“Whatever you say, Al,” Tom said.

It went a little easier with four hands at the task, and finally Kelp called, “That’s it!” and they lifted the plank one last time, putting it on one of the rails, before going back to the barrier.

The hinge holding the two planks together now straddled the barrier, the second shorter plank angling back and down into the truck. Kelp and Tiny were already pushing out the plank for the other side, and this one seemed to go easier, now that they’d all had some practice.

Next came the car. Kelp was heard puffing and grunting (no sounds from Tiny), and then the eyeless noseless face of the green Hornet came into view, its half-flat tires waddling up the slope of the planks, Kelp and Tiny pushing from behind.

Up and over the hinged plank the abused little vehicle went, tires squlging along, its human servitors patting and prodding it along its way like circus roustabouts unlading a baby elephant. When the front tires hit the rails, the soft treads sagged around the shape of the metal, making a loose grip, keeping the tires firmly in place as the rest of the car continued on down the planks. When all four wheels were on the rails, momentum pushed the Hornet another dozen feet, before it drooped to a stop.

The planks wouldn’t be needed again. They were pushed sideways and dumped onto the ground behind the barrier, parallel to the road. Then the rest of the gear was unloaded from the semi and stowed into the roofless Hornet: diving suits, tanks, trash bags of Ping-Pong balls, winch, rope, shovels, poles (for pushing), wire cutters, and all the rest.

When that was done, Kelp and Stan got back into the vehicles that had brought them here and drove away to abandon the truck, which was too big to hide and in any event was no longer needed. Then Kelp would drive Stan back, and they’d stash the Cadillac in a nearby dirt road they’d noted earlier.

Meantime, Dortmunder and Tiny and Tom started pushing the Hornet along the track. They’d thought they might need somebody at the wheel, but the softness of the tires made that unnecessary; the car rolled right along, the overhanging bulge of tires keeping them from veering off the rail. On the other hand, the soft tires also increased friction and made the car harder to push; the best they could do was a slow walking pace.

If the work hadn’t been so hard, it would have been a pretty trip, strolling along the cleared railway roadbed through the forest, with the starry sky far above the trees in the pollution-free deep-black up-country sky. Their flashlights beamed this way and that through the tree trunks and shrubbery, making aisles of light in the dark forest, the green of spring’s young leaves standing out like wet paint. Now, at nearly two in the morning, the forest was silent and peaceful, the only sounds the scuffling of their feet on the gravel and their occasional grunted remarks: “Son of a bitch bastard,” and the like.

By the time Kelp and Stan caught up, the trio with the car had reached the chain-link fence marking the boundary of reservoir property, in which Tiny was in the process of wire-cutting a huge opening. “No problem,” Kelp announced.

“Please don’t say that,” Dortmunder told him.

“It’s your plan, John,” Kelp pointed out. “What could go wrong?”

Dortmunder groaned.

Bob shone the flashlight beam on the padlock securing the bar across the dirt road leading to the reservoir. As usual, it had not been tampered with. Of course it hadn’t. The event had happened once, that’s all, and would never happen again. Making Bob come down here every night and doublecheck every padlock on every entry road around the reservoir was just a sneaky punishment for his failure to understand what was actually going on the night it happened.

The night it happened. Not a sea monster, after all, but some weird form of breaking and entering. Who would break and enter a reservoir, and for what possible reason? It didn’t make any sense, but that’s what somebody did, all right; the clipped-through padlocks found next morning, and the tracks of some large heavy vehicle leading right down to the bank of the reservoir, proved that much.

Unfortunately, these mysterious midnight prowlers had chosen to strike at a particular moment when Bob himself was overwrought, what with his just having returned from his honeymoon and starting back to work and all, and so he’d had this excessively emotional response when he’d looked out at the lake and seen what it turned out must have been a person swimming, but which, to his overwrought and excessively emotional eyes had, uh, seemed to be, um…

… a sea serpent.

Bob and the counselor had worked all this out pretty extensively the last month. In fact, Bob was beginning to believe that his terrible experiences of that moonlit night in April were a blessing in disguise, since they’d led him to Manfred, the counselor who was having an absolutely significant effect on Bob’s life.

But what a mess he’d made of things along the way, starting with his inability to find Soldier of Fortune magazine later that night when he’d driven away from the dam and home and Tiffany forever. Without Soldier of Fortune, his plans to become a hard-bitten mercenary soldier on some different and more interesting continent had been stymied, and so he’d bought a couple sixpacks instead and parked all night alone up on Ten Eyck Hill, overlooking the reservoir, waiting for the sea serpent to return.

It had not, of course, and at some point in his vigil Bob had finally passed out from exhaustion and beer (and, as he and Manfred now understood, overwroughtness and excessive emotion), and when he’d returned, bleary and messy, to his normal life the next day, he’d learned that nobody wanted him anymore. Tiffany, furious, had moved back with her parents. Down at the dam, they were talking about dereliction of duty. It wasn’t until Bob had agreed to accept counseling that his boss had decided not to fire him.

Once Tiffany had learned he was so serious about solving his problems that he’d started counseling, she’d come back as well—which had its pluses and minuses, to tell the truth—and over the course of the last month Bob felt that he and Manfred had made great strides together. Bob felt himself really coming together these days, both intellectually and emotionally. Right now, he was feeling very good about himself, very comfortable in his space.

It was going to take a little longer, though, for the crowd at work to settle down and forget the past and accept the new Bob. In the meantime, the other guys mostly didn’t talk to him—which was okay, too, considering the kind of talk they talked when they did talk—and he had this ridiculous extra duty every night, checking all the padlocks and all the roads to be sure those mysterious unknown swimmers had not returned.

But who were they? What made them do it? Cutting through padlocks, destroying official property like that, was serious business. Nobody would do such a thing just so they could go skinny-dipping with their girlfriend. Not when there were so many actual lakes and ponds all around this whole area. And not at all in April; way too cold. Some sort of Polar Bear Club branch of the ancient Druids was the only possibility Bob had come up with so far, which just didn’t sound all that probable, not even to him.

Well, again tonight, this padlock on the barrier next to the state highway was unharmed. Nevertheless, he was required to unlock it, open the bar, get into his car, drive to the property-line fence and the second padlocked barrier, check that lock, open it, and drive on to the reservoir, to the spot where it had happened.

Criminals do not return to the scene of their crime. Manfred said that was just superstition. But on the other hand, Manfred also said he should go along with everybody else for now, with all their myths and rituals, until the general community feeling was that he had atoned for his abandonment of them and their values. So that’s what he’d do.