Yarns Without Threads 

... In the course of comfortable evenings in his library, after Mrs. Miller had gone up to bed, he told me the strange experiences which I have written into these mystery stories: the one about bawdy Mrs. Whyte-Burrell, the one about Dr. Nathan's abominable house, and this about the washing machine in the melancholy nudist colony.

...

He lived reasonably and even richly on his small income. He found as much amusement and excitement in his daily life as any man should. More remarkable is the fact that he became moderately famous as a detective of crime, in spite of a deplorable lack of special knowledge, hocus-pocus, scientific paraphernalia and false whiskers.

Not that any of these would have been the least use to him in the Naked Lady case.

After leaving the highway, Miller's car had to climb a steep road up a dark and narrow glen. At the top, a stone wall crossed the glen, and a pair of stout wooden gates barred the road. On the solid surface of these gates, freshly painted yellow, the silhouette in green of a naked girl spreading her arms in a gesture of triumph and freedom had been stencilled. This was the nudist colony. Miller stopped his car.

The gates remained shut, mute, unexpectant. Beyond the wall rose the roof of a gate house; beyond that, trees and vague roofs in darkness, and a strange tower. Miller sounded his horn. Nothing happened, and he muttered to himself.

...

He sounded the horn again. At last the gates opened slowly before them at the hand of a muscular, naked fellow whose brown body glistened with rain in the lights of the car. When the way had been cleared, the naked man paused insolently with his hands on his hips to stare. Then he ducked abruptly into the gate house, out of the rain. ...

...

"... Is that all?"

"That's all, sir."

It was all. Excepting the washing paraphernalia, there was nothing else, not even a stray pin or nail. Miller looked thoroughly, even to the extent of running a hand along the narrow ledges over the doors. Naturally, nudists and naturists got on without screws, can-openers, safety-pins, hammers, tacks, tins of shoe-polish and such odds and ends as Miller kept on his own back porch. Nudists, too, have no pockets. A significant fact (to Miller's way of thinking) for this reason: it more or less precluded the existence of any kind of murderous apparatus, so far as the nudists were concerned, beyond what could be discovered in the room.

... Since the spring of 1933, the place had been a nudist colony.

The washing machine and the nudist colony came together on the seventh of September for good reasons. If no other linen, nudists have at least sheets and towels. The local laundryman, the only regular visitor to the place except nudists, had taken to peeping, and so come into conflict with Miss Betts, the proprietress of the place. The conflict, and the indignation of the laundry-man's wife, had combined to end all laundry service at Temple Garden. This much, Miller knew from local gossip. Consequently, the purchase of a washing machine for the colony seemed not at all unusual to him that afternoon. ...

"Let's hear what happened, and get it over," suggested Miller. "I'll stop you if I have any questions."

Miller refilled his glass. Van Seiver coughed.

"Well, you see," he said, "I drove out with Kelligan after lunch to demonstrate the Water Sprite to-to the lady who runs-who ran-to the head of the nudist colony at Temple Garden, and when I arrived-"

"You didn't bring the machine with you, did you?"

Van Seiver blushed, took a glove from his hat and wrung a finger of it in an orgy of uncontrollable self-consciousness.

"Not that-not exactly, Mr. Miller. No, it was necessary for me-that is, I sent it on ahead. The whole affair was terrible-terribly embarrassing. I wasn't used to such places, people undressed, and all that. I dreaded the-the occasion, or whatever you would call it. So completely unaccustomed to that sort of thing. Stark naked, nude. You can imagine how I felt."

"Come, here's a giddy whirl," thought Miller. He lighted a cigarette, breathed deeply of the contaminated atmosphere, wondered about his diet as Miss Botto would arrange it, took fond leave of his unnatural life.

... The gate closed, and was locked.

"You better come in the gate house and leave your clothes," said Power. "John'll give you a locker. We got to take your measurements, too."

