Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 18, No. 5, May 1973

The Man Who Came Back by Edward D. Hoch

A late husband should always be armed with an infallible alibi.

New York is a sweatbox in August, and Paul Conrad often wondered why the city didn’t simply shut down for the month as Paris did. This August seemed especially bad, with daily temperatures above ninety, and it was no wonder that he thought often of his sister with her cottage on Fire Island. He thought of her, and then went back to his drawing board to work on the winter ad campaigns.

He’d been working nights all month, if only because the office was air-conditioned. After work there was nothing awaiting him but a hot and lonely bachelor’s apartment, with a bar or a movie as the only likely alternatives. He was between girls at the moment, much to his sister’s displeasure. She felt that any man of should be bringing up a family. Helen, two years younger and already on her second husband, had three children from her first marriage, with another on the way.

This night, alone in the agency art department, he was hunched over his drawing board when the telephone rang.

“Paul Conrad?”

“Speaking.”

“Paul, I took a chance on catching you there, when nobody answered at the apartment.”

“Who’s this?” The voice was familiar, and yet some barrier of his mind kept him from identifying it.

“Ralph,” the voice answered.

Ralph. He sat down hard, clutching the telephone as if it might suddenly fly away. “Ralph Jennings?” he whispered, though now he recognized the voice and knew the impossible was true. “You’re alive!”

“I have to see you, Paul. Tonight.”

“Where are you?”

“The Manhattan Manor Motel. It’s over on the west side, near the river.”

“I’ll find it. Are you using your own name?”

“Sure.” He hesitated a moment on the other end of the line and then added, “Paul... don’t tell Helen. Not yet.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

He hung up and sat staring at the phone for several minutes. Ralph Jennings, his sister’s first husband, had returned from a watery grave after five years. The only trouble was, Helen now had another husband.

No, he wouldn’t tell Helen.

The motel room was neat and modem, an impersonal room, but Paul Conrad barely noticed it as he faced the man he’d never expected to see again.

“What happened?” he asked, though he wanted to ask why. Why did you disappear, why did you come back now, why did you call me? Why?

“I fell off the boat, just like the newspapers said, but I didn’t drown.”

“I can see that,” Paul said.

Ralph Jennings smiled. He’d always been quick with a smile, always the charming young man with the bright future. Helen hadn’t been able to resist him. “I made it to shore somehow, but I was dazed and didn’t remember clearly. It took me a couple of days before I was myself, and by that time Finley had told everybody I’d drowned. I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you did nothing.”

Jennings averted his eyes. “Well, I guess so.”

“What have you been doing for five years?”

“Sailing, mostly. I’ve been working on a cruise ship out of Miami. I always liked the sea, you know. We make several runs each year between the various Caribbean ports, and to Bermuda. I only get to New York in the summer.”

He was talking too fast, telling too much, and yet not enough. “What do you want me to do, Ralph? Helen’s remarried, you know.”

“I know. I saw it in the papers last winter. You probably won’t believe this, but every year when I got to New York I’d say to myself, maybe this summer I’ll call her. This year, with the remarriage and all, I figured I should. But the shock might hit her pretty hard — that’s why I called you first.”

“Weren’t you ever curious about your three children?”

“Sure. Sure I was curious.” His eyes were pleading, but somehow to Paul the pleading wasn’t quite sincere enough. “You must think I’m some sort of a monster.”

“You disappeared and let Helen think you were dead. You left your three children without a father.”

Jennings ran a hand through his dark hair. “They had the insurance.”

“Which will now have to be paid back.”

“I don’t know, Paul. I don’t know what I was thinking of! So I was wrong! What can I do about it now?”

“Helen’s pregnant, you know.”

“I didn’t know. How could I? Who is this guy, Paul?”

“Jack Winegood. He makes a pretty fair living as news director on one of the smaller New York radio stations. A good enough living so they can afford a cottage on Fire Island.”

“Is that where she is now?”

Paul nodded. “Do you really want her to know you’re still alive?”

“Of course! We’ve got to get this thing worked out.”

