My own shack was out of the city limits--a little place I keep to live in when the urge to go fishing seizes me, which is generally about twice a year. Mercer picked the place up for me at a song. The Monstrosity was some four miles further out from town, and off the highway perhaps a half-mile more. I made the four miles in just a shade over that many minutes, and clamped on the brakes as I saw the entrance to the little drive that led toward the sea, and Mercer's estate. * * * * * With gravel rattling on my fenders, I turned off the concrete and swept between the two massive, stuccoed pillars that guarded the drive. Both of them bore corroded bronze plates, "The Billows," the name given The Monstrosity by the original owner, a newly-rich munitions manufacturer. The structure itself loomed up before me in a few seconds, a rambling affair with square-shouldered balconies and a great deal of wrought-iron work, after the most flamboyant Spanish pattern. It was ablaze with light. Apparently every bulb in the place was burning. Just a few yards beyond the surf boomed hollowly on the smooth, shady shore, littered now, I knew, by the pitiful spoils of the storm. As I clamped on my brakes, a swift shadow passed two of the lower windows. Before I could leap from the car, the broad front door, with its rounded top and circular, grilled window, was flung wide, and Mercer came running to meet me. He was wearing a bathrobe, hastily flung on over a damp bathing suit, his bare legs terminating in a pair of disreputable slippers. "Fine, Taylor!" he greeted me. "I suppose you're wondering what it's all about. I don't blame you. But come in, come in! Just wait till you see her!" "Her?" I asked, startled. "You're not in love, by any chance, and bringing me down here like this merely to back up your own opinion of them eyes and them lips, Mercer?" * * * * * He laughed excitedly. "You'll see, you'll see! No, I'm not in love. And I want you to help, and not admire. There are only Carson and myself here, you know, and the job's too big for the two of us." He hurried me across the broad concrete porch and into the house. "Throw the cap anywhere and come on!" Too much amazed to comment further, I followed my friend. This was a Warren Mercer I did not know. Usually his clean-cut, olive-tinted face was a polite mask that seldom showed even the slightest trace of emotion. His eyes, dark and large, smiled easily, and shone with interest, but his almost beautiful mouth, beneath the long slim mustache, always closely cropped, seldom smiled with his eyes.