“Damn it, man, why didn’t you say so? Here we’ve been wasting time.”
“You have.”
“All right. We won’t quarrel. We’ve got to get him away from here before any members come.”
He glanced at the chronometer strapped to his right wrist, and accidentally pointed the automatic at me.
“Put the gun down, Bassett. You’re too upset to be handling a gun.”
He laid it on the embossed blotter in front of him and gave me a shamefaced smile. “Sorry. I am a bit nervy. I’m not accustomed to these alarums and excursions.”
“What’s all the excitement about?”
“Young Wall seems to have some melodramatic notion that I stole his wife from him.”
“Did you?”
“Don’t be absurd. The girl is young enough to be my daughter.” His eyes were wet with embarrassment. “My relations with her have always been perfectly proper.”
“You do know her, then?”
“Of course. I’ve known her for years – much longer than George Wall has. She’s been using the pool for diving practice ever since she was in her teens. She’s not far out of her teens now, as a matter of fact. She can’t be more than twenty-one or two.”
“Who is she?”
“Hester Campbell, the diver. You may have heard of her. She came close to winning the national championship a couple of years ago. Then she dropped out of sight. Her family moved away from here and she gave up amateur competition. I had no idea that she was married, until she turned up here again.”
“When was this?”
“Five or six months ago. Six months ago, in June. She seemed to have had quite a bad time of it. She’d toured with an aquacade for a while, lost her job and been stranded in Toronto. Met this young Canadian sportswriter and married him in desperation. Apparently the marriage didn’t work out. She left him after less than a year together, and came back here. She was on her uppers, and rather beaten, spiritually. Naturally I did what I could for her. I persuaded the board to let her use the pool for diving instruction, on a commission basis. She did rather well at that while the summer season lasted. And when she lost her pupils, I’m frank to say I helped her out financially for a bit.” He spread his hands limply. “If that’s a crime, then I’m a criminal.”
“If that’s all there is to it, I don’t see what you’re afraid of.”
“You don’t understand – you don’t understand the position I’m in, the enmities and intrigues I have to contend with here. There’s a faction among the membership who would like to see me discharged. If George Wall made it appear that I was using my place to procure young women–”
“How could he do that?”
“I mean if he brought court action, as he threatened to. An unprincipled lawyer could make some kind of case against me. The girl told me that she planned a divorce, and I suppose I wasn’t thoroughly discreet. I was seen in her company more than once. As a matter of fact, I cooked several dinners for her.” His color rose slightly. “Cooking is one of my hobbyhorses. I realize now it wasn’t wise to invite her into my home.”
“He can’t do anything with that. This isn’t the Victorian age.”
“It is in certain circles. You just don’t grasp how precarious my position is. I’m afraid the accusation would be enough.”
“Aren’t you exaggerating?”
“I hope I am. I don’t feel it.”
“My advice to you is, level with Wall. Tell him the facts.”
“I tried to, on the telephone last night. He refused to listen. The man’s insane with jealousy. You’d think I had his wife hidden somewhere.”
“You haven’t, though?”
“Of course not. I haven’t seen her since the early part of September. She left here suddenly without a good-by or a thank-you. She didn’t even leave a forwarding address.”
“Run off with a man?”
“It’s more than likely,” he said.
“Tell Wall that. In person.”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t possibly. The man’s a raving maniac, he’d assault me.”
Bassett ran tense fingers through his hair. It was soaked at the temples, and little rivulets ran down in front of his ears.
He took the folded handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and wiped his face with it. I began to feel a little sorry for him. Physical cowardice hurts like nothing else.
“I can handle him,” I said. “Call the gate. If he’s still up there, I’ll go and bring him down.”
“Here?”
“Unless you can think of a better place.”
After a nervous moment, he said: “I suppose I have to see him. I can’t leave him rampaging around in public. There are several members due for their morning dip at any moment.”
His voice took on a religious coloring whenever he mentioned the members. They might have belonged to a higher race, supermen or avenging angels. And Bassett himself had a slipping toehold on the edge of the earthly paradise. Reluctantly, he picked up the intramural phone: “Tony? Mr. Bassett. Is that young maniac still rampaging, around? . . . Are you certain? Absolutely certain? . . . Well, fine. Let me know if he shows up again.” He replaced the receiver.
“Gone?”
“It seems so.” He inhaled deeply through his open mouth. “Torres says he took off on foot some time ago. I’d appreciate it, though, if you stayed around for a bit, just in case.”
“All right. This trip is costing you twenty-five dollars, anyway.”
He took the hint and paid me in cash from a drawer. Then he got an electric razor and a mirror out of another drawer. I sat and watched him shave his face and neck. He clipped the hairs in his nostrils with a tiny pair of scissors, and plucked a few hairs out of his eyebrows. It was the sort of occasion that made me hate the job of guarding bodies.
I looked over the books on the desk. There were a Dun and Bradstreet, a Southern California Blue Book, a motion-picture almanac for the previous year, and a thick volume bound in worn green cloth and entitled, surprisingly, The Bassett Family. I opened this to the title page, which stated that the book was an account of the genealogy and achievements of the descendants of William Bassett, who landed in Massachusetts in 1634; down to the outbreak of the World War in 1914. By Clarence Bassett.
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested,” Bassett said, “but it’s quite an interesting story to a member of the family. My father wrote that book: he occupied his declining years with it. We really did have a native aristocracy in New England, you know – governors, professors, divines, men of affairs.”
“I’ve heard rumors to that effect.”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to bore you,” he said in a lighter tone, almost self-mocking. “Curiously enough, I’m the last of my branch of the family who bears the name of Bassett. It’s the one sole reason I have for regretting my not having married. But then I’ve never been the philoprogenitive type.”
Leaning forward toward the mirror, he began to squeeze a blackhead out of one of the twin grooves that ran from the base of his nose. I got up and roamed along the walls, examining the photographs. I was stopped by one of three divers, a man and two girls, taking off in unison from the high tower. Their bodies hung clear of the tower against a light summer sky, arched in identical swan dives, caught at the height of their parabolas before gravity took hold and snatched them back to earth.
“That’s Hester on the left,” Bassett said behind me.
Her body was like an arrow. Her bright hair was combed back by the wind from the oval blur of her face. The girl on the right was a dark brunette, equally striking in her full-breasted way. The man in the middle was dark, too, with curly black hair and muscles that looked hammered out of bronze.