The bar was located on a screened porch at one end of the dining-room. It was empty at the moment except for the white-jacketed barman and two men arguing about the Detroit Lions. We sat down at one of the small tables along the screened wall facing the beach. The barman came over. She ordered a Scotch on the rocks, and I asked for a Martini. A big fan in the corner blew humid air across us.
“My name’s George Hamilton,” I said.
She dropped the book on a chair beside her. “Forsyth. Marian Forsyth. How do you do, Mr. Hamilton?”
“Have you been here long?”
“Just two days,” she replied.
“You know, I keep thinking I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
Again I was conscious of the urbane amusement in the eyes. “Really? I thought we had by-passed that one.”
“No,” I said. “It’s on the level. There is something familiar about you. Where are you staying?”
“The Hibiscus Motel, just up the street.”
“Then we’re neighbors. I’m there too.”
“That might have been where you saw me. In the lobby, perhaps.”
“I suppose so,” I said. “But I don’t see why I’d be so hazy about it. You’re quite striking, you know. I mean, the Black Irish coloring, and the classic line of that hair-do. It sings.”
She propped her elbows on the table, with her chin on her laced fingers, and smiled. “And what other personality problems do you have, Mr. Hamilton, besides shyness?”
I grinned. “I’m sorry. Seriously, though, if any Charles or Antoine ever tries to tout off that chignon, shoot him.”
“That seems a little drastic, doesn’t it? But—if you insist.” Then she added, “Incidentally, I’m not Irish. I’m Scottish. My maiden name was Forbes.”
I was reaching for cigarettes in the pocket of the robe, which was on the chair beside me. When I glanced up at her, there was nothing in her face but that same cool good humor. “Oh?” I said. Then I remarked, “I didn’t know you were married.” She wore no ring.
“I’m divorced,” she said. “Where are you from, Mr. Hamilton?”
The barman brought over the drinks. “Texas,” I told her.
She took a sip of the Scotch and looked at me thoughtfully. “I’d never have known it. You don’t sound a bit like a Texan.”
“I’m not a professional,” I said. “It’s a fallacy, anyway. All Texans don’t go around saying ‘Howdy, pardner.’”
“Yes, I know. I’m from Louisiana, myself. But I do have a pretty fair ear for accents. You’ve lost yours entirely.”
“I never really had one,” I said. “But while we’re on this Professor ‘Iggins kick, you can spot it if you listen closely. I still boot one occasionally.
She nodded. “And Southern. You must have a good ear yourself.”
I shrugged. “I had a little speech training. At one time I was going to be an actor.”
She regarded me with interest. “But you’re not in show business?”
“No,” I said. “Advertising. But how about the fishing? Do you want to try it?”
“Oh, yes. Very much. But I’m not sure yet I can make it tomorrow. Could I let you know tonight?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why don’t we have dinner together?”
She smiled. “I’m afraid I couldn’t, tonight. But thanks, anyway. Suppose I call you around ten or eleven. Will you be in then?”
I said yes. She asked several more questions about fishing, refused the offer of another drink, and left to go back to the motel. I swam for a while, wondering about her. I couldn’t place her at all. Was she really interested in fishing, or was she just a girl away from home looking for a little fun? If the latter, I thought, she had a very cool approach to it. I wondered if she had money. A bathing suit revealed a lot of interesting statistical data, but it didn’t say a damn thing when it came to financial status.
I was lying in bed around eleven reading
“That’s great. Here’s hoping you land a sail.”
“I just hope we can still get a boat. Do you think they’ll all be taken?”
“No,” I said. “It’s the off-season. And I’ve already talked to Holt; he’s open tomorrow. I’ll call now and confirm.”
“I hate to keep bothering you with questions,” she apologized, “but what shall I take? What time do we leave, and how long are we out?”
“What room are you in?” I asked. “If you’re dressed, I could come over—”
The brush was polite, but firm. She was about to go to bed. She repeated the questions.
“Hat, or fishing cap,” I said. “Long sleeves, dark glasses, tan lotion. That sun is murder. We’ll leave the dock at eight, and come in around four-thirty or five. They furnish the tackle; all we have to bring is our lunch. There’s a restaurant on Roosevelt that’ll be open. I don’t have a car, but I’ll call a cab—”
“I have one,” she interrupted. “I’ll meet you in the parking area behind the motel at seven-thirty. Will that be all right?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Just one other thing,” she asked. “Could you tell me what the outriggers are for?”
I wondered why she wanted to go into that in the middle of the night over the phone, but shrugged. She seemed to have an insatiable curiosity about the mechanics of big-game fishing.
“They serve several purposes,” I told her. “The line is run out from your rod tip and trolled from the end of the outrigger, clipped in a gizmo like a big clothes-pin. Takes the load off your arms, for one thing. And it’s springy on the end, so it gives the bait a good action. But the big reason, of course, is the automatic dropback when a sail- fish strikes. I suppose the book told you that a billfish of any kind always stuns his bait before he takes it in his mouth. So when he raps it with that bill, it snaps the line off the outrigger; that releases about twenty feet of slack, and the bait stops dead in the water. Just as if it had been alive and he’d killed it.”
”I see,” she said thoughtfully. “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Hamilton. I’m looking forward to it, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
After she’d hung up I lay there thinking about her, studying the whole thing a little warily. She didn’t ring true, somehow. Then I dismissed the worry. Hell, she couldn’t possibly know me, and I was three thousand miles from Las Vegas. The prospect of another fishing trip was irresistible, anyway, and she might turn out to be a very interesting deal. I don’t get you at all, Mrs. Forsyth, but you’re beginning to intrigue me. We’ll see what we can find out tomorrow.
It wasn’t much—at least, not to begin with. And then when I finally did figure out what she was doing, she puzzled me even more.
* * *
It was a beautiful day. When I awoke it was a little after seven and already full daylight inside the room. I crossed to the window and parted the slats of the closed Venetian blind. The sky was clear, and fronds of the coconut palms in the courtyard between the two wings of the motel stirred gently in a light breeze that appeared to be from the south or south-east. The Stream would be in lovely shape. I was eager to be under way. When I’d shaved and showered, and emerged from the room with the beach bag containing glasses, fishing cap, tan lotion, and cigarettes, she was just coming out of No. 17, diagonally across from me. She had on a conical straw hat, blue Bermuda shorts, and a simple blouse with long sleeves, and was carrying a big purse. She waved and smiled. “Good morning, Mr. Hamilton.”
I learned nothing from the car. As the great American status symbol it was useless, because it wasn’t hers; it was a rental she’d picked up at the airport in Miami. She was wearing a watch, however, that had cost at least five hundred. She didn’t have much to say while we were eating breakfast, and afterwards, while we were running out to the Stream with the engines hooked up, talking was difficult because of their noise. We sat forward under the canopy to avoid the tatters of spray flung backward as the
