Read Online Death Takes a Bow by Frances Lockridge - Free Book Online

to push just as the doors receded of their own miraculous accord. She went downstairs to the arriving train level, still trying to identify the discrepancy which continued to bother her.
    It felt right, she decided, for the discrepancy to concern one of the people she had encountered on the platform after the murder—or encountered somewhere between the time that Mr. Sproul failed to stand up and the time she got into the taxicab to come and meet her sister’s little daughters. It felt right that she had met one of those people before, or seen one of them before, under conditions which did not accord with the conditions under which she had seen them this evening. If she had, for example, seen Dr. Dupont turning cartwheels in a vaudeville show, that would account for it. “Although,” Mrs. North admitted to herself, “a little extremely.” If she had seen that other doctor—the real doctor—acting as a traffic policeman on Fifth Avenue, that would explain it. Or if she had seen the woman who had preceded Mr. North at the lectern, and was presumably the program chairman of the club—Mrs. Williams or something—performing as a ballet dancer, that would be the sort of thing it was.
    But it was not any of these things, and it was not, Mrs. North decided, anything she was apt to get straight until something else resuggested it to her mind. Eventually, perhaps, something would happen which would throw an oblique light on her puzzlement and give sudden illumination. Or it might be, of course, that nothing would happen until the puzzlement had slowly faded away.
    She was ten minutes late for the train, Mrs. North observed as she passed a clock. But on the other hand, she saw on the arrivals blackboard, the train was twenty minutes late for itself. She lighted a cigarette and waited, wondering about Mr. Sproul. Red caps went down the stairs, which meant the train was coming. Mrs. North could have gone down; but she decided that that way there would be greater danger of missing the little girls. She could stand here, between the two stairways—the Pennsylvania Railroad had certainly arranged things awkwardly—and look in both directions and pretty soon see them.
    The stairway leading to the rear of the train probably was the better bet, she decided, because her sister would have sent the little girls in a Pullman, and asked the porter to look after them. So she stood nearer the stairway leading to the rear and looked down it and saw people beginning to come up.
    She could not see any little girls coming up the stairway, so she hurried to the other and looked down it. More people were coming up it, including what was evidently a large part of the army, and no little girls. “Damn the Pennsylvania Railroad,” Mrs. North said, and dashed back to the other staircase. Still no little girls. She took a place between the staircases and vibrated her head as rapidly as she could, making her neck hurt. Still no little girls. And now the stream of arriving passengers was reduced to a trickle—two trickles, specifically. Mrs. North began to be worried.
    And then there was a glad young voice behind her. It said:
    â€œAuntie Pam! Auntie Pam !”
    That was one of the girls. Margie or—or the one you mustn’t call Lizzie, but must remember always to call Beth. Somehow they had got around her.
    Mrs. North turned quickly, with a welcoming smile. There were no little girls. There were—
    One of the two young ladies confronting Pam North beamed and gamboled forward.
    â€œAuntie Pam!” she said. “Darling !”
    Mrs. North gasped. They were not little girls; they were almost grown up girls. And attached to each, with a kind of firm hopefulness, was a sailor. The sailors were looking at Mrs. North with anxious doubt, like uncertain puppies. They were very young sailors.
    â€œBut not that young!” Mrs. North thought a little frantically, as she started foward.