The Frankenstein Factory by Edward D. Hoch

very far away.
    “How far is it over there?” he asked, going up to the boathouse where Hobbes was working.
    “To shore? Well, it’s nearly sixty miles back to Guaymas, where you came from. But straight ahead, over to Baja California, is only about fifteen. The hovercraft makes it in ten minutes, usually, unless the headwinds are bad.” He still spoke in miles rather than kilometers, though the country was gradually adopting the metric system.
    “Maybe you’ll have a searail someday,” Earl suggested. They were building some, for rocket-powered trains, in the Caribbean.
    “Wouldn’t want one. Spoil our privacy.”
    Earl squinted into the rising sun, focusing on a blue and white pennant that fluttered from the top of the flag pole. He hadn’t noticed it before and was certain it hadn’t been up when he’d arrived. “What’s that?”
    “Signal pennant for the hovercraft. He comes early, around seven, and sometimes if I don’t need supplies or want to sleep late I ring up the pennant. Then, he passes us by till the following week.”
    “Then you told him not to come this morning?”
    “No.”
    “Who did?”
    Hobbes shrugged. “Somebody sneaked out last night to put it up there. Maybe our murderer.”
    “You don’t seem awfully concerned.”
    “We’ll get the boat fixed. It’s not much of a job.”
    “Who would have known about the pennant system?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, I didn’t know about it. And Vera and Tony wouldn’t have known.”
    “I see what you mean. You’re right, of course. The recent arrivals aren’t familiar with it. Let’s see—Armstrong and Whalen and me. And Hilda, of course. That’s all.”
    “Then one of them must have hoisted it.”
    “You’re too much of a detective for your own good, Jazine. The pennant system might have been mentioned to someone else. I might even have raised it myself while sleepwalking.”
    “Do you sleep walk?”
    “No.”
    “Then I guess we can forget that possibility. Who are you covering up for, Dr. Hobbes?”
    “No one.” He’d chosen a small piece of plywood, and he bent to size it for the repair job on the boat.
    “Tell me something about Hilda. Isn’t that an odd name for a Mexican woman?”
    “Short for Hidalga, with a little shifting of the letters. It means noble. ”
    “How old is she?”
    “I never asked. What would you say—forty? Or late thirties?”
    It seemed like a good guess to Earl. “How long has she worked for you?”
    “A few years. Four or five, maybe.” He turned on the automatic hoist to lift the boat into position. “Want to give me a hand with this?”
    “Sure.”
    Hobbes covered the hole with the piece of plywood, welding it into position with an ultrasonic gun. “That should hold long enough to get us across. Of course, it’s no hovercraft.”
    “You going to try it today?” Earl asked, glancing out at the whitecaps on the gulf. If anything, the wind was increasing.
    “Only if it calms down. I wouldn’t feel like a swim today, even with my sharkstick along.”
    “Sharks?”
    Hobbes nodded. “They come up from the ocean. A sharkstick will give them a nasty shock, but sometimes they come at you so fast there’s no chance to use it.”
    “What about Phil Whalen?” Earl asked, returning to the subject of the pennant. “He fired at someone last night. Maybe he saw the person who raised the flag.”
    “Or maybe he wanted us to think he saw him.”
    “You don’t trust Whalen, do you?”
    Hobbes shrugged. “He’s a good surgeon. But there’s never a need for an honest man to carry a gun. He’s hiding something.”
    Earl grunted. “I wonder what.”
    They left the boathouse and headed back toward the path through the trees.
    For the rest of the morning Earl made a special point of keeping an eye on Whalen. It wasn’t difficult to do, since they decided after breakfast to try the buddy system Earl had suggested the previous night. While Armstrong and Hobbes stayed close to the