“Who did?”
“The people last night. The chlorine water killed them, poor little beggars, so I got to suck them out.”
“The people?”
“The tropical fish. They scooped ’em out of the aquarium and chunked ’em in the pool. People go out on a party and get drunk, they forget all the ordinary decencies of life. So Mr. Bassett takes it out on me.”
“Don’t hold it against him. My clients are always in a rotten mood when they call me in.”
“You an undertaker or something?”
“Something.”
“I just wondered.” A white smile lit his face. “I got an aunt in the undertaking business. I can’t see it myself. Too creepy. But she enjoys it.”
“Good. Is Bassett the owner here?”
“Naw, just the manager. The way he talks, you’d think he owns it, but it belongs to the members.”
I followed his wedge-shaped lifeguard’s back along the gallery, through shifting green lights reflected from the pool. He knocked on a gray door with a MANAGER sign. A high voice answered the knock. It creaked along my spine like chalk on a damp blackboard: “Who is it, please?”
“Archer,” I said to the lifeguard.
“Mr. Archer to see you, sir.”
“Very well. One moment.”
The lifeguard winked at me and trotted away, his feet slapping the tiles. The lock snicked, and the door was opened slightly. A face appeared in the crack, just below the level of my own. Its eyes were pale and set too wide apart; they bulged a little like the eyes of a fish. The thin, spinsterly mouth emitted a sigh: “I am glad to see you. Do come in.”
He relocked the door behind me and waved me to a chair in front of his desk. The gesture was exaggerated by nerves. He sat down at the desk, opened a pigskin pouch, and began to stuff a big-pot briar with dark flakes of English tobacco. This and his Harris tweed jacket, his Oxford slacks, his thick-soled brown brogues, his Eastern-seaboard accent, were all of a piece. In spite of the neat dye job on his brown hair, and the unnatural youth which high color lent his face, I placed his age close to sixty.
I looked around the office. It was windowless, lit by hidden fluorescence and ventilated by an air-conditioning system. The furniture was dark and heavy. The walls were hung with photographs of yachts under full sail, divers in the air, tennis-players congratulating each other with forced smiles on their faces. There were several books on the desk, held upright between elephant bookends made of polished black stone.
Bassett applied a jet lighter to his pipe and laid down a blue smoke screen, through which he said: “I understand, Mr. Archer, that you’re a qualified bodyguard.”
“I suppose I’m qualified. I don’t often take on that kind of work.”
“But I understood– Why not?”
“It means living at close quarters with some of the damnedest jerks. They usually want a bodyguard because they can’t get anybody to talk to them. Or else they have delusions.”
He smiled crookedly. “I can hardly take that as a compliment. Or perhaps I wasn’t intended to?”
“You’re in the market for a bodyguard?”
“I hardly know.” He added carefully: “Until the situation shapes up more clearly, I really can’t say what I need. Or why.”
“Who gave you my name?”
“One of our members mentioned you to me some time ago. Joshua Severn, the television producer. You’ll be interested to know that he considers you quite a fireball.”
“Uh-huh.” The trouble with flattery was that people expected to be paid for it in kind. “Why do you need a detective, Mr. Bassett?”
“I’ll tell you. A certain young chap has threatened my – threatened my safety. You should have heard him on the telephone.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Just for a minute, last night. I was in the midst of a party – our annual post-Christmas party – and he called from Los Angeles. He said he was going to come over here and assault me unless I gave him certain information. It jarred me frightfully.”
“What kind of information?”
“Information which I simply don’t possess. I believe he’s outside now, lying in wait for me. The party didn’t break up until very late and I spent the night here, what remained of it. This morning the gateman telephoned down that he had a young man there who wished to see me. I told him to keep the fellow out. Shortly after that, when I’d gathered my wits together, I telephoned you.”
“And what do you want me to do, exactly?”
“Get rid of him. You must have ways and means. I don’t want any violence, of course, unless it should prove to be absolutely necessary.” His eyes gleamed palely between new strata of smoke. “It may be necessary. Do you have a gun?”
“In my car. It’s not for hire.”
“Of course not. You misinterpret my meaning, old boy. Perhaps I didn’t express myself quite clearly. I yield to no man in my abhorrence of violence. I merely meant that you might have use for a pistol as an – ah – instrument of persuasion. Couldn’t you simply escort him to the station, or the airfield, and put him aboard a plane?”
“No.” I stood up.
He followed me to the door and took hold of my arm. I disliked the coziness, and shook him off.
“Look here, Archer, I’m not a wealthy man, but I do have some savings. I’m willing to pay you three hundred dollars to dispose of this fellow for me.”
“Dispose of him?”
“Without violence, of course.”
“Sorry, no sale.”
“Five hundred dollars.”
“It can’t be done. What you want me to do is merely kidnapping under California law.”
“Good Lord, I didn’t mean that.” He was genuinely shocked.
“Think about it. For a man in your position, you’re pretty dim about law. Let the police take care of him, why don’t you? You say he threatened you.”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, he mentioned horse-whipping. But you can’t go to the police with that sort of thing.”
“Sure you can.”
“Not I. It’s so ridiculously old-fashioned. I’d be the laughingstock of the entire Southland. You don’t seem to grasp the personal aspects, old boy. I’m manager and secretary of a very, very exclusive club. The finest people on the coast confide their children, their young daughters, to my trust. I have to be clear of any breath of scandal – Calpurnia, you know.”
“Where does the scandal come in?”
Calpurnia took his pipe out of his mouth and blew a wobbly smoke-ring. “I’d hoped to avoid going into it. I certainly didn’t expect to be cross-questioned on the subject. However. Something has to be done before the situation deteriorates irreparably.”
His choice of words annoyed me, and I let the annoyance show. He gave me an appealing look, which fell with a thud between us: “Can I trust you, really trust you?”
“So long as it’s legal.”
“Oh, heavens, it’s legal. I am in a bit of a jam, though, through no fault of my own. It’s not what I’ve done, but what people might think I’ve done. You see, there’s a woman involved.”
“George Wall’s wife?”
His face came apart at the seams. He tried to put it together again around the fixed point of the pipe, which he jammed into his mouth. But he couldn’t control the grimace tugging like hooks at the end of his lips.
“You know her? Does everybody know?”
“Everybody soon will if George Wall keeps hanging around. I ran into him on my way in–”
“Good God, he is on the grounds, then.”
Bassett crossed the room in awkward flight. He opened a drawer of his desk and took out a medium-caliber automatic.
“Put that thing away,” I said. “If you’re worried about your reputation, gunfire can really blow it to hell. Wall was outside the gate, trying to get in. He didn’t make it. He did give me a message for you: he won’t leave until you see him. Over.”