Slack tide

by Coxe, George Harmon, 1901-

  He examined the extinguisher in the deckhouse first. It was bright and shiny, and although he did not touch it, he could find nothing about it that was out of the ordinary. He went below to the galley and discovered that this extinguisher was right where it should have been. The light was not very good here and he looked at it several seconds before he actually saw it. He had to re-focus and study it to realize that the brass surface was stained and spotty, its once shiny finish etched with corrosion. Then, slowly at

  first but gathering momentum, the significance of what he saw became clear.

  The basis of his conclusion was a sound one and came from his knowledge of the cruiser and Harry Danaher's practices. A layman might have found nothing unusual in that extinguisher, but MacLaren knew what salt water could do to such a surface. Danaher, for all his faults, was a spit-and-pohsh man, and since an extinguisher, safely out of weather, could not have acquired such corrosion vdth Danaher around, it meant that this particular extinguisher had, until recently, been somewhere else.

  Like that, the answer came to him. For of the extinguishers aboard, only the one in the cockpit was exposed to the spray and weather.

  If his hunch was right, this extinguisher had very recently been in the cockpit. Someone had exchanged it for the extinguisher that had originally been here in the galley. There could, he reaHzed, be other reasons for such an exchange, but he clung to the one that gave him hope that he might have found a worthwhile clue.

  He did not touch it, and he left the boat as quickly as he could. He did not think anyone had seen him as he got into the skiff and rode across to the floating dock. It was not until he stood in front of the showroom door that Sergeant Wyre appeared around the corner, put a coin in the soft drink machine, and extracted a bottle of Pepsi-Cola.

  The sight of the uniform and the familiar face started a series of conflicting thoughts in MacLaren's head. He had no intention of following up his fire extinguisher theory personally. Whether or not the idea had value was some-

  thing for the pohce to decide, but he did not want to confide in the sergeant until he knew just how Kingsley had died and what the medical examiner's verdict was to be. He spoke of this when the sergeant lowered the bottle after having poured half its contents down his throat.

  "What about that autopsy report?"

  "Supposed to be in this afternoon sometime."

  "Don't you even know how he died yet?"

  Wyre thought it over. He held the bottle up to the hght to see how much remained and then finished it off.

  "I can tell you this much if it helps any," he said, putting the empty bottle in the near-by case. "There were two wounds on the back of Kingsley's head. One was superficial, and the other wasn't."

  MacLaren's "Ahh—" was an involuntary expression of rehef. Then, with a sudden exultancy, he said: "I told you that block of wood couldn't have kiUed him."

  "Sure. But that don't mean you couldn't have socked him again later."

  "Nuts."

  "I don't say you did, understand. That's for the heuten-ant and the county dick to decide."

  "Nuts."

  Wyre adjusted his hat and shrugged. There may have been an incipient grin on his hps. "Well, you asked me and I told you," he said. "See you." He gave a half salute and disappeared round the comer.

  MacLaren stopped below Sam Willis's bedroom window and yelled up at him as he had done the other day.

  "You up there, Sam?"

  "Hell, yes," the voice came back. "You know damn well I'm up here."

  The cluttered room was just as MacLaren had remembered it. Willis glowered at him from the easy chair, and his injured ankle was propped up. The .22 rifle stood near by, the Scotch cooler was within easy reach, and the low table was cluttered with magazines, the two binoculars, and a scratch pad on which WiUis had been doodUng.

  "What the hell happened down there this morning?" he asked querulously. "Somebody was shooting."

  "Yeah." MacLaren grinned at him. "If it hadn't been for the fog you'd have seen it all."

  "Well—tell me about it, damn it."

  "I'll trade you."

  "Trade me for what?"

  "Information." MacLaren eased down on the edge of the chair. "I'll tell you what happened this morning and you teU me what you saw the night Kingsley was kiUed."

  "What makes you think I saw anything?"

  Because he wanted to keep Willis in a reasonably good humor, MacLaren let the question pass and launched into an account of what had happened aboard the Annabelle III that morning in the fog. He made no mention of his own part in the matter, but simply suggested that the po-hce had acted on a tip.

  "Just my luck," Willis said when MacLaren finished, "to have something like that happen with the inlet all fogged in. Day after day I sit here and see nothin'—"

  "You see plenty, Sam," MacLaren interrupted.

  "Sometimes I do."

  "You heard what happened to Kingsley, haven't you?"

  "Sure I heard."

  "It was around nine o'clock," MacLaren said. "I know you were in this room and I know you hadn't gone to bed. You've got the mind and the instincts of a busybody, and you've got a fine pair of night glasses here." He leaned forward. "I think you saw what happened on the dock," he said. "I wish you'd tell me about it."

  WiUis rubbed his long nose and directed his glance out the window. "Yeah," he said finally. "I saw the fight. I saw the girl throw something at Kingsley and I saw him dive into the inlet."

  Somewhere in MacLaren's chest a nerve tightened as new hope expanded swiftly within him. He found he was holding his breath before he said: "Did you see him pull himself into the dinghy?"

  Wilhs was still looking out the window, and he took time to consider the question.

  "Not exactly."

  "What do you mean, not exactly?"

