WORRALS INVESTIGATES

 

by Captain W. E. Johns

 

 

11.   DOUBTS AND DANGERS  (Pages 139 – 149)

 

Worrals has a bad night, even though she is very tired, because she is worrying about Frecks.  Eventually she gets up and goes to see if the plane got away safely or whether there is wreckage on the island.  When she gets to the islets where the plane was concealed she sees that it has gone.  Walking out along a reef towards the place, Worrals finds a new-looking brass cartridge case and the smell of burnt cordite is still fresh and strong.  Frecks had no rifle.  The doctor must have done the shooting.  Scanning the beach, Worrals sees a white object.  “From its shape and size it looked unpleasantly like a human body”.  Going to investigate, Worrals finds the body of Doctor Borran, dead, with her rifle beside her.  Projecting from between her shoulders is an arrow.  “Now Worrals had been prepared for many things.  For almost anything.  But not for this.  To say that she was shaken would be to say nothing”.  A movement catches her eye and she sees a native face, daubed with paint.  Worrals runs for her life and an arrow is fired at her, missing, but hitting a palm tree just in front of her.  “And suddenly, too, she was ashamed that she had fled from a murderer whom she had almost caught red-handed.  Anger, with herself and with the murderer, followed.  She had no reason to regard the doctor with anything but disgust; but that was not the point.  The woman had been murdered and it was her duty to do something about it”.  She turns and raises her gun ready to fire, but no pursuer appears.  She then runs back to the palace.  Worrals tells the girls that there are “savages” outside and they have killed the ‘Geranium’.  One native girl, Tepi, says that the Geranium had shot a man and “Now men come back and Geranium she finish quick time”.  Understanding dawned in Worrals’s eyes.  Tepi,” she said slowly.  “I think you may have got something there”.