We started off side-by-side, as friendly as puppies again. It would probably last all of fifty yards. The roadway, barely wide enough to pass a car, hung above the level of the lake and dodged between high rocks. About half way to the far end another smaller cabin was built on a rock foundation. The third was well beyond the end of the lake, on a patch of almost level ground. Both were closed up and had that long-empty look.
Bill Chess said after a minute or two: “That straight goods little roundheels lammed off?”
“So it seems.”
“You a real dick or just a shamus?”
“Just a shamus.”
“She go with some other guy?”
“I should think it likely.”
“Sure she did. It’s a cinch. Kingsley ought to be able to guess that. She had plenty of friends.”
“Up here?”
He didn’t answer me.
“Was one of them named Lavery?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said.
“There’s no secret about this one,” I said.”She sent a wire from El Paso saying she and Lavery were going to Mexico.” I dug the wire out of my pocket and held it out. He fumbled his glasses loose from his shirt and stopped to read it. He handed the paper back and put his glasses away again and stared out over the blue water.
“That’s a little confidence for you to hold against some of what you gave me,” I said.
“Lavery was up here once,” he said slowly.
“He admits he saw her a couple of months ago, probably up here. He claims he hasn’t seen her since. We don’t know whether to believe him. There’s no reason why we should and no reason why we shouldn’t.”
“She isn’t with him now, then?”
“He says not.”
“I wouldn’t think she would fuss with little details like getting married,” he said soberly. “A Florida honeymoon would be more in her line.”
“But you can’t give me any positive information? You didn’t see her go or hear anything that sounded authentic?”
“Nope,” he said. “And if I did, I doubt if I would tell. I’m dirty, but not that kind of dirty.”
“Well, thanks for trying,” I said.
“I don’t owe you any favors,” he said. “The hell with you and every other God damn snooper.”
“Here we go again,” I said.
We had come to the end of the lake now. I left him standing there and walked out on a little pier. I leaned on the wooden railing at the end of it and saw that what had looked like a band pavilion was nothing but two pieces of propped up wall meeting at a flat angle towards the dam. About two feet deep of overhanging roof was stuck on the wall, like a coping. Bill Chess came up behind me and leaned on the railing at my side.
“Not that I don’t thank you for the liquor,” he said.
“Yeah. Any fish in the lake?”
“Some smart old bastard of trout. No fresh stock. I don’t go for fish much myself. I don’t bother with them. Sorry I got tough again.”
I grinned and leaned on the railing and stared down into the deep still water. It was green when you looked down into it. There was a swirl of movement down there and a swift greenish form moved in the water.
“There’s Granpa,” Bill Chess said. “Look at the size of that old bastard. He ought to be ashamed of himself getting so fat.”
Down below the water there was what looked like an underwater flooring. I couldn’t see the sense of that. I asked him.
“Used to be a boat landing before the dam was raised. That lifted the water level so far the old landing was six feet under.”
A flat-bottomed boat dangled on a frayed rope tied to a post of the pier. It lay in the water almost without motion, but not quite. The air was peaceful and calm and sunny and held a quiet you don’t get in cities. I could have stayed there for hours doing nothing but forgetting all about Derace Kingsley and his wife and her boy friends.
There was a hard movement at my side and Bill Chess said, “Look there!” in a voice that growled like mountain thunder.
His hard fingers dug into the flesh of my arm until I started to get mad. He was bending far out over the railing, staring down like a loon, his face as white as the weather tan would let it get. I looked down with him into the water at the edge of the submerged staging.
Languidly at the edge of this green and sunken shelf of wood something waved out from the darkness, hesitated, waved back again out of sight under the flooring.
The something had looked far too much like a human arm.
Bill Chess straightened his body rigidly. He turned without a sound and clumped back along the pier. He bent to a loose pile of stones and heaved. His panting breath reached me. He got a big one free and lifted it breast high and
