by Cave, Hugh
"Well, we are, aren't we?" She smiled the smile he would have driven from Connecticut for. “At least, we're talking about you."
Through the rest of dinner, though, he made sure the conversation centered on her. Not on her missing sister or the Watsons, as it had the evening before, but on Verna Clark, whose real name was Linda Mason, and the things she thought about and believed in and liked to do when she could do what she liked. It was an interesting evening. At the end of it, their goodnight embrace in front of the Watsons' house took even longer than the one at the Everols' gate.
So long, in fact, that he saw a movement at an upstairs window before it ended. A hand inched a curtain aside; a face peered down at them for a few seconds. Then, when he drew Verna's attention to it and she turned to look, the face abruptly vanished and the curtain flapped back into place.
"They probably heard the car pull up and are wondering why I'm taking such a long time to come in," Verna said. "It's natural, I suppose."
He wondered.
At the Everols' house, letting himself in with the key Susan had lent him, he found the downstairs dark and silent. Evidently the family had retired. Climbing the stairs to the room he was using—Jacob's room, he reminded himself again—he inspected the markings on the windows. Satisfied that they were untouched, he undressed and went to bed—not in Jacob's pajamas this time but in new ones he had bought in Clandon.
And he dreamed.
In the dream he saw dark shapes outside his windows. They were not distinct enough for him to make out what kind they were; they could have been blobs of darkness visible only because they were blacker than the night itself. Except for the eyes. At every window were eyes, some red, some yellow, some an eerie green.
In the dream the pentagrams on the panes of glass began to glow yellow, then deepened through orange to scarlet. When the scarlet was intense enough they caught fire, and each of them became a blazing, five-pointed star.
The shadow shapes disappeared.
In the morning, while breakfasting with the Everols, he mentioned the dream and saw a meaningful glance pass between Everett and Blanche. With a scowl that warped his long face and half shut his eyes, Everett said in his sandpaper voice, "There was something at a window in our room, too, mister, and it wasn't a dream. Blanche and me were both awake. We saw it."
"And?"
"The thing you drew on that window caught fire, same as you say yours did. Drove the thing away, seems like."
"What kind of thing was it?"
"Hard to say. Looked to me like a bat, sort of, if there ever was a bat that big. We used to have bats here, too. Lots of 'em. Had to pay an exterminator to get rid of 'em."
Jeff turned to Susan. "You, Susan? Did you see or hear anything?"
She shook her head. "I was tired. I slept right through."
"I wonder if Amanda..."
"She didn't say anything when I took up her breakfast," Blanche said.
"How is she, by the way?"
"Well. . . some better, maybe, but there's a lot she doesn't recall. She hasn't any idea what happened to her. What you aim to do today, by the way?"
"For starters I'll just walk around a bit more, I think."
"Thought you already done that."
"Well, yes," Jeff said, "but you have a big place here. There's a lot of it I haven't seen yet, and that's what I'm here for, isn't it? To look things over and decide what we can do."
But he would not be just “walking around," he knew. Next on his list of things to "look over" was that sinister sinkhole called the Drowning Pit. Nor would he wait to rent scuba gear before going there.
Chapter Fourteen
The air was like milk, Jeff discovered on leaving the house. A cool, damp mist lay along the paths and blocked out all but the nearest trees. At the sinkhole he nearly walked off the edge into the water before realizing he had reached his destination.
The Drowning Pit. Even at this hour it was a sinister-seeming place, the water barely visible as a sheet of dark glass under the drifting layers of mist, the silence so complete he could hear his heart thudding.
With a glance up at the knoll to be sure no one was watching, he quickly shed his clothes and shoes and stood naked at the pit's edge.
Now with the stone cool and smooth under his curled toes, he took in a slow, deep breath, held it, let it out, and took in another. He was a better-than-average swimmer, but how deep was this sinkhole? And how dark? At least he had bought a flashlight at the drugstore and taken the time to waterproof it with a wrapping of plastic. With adhesive tape he had bought at the same time, he fastened it now to his left wrist and hoped the waterproofing would work. Then he filled his lungs with air and dived.
Almost at once he knew the water of the Drowning Pit was clean and clear, with only the mist reducing its brightness at the moment. Good! His light worked better than he could have hoped for, too, revealing a faint blueness in the rocky walls, as though they were of pale blue bottle glass through which light could pass. Surprised and pleased by the strange, unreal beauty of his surroundings, he swam on down.
But it was deep. He had still not caught a glimpse of the bottom when his chest began to ache and he had to return to the surface.
After clinging to the edge for a while, he swung himself up and sat motionless, resting, with his feet in the water. But suddenly a bird cry shattered the silence—a screech so unexpected and shrill that he was almost startled into falling from his perch.
He recovered and looked around. The mist was thinning here. He saw a ghostly dark-gray bird, as large as a gull, planing down from the knoll—that knoll with the Stonehenge boulders, down the other side of which Verna Clark's little red car had rolled into the pond.
The bird vanished into the mist and the stillness returned. Jeff began breathing deeply again in preparation for a second plunge.
