The Scorpia Menace Read Online Free

wonder myself why I haven't married."
"There you are, you see," said her mother, as though she had just uttered a profound truth.
"Still, perhaps you'll run across somebody interesting during this new course. What are you taking?"
"Medieval history," Diana said brightly.
Mrs. Palmer frowned.
"Well, no doubt you know best, dear," she said. "Though I must say it does seem a little arid to me."
She looked helplessly round the immaculate drawing- room, as though there were hundreds of bowls of flowers that still needed arranging.
"Why not have a swim before dinner, darling? There's plenty of time and the sun's still hot."
Ten minutes later the trim form of Diana, taut and bronzed in her bikini, trotted out onto the lawn at the rear of the house, a Sealyham terrier yapping excitedly behind
her. A Japanese gardener hacking away at the roots of a fruit tree in a neighboring garden almost turned a somersault as he caught sight of her. Diana climbed to the top of the diving board, her feet hardly seeming to touch the rungs of the ladder. Then she jack-knifed down from the twenty- foot level. Her arrowed body hit the water so perfectly that she entered the pool almost without a ripple. Something seemed to pull her body down through the water with a minimum of disturbance.
She took an almost sensuous pleasure in swimming and shee floated lazily beneath the surface, her hands spread out si i Illy above her head, her skin tingling from the freshness of the water, as she drifted to the end of the pool. Then she surfaced, shaking her long, dark hair, conscious of a faint echo of applause. She looked up to see the laughing, boyish face of a trim-looking man in his forties. His blond hair was cut short and a briar pipe was stuck between his square, white teeth. His square jaw re-echoed the theme mid he belched furiously at the pipe, which gave off sparks and blue smoke as he continued to applaud.
"Beautiful, Diana," he said.
"Thank you, Uncle David," she said. "I didn't expect you home so early."
"Flew in two hours ahead of schedule," her uncle said. "They had an early warning of electrical storms so I derided not to take the later plane."
He sat down on a rustic bench near the edge of the pool as Diana stroked her way effortlessly through the water.
He knocked the pipe on the wooden arm of the bench, Bending a shower of sparks and ash over the tiles.
"Lily tells me you're going to take a night course in medieval history," he said.
Diana shook the water from her hair and gripped the ladder at the side of the pool. She smiled up at David on the terrace.
"It wouldn't have anything to do with Kit Walker, would lt?" her uncle grinned. "I remember he came from a long line of buccaneers or something, wasn't it?"
Diana felt herself flushing again.
"Really, Uncle David," she said. "It was sea-captains and admirals and people like that. Pirates, indeed!"
her uncle smiled again. It's a thin division especially when one gets a little farther back in history. Diana had ducked back beneath the surface of the water. But later when she went up to change for dinner Uncle david's words came to her mind Kit walker had been much in her thoughts of late.
3
PIRATE GOLD
Diana Palmer ran lightly up the double flight of steps in I ront of Westchester College as leaves whirled about her in I lie night wind. Ahead of her the long rows of windows cast yellow beams of light across the campus. She avoided chattering groups of students and made instead for a secluded side door. More and more, Diana was isolating herself from people, working out some of the complex problems of her life in her head. And more and more the smiling face of Kit Walker had crystallized itself into a permanent image in her mind.
Now she made her way down the corridor by a route that avoided the mainstream of student chatter into the library where the Medieval History Class was assembling. there were only a dozen taking part and of these only three were known to Diana personally. However, she