The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

FLIGHT TO NOWHERE Charles Williams

It was incredible. There were no signs of violence or even sickness aboard the ship, and the Gulf itself had been calm for weeks. Her sails were set and drawing gently in the faint airs of sunset, her tiller lashed, and she was gliding along on a southeasterly course which would have taken her into the Yucatan Channel. Her dinghy was still there, atop the cabin, and everything was shipshape and in order except that there was not a soul on board.

She was well provisioned, and she had water. The two bunks were made and the cabin swept. Dungarees and foul weather gear hung about the bulkheads, and in one of the bunks was the halter of a woman’s two-piece bathing suit. And, subtly underlying the bilge and salt-water smells, there still clung to the deserted cabin just the faintest suspicion of perfume. It would have gone unnoticed except that it was so completely out of place.

The table was not laid, but there were two mugs on it, and one of them was still full of coffee. When the hard-bitten old mate in charge of the boarding party walked over and put his hand against the coffee pot sitting on one burner of the primus stove it was slightly warm. There had been somebody here less than an hour ago.

He went over to the small table where the charts were and opened what he took to be the log book, flipping hurriedly through to the last page on which anything was written. He studied it for a moment, and then shook his head. In forty years at sea he had never encountered a log entry quite like it.

“. . . the blue, and that last, haunting flash of silver, gesturing as it died. It was beckoning. Toward the rapture. The rapture . . .”

Before he closed the book he took something from between the pages and stared at it. It was a single long strand of ash-blonde hair. He shook his head again.

Putting the book under his arm, he picked up the small satchel which had been lying in the other bunk and jerked his head for the two seamen to follow him back on deck.

A few yards away in the red sunset the master of the American tanker Joseph H. Hallock waited on her bridge for the mate to come aboard.

Freya, of San Juan, P.R., it said under her stern, and the master of the tanker studied her curiously while he waited for the mate. She was a long way from home. He wondered what she was doing this far to the westward, in the Gulf of Mexico, and why a small boat from Spanish Puerto Rico should have been named after a Norse goddess.

The mate came up on the bridge carrying the big ledger and the satchel. “Sick?” the captain asked. “Or dead?”

“Gone,” the mate said, with the air of a man who has been talking to ghosts without believing in them. “Just gone. Like that.

“Two of ’em, as near as I can figure it,” he went on, sketching it tersely. “A man and a woman, though there wasn’t much in the way of women’s clothes except half a bathing suit. One or both of ’em was there not over an hour ago.”

“Well, as soon as you get that line on her we’d better go back and see,” the captain said. “Anything in the log?”

“Gibberish,” the older man replied. He passed over the book, and then the satchel. “Cap, you ought to be thankful you’ve got an honest mate,” he said, nodding toward the little bag. “Just guessing, I’d say there’s about fifty thousand dollars in there.”

The captain pursed his lips in a silent whistle as he opened the bag to stare briefly at the bundles of American currency. He looked outward at the Freya, where the men were making the towline fast, and frowned thoughtfully. Then he opened the big journal at the page the mate indicated and read the last entry.

He frowned again.

The rapture . . .

When there was no longer any light at all and they had given up the search for any possible survivors and resumed their course, the captain counted the money in the presence of two of the ship’s officers and locked it in the safe. It came to eighty-three thousand dollars. Then he sat down alone in his office and opened the journal again . . .

It was a hot, Gulf Coast morning in early June. The barge was moored out on the T-head of the old Parker Mill dock near the west end of the waterway. Carter had gone to New Orleans to bid on a salvage job and I was living on board alone. I was checking over some diving gear when a car rolled out of the end of the shed and stopped beside mine. It was a couple of tons of shining Cadillac, and there was a girl in it.

She got out and closed the door and walked over to the edge of the pier with the unhurried smoothness of poured honey.

“Good morning,” she said. “You’re Mr Manning, I hope?”

I straightened. “That’s right,” I said, wondering what she wanted.

She smiled. “I’d like to talk to you. Could I come aboard?”

I glanced at the spike heels and then at the ladder leaning against the pier, and shook my head. “I’ll come up.”

I did, and the minute I was up there facing her I was struck by the size of her. She was a cathedral of a girl. In the high heels she must have been close to six feet. I’m six-two, and I could barely see over the top of the smooth ash-blonde head.

Her hair was gathered in a roll very low on the back of her neck and she was wearing a short-sleeved summery dress the color of cinnamon which intensified the fairness of her skin and did her no harm at all in the other departments.

Her face was wide at the cheekbones in a way that was suggestively Scandinavian, and her complexion matched it perfectly. She had the smoothest skin I’d ever seen. The mouth was a little wide, too, and full lipped. It wasn’t a classic face at all, but still lovely to look at and perhaps a little sexy. Her eyes were large and gray, and they said she was nice.

It was hot in the sun, and quite still, and I was a little uncomfortable, aware I’d probably been staring at her. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

“Perhaps I’d better introduce myself,” she said. “I’m Mrs Wayne. Shannon Wayne. I wanted to talk to you about a job.”

“What kind of job?” I asked.

“Recovering a shotgun that was lost out of a boat.”

“Where?” I asked.

“In a lake, about a hundred miles north of here—”

I shook my head. “It would cost you more than it’s worth.”

“But – ” she protested, the gray eyes deadly serious. “You wouldn’t have to take a diving suit and air pump and all that stuff. I thought perhaps you had one of those aqualung outfits.”

“We do,” I said. “In fact, I’ve got one of my own. But it would still be cheaper to buy a new shotgun.”

“No,” she said. “Perhaps I’d better explain. It’s quite an expensive one. A single-barreled trap gun with a lot of engraving and a custom stock. I think it cost around seven hundred dollars.”

I whistled. “How’d a gun like that ever fall in a lake?”

“My husband was going out to the duck blind one morning and it accidentally fell out of the skiff.”

I looked at her for a moment, not saying anything. There was something odd about it. What kind of fool would be silly enough to take a $700 trap gun into a duck blind? And even if he had money enough to buy them by the dozen, a single-barreled gun was a poor thing to hunt ducks with.

“How deep is the water?” I asked.

“Ten or twelve feet, I think.”

“Well, look. I’ll tell you how to get your gun back. Any neighborhood kid can do it, for five dollars. Get a pair of goggles, or a diving mask. You can buy them at any dime store. Go out and anchor your skiff where the gun went overboard and send the kid down to look for it. Take a piece of fishline to haul it up with when he locates it.”

“It’s not quite that simple,” she said. “You see, it’s about three hundred yards from the houseboat to where the duck blind is, and we’re not sure where it fell out.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It was early in the morning, and still dark.”

“Didn’t he hear it?”

“No. I think he said there was quite a wind blowing.”

It made a little sense. “All right,” I said. “I’ll find it for you. When do we start?”

“Right now,” she said. “Unless you have another job.”

“No. I’m not doing anything.”

She smiled again. “That’s fine. We’ll go in my car, if it’s all right with you. Will your equipment fit in back?”

“Sure,” I said.

I got my gear and changed into some sports clothes. She handed me the car keys and I put everything in the trunk.

As soon as we were out the gate she fumbled in her bag for a cigarette. I lit one for her, and another for myself. She drove well in traffic, but seemed to do an unnecessary amount of winding around to get out on the right highway. She kept checking the rear-view mirror, too, but I didn’t pay much attention to that. I did it myself when I was driving. You never knew when some meathead might try to climb over your bumper.

When we were out on the highway at last she settled a little in the seat and unleashed a few more horses. We rolled smoothly along at 60. It was a fine machine, a 1954 hardtop convertible. I looked around the inside of it. She had beautiful legs. I looked back at the road.

“Bill Manning, isn’t it?” she asked. “That wouldn’t be William Stacey Manning, by any chance?”

I looked around quickly. “How did you know?” Then I remembered. “Oh. You read that wheeze about me in the paper?”

It had appeared a few days ago, one of those interesting-character-about-the-waterfront sort of things. It had started with the fact that I’d won a couple of star class races out at the yacht club; that I’d deck-handed a couple of times on that run down to Bermuda and was a sailing nut; that I’d gone to M.I.T. for three years before the war. It was a good thing I hadn’t said anything about the four or five stories I’d sold. I’d have been Somerset Maugham, with flippers.

Then an odd thought struck me. I hadn’t used my middle name during that interview. In fact, I hadn’t used it since I’d left New England.

She nodded. “Yes. I read it. And I was sure you must be the same Manning who’d written those sea stories. Why haven’t you done any more?”

“I wasn’t a very successful writer,” I said.

She was looking ahead at the road. “Are you married?”

“I was,” I said. “Divorced. Three years ago.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. I mean, I didn’t intend to pry—”

“It’s all right,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about it.

It was just a mess but it was over and finished. A lot of it had been my fault, and knowing it didn’t help much. Catherine and I hadn’t agreed about my job, my interests in boating or writing – or anything. She’d wanted me to play office politics and golf. We finally divided everything and quit.

I had learned diving and salvage work in the Navy during the war, and after the wreckage settled I drifted back into it, moving around morosely from job to job and going farther south all the time. If you were going to dive you might as well do it in warm water. It was that aimless.

She looked at me and said, “I gathered you’ve had lots of experience with boats?”

I nodded. “I was brought up around them. My father sailed, and belonged to a yacht club. I was sailing a dinghy by the time I started to school. After the war I did quite a bit of ocean yacht racing, as a crew member. And a friend and I cruised the Caribbean in an old yawl for about eight months in 1946.”

“I see,” she said thoughtfully. “Do you know navigation?”

“Yes,” I said. “Though I’m probably pretty rusty at it. I haven’t used it for a long time.”

I had an odd impression she was pumping me, for some reason. It didn’t make much sense. Why all this interest in boats? I couldn’t see what blue-water sailing and celestial navigation had to do with finding a shotgun lost overboard in some piddling lake.

She never did say anything about herself, I noticed, and I didn’t ask. She always kept working the conversation around to me, and inside an hour she had most of the story without ever seeming actually to be nosy.

We went through another small town stacked along the highway in the hot sun. A few miles beyond the town she turned off the pavement onto a dirt road going up over a hill between some cotton fields. We passed a few dilapidated farmhouses at first, but then they began to thin out. It was desolate country, mostly sand and scrub pine, and we met no one else at all. After about four miles we turned off this onto a private road which was only a pair of ruts running off through the trees. I got out to open the gate. There was a sign nailed to it which read: Posted. Keep Out. I gathered it was a private gun club her husband belonged to, but she didn’t say. Another car had been through recently, probably within the last day or two, breaking the crust in the ruts.

We went on for about a mile and then the road ended abruptly. She stopped. “Here we are,” she said.

It was a beautiful place, and almost ringingly silent the minute the car stopped. The houseboat was moored to a pier in the shade of big moss-draped trees at the water’s edge, and beyond it I could see the flat surface of the lake burning like a mirror in the sun.

She unlocked the trunk and I took my gear out. “I have a key to the houseboat,” she said. “You can change in there.”

She led the way, disturbingly out of place in this wilderness with her smooth blonde head and smart grooming, the slim spikes of her heels tapping against the planks. I noticed the pier ran on around the end of the scow at right angles and out into the lake.

“I’ll take the gear on out there,” I said. “I’d like to have a look at it.”

She came with me. We rounded the corner of the houseboat and I could see the whole arm of the lake. This section of the pier ran out into it about thirty feet, with two skiffs tied up at the end. The lake was about a hundred yards wide, glassy and shining in the sun between its walls of trees, and some two hundred yards ahead it turned around a point.

“The duck blind is just around that point, on the left,” she said.

I looked at it appraisingly. “And he doesn’t have any idea at all where the gun fell out?”

She shook her head. “No. It could have been anywhere between here and the point.”

It still sounded a little odd, but I merely shrugged. “All right. We might as well get started. I’d like you to come along to guide me from the surface. You’d better change into something. Those skiffs are dirty and wet.”

“I think I’ve got an old swimsuit in the houseboat. I could change into that.”

“All right,” I said. We went back around to the gangplank and walked aboard. She unlocked the door. It was a comfortably furnished five-room affair. She pointed out a room and I went in to change. She disappeared into another room. She was a cool one, with too damned much confidence in herself, coming out to this remote place with a man she didn’t even know.

Cool wasn’t the word for it. I could see that a few minutes later when she came out on the dock while I was getting the skiff ready. She could make your breath catch in your throat. The bathing suit was black, and she didn’t have a vestige of a tan; the clear, smooth blondeness of her hit you almost physically. There was something regal about her – like a goddess. I looked down uncomfortably and went on bailing. She was completely unconcerned, and her eyes held only that same open friendliness.

I fitted the oarlocks and held the boat while she got in and sat down amidships. Setting the aqualung and mask in the stern, I shoved off.

We couldn’t have been over seventy-five yards off the pier when I found the gun. If I’d been looking ahead instead of staring so intently at the bottom I’d have seen it even sooner. It was slanting into the mud, barrel down, with the stock up in plain sight. I pulled it out, kicked to the surface and swam to the skiff.

Her eyes went wide and she smiled when she saw the gun. “That was fast, wasn’t it?” she said.

I set it in the bottom of the boat, stripped off the diving gear, and heaved that in, too. “Nothing to it,” I said. “It was sticking up in plain sight.”

She watched me quietly as I pulled myself in over the stern. I picked up the gun. It was a beautiful trap model with ventilated sighting ramp and a lot of engraving. I broke it, swishing it back and forth to get the mud out of the barrel and from under the ramp. Then I held it up and looked at it. She was still watching me.

