Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 31, No. 4. Whole No. 173, April 1958

William O’Farrell The Girl on the Beach

A powerful and impressive story, especially in the characterization and the telling... and you will meet one of the most repulsive females ever delineated on the printed page

The car was a two-tone convertible, red and white, with dolphin-like fins and lots of gingerbread. Garish, John Carter thought — too gaudy even for Florida’s winter season which, this being December, would not start for another month. The car was Marla’s choice, not his. A native Floridian, he did not feel the need of celebrating his escape from dreary cold by indulging extravagantly in color. The sun was enough for him — the golden sun, the warm, gray beach with its curious interlacings of violet shade, and the quick run across the sand to plunge into azure water. Once it had been like that — once upon a time...

Once upon a time, he thought, there was this here lucky prince that had it made. He had enough money, inherited, to get along on, he had an attractive wife and a good strong body, and his reflexes were normal and his mind was okay, too. Then one night he tripped over an empty orange crate, and wham!...

It was nine thirty in the morning and he and Marla were driving east along the Beach Road straight into the sun. He opened the glove compartment, got out a pair of dark glasses, and put them on.

“Want me to put the top up?” Marla asked.

“Why bother? We’re almost there.”

Sitting on his left hip, as he was, and with his eyes shielded by the glasses, it was easy to study Marla without her knowledge. Except for her variable hair, she was a pleas-ant-looking girl, quiet in voice and appearance, and quite predictable. Twenty-eight years old — three years younger than himself — with high cheekbones and large gray eyes that should have been serene but, at the moment, were nothing of the kind. Worried about her marketing, John thought, and the new slip covers or drapes or something, and an appointment with her hairdresser, and how she could possibly get everything done before it would be time to come back for him at the beach. Momentous affairs, all these, particularly the appointment with the hairdresser. He wondered what was going on behind his wife’s tanned and beautifully molded forehead, what color and style she was considering for her hair this time.

In ten months he had seen it change from its natural, and lovely, tawny color, to a hennaed cinnamon, then to dark red. Now it was blonde, so fair that it was almost white. He meditated, but not too deeply, on the apparently mysterious changeableness of women which, in truth, is not mysterious at all but motivated by an innate and universal dissatisfaction with themselves. Then he saw that they were approaching the Circle Bar (hot dogs, hamburgers, soft drinks, and beer) and he dismissed the subject from his mind.

The Circle Bar was on the right, at the junction of the Beach Road and a narrower road of hard-packed shell. The roadstand blocked all vision of the latter until they were actually on it, and Marla had swerved right without cutting down her speed.

“Some day,” John said, “this circus van is going to wind up so much junk.”

“Sorry. I keep telling myself to be careful at that corner. Then I get to thinking about something else...”

Marla drove the twenty yards which was the total length of the shell road and stopped before a sign that read NO DOGS ALLOWED ON BEACH. Beyond the sign was another stretch of twenty yards, this one of sloping sand, and beyond that the water of the Gulf. The beach was bounded on the left by a stony projecting finger known as the Point of Rocks. It had no boundary on the right for several miles. A few heads floated like coconuts in the water, and a few people were lying on the sand. A man walked by, holding in two muscular black poodles on a double leash. A dog of unspecified breed, unleashed, raced round and round them, barking. So much for signs, John thought. Marla got out, walked around the car, and opened the door at his side.

“You go ahead. I’ll bring the chair,” she said.

“I can carry it.”

“Probably, but there’s no reason why you should.”

John got out. First he pivoted on the seat until he had managed to worm his legs through the open door. Then, with the help of his rubber-tipped cane, he heaved himself upright. Fire smoldered in his hip. He looked away while Marla wrestled with the deck chair. He stumped forward when he heard the car door slam.

Marla passed him on the sand. By the time he reached his accustomed spot she had set up the chair. He let himself down gently, but the canvas chair was low and getting seated was always hazardous. He panted a little when finally he managed it.

“Got your book? Okay,” Marla said. “Now what else will you need? Cigarettes? Coca Cola? Beer?”

“I don’t need a thing.”

“Nice day. Maybe I’ll have a swim when I come back.”

“The ocean’ll be here. And so will I.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s true. See you.” She walked back to the car. He took a paper-backed book from his pocket. One paragraph was all he could read. Then he snapped the book shut and put it away.

