There had to be a way out of it. It was maddening. I looked across the dark waterway. Everything was quiet along the other side; there was nothing except an empty warehouse, a deserted dock. Nobody had seen it. Barclay probably didn’t even know the pug had come out here. He’d done it on his own because he couldn’t rest until he’d humiliated a bigger man who’d knocked him down. That was the awful part of it: there was nothing whatever to connect me with it except the simple but inescapable fact he’d driven in here to see me and had never driven out again—I stopped. Driven? No. I hadn’t seen any car. But how did I know there wasn’t one out there? The shed was dark.
My mind was racing now. I sprang up and ran around to the storeroom door, still barefoot, dripping water out of my sodden clothes. I found a flashlight and leaped onto the ladder. I ran across to the door of the shed and threw the beam into the darkness inside. There it was, back in a corner. I was weak with relief. Maybe he’d parked it there in the dark to keep me from seeing it and being warned. But that didn’t matter. The big thing was that he did have a car in here.
All I had to do was drive it out past the watchman, and the pug had left here alive. It was as simple as that.
Out at the gate the light was overhead, and the interior of the car would be in partial shadow. The watchman’s shack would be on the right. I could hunch down in the seat until I was approximately the size of the pug. All the watchman ever did was glance up from his magazine and wave. He wouldn’t see my face, nor remember afterward that he hadn’t. It was the same car, wasn’t it? The man had driven in, and after a while he had driven out.
But wait. There was something else. I’d still have to get back inside without Christiansen seeing me. He knew I was in here, and I couldn’t very well come in again without having left. But that was easy, too. It must be nearly eleven now. Chris went off duty at midnight. All I had to do was wait until after twelve and come back in on the next man’s shift. He wouldn’t know where I was supposed to be, or care.
I walked over to the car and flashed the light in, and the whole thing fell in on me again. I realized I should have known it if I’d been using my head. You always removed the keys automatically when you got out of a car. It was worse than ever now.
I leaned wearily against the door. I knew where the keys were, didn’t I? It would take only a minute. Revulsion swept over me. I thought of what it was like down there, the light shining among that surrealist forest of dark pilings while grass undulated gently in the current and a dead man watched you with smoke coming out of his head. It was something out of a madman’s dream.
But it had to be done. I walked back to the barge, dreading it, and stood on the afterdeck where he had landed and slid in. I could see the faint glow of the light below me, back under the pier, and began taking off the wet trousers and shirt. There was no use being hampered by them this time. In the deep shadows beside me I could just make out the form of the big steel mooring bit. That was what had killed him. He’d been wheeling vertically as he fell, and his head had crashed down onto the top of it with force enough to brain an ox. I felt queasy, and tried not to think about it.
Then, suddenly, the whole plan began to take form in my mind at once. I’d had only part of it before; this would clinch it. Men had been found floating along water fronts before with their heads broken in, and usually their pockets were empty. And I didn’t merely take the car out; I parked it among those dives in the tough district between here and town. It wouldn’t matter where he was actually found. Bodies drifted erratically with the tides as they began to grow buoyant.
I was ready. Then I hesitated, thinking coldly. I didn’t know much about law or the workings of courts, but I had sense enough to realize that what I was about to do was deliberately criminal. The other hadn’t been, even though it had killed him. I could still go call the police and report it, and everything would be on my side. A half dozen generations of lawyers and New England clergymen leaned over my shoulder and whispered fiercely that that was the only thing to do.
And on the other hand? Once I did this it was irrevocable, and I was on my own. If they caught me then there’d be no evidence of a fight or accident. They might convict me of deliberate murder, because I’d tried to cover it up. Even there in the hot night I could feel the chill run up my back.
I waited, trying to make up my mind. I didn’t have all night. Which was it to be? Then, strangely, there was nothing in my mind except that girl, just the way it had been before. There was an odd feeling of finality about it, of inevitability, as if I already knew what I was going to do because there wasn’t actually any choice. I didn’t try to understand it. That would have been futile. On the face of it, it was crazy. For hours I’d been fighting against taking her job, and now that something was in the way which might stop me I knew I wouldn’t let anything stop me. I put the mask over my face and dropped over the stern into the water.
I went straight down until I was below the last of the horizontal timbers and then cut in among the pilings. There could be no lost motion. Thirty feet down and thirty back used up a lot of precious air, and I’d cut it too fine those other times. The light grew stronger. He was still lying there beside it. I looked away from his face. I swam down and took hold of his belt. Revulsion shot through me as I pushed a hand into the first pocket. It yielded nothing but a handkerchief. The next held a pocketknife and a package of contraceptives. The desire to hurry, to run from him and get back to the surface, was almost overpowering now. I had to fight it. I turned him over. Mud sucked at him. A cloud of silt lifted and obscured the upper part of his body, drifting down the current. I felt for the hip pockets.
The leather key case was in the first. Then I had the wallet. I slid back a little, looked at them in the light to be sure I made no mistake, and then rammed the wallet down into the muck beyond my elbow. I withdrew my hand and closed the hole. I swam out, following the light cable. I went up. My head broke surface. Darkness and the clean night sky had never looked more beautiful.
I went around to the ladder, still shaking a little, and climbed aboard. My right hand hurt against the rungs. I hoped I hadn’t broken any bones. I stood naked and wet in the night, thinking furiously. One of the bad moments was over now. But there was still another. No, I told myself reassuringly, there’d be nothing to it. Was I losing my nerve now that I was actually going to do it instead of just thinking about it? The chances were a thousand to one he’d merely glance up and wave me on as I went past in the car.
I walked around to the other side of the deckhouse and set the key case to drain beside the ladder where I could find it. Then I went aft, unplugged the light, and hauled it aboard, coiling the cable. I put it away in the storeroom, along with the diving mask, and locked the door.
I wrung out the wet clothes and hung them in the bathroom. Glancing hurriedly at my watch, I saw it was ten minutes of eleven. I had plenty of time. Then I did a double take, realizing how bad the strain had been. I’d had the watch on all the time, three trips to the bottom of the channel, without even noticing it.
It was supposed to be waterproof, but that didn’t mean much. Five fathoms down was a lot different from standing in the rain. I held it up to my ear. It was still running. I took it off and dried it.
Splashing myself with a pail of fresh water, I dried off and looked at my face in the mirror. There was a discolored lump above my right eye, a cut in the corner of my mouth, and another bad bruise on the side of my jaw. There was nothing I could do about it now except try to keep anybody from seeing it. I examined the hand. It was badly swollen, but I couldn’t feel anything broken.