She picked up the light. Worked the switch. Aimed at the mass of dead leaves, twigs and thigh-thick branch in the pond. With flinching nerves she saw that the water was stained red. And then she saw Duff — Duffs head. The scalp was open. His eyes were shut. He didn’t seem conscious. But his hands, on the pond edge, were grasping feebly and he had his mouth out of water. He was trying to say something.
“Duff!” she cried.
He muttered.
“Duff! I’ll get help! Can you hang on?”
His blood-streaked face looked up. His eyes showed now as slits. His teeth bared. His lips worked. “Scream,” he finally enunciated. “And look behind you.”
She swung around — and saw no one. But she screamed.
THREE
Emery McIntosh, chief of the Miami office of the FBI, listened to Higgins without interrupting. He was a medium-sized man of about fifty with a bald spot on the top of his head, nattily dressed in tropical-worsted suit, silk socks, black, highly polished shoes and a white shirt with a stiff collar. When he did speak, there was little in his accent to suggest his Scottish descent. But the ways and even the looks of his ancestors might have been read into the crisp mustache which matched his sandy hair, the blue glint of his eyes, the extraordinary firmness of his mouth and the deep, rather melancholy timbre of his voice. McIntosh looked, Higgins reflected, like a Presbyterian deacon dressed for taking up a Sunday collection—
which he was and had been about to do when the younger agent had telephoned.
“And the lad’s coming along all right?” McIntosh finally asked.