"Oh, nothing very important, I suppose. Point Perro is about sixty miles south on the coast highway. Uninhabited, though it's on any good map. Just a headland with a beach below, private property, fenced off, but I happen to know the owner and have his permission to use it. As isolated a spot, as primeval, as you'll find outside the High Sierras. Bruce and I took our sleeping bags down there for a weekend of surf casting. It has a deep-dropoff where the fish are apt to congregate at high tide. We found somebody had been dynamiting them, which had not only wasted and slaughtered fish but ruined some of the rock formations. Bruce followed the tire tracks above the cliffs, saw that the dynamiters had headed south, and insisted on following; He was quite ready to beat up on them himself. All we actually accomplished was to roust out the authorities, which spoiled our whole Saturday; but it never occurred to him to do less."
Kintyre sighed. "I suspect that he crusaded himself to his death, in just that manner."
"Let's return to our timetable," suggested Clayton. "Bruce stormed out of my place that Sunday night, but he did agree to come back the next afternoon. I said I'd think it over meanwhile, and he could bring Guido to see me after all."
"What happened?"
"They came together. I saw right off Guido was hopeless. Quite an amusing guy and all that, but once a bum always a bum. However, I made polite noncommittal noises. Hell, maybe I'll open a night club someday, and Guido can sing in it. That would be okay." Clayton drew on his cigar. "I didn't see Bruce again till that little party here Thursday night. Can you fill in the meantime?"
"Mmm—I had it all sorted out in my mind—yes. The Monday you speak of, I introduced Jabez Owens to Bruce. We all talked for about an hour in my office. Otherwise I think he just had a routine day, till he went over to your apartment."
"Tuesday?"
"More routine, except that Owens showed up as agreed and lent him the Borgia letters. Bruce took them home that night to look over."
"Oh, yes, those two were having quite an argument about it at the party. What's the deal, anyway? I didn't quite follow. Talking to Professor Ashwin most of the time, myself."
"Well, you know Owens is a writer, specializing in historical nonfiction on the popular level."