Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

From the lake came the strong, sweet sound of a motor-boat moving pretty fast. The sound moved from the main channel past the point and into the arm.

“It’s Ira and Dan,” Rita Boniface said.

“Sounds like it,” I said.

I finished my drink and set the glass on the table. Turning toward the door, I saw clearly in the light of the lamp something I had not seen before. It was a shoulder harness, complete with .38 automatic, and it was lying in a casual way across the foot of the bed like nothing more than a discarded shirt. I stopped and stared at it, feeling a cold and heavy congealing of the uneasiness that had been gathering inside me ever since the arrival of these odd people that I did not understand and did not like. I wished that they had not come, or that they would, having come, go away again at once.

“What a pretty toy,” I said.

“The gun? It’s Ira’s.”

“Is it part of his ordinary equipment?”

“It is when he goes anywhere with Dan Grimes, and he’s going somewhere with Dan practically all the time.”

“You mean he’s Grimes’s bodyguard?”

“That’s one of the things he is. Ira’s a number of things that might surprise you. He’s a capable guy.”

“I got that impression.”

“He’s a very capable guy, and he’s mine. Don’t be fooled because I try to entertain myself when I’m bored. Ira’s number one.”

“With you and Grimes both?”

“That’s right. With me and Dan and others too. As I said, where Dan goes, Ira usually goes.” She paused, and I could hear her breathing, the sound of it suddenly slow and deep and measured in the room. “Maybe soon,” she said softly, as if I were no longer there and she were speaking only to herself, “Dan will go somewhere without Ira, and there will only be Ira left.”

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking.”

The boat had pulled up to the dock, and I went outside and walked a few steps down the slope and waited. Dan Grimes and Ira Boniface came up the slope toward me. Grimes was walking a little in advance, and he was carrying a metal stringer with half a dozen bass hanging from it. He held the string up for me to see, and it was plain that he was feeling exhilarated by his luck.

“What do you think of these?” he said.

“They’re beauties,” I said.

They looked as if they’d weigh about three to five pounds each. There were two white bass and four black bass.

“You knew what you were talking about, all right,” he said. “The second cast I made, I got a good strike.”

“Did they give you a good fight?”

“Yes,” he said, “they fought hard.”

Rita Boniface had come after me out of the cottage. She lit a cigarette and stood looking at the bass without enthusiasm.

“I’m getting hungry,” she said.

“We’ll go get something to eat,” Grimes said. He turned back to me. “Where’s a good place to go, Laird? From now on, I’m taking your advice on everything.”

“There’s a place just where you turned off the highway onto the lake road,” I said. “They have good Kansas City steaks. Charcoal broiled.”

“Fine,” Grimes said. “How’s a KC charcoal broiled steak sound, Rita?”

“It sounds good,” Rita said. “Let’s go get it.”

She turned and started up the slope to the cottage, and Ira Boniface went after her.

“I’ll clean your bass and put them in the freezer,” I said.

“Will you do that?” Grimes handed me the string. “I’d appreciate it.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Part of the service.”

“Next time anyone wants to know a good place to fish, I’ll know where to tell him.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” I said.

He went up the slope at an angle to his own cottage. There was a big stump of an oak on the slope between the cottage he was in and the one occupied by the Quintins. I used the stump for cleaning fish for guests, and now I got a knife and a scaler and cleaned the bass on the stump. I had just finished with the last bass when Grimes and the others came out of the cottages and drove away in the Chrysler wagon. It was almost as dark then as it would get, and there was a bright moon rising out of the lake.

They came back about ten and went into Grimes’s cottage. A little later I went down the slope to the dock and sat on the bench in the moonlight. It was a wonderfully clear, cool night, the air filled with scents and stirring with small sounds, and I sat there for a long time on the bench, but I was unable to feel any of the good things a man should feel on that kind of night.

Someone in the cottage turned on a portable radio and tuned in a d. j. program. The music was very bad and very loud, and the talk and laughter became louder in competition with the bad music. They were having quite a party up there. I was glad the fourth cottage was unoccupied, because otherwise I might have had a complaint about the noise, which would have created a problem.