The barrel could conceivably have stayed free of rust for a long time, stuck in the mud like that where there was little or no oxygen, but the wood was something else. It should have been waterlogged. It wasn’t. Water still stood up on it in drops, the way it does on a freshly waxed car. It hadn’t been in the water 24 hours.

I thought of that other set of car tracks, and wondered how bored and how cheap you could get.

She pulled us back to the pier. I made the skiff fast and followed her silently back to the car, carrying the diving gear and the gun. The trunk was still open. I put the stuff in, slammed the lid, and gave her the key.

Why not, I thought savagely. If this was good clean fun in her crowd, what did I have to kick about? Maybe the commercial approach made the whole thing a little greasy, and maybe she could have been a little less cynical about waving that wedding ring in your face while she beat you over the head with the stuff that stuck out of her bathing suit in every direction, but still it was nothing to blow your top about, was it? I didn’t have to tear her head off.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she said, the gray eyes faintly puzzled.

This was the goddess again. She was cute.

“Am I?” I asked.

We walked back to the pier and went into the living room of the houseboat. She stopped in front of the fireplace and stood facing me a little awkwardly, as if I still puzzled her.

She smiled tentatively. “You really found it quickly, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. I was standing right in front of her. Our eyes met. “If you’d gone further up the lake before you threw it in it might have taken a little longer.”

She gasped.

I was angry and I stuck my neck out another foot.

“Things must be pretty tough when a woman with your looks has to go this far into left field—”

It rocked me, and my eyes stung; a solid hundred and fifty pounds of flaming, outraged girl was leaning on the other end of the arm. I turned around, leaving her standing there, and walked into the bedroom before she decided to pull my head off and hand it to me. She was big enough, and angry enough.

I dressed and was reaching for a cigarette when I suddenly heard footsteps outside on the pier. I held still and listened. They couldn’t be hers. She was barefoot. It was a man. Or men, I thought. It sounded as if there were two of them. They came aboard and into the living room, the scraping of their shoes loud and distinct in the hush. I stiffened, hardly breathing now.

Detectives? Wayne himself? Suddenly I remembered the way she’d doubled all over town getting out on the highway and how she’d kept watching the rear-view mirror. I cursed her bitterly and silently. This was wonderful. This was all I lacked – getting myself shot, or named co-respondent in a divorce suit. And for nothing, except having my face slapped around under my ear.

I looked swiftly around the room. There was no way out. The window was too small. I eased across the carpet until I was against the door, listening.

“All right, Mrs Macaulay,” a man’s voice said. “Where is he?”

Mrs Macaulay? But that was what he’d said.

“What do you want now?” Her voice was a scared whisper. “Can’t you ever understand that I don’t know where he is? He’s gone. He left me. I don’t know where he went. I haven’t heard from him—”

“We’ve heard that before. You’ve made two trips out here in 24 hours. Is Macaulay here?”

“He’s not up here, and I don’t know where he is—”

Her voice cut off with a gasp, and then I heard the slap. It came again. And then again. She apparently tried to hold on, but she began to break after the third one and the sob which was wrung from her wasn’t a cry of pain but of utter hopelessness. I gave it up then, too, and came out.

There were two of them. The one to my left lounged on an armchair, lighting a cigarette as I charged into the room. I saw him only out of the corners of my eyes because it was the other one I wanted. He was turned the other way. He had her down on the sofa and off balance with a knee pressed into her thighs while he held her left wrist and the front of her bathing suit with one hand and hit her with the other. He wasn’t as tall as she was, but he was big across the shoulders.

I caught the arm just as he drew it back again. He let her go. Even taken by surprise that way, he was falling into a crouch and bringing his left up as he stepped back. But I was already swinging, and it was too sudden and unexpected for even a pug to get covered in time. He went down and stayed down.

I started for him again, but something made me jerk my eyes around to the other one. Maybe it was just a flicker of movement. It couldn’t have been any more than that, but now instead of a cigarette lighter in his hand there was a gun.

He gestured casually with the muzzle of it for me to move back and stay there. I moved.

I was ten feet from him. He was safe enough, and knew it. I watched him, still angry but beginning to get control of myself now. I didn’t have the faintest idea what I’d walked into, except that it looked dangerous. I couldn’t place them. They weren’t police. And they obviously weren’t private detectives hired by her husband, because it was her husband they were looking for. Somebody named Macaulay, and she’d told me her name was Wayne. It was a total blank.

The one I’d hit was getting up. Pug was written all over him. He moved in on me clearing his head, cat-like, ready. He was a good six inches shorter than I was, but he had cocky shoulders and big arms, and I could see the bright, eager malice with which he sized me up. He was a tough little man who was going to cut a bigger one down to size.

“Drop it,” the lounging one said.

“Let me take him.” The plea was harsh and urgent.

The other shook his head indifferently. He was long, loose-limbed, and casual, dressed in a tweed jacket and flannels. I couldn’t tab him. He might have been a college miler or a minor poet, except for the cool and unruffled deadliness in the eyes. He had something about him which told me he knew his business.

“All right,” the pug said reluctantly. He looked hungrily at me, and then at the girl. “You want me to ask her some more?”

I waited, feeling the hot tension in the room. It was going to be rough if he started asking her some more. I wasn’t any hero, and didn’t want to be one, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you could watch for very long without losing your head, and with Tweed Jacket you probably never lost it more than once.

Tweed Jacket’s eyes flicked from me to the girl and he shook his head again. “Waste of time,” he said. “He’d scarcely be here, not with her boyfriend. Check the rooms, though; look at the ashtrays. You know his cigarettes.”

The pug went out, bumping me off balance with a hard shoulder as he went past. I said nothing. He turned his face a little and we looked at each other. I remembered the obscene brutality of the way he was holding and hitting her, and the yearning in the stare was mutual.

There was silence in the room except for Shannon Wayne’s stirring on the sofa. She sat up, her face puffed and inflamed; her eyes wet with involuntary tears. She clutched the torn strap of her bathing suit, fumblingly, watching Tweed Jacket with fear in her eyes. Tweed Jacket ignored us. The pug came back.

“Nothing. Nobody here for a long time, from the looks of it.”

He looked at me hopefully. “How about Big Boy? Let’s ask him.”

“Forget it. Stick to business.”

There was no longer any doubt as to who was boss, but the pug wanted me so badly he tried once more. “This is a quiet place to ask, and he might know Macaulay.”

Tweed Jacket waved him toward the door. “No,” he said. His eyes flicked over the girl’s figure again coolly. “It’s Mrs Macaulay he’s interested in.” They left.

In the dead silence I could hear their footsteps retreating along the pier, and in a moment the car started. I breathed deeply. Tweed Jacket’s manner covered a very professional sort of deadliness, and it could easily have gone the other way. Only the profit motive was lacking. He simply didn’t believe Macaulay was here.

I turned. She was still holding the front of the bathing suit. “Thank you,” she said, without any emotion whatever, and looked away from me. “I’m sorry you had to become involved. As soon as I can change, I’ll drive you back to town.”

It wasn’t until ten, that night, that I said goodbye to Shannon Macaulay. We’d driven back to town and stopped at a cocktail lounge. She’d cleared up some of the questions that had been hanging in my mind. She did know where her husband was. He had been an insurance executive for a marine underwriters outfit in New York. He wasn’t in trouble with his firm or the police. I could check that by calling them, she said. The Tweed Jacket, whose name was Barclay, represented some syndicate who were looking for her husband. Why? She evaded that one. I wasn’t satisfied with that, but I went along.

And where did I come in? Easy. The phony dive act was necessary because Shannon had to sound me out. See what kind of a guy I was. Check my experience against that article she’d read about me.

They needed more than a diver. Specifically, they wanted me to buy and outfit a boat and take them off the Yucatan coast to recover something from a sunken plane. Then I was to land them secretly in Central America. That explained her questions about my navigational experiences in the Gulf and the Caribbean. What was in it for me? She’d said, “The boat is yours. Plus five thousand dollars.”

I’d whistled softly. There was nothing cheap about this deal. I could see myself cruising the world in the Ballerina. She was a beautiful auxiliary sloop. I’d wanted her even before she’d been put up for sale. With the Ballerina and five thousand bucks I could live the kind of life I always wanted. I could work and play as I pleased. Manning of the Ballerina.

That about clinched it. That and Shannon Macaulay. She’d been awfully good about my misunderstanding of her motives that afternoon and grateful for what I’d done.

Look, I asked myself, what was with Shannon Macaulay? I didn’t know anything about her. Except that she was married. And her husband was on the lam from a bunch of mobsters. So she was tall. So she was nice-looking. So something said sexy when you looked at her body and her face, and sweet when you looked at her eyes. I had seen women before, hadn’t I? I must have. They couldn’t be something entirely new to a man 33 years old, who’d been married once for four years. So relax.

I tried to relax walking back to the pier, but it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t figure the Macaulay guy. What was he mixed up with? Why was he so sure he could spot the plane? How did he figure he could shake this mob with something as easy to spot as this big beautiful blonde wife of his? I knew landing them secretly in a foreign country wasn’t legal. And I didn’t like the possibilities of tangling with Tweed Jacket and his buddy again, but those were risks I’d have to take.

Relax? Hell, I’d wanted to drive her home, but I knew how stupid that was the minute I’d said it. She gave me her number and told me to watch what I said, to make it sound like a lovers’ meeting in case Tweed Jacket was tapped in. We’d arrange to meet once more to give me the money I’d need. Just before she drove away, she’d thanked me, saying, “You’ve got to help me, Bill, I can’t let him down.”

It was about 10:30 when I walked up to the shack at the pier.

Old Christiansen, the watchman, came out. “Fellow was here to see you, Mr Manning,” he said. “He’s still out there.”

“Thanks,” I answered, not paying much attention. “Goodnight.” It was late for anybody to be coming around about a job. I entered the long shed running out on the pier. It was velvety black inside, and hot. Up ahead I could see the faint illumination which came from the opened doors at the other end. There was a small light above them on the outside.

I started over toward the ladder to the barge and then remembered that old Chris had said somebody was waiting out here to see me. I looked around, puzzled. My own car was sitting there beside the shed doors, but there was no other. Well, maybe he’d gone. But Chris would have seen him. The gate was the only way out.

I saw it then – the glowing end of a cigarette in the shadows inside my car.

The door swung open and he got out. It was the pug. There was enough light to see the hard, beat-up, fight-hungry face. He lazily crushed out his cigarette against the paint on the side of my car.

“Been waiting for you, Big Boy,” he said.

“All right, friend,” I said. “I’ve heard the one about the good little man. A lot of good little men are in the hospital. Hadn’t you better run along?”

Then, suddenly, I saw him holding and hitting her again and I was glad he’d come. Rage pushed up in my chest. I went for him.

He was a pro, all right, and he was fast. He hit me three times before I touched him. None of the punches hurt very much, but they sobered me a little. He’d cut me to pieces this way. He’d close my eyes and then take his own sweet time chopping me down to a bloody pulp. My wild swings were just his meat; they’d only pull me off balance so he could jab me.

His left probed for my face again. I raised my hands, and the right slammed into my body. He danced back. “Duck soup,” he said contemptuously.

He put the left out again. I caught the wrist in my hand, locked it, and yanked him toward me. This was unorthodox. He sucked air when my right came slamming into his belly. I set a hundred and ninety-five pounds on the arch of his foot, and ground my heel.

He tried to get a knee into me. I pushed him back with another right in his stomach. He dropped automatically into his crouch, weaving and trying to suck me out of position. He’d been hurt, but the hard grin was still there and his eyes were wicked. All he had to do was get me to play his way.

He was six or eight feet in front of the pier, with his back toward it. I went along with him, lunging at him with a right. It connected.

He shot backward, trying to get his feet under him. His heels struck the big 12-by-12 stringer running along the edge of the pier and he fell outward into the darkness, cartwheeling. I heard a sound like a dropped canteloupe and jumped to the edge to look down. The deck of the barge lay in deep shadow. I couldn’t see anything. I heard a splash. He had landed on the after deck and then slid off into the water.

I went after him, wild with the necessity to hurry. But the minutes it took me to break out the big underwater light and a diving mask made the difference. The ebbing tide had carried him under the pilings supporting the pier and by the time I got to him he was dead. He was caught there, his skull crushed by the fall on the deck. His eyes were open staring at me. I fought the sickness. If I gagged, I’d drown.

The next thing I was conscious of was hanging to the wooden ladder on the side of the barge, being sick. I’d left him there. The police could get him out; I didn’t want to touch him. I climbed up to the deck and collapsed, exhausted. I was winded, soaked and the cut places on my face were stinging with salt. My right hand was hurt and swollen.

I had to get out to the watchman’s shanty and call the police. But then the whole thing caught up with me. This wasn’t an accident I had to report. I’d killed him in a fight. I’d hit him and knocked him off the pier, and now he was dead. It wasn’t murder, probably, but they’d have a name for it – and a sentence.

Well, there was no help for it. I started wearily to get up, and then stopped. The police were only part of it. What about Barclay? And the others I didn’t even know? This was one of their boys.

Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking of the police any more, or of Barclay’s hoodlums, but of Shannon Macaulay. And the Ballerina. Of course, the whole thing was off now. Even if I didn’t get sent to prison, with those mobsters after me and convinced I had some connection with Macaulay I was no longer of any use to her.

No, the hell with reporting it. Sure, I regretted the whole thing. But I was damned if I was going to ruin everything just because some vicious little egomaniac couldn’t leave well enough alone. Leave him down there. Say nothing about it – I stopped.

How? Christiansen knew he was in here. I was all marked up. In a few days, in this warm water, the body would come to the surface, with the back of his head caved in and bruises all over his face. I didn’t have a chance in the world. He’d merely come in here to see me, and had never come out. That would be a tough one for the police to solve.

