Corpses at Indian Stone Read Online Free Page A

ill."

    "Come in." She pushed back the screen and he moved around it. She held the candelabrum toward him. Her lips twitched slightly. "So you're the celebrated Agamemnon Telemachus Plum! How do you do? I'll call Father immediately."

    She went away up the stairs. She knew his whole name. Of course, they all had--
    all the Indian Stones people. That had been just one of his juvenile tragedies. His father, a Greek scholar, had chosen his name. His mother had just died and Sarah had been too worried about her brother's condition, at the time, to interfere with the naming of a hapless infant.

    A second thought burst upon him expandingly, erasing the first. Her father. She had said, "My father." Then she was--he tried to remember her name. He could recall the grubby pigtails, the loud, raspy voice, and the quality that had passed for wit among children. She was the one who had started calling him Agriculture Telephone. It was Dorothea--Doreen--something more unique--boy's name--Danielle. Candlelight was eddying in the stair well again.

    He found himself trying to be reserved and amused. He tugged his beard impressively. "How are you, Danielle?"

    She came to the bottom step, smiling, and she looked at him for a moment.
    "Father's probably still out in his darkroom. Working. Our electricity's off. Power line down--I guess. Anyhow--we got here this morning and we ordered it fixed--but the men didn't come. If you'll follow me--"

    She led him through the kitchen and across the lawn. The garage--a converted stable, like Sarah's--served also to house Dr. Davis's photographic development room. It was on a short corridor off the main floor. Danielle walked along, trailing her greenish garments, carrying the candles, and staining the night with a subtle, insistent perfume that was like rhythm or a musical chord, in that it affected other senses than the one which perceived it. She knocked on a door.

    The response was crisp. "Just a second! Who is it?"

    "Me. Dr. Plum has come over. Sarah's sick."

    "Be right out." There was a moment of silence. ''Tell him I've got to wash up--and get my bag." A lock clicked and the door opened. From the dark corridor, Aggie had a glimpse of a tight little room, crammed with photographic materials. A candle burned there, behind a red globe. He noticed one small window very high up over a sink. "I'll be only a jiffy!" Aggie could see nothing but the man's arm. He realized Dr. Davis did not know he was standing behind Danielle. She started back down the corridor.

    When they reached the living room, she inspected him attentively. "I generally find these meetings--following a common childhood--extremely disillusioning. You, at least, have made a mark somewhere--even if the rest of us haven't."

    He had no idea what she did, or whether she was married, or if she was widowed or divorced-or anything else. He had forgotten her. He could see that she was a beautiful woma--and no more. He nodded.

    "You look, heaven knows, like Joe Academy, the Cloistered Wonder-boy! How many honorary degrees have you by now?"

    That hurt him--and annoyed him intensely besides. He thought of a retort--which, as a rule, he failed to do. "The pigtails are still there--in a figurative sense. I remember them. Blonde--basically--but vertiginous from being a mite soiled. You were a vile child, Danielle. At six--anyway."

    She smiled with what seemed to be pleasure. But he could also see the rise and spread in her cheeks of a faint wrath. There was a brisk step in the rear of the house and her father came into the room.

    "Aggie, old man!" He slowed for a fraction of a second at the sight of the Vandyke. "Splendid to have you here! Heard you'd be up for the summer. What in heaven's name is wrong with Sarah? Got the constitution of a loggerhead!"

    Dr. George G. Davis didn't look two decades older. Only one. Crisp and lithe.
    Pince-nez and pin-striped suit. A really fine surgeon and neurologist--who could pass as a good banker or the