Half an hour from the dock, we rounded a blunt promontory that the others called Dull Point, and Tim cut down our speed, putting the boat in closer to the rocks that jumped up high and sharp at the water's edge. We were now all eyes-eyes that soon ached from staring under the noon sun but kept on staring. Twice we saw clefts in the rock-walled shore, pushed hopefully in to them, saw that they were blind, leading nowhere, opening into no hiding-places.
The third cleft was even more hopeless-looking at first sight, but, now that Dull Point was some distance behind us, we couldn't pass up anything. We slid in to the cleft, got close enough to decide that it was another blind one, gave it up, and told Tim to go on. We were washed another couple of feet nearer before the tow-headed boy could bring the boat around.
Cotton, in the bow, bent forward from the waist and yelled:
"Here it is."
He pointed his gun at one side of the cleft. Tim let the boat drift in another foot or so. Craning our necks, we could see that what we had taken for the shore-line on that side was actually a high, thin, saw-toothed ledge of rock, separated from the cliff at this end by twenty feet of water.
"Put her in," Feeney ordered.
Tim frowned at the water, hesitated, said: "She can't make it."
The boat backed him up by shuddering suddenly under our feet, with an unpleasant rasping noise.
"That be damned!" the sheriff bawled. "Put her in."
Tim took a look at the sheriff's wild face, and put her in.
The boat shuddered under our feet again, more violently, and now there was a tearing sound in with the rasping, but we went through the opening and turned down behind the saw-tooth ledge.
We were in a v-shaped pocket, twenty feet wide where we had come in, say eighty feet long, high-walled, inaccessible by land, accessible by sea only as we had come. The water that floated us-and was coming in rapidly to sink us-ran a third of the way down the pocket. White sand paved the other two thirds. A small boat was resting its nose on the edge of the sand. It was empty. Nobody was in sight. There didn't seem to be anywhere for anybody to hide. There were footprints, large and small, in the sand, empty tin cans, and the remains of a fire.
"Harve's," Rolly said, nodding at the boat.
Our boat grounded beside it. We jumped, splashed, ashore-Cotton ahead, the others spread out behind him.
As suddenly as if he had sprung out of the air, Harvey Whidden appeared in the far end of the v, standing in the sand, a rifle in his hands. Anger and utter astonishment were mixed in his heavy face, and in his voice when he yelled:
"You God-damned double-crossing-" The noise his rifle made blotted out the rest of his words.
Cotton had thrown himself down sideways. The rifle bullet missed him by inches, sang between Fitzstephan and me, nicking his hat-brim, and splattered on the rocks behind. Four of our guns went off together, some more than once.
Whidden went over backwards, his feet flying in the air. He was dead when we got to him-three bullets in his chest, one in his head.
We found Gabrielle Collinson cowering back in the corner of a narrow-mouthed hole in the rock wall-a long triangular cave whose mouth had been hidden from our view by the slant at which it was set. There were blankets in there, spread over a pile of dried seaweed, some canned goods, a lantern, and another rifle.
The girl's small face was flushed and feverish, and her voice was hoarse: she had a cold in her chest. She was too frightened at first to tell us anything coherent, and apparently recognized neither Fitzstephan nor me.
The boat we had come in was out of commission. Whidden's boat couldn't be trusted to carry more than three with safety through the surf. Tim and Rolly set off for Quesada in it, to get us a larger vessel. It was an hour-and-a-half's round trip. While they were gone we worked on the girl, soothing her, assuring her that she was among friends, that there was nothing to be afraid of now. Her eyes gradually became less scary, her breathing easier, and her nails less tightly pressed into her palms. At the end of an hour she was answering our questions.
She said she knew nothing of Whidden's attempt to kidnap her Thursday night, nothing of the telegram Eric had sent me. She sat up all Friday night waiting for him to return from his walk, and at daylight, frantic at his failure to return, had gone to look for him. She found him-as I had. Then she went back to the house and tried to commit suicide-to put an end to the curse by shooting herself.
"I tried twice," she whispered; "but I couldn't. I couldn't. I was too much a coward. I couldn't keep the pistol pointing at myself while I did it. I tried the first time to shoot myself in the temple, and then in the breast; but I hadn't the courage. Each time I jerked it away just before I fired. And after the second time I couldn't even get courage to try again."
She changed her clothes then-evening clothes, now muddy and torn from her search-and drove away from the house. She didn't say where she had intended going. She didn't seem to know. Probably she hadn't had any destination-was simply going away from the place where the curse had settled on her husband.
She hadn't driven far when she had seen a machine coming towards her, driven by the man who had brought her here. He had turned his car across the road in front of her, blocking the road. Trying to avoid hitting his car, she had run into a tree-and hadn't known anything else until she had awakened in the cave. She had been here since then. The man had left her here alone most of the time. She had neither strength nor courage to escape by swimming, and there was no other way out.
The man had told her nothing, had asked her nothing, had addressed no words to her except to say, "Here's some food," or, "Till I bring you some water, you'll have to get along on canned tomatoes when you're thirsty," or other things of that sort. She never remembered having seen him before. She didn't know his name. He was the only man she had seen since her husband's death.
"What did he call you?" I asked. "Mrs. Carter? Or Mrs. Collinson?"
She frowned thoughtfully, then shook her head, saying:
"I don't think he ever called me by name. He never spoke unless he had to, and he wasn't here very much. I was usually alone."
"How long had he been here this time?"
"Since before daylight. The noise of his boat woke me up."
"Sure? This is important. Are you sure he's been here since daylight?"
"Yes."
I was sitting on my heels in front of her. Cotton was standing on my left, beside the sheriff. I looked up at the marshal and said:
"That puts it up to you, Cotton. Your wife was still warm when we saw her-after eleven."
He goggled at me, stammering: "Wh-what's that you say?"
On the other side of me I heard Vernon's teeth click together sharply.
I said:
"Your wife was afraid Whidden would kill her, and wrote that statement. But he didn't kill her. He's been here since daylight. You found the statement, learned from it that they had been too friendly. Well, what did you do then?"
"That's a lie," he cried. "There ain't a word of truth in it. She was dead there when I found her. I never-"
"You killed her," Vernon barked at him over my head. "You choked her, counting on that statement to throw suspicion on Whidden."
"That's a lie," the marshal cried again, and made the mistake of trying to get his gun out.
Feeney slugged him, dropping him, and had handcuffs on his wrists before he could get up again.
XVIII.The Pineapple
"It doesn't make sense," I said. "It's dizzy. When we grab our man-or woman-we're going to find it's a goof, and Napa will get it instead of the gallows."
"That," Owen Fitzstephan said, "is characteristic of you. You're stumped, bewildered, flabbergasted. Do you admit you've met your master, have run into a criminal too wily for you? Not you. He's outwitted you: therefore he's an idiot or a lunatic. Now really. Of course there's a certain unexpected modesty to that attitude."