As he moved to reach the lines to free them, Meyer said, "Damned handy, Travis. As soon as you run out, they drop you another one. Stop panting and start the motor, eh?"
Back at Thompson's, I ran the skiff up alongside the starboard stern of The Busted Flush. She was tied up with the port side against the pier. While Meyer held it there, I scrambled aboard. He lifted her to her feet, and I reached over the rail, got her, swung her aboard, tried to put her on her feet and had to hold her to keep her from falling. Meyer went chugging off in the skiff to leave it over at the small boat dock where it belonged.
I took her down into the lounge and on through, past the galley to the master stateroom. She stood braced, holding tightly to the back of a chair while I turned the lights on and pulled the pier-side draperies shut. Her head was bowed. She looked up at me and started to say something, but the chattering of her teeth made it unintelligible. I took my heaviest robe from the hanging locker and tossed it onto the big bed, then got her a big towel from the locker in the head and threw it in onto the bed and said, "Get out of that wet stuff and dry yourself good."
I went to the liquor locker, found the Metaxa brandy and poured a good three inches into a small highball glass. I carried it to the stateroom and knocked, and in her chattery voice she told me to come in. She was belting the robe. Her clothing was in a sodden little pile on the floor. I handed her the glass. It chittered against her teeth. She took it down in three tosses, shuddered, then sat on the edge of the bed, hugging herself.
Meyer appeared in the doorway. "Chills? Hmm. Shock. Reaction. Miss, if you have the energy, a hot shower or, better yet, a hot tub. And then another drink. Okay?"
She gave a tense little bob of her head, and Meyer scooped up the wet clothing. In moments I heard the roar of the water into the huge elegant sybaritic tub the original owner had installed to please the tastes of his Brazilian mistress, before I won the vessel from him-sans mistress-in a Palm Beach poker session.
"S-s-s-something... in my... l-l-l-leg," she said. I got the needlenose pliers, the good wire cutters, and Dr. Meyer to assist me. We had her lie prone on the giant bed, custom-built-in equipment on the boat when I had won her, and Meyer folded the robe back, untangling it from the barbs on the other set of gang hooks on the belly of the speckled plug. I swung the big bed lamp over to bear upon the operating area.
There are too many trite words for legs like that. Ivory. Grecian marble. I was considerably more accustomed to brown legs. These had a dusky pallor. But pallor did not mean softness.
The chills were in cycles. When a chill tightened her up, the long muscles of calf and thigh, dancer's muscles, swelled-changing the elegant curvatures of those legs in repose. The backs of the thighs and the calves had a fine-grained, flawless, matte finish, and the area of the backs of her knees were shinier, faint blue veining visible under the skin.
We had to adjust our operating technique to the chills, but the brandy was beginning to work, diminishing the violence of them. First, with Meyer steadying the triple shank of the imbedded gang hook, holding it with the needlenose pliers, I nipped through it with the wire cutters, tossed the body of the plug aside. Of the gang hook, two hooks were sunk into her beyond the barb. With Meyer still holding the shank, I clipped the free hook off.
"This is the part that will hurt, dear," Meyer said. "Go ahead," she said.
There is only one way to remove a fish hook. You have to push it the rest of the way through, bring the point back out through the skin.
Meyer changed the grip and angle of the pliers, waited for a small chill to end, then made a slow steady twist of his wrist. The two barbed points made two little tents in the skin as they came up from underneath, pushed against the essential toughness, no matter how delicate it may seem, of human hide, then simultaneously pierced through. She made no sound or motion. Wondering if she had fainted, I moved to look at her face. She lay with her eyes open, totally relaxed.
I carefully clipped the barbs off. Bright dark droplets of blood stood out against fairness. I plucked the barbs from the smooth surface of hide, and Meyer, holding the same grip on the pliers, rotated his wrist the other way and brought the barbless curves of metal back out through the channel where they had first dug in. Dab of iodine then, on each of the four small holes, and one round ouchless waterproof patch, size of a half dollar.
"A great honor, Doctor," I said, "to assist you in the technique which bears your name."
Unfolding the back of the robe down over her legs he said, gutturally, "You may have the object of removed to keep always, Kildare."
"Clowns," the girl murmured. "My God." Meyer hastened out, turned off the bath water. "Your bath awaits, milady. In several minutes I will knock, enter with averted stare, hold the second drink in your direction. The water is very hot. Force yourself into it. What do we call you?"
She sat up slowly, looked in turn at each of us, and her dark eyes were like twin entrances to two deep caves. Nothing lived in those caves. Maybe something had, once upon a time. There were piles of picked bones back in there, some scribbling on the walls, and some gray ash where the fires had been. "Jane Doe will do just fine," she said.
"Your comedy team is Meyer and McGee," he said. "I am Meyer, known as Meyer. The pretty one is McGee, known as Travis, and this is his simple little unassuming houseboat, Jane Doe."
"Delighted," she said, barely moving her lips, and stood up and brushed by us and went into the bath and closed the door.
I went into the guest stateroom which Meyer was occupying. There is a big drawer under the bed. An ironic type had once named it the broad bin, and unfortunately I have been unable to think of anything else to call it. I found girl's pajamas, roomy flannelette in blue and white stripes. I found some black Dacron sailcloth slacks in size twelve, and a white pleated Dacron shirt with long sleeves and with an edge of Dacron lace on the collar and cuffs. I found a pair of tennis shoes that looked about the right size. And I took out one of those little packages, seal unbroken, the better hotels provide for female guests whose luggage has been taken to some highly unlikely place by their friendly airline. The essential toiletries, with a stylized picture of either a blonde or a brunette imprinted on the flexible plastic.
I put them in on the big bed of the boat's owner, debated making the bed up fresh, remembered that the linen had had but one night's use by McGee, and she was not exactly in a condition to be overly fastidious. As I came out of the master stateroom, Meyer came out of the bath after delivering the drink.
"Come take a look," he said. I followed him to the galley.
He had drawn a small washtub of fresh water, put her clothing in it to rinse the salt out of the fabric. Mother Meyer.
"What we have, Doctor Watson," he said, "is a raw silk sleeveless blouse in natural color, and an OrIon fleece wraparound skirt, both items with the label of something called, God help us all, The Doll House, in Broward Beach. And we have these lacy little blue briefs, and the matching bra, about a B-cup size 34 I would judge, excellent quality and unlabeled, possibly from a custom house. No shoes. And, as you may have noticed, no jewelry, no wristwatch. But pierced ears, indentation of a ring on the ring finger of the right hand, and though she's no sun bunny, a stripe of pallor on the left wrist where the wristwatch was worn." I followed him into the lounge. "Age, Mr. Holmes?"