Читать книгу The Twisted Shadow - Edith Dorian - Страница 7

JUDY LOOKED POINTEDLY FROM RANGER WADE TO the clock. “This library closes at nine sharp,” she informed him. “You’ll have to hurry if you want a book. Snakes are classified under 598—over there in the stacks at the back of the room.”

Her tone was as warm and cordial as an icicle, but Ranger Wade chose to ignore it.

“Thanks,” he said blandly. “I’ll have a look.” He held out his palm with a cylinder of lipstick on it. “I thought I’d better stop by with this. You dropped it at the Station yesterday.”

Judy hastily thawed several degrees. “Oh swell, thanks,” she said happily. “I’ve been moaning over it all day.” Just the same she still had no intention of letting him keep her overtime. There was no sense in encouraging people to stroll in at the last minute or nobody’d ever get out of the place. “Don’t forget you have only seven minutes,” she said over her shoulder as she headed back to her books. “Please call if you need help.”

But when Miss Leonard hurried across the room five minutes later, Judy had finished her replacement job uninterrupted.

“Time to close shop,” the librarian said. “Just leave a light on the desk and put the latch on the door as you go, please, will you, Judy?”

“What about you and Miss Addison?” Judy asked. “It won’t kill me to stay if you need me, you know.”

But Miss Leonard shook her head. “Miss Addison’s already shooed one committee out the back door and escaped,” she told Judy, smiling. “The other may be around for another half hour, but I’m a member of it anyway so that’s my funeral. You trot along.”

Then, hearing footsteps in the stacks, she raised her eyebrows. “Some one still here?” she asked in surprise.

“One of the rangers,” Judy said.

“Well, don’t let him hold you up,” Miss Leonard advised her, and Judy laughed.

“Don’t worry, he won’t,” she said cheerfully as she settled behind the desk with both eyes glued on the clock, and Miss Leonard vanished, chuckling.

One minute to go. Half a minute. Nine! Judy banged three card drawers shut in rapid succession. That ought to do it, she thought with satisfaction.

It did. Ranger Wade dutifully reappeared with a book clutched in his hand and strode over to the desk.

“Anything in the regulations against my taking out another?” he asked. “You brought me three yesterday.”

“Nothing at all,” Judy said briskly, “the quota’s four. If you’ll just sign the cards, I’ll check it right out.”

But when he handed her the Nature Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians, she was annoyed again. Only this time it was herself she wanted to kick. She had meant to stick that away in the bookmobile at lunch hour for her snake-minded cub.

“Isn’t this a little elementary for you?” she asked in her best professional tone. “I was thinking of taking it over to a cub scout in the Park.”

“To the towhead with the grin?” the ranger asked. “He’s the one I’m getting it for. He’s working on a reptile badge.”

“Oh,” Judy said, and did another mental about-face. If she’d had any brains, she’d have known yesterday. This was a man she had to work with all summer! “Then if you’re the ranger who’s taking those kids on for nature badges, you’d better show me what books you want me to bring over there. Besides, I promised that towhead two snake books. Just wait till I find a pad and you can come pick them out for me.”

She rummaged hastily in the top desk drawer, and Ranger Wade looked up at the clock. “My ears are going back on me,” he announced. “I thought you said I had to be out at nine o’clock sharp!”

“Under normal circumstances,” Judy said calmly as she steered him toward the stacks. “But these aren’t normal. Once you get back in Junior’s clutches, you’ll probably never show up again. I’m surprised he let you out tonight.”

“Junior,” the ranger repeated, puzzled. “Junior who?”

“The slithering serpent,” Judy explained. “That pine snake or whatever you called him. How is he, by the way?”

“Doing as well as could be expected considering the scare you gave him,” Ranger Wade retorted, and Judy hoisted storm signals again.

The ranger, however, refused to be intimidated. “Look,” he said plaintively, “why don’t you declare a truce? I practically never carry serpents coiled around my middle. We could even go fifty-fifty: I forgive you for picking on Junior and me, and you forgive us for existing. Then we could go eat lobster rolls in peace and practice first names. After all, we have to work together.”

He sounded so absurd that Judy laughed in spite of herself. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. At least he had a sense of humor.

He grinned back at her cheerfully. “Here’s your pencil,” he said. “Come on and get this over with. I should never have mentioned those lobster rolls. I can feel myself starving.”

But he was still alive a half hour later when they settled on a couple of stools at the Whistling Clam with their sandwich rolls and coffee.

“I’m glad you made me stop and pick that stuff out,” he admitted. “It’ll make working with those kids all summer a whole lot easier. Your library’s okay on its wildlife collection, Judy.”

