Lady Afraid Read Online Free Page B

Got it?”
    “Yes, I will do that.”
    Brill slid his chair from the table, arose. “Remember that Maurice and Black, the detectives, have got to case the Lineyack joint for you. So wait until I have their report. I’ll telephone you—probably sometime this afternoon.”
    Now quite dry of words, Sarah nodded.
    “I just wanted to point out to you, Mrs. Lineyack, that this can be just one of two things—either it’s legal or it’s not. And if it’s not, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”
    He went away then. He did not say good-by. He merely went away, his steps quick, his lean back slightly arched.
    A hard, sly, and cruel man, Sarah thought, and her dislike of him stood unabated.

Chapter Three
    B Y NOON THE STORM had lost no force. The rain still came in endless volleys and the wind had backed itself several degrees, indicating further miserable weather. And at twelve-thirty Mr. Collins’s secretary, middle-aged Miss Fletching, dropped a telephone memorandum on Sarah’s desk. Mr. Arbogast phoned to cancel his sail on Vameric today. He doesn’t like the weather.
    “That,” said Miss Fletching, “means your honey of a boat doesn’t make her test run today.”
    “Yes… I suppose so.”
    “I hear you won’t be here for a few days. You’ll miss the trials entirely.”
    “Yes. I—I’m taking a short vacation.”
    Sarah sat still after Miss Fletching had gone. She slowly lighted a cigarette…. A day of ill omens, this, and she knew she was not waiting it out well.
    Nervously she arose. At the window she stood frowning at the yard. She looked out past the woodworking shop, past two of the marine railways to the fitting dock, to Vameric lying there, held by spring lines and her shining mahogany hull protected by fenders.
    Vameric was a yacht, all sail, sixty-eight feet on the water line, built for outside cruising races. She had no engine to drive her. Only sail. But Vameric would, if the aerodynamic figures and the wind-tunnel experiments were any indication, finish first in every deepwater race in which she was entered, perhaps for years to come.
    This was more than just a yacht. This was a culmination, a gathering together of all the skills of sailing ships. Vameric had a deep hard keel and sweet runs; she would leave an almost imperceptible wake, not dragging the entire ocean after her. She should have good manners when hove to. The rig of sails, a wishbone adaption of the staysail-ketch idea, was unusual: Sarah’s idea and a rather radical one. If Vameric lived up to expectations, Sarah, as the vessel’s architect, would suddenly be a name known wherever fine yachts were sailed. She would be eminent in a field where no woman had achieved much.
    For long moments Sarah tried to take her stunned thoughts out of mid-air, wrap them around the lovely yacht, let them be warmed and cheered. It was futile.
    She swung back listlessly to her desk. Her private office was somewhat like Sarah, neatly sufficient without frill. Not masculine, but not frothily feminine either. The desk stood uncluttered; the drawing board was not blotched; her instruments rested in geometrical precision. A bookcase held an excellent collection of works on sail, including items as widely varied as Manfred Curry on aerodynamics of sail curvature, Callahan’s popular how-to-dos, and Lubbock on the clipper ship. The office symbolized, as Sarah herself did, a great deal of achievement in a field almost without women. The office by itself was an odd eminence for a woman; not unaware of this, Sarah should have felt pride, but she could summon no special lift at this moment.
    Gravely she fell to rechecking her plans for tonight…. She had packed the two suitcases yesterday; one held her things, and the other contained stuff she had bought for Jonnie. She did not know her son’s size. She knew only that he would be a little boy two and a half years old, brown-eyed, with freckles. She was guessing about the freckles, but Sarah herself had