Miller took off his clothes. He saw them locked away. Then he was stood in a corner by the naked Diegelman.

"Waist, 38," said Diegelman rapidly, "thigh, 25, calf, 15³/₄. Pretty solid build. Getting fat around here." (Diegelman seized a fistful of Miller's middle and waggled it judicially.) "Upper arm, 15¹/₄, lower arm, 12¹/₄ . . ."

"I guess that's all," said Power, stripping off his trousers. "Come along, I'll show you where you bunk. Then I'll take you round."

The grass felt soft, the trees looked gloomy. They walked past the tower to a small street of cottages. Miller felt white and cold. Power was brown, and a short mane of black hair covered his belly and chest up to the abrupt line where he shaved under his chin. He showed Miller a cottage, a bare single room with a cot.

"Your place. Everybody's at the pond right now. Want a swim before chow?"

"Not a bad idea."

They followed a grassy road in half a circle beneath the trees, then crossed the arch of a Japanese bridge which spanned a small brook. They came to a meadow, a clearing in the woods. This contained a clear pool, cupped in irregular sandy banks, glistening in the sunlight. Three or four people splashed in the water, others lounged on the grass. A sturdy, muscular girl ran past them toward the pagoda. She laughed, and cried, "Time for eats."

"That's Miss Botto. She feeds us."

Miller looked over his shoulder at Miss Botto.

She loped, a supple, tan, sturdy girl disappearing into the grove.

"Pretty nice," said Power. "So's Gertie Fontaine. Rest of the women aren't so hot. Mrs. Lotterhand is a wash-out. She's the skinny one over there, the one flapping her arms around."

Lunch consisted of raw carrots, raw cabbage and walnuts, fortified by Swedish bread and fresh milk. Miller talked to the Misses Fontaine, to the elderly and amiable Carneys, and to Lionel Blum, a spindling, anaemic, nearsighted creature whose belly depended from beneath a thin chest like a fat pouch.

"He'll talk your ear off," said Gertie Fontaine.

"We're taking a walk," said the Carneys.

"I'm an enthusiast, Mr. Mann," blurted Blum, undismayed, "but my wife isn't an enthusiast, and I can't get her interested in nudism. Did you bring your wife, Mr. Mann? Is she here?"

Mrs. Lotterhand mothered her infant. The two stepsons moved together secretively, avoided the others. The sun felt warm, and Miller basked in the meadow. At two o'clock, they had to gather for exercises. ... The Carneys and Power drifted toward him, and others appeared in the meadow.

Diegelman came running with a medicine ball under his arm.

"Well, then we moved to Greenwich village and took up painting, but her brother Chauncey kept sticking his nose in all the time. I couldn't stand him. I told her I wanted to clear out, and she must have been still in love with me, I'll give her credit for that. She kicked Chauncey out. Then she got the idea of starting this nudist colony.

"She got a good crowd here at first, and charged a big price. You know, I got an idea she was just trying to show me off to other people, the way she did with the dancing and painting. That's what ruined the whole works, I guess. You know I got a lot of hair on my chest. It looks like the devil, it's so thick and black, and it looked a whole lot worse when I first came up here, because my skin was so white and showed it up so bad. Well, I was damned if I'd shave it off."

"I hardly blame you."

"It wasn't that alone. There were other things. ...

... He went off by himself to see O'Donnell, who had business to be at the front gate in charge of the siege. O'Donnell was smoking a cigarette in the shade of the gate house. He blushed and sniggered covertly at the naked Miller.

"Stop it, you oaf. Get up on your feet. Let's go over behind those trees for a talk. Give me a cigarette."

O'Donnell obeyed pompously.

"How do you like having no clothes on, Chief?"

"Very much. I always was a nudist, you know."

"You was, sir?"

"At heart. Now I'm taking it seriously. I'm not turning in a budget for new uniforms for next year. All you men will get is a gun to strap over your tails and a brassiere to pin your medals on. ..."