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Read by Angelica Robotti

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The night was one of the most beautiful that Beth Sheldon could remember. The stars were brilliant in the blue velvet sky, the moon was like a huge silver ball, and the wind, filled with the fragrance of honeysuckle and hyacinths, seemed like a caress as it brushed her face. She walked slowly, breathing in the cool spring air, forcing herself to this casual pace when her every instinct clamored for her to run. To run and run and run!

Beth Sheldon was terrified.

From time to time she paused, standing very still, letting her eyes turn this way and that, as if expecting to see some shadowy shape hurtling out upon her. There was a formlessness to this shape she awaited, a facelessness that added to her fright. She had no way of knowing who or what was her enemy. All she understood was that someone or something wanted her dead.

Movement among the dead leaves off to one side of the woods startled her into an outcry, and she stood frozen, unable to move a muscle, until a rabbit bounded across the road ten paces away, hopping madly through the moonlight.

Beth let the air out of her lungs as she sighed with relief. Her right hand tightened on the heavy blackthorn walking stick she carried. Ever since that day, a week ago tomorrow, when she had almost died in the turbulent waters off Capstone Rocks, when someone had caught at her ankle and tried to keep her underwater, she had been filled with nameless dread.

She put away that memory, using all her willpower. Yet it persisted, with a remembrance of that instant when iron fingers had closed on her ankle, when a dead weight had dragged her down. And down. And down, until her lungs had come close to bursting, until she had wrenched free and—

Beth shook a little, standing there, whimpering.

There was no reason anyone should want to kill her. She had never harmed anyone. She led a quiet life, living in the cottage that was her home and studio, where she wrote the books for children that had given her, she liked to feel, something of a reputation in the field. She never troubled anyone; she was too deep in her work to bother much about the life that went on around her.

And yet—

Someone beneath the surface there near Capstone Rock had tried to drown her, had sought to keep her there forever, perhaps pushing her lifeless body into a rock crevice so that no one would ever find her. Why had he done it? Who had it been?

How often lately had she lain awake at night, listening to the nighttime sounds around her cottage, puzzling over these questions without result! The more thought she gave to the incident, the more confused she became. It was hopeless, trying to make sense out of the inexplicable.

Her hand loosed its frenzied grip on the blackthorn stick. She looked around her at the country road, at the trees and underbrush hemming her in. Sometimes she thought she was stupid to leave the security of her house and go strolling like this, but she needed the exercise. She had to wipe away the cobwebs from her mind.

Beth walked on.

She must conquer this fear. It had all been a mistake, what had happened off Capstone Rock. Nobody wanted Beth Sheldon dead. It had been a mischievous teenager who had grabbed her ankle and yanked her downward. It had to be. Just the same, some womanly intuition told her there was something more to it than that. Unless it was her imagination, a prowler had been keeping her under surveillance recently, after dark at her cottage. Twice she had caught glimpses of someone or something out there under the trees, just watching.

She kept eyeing the woods on either side. Was someone here now, coming after her? She caught little sounds, the breaking of a twig, the brush of—a foot?—in the dead leaves on the woodland floor, the harsh sound of someone breathing.

Her chin firmed as her head lifted. She would not panic. She was a sensible woman in her middle twenties; she had made her own way in life for the past five years. If anyone were to attack her, she would use the blackthorn stick to smash and batter him. She was not a helpless child. She had taken care of herself too long to get hysterical over this wild flight of imagination.

The road straightened as she went around a curve. Beth walked with longer strides, using the walking stick firmly, keeping to the center of the road. If anyone were to jump out at her, she would see him in plenty of time to defend herself.

Above the night sounds she heard a deeper noise. A car was coming, moving fast. She turned, catching the twinkle of headlights in the distance.

“The fool,” she whispered. “He must be doing eighty.”

Casually, she strode to the bushes that rimmed the straight-away, her eyes on the twin beams of light that were touching the bend now. Then they straightened, illuminating the dirt road, the bushes, and the hanging tree branches. It was a powerful car—the deep throb of its motor told her that much. And it was coming fast. Very fast.

She shrank back. In an instant it would be past her.

Something hit the middle of her back. Whatever it was shoved her forward, viciously. Right into the path of that hurtling machine.

Beth tried to cry out, but her tongue was frozen.

There was a searing white brilliance in her eyes. The black-thorn stick fell from her numb hand as she put those hands before her, to try and push away from that dark monster that was right on top of her.

Something hit her.

She was lifted, flung aside like a rag doll, as her whole world reeled around her. She had the sensation of flying, of soaring through the air. In that same instant she caught the shriek of brakes, the skidding slide of the big car. There was an explosion....

