"No." Her voice was as husky as his. "But we must." She turned away with determination and made her way back to the stern where a skiff's painter was looped about a cleat, and Norman followed her reluctantly.
"If we must, we must," he said with as much cheeriness as he could muster, loosening the line and drawing the skiff close beneath the graceful, over-hung hull and helping her down into it.
She seated herself in the stem, and he leaped down lightly, settled oars in the locks and rowed toward the shore lights.
There was a faint phosphorescent gleam on the placid surface of the bay, and the only sound was a little sluffing of water against the bow, the occasional splash of an oar as he sent the boat skimming over the surface with powerful strokes.
Neither of them spoke until half the distance was covered. She was thinking of her husband and of their lost love with a sad sort of nostalgia, and he was thinking about the solid night's sleep he was going to enjoy alone aboard the Marjie J. after he dropped her at the dock and returned.
"Normanl Be careful." Her voice was a sudden gasp and she half rose, pointing over his shoulder with a trembling forefinger.
He twisted his head to look just as the bow struck solidly against a floating object.
There was a dull, curiously sodden thud. The skiff lost way and floated aimlessly as they both stared in frightened fascination at the floating body of a dead man.
"My God," said Norman, shipping an oar hastily to revolve the stem. "It's a corpse, Muriel. A man. Here, take this other oar and bring me back close. I'll get in the bow and try to drag him in."
"Do you have to, Norman?" Her voice was thin with terror. "Can't we just-leave him? Someone else will find him. Why us? You'll have to report to the police. They'll take our names. No, Norman I We mustn't."
"Cut it out, Muriel." His voice was crisp with annoyance. "Get that oar in the water. We're drifting away. Of course, we have to. But don't worry. You can get in your car and drive away before I report it. No one will know I wasn't taking a midnight row alone."
He knelt in the bow and directed her efforts with the oar. "A little more to my left-now forward. Hold it." He leaned far over and got a grip of water-soaked coat, tugged and lifted and grunted, and gradually drew the dead weight upward and over the edge where it plopped to the bottom of the boat in a crumpled heap bearing little semblance to a human body.
"That does it." Norman sank back on his knees, breathing hard. He leaned over the heap of water-logged flesh and muttered, "Poor devil's throat is slashed wide open."
He turned about to resume his rowing seat and take up the oars, looking on in silent commiseration while Muriel leaned over and retched agonizingly.
"Just don't think about it," he counseled. "It's nothing to do with us. We'll be at the pier in a jiJBEy, and you get in your car and drive straight home and forget this happened. I'll have to find some joint that's open where I can telephone from, and you'll be absolutely in the clear."
She sat with bowed head, trembling a little, and did not answer him. She couldn't explain to him that it had come to her suddenly that the man in the water might have been some woman's husband-some woman who perhaps had found illicit love more exciting and more zestful than the t2imer caresses he could offer her-a man whose name might be John.
It was a bizarre and inexplicable thought, and it made her weep silently as she sat in the boat with bowed head until it came up to the end of a deserted fishing pier.
And Norman saw the tears on her cheeks as he tied up the boat and awkwardly helped her out; and wondered what the hell had got into her, when she broke away from him with a little cry as he tried to comfort her.
He stood and watched her run down the pier to the place where she'd left her car parked when he met her earlier, and then he followed more slowly, giving her plenty of time to drive away from the spot before he reported his discovery to the police. And he had no way in the world of knowing that his affair with Muriel was already ended, and he never did understand why it was that she resolutely refused to speak to him every time he tried to telephone her in the following days.
THIRTEEN: 11:00 PM
When Shayne put the telephone down after Lucy's call, he strode back and forth across the office rumpling his hair angrily. "Let's try to make a little sense out of all this. Let's see what we know at the moment."
He stopped and held up one finger for each item as he said it aloud:
"First. The man who told me he was Bert Paulson-who had a wallet with Paulson's identification-isn't Paulson. He doesn't answer the description from Jax, and though he's trying to pose as Paulson, he evidently doesn't know that Nellie's brother has been living with her in Jacksonville all along. Else why would he have bothered with a story about working in Detroit and just coming down two weeks ago in answer to a wire from her?"
He glared at Gentry and Rourke as he frowned at his own question. "Well, why did he tell me that? Damn it, if he does know about Nellie's trouble in Jax-and he must because he said he hired a private detective to locate her- then he must know she pulled the badger game there with her brother, and it ruins his chance of getting by with impersonating Paulson by adding the Detroit touch. So why do it?"
"You tell us, Mike," Will Gentry said cheerfully. "Right now this is your baby from the word go."
Shayne said, "All right. That's one thing we know for certain. That he isn't Paulson. Now, let's see what we actually know about Nellie.
"Fact number two. She evidently didn't lie about being frightened in the Hibiscus by some man not her brother. Their two stories agree on that one point-other than the mix-up in relationship. But what about the dead body she claims she saw? Her brother with his throat cut?"
"The body that isn't there any more?" Tim Rourke put in.
"Yeh. But we have proof that she did call down to report a body. At least, someone called down from three-sixty. Oliver Patton backs up that much of her story. Why would anybody do a crazy thing like that if there wasn't a body?"
"I think the crux of the whole matter lies in one word you just used," said Gentry placidly. "Crazy. If the girl's off her rocker, there's no use trying to find a reasonable motivation for anything she says or does."
"But damn it. Will. I don't believe that girl's crazy. Scared and hysterical-sure. But I talked with her for ten minutes. She acted exactly as I'd expect a girl to act who'd been through exactly the harrowing experience she described."
"You're not a doctor," said Gentry impatiently. "I think we better put out a pick-up on both of them, Mike. Sit down and write out the best description you can of both of them. I'll put it on the radio to all cars."
Shayne shrugged and sat down and drew a sheet of paper toward him. He scribbled swiftly on it for several minutes, then shoved it toward Gentry. Knowing the girl tvas safely parked in Lucy's apartment was his ace-in-the-hole now. He didn't want her picked up for questioning yet, but he didn't mind her description going out on an All Cars because he knew they'd never find her. And he did want the scarred-face man picked up.
Will Gentry read the two descriptions over the intercom, and was about to switch it off when he stiffened and said, "Yes. Give it to me."
It was a voice from the Communications Room, and it said, "Report just came in of a man's body found floating in bay. Throat cut. Ambulance dispatched to pier at Tenth Street to pick up for morgue. Unidentified man in rowboat reported body."
The three men in Will Gentry's private office sat very silent for a long moment. Then Shayne asked quietly, "The Hibiscus fronts on the bay, doesn't it?"
"Right on the edge overlooking it," Rourke said.
Shayne got to his feet and the others followed suit. He said, "If either three-sixty or three-sixteen face the east-"