The girl had listened interestedly.
"Why?"
"Oh, Jimenez began to take orders for radar from other fishing boat owners. If La Rubia could dodge them by radar, they could trail her by radar even in the dark. So the skipper and crew of La Rubia promised blood-curdling things as Jimenez's fate if he delivered a radar set to anybody else. Then the skippers and crews of other boats made even more blood-curdling threats if he didn't deliver radar to them. So Jimenez ran away, leaving me to hold the bag."
The girl nodded.
"And therefore," said Terry, "I'm shutting up shop. I'll turn the inventory over to the police and go off somewhere until someone learns where La Rubia gets her fish. When things calm down again, I'll come back and start up business once more—without Jimenez. I'll probably stick to electric-eye doors, burglar alarms, closed-circuit television systems and things like that. Then I might make this underwater broadcasting device, if your father still wants it. I'd better not now."
"We heard about your problem," said the girl. "Almost exactly the way you just explained it."
Terry stared. Then he said politely, "Oh. You did?"
"Yes, I thought—"
"Then you knew," said Terry more politely still, "that I was leaving town and couldn't make the gadget you want? You knew it before you came here?"
"Why," said the girl, "your plans seemed to fit in very nicely with ours. We've got a sixty-five-foot schooner and we're sailing around. My father wants something like—what you described. So since you want to—well—travel around for a time, why not come on board our boat and make the thing we want there? We'll land you anywhere you like when it's finished."