Of all the places in the world, it had to happen on a pier to which there was only one entrance and where everybody was checked in and out by a watchman – No. Wait. Not checked in and out. Just questioned as they came in. No books, no passes. And the watchman only waved them by as they went out.

It collapsed. It didn’t mean anything at all, because nobody had gone out. Christiansen would never have any trouble remembering that when the police came checking.

There had to be a way out of it. I looked across the dark waterway. Everything was quiet along the other side; there was nothing except an empty warehouse, a deserted dock. Nobody had seen it. Barclay probably didn’t even know the pug had come out here. He’d done it on his own because he couldn’t rest until he’d humiliated a bigger man who’d knocked him down. There was nothing whatever to connect me with it except the simple but inescapable fact he’d driven in here to see me and had never driven out again— I stopped. Driven? No. I hadn’t seen any car. But how did I know there wasn’t one out there? The shed was dark. I got a flashlight and checked. There it was in the corner of the shed. All I had to do was drive it out past the watchman, and the pug had left here alive. It was as simple as that.

Out at the gate the light was overhead, and the interior of the car would be in partial shadow. The watchman’s shack would be on the right. I could hunch down in the seat until I was about the pug’s size. All the watchman ever did was glance up from his magazine and wave. He wouldn’t see my face; nor remember afterward that he hadn’t. It was the same car, wasn’t it? The man had driven in, and after a while he had driven out.

Wait. I’d still have to get back inside without Christiansen’s seeing me. But that was easy too. It must be nearly eleven now. Chris went off duty at midnight. All I had to do was wait until after twelve and come back in on the next man’s shift. He wouldn’t know where I was supposed to be, or care.

I walked over to the car, flashed the light in, and saw there were no keys. I leaned wearily against the door. I knew where the keys were, didn’t I? It would take only a minute. Revulsion swept me.

But I knew it had to be done. I dove down, emptied his pockets, and came up to surface again. I hadn’t looked at his face. It took me a few minutes to clear the gear I’d used. Then I tried to fix up my face with hot water applications. After that I changed into dry clothes that were similar in color to the ones he’d been wearing. I dried his keys and started his car.

I hunched down in the seat and drove up to the gate slowly. Chris was in the shack, pouring coffee out of a thermos. He looked over casually, waved a hand, and turned back to his coffee.

I drove the car uptown – away from the waterfront, parked it on a quiet street, and threw the key far into a vacant lot. I was free of him now, the poor little punk. Why couldn’t he have stayed away?

At twelve-thirty I stepped into an all-night drugstore and called a cab. I hoped the driver couldn’t see my face.

We passed the last street and were approaching the gate.

He braked to a stop in front of the shanty. The 12-to-8 watchman was looking out the window. “Manning,” I called out, keeping my face in shadow. He lifted a hand.

“All right, Mr Manning.”

The cab started to move ahead, then stopped. Somebody was calling out from the shack. “Mr Manning! Just a minute –”

I looked around. The watchman was coming out. “I almost forgot to tell you. A woman called about ten minutes ago –”

I wasn’t listening. I stared at the window of the shack. Old Chris was looking out, a puzzled frown on his face.

The other watchman was still talking. “– Chris was just about to walk out and tell you. He said you was on the barge.”

I couldn’t move, or speak. Chris was standing beside him now, looking in at me. “Son of a gun, Mr Manning. I didn’t see you go out.”

I fought to get my tongue broken loose from the roof of my mouth. “Why – I –” It was impossible to think. “Why, I came out a while ago. Remember? When my friend left. We drove out to have a couple of beers. It must have been a little before twelve—”

“You was in that car?” He peered at me dubiously. “I looked right at it, too, and didn’t even see you. I must be getting absentminded. I was about to walk all the way out there to the barge and tell you that woman called—”

He broke off suddenly, concerned. “Why, Mr Manning. What’s wrong with your face?”

I was rattled now, but I tried not to show it to these two old men who meant well, but who would remember everything they saw later on.

“Oh,” I mumbled, feeling my face as if I were surprised at the fact of having one. “I – uh – I was getting something out of the storeroom and fell.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” he answered solicitously. “But you ought to put something on them cut places. Might get infected. You never know. I think it’s the climate around here, the muggy air, sort of—”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Thanks.”

I got rid of the cabbie, who’d be the third guy to answer any questions asked by the police – or Barclay’s bunch of killers.

I tried to think. How much chance did I have now? In a few days he’d float up, somewhere along the waterfront, and the police would start looking. One of the first things they’d do would be to question all the guards along the piers.

Float up? That was it. He couldn’t float up. I had to stop it. I looked downward again, and shuddered. Could I go back into that place once more? Once? It would take at least a half dozen dives to do it, to make him fast with wire to the bottom of one of those pilings. Too much precious time and breath were wasted in going down and coming up.

There was just one more thing, I thought, and then we had it all. Carter would be back from New Orleans sometime this morning, here aboard the barge, and I wouldn’t be able even to look.

I fought with panic. I still had a chance, I told myself. They might never connect me with it. After all, there was no identification on him now that I’d shoved the wallet into the muck. They wouldn’t have a picture of him, except possibly one taken as he looked when he came up. Chris might not have had a good look at him when he came in the gate.

But I wouldn’t know. That was the terrible part of it. I’d never have any idea at all what was happening until the hour they came after me.

I had to get out of here. I was thinking swiftly now. Quit, and tell Carter I was going to New York. Sell my car, buy a bus ticket, get off the bus somewhere up the line, and come back. Buy the boat, under another name, of course. In three days I could have it ready for sea. We’d be gone before they even came looking for me. If they did.

It didn’t occur to me until afterward that never once in all of it did I ever consider the possibility of not buying the boat and not taking Shannon Macaulay.

Suddenly, I had to see her. For the first time in a self-sufficient life I was all at once terribly alone, and I didn’t know why, but I had to see her.

That reminded me. The watchman had said that a woman had called. I was still holding in my hand the slip of paper he had given me. It was a telephone number, the same one she had given me in the bar. Maybe something had happened to her. I ran toward the car.

Calling from the watchman’s shack would be quicker, but I didn’t want the audience. I slowed going through the gate, and the graveyard watchman lifted a hand and nodded. I noted bitterly that old Chris had gone home at last.

I pulled up at the nearest bar and called her. She answered, finally, her voice tense. We put on the lovers’ rendezvous tone to take care of possible listeners. She arranged to meet me at the cocktail joint we’d drunk at earlier in the day.

I was sitting in the car in front of it when she pulled up and parked her Caddy. If she were being followed I didn’t want to go inside where they might get a look at my marked-up face. I eased alongside. She saw me, and slipped out on the street side and got in. It had taken only seconds.

I shot ahead, watching the mirror. There were cars behind us, but there was no way to tell. There are always cars behind you. I was conscious of the gleam of the blonde head beside me, and a faint fragrance of perfume.

She noticed my face and gasped. Tell her? What kind of fool would tell anybody? I had known her less than twenty-four hours; I knew practically nothing about her; I knew she had gotten me into this mess; yet I would have trusted her with anything. I told her. I brushed off her sympathetic offerings, but I didn’t find them unpleasant.

I had been watching the mirror carefully. By this time we were well out on the beach highway and traffic had thinned out considerably. There were three cars behind us. One of them stopped. I shot ahead fast, dropping the other two well behind me. As they disappeared momentarily behind some dunes, I slowed abruptly and swung away from the beach. We were some 50 yards from the road, well out of range of passing highlights. I shut the headlights before we stopped rolling.

She started to light a cigarette. “Not yet,” I said. Both cars went by, their tail-lights slowly receding down the road.

I lit her cigarette.

“All right, listen,” I said. I told her what I was going to do. “There’s only one catch to it,” I finished. “You’ll have to give me the money for that boat with no guarantee you’ll ever hear from me again. The word of a man you’ve known for one day isn’t much of a receipt.”

“It’s good enough for me,” she said quietly. “If I hadn’t trusted you I would never have opened the subject in the first place. How much shall I make the check?”

“Fifteen thousand,” I said. “The boat is going to be at least ten, and there’s a lot of stuff to buy. When we get aboard I’ll give you an itemized statement and return what’s left.”

“All right,” she said.

“Pick a name,” I said. “How about Burton? Harold E. Burton.”

She wrote out the check. I held it until it dried, and put it in my wallet. “Now. What’s your address?”

“106 Fontaine Drive.”

“All right,” I said, talking fast. “I should be back here early the third day. This is Tuesday now, so that’ll be Thursday morning. The minute the purchase of the boat goes through and I’m aboard I’ll mail you an anniversary greeting in a plain envelope, just one of those dime-store cards. I don’t see how they could get at your mail, but there’s no use taking chances. Other than that I won’t get in touch with you. I’ll be down there at the boat yard all the time. It’s in another part of the city, and I won’t come into town at all. I’ve only been around Sanport for about six months, but still there are a few people I know and I might bump into one of them. I’ll already have everything bought and with me except the stores, and I’ll order them through a ship chandler’s runner—”

“But,” she interrupted, “how are we going to arrange getting him aboard?”

“I’m coming to that,” I said. “After you get the card, you can get in touch with me, from a pay phone. It’s Michaelson’s Boat Yard; the name of the sloop is Ballerina. I’m just hoping I can get her. She was still for sale last night. But if something happens and she’s already sold by the time I get back, I’ll make that card a birth announcement instead of an anniversary greeting, and give you the name of the one I actually do buy. All straight?”

“Yes,” she said. She turned a little and I could see the blur of her face and the pale gleam of the blonde head. “I like the whole plan, and I like the way your mind works.” She paused for a moment, and then added quietly. “You’ll never know how glad I am I ran into you. I don’t feel so helpless now. Or alone.”

I was conscious of the same thing, but probably in a different way than she’d meant it. There was something wonderful about being with her. For a moment the whole mess was gone from my mind.

“You were good on the phone, too,” she said. “Thanks for understanding.”

In other words, keep your distance, Buster. I wondered why she thought she had to warn me. We both knew it was only an act, didn’t we? Maybe I was always too aware of her, and she could sense it. “All right. Now,” I said curtly. “That leaves the problem of getting him aboard. I’ll have to work on that. He’s in the house, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. “How did you know?”

“Guessing, mostly. You said they’d searched it while you were gone. They wouldn’t have had to tear it up much, looking for a grown man. So maybe he told you they had.”

“You’re very alert. He heard them and told me.”

“Why is he hiding there? And how?”

She leaned forward a little and continued. “I’ve been wanting to get to this. Here’s the whole story, briefly.

“About three weeks ago my husband spotted them on the street and knew they’d caught up with us again. He had a plan for getting to Central America and losing them completely, for the last time. It was about completed. It involved a man who’d been a close friend of my husband’s in college. He lives in Honduras and is a wealthy plantation-owner with considerable political influence. He’s also a rather passionate flying fan. He’s always buying planes in the States and having them flown down to him, and my husband was to take this one to him. It would get him out of the country without any trail they could follow, you see? He’d merely take off without filing a flight plan, and disappear. It would be illegal, but as I say this friend of his had political connections.

“However, he had to go alone. It was a light plane and its cruising radius with the maximum amount of fuel was still a little short, so he’d added an extra tank. I was to come later, making sure I wasn’t followed. I was to do it over the Memorial Day weekend, and it involved about five different zigzagging commercial flights with the reservations made considerably ahead of time. On a long holiday like that they’d be sold out, you see? Anyone trying to follow me might catch a no-show at one or even two of the airports, but not all of them.

“Two days before I was to leave, my husband came back. He crashed off the Yucatan coast, but got into a life raft and was picked up by a Sanport fishing boat. They docked at night and he got home unseen.

“But now they’ve found out where we live, and they have the place surrounded. Barclay rented the house right across the street, and they watch me all the time, waiting for me to lead them to him—”

“And they don’t know he’s inside?”

“I don’t think so. You see, they searched it the first time while he was actually gone. They made it look like burglary.”

“But didn’t you say they’d searched it again today? Yesterday, I mean?”

She nodded. “He’s in a sealed-off portion of the attic, and the only way into it is through the ceiling of a second-floor closet. He stays up there nearly all the time. All the time when I’m out of the house. I think they’re pretty sure he’s gone, but they know if they keep watching me I’ll lead them to him sooner or later. I hadn’t realized until what happened up at the lake that they might try beating me up. That scares me, because frankly I don’t know how much of it I could take.”

That angered me and made me realize how much more there was to this girl than her looks. No whining, no heroics – she simply said she didn’t know how much of it she could take and went right on with what she had to do. The next time that pug looked at me, I’d look back.

She went on. “And as to what’s in the plane, it’s money. About eighty thousand dollars. All he has left. He can’t take much more, Bill. That plane crash did something to him – and being brought back to Sanport after he thought he had gotten away. And losing the money on top of it, so he couldn’t even run any more.”

“But you just wrote a check for fifteen thousand—”

“I know. Naturally, he left me some so I could follow him. I sold my jewelry, and borrowed on the car.”

I began to catch on then. She was merely handing me the last chance they’d ever have. This girl was a plunger, and when she said she trusted you she trusted you all over.

“Well, wait,” I said. “I can probably find a cheaper boat—”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to go to sea in a cheap boat. And we’ll recover the money from the plane, anyway.”

“Do you realize the jam you’ll be in if I turn out to be a phony?”

“That was the general idea, Bill, when I said I wanted time to make up my mind about you. Remember?”

