The Lower Deep

by Hugh B. Cave

  Descending slowly to the gully floor, he sprayed the boulders with his light. "All right, you, whoever you are! I may not be able to find you, but I can wait as long as you can. Even for daylight if I have to. Let's cut it short, shall we?"

  No answer came from the rock pile. He saw nothing move.

  "Okay, have it your way." He found a place to sit. "But if I get bad-tempered, I'm just likely to use my gun instead of my legs when you decide to make a break for it. I'm warning you."

  Still no answer.

  He let a good five minutes go by, his light out now so his eyes would adjust to the wet dark. The rain came down harder, working its way through his khaki uniform. He shivered. But it must be even more uncomfortable for someone not wearing any clothes, he thought with satisfaction. And again he recalled the two other times he had come across naked people here at Anse Douce: one a teenage schoolgirl, the other a dead, shark-torn patient from the Azagon.

  A wind had sprung up now, and off in the rainy darkness surf broke with a monotonous, muted rumble on an unseen stretch of shore. Too much noise, he thought uneasily. When his quarry did make a break, he might not hear anything.

  He did, though, because the sound was close. From off to his left came the tinny clunk of an empty can being kicked or knocked into some coral. Twisting himself in that direction as if the sound itself had jerked him around, he switched on his light. Someone on hands and knees was trying to crawl away from him through a gap between boulders.

  A girl. And not naked as he had expected, but wearing blue jeans and a blue denim shirt. Barefoot, though.

  Trapped in the pool of light, she stopped crawling and slowly rose to her feet, then turned even more deliberately to face him. She said nothing, and Etienne walked down to her, not halting until he was close enough to reach out and hold her if she tried to run.

  "Ginny Jourdan," he said. "Where have you been?"

  She shrugged. Then she looked down at her bare feet, saw the empty beer can that had betrayed her, and gave it a savage kick. It went clattering among the coral rocks with a racket that lasted for many seconds, during which time she cursed it with controlled fury. She was no longer the Ginny Jourdan he knew, Etienne realized. This young woman was one to be wary of.

  "You were naked when you ran in here," he said. "You must have had these clothes hidden here."

  "I don't have to answer your questions!"

  "Don't you? Well, all right, if you say so. You have to come with me, though." His hand closed over her arm. "So let's go."

  She twisted herself free and spat at him. "I can walk! There's nothing the matter with me!"

  "Okay, walk. But don't try running again."

  Using his flash to light the way up the gully slope for both of them, he stayed close behind her. When they were out of the gully and striding along the shore toward town, he said tentatively, "You going to behave yourself now, Ginny?"

  She turned to glare at him, her only answer a further tightening of already thin lips.

  "Don't try anything," he warned. "Don't even walk fast. I'm pretty quick on my feet, in case you don't know it. And if I have to carry you home over my shoulder, I will."

  This time she did not even turn her head, but paced doggedly on, ignoring him.

  "You hear me?" he demanded.

  She stopped and swung herself around, her hands on her hips. His light touched her face and revealed a glitter in her eyes that he had never seen in any woman's eyes before. What was it with this girl and Anse Douce? Had she been here the whole time she was missing—the whole eight days—holed up in some hiding place?

  "You needn't be afraid I'll try to get away from you," Ginny said, speaking very slowly and deliberately now. "I didn't have to come back, you know."

  On the hard sand just above the sea's edge they faced each other: defiant teenage girl and determined but apprehensive army officer.

  "You didn't have to come back from where, Ginny?"

  "The place I disappeared to."

  "And where was that?"

  Her reply was a mocking laugh, and then she refused to say anything more, simply resuming the walk and ignoring his attempts to continue the conversation.

  That walk to Pointe Pierre and up through a sleeping Dame Marie to the army post was the longest one of Etienne's life, and he was limp with relief when it ended. Commanding the girl to sit, he detailed one of his men to guard her and picked up the phone. Hoping to God it would work, he called Louis Clermont.

