How could you prove it? Would there be a tape missing from the inventory? What would that prove? Any one of the operators might have taken it--if there was one missing at all. Maybe there wasn't even an inventory. No. That wouldn't do. But a man couldn't transcribe a whole roll of tape without leaving a trace. It took time. The time alone had to leave some kind of a mark--like Kerby's being ordered to stay away from the radio room.
Gary came to a door marked "Chief Pilot." It had a frosted glass window, so you couldn't see inside, but he could hear a voice beyond the panel. He knocked lightly on the glass, and a man said, "Come on in."
Behind his desk, Harvey Browning was talking on the telephone. "Yes, dear," he said. "Is there anything else you want? ... Okay. I have to get off the phone. Gary Heaslip just came in, and I want to talk to him. Okay? ... Bye, Honey."
Gary pulled a chair over near Harvey's desk and sat down.
Harvey said, "Williamson's sore as a boil about you, you know. Passenger volume's dropped off about fifteen percent since the crash."
"I guess I can't blame him much for that," Gary said.
"No," Harvey shook his head. "You can't blame him. But I wanted to ask you a few questions--off the record. Man, I don't see you missing out on a thing like that."
"I don't see me missing out on it, either. I flew second pilot with you on the route training. Did you ever know me to make a mistake?"
"That's what I mean," Harvey said. "But you must have slipped up. That tape's right there with your voice on it."
"That's just the point," Gary said. "That tape is a fake, Harvey. I found out Hennler was alone in his radio room for at least fifteen or twenty minutes after his relief showed up ..."
The door swung open and Jack Williamson, president of L.I.A., stood in the doorway.
"S'matter?" Harvey said.
"Heaslip, get out of here!"
Gary said, "What ...?"
"I said, get out of this office! You're barred from Long Island property. You're a trespasser and a stupid bastard that killed seventeen people and I don't want you on the place! And if you show up as a passenger, we won't carry you. Now beat it!"
Browning shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, what can I do, boy?
Gary said, "Look, Mr. Williamson, I want a fair chance to prove I'm innocent--"
"I don't give a damn what you want, Heaslip. You're not wanted around here. This is private property. That includes the hangars and L.I.A.'s offices. If I catch you here I'll have you arrested. Is that straight? Now beat it."
Browning said, in an undertone, "Sorry, Gary, He's the boss."
Gary went through the open door and it slammed behind him so the glass rang.
DOLORES CARTER
When Dolores entered the diurnal dusk of the Montaugan Monday Afternoon Club with Mrs. Claude Magnuson there was already a fresh wind tossing the immense hedges that ringed the old mansion, and the fluffy clouds of morning had pulled out into long plumes that suggested gales aloft.
Ella Magnuson said, "I just hope that dull Winslow woman doesn't make that we-must-all-get-together-for-the-good-of-the-community speech of hers."
"There are better things to hope for," Dolores said. "You can hope that the speaker-of the-afternoon has had a heart attack, or that some thoughtful soul has dropped a dozen rotten eggs in the basement. There's really quite a lot to hope for."
"Dolores," Ella said. "How can you talk that way?"
"I don't know. It seems to be a gift," Dolores said. "I don't know why I come here. I don't like the people--except you, dear. I'm not old enough yet to spend an afternoon playing cards. I don't care for tea, which is all these old bags want to drink. Have you ever given a thought to what would happen if somebody planted a little gin in their tea?"
Dolores glanced at Ella, aware that she thought, this extremely daring. Dolores considered herself a breath of fresh air in Ella's life.
Ella's mouth shaped itself into a gross little "O" and Dolores said, "Ella, why will you pretend to be shocked?"
They went into the meeting room--a long apartment that had once comprised living room and dining room of the mansion. Perhaps fifty women were sprinkled, in varying degrees of discomfort, over the straight backed chairs facing one end of the room. A few sat like knitters by a guillotine. The rest rushed hither and yon with shrill cries of, "Oh, my dear!" and "How wonderful you could come!"