“It’s pretty much okay anyway as far as I can tell from just two days,” Judy said. “Miss Leonard seems to buy books as if the budget grew in the United States mint. That library rocked me right back on my heels when I first saw it. You see, my mother was born and brought up here, and I guess I thought the town was still the same—just a hundred year-rounders, not even any summer people.”

“Well, you weren’t any greener than I was,” Tim consoled her. “The national parks I’d met were out in the country with maybe a general store and a movie in a nearby village. I nearly flipped when I saw Ship Street.”

“That’s one thing I still don’t get,” Judy said frankly, “why you’re here, I mean. Back at the library you didn’t make Maine sound like good snake country.”

“But you’ve got to admit it’s swell summer country,” he pointed out, “and who’s a wildlife-management major to snoot any national park job in vacation? Right now I only think I’m a herpetologist. I start graduate work this fall.”

“Then you’re one up on me,” Judy told him. “I’ve got another year at Barnard before I start library school. I didn’t know about summer rangers, though. I figured you were ranging’ around here permanently.”

“No reason not to,” he agreed. “Plenty of wildlife-management majors go in for ranger work—only I’d be down in the Everglades where you don’t need a magnifying glass to find a snake!”

“Why not South America?” she asked. “Brazil maybe. Isn’t that supposed to be tops for snakes?”

“Got a plane ticket in your pocket?” he demanded, and Judy made a wry face.

“If I had, I’d use it myself,” she informed him. “My family’s down there and I haven’t seen them for two years! Dad’s in the consular service.”

But she shook her head vigorously at his barrage of questions. “There’s no use asking me about the place. Jaunting to Porto Alegre and back vacations is hard on the pocketbook. I’ve stayed in the States. Anyway, this summer Dad and Mother were supposed to come home for a couple of months. Now they won’t be back till fall.”

“The least you could do is adopt me,” Tim said, “but do you offer? No! And I’d make a lovely foster child.”

“I’m panting for the opportunity,” Judy assured him. “I can’t imagine anything sweeter than you and a couple of bushmasters romping around a kitchen.” She wagged her head regretfully, however. “Only I don’t recommend it. In the consular service you never can tell. Just when everything was legal, zoom, Dad’d be transferred, and considering St. Patrick, wouldn’t you look cute in Ireland!”

“Perish the thought,” Tim said with horror. “Let’s get out of here before you think of anything worse.”

The full moon was riding high when they sauntered down to the waterfront, and Judy nodded at the red beam of Pound o’ Tea Light streaking across the silvered waters.

“I won’t trade views for your gallows,” she said. “There are advantages to living here on the Foreside.” She pointed to a big white house facing the harbor. “I’m staying at Captain Dunning’s. He and his wife took me in because the captain’s on the library board. Mrs. Matt even feeds me, except when I stay through like tonight.”

“Don’t gloat,” Tim said sternly. “You’ll be on a low-calorie diet next winter when I’m still a fine figger of a man. I know. I’ve sampled Mrs. Matt’s cooking. She gave me a dish full of scalloped clams one night last week when Sandys Winter’s car broke down and I drove him over here for supper.” He cocked an eyebrow and studied Judy critically. “You know, if it’s a view you want, I ought to drive you over to Gibbet Ridge now while you’re still thin enough to fit into a Park Ford. Mr. Winter’s the man who really has one.”

“What’s so different about his?” Judy asked, laughing.

“It’s the combination he’s got,” Tim said. He waved his arm at the lobster boats and pleasure craft rocking at their moorings in the harbor. “The twentieth century on this side of him and the nineteenth on the other.”

Judy looked bewildered. “Don’t stop there,” she ordered. “You’ve lost me. Where does the nineteenth century come in?”

“In a couple of schooners,” Tim explained, “old fore-and-afters, the Ellen B. and the Flying Nancy, and a clipper called the Golden Falcon. Your Captain Matt’s grandfather was master of the Falcon, and Captain Matt supervised the job of getting the three of them shipshape again for Mr. Winter. They just got towed in and anchored off Bold Dick Beach ten days ago.” He squinted at his wristwatch in the moonlight. “It isn’t ten yet. We still have time to row around them. How about it?”

But Judy stared over at the Park car suspiciously. Maybe he didn’t wear snakes coiled around his waist but he’d already admitted he drove around with them. “It’s the company you keep,” she informed him. “And if you think I want to see anything enough to take a moonlight ride with Junior, the answer is a cinch: I don’t!”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Tim demanded. “Sometime you’ll catch on to how bright I am. I actually doped out your reaction to Junior yesterday. Besides, you hurt his feelings and he has to stay in bed.”