"I'll say! For a minute I thought my brain cells were rubbing together."
Zircon sighed. "I am stumped. And not only by your Wailing Willie, either. This whole affair baffles me, including the presence of Steve's former tail on this island. Hasn't it occurred to you that those fancy frogmen, as you call them, would have made some overt move by now if they were really interested in us?"
"Dropping the chicken was an overt move," Rick pointed out.
"Yes and no. I'd prefer to call it a not-too-subtle warning. Yet they haven't tried to interfere with your diving around the wreck."
"I've wondered about that," Scotty offered, "and it seems to me they've satisfied themselves that our interest is just in the wreck, and not in whatever they have hidden underwater. If they have anything hidden, I mean. As long as we stick with the wreck, they have no reason for causing trouble."
Tony agreed. "That makes sense to me. Perhaps you can answer this: Why do they wear cold-water suits? It's appreciably cooler at twenty fathoms, but it's certainly not cold enough for a suit."
"We only stay down fifteen minutes," Scotty said. "If we stayed down longer we might get chilled. The water isn't warm by any means down by the wreck."
Rick had a thought. "We're used to cold water, remember? Diving off Spindrift would chill a polar bear, even in summer. Suppose these people had done all their diving in tropic waters? This water would seem cold to them, particularly down deep."
It was nearly dark now, only a glimmer of light in the west. The four sat on the front porch of the cottage.
Zircon asked, "Did you monitor the radio tonight, Rick?"