His thin expressive face registered a touch of shame. “I have to confess I never had any. Hence, perhaps, the abstraction of my psychological concepts. At one time, of course, I took a good deal of interest in my investments. In recent years much of my time has been devoted to my wife. She is not well, you see.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“No, Mr. Archer, Beatrice is not at all well. She is afflicted with a progressive muscular atrophy of the legs which has deprived her of all locomotive power. Her thigh, Mr. Archer, her thigh, is no thicker than my forearm.” He pushed up his shirt sleeve to exhibit his thin arm. “I often thank whatever gods there be that I am able to provide her with the best of loving care.”
The singer returned to the piano bench and began to play. Mr. Ralston rose with courtly grace and excused himself. “There’s a number I’ve been intending to request all evening. I’m extremely fond of it.”
The musician collected another of Mr. Ralston’s dollars and began to play “In a Little Spanish Town.” Mr. Ralston hummed the tune with her, meanwhile conducting an imaginary orchestra with great verve.
“That’s the spirit, Mr. Ralston,” one of the sailors yelled. “If you had any hair you’d look exactly like Stokowski.”
“Do not judge me by the hairiness or otherwise of my scalp,” Mr. Ralston said joyously. “Judge me by my musical imagination.”
I finished my drink and went out to the lobby to look for Al.
Whenever I visited him, Al had a cot set up for me in his ground floor room. At half-past twelve I was getting ready to roll into it, feeling pleasantly comatose from half a dozen bottles of beer. Al had finished his midnight rounds a few minutes before, and was taking off his tie in front of the mirror. There was a knock on the door, and he put his tie back on.
It was one of the Filipino bellhops. “Mr. Sablacan,” he said excitedly when Al opened the door. “There are men swimming in the swimming pool. I told them they must not swim there at night, but they just laughed at me. I think you must come and kick them out.”
“O.K., Louie. Are they guests?”
“I don’t think so, Mr. Sablacan. Only Mr. Ralston.”
“Mr. Ralston? Is he there?”
“Yessir. He is bouncing on the diving board.”
“Want to come along, Lew?”
Mr. Ralston interested me, and I put my shirt back on and went along. He was standing on the board shining a big flashlight on the pool. Three young men were chasing each other around in the water, diving like porpoises and blowing like grampuses. When we got closer we could see that Mr. Ralston had nothing on but a pair of striped swimming trunks. The young men had nothing on at all.
“Hey, Mr. Ralston,” Al shouted. “You can’t do this.”
“A lady with a lamp shall stand in the great history of the land,” said Mr. Ralston.
“He’s drunk as a lord,” Al said to me. “I guess this is one of the nights I put him to bed.”
“You’ll have to tell your friends to get out of there,” he said to Mr. Ralston.
“They are my guests,” Mr. Ralston shouted severely. “They expressed a wish to go swimming, and naturally I indulged them.”
“Get the hell out of there!” Al roared across the water. “I’ll give you ten seconds and then I call the Shore Patrol.”
The threat worked. The three sailors scrambled out of the pool and began to put on their clothes. Mr. Ralston came toward us, swinging the beam of the flashlight like a long luminous rod.
“You’re not being very genial, Mr. Sablacan,” he said in a disappointed tone. “Boys will be boys, you know. In fact, boys will be boys will be boys.”
“You’re no boy, Mr. Ralston. And it’s time for you to be in bed.”
“He’s O.K.,” said one of the sailors, a dark boy with a pleasant smile. “He said it was all right for us to come in here. We sort of got the idea that it was his private pool.”
Mr. Ralston made a diversion. “Indeed I am O.K.,” he said. “I am in superb physical shape.” He beat with a thin fist on his withered chest, which was sparsely covered with gray hairs. “What is more, I take it to be one of my perquisites to use this pool whenever I choose. My friends also.”
The sailors had slipped away in the darkness. “Goodnight, Mr. Ralston,” they called from the gate, and went out through the lobby. I helped Al to persuade Mr. Ralston to retire to his bungalow. We left him at the door and went to bed.
It was very early – scarcely dawn – when we were awakened by a knock at the door. Al rolled over and said sleepily, “Who is it?”
“It’s Louie again, sorry, Mr. Sablacan. We caught one of those sailors trying to get into the pueblo, and he says he wants to talk to you.”
“O.K., O.K.” Al rolled out of bed. “Hold him till I get there.”
The dark young sailor was sitting in the lobby looking sheepish, with two bellhops standing over him.
“Where did you catch him?” Al said.
“He was trying to sneak through the lobby to the pueblo.”
“My God!” Al yapped, his face bright red. “Don’t tell me you were trying to go for another swim.”
“I lost my I.D. card last night,” the sailor said meekly. “I can’t get back to the ship without it.”
“How do I know that’s true? We’ve had plenty of thieves around here.”
“Mr. Ralston will vouch for me. I know his son.”
“Mr. Ralston hasn’t got a son.”
“His stepson, I mean. Johnny Swain. We’re on the same ship.”
“We’re not going to bother Mr. Ralston at this hour of the morning, but I’ll give you one chance. We’ll go and look for your I.D. card–”
“I think I must have dropped it when I took off my clothes.”
It was there all right, lying in the grass beside the pool. James Denton, Seaman First Class, with his picture on it, looking sick.
“I should turn it in to the Shore Patrol and let you explain how you lost it,” Al said.
“But you’re not going to do that?”
“But I’m not going to do that. Just don’t let me catch you taking advantage of Mr. Ralston, see?”
“I wouldn’t take advantage of him,” James Denton said. “He’s a swell guy.”
I had wandered to the edge of the pool and stood looking at the water, chlorine-green and smooth in the windless morning as polished agate. In the deepest corner I caught sight of something which shouldn’t have been there. It was the pale body of a little old man, curled and still in his quiet corner like a foetus in alcohol.
James Denton had another swim after all. When he brought Mr. Ralston out of the pool, Mr. Ralston’s temperature was that of the water.
“I guess this is partly my fault,” James Denton said miserably. “We wouldn’t let him come in last night, but I guess he came back after we left. He was a swell guy.
“Jeez, that chlorine gets the eyes,” he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. But he was very young, and I suspected that he was crying.
“Could Mr. Ralston swim?” I said to Al.
“I don’t know, I never saw him swim. This is a terrible thing, Lew. So far as I know nobody ever drowned in this pool before.”
He looked at Mr. Ralston and looked away. Mr. Ralston, with his blue face and red striped trunks, looked very small and weirdly pathetic on the grass. Al covered his face with a handkerchief.
“Well,” he said, “I guess I better call Mr. Whittaker and the cops. Mr. Whittaker won’t like this.”
Mr. Whittaker, who owned the Valeria Pueblo, didn’t like it. He was a small, spry, sharp-faced man with gray hair receding from hollow veined temples and hands that were never still. In his left cheek a tic jerked continually with an almost audible click. Whenever his cheek jerked Mr. Whittaker smiled to hide it, thus giving the impression of a rodent who periodically snarled.