She heard voices, as in a dream.

“The girl’s alive. I’m not so sure about the man.”

“He must have been barreling along. Will you look at these skid marks?”

“You know who he is, don’t you?”

“I do. So be easy with him. Can we get him out?”

Beth Sheldon felt momentarily annoyed. What was so important about the driver? How about her, the victim? It was the man who had been speeding on this narrow back-country lane. The accident had been his fault. She—

She knew sudden fear.

No! The accident had not been his fault. Someone had been behind her, had pushed her into the path of that car.

She lost consciousness a second time.

There was a smell in her nose. Ammonia. Irritated, she moved her head from side to side, then heard a chuckle.

“She’s coming around.”

“Who is she, anybody we know?”

A deeper voice, that of an older man, said, “Name’s Sheldon. Lives alone over on the Hollow Road. Has a cottage there.”

Beth opened her eyes.

Two young men wearing the austere whites of ambulance interns were bending over her. One of them was smiling down at her. In the bright light that came from a car’s headlights, she saw he had long blond hair and a mustache The other intern was dark and clean-shaven, with crisp, black hair.

The blond man said, “You’re a lucky girl. I don’t think you have any broken bones. Still, we’ll have to make a more thorough examination.”

Beth found her mouth was very dry, so dry that her tongue seemed to stick to the roof of her mouth. She asked weakly, “Could I have some water?”

It was the dark young man who put an arm under her back and lifted her very gently. His eyes were on her face, sharp and intent. Probably wants to see if anything hurts me, she thought. To her surprise, nothing did.

Oops She winced as pain stabbed into her shoulder.

“Your shoulder,” the dark-haired man said. “Got a black and blue mark on it. You must have fallen into the fender or the bumper.”

“S—somebody p—pushed me.”

His dark eyebrows lifted. “Out here? In this godforsaken spot?”

She nodded weakly. “Yes. I heard the car coming. He was going awfully fast, so I got over to the side of the road. Then, just as he was about to pass me—somebody shoved me.”

The man with the deep voice came into view, leaning down to stare at her. Beth recognized him as Abe Boldin, owner of the general store over in Rocky Cove, where she shopped occasionally. Her lips twitched as she tried to give him a smile.

“Shoved you?” Boldin asked disbelievingly. “Who’d do a thing like that?”

It was too long a story to tell them here and now. The disbelief in his voice was echoed in the eyes of the others. Beth sighed, “Never mind. But I did feel hands against my back, pushing me.”

“Maybe a tree branch hit you, or you stepped back into it. It bent and appeared to push you ...”

The blond man broke off his explanation when his eyes met Beth’s. He shrugged. “All right. Have it your own way. Somebody hates you and pushed you into the car. Fortunately, it didn’t do too much harm. Can you stand?”

He held her hands in his and pulled. The other intern was supporting her back and neck. Beth made it to her feet, swayed a little, and then realized that, outside of her aching shoulder, she was quite all right.

She realized also that her sweater was disarranged, that her bra was undone, and that the intern had given her a thorough examination while she had been unconscious. Well, they’d have to do that, so they could check that no bones had been broken.

Somebody handed her a glass of water. She drank it gratefully, then handed back the empty glass. As she did so, her eyes saw the crumpled car, wrapped halfway around a thick tree bole, and she gasped.

“The man, the one who drove the car,” she cried, her words spilling out. “What about him? You’ve been working over me, but he may need you more than I do.”

“He’s on his way to Memorial Hospital,” the blond intern said.

“But is he badly hurt?”

His face grew grave. “He’s unconscious. I don’t know if he’ll live. There might be internal injuries, as well as a broken arm, along with some ribs. But the doctors will work on him at the hospital. If they can save him, they will.” In an awed voice, he muttered, “They’ll probably have Donovan up from Boston to look at him.”

The name meant nothing to Beth.

She practiced walking a few feet, then came back. Her shoulder still hurt, but other than that, she seemed healthy enough. When she saw her blackthorn stick lying on the ground a few feet away, she went and picked it up.

“Can I go home now?” she asked.

The dark-haired intern said, “You ought to have a more thorough examination. We have an ambulance here—come back to the hospital with us.”

“There’s no need for that,” she said slowly. “Really, I feel fine. Except for the shoulder, that is. Besides, I’d rather see my own doctor.”

The interns looked at each other. It was the blond who said, “I guess that’ll be all right. You’re a lucky girl. But get in the ambulance, anyhow. We’ll drive you home.”

Abe Boldin muttered, “I can take her. I know the way.”

