“Get him out of here,” Rebecca cried. Laughing, she shooed her children and their pet back to their room and wiped the mess off the floor. As she finished she realized Glen was putting on his raincoat.
“Where are you going?”
“I think I’ll take a walk down the beach and have a look at the Randalls’ place. If there
“In this rain?” Rebecca protested. “Honey, you’ll be soaked to the skin — it’s pouring out there, and the wind’s nearly tearing the roof off.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to come with me?” Glen asked innocently. Rebecca glared at him.
“That means I don’t want you to go at all.”
Glen gave her a quick hug and kissed her on the nose. “Well, I’m going and that’s that. If we’re ever away, I hope the Randalls will keep an eye on this place. It seems to me that the least I can do is keep an eye on theirs. And if Missy thinks she saw someone—”
“She didn’t say she saw anyone.”
“Well, she saw smoke.”
“She said that tonight,” Rebecca argued. “She didn’t say anything about it this afternoon. I think she was just trying to convince us that someone was there. I probably put the idea into her head myself when I said she might have seen something.”
“But she might have seen smoke,” Glen countered, “and if she did I want to know what’s going on.”
Rebecca sighed, knowing further argument was useless. “All right, but be careful. Please?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Glen reassured her. “I’ll be back in half an hour, probably sooner.”
A moment later he was gone. Rebecca strained to see him from the window as he went out into the night. But the storm swallowed him up, and she was left to wait alone and worry.
16
Max Horton surveyed the cabin of the trawler, making a final inspection before going ashore. He’d been working steadily for half an hour, though he could have finished the job of putting the boat to rights in ten minutes. He’d been dawdling, making the work last, enjoying his solitude, enjoying the boat. But now the job was done and he could no longer delay joining his brother at the inn. A slight smile crossed his face as he anticipated the warm glow that a hot brandy and water would bring.
Then he heard a sound. It was faint, nearly drowned out by the storm raging in from the sea, and indistinct. But it sounded like a hatch cover being dropped into place.
A sense of impending danger made Max’s spine tingle, and he moved quickly to the hatchway.
He was only seconds too late.
It was already too far from the wharf for Max to attempt a jump, and even if it had been closer, the water was too rough. Then, as a bolt of lightning lashed out of the sky, Max saw the figure on the wharf. It stood perfectly still, hands on hips, head thrown back as if in laughter. The screaming wind drowned out any sounds and the effect of the silent, maniacal laughter chilled Max.
The brilliance of the lightning faded away as the crash of thunder shook the pitching trawler. Max ducked back into the wheelhouse, fumbling in his pocket for his keys. He jammed the ignition key in its lock, twisted it violently, and pressed the starter of the port engine.
Nothing happened.
He pressed the other starter. Again nothing.
He glanced out the window in time to see the wharf disappear into the darkness, and realized the boat was riding the turning tide. He was being drawn toward the mouth of the harbor — and the waiting rocks.
He jabbed at the recalcitrant starter buttons once more, then threw the switch that would drop the main anchor. When it too failed to respond, he left the wheelhouse and moved as swiftly as he could to the stern. He kicked open the anchor locker on the deck and hurled the anchor over the side.
Then he watched as ten feet of line played out and the frayed end of the line disappeared into the blackness of the water.
Something had done its job well.
Max yanked open the hatch cover over the engine compartment and dropped nimbly into the space between the two big Chrysler engines. At first glance everything seemed to be normal, but as he flashed his light over the immense machines he noticed something.
The wiring.
The new wiring that he and Jeff had installed only a week ago had changed. The insulation was gone, burned off as if it had been hugely overloaded, or struck by lightning. The copper wiring, pitted and looking worn, gleamed dully in the glow of his flashlight.
He scrambled out of the engine compartment and replaced the hatch cover. He returned to the wheelhouse and tried to assess the situation. Only then did he realize he was trembling with frustration and rage. He groped in his pockets, pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out, and lit one. He sat quietly at the helm and dragged deeply on his cigarette, forcing himself to calm down, analyze the situation, then do whatever had to be done to save the ship. Once more an image of the fingers of rock looming out of the mouth of the harbor came into his mind.…
Glen Palmer approached the old Baron house cautiously. He had intended to walk along the beach and arrive at the house from the seaward side, but the storm had quickly driven him into the comparative shelter of the woods. He had walked quickly, though the sodden ground had sucked at his shoes. The wind screaming in the treetops above him had chilled his spirit as the rain, funneling through the dense foliage, had chilled his body.
Finally he had found the path that would take him back to the beach — the same path his children had used that afternoon — and he had broken out of the woods only forty feet from the house. The house itself blended almost perfectly with the blackness of the night, and only occasional flashes of lightning revealed that it still stood, a silent sentinel on the beach, testimony to the long-disappeared people who had built it. No light seeped from its dark windows, no clue as to what might lie within escaped its walls. As he made his way around it, Glen shivered, less from the cold than from the deathly stillness that seemed to emanate from the house.
He paused when he found the kitchen door unlocked, sure that something was wrong. Then he entered the kitchen, flashing his light from one corner to another, illuminating first a wall, then the sink, next the icebox, and finally the door to the dining room. He didn’t call out, not out of a fear of alerting anyone who might be inside, but because of deep certainty that the house was empty.
He went confidently into the dining room, again flashed the light briefly around, then moved on to the living room. It was then he knew that someone had been there.
It was at least ten degrees warmer here, and the air was drier — the mustiness of the house had been dispelled in the living room, and the slightly sweet, yet acrid smell of a wood fire lingered. He went to the fireplace and snapped the flashlight off. In the sudden blackness the dull red of a banked fire glowed dimly. Glen put out a foot and kicked the remains of the fire. The thin layer of dead ash fell away and the fire leaped into life. Glen frowned at it and shook his head, wondering whether Missy really had seen the smoke that must have been curling from the chimney only a couple of hours ago. Or had it only been a lucky guess?
He moved slowly through the rest of the house, examining everything more carefully. There was no sign of vandalism, no sign that anything had been disturbed at all. Whoever had been here had apparently borne the house no ill will; even the fire seemed to have been tended to.
Glen returned to the living room. The fire had built itself up to a steady blaze. He looked around for a poker, intending to break it down again, but found nothing. He sank into the chair facing the hearth and wondered if it would be safe to leave. But as he listened to the raging storm, he decided to wait awhile, at least until the fire burned down. It would give the storm time to spend itself, and himself time to dry out and warm up. He got up and went to the window that faced north, flashed his light steadily five times, then returned to the chair in front of the fire. If Rebecca was watching she would know he was all right.
On the fishing trawler, Max Horton returned to the engine compartment for a more thorough investigation.
