Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

Marjorie thought how they were porpoise-colored, when suddenly there was an explosion, high up — not the phut, but bigger, more like the bump of a bomb. A white ball of smoke formed, and that rear plane, slightly off line with the others, began to wallow like a porpoise rolling to the surface for oxygen. She had always thought that one day she would see a plane fall. She could not believe that she was seeing it now. It happened so swiftly. The plane was no longer in the hot blue sky at all. This crash was different — longer, more conclusive, with a final metallic death rattle.

Stacy gasped: “Brook! It’s Brook!”

She was running like a crazy person, Marjorie after her, to the waterlogged old rowboat. They were in it, ankle deep in water, wallowing, floundering toward the not distant point of Honeymoon Island. Running again through the impeding sand. Two uniformed fliers kept them off from the wreck. “Is... it... B-Brook Hanna?” she babbled.

“No, Ma’am. Hanna didn’t fly today. He’s back at the field.”...

It took a knock-out sedative to get Stacy quiet. She kept insisting that this was Carl’s work, he was gunning for Brook. Yvette soothed her, “La pauvre petite. Dormez, Mademoiselle.”

What had happened? Nobody knew. Somebody shooting at the plane? That was nonsense — there was nobody to shoot at it — nothing to shoot with. So it was put down to an accident, just one of those things that happen when you are training raw recruits. The two boys killed, pilot and gunner, were Michigan lads.

The south wind veered to a north wind, on a regular tear, but it was a relief. As Hollis said, there was something about a south wind, like the mistral in the South of France, and men had once been pardoned for murder when that blew. After that, the days were as calm as your own hand mirror, the sea deep turquoise-blue with green and purple streaks, the red hibiscus poised as still as artificial flowers on their bushes.

Marjorie, roaming the island alone, came upon a broken piece of string snarled in a mangrove tree, like kite string. She also came upon some words spelled large upon the exposed beach with big white clam shells. It was as though a child had been playing on the island — and there was no child! Only the playboy! Or the kite man flying his kites? She had to giggle at the mental vision of old McCloud with his white turban ends yarding to a kite’s breeze!

To Hollis she confided: “Stacy is writing messages to Brook Hanna, with shells, on the beach. Every time a plane flies so low it just misses our roof, that will be Hanna reading them. Today’s billet doux is ‘I STILL DO.’ ”

“Still do what?” wondered little Mr. Mears.

“Still loves him, you dope,” Marjorie tittered.

The breeze was from the east — it was from the west — each shift foretold by McCloud. The war might have suppressed the weather reports, but Little Mangrove had its weather reporter right with it. McCloud was a good deal better than a barometer: more accurate. But all was peaceful.

Then, one evening, McCloud reckoned that they were due for another south wind. That night Moselle went on a rampage. She came to Marjorie, with the whites of her eyes as big as the whites of a pair of fried eggs, and demanded hysterically to be conveyed off “dis debbil-damned island to the mainland, where Things don’t happen, right away now.”

Marjorie descended to a bribe. “You mean, leave me? Just when I was going to give you my red silk dress?”

“Don’ want no red silk dress... The new one?” Moselle wavered.

“The brand-new one. And the red strap slippers.”

“They am too much murder on dis island,” Moselle whinnied. “Nothin’ don’ pay you back for murder. Affen you murdered, you can’t wear no red silk dress.” But she calmed magically; went off muttering to herself about “not likin’ dat weavver man, he make bad things happen.”

Marjorie was troubled. She had learned how truly psychic are the negroes: they smell trouble ahead, as a bird dog smells game.

In the morning Marjorie took a small, solitary excursion. She walked to the north end of Little Mangrove and frowned across at Honeymoon Island, so maddeningly near. You could swim it — but sharks? She remembered the water-logged old boat. One oar was now missing, the water was all but sinking it. The south breeze blew her over. She would have to bail with something, before she could pole it back. The island was a low, barren, desolate streamer of land, with a white line of beach showing the blanched old bones of shells and with — at this end — a low growth of mangroves. Nothing ominous — not a thing.

Marjorie followed the beach. A guard came stalking to meet Marjorie, and she remembered the rule: absolutely no visitors and this means you! He was very young, uniformed in rags and a peaked official cap. He did not quite know what to do about a pretty feminine trespasser who smiled at him, but he remained stern, if helpless.