“Remember how he cut that pilot off with some phony excuse about listening to the motor? You see, Griffin didn’t know until then where the real drop had been thrown overboard. He realized just at that moment what the pilot had been talking about, and he shut him up before we could get wise. The next thing Captain Shevlin was about to say was that the night all this happened was the same night that explosion took place. You see it now, Pat?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice low and choked with emotion. “We’ve got to get word to the police.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Pat. We can’t prove a word of it.”
“What are we going to do?”
He caught the improvised crutch and pulled himself upright, white-faced with pain. “We’ve got to get down to that Number Fourteen buoy by the time it’s dark. If it is Griffin, he’ll be there.”
“But hadn’t we better get the police too?”
“No. They might scare him off.” He paused; then went on softly. “I want Griffin, Pat. The police can have him after I get through with him.”
It was dusk when they came out at last on the main arm of the bayou, near the camp, and he sank down, exhausted and drenched with sweat. It had been agonizing, and maddeningly slow, with long stops to rest every two or three hundred yards. The crutch kept sticking into the ground, and he had had to cut off his trouser legs and bind them around the end of it to form a cushion. The ankle throbbed with pain whenever he stood upright, even with no weight on it. And every weary step of it had been goaded by the refrain going around in his head. We’ll be too late. We’ll be too late.
They squatted down now in the screen of shrubbery and looked out across the bayou in the deepening twilight. “We still have to get across,” she whispered.
“I have to get across,” he corrected. “You wait here, Pat.”
“But how are you going to do it? If you leave your crutch here you won’t be able to walk when you get over there.”
“I’m going to take it,” he replied. He stood up again and limped painfully along the bank. In a moment he found what he sought, a piece of dried-out timber left by the high water of some long-past flood. Getting down onto his hands and knees, he rolled and tugged it into the water. She helped him.
“Let me go, Pete,” she begged.
“No,” he said shortly. He was working fast now. He sat down on the edge of the bank, placed the crutch lengthwise along the piece of driftwood, took off his shoes, tied the laces together, and set them across it. Then he removed his belt, strapped it around the whole thing, and fastened his wrist watch on the belt.
It was growing dark now. Time was running out. He could scarcely see her in the dense shadow along the shore. Taking the gun out of the waistband of his trousers, he handed it to her.
“Wait for me right here,” he said quietly. “Sit still, and don’t smoke. When somebody comes along in a boat it’ll probably be me, but don’t believe it until you hear me speak and recognize my voice. If Easter shows up, don’t try to bluff him with this gun. Shoot him.”
He moved slowly, kicking with only one foot, but he could stop and rest by holding onto the timber. When he climbed out on the other side he could not get his left shoe back on because of the swelling and pain in his ankle. He threw it away and began groping his way along the bank. It was black under the trees. He bumped into them and floundered in vines and underbrush. Several times he banged the ankle, and cursed the sickening pain.
Griffin would be there now. He had an insane desire to throw the crutch away and try to run. If Griffin found what he sought, and got away, they’d never prove a thing. There was no evidence except whatever it was lying there on the bottom of the channel. He lost track of time; there was no knowing how long it was before he began to see the lights of the store and restaurant ahead.
He kept on along the bank, coming in behind the cabins. There was no one around as he hobbled onto the float and felt his way along toward the skiffs. He groped around in three of them before he found one with oars. Getting in was awkward; he had to crawl off the dock onto the seat on his hands and knees. His head was aching again. When he was sitting up on the seat at last with his legs stretched out, the ankle didn’t hurt so badly. He picked up the oars and shoved away from the landing.
A low overcast was pushing in from the Gulf, blotting out the stars. He could just make out the dark loom of the timber on both sides of him as he swung the oars with long, hard strokes. When he had rounded the bend and passed the branching channel he pulled in close to shore and began calling her name softly.
“Here, Pete,” she said, quite near. He came up against the bank stern first. She stepped in and sat down, and gingerly handed him the gun.
“I’ll drop you off at the boat landing,” he said. “And go on out under that first highway bridge, by the Counselor.”
“No,” she said flatly. “I’m going with you.”
“You can’t. It may be dangerous.”
“Please, Pete,” she whispered. “Can’t you understand? I have to go. I can’t let you do it alone. We’re in this together.”
Delay was agony. Time ran past them while they talked. Against his better judgment he relented. “O.K., Pat,” he said. He dug in the oars and went straight up the bayou past the old camp ground. Sweat ran down his naked shoulders. He felt his way around the bend and under the highway bridge. A few cars slipped past on the highway. He looked away from the lights to avoid cutting down his vision even more. Patricia was quiet in the stern seat, and he could see only the pale blur of her face. It was intensely still except for the creak of the oarlocks.
Maybe I’m wrong, he thought. Maybe Counsel had already found it and hauled it up before Griffin shot him. But, no. There hadn’t been time. Easter had said it was just after dark when he heard the shots. Griffin had been waiting for him. Shooting him before Counsel could lead him to the place where it had been thrown overboard was stupid of Griffin, but it almost had to be that way.
That was the thing that had made it so nearly impossible to figure out. One man had shot Counsel and another had buried him, and neither knew about the other. Counsel had probably fallen out of his boat and had swum ashore to try to get back to his car and a doctor, and Griffin didn’t know he was dead until he had already approached McHugh. He thought Mac was working for Counsel until it was too late and he’d already exposed himself. He’d killed Mac, and then tried to kill Mrs. Conway because he knew that if she’d put one man on the trail there’d be others unless he stopped her.
They were nearing the ship channel. “Not a sound from now on, Pat,” he whispered. “Don’t talk, and don’t move around. If he’s down here he’ll be working without lights and we’ve got to get close enough to board him.”
“You’ll be careful, won’t you?” she pleaded.
He thought of everything that depended on them now. If they failed . . . He pushed the thought of failure out of his mind and felt the hard weight of the gun against his waist. “I’ll be careful,” he said grimly.
They were out in the ship channel now and he could see the lighted buoy winking on and off below them. Swinging wide, against the opposite shore, they slipped past in the impenetrable darkness beyond the range of its flashes. He rowed softly now, guarding against every sound.
When they were a hundred yards or more beyond the light he stopped pulling on the oars and held his breath to listen. There was no sound except an occasional faint rumble from the dredge working below them. The darkness of the water and of the sky seemed to run together, as if they were suspended in a black void and cut off from all contact with the world except the intermittent flashing of the buoy just visible out of the corner of his eye.