by Jack Iams
“Who?” said Squareless. “Oh, you mean the handy man. I suppose the old gals got into touch with him directly.”
“He must be a very good handy man,” said Sybil. “He had the house in apple-pie order.”
“Don’t think I know him,” said Squareless. “The fellow who looks after it in summer has gouged enough out of me to treat himself to Florida this winter. This Whittlebait’s probably a cousin or something. They’re all related to each other, these Pinies.”
“Pinies?” said Sybil. “What in the world are Pinies? Are they at the bottom of our garden?”
Squareless chuckled. “Well, in the South,” he said, “they’d call ’em crackers.”
“Oh, I see,” said Sybil. “Everything’s perfectly clear now.”
“I keep forgetting you’re a brand-new arrival,” said Squareless. “Pinies is the somewhat slighting name attached to a perfectly worthy group of citizens who are sensible enough to live back in the pine woods out of reach of hurricanes, tidal waves, and other phenomena of the jolly ocean front. They make a living mostly on the summer people, whose lawns they mow and whose hedges they clip and so on for sums sufficient to enable them to devote themselves to fishing and gunning in the winter. Although a few of them pick up the spare dollar by keeping an eye on the water-front houses through the off season. There’s nothing wrong with ’em. They’re a self-contained little bunch and they’re suspicious of reading and writing, but they’re perfectly honest and well-behaved.”
“We don’t have to worry about arrows quivering in the front door?” asked Sybil.
“No, my dear,” said Squareless. “Sorry to disappoint you, but the Pinies aren’t likely to provide you with any excitement.”
“But, Mr. Squareless,” said Sybil, “you must have thought somebody was capable of providing some excitement hereabouts tonight.”
Squareless looked at her from under his shaggy eyebrows. “True,” he said. “But I wasn’t thinking of Pinies. I was thinking of ghosts.”
Tim and Sybil both jumped. Squareless smiled and took his pipe out of his mouth. “There was a time,” he said, “when this wasn’t quite the peaceful little resort it now appears. During the sorry days of Prohibition, this little inlet was highly favored by the rum-running gentry for obvious reasons. For a while, in fact, this area was a headquarters for some very fancy operators. So when I speak of ghosts, I do so as they speak of Captain Kidd’s ghost in the West Indies.”
“You mean these people went on using the place after Repeal?” asked Tim.
“They tried to. I suppose they’d learned to like the sea air. At any rate, they went on running a casino down the shore a ways and for a few years they had quite an establishment. In fact, that’s why this side of the inlet, as you may have noticed, has gone downhill, at least from the point of view of the other side. An amusement pier was built, and all sorts of claptrap concessions were strung along the boardwalk, and cheap boarding-houses went up—all designed to attract what the other side considers an undesirable element. I personally consider all summer people undesirable, but I can see how the solid burghers of the one side were a little upset by the various skin-game operators and gamblers and occasional gangsters that moved in on the other.”
“Is that why you live on the respectable side?” asked Sybil.
“Not entirely,” said Squareless.
“I only wondered,” said Sybil, “if you disapproved of gambling.”
“Well, no,” said Squareless, “not in general. I disapprove of the sort of gambling that went on in that casino, which, I am happy to add, burned down some time before the war. But I’ve done a good deal of friendly gambling in my day.”
“What I am leading up to,” said Sybil, “is, do you play bridge?”
“I used to play a great deal of bridge,” replied Squareless. “Rather good at it, I was, too. But I haven’t played much since—since I became a recluse.” He smiled. “You can’t be a recluse and play bridge.”
“But wouldn’t you play with us?” pleaded Sybil. “If we could find a fourth?”
“A fourth?” said Squareless. “Ay, there’s the rub.”
“As distinct from the rubber,” said Tim.
“Oh, there must be a fourth around somewhere,” said Sybil impatiently. “After all, this isn’t the Fiji Islands.”
“I’m afraid it might as well be,” said Squareless.
“I can’t believe it.”
“After all, dear,” said Tim, “if Mr. Squareless who has lived here all his life doesn’t know of a fourth, you’re hardly likely to dig one up in a couple of days.”
“We’ll see,” said Sybil.
“Incidentally,” said Squareless, “I haven’t exactly lived here all my life. Please don’t think me that provincial. In my younger days, after—after the unhappiness of which I spoke, I did a good bit of wandering around the world. Enjoyed it, too. It’s only lately that I decided I wanted peace more than anything else and came back here to find it. There’s plenty of it here. Too much for most people.”
“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 y
our 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 as elaborate carelessness. As far as he was aware, though, nobody was ever hanged for elaborate carelessness.