In one corner of the room a middle-sized man, with a large sandy mustache and sparse sandy hair, attempted to maintain a conversation with the chairwoman while nervously clicking a small metal cricket designed to signal the operator of his slide projector.
"Oh, God," Dolores said, "I just know he's going to talk about Tibet. What's he doing here in the summer anyway? I thought all lecturers rested or explored or something in the summertime."
"He's local talent," Ella said, "but he did go to Tibet."
"I wish I had a drink."
"Why do you come here if you hate it so much?" Ella asked, very sensibly.
"I've been trying to figure that out myself."
She was still trying at four thirty when the tart had been drained, the last imported biscuit crunched between faulty dentures, the last angry discussion between irate card-partners quieted.
Ella Magnuson had managed to vanish somewhere in mid-Tibet, and it was abruptly brought home to Dolores that outside there raged a rare early July downpour accompanied by much wind. She tried to solicit a ride, but none of the good ladies were going in the right direction.
For a while she stood on the long, screen-enclosed porch, looking out at the dismal swaying of the giant hedges and hearing the drumming of rain on the shingled roof. Of course, she could call a cab. But that would look a little ridiculous, driving into the yard in a taxi when Heaslip was sitting out in the garage doing, probably, nothing at all.
After a time she decided there was no help for it, and called the house. She told Heaslip to bring the car and Irene as well.
After she had hung up she went back out on the porch to wait, sitting in one of the vast rocking chairs and feeling, in some confused way, ashamed.
What must Gary--Heaslip think of you already? You had behaved as though you could hardly wait to leap into bed with him, like an animal. How could you have done a thing like that? How could you have let whatever it was run away with you? You were a grown woman. Thirty-eight years old. Not far from the point of no return.
You had heard that women began to look for younger lovers when they were in their forties--as though that would offer them a return, an inoculation of new youth. Was that what had happened to you?
But you were really too young for that kind of thing. Not old at all. Not like the tired old biddies walking under umbrellas to the cars ranged along Randolph Road beyond the hedge. You couldn't be like them, yet. You didn't look that old.
She saw the long black nose of the Packard probing into the curving drive that entered through the hedges, passed before the steps of the porch and bent back to Randolph Road.
Gary got out, walking around the car with an umbrella in his hand. He came up to the steps, opening the black silken mushroom, and waited for her to step under it.
"I thought you were to bring Irene," Dolores said.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Carter," Gary said. "She--"
A sudden explosion of sound cut him off, as a car behind the Packard protested the delay. Dolores moved under the umbrella and Gary shielded her down to the car, opening the rear door for her to step in. He closed it behind her, went around the rear of the car and got in. Dolores watched his shoulders and the confident movements of his head as he glanced in the rearview mirror and pulled evenly out of the driveway into Randolph Road.
"Directly home, Mrs. Carter?" Gary said, "Or would you prefer to drive downtown?"
You had to envy the man his self-possession, she thought. "To the house," she said. But it might not be self-possession. The immobile face, completely expressionless in the rearview mirror, was probably nothing but brut
e stupidity. How could you have slept with this man? How could you have even thought of it? And wasn't that last remark--that question--a piece of impudence? Wasn't he really saying, would you like to try it again? Directly home, indeed!
You'd have to do something about that. You couldn't just let it pass. She said, "I didn't hear what you said before about Irene?"
"I couldn't find her, Mrs. Carter," Gary said. "She wasn't anywhere about."
"I can't think why she shouldn't be. She's always hanging around the garage lately." Did that sound like jealousy? Would he think you envied your own daughter? It was too late to unsay it now but you'd have to correct the impression somehow.
"I haven't seen her all day today, Mrs. Carter." At least the man wasn't presuming--although, god knew, you'd given him enough reason to presume. How could you be so stupid? And Ivan? You couldn't stop thinking about him, but you'd have to. Anyway, you'd have to speak to Heaslip, make it clear to him about that night. You couldn't let him continue under the impression that was going to happen again. How would you begin? You'd say, Heaslip ...