Paul sighed and stood up. “I’ll go talk to her, see how she’s feeling. The police might take a dim view of your defrauding the insurance company, you know.”

“I didn’t get the money. And she was acting innocently. She didn’t know I was alive.”

“How long will you be in town?”

“The ship sails the first of next week, but I’ll stay longer if necessary.”

“It’s too late to see her tonight,” Paul decided. “I’ll take off from work tomorrow and go see her in the morning. Stay close to your phone around noon.”

“Right.” He held out his hand. “And thanks, Paul.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re in big trouble, as if you don’t know it.”

The street was still hot, but he didn’t really notice. On the way back to the apartment he stopped for a couple of stiff drinks.

In the morning he drove out to Long Island’s south shore and took one of the summer ferries over to Fire Island. The day was clear and a breeze off the ocean was just strong enough to make the heat bearable. He strolled along the boardwalk until he reached his sister’s cottage, then went out through the sand to where he saw them at the water’s edge. Helen was there with the three children and another woman, enjoying a morning swim in the salty surf.

As he approached, Helen stood up to greet him. “Playing hooky from work? This is only Friday, isn’t it?” The white one-piece bathing suit was flat against her stomach, with no sign as yet of her pregnancy. At 29, she still looked like a college girl, and acted like one sometimes, too.

“How are you, Sis? Just thought I’d take a run out to see you.”

“Great! Do you remember Sharon O’Connell? She was a bridesmaid at my first wedding.”

Yes, he remembered Sharon O’Connell: tall and graceful and eternally sad, a serious girl in a world that needed one. He shook hands with her, noted the absence of a wedding ring on her left hand, and wondered what she’d been doing with herself. “I didn’t recognize you at first. How’ve you been, Sharon?”

“Fine. Just fine, Paul. It’s been a long time.”

“You working in New York?”

She nodded, studying him through heavy eye makeup that seemed out of place on the morning beach. “I still do a little modeling, though both the years and the pounds are catching up with me. I went to a party here last night and ran into Helen. She invited me to spend the night, since Jack was working.”

He turned to his sister. “Jack’s in town?”

Helen nodded. “Covering the U.N. thing. He hopes to get out for the weekend.”

“I wonder if Sharon would excuse us for a few moments, Helen. There’s something I want to talk to you about. A family sort of thing.”

Sharon rose to her feet on cue and grabbed the children’s grasping hands. “Sure, you two go ahead. I’ll take the kids for a run down the beach.”

Paul watched her go, the long tanned legs kicking up sand as she ran. He was remembering that she’d once dated Ralph Jennings, a long time ago when they’d all been younger.

“Now, what’s all the mystery?” Helen wanted to know.

“I’m afraid I’ve got a bit of surprising news for you. Last night—” He was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone in the cottage. Helen ran to answer it and he slipped out of his sport jacket, relaxing on the sand. Far off down the beach, Sharon and the children splashed noisily along the surf.

Helen came back after a few moments, her face pale even through the suntan. “That was Jack,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” His heart was pounding with sudden apprehension.

“He said... he said Ralph was alive. He said Ralph was alive until this morning, but that somebody had murdered him.”

Ralph Jennings had died in the motel room where Paul had met him. He’d been shot in the forehead at close range, with a small-caliber pistol that made little noise. It appeared that he’d just opened the door to admit his murderer when he was shot. Another guest had discovered his body near the half-open door around eight a.m., and Jack Winegood had been covering the story for his station when Ralph’s identity was determined.

Paul left Helen at the cottage with Sharon and the children, and caught the next ferry to the mainland. An hour later he was with Jack Winegood in his office.

“How’s Helen taking it, Paul?” the big man asked. Jack was not a great deal unlike Ralph Jennings, though he’d always lacked Ralph’s twinkle of charm. He was a businessman, and his business was the news.

“She’s stunned, of course.” Paul told Winegood about Ralph’s phone call, and their meeting of the previous night at the motel.

Helen’s husband nodded as he listened. “The police will want to talk with you. That may have been the last time he was seen alive.”

