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" 'Darling,else, and it just looked that way ¡¯

"I turned around in a small circle I saw the faint outline of Goblin by one post of the fancy bed Goblin nodded to orously

"I looked at her She was looking past me to the place where Goblin stood

" 'They were dead bodies, Aunt Queen,' I said 'I know because Goblin knows and Goblin is afraid ¡¯

"A deep silence fell over her, and then she looked up at ated in every conceivable way, et you out of here ' "

Chapter15

15

"ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Sugar Devil Island, which had always been the biggest secret of Blackwood Far not only the sheriff of Ruby River Parish and his deputies but two private investigators hired directly by Aunt Queen, two private laboratory technicians and two gentleation

"In this way, the Here And as I stood there on the banks, directing people to the locality where I saw the bodies duht of people trooping all over Manfred's sacred retreat

"Pops had had real bad indigestion after breakfast and said that he just couldn't go with us It made him feel really bad, but he just wasn't up to it

"Aunt Queen, of course, could not be expected to make such a journey, but she did, handsomely turned out in khaki sportswear, which ist (I had forgotten that she had been to the Ale )

"And of course Jasmine ith us, in blue jeans, which she never wore, breasts poking through one of arettes and eyeing everybody with suspicion if not downright scorn

"And I stood there, listening for anything that would lessenisolated and ridiculed

"Of course, dead bodies in the sere nowhere to be found

"But probing some six to ten feet of soft-botto the island were particularly obtrusive and 'friendly,' which toto be fed and they had probably just been fed on the bodies I'd seen given over to them