“With your stupid diamonds,” I said.
He nodded. We thought so. “Macaulay didn’t go back to New York, knowing what he was up against now. His wife disappeared also. The firm said he had suffered a heart attack and resigned. He’d told them, earlier, that he had to go to the coast because of illness in the family. We almost caught up to him two or three times. He never tried to sell any of the diamonds. We figured that, just about the time we ran him down in Sanport. He hadn’t sold them because he didn’t have them.
“He escaped us in Sanport, taking off in a plane with a man carrying an aqualung diving outfit. Macaulay, by the way, couldn’t swim. When we learned about the diver, we knew what had happened. The metal box with the diamonds had fallen into the water when Macaulay’s friend was killed.
“We stuck close to Mrs Macaulay, knowing she’d soon lead us to him. But just about that time we suspected he was back in Sanport because of a little story in the paper. About five days after Macaulay took off, a fishing boat docked with a man it had picked up in a rubber liferaft on the Campeche Bank. He told them he was a pilot for some Mexican company and had crashed while going from Tampico to Progreso alone in a seaplane. He took off the minute the fishing boat docked.”
“I get it now,” I said. “As soon as she got in touch with me you knew the castaway was Macaulay. And you realized he had crashed out there somewhere, but that he knew exactly where the plane was and could find it again, or he wouldn’t have been trying to hire a diver.”
Barclay nodded. “Correct. We also suspected he was in the house, but taking him alive wasn’t going to be easy. He was armed and panicky.”
“The thing that puzzles me,” I said, “is that you and your meatheaded thugs never did put the arm on her to find out where the plane was. You’re convinced now she knows where it is, but you let her come and go there for a week or more right under your noses.”
“We weren’t certain she knew then.”
“But you are now. Why?”
He lit a cigarette. Sanport’s lights were fading on the horizon.
“It’s simple,” he explained. “I wrote Macaulay a letter two days ago advising him to tell her.”
I shook my head. “Say that again. You wrote him a letter – where?”
“To his house. Even if he weren’t there she would get it to him.”
“And he’d be sure to tell her, just because you suggested it? Why?”
He smiled again. “Sure, he was an insurance man, wasn’t he? I just pointed out that there was always the chance something might happen to him and he ought to protect her.”
“By telling her where the plane was?” I asked incredulously. “So he could guarantee her being put through the wringer by you—”
He shook his head gently. “You still don’t see Macaulay’s point of view. He knew she’d be questioned. But suppose she didn’t know where the plane was?”
I saw the bastard’s logic. “Good God—”
“Right. Life insurance. He was leaving her the only thing that could stop the interrogation.”
I saw then what Macaulay must have gone through in those last few hours. He had to tell her.
I leaned my elbows on my knees and looked at him. “You dirty son—”
I stopped. I’d forgotten him. She’d been telling the truth.
Barclay had sent that letter to Macaulay only two days ago. I had to talk to her.
Barclay let me, too. He knew he was tying me tighter to Shannon and that I’d be easier to handle that way, so he called Barfield up. Barfield liked his sleep a lot more than he liked me. I could see his face burning as I went below.
She was lying on the starboard bunk with her face in her arms.
“Shannon,” I said.
“What, Bill?” Her voice was muffled.
“How long have you known what these gorillas are after?”
She turned slowly and looked up with listless gray eyes.
“Since three this afternoon,” she said.
I felt weak with relief or joy, or both of them. I’d been right. All the bitterness was gone and I wanted to take her in my arms. Instead I lit a cigarette. “I want to apologize,” I said.
She shook her head. “Don’t. I sold you out, Bill.”
“No,” I whispered. “You didn’t know. I thought you had lied, but you hadn’t. It doesn’t matter that he was lying to you.”
“Don’t make it any worse, Bill. I had six hours to call you, and you could have got away. I tried to, but I couldn’t. I thought I owed him that, in spite of what he did. Maybe I was wrong, but I think I’d still do it the same way. I don’t know how to explain—”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “You were telling the truth all the time. That’s all that matters.”
She stared up at me. “Why does it?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I wanted to shout it out to her, or sing it, but I kept my face blank and lit a cigarette for myself.
“I’m sorry about it,” I said gently.
She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “It’s all right. He didn’t have a chance, anyway. I think they knew he was in the house, and anything we tried would have failed.”
“Why hadn’t he ever told you?” I asked.
“Ashamed, I think. He wasn’t really a criminal, Bill. There was just too much of it, and it was too easy, and no one would ever know.”
“It’s too bad,” I said. “It’s a dirty shame.”
She turned her face a little, and her eyes met mine squarely. “You know I must have suspected it, don’t you? Nobody could be stupid enough not to guess there must be more to it than he told me. I did suspect it. I can’t deny it. I was cheating when I told you what he told me, because I was afraid it wasn’t the truth, or not all the truth. But what could I do? Tell you I thought my husband was lying? Did I owe you more than I did him? Doesn’t eight years of time mean anything, or the fact he had never lied to me before, or that he’d always been wonderful to me? I’d do it again. You’ll just have to think what you will.”
“You know what I think? I’ll tell you about it some day.”
“Wait, Bill,” she whispered. “You don’t know all of it yet. When you do, you’ll think I’m a fool. He was going to leave me. He wasn’t on his way to Honduras when he crashed. He was going to destroy the plane and disappear somewhere on the Florida coast.”
I got it then. “And you’d have gone on to Honduras, thinking he would be there? And when he wasn’t, you’d have been certain he was dead? Down somewhere in the Gulf, or in the jungle?”
“Yes,” she said. Then she smiled a little bitterly. “But I wasn’t the one he wanted to convince. If Barclay and his men had managed to follow me down there, they’d give him up as dead too.”
“But running out on you? Deserting you, leaving you stranded in a foreign country?”
“Not quite stranded, if you mean money,” she said. “You see, it wasn’t in the plane. I thought it was, but it was in a bag of his I was supposed to bring down with me. None of it’s clear-cut, Bill. He was leaving me, and he had to double-cross his friend who bought the plane, but he wanted me to have the money.”
Conscience money, I thought.
Suddenly she was crying silently. “Does it make much sense to you that I still didn’t call and tell you, after that?”