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

So Marjorie wandered on up the beach. He called after her: “ ’Bout time for machine-gun practice in that lagoon up there a piece.”

“I know,” she smiled back. “Thanks.”

The island curved, she was soon out of sight of him. Here the beach was more desolate; the sun blazed, not a bush for shelter. The island widened, so that there were thickets of trees (Hiding for a machine gun? Absurd, she rejected it, that was not shooting!) but Marjorie was loathe to penetrate, afraid of rattlers. She came to the little lagoon, an uneven, deep half-moon, with its target range: a cool, tranquil green, very pretty, with fish playfully leaping.

Curiously she was not at first warned of the approach of planes by the drum of engines. The first hint was a fleeting shadow on the sands — so small that it must be either a bird or a plane very high up. She stared into the blistering blue, until her eyes watered. Nothing. Not a sound — not a sign.

Then, almost at once, the planes came pulsing up — high, like shadowy, double crosses in the sky — ten of them. Circling off — then lowering — looming — the roar a terror. Marjorie could not credit what was then happening. Couldn’t they see her? The roar of guns and engines was terrific. It seemed to rock the little island like a floating custard island. The shells spatted up the water — they kicked up the sands about her. Boom-boom. Tut-tut-tut-tut. Boom-bump: Marjorie was in the midst of skyrockets going off every which way all at once. Relentless — zoom — swoop — boom. They were aiming at her. She sat — shocked down — and gaped defiance.

It was from this position that she saw again the exploding ball in the heavens — not like these other explosions, in either action or position — and saw the great plane seem to falter — something drop away from it, a wing? — roll over and nose-dive toward the water.

Marjorie found her quavering legs and ran — floundered through the sand. “I’ll — t-tell — H-Hollis. They are sh-shooting each other. They are sh-shooting everything. But — that wasn’t shooting. It was more as though it ran into a load of dynamite. But there was nothing there.”

The guard, justified, called: “I told you so!”

“You fool,” babbled the pretty woman, “that was another c-crash and you don’t even know—!”...

Hollis was extremely angry with her.

His really eloquent fury was interrupted by Yvette, who urged a doctor for her mistress. Stacy was not calmed by the news that her fiancé was safe. The dead were a boy from Nebraska and a boy from Texas. This was Carl Schee’s work! He had only missed again. He would get Brook yet. No appeal to reason quieted her. It took again the knock-out tablet.

Hollis, in their own room, resumed. By this time, Marjorie, her nerves crying out, was in tears — but the tears did not melt him. “Unless they bomb me off the island, I am finishing my book, Marjorie. And all that I ask of you, as my wife, is the negative assistance of not going out and standing under the bombs!”

It was the first time that her power over him had totally failed.

The honeymoon was over...

Of course, it was not over...

But even in his cherishing arms, Marjorie could not move him.

She said: “This is a very funny thing, darling. It was like running into dynamite, with no dynamite there.”

“I am not interested, beloved.”

She repeated to him what he had said to her on their first murder case:

“You have a trained mind. Remember? Do something, darling! And then this shadow at first, with no sound of an engine. The plane must have been very high, because the shadow was so small.”

“That,” said Hollis, caught, “is odd.”

Marjorie would, by this time, have expected her particular anathema, the drawling-witted local sheriff. She did not expect a gentleman who looked like a citizen of the U.S.A. in good standing, and more particularly like one of the better-grade Princeton graduates, class of 1920 — and who announced himself as an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation!

He sat down in the living room like any caller, and accepted a glass of iced papaya juice, and almost casually got the whole set-up.

When ghost-pale little Stacy began her chatter about somebody (her gaze pointed Carl Schee) gunning for just her fiancé, Lieutenant Brook Hanna, this F.B.II. man, Coates, said he was afraid it was much bigger than that. Somebody was gunning for any and all army fliers. At this rate, they would kill off our men while they were still students, before they ever got to the wars. He said skillfully, “You are the Miss Rider who, as a baby, was...?”

“Yes.”

His look poor-childed her.

It slid off, clicked around the room, ticketed everyone, down to Moselle and Yvette, assisted by a few well-placed questions.