What should he do today?
A few miles from where Richard Queen was lying in the bed swam an island. The island was connected to the Connecticut mainland by a private causeway of handsome concrete. A fieldstone gatehouse with wood trim treated to look like bleached driftwood barred the island end of the causeway. This gatehouse was dressed in creeper ivy and climber roses, and it had a brief skirt of garden hemmed in oyster shells. A driftwood shingle above the door said:
Two private policemen in semi-nautical uniforms alternated at the gatehouse in twelve-hour shifts.
Nair Island had six owners, who shared its two hundred-odd acres in roughly equal holdings. In Taugus, the town on the mainland of which the island was an administrative district, their summer retreat was known — in a sort of forelock-tugging derision — as “Million-Nair” Island.
The six millionaires were not clubby. Each estate was partitioned from its neighbors by a high, thick fieldstone wall topped with shells and iron spikes. Each owner had his private yacht basin and fenced-off bathing beach. Each treated the road serving the six estates as if it were his alone. Their annual meetings to transact the trifling business of the community, as required by the bylaws of the Nair Island Association, were brusque affairs, almost hostile. The solder that welded the six owners together was not Christian fellowship but exclusion.
The island was their fortress, and they were mighty people. One was a powerful United States Senator who had gone into politics from high society to protect the American way of life. Another was the octogenarian widow of a railroad magnate. Another was an international banker. A fourth was an aging philanthropist who loved the common people in the mass but could not stand them one by one. His neighbor, commanding the seaward spit of the Island, was a retired Admiral who had married the only daughter of the owner of a vast shipping fleet.
The sixth was Alton K. Humffrey.
Inspector Queen came downstairs shaved and dressed for the day in beige slacks, nylon sports shirt, and tan-and-white shoes. He carried his jacket over his arm.
“Morning.”
The Pearls returned his greeting heartily. Too heartily, he thought.
“You’re so early, Richard.” Becky was pouring her husband’s coffee. She was in a crisp house dress, white and pink. Abe was in his uniform. “And my, all dressed up. I know! You meet a woman on the beach yesterday.”
The old man laughed. “The day a woman messes with me.”
“Don’t give me that. And don’t think Abe isn’t worried, leaving me alone in the house every day with an attractive man.”
“And don’t think I’m not,” Abe Pearl growled. “Squattez-vous, Dick. Sleep all right?”
“All right.” He sat down opposite his friend and accepted a cup of coffee from Beck Pearl gratefully. “Aren’t you up kind of early yourself this morning, Abe?”
“With the summer people coming in, I never know what I’m going to find down at Headquarters. There was trouble at a beach party early this morning — some tanked-up teenagers. Want to sit in, Dick, just for ducks?”
The Inspector shook his head.
“Go on, Richard,” Beck Pearl urged. “You’re bored. Vacations are always that way.”
The old man smiled. “Working people take vacations. Not old discards like me.”
“That’s fine talk! How do you want your eggs this morning?”
“No breakfast, Becky. Thanks a lot.”
The Pearls glanced at each other as the old man raised the cup. Abe Pearl shook his big head slightly.
“Well, Dick, suit yourself,” he said. “I thought it might appeal to you. What do you hear from your son? I noticed you got a letter yesterday.”
“Ellery’s fine. He’s in Rome now. Thinking of visiting Israel next.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?” Mrs. Pearl asked. “Or weren’t you invited?” Her two sons were married, and she had definite ideas about what was wrong with the younger generation.
“Invited? Ellery begged me to go. But I didn’t feel it would be right. He’s roaming around Europe looking for story ideas, and I’d only be in his way.”
“He wasn’t fooled by that poppycock, I hope,” Beck Pearl snorted.
“He wanted to cancel his trip,” Richard Queen said quietly. “He only went because you and Abe were kind enough to ask me up here for the summer.”
“Well! I should think so.”
Abe Pearl rose. “You’re sure you won’t sit in, Dick?”
“I thought I’d do a little exploring today, Abe. Maybe take your boat out, if you don’t mind.”
“Mind!” Abe Pearl glared down at him. “What kind of dribble is that?” He kissed his wife fiercely and pounded out, making the dishes on the sideboard jingle.
Through the window Inspector Queen watched his host back the black-and-white coupé with the roof searchlight out of the garage. For a moment the sun sparkled on the big man’s cap with the gold shield above the visor. Then, with a wave, Abe Pearl was gone.
With his ability and popularity, the old man thought, he can hold down this Chief’s job in Taugus for life. Abe used his head. He got out of the big time when he was still young enough to set up a new career for himself. He isn’t much younger than I am, and look at him.
“Feeling sorry for yourself again, Richard?” Beck Pearl’s womanly voice said.
He turned, reddening.
“We all have to adjust to something,” she went on in her soft way. “After all, it isn’t as if you were like Abe’s older brother Joe. Joe never had an education, never got married. All he knew was work. He worked all his life on a machine, and when he got too old and sick to work any more he had nothing — no family, no savings, nothing but the few dollars he gets from the government, and the check Abe sends him every month. There’s millions like Joe, Richard. You’re in good health, you have a successful son, you’ve led an interesting life, you’ve got a pension, no worries about the future — who’s better off, you or Joe Pearl?”
He grinned. “Let’s give Abe something to be jealous about.” And he got up and kissed his friend’s wife tenderly.
“Richard! You devil.” Becky was blushing.
“Old, am I? Bring on those eggs — sunnyside, and don’t burn the bacon!”
But the lift was feeble. When he left the house and headed for Abe Pearl’s second-hand sixteen-foot cruiser, the old man’s heart was bitter again. Every man tasted his own brand of misery. You needed more than a successful past and a secure future. Becky had left one thing out, the most important thing.
A man needed the present. Something to do.
The engine coughed its way into the basin and expired just as the sixteen-footer slid alongside the dock. Richard Queen tied up to a bollard, frowning, and looked around. The dock was deserted, and there was no one on the beach but a buxom woman in a nurse’s nylon uniform reading a magazine on the sand beside a net-covered perambulator.
The old man waved. “Ahoy, there!”
The nurse looked up, startled.
“Could I possibly buy some gas here?” he bellowed.
The woman shook her head vigorously and pointed to the pram. He walked down to the beach end of the dock and made his way across the sand toward her. It was beautiful sand, clean as a laundered tablecloth, and he had the uneasy feeling that he should not be making tracks in it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking off his hat. “Did I wake the baby?”
The nurse was stooping over the carriage intently. She straightened up, smiling.
“No harm done. He sleeps like a little top.”