  From the way Clermont answered, it was obvious he had been aroused from a sound sleep. "Yes?" he grumbled. "Who is it?"

  "Roger Etienne, Doctor, at the army post. I have Ginny Jourdan here. Can you come over?"

  "I'm on my way," Clermont growled, and hung up.

  The police post was only a short walk away, but the St. Joseph doctor took his car in anticipation of having to drive the girl home. At the post he found a sergeant standing over the girl and the lieutenant seated at a desk, watching them both. The young woman whose disappearance had turned the whole district upside down for more than a week now sat quietly, seemingly half asleep, on a bench against the ocher-hued station wall.

  Clermont hunkered down in front of her.

  "Ginny," he said gently.

  She glanced at him as if she had never seen him before. Then with complete indifference she looked away.

  "Ginny, are you all right?"

  "If you mean do I need a doctor, the answer is no!" Her voice was shrill with defiance.

  Clermont stood up again, leaned forward, and put a hand to her chin. Gently but firmly he turned her head so he could study her. As Etienne had earlier, he noticed a dramatic change in her eyes.

  He saw other things the army man had not noticed. "She's exhausted, Roger," he said to the man at the desk. "You suppose I could take her home to her folks?"

  "No," Etienne said. "She could run away again."

  "Well—maybe you're right." Clermont frowned at the girl and did some heavy thinking. There ought to be some tests run on her, he decided. Behind such a complete about-face in personality could be some sort of physical upheaval. He himself didn't have the equipment for such tests, nor would he completely trust his solo evaluation of them even if he did. The best place for her right now was the excellent private hospital in Cap Matelot run by his and Steve Spence's friend, Dr. Edouard Beliard.

  He explained this to Etienne, who at first seemed about to shake his head, then reluctantly nodded.

  "There are some questions I'd like to ask her first, though," the lieutenant said. "Remember, she's given us proper hell for a whole week."

  "Later, Roger."

  "You sure?"

  "She needs a good rest before being questioned. Let me take her to the hospital. If you like, you can send a man along with us to keep an eye on her."

  "I don't want to go to a hospital!" Ginny Jourdan shrilled. "I want to go home!"

  "So you can run off again?" Clermont said gently.

  "You needn't be afraid of that."

  "I'll be the judge of what to be afraid of when I've looked you over, girl." And had a psychiatrist talk to you, he silently added.

  "I don't want to be looked over. Not by you or anyone. I won't be!"

  Clermont reached for her hands, but she snatched them away. With a sigh, he shook his head at her. "Ginny, do you have any idea what you've done? Never mind all the trouble you put us to before, when Roger found you naked at the cove. This time you've stood the whole town on its ear. I swear to God everybody for miles around has been looking for you. Roger, here, has been catching hell for not finding you." He suddenly frowned and said to Etienne, "Where did you find her, anyway?"

  "Anse Douce again."

  Clermont sucked in a breath. "What in God's name is it with Anse Douce, Ginny? Why won't you tell us?"

  She looked away.

  "What's going on there?" Clermont begged.

  No answer.

  Then, "I want to go home," Ginny said in a suddenly dul
cet voice. "Please? Take me home?"

  "After Dr. Beliard and I have had a good look at you."

  "If I agree to go to the hospital and you don't find anything wrong with me, can I go home?"

  "Of course. But first you're going to be a good girl and cooperate with us. Right?"

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  "And you're going to tell us where you've been. Right?"

  "If I can remember. I don't remember now."

  Clermont looked at her and wondered. Another case of amnesia? It could be. He hadn't really questioned the honesty of Mendoza or Henninger. But for some reason he did not quite believe what he was hearing now. Maybe because Ginny had been gone so much longer and at first had been so hostile.

  "All right. We can begin with the hospital, anyway." He turned to Etienne. "Just let me use your phone to call her folks, Roger. And I'd better give the hospital a ring, too. It isn't exactly the St. Joe General. They might appreciate a call before I walk in with such a celebrity."

  22

  "Well, are you going to tell me?"

