Read Wildfire at Midnight for Free Online Page B

considered, of being just plain rude. Alma Corrigan sat back in her chair with a little tightening of the lips. Roberta flushed slightly and leaned forward.
    "Oh, but Marion, I'm sure Mrs. Corrigan's right. It doesn't look hard, and there must be a wonderful view—"
    "There's a wonderful view from every single one of the Cuillins," said Marion dampingly.
    "You've climbed them ail?" asked Roderick gently.
    "If you mean do I know what I'm talking about, the answer is yes." said Marion Bradford.

    There was a little pause, in which everyone looked faintly uncomfortable, and I wondered what on earth made people behave like that without provocation. Colonel and Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson returned to The Times crossword, and Roderick Grant lit a cigarette, looking all at once impossibly remote and well-bred.
    Nicholas was looking bored, which meant, I knew, that he was irritated, and Marcia Maling winked across at me and then said something to him which made his mouth twitch. Roberta merely sat silent, fiery red and unhappy. As an exercise in Lifemanship, it had been superb.
    Then Hubert Hay spoke for the first time, completely ignoring both Marion Bradford's rudeness and the hiatus in the conversation. I remembered Marcia's definition of him as sorbo, and felt amused.
    "If I was you," he said cheerily to Roberta, "I'd try the Bad Step. Wait till high tide, and then you won't break your neck if you fall. You'll only drown. Much less uncomfortable, they say."
    He had a curiously light, high little voice, and this, together with his odd appearance, produced a species of comic relief. Roberta laughed. "I can swim."
    "In climbing boots and a rucksack?"
    "Oh well, perhaps not!"
    "What on earth's the Bad Step?" I asked.
    Hubert Hay pointed towards the west windows. "You see that hill beyond the river's mouth, between us and the Cuillin?"
    "Yes."
    "That's Sgurr na Stri. It's a high tongue of land between here and the bay at the foot of Garsven. You can take a short cut across it, if you want a scramble. But if you follow the coast round to Loch Coruisk and the Cuillin, you have to cross the Bad Step."
    'That sounds terrible isn’t it sort of Lovers' Leap?"
    "Not as much." said Roderick Grant.
    "No'' Maybe you re right. Anyway, it hangs over the sea, and you have cross it by a crack in the rock, where your nails can get a good grip.”
    "Your nails?"'' said Marcia, horror-stricken. "My God! D'you mean you have to crawl across?"
    Nicholas- grinned "No, lady. He's talking about your boots."
    "It sounds just my style," announced Roberta buoyantly. "After all, who minds drowning? Let's go around there, Marion, and come back over Sgurr na Stri."
    "I've made up my mind where we're going," said Marion, in that flat, hard voice which carried so disastrously. "We're going up Blaven."
    There was a sudden silence. I looked up sharply. I had been right, then, in thinking that some queer reaction took place every time that name was mentioned. This time it was unmistakable. And I was not imagining the note of defiance in Marion Bradford's voice. She knew that her announcement would fall on the room in just that kind of silence.
    Ronald Beagle spoke then, diffidently. "Is that quite— er, wise, Miss Bradford? It's not exactly a beginner's scramble, is it?"
    "It's easy enough up the ridge from this end," she said shortly.

    "Oh, quite. But if the weather's bad—"
    "A spot of rain won't hurt us. And if mist threatens we won't go. I've got that much sense."
    He said no more, and silence held the room again for a moment. I saw Nicholas move, restlessly, and I wondered if he felt, as I did, a discomfort in the atmosphere sharper than even Marion Bradford's rudeness could warrant.
    Apparently Marion herself sensed something of it, for she suddenly stabbed out her cigarette viciously into an ash tray and got up.
    "In any case," she said, in that tight, aggressive voice of hers, "it's time someone broke the hoodoo on that blasted mountain, isn't it? Are you coming,