He was rather glad that the motor cruiser had a tiny kitchen, and that he'd persuaded young Hansen to spend a few minutes there percolating some coffee before they both went ashore in the rowboat with the securely bound pair. It gave him a chance to straighten his shoulders, collect his thoughts and breathe in the brine-scented air. It wasn't the open sea, only the fingertip of a bay, with the shoreline close on both sides. But there was something about any part of the ocean that could give a harassed man perspective, make him realize how small and quick-passing all human tragedies were, when you contrasted them with eternally breaking waves, and the vast shining permanence of the sea. He had paused for only a moment by the rail, to stare down into the clear water, seeking perhaps to make that realization even stronger, to keep it more forcefully in mind. Or perhaps only because he was so inwardly preoccupied. He could not have said exactly why. He could see every rock and crevice, every waving seaweed, every darting silvery fish between the cruiser's keel and the sandy bottom, for the inlet was now as still as a sheet of glass. He was just turning from the rail when a faint gust of wind ruffled the water, spoiling its crystal-clear transparency. The ripples attracted his attention and he did not turn, simply continued on for a few paces parallel with the rail. He was staring down idly when the ripples vanished and he could see all the way to the bottom again. A look of horror came into his eyes and he gripped the rail with both hands, cold sweat oozing from the pores of his skin, bringing a glistening to his bare back, drenching him from waist to armpits. The corpse was wedged in a narrow rock crevice, in a rigidly contorted attitude, the face white and staring and turned upward, the legs grotesquely bent. It was clothed only in shorts and the blonde hair on the naked chest was matted with seaweed, which swayed back and forth in the underwater current. Curiously enough, the hair on the dead man's head did not move with the current, but the slack jaw seemed to move slightly, as if protesting against the indignity which had been thrust upon him. There was neither strength nor weakness in Gerstle's lifeless features now, but there was something about the configuration of the face which suggested that great energy and firmness of purpose had once been dominant characteristics of the man. The cheeks were faintly blue with a two-days' growth of beard, the eyes wide and staring, the lips purplish. Both the wrists and ankles of the slain cafe society exposé editor had been bound with heavy wire which glistened in the downstreaming sunlight, and had cut cruelly into the flesh, whether before or after death Fenton had no way of knowing.