releases about twenty feet of slack, and the bait stops dead in the water. Just as if it had been alive and he’d killed it.”

”I see,” she said thoughtfully. “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Hamilton. I’m looking forward to it, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

After she’d hung up I lay there thinking about her, studying the whole thing a little warily. She didn’t ring true, somehow. Then I dismissed the worry. 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 rental 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. He swung out the outriggers, nodded for Mrs. Forsyth to take the port chair, and put out her line, baited with balao. She watched as he clipped it to the outrigger halyard and ran it out to the end. He fitted the butt of the rod into the gimbal in her chair.

She took it and looked round at me. “Now what do I do?”

Normally I detest people who want to talk when I’m fishing, but this was different. I was curious about her, and becoming more so all the time. “Just watch your bait,” I said. “You see it? A little to your right, and about seventy-five feet back?”

She looked. It skipped across the surface momentarily, and slid under again, fluttering. “Yes. I can see it now.”

“Keep your eye on it,” I said. “Watch it every minute-”

She nodded. “That’s so I’ll know when I get a bite?”

I restrained an impulse to wince. “Strike,” I said. “These fish out here don’t nibble; they hit. But that’s not the reason for watching it. You’ll know when