She couldn’t help worrying, of course. For instance, the place was locked up and there was no caretaker on the premises, so Mr. Tibbs would not have been able to get in. This observation, when first made, had considerably threatened Deidre’s equilibrium. For the building, thoughtfully, even lovingly designed so that its inhabitants would get the benefit of all the light and sunshine available, was made almost entirely of glass. And what if her father, frenziedly searching for Mrs. Coolidge (or Nancy Banks, who made such a fuss over him) harmed himself by hammering on those heavy slabs or, worse, seized a stone from the garden and tried to smash the doors? Suppose he then tried to squeeze through gripping the jagged raw edges … ?
At this point Deidre would wrench her mind from such dreadful fancies and once more wrestle her way toward comparative tranquility. But the idea would not easily be vanquished, and when the car drew up outside Laurel Lodge, and the dark glass structure loomed apparently undisturbed, she felt a great rush of relief.
The iron gates were locked, a token restraint merely, as the grounds were surrounded by a brick wall barely a yard high. The rain had stopped, but there was still a high howling wind. As Deidre staggered across the gravel, her coat streamed out behind her and her cries of “Daddy, where are you? It’s Deidre” were blown back into her mouth as soon as uttered. Constable Watson had a flashlight in his hand, and was testing all the doors and windows and bellowing “Mr. Tibbs?” in what seemed to Deidre a very authoritative, even threatening manner. He disappeared around the side of the building shining his light into each of the five transparent boxes; the workroom and kitchen, the rest room and office, the canteen. Then he came back shouting “He’s not here,” and Deidre, uncomprehending, yelled back, “Yes, yes … somewhere.”
She waved at the surrounding garden, and the man followed the movement with his flashlight. The beam swept an arc of brilliant light over the surrounding lawns and shrubbery. A band of green-gold conifers, waving and soughing like the sea, leaped into sight, then vanished as the flashlight moved on. The flower beds were empty brown sockets, and the shrubs that gave the place its name creaked in the bitter whirling wind. (Deidre had always hated the laurels. They were so coarse and melancholic, and their leathery spotted leaves made her think of the plague.)
She seized PC Watson’s arm, gasped, “We must search,” and started pulling him toward the nearest dark mass of shrubbery. He resisted, and Deidre, turning back, was just about to redouble her efforts when the blistering roar of the wind ceased. The strife-tom trees rustled and groaned for a few moments more, then settled into silence.
Surprisingly—for they were half a mile from the nearest habitation—a dog barked. This was followed by another sound, which, although muffled by the hedge of Leylandii conifers, was unmistakably a human voice. It was calling out, not in any panic-stricken way but with a sonorous, tolling necessity, like a town crier. Deidre moaned, “The lake!,” and flew in the general direction from which the recitations had come. Her companion followed, trying to light her with his flashlight, but she was running so fast and zigzagging so wildly back and forth that he kept losing her. Once she tripped, fell into a flower bed, and scrambled up, her hands and clothes plastered with mud.
In fact, the lake was not a lake at all but a reservoir. A vast natural hollow that had been extended and shaped into a rectangle, then edged with masonry and planted all about with reeds and other vegetation. People were allowed to sail on it in the summer, and it was home to a large variety of birds and small mammals. Nearby was a concrete building surrounded by a high wire fence with a sign attached. It showed a yellow triangle with a jagged arrow and a man lying down and read danger of death, keep out. Just as Deidre arrived, the moon, so white it appeared almost blue in the icy air, sailed serenely out from behind a bank of dark cloud. It illuminated an astonishing sight.
Mr. Tibbs was standing rigidly upright in an oarless rowing boat in the very center of the reservoir. His arms were flung wide and, as his fingers were almost precisely aligned with the perfect circle of the reflected moon, he seemed to be holding a new, mysterious world in the palm of his hand. His trousers and shirt were torn, his hair stuck out wildly in all directions, and his forearms and chest were scratched and bleeding. But his face as he stared upward was stamped with such ecstatic bliss that it was as if he saw streams of celestial light pouring from the very gates of paradise.
Mr. Tibbs had an audience of one. A rough-haired, rather shabby brown-and-white mongrel with a plumed tail. He sat bolt upright, his head cocked to one side in an attitude of strained attention, his ears pricked. He paid no attention when the others crashed into view, but kept his eyes (brown and shiny as beechnuts) firmly fixed on the figure in the boat.
“I saw a mighty angel come down from heaven!” cried Mr. Tibbs. “Clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was upon his head! And his face was as it were the sun. And his feet as pillars of fire!”
While the constable used his radio to organize assistance, Audrey Brierley was hanging on to a struggling Deidre. “We’re getting reinforcements, love,” she said urgently. “And an ambulance. They’ll be here in no time. Please calm down. There’s nothing you can do. If you get in there, that’ll be two people we’ll have to pull out. Twice the trouble, twice the risk. Now you don’t want that, do you?” Deidre stood still then. “Good girl. Try not to worry. He’ll be cold and wet, but he’s in no real danger.”
“If any man have an ear, let him hear,” clarioned Mr. Tibbs. Then he flung out his arm in a wide sweep encompassing his human audience of three, the concrete hut, and the scrupulously attentive canine, and fell into the water.
Deidre screamed, Policewoman Brierley hung on anew, and Constable Watson peeled off his heavy tunic, got rid of his boots, and dived in. He kicked out with great difficulty (his trousers were immediately saturated), cursing the fate that had put him on late turn. He attempted a strong crawl toward the dark outline of the boat, and each time he turned his head, a little of the water, freezing cold and tasting richly of mud and iron, slopped into his mouth. He grabbed what he thought was his quarry, only to find himself clutching a huge skein of slimy weed. He swam further in. On his limited horizon the water lapped and bobbed against the sky. Mr. Tibbs’s descent had fractured the immaculate circle of the moon, and it now lay in broken bars of silver around the policeman’s head. He could hear wails from Deidre interspersed with barks from the dog, which, now that the declamation had ceased and the action had started, was running excitedly round in circles.
The policeman reached Mr. Tibbs, hooked an arm around the old man’s neck, and turned him around. To the anguished Deidre, wringing her hands on the bank, her father seemed to spin with graceful ease, but to Jim Watson it was like hauling a hundred-pound sack of potatoes. Thank God, he thought, feeling his arms wrenching in their sockets, the old man wasn’t thrashing about. Indeed, Mr. Tibbs seemed quite unaware that there was any danger in his position at all. He drifted beatifically, cruciformly, on his back. With his rigid, unnatural smile and spreading white hair, he looked like the corpse of a holy man floating in the Ganges. PC Watson plodded on. His arm was almost beating the water in his efforts to keep them both afloat.