It was nearly noon when he finally said, “Let’s go back in, Wescott.” I headed hack, favoring a new blister. “Quite a challenge,” he said. “Dreary little button of an island. Merge structure into environment when you have something dramatic to start with, and ignore it when you don’t. So I’ll just think of it as a platform.”
“Like a launching site, huh?”
“I’m thinking aloud, Wescott, not trying to elicit moronic comments.”
“Excuse me, indeed.”
“This afternoon, Wescott, we’ll be on foot. I’ll need your help in some measurements.”
“This afternoon, Stonebarger, you’ll be on foot.”
His neck grew visibly, from an estimated size eighteen to a twenty, but his voice became very soft. “I said I’ll need you, Wescott. All afternoon.”
“But I have to go back to—”
“I’ll need you.”
“Uh... okay.”
Mary was on the dock to meet us, her splendid legs agleam with insect repellent. “Have a happy morning, boys?” she sang out.
“Comfy,” I said with a certain moroseness.
“Tomorrow,” Stonebarger said, “I shall want the best botanist in the area. And I also want to talk to someone of reasonable intelligence who has spent his entire life on one of the islands in this area. I could also use a competent geologist, but that can come later. I want the first two here in the morning, as early as possible.”
“Of course you do,” Mary said soothingly, with a fond, warm smile.
I looked north toward the main channel and saw the distinctive how wave that only a big Huckins will make when it is at top cruising speed, really up and out and flying. A moment later I recognized it as being the Browdon cruiser, usually docked at Browdon Island, down below Captiva Pass.
She tilted around Mary’s channel marker, lugged down until she turned into a displacement hull and came burbling cautiously toward us. I hadn’t known any of the Browdons were down as yet, and I didn’t know any of them knew Mary.
She came in. I caught a line and made it fast. The hired captain. Albert Something-or-other, swung the stern in. The first onto the dock was the nervous little caretaker of Browdon Island, Mr. Weech. I’d seen him around Boca. He came trotting directly toward Stonebarger and stopped a cautious six feet away, wringing his hands. “Mr. Stonebarger!” he said. “Heavens, Mr. Stonebarger. I’ve been nearly out of my mind!” Several other men had climbed off the cruiser. They all were of that familiar breed of young accountants and young lawyers who act stark naked if they aren’t within a hundred feet of a city cab. They looked as if their sports shirts still had the pins in them.
“Who are you?” Stonebarger demanded.
“Mr. Weech! Mr. Weech! I was supposed to be there to meet you. We were late getting to the airport. You were gone. Dear heaven, I’ve been so upset. How did you get to Boca Grande?”
“I took a taxi, you idiot!”
“Exactly what is going on here?” Mary demanded in a loud, clear voice.
Weech spun around. “Oh, the Browdon family and some other people have bought Kimbrough Key — a lovely island, just lovely, utterly wild and deserted — and the famous Mr. Morgan Stonebarger has been commissioned to design a five-million-dollar resort project on it. He’s down here for his first look at it, for preliminary thinking, and we... we lost track of him. I couldn’t imagine what had happened until somebody said they saw—”
“Shut up, Weech,” Stonebarger said, with such a weary emphasis that all of us stood very still in the midday sun. Stonebarger took a long look at Mary’s island. “I despise childish jokes,” he said to her. “You could have told me this is not called Kimbrough Key.”
“You didn’t ask,” Mary said. She lifted her chin. “You are an arrogant fathead, Mr. Stonebarger. There was no joke.”
Weech moaned faintly. Stonebarger looked at Mary in a troubled way. “Just who are you, Miss Dawes?”
“I own this island. I’m a partner in a firm of industrial designers in New York. My sister was sending a friend down — I didn’t catch the name. I was supposed to meet him at the Pink Elephant. I... I even asked you about Liz. Remember? You claimed you knew her.”
“I know no one named Liz, believe me. My wife’s name is Elizabeth.”
“Just like it said in that article you showed me, Mary,” I said.
Stonebarger was not satisfied. “But why, Miss Dawes, why would you let me go through the motions of preliminary planning if you thought I was just a guest? I was told that the Browdon service staff and some people from their St. Louis office would be here to help me. Why did you let me make a fool of myself?”
“My sister’s friends are — quite unusual. That’s why I asked Barney to stay over, because you seemed like some kind of a nut.”
He swiveled his big head and peered at me. “You rowed me around for hours,” he said accusingly.
“I was humoring you.”
He snorted and went plunging off to the cabin.
Weech clapped his hands and said, “Run, Charlie! Run after Mr. Stonebarger and carry his things back down here for him.” Charlie took off like the favored greyhound in the daily double. “My word!” Mr. Weech said, “he’s masterful, isn’t he?” There was a trace of incipient hero worship in his voice.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Mary said.
Morgan Stonebarger came striding back down to the dock, Charlie a burdened and dutiful six feet behind him.
“Are we off?” Mr. Weech asked pertly.
“When I’m ready,” the great architect said.
He took my upper arm in one giant hand and Mary’s in the other and led us away from the others. He stopped, released us and said, “I was very rude about your work, Miss Dawes.”
“Maybe it was the kind of truth that—”
“I am a very rude man. I have consciously practiced rudeness for years. I have a lot of work to do in whatever time is left to me. I think it is important work. I think it is more important than sweet forbearance, which merely encourages people to waste your time with their nonsense. When they waste my time, they waste pieces of my life. So I have no time to be apologetic to you, Miss Dawes. Nor do I care to be so dishonest as to leave doubts in your mind. Your work is pedestrian. That is an expert opinion.”
“What gives you the right to—”
“But up until now you haven’t known it’s rather dull work, which is greatly in your favor. Self-deception is better than cynicism. Your commercial success is not satisfying to you.”
“Now, just a minute!”
He turned to me. “Is a one-day charter still possible, Barney?”
“While I was doing all that rowing, it went up to a hundred bucks, friend.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll let you know.” He grabbed my hand and chipped flakes off every knucklebone. “Bring your Miss Dawes along with us, Barney, and we’ll discuss art, life, purpose, destiny and — rude architects.”
We watched from the dock as the big cruiser swung south and disappeared beyond the fringe of Mary’s island. Stonebarger didn’t wave. He wasn’t the waving kind.
Mary frowned at me, reached out and squashed a mosquito against my forehead and said, “Is he one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?”
“He hasn’t had a chance to be either one. He’s one of the busy guys.” I smiled at her. “And you notice how bright he is, calling you my Miss Dawes?”
“Don’t get carried away.”
After a pickup lunch we went to Boca in the Baylady. Each time I glanced at Mary she looked better to me. She seemed broody. I spent a lot of time devising subtle plots. Good old Stonebarger had started a little constructive erosion. I could play it very cool, very safe, move very slowly. Sooner or later I’d get my chance to sell her my plan. I knew it would work. We’d live on the island full time. I’d work my charter-boat business out of there. I’d put up some more cottages. Maudie would be on hand full time. I’d work a package deal for the most dedicated fishermen, those who would go for the rustic, primitive island life. There would come the right moment and the right place, and I’d handle it just right this time.