The Balloon Man (22 page)

Another possibility was that someone had stolen the parure from her. Max doubted that. The lady wouldn't have taken a theft
meekly, she'd have reported it to her insurance company and raised hell with the police, maybe even hired
Max Bittersohn to get her property back. Which she hadn't. So, no theft.

Max was beginning to feel a bit pleased with his brilliant reasoning. He reached automatically for another chunk of kelp.
All right, let's say it was an agent of Mevrouw Vanderwoude's who returned the jewels. Never mind why she'd chosen a somewhat
unorthodox method. People did strange things, as anyone related to the Kellings ought to know. Louie couldn't have been the
agent in question. For one thing, nobody with an IQ over thirty would trust Louie to return an object of value. The minute
he got his hands on it he'd head for the nearest hock shop or some country that didn't allow extradition.

For another thing, if Louie had been the benevolent Santa, he'd have admitted it when he was cornered instead of risking a
charge of assault. And he wouldn't have been hanging around, or under, after the job was done.

So that meant two people or groups of people, one returning the gems, the other trying to steal them back. The unidentified
corpse under the tent might have belonged to one of the gangs, or he might have been ah innocent bystander who happened to
see something he oughtn't have seen.

Max was chewing savagely. He was imagining he was chomping on someone's jugular. Louie. Louie was the key; Louie knew more
than he had admitted, and if—no, when—Max got home he was going to get the truth out of
the evasive old idiot if he had to borrow Egbert'srubber hose.

That was another thing to look forward to. Looking up, Max realized that the sun was high in the sky. How quickly time passed
when a man was enjoying himself, munching seaweed and thinking good thoughts about beating a guy up. The air was pleasantly
warm. Time for a swim.

Since there was nobody around but the fulgars, he stripped and spread his clothes out along the rocky spine of the island.
He was a fastidious man, when circumstances allowed, and he was beginning to develop a strong loathing for those clothes.
If—when!—he got home he'd burn them or bury them. Maybe baking them in the sun would help fumigate them.

Since he didn't know enough about the fickle tides and currents, Max didn't think it prudent to get too far from the rock
that had become his by right of discovery. Maybe he could name it after Davy and plant a flag. The faithful old red robe would
look fine, if only he had something to use as a flagpole. Swimming around in circles was pretty boring, but the exercise was
doing him good.

After a while he noticed something interesting. The fish were swimming faster and more awkwardly, as if they'd lost their
way and didn't know how to get back into their normally-graceful patterns. Could the unusual behavior of these shoals of fish
portend the onset of a storm? He'd really be in trouble if that happened. A supply of fresh water would taste good, but it
would soak his clothes and
leave him liable to hypothermia if the weather turned cold. He flipped over onto his back and looked uneasily at the sky.
Still blue, still cloudless. All the same, it might be advisable to get closer to the rock.

Hanging on to the ledge, he noticed that the turbulence was increasing and the fish were swimming faster. There was a strange
noise. Max pulled himself out of the water and scrambled higher up the rocks, straining his neck for a better look at whatever
might be there. His hand slipped and he almost fell off the rock.

Could what he was seeing be real, or had he gone irretrievably bats? Was there or was there not a perky little yellow seaplane
bobbing gently up and down; and an oddly assembled but demonstrably functional and astonishingly familiar person standing
on the wing?

Heedless of the minor circumstance that he hadn't a stitch on his body except for a couple of scars he'd acquired on the football
field in his more visibly athletic days, Max yelled and jumped and flailed his arms like a monkey on a stick.

“Tweeters! Hey, Tweeters? It's Max.”

“I see you, Max,” was the reply. “Of course it's you. Who else would it be?”

“Don't ask me, I'm a stranger here myself. Are you sure I'm not hallucinating again?”

“I don't know what other hallucinations you may have had, but I'm not one of them. How are you?”

“All the better for seeing you, my dear. Was it the Wolf
of Little Red Riding Hood who said that? Stay put, Tweeters; I'll swim over to you.”

“Oh dear, no. Stay where you are and put your pants on; you know what a prude I am. I'll taxi right up to your mooring.”

