It was a beautiful place, and almost ringingly silent the minute the car stopped. The houseboat was moored to a pier in the shade of big moss-draped trees at the water’s edge, and beyond it I could see the flat surface of the lake burning like a mirror in the sun. There was no whisper of breeze. I got out and closed the door, and the sound was almost startling in the hush.
She unlocked the trunk and I took my gear out. “I have a key to the houseboat,” she said. “You can change in there.”
It was a lot larger than I had expected, and looked as if it must have four or five rooms. It was moored broadside to the pier which ran along parallel to and just off the bank under the overhanging limbs of the trees. A narrow gangplank ran from the bank out to the pier, and another shorter one onto the deck of the scow.
She led the way, disturbingly out of place in this wilderness with her smooth blond head and smart grooming, the slim spikes of her heels tapping against the planks. I noticed the pier ran on around the end of the scow at right angles and out into the lake.
“I’ll take the gear on out there,” I said. “I’d like to have a look at it.”
She came with me. We rounded the corner of the houseboat and I could see the whole arm of the lake. This section of the pier ran out into it about thirty feet, with two skiffs tied up at the end. They were about half full of water, and there were no oars in them. I put down the aqualung and mask and looked around.
The lake was about a hundred yards wide, glassy and shining in the sun between its walls of trees, and some two hundred yards ahead it turned around a point.
“The duckblind is just around that point, on the left,” she said.
I looked at it appraisingly. “And he doesn’t have any idea at all where the gun fell out?”
She shook her head. “No. It could have been anywhere between here and the point.”
It still sounded odd, but I merely shrugged. “All right. I might as well get started.”
She started to turn, and then froze. She was listening to something. Then I heard it, very faintly, over the immense hush all around. It was a car, somewhere a long way off. Her face grew very still and I could see the color go out of it. The sound of the car faded away; I couldn’t tell whether it had stopped somewhere or gone on.
We were standing very close together on the end of the pier. Our eyes met. “What’s the gag?” I asked roughly.
“Gag?”
“You’ve been looking for a car, or listening for one, ever since you picked me up. Is somebody following you?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “I hope not.”
“Your husband?”
Her face jerked up toward mine and I could see the ruffling of an Irish temper in the eyes. “My husband? And why would my husband be following me, Mr. Manning?”
I was a mile off base, and realized it. “I’m sorry,” I said. It had been a stupid thing to say, and I wondered what there was about her that made me so uncomfortable and ready to jump down her throat at the slightest excuse. She wasn’t bothering me, was she? The hell she wasn’t bothering me.
She smiled, a little shakily, and I knew she was still scared. “It’s all right,” she said. “You really didn’t mean it, anyway. You’re very nice, you know.”
“Maybe we’d better get started looking for that shotgun,” I said.
“Would it help if I went, too, in one of the boats?” she asked. “I’d like to watch. And I thought perhaps, if you had something to guide you—”
I looked around. It would help, all right. The water was fairly clear and the visibility should be pretty good with the sun directly overhead, but still I’d have to come to the surface every few yards to get my bearings.
“Sure,” I said. “But you can’t go out in a skiff the way you’re dressed. I can bail one out, but it’d still be dirty and wet.”
“I think I’ve got an old swimsuit in the houseboat. I could change into that.”
“All right,” I said. We went back around to the gangplank and walked aboard. She unlocked the door. It led into a big living-room which was well-furnished and even had a fireplace. There was a rug on the floor, a sofa, some overstuffed chairs, a bookcase, and two or three framed pictures along the walls. The windows were closed and curtained. It was in the center of the deckhouse structure, and two doors led off into other rooms at each end. The air was dead and still, and smelled faintly of dust.
She nodded to one of the doors at the right end of the living-room. “You can change in there. I’ll see if I can find my swim-suit.”
I went in. It was a bedroom. There was a double bed in it, and a dresser, and the floor was carpeted from wall to wall. So this was roughing it in a duck camp in the wilds. I took off my clothes and got into the swimming trunks. It was hot, and I was shiny with sweat. I wondered if she had found her suit, and then wished irritably I could quit thinking of her.
I took a cigarette out of the shirt and lit it before I went out in the living-room again. The doors at the other end were closed, but I could hear her moving around in one of the rooms. It sounded as if she was changing clothes. I located a pair of oars and went down to the end of the pier.
Hauling one of the skiffs up alongside, I began bailing with an old can. There was no shade here, and the sun beat down on my head. In a moment I heard the whispered padding of bare feet behind me and turned around.
She could make your breath catch in your throat. The bathing suit was black, and she didn’t have a vestige of a tan; the clear, smooth blondness of her hit you almost physically. A few inches shorter with the same build and the same legs and she would have been downright voluptuous; as it was there was something regal about her. I looked down and went on bailing.
I fitted the oarlocks and held the boat while she got in and sat down amidships. Setting the aqualung and mask in the stern, I shoved off.
“Pull out about twenty yards,” I directed. The water was only about five feet deep around the pier and I could see the bottom from the surface. The gun was nowhere around there.
“All right,” I said in a moment. “Hold it right there while I go over. Row very slowly toward the point, just as if you were going to the blind, but don’t get too far ahead of me. You’ll be able to tell where I am by the bubbles coming up. I’ll have to cover fifty or seventy-five feet on each side, because it was dark and he could have wandered that much off the course.”
She nodded, and watched with intense interest while I slipped the straps of the outfit over my shoulders and put on the mask. I bit on the mouthpiece and slid over the stern. The water was only about ten feet deep and the visibility was good. I went down and brushed bottom. It was soft, and my hand raised a cloud of silt.
That was the only thing I was afraid of. In all that time the gun might have sunk completely out of sight in the mud. But still it should leave a track, an outline, where it disappeared, as there were no currents to disturb the bottom and erase it. I looked up and could see the boat directly above me on the ground-glass screen of the surface. The oars dipped once, scattering bubbles. I swam to the right, just above the mud and not disturbing it, made a wide swing, and came back to cover the other side. Here and there an old log lay on the bottom. I searched carefully around them.
She moved the boat slowly ahead. Time went by. I saw an empty bottle, two or three beer cans, and an underwater snag festooned with bass lures. Now and then bass and perch would stare at me goggle-eyed and slide away.
We couldn’t have been over seventy-five yards off the pier when I found the gun. If I’d been looking ahead instead of staring so intently at the bottom I’d have seen it even sooner. It was slanting into the mud, barrel down, at about a 60-degree angle with the stock up in plain sight. I pulled it out and kicked to the surface. I was some twenty feet from the boat. She saw me and rowed over.