This time he knew at once he would go much deeper. He hadn't properly prepared himself the first time. He was bolder, too, now that he knew what to expect. The circle of milky whiteness contracted above him. Below, the walls of the pit acquired more character, developing patches of shadow where they became irregular with knobs and niches.
But again he had to go back up.
He was diving for the third time when it happened. Deeper than he had gone on the first two tries, he was exploring the irregularities of the wall and saw just below him what appeared to be an opening, a tunnel, the entrance to some sort of grotto, perhaps, that wholly intrigued him. It was beyond his reach, he realized, and would remain so until he came here with equipment.
With a longing look at the cave mouth, if that was what it was, he turned back. His chest ached again. The circle of milky daylight above seemed small and remote. Then, in the glow of his light, just above his upthrust hands, a ghostly pattern of crisscrossed lines took form, sinking slowly toward him, and he sensed danger.
With a powerful backward push of his arms, he sought to propel himself clear of the thing, not knowing what it was but vividly remembering that someone had tried to turn Verna's car into a death trap. The pattern of lines seemed not quite to reach the wall. There was a gap between web and stone. He tried desperately to reach it, and almost succeeded.
Almost. Not quite. The sinking net fell across his furiously churning legs. His head and arms were in the gap and he tried to make himself vertical to glide through it to the light above. But one foot, moving too slowly, became entangled in the sinking strands.
When he thrust himself up toward the surface, the foot pulled the net after him. The weblike thing rose in a swirling cloud above his knees. For a few yards only he carried it up with him. Then its weight overcame his momentum and it began to sink, inexorably pulling him down with it.
He had to breathe!
Afterward, he wondered where he had found the strength or determination, whatever it was, that enabled him to live without air for the next twenty seconds or so when he knew it was impossible. For hours he relived that moment when he doubled h
imself over, got his hands on the net where it was wrapped about his foot, and worried the strands apart with his fingers until he was able to pull the foot free.
You were supposed to recall the highlights of your life when facing death, weren't you? He hadn't. It was all a little vague, but he was certain of one thing: Part of his mind, at least, had been fixed on Verna Clark. All the time he was battling the string trap that held him, he saw himself sitting with her at the Clandon Inn and the bus station. Not talking to her, exactly. Not really doing anything. Just sitting there, being with her.
He also remembered a crazy urge to yell in triumph, even underwater, when the foot came free. Then at last he was clinging to the edge of the pit, gasping for air, turning his head in search of some clue to what had happened.
There! On the knoll from which the bird had taken wing after startling him with its eerie cry... wasn't that a human figure standing by one of the boulders, looking down at him? He struggled to his feet and took an unsteady step toward it but was weaker than he thought. His knees buckled. He went sprawling.
Before he could rise again, the figure dissolved.
One moment it was there and he was gazing straight at it as he struggled to get his knees under him. The next moment it had vanished. The effect was uncanny. Or had it only stepped behind the boulder?
Still weak, he slowly toiled up the slope to investigate. Why had his assailant come up here, anyway—if, indeed, that figure in the mist had been the person who dropped the net on him? And what kind of net had it been?
He thought he could answer the second question. In Haiti he had seen fishermen walking the beaches with nets they threw out into the surf to catch small fish. Driving down to Florida he had seen the same kind of nets used by men on bridges that spanned ocean inlets. Here, so close to the gulf, many men might own such nets.
At the top of the knoll, confronted by the boulders, he thought he knew the answer to his assailant's disappearance, too. After dropping the net on him, the fellow must have come up here to watch the pool. Then, on seeing that his murderous scheme had failed, he must have performed his vanishing act by running down the offside slope to the road that led from the pond out to the highway.
Unless, of course, it had been one of the Everols, wanting to put an end to his investigation. Verna Clark's sister had disappeared while looking for fossils near here, hadn't she? And Verna herself had very nearly gone into the pond with her car. If his assailant had come from the Everol house, he or she probably would have run down the other side of the knoll and hurried back there.
Chapter Fifteen
The friendly voice at the diving shop turned out to be that of an ex-navy frogman from, of all places, New London, Connecticut. "Hell," he said with a grin, "no one in Florida was born here. If it wasn't for outsiders coming in, this state would belong to the 'gators and water moccasins. Where you plannin’ to use this gear?"
"In a sinkhole."
"You mean an underwater cave? Better be extra careful if you're new at it. We lose half a dozen people a year in those things. Here, take this." He produced a ball of white string. "Tie the end to something at the cave mouth and play it out as you go in, so you can find your way back out. I'm not kidding. There'd be guys alive today if they'd done that. You get down inside one of those caves, everything looks the same and you're out of air before you can find your way back out."
Jeff had stopped at the Western Union office in Clandon to pick up money the bank had wired him. He paid the deposit on the diving gear and after a few minutes more of friendly counseling let the shop owner help him carry it to his car. "I'll try to return this tomorrow," he said.
"Check, Professor."
Driving back to Clandon, he reviewed what had happened at the house after his close call at the Drowning Pit. He had not mentioned his attempt to explore the sinkhole itself, of course; only that he had seen someone, perhaps a trespasser, on the knoll near it. But Everett and the two women had not risen to the bait.
