'Let's see what the water's like,' I suggested, and got up and walked to the edge of the pool.
She followed me. 'What have you brought that for?' she asked, indicating the scuba gear.
I told her, then said, 'I haven't used it for quite some time so I thought I'd check it. Have you done any scuba diving?'
'Lots of times,' she said. 'I spent a summer in the Bahamas once, and spent nearly every day in the water. It's great fun.'
I agreed and settled down to checking the valves. I found that everything was working and put on the harness. As I was swilling the mask out with water she dived into the pool cleanly, surfaced and splashed at me. 'Come in,' she called.
'Don't tell me -- the water's fine.' I sat on the edge of the pool and flopped in -- you don't dive with bottles on your back. As usual, I found it difficult to get into the correct rhythm of breathing; it's something that requires practice and I was short of that. Because the demand valve is higher in the water than the lungs there is a difference of pressure to be overcome which is awkward at first. Then you have to breathe so as to be economical of air and that is a knack some divers never find. But pretty soon I had got it and was breathing in the irregular rhythm which feels, at first, so unnatural.
I swam around at the bottom of the pool and made a mental note to change the belt weights. I had put on a little flesh since the last time I wore the harness and it made a difference to flotation. Above, I could see Katherine Halstead's sun-tanned limbs and I shot upwards with a kick of the flippers and grabbed her ankles. As I pulled her under I saw the air dribbling evenly from her mouth in a regular line of bubbles rising to the surface. If I had surprised her it certainly didn't show; she had had sense enough not to gasp the air from her lungs.
She jack-knifed suddenly and her hands were on my air pipe. With a sudden twitch she pulled the mouthpiece away and I swallowed water and let go of her ankles. I rose to the surface gasping and treading water to find her laughing at me. I spluttered a bit and said, 'Where did you learn that trick?'
The beach-bums in the Bahamas play rough,' she said, 'A girl learns to look after herself.'
'I'm going down again,' I said. 'I'm out of practise.'
'There'll be another drink waiting when you come out,' she said.
I dropped to the bottom of the pool again and went through my little repertoire of tricks -- taking the mouthpiece out and letting the pipe fill with water and then clearing it, taking the mask off and, finally, taking off the whole harness and climbing into it again. This wasn't just a silly game; at one time or another I'd had to do every one of those things at a time when it would have been positively dangerous not to have been able to do them. Water at any depth is not man's natural element and the man who survives is the man who can get himself out of trouble.
I had been down about fifteen minutes when I heard a noise. I looked up and saw a splashing so I popped to the surface to see what was going on. Mrs. Halstead had been smacking the water with the palm of her hand, and Fallon stood behind her. I climbed out, and he said, 'My tray has arrived -- now we can compare them.'
I shucked off the harness and dropped the weight belt. 'I'll be up as soon as I've dried off.'
He regarded the scuba gear curiously. 'Can you use that -- at depth?'
'It depends on what depth,' I said cautiously. 'The deepest I've been is a little over a hundred and twenty feet.'
'That would probably be enough,' he said. 'You might come in useful after all, Wheale; we might have to explore a cenote.' He dismissed the subject abruptly. 'Be as quick as you can.'
Near the pool was a long cabin which proved to be change-rooms. I showered and dried off, put on a terry- towelling gown and went up to the house. As I walked in through the French windows Fallon was saying '. . . thought it was in the vine leaves so I gave it to a cryptographer. It could be the number of veins on a leaf or the angle of the leaves to the stem or any combination of such things. Well, the guy did a run through and put the results through a computer and came up with nothing.'
It was an ingenious idea and completely wrong. I joined the group around the table and looked down at the two trays. Fallon said, 'Now we've got two trays, so we'll have to go through the whole thing again. Vivero might have alternated his message between them.'
I said casually, 'What trays?'
Halstead jerked up his head and Fallon turned and looked at me blankly. 'Why, these two here.'
I looked at the table. 'I don't see any trays.'
Fallon looked baffled and began to gobble. 'Are . . . are you nuts? What the hell do you think these are? Flying saucers?'
Halstead looked at me irefully. 'Let's not have any games,' he said. 'Murville called this one a tray, Juan de Vivero called that one a tray, and so did Goosan in his letter to Herrick.'
'I don't give a damn about that,' I said frankly. 'If everyone calls a submarine an aeroplane, it still can't fly. Old Vivero didn't call them trays and he made them. He didn't say, 'Here, boys, I'm sending you a couple of nice trays.' Let's see what he did say. Where's the transcription?'
There was a glint in Fallon's eye as he held out the sheaf of papers which were never far from him. 'You'd better make this good.'
I nipped the sheets over to the last page. 'He said, 'I send you gifts made in that marvellous manner which my father learned of that stranger from the East.' He also said, 'Let the scales of enmity fall from your eyes and look upon these gifts with proper vision.' Doesn't that mean anything to you?'
'Not much,' said Halstead.
'These are mirrors,' I said calmly. 'And just because everyone has been using them as trays doesn't alter the fact.'
Halstead made a sound of irritation, but Fallon bent and examined them. I said. 'The bottom of that 'tray' isn't copper -- it's speculum metal -- a reflective surface and it's slightly convex; I've measured it.'