Two young women strolled by. They were pretty and had nice figures. He watched them, but without any twinge of desire. Gloomily, rather, because he knew that for them — and for their millions of sisters — he was no longer an object of interested speculation. He was washed up, through, a cripple. His mouth, which would have been a good mouth had it not been thinned by bitterness, opened and closed as he drew a sharp, unsatisfying breath. The air was clean, having the ozonic, healthy odor of weak chlorine; nevertheless he felt stifled.

“Hi,” a young voice said from just beside him.

It was Luella, last name unknown, who lived, vaguely, “down the beach.” With an aunt, John had gathered, whom he had never seen. Luella was eleven. Her scrawny body was more amply covered by a bathing suit designed for a girl a couple of years older and much plumper than herself. Two braids of neutral-colored hair hung down her back, and she had a sharply featured little face, brown eyes too knowing for her age, and grimy knees.

“Hello,” he said.

“That your wife just left?”

He nodded.

She said, “Pretty,” and added thoughtfully, “I guess. Where’d she go?”

“To the market, maybe into town to do some shopping, probably to the beauty parlor. Why?”

“I knew her hair was dyed.” Luella plumped down on the sand. Her back to John, she chewed one of her braids, staring at a couple who lay between them and the water. There was a long silence before either of them spoke again.

Then Luella said rapidly, “They’re not married. His wife’s getting a divorce for non-support and desertion and uncompatibility—”

“Incompatibility.”

“Okay. She used to be a manicurist at Rex’s barber shop but she doesn’t have to work now because she lives with him.”

With some difficulty John unraveled the breathlessly complex information. The girl, not the wife, had been a manicurist. “Do you know those people?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then how on earth did you find out about them? And about half a dozen other people you’ve pointed out to me?”

Luella, it seemed, had become conveniently deaf.

“You’re a menace,” he said, half meaning it. “If you were my little girl I’d give you a good spanking.”

The small head pivoted on the long thin neck. Luella’s brown eyes looked sleepily into his and John experienced a sensation similar to a mild electric shock. Before he could analyze it, Luella had scrambled to her feet and started toward the water. At a distance of three yards she turned and walked backward for a moment, grinning. Then she ran up the beach, disappearing behind a clump of colored umbrellas.

Left alone, John tried again to read. He struggled through two pages before he put the book back in his pocket. After that he did nothing but wait for Marla and, from time to time, glance curiously at the couple (married? unmarried?) lying thirty feet away.

Marla arrived at noon, a full hour before her customary time. She wore a new and highly revealing swimming suit completely unsuited to her personality as John had always understood her personality. It occurred to him that, since his accident, she had changed. She no longer seemed to care especially for his opinion.

“There’s your wife,” Luella said. He had not realized she’d come back. “That’s Shelby Granville with her.”

John removed his dark glasses for a better view. Granville, with his black crew-cut and overly handsome face, was at Marla’s side. He wore bathing trunks and waved to John as they approached.

Marla called, “Shelby had some trouble with his car. I gave him a lift.”

“Good enough.”

“Hello, old boy,” Granville said, a form of address John disliked extremely. Beyond that, he really had nothing against the man. He was a mental lightweight, but amusing.

“Hello,” he said.

“I’m going for a swim.” Marla kicked off her beach shoes. “The young lady a friend of yours?”

John was surprised to see that Luella’s face had suddenly grown sullen. “Luella, this is Mrs. Carter and Mr. Granville.”

“Hi, Shelby.” She did not speak to Marla. So far as she was concerned, Marla wasn’t there.

Granville nodded warily, and Luella muttered, “Gotta go now. Gotta go on home and get my lunch.” She walked away.

Marla laughed. “A new facet to your already multifaceted character, Shelby?”

Granville shrugged. “I know her aunt slightly.”

“Coming?” Marla adjusted a rubber cap. Followed by Granville, she ran to the water and waded in. She stood hip-deep for a time, getting used to the cooler temperature, and the receding waves plastered the wet suit to her body. Granville, who had dived in immediately, returned to speak to her. She laughed. He took her hand and guided her to deeper water. Then they struck out side by side, and the ebb tide carried them out of sight beyond the Point of Rocks.

