9. Under the Barberry Bush
I left rather abruptly. But on the darkening path toward St. Ann’s I decided that Corole could not have heard our conversation. Feeling that I must get these last two pieces of news, as well as the occurrence of the previous night to O’Leary as soon as possible, I walked rapidly along through the fog. I crossed the little bridge and was hurrying through the apple orchard when I came face to face with O’Leary.
“You are the very person I want to see, Miss Keate,” he said at once.
Taking my arm he drew me a few steps from the path; he motioned and following his gesture I found I had a view of the south door and small colonial porch.
“Tell me, Miss Keate, exactly where you were standing the night of June seventh when the—er—arrow-like affair was thrown over your shoulder?”
“I had truly forgotten that—I should have told you.”
“That’s all right,” he brushed my apology aside. “Can you recall about where you were standing and the line it took over your shoulder?”
“I think so,” I replied slowly and thoughtfully. “It seems to me it should have fallen somewhere about that clump of barberry. Over there.” I pointed with my finger toward the shrubbery that edges the apple orchard. “I suppose you are trying to find what it was.”
“If no one else has found—or retrieved it yet,” agreed O’Leary.
With O’Leary going ahead and holding back the more importunate branches and shrubs, we made our slow way to the spot I had indicated. I remember that we took some pains not to be seen from the hospital and, bending over as I did, to keep my white cap invisible from those windows, I had an absurd feeling that I was playing a grim game of hide-and-seek. In the excitement of the search I did not notice my soaked shoes and my wet hair, and remember only how I groped along the sodden leaf mold, and around the slippery brown roots of the shrubs and trees. If we had known what to look for, it would have been an easier task, O’Leary informed me, after some twenty minutes’ vain delving in the wet underbrush. He was inclined to be a little pettish about it, implying that I might have noticed the thing more carefully. That remark was made the time he slipped on some wet leaves and flung his hands into a barberry bush to keep his balance. He looked amazingly human and ordinary, picking out the thorns. It was just a few moments after that that I heard him utter a sudden ejaculation of pain. He was on the opposite side of a large clump of barberry bush and I crawled cautiously around to discover what had happened.