Hell, she couldn’t possibly know me, and I was three thousand miles from Las Vegas. The prospect of another fishing trip was irresistible, anyway, and she might turn out to be a very interesting deal. I don’t get you at all, Mrs. Forsyth, but you’re beginning to intrigue me. We’ll see what we can find out tomorrow.

It wasn’t much—at least, not to begin with. And then when I finally did figure out what she was doing, she puzzled me even more.

It was a beautiful day. When I awoke it was a little after seven and already full daylight inside the room. I crossed to the window and parted the slats of the closed Venetian blind. The sky was clear, and fronds of the coconut palms in the courtyard between the two wings of the motel stirred gently in a light breeze that appeared to be from the south or south-east. The Stream would be in lovely shape. I was eager to be under way. When I’d shaved and showered, and emerged from the room with the beach bag containing glasses, fishing cap, tan lotion, and cigarettes, she was just coming out of No. 17, diagonally across from me. She had on a conical straw hat, blue Bermuda shorts, and a simple blouse with long sleeves, and was carrying a big purse. She waved and smiled. ‘Good morning, Mr. Hamilton.’

I learned nothing from the car. As the great American status symbol it was useless, because it wasn’t hers; it was a hire job she’d picked up at the airport in Miami. She was wearing a watch, however, that had cost at least five hundred. She didn’t have much to say while we were eating breakfast, and afterwards, while we were running out to the Stream with the engines hooked up, talking was difficult because of their noise. We sat forward under the canopy to avoid the tatters of spray flung backward as the Blue Runner knifed into the light ground-swell at top cruising speed.

‘Is it always this noisy?’ she asked, having to raise her voice.

I shook my head. ‘Just while we’re running out. When we start fishing, we troll on one engine, throttled down. Hardly any noise at all.’

‘Oh,’ she said, as if relieved.

The boat was a thirty-five-foot sports fisherman with topside controls and big outriggers capable of bouncing a marlin bait. Holt kept her in superb condition so her white topsides sparkled in the sun. He and his Mate were both taciturn types whose sole interest in life was fishing. They were good, too. I’d enjoyed fishing with them.

It was a few minutes before nine and Key West was down on the horizon when we crossed the edge of the Stream shortly to the south and east of Sand Key light. It was beautiful, running dark as indigo in a ragged line beyond the reefs with just enough breeze to ripple the light ground-swell rolling up from the south-east. The Blue Runner slowed, and Sam the Mate came down from topside.