Free Cherry Ames 09 Cruise Nurse by Helen Wells

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    MR. ROUGH DIAMOND
    67
    So Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy,
    Was he?”
    Cherry tried to look stern. “Don’t answer my question with another one. Are you going to obey orders while I’m gone?” She handed him the glass of pineapple juice.
    “Straw,” Timmy said tersely. “I never drink any thing without a straw.”
    For a moment Cherry almost lost her patience. It was getting on toward evening and she hadn’t even unpacked. And where on this big, unfamiliar ship could she fi nd a straw? Then she remembered the angled glass ones in the dispensary for patients who were not yet able to sit up. If she got one for Timmy it might keep him amused—it might even make it easier for his mother to force fl uids. She darted away again to the dispensary.
    And for the third time in the very same corridor on B deck she bumped into a passenger. This time it was not Jan Paulding. It was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a brown, weather-beaten face. But he, too, had been standing just outside of Stateroom 141; he hadn’t known the door was going to be thrown open suddenly; like Jan he hadn’t heard Cherry’s rubber-soled shoes crossing the thick carpet.
    But unlike Jan he was not surprised into near-panic when Cherry popped out into the corridor. Startled, yes, but he merely backed away with a suave apology:
    “I beg your pardon, Nurse. I seem to have lost my way. This is where my cabin was when I last left it.” 68 CHERRY
    AMES,
    CRUISE
    NURSE
    His sharp, bright-blue eyes twinkled merrily. “But you weren’t in it when I went up to the club for tea.” His manner was pleasant enough, a trifl e too molli-fying, Cherry thought, but there was something about his voice she didn’t quite like. It was deep, almost harsh, as though he had overworked it , shouting commands, or uttering loud roars of uncontrollable rage.
    He was wearing an immaculate tropical worsted suit of tiny brown and tan checks with an expensive-looking tie as bright as his twinkling eyes. But Cherry suspected he would feel more comfortable in something more rugged: a lumberjacket and dungarees, perhaps. He reminded her of a phrase the purser had used earlier that morning describing the patient who had died in Curaçao: “A rough diamond, but a nice character.”
    Well, this man, Cherry felt sure, was another rough diamond. She didn’t know whether he had a nice character or not.
    She smiled at him primly. “Perhaps you have the right room but the wrong deck. This is B deck.”
    “Oh, of course. How stupid of me.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Do forgive me.” He turned away toward the stairs. Cherry noted that his strides were long and that he moved with the muscular grace of an accomplished athlete.
    “I don’t believe for one minute he was lost,” she told herself. “That man’s too shrewd. He wouldn’t lose his way in a labyrinth.”
    Later she glanced at the glass-framed deck plan on the wall in the dispensary. There were no cabins

    MR. ROUGH DIAMOND
    69
    directly above the Cranes’ and the doctor’s suites. In that area on A deck were the gymnasium, the novelty shop, and the beauty salon.
    There were no passenger staterooms except on A and B decks!
    “The plot thickens,” Cherry whispered to herself as she picked up a glass straw and locked herself out of the dispensary. “First the safe is broken into, hut nothing is taken. Next I catch Jan Paulding listening outside of Timmy’s door. And now this extrapolite rough diamond, pretending he got his stateroom mixed up.” And then she remembered something else.
    They were heading into bad weather and the ship had rolled and pitched as the blue-eyed man strode down the corridor. Cherry had had a hard time keeping her balance just standing still, holding on to the dispensary door. But it hadn’t fazed the mysterious passenger one bit. He had moved serenely along, as though enjoying the Julita’s bucking motion. He had the most perfect pair of sea legs she had ever seen.
    “My