Beth Sheldon felt relief wash over her. To have to walk home after what had happened was unthinkable. The man who had shoved her in front of the car might still be waiting somewhere in the woods. She realized without caring that all her bravery had suddenly oozed right out of her.

“If it wouldn’t be putting you out of your way, Mr. Boldin, I really would appreciate it.”

She thanked the two interns, then went with Abraham Boldin to his pickup truck. His gnarled hand caught her elbow, and he assisted her into the cab. Beth sank back against the cushions with a grateful sigh.

Boldin started his engine, backed, and turned.

He said, “Lucky thing for you and him that I worked late tonight. Might be nobody else’d be traveling this road this time of night.”

“Oh, I am grateful, so grateful.”

He pooh-poohed her gratitude, but nonetheless he was pleased. “Heard the crash from about a mile away. Got here just as soon as I could. When I saw what had happened, I ran through the woods to the Cantrell place and made a phone call. Ambulance got here pretty fast.”

“A lucky thing for that driver. And for me.”

Boldin drove in silence for a few moments. Then he asked, “You said something about feeling somebody push you, back there. Did you really mean that?”

“I did. It was two hands. I couldn’t be mistaken about that.

I felt them distinctly.”

No need to tell him about the hand that had caught her ankle a week ago, that had sought to drown her. Glancing at him out of the corners of her eyes, she could read the disbelief in his face. Beth felt resentment stir inside her.

“It wasn’t any tree branch, as that intern said, Mr. Boldin. I guess I can tell the difference between a branch and a pair of hands.”

“But why would anybody want to hurt you? Doesn’t make sense.”

“Just the same, it happened.”

He gave her an odd look from under his bushy eyebrows. Beth Sheldon had lived for the past five years in this little backwater part of the country. She knew the clannishness of the local residents, whose grandparents, for the most part, had lived in the same houses they now inhabited. They had a news grapevine, too, and she had no doubts but that her story would be all over Rocky Cove before tomorrow noon.

She could imagine the pitying looks she would get. The old-maid writer, the one who keeps to herself so much, back there in the woods along Hollow Road, is finally cracking up, they would say. Maybe she was, at that, she reflected ruefully.

Beth tightened her lips. She had felt those hands, just as she had felt fingers around her ankle. Someone wanted her dead. She was convinced of that, but she knew well enough she would never convince Abraham Boldin—or any of the local people—of this fact. They lived their lives in a calm little circle which shut out a lot of what went on in the world. Well, as a writer, she herself lived in an even tighter little circle.

The headlights picked out a white picket fence and a mailbox, and Boldin put a foot on the brake. He pulled up before the gate and turned to look at her.

“Here you are. I’d advise you to get a good night’s sleep. You’ll feel better about all this in the morning.”

The voice of common sense. She nodded, giving him a brief smile, and reached for the door handle. “I want to thank you for everything, Mr. Boldin. You’ve been a real hero.”

He chuckled. “Wife’ll be on my neck soon’s I get home. I’m way past my proper time. She’ll have me dead by the side of the road if I don’t hurry.”

She hesitated as she stepped to the ground. “Should I call her, tell her you’re on the way?”

He grinned, shaking his head. “Doubt there’s any need for that. ’Less I miss my guess, Ada Cantrell’s been talking to her already. She heard me phone the hospital and the police to report the accident.”

“The police,” Beth repeated.

“Hank Layne was there and gone by the time you came to. He had your name and address, I gave it to him. He’ll likely stop by to see you tomorrow.”

Beth frowned. “Shouldn’t he have stayed to make sure I was all right before he left?”

“He went off with the ambulance that held the driver. Had to get him on an operating table fast.” Boldin gave a grim smile. “Only one police car in these parts, anyhow. Not as if we were a big city.”

One police car, yes. And one police officer—Big Hank Layne in his khaki uniform with the broad leather belt around his stout middle and the gun butt protruding from his holster. Hank drove that lone car along the country roads every so often, when he wasn’t sleeping with his feet propped up on his desk in the town jailhouse office. Beth smiled. What need had Rocky Cove for more police cars or more police officers?

She wondered vaguely who the driver of the car had been, that he was considered so important they would bring a specialist up from Boston, and need the services of Hank Layne to get him onto a hospital operating table as fast as possible. She opened her mouth to ask Abraham Boldin, but he put his pickup truck in gear just at that moment, and the meshing of the ancient gears drowned out her voice. She watched the truck move off into the dark night.

