Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

There was no reply.

Irritably the overseer turned away from the mike. Louquo was standing in the doorway.

“You hear all that?” DiMarco asked the old man.

Louquo nodded impassively.

“Then you know the situation. Have one of the maids make some kind of bed in the boat and have the patient carried down to it. Make sure she’s wrapped warmly in blankets.”

“ Si, señor ,” the old man said.

It was nearly two p.m. when the small jet returned from Nassau loaded with guests. They had already started partying on the plane, and everyone was in such a gay mood, Pamela completely forgot to inquire about the snakebite victim until she suddenly realized a couple of hours later that Juan DiMarco was missing. Then she hunted up Louquo to ask what had happened.

“ Señor DiMarco took the girl in the boat right after you radioed,” the old man said.

“Girl?” Pamela said. “I thought it was a woman.”

“Well, yes, señora , but a young one. About eighteen.”

“Juan should be back by now,” Pamela said with a frown. “I didn’t mean for him to wait until the patient is fully recovered. Ask him to report to me as soon as he returns.”

The boat didn’t return until six p.m. By then all the guests had arrived and the party was in full swing. Juan DiMarco found Pamela on one of the upstairs balconies with a handsome, bronzed man she introduced as Sir Ambrose Harding.

The overseer’s clothing was drenched with salt water and he looked exhausted. After politely shaking hands with the baronet, he said to Pamela in a tired voice, “Louquo said you wanted to see me.”

“Yes. How did things go?”

“About as I expected. She was dead on arrival. The doctor figured she’d been dead about an hour, which means about three hours after we left.”

“Three hours? It took you four hours to make eighty miles?”

“I told you it would.” After a period of silence, DiMarco added, “At the request of the father I brought the body back. He went along in the boat. According to native belief the girl’s spirit would forever wander instead of entering the eternal jungle if she weren’t buried on home ground.”

“I see,” Pamela said. There was another period of silence before she finally said, “I’m sorry.”

“I knew you would be,” the overseer said.

Making an abrupt about-face, he went back inside.

“What was that all about?” the baronet asked.

“One of the island’s Indians was bitten by a snake. Juan took her by speedboat to Mayagues on the west coast of Puerto Rico, about eighty miles from here. Unfortunately he didn’t get there in time.”

“That’s too bad,” the baronet said.

Pamela grew conscious of someone standing in the arched doorway onto the balcony. Glancing that way, she saw it was Louquo.

Because she suspected he had been standing there listening to the whole conversation with the overseer, her tone was a trifle sharp. “Well?”

“When does the señora wish the buffet served?” the old man inquired in his most formal manner.

Glancing at her watch, Pamela said in a more pleasant tone, “Not for about an hour, Louquo. Give the guests a little more cocktail time.”

The weekend was not as great a success as Pamela had hoped. The guests seemed to enjoy themselves, but Pamela was disappointed in Ambrose Harding. While he obliquely implied that he was available for an affair if Pamela were interested, he made it quite clear that he had no desire to remarry which ruled him out completely so far as she was concerned. Despite her six husbands, there was a puritanical streak in Pamela that made it impossible for her to enter into casual affairs. As a matter of fact, the reason she had married so many times was that she was incapable of sleeping with any man out of wedlock.

On Monday morning when Tom York flew the Baronet and his party back to San Juan, and the Bartons on to Nassau, Pamela did not go along. When the last yacht departed shortly afterward, she suddenly felt lonely. Hunting down Louquo, she told him to send someone to Paxhali’s village to tell the guide she wanted to take the speedboat across the island after lunch.

Paxhali showed up a little after one p.m., and they took off along the winding jungle stream leading to the central lake about one-thirty. When the speedboat shot from the mouth of the freshwater outlet into the lagoon, only one old man in a canoe was fishing. Pamela waved to him as they went past, and he waved back.

The tide was just starting to come in when they arrived at the reef. Paxhali, as usual, pulled the bow of the boat up on the reef, then stood on guard near it while Pamela went to examine the tide pools.

Today there was an unusual wealth of sea life in the pools. Pamela became so fascinated that she was unaware of how much time had passed until water began to lap over her canvas shoes. Then, glancing around, she saw that only the higher portions of the reef were still above water. She was going to have to wade back to the boat.

At that moment she realized that although Paxhali still stood where she had left him, the speedboat was gone. Her gaze skimmed over the water in all directions, and she spotted the boat just as the pounding surf carried it crashing against the base of the cliff, smashing it to pieces.

How careless of Paxhali, she thought, irritated but hardly alarmed. There was no cause for alarm because the old man in the canoe was heading for the reef.

Paxhali stepped into the canoe while Pamela was still wading through knee-deep water in that direction. By the time she reached the high spot where the young Indian had been standing, the canoe had drifted off a dozen yards. Pamela stood looking at it expectantly, waiting for its return. Paxhali was seated in the boat’s center and had picked up a paddle. The old man in the stern had his paddle in the water and was moving it just enough to keep the canoe stationary.

After a few moments, Pamela said, “What are you waiting for? Tell him to bring the canoe over here, Paxhali.”

“He understands English, señora ,” the young Indian said. “His name, Pia.”

Pamela said to the old man, “Pia, come here and get me.”

Pia stared at her unblinkingly, still moving his paddle just enough to keep the canoe in place.

“What’s the matter with him?” Pamela asked on a high note. “I thought you said he understood English.”

“I guess he close his ears,” Paxhali said. “He Wawaiya’s father.”

“Who?” she asked blankly.

“Wawaiya, my bride-to-be. You remember, the one bitten by la serpiente .”

Pamela gazed at him openmouthed.

“We would return for you, La Madre , but we have no time,” Paxhali said tonelessly. “Is something more important we must do. Is the funeral of Wawaiya today, and we must hurry there to make sure her akamboue , her spirit, goes to the eternal jungle.”

His paddle sliced into the water, turning the canoe toward shore. Then both blades were driving the canoe toward the outlet with powerful strokes.

“Paxhali!” Pamela screamed. “Come back! Pia!”

The canoe shot through the wide gap in the cliff and disappeared upstream.

Pamela screamed for help until the water was halfway up her thighs, but no one answered. Eventually she had to swim for shore because she had no other choice.

Her only chance was to make for the outlet, because at high tide the surf raged against vertical rock either side of it. She thought she was going to make it until she got within twenty yards, but then discovered the current of the freshwater stream was too strong to swim against. It kept pushing her back.