After the three had exchanged glances, the white-haired little bird woman said in her bouncy voice, "It was probably only some trick of the mist, you know, Jeffrey. Strange things seem to happen here sometimes when the mist is heavy."
"More likely it was our lady scientist looking for dinosaur bones, or whatever it is she's really looking for," Blanche said with a sarcastic snort.
Everett, seated at a table with some bills and a checkbook in front of him, stopped work to listen but made no comment.
Who else might have dropped the net on him? The Haitian, Lelio Savain, perhaps? But why would Lelio want to?
Nearing Clandon, Jeff glanced at the car clock, reset since his accident, and saw that the morning was about over. Should he stop at the Watsons' and brief Verna on what had happened? Ask her to accompany him to the sinkhole in the morning and stand guard while he dived again? He should, he decided.
Earl Watson's fat wife opened the door to him while he was still climbing the steps.
"Oh, it's you, Mr. Gordon," she said. "I thought it was Earl comin' home." She stepped back and motioned him to enter. "You come to see Miss Clark, I guess, huh?"
"Yes."
"She ain't here. Staley Howe brought her car back a short time ago and she went to the store. Said she'd be right back, though. So sit down, why don't you? I was just makin' some coffee. Can I get you some?"
Sinking into one of the shabby overstuffed chairs, Jeff shook his head. "Thanks, no. But I'll wait."
"Well, I'll just get a cup for myself if you'll excuse me a sec. I guess I'm hooked on coffee the way some folks are on booze 'n' cigarettes." Waddling from the room, she left him alone.
Close to Jeff's chair stood a table littered with things of the Watsons' world: a folded newspaper that Marj apparently used for a fan; the remains of a greasy cheese sandwich on a plate; an ashtray full of butts; a catalog from the university where Verna was a student. (That belonged to Verna, of course.) Returning, Marj cleared a spot for a mug of coffee and said to him, "I brought you some anyhow, just in case."
"All right. Thanks." But he heard a car outside at that moment and, rising, hurried out to the veranda.
It was not a car but a pickup truck, old and battered, and the person who got out of it was the man with the leathery face and shoulder-length hair, Marj's husband. Over one shoulder he carried a roll of old, stained canvas that, before climbing the veranda steps, he let fall by lowering the shoulder and stepping aside. "'Lo there," he said with apparent indifference. "You here to see Verna?"
"Yes."
"She was right behind me. Should be here any second now." He went into the house and, yes, Verna's little red car came into sight at that moment. Jeff met her at the top of the steps with his hands outthrust, but, after touching her hands, stepped back instead of embracing her. The Watsons were watching, without a doubt.
When Verna and he went inside, Earl had disappeared into some other part of the house, but Marj was standing by the table on which Jeff had left his coffee mug. The mug had been moved, he saw, as Marj picked it up and handed it to him. No. Something else on the table had been moved.
With the table so cluttered, he had put the coffee mug down on top of the college catalog. But what was under it when Marj picked it up was a copy of the National Enquirer that had been under the catalog.
The catalog had disappeared.
"Can we?" Verna was saying. "I think I need a second opinion."
He had missed what preceded the question but knew he had to answer. "Of course," he said quickly, without any idea of what he was agreeing to.
"Come on, then." She took his hand and drew him toward the door.
"And how about lunch, too?"
"All right. I'm hungry."
"Mrs. Watson, thank you for the coffee," Jeff said as they went out.
In her car Verna said, "I just want to talk to you, I guess you know. There's nothing wrong with the garage bill."
"And I want to talk to you. Where are we going? The inn again?
"
"Well, there are a couple of fast-food places in town."
"We need to talk."
"The inn, then."
As usual, the old-fashioned dining room was all but empty. They sat at a corner table, and over lunch Jeff told her about the attempt on his life at the Drowning Pit and his seeing someone watching from the knoll when he surfaced.
"But who would want to kill you?" Verna said. "You came here to help those people!"
"Evidently someone doesn't want them helped or is afraid I'll find out something. Anyway, I've rented scuba gear and want to try again tomorrow morning at daybreak, before anyone is likely to catch me at it. Can you be there?"
She reached across the table to touch his hand. "I'll be there. Count on it."
"Now tell me what you've been up to."
She said quietly, "I wanted to make a phone call without running the risk that Marj might hear me, so I went out to a booth. You remember the box of fossils we picked up at the bus station?"
He nodded.
"I called the prof who sent it to me. What I want him to do now—and he's agreed to do it—is tell the Miami Herald that I've made a significant discovery here. I need an excuse to stay here and keep on looking, and that will give me one. And Jeff"—she was frowning now—"he said something strange. He asked if I'd gotten the college catalog I'd written to him for. I never wrote to him for a catalog. When I told him so, he said he'd received a letter, typed, signed Verna Clark. Even the signature was typed. It was in quotes, too, as if to say 'I know I'm not really Verna Clark, but don't forget you mustn't use my real name.'"
"I saw a catalog from your college on a table in the Watsons' living room just now," Jeff said.
"What?"
"Do the Watsons have a typewriter?"
"Yes, they do."
"Is there a list of the faculty in your college catalog?"