Beth lifted the gate-latch as she entered the flagstone path that wound between the tulip borders toward the front door. She moved up the path at a fast walk, not wanting to stay outside in the darkness longer than she must. She would have to rearrange her schedule so she could walk during the daylight hours, instead of after the moon had risen.

She had liked the starlit nights and the big ball of moon that hung above the treetops, however. These spring nights were so calm and peaceful, she had reveled in them. But that was before tonight.

The door opened to her key, and her hand reached for the switch. The light was warm and comforting, showing her the hooked rug, the couch and easy chair, the two big bookcases, the hanging baskets holding her Swedish ivy, the grape ivy, and fuchsia She glanced around the room as if to reassure herself of her own safety, then closed and locked the door, sliding home the bolt.

She moved from the enclosed porch into the living room, and through it into her bedroom. She wanted hot cocoa and a cigarette, but before these, she needed to get out of her clothes and into a warm, woolly bathrobe. As she walked, she hit all the light switches until the cottage blazed.

Pulling down the shades, she slid out of her clothes and examined her bruised shoulder in the bathroom mirror. The flesh was black and blue, and felt sore, but she could move the shoulder without too much difficulty. She noted also that her left arm was also turning dark here and there.

As she had been shoved forward, her left arm and shoulder must have struck the right fender or bumper of the car. It had been only a glancing blow—she remembered the shriek of brakes as the driver had tried to avoid her—or she might not be standing here. She made a face at herself, reaching for the flannel pajamas and woolen bathrobe she had placed on the clothes hamper.

“You’re no threat to anyone,” she told her reflection. “So why should anyone want you dead?”

There was no answer to that, or if there was one, she couldn’t think of it.

She went on staring into the mirror, seeing a face framed by rich brown hair, dominated by large brown eyes and an overgenerous mouth. Her lashes were very long—they seemed almost like tiny fans to her—and with the rich brown of her eyebrows and her thick hair, gave her the appearance of a woods dryad, or what she imagined a woods dryad might look like. A man had once told her there was an elfin quality to her features, but Beth thought them rather plain and ordinary.

Sighing, she eased into her flannel pajamas and bathrobe.

The hot cocoa tasted so delicious, she had two cups. Vaguely Beth understood that it was not the cocoa so much as it was the peace and serenity of her own kitchen, where she was quite safe, that induced this warm, cozy feeling inside her. She sipped slowly, letting herself relax, trying to think of the book on which she was working, planning out her next day of work.

When her eyelids began to droop, she said, “Enough. It’s time to hit the sack.”

She gathered up the cup and saucer, and put them in the sink. She would clean them tomorrow, with the breakfast dishes. Half asleep, she trudged through the cottage, switching off the lights until only her bed-table lamp still glowed.

Sliding out of the heavy robe, she eased herself between the sheets and pulled the covers up over her ears. She sighed, nestled herself more comfortably, and was asleep. She dreamed of cars endlessly chasing her through an eerie woodland, of stumbling and falling, of hands shoving her this way and that, but always in front of the oncoming cars.

Twice she woke in the night, sitting up and staring around her, realizing that these were only dreams. Then she settled back to slumber. When a stray sunbeam touched her eyes she woke, stretched lazily, and lay a moment, contemplating the ceiling.

As always, her mind went to the book she had almost completed. Another few weeks and it should be ready for her publisher. Usually, she mailed out her manuscripts to her agent, but she rather thought that this time she would drive them to New York, to present it in person.

It would give her a chance to get away from whoever wanted to kill her.

She threw back the bedclothes and ran for the shower, dropping the flannel pajamas on the way. Warm water and soap and a brisk toweling gave her a sense of well-being.

“Bacon and eggs today, my girl,” she told herself. “I find that I am ravenous.”

The bacon was frying crisply when the doorbell rang. Wondering who could be calling on her at such an early hour, she turned off the gas, wiped her hands on a towel, and walked toward the front door.

A tall man with graying hair, clad in an impeccably tailored corduroy suit with a print tie against a solid pink shirt, stood on the tiny stoop. Beth stared at him, realizing that she had never seen him before. Her hands went to the lock to open the door, when she realized that her life was still in danger.

“That’s nonsense,” she muttered in vexation. “A man like this isn’t going to hurt me.”

His smile was broad and friendly as the door swung open.

“Miss Beth Sheldon?”

“I’m Beth Sheldon. But I don’t know you.”

He took out his wallet, extracted a card, and handed it to her. It read: Bertram K. Lambkin, Attorney-at-Law. His office was located in Boston. From the card, Beth’s eyes lifted toward the man himself.

“This is going to be very sudden, Miss Sheldon. I represent Neal Harper and—he wants to marry you.”

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