Undercurrent

him…' Static. 'Ned, I'm sorry as hell but I can't locate him along here, maybe he's still on One or maybe he turned off Carmel somewhere. I've lost him…'

Quartermain said 'Goddamn it!' very softly. Then he depressed the Send button on the handset again. 'Keep looking, Jim. Go back to One and cruise it. Cruise the side streets off Carmel. I'll put out a surveillance request to the Monterey police and to the State people. Give me a report in five minutes.'

Favor acknowledged and signed out, and Quartermain called through to Donovan at the Cypress Bay station and issued his surveillance request. The remainder of the five minutes went by silent and tense, and then Favor came on: negative. Quartermain instructed him to maintain his search until no longer feasible, then he slammed the handset back on the transceiver unit and took us out onto the highway again.

I said, 'Winestock won't go far, if running is what he's got in mind.'

'I know that, but I'm thinking about the bald man. Winestock might have led us right to him.'

'There's still time. It'll work out.'

'Sure,' he said. 'Sure it will.'

Beach Road came up on the right, and Quartermain slowed and made the turn. We went down the road past the trailer encampment and out onto the bluff face. The wood-sided station wagon of the morning was no longer parked there, and it was otherwise vacant. Quartermain edged up to the guardrail on the left and darkened the car.

I said, 'Dancer's car-what I think is Dancer's car- is gone. Maybe he's out somewhere, too, for one reason or another.'

'That's all we need.'

The wind blowing in from the sea was chill and damp, and the mist out of the horizon shifted and undulated low over the black carpet of the sea. I pulled up the collar on my suit jacket as we crossed to the set of stairs that led downward to the beach shack.

We paused on the landing, looking down. The house was shrouded in darkness. You could see the breakers spitting foam and spray as they soared up and over the series of bird-limed boulders on either side of the structure, further down; and you could hear the dull throb of the sea's heart, and the sandy whisper of the wind, and the faint sighing of the old, sea-wormed boarding.

'It looks deserted, all right,' Quartermain said.

'Do we go through the motions here, too?'

'We might as well. You never know.'

We started down the sand-coated steps, moving carefully; the stairs were too narrow for more than one person at a time, and I led the way. We were a third of the way down, and I had my head up looking at the shack, when a flash of flickering red-orange illuminated the night sky immediately to the rear of it.

I stopped, thinking: What the hell was that? The flaring reddish brightness diminished into a dull glow, and all at once I thought: Fire, oh Jesus, fire!

I lunged forward, yelling it over my shoulder to Quartermain, running now and hanging onto the railing to keep from losing my balance on the sand-slick boards. I could hear Quartermain cursing steadily behind me. I jumped the last five steps, stumbling, bringing myself upright-and the running figure materialized to the left rear of the shack, racing diagonally toward the rock jetty on that side.

Quartermain saw him at the same time, and he shouted 'Stop! Halt there! Police officer!' as we pounded around the side of the shack and down the incline toward the ocean. The running figure slowed momentarily, looking back over his shoulder, and for that instant he was clearly outlined against the pale, starlit black of the sky. Short, wedge-shaped, thick-chested. And even at that distance, because he wore no head covering of any kind, I could see the faint gleam of his bare crown.

The balding guy-the goddamn balding guy.

He swung his head frontally again and kept on running, almost to the rocks down there. Quartermain began to shout again, more in rage than with any thought of the words having an effect. I stayed abreast of him several more steps, and then I thought about the shack and looked back and the glow had brightened somewhat, wavering and flickering. I made one of those instantaneous decisions you have to make in moments of crisis, and shouted to Quartermain, 'I'm going to the house!'

He ran on in his loose, shambling way-and the guy was at the rock jetty now, clambering up over the eroded boulders. I took myself out of it, turning, and ran to the sun porch at the rear of the shack, caught the log railing and lifted myself up and over. The drapes were still open across the plate-glass rear wall, and I could see the smoke billowing in there and the flames in a shimmering cherry-yellow pyre; Dancer's bookshelves, the entire left- hand wall, were ablaze.

I went to the porch door, caught the knob and hit the wood paneling with my shoulder at the same time. It banged inward and I was inside, with my right arm up to protect my face. The searing heat of the flames washed over me, and the smoke burned like acid in my lungs, gagging me, taking away my breath. My eyes began to sting and water, and I slitted them, blinking rapidly, looking around the room. Nobody on the floor, nobody on the smoldering furniture-no sign of Dancer. A gasoline can lying to one side, flaming, told me all I needed to know about the origin of the fire.

I ran across to the center hall, coughing violently now, and looked into the kitchen. Empty. I threw open the doors to the bedroom and bathroom, and there was no one in either of them; the place was unoccupied-and that told me something, too. I looked back into the front room, but the fire had begun to spread rapidly and the smoke and flames formed an impenetrable barrier; the roar of the inferno was deafening.

Turning, I stumbled to the front door. It was key-locked, and the key was gone. I hit the panel a couple of times with my shoulder, but it failed to give. Panic formed in the pit of my stomach, clawing. I kicked it down and plunged through the bedroom door, with the smoke and the heat coming hungrily in after me, and got to the window and tugged at the sash and felt it yield and threw it all the way up. My fingers fumbled at the catch-lock on the shutters, snapped it free, and I shoved them apart and dragged myself over the sill and fell onto the sandy ground outside. Half crawling, half running, I got away from there and around onto the slope that fell away to the murmuring surf.

I knelt with my head hanging down, coughing and retching and sucking cold salt air fishlike through my open mouth. When I could breathe again, when some of the burning pain subsided in my lungs, I got my head up and saw Quartermain running toward me from the direction of the near rocky jetty. He was alone, and I did not need to ask to know that he'd come up empty; but at least he appeared to be unhurt.

He got to me and took my arm and helped me up. 'Are you all right? Christ!'

'I think… so.'

'Dancer?'

'Not in there. It's empty.'

'Bastard got away. He went over the boulders and up a steep bluff down the way. I heard a car engine, and by the time I got up there he was gone. If I'd worn my goddamn gun, I might have had him-son of a bitch, anyway!'

Panting, I pivoted and looked at the shack. Smoke rolled up into the misty sky in thick clouds, and you could see flames licking with curled orange tongues through the shingled roof. As I watched, the rear glass wall shattered from the intense heat, bursting smoke and glistening shards and more tongues of fire outward. There was nothing we could do; the place was a damned tinderbox.

Quartermain's face looked hellish in the dancing light. 'We'd better get up to the car before a spark catches the stairs,' he said savagely, and we ran in a wide sweep toward the bluff and along it to the stairs. I could feel the heat again and taste the smoke as we scrambled up. I stopped on the landing, hanging onto the railing and looking down at the flaming shack; Quartermain continued on to the car, and a moment later I could hear him shouting into the transceiver's handset.

I stayed where I was, letting the cool sea wind act as a balm on the heat-reddened surface of my face. Breathing was still a problem, but I thought that it would be all right after a while. A minute or two slid away, and I began to think about the blazing bookshelves and the can of gasoline and the emptiness of the shack, and what meaning those facts had. I turned and went over to the car.

Quartermain was leaning wearily against the roof, the handset still in his fingers and the door open; his iron- colored hair was disarrayed, jutting up and out at angles from his scalp. I said, 'I think I know why the fire was set, Ned.'