Cameron pushed the skiff clear, settled back in the stern. The outboard purred into activity and within a matter of seconds the skiff was lost to sight, although the sound of the motor continued to drift back through the misty darkness.
“Well,” Mason said, taking a flashlight from his pocket, “let’s go below. Watch your step, Della, the deck’s slippery.”
Mason took a key from his pocket, unlocked a padlock, slid back the hatch, assisted Della Street down the companionway and into the main cabin.
“How cozy,” Della exclaimed.
“It is, all right,” Mason agreed, lighting a candle.
“What did they do for heat?”
“There’s a little stove that burns wood and coal,” Mason said. “They used it for cooking as well as for heating. I told Cameron I wanted a fire laid in it. Yes, it’s all ready to start going.”
Mason lit a match, tossed it into the stove. The paper and kindling crackled into cheery flame. Mason said, “Now then, all we have to do is to wait for the tide to run out.”
Della Street looked at her wrist watch. “The boat is aground now?”
“Yes,” Mason said, “the keel’s resting on the mud.”
The yacht gave a slight, all but imperceptible list.
“Not only aground,” Mason said, “but it’s going to start tilting in a few minutes. Well, it won’t take us long now. I want to see just exactly how long before low tide a body would roll to the lower side of the cabin, and just how the yacht starts listing as the tide runs out.”
Della shivered slightly.
“Getting nervous?” Mason asked.
“A little,” she admitted. “It’s creepy here. Let’s blow out the candle and wait here in the dark. The stove will give out enough light... I feel sort of conspicuous... Anyone could... Well, you know... through the porthole...” She broke off and laughed.
Mason promptly blew out the candle.
“There, that’s better,” Della said. “I had the feeling that eyes were peering through the portholes.”
Mason slipped his arm around her, “Forget it,” he said. “No one even knows we’re out here.”
She laughed, a little apologetic laugh, and pressed herself close to his protecting shoulder.
The fire crackled merrily. Little ruddy reflections of flame flickered out from the draft in the front of the stove. Silence descended upon them, a silence broken only by the gurgling sound of tide water swirling past the grounded yacht.
The yacht swung a little more over to the side, moving almost imperceptibly.
Mason consulted the luminous dial of his wrist watch, said, “Well, here’s where I lie down on the floor and pretend I’m a dead body.”
Della Street glanced over in the direction of the dark red stain on the carpet and said, “I don’t like to have you lie there.”
“Why?”
“It seems too sinister. It might bring... Can’t you lie in another part of the yacht just as well?”
“No,” Mason said, “I’m going to conduct the experiment right here.”
Mason stretched himself out on the carpeted floor of the cabin, his head within a few inches of the brass door sill of the cabin in the rear of the boat.
“Okay, Della?”
“Well, its sort of creepy. Makes you think of ghosts.”
“If Milfield’s ghost could only come back and tell us exactly what happened,” Mason said, “it would be a break for us.”
Della came over to sit on the floor beside him. Her hand slid down Mason’s arm, her fingers found his hand, and closed about it.
Mason patted her shoulder, said, “Remember, I’m supposed to be a corpse.”
She laughed, “Don’t you feel like a corpse?”
“No.”
The boat moved sluggishly, taking a little more list.
“Not enough slant as yet to roll me down to the other side,” Mason observed, “—when that happens, we’ll take a look at the watch and notice the exact time. Where’s the flashlight, Della?”
“On the table.”
Mason sighed wearily. “It certainly was quite a day in court. Hard as this floor is, it feels nice and restful.”
Della took her hand from his, let her fingertips stroke his forehead, “You should take things easier.”
“Uh huh,” Mason agreed somewhat drowsily, asked a few minutes later, “What time is it now, Della?”
She looked at his wrist watch. “Getting along toward one-thirty.”
“Another ten or fifteen minutes should tell the story,” Mason observed.
Abruptly Della Street shifted her position. “You don’t need to be so darned uncomfortable,” she said. “Here, lift up your head.”
She placed his head on her lap. “There, that’s better. Now, you can tell just as much about it as you can with your head lying on that hard floor.”
“I can’t,” Mason protested drowsily. “I should have my head down there... on the floor... I want to know the exact time... Oh well... perhaps this will do if I keep completely relaxed.”
Her fingers moved along his forehead, the fingertips caressed his eyebrows and the closed eyes, smoothed back his hair.
“You just lie there and relax,” she said softly.
Mason raised his hand to hers, moved it to his lips, held it there for a moment, then released it.
A moment later, his regular breathing showed that he was asleep, and, in his sleep, his hand once more groped for Della’s, held it close.
Minutes passed with no change in the situation. Della Street sat motionless. The boat, firmly aground now, seemed to have ceased tilting.
Della Street herself became drowsy. The warmth of the cabin, the utter quiet which enveloped them, the relaxing of taut nerves after a hard day in court, coupled with the lateness of the hour, made her head nod in little snatches of welcome sleep.
Abruptly the cabin floor gave a peculiar lurch. The yacht hesitated for a moment, then suddently heeled way over.
For the moment, Della Street, startled to wakefulness, was too frightened to say anything. She grasped instinctively at the doorway of the cabin for support. Perry Mason’s limp body rolled over and over. The lawyer, wakened from a sound sleep, clawed at the carpet in a sudden automatic reflex action. Then Della heard a thud as Mason banged up against the starboard wall of the cabin.
A moment later, she heard his laugh from the darkness. “Well, Della, I guess I went to sleep and that did it. The time seems to be exactly one-forty-three. According to my mental arithmetic, that’s almost exactly four hours and one minute after high tide. Of course, there’s a slight difference in the height of the tides which we’ll have to take into consideration, but it’s only a few inches and...”
“What’s that?” Della Street asked, startled, as Mason abruptly stopped talking.
“Listen!” he cautioned.
They listened. From the outer darkness came a peculiar rhythmic thumping sound which grew momentarily louder — a sound which had a peculiar jarring undertone that seemed to strike the hull of the boat with a distinct impact.
“What is it?” Della Street whispered.
“A rowboat,” Mason announced in a low voice.
“Coming this way?”
“Yes.”
“Do you suppose it’s the man coming back for us? — Perhaps his outboard motor went wrong and...”
“Too early,” Mason said. “Keep quiet, Della. Where are you?”
“Over here by the stove, getting the poker,” she said. “If this should be the murderer...!”
“Hush,” Mason warned.
He groped toward her in the darkness, whispered, “Let’s find that flashlight.”
“I’ve been looking for it,” she whispered. “When the boat heeled over, it must have rolled off the table. Here, Chief, you take this poker. It’s heavy and...”
Abruptly the jarring impact ran through the yacht as a rowboat thudded against the side of the yacht’s hull.