That could be me, he thought.

Kelp sat on the stone bench on the westbound platform like the last-ever passenger waiting for a train that will never come. Legs crossed, arms folded, body pushed slightly forward by the bulk of the scuba tank, he sat mostly at his ease; vaguely visible in the diffuse glow from his headlamp, water lazily ebbing and flowing around him, and if he could have seen himself there, in the drowned town, in the brown water, waiting on the ruined platform for the nonexistent train, he would definitely have scared himself.

But he couldn’t see himself, nor was there anyone else to observe him seated there. Minute after minute there was nobody else, and after a while Kelp began to fidget, began to feel a little cold and uncomfortable on this stone bench, began, in fact, to feel quite alone here in Putkin’s Corners.

Where was Doug? Wouldn’t he have to follow the tracks to the station? Wasn’t that the most logical, the only thing, he could do? And then—

Light. Vague, dim, barely discernible inside the muck, made harder to see by the diffusion of his own light. Hard even to be sure it truly existed, wasn’t merely some refracted ray of his own headlamp’s gleam, but wasn’t that, over there, not along the track but over on the far side, on the east bound platform, where he hadn’t expected to see anything at all, some sort of light?

I should reach up, Kelp thought, and switch off my lamp to make it easier to see that light over there; if there’s really a light over there to be seen. The problem was, he’d had plenty of time by now to get himself good and spooked, which he hadn’t realized until that other light—if it existed—had come swimming more or less into view from a completely unexpected direction. What if it was a— Well, there aren’t any ghosts, really, but— Underwater, somehow, the regular rules didn’t seem to apply. Maybe anything that wanted to exist could exist, down here, at the bottom, away from people. Maybe that light was… anything at all.

Kelp managed to lift his right hand and touch the switch on his headlamp, but he never did summon the strength to turn it off. He just sat there, hand to head, while the light across the way floated and swayed, moved into nonexistence, flowed back again, disappeared once more, and then suddenly came straight at him! Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

It was Doug. Kelp felt vast relief and didn’t even mind when Doug hauled him to his feet and shook a stern finger at him, which he then pointed at the white nylon cord wrapped around his other wrist. This cord drifted away upward into the dark, and the second Kelp saw it he remembered what he was supposed to have done first thing out of the boat.

Of course! