Cherry Ames Boxed Set 17-20

by Helen Wells

  He shook his head as though to clear it of a nightmare. “Ed Smith insisted that we fly here first. I guess Fisher and I were panicky enough—or foolish enough—to agree. Neither of us is used to a life of crime,” he said, again forcing a faint grin.

  Then Long Jack closed his eyes, exhausted.

  Jeff shook his head incredulously. He looked at his watch.

  “Bob ought to be here with the police before long, Cherry,” he said. “Why don’t you get yourself a cup of hot coffee? Tomi and I will see that these crooks don’t fly the coop.”

  “I think I will,” Cherry said, grateful to get out of the room. She stepped out into the wet night and walked slowly around the hospital building for a breath of air. She would clean herself up in a little while.

  An hour later, as she was doing routine chores in the ward with Sara—partly to work, partly to calm down—Cherry heard two cars roar into the compound. Bob came in, wet and muddy. He said he had had a furious ride in one of the police cars from Nairobi.

  “Everything’s under control,” he said, smiling. He beckoned her to the door, out of earshot of Sara. “The police are taking charge of your prisoners. You can stop worrying.” He put an arm around her shoulder, and patted her gently. “You’ve had quite a night of it,” Bob said. “You shouldn’t be working. Why don’t you get some sleep? We can talk in the morning.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  The End of the Story

  A WEEK LATER CHERRY, BOB, AND JEFF SAT ON THE veranda of the New Stanley Hotel, within view of Mount Kenya. Its snowcap glistened in the hot morning sun. Bob had just returned from police headquarters, and the three of them were cooling off with iced Cokes.

  “Well,” Bob said with a sigh, “I sure am glad that’s over and done with at last. Now maybe we can get back to the normal business of running our hospital.”

  “I hope so,” said Cherry. “I don’t care if I never see or hear of another diamond again.”

  “Huh!” Jeff snorted, teasing her. “Maybe you feel that way now, but wait until you see a pretty one you’d like to wear.”

  Cherry smiled, but she did not joke back. She noticed Bob looked sober and reflective. He said:

  “I certainly did hate to see Long Jack tangled up in such a filthy business.”

  “He seemed honestly sorry,” Cherry said. “He made no excuses for what he’d done—except to admit that he had been tempted by easy money.”

  “There’s no such thing as easy money,” Jeff said. “Only some people, like our friend the hunter, have to find it out the tough way.”

  “I hope it doesn’t go too hard with him,” Cherry said. “After all, he told the whole story to Jeff and me, and he said he was going to do the same with the police.”

  “He did,” Bob said. “And after he talked, Ed Smith broke down and sang a little song himself. When the officials mentioned the fact that sentences might be lighter if all the diamonds were recovered, Ed told the name of his contact in the United States—the man who posed as the phony Abercrombie agent and took the first shipment from the MATS plane. So the FBI got on his trail, and it looks as if they’ll get back those stones, and very likely nab everybody else who was in on the deal.”

  “How about Krynos?” Cherry asked. “Did they ever find him?”

  “Not yet. But Interpol—the International Police Force—are looking for him, and it will be a miracle if he can run away from them for very long. Obviously he was a phony, too, and not a trader at all!”

  Jeff spoke up. “I didn’t get taken into Miss Cherry-Sherlock-Holmes Ames’s confidence,” he said, winking at Bob, “so I came in on this late. And, I might add, in a very surprising way.”

  “You were wonderful, Jeff,” Cherry said. “The way you stopped those men on the beach was simply marvelous. If all this had been a movie, I suppose I would have wound up falling in love with you.”

  Jeff grinned sheepishly. “Well, it’s not too late. Why don’t you?”

  “I may do it yet.” Cherry smiled. “So you watch out.”

  Bob laughed. “O.K. When you kids decide to tie the knot, I’ll be the best man.”

  Jeff realized that he was being kidded, and grew serious again. “What I don’t understand is how Ed Smith knew beforehand that you were going to send blood samples back to Washington.”

