keep our fingers crossed for her.”
“Thanks, George.” She said it with measured politeness and favored him with a smile that was just a shade short of being sincere. We made pleasantries for another few minutes, then watched the pair of them walk along the narrow band of concrete between the side of the pool and high Italian cypress as they went toward the house. I flopped down on the green pad again, lit a fresh smoke and tried to read something into George Engle’s crack about pitfalls and accidents. Engle had much better manners than to mention something like that without a reason. His tone had been a little like talking to a friend in a hospital bed, telling him you hope he’ll recover, and then recalling that you’ve known several others who had his same malady, God rest their souls.
Four
EVENING BROUGHT dinner on the terrace, two tables of bridge, and early good nights. At eleven o’clock I leaned on the window sill of one of George Engle’s guest rooms and watched thin trails of vapor caught in the moonlight falling across the upper reservoir. A narrow walk circled the building on the side toward the hill and, stepping outside, I struck a match, touched off a final smoke before hitting the sack, and listened to the small noises of the desert night. When I ground out the red ember and went inside, I piled my change on the dresser, slipped off my watch, and climbed out of my pants. There was a silver dollar among the coins I’d shelled out and I tossed and caught it and, without even glancing to see whether it was heads or tails, reached for a pair of swimming trunks.
The pool was deserted. Good enough. You get a lot of swimming on the beach but your diving tapers off and I needed a little work to put me in shape before the inn opened at Death Valley, so I stepped onto the board and led off with a simple jackknife. Not good. I repeated, this time going almost to the bright, sunken stainless steel drain grill fifteen feet below. Then a couple more, going as shallow as I could, and after that a full gainer or two.
“Very good, Mr. Bowman.”
I turned to see George Engle standing behind me. “Thanks,” I said, and stepped down from the board. “Next?”
“No. You go ahead. I’d like to learn to do that half as well as you do, Marty.”
“Thanks again,” I said. “Takes a little patience, I guess, but that’s about all.”
“I doubt that,” Engle said good-naturedly. “I get all the practice one man can stand, yet improvement seems to come slowly.”
“Take a couple,” I said. “I’ll watch and see if we can’t speed the process a little.”
His pleasure was genuine and for twenty minutes George Engle dove and I worked with him. A diligent pupil and one determined to turn in a creditable performance. You don’t find many like that—at any age. I thought about his young wife and how hard Engle must have worked to stay trim and fit and all and I wanted to help him improve his diving. But another thing I’ve found is that there comes a time when the best thing you can do for a person who’s trying to learn is let him alone. When G.E. reached that point I slung my towel across my shoulders and started an exit.
“Watching you work is making me hungry,” I said. “I seem to remember your mentioning an all-night serve-yourself snack bar somewhere in the house.”
“By all means,” he said. He walked along a few steps and gestured toward the door near one end. “Straight through to the kitchen. Make yourself at home and I’ll be along in a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” I said, then looked up sharply as something splashed back in the pool.
George smiled. “Damn bugs. Every once in a while a big one will see those lights under the water and fly toward it.”
I muttered an “Oh,” and toddled off to the groceries. Provisions for midnight chow were on par with the rest of the Engle layout. I laid out two slices of bread, then went eny-meeny-miney-moe among the assortment of meats, cheeses and relish arranged nearby, and came up with something in the nature of a Dagwood Special. Drawing a cup of coffee, I sat down to munch my sandwich and browse through the magazine rack.
The stock of literature ran mostly to men’s mags with a liberal sprinkling of physical-culture stuff. I thumbed around a while, then started an article on muscle tone but when I came to the continued part it said turn to page ninety-six. There wasn’t one. It was the last sheet, next to the cover, and someone had torn it out. Very vexing. Out of idle curiosity, I pulled the issue before mine and the three that followed it. All of them had a page ninety-six and every one of those pages had the same advertisement on the back side. I grinned then, because the page that had been carefully cut out was one of those “do-you-long-for-your-youthful-vigor” booby traps that advise you to waste no time in sending the enclosed coupon along with four dollars. Dr. Holcum’s pills, according to the ad, would indeed put you back in the saddle again. It looked like one or another of Engle’s previous guests was in the market for hormone shots.
I downed the rest of my coffee, glanced at the wall clock, then decided that George had had more than a half hour to work on his dives and maybe I ought to drop by and see if he was doing all right. A light wind had started to blow down from the hill. I went across the terrace separating the pool from the rambling, U-shaped house. Engle wasn’t in sight. He didn’t bob up while I watched and I guessed he’d called it a night so I turned toward the walk leading to my own room, then stopped and whirled around like you do when your mind has just caught up with something your eyes have seen.
A towel and a robe draped across the back of a lawn chair near the diving board. I broke into a jog. When I neared the pool the black tile numbers caught my eye—a one and a five standing motionless against their background of blue. Then I saw something else. The still form of George Engle rested on the bottom under fifteen feet of water.
I gave a king-sized yell and plunged in.
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