Ross Macdonald - 1960 - The Ferguson Affair by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

couldn’t see his eyes.
                 “It’s
not as bad as it sounds. He simply showed too much interest in one of the
members’ wives. He was very attentive to her, and perhaps she took a little too
much advantage of it. Her husband heard about it, and objected. So I fired
him.” He added: “Thank God I did fire him, before this police investigation
came up.”
                 “Did
Gaines give any indications that he was using his position here for criminal
purposes? To pick out prospects for burglary, for instance?”
                 “The
police asked me that. I had to answer no. But they pointed out that one or two
of our members have been victims of burglary in the past six months. Most recently, the Hampshires .”
                 Bidwell’s
voice was rigidly controlled, but he was under great strain. A drop of sweat
formed at the tip of his nose, grew heavy and filled with light, and fell off
onto his blotter. It made a dark red stain, like blood, on the red blotter.
                 “How
did you happen to hire Gaines in the first place?”
                 “I
was taken in. I pride myself on my judgment of people, but I was taken in by
Larry Gaines. He talked well, you know, and then there was the fact that the
college sent him. We nearly always get our lifeguards from Buenavista College. In fact, that may be why Gaines registered there.”
                 “He
actually registered at the local college?”
                 “So
they tell me. Apparently he dropped out after a few days or weeks. But we went
on assuming that he was a college student. He was a little old for the role,
but you see a lot of that these days.”
                 “I
know,” I said. “I went through college and law school after Korea.”
                 “Did
you, now? I never did make it to college myself. I suppose that’s why I feel a certain sympathy for young people trying to educate
themselves. Gaines traded on my sympathy, and not only on mine. Quite a few of
the members were touched by his scholarly aspirations. He has a certain charm,
I suppose—rather greasy, but potent.”
                 “Can
you describe him?”
                 “I
can do better than that. The police asked me to rake up some pictures of him.
Gaines was always getting himself photographed. He did a lot of picture-taking
himself.”
                 Bidwell
brought five or six glossy prints out of a drawer and handed them to me. Most
of them showed Gaines in bathing trunks. He was slim-hipped and
wide-shouldered. He held himself with that actorish air, self-consciousness pretending to be self-assurance, which always made me
suspicious of a man. His crew-cut head was handsome, but there was a spoiled
expression on his mouth, something obtuse in his dark eyes. In spite of the
costume, the tan, the molded muscles, he had the look of a man who hated the
sun. I placed his age at twenty-five or six.
                 Keeping
one of the pictures, I gave the rest back to Bidwell. “May I have a look at
your membership list?”
                 It
was lying on top of his desk, and he pushed it across to me: several sheets of
foolscap covered with names in a fine Spencerian hand. The names were alphabetically grouped, and each was preceded by a number.
Patrick Hampshire was number 345. Colonel Ian Ferguson was number 459.
                 “How
many members do you have?”
                 “Our
by-laws limit us to three hundred. The original membership
were numbered from one to three hundred. When a member—ah—passes on, we
retire his number, and issue a new one. The roster runs up to 461 now, which
means that we’ve lost 161 members since the club was founded, and gained a
corresponding number of new members.”
                 He
recited these facts as if they constituted a soothing liturgy.