“I remember,” I said. “Do you mind if I get a little personal? I’ve been feeling sorry for Macaulay because he was up against a rough proposition alone. I’d like to amend that; I don’t know of anybody who’s less alone.”

She didn’t answer for a moment, and I wondered if I’d gotten it off as lightly as I intended. After all, this was an awkward situation for her, and she’d already shown me the road signs once.

It was almost too fast for me then. She slid toward me on the seat, murmuring, “Bill . . . Bill!” her face lifted to mine and her arms slipping up around my neck, and then I was overboard in a sea of Shannon Macaulay. Yet even as I swam into that sea, my mind was trying to tell me it was an act and that the reason she was saying my name over and over was to keep me from having my head blown off. And that’s what it was.

A voice said, “All right, Jack. Break it up and turn around.”

I turned. A light burst in my face, and another voice I recognized as Barclay’s said, “You people are oversexed, aren’t you?”

Two thoughts caught up with me at once. The first was that they hadn’t heard us and didn’t suspect anything. Her reaction time had been so fast they’d caught us kissing, just as you’d have expected of two people in a parked car along the beach. That was good.

But it was the second one that pulled the ground from under me. They had that light right in my face, and they’d be blind if they didn’t see the marks that pug had left on it.

I had never been more right. “Hmmmmm,” Barclay said softly. “So that’s where he went.”

“Who?” I asked, just stalling for time. I had to think of something. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t be stupid. The guy you hit, up at the lake.”

If I denied it they wouldn’t believe me anyway, and when he didn’t show up they’d go out there and ask the watchmen. They’d know then I’d done something to him. There was a better way: talk like a loud-mouthed fool, and admit it. It didn’t have much chance, but at least it had more than the other.

“If that’s who you mean,” I said. “He did. I guess you haven’t seen his face. Keep him out of my hair or he’s going to be bent worse than that the next time you get him back.”

“Where is he now?”

“How would I know?” I said. “Was he supposed to tell me his plans?”

“Skip it, wise guy,” he said. “And get out of town. We’re too busy to be chasing around after your love instincts. Get out of the car.”

I didn’t want to, but I got out. I heard her shaky indrawn breath as I closed the door. “No. No. No – ”

It was a good, cold-blooded, professional job. Nobody said anything. Nobody became excited. I never did even know for sure how many there were besides Barclay. I swung at the first dark shape I saw, because I had to do something; the blackjack sliced down across the muscles of my upper arm and it became a dangling, inert sausage stuffed with pain.

They gave me a good working over. The last thing I heard was Shannon’s screams.

When I came to, she was there on her knees beside me, helping. My arm was numb and I felt sick, but she rested there until the pain subsided.

Driving back to town, neither of us said anything about the way she’d put on the kissing act to keep my head from being blown up.

Finally, I asked, “What did Macaulay do to them?”

She hesitated.

“It’s all right,” I said. “If it’s none of my business—”

“No,” she said slowly, staring ahead at the headlights probing the edge of the surf. “It isn’t that. It’s just that I don’t know the whole story myself.”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“Most of it. But not all. He says I’ll be safer if I never know. It happened about three months ago. He had to go to the coast on business, for about a week, he said. But three days later he called me late one night, from San Antonio, Texas. I could tell he was under a bad strain. He said for me to pack some bags, and leave right away for Denver. He didn’t explain; he just said he was in trouble and for me to get out of New York fast.

“He met me in Denver. It was something that happened at a party he went to, in some suburb of Los Angeles. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he finally admitted a man had been killed, and he had seen it.”

“But,” I said, “All he has to do is go to the police. They’ll protect him. He’s a material witness.”

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “One of the people involved is a police captain.”

“Oh,” I said.

It sounded too easy and too pat, but on the other hand there wasn’t any doubt she was telling the truth. But what about Macaulay himself?

“How long have you been married?” I asked.

“Eight years.”

“And he’s been with that marine insurance firm all the time?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s been with them ever since he came out of law school, back in the thirties, except for three years in the service during the war.”

I shook my head. There was nothing in that. We came into the almost deserted town. I stopped beside her car and got out with her. She put out her hand. “Thanks,” she said. “It’ll be bad, waiting for that card.”

There was nobody on the street. I was still holding her hand, hating to see her leave. But all I said was, “Don’t go out of the house at night while I’m gone. If you have to come downtown, do it during rush hours when there are lots of people on the streets.”

“I’ll be all right,” she said.

“If you see a car behind you on the way home, don’t worry about it. It’ll be mine. That’s all.” I followed her out. It was an upper-bracket suburb out near the country club. She pulled into a drive and stopped under a carport beside a two-storied Mediterranean house with a tile roof and ironwork balconies. I stared at the house across the street. The windows were all dark. But they were in there, watching her as she got out of the car and fumbled in her bag for the key. She waved a white-gloved hand, and went inside.

I went on, looking the place over. It was the second house from the corner. I turned at the intersection and drove slowly down the side street. There was an alley behind the house. A car was parked diagonally across the street from the mouth of it in the shadows under the trees, and as I went past I saw a man’s elbow move slightly in the window. They had it covered front and back. There’d be one at the other end of the alley.

All I had to do was get Macaulay out of there alive. And by that time they’d be after me too.

I made my plans quickly. I drove back to the barge, packed my stuff, cleaned my face up as well as I could. It was morning when I started into town. I thought about the guy under the pier and then tried to dismiss him from my mind. Shannon helped. I couldn’t push her out of the picture at all – nor could I forget Macaulay. His story didn’t jell. I knew something about that tricky coastline off Central America. He’d have to be a superb navigator to find that spot again.

I sold my Oldsmobile for half of what it was worth and bought a bus ticket to New York. Before I got on the bus, I sent a telegram to Carter explaining that I had to see sick relatives in New York and that he’d have to get a new diver. It was the least I could do.

I fell asleep the minute I hit the seat.

We came into New Orleans at ten-fifteen p.m. Through passengers going east were scheduled to change buses, with a layover of forty minutes. I got my bag, ducked out a side door, and caught a cab. I registered as James R. Madigan at a little hotel and went to work on the marks on my face. Another few hours and they’d hardly be noticed.

They might find out I’d left the bus, and they might even trail me to this hotel and eventually start looking for somebody named Madigan, but there the whole thing would end. Harold E. Burton was only a check for $15,000, and the last place they’d ever expect me to go would be back to Sanport.

I studied the rest of it. There’d be the station wagon I had to buy to get back to Sanport with all the gear. I’d store it in a garage after we sailed. After a year or so they’d probably sell it for the storage charges, and if anybody ever bothered to look into it all he’d find would be that it had been left there by a man named Burton who’d sailed for Boston in a small boat and never been heard of again. People had been lost at sea before, especially sailing alone.

After I’d landed them on the Central American coast, I’d return to Florida and could lose myself among the thousands who made a living along the edge of the sea in one way or another, gradually building up a whole new identity. I burned my identification. I fell asleep thinking of Shannon.

It was a little after eight when I awoke. I shaved hurriedly, noting my face was almost back to normal now, and dressed in a clean white linen suit.

A little later, I put in a long-distance call to Sanport, to the yacht broker. I told him I was interested in the Ballerina. He said it was available at eleven thousand dollars. I arranged to meet him at Michaelson’s yard in Sanport at nine the next morning.

When the banks opened I went into the first one I came to, endorsed the check for deposit, and opened an account, asking them to clear it with the Sanport bank by wire. They said they should have an answer on it by a little after noon.

The used car lots were next. Part of my mind had been occupied with the problem of getting Macaulay out of that house, and now I was starting to see at least part of the answer. I didn’t want a station wagon; I wanted a black panel truck. I found one in the next lot. After trying it out, I told the salesman I’d come back later and let him know. I couldn’t buy it until the check cleared.

The wire came back from the Sanport bank a little after one. I cashed a check for three thousand, picked up the truck, and drove over to a nautical supply store. It took nearly two hours to get everything I needed here, chronometer, sextant, azimuth tables, nautical almanacs, charts, and so on, right down to a pair of 7 × 50 glasses and a marine radio receiver. That left the diving gear. Of course there was still the aqualung in the back of her car, but the coast of Yucatan was too far to come back for spare equipment if anything went wrong. I bought another, and some extra cylinders which I had filled. At five o’clock the truck was full of gear, and nothing remained but to check out of the hotel and start back.

No, there was one thing more. I went into a dime store and bought an anniversary greeting card.

I drove all night.

At dawn, I hit the outskirts of Sanport where Michaelson’s Boat Yard was located. I parked the car and went into a diner for breakfast. When the workmen started to drift into the yard, I walked in and got a look at the Ballerina. She was a beauty.

The yacht broker showed up and we closed the deal for $10,500. I checked the work list with the foreman and arranged for a shakedown cruise the following morning. She was in such good shape that he guaranteed she’d be ready for me that same afternoon. Looking her over, I agreed.

Just then the telephone rang. The girl at the desk said, “Just a minute, please.” She looked inquiringly at the super. “A Mr Burton – ?”

“Here,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Burton speaking,” I said.

“Can you talk all right from there?” she asked softly.

I couldn’t, so I got her number, walked down to a pay booth and dialed, fumbling in my eagerness. She answered immediately.

“Bill! I’m so glad to hear you—”

It struck me suddenly she didn’t have to act now, as she had the other night, because there was no chance anybody could be listening. Then I shrugged it off. Of course she was glad. She was in a bad jam, and she’d had two days of just waiting, biting her nails.

“I didn’t do wrong, did I?” she went on hurriedly. “But I just couldn’t stand it any longer. The suspense was driving me crazy.”

“No,” I said. “I’m glad you didn’t wait for the card. I was worried about you, too. Has anything happened?”

“No. They’re still watching me, but I’ve been home nearly all the time. But tell me about you. And when can we start?”

“Here’s the story,” I said, and I told her. We set the sailing date for Saturday night.

And then she asked the big question.

“Have you thought of anything yet? I mean for getting Francis aboard?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve got an idea. But something else has occurred to me.”

“What’s that, Bill?”

“Sneaking him aboard isn’t the big job. Getting you here is going to be the tough one.”

“Why?”

“They’re not sure where he is. But they’re covering you every minute.”

I went on, talking fast, checking with her about the layout of the house and the streets in the neighborhood.

Finally, I said, “All right. That’s about all I needed to know. I think we can pull it off, but I want to work on it a little more. And I’ve still got to figure out a way to get you.”

“And your diving equipment,” she said. “It’s still in the back of the car.”

“I know,” I said. “I was just coming to that. There won’t be time to fool with it, either, when I come to get you, no matter what kind of plan we work out. Anyway, put that aqualung in a cardboard carton and tie it. Pack what clothes and toilet articles you can get into another carton, and put both of them in the trunk of your car. Around noon tomorrow call Broussard & Sons, the ship chandlers, and ask if they’ll deliver a couple of packages to the Ballerina, along with the stores. They will, of course. But don’t take them to Broussard’s yourself.

“Take the car to the Cadillac agency for a supposed repair. As soon as you get inside on the service floor, call a parcel delivery service to come after the cartons. Whoever’s following you will be outside and won’t see the things come out of your car. If he did they’d be hot on the trail in nothing flat to see where they went. All straight?”

“Yes. Now, when will I call you again?”

“Saturday afternoon about five, unless something happens and you have to get in touch with me sooner.”

It took the rest of the morning to check the gear on the sloop and make out a stores list. Broussard’s runner came down in the afternoon and picked it up. The yard closed at five. I drove the truck inside and parked it. The night watchman was another problem; as fast as I solved one I had two more to take its place. I had to get them aboard without his seeing them.

I studied the layout of the yard. The driveway came in through the gate where the office and the shops were located, and went straight back to the pier running out at the end of the spit. The Ballerina, of course, would be out on the pier after I brought her back in from the shakedown. If I backed the truck up to the pier and left the lights on he wouldn’t be able to see them come out the rear doors.

I cleaned the cabin of the boat that night and got a good night’s sleep.

The Ballerina checked out beautifully the next morning and the yardwork was done. I paid the bill and spent the afternoon checking and stowing all the gear aboard her. Later, I bought a paper, but there was nothing about his body’s being found.

With nothing to do, I began thinking of her again. I still hadn’t figured a way of getting her aboard. Finally I hit on an idea. If it worked, this time tomorrow we’d be at sea.

The stores came down in a truck at a little after nine. I looked quickly for the two cartons, took them aboard, and started checking stores with the driver. When he had it all on the end of the pier I wrote out a check and started carrying it aboard.

I was still at it at eleven o’clock when two strange men came into the yard. They were dressed in seersucker suits and panama hats, and were smoking cigars. They started around the yard, talking to each of the workmen for a minute or two.

Then they were coming toward me. I was just picking up a coil of line; I straightened, watching them. I’d never seen them before as far as I could tell. They showed me a photograph, questioned me briefly, and left.

They worked fast. It couldn’t possibly have been more than a few hours since they’d found him, and already they had a picture. Not a picture, I thought. Probably dozens of them, being carried all over the waterfront. And it was a photograph of him as he was alive, not swollen and unrecognizable in death.

Anybody but a fool would have known it, I thought. The pug would have a criminal record, and when they have records they have pictures. Maybe they had identified him from his fingerprints. But that made no difference now. The thing was that Christiansen would recognize him instantly.

I shook it off. They’d still be looking for Manning, who had gone to New York. And we’d be gone from here in another twelve hours. I was still tense and uneasy. It was Saturday afternoon, and it grew worse as the afternoon wore along.

It was exactly five o’clock when the telephone rang inside the booth at the gate.

“Bill,” she said softly, “I’m getting really scared now. Are we all ready?”

