"I'm not trying to insult you. I'm only thinking, your trouble could be
caused by a situation. A place. Did you get overseas in the Army?"
"No, unless you count Alaska."
"And of course it wasn't your kind of life. All you'd think about
would be going home. But suppose you went somewhere else, someplace
congenial--and stayed. I wonder if you mightn't feel like buckling
down. You could still make a name for yourself, or at least a fair
living, as an entertainer. If you'd try."
"Go where?"
"Well, Trig Yamamura has connections in Honolulu. Or via people I know,
we could probably finagle a start in New York, if you'd rather. The
main point would be, stay away from here! For a few years anyhow, till
you got your feet well planted."
Guido said in a low voice: "I've thought the same from time to time.
But Bruce was the only one who ever got behind me and pushed, and he
didn't have any such contacts."
He smiled. "Could be, Doc, that blue funk of yours is also situational.
If I need to get away, maybe you need to settle down. Dig? Pipe,
slippers, a wife and a lot of runny-nosed kids to worry about, instead
of whatever dead thing it was that happened years ago."
"Let's quit the personal remarks," said Kintyre.
They drove on. The sea came into view, tumbling at the foot of steep
yellowish cliffs. It was a cold, etched gray, under a gray sky. There
was no clear horizon, sky and water ran together in mist. Guido had to
slow down somewhat on the curves, but he managed a dangerous speed.
Tires squealed and once he passed another car on a hill and avoided
collision only by some inspired steering.
When they had left Berkeley more than an hour behind, he asked: "How
far do you want to go, anyway?"
"Go on," said Kintyre.
"How come?"
Kintyre didn't answer.
At Half Moon Bay, the beach was empty and the clustered cabins forlorn;
fog had closed in until you could not see past the breakers. It was
clammy out there.
"Never liked the coast myself," said Guido. "She did--does, God damn
it! She's queer for beach picnics. Likes to play volley ball and make
sand castles."
Kintyre unclenched his fists.
"If we don't get her back," said Guido, almost matter-of-factly, "of
course I can't leave home. The old lady won't have nobody left but me."
He crammed his foot on the gas. The car spurted ahead. The ground
climbed again.
Presently they were on a deserted stretch. The land fell too abruptly
to attract visitors: most places had no way down to the water. Sere
brown hills lifted on the east side of the highway, trees huddled along
them in clumps. The fog came streaming over the road.
"Now what?" said Guido. "It'll be socked in farther south."
"Continue," said Kintyre.
"Like hell!" Mutiny leaped on the dark snub face. "I've gone far
enough. How d'you know they don't need us back in town?"
Kintyre felt his muscles congeal.
"What's the matter?" Guido stamped on the brakes. The car skidded to a
halt.
Kintyre shuddered. The horror screamed, once, and drained from
him. He knew remotely that it was not conquered--not yet--but his
disintegrated self had coalesced for at least the time during which all
of him would be needed.
He said, hearing his voice like another man's:
"Can you push this car back up to ninety going onward?"
"Huh?"
"I think I know where Corinna is."
Guido's hands slackened on the wheel. Suddenly they tensed again. The
car growled from the shoulder and began to accumulate speed.
"I don't want to pile us up," said Guido, "but I guess I could average
fifty. Where is she?"
"Do you know Point Perro?"
"I don't believe so."
"It's a little privately owned cove. Not far to go now. It's fenced
off, posted, and there's nothing from the road to indicate it even has
a beach. You couldn't find a lonelier spot in a day's driving."
Cloven air bawled past the windows. Guido squinted into thickening
fog. He could only see a few yards ahead before the gray curtain fell;
he had to imagine when the turns were coming up, and take them on two
wheels. All at once Kintyre was terrified of an accident.
"I mentioned it to Clayton a couple of days ago," he said. The words
came out one by one. "I seem to have forgotten that--down underneath,
perhaps, I didn't want to admit to myself I'd given him any help--but I
don't think it was coincidence I chose this route. Never mind. Clayton
is an Easterner. His time out here has been spent entirely in the
respectable sections of the Bay Area. Silenio and Larkin are complete
strangers. How would they know where to take her, except some such
randomly learned-about spot as this? At least, it's one chance for us.
One chance!"
Guido said above the wind, the engine, and the wheels: "If you're
right, Doc, it's even a good chance. An Easterner would drive a lot
slower than me along this route, especially when they hit the fog. We
might catch up to them."
"They've had hours," said Kintyre. "On the other hand, they had to meet
each other too, and confer. They're not supermen, they would try to
think of something, and argue about their plans, for a long time while
they just drove aimlessly, surely not in this direction. We can hope."
"If they've done anything to her," said Guido, his face the mask of
flayed Marsyas, "I myself will--"
"You'll let me off at Point Perro," said Kintyre. "Then burn up the
motor getting to a phone. Don't waste time on any sheriff's office,
call Berkeley headquarters direct. They can call the local authorities
for you. It should actually be quicker that way."
"You, though," said Guido. "I can't leave you alone with them."
"Do you want to help Corinna, or do you want to get yourself sliced
open for no purpose at all? You're a better driver, so you can get help
sooner. I'll have a better chance of delaying matters down in the cove."