Paul had already considered the possibility, and he didn’t like it. To his knowledge, on the previous evening he was the only one who knew that Ralph Jennings was still alive — and certainly that was one of the prerequisites for the killer: to know Ralph Jennings was alive. “You’d better get out there with Helen,” he told Winegood. “I’ll see the police.”

He didn’t, however, go directly to the police. They would only tie him up with hours of questioning or worse. There was somebody he wanted to talk with first.

Oat Finley had been a neighborhood character when Paul and Helen were growing up on the New Jersey coast. He’d come back from the war to open a boat charter service that allowed him plenty of time to sit on the dock and smoke his pipe. There had been those who spoke of an old war injury, of Oat being not quite right, but he’d always been friendly enough to Paul and his sister.

When Helen married Ralph Jennings, a strange sort of friendship had developed between Jennings and Oat. Before long, Jennings had bought a share of the failing charter-boat business, and he spent many nights and weekends on the water with Oat. It had been on one of those trips, five years ago, that he’d fallen overboard in the dark, and Oat Finley had reported him dead.

Paul hadn’t seen Oat recently, but he knew where to find the man. The charter-boat service was. still in operation, though now it had been moved to Staten Island, where its main customers were weekend fishermen who traveled out into the Atlantic with a collection of exotic lures and a couple of cases of beer.

It was midafternoon when Paul walked down the sagging wooden ramp to the deck of the Brighter II and called out to Oat Finley. “How are you, Oat? Remember me?”

Though Oat couldn’t have been more than forty, he had a slow way about him that constantly brought forth guesses regarding his age, placing it anywhere over fifty. His hair was already gray, and the weather-beaten lines of his face seemed almost like old leather when he turned to smile at Paul.

“Conrad, aren’t you? Helen’s brother.”

“That’s right. Haven’t seen you in a number of years now, Oat.”

“Been that long?” Oat bit on his pipe. “What can I do for you? Give you a good price if you want to rent the boat.”

Paul sat down on a canvas deck chair opposite him. “I came about Ralph Jennings, Oat.”

“Ralph Jennings?”

“He’s dead.”

The wrinkled eyelids closed for a moment, then opened to meet his gaze. “Ralph Jennings has been dead for five years,” he said finally.

Paul shook his head. “No, Oat. Only for about ten or eleven hours.”

The expression of friendly indifference didn’t change. “He drowned.”

“You thought he drowned, but he swam to shore. He’s been alive all these years, working on a cruise ship. Last evening he called me and told me about it. Then sometime during the night he was murdered.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I thought Ralph might have phoned you yesterday, too.”

“He didn’t. To me, he’s been dead for five years, ever since that night on the boat. I don’t know about anything else.”

“Just what happened that night? Where were you bound?”

“I told all that when it happened. One of our boats, the Brighter it was, had developed engine trouble. We’d worked on it most of the day and took it out for a run to see if we’d gotten the kinks out. It was still making a funny noise, and Ralph leaned over the engine to try and spot the trouble. Just then we hit a swell and he went over the side. I swung the boat around, but in the darkness I couldn’t find him.”

“All right,” Paul said. “And you haven’t heard anything from him since?”

“What would I hear from a dead man?”

It was useless to explain any more. Paul thanked him and climbed back to the dock, feeling the sweat beginning to roll down the small of his back. He had visited Oat Finley and learned nothing at all. Now there was nobody left but the police.

Paul returned to the city and told his story to a calm and well-dressed detective who asked questions in a quiet voice and wrote everything down. They even gave him a cup of coffee, and when he left the station house it was with a relieved feeling that the worst was over.

“Hello, there,” a voice spoke from the shadows as he was opening his car door.

“What?” He turned and saw Sharon O’Connell leaning against the car next to his. “Well! This is unexpected.”

“I always do the unexpected,” she answered with a smile. “I spotted your car and decided to wait.”

He wanted to ask how she knew what his car looked like, but instead he said, “Let’s get a cup of coffee, then.”

“I could use a drink a lot better, if you’re buying.”

“Sure.”

She drove her own car, following him to a nearby bar that was reasonably quiet for a Friday night. Over two tall, frosty glasses he studied her carefully cool image and asked, “All right. You wanted to talk to me. What about?”

