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like her very much. I tried to warn myself. It hadn’t been twenty minutes since I’d gone off halfcocked in the other direction. Maybe there was just something about her that precluded objective appraisal, at least as far as I was concerned.
    “What is the deal, specifically?” I asked.
    She took another drag on the cigarette, and crushed it out very slowly in the ash tray. She looked at me. “Just this,” she said. “That you buy and outfit a seaworthy boat large enough to accommodate three people but which can be handled by one seaman with the help of two landlubbers. We’ll furnish the money, of course, but the whole thing is to be done under your name or an assumed one, and we have no connection with it, for obvious reasons, until the very hour we go aboard. Secretly, and without being followed. That isn’t going to be easy, either. Sail us to a place off the coast of Yucatan and recover something from a private plane which crashed and sank—”
    “Wait,” I said. “In how much water? Do you know?”
    “Just roughly,” she replied. “About sixty feet, I think.”
    I nodded. “That’s easy. The depth, I mean. But finding the plane is something else. You could spend years looking for it, and still never locate it. Planes break up fast, especially in exposed positions and shallow water.”
    “I believe we can find it,” she said. “But we’ll go into the reasons for that later. After we recover what my husband wants from the plane, you sail us to a spot on the coast of a Central American country and land us. That’s all.”
    “What Central American—” I started to ask, and then stopped. The vagueness had been intentional. “I land you? What about the boat?”
    “The boat is yours. Plus five thousand dollars.”
    I whistled softly. There was nothing cheap about this deal. Then two thoughts hit me at exactly the same time like two slugs of Scotch. The boat is yours was one of them, and the other was Ballerina . It was like hearing somebody had left you a million.
    “Wait,” I said eagerly. “How much do you plan to spend for a boat?”
    “Could we get an adequate one for ten thousand?”
    “Yes,” I said. I considered swiftly. The last I’d heard they were still asking twelve thousand for Ballerina , but they might go for an offer of ten cash. Sure they would. And if not I’d add the rest myself out of the five thousand.
    Then I thought of something else. “You mean, I just land you on the coast of this country, whatever it is, and that’s it? You realize, don’t you, that without papers you’ll be picked up and deported inside a week?”
    “That part is all taken care of,” she said.
    It was none of my business. She could even say that nicely.
    We were both silent for a moment. I turned, and she was watching me. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
    Manning of the Ballerina , I thought. I could see the lines of her. But, still, what about this? I didn’t know anything.
    “Look,” I asked, “this whatever-it-is in the plane. Does it belong to your husband?”
    She nodded. “It’s his.”
    “Which is his real name? Wayne or Macaulay?”
    “Macaulay,” she said simply. “You don’t make it as easy for them as looking you up in the telephone book.”
    “Who is Tweed Jacket?”
    “His name is Barclay. You might call him a killer, though I prefer executioner. It describes his attitude as well as his profession.”
    “And your husband is running from him?”
    “Barclay’s only one of them. Running, yes. In the past three months we’ve lived in New York, San Francisco, Denver, and Sanport.”
    “Couldn’t he get police protection?”
    “I suppose so. But it isn’t much of a way to live.”
    I still hesitated, without knowing why. What was I afraid of? I believed her, didn’t I? Maybe that was it. I was too eager to believe her.
    Suddenly she reached out and put her hand on my arm.
    The gray eyes were large and unhappy and pleading.
    “Please,” she said.