"They're the brain child of a certain Dr. Herrigg," the woman replied. "I always thought there was something offside about the old crow, and now that I know it, I'm going...."
Suddenly, she was interrupted by a nasty cracking sound, and Marc quickly took up his old courtship with the rock, lest it be the overture to another explosion. He sensed, rather than saw or heard, the woman dropping to his side.
"What was that?" he whispered. Then he turned to the woman and started back in horror. She was lying face-down in the sand, and the hole at the base of her skull was clearly visible. The matter of the fluid running in her veins was settled beyond all argument; it was blood.
Blindly following a first impulse, Marc leaped to his feet to see where the shot had come from. He regretted it almost instantly. No sooner had he gotten on eye level with the top of the rock, than there was a second cracking sound and a bullet whined viciously past his ear, like a great, lethal gnat. He hugged the rock again, wondering incongruously if he were to spend the rest of his life in a crouching position. It seemed such a vulgar position in which to die. In the brief moment of his exposure, he had seen a small, grey-haired figure, with a pointed, sharp-featured face, and a gun to match. The sight had done much to shake Marc's confidence in his own future. Indeed, he imagined that this, approximately, was what the mystery writers were referring to when they mentioned a "tight spot." And the sound of footsteps descending the stairway convinced him that his own personal spot was swiftly becoming downright constricting. His eyes, wide and wild, frantically ran the length of the beach.
There was only one choice, and it was a dismally unknown quantity. Cut off from the stairway, he would have to crawl along the base of the bluff in the opposite direction, keeping down behind the covering rocks as well as he could. He wasn't sure just where such a path might lead, but it held one feature that appealed to him over-whelmingly; it would at least put a distance between himself and the man with the gun, who's deadly acquaintance he was reticent to make.
By the time Marc had come to the end ... the dead end ... of his tortuous path, his knees, with a trim of parsley, would easily have made an attractive addition to even the best butcher's display. Still crouching, he drew himself stiffly up, and sat down on a flat rock to inspect his damaged joints. Finally satisfied that they had not been worn all the way through, no matter how much they felt like it, he gave his attention over to the situation at hand. It looked hopeless.
To his left, and in front of him, there was nothing but ocean; to his right, a grey-haired killer; and directly behind him, the sheer, stony face of the cliff. There was nothing to do but hope for the best ... in spite of an insistent feeling that the best would be none too good. He picked up a loose stone and regarded it bleakly. Compared to the gun he'd glimpsed on the beach, it looked loathsomely harmless.
Marc couldn't have said exactly how long he'd been sitting there, looking like an unhappy throw-back to the stone age, but the afternoon light had already begun to fade from the sky, and the rock in his hand had become heavy. He guessed it was about an hour. Why hadn't the man followed him? He gazed toward the darkening sea, and fished vainly for some meaning, some key, to the afternoon's events. In them there had been surprise and danger, but over it all, there had also been the discoloring shadow of unreality. He began to wonder if it hadn't all been just a delusion born of over-exposure to the sun. After all, during the summer months, fried brains weren't the exclusive property of the local restaurant owner. They were anybody's, just for the basking.