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.
I walked towards him. “Mr. Rossiter?”
“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 Archer.”
He held out his hand, which was wet, after wiping it on his bathing trunks, which were also wet. “Oh, yes, Mr. Archer. 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-two or -three at most. Out of school into the air, I thought. Probably met Una Sand at a party, fell hard for all that glamour, 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 was 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 gray 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 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 Rossiter 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.
He stood up, tore off his mask, and threw it away into the sea. He looked at me angrily, one arm holding the body of his wife against him. The white body half-floating in the shifting water was nude, a strange bright glistening catch from the sea floor.
“Go away,” he said in a choked voice.
I went to get a blanket out of the car, and brought it to him where he laid her out on the beach. He huddled over her as if to protect her body from my gaze. He covered her and stroked her wet hair back from her face. Her face was not pretty. He covered that, too.
I said: “You’ll have to call the police now.”
After a time he answered: “I guess you’re right. Will you help me carry her into the house?”
I helped him. Then I called the police in Santa Barbara, and told them that a woman had been drowned and where to find her. I left Jack Rossiter shivering in his wet trunks beside her blanketed body, and drove back to Hollywood for the second time.
Millicent Dreen was in her apartment in the Park-Wilshire. In the afternoon there had been a nearly full decanter of Scotch on her buffet. At ten o’clock it was on the coffee table beside her chair, and nearly empty. Her face and body had sagged. I wondered if every day she aged so many years, and every morning re-created herself through the power of her will.
She said: “I thought you were going back to Santa Barbara. I was just going to go to bed.”
“I did go. Didn’t Jack phone you?”
“No.” She looked at me, and her green eyes were suddenly very much alive, almost fluorescent. “You found her?” she said.
“Jack found her in the sea. She was drowned.”
“I was afraid of that.” But there was something like relief in her voice. As if worse things might have happened. As if at least she had lost no weapons and gained no foes in the daily battle to hold position in the world’s most competitive city.
“You hired me to find her,” I said. “She’s found, though I had nothing to do with finding her – and that’s that. Unless you want me to find out who drowned her.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I said. Perhaps it wasn’t an accident. Or perhaps somebody stood by and watched her drown.”
I had given her plenty of reason to be angry with me before, but for the first time that day she was angry. “I gave you a hundred dollars for doing nothing. Isn’t that enough for you? Are you trying to drum up extra business?”
“I did one thing. I found out that Una wasn’t by herself yesterday.”
“Who was with her?” She stood up and walked quickly back and forth across the rug. As she walked her body was remolding itself into the forms of youth and vigor. She re-created herself before my eyes.
“The invisible man,” I said. “My tennis partner.”
Still she wouldn’t speak the name. She was like the priestess of a cult whose tongue was forbidden to pronounce a secret word. But she said quickly and harshly: “If my daughter was killed I want to know who did it. I don’t care who it was. But if you’re giving me a line and if you make trouble for me and nothing comes of it, I’ll have you kicked out of Southern California. I could do that.”
Her eyes flashed, her breath came fast, and her sharp breast rose and fell with many of the appearances of genuine feeling. I liked her very much at that moment. So I went away, and instead of making trouble for her I made trouble for myself.
I found a booth in a drugstore on Wilshire and confirmed what I knew, that Terry Neville would have an unlisted number. I called a girl I knew who fed gossip to a movie columnist, and found out that Neville lived in Beverly Hills but spent most of his evenings around town. At this time of night he was usually at Ronald’s or Chasen’s, a little later at Ciro’s. I went to Ronald’s because it was nearer, and Terry Neville was there.
He was sitting in a booth for two in the long, low, smoke-filled room, eating smoked salmon and drinking stout. Across from him there was a sharp-faced terrier-like man who looked like his business manager and was drinking milk. Some Hollywood actors spend a lot of time with their managers, because they have a common interest.
I avoided the headwaiter and stepped up to Neville’s table. He saw me and stood up, saying: “I warned you this afternoon. If you don’t get out of here I’ll call the police.”
I said quietly: “I sort of am the police. Una is dead.” He didn’t answer and I went on: “This isn’t a good place to talk. If you’ll step outside for a minute I’d like to mention a couple of facts to you.”