Jane Carter Investigates Episode One Hundred and Four
The taxi came to a sudden halt, and I
emerged from my reverie. Jack leaned forward to ask the driver why we had
stopped.
“I can’t see the road very well,” the
man replied. “And there’s a bridge up ahead.”
As the car crept forward again, I
peered from the window. The lights which marked the arching steel bridge were
only faintly visible through the swirling gray fog. A pillar gradually emerged
from the mist and, beside it, the shadowy figure of a crouching man. His
burning cigarette made a pinpoint of light as he tossed it into the river.
A second man appeared on the bridge.
Stealthily, he approached the one who gazed with such absorption into the inky
waters. His purpose was shockingly clear.
I screamed a warning; the taxi driver
halted his cab, shouting huskily out the window, but our warning came too late.
We watched, helpless, as the attacker
tackled his victim. There was a brief, intense struggle, then a body went
hurtling from the bridge, fifty feet to the water below.
“That man was pushed off the bridge.
He’ll drown!” I said.
“We’ve got to save him,” said Jack.
As the cab came to a standstill, we all
sprang to the pavement. In the murky darkness, the bridge appeared deserted,
but we could hear the pounding footsteps of the attacker escaping.
“Leave that guy to me,” said the cab
driver. “I’ll get him!”
Abandoning his taxi, the driver darted
across the bridge in hot pursuit.
The rest of us ran to the river bank. A
man was struggling in the water below and crying out for help.
Jack started to kick off his shoes.
“Wait!” I said. “You may not need to
jump in after him. That boat will be there in a minute.”
I pointed to a tugboat which had passed
beneath the bridge and was veering toward the struggling man. As we watched,
the boat came alongside, and the captain fished the victim from the water with
a boat-hook.
“Thank goodness for that,” I said. “I
hope the poor fellow is all right.”
“And I hope our driver catches the man
who did the pushing,” said Florence. “I never witnessed a more vicious attack
in my entire life.”
As she spoke, the cabman returned
across the bridge.
“The fellow got away,” he reported. “He
had a car waiting.”
“You didn’t see the license number?”
Jack asked.
“Not a chance.”
“Too bad.”
The tugboat had tied up only a short
distance from the bridge.
“Jack, let’s go down there,” I
proposed. “I want to be certain that man is all right.”
Jack hesitated, then agreed. We left
Florence with the cab driver—she was concerned about ruining her shoes—and Jack
and I descended the steep, muddy slope.
The boat had been made fast to a
piling. Face downward on the long leather seat of the pilot-house lay the
rescued man. The captain, a short, stocky man with grease-smeared hands and
clothing saturated with coal dust, stood over the half-drowned man.
“Anything we can do?” Jack called from
the bank.
“Don’t know yet if he’ll need a
doctor,” answered the tugboat captain, barely glancing up. “It was a nasty
fall.”
We leaped from the river bank onto the
deck. Inside the cabin, the man on the seat showed signs of reviving.
“Struck the water flat on his back,”
the captain said. “Lucky I saw him fall, or I never could have fished him out.
Not on a night like this.”
“The fellow didn’t fall,” I said. “He
was pushed.”
The man on the seat groaned and rolled
over.
“Steady,” said the captain. “Take it
easy. You’ll tumble off the seat if you don’t stay quiet.”
“My back,” mumbled the man.
His face was ghastly white and
contorted with pain. He looked to be in his early thirties and wore
tight-fitting blue trousers and a coarse flannel shirt.
“My back,” he moaned again, pressing
his hand to it.
“You took a hard wrench when you hit
the water,” said the captain. “Here, let’s see.”
He unbuttoned the man’s shirt, and
rolling him over, started to strip it off.
“No!” snarled the other with surprising spirit. “Leave me alone! Get away!”
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