“We’re all ready,” I said. “Listen. I’ve got to get Macaulay first. They’re not sure where he is, and if it works right they won’t even know he’s gone. They won’t suspect anything’s happening. But when you disappear, everything’s going to hit the fan.”

“I understand,” she said.

I went on, “Tell him to dress in dark clothes and wear soft-soled shoes. He’s to come out the back door at around 9:10. That’ll give him plenty of time to get his eyes accustomed to the darkness and make sure there’s nobody in the alley itself. I don’t think there will be, because they’re too smart to be loitering where somebody might see them and call the police. They’re watching the ends of it, sitting in cars. I’ll come down Brandon Way and stop at the mouth of the alley at exactly 9:20—”

“But, Bill, you can’t stop there. He’ll know what you’re doing. He’ll kill you.”

“He’ll be busy,” I said. “I’ve got a diversion for him, and I think it’ll work. Now, the truck will be between him and the mouth of the alley. Tell Macaulay to come fast the minute the truck stops. And if anything goes wrong he’s to keep coming toward the truck. If he breaks and goes back he hasn’t got a chance. Tell him when he reaches it to stand a little behind the door and just put his hand up on the frame of the window, near the corner. He’s not to get in or open the door, until the truck starts moving. If he even puts his weight on the running board while it’s stopped, that guy may hear it. Got all that?”

“Yes,” she said. “Then what?”

“You’re next. Have you ever been to a drive-in movie?”

“Yes. Several times.”

“All right. As soon as he leaves the house at 9:10 you lock all the doors. Be standing right by the phone at 9:20. If you hear any commotion or gunshots, call the cops and hide, fast. A prowl car will get there before they can get to you. But if you don’t hear anything, you’ll know he got away. Leave the house at 9:30. Some of them will follow you, of course. Go to the Starlite drive-in, out near the beach on Centennial Avenue. Centennial runs north and south. Approach from the north, and try to time it so you get there at ten minutes before ten. If you look you’ll see a black panel truck parked somewhere in the last block before you get to the entrance. That’ll be me. Drive on in.

“Now, all this is important. Be sure you get it right. This is Saturday night, so it’ll be pretty full. But you know how they’re laid out, fan-wise, spreading out from the screen, and there are always a few parking places along the edge because the angle’s poor out there. Enter one of the rows and drive across to the exit, slowly, looking for a good spot. But there aren’t any. So you wind up clear over at the end. Sit there twenty minutes, and then back out. You’ve decided you don’t like that, and there must be something better further back. So drop back a row and go back to the entrance side again. Park there for five or ten minutes, and then get out and walk down to the ladies’ room in the building where the projector is. Kill about five minutes and then come back to the car. The minute you get in, back out and drive toward the exit. Before you get to it, pull into one of the parking places along the edge, and step out, on the right-hand side. Don’t scream when a hand grabs your arm. It’ll be mine.”

“Won’t they still be following me?”

“Not any more,” I said. “By the time you come back from the ladies’ room I’ll know who he is.”

“You think he’ll get out of his car too?”

“Yes. It’s like this. There’ll probably be two cars trailing you. When they see you go into a drive-in theatre one man will follow you in to be sure it’s not a dodge for you to transfer to some other car. And the other bunch will stay outside near the exit to pick you up coming out, because there’s a hellish jam of cars fighting for the exit when the movie breaks up and they could lose you if they both went inside. There’s just one thing more. If an intermission comes along, sit tight where you are. You’ve got to make those two moves and that trip to the powder room while the picture’s running and not many people are wandering around. It’s darker then too; nobody has his lights on.”

“Yes, but how are you going to stop him from following me the second time? Bill, they’re dangerous.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “He won’t even see me. When he gets out to follow you on foot I’ll fix his ignition wires. By the time he tumbles to the fact his car’s not going to start, you’ll already be down at the other end of the row and in my truck. When the picture’s over, we just drive out, along with everybody else.”

“All right. But you’ll be careful, won’t you?”

“Why?” I asked. I couldn’t help it.

“Couldn’t we put it this way – if anything happens to you we wouldn’t get away.”

“We’ll call it that.”

“Yes,” she said. Then she added, “That, at the very least.”

She hung up.

I sweated it out. It was eight-fifty when I reached the neighborhood and cruised slowly to time it right. I was betting a lot on just a flashlight and a black panel truck. The thing was to give him just a little time to look it over, so I wouldn’t spring it on him too suddenly. He’d be able to see what I was doing, and as I passed under the street light at the intersection of Fontaine Drive he’d see the black sides of the truck. My headlights would cover the Louisiana license plate. At 9:18 I eased away from the curb.

Switching on the flashlight, I held it in my left hand and shot the beam into dark places under the trees and back among the hedges as I came slowly down the street. After I crossed Fontaine I could see him. He was in the same place, facing this way. I flashed the light into another hedge.

I had to calculate the angles fast now. I was well out in the center of the street, watching the mouth of the alley on his side. He was parked just beyond it. I stopped with my window opposite his, and at the same time I threw the light against the side of his car but not quite in his face.

“You seen anything of a stray kid?” I asked, as casually as I could with that dryness in my mouth. “Boy, about four, carrying a pup—”

It worked.

I could feel the breath ooze out of me as a tough voice growled from just above the light. “Nah. I haven’t seen any kid.”

“Okay. Thanks,” I said. I felt along the edge of the window frame in the opposite door. Hurry. For the love of God, hurry.

My fingertips brushed across a hand. I inhaled again.

I let the truck roll slowly ahead three or four feet, and said, “If you see a kid like that, call the station, will you? We’d thank you for it.”

I moved the light away from him. He wouldn’t be able to see anything for twenty or thirty seconds, and Macaulay was on the far side of the truck, walking along with me. But he had to be in it before we hit the street below Fontaine, under the light. I slipped the clutch and hit the accelerator a couple of times, shooting the flashlight beam along the sidewalk. The door opened soundlessly, and he was sitting beside me. He closed it gently.

There was no outcry behind us. I wanted to step on the gas. Not yet, I thought. Easy. I still hadn’t seen him at all. He was only a dark shadow beside me as we rolled on toward the intersection. Then a cigarette lighter flared.

I jerked my face around, whispering fiercely. “Put that—”

“It’s all right,” a smooth voice said. “Just turn at the corner and go around the block.”

I saw a lean face, and tweed, and the gun held carelessly in his lap. It was Barclay.

We turned. I was numb all over and there was nothing else to do.

“Park at the mouth of the alley, and do it quietly,” Barclay said.

“Mrs Macaulay?” I asked mechanically.

“She’s in the house.”

“Is she all right?”

“Yes.”

I swung around the next corner, and we were on Fontaine, under the big, peaceful trees. “Then you finally killed him, didn’t you?”

“Oh. Yes,” he replied, almost as if talking to himself. “Too bad.”

There was no point in asking what he meant. I was too far behind now to catch up in a week. We parked at the mouth of the alley. Across the street I could see the red tip of a cigarette in the other car. Bitterness welled up in me. I’d fooled them, hadn’t I?

Barclay opened the door on his side. “Go in. We’ll be leaving soon.”

“Leave?”

“Sail. Ballerina sleeps four, right?”

He stepped aside in the darkness and followed closely behind me. My mind turned the parts of it over and over with no more comprehension than a washing-machine tumbling clothes. Sail? Four of us? Macaulay was already dead, that was what they’d wanted, wasn’t it?

It was – unless she had been lying all the time. I tried to shove the thought out of my mind. It came back. How would they have known I was coming by in the truck unless she had told them?

Maybe I could have got away from him in the alley, but I didn’t even try. The whole thing had fallen in on me, and I didn’t have anywhere to go. I wanted to see her, anyway. She had lied about it, or she hadn’t lied about it. I had to know.

I had wanted to see Macaulay and when I finally saw him he was a corpse on the floor of his living room. He’d been dressed according to the instructions I’d given Shannon. She was there, shocked and speechless, barely able to keep herself together when Barclay escorted me in. Two of his friends were there, too. He gave his instructions tersely.

“Very well. We’re finished here,” he said. “Who has the keys to her car?”

“Here.” The big blond guy fished them from his pocket.

“Give them to Carl,” Barclay directed crisply. “You’ll go with us in the truck.”

He shifted his gaze to the other man. “Take the Cadillac downtown and park it. Meet us on the southeast corner of Second and Lindsay. We’ll be going east, in a black panel truck, Manning driving. Get in the front seat with him. When we go in the gate at the boat yard Manning will tell the watchman you’ve come along to drive the truck back to a garage. If Manning tries any tricks, don’t shoot him; kill the watchman. As soon as we’re all aboard the boat, take the truck to some all-night storage garage and leave it, under the name of Harold E. Burton, and pay six months’ storage charges in advance. Then pick up the Cadillac, drive it to the airport, and leave it. Take a plane to New York, and tell them we should be in Tampa in three weeks to a month. Tell them about Macaulay, but that we have her and it’s under control. You got that?”

“Check,” Carl said. He took the keys and went out.

I could see a little of it now. They were hanging it on her quite neatly. The police already wanted me, and they’d be after her now too, for killing Macaulay. I didn’t know what Barclay wanted with her, but he had her from every angle. There was nowhere we could run.

We boarded the Ballerina the way Barclay scheduled it and he used my loading plan perfectly. The watchman never suspected a thing. Carl drove the truck off the pier and that was it. I could have jumped over the side and possibly escaped, but he knew I wouldn’t. I had nowhere to go, with the police looking for me, and I couldn’t leave her. The big one helped her down into the cockpit.

On deck, Barclay said, “Let’s sail.”

“Where?” I asked.

“I’ll give you a course when we’re outside. Now, step on it.”

“I’ll have to light the running lights first. Is that all right with you?”

“Certainly.”

“I just wanted to be sure I had your permission.”

He sighed in the darkness. “This is no game, Manning. You and Mrs Macaulay are in a bad spot. What happens to her depends on the way the two of you cooperate. Now, get this sloop away before the watchman hears us and comes snooping.”

Getting the watchman killed would accomplish nothing. “All right,” I said. We moved slowly away from the pier, out toward the channel, going seaward. There was no other traffic.

Barclay sat down across from me in the cockpit, smoking. “Very neat,” he congratulated himself above the noise of the engine.

“I suppose so,” I said. “If killing people is your idea of neatness.”

“Macaulay? We couldn’t help it.”

“Of course,” I said coldly. “It was an accident.”

“No. Not an accident. Call it calculated risk.” He paused for a moment, the cigarette glowing, and then he went on. “And speaking of that, here’s where you fit in. You’re also a calculated risk. I can handle small boats well enough to take this sloop across the Gulf, but I couldn’t find the place we’re looking for. We need you. We won’t kill you unless we have to. Score yourself a point.

“But before you start anything, imagine a bullet-shattered knee, with gangrene, and only aspirin tablets or iodine to treat it. And figure what we could do to Mrs Macaulay if you don’t play ball.

“One of us will be watching you every minute. Do as you’re told, and there’ll be no trouble. Is it all clear, Manning?”

“Yes,” I said. “Except you keep telling me this is no game, so there must be some point to it. Would you mind telling me where you think you’re going, and what you’re after?”

“Certainly. We’re looking for an airplane.”

“You mean the one Macaulay crashed in? You’re going to try to find it after you’ve killed the one person on earth who knew where it is?”

“She knows,” he said calmly. “Why do you think we brought her?”

“Look,” I said. “He was alone in it when it crashed. How could she possibly know?”

“He told her.”

“You’ll never find it in a million years.”

“We will. He knew where it was, and was certain he could go back to it, or he wouldn’t have hired you. So it has to be near some definite location, a reef or something. And if he knew, he could tell her. She’s already given me the general location. It’s to the westward of Scorpion Reef. You know the spot?”

“It’s on the chart,” I said curtly. “Listen, Barclay. You’re stupid as hell. Even if you found the plane, that money’s not recoverable. I didn’t tell her, because the main thing they wanted was to get away from your bunch, but that currency’s pulp by now. It’s been submerged for weeks—”

“Money?” he asked. There was faint surprise in his voice.

“Don’t be cute. You’re not looking for that plane just to recover the ham sandwich he probably had with him.”

“She told you there was money on the plane? Is that it?”

“Of course that’s it. What else? They were trying to get to some place in Central America so they could quit running from you and your gorillas—”

“I wondered what she told you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re nuts, Manning. We’re not looking for any money. We’re after something he stole from us.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s not important what you believe. But what makes you so sure, when you’d never met him and knew nothing about him at all?”

“I know her. She wouldn’t lie about it.”

He chuckled. “Wouldn’t she?”

The Ballerina began lifting slowly on the long groundswell running in through the mouth of the jetties. I searched the darkness ahead and could see the seabuoy winking on and off. I wondered why Barclay had tried to get off a cock-and-bull story like that. He was in control; why bother to lie?

“I found their bag, the one she sent aboard.”

I looked around. It was the voice of George Barfield, down below.

“Any chart in it?” Barclay asked.

“No.” Barfield came out carrying something in one hand and sat down beside Barclay. “The satchel was in it, all right. About eighty thousand, roughly. But no chart, none at all.”

“What?” It exploded from me.

“What’s the matter with Don Quixote?” Barfield asked. “Somebody goose him?”

“Could be he just got the point,” Barclay murmured. “She told him that money was in the plane.”

“Oh,” Barfield said. “Well, I wanted to see everything before I died, and now I have. A man over thirty who still believes women.”

I felt sick. “Shut up, you punk.” I said. “Put that bag down and throw a flashlight on it. There’s one on the starboard bunk.”