  “He didn’t,” Bob said. “He explained that part of it when he spilled out the whole story to the police. But he was looking hard for ways to smuggle the stones out of Africa. Remember, the attempt to do it in the horns of the antelope Long Jack shot had gone wrong. So when Smith heard from Krynos that we were here on a medical mission, he decided to visit us—to see if he couldn’t make use of some angle of our activities.”

  “And when he discovered, on his very first day at Ngogo,” Cherry said, “that Bob shipped blood samples in test tubes to the Foundation in Washington, well—”

  “It was a pretty slick trick,” Jeff said.

  “And if it hadn’t been for Cherry’s eagle eye,” Bob said, “he’d have gotten away with it too.”

  “Oh, come on now!” Cherry protested. “My mother always warned me to beware of men who keep flattering a girl.”

  “All right,” Bob said. “I agree with your mother. So I’ll never say another flattering word to you again. How about you, Jeff?”

  This time, when Jeff smiled, there was a faint touch of a blush under his tan.

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “It’s pretty hard not to flatter a girl like Cherry.”

  In case you missed Cherry Ames, Rural Nurse…

  CHAPTER I

  New Job, New Friends

  “WELL, NOW YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN, CHERRY AMES,” SAID the nurse supervisor. “Now you’ll be the one and only nurse responsible for good public health nursing service in this entire county. Just you, Cherry.”

  “I’m scared and delighted all at once,” Cherry said. “All those families! We visited only a sampling of them. All those towns and villages!”

  Cherry and Miss Hudson had just returned from their last visit together to the twenty-five square miles of Cherry’s county in southeastern Iowa. It was a lovely countryside of thriving farms, where some ten thousand persons lived and worked, and where their children attended rural schools.

  “Scared or not,” Cherry said, “I feel I’m off to a good start, Miss Hudson. I learned a lot driving around with you, nursing under your supervision during this training period.”

  “I think you’ll do fine,” her supervisor encouraged her. “I’ll visit you regularly, and you’ll come to monthly meetings with my fourteen other county nurses. Between times, if you need any advice or extra help, you can always phone or write me at the regional office upstate. Of course all the specialized facilities of the State Health Department are open to your patients on your request.” Miss Hudson smiled at her reassuringly. “And Dr. Miller, as health officer and your medical adviser, will confer with you frequently here in your office.”

  Cherry had been assigned this rather bare office on the second floor of the county courthouse in the small, quiet town of Sauk. Sunlight sifting through the trees outside shone on file cabinets and tables stacked with county health records and pamphlets about community health.

  “I’m glad,” Cherry admitted, “that Dr. Hal Miller is young and as new on his county job as I am on mine. Makes it easier to work comfortably together.”

  The supervisor smiled. “Well, you have to be young and strong to go out in all kinds of weather to nurse patients deep in the country. And I shouldn’t say just ‘patients.’ Remember that well people, who can be prevented from getting sick, are just as big a part of your job, Cherry. Remember to teach good health care, and plan it in terms of whole communities.”

  “I’ll remember,” Cherry said.

  She felt rather breathless at the scope of her “one-man” job. Nursing new babies, children’s diseases, old people, and persons hurt in farm accidents, nursing patients of the eight physicians scattered through
the county, under the physicians’ direction—that was only part of it. She would also teach health at P.T.A. meetings; keep watch for any threatened epidemic; and, if necessary, set up emergency clinics under the direction of the county health officer. She’d have TB control work to do, too. And she’d act as the one and only school nurse at the twenty-odd rural schools in her county. The nearest hospital was twenty-five miles away. It was a tall order for one nurse.

  “I’m lucky,” she thought, “to be working with a county doctor as nice as Hal Miller.”

  Miss Hudson picked up her handbag and a sheaf of reports. She smothered a yawn. “Thank goodness it’s Saturday, and the beginning of Labor Day weekend.”

  Cherry walked downstairs with her supervisor. “You still have a long drive home, haven’t you, Miss Hudson? Before you start out, would you like to come over to my Aunt Cora’s house and have some iced tea?”