  George Benson glared at his wife over the breakfast table but did his best to keep any trace of irritation out of his voice. What came through was only a hint of mockery.

  Alice finished her coffee and lit a cigarette. It was Saturday; no school today. "You've already told me, haven't you, George? I was with a boyfriend."

  "I'd like to hear you admit it."

  "Then I admit it. Of course. I was with a boyfriend."

  "You never did go to Cap Matelot, did you?"

  "No.

  "You think it was smart of you to tell me that particular story? Especially about going there on the daily bus? You must have known I'd talk to someone who was on that bus, sooner or later."

  Alice merely smiled at him.

  "Who is the boyfriend?" George asked. "Or do you have more than one?"

  "Bill."

  "Nobody in St. Joe is named Bill, for Christ's sake. Bill who?"

  "Smith, of course." She smiled now at her own cleverness.

  "All right, so you won't tell me his name. So where does he live? Here in town?"

  "Oh, I'm not about to tell you that, George. You might challenge him and get hurt. You'd be no match for Bill, believe me."

  The conversation had been going on at this pace for some time now, and George was beginning to regret having begun it. On arriving home yesterday after his talk with the fisherman, he had actually made up his mind not to say anything.

  After all, what did it matter, except to his pride? He had been reasonably sure all along that Alice was not visiting her schoolteacher friend all that often. That, in fact, Germaine Doret most of the time was merely covering for her when she had a date. The truth was no surprise.

  But he had begun wondering who in Dame Marie the boyfriend might be, and then, though he had gone to bed determined not to say anything, had lain awake half the night trying to come up with a name. And this morning, on finding Alice at the breakfast table when he walked into the kitchen, he had not been able to control his tongue.

  Alice gazed at him now with an air of studied innocence. "Really, George," she said, "you ought to have an affair, too."

  "Thanks."

  "I mean it. I know you despise me. You have from the very beginning, almost. But there must be someone you could find happiness with, if only in bed."

  George thought of the hours he had spent with Danielle André, in bed and out—the wonderful, lifesaving hours that kept him from going crazy in this small town, with a wife who might as well be a stranger. "I'll think about it," he said.

  "You do that, George. And now if you'll excuse me—" Rising, she gazed at him without expression for a few seconds, then walked out of the kitchen. When she left the house five minutes later, George wondered where she might be going on a Saturday. Of course, Saturday was market day in Dame Marie. But she hadn't carried a shopping basket.

  The word "divorce" had not entered into their dialogue, he realized. The entire conversation, in fact, had had an air of unreality about it, as though its real substance, dark and sinister, lay like a waiting shark under the surface. Pouring himself another cup of coffee, he let himself think about it and became convinced he was living in a kind of fairy tale. Not a kids' kind of fairy tale but one of those with monsters and demons. A moment later his phone rang and he learned from Ginny Jourdan's father that Ginny had been found.

  "Dr. Clermont has taken her to that private hospital-in Le Cap for observation," Maurice Jourdan said. "Leonie and I thought we ought to call you before going there. You worked so very hard trying to help us find her."

  It was strange, George thought, that Ginny and Alice had disappeared at the same time. The Cuban fellow at the alcoholics' place, too. This was Saturday. All three of them had vanished the same Thursday night, more than a week ago. Yes, strange. To dismiss it as a coincidence would be to stretch the law of chance to the breaking point.

  Well, he had a job to do, no matter what. Today he would be trying to teach his people new ways to make and use fish traps. They made pretty good ones out of bamboo, even if the things did resemble coffins, but heavier ones could be used in deeper water where the bigger fish hung out. He had to talk to them about it, get them using their imaginations. That was becoming a big part of his job now, wasn't it?—tossing out ideas for his guys to chew on.

  Before leaving for work he took two aspirin tablets, blaming his talk with Alice for having given him a brute of a headache.

  While George Benson was talking with his wife that morning, Lieutenant Roger Etienne and one of his men drove to Pointe Pierre in the army jeep and walked along the shore to Anse Douce. Their destination was the gully in which Etienne had found the girl.

