still at it at eleven o’clock when I looked up and saw the two strange men come into the yard. They were dressed in seersucker suits and Panama hats, and were smoking cigars. I saw the foreman go over, as if asking what they wanted. They started around the yard, talking to each of the workmen for a minute or two.
Then they were coming toward me. I was just picking up a coil of line; I straightened, watching them. I’d never seen them before as far as I could tell.
“Mr. Burton here’s from out of town,” the foreman was saying. “I doubt if he’d know him.”
“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep my face blank. I was beginning to be afraid. The larger one, the blond, was carrying something in his hand. It was a photograph.
He held it out. “Ever see this man, that you know of?” he asked. He didn’t glance toward my hand as I took it; he watched my face. They both did. They didn’t have an expression between them.
I held it up to take a good look. Then I handed it back. “I don’t think so,” I said. “What did he do?”
“Just a routine police matter,” he said. “We’re trying to find somebody that might know him.”
I shook my head. “Sorry. He’s a new one on me.”
“Thanks anyway,” he said.
They left.
I went on aboard the boat with the coil of line under my arm, but instead of stowing it away I walked down into the cabin and dropped, weak-kneed, onto the settee. I wiped the sweat from my face. The way they worked was frightening; it couldn’t possibly have been more than a few hours since they’d found him, and already they had a picture. Not a picture, I thought. Probably dozens of them, being carried all over the water-front. And it was a photograph of him as he was alive, not swollen and unrecognizable in death.
Anybody but a fool would have known it, I thought. The pug would have a criminal record, and when they have records they have pictures. Maybe they had identified him from his fingerprints. But that made no difference now. The thing was that Christiansen would recognize him instantly.
I shook it off. They’d still be looking for Manning, who had gone to New York. And we’d be gone from here in another twelve hours. I was still tense and uneasy, though, as I finished loading stores and went up to the office to write a check for the yard bill. I topped off the boat’s fuel tank and fresh water tank. The ringing clatter of the calking hammers died away at twelve as the men knocked off and went home. It was Saturday afternoon.
I filled the running lights, and drove the truck out and bought some ice. She was ready for sea. There was nothing to do now but wait.
It was bad. And it grew worse.
It was exactly five o’clock when the telephone rang inside the booth at the gate. I went in and closed the door.
“Bill,” she said softly, “I’m getting really scared now. Are we all ready?”
“We’re all ready,” I said. “Listen—I’ve got to get Macaulay first. They’re not sure where he is, and if it works right they won’t even know he’s gone. They won’t suspect anything’s happening. But when you disappear, everything’s going to hit the fan.”
“I understand,” she said.
I went on, sweating inside the booth. I could see the watchman down in the other end of the yard. “Tell him to dress in dark clothes and wear soft-soled shoes. He’s to come out the back door at around nine-ten. That’ll give him plenty of time to get his eyes accustomed to the darkness and make sure there’s nobody in the alley itself. I don’t think there will be, because they’re too smart to be loitering where somebody might see them and call the police. They’re watching the ends of it, sitting in cars. I’ll come down Brandon Way and stop at the mouth of the alley at exactly nine-twenty—”
“But, Bill—You can’t stop there. He’ll know what you’re doing. He’ll kill you.”
“He’ll be busy,” I said. “I’ve got a diversion for him, and I think it’ll work. Now the truck will be between him and the mouth of the alley. Tell Macaulay to come fast the minute the truck stops. And if anything goes wrong he’s to keep coming toward the truck. If he breaks and goes back he hasn’t got a chance. But I don’t