bly, distributing the invitations for
my tea next week? They really
should go out tonight and think it's
so much nicer having them deliv-
cred by hand, don't you? And Pro-
fessor says you're so dependable.
So will you drop around for them
when you're through"
"I'd love to, Mrs. Folsome," Zorie
Corey had said in her melodious
young voice, instead of any number
of appropriate things she might have
said.
She might have mentioned that
she didn't possess car; that it was
going to rain that she was terribly
rushed. She might have suggested
that Mrs. Folsome neatly affix a
two-cent stamp in the upper right
hand corner of each of the enve-
lopes and drop them in one of the
green receptacles that an all-seeing
government has placed at numerous
street corners for the convenience
of its citizens.
"Why," Zorie Corey rebelliously
muttered, don't you deliver them
with your own hand, you old tight
wad?"
Zorie Corey wished she was a war
nurse. Then she wished she lived in
California. But anywhere would do.
Anywhere but Elleryton.
professor says you're so depend
able" And well he might! Profess
sor Bowdoin J. Folsome was head of
the English Department. Zorie Cor
ey was his half-time secretary, and
his notion of the hours that half