They were gone for more than half an hour. John saw Luella again before they returned. She came from the direction in which Marla and Granville had disappeared.

“No lunch?”

“Nobody home. I ate an apple. Your wife’s down there” — she pointed — “on the beach.”

“Yes?”

“With Shelby.”

“So?”

Luella suddenly giggled. She walked off in the direction of her home.

Shortly afterward, John saw Marla and Granville coming toward him. He tried to get up but couldn’t make it. Marla had to help him from his chair.

They dropped Granville at the garage where his car was being fixed, and went home for lunch. After lunch Marla took her nap. Later she would go out again to finish the day’s round of chores and John, if he did not go with her, would be left with a bitter choice between reading and television. He hated daytime television, but usually he preferred it to being a helpless passenger. When Marla had retired to her room, he limped out to sit on the end of the boat dock in the shade of an overhanging live oak.

The Carter home was on the edge of a natural canal between the Gulf and a small bay. They had a boat, its outboard motor covered by a tarpaulin; the boat had been unused now for months and was laid away in the carport against a more active time. Sitting there, John wondered why the motor had to be inactive, why he had allowed himself to drift into an inertia as complete as that of the motor. There were literally hundreds of things he could still do. He liked to fish. There was a wheelbarrow in the tool shed. Tomorrow he would trundle the motor down here, set it up in the boat, and go out with his tackle. There were also plenty of odd jobs to do around the house. The guard-rail on this boat dock needed strengthening. He had always been handy with tools, and it was merely a question of getting interested again. A change of attitude — no more than that. Tomorrow...

Marla came out of the house, a preoccupied expression on her face. “Is anything the matter, John?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“The way you act — like a sulky little boy. You make me feel as if I’d done something wrong.”

“Have you?”

“Of course not. Coming into town?”

He shook his head. “Rather listen to TV. Good program coming up. Captain Alligator. It’s about—”

“Do you have to be so bitter?”

“I’m not bitter. I just want to listen to Captain Alligator. Do you mind?”

He went to bed that night and decided that in the morning he would skip going to the beach. There were too many more constructive methods of killing time. But when he awoke it was to a familiar condition of lassitude. It tired him even to think of the exertion that would be necessary to install the outboard motor and take the boat down to the bay. He was ready at nine fifteen when, following their established schedule, Marla ran the car out in the drive.

Luella did not appear that morning, but the following day he had been on the beach only a few minutes when he saw her coming toward his chair.

“Hi.”

“Hello, Luella. Where were you yesterday?”

She studied him gravely. “My aunt locked me in my room.”

“Well, that’s the price small girls have to pay for being naughty.”

“I didn’t mind. I had lots to think about. And I’ll get even. Don’t you worry,” she said. “I’ll get even.”

John shifted his position uneasily. “See here, Luella. Your aunt must have had good reason to lock you up. What did you do?”

She didn’t answer, and it occurred to John that this was her set pattern. Asked a question she preferred not to answer, she simply ignored it. A thoroughly exasperating trait.

“Shelby isn’t here today,” she said abruptly. “Was he here yesterday?”

“I didn’t see him.”

There was a smudge on her left cheek. It twitched as she lifted that side of her face in a small grin. “You don’t like him, do you? Your wife does. I bet—” She broke off. A piece of broken glass was at her feet. She picked it up, dropped it in a paper sack that she hauled from under her baggy swimming suit, and stowed the sack back in its hiding place,

“What do you bet?”

Again she didn’t answer, but her grin persisted. It infuriated him. “Answer me, Luella! What were you going to say?”

She turned and strolled off down the beach.

Marla whipped into the shell road at the usual time. She helped him stand up, folded the deck chair, then took it to the car. They were both silent driving home and all through lunch. After lunch he rolled the wheelbarrow to the carport. Straining, he lifted the outboard motor. When he had it securely in the wheelbarrow, he had to stop and rest.

Marla came out while he was leaning against the red and white convertible. “What are you trying to do?”

“I’m not trying to do anything.”

“Okay, sorry I used a dirty word. But if you want that motor in the boat, why don’t you tell me? I’m always glad to give you a hand.”

“I have the normal allotment of hands. Three would only complicate the job. And if it comes to that,” he added sarcastically, “how much do you tell me?”

“About what?”

