Free Maiden Flight by Harry Haskell Page A

to come to Oberlin to visit his mother at precisely the time when he knew I would be there. That was just the last straw!
    Then there was the time when Orv sat next to Harry’s sister at lunch. We were all Mr. Stetson’s guests at the Faculty Club, and Mary Haskell told my brother that I reminded her of Harry’s favorite cousin—the one who unwittingly did me a favor years ago by insisting that Harry must on no account become a missionary—more than any lady she knew. I took that as a high compliment coming from Mary, who is a missionary herself. What I didn’t realize was that Harry and Mr. Stetson were in cahoots—or that I was the innocent prey they were pursuing! Harry says he owes more to the Prof than to any other person for starting him to thinking while he was at college. I guess I owe the Prof a debt of my own—for helping steer Harry through the labyrinth of the female heart!
    Mr. Stetson calls me the “lady trustee” and likes to pretend I intimidate him—ha! We know each other too well to have any illusions on that score. I may look fierce sometimes, but I’m meek enough at heart. In point of fact, the Prof is one of the most perceptive people I know. He told me some lovely things about Harry’s work in Kansas City in the years when I didn’t have any contact with him. I suppose it was inevitable that my casual friendship with the Prof would set tongues wagging in a small town like Oberlin. From what I hear, Mary was responsible for spreading the rumor that Harry and Mr. Stetson were “after the same girl.” Can you beat that? “So you see,” I said to my future husband, “your little sister isn’t so innocent and unsuspecting as you thought!”

    Orville
    I confess I had my suspicions about Stef even before the Wrangel Island business blew up in our faces in the fall of ’23. Up to then I had done my best to be agreeable, knowing how attached he and Kate were to each other. But the news reports of the incident left me no alternative. Kate showed me a letter that Harry had sent her from London, and I was glad to see that he sized Stef up in just about the same way I had come to think of him—as someone who sincerely believed that he was a special pet of the gods. Even Kate had to admit that his conduct toward me in that matter showed that he was not to be trusted.
    Things had looked very different two years earlier, when Stef launched his first expedition to the island. In those days he could do no wrong in our eyes. He impressed both Kate and me as a romantic adventurer straight out of the pages of Robinson Crusoe . And Wrangel was his very own Island of Despair. Nobody could have been more taken aback than I was when Stef announced his intention to colonize it in the name of King George. The ship’s crew was ludicrously small—three American sailors and one Canadian, plus an Eskimo cook—and they were woefully unprepared for the harsh conditions they encountered above the Arctic Circle. A year later, when it proved necessary to send fresh supplies, I loaned Stef three thousand dollars to outfit a relief ship. But ice prevented the Teddy Bear from getting through to the island, and no further attempt was possible until 1923.
    That summer, while Kate and I were at the bay, Griff Brewer decided to raise money for a second expedition through a public subscription in England. Imagine my surprise when I learned thatthe biggest contributor to the Wrangel Island Relief Fund was the British Wright Company. The board of directors had blithely voted to give my money away and notified me after the deed was done. Both Griff and Stef betrayed my trust in the most inexcusable fashion. But their underhanded scheming came to naught. By the time the second relief ship reached the island, the white men were all dead. Only the Eskimo cook and her cat had survived. A few months later, a Russian crew arrived and planted the Soviet flag on the island. In the end, those men’s lives had been sacrificed for