The boat went on and the fog closed in behind it.
The current was stronger now, and my attempts to attract the attention of the Sausalito ferry had left me weaker. I floated, letting the water sweep me where it would, resting.
Another light appeared ahead of me suddenly—hung there for an instant—disappeared.
I began to yell, and worked my arms and legs madly, trying to drive myself through the water to where it had been.
I never saw it again.
Weariness settled upon me, and a sense of futility. The water was no longer cold. I was warm with a comfortable, soothing numbness. My head stopped throbbing; there was no feeling at all in it now. No lights, now, but the sound of foghorns … foghorns … foghorns ahead of me, behind me, to either side; annoying me, irritating me.
But for the moaning horns I would have ceased all effort. They had become the only disagreeable detail of my situation—the water was pleasant, fatigue was pleasant. But the horns tormented me. I cursed them petulantly and decided to swim until I could no longer hear them, and then, in the quiet of the friendly fog, go to sleep. …
Now and then I would doze, to be goaded into wakefulness by the wailing voice of a siren.
“Those damned horns! Those damned horns!” I complained aloud, again and again.
One of them, I found presently, was bearing down upon me from behind, growing louder and stronger. I turned and waited. Lights, dim and steaming, came into view.
With exaggerated caution to avoid making the least splash, I swam off to one side. When this nuisance was past I could go to sleep. I sniggered softly to myself as the lights drew abreast, feeling a foolish triumph in my cleverness in eluding the boat. Those damned horns. …
Life—the hunger for life—all at once surged back into my being.
I screamed at the passing boat, and with every iota of my being struggled toward it. Between strokes I tilted up my head and screamed. …
VII
“You Have a Lot of Fun, Don’t You?”
When I returned to consciousness for the second time that evening, I was lying on my back on a baggage truck, which was moving. Men and women were crowding around, walking beside the truck, staring at me with curious eyes.
I sat up.
“Where are we?” I asked.
A little red-faced man in uniform answered my question.
“Just landing in Sausalito. Lay still. We’ll take you over to the hospital.”
I looked around.
“How long before this boat goes back to San Francisco?”
“Leaves right away.”
I slid off the truck and started back aboard the boat.
“I’m going with it,” I said.
Half an hour later, shivering and shaking in my wet clothes, keeping my mouth clamped tight so that my teeth wouldn’t sound like a dice-game, I climbed into a taxi at the Ferry Building and went to my flat.
There, I swallowed half a pint of whisky, rubbed myself with a coarse towel until my skin was sore, and, except for an enormous weariness and a worse headache, I felt almost human again.
I reached O’Gar by phone, asked him to come up to my flat right away, and then called up Charles Gantvoort.
“Have you seen Madden Dexter yet?” I asked him.
“No, but I talked to him over the phone. He called me up as soon as he got in. I asked him to meet me in Mr. Abernathy’s office in the morning, so we could go over that business he transacted for father.”
“Can you call him up now and tell him that you have been called out of town—will have to leave early in the morning—and that you’d like to run over to his apartment and see him tonight?”
“Why yes, if you wish.”
“Good! Do that. I’ll call for you in a little while and go over to see him with you.”
“What is—”
“I’ll tell you about it when I see you,” I cut him off.
O’Gar arrived as I was finishing dressing.
“So he told you something?” he asked, knowing of my plan to meet Dexter on the train and question him.
“Yes,” I said with sour sarcasm, “but I came near forgetting what it was. I grilled him all the way from Sacramento to Oakland, and couldn’t get a whisper out of him. On the ferry coming over he introduces me to a man he calls Mr. Smith, and he tells Mr. Smith that I’m a gumshoe. This, mind you, all happens in the middle of a crowded ferry! Mr. Smith puts a gun in my belly, marches me out on deck, raps me across the back of the head, and dumps me into the bay.”
“You have a lot of fun, don’t you?” O’Gar grinned, and then wrinkled his forehead. “Looks like Smith would be the man we want then—the buddy who turned the Gantvoort trick. But what the hell did he want to give himself away by chucking you overboard for?”
“Too hard for me,” I confessed, while trying to find which of my hats and caps would sit least heavily upon my bruised head. “Dexter knew I was hunting for one of his sister’s former lovers, of course. And he must have thought I knew a whole lot more than I do, or he wouldn’t have made that raw play—tipping my mitt to Smith right in front of me.
“It may be that after Dexter lost his head and made that break on the ferry, Smith figured that I’d be on to him soon, if not right away; and so he’d take a desperate chance on putting me out of the way. But we’ll know all about it in a little while,” I said, as we went down to the waiting taxi and set out for Gantvoort’s.
“You ain’t counting on Smith being in sight, are you?” the detective-sergeant asked.
“No. He’ll be holed up somewhere until he sees how things are going. But Madden Dexter will have to be out in the open to protect himself. He has an alibi,