“Never mind.” He lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow. By a series of lunges — push a step, set the barrow down, then push again — he got it to the dock. Marla watched from a distance but when he stopped beside the boat she went inside the house.

The boat lay upside down on top of the dock. He didn’t have much trouble righting it and letting it down into the water. Getting the motor into place was harder. He could hardly lift it and when he did have it cradled against his chest, his hip gave way. He fell back against the guardrail. Wood cracked sharply as the flimsy rail gave way. He teetered for an instant on the dock’s edge, then dropped the motor and sprawled out on the planks. Water splashed him as the motor struck it and sank from sight.

John sat on a makeshift bollard, shivering. He probably would not have drowned if he had fallen in. Somehow, for a time, he could have managed to keep afloat. But mangroves grew impenetrably on the banks of the canal and without help he would never have been able to climb back on the dock. If he had shouted, and if his shouts had gone unheeded or unheard...

He studied the guard-rail. At the point where it had broken, the wood showed fresh. The break, except for an eighth of an inch or less, was clean. But there was a scattering of sawdust underneath it. He pushed himself upright, got his cane, and went unsteadily to the house.

Marla was in the living room. She had been watering some potted plants and had a pitcher in her hand. She dropped the pitcher when she saw his face. The pitcher broke, spilling water on the terrazzo floor.

“What happened, John?”

He closed the door and leaned against it. “Don’t you know?”

“Would I ask you if I did?”

“Somebody,” he said deliberately, “somebody sawed the dock’s railing almost through. Somebody came damn close to killing me.”

Marla’s hand went swiftly to her throat. “Oh, my God!” she said. “I forgot to tell you!”

“Somebody neglected to tell me something. That’s obvious.”

She stepped gingerly over the spilled water. “I did it this morning. I’ve been intending to fix that rail for weeks — to saw it off and put a new one in. But I got started late. Before I could finish it was time to pick you up.” She tried to kiss him. “I’m terribly sorry!”

He twisted his head away. “Sorry I didn’t drown?”

She flushed. “You shouldn’t say such things.”

“You’d say such things and worse if you were in my place.”

“Now that is something in which I’m interested.” Her voice had suddenly become as cutting as his own. “What is your place exactly?”

“I’m not sure. Suppose you tell me.”

“As far as I can see,” she said, “your place is on the beach. Sitting. Or on the boat dock. Sitting. Or sitting beside me in the car. Not trying to help in any way. Just sitting and feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve been absolutely useless ever since that so-called injury to your hip!”

“So-called?”

“You know what the doctor told me? That hip is three-tenths bruise and seven-tenths psychosomatic condition. But you leave everything — for me to do!”

“Including sawing off the dock rail? Including planting an orange crate where I’d be sure to fall over it in the dark? Deliberately?”

She couldn’t have been more shocked if he had slapped her. “You think I left that orange crate in the drive — deliberately?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

She squared her shoulders, standing very straight. “And if I did — just suppose what you suspect is true — what do you propose to do about it?”

“Protect myself, of course.”

“I know this scene. It’s the one where the wronged husband packs his bags and moves to his club. Unfortunately the Golf Club isn’t equipped for permanent guests.”

“I can go to a hotel.”

“How will you get to town? You don’t expect me to drive you, do you?”

“I wouldn’t trust you to drive me. I’ll call a cab.”

She stepped aside. “There’s the telephone.”

He walked toward it, furious. His foot came down in the spilled water and he slipped. Sick pain flooded him as he landed on his bad hip on the slick terrazzo floor.

Marla got him into bed. He lay there for three days while his right leg performed odd little jerking movements with no direction from himself. He could tell when a spasm was coming. For a while, by grasping both sides of the mattress and exerting all the pressure he was capable of, he could stall it off. But eventually it came back anyway. His foot would kick straight up and try as he might, he could not restrain the accompanying groan of agony.

The doctor came the first day. “Frankly, I’m puzzled by that hip of yours,” he said. “The x-rays show nothing seriously wrong with it. Why don’t you forget your cane and try to walk?”

“Because I don’t enjoy falling on my face.”

On the second day Marla brought him a cup of chicken broth. It tasted bitter, unlike any broth he had ever known. He refused to drink it. Indeed, he refused all further food.

“But you must eat! If you’re just trying to punish me—”

“I’m not punishing anyone. I’ll be up tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m not hungry.”