  "I know damned well she was naked when I first spotted her running," the lieutenant said. "She must have had her clothes hidden there."

  "Sir, it couldn't be she just looked naked in the rain?"

  "Uh-uh. If she'd had on those blue jeans and that blue shirt then, I mightn't have seen her at all."

  The rain had stopped during the night, but it was still a gray morning as the two men made their way along the shore. No sun had appeared. A soaring pelican suddenly folded its wings and plunged headfirst into the sea, to emerge with a wriggling fish in its beak. One of the biggest crabs Etienne had ever seen reared out of a patch of seaweed to challenge him with wildly waving claws, then fled when he kicked at it and missed. A village dog, probably on the prowl for a meal of dead fish, emerged like a ghost from the sea grapes, saw them, and slunk back out of sight.

  The two khaki-clad men made their way down to the coral castles in the gully bottom, and after a few moments of peering around, Etienne located the sandy strip where Ginny Jourdan had drawn attention to herself by accidentally kicking an empty beer can. "What we're looking for ought to be somewhere near here," he said.

  The area contained many potential hiding places because of the coral chunks. Someone had once remarked that those chunks must have been deposited here by a cosmic dump truck. Whatever their origin, they came in all shapes and sizes and rested every which way, forming pockets, tunnels, fissures, crevices, even a number of small, dark caves.

  It was in one of the caves that Etienne, using a flashlight, bent to examine the sand. "Dion, look here."

  Halting beside him, the other looked down. "Footprints. Many of them. This place has been used often, sir."

  No rain could fall here, nor would any seawater come this far up the gully unless driven by a storm more severe than Anse Douce had known in recent months. The sand therefore was soft, and most of the prints were blurred. Studying the few that were fairly distinct, Etienne said with conviction, "Both men and women, Dion. Note the difference in size. Or maybe boys and girls, eh?"

  "Maybe, sir."

  "Some barefoot, some with shoes."

  "Right, sir."

  On hands and knees now, studying the prints at close range, Etienne reached out and picked up something that wi
nked in the light of his flash. "What's this?"

  His subordinate bent to peer at it. "Just a cheap name-pin, sir. They sell them in Le Cap. Most likely some kid dropped it while they were having a party."

  Etienne frowned at the thing in his palm and shook his head. With the flashlight he examined it more closely, turning it over and peering at the back of it.

  "You're wrong, Dion. This isn't any cheap trinket; it's sterling silver and must have cost plenty. And look here at the name."

  "Alice?" Dion said. "I don't know any Alice in Dame Marie."

  "Yes, you do."

  "I do?"

  "The wife of the fishing fellow, George Benson."

  23

  "Steve, you don't look too good." As Steve Spence rose to greet him in the Azagon's library, Louis Clermont frowned at him with real concern. These days Clermont had the run of the "alcoholics' place," as he still called it, and no longer stood on ceremony when calling. "Feel all right, do you?"

  "No worse than I've been feeling for days now."

  "Same thing? The headaches?"

  "You know, I wish I could accurately describe the feeling." Steve pressed his palms to his temples, lowered them, and shook his head in defeat. "It's not a headache, exactly. There's pressure and pain, yes. But the worst of it is the feeling I have that someone or something is—well, if I believed in ESP, I'd say someone was bombarding me with thought waves."

  "What kind of thought waves?"

  "Suggestions. Persuasions. But evidently my receiving equipment isn't what it might be. I'm not getting any clear messages. At least, not yet."

  "Had any urges to go swimming?" Clermont asked with a scowl.

  "Yes. And you remember that business of Paul's holding his breath? I've caught myself doing that." Which, Steve recalled wryly, had been embarrassing a few nights ago. In bed with Nadine Palmer, he had fallen asleep and begun getting a powerful message to stop breathing. Suddenly he had found himself wide awake, gasping, with Nadine bending over him and frantically shaking him by the shoulders.