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Every once in a while the moon would shine through a rift in the clouds, and I took advantage of it to get a better look at the homemade village.

Cuddy’s place was easier to find than I expected. It was the only dump that ever had seen paint, and on the south side hung a ship’s nameplate with CARMINE spelled out in large block letters. It was a deckhouse, all right, probably washed off during a storm. I edged up to a window and looked in. All I could see were a few vague outlines. I tried the door. It opened outward noiselessly. From one corner of the room came the raspy snore of a back-sleeper with a load under his belt.

A match lit the place up. Cuddy never moved, even when I put the match to the ship’s lantern swinging from the center of the ceiling. It was a one-room affair with a few chairs, a table and a double-decker bed along the side. He had rigged up a kerosene stove with the pipe shooting through the roof and used two wooden crates for a larder. Beside the stove was a barrel of clams.

Lots of stuff, but no kid.

Bill Cuddy was a hard man to awaken. He twitched a few times, pawed the covers and grunted. When I shook him some more his eyelids flickered, went up. No pupils. They came down ten seconds later. A pair of bleary, bloodshot eyes moved separately until they came to an accidental focus on me.

Bill sat up. “Who’re you?”

I gave him a few seconds to study me, then palmed my badge in front of his face. “Cop. Get up.”

His legs swung to the floor, he grabbed my arm. “What’s the matter, officer? I ain’t been poachin’. All I got is clams, go look.” He pointed to the barrel. “See?”

“I’m no game warden,” I told him.

“Then whatcha want of me?”

“I want you for kidnapping. Murder maybe.”

“Oh . . . No!” His voice was a hoarse croak. “But . . . I ain’t killed nobody atall. I wouldn’t do that.”

He didn’t have to tell me that. There are types that kill and he wasn’t one of them. I didn’t let him know I thought so.

“You brought a set of pajamas into Andy’s place this afternoon. Where did you get them?”

He wrinkled his nose, trying to understand what I was talking about. “Pajamas?”

“You heard me.”

He remembered then. His face relaxed into a relieved grin. “Oh, that. Sure, I found ’em lying on Shore Road. Thought I’d kid Andy with ’em.”

“You almost kidded him to death. Put on your pants. I want you to show me the spot.”

He stuck his feet into a pair of dungarees and pulled the suspenders over his bony shoulders, then dragged a pair of boots out from under the bed. A faded denim shirt and a battered hat and he was dressed. He kept shooting me sidewise glances, trying to figure it out but wasn’t getting anyplace.

“You won’t throw me in the jug, will you?”

“Not if you tell the truth.”

“But I did.”

“We’ll see. Come on.” I let him lead the way. The sand had drifted too deep along the road to take the car so we plodded along slowly, keeping away from the other shacks. Shore Road was a road in name only. It was a strip of wet Sahara that separated the tree line from the water. A hundred yards up and the shacks had more room between them. Bill Cuddy pointed ahead.

“Up there is the cove where I bring the boat in. I was coming down there and where the old cistern is I see the pants lying right in the middle of the road.”

I nodded. A few minutes later we had reached the cistern, a huge, barrel-shaped thing lying on its side. It was big enough to make a two-car garage. Evidently it, like everything else around here, had been picked up during a storm and deposited along the shore. Bill indicated a spot on the ground with a gnarled forefinger.

“Right here’s the spot, officer, they was lying right here.”

“Fine. See anyone?”

“Naw. Who would be out here? They was washed up, I guess.”

I looked at him, then the water. Although the tide was high the water was a good forty yards from the spot. He saw what I meant and he shifted uneasily.

“Maybe they blew up.”

“Bill?”

“Huh?”

“Did you ever see wet clothes blow along the ground? Dry clothes, maybe, but wet?”

He paused. “Nope.”

“Then they didn’t blow up or wash up.