"Mrs. Carter," Gary said, "I--uh, haven't had a chance to say anything to you until now, but--uh, well the fact is that ..."
Now it was coming, the filthy beast. Now he would try to take advantage.
"... actually, I think we ought to understand one another better about that night two weeks ago. I work for you as a chauffeur, Mrs. Carter, but-uh ..."
"Well?" she demanded.
"The thing is that I don't think we--I ought to let that happen again. I'd like to speak very--uh, frankly if you don't mind."
"Not at all, Heaslip."
"The fact is that ..." He turned neatly into Park Avenue and headed out toward the airport. "... I think we were both carried away by the situation. It all seemed very impersonal. I think it really was--impersonal, I mean. I think at a particular moment we both needed someone, but we didn't necessarily need any special person."
"I--I understand, Gary," she said. Then, as sudden relief flooded her mind, "I--I think I'd like to sit up front with you."
"Of course, Mrs. Carter." He was smiling. He stopped the car and started to open the door. A gust of wind pushed it shut against him.
"I'll come over the seat," Dolores said. "That wind is fierce."
The rain bludgeoned against the windshield, blurring vision ahead as she wriggled over the upholstery and contorted herself beside the driver's seat.
"I'm afraid I wasn't thinking very kindly of you, Gary," Dolores said. He was really awfully nice. "I wasn't very fair." Maybe he hadn't liked you. Maybe you hadn't been "good." It was an embarrassing thought.
Gary started the car. You could hear the steady, wet swishing of the wheels on the road, and the water on the windshield reduced the visibility to the vaguest of blurs.
"Can you turn on the radio from up here?" Dolores asked.
He reached over and turned it on.
The mellifluous voice of a newscaster said, "Small craft warnings have been posted from Block Island to Hatteras, and there are a mounting number of reports of disaster on Long Island Sound. Three privately owned fishing boats are now several hours overdue and--"
"You know," Gary said, "the Doctor and Miss Ledbitter are out. In that." He made a vague gesture of one hand that included the whole immense downpour.
Dolores went suddenly pale. She reached over and mapped off the radio. "What do you mean?"
"Doctor Carter took the Ivalor out just before lunch. I suggested that it looked as though a bad storm were coming up, but the Doctor said the Ivalor could handle anything like this. Frankly, I'm a little worried about them."
"Let's get back to the house," Dolores said, urgently. "Right away, please."
IVAN CARTER
Once past the outlet from Willet's Cove into Block Island Sound, Doctor Ivan Carter located a tripod on one of the small islands, aimed the Ivalor straight toward it and gave his attention to other matters.
That was when he noticed Erica. She was curled like a kitten in the little open deckspace before the anchor locker. Promptly he felt a little surge of annoyance that he should be tied to the wheel, unable to leave it for more than a moment or so, while she did nothing but sleep. He gave a single sharp toot on the boat's horn and saw her start awake. There was a momentary look of fright on her face. Then she picked herself up and came back along the narrow deck and into the deckhouse, rubbing her eyes.
"Why did you do that?" she said.
"I was afraid you might fall in," he said. "You're never very careful. Supposing we hit a snag or there was a sudden swell--then what could I do if you went overboard?"
She said nothing, giving him an odd look, and he said, "Why don't you fix something for us to eat?" She went below without a word and he could hear her, above the engine's pulsing, doing something in the tiny galley.
Then he wondered why he had told her to make food, because he didn't really want anything to eat. After a few moments he decided he was maintaining discipline. You had to maintain discipline with Erica, or she began to talk wildly about leaving; about how their affair was no good, really.
He looked back at the dinghy bobbing in the Ivalor's wake. It was riding lower in the water than he felt it should. He leaned over and called down the companion way, "Come up and take the wheel a minute. I want to look at something."
