Girl Out Back by Charles Williams

laboratories. Millions of compounds were water soluble, and the minute dried crystals of practically any substance could be dispersed and spread with water. I was chasing moonbeams, and when I caught a sackful I’d build an arc light.
    Cliffords was absurd. This entire thing was absurd. It almost had to be Haig, or Haig’s ill-gotten swag, that they were seeking, because he was the biggest crime story, and the most baffling one, of the past decade, and because they had shown me his picture. So where was the connection between that coldly violent killer and this harmless old pixie getting his kicks out of space ships and Peter Rabbit? Why, of course, I thought sarcastically; you could see the tie-in almost immediately. Cliffords had at one time been an employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and Haig was born in California. Fool-proof, wasn’t it? And to narrow it down even further, they each had one left hand. Or at least, I supposed they did, or had.
    Look at it, I thought. Cliffords was already living up here alone in this isolated backwater before Haig had even begun his fantastic career. I’d established that. Haig would be twenty-eight now; Cliffords was forty-five, or around there. There could be no family relationship, or even nodding acquaintance, between the two; anybody Haig had even borrowed a match from in the past ten years had been run down and checked out by the F.B.I.
    So what did you have? You had nothing.
    No-o. Not quite. No matter how fantastic it was, you still had the almost dead certainty that this derailed leprechaun was spending Haig’s money.
    I cranked the motor.
    Around each bend the next reach lay glaring and empty under the sun, as devoid of any signs of life or human habitation as the last. After about thirty minutes I began watching the right-hand shore for the end of the road. I spotted it shortly, an opening in the trees where the bank had been cut down into a sloping ramp for launching boats off trailers. There were the remains of several old campfires, but no cars were visible. I slowed a little and began keeping a lookout for the cabin or a boat landing. A little over a mile ahead as I came around a bend the channel spread out to some two hundred yards in width and ran straight for almost a mile with an extensive bed of pads along the left side. About half-way up it I saw what I was looking for. A skiff was pulled up on a shelving bit of beach in a small cove on the right. The motor was tilted up on the stern. Cliffords wasn’t in sight, but as I went past I had a glimpse of weather-beaten gray back among the trees. That would be the cabin.
    I went on without slowing. He would probably hear me, but there would be nothing strange about an occasional fisherman going by. I cleared the next bend and continued another mile or two before I cut the motor and set up the fly-rod again. An hour went by as I fished with indifferent success, merely going through the motions. I refilled the motor from the fuel can and started back. The skiff was still in the cove. I didn’t see Cliffords anywhere. He probably took a nap this time of the afternoon, or caught up on his reading.
    I wound on down the channel until I was sure he could no longer hear the motor. The new models are a lot quieter than the old ones used to be. Just before rounding the last bend approaching the camp-site and launching ramp at the end of the road I cut the motor and swung into the bank where the limbs of a large tree overhung the water. Working the boat back under the screen of foliage, I made it fast, and stepped out.
    There was no trail. I kept open water in view from time to time as I slipped through the underbrush and timber. It was intensely still and very hot now, and my shirt became soaked with perspiration. An outraged blue jay called me a Sunday driver and expressed his doubts as to my legitimacy, and once I flushed out a wild sow with a litter of pigs. About twenty minutes later I swung to the left again and