Girl Meets Body. Jack Iams
“Do you live all alone?” asked Sybil curiously. Squareless looked at her before he answered. Then he said, “With a housekeeper. And she doesn’t play bridge.” He emptied his glass and rose abruptly. “This has been very pleasant,” he said. “I hope you have an enjoyable winter. In spite of ghosts.”
He started toward the door. Sybil followed him. “If we could find a fourth,” she began, “would you—”
“I don’t know,” said Squareless. He reached for his hat and windbreaker, then turned on her almost fiercely. “I don’t know, I tell you,” he snapped. “Stop asking me questions.”
Then he walked quickly into the darkness.
Chapter Seven
Husband Copes With Prowlers
Sometime during the night, Tim was awakened by Sybil shaking his shoulder. She was sitting up in bed. “Tim,” she was saying, “Tim, there’s somebody down on the beach.”
“Huh, whuzzit?”
“I just saw a light moving down on the beach.”
Tim sat up sleepily beside her and focused his eyes on the window. It was a big window and the moonlight, fading and brightening as patches of cloud streamed across the sky, filled the bedroom that Mr. Whittlebait had apparently chosen for them. At least, he had made up the four-poster bed across which the pale light was now drifting.
“Don’ see ’nything,” said Tim.
“It was there a second ago. It just went out.”
Tim’s eyes began to function more normally. He could see the shadowy dunes now and beyond them the gleaming beach and the long outline of the pier.
“Probably a blob of phosphorus in the water,” he said.
“Look,” said Sybil. “Is that phosphorus?”
A tiny circle of light appeared suddenly near the foot of the pier, then vanished again.
“Well, no,” said Tim.
“Well then?” said Sybil.
Tim sighed. He was wide awake now. “I have a feeling,” he said, “that we are embarking on an old traditional bedroom scene. Wife hears burglar downstairs. Husband says it’s termites. Wife says all right, if that’s the kind of man he is, she’ll go downstairs and cope with burglar single-handed.”
“He doesn’t let her do it, does he?”
“He does if they’ve been married long enough,” said Tim.
“Have we?”
“Almost. What time is it?”
Sybil stretched for her watch on the bedside table. “Half-past two.”
Tim scratched his tousled head and grinned at her. “Do you really want me to have a look?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so. Do you mind awfully?”
“I guess not.”
“Think how nice and cozy it will be when you get back.”
“Look,” said Tim, “that’s the principle of beating your head on the wall because it feels so good when you stop. However—” He sighed again and climbed out of bed, growling at the feel of the cold floor. He found his shoes and put them on over his bare feet.
“Take the poker,” said Sybil.
“It doesn’t help. People just tell me to put it down and I do. Leaves me at a disadvantage.”
“Haven’t we any firearms of any sort? No war trophies?”
“By George,” said Tim, “I do have a Luger, at that. It’s somewhere in the luggage. Unloaded, though.”
“I wish you’d take it with you, even so.”
“I’ll see if I can find it.”
He clattered downstairs, his shoes feeling loose without socks. Most of the luggage was still in the hall and he undid a duffel bag and fumbled through it until he found the Luger. He found a flashlight, too. Then he look his weather-stained trenchcoat from the stand and slipped it over his pajamas and put the Luger and the flashlight in the pockets. He felt vaguely foolish, the way he had sometimes felt when his jeep roared into a freshly captured town and deposited him in battle dress at the local museum. It had turned into a comparatively pleasant night. The wind had shifted and felt almost balmy as it flapped the trenchcoat around his legs. The moon was momentarily obscured by a mass of clouds but enough light seeped through to envelop the dunes in ghostly pallor. Tim sloshed through them, sinking and sliding in the sand, which rapidly filled his shoes.
The sea had quieted to a rhythmic purr, a silky sound above which, suddenly, Tim was sure he heard the splash of oars. Somebody else thought so, too, because the little circle of light appeared again, this time near the end of the pier, and its beam swung across the dark water. Then, with the unreality of a slick stage effect, it picked out the bobbing shape of a rowboat with a huddled figure in it. Instantly the light went out.
Tim stood still in the shelter of the dunes. The foot of the pier, which as far as he could tell in the dimness was reached by some sort of stairs, was about twenty-five yards away. It seemed to converge with a boardwalk that extended, flat and nebulous, along the shoreline in the opposite direction. The pier itself was cluttered with indefinable structures that blocked the view.
Then, softly hollow, Tim heard footsteps coming toward him over the planking of the pier. They were coming fast but not running. Then they slowed, and two figures emerged cautiously from between two buildings near the entrance to the pier. They paused and seemed to be whispering together. It looked to Tim as if they had been rattled by the apparition of the rowboat, and he decided that it might be a good idea to rattle them some more before they recovered.
He put on his sternest classroom voice. “What goes on?” he called.
“Mother of God,” cried one of the figures aloud. It wasn’t a curse, either. It sounded, rather, like a man who was used to cursing and had to put special appeal in his voice when he wanted it to count.
Simultaneously the other figure sent the beam of the flashlight in Tim’s direction. Tim dropped behind the dune and closed his fingers on the Luger’s butt. “Come, come,” he called, “speak up.” It occurred to him immediately afterward that, this phrase smacked all too much of the classroom.
The man with the flashlight spoke. “Take it easy, Mac,” he said. “Don’t get excited.”
“I’m not excited,” said Tim. “Just curious.”
“Wise guy, eh?” This came from the first figure, who had evidently been reassured by Tim’s attempt to sound tough. The other man shushed him.
“Okay, Mac,” he said. “We been fishin’, that’s all.”
“At this time of night?” asked Tim.
“Hell, yes. It’s the best time.”
This, for all Tim knew, was true. Whether it was or not, he didn’t see what he could do about it. The pier, presumably, was public. No riparian rights seemed to be involved. As a man whose only immediate interest was to go back to bed, he felt he had done his duty.
“Okay,” he said. “Skip it.”
“Okay,” said the man with the flashlight.
“Wait a minute,” said the other man. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Shut up, you damned fool,” said the other. “So long, Mac.”
“So long,” said Tim. He felt more than ever as he had when his conquering hero’s entry wound up among the Etruscan vases.
The flashlight was doused and the two men sauntered down the boardwalk with what struck Tim