“No need to board you, Mr. Stanton! Go head!”
The water roughened. Duff knew they were outside the bay. At sea. He heard a murmur in the dark and thought it was Eleanor’s voice. Excitement surged through him. If he could let her Know he was there — that the groaning she must have heard had been his! He tried to make a clearer sound, but the gag stifled him.
He doubted his senses then. All this was hallucination, nightmare. But she continued to murmur, and presently he noticed her complaining had a single form. A long moan and two little moans afterward. He moved his mouth in what might have been a near-grin if he had not been gagged. Telegraphy had been a hobby of his, long ago. And he’d taught the Morse code to Charles, Marian and Eleanor. If she was using it, she was signaling his initial: D. He started a series of moans to spell out “Eleanor,” but he’d gone only as far as the second e when she signaled back, “Duff.”
So, for minutes, they alternately made sounds. In that time Eleanor stated, “Heard a noise at sinkhole. Looked. Was grabbed. Brought here. By whom?”
He prepared to reply in the dark, but to his dismay, a third voice spoke, “Very darn ingenious’“ And all the lights went on.
It was a big cabin with two bunks and modernistic furnishings. On a tubular chair sat a man of about sixty — tall, gray-haired, wearing a white dinner jacket — one of the men Duff had seen in the house drinking cocktails. Beyond him on the other bunk Duff could see a female knee and the brown dress Eleanor wore.
“I’m Stanton,” the man said.
Duff made a sound. Then, realizing Stanton had listened in on their conversation, Duff moaned in code, “Ungag us.”
The man bent over Duff. His expression was cold. He had high cheekbones, rather pale gray eyes — features that spelled his Slavic ancestry— features vaguely familiar through newspaper photographs of important Miamians giving parties, heading charity drives.
Stanton stared at Duff a moment and then spoke, “I’ve been waiting for you to come around ever since we cleared the Coast Guard.” He paused. “Your — visit — wasn’t precisely expected. But we took no chances. You were seen coming over my wall.” He turned to Eleanor. “I think you both know why you’re here, in a general way. My yacht is heading for an island in the Bahamas. A small one, uninhabited and far from any others. We won’t be spotted there, even from the air, because that island”—he smiled chillily—“has been arranged so that my yacht’s hidden when she’s in. It has been a transshipment point for cargo from — another country. Cargo brought here by me. Your interrogation won’t begin till we reach that island, a while before daylight. I’m glad we have Miss Yates along. We’d intended to question her. But it will be more effective to use her as a means to get the truth out of you, Bogan.”