  Aunt Cora, Cherry knew, could be counted on for hospitality at the drop of a hat. Hadn’t she taken Cherry herself in to stay at her comfortable house here in Sauk? Aunt Cora was one big reason Cherry had applied for this position as rural nurse.

  “Thanks, Cherry, but I promised my own family to be home for supper.” Miss Hudson opened her car door and held out her hand to Cherry. “Good luck.”

  Just then another car pulled up alongside the supervisor’s. A tall, lean, young man in a rumpled suit jumped out and came over to the two nurses. A thermometer in its case stuck out of his breast pocket, and a late garden rose was in his lapel.

  “Are you leaving now, Miss Hudson?” Dr. Hal Miller asked. “I tried to get here sooner, but I had to stay with the Ellis youngster until his hemorrhaging stopped. Hello, Miss Cherry.”

  Cherry smiled at the young physician, and Miss Hudson said to him, “It’s nice of you to see me off. We’ll be meeting again soon in some of the state or university hospitals. Now if I don’t get started, I’ll never leave this lovely little old town.”

  The supervisor slid into her car, waved, and drove off. Dr. Miller and Cherry stood for a minute in the shade of the courthouse trees. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.

  “Had a busy afternoon, Doctor?” Cherry asked, with a hint of a smile.

  He grinned back at her. “You look a little warm and dusty yourself. Say, would you mind coming back upstairs for a quick conference? I know it’s late, I know we aren’t supposed to work as a regular thing on Saturdays, but the work does pile up.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” Cherry said. Sick people, and prevention of sickness, could not wait. Besides, Cherry knew, Dr. Miller had his hands full as both the county health officer and private practitioner. He shared an office with, and assisted, Dr. Aloysius Clark, who was growing too old to drive long distances in the country. The young doctor drove out to treat these rural patients.

  Some of Cherry’s patients, unable to pay, would be treated without charge by Dr. Miller as county health officer. Other patients, able to pay, would be treated privately by any of the county doctors, who would call Cherry in to do the necessary nursing. Many times her patients would be persons she herself discovered to be in need of health care and referred to a doctor.

  Cherry and Dr. Hal talked over the day’s cases and made plans for next week’s visits. The big bare room grew shadowy. The young doctor closed the last case folder while Cherry finished writing down his nursing instructions.

  “There! That’s all we can do for today,” he said. “There’s nothing that can’t safely wait over the weekend. Gosh, I’m starving!”

  Cherry looked over her shoulder. “It’s so late, even my clerk has gone home.”

  Dr. Hal got up and stretched his long arms and legs. “Miss Cherry, did you feel as overheated all day as I did? Calendar says September third, but I thought I’d melt.”

  “The heat’s good, makes the corn ripen,” Cherry quoted her farmer friends. “Yes, Doctor, the sun felt so warm today I wanted to go swimming.”

  “Well, why don’t we?” Dr. Miller suggested. “Swimming weather isn’t going to last much longer. Why don’t we round up some people, and have a picnic and swim at Riverside Park?”

  Cherry was interested. “Tomorrow? Or Monday? That’s Labor Day.” She had a moment’s hesitation about whether it would be all right for her to see Dr. Hal socially. They had not yet done so, unless she counted accidentally meeting him at the town’s one drugstore or garage or seeing him at church. Both of them had been crowded for time, she with in-job training, and he in learning his duties as part-time health officer. But now—? Well, Cherry decided, formal medical etiquette need not apply in a little backwoods town like Sauk, where there was only a handful of people to be friends with one another.

  Dr. Hal must have been thinking much the same thing, for he said:

  “You know, Miss Cherry—darn it, let’s drop the formalities when we’re not working. Can’t I call you Cherry, and you call me Hal?”

  Cherry smiled and nodded. “Yes, Doctor,” she said to tease him. He was only a few years older than she was, so it felt perfectly natural to be friends.