He waited, crouched among the dunes, until the two figures had melted into the darkness. A minute or so later, as he turned back toward the house, he heard the sound of an automobile starting.
At the front porch, he sat down and emptied the sand out of his shoes. He carried them into the house and upstairs.
Sybil, in her blue pajamas, sat on the edge of the bed, smoking. “I was watching through the window,” she said. “What was it all about?”
“Damned if I know,” said Tim. “Couple of guys said they’d been fishing. Maybe they had.”
“Did they have any fish?”
“Not that I noticed. But that wouldn’t prove they weren’t fishing.”
“Were they the sporting type?”
“I’m no judge of the sporting type.”
“A pity,” said Sybil. “Maybe I should have gone after all.”
“They’d certainly have taken you for the sporting type if you had.”
Sybil snuggled warm against him. “In a ladylike way,” she said, “I am.”
Chapter Eight
Cold-Blooded Peeping Tom
Sunshine poured in through the big window, bathing the four-poster in brightness and warmth. Sybil sat up and stretched her arms and cried exuberantly, “Oh, darling, what a wonderful morning!”
“Looks all right from here,” said Tim.
Sybil jumped out of bed and leaned across the window sill. “It looks all right from everywhere. The sea is positively dancing. Can’t be the same one as last night.”
It was, certainly, a gorgeous expanse of blue that lay outside the window. Gay little breakers tumbled out of its edges and chased each other up the white beach. The land, too, seemed almost to glisten in the golden October haze. The dunes were rolling patterns of dark greens and russets against silver. Even the deserted pier, the boardwalk, and the Ferris wheel caught the sparkle of the day. Everything that had seemed ominous and strange the night before was now all smiles and innocence.
“Listen to the sea gulls,” said Sybil, pointing to half a dozen or so that were wheeling above the water’s edge. “They sound like choirboys.”
The only somber note on the horizon was the tall brown house on the opposite point, half its windows shuttered, frowning on the light-heartedness around it much as Squareless himself had frowned at the lighthearted iniquities of summer people.
“Darling,” said Sybil, perching in the window and twisting toward him, “know what I think I’ll do?”
“Sleep for another couple of hours,” yawned Tim.
“No.”
“Cook me an enormous breakfast?”
“Later on, maybe. But first.”
“Take a bath?”
“Yes. But where?”
Tim sat up suddenly among the covers. “My God,” he said, “you don’t mean in the ocean?”
“I certainly do.”
“You’re mad.”
“Nonsense. We used to swim much later than this in Cornwall.”
“This isn’t Cornwall. The Gull Stream—”
“I know all about the Gulf Stream.”
“You haven’t a bathing-suit.”
“What of it?” She strolled toward the bathroom, unbuttoning her pale blue pajama coat. A moment later, she came back with a fluffy white towel draped around her. “You
won’t join me?”
“No, thanks. Somebody’s got to stay ashore and handle the crowds.”
“Piffle. There’s no one around.”
“Mr. Squareless, for a starter.”
“It would brighten his gray life,” said Sybil. “Anyway, he can’t see around the point. I’ll go in on the far side, by the pier.”
“If you start to freeze,” said Tim, “don’t expect me to swim out with a bottle of brandy around my neck.”
“Most men would be glad to,” said Sybil. She blew him a chuckling kiss and went out.
Tim listened to her bare feet on the stairs, then he got out of bed and stood by the window. Sybil appeared from under the porte-cochere and picked her way daintily across the dunes, her long legs, under the sketchy white cloak, moving with graceful sureness. She reached the beach and, tossing the towel aside, turned to wave, a moment’s tableau against the clean white and blue. Then she ran lightly across the sand toward the shifting lace o[ the surf.
Watching her, Tim felt again as he had when they first arrived in their hotel room, as if he had been thrown into the company of a lovely, wanton stranger. Then he was pleased to feel a more husbandly reaction, a complacent chuckle as she dipped a toe into the water’s curving edge and turned back. That was no lovely, wanton stranger, that was his wife.
She scurried back to the dunes and picked up the towel, then headed for the house, running and slipping through the sand. Tim watched her for a moment, then put on his bathrobe and slippers and went downstairs in time to meet her at the front door.
“Don’t stand there beaming I-told-you-so,” snapped Sybil before he could speak. “I came back because there’s a Peeping Tom on the pier.”
“No jury would convict,” said Tim.
Sybil glanced with modest satisfaction at her ill-clothed two thirds. “The trouble is,” she said, “that he didn’t really peep. He didn’t whistle or leer or anything. He didn’t even look interested.”
“Must have been asleep.”
“His eyes were open. I think he was something else.”
“Drunk?”
“Dead.”