She looked sullen when she came up a moment later, and silently laid her hands on the spokes. "Keep lined up with that tripod," he said. "I want to look at the dinghy." He went back past the cockpit to the stern, pulling the dinghy close to the taffrail. There were nearly two inches of water in its bottom.
He said, "Can't you remember to do anything you're told? I told you this morning to have Heaslip pump out the dinghy."
She said nothing. Nothing at all. He saw two shiny tears move reluctantly down her tanned cheeks.
Suddenly he said, "All right, honey. I'm sorry." He touched her hands on the wheel, and said, "I mean it, Erica. I'm really sorry. I let my rotten disposition run away with me. Why don't you go on below and I'll take over." Without a word she went down the companionway.
He made a wide swing around a bell buoy, tolling gloomily in the light breeze, and headed nearly due west by the compass, watching the floating disc veer as the Ivalor turned.
He wondered where he ought to go. He would have liked to ask Erica if she preferred any particular place. But it wouldn't look good. You'd look kind of abject, if you did that sort of thing. And there was a limit beyond which a man couldn't allow women to go.
It was like that with Dolores, too. The damned money. It gave her the upper hand. Right after her parents died in the wreck she had wanted to put all the money in your name. But that hadn't seemed the right thing. You'd refused it--and now it was too late to take back the refusal. You hadn't known then that somehow the money would sap away your incentive. Not really the money--just the knowledge it was there.
He saw the clouds then--a long, lowlying bank of gray north-northwest--and he thought of turning back, because there was no point in getting stuck out in anything even if the Ivalor could ride it out. Only just then Erica came from below. She had food arranged on a tray and she looked a little as though she had been drinking.
He said, "I don't really want anything right now."
She didn't say anything. She just went to the cockpit and dumped the whole tray over the side.
It was the most unexpected thing she could have done and you wondered what the hell had happened to her, because she wasn't like that; not really. It was as though everything had suddenly slipped out from under your control. You wanted to grab her and shake her and demand to know what was the matter with her.
Then she came up by the wheel and said, pointing toward the gray cloud bank, "I guess Gary was right."
And then you saw that the son of a bitch wasn't content with taking your wife away from you, but he was getting under Erica's skin, too. Your knuckles turned white where they gripped the wheel. You forced t
hem to relax.
"I think we'll put in at Hilger's Island," Ivan said, his voice very hard. "There's still part of the dock left there."
Hilger's Island had once been the summer home of a wealthy gentleman who owned a number of fast boats and an extensive interest in the alcohol trade. His finances had held up in the crash of 1929, but there had been a little trouble with the left ventricle of his heart where a bullet had perforated it. He had, in consequence, died, leaving the house where he had been wont to romp to fall into slow decay.
The dock, stuck out like the center bar of a letter E between the two arms of the island, had been built for large boats and all but the outer end remained fairly intact, even after twenty years.
Ivan brought the Ivalor neatly up against the weathered timbers, while Erica placed canvas bumpers to prevent damage to the hull.
When the boat was safely moored Ivan said, "I think we owe ourselves a little drink." After a while, they had another and another. It was mechanical drinking, as if the liquor were the button you had to push before some vital machine would turn on.
Erica was unresisting when he took her in his arms. She lay limp as he touched her ear with his lips--completely passive; and there was no resistance when he drew her polo shirt over her head and touched the buttons of her shorts.
But it was afterward, when she stood there naked, her hair disheveled, swaying a little with the alcohol, that she said in a very calm, flat voice, "Ivan, that's the last time I'm going to sleep with you."
Then she picked up the polo shirt and shorts from where they lay on the long bench of the deckhouse and went down the companionway into the cabin, pulling the hardwood top down and closing the door behind her.
That was when Ivan saw that the sea outside the arms of Hilger's Island had grown choppy and that the westering sun had vanished in clouds.
The Ivalor was too small to ride out a storm at the Hilger dock. There wasn't enough shelter. He cast off the stern line and let the boat swing with the wind. When she was clear of the dock he started the engine and loosed the bow line, cutting the helm sharply to carry her away from the dock.
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