“You still haven’t said anything.” He got up and took a step towards me, very tall and wide. “What I said was good day.”
But not tall and wide enough. I’ve always had an idea, probably incorrect, that I could handle any man who wears scarlet silk bathrobes. He saw that idea on my face and changed his tune: “If you don’t get out of here, my man, I’ll call a guard.”
“In the meantime I’d straighten out that delightful marcel of yours. I might even be able to make a little trouble for you.” I said that on the assumption that any man with his pan and sexual opportunities would be on the brink of trouble most of the time.
It worked. “What do you mean by saying that?” he said. A sudden pallor made his carefully plucked black eyebrows stand out starkly. “You could get into a very great deal of hot water by standing there talking like that.”
“What happened to Una Sand?”
“I don’t know. Get out of here.”
“You’re a liar.”
Like one of the clean-cut young men in one of his own movies, he threw a punch at me. I let it go over my shoulder and while he was off balance placed the heel of my hand against his very flat solar plexus and pushed him down into his chair. Then I shut the door and walked fast to the front gate. I’d just as soon have gone on playing tennis with the invisible man.
“No luck, I take it?” Mrs. Dreen said when she opened the door of her apartment to me.
“I’ve got nothing to go on. If you really want to find your daughter you’d better go to Missing Persons. They’ve got the organization and the connections.”
“I suppose Jack will be going to them. He’s home already.”
“I thought he was coming tomorrow.”
“That telegram was sent yesterday. It was delayed somehow. His ship got in yesterday afternoon.”
“Where is he now?”
“At the beach-house by now, I guess. He flew down from Alameda in a Navy plane and called me from Santa Barbara.”
“What did you tell him?”
“What could I tell him? That Una was gone. He’s frantic. He thinks she may have drowned.” It was late afternoon, and in spite of the whiskey which she drank slowly and steadily like an alcohol lamp, Mrs. Dreen’s fires were burning low. Her hands and eyes were limp, and her voice was weary.
“Well,” I said, “I might as well go back to Santa Barbara. I talked to Hilda Karp but she couldn’t help me. Are you coming along?”
“I have to go to the studio tomorrow. Anyway, I don’t want to see Jack just now. I’ll stay here.”
The sun was low over the sea, gold-leafing the water and bloodying the sky, when I got through Santa Barbara and back onto the coast highway. Not thinking it would do any good but by way of doing something or other to earn my keep, I stopped at the last filling station before the road turned off to Mrs. Dreen’s beach-house. It was about a quarter of a mile from the turning.
“Fill her up,” I said to the woman attendant. I needed gas anyway.
“I’ve got some friends who live around here,” I said when she held out her hand for her money. “Do you know where Mrs. Dreen lives?”
She looked at me from behind disapproving spectacles. “You should know. You were down there with her today, weren’t you?”
I covered my confusion by handing her a five and telling her: “Keep the change.”
“No, thank you.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. All I want you to do is tell me who was there yesterday. You see all. Tell a little.”
“Who are you?”
I showed her my card.
“Oh.” Her lips moved unconsciously, computing the size of the tip. “There was a guy in a green roadster, I think it was a Chrysler. He went down around noon and drove out again around four I guess it was, like a bat out of hell.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear. You’re wonderful. What did he look like?”
“Sort of dark and pretty good-looking. It’s kind of hard to describe. Like the guy that took the part of the pilot in that picture last week — you know — only not so good-looking.”
“Terry Neville.”
“That’s right, only not so good-looking. I’ve seen him go down there plenty of times.”
“I don’t know who that would be,” I said, “but thanks anyway. There wasn’t anybody with him, was there?”
“Not that I could see.”
I went down the road to the beach-house like a bat into hell. The sun, huge and angry red, was horizontal now, half-eclipsed by the sea and almost perceptibly sinking. It spread a red glow over the shore like a soft and creeping fire. After a long time, I thought, the cliffs would crumble, the sea would dry up, the whole earth would burn out. There’d be nothing left but bone-white cratered ashes like the moon.
When I rounded the bluff and came within sight of the beach I saw a man coming out of the sea. In the creeping fire which the sun shed he, too, seemed to be burning. The diving mask over his face made him look strange and inhuman. He walked out of the water as if he had never set foot on land before.
“Who are you?” he shouted to me when I stopped the car.
I walked towards him. “Mr. Ross?”
“Yes.” He raised the glass mask from his face and with it the illusion of strangeness lifted. He was just a handsome young man, well set-up, tanned, and worried-looking.
“My name is Rogers.”
He held out his hand, which was wet, after wiping it on his bathing trunks, which were also wet. “Oh, yes, Mr. Rogers. My mother-in-law mentioned you over the phone.”
“Are you enjoying your swim?”
“I am looking for the body of my wife.” It sounded as if he meant it. I looked at him more closely. He was big and husky, but he was just a kid, twenty-one at most. Out of high school into the air, I thought. Probably met Una Sand at a party, fell hard for all that glamor, married her the week before he shipped out, and had dreamed bright dreams ever since. I remembered the brash telegram he had sent, as if life were like the people in slick magazine advertisements.
“What makes you think she drowned?”
“She wouldn’t go away like this. She knew I was coming home this week. I cabled her from Pearl.”
“Maybe she never got the cable.”
After a pause he said: “Excuse me.” He turned towards the waves which were breaking almost at his feet. The sun had disappeared, and the sea was turning grey and cold-looking, an anti-human element.
“Wait a minute. If she’s in there, which I doubt, you should call the police. This is no way to look for her.”
“If I don’t find her before dark, I’ll call them then,” he said. “But if she’s here, I want to find her myself.” I could never have guessed his reason for that, but when I found it out it made sense. So far as anything in the situation made sense.
He walked a few steps into the surf, which was heavier now that the tide was coming in, plunged forward, and swam slowly towards the raft with his masked face under the water. His arms and legs beat the intricate rhythm of the crawl as if his muscles took pleasure in it, but his face was downcast, searching the darkening sea floor. He swam in widening circles about the raft, raising his head about twice a minute for air.
He had completed several circles and I was beginning to feel that he wasn’t really looking for anything, but expressing his sorrow, dancing a futile ritualistic water-dance, when suddenly he took air and dived. For what seemed a long time but was probably about twenty seconds, the surface of the sea was empty except for the white raft. Then the masked head broke water, and Ross began to swim towards shore. He swam a laborious side-stroke, with both arms submerged. It was twilight now, and I couldn’t see him very well, but I could see that he was swimming very slowly. When he came nearer I saw a swirl of yellow hair.