“Darned if I don’t believe you’re right!” Scotty went down the stairs, looked into Mrs. Yates’ room to say good night, and opened the front door. “Tell Eleanor I couldn’t wait for her. Omega meeting in the a.m. Tell her”—his eyes lighted up—“that any time she wants to shop for jewelry suits me.”
Two red taillights swept down the drive. Duff stayed on the porch. An old moon had risen; it threw shadows across the silver nebula of lawn. An automatic smile on Duff’s long, earnest face slowly faded. He imagined the excitement with which Eleanor might “shop” with Scotty, or some other boy, for a diamond ring. He would have been less than human if he had not also reflected that any diamond he could buy would be almost invisible. Yet no purposeful thought of himself and Eleanor and an engagement ring entered his head.
He sighed into the moonglow and noticed the glint of it on the lily pool he’d built the year before — partly in pursuance of a hobby and partly to embellish the Yates’ lawn, which, at the time of his arrival, had been unkempt.
Years before, in Indiana, Duff had become interested in aquariums. He’d built several of wood and window glass, stocked them from local brooks, and sold a few. In Florida he had soon observed that pools could be dug in the underlying limestone; they needed only a little cement to waterproof them, and frost never heaved the ground. He had also found that tropical fish could be raised outdoors, that some species were native, and that colored water lilies of many varieties could be obtained at no cost when the university was separating its plants. So he had built a pool some twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide, trapped mollies in a nearby canal and bought a pair of wagtails.
Having noticed, some days before, that a new crop of mollies was due — and not feeling in a mood to sleep — Duff now went back to the house, procured a flashlight and walked down to the pond.
Sure enough, half a hundred tiny minnows swam in the open places and among the water plants and hid under the lily pads. Four of his crimson, night-blooming lilies were out, each one as big as a dinner plate. His torch moved about, touching the flowers, penetrating the clear water to search out snails and to follow the upward dive and downward lunge of water beetles. A small branch had dropped on one of the day-blooming lilies, and Duff walked over to a cabbage palm where he kept a dip net for retrieving such objects.
The branch lay among the lily pads at a place where they intermingled — reddish leaves floating alongside green. The surface was covered densely in an area as big as the top of a dining-room table. But, in dipping out the branch with one arm while with the other hand he aimed the flashlight, Duff opened up a space between the pads. It wasn’t a wide gap, but it was wide enough to allow the light beam to penetrate the water to what should have been the bottom of the pond— and wasn’t. A board was revealed.
Duff tossed out the small branch and pulled the lily pads farther apart. He presumed the board had fallen into the pond during the October hurricane, and wondered why it hadn’t floated. He thought it might be a section of one of the boxes in which the lilies were planted, a section came loose, but held under water by a nail.
With the idea of “box” on his mind, Duff gasped audibly. He pushed hard at the leaves. It was not a side of a lily box and it was not a board. Leaning, holding his light closer, he could now see the top, the grain of hardwood, the glimmer of varnish or wax, and a glint of brass screw heads around the sides. Probing again with the net and changing his position, he thought he made out handles at both ends of the box.
He switched out his light. He let the lily pads float together, covering a hiding place that wasn’t as ideal as Harry’s closet, since, from time to time, Duff cleaned out excess algae in the pond and scrubbed its sides, wading hip-deep. But it was a good-enough hiding place now, because he performed those chores at long intervals and had finished them just after the blow in October.