For an instant, Paula’s arms flailed wildly. Then she crashed against the weather-beaten wood. There was a splintering sound as the railing gave way under her weight. She tried to catch herself. Then, in a clumsy slow-motion swan dive, she fell over the edge, screaming.
The scream broke off, and Nancy looked over the splintered railing. Paula was sprawled faceup and motionless on the concrete apron at the foot of the tower, one arm bent under her, eyes staring up at the sky.
The wind had died down. The air was perfectly still.
From the contorted position in which Paula lay, Nancy knew Paula was dead.
“Hey! What’s going on down there?”
Nancy looked above her and saw Sammy peering down at Paula’s sprawled body. Sammy looked as if she were seeing a ghost. “Is Paula really dead?” Sammy asked.
Bess was kneeling next to the body, feeling for a pulse. “I think so,” she called up soberly.
Nancy leaned weakly against the solid part of the railing until Ned streaked up the stairs and pulled her into his arms. After clinging together for a moment or two, they followed the group, who had just raced down from the lookout tower.
“I don’t understand,” Linda said. “How did Paula survive the fall from the cliff?”
“She never fell off the cliff. Max did—or, rather, he was—”
“Pushed.”
It was Max’s voice. Nancy looked up. Max was leaning against the doorjamb of the shed.
Ned and Tod hurried over to Max and helped him walk across the yard.
Bess approached him anxiously. “Are you sure you’re up to this? The helicopter is bringing a doctor in a little while.”
“I’m all right,” Max said weakly, but his breathing came in jagged gasps.
“Paula pushed you—is that what you’re saying?” Ralph asked in astonishment. “But we heard Paula shout. . . . And we saw . . .” He stopped. “Oh, I see,” he said. “Paula faked it—the shout and everything.”
Ned’s arm had been around Nancy. “You’re trembling,” he said to her. “Are you cold? Do you want to borrow my jacket again?”
Nancy gave one last nervous shiver. Then all at once she smiled at Ned. “No, thanks,” she said, as if she had a secret. She turned to Max. “But that’s what Paula did, didn’t she, Max—give you her jacket?” Max nodded weakly and tried to talk. “Let me tell it,” Nancy said.
“When you got to the top of the cliff, you confronted Paula with what you knew, and then you got into a big argument. She distracted you and knocked you over the head with something—a rock maybe?”
“Yes,” Max said, fingering the gash over his eye.
“And when you fell,” Nancy went on, “that’s when we heard the thump. The jacket—now that was a clever move on Paula’s part, since she knew I’d be on my guard against her every second if I thought she’d pushed you off the cliff. That’s why she had to make believe she was the victim.
“And until I remembered that Ned had loaned me his jacket, she almost had me fooled. It took me a while, but suddenly I realized how easy it would have been for her to put her jacket on you—it was big enough.”
Max coughed and spoke. “The trick boomeranged, though. Her jacket is what saved my life. It was so big, air got trapped in it and helped keep me afloat until I could grab on to a limb and pull myself out.”
Wincing in pain, he sank to the ground. “But I think I broke a couple of ribs in the fall.”
Bess knelt beside him and wiped away the beads of sweat on his forehead.
Sammy looked from Max to Paula’s body. “But why did Paula do it? Was she responsible for holing the raft and stealing the crystal out of the radio?“.
“Paula was responsible for everything,” Nancy said. “She invented the contest—”
“Invented the contest?” Mike exclaimed.
“Yes, it was a trick to get me here.”
“See?” Linda said smugly to Ralph. “I told you the whole thing had to be a joke.”
“Some joke,” George said bitterly. She turned to Nancy. “But I don’t understand why Paula did all this.”