I went at him tooth and nail. But when he reached Oakland early that night he was still sticking to his original statement—that Gantvoort was the only one of his sister’s suitors that he knew anything about. And I knew that I had blundered, had underrated Madden Dexter, had played my hand wrong in trying to shake him down too quickly—in driving too directly at the point I was interested in. He was either a lot stronger than I had figured him, or his interest in concealing Gantvoort’s murderer was much greater than I had thought it would be.
But I had this much: if Dexter was lying—and there couldn’t be much doubt of that—then Gantvoort had had a rival, and Madden Dexter believed or knew that this rival had killed Gantvoort.
When we left the train at Oakland I knew I was licked, that he wasn’t going to tell me what I wanted to know—not this night, anyway. But I clung to him, stuck at his side when we boarded the ferry for San Francisco, in spite of the obviousness of his desire to get away from me. There’s always a chance of something unexpected happening; so I continued to ply him with questions as our boat left the slip.
Presently a man came toward where we were sitting—a big burly man in a light overcoat, carrying a black bag.
“Hello, Madden!” he greeted my companion, striding over to him with outstretched hand. “Just got in and was trying to remember your phone number,” he said, setting down his bag, as they shook hands warmly.
Madden Dexter turned to me.
“I want you to meet Mr. Smith,” he told me, and then gave my name to the big man, adding, “he’s with the Continental Detective Agency here.”
That tag—clearly a warning for Smith’s benefit—brought me to my feet, all watchfulness. But the ferry was crowded—a hundred persons were within sight of us, all around us. I relaxed, smiled pleasantly, and shook hands with Smith. Whoever Smith was, and whatever connection he might have with the murder—and if he hadn’t any, why should Dexter have been in such a hurry to tip him off to my identity?—he couldn’t do anything here. The crowd around us was all to my advantage.
That was my second mistake of the day.
Smith’s left hand had gone into his overcoat pocket—or rather, through one of those vertical slits that certain styles of overcoats have so that inside pockets may be reached without unbuttoning the overcoat. His hand had gone through that slit, and his coat had fallen away far enough for me to see a snub-nosed automatic in his hand—shielded from everyone’s sight but mine—pointing at my waistline.
“Shall we go on deck?” Smith asked—and it was an order.
I hesitated. I didn’t like to leave all these people who were so blindly standing and sitting around us. But Smith’s face wasn’t the face of a cautious man. He had the look of one who might easily disregard the presence of a hundred witnesses.
I turned around and walked through the crowd. His right hand lay familiarly on my shoulder as he walked behind me; his left hand held his gun, under the overcoat, against my spine.
The deck was deserted. A heavy fog, wet as rain—the fog of San Francisco Bay’s winter nights—lay over boat and water, and had driven everyone else inside. It hung about us, thick and impenetrable; I couldn’t see so far as the end of the boat, in spite of the lights glowing overhead.
I stopped.
Smith prodded me in the back.
“Farther away, where we can talk,” he rumbled in my ear.
I went on until I reached the rail.
The entire back of my head burned with sudden fire … tiny points of light glittered in the blackness before me … grew larger … came rushing toward me. …
VI
“Those Damned Horns!”
Semiconsciousness! I found myself mechanically keeping afloat somehow and trying to get out of my overcoat. The back of my head throbbed devilishly. My eyes burned. I felt heavy and logged, as if I had swallowed gallons of water.
The fog hung low and thick on the water—there was nothing else to be seen anywhere. By the time I had freed myself of the encumbering overcoat my head had cleared somewhat, but with returning consciousness came increased pain.
A light glimmered mistily off to my left, and then vanished. From out of the misty blanket, from every direction, in a dozen different keys, from near and far, foghorns sounded. I stopped swimming and floated on my back, trying to determine my whereabouts.
After a while I picked out the moaning, evenly spaced blasts of the Alcatraz siren. But they told me nothing. They came to me out of the fog without direction—seemed to beat down upon me from straight above.
I was somewhere in San Francisco Bay, and that was all I knew, though I suspected the current was sweeping me out toward the Golden Gate.
A little while passed, and I knew that I had left the path of the Oakland ferries—no boat had passed close to me for some time. I was glad to be out of that track. In this fog a boat was a lot more likely to run me down than to pick me up.
The water was chilling me, so I turned over and began swimming, just vigorously enough to keep my blood circulating while I saved my strength until I had a definite goal to try for.
A horn began to repeat its roaring note nearer and nearer, and presently the lights of the boat upon which it was fixed came into sight. One of the Sausalito ferries, I thought.
It came quite close to me, and I halloed until I was breathless and my