  "I saw him swim over to the dinghy. I saw him kicking alongside of it as he headed for the island. Then I lost it."

  MacLaren did not beHeve this. He said so. Because he was so intent on learning just a httle more his voice became blunt and aggressive.

  "You saw more than that, Sam."

  WiUis leaned back in his chair and picked up the pencil. Then, suddenly, his face seemed to close up and the eyes were withdrawn. He began to doodle, and MacLaren saw

  that a series of eights covered the pad, some thin, some fat, some large, some small. Some of them had faces drawn in the loops and others contained pencil marks that had no form nor any pattern.

  "I told you what I saw," Willis said finally, and now his tone was sullen. "You think these binoculars have got infrared lenses? You think I'm a magician or something?"

  "All I'm saying is that these are the same kind of glasses the Navy used during the war when they could get them. No night is all black. With these glasses even the stars give some illumination. There'd be reflected hght from the office showroom and the house on the island—even from the lamps on Main Street. If a captain could see from the darkened bridge of a ship at sea, I think you could see enough from this room, especially if the light was out, to know that Kingsley reached shore. If you could see that much you also must have seen what happened after that."

  Even before he finished he saw the stubbornness working on the man's face. The half-closed eyes were again hostile and the mouth tightened.

  "Are you caUing me a Har?"

  MacLaren looked right at him before he rephed. He could not beheve that this was the whole truth, and something about Willis's manner and attitude disturbed him greatly. He was not sure why. He could have accepted a spirited and perhaps caustic reply. Such a reaction would have been characteristic of the man, but he had not expected to find such obvious hostility and resentfulness. Finally, sensing that he could expect no further co-operation, he stood up.

  "No," he said, "and I'm not going to argue with you, Sam. But we've been friends a long time and I'm in a spot. So is Mrs. Kingsley. I don't think we had anything to do with her husband's death."

 
"So why get tough with me? If you didn't do it, if they don't arrest you, how can you get hint?"

  "Because that's not enough any more. Maybe the autopsy wiU bear me out and maybe it won't, but either way we'U always be under suspicion unless the pohce learn the truth and can prove it. Until the case is closed, I'U always be a suspect in the minds of some people. Everybody in town will know about it, and I have to hve here. When my father and mother come up in another few weeks, how do you think they're going to feel?"

  He hesitated. When there was no reply, he said: "All right, Sam. Tell the police what you want to and—"

  "You think they'U come here?"

  "Certainly they'll come here. You're a witness, aren't you? Just remember this: If you're holding out on me— and I still don't know why you should—and I find out about it, I'm crossing you ojff my hst for good."

  Again he hesitated, and the resentment was still in the man's face and in the brooding eyes. But there was something more now, a look of puzzlement and, for the first time, uncertainty. When there was no reply, MacLaren turned and left the room.

  DON MacLAREN had too much pride to inquire at the desk for Ruth Kingsley when he went to the Inn for dinner, but that did not prevent him from hoping that he would see her. He ate at his usual small comer table and, it being Friday, the weekend people had begun their influx and the room was quite crowded. He tried to keep his attention on his food, but he could not help glancing up each time someone entered. He spoke to those who spoke to him and passed the time of day with those who stopped for a moment at his table, but as the meal progressed his moodiness increased.

  He left at a quarter of eight and stalked out of the lobby, his craggy face serious and his dark-blue eyes brooding. He spoke to no one but the clerk, who asked him if he had enjoyed his dinner, and continued down the slope to the boatyard. Here he wondered briefly when someone would come to take the Annahelle 111 away, and noted that the owners were now aboard several of the other cruisers. When he had questioned Larry Keats about the amoimt of gas and oil he had sold, he dismissed the youth and sat down on the bench by the showroom as was his custom.

  But not for long. In order to forget Ruth Kingsley he turned his mind to other things, and again he was reminded of his talk with Sam WiUis. He had looked forward to teUing Ruth that they had a friendly witness, but now.

  as remembered things came back to him, an odd sense of dissatisfaction began to worry him that had nothing to do with the girl.

  The focus of this dissatisfaction was Sam Willis. He recalled the change that had come over the man's face when he pressed him for additional information, and the stub-bom denial that he had seen more than he would admit. WiUis had never been an easy person to get along with. Always independent and opinionated, he was at times obstinate and unreasonable. But he was seldom a reticent man, and MacLaren found it hard to understand why WiUis should have resorted to an attitude of sullen silence when MacLaren had pressed him.

  That is why he rose a few minutes later and started upstream toward his father's house. It would be dark shortly. There was a very fine pair of glasses in his father's desk, similar to Sam's Navy binoculars but older. He knew they were eflFective at night because he had used them often when cruising. If they were not as good as Sam's it did not matter greatly, but he knew he could not be satisfied until he had tried them out; only then could he have any accurate idea of their range and e£Fectiveness. Once he had looked through them he would know better just what Sam WiUis might have seen the night Kingsley died.

  It was still not dark when he reached the house, so he sat down on a single stone step which led to the porch. Below him, the yard, the inlet, and the river beyond with its network of spars and rigging were stiU visible against the darkening sky. Here and there lights began to show in the cabin ports of the sailboats moored beyond the inlet.

  and far ojff to the right he saw the hghts had been turned on at the bridge.