But the following morning he was still unable to get out of bed. And Shelby Granville came calling in the afternoon.

“Let’s have the truth, old boy. You nursing a hangover or just taking a little rest?” He had the spuriously boisterous manner which some people assume when they enter a sick-room. “You look all right to me.”

“I am all right,” John said. “And I don’t have a hangover. Now it’s your turn to tell the truth. Who told you I was laid up?”

Marla had followed Granville into the room. She stood on his left and John saw what he took to be an unspoken warning flash from her to their guest.

“Well—” Granville said, and hesitated. He seemed confused.

“Don’t bother telling me. I think I know.” John got that far before he stopped. He stopped because, in the circumstances, he was unable to put his suspicions into words. Not before a man who, whatever he meant to Marla, was to him an enemy.

“Time for John’s nap, Shelby.” Marla’s tone was conciliatory. “Let’s go into the living room. I’ll give you a drink.”

“I could use one.” Granville backed to and through the door. “Carter, I want to see you hale and hearty next time I come around.”

“I’ll be hale, at least. That’s a promise,” John told him as Marla reached back and shut the soor.

There followed a bad ten minutes during which John threw back the sheets and forced himself to swing his legs out of the bed. His cane was handy. By leaning on it and holding on to the bedpost, he pulled himself to a standing position. It hurt but, unexpectedly, his leg behaved much better when he was on his feet. He worked down to the foot of the bed, supporting himself with one hand on the mattress. From there, with his cane, he snaked a straight-backed chair into the position he desired. It was the steady prop he had needed. Moving it forward a few inches at a time, he made his way to the closed door. He put his ear against it, listening.

Voices. Marla’s voice and then Granville’s, but either they were so muffled by the door, or purposely had been pitched so low, that he couldn’t make cut more than an occasional word. But it was hardly necessary to hear what they were saying. It was as though, in some previously neglected corner of his mind, he knew the burden of their whisperings, had known what they had talked about and plotted from the beginning. He inched back to bed.

He dozed a little that night, but there was no real sleep. And in the morning when Marla brought his breakfast, which he did not touch, he was already dressed.

“Well, this is a surprise,” she said. “Glad to see you’re feeling better, but you needn’t have put your clothes on.”

“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I did need. The authorities take a dim view of people wearing pajamas on the beach.”

“You’re going to the beach?”

“I have to go somewhere. I can’t lie here forever.”

She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Maybe you know best.”

This time when Marla raced the red and white convertible past the Circle Bar and into the short shell road, John sat tensely upright, fighting to control his jangled nerves. As usual, she hauled out the deck chair, and as usual she asked if he needed anything before she left. On the surface everything was as it had been before but, unknown to Marla, a radical change had entered their relationship. He had found her out. He was convinced she was trying to get rid of him. She had no money of her own and since she couldn’t reasonably expect much alimony, she was going about it in the most elementary of all ways.

Two young women walked by. They were pretty and had nice figures. Perhaps they were the same two he had seen before. If so, he watched them this time for a different reason — enviously, because they were so alive. He watched them until they reached the Point of Rocks, then saw them turn and stroll back up the beach again. They walked along the water’s edge, meeting Luella who came from the opposite direction. Luella climbed the beach toward him. Her paper sack had been replaced by a small canvas bag.

“Where you been?” She halted in front of him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her eyelids were half lowered with a new secretiveness.

“Hello,” he said.

“Where you been?”

“At home. Do something for me, will you, Luella?”

“Depends.”

“Get me a hamburger and a carton of black coffee. No sugar.” He gave her a dollar. “Get something for yourself,” he added when she did not move.

She nodded and walked toward the Circle Bar.

The two young women had stretched out on the sand. They lay close together, talking confidentially, and an aura of feminine mystery surrounded them. Presently they got up and waded into the sea.

“Here’s your stuff.” Luella had come back.

“Thanks. Where’s yours?”

She squatted and laid her canvas bag on a flat rock. With another rock she pounded on the bag. There was a sound of breaking glass. “I’ll save the money. Got a lot of money saved up now.”

“That’s nice. Saving for anything in particular?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She pounded on her bag. Her next question came abruptly. “Where’s your wife?”

“Home.”