“I’ve got it here.” Barfield put the bag down, flipped on the light and I looked at bundle after bundle of twenties, fifties, and hundreds.

I sold my jewelry and borrowed what I could on the car. It’s the last chance we’ll ever have. I don’t know why they’re trying to kill him; it was something that happened at a party—

“All right,” I said. “Turn it off, Barfield.”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘turn it off, you punk.’ ”

“Shut up,” I said.

“How long would it take you to learn enough navigation, Joey?”

“Too long,” Barclay answered. “Leave him alone.”

“I was pretty good at math.” Barfield said. “Want me to try it? I could get sick of this guy.”

“Stop it,” Barclay ordered curtly. “Even if we could find the place alone, we still need a diver.”

“Anybody with an aqualung.”

“George,” Barclay said softly.

“All right. All right.”

“What’s in the plane?” I asked.

“Diamonds,” Barclay answered.

“Lots of diamonds.”

“Whose?”

“Ours.”

“And she knows about it?”

“Yes.”

I wanted to hear it all. “And they weren’t trying to get to Central America?”

“Yes, they were, at first. But Macaulay couldn’t take her in the plane because he had to take a diver.”

I was a chump. A sucker. I’d believed her. Even when I’d had intelligence enough to realize the story sounded fishy I’d still believed it. She wouldn’t lie. Oh, no, of course not. Hell, how stupid could you get? She couldn’t go in the plane because he’d had to add a fuel tank to stretch out its cruising radius. I was their last chance to escape; she had trusted me with all the money they had left – she must have been laughing herself sick all the time. I even imagined her telling her husband about it. Dear, this poor sap will believe anything.

And because I’d believed it I had killed that poor vicious little gunman and now the police would be looking for me as long as I lived. Only I wasn’t going to be living very long. I was scheduled for extinction when I found Macaulay’s plane and brought up what they wanted.

So was she. And wasn’t that too bad? I wondered if she realized just what her chances were of selling Barclay and that big thug a sob-story of some kind. As soon as she told them where to look for that plane she was through. There should have been some satisfaction in knowing her double-crossing had got her killed as well as me, but when I looked for it it wasn’t there.

So I was going back to feeling sorry for her? I was like hell. The dirty, lying, double-crossing – I stopped, puzzled. If she knew what was in the plane and where it was, why hadn’t they grabbed her off long ago? Why had they kept trying to sweat Macaulay out of hiding so they could take him alive and make him tell, when they could have picked her up any time they pleased?

What the hell, was I still trying to find a way out for her? Of course they hadn’t wanted her as long as there was a chance she would lead them to Macaulay. Her information about the plane would be second-hand, and they’d only taken her as second choice after Macaulay was dead. She was all they had left.

Well, I thought, they didn’t have much.

Barclay had me set a course for west of Scorpion Reef. Barfield watched me plot it in the chartroom.

I gave Barclay the corrected course, and he let her fall off another point.

“Now,” he said, “ever handle a sailboat, George?”

“No,” Barfield replied, across from me. “But if your nipple-headed friend can do it, anybody can.”

“Well, you won’t have to,” Barclay said. “Manning and I will split the watches. You’ll be on deck when he has it and I’m asleep. Mrs Macaulay can have the forward part of the cabin; you, I, and Manning can sleep in the two bunks in the after part. And Manning won’t go down there when one of us is asleep.

“It’s after twelve now,” he went on. “Get some sleep, George. Manning can stretch out here in the cockpit and I’ll take the first watch, until six. When Manning relieves me, you’ll have to come on deck.”

I sat down, as near Barclay as I dared, and lit a cigarette. “It would be tragic,” I said, “if he blew his stack and killed me before I found your lousy plane for you and the two of you could take turns at it.”

“Why should we kill you?”

“Save it,” I said. “I knew all along you wouldn’t. Just give me a letter of recommendation. You know, something like: ‘This will introduce Mr Manning, the only living witness to the fact that we killed Macaulay and that his widow is innocent—” ’

“Not necessarily,” he said. “You can’t go to the police. You’re wanted for murder yourself.”

He knew I’d have everything to lose and nothing to gain. But if I were dead and lying somewhere in two hundred fathoms of water there was no chance at all. And .45 cartridges were cheap.

I moved a little nearer, watching his face. It was calm and imperturbable in the faint glow from the binnacle. I could almost reach him.

The eyes were suddenly full of a mocking humor. “Here,” he said. He handed the .45 automatic to me butt first. “Is this what you want?”

For a fraction of a second I was too startled to do anything. Then I recovered myself and grabbed it out of his hand.

“You really wanted it?” he asked solicitously.

“Come about,” I said. “Take her back to the seabuoy.”

“What an actor!” His voice was amused.

“You don’t think I’d kill you?”

“No.”

“So it’s not loaded?” Completely deflated, I pulled the slide back. I stared. It was loaded.

“You won’t pull the trigger,” he said, “for several reasons. You can’t go back to Sanport, because of the police. You couldn’t shoot a man in cold blood. You aren’t the type—”

“Go on,” I said.

“The third reason is that Barfield is down there in the cabin with another gun, with Mrs Macaulay. If you try anything, she gets it.”

“I don’t give a damn what happens to Mrs Macaulay,” I said.

He smiled. “You think you don’t, but that would change with the first scream. You don’t have the stomach for that either.”

“I’m the original gutless wonder. Is that it?”

“No. You’re just weak in a couple of spots where you can’t be in a business like this. I’ve sized you up since that afternoon at the lake.”

“Then you knew what she was up to? That’s the reason you shoved off and left us?”

“Naturally. Also the reason we roughed you up without really hurting you, that night on the beach. We wanted you to hurry and get this boat for them so we could find where Macaulay was hiding. It worked, except that he forced us to kill him. That’s that, and now I’ll take my gun back.”

Sweat broke out on my face. I had only to squeeze the trigger, ever so gently, and there would be only one of them. He watched me coolly, mockingly.

My finger tightened. I didn’t care what happened to her, did I? I cursed her silently, bitterly, hating her for being alive, for being here.

“George,” Barclay said quietly.

I went limp. I handed the gun to him, feeling sick and weak all over.

“What is it?” Barfield’s voice asked from the companionway.

“Nothing,” Barclay said.

I lit a cigarette. My hands shook.

He had wanted me to realize the futility of jumping one of them to get his gun as long as she was where the other could get her. I detested her. Maybe I even actively hated her. She and her lying had ruined everything for me, I was sick with contempt when I thought of her, and yet he’d known he could tie my hands completely by threatening her with violence. I was “weak” all right.

“The hell with Mrs Macaulay,” I said. “What did Macaulay do?”

“He stole three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of diamonds from us. Since you were in the salvage business,” he went on, “you must have known the Shetland Queen.”

I looked up suddenly. “Sure. I remember her.”

She had gone down in about ten fathoms, off Campeche Bank last fall, and the underwriters had let a contractor salvage as much of the cargo as wasn’t ruined. They had saved some machinery and several thousand cases of whiskey that somehow hadn’t been smashed. The crew had been saved.

“So that’s the first time your diamonds were dunked,” I said. “But where does Macaulay fit in?”

I began to get the connection. Salvage – underwriters; the part about his being in the marine insurance business was true.

“They were aboard the Shetland Queen,” continued Barclay. “But they didn’t appear on the cargo manifest or any of the Customs lists. They were in some cases of tinned cocoa which were going to a small importing firm in New Orleans. A cheap way to ship diamonds but tough to explain if something happens to the ship, as in this case. The cocoa was insured, for two or three hundred dollars. We would have looked stupid trying to collect three-quarters of a million dollars from the underwriters when we’d paid a premium on a valuation of three hundred dollars. We couldn’t explain that to Customs either.

“Benson & Teen had paid off all claims, including ours, and were salvaging what they could, but they weren’t going to waste time bringing up a few dollars’ worth of tinned cocoa. They paid, and wrote it off. We made a few feelers. Since they were working inside the ship anyway, why not bring up our cocoa and let us drop our claim? They brushed us. We let it drop, before they got suspicious. We had to wait until they were finished and then do our own salvaging.

“But then some – uh – competitors of ours got wise and also tried to buy the cocoa from Benson & Teen. This was a little too much for Macaulay, who was in charge of the operation. He sent a confidential agent down to the salvage operations to look into this chocolate business on the quiet. This guy asked to have the cocoa brought up and, since he was acting for Benson & Teen through Macaulay, they brought it up. He found out what made it so valuable, devalued it, and phoned Macaulay.

“They had two problems. The first was getting the stones into the States without paying duty or answering any embarrassing questions as to where they had come from. The second was to keep us from getting them. We had two men in the Mexican port keeping an eye on the cargo that was brought in. Macaulay solved both problems at once. He’d been a bomber pilot in the Second World War, and held a pilot’s license. He came down to the Gulf Coast, chartered a big amphibian, and came after his agent and the stones. They were to meet in a laguna some ten or fifteen miles east of the Mexican port. They did, but our men were there too. They’d followed Macaulay’s man and lost him in the jungle, but saw the plane coming in and got there just as the man was climbing aboard. They recognized Macaulay and opened fire, killing the other man, but Macaulay got away in the plane.”

“With your stupid diamonds,” I said.

He nodded. We thought so. “Macaulay didn’t go back to New York, knowing what he was up against now. His wife disappeared also. The firm said he had suffered a heart attack and resigned. He’d told them, earlier, that he had to go to the coast because of illness in the family. We almost caught up to him two or three times. He never tried to sell any of the diamonds. We figured that, just about the time we ran him down in Sanport. He hadn’t sold them because he didn’t have them.

“He escaped us in Sanport, taking off in a plane with a man carrying an aqualung diving outfit. Macaulay, by the way, couldn’t swim. When we learned about the diver, we knew what had happened. The metal box with the diamonds had fallen into the water when Macaulay’s friend was killed.

“We stuck close to Mrs Macaulay, knowing she’d soon lead us to him. But just about that time we suspected he was back in Sanport because of a little story in the paper. About five days after Macaulay took off, a fishing boat docked with a man it had picked up in a rubber liferaft on the Campeche Bank. He told them he was a pilot for some Mexican company and had crashed while going from Tampico to Progreso alone in a seaplane. He took off the minute the fishing boat docked.”

“I get it now,” I said. “As soon as she got in touch with me you knew the castaway was Macaulay. And you realized he had crashed out there somewhere, but that he knew exactly where the plane was and could find it again, or he wouldn’t have been trying to hire a diver.”

Barclay nodded. “Correct. We also suspected he was in the house, but taking him alive wasn’t going to be easy. He was armed and panicky.”

“The thing that puzzles me,” I said, “is that you and your meatheaded thugs never did put the arm on her to find out where the plane was. You’re convinced now she knows where it is, but you let her come and go there for a week or more right under your noses.”

“We weren’t certain she knew then.”

“But you are now. Why?”

He lit a cigarette. Sanport’s lights were fading on the horizon.

“It’s simple,” he explained. “I wrote Macaulay a letter two days ago advising him to tell her.”

I shook my head. “Say that again. You wrote him a letter – where?”

“To his house. Even if he weren’t there she would get it to him.”

“And he’d be sure to tell her, just because you suggested it? Why?”

He smiled again. “Sure, he was an insurance man, wasn’t he? I just pointed out that there was always the chance something might happen to him and he ought to protect her.”

“By telling her where the plane was?” I asked incredulously. “So he could guarantee her being put through the wringer by you—”

He shook his head gently. “You still don’t see Macaulay’s point of view. He knew she’d be questioned. But suppose she didn’t know where the plane was?”

I saw the bastard’s logic. “Good God—”

“Right. Life insurance. He was leaving her the only thing that could stop the interrogation.”

I saw then what Macaulay must have gone through in those last few hours. He had to tell her.

I leaned my elbows on my knees and looked at him. “You dirty son—”

I stopped. I’d forgotten him. She’d been telling the truth.

Barclay had sent that letter to Macaulay only two days ago. I had to talk to her.

Barclay let me, too. He knew he was tying me tighter to Shannon and that I’d be easier to handle that way, so he called Barfield up. Barfield liked his sleep a lot more than he liked me. I could see his face burning as I went below.

She was lying on the starboard bunk with her face in her arms.

“Shannon,” I said.

“What, Bill?” Her voice was muffled.

“How long have you known what these gorillas are after?”

She turned slowly and looked up with listless gray eyes.

“Since three this afternoon,” she said.

I felt weak with relief or joy, or both of them. I’d been right. All the bitterness was gone and I wanted to take her in my arms. Instead I lit a cigarette. “I want to apologize,” I said.

She shook her head. “Don’t. I sold you out, Bill.”

“No,” I whispered. “You didn’t know. I thought you had lied, but you hadn’t. It doesn’t matter that he was lying to you.”

“Don’t make it any worse, Bill. I had six hours to call you, and you could have got away. I tried to, but I couldn’t. I thought I owed him that, in spite of what he did. Maybe I was wrong, but I think I’d still do it the same way. I don’t know how to explain—”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “You were telling the truth all the time. That’s all that matters.”

She stared up at me. “Why does it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I wanted to shout it out to her, or sing it, but I kept my face blank and lit a cigarette for myself.

“I’m sorry about it,” I said gently.

She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “It’s all right. He didn’t have a chance, anyway. I think they knew he was in the house, and anything we tried would have failed.”

“Why hadn’t he ever told you?” I asked.

“Ashamed, I think. He wasn’t really a criminal, Bill. There was just too much of it, and it was too easy, and no one would ever know.”

“It’s too bad,” I said. “It’s a dirty shame.”