  He was reaching for his pipe when he heard the shots.

  In that first instant as they came to shatter the silence, he thought there were three but he could not be sure. Because the first, a sharp cracking sound, seemed to merge with the more explosive report which followed simultaneously. A similar sound came almost immediately, and then the night was still again.

  For another three seconds MacLaren sat right where he was because he was too startled and surprised to move. For perhaps one more second he sought some explanation, and then he was on his feet and turning toward the corner of the porch.

  A strange sense of foreboding was working on him now, and he could feel the skin start to tighten on the back of his neck. For he knew where the shots came from. They had a muflfled quahty, suggesting that they had been fired indoors, and there was no other house near by except Sam's.

  He roimded the comer of the porch in long strides, a sudden urgency goading him on. At the opening of the hedge he hesitated and glanced up, aware that there was some light in the room, that the window was part-way open.

  "SamI" he yelled. Then, his voice rising as some new feeling of alarm spread through him, he tried again. "Saml Are you all right?"

  When there was no answer, he waited no more but pushed through the opening, and ran across the narrow yard to the door. Not speculating now, not trying to un-

  derstand what had happened, yet knowing somehow that something was horribly wrong, he opened the door and pushed inside.

  He started to call out once more, but before he could do so, he heard a door slam at the rear of the house. As the sound came to him, he turned toward it automatically.

  A feeling of fear began to work on him as he crossed the room and started into the kitchen. It was not an intimate personal sense of fear, and he had no thought that he himself was in danger. But there was a curious tinghng at his nerve ends and a growing tightness in his chest.

  Three strides took him across the kitchen, and he opened the door and stepped out. In the quiet moment that followed he was aware that there was still some hght in the sky. He saw the narrow yard with its bare patches, the hedge, the tangled growth of wild cherry and scrub oak trees that lay beyond. A narrow, seldom-used path curved off into the dark under the trees, and he was about to take an impulsive step toward it when the shot came.

  He heard the slug hit the side of the house a foot from his head before he heard the sound of it.

  At no time did he see anything, and what he did was instinctive. He had been shot at before in Korea and his reflexes were good. Half expecting a second shot, he dropped instantly, and as he hit the ground, it came.

  He heard the thud in the shingles above him, and he stayed right where he was, his nerves still tight but his mind working furiously. He tried to see along the path and could not. There may have been the sound of someone

  moving in the brush, but he could not be sure and he did not hear it again.

  For another half minute he lay still, his ears sharply tuned, his eyes watchful. When he decided to get up, he did not tarry. One continuous movement brought him to his feet and wheeled him toward the door and then he was inside the kitchen. He could hear the thudding of his heart now. He could feel the moisture in his palms, and for a moment or two he tried to flex some of the stiffness from his muscles. All this was pure physical reaction and it took him awhile to activate his mind, to reahze there had been no sound from the room upstairs.

  In that same instant the odd fear struck at him again and he hurried to the narrow staircase and started up. The silence ahead of him served only to increase his apprehension, and he spoke once more as he reached the doorway.

  "Saml"

  The stillness around him wiped out the word, and he moved in, seeing now that the light came from a gooseneck lamp in the corner. The easy chair near the window was empty, and it was only when he had taken one more step that he could see why Sam WiUis had not made some reply.

  MacLaren seemed to know as his glance focused that Sam would never make any reply. Even in the shadows cast by the ch
air and the magazine-httered table, and seeing at first only the profile of the gaunt, still face, he found the look of death in the crumpled body. Wilhs had fallen partly on his side and partly on his stomach, as if he had been trying to get out of the chair when the bullets hit

  him. The ankle with its dirty-white cast was drawn up at the knee. The .22 rifle lay within inches of one outstretched hand and the other was tucked beneath his stomach.

  For another long second, surprise and shock held Mac-Laren motionless as his horrified gaze absorbed the picture. Then he was moving, stepping round the table and kneeling beside the still figure. He shook a hmp shoulder. He reached for a hand that was as warm as his own, and even as his first two fingers sfid up the bony wrist, he saw the moist dark stains on one side of the shirt.

  The two tiny holes were perhaps six inches apart and the stains were still spreading. His fingers were damp and trembling as they explored the inside of the hmp wrist, and he tried three different places before he understood that there was no pulse here, that Sam WiUis was dead.

  MacLaren was not sure how long he stayed there on his knees, looking down at the man who had taught him so much when he was a boy. Time no longer had any significance. His mind was still stunned and there was only sickness and despair churning in his stomach and polluting his mind.

  Very gently, he released the wrist. He found his handkerchief and dried his hands, and gradually, as his brain began to function, his eyes grew watchful, and that is how he happened to notice the other half-hidden hand.

  At first he had only this ghmpse of something that did not seem to belong there. Leaning close now, and bending down still more so he could look beneath the twisted figure, he saw that the fingers were clenched around what seemed to be a greenish piece of paper. He did not remove this.

  but he loosened the fingers enough to reahze that Sam Willis had died clutching a fifty-dollar bill.