“Now that’s a romantic opening!”

“My brother-in-law was murdered this morning. I’m not feeling romantic. You shouldn’t, either, if memory serves. Didn’t you date Ralph at one time?”

“My good man, that was a lifetime ago! He married your sister nearly ten years back. I went with him in college.”

“Still—”

“Still, nothing! Besides, I didn’t come here to talk about me. It’s about your sister.”

“Helen? What—?” Suddenly he was afraid of what was coming. He signaled the waiter for two more drinks.

“I told you I spent the night at Fire Island with her, but that’s not strictly true. I met her at this party and came back to the cottage with her, but then she asked me to look after the children and she went out again. She was gone for three hours, Paul.”

“Did you tell this to the police?”

“Of course not. Do you think... Paul, would that have been time enough for her to drive into Manhattan and back?”

He thought about it and nodded. “Just barely. Are you implying that Helen drove into town and killed Ralph Jennings?”

“Of course not! I’m just telling you because that’s what the police might think if they get wind of this. Helen is a friend of mine, and I think she needs help. I think you’re the only one who can reach her right now.”

“What about her husband?”

“Oh, sure! I’m going to go to Jack Winegood and tell him his wife was away from home for three hours in the middle of the night! While he was working! How do you think that would sound?”

“Better than murder, I suppose. You know, another man might be her only alibi if this thing gets out.”

“How’s it going to get out?”

He played with his glass, forming moist circles on the table. “Things have a way of getting around. If there’s another man, he might talk. And if she took the ferry, several people must have seen her.”

Sharon leaned back in her chair. “So now you can worry about it, too.”

“Did she get a phone call while you were with her last night?”

“No. Not after we got back to the cottage. This all seemed to have been set up before.”

He knew he’d have to face Helen with his knowledge. They’d never had secrets from one another, not all through childhood when they confided their innermost thoughts while hanging upside down from the big elm in Grandmother’s yard. “All right,” he said finally. “Thanks, I think.”

“Is there anything I can do to help, Paul?”

“I guess not. Except... Well, you knew Ralph pretty well at one time.”

“So did you.”

“I know, but not the same way. Sometimes I wonder if I really knew him at all.” He paused, not knowing how to put it into words. “Sharon, did he ever give you any hint that he might have been involved in something not exactly honest?”

“What do you mean?” Her eyes sharpened with something like apprehension.

“He’d been hiding for five years. Why? Was he hiding from Helen, or something else? If it was from Helen, why would he have come back this summer? Not just because he suddenly heard about her marriage. Examine the thing logically, Sharon. The news of her marriage brought him out into the open, therefore it couldn’t have been hatred or dislike of my sister that kept him away.”

“Maybe he reappeared just to make more trouble for her.”

“Then why did he call me first, to ease the shock? Why didn’t he just barge in on her — or better still, call her husband?”

Sharon O’Connell lit a cigarette. “Maybe he did call Jack. He was in town last night, remember. Jack could have killed him.”

Paul tried to examine his current brother-in-law objectively. Yes, he could imagine Jack Winegood committing murder; but would he have shot Ralph Jennings, a man he’d never met, as soon as Ralph opened the door of his room? “I doubt it,” he told Sharon.

“Then it gets back to Helen, doesn’t it? There’s no one else he would have called.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Paul said. “Tomorrow.”

“I’m driving back to Fire Island tonight, if you want to come along.”

“Sure,” he decided suddenly. “Helen and Jack have a guest room. I’ll stay with them overnight.”

The ride out was uneventful, and he began to regret having left his own car in town. Now he’d be stranded out there till Jack drove in sometime the following day, and he didn’t know just when that might be.

“Looks like rain,” Sharon said on the ferry, glancing up at the stars as they gradually faded from view behind a curtain of clouds.

“Summer storm. In another month we’ll be having hurricanes.”

“You’re a dreamer, Paul. You always were. Only most of your dreams are nightmares.” She gazed out at the rippling waters. “Why don’t you get married and settle down?”

“Is that a proposal, or are you just filling in for Helen with the kid-sister bit?”

