By Lester Dent; published by Cassell in 1951
Chapter 1
Tracy Mallard was in a hurry, but when she saw the baggy slack-shouldered figure of Samuel Crawford standing beside the road, Tracy stopped the roadster anyway.
“Want a ride, Sam?” Tracy called.
Tracy resented it when Samuel Crawford did not turn around. The man was facing the other direction, leaning against a road sign.
Because of that drooping posture and the fishbone tweed suit, Tracy had presumed the man was Samuel Crawford.
“Don’t be a snob, Sam,” Tracy said.
The man didn’t turn and didn’t speak. Tracy hadn’t seen his face.
“If you’re practicing that for Mildred, you’re wasting your time,” Tracy called. “Mildred will pick up a heavy silence like that and hit you over the head with it.”
Mildred was Sam Crawford’s wife. For twenty years, she had been training Sam the way some women of Mildred’s type train their jumping horses.
The afternoon was slightly brutal. The wind was rocking even fair-sized trees. Out in the Sound, the breeze would be tearing the tops off the waves and the sky was flowing wild and dark like melted lead.
Tracy raced the engine impatiently. She was driving to Hempstead Harbor, to skipper the wishbone ketch Darling Lacia in a race starting at two o’clock. It was nearly noon now.
“The hell with you, Sam,” Tracy said. “Either you want a lift, or you don’t.”
Now the man took a firm hold on the road sign and turned himself around.