He never thought about taking the money and leaving the job undone, for he wanted to be given any repeat business that Barnaby might have for a man like him, in the future.
Like any good craftsman, he knew that the quality of his product must remain high, higher than any competition's product, if he were to survive at doing what he liked to do. The only difference between Morby and any other craftsman was that Morby's craft was far more dangerous than most; and his end product, rather than some tangible piece of goods like a pair of shoes or a leather wallet, was destruction. Morby liked to destroy, because it was exciting. He couldn't imagine going through life as a clerk or nine-to-five office worker.
He came in by sea, in a midnight black wet suit and diving tanks. He had entered the water farther up the shore, out of sight of the Niche, then swam just below the surface until he rounded the point and struck in among the docked fishing craft. Behind him, on a thin chain latched to his waist, he towed a waterproof tin box which contained the tools of his trade: a well silenced pistol with two spare clips of ammunition, a plastic-wrapped package of gelignite plastic explosives, a mini-timer to set off the charge when he was well away from the scene, and a set of keys which could open the locks on almost any boat made.
The docks were built out from the beach, forming a perfect cover for his final approach. He swam in beneath one of these and came out of the water in the shadow of the old wooden planking, where no one would see him.
He pulled back the black rubber hood that clung tightly to his head, and when his ears had adjusted, he could hear laughter and voices, not too far away along the beach.
Morby smiled to himself, because he knew that, in a little while, none of these men would feel much like laughing.
Unsnapping the chain from his waist, shrugging out of his oxygen tanks, he opened the tin box and took out his pistol, the gelignite, the timer and the keys. The last made a brief jangling noise as he tucked them into a snap pocket of the wet suit, but he was confident that no one had heard them.
Cautiously, he left the shadow of the pier and went to scout around, to locate the bulk of the fishermen who had the night duty in the Niche, and to find the most likely target for the gelignite. Barnaby hadn't cared which boat was blown up, just so one of them got ripped to shreds.
“The cops will find traces of the gelignite,” Morby had warned.
Barnaby had said, “But it's the only way to be sure the boat's a total loss?”
“Yes,” Morby said. “A fire can be fairly rapidly extinguished on a boat. If I set a fire, I'd have an escape problem, and I doubt I'd end up doing much damage.”
“The gelignite, then,” Barnaby said. “And so what if they find traces? Do you really think they'd come back to me, a respectable man of the community, a millionaire?”
“You're the only one who wants them out of the Niche, though,” Morby said, jabbing a thick finger at the older man.
“That's true,” Barnaby had said. “However, why should I pull a stunt like this when they'd have to be out in thirty days anyway?”
“That's a good point,” Morby had admitted. “That ought to convince the cops that you're clean, that on top of your good name and all your money.” He gave Barnaby a searching look and said, “But I've wondered the same thing myself. Why are you going to take a risk like this, when they'll be gone in thirty days, anyway?”
“That's personal,” Barnaby had said.
And Morby, aware that he could not push the point any further, had let it drop at that.
Now he was prowling the Niche in the darkness, listening to the fishermen exchange jokes around a large beach fire, and staking out the most likely looking ships to see which he wanted to blow to smithereens.
Morby went over the side of the Princess Lee, padded along the gangway to the galley steps, went down these one at a tune as silently as a cat on cotton. The galley door was closed, but not locked. He pushed it open without any trouble. He went in, followed a corridor aft, until he found a place against an inner partition, where the gelignite would do its best work. He bent down and began to mold the plastic charge to the base of the wall, stringing it out just enough to rip up the major seam in the floor and let the water in soon after the flames.
In a minute, he was finished. He picked up the mini-timer, set that to a full five minute fuse, jammed it into the gelignite.
He stood up, folded the plastic wrappings and stuffed those into another safety pocket in his wet suit.
The job finished, he turned to leave — just in time to encounter a middle-aged fisherman in blue jeans and a sweatshirt; the man had just come down the galley stairs, as quietly as Morby had, though his quiet had been that generated by familiarity and not by purposeful stealth. He stepped into the corridor and flipped on the overhead lights, bathing Morby in what seemed an intense, white glare.
Morby brought up his pistol.
The fisherman gaped at the sight of the big man in the diving suit, for he had clearly not known there was anyone down here.
“What the hell—” he began.
Morby shot him three times, all in the chest.
The fisherman dropped like one of his anchors, stone dead.
Morby waited, very still, for someone else to follow the dead sailor. When a full minute had passed, he realized that the man had been alone.
Quickly, then, he walked down the corridor, stepped over the body and went up onto deck, without a glance backward. He had not wanted to kill the fisherman, but he'd seen no other possibility. The man had caught sight of his head, his face, and would be sure to remember him. Though Morby lived just outside of Boston, he kept a summer cottage at Calder, and he would have been spotted by this man sooner or later.
Now, with the mini-timer's fuse rapidly running down, Morby went over the side of the Princess Lee, swam to the beach and risked a quick run along the sand to the dock where he'd left his gear. It was still there.
He pulled up his hood, slipped into his oxygen tanks and buckled them across his chest.
The gelignite had not gone off.
He put the pistol and the ammunition clips into the tin box, sealed that, snapped the chain onto his belt. Lifting the box, he started forward, wading into the deeper water under the dock. When he was in up to his waist, the explosion lifted a dark lid off the world and let a fierce red-white light in. The noise followed: like the worst thunder in the world.
Morby grinned, waded deeper, then went under. In the confusion on the beach, it was easy for him to swim out of Jenkins' Niche unnoticed.
TWENTY
While Ben was downstairs on the telephone, Gwyn got out of bed, chose a pair of clean pajamas from the bureau, and went into the bathroom to freshen up and to make herself more attractive. Her hair really needed washing, but once she brushed the tangles out of it, it didn't look too bad. She washed her face, powdered it slightly, applied a thin coat of clear, moisturizing lipstick. Slipping into the clean pajamas, she looked and felt like an altogether different person than the girl who had just eaten supper. She was still tired, very tired, but not so weary as she had been these past two days. And, right now, though sleep was attractive, she did not long for it in quite such an unholy fashion as she had this afternoon.