“Neither one. I like you, that’s all.”

“You liked Ralph, too,” he reminded her, awaiting her reaction.

“Sure I did. I liked a lot of guys back in those days.”

“What was it about Ralph? Why didn’t you two ever hit it off?”

She turned her eyes toward him, just for an instant. “Maybe Helen came along. That’s what you wanted me to say, wasn’t it?”

“No.”

“Maybe I left those kids alone last night, and took the ferry in myself. Maybe I killed him, because he’d come back to Helen again. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Damn you, Paul Conrad! You never change, do you?”

“How should I change? Should I go away and disappear for five years, like Ralph did? Should I jump over the side right now?”

They were mostly silent for the rest of the trip across, and Sharon left him before he reached his sister’s cottage. It was night on Fire Island, but it was a Friday night, and there were parties in progress in some of the cottages. He found Helen and Jack alone on their porch with tall glasses clinking of ice cubes, and he settled into a chair opposite them.

“Can you put me up for the night?” he asked Helen. “I’ll ride in with Jack tomorrow.”

“Sure. How’d you get out here?”

“Sharon drove me. I ran into her at the police station.”

“Anything new?” Helen asked.

“Jack probably knows as much as I do.”

Jack Winegood shifted in his wicker chair. “The police think it might have been a sneak thief who thought the room was empty and panicked when he found Jennings there.”

“Sure. Guys come back from the dead every day to get killed by hotel thieves.”

Winegood shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

“Jack, get Paul a drink, will you? We’ve been sitting here talking and he doesn’t even have a glass.”

Winegood mumbled something and disappeared into the cottage. It was the chance for which Paul had been waiting. He stared into the darkness at the glowing tip of his sister’s cigarette. “Sharon says you were away from here last night.”

“What? Oh, I guess I went up to the store for something.”

“Are you in trouble, Helen?” he asked, wishing he could see her face more clearly.

“Why should I be?”

“You’d have been in trouble if Ralph had lived. You’d have had one husband more than allowed.”

“So I’d have hired myself a good lawyer.”

“Helen... I don’t think I ever asked you this before. Did you still love Ralph when he disappeared?”

“He was the father of my children.”

“But did you still love him?”

The screen door slammed and Jack Winegood reappeared with Paul’s drink. “Hope you felt like gin, boy. The Scotch is all gone.”

“Fine.” He wondered how much of the conversation Helen’s husband had heard, but he didn’t particularly care.

“You’d better get some sleep if you’re driving in with me tomorrow. I have to be at the station by nine.”

“I’ll be ready.”

He sipped his drink, tasting the burning coolness of the gin going down. When Helen and Jack went in to bed, he decided to stay up for a while longer, and strolled down the beach with his glass, feeling the warmth of the sand as it sifted into his shoes. There was a moon now, and the threat of a storm had passed. He remembered Sharon, and headed for the cottage where she was staying, but there was a party going on there. A girl who might have been Sharon was laughingly fighting off a shadowy young man on the front steps.

Paul felt old and tired and went back to his bed.

By noon on Saturday he was back at the police station, seeking out the young detective who’d questioned him. The man’s name was Rivers, and he remembered Paul with a casual greeting. He was still well-dressed, but this time he didn’t offer Paul any coffee.

“You’ve remembered something else, Mr. Conrad?” he asked pleasantly.

“Not exactly. I just had an idea that might help you.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Well, if Ralph’s killer wasn’t just a sneak thief — if it was someone who knew Ralph was still alive and back in New York — then Ralph must have phoned him as he did me. Hotels and motels keep a record of calls made by guests, don’t they?”

The detective smiled slightly. “They usually record the total number of local calls made, and the individual telephone numbers in the case of long-distance calls.”

“Then you can check—”

“We have checked, Mr. Conrad.”

“Well?”

“Ralph Jennings placed only one call from his room, and that would have been the local call to you. It looks as if you were the only person who knew he was still alive.”

