The other two raised the machines in their hands and pointed them at the talker. But then one of them lowered his machine and said something to his partner. The two of them spoke briefly together. They seemed undecided.
The talker kept talking, waving his arms. The wind blew his raincoat around him and the sun gleamed on his perspiring forehead.
The other two finally came to a decision. They motioned to the talker, who came back out of the driftwood and walked with them across the sand again to the car they’d arrived in. While the talker and one of the other two stood beside the car, the third man opened the door, slid behing the wheel, and operated an automobile telephone mounted under the dash.
A name was spoken, blew out over the waves: “Mr. Gross.”
There was a brief telephone conversation on the part of the man in the car, and then he handed the telephone receiver to the talker, the one who had just recently been standing amid the driftwood. The talker began to talk again, this time into the telephone, but just as urgently and rapidly as before. He stopped talking to listen, and then he talked again. The telephone was handed to one of the others to speak a word of corroboration to the man at the other end, and then handed back to the talker to talk into some more.
The wind blew. The sun shone. The water lapped at the beach. The black auto gleamed. The talker talked. The other two stood stolid and patient, dispassionate, not caring whether the talker convinced the man on the other end of the phone line or not. One of them lit a cigarette, hunching his back and cupping his hands to protect the match flame from the wind. The white smoke blew away, out to sea, along with the words of the talker, along with anything else that might be left here.
The talker was finished. He handed the telephone to one of the others, who spoke into it briefly, listened, nodded and spoke again, and then put the receiver back on its hook under the dashboard.
The trio got into the car, all in the front seat, the talker — now silent — in the middle. The car made a wide U-turn and drove away from the beach, toward the invisible road.
Chapter 25
Phew!
Let me tell you, that was close. Down among the driftwood there, I thought it was all up, all over but the shooting. I talked like Broderick Crawford in a hurry, I said everything five or six times fast, and I kept jumping up and down and waving my arms to try to attract their attention, and for a while it looked as though I might as well have been talking French. But I just kept at it, telling them who had killed Agricola, and why he’d done it, and how come he had to be the one who’d really been giving the syndicate information to Tough Tony Touhy, and pointing out how I’d guessed he was the guy Slade had taken with him to see Agricola, and then going over the whole thing all over again, and after a while it finally did begin to seep into their skulls a little, like rain through concrete.
It was Trask who finally said, “What can it hurt? Let him talk to Gross. If Gross says he’s on, he’s on.”
Slade said, “I don’t want to take a lot of time.”
“This won’t take long,” Trask told him.
So that was how it was. We walked on back to the car, and I figured at first it meant we’d be taking another long ride together, back across the Island and south to Hewlett Bay Park, but it turned out the car had a telephone in it. I’d heard about that before, telephones in automobiles, but this was the first time I’d ever seen one.
You’d think, with my reading in science fiction and all, I would have thought about the wonders of science and like that when I saw the telephone in the black car, but that wasn’t what came into my mind at all. The black car on the sand dunes, the deserted area, the tough type calling his boss on a telephone in the car — it was all exactly like a scene from one of those movie serials I used to watch on Saturday afternoons when I was a kid. I looked up into the sky for Superman or Spy Smasher, but nobody showed.
Except Mr. Gross, of course, on the other end of the telephone. Trask had made the call, while Slade stood next to me with his hand suggestively in his pocket. After a minute or two of fiddling with the phone company, Trask finally reached Mr. Gross and told him the situation. He and Gross talked back and forth a minute, and then he handed me the phone and said, “He wants to hear it. Tell him the story.”
So I went through the whole thing again, in as orderly a manner as I could manage under the circumstances. Mr. Gross asked a few questions, and I answered them as best I could, and then he said, “It sounds possible. Not necessarily true, you understand, but possible. An alternative explanation. We will have to learn which explanation is accurate. Put Trask back on.”
“Yes, sir.”
I handed the phone to Trask, there was another brief conversation, and then the call was over. Trask said to Slade, “We’re supposed to bring him to see Mr. Gross.”
I exhaled. It was, I believe, the first time I’d exhaled in about three minutes.
Salde shrugged. “So we’ll never get done with this job,” he said. But he didn’t seem irritated, just fatalistic about it all.
Trask motioned a thumb at me. “Come on, nephew,” he said. “Back in the car.”
“Under the afghan again?”
They looked at each other. Slade shrugged and Trask said, “No. Climb in front.”
I was happy to. Not only did I anticipate a much more enjoyable ride sitting on the seat in the open air than lying on the floor under an afghan, but letting me sit up there was kind of letting me know they pretty much believed me.
Slade drove again, and Trask sat on my right. Slade steered the car around in a wide U in the sand and headed back for the highway. As we reached it and turned west, toward the late afternoon sun, Slade put the visor down and said, “I hope you’re telling the goods, nephew. I never did like that bastard anyway.”
“Neither did I,” said Trask.
I agreed with them both.
Chapter 26
There was quite a group waiting for us when we got to Mr. Gross’s house. Aside from Mr. Gross himself, there was my Uncle Al, there was Farmer Agricola’s bodyguard Clarence, there was Inspector Mahoney, and there were two tough-looking types I’d never seen before. Uncle Al and Clarence and Inspector Mahoney all looked worried, and the two tough-looking types looked like all other tough-looking types: tough-looking, uninterested, and not very bright.
We came in, Trask and Slade and me, and Mr. Gross said, “Ah. Here you are. We’ve been waiting for you.”
This was the room where three bridge games had been in progress the last time I’d been in this house. The card tables were gone now and rather frail-looking chairs and end tables were spotted here and there around the room. On the floor was a very clean oriental rug.
Mr. Gross had gotten to his feet as we came in, and now he motioned me to a chair where I’d be the inevitable center of attention. “Sit down, Mr. Poole. Make yourself comfortable.”
I sat down, but I wasn’t very comfortable. Would I be able to convince them?
I felt all the eyes on me and I was feeling a fright that was only partially stage fright.
Mr. Gross said, “I called these people here to listen to your ideas. I want you to tell it all again, just like you told it to me over the phone. They can tell us if the story holds together right.”
Mahoney said, “This is dangerous, Gross. I shouldn’t be here, this is endangering my usefulness to you and myself and the whole organization.”