“She was here yesterday. So was Shelby,” she added, after a pause.

He changed the subject, irritably. “Luella, what are you doing with that bag?”

“Smashing up this glass. It’s for my pictures. I make real pretty pictures.” She answered unemotionally but, for the first time in all the weeks he had known her, he caught a glint of enthusiasm in the thin, small face. “Got the walls of my room almost covered. You smear paint on first — any kind of paint just so it’s sticky. Then you draw a picture with your finger. Then you get the glass all powdery and blow it on the picture with a bellows. Makes it glitter,” she said. “What you sweating so much for?”

“It’s very hot.”

“Don’t feel hot to me.” She kept pounding with her rock.

He leaned forward, perspiration rolling down his face. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you a dollar for that bag. How about it?”

She looked up slowly, amusement in her half closed eyes. “You want this glass? What for?”

“Never mind. Here’s the dollar.”

“Well—”

He gave her a bill. She examined it carefully, then lifted the canvas bag with both hands, in a sort of ritual gesture. He put the bag in his pocket. She got up and slowly walked toward the water. No further word was spoken but at a distance of several yards she glanced back over her shoulder. Then she giggled, disconcertingly.

Marla had to choose that particular day to have what she called a heart-to-heart talk. He sat at the table while she prepared lunch, and the sugar bowl was in front of him. Marla used lots of sugar. She did not have to worry about her weight.

She said, “We can’t go on like this. Do you realize you’ve hardly spoken a word to me for days?” She paused, then went on. “What’s happened to us? We were so happy until you had that accident. The doctor says that all you need is exercise.”

“Doctors!”

“You pay their bills. It seems to me you’d listen to what they say.”

Talk, talk, talk. She was in and out of the kitchen, but never out long enough for him to open the sugar bowl and do what he planned to do. The suspense was torture. By the time they finished lunch John was exhausted and had to lie down on his bed. And that afternoon Marla varied her routine. She stayed at home until four thirty and then went out for only twenty minutes to get a carton of cigarettes.

Before dinner he was similarly blocked from unobserved access to the sugar bowl, and he got no sleep the first part of the night. He struggled up shortly after midnight. Taking his flashlight he went quietly to the kitchen, found the bowl, and emptied about half of the canvas bag into it. Then he returned to bed and slept soundly the balance of the night.

But in the morning, when Marla brought him orange juice, he sat up quickly. “I’ll eat at the table.” He fumbled for his cane. “Have you had breakfast?”

“Just some juice.”

“No coffee? No cereal?”

“Not yet. Why don’t you have breakfast here? It’s just as easy—”

“I’ll eat at the table!” he repeated loudly, and squirmed into his bathrobe. Marla was in the kitchen when he took his usual place. She brought in two cups of steaming coffee.

“None for me,” he said.

She started to protest, then shrugged. She picked up the sugar to sweeten her own coffee. The bowl dropped to the floor and smashed.

“Clumsy!” she said. “Darn thing slipped out of my hand.” She got a whiskbroom and a dustpan and swept up the sugar. John muttered inarticulately when she finally sat down.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

Nothing, he thought — there was nothing to be done. Fatalistically, he accepted the fact that he was going to die. It was really all right: in such circumstances he didn’t want to live. For the first time in days he ate a hearty breakfast. Afterward, the expected pain and nausea failed to materialize. He was almost relaxed when Marla drove him to the beach.

There were more people on the sand that morning — strangers for the most part, the vanguard of the tourist season. He did not see Luella until three-quarters of an hour before it was time for Marla to pick him up, and he would not have seen her then if a woman lying nearby on a blanket had not suddenly rolled over. Luella was sitting just beyond her. She waved, jumped up, and ran to his chair.

“Hello,” he said. “You’re not collecting glass this morning? No more pretty pictures?”

She shook her head disdainfully. “I got better things to do. How’s your wife?”

“Mrs. Carter is quite well.”

“She was here yesterday afternoon.”

“Was she?”

“Yeah. Her and Shelby.”

He felt suddenly depleted, knowing that he wanted no more of this child. He needed a drink, but there was no bar or package store in walking distance. The Circle Bar sold beer, if he could get there. He tried as Luella watched him, not offering to help. He put one hand on the wooden bar that formed the front part of the deck chair, planted his cane in the sand, and pushed. Then surprisingly he was standing up, unsteadily but in a position from which he could go on to the next step. He was turning toward the shell road when a flash of memory brought him to a stop.