After that, Paul had one more angle to try — the nagging suspicion that something other than Helen had kept Ralph in hiding during the past five years. Something else, and that something else just might have been an illicit undertaking of some sort. He’d always been suspicious of the amount of time Jennings spent on the boat with Oat Finley.

He found Jack Winegood at the station, checking the news ticker for the latest out of Washington. “I was wondering if you could help me, Jack. You’ve got an in with the police.”

His brother-in-law blinked and put down the yellow sheet of news bulletins. “What do you want?”

“Can you find out if a man named Oat Finley has a police record? Either here or in New Jersey?”

“Finley? Wasn’t he on that boat with Jennings five years ago?”

“That’s right. He lives out on Staten Island now.”

“You’re trying to solve this murder all by yourself, aren’t you? Mind telling me why?”

“I’d rather not, Jack.”

Winegood studied him a moment longer. “Look, I didn’t want to mention it in the car coming in this morning... I guess maybe you and I haven’t been the closest of friends, but I heard part of your conversation with Helen last night. I know you’re doing this for her, and I appreciate it.”

“Then you’ll check on Oat Finley?”

“Wait in my office. If he has a record in New York City, I can get the information over the telephone. New Jersey will be tougher.”

Paul went into the office where he’d met with Winegood just twenty-four hours earlier, when both of them were still shocked by the news of Ralph’s reappearance and murder. He dropped into one of the sticky leather armchairs and lit a cigarette, prepared for a lengthy wait while Winegood was busy on the phone. The office was a reflection of the man, drab and ordinary, with occasional flashes of interest in the form of framed and autographed pictures. A former mayor, a current senator — the newsmakers. On his desk was a paperweight in the shape of a microphone.

Winegood returned in ten minutes. “That was a good guess,” he said. “Oat Finley’s been arrested twice. The first time was eight years ago, on suspicion of running contraband Scotch whisky into the country from a ship ten miles offshore. The charges were finally dismissed, because of some problem with the evidence — illegal search and seizure. Two years ago, Federal agents grabbed him on a similar charge — this time selling whisky without a tax stamp on it. He was convicted, but received a suspended sentence for a first offense.”

“Interesting.”

“Here’s something even more interesting. Did you know it was Finley who identified Jennings’ body yesterday morning? A card in Jennings’ wallet listed him as next of kin.”

“I’ll be damned!” Paul moved to the edge of the chair, feeling the rush of excitement through his veins. It was a long shot, but it had paid off. “I talked to him yesterday and he never mentioned it. In fact, he pretended to know nothing about Jennings surviving the boat accident.”

“He knew, all right.”

“I guess he did.” Suddenly the pieces were dropping into place for Paul. “When I talked with Ralph, he mentioned that he was dazed after the accident. The water wouldn’t have done that, but a hit on the head might have. I think Ralph was in on Oat’s smuggling activities. He must have known about them, with all the time he spent on the boat with Oat Finley. Something happened that night five years ago, and Oat tried to kill him. Ralph was scared and decided to play dead, until he heard about Helen’s remarriage to you. Then he decided to return and straighten things out — and Oat killed him again.”

“Where is this guy?” Winegood asked.

“Staten Island. I’m going out there.”

“So am I, Paul.”

“I think I can handle him.”

Jack Winegood smiled. “I’m still a newsman, and this is the best story I’ve had all summer. I’m sticking with it.”

They left together, and headed through Brooklyn toward the bridge to Staten Island.

Oat Finley’s boat was there, bobbing gently against the dock, but he was nowhere in sight. Paul squinted into the sun and finally settled on a bald little man who ran a hot-dog stand at one end of the pier.

“How’s the fishing, Pop?”

“Good, I guess. Don’t fish much myself.”

“We wanted to rent a boat. Oat Finley’s boat.”

“That one out there, with the big mast. Nice one, but he don’t rent it much.”

“You seen him around today?”

“Not in the last hour or two.”

“Where does he live, when he’s not on the boat?”

“Got an apartment with a nephew of his, up on the hill. That red brick building.”

“The nephew been around today?”

The bald man shook his head. “He usually works the boat with Oat, but I ain’t seen him in a couple of days.”

