“You should’ve shot me, Mark, it would have been more convincing.” I released him. “You got the cards stacked. I can’t prove that was Sherry inside the canvas with the chains and weights. Getting rid of Sherry was the most important thing in your life, wasn’t it? No evidence. Gone for good. And that meant we could move on. We’d have to move on. The boss’d chase after the escaped Finlay gang to get Sherry back, only it’d be a wild goose chase, because Sherry isn’t anywhere but out there, about forty feet under, where that little cathedral is!”
Willie turned the boat around and started rowing clumsily back with slow strokes. I started a cigarette and let the wind whip away the smoke.
“Funny you thought of putting her out there. There’s not a better place. If the boss knew, I think he’d like her being there with the bronze bell in the tower and all. It’s just your motive for putting her there that spoils it, Mark. You made something dirty out of something that could’ve been—well—beautiful.”
“You aren’t going to tell Hamphill!”
“I don’t know. In a way I guess it might be best for us to move on. I don’t know.”
Willie beached his rowboat, grinning.
I said, “Hi, Willie.”
“Hello, Hank. That takes care of Mr. Finlay, don’t it?”
“It sure does, Willie. It sure does.”
“He wasn’t very heavy,” said Willie, puzzled.
There was a crunching of feet on the sandy concrete stairway coming down the cliff. I heard Hamphill coming down, sobbing with pain and moaning somet
hing that sounded like “Sherry’s gone. Sherry’s gone!” He burst toward us from the base of the steps. “Sherry’s gone!”
“Gone?” said Mark, playing it. “Gone!” said Willie.
I said nothing.
“Finlay’s car’s gone too. Hank, get our car, we’ve got to go after them. They can’t take Sherry—” He saw the rowboat. “What’s that for?”
Mark laughed. “I got Willie to give me a hand with Finlay.”
“Yeah,” said Willie. “Plunk—overboard. He wasn’t heavy at all. Light as a feather.”
Mark’s cheek twitched. “You’re just bragging, Willie. Oh, Hank, you better go get the car ready.”
Maybe I showed something in my eyes. Hamphill glanced first at me, then at Mark, then at Willie, then at the boat.
“Where—where were you, Hank? Did you help load Finlay and drop him?”
“No. I was asleep. Somebody hit me on the head.”
Hamphill shambled forward in the sand.
“What’s wrong?” cried Mark.
“Hold still!” commanded Hamphill. He plunged his hand into one of Mark’s coat pockets, then the other. He drew something out into the moonlight.
Sherry’s bracelet and ring.
Hamphill’s face was like nothing I’d ever seen before in my life. He stared blindly at the boat and his voice was far away as he said, “So Finlay was light as a feather, was he, Willie?”
“Yes, sir,” said Willie.
Hamphill said slowly, “What were you going to do, Mark, use the bracelet and ring on your own time, to get the money?” He jerked a hand at Willie. “Willie, grab him!”
Willie grabbed. Mark yelled. Willie coiled him in like a boa constrictor enfolding a boar.
Hamphill said, “Walk out into the water with him, Willie.”