"I suppose so." Guido spoke it with difficulty.
"'_One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to
frighten wolves_,'" recited Kintyre in Machiavelli's Italian. "'_Those
that wish to be only lions do not understand this._'"
Guido laughed shakily. "Modest fellow," he said.
Kintyre would have liked to clap his shoulder, but dared not. They were
going seventy miles an hour on a winding road and it was becoming less
visible each minute.
"Good for you," he said. "We'll salvage you yet." After another mile:
"Or do you even need it any more?"
20
The fog had grown so dense that Kintyre knew his goal only by the car
parked at the roadside. "Don't stop!" he cried, the moment it hove into
view. "Brake easy. Let me out a hundred yards on." He began to open
the door. "The nearest phone I remember is a gas station a few miles
farther south. Don't raise your own posse and come back. They'd hear
you and might shoot her first. Wait for the police. Good luck."
They rolled softly through a dripping gray swirl. Kintyre stepped from
the car. Contact jarred in his feet. Almost, he fell, running alongside
it in search of balance. Then the dark wet body slipped from him and
was lost. He heard a muffled slam as Guido closed the door, the rising
drone of speed, and now just his shoes thudding on pavement.
He stopped himself and jogged back. He was no track star, but he
remembered to conserve his wind. The fog was moving with him, its
eddies and streamers gave him the nightmare sense of a treadmill bound
south. He could see the highway and something of the right-hand cliff
that rose up and lost itself overhead. To his left there was nothing,
world's edge and smoky endlessness. The air was chill.
Presently he regained the automobile. It was a new model, built for an
impression of lowness and width; it sat and bared its teeth between
blind headlights like some garish dinosaur defying the glaciers. Judas!
Suppose this was only a harmless passer-by? But a signboard told him
POINT PERRO, and who else would have come today? Kintyre tried the
door. It wasn't locked. He eased it open to read the registration on
the steering column.
Gerald R. Clayton. So. Kintyre felt his hands shaking. One more
reassurance, before he went down the path. The dashboard thermometer
showed the engine still warm. They hadn't been here long.
_I do not wish for a God to help me_, he thought. _But I wish I had one
to thank._
He filled his lungs and emptied them, filled and emptied them. Those
were dank breaths, but they helped him ease up. He had three armed men
to face; if he must also war with himself, it would be hopeless. Not
that he felt any great conviction of winning. But--yes. He reached
under the dash and yanked loose the ignition wires. After he was dead,
that might delay their escape with Corinna.
He climbed the low barbed-wire fence. It guarded a jut of cliff maned
with harsh yellow grass. You had to go to its very edge to see that
there was a beach underneath. As he approached, he began to hear the
surf. Incoming tide: breakers crashed among rocks, the water streamed
down again with a roar, whirlpools gurgled in small grottoes. He did
not think a human cry would be heard this far above.
When he came to the brink, he could just make out a sketch of jumbled
crags and a laciness on the bull combers; then the rifted mist hid
the sea from him again. There would be a highness to either side, the
arms enclosing this inlet, but those were lost in the gray. He walked
cautiously until he saw the path, a goat track plunging downward.
Its dirt was gritty under his feet. Despite himself, he loosed gravel
showers now and again. After each he stopped, crouching and listening
for voices. There were none: only the surf, snorting more loudly every
time. The fog was his friend, could he have approached without it? Yes,
he'd have found a way somehow, swum around a headland if he must, but
the fog helped him. No proof of supernatural assistance, of course;
this was a notoriously wet stretch of coast; however, he was advantaged
thereby.
At the cliff's foot he stood among half-seen boulders and considered
where his enemy might be. Not more than a hundred yards from him,
but he had perhaps fifty feet of unclear vision. This pea soup was
thickening by the minute. If the others arrived, say, twenty minutes
ago, they would have been granted better visibility, could have
selected a spot. Kintyre stretched his memory. The cliffs made a
semicircular wall, with driftwood and great stones at its foot; the
diameter was a narrow strip of sand, paralleled by a line of rocks.
These latter were below high-water mark and would be drenched already.
Kintyre could just glimpse the sleet-colored ocean breasting them.
Okay. So his quarry was under the cliff. Was there some way to lure one
of them out?
An idea came. It was hazardous, but no more so than blundering blind.
And he was not afraid of what might happen to him. In a certain way, he
had been given another chance to rescue Morna; he could not but take it.
Crouching in the rocks, he started to cough, as much like a sea lion's
bark as he could manage. It was a bad imitation, but he dealt with
pavement people. The noise went deep, wet, and ringing among the
breakers.
"What's that?"
From the right! Kintyre fell on his stomach and began to eel his way
over the rocks.
"A gahdam seal yet." Larkin's youthful whine. "Holy Moses, what a spot!"
"Better go see." It was an unfamiliar bass. Silenio.
"Ah, nuts, you go."
"You heard me, Terry," said Silenio.
"The girl knows this coast," said Clayton. Kintyre flowed over a
bleached white tree trunk. It snagged his shirt, he had to stop and
fumble for his liberty. And the fog talked and talked.
"It's just a seal, isn't it, Miss Lombardi?"
No answer.
"Silenio," said Clayton.