Paul climbed the hill, with Winegood behind, thinking as he always did that Staten Island was a place apart. Even the bridge, stretching across the harbor entrance like some steel umbilical, had fed the island only with greater numbers, but not yet with the peculiar turmoil that was the real New York.

“Wait outside,” Paul told Winegood when they reached the apartment building. “He might try to get away.”

“All right.”

Paul went up the steps carefully, wishing he had some weapon, then remembering that this was Oat Finley — old Oat, the neighborhood character. No one to fear, even if he were a murderer.

“Oat!” He knocked softly on the door, then louder. “Oat!”

The door was unlocked. Oat had never been one for locking doors. He stepped in, ready for anything except what he saw.

Oat Finley was seated in a chair facing the door, staring at him with three eyes. The third eye was a bullet hole, and old Oat wasn’t needing any of them to see.

Downstairs, Paul found Jack Winegood still waiting. “He’s dead, murdered. Not too long ago.”

The blood drained from Winegood’s face, and he seemed to sway.

Paul steadied him. “I know how you feel. If Oat Finley was guilty, that meant Helen was innocent. Now we’re back where we started, only worse.”

“She’s my wife, Paul.”

“And she’s my sister. I think...” He was staring back down the hill at the shoreline, watching one of the crafts pull slowly away from the dock. He couldn’t be mistaken. It was Oat Finley’s Brighter II. “Jack! Stay here and call the police!” he shouted, already running down the hill.

“Where are you—?”

Paul couldn’t hear any more. He was running with the momentum of a downhill race, his eyes never leaving the sleek white hull as it moved slowly, but with gaining speed, through the choppy waters of the Lower Bay. It might have been heading for Fire Island, or for a thousand other points on the opposite shore.

“Quick!” Panting, gasping for breath. “What’s the fastest boat I can rent here?”

“Well, mister, I’ve got a speedboat over there that’s pretty fast.”

“Can you catch the Brighter II”

“Oat Finley’s barge? Any day in the week!”

“Here’s ten bucks if you catch it right now.”

“You’re on, mister.”

The man knew his craft, sent it kicking through the crests as if driven by a fury. Within five minutes they were gaining, closing the gap with the Brighter II.

“He thinks it’s a race,” the man told Paul. “He’s speeding up.”

“Catch him!”

“I saw it go out, but that’s not Oat on board.”

“I know,” Paul said. He no longer had to ask who it was.

“Clouding up. Looks like a storm to the east.”

Spray in his face, salty to his tongue, Paul didn’t bother to answer. They were overtaking the Brighter II again, and this time they would catch her.

“When you’re close enough, I’m going to jump for it,” Paul told the man.

“Damn fool stunt! Give me my ten bucks first!”

He handed the man his money, then stood upright, grasping the sticky windshield. “Get a little closer.”

“You’ll kill yourself, mister.”

Paul waited another instant, until he felt he could almost touch the sleek silvery side of the other craft. Then he launched himself into space, clawing for a handhold. One foot hit the water, and he thought he’d be grabbed under, but then he was pulling himself over the railing, rolling into the stern of the craft.

He got shakily to his feet and clawed his way forward to the tiny cabin. He knew there’d be a gun, and when he saw it pointed at him he felt no fear.

“Hello, Ralph,” he said above the roar of the engines. “Back from the dead a second time?”

Ralph Jennings didn’t lower the gun. He kept his left hand on the wheel, but his eyes and the pistol were both on Paul. “You had to come after me, didn’t you?”

“Helen’s in trouble, Ralph. They’re going to think she did it.”

The eyes were hard and cold above the gun. “They’ll know soon enough it wasn’t me that got killed. I only needed to confuse things until I could get to that rat Finley and catch him off guard.”

“I know about all that, Ralph.”

“How, Paul? How’d you know?”

“I didn’t tumble for a long time, not till just a few minutes ago, in fact, when I saw the way you were handling this boat. But I should have. Of course I didn’t see the body, and neither did Helen. Winegood might have seen it while he was reporting the killing, but he’d never met you. And this morning I learned that Oat Finley had identified the body! That really set me to thinking. I’d already figured out how you and Finley were running whisky ashore from ships and selling it tax-free back in the old days. Your story about being dazed after the accident made me think that it wasn’t an accident at all, but a case of thieves falling out. Finley tried to kill you, and you decided to go into hiding rather than call the police and get yourself deeper into trouble.”

