"That was pretty convincing, Tal," she said. "Very." Peary came into the outer office. He looked thoughtful. "Suppose I was the blackmailer. I find the bodies. I came across them by accident. Or maybe I was smart enough to look for them. Okay. What do I do? I make damn well certain that nobody else finds them and spoils the game. I want to do a better job of hiding them than George did. But I don't want to completely dispose of the bodies. I want them where they can be a threat. I want them where they can be dug up." Ruth said, "That man Grassman. We saw him out at the lake, Tal and I did. And now he's disappeared. That could mean that he found the bodies." "And found the blackmailer, too," Peary said. I found myself remembering the odd conversation with George. When he had said he couldn't give me a job. And had offered me a gun out of stock. He had known I had come from Fitz. He had thought I was a friend of Fitz, cutting myself in on the take. It was obvious that Fitz was the blackmailer. I remembered the expensive look of the suit he was wearing when I had seen him at the Inn. He had come to Hillston with the idea of finding the money Timmy had hidden. He had stayed in the cabin out at the lake. He made a point of telling me that the money wasn't hidden out at the lake. He had looked there. And found something profitable and horrible. But what was most convincing was Fitz telling me that he was certain Eloise hadn't taken the money with her. He must have appreciated his own joke. Eloise had never meant to leave permanently. She would have been a fool to leave as long as there was a chance of Timmy coming back. She knew about the money. Yet Timmy had been shrewd enough not to trust her with information about the hiding place. I thought of that first conversation that must have taken place between Fitz and George after Fitz found the bodies. "What should we do?" Ruth asked. "Should we talk to Captain Marion?" At four-thirty that gray Wednesday I stood on the lake shore with Ruth and Allan Peary, Sergeant Brubaker and Lieutenant Prine. We were in front of the place that had belonged to George Warden before he had sold it. The narrow dock had been hauled out onto the shore for the winter and hadn't been replaced. The wind had died and the lake was like a gray steel plate. Voices had an odd resonance in the stillness. Captain Marion came out of the cabin with a husky young patrolman. The patrolman had changed to swimming trunks. He wore an aqualung with the face mask shoved up onto his forehead. He walked gingerly on the rough path in his bare feet. He looked serious, self-important, and chilled. Captain Marion said, "Try to stay on this line right here. The water looks kind of murky. How's the light?" The patrolman clicked the watertight flashlight on. "It looks bright enough." Prine said in a low voice so Captain Marion couldn't overhear, "This is nonsense."