She turned her face a little, and her eyes met mine squarely. “You know I must have suspected it, don’t you? Nobody could be stupid enough not to guess there must be more to it than he told me. I did suspect it. I can’t deny it. I was cheating when I told you what he told me, because I was afraid it wasn’t the truth, or not all the truth. But what could I do? Tell you I thought my husband was lying? Did I owe you more than I did him? Doesn’t eight years of time mean anything, or the fact he had never lied to me before, or that he’d always been wonderful to me? I’d do it again. You’ll just have to think what you will.”

“You know what I think? I’ll tell you about it some day.”

“Wait, Bill,” she whispered. “You don’t know all of it yet. When you do, you’ll think I’m a fool. He was going to leave me. He wasn’t on his way to Honduras when he crashed. He was going to destroy the plane and disappear somewhere on the Florida coast.”

I got it then. “And you’d have gone on to Honduras, thinking he would be there? And when he wasn’t, you’d have been certain he was dead? Down somewhere in the Gulf, or in the jungle?”

“Yes,” she said. Then she smiled a little bitterly. “But I wasn’t the one he wanted to convince. If Barclay and his men had managed to follow me down there, they’d give him up as dead too.”

“But running out on you? Deserting you, leaving you stranded in a foreign country?”

“Not quite stranded, if you mean money,” she said. “You see, it wasn’t in the plane. I thought it was, but it was in a bag of his I was supposed to bring down with me. None of it’s clear-cut, Bill. He was leaving me, and he had to double-cross his friend who bought the plane, but he wanted me to have the money.”

Conscience money, I thought.

Suddenly she was crying silently. “Does it make much sense to you that I still didn’t call and tell you, after that?”

“Does it have to?” I asked.

She put both hands alongside her face and said slowly, around the tightness in her throat, “I don’t know how to explain it. When he told me that, I knew I would leave him, but I couldn’t run out on him until he was safe.”

I tried to see Macaulay, and failed again. How could he inspire that kind of loyalty on one hand and be capable of the things he had done, on the other? I said nothing about it because it might not have occurred to her and it would only hurt her, but he had killed that diver, or intended to until the airplane crash saved him the trouble. The way he had it planned, there couldn’t be any second person who knew he was still alive. He’d probably killed him as soon as the poor devil brought up the box in that Mexican laguna. And he would have killed me, in some way.

Then I thought of something else. “Do you really know where that plane is?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yes. He told me very carefully. And I memorized everything he said.”

I wondered. She thought she did. Barclay was convinced she did. But apparently I was the only one aboard who had any idea of the immensity of the Gulf of Mexico and the smallness of an airplane. If you didn’t know within a few hundred yards you could drag for a thousand years and never find it.

Not that I cared if they found their stupid diamonds or not. It was something else. If they didn’t, Barclay would think she was stalling. “ – suppose she didn’t know,” he’d said softly. The implication was sickening.

“He didn’t show you on a chart?” I asked. “Or make a drawing?”

“No,” she said. “But it’s near a shoal about fifty miles north-north-east of Scorpion Reef. It’s around a half-mile long, running north and south. The plane sank two miles due east of it.”

“Was there white water, or did he just see the shoal from the air before he crashed?”

“He didn’t say.”

That wasn’t good. You had to assume too many things. You had to assume that Macaulay had known where he was himself and that the water was shallow enough at that spot to cause surf, so we could find it. If he’d merely seen a difference in the coloration of the water from above, we didn’t have a chance. Then you had to have faith in his ability to estimate his bearing and distance from the shoal in the wild scramble to launch the rubber raft.

I tried to reassure myself. He could navigate, or he wouldn’t have tried to fly the Gulf in the first place. He gave the location in reference to Scorpion Reef, so he must have sighted Scorpion. Fifty miles was only a few minutes in a plane, so he couldn’t have gone far wrong in that distance. And there had to be visible white water. He’d been intending to go back to it in a boat, hadn’t he? He must have known what he was doing.

Then something else struck me. “Wait,” I said. “Barclay told me to set a course to the west of Scorpion Reef. Are you sure you said east?”

“Yes. He must have misunderstood. I said north-northeast.”

“Just a minute,” I said. I went out into the after part of the cabin and leaned over the chart. With the parallel rulers I laid down a line 33 degrees from Scorpion Reef, picked fifty miles off the edge of the chart with the dividers, and set them on the line. I stared. There was no shoal there.

Beyond, another 20 or 25 miles, lay the Northern Shelves, a wide area of shoaling water and one notation that three fathoms had been reported in 1907. Could he have meant that? But if he had, we didn’t have a chance. Not a chance in the world.

In the first place, if he couldn’t fix his estimated position within twenty-five miles that short a time after having sighted Scorpion Reef his navigation was so sloppy you had to throw it all out. There went your first assumption, the one you had to have even to start: that Macaulay had known where he was himself. And in the second place, that whole area was shoal. God knew how many places you might find white water at dead low tide with a heavy sea running. Trying to find an airplane with no more than that to go on was so absurd it was fantastic.

Fumbling a little with nervousness, I swung the rulers around and ran out a line NNW from Scorpion Reef. Barclay said she had told him that direction. I looked at it and shook my head. That was out over the hundred-fathom curve. Nothing there at all. And if he’d been headed for the Florida coast he wouldn’t have been over there in the first place.

I thought swiftly. We’d never find that plane. To anybody even remotely acquainted with salvage work the whole thing was farcical except there was nothing funny about it here, under the circumstances. They were going to think she was stalling. She’d already contradicted herself once, or Barclay had misunderstood her.

Three-quarters of a million dollars was the prize. Brutality was their profession. I thought of it and felt chilly along the back.

I was still looking at the chart when the idea began to come to me. I looked at my watch. It was just a little less than two hours since we’d cleared the seabuoy. Guessing our speed at five knots would put us ten miles down that line. Growing excited now, I marked the estimated position and spanned the distance to the beach westward of us with the dividers. I measured it off against the edge of the chart. It was a little less than nine miles.

Hope surged up in me. We could do it. There was still enough glow in the sky over Sanport to guide us, and if there weren’t all we had to do was keep the sea behind us and go downwind. The water was warm. You could stay in it all day without losing too much body heat.

I hurried back through the curtain and told her my idea.

She was scared. She couldn’t swim very well, but when I told her there wasn’t a chance in the world of finding that plane and that they’d kill us anyway, she agreed.

I told her to play sick, grab the belt as she got past Barfield, and go overboard holding it while I handled Barclay.

She nodded. “Thank you for everything,” she said softly. She thought we were going to drown.

I put my hand against her cheek. “We’ll make it,” I said. Just touching her brought back that intense longing to take her in my arms. I stood up abruptly and went back on deck. It was very dark. Barfield growled something and went below. I sat down in the cockpit, on Barclay’s right and as near him as I dared.

“Nice talk?” he asked.

“Very nice,” I answered.

“She really didn’t know what he was doing, did she?”

“No.”

“Could be,” he said.

My eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness now. I looked astern and could still see the faint glow over the city. Involuntarily, I shuddered. There was a lot of dark water between here and the shore.

“Did she tell you where the plane was?” Barclay asked.

“Yes,” I said. I repeated what she had said, and asked, “Where did you get the impression it was west of Scorpion Reef?”

“That’s what she said,” Barclay answered. “She said NNW.”

“She was suffering from shock,” I said coldly. “I believe she had just seen her husband butchered in cold blood. And, anyway, it’s a cinch he wouldn’t have been to the westward of Scorpion Reef if he’d been heading for the Florida coast.”

“Maybe,” he said. “We’ll see about it after breakfast. Get some sleep and don’t try anything stupid.”

I started to say something, but at that moment I heard voices in the cabin. She had started up.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Barfield’s voice growled.

“I – feel nauseated,” she said. I could barely hear her. “ – fresh air –”

“Hey, Joey,” Barfield called out. “All right to let her up?”

I waited, holding my breath.

“No,” Barclay said. “Find her a pail.”

If she hadn’t passed him we had no chance at all, but it was now or never. I swung. My fist crashed into the blurred whiteness of Barclay’s face, and at the same time I yelled, “Run!”

Barclay fell back, clawing in his pocket for the gun. She came up through the hatch, moving fast, with Barfield shouting behind her. I could see her for a brief second, standing erect on the deck at the forward end of the cockpit with the bulky life-preserver clutched to her breast. Then she was lunging and falling outward, splashing somewhere in the darkness. I grabbed Barclay’s jacket and pushed him into Barfield as he came lunging up. I slid over the rail, and water closed over me. Even as I was going down I tried to keep myself oriented.

The Ballerina was off course now, all of its angles gone. I started to swim back, hoping to spot her blonde head or the white of the life belt, but the whitecaps were confusing.

When the sloop was some 75 yards away, I lifted my head and called out, not too loudly, “Shannon. Shannon!” There was no answer. I wondered if I had gone beyond her. I began to be afraid, and called out again.

This time I heard her. “Here,” she said. “Over this—” The voice cut off, and I knew she had gone under. She was off to the left, downwind. I turned.

Another sea broke over me. Then I was floundering in the trough. The blonde head broke surface right beside me. “Thank God,” I said silently, and grabbed her dress. She clasped her arms tightly about my neck and tried to pull herself up. We went under. I felt suddenly cold in water that was warm as tea. She had both arms about me.

Our heads came out. I shook water from my face. “Shannon! Where’s the lifebelt?”

She sputtered and fought for breath. “It – I—” she said, and gasped again. “I lost it.”

It was the bright sunlight streaming into the cabin that brought me out of it slowly. And then the wonderful nightmare of the night in the water came back to me. The lifebelt was gone, and she knew we couldn’t make it. Yet she’d ignored Barclay’s hailing from the Ballerina as he tried to locate us in the darkness. She’d been wonderful. Scared, but she’d followed my directions fully. Stripped for buoyancy, we tried the hopeless push toward Sanport, orienting on the stars.

It was dawn and we hadn’t covered a third of the way, when I choked up enough breath to tell her.

“I couldn’t tell you before,” I said. “Even – if he had run out on you. But doesn’t matter now. Have to tell you. I love you. You’ve never been out of my mind since you walked out on the edge of that pier—”

She didn’t say anything. She brought her arms up very slowly and put them about my neck. We went under, our lips together, arms tight about each other. It was like falling endlessly through a warm, rosy cloud. I seemed to realize, very dimly, that it was water we were sinking through and that if we didn’t stop it and swim up we’d drown right there, but apparently there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t want to turn her loose long enough to swim up. We went on falling, through warmth and ecstasy and colors.

We’d broken surface again, and then I’d seen the masts of the sloop. They were still looking for us. Suddenly I realized she’d let go, voluntarily. I’d gotten to her, even as I realized that the sloop was bearing down on us. Barclay’d made good use of those 7 × 50 binoculars. I remember Barfield’s whistling as he dragged her aboard. Then I’d blacked out.

It was four in the afternoon when Barfield shook me awake. The husky guy hated my guts all right, but evidently Barclay had told him to lay off. He told me to make some sandwiches and coffee, wake Shannon, and get up on deck. It was while she was dressing and I was preparing the food that the idea came to me. If we could shake these two, all problems were solved. Why go back? Here was the Ballerina, the girl I knew I wanted, and eighty thousand dollars. We could change our names, get married in one of those little Caribbean ports. We’d change the name of the boat and its Port of Registry. We’d stay away from the big ports, cruise the world, and they’d never find us.

The dream faded abruptly. My two friends upstairs were calling from on deck. You couldn’t dream them away.

I had five days, maybe a week. They had to slip up sometime – I hoped.

Shannon helped me bring the food.

Barclay was at the tiller, and Barfield lounged on the port side, his legs outstretched. He drew them in, and grinned. “Going for a swim, honey?” he asked.

She glanced briefly at him as if he were something that had crawled out of a ditch after a rain, and sat down on the starboard side holding the plate of sandwiches in her lap.

He looked to me. “Take the helm.”

He took a sandwich, glanced at me and then at Shannon. “We’re about fifty miles from land. Don’t try any more swimming stunts and forget about the dinghy. I’ve thrown away the oars. We’ll pistol whip you, Blondie, if either of you tries anything again.

“Now let’s get down to business. Tell us exactly what your husband said about that plane crash.”

Shannon stared at him, contemptuously.

“All right. It was late in the afternoon, he said, near sunset, when he picked up Scorpion Reef. He was heading for the Florida coast somewhere above Fort Myers. A few minutes later his starboard engine caught fire. He couldn’t put it out, and knew he was going to crash. He had noticed a reef or shoal below him just a minute or two before, and tried to get to the downwind side of it, where the sea wouldn’t be so rough, but he couldn’t make it. He crashed on the east side of it, about two miles off, and the plane sank almost immediately. He just had time to climb out on a wing and throw the raft in the water. As you probably know, he couldn’t swim at all.”

“Why didn’t he try to get the diamonds off with him?”

“He had stowed the box in a locker so it wouldn’t go flying around in rough weather. The locker was aft, already under water.”

“What about the diver?”

That hurt her. She hesitated, sickness in her eyes. “He said the man didn’t have his belt fastened, and was killed in the crash.”

Barclay lashed it at her suddenly, “Why was he so sure of his exact bearing from that reef? He didn’t have time to take a compass reading before the plane went down, and he didn’t have a compass on the raft.”

She was quite calm. “It was late afternoon, I said. The sun was setting. The plane, the very northern end of the surf on the shoal, and the sun were all in one straight line.”

She looked around suddenly at me. “I remember now, you asked me that, didn’t you, Bill? Whether he could see surf from the raft. And I’d forgotten.”

I nodded. It would make a difference, all right; but you still had to find the reef. It was hopeless.

