Police!!! | Page 3

But then, of course, I
could not be either.
No doubt the nervous tension incident to the expedition was making me
supersensitive and even morbid.
Our sail-boat rode the shallow torquoise-tinted waters at anchor,
rocking gently just off the snowy coral reef on which we were now
camping. The youthful waitress who, for economy's sake, wore her cap,
apron, collar and cuffs over her dainty print dress, was seated by the
signal fire writing in her diary. Sometimes she thoughtfully touched her
pencil point with the tip of her tongue; sometimes she replenished the
fire from a pile of dead mangrove branches heaped up on the coral reef
beside her. Whatever she did she accomplished gracefully.
As for the man, Grue, his back remained turned toward us both and he
continued, apparently, to scan the horizon for the sail which we all
expected. And all the time I could not rid myself of the unpleasant idea
that somehow or other he was looking at me, watching attentively the
expression of my features and noting my every movement.
The smoke of our fire blew wide across leagues of shallow, sparkling
water, or, when the wind veered, whirled back into our faces across the
reef, curling and eddying among the standing mangroves like fog
drifting.
Seated there near the fire, from time to time I swept the horizon with
my marine glasses; but there was no sign of Kemper; no sail broke the

far sweep of sky and water; nothing moved out there save when a wild
duck took wing amid the dark raft of its companions to circle low
above the ocean and settle at random, invisible again except when, at
intervals, its white breast flashed in the sunshine.
Meanwhile the waitress had ceased to write in her diary and now sat
with the closed book on her knees and her pencil resting against her
lips, gazing thoughtfuly at the back of Grue's head.
It was a ratty head of straight black hair, and looked greasy. The rest of
him struck me as equally unkempt and dingy--a youngish man, lean,
deeply bitten by the sun of the semi-tropics to a mahogany hue, and
unusually hairy.
I don't mind a brawny, hairy man, but the hair on Grue's arms and chest
was a rusty red, and like a chimpanzee's in texture, and sometimes a
wildly absurd idea possessed me that the man needed it when he went
about in the palm forests without his clothes.
But he was only a "poor white"--a "cracker" recruited from one of the
reefs near Pelican Light, where he lived alone by fishing and selling his
fish to the hotels at Heliatrope City. The sail-boat was his; he figured as
our official guide on this expedition--an expedition which already had
begun to worry me a great deal.
For it was, perhaps, the wildest goose chase and the most absurdly
hopeless enterprise ever undertaken in the interest of science by the
Bronx Park authorities.
Nothing is more dreaded by scientists than ridicule; and it was in spite
of this terror of ridicule that I summoned sufficient courage to organize
an exploring party and start out in search of something so extraordinary,
so hitherto unheard of, that I had not dared reveal to Kemper by letter
the object of my quest.
No, I did not care to commit myself to writing just yet; I had merely
sent Kemper a letter to join me on Sting-ray Key.

He telegraphed me from Tampa that he would join me at the
rendezvous; and I started directly from Bronx Park for Heliatrope City;
arrived there in three days; found the waitress all ready to start with me;
inquired about a guide and discovered the man Grue in his hut off
Pelican Light; made my bargain with him; and set sail for Sting-ray
Key, the most excited and the most nervous young man who ever had
dared disaster in the sacred cause of science.
Everything was now at stake, my honour, reputation, career, fortune.
For, as chief of the Anthropological Field Survey Department of the
great Bronx Park Zoölogical Society, I was perfectly aware that no
scientific reputation can survive ridicule.
Nevertheless, the die had been cast, the Rubicon crossed in a sail-boat
containing one beachcombing cracker, one hotel waitress, a pile of
camping kit and special utensils, and myself!
How was I going to tell Kemper? How was I going to confess to him
that I was staking my reputation as an anthropologist upon a letter or
two and a personal interview with a young girl--a waitress at the Hotel
Gardenia in Heliatrope City?
* * * * *
I lowered my sea-glasses and glanced sideways at the waitress. She was
still chewing the end of her pencil, reflectively.
She was a pretty girl, one