The third man wore a dinner coat with a professional air. He accompanied the policemen to their car and offered his regrets that he hadn’t been able to help them as much as he would have liked to. They drove away. He turned back toward the clubhouse, where I caught him at the door:
“I’m William Gunnarson, a local attorney. One of my clients is involved with an employee of the club. Would you be the manager?”
His bright and sorrowful eyes examined me. He had the nervous calm which comes from running other people’s parties, and a humorous mouth which took the curse off it. “I am tonight. Tomorrow I’ll probably be looking for a job. We who are about to die salute thee. Is it Gaines again? Ill-gotten Gaines?”
“I’m afraid it is.”
“Gaines is an ex-employee of ours. I fired him last week. I was just beginning to indulge in the hope that he was out of my hair for good. Now this.” He flipped his hand in the direction the police had taken.
“What was the trouble?”
“You undoubtedly know more about that than I do. Is he a burglary suspect, or something of the sort? I’ve just been talking to a couple of detectives, but they were terribly noncommittal.”
“We could trade information, perhaps.”
“Why not? My name is Bidwell. Gunnarson, did you say?”
“Bill Gunnarson.”
His office was oak-paneled, thickly carpeted, furnished with heavy, dark pieces. An uneaten steak congealed on a tray on the corner of his desk. We faced each other across it. I told him as much as I thought I needed to, and then asked him some questions. “Do you know if Gaines has left town?”
“I gather he has. The police implied as much. Under the circumstances, it’s hardly surprising.”
“The fact that he’s wanted for questioning, you mean?”
“That, and other circumstances,” he said vaguely.
“Why did you fire him?”
“I’d sooner not divulge that information. There are other people involved. Let’s say it was done at the instance of one of the members, and leave it at that.”
I didn’t want to leave it at that. “Is there anything to the rumor that he made a rough pass at one of the ladies?”
Bidwell stiffened in his swivel chair. “Good Lord, is that around town?”
“I heard it.”
He stroked his mouth with his fingertips. His desk lamp lit only the lower part of his face. I couldn’t see his eyes.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. He simply showed too much interest in one of the members’ wives. He was very attentive to her, and perhaps she took a little too much advantage of it. Her husband heard about it, and objected. So I fired him.” He added: “Thank God I did fire him, before this police investigation came up.”
“Did Gaines give any indications that he was using his position here for criminal purposes? To pick out prospects for burglary, for instance?”
“The police asked me that. I had to answer no. But they pointed out that one or two of our members have been victims of burglary in the past six months. Most recently, the Hampshires.”
Bidwell’s voice was rigidly controlled, but he was under great strain. A drop of sweat formed at the tip of his nose, grew heavy and filled with light, and fell off onto his blotter. It made a dark red stain, like blood, on the red blotter.
“How did you happen to hire Gaines in the first place?”
“I was taken in. I pride myself on my judgment of people, but I was taken in by Larry Gaines. He talked well, you know, and then there was the fact that the college sent him. We nearly always get our lifeguards from Buenavista College. In fact, that may be why Gaines registered there.”
“He actually registered at the local college?”
“So they tell me. Apparently he dropped out after a few days or weeks. But we went on assuming that he was a college student. He was a little old for the role, but you see a lot of that these days.”
“I know,” I said. “I went through college and law school after Korea.”
“Did you, now? I never did make it to college myself. I suppose that’s why I feel a certain sympathy for young people trying to educate themselves. Gaines traded on my sympathy, and not only on mine. Quite a few of the members were touched by his scholarly aspirations. He has a certain charm, I suppose-rather greasy, but potent.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I can do better than that. The police asked me to rake up some pictures of him. Gaines was always getting himself photographed. He did a lot of picture-taking himself.”
Bidwell brought five or six glossy prints out of a drawer and handed them to me. Most of them showed Gaines in bathing trunks. He was slim-hipped and wide-shouldered. He held himself with that actorish air, self- consciousness pretending to be self-assurance, which always made me suspicious of a man. His crew-cut head was handsome, but there was a spoiled expression on his mouth, something obtuse in his dark eyes. In spite of the costume, the tan, the molded muscles, he had the look of a man who hated the sun. I placed his age at twenty-five or six.
Keeping one of the pictures, I gave the rest back to Bidwell. “May I have a look at your membership list?”
It was lying on top of his desk, and he pushed it across to me: several sheets of foolscap covered with names in a fine Spencerian hand. The names were alphabetically grouped, and each was preceded by a number. Patrick Hampshire was number 345. Colonel Ian Ferguson was number 459.
“How many members do you have?”
“Our by-laws limit us to three hundred. The original membership were numbered from one to three hundred. When a member-ah-passes on, we retire his number, and issue a new one. The roster runs up to 461 now, which means that we’ve lost 161 members since the club was founded, and gained a corresponding number of new members.”
He recited these facts as if they constituted a soothing liturgy. I wondered if he was talking to me simply to keep from talking to himself.
“Did Gaines have much to do with the Hampshires, do you know?”
“I’m afraid he did. He gave the Hampshire youngsters some swimming lessons in their private pool.”
“The Fergusons?”
He thought about his answer, pushing out his lower lip, and quickly retracting it. “I hadn’t heard that they were burglarized.”
“Neither had I. Their number is 459. That means they’re recent members, does it?”
“Yes, it does,” he said with vehemence. “The committee’s responsible, of course, but I have power of veto. I should have used it.”
“Why?”
“I believe you know why.” He rose, and walked to the wall, then turned from it abruptly as if he’d seen handwriting on it. He came back to the desk and leaned above me on his fingertips. “Let’s not beat around the bush, shall we?”
“I haven’t been.”
“All right. I admit I have. I make no apologies. The situation is explosive.”
“You mean the situation between Colonel Ferguson and his wife?”
“That’s part of it. I see you do know something about it, and I’m going to be candid with you. This club is on the brink of a major scandal. I’m doing all I can to avert it.” His tone was portentous; he might have been telling me that war had just been declared. “Look at this.”
Bidwell opened a drawer in his desk and brought out a folded newspaper clipping. He unfolded it with shaking hands, spreading it out on the blotter for me to read:
