'Tonight at eight, at the nursing home. Dr. Godwin isn't free till then.'
'I want to be there.'
'That suits me, if Godwin can be persuaded. It was all I could do to get myself invited, and I'm her lawyer.'
'I think Godwin is sitting on something. There's a job that needs doing between now and eight. It's properly my job but this is your town and you can do it faster. Find out if Roy Bradshaw's alibi for Helen Haggerty's murder is waterproof and dustproof and antimagnetic.'
Jerry sat up straight and used his forefinger to smudge his nose some more. 'How should I go about it?'
'Bradshaw addressed an alumni banquet Friday evening. I want to know if he could have slipped out during one of the other speeches, or left in time to kill her. You have a right to any facts the sheriff's men and the pathologist can provide about time of death.'
'I'll do my best,' he said, pushing his chair back.
'One other thing, Jerry. Is there any word on the ballistics tests?'
'The rumor says they're still going on. The rumor doesn't say why. Do you suppose they're trying to fake something?'
'No, I don't. Ballistics experts don't go in for fakery.'
I left him gathering up his transcripts and walked downtown to the Pacific Hotel. My bellhop had contacted Mrs. Deloney's cab-driver, and told me in return for a second five that the two elderly ladies had checked in at the Surf House. I bought a drip-dry shirt and some underwear and socks and went back to my motel to shower and change. I needed that before I tackled Mrs. Deloney again.
Someone was knocking as I stepped out of the shower, tapping ever so gently as if the door was fragile.
'Who's there?'
'Madge Gerhardi. Let me in.'
'As soon as I'm dressed.'
It took a little time. I had to pick the pins out of my new shirt and my hands were jerking.
'_Please_ let me in,' the woman said at the door. 'I don't want to be seen.'
I pulled on my trousers and went to the door in my bare feet. She pressed in past me as if there was a storm at her back. Her garish blonde hair was windblown. She took hold of my hands with both of her clammy ones.
'The police are watching my house. I don't know if they followed me here or not. I came along the beach.'
'Sit down,' I said, and placed a chair for her. 'I'm sure the police aren't after you. They're looking for your friend BegleyMcGee.'
'Don't call him that. It sounds as though you're making fun of him.' It was an avowal of love.
'What do you want me to call him?'
'I still call him Chuck. A man has a right to change his name, after what they did to him, and what they're doing. Anyway, he's a writer, and writers use pen names.'
'Okay, I'll call him Chuck. But you didn't come here to argue about a name.'
She fingered her mouth, pushing her full lower lip from side to side. She wasn't wearing lipstick or any other makeup. Without it she looked younger and more innocent.
'Have you heard from Chuck?' I said.
She nodded almost imperceptibly, as if too great a movement would endanger him.
'Where is he, Madge?'
'In a safe place. I'm not to tell you where unless you promise not to tell the police.'
'I promise.'
Her pale eyes brightened. 'He wants to talk to you.'
'Did he say what about?'
'I didn't talk to him personally. A friend of his down at the harbor telephoned the message.'
'I take it he's somewhere around the harbor then.'
She gave me another of her barely visible nods.
'You've told me this much,' I said. 'You might as well tell me the rest. I'd give a lot for an interview with Chuck.'
'And you won't lead the police to him?'
'Not if I can help it. Where is he, Madge?'
She screwed up her face and made the plunge: 'He's on Mr. Stevens's yacht, the _Revenant_.'
'How did he get aboard her?'
'I'm not sure. He knew that Mr. Stevens was racing her at Balboa over the weekend. I think he went there and surrendered to Mr. Stevens.'
I left Madge in my room. She didn't want to go out again by herself, or ride along with me. I took the waterfront boulevard to the harbor. While a few tugboats and tuna-fishers used its outer reaches, most of the boats moored at the slips or anchored within the long arm of the jetty were the private yachts and cruisers of weekend sailors.
On a Monday, not many of them were at sea, but I noticed a few white sails on the horizon. They were headed shoreward, like homing dreams.
A man in the harbormaster's glass-enclosed lookout pointed out Stevens's yacht to me. Though she rode at the far end of the outer slip, she was easy to spot because of her towering mast. I walked out along the floating dock to her.
_Revenant_ was long and sleek, with a low streamlined cabin and a racing cockpit. Her varnish was smooth and clear, her brass was bright. She rocked ever so slightly on the enclosed water, like an animal trembling to run.
I stepped aboard and knocked on the hatch. No answer, but it opened when I pushed. I climbed down the short ladder and made my way past some short-wave radio equipment, and a tiny galley smelling of burned coffee, into the sleeping quarters. An oval of sunlight from one of the ports, moving reciprocally with the motion of the yacht, fluttered against the bulkhead like a bright and living soul. I said to it:
'McGee?'
Something stirred in an upper bunk. A face appeared at eye level. It was a suitable face for the crew of a boat named _Revenant_. McGee had shaved off his beard, and the lower part of his face had a beard-shaped pallor. He looked older and thinner and much less sure of himself.
'Did you come here by yourself?' he whispered.
'Naturally I did.'
'That means you don't think I'm guilty, either.' He was reduced to such small momentary hopefulnesses.
'Who else doesn't think you're guilty?'
'Mr. Stevens.'
'Was this his idea?' I said, with a gesture that included McGee and myself.
'He didn't say I _shouldn't_ talk to you.'
'Okay, McGee, what's on your mind?'
He lay still watching me. His mouth was twitching, and his eyes held a kind of beseeching brightness. 'I don't know where to start. I've been living in my thoughts for ten years--so long it hardly seems real. I know what happened to me but I don't know why. Ten years in the pen, with no chance of parole because I wouldn't admit that I was guilty. How could I? I was bum-rapped. And now they're getting ready to do it again.'
He gripped the polished mahogany edge of the bunk. 'I can't go back to 'Q', brother. I did ten years and it was _hard_ time. There's no time as hard as the time you do for somebody else's mistake. God, but the days crawled. There weren't enough jobs to go round and half the time I had nothing to do but sit and think.
'I'll kill myself,' he said, 'before I let them send me back again.'
He meant it, and I meant what I said in reply: 'It won't happen, McGee. That's a promise.'
'I only wish I could believe you. You get out of the habit of believing people. They don't believe you, you
