The pacing continued. Once it stopped for a while and I heard people walking past. They talked loudly and laughed a lot. Probably just closing up some of the local bars. Then the footfalls returned. Finally, I saw the light again, and snuggled down tight behind the oil drum as the beam swept over me and along the pilings. Then it played on the water for a few minutes, sometimes shining way out over the water. Then it went out, the footfalls faded for the last time, and I was alone under the pier.
I hoped.
After another half-hour's wait, I dragged and hopped myself along in the shallow water until I came to the next pier. There was a ramp leading right down to the water. Gloucester has huge tides, and these floating angular ramps rise and fall with the water, allowing people to get to their boats easily. I rolled onto the floating platform and ground my way up the ramp slowly and quietly. I couldn't feel my legs.
At the top I slid into the shadow of a boatyard shack and waited. Nothing. Mr. X, convinced I was dead at the bottom of the harbor, had finally departed. Freezing, I lurched and staggered along the street. The Scout was parked where I'd left it. I didn't have the keys; they were either in the hands of Mr. X or else left on the pavement next to the car. In any case, I wanted to leave it exactly as it was. I fumbled in my pockets. No wallet, which didn't surprise me. My corpse, minus wallet, would inject the robbery motive. Also, it let Mr. X and his associates know exactly who the nosy fellow in the Schooner Race was. This did not set well with me at all. I hurried on, hoping that a brisk walk would warm me. It was warm out with no wind, which was lucky. Also lucky that I was wearing a wool sweater beneath my Windbreaker. Wool, of all materials, is the only one that is as warm wet as it is dry. My head and sides hurt terribly, but I would be all right.
Twenty minutes later I found a phone booth. I had deliberately slunk about to avoid police cars. I didn't want to be seen by anyone. A plan was beginning to form in my hurt head. Slumped into the phone booth, I let the door remain open so the light wouldn't go on. I had change, and dialed our number preceded by 044-a collect call that was a bit frenzied, but brief and to the point:
Mary was to make extra-sure all doors, windows, etc., were bolted and the dogs inside, freely roaming throughout the first floor. Additionally, she was to keep my Browning 9-mm Auto at her bedside. At my insistence she'd learned how to use it.
She was to call Jim DeGroot and tell him to pick me up, in exactly the manner I would explain to her.
"I'll see you around three. Jim and I will sneak in the back way. Remember, no lights."
"Are you all right, Charlie?"
"Just dandy. Good-bye."
It would take DeGroot an hour to arrive, but I started on my way. I had a long walk.
I sat hunched, shivering, behind the short hedgerow that lined the edge of Brown's Boatyard Annex. It seemed forever before the red Olds wagon came cruising slowly along the street. In two seconds, I was in the front seat, telling Jim to turn on the heat full blast. I shivered until we were halfway home, then fell asleep. He woke me up behind our garage, and had to help me up the stairs to the kitchen door. I had stiffened up badly, and felt as if my body had been used as a plaything by a pack of mandrills. My cast was soft; I'd need a new one.
Mary pulled open the door even before we reached if and let us in. She hugged me and I groaned. She put her arms around my neck to kiss me and I groaned again. I told her to stop there. She turned on the stove light and busied herself with a boiling kettle. Soon each of us had a giant hot toddy cradled in our paws. I had shed the cold garments for flannel PJs and a robe. Mary probed my skull first and pronounced it intact.”
"The outside anyway. There's no telling about the inside."
"Let's look under the light… can you see, through my thinning hair, a bruise?"
"No. Whoever bopped you used something heavy and soft and your hair's not thinning."
"Yeah, like a leather bag full of buckshot. It's also called a blackjack."
Jim said it was madness not to call the police. Mary gripped the sides of her head with her hands, working her fingers in and out. She was about to cry. She was scared plenty.
"Jesus, Charlie, they wanted to kill you. They tried to kill you."
"Now listen," I said, exchanging the toddy mug for one with hot coffee, "everybody shut up and listen. Mr. X thinks he did me in. So be it. It's my guarantee of safety, Tomorrow the two of you are going back up to Gloucester looking for me. You're going to ask around the Schooner Race… describe me to the owners and patrons. You're going to find the Scout and have the police tow it, or help you start it. Make a big deal about the fact I haven't shown up. The Gloucester police will do the rest. Sooner or later Dan Murdock and Company will get the word: I'm gone…"
"Who the hell is Dan Murdock?"
I told them, and Jim was all for making a beeline straight for him. But of course, I explained, their picking him out would refute my death, since how on earth would they have known about Murdock unless I told them?"
Jim left surreptitiously ten minutes later. After dosing, myself with aspirin, I went to bed.
It was 3:30 next afternoon when Jim dropped Mary off at the front door. She found me in the sunporch smoking a Cuesta Rey. I had slept till noon, waking only to see Mary off at ten.
"Well?"
"The entire town of Gloucester thinks you're dead… or probably dead."
"Excellent, my love. And surely certain interested parties now know I'm dead. They're only waiting for my bloated carcass to surface in the putrid water of Gloucester Harbor. And if the body is never found, so much the better-they'll think they're home free."
"Who are they and what are they doing?"
"That's what I'm going to find out. One thing there's no mistaking now, though, is that somebody really tried to kill me. To kill in a manner remarkably similar to the way in which Allan Hart died." ~
"Well-you're going to forget the whole thing, Charlie, right now. We've got, with luck, twenty-five good years left on this planet. I don't want to spend mine with a bloated corpse."
"Tell me what happened."
"Jim and I went to that bar. One of the bartenders remembered you-he said you were a good fighter for an old guy."
"Bless his heart."
"So we pretended to be really upset of course… and I think we did a good job of it. The whole place is worried, and people are asking around if anyone's seen you. Then we just happened to find the Scout. It was still where you said it would be. The keys were nowhere to be found, so the police helped us get a new key-don't ask me how. It'll work, they said, at least until I can have another made. Then we went to the station and I filled out a form and answered a whole bunch of questions about your appearance, habits, etc., and now they want me to send them a picture."
"Perfect."
"No it isn't, you dope. They're going to get in touch with Brian Hannon."
"Uh oh. Oh boy. I should have thought of that."
"Yes you should have. In fact I'm surprised Brian hasn't been over here yet…"
"He may have been. I heard the doorbell once, and the phone's rung on and off too. But according to Plan A, I haven't stirred."
"Well you'll have to talk with Brian. I think it's a crime, isn't it, to falsify a disappearance?"
"Hmmmm. I think you're right. It's certainly frowned on."
"And what are you going to tell him?"
"I'm not sure I'm going to tell him anything, and I'll tell you why: I have-really, truly, officially-nothing to go on but observations, hunches, and my near-death by murder."
"You've got to be kidding."
"No: While a lot of what I've found out is suspicious, there's no hard proof of any of it. Did Allan drown accidentally or not? Who knows for sure? Are the missing Windhover and the phantom boat Penelope one and the same? Maybe. Maybe not."