Read Online Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene by Stuart Palmer - Free Book Online

Actually, Lenore loves her parents, though you may doubt it. Especially her father. She was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to defy them if it came to an issue.”
    Miss Withers thought again of the words of Tennyson, that neglected Victorian, the words she had quoted in part over the telephone to Inspector Oscar Piper: What quality of fools is this, to hurt the most the ones they love the best.
    “I see. So it was easier simply to run away. Do you know Lenore well?”
    “Oh, yes. I lived in Manhattan for years before coming out here with my family. Lenore and I were in school together.”
    “Did you also know her parents?”
    “Yes. I’ve been to their apartment several times.”
    “Do you think they deserve the treatment they’re getting?”
    “I guess I don’t, really. They’re dreadful stuffed shirts, of course, but I liked them. They mean well.”
    “You would be doing them and Lenore a great favor if you were to tell me where to find her.”
    “Do you think so? Perhaps I would. To be honest, I’ve not been quite easy about what she plans to do. Something about it stinks.”
    “What does she plan to do?”
    For the third time Carol Hadley hesitated, but Miss Withers was now aware of a singing sense of triumph. She had broken through. At last she had managed to penetrate that pliable, passive resistance that had threatened constantly to defeat her.
    “All right,” Carol Hadley said, her decision made and her bridge burning behind her. “I’ll tell you, and if that makes me some kind of traitor, to hell with it. I don’t mind admitting that it will be a relief. Lenore’s going on a cruise to the Far East. To India and Japan. On a private yacht, very hush-hush. It’s supposed to be a kind of pilgrimage to the lands of Zen. There are fifteen or twenty of them going, and they’re all chipping in, whatever they can, on expenses. The owner of the yacht calls himself Captain Westering, which sounds phony, and I don’t think he knows much about sailing or navigating or anything like that. The yacht is called Karma , the Hindu word for Fate. Lenore tried to talk me into going along, and I did go down to the waterfront to talk to this Captain Westering about it, but when I saw how things were, I said no, thanks. I was sworn to secrecy, of course, but now I’ve broken my word all to hell, and I don’t care. I’m glad. The yacht is an old one that used to belong to Errol Flynn or John Barrymore or someone like that, and I doubt if it ever gets to the Far East, or even halfway, and what I’m afraid of, to tell the truth, is that it will sink.”
    “I gather from your tense that the yacht is still moored at the waterfront?”
    “Yes. It’s at a commercial dock in the bay, where it’s supposed to be getting fitted out and stowed and provisioned for the voyage. It should have sailed long before now. Lenore called me only yesterday and said they were running into all kinds of problems.”
    “Where is Lenore staying?”
    “On board the yacht. All the passengers are. Most of them, at least.”
    “And where is the dock?”
    And again, for the last time, on the verge of her final revelation, Carol Hadley hesitated beside her burning bridge in the land of the enemy, clearly torn, although too late, between her better judgment and a tenacious personal loyalty. Miss Withers did not make the mistake of trying to prod her in one direction or the other. Wisely, she merely waited.
    “I suppose,” Carol Hadley said, “that I can always comfort myself with the thought that I’ve done the sensible thing like a good little girl, even though I shall have broken my word and shall feel like a louse. Having told you so much already, I may as well tell you the little that’s left ...”
    And so it happened that Miss Withers stood at last, at approximately the hour of nine thirty of an April evening thick with fog, on a commercial dock in San Francisco Bay and looked up through fog at the looming rakish bulk of the