I was basing a great deal of my hypothesis on the belief that there was a system of subterranean tunnels and passageways in, around and under Chambers Bay. It is a known fact that caves exist throughout North America and that they are almost always found in and around the Great Lakes area. At this point I was willing to wager that Sate's crew was down there somewhere.
On the other hand, if I accepted Madden's premise that the creatures numbered more than one, then I had to be willing to tackle a host of other unanswered questions. How many are there? And what was their role in all of this? And Kelto's repeated reference to an equinoctial awakening was raising other questions.
At that moment, I had only one objective — to get Kendall to delay his planned sweep until he had the chance to hear Kelto's story and in turn listen to the plan Madden and I had developed to check out the caves.
There was one other disturbing dimension to the Chambers Bay situation that up to this point hadn't been given a great deal of consideration. If Kelto was right about the Emissary being someone who was moving freely in the mainstream of all this, then the so-called Emissary was in a position to reveal our plan to the true believers.
So, while Jake inched us back to the village, I used the opportunity to whip out the trusty old three-by-fives and frantically make notes on the whole affair. Kelto and B.C. rode in the cramped back seat, both morose, both absorbed in their own thoughts. It was almost twelve-thirty, and I was getting concerned about being able to get to Kendall in time.
It didn't take long after we arrived at the schoolhouse to get the answer. Kendall had deployed his six man force and initiated the sweep at twelve o'clock sharp. The schoolhouse, the women, the children and everything else the Chambers Bay residents held near and dear had been entrusted to young Constable Gregory and a handful of grimfaced teenagers backed by a squad of stalwart and equally grim-looking young ladies. According to Ferris, Kendall's plan had been set in motion and was being implemented exactly as he had diagramed it.
I found Ferris entrenched in what had come to be known as the operations center, a pipe jammed in the corner of his mouth, a stethoscope around his neck and a squalling urchin, pants down, butt up, laid out on the table in front of him. The mother, who had just spied the needle Doc was preparing for her youth, looked even more apprehensive than the distraught youngster. Doc had already cornered B.C. and elicited her assistance.
Kendall had launched his sweep at high noon with a squad that included Constable Hawkins, Caleb Hall, Bert Johnson and three others. Doc informed us that the plan called for them to start from the marina and work their way west. Their arsenal included the tranquilizer guns and the trap blanket. While Madden listened to Ferris's disturbing report, his shoulders sagged and his craggy face settled into a concerned scowl.
"Why the hell couldn't he have waited one more hour?" Jake fumed. "One damn hour couldn't have made that much difference. He knew we were tryin' to get back before the deadline."
Young Gregory defended his superior. "He wanted to make sure they covered everything before they lost what little light they had left, sir."
Jake sighed, headed for the coffee and motioned for me to follow him over to the area maps Kendall had tacked to the wall behind the riser. He picked up a grease pencil and scrawled a big X over the location of the marina. "They started from this point and they're workin' in this direction." His ungainly fist made a sweeping gesture across the expanse of map. "Now, if they space themselves back thirty yards from the shoreline, they'll cover this area." He encapsulated the area with another big black greasy circle and then drew another at the approximate location of the Austin widow's home. "Hell, they won't come within a mile of apple trees from that inlet you showed me."
I nodded, turned and motioned to Kelto.
He joined us, and I started interrogating him about the inlet. "Starting at the ridge on the eastern boundary of the Carson property, show me where you start running into the caves."
Kelto's feminine, too white hand with pencil-thin fingers crept out of his jacket pocket and moved to the general area where Madden had drawn the second circle. "Here and here," he said cryptically, pointing to two different locations. "These in this area are quite high." He pointed to the western or far wall of the inlet. "The ones located on the eastern wall, below the old woman's house, are at about water level. It's a sheer drop, and there may even be water in some of them. I've checked out the ones on the western wall. I never could figure out how to get to the ones below the house."
Madden stepped back as I circled around the two men and studied the map. "Then that means the old house sits directly over the caves."
"It's very steep — twenty, maybe thirty feet down to the first caves. They're smaller. The bigger ones are right at the level of the water," Kelto said.
Madden studied the maps. "Is there any way to come into the inlet from the lake side?"
"The water comes in through an underground passage. I've looked at it. The entrance is above the surface on the lake side and below the surface in the inlet."
Again Madden's shoulders sagged. "Okay, Researcher," he groused, turning to me, "got any ideas?" "Only one," I admitted, "the obvious one. Scale down from behind the house."
"You know how to do that?"
"Not me," I protested. "I don't do caves and I don't do scaling. I leave that to the younger, more adventurous types."
"It would be difficult," Kelto interrupted. "When you're standing on the west wall, you can't determine which ones only go back a few feet and which ones snake back in for some distance."
I decided it was time to do more than just voice a passing objection to Madden's fastforming plan. "Wait a minute, Jake, I know what you're thinking. You're talking about lowering someone some thirty feet down a sheer wall into a foggy inlet and looking for a cave that: may or may not contain flesh-eating things that we know bullets don't stop. Think about that before you push this any farther."
Madden, still studying the map, grunted.
"Besides," I added, "we're not certain they're even down there."
"But you think they are," he insisted.
He had me. At this point I was convinced of it. "Yes," I admitted.
Jake hoisted his bulky frame up over the edge of a nearby table and allowed the scowl to erode into a half-grin. He finished off his coffee and plunked the empty cup down on the table beside him. "I think they're down there, too," he admitted, "and since the three of us can't handle it alone, we wait for Kendall. Then we head for the caves."
Old E.G. wasn't all that thrilled with the prospect of hurtling his already battered body over a sheer precipice and dangling by a thin nylon line over churning waters hidden by fog. Add to that the fact that I was convinced the caves were populated by prehistoric throwbacks that indiscriminately ate meat, alive as well as dead, and compound that by the fact that my Mauser had proven to be next to useless against them. It was easy to conclude that I wanted no part of Madden's little caper.
Story or no story, it sounded like a very bad idea.
Waiting for Kendall's triumphant return gave me a chance to catch a few fast winks, which I did. Curling my weary frame up on one of the bleachers and using my jacket for a pillow, I slipped almost immediately into one of my typical, none too rewarding efforts at sleep. Laced into my apprehensions about chasing some man-eater down some dark, damp cave was a bad dream about Gibby.
"Wake up, E.G., wake up." B.C. was shaking me by the shoulder.