“Really? Let me see—”
She took a step, lit on a stone with a bad angle, gave a little squeal, and toppled into me. Not being firmly based, over I went, and I went clear down because I spent my first tenth of a second trying to keep my fingertip hold on my prize, but I lost it anyway. When I bounced up to a sitting position Connie was sprawled flat, but her head was up and she was stretching an arm in a long reach for something, and she was getting it. My greenish gray stone had landed less than a foot from the water, and her fingers were ready to close on it. I hate to suspect a blue-eyed blonde of guile, but if she had it in mind to toss that stone in the water to see it splash all she needed was another two seconds, so I did a headlong slide over the rocks and brought the side of my hand down on her forearm. She let out a yell and jerked the arm back. I scrambled up and got erect, with my left foot planted firmly in front of my stone.
She sat up, gripping her forearm with her other hand, glaring at me. “You big ape, are you crazy?” she demanded.
“Getting there,” I told her. “Gold does it to you. Did you see that movie, Treasure of Sierra Madre?”
“Damn you.” She clamped her jaw, held it a moment, and released it. “Damn you, I think you broke my arm.”
“Then your bones must be chalk. I barely tapped it. Anyway, you nearly broke my back.” I made my voice reasonable. “There’s too much suspicion in this world. I’ll agree not to suspect you of meaning to bump me if you’ll agree not to suspect me of meaning to tap your arm. Why don’t we move off of these rocks and sit on the grass and talk it over? Your eyes are simply beautiful. We could start from there.”
She pulled her feet in, put a hand — not the one that had reached for my stone — on a rock for leverage, got to her feet, stepped carefully across the rocks to the grass, climbed the bank, and was gone.
My right elbow hurt, and my left hip. I didn’t care for that, but there were other aspects of the situation that I liked even less. Counting the help, there were six or seven men in and around the house, and if Connie told them a tale that brought them all down to the brook it might get embarrassing. She had done enough harm as it was, making me drop my stone. I stooped and lifted it with my fingertips again, got clear of the rocks and negotiated the bank, walked down the drive and on out to the car, and made room for the stone in the medicine case, wedged so it wouldn’t roll around.
I didn’t stop for lunch in Westchester County, either. I took to the parkways and kept going. I didn’t feel really elated, since I might have got merely a stray hunk of granite, not Exhibit A at all, and I didn’t intend to start crowing unless and until. So when I left the West Side Highway at Forty-sixth Street, as usual, I drove first to an old brick building in the upper Thirties near Ninth Avenue. There I delivered the stone to a Mr. Weinbach, who promised they would do their best. Then I drove home, went in and found Fritz in the kitchen, ate four sandwiches — two sturgeon and two home-baked ham — and drank a quart of milk.