briefcase.
'My alimony,' she explained, 'from the safe.' Clutching her mink to her, she clambered down into the cruiser and went to the controls. Piper followed her unsteadily.
'Low on fuel,' she said. 'We'll need some more.' Presently Piper was trudging back and forth between the cruiser and the fuel store at the far side of the courtyard behind the house. It was dark and occasionally he stumbled.
'Isn't that enough?' he asked after the fifth journey as he handed the cans down to Baby in the cruiser.
'We can't afford to make mistakes,' she replied. 'You wouldn't want us to run out of gas in the middle of the bay.'
Piper set off for the store again. There was no doubt in his mind that he had already made a terrible mistake. He should have listened to Sonia. She had said the woman was a ghoul and she was right. A demented ghoul. And what on earth was he doing in the middle of the night filling a cruiser with cans of petrol? It wasn't an activity even vaguely related with being a novelist. Thomas Mann wouldn't have been found dead doing it. Nor would D. H. Lawrence. Conrad might have, just. Even then it was highly unlikely. Piper consulted Lord Jim and found nothing reassuring in it, nothing to justify this insane activity. Yes, insane was the word. Standing in the fuel store with two more cans Piper hesitated. There wasn't a single novelist of any merit who would have done what he was doing. They would all have refused to be party to such a scheme. Which was all very well, but then none of them had been in the awful predicament he was in. True, D. H. Lawrence had run off with Mr Somebody-or-other's wife, Frieda, but presumably of his own accord and because he was in love with the woman. Piper was most certainly not in love with Baby and he wasn't doing this of his own accord. Definitely not. Having consulted these precedents Piper tried to think how to live up to them. After all, he hadn't spent the last ten years of his life being the great novelist for nothing. He would take a moral stand. Which was rather easier said than done. Baby Hutchmeyer wasn't the sort of woman who would understand taking a moral stand. Besides there wasn't time to explain. The best thing to do would be to stay where he was and not go down to the boat again. That would put her in a spot when Hutchmeyer and Sonia got back. She'd have her work cut out explaining what she was doing on board the cruiser with her bags packed and ten five-gallon cans of gasolene stashed around the cabin. At least she wouldn't be able to argue that he had forced her to elope with him if elope was the right word for running away with another man's wife. Not if he wasn't there. On the other hand there was his suitcase on board too. He would have to get that off. But how? Well of course if he didn't go back down there she would come looking for him and in that case...Piper peered out of the store and seeing that the courtyard was clear, stole across it to the front door and into the house. Presently he was looking out from behind the lattice of the piazza lounge at the boat. Around him the great wooden house creaked. Piper looked at his watch. It was one o'clock. Where had Sonia and Hutchmeyer got to? They should have been back hours ago.
On board the cruiser Baby was having the same thought about Piper. What was keeping him? She had started the engine and checked the fuel gauge and was ready to go now and he was holding everything up. After ten minutes she became genuinely alarmed.
And with each succeeding minute her alarm grew. The sea was calm now and if he didn't come soon...
'Genius is so unpredictable,' she muttered finally and climbed back on to the jetty. She went round the house and across the yard to the fuel store and switched on the light. Empty. Two jerry-cans standing in the middle of the floor were mute testimony to Piper's change of heart. Baby went to the door.
'Peter,' she called, her thin voice dying in the night air. Thrice she called and thrice there was no reply.
'Oh heartless boy!' she cried and this time it seemed there was an answer. It came faintly
