The drowning pool

“Sometimes,” I said, “I like a good solid black better than mottled gray.”

“You don’t have my responsibilities, Mr. Archer. A great company depends on me. A single misstep on my part can destroy the livelihood of thousands of people.”

“I wonder if you’re that important,” I said. “I think life would go on without you.”

“That isn’t the point at issue.” He smiled as if he’d uttered a witticism. “The point is whether life can go on without you. I’ve gone to a good deal of trouble to explain my position. I’ve hoped that if you understood it, you’d take a somewhat different attitude toward me. You’re an intelligent man, Mr. Archer, and, to be frank, I like you. Also, I abhor killing, as I’ve told you. There’s the further fact that my wife seems to admire you, and if I were to have you put away she’d certainly be aware of it and perhaps even try to make trouble. I can deal with her, of course. I can even endure the thought of another death, if you prove its necessity to me. But I’d so much rather handle this thing in a rational, urbane way. Wouldn’t you?”

“I’ll listen. How much?”

“Good. Fine.” The little mouth curled upwards like a cherub’s. “I believe you have ten thousand dollars of mine. I don’t know for sure, but it stands to reason, doesn’t it? If you were to admit that you have it, it would be very valuable proof of your good faith.”

“I have it,” I said, “out of your reach.”

“Keep it. It’s yours.” He waved his hand in a fat and royal gesture.

“What do I do for it?”

“Nothing. Nothing whatever. I’ll put you ashore at San Pedro and you can simply forget that I ever existed at all. Take up your own affairs again, or go for a long vacation and enjoy yourself.”

“I have the money now.”

“But not the means to enjoy it. That is still in my gift.”

The yacht was begi

“You can relax, Melliotes,” Kilbourne said. “We’re well away from shore.” He turned back to me: “Well, Mr. Archer, will you accept the gift of freedom on those terms?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I have no wish to hurry you. Your decision is an important one, to both of us.” Then his face lit up like a man’s who has heard his sweetheart’s footsteps: “My breakfast, I do believe.”

It came on a silver tray that was almost too wide for the hatchway. The white-jacketed mulatto steward was sweating under its weight. Kilbourne greeted each dish separately as the metal covers were lifted. Next to Walter Kilbourne, food was his one true love.

He ate with a gobbling passion. A piece of ham and four eggs, six pieces of toast; a kidney and a pair of mountain trout; eight pancakes with eight small sausages; a quart of raspberries, a pint of cream, a quart of coffee. I watched him the way you watch the animals at the zoo, hoping he’d choke to death and settle things for both of us.

He leaned back in his chair at last and told the steward to take the empty dishes away.

“Well, Mr. Archer?” The white fingers crawled through his thin pink curls. “What is your decision?”

“I haven’t thought it through yet. One thing, how do you know you can trust me?”

“I don’t know that I can. Rather than have your blood on my hands, I’m willing to take a certain amount of risk. But I do think I can recognize an honest man when I see one. That ability is the foundation of my success, to be perfectly frank.” His voice was still thick with the passion of eating.

“There’s a contradiction in your thinking,” I said. “If I took your dirty money, you wouldn’t be able to trust my honesty.”

“But you have my dirty money now, Mr. Archer. You secured it through you own alert efforts. No further effort on your part is required, except that I presume you’ll scour it thoroughly before you spend it. Of course I realize how foolish I would be to place my whole dependence on your honesty, or any man’s. I’d naturally expect you to sign a receipt for it, indicating the nature of the services rendered.”

“Which were?”

“Exactly what you did. A simple notation, ‘For capture and delivery of Pat Ryan,’ will suffice. That will kill two birds with one stone. It will cancel out my payment to Ryan, which is the only real evidence against me in Mrs. Slocum’s death. And more important, it will protect me in case your honesty should ever falter, and the murder of Pat Ryan come to trial.”

“I’ll be an accessory before the fact.”

“A very active one. Precisely. You and I will be in the position of having to co-operate with each other.”

I caught the implication. I watched it grow in my mind into a picture of myself five years, ten years later, doing dirty errands for Walter Kilbourne and not being able to say no. My gorge rose.

But I answered him very reasonably: “I can’t stick my neck out that far. There were half a dozen men involved in Ryan’s death. If any of them talks, that tears it open.”

“Not at all. Only one of them had any co

“Schmidt.”

The eyebrows ascended his forehead like surprised pink caterpillars. “You know Schmidt? You are active indeed.”

“I know him well enough to stay clear of his company. If the police put a finger on him, and they will, he’ll break down and spill everything.”

“I am aware of that.” The cherub mouth smiled soothingly. “Fortunately, you can set your mind at rest. Oscar Schmidt went out with the tide this morning. Melliotes took care of him for all of us.”

The man in the linen suit was sitting on the leather bench that lined the after bulkhead. He showed his teeth in a white and happy smile and stroked the fluted barrel of his gun.

“Remarkable,” I said. “Ryan takes care of Mrs. Slocum. Schmidt takes care of Ryan. Melliotes takes care of Schmidt. That’s quite a system you have.”

“I’m very pleased that you like it.”

“But who takes care of Melliotes?”

Kilbourne looked from me to the gunman, whose mouth was expressionless again, and back to me. For the first time our interests formed a triangle, which relieved me of some pressure.

“You ask very searching questions,” he replied. “I owe it to your intelligence to inform you that Melliotes took care of himself several years ago. A young girl of my acquaintance, one of my employees to be exact, disappeared in Detroit. Her body turned up in the Detroit River a few days later. A certain unlicensed medical practitioner who shall be nameless was wanted for questioning. I was on my way to California at the time, and I offered him a lift in my private plane. Does that answer your question?”

“It does. I wanted to know exactly what I was being offered a piece of. Now that I know, I don’t want it.”

He looked at me incredulously. “You don’t seriously mean that you want to die?”

“I expect to outlive you,” I said. “You’re a little too smart to have me bumped before you recover you thousand-dollar bills. That money really worries you, doesn’t it?”

“The money means nothing to me. Look, Mr. Archer, I am prepared to double the amount.” He brought a gold-cornered wallet out of an inside pocket and dealt ten bills onto the table. “But twenty thousand is my absolute limit.”

“Put your money away. I don’t want it.”

“I warn you,” he said more sharply, “your bargaining position is weak. One reaches a point of diminishing returns, where it would be cheaper and more convenient to have you killed.”

I looked at Melliotes. His glowing eyes were on Kilbourne. He hefted the gun in his hand, and asked a question with his knitted black eyebrows.

“No,” Kilbourne said to him. “What is it that you want, if not money, Mr. Archer? Women perhaps, or power, or security? I could find a place in my organization for a man that I can trust. I wouldn’t waste my words on you, frankly, if I didn’t happen to like you.”