Barclay lit a cigarette. “Okay. Now, what was the position?”

“Fifty miles north-northeast of Scorpion Reef.”

He stared coldly. “You said westward last night.”

“I’m sure I didn’t,” she replied.

“Make up your mind – fast.”

“It’s north-northeast.”

“We’ll see,” he said crisply. “George, get that chart, the parallel rulers, and dividers.”

Barfield brought them up and the two of them studied the chart. Shannon regarded them as if they were lice. Barclay’s face was thoughtful. “North-northeast—”

I knew what he would find, and waited, tensely.

He picked the distance off and set the dividers along the line. Then he turned his head and stared bleakly at Shannon Macaulay.

“Come again?”

“You asked me what he told me,” she said indifferently. “I have just repeated it, word for word. What else would you like me to do?”

“Tell the truth, for once.”

“I am telling the truth.”

He sighed. “The chartmaker was lying. The nearest sounding shown here is 45 fathoms.” He paused and nodded to Barfield. “George.”

I was too wild to be scared. “Listen, Barclay. This whole thing is going to come unzipped. If he hurts her, it’s you I’m coming for, and you’re going to have to use that gun to stop me. If you think you can find that reef without my help, go ahead.”

It hung poised, ready to go either way. “Don’t be a damned fool,” I went on. “If she were going to lie, would she give you a stupid position like that? Maybe there is a shoal there, or somewhere within fifteen miles or so. All that area hasn’t been sounded. Macaulay could have been off in his reckoning. The only thing to do is go there and see, and you’ll never get there unless I take you. You name it. Now.”

He saw I was right.

Barfield lounged on the seat with a cup of coffee in his hand. “The hero,” he said. “We’ve got a real, live hero aboard, Joey.”

The breeze held steady out of the northeast, day after day, and the miles ran behind us. I’d bought time for us, but I hadn’t bought much, and every day’s run was bringing us nearer the showdown. I knew what would happen when we got down there and couldn’t find any shoal. Something had to happen before then; we had to get a break. But they didn’t drop a stitch. When one was asleep the other was watching me, never letting me get too near. And there was always Shannon Macaulay. They had me tied, and they knew it. It was unique, a masterpiece in its own way; we were at sea in a 36-foot sloop, so all four of us had to be sitting right on top of the explosion if it came. I couldn’t hide her or get her out of the way.

It was noon, the fourth day out of Sanport. I was working out our position on the chart when an idea began to nudge me. We wouldn’t pass near enough to Scorpion Reef to sight it, so they had to take my word as to where we were. Barclay knew approximately, of course, because he checked the compass headings against each day’s position, but he had to accept my figures for the distance run.

I was thinking. It might work.

Twenty or twenty-five miles beyond the point where Macaulay was supposed to have crashed lay the beginnings of the Northern Shelves. If there were a shoal or reef in a hundred miles it would be out there. The chances were a thousand to one that it was somewhere in that vast shallow area that he had actually gone into the drink, even though they were about a hundred billion to one against our ever finding where. So if I put us out there when they thought we were on the location she had given them—

We might find a shoal. And any shoal would do.

I set the little cross down 15 miles to the westward and a little north of our actual position and tore up my work sheet. Take ten miles out tomorrow noon and I’d have it made without exciting Barclay’s suspicions. It was Wednesday. I told him we’d make it by Friday.

I didn’t say anything to Shannon. The object of the whole thing was to get her off the boat, and if she knew why I wanted her off she wouldn’t go. She’d have some foolish idea about not letting me face it alone, and I’d never convince her that alone was the only way I had a chance.

Barclay apparently suspected nothing as he checked positions with me the next day. In fact he seemed satisfied with the efforts I had been taking all that day. We kept looking for white water, listening for the sound of surf breaking; but no signs of shoal appeared.

Barclay had become more quiet, cold, and unapproachable as Friday wore on and we saw nothing.

Barfield’s face was ugly as he watched Shannon now, and several times I saw him glance questioningly at Barclay. We were all in the cockpit. I had the tiller.

“Listen,” I said harshly. “Both of you. Try to get it through your heads. We’re not looking for the corner of Third and Main. There are no street signs out here. We’re in the general area. But Macaulay could have been out ten miles in his reckoning. My figures could be from two to five miles out in any direction. Error adds up.”

He was listening, his face expressionless.

I went on. I had to make them see. “When Macaulay crashed, there was a heavy sea running. There’s not much now but a light groundswell. There could have been surf piled up that day high enough to see it five miles away, and now you might think it was just a tide-rip. We’ve got to criss-cross the whole area, back and forth. It may take two days, or even longer.”

He looked coldly at me. “Don’t take too long.”

Dawn came, the sea was empty and blue as far as the eye could see.

Barclay took the glasses and stood up, scanning the horizon all the way around. Then he said, “Make some coffee, George.”

Barfield grunted and went below. In a few minutes Barclay followed him. I could hear the low sound of their voices in the cabin. She sat across from me in the cockpit, her face stamped with weariness. When she saw me looking at her she tried to smile.

I turned and hurried back to her. “Go forward,” I said. “Lie down on deck, against the forward side of the cabin. Stay there. If anything happens to me, you can raise the jib alone. Just the jib. Keep running before the wind in a straight line and you’ll hit the coast of Mexico or Texas—”

“No,” she whispered fiercely.

I peeled her arms loose and pushed her. “Hurry!” She started to say something more, looked at my face, and turned, running forward. She stepped up from the cockpit and went along the starboard side of the cabin, stumbling once and almost falling.

I had to hurry. They’d be coming up any minute. I slipped forward and stood on the deck, looking down the hatch.

“Surf!” I yelled. “Surf, ho!”

Barclay came up fast, his head turning toward the direction of my arm. I hit him hard and he went sprawling over the side. I was falling too, on top of Barfield as he emerged from the hatch. He bulled his way up on deck, crashing us both down on the deck. A big fist beat at my face, as I groped for his throat. He got his gun out of his hip pocket. I chopped his hand hard enough, and it slid out of his hand along the grating.

He hit me on the temple and my head slammed back against the planks. He was coming to his knees, groping behind him for the gun. I tried to push myself up, and then beyond him I saw her. She ran along the deck and dropped into the cockpit. She picked up the gun and was swinging it at his head. He should have fallen, but it had no more effect on him than a dropped chocolate eclair. He heaved upward, lashing out behind him with one big arm. She fell, and her head struck the coaming at the forward end of the cockpit. I came to my feet and lunged at him and we fell over and beyond her onto the edge of the deck just as the sloop rolled again and we slid over the side into the water.

I came out into sunlight and sparkling blue, and sobbed for air. Seconds went by, and I knew he wasn’t coming up. He’d had the breath knocked out of him when we hit the deck, just before we slid overboard, and he’d drowned down there. I looked around again. There was no trace of Barclay.

I could hear the boat’s engine behind me, fainter now, and I turned to see which way it was circling. I stared. It wasn’t turning. It was two hundred yards away, going straight ahead for Yucatan with nobody at the helm. I didn’t see her anywhere. She’d been knocked out when she fell. And I had lashed the tiller.

I reached down mechanically and started taking off my dungarees and slippers.

Even when you don’t have anywhere to go, you keep swimming. I swam toward the boat, disappearing now, and toward the coast of Yucatan a hundred and twenty miles away. The sun was on my left. It climbed higher.

I didn’t panic, but I had to be careful about letting the loneliness and immensity of it get hold of me or thinking too much about how near we had been to winning at last. I wondered if she had been killed, or badly hurt, and saw in a moment that wasn’t safe either. I concentrated on swimming. One stroke, and then another stroke. Don’t think. Don’t think about anything.

It could have been an hour, or two hours. I looked off to the right and saw the mast. It was at least a mile away and wouldn’t see me, but I gave a sob of relief that almost strangled me because it meant she was all right. She’d only been knocked out. She’d probably never find me, but she could make it.

But the time I’d spent showing Shannon navigational and boat-handling points paid off. She had no idea where I’d gone overboard, but she was cutting the whole area into a big grid, searching.

Each time the groundswell lifted me, I kicked myself as high as I could and waved. Those binoculars paid off. I could see the boat headed toward me, and I knew that Goddess had her ancestral Viking fates working for us at last.

We didn’t have to do much talking about the way we felt. About all I could say for the next few days was “You Swede, you big, lovely, magnificent Swede.” She seemed equally happy. I tried to brush aside the cloud that haunted her. Her last months with Macaulay; the strain of the chase had cut into her more deeply than I realized. I repeated the plans I had for changing the name of the boat and its port of registry; for cruising the small ports where we’d be safe from any pursuit for the eighty thousand dollars which would take care of us both for a long time. She smiled agreement each time, but her eyes gave her away. Several times she awoke at night shivering and I knew it wasn’t the tropical breezes. Something continued to haunt her, to keep her from the full paradise that should have been ours.

Time stood still for us. I spent the next few days painting the name, Freya, and San Juan as our port of registry on the stern. My living Freya – she liked that better than Swede – helped. She was a natural at anything you taught her. She learned to use the aqualung and we spent hours at it, diving down to look at the myriad wonders of marine life. She became fascinated with it as if it were another world.

And then it happened. We were far off the Northern Shelves working toward the Yucatan straits. The chart told me we were right on the hundred-fathom curve. It was a very hot sunny day and Shannon suggested we go in for a swim. She was beautiful as she adjusted her mask and dived over the side. I fixed my mask and went under the hull to see if we’d begun to collect any marine growth. It was cool and pleasant, and I paused to watch the silvery flow of hair about her head as she swam beneath me.

A few minutes later I noticed a small shovel-nosed shark off to one side and below. I swam down to watch him. It was quite small and not dangerous. When I looked for Shannon she was gone. I swam to the surface but she was nowhere in sight. I began to be uneasy. But maybe she had gone back aboard for some reason. I was turning to look behind me again when a flash of silver caught the corners of my eyes at the edge of the mask. I froze with horror. She was at least a hundred feet below me, going straight down.

Why had she done it? It had been an accident. It must have been. She was deliriously happy with me. She had no reason for throwing her life away. The pressure must have twisted her sense of direction. She’d been confused, and I’d been too far away to help.

No! She’d known exactly what she was doing. There had been hints. She’d known the violence and the terror of being hunted and had said there’s no escape. That’s why she’d looked at me as if I were an innocent child when I ranted about those little ports. She knew we’d never get away with it.

Alone, I found myself sighting again for 23.50 north, 88.45 west, the spot where she’d gone down. Macaulay could be right. It could be possible to find a pinpoint in the Gulf. There was the exact spot! See, where that seagull is on that driftwood. Looking down into the water I could see a silvery shape.

It was beckoning up at me. I heard her voice say, “Come with me, we’ll live in rapture.”

Something heavy was on my shoulders. I felt straps across my chest. I was wearing the aqualung.

I screamed.

I can still close my eyes and see the whole thing – the blue, and that last, haunting flash of silver, gesturing as it died. It was beckoning. Toward the rapture. The rapture . . .

It was after 2 a.m. when the master of the Joseph H. Hallock closed the journal. The poor devil, he thought. The poor, tortured devil. Four o’clock – and we raised the sloop a little after five.

Changing the name of the sloop didn’t alter the identity of any kind of seagoing craft. There were papers. And more papers. It was as futile as writing your own name on a borrowed passport. Manning should have known, too, that it took about ten pounds of paperwork and red tape to dock at any foreign port – including fishing villages. They all had port authorities, and they all demanded consular clearances and bills of health from the last port of call; registry certificate, Customs lists, crew lists, and so on, ad infinitum, and in the case of pleasure craft they probably required passports and visas for everybody aboard. Manning should have known they didn’t have a prayer of a chance.

He was in his bunk puzzling over it. Suddenly he sat upright. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “I’ll just be damned. It would be perfect.”

It was sunset again, two days later. The tanker was waddling, full-bellied, up the coast of Florida just south of Fowey Rocks. She was well inshore from the main axis of the Stream, since they had made arrangements by radio to have a Coast Guard boat meet them off Miami and take the Freya off their hands. Or at least that was the master’s excuse to Mr Davidson, the mate.

When you resolved the contradiction and acknowledged that Manning couldn’t possibly have believed any of that moonlit dream about escape to the tropics in a boat, he mused, what did you have left? You had left the twin facts that Manning was a writer, and that he was trying to save himself and that girl he was so much in love with.

They had nowhere to go, the girl had said. Nowhere to go, that is, as long as they were being sought by a gang of criminals and also by the police. But if they weren’t being actively sought by anyone, they could come back to their own country, where they would attract less attention than anywhere else on earth. And they would no longer be sought if everyone believed them dead.

But I don’t know any of this, he thought. I’m only theorizing. I don’t really want to know, absolutely and finally, because I’d be obligated to report it. They hadn’t committed any real crime, unless it was a crime to defend oneself, and he hoped they got away with it.

Then he saw what he had been watching for, astern and slightly inshore from the Freya. It could be driftwood, or it could be a head, or two heads. He peered aft in the gathering twilight, and almost raised the glasses.

No, he thought reluctantly; if I know I have to report it. But nobody is interested in the unverified vaporings of a sentimental old man.

They would make it ashore without any trouble, with the lifebelts. And they probably had enough money to buy some clothes to replace their bathing suits. Not that they would be likely to attract any attention in Florida, however, if they went around in their bathing attire for years.

But they were drifting back rapidly. Would he have to lift the glasses to satisfy himself? The objects separated momentarily for an instant before they merged again as one. And one of them had been definitely lighter in color than the other. The master sighed.

“Bon voyage,” he said softly. He turned and went into the chartroom with the glasses still swinging from his neck.