He squared his shoulders and fixing his eyes on the wall behind my head, he said, “At ninethirty p.m. this evening, I received instructions from Mr. Davis to shadow Juan Gomez, a jai alai player, suspected of running Cuban nationals between this coast and Havana.”
I ran my fingers through my hair, looked at Tim, shook my head.
Clairbold went straight on. “I took up a convenient position where I could observe Gomez without being seen. He was playing on the jai alai court at the time. At the end of the game, I waited in my car at the players’ entrance. Gomez eventually appeared with a red-headed woman I identified as Lois Spence. They drove away in a Cadillac.” He paused to look at his report.
“Never mind the licence number,” I said, guessing what he was looking for. “Where did they go?”
He put his report away regretfully. “They took the coast road, and I had no difficulty in following them. The traffic was heavy and I kept two cars behind them. Three miles beyond Dayden Beach there’s a branch road that goes down to the sea. They took this road, and I thought it unwise to follow. My headlights would have revealed my presence. I left my car and followed on foot. At the end of the road I found the Cadillac had been parked, and I observed Gomez and Miss Spence walking along the beach in an easterly direction. There was no cover, and it was impossible to go after them without being seen. Fortunately, they did not go far, and I was able to watch them from behind the Cadillac. They waited for several minutes, then a boat, out at sea, began signalling. Gomez returned the signals with a flash-light, and the boat came in. She was a thirty-footer, painted dark green. She wasn’t equipped with outriggers and had no mast. One of the windshields on the pilot house was broken.” He cleared his throat, holding his hand before his mouth. “I then observed a concrete ramp, cleverly concealed in the sand, had been built out to sea, allowing the boat to come practically up to the beach. The boat tied up to the ramp. Gomez and Miss Spence went aboard.” He paused here, blushed slightly. “My instructions were to find out where the boat was going to. From where I was it was impossible to hear anything. I decided to crawl to the boat, although the risk of detection was considerable. However, I succeeded.”
I stared at him, imagining him crawling over the white moonlit sand towards a bunch of cutthroats who’d’ve rubbed him out without a thought. My estimation of him went up sharply.
“That was a nervy thing to have done,” I said, and meant it.
The blush turned to a deep scarlet. “Well, I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his cheek with his hand. “You see, I’ve had a thorough training.” He hesitated, then blurted out: “Although the Ohio School of Detection teaches through the mail, it doesn’t leave anything to chance. They impressed on me that the art of stalking was a pretty useful thing to learn. I’d practised it quite a bit in my room.”
Tim choked, coughed, looked away. I scowled at him.
“Go on,” I said.