  “Well, you know, Cherry,” he said, perching on a desk, “it’s a funny thing how I haven’t gotten around to seeing you except on the job. I’ve wanted to. In fact, since I came to Sauk, I haven’t spent time with anyone except medical personnel and patients. Maybe that’s what comes of working and living at Dr. Clark’s house. Hmmm? Why, now that we spoke of having a swimming party, I realize I don’t know any people to invite except one next door neighbor.”

  “Well, I only know my next door neighbors and the Drew girls,” Cherry said. “I’m still new here, too. Never mind. My Aunt Cora knows everybody for miles around here. She’ll gather up some acquaintances for us.”

  “Your Aunt Cora sounds grand.”

  “She is. And if I don’t go home to supper soon, she may send Sheriff Steeley after me.”

  Dr. Hal decided to leave his car parked where it was, and walk home. The tree-filled main street was only eight blocks long and part of a federal highway. They met no one else out walking at this hour; people were indoors having their suppers. Only the birds were in sight, swooping and twittering as the sun dropped. Cherry felt relaxed, and listened to the young man walking beside her.

  Hal told Cherry he came from a small town like this one, but in another part of Iowa. He had taken his medical training at the fine schools here in his home state. Then he had served as intern and, later, as staff physician at a large hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.

  “I didn’t feel at home working in a big institution,” he said. “I didn’t like the rigid routine. I missed my own country kind of people. Besides, I felt cooped up in the city. So I looked for an opening in a rural area, and the United States Public Health Service gave me a scholarship and trained me as a health officer. Then a former professor of mine wrote that his old friend, Dr. Clark, was looking for a husky young assistant. So here I am.” He smiled down a little shyly at Cherry. “What about you? You did tell me a few things about your training, the different kinds of nursing you’ve done, but I’d like to hear more.”

  It embarrassed Cherry to talk about herself. As they turned the next corner, she could see Aunt Cora’s straight figure standing on the front porch, farther up the street. Cherry mumbled, “My aunt must think I’m lost, strayed, or stolen,” and walked faster.

  Dr. Hal looked amused and quickened his long, easy stride. “Well, you’ll have to tell me some other time. Especially about why you wanted to have a try at rural nursing.”

  “That’s easy. I was born and brought up across the Mississippi River east from here, in Illinois, in a town in the heart of the corn belt. I’ve always known and respected the people who grow the nation’s food, and I’ve always had a hankering to—to nurse out in the country.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re awfully pretty?” Dr. Hal said. She was tall and slim and full of life, with brilliant dark eyes and dark curls. “Did those cherry-red cheeks win you your name?”r />
  “Thank you for the kind remarks,” Cherry said. “No, I’m named for my grandmother. My coloring turned out to be the sort of—uh—an appropriate accident.”

  Dr. Hal burst out laughing at that. They had reached Aunt Cora’s house. Cherry noticed in surprise that her aunt wore her next-to-best flowered silk dress, and two cars were parked in front of the house. One was her aunt’s sleek new car, the other was a rusty black sedan, so old, big, and cumbersome that it resembled a boat or a hearse. What was going on?

  Aunt Cora came down the steps, shaking her head but smiling.

  “Where in the world have you been, child? You’re Dr. Hal Miller, aren’t you? I’ve wanted to meet you ever since Aloysius told me about you. I’m sorry to snatch Cherry away, but an old friend of mine has just come home after being away all summer, and we’re celebrating by going out for supper. I certainly hope you’ll come by another time, and often—”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Ames. You may be seeing me sooner than you count on. Cherry, will you ask your aunt about the picnic?”

  “What picnic?” Aunt Cora wanted to know.

  “Why,” Cherry said, “the picnic and swimming party that we hope you’re going to arrange for us. For tomorrow or Labor Day.”

  Aunt Cora looked baffled, but recovered immediately. “Do you want fried chicken to take along, or wieners and potatoes to roast over a bonfire? And for how many of you?”

  “Ah—we don’t know enough people yet to ask,” Dr. Hal admitted.

  “I’ll get to work on it by telephone,” Aunt Cora promised. “I know ever so many young people who’d like to know you. Well! I’m glad you both are finally taking a little time off from work to socialize! How many young people do you want me to invite? Ten? Twenty?”