The craft hit a swell, and Ralph had to steady himself. “Keep talking.”

“So this summer, finally, you came back. Helen had remarried, and I guess you realized you weren’t being fair to her. You phoned me, and then you phoned Oat Finley, because you knew he’d find out you’d returned. You were more clever with those phone calls than you realized. The police check showed you’d only made one local call from your room. This baffled me, till I realized that there wouldn’t have been a Staten Island phone book in your room. You could have called Information, but instead I suppose you went down to the lobby, looked up the number, and called Oat from there.”

“You’re smart, Paul. Wasting your time in the art business.”

“Oat Finley knew you were going to have to tell everything about your disappearance, including his attempt to kill you and his illegal smuggling business. He was already on a suspended sentence, and he knew it would mean prison for him. You figured he’d try to kill you again Thursday night, but what you didn’t figure was that instead of coming himself he’d send his nephew — who’d taken over as his criminous partner after you disappeared.”

“You’re guessing now.”

“Not at all! You were ready for something, killed the nephew, and switched identification with him, to confuse things till you could kill Finley and be safe from him. But in switching wallets you must have missed a card he carried listing Oat Finley as his next of kin. When I heard that the police called Finley to identify the body, I should have known right away it wasn’t you. You wouldn’t be listing your would-be murderer as next of kin. Apparently this card didn’t have the nephew’s own name on it, because the police only needed Finley’s word to be convinced the body was yours. Of course, the truth would come out quickly enough if they checked the fingerprints or showed the body to Helen, but you needed only a few hours. Finley gave you more time than you expected, because he saw an advantage to himself in identifying the dead man as you — he could kill you later and throw your body in the ocean, and the police would never untangle the thing. He must have figured his nephew wouldn’t be missed. He could always make up a story to cover his absence.”

Ralph suddenly swerved the boat, scanning the harbor area with a quick eye. “Talk faster, Paul. I’m getting impatient.”

“You got to Finley this morning, before he could find you, and killed him. When I found his body, the pieces began to fit together. The first dead man was a kin of Finley’s, and a nephew was missing. If the dead man was the nephew, I figured you’d killed them both — otherwise, why go into hiding again right after reappearing? When I was chasing the boat just now, I could see it was in the hands of someone who knew it. That made it you for sure. Now tell me where you’re going.”

“Away. Just away.”

“You think you can? Even if the police don’t go checking fingerprints, some newspaper’s bound to print your picture from five years ago. The cops will know quickly enough that it’s not your body, that you set up the scene in the motel room to look like you were shot opening the door. They’ve probably got a pickup out for you already.”

“Then Helen won’t have to worry.” He stared down at the gun in his hand, as if seeing it for the first time. “I thought Oat was just running untaxed whisky, and I helped him with it. Then one night I discovered there was heroin in the cases, too. I wanted out, and that’s when he tried to kill me. That’s why he sent the nephew to kill me, too. I don’t feel guilty about killing either of them.”

The craft hit another harbor swell, throwing Ralph off balance. Paul went at him, trying for the gun, but he wasn’t fast enough. There was a single shot and Ralph Jennings crumpled into the corner. By the time Paul tore his shirt away, Ralph’s blood was on them both. He tried to speak, and then died in Paul’s arms as the Brighter II cruised unmanned in widening circles.

Paul looked down at his sister, playing in the sand with her youngest child. “Do you want to tell me where you were that night, Helen?” he asked her quietly.

“I’ve told Jack, and he’s the only one who needs to know. It was just a messy little Fire Island affair, and it’s over now.”

“I’m glad. Jack’s a pretty decent guy.”

She nodded. “Maybe this summer hasn’t been so bad after all.”

Paul kicked at the sand with his bare foot. Down the beach he could see Sharon O’Connell walking toward them. “Maybe not,” he agreed.