Marla had stayed at home most of the previous afternoon. She had gone out at four thirty, of course, and she could have come here to the beach at that time — but she hadn’t been gone for more than twenty minutes. He looked at Luella. She was still watching him, her face expressionless. He turned back to ask her what time Marla had been here yesterday.

He didn’t get a chance. Seeing him stop, Luella spoke again. “They were here a couple of hours. Behind the Point of Rocks.”

He didn’t tell her that he knew she lied. But she must have sensed it. “You don’t believe me? Ask anybody! She shows up every day with Shelby!”

He left her, limping to the shell road and making his painful way to the Circle Bar. He drank two cans of beer. They had no effect on him. He returned to his chair and caught sight of the picture while he was still several yards away.

It lay on the seat, a rectangle of cardboard covered with sticky paint from which shards of glass reflected the strong sunlight. Wondering, he picked it up. His breath stopped for a moment when he realized what he was holding. A crude, finger-drawn picture of a man and woman. Even in his disgust he could not help admiring Luella’s talent. There could be no mistaking the two people she had meant to portray, nor the suggestive manner in which she had meant to portray them.

He dropped the glob of paint and turned to face the sea. She was squatting on a slight elevation just beyond a group of men.

“Luella!” he called, but she paid no attention. He had to shout. “Come here!”

She got up, but did not approach him immediately. She stopped first to speak to the men. There were three of them. They rolled over on their stomachs to look at John. Then Luella strutted toward him. Strut was the only word for her complacent little swagger. She stopped with one hand on her hip, posing like a grotesque midget-model.

“Whatcha want?”

He pointed to the picture with his cane. “Is that thing yours?”

She nodded. “Think it’s pretty?” “Go away,” he said, “I don’t want you ever to speak to me again.”

“Say—” She pulled herself up straight, offended. “You better watch out. I know about men like you.” She came a half step nearer, undulating her thin body. “I bet you’d like to kiss me, wouldn’t you?”

“Get away from me!”

Luella giggled. She skipped back out of reaching distance before she let the giggle turn into a sharp scream. She ran to the three men and whispered urgently to them. All three got up and stared at John. Other people were looking at him too — curiously. One of the men walked over to a neighboring group. The group’s curiosity changed suddenly to loathing. They, too, got to their feet, all staring fixedly at John. There were seven of them now. They started walking toward him. They plodded through the sand, their arms swinging slightly ahead of them. They walked, he thought, like apes.

He called out, “Now wait a minute—” But they did not stop. They were no more than six yards away when he started backing up. “Now wait—” They kept on coming. Luella trailed behind. The instant before he broke and tried to run, he saw her eyes. They were excited, and her mouth was open wide.

His cane sank deep into the sand. It was now a hindrance more than a help. On the shell road he was able to go faster but when they noticed his increased speed, they also spurted forward and two of them came up to walk abreast of him, one on either side.

“Where you think you’re going, Jack?” the man on the left asked.

“Now listen—”

“You son of a—” growled the one on the right. “We ought to turn you over to the cops.”

“Hell with the cops,” said the other. “We’ll handle it ourselves.”

The two men started closing in. Marla, he thought, instinctively identifying her with sanctuary. There was a telephone at the Circle Bar. If he could only reach it—

“Let’s get him!” someone shouted from behind. There was a growing murmur of agreement.

John broke into a panicked run. After the first few steps he dropped his cane, abandoned it, and kept on. He hadn’t known that he could walk without it, but he was making good time now. The Circle Bar was on his left, ahead. He had almost reached it when his hip, unused to the exercise, gave way. He fell, sprawled out in the middle of the shell road as the red and white convertible raced around the corner. He caught a single glimpse of Marla’s face through the windshield. The convertible was going fifty miles an hour when it hit him.

Marla screamed at the initial impact. She slammed on the brakes, skidded to a stop.

The man beside her nodded his approval. “Quick thinking, baby. Keep it up. We’ll climb out now and you start throwing hysterics. Understand?”

“Of course.” The words were spoken in a controlled voice at singular variance with the piercing screams.

“Let’s go, baby,” Shelby Granville said.