Though it leaves the neck sore for days, the effect of a rabbit punch on the centers of consciousness is sudden and brief. In two or three minutes I came out of it, to the sound of Ed’s voice saying:
“We don’t like hurting people and we aren’t going to hurt you. But you’ve got to learn to understand, whatever your name is—”
“Sacher-Masoch,” I said.
“A bright boy,” said Ed. “But a bright boy can be too bright for his own good. You’ve got to learn to understand that you can’t go around annoying people, especially very important people like Mr. Neville here.”
Terry Neville was sitting in the far corner of the backseat, looking worried. Ed was between us. The car was in motion, and I could see lights moving beyond the chauffeur’s shoulders hunched over the wheel. The blinds were down over the back windows.
“Mr. Neville should keep out of my cases,” I said. “At the moment you’d better let me out of this car or I’ll have you arrested for kidnaping.”
Ed laughed, but not cheerfully. “You don’t seem to realize what’s happening to you. You’re on your way to the police station, where Mr. Neville and I are going to charge you with attempted blackmail.”
“Mr. Neville is a very brave little man,” I said. “Inasmuch as he was seen leaving Una Sand’s house shortly after she was killed. He was seen leaving in a great hurry and a green convertible.”
“My God, Ed,” Terry Neville said, “you’re getting me in a frightful mess. You don’t know what a frightful mess you’re getting me in.” His voice was high, with a ragged edge of hysteria.
“For God’s sake, you’re not afraid of this bum, are you?” Ed said in a terrier yap.
“You get out of here, Ed. This is a terrible thing, and you don’t know how to handle it. I’ve got to talk to this man. Get out of this car.”
He leaned forward to take the speaking tube, but Ed put a hand on his shoulder. “Play it your way, then, Terry. I still think I had the right play, but you spoiled it.”
“Where are we going?” I said. I suspected that we were headed for Beverly Hills, where the police know who pays them their wages.
Neville said into the speaking tube: “Turn down a side street and park. Then take a walk around the block.”
“That’s better,” I said when we had parked. Terry Neville looked frightened. Ed looked sulky and worried. For no good reason, I felt complacent.
“Spill it,” I said to Terry Neville. “Did you kill the girl? Or did she accidentally drown—and you ran away so you wouldn’t get mixed up in it? Or have you thought of a better one than that?”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even know she was dead. But I was there yesterday afternoon. We were sunning ourselves on the raft, when a plane came over flying very low. I went away, because I didn’t want to be seen there with her—”
“You mean you weren’t exactly sunning yourselves?”
“Yes. That’s right. This plane came over high at first, then he circled back and came down very low. I thought maybe he recognized me, and might be trying to take pictures or something.”
“What kind of a plane was it?”
“I don’t know. A military plane, I guess. A fighter plane. It was a single-seater painted blue. I don’t know military planes.”
“What did Una Sand do when you went away?”
“I don’t know. I swam to shore, put on some clothes, and drove away. She stayed on the raft, I guess. But she was certainly all right when I left her. It would be a terrible thing for me if I was dragged into this thing. Mr.—”
“Archer.”
“Mr. Archer. I’m terribly sorry if we hurt you. If I could make it right with you—” He pulled out a wallet.
His steady pallid whine bored me. Even his sheaf of bills bored me. The situation bored me.
I said: “I have no interest in messing up your brilliant career, Mr. Neville. I’d like to mess up your brilliant pan sometime, but that can wait. Until I have some reason to believe that you haven’t told me the truth, I’ll keep what you said under my hat. In the meantime, I want to hear what the coroner has to say.”
They took me back to Ronald’s, where my car was, and left me with many protestations of good fellowship. I said good night to them, rubbing the back of my neck with an exaggerated gesture. Certain other gestures occurred to me.
When I got back to Santa Barbara the coroner was working over Una. He said that there were no marks of violence on her body, and very little water in her lungs and stomach, but this condition was characteristic of about one drowning in ten.
I hadn’t known that before, so I asked him to put it into sixty-four-dollar words. He was glad to.
“Sudden inhalation of water may result in a severe reflex spasm of the larynx, followed swiftly by asphyxia. Such a laryngeal spasm is more likely to occur if the victim’s face is upward, allowing water to rush into the nostrils, and would be likely to be facilitated by emotional or nervous shock. It may have happened like that or it may not.”
“Hell,” I said, “she may not even be dead.”
He gave me a sour look. “Thirty-six hours ago she wasn’t.”
I figured it out as I got in my car. Una couldn’t have drowned much later than four o’clock in the afternoon on September the seventh.
It was three in the morning when I checked in at the Barbara Hotel. I got up at seven, had breakfast in a restaurant, and went to the beach house to talk to Jack Rossiter. It was only about eight o’clock when I got there, but Rossiter was sitting on the beach in a canvas chair watching the sea.
“You again?” he said when he saw me.
“I’d think you’d have had enough of the sea for a while. How long were you out?”
“A year.” He seemed unwilling to talk.
“I hate bothering people,” I said, “but my business is always making a nuisance out of me.”
“Evidently. What exactly is your business?”
“I’m currently working for your mother-in-law. I’m still trying to find out what happened to her daughter.”
“Are you trying to needle me?” He put his hands on the arms of the chair as if to get up. For a moment his knuckles were white. Then he relaxed. “You saw what happened, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But do you mind my asking what time your ship got into San Francisco on September the seventh?”
“No. Four o’clock. Four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I suppose that could be checked?”
He didn’t answer. There was a newspaper on the sand beside his chair and he leaned over and handed it to me. It was the Late Night Final of a San Francisco newspaper for the seventh.
“Turn to page four,” he said.
I turned to page four and found an article describing the arrival of the USS Guam at the Golden Gate, at four o’clock in the afternoon. A contingent of Waves had greeted the returning heroes, and a band had played “California, Here I Come.”
“If you want to see Mrs. Dreen, she’s in the house,” Jack Rossiter said. “But it looks to me as if your job is finished.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“And if I don’t see you again, good-bye.”
“Are you leaving?”
“A friend is coming out from Santa Barbara to pick me up in a few minutes. I’m flying up to Alameda with him to see about getting leave. I just had a forty-eight, and I’ve got to be here for the inquest tomorrow. And the funeral.” His voice was hard. His whole personality had hardened overnight. The evening before his nature had been wide open. Now it was closed and invulnerable.