Max was mildly amused. “What mooring? I've been over every millimeter of this rock and haven't found one yet.”

Suddenly it was Christmas and Easter and Groundhog Day and April Fool's Day and Halloween all together. Tweeters Arbuthnot
generally felt more at ease among his feathered friends, but he did make exceptions for a few tried and trusted humans. At
boarding school he'd met a chap named Brooks Kelling, who hadn't minded being seen with a fellow student who had a neck like
a crane's, a nose like a pelican's beak, and a voice like a booming bittern. They shared a passion for birds, which neither
had lost, though in recent years Brooks had been somewhat distracted by a female of a nonavian species.

Recently Tweeters had found another interest, in the person of Sarah's aunt Emma. Thus far Emma had been more amused than
impressed by Tweeters's advances, such as they were, but where there was life there was hope, as Tweeters had been heard to
say. His seaplane was not for joyriding, but for serious birding. He was built much like a rednecked grebe-—the description
had come from Brooks—but to Max he looked exactly like an angel. And Max had nothing to offer him but seaweed.

Tweeters hadn't exaggerated his skill as a pilot. He edged
the plane so close to the ledge on which Max was perched that all Max had to do was lower himself onto the wing and crawl
along it to the cockpit. He felt like kissing Tweeters but refrained for fear of frightening the timid creature, and also
because he hoped to be kissing someone considerably better before much longer.

“How did you find me, Tweeters?”

“Good question, Max. I've been buzzing around these waters like a diving petrel trying to catch up with a wandering albatross.
Theonia had one of those flashes of hers, or maybe it was Sarah who had it, something about'a quantity of water and a rock
shaped like Gibraltar; they've both been pretty worried about you. The rest of us, too, of course. It was a spot of red that
finally caught my eye. That's not a color one finds out here, the scenery runs more to blues and greens and browns. Oh, Theonia
mentioned that she'd put a lunch basket in the back. She thought you must surely be ready for a change of cuisine by now.”

Max's mouth watered. “She didn't happen to include a thermos of black coffee, by any chance?”

“There's one in the hamper behind you. And sandwiches and various other odds and ends, including one of her chocolate tortes.
What have you been eating all this time?”

“Seaweed. That's what gets eaten out here. Forgive my bad manners, I ought to have offered you some.”

Max was feeling a little light-headed. Tweeters gave him a sidelong look. “I believe Theonia mentioned that the roast beef
sandwiches are marked on the wrappings with a
big red B. The turkey has a T, and the ham, well, you get the drift. I don't know what else she put in, but its bound to be
good.”

“First I have to get in touch with Sarah. She must be as frantic about me as I am about her. You wouldn't happen to have some
kind of telephone on board, would you?”

“Certainly. Radio, too, of course, that's standard equipment, but these cordless phones are marvelously handy, aren't they?
When they work, that is. What's your home telephone number, Max? Or cant you remember?”

“I'm not at my best right now, but we've got so damned many phones I ought to remember one of the numbers.”

Max fiddled with the buttons, got a wrong number, grunted, “Probably a mermaids,” and finally managed to make a connection
with the green phone in his office at Ire-sons Landing.

Nobody was at home except the answering machine. Max tried the carriage house, then the Boston office, and finally the Tulip
Street house. Where the hell could they all have gone?

Looking for him, maybe. Nice of them. Poor Sarah, she must be out of her mind. He wasn't sure he was entirely in his mind.

At last he managed to catch Mariposa, the supremely capable queen of the kitchen of the Boston house, who moonlighted as one
of his operatives. When she heard his voice she let out a shriek that half deafened him, then
buried him under a spate of Spanish, before she switched over to plain American.

“How come you stayed away so long without tellin' nobody?”

“Because I had no way to get home. How long was I gone?”

“Come on, Max, don't get funny. We ain't in the mood.”

“Mariposa, I am not trying to be funny, I'm trying to get home.”

“Where are you?”

“With Tweeters Arbuthnot in his seaplane. Don't ask me how he found me, because I'm not too clear on that myself I don't even
know how long I've been away, but its been too damned long, I can tell you that.”

“It sure has. We were pretty scared, Max.”

“Me too, Mariposa. Is Sarah all right? I tried to reach her, but nobody's home. When did you and Charles get back?”

“Never mind that now, we'll make our report when we see you, an' it sure better be soon. I'm gonna shut up now so you can
keep callin' Sarah. Davy's wound up tight as a torero's pant legs, an howlin' for his daddy. It's been rough around here,
I can tell you,
Hasta la vista!”

“And the same to you,, Mariposa.” Max took another sandwich and refilled his coffee cup.

“Ah, sweet mystery of life, at least I've found thee! I wish I had a razor so I could get rid of this bush. Mariposa said
Davy's been raising hell because I wasn't around He wouldn't even recognize me the way I look now.”

“Yes, that is a point to consider,” Tweeters conceded. “Not knowing much about children, I tend to steer clear of them wherever
possible, unless they're seriously interested in the Ciconiiformes. You did mention something during the summer about your
son's interest in the herons and bitterns. Three years is hardly a ripe age for a bird lover, but it shows a definite bias
toward the proper side, wouldn't you say? Of course you know the young man far better than I.”

“I hope you get to know him better, Tweeters. I think you two would get on, and you certainly could teach him a lot.” Max
scowled at the hand wrapped around the cup. It was scraped and roughened from gripping the unforgiving rocks. He rubbed his
knuckles against his cheeks and winced.

“I must look like something that came up out of a swamp. My kid will be wondering what kind of animal his mother's let into
the house.”

“Oh, if that's what's worrying you, I always carry a fitted shaving kit that one of my cousins gave me. It's a bit la-di-da,
but it does come in handy every now and then. Look in that overhead net. There might even be a clean sweatshirt that would
fit you. I buy mine a size too large in the vain hope that they won't make me look like the scarecrow from Oz. Not that it
ever works. Take the dark blue one with the seahorse on it. Not precisely the style you'd have chosen, perhaps, but needs
must, as the old saying goes.”

Max didn't care what the shirt looked like. At least it would be clean and dry. For a man who'd been spending more time in
the water than out, the warm fabric felt heavenly when he put it on. Sharing a seat with the spider-legged Tweeters was agony
for a man as tall as Max, and the way the plane was bouncing around was an added attraction he could easily have done without;
but it was a hell of a lot better than the rock.

After he'd finished massaging his jaw with Tweeters's razor, he reached for the phone. “Tweeters, would you mind if I tried
again to get through to Sarah? We still have at least an hours cruising time, haven't we?”

“Yes, we do, and of course I don't mind, go right ahead. I'm sure the wires have been burning with the news, if that is the
phrase, but she will no doubt be anxious to hear your voice. While you're talking you just might watch what I do, in case
you have to set us down. Not that you will, but I always mention it just so you won't find the trip too dull.”

“You're the perfect host, Tweeters. Don't I even get a Mickey Mouse life preserver?”

“Sorry, I'm fresh out of them. But you're a good swimmer, I'm told. Or we could always keep a lookout for a friendly dolphin
to give us a piggyback ride. Now look, I'll show you which button to push. This is the one that works, usually.”

“That's okay, I know how to operate telephones. Just so I don't have to fly the damned plane or argue with a dolphin.
Where the hell could she be? I hope to God nothing has happened. I can't wait to see her.”

“I expect you and she will have more time together from now on, won't you?”

Like other shy bachelors, Tweeters had only vague notions about the things that happened in families where the fathers and
mothers didn't seem to mind talking with the children. His own childhood memories had been mostly of birdwatching while his
tutor exchanged genialities with a young woman who was supposed to be teaching him French. He was extremely well informed
about the mating habits of various birds, however, and when Max said, “Sarah? Darling, is that you?” he looked straight ahead
and pretended not to listen.

Above all other things, Max hoped he'd be able to have a few minutes alone with Sarah before the celebration began. It was
unthinkable that there wouldn't be one. Once Sarah calmed down she told him Miriam had started baking a welcome home cake
as soon as the word had come via Tweeters and his seagoing telephone that the lost had been found. “She's arranged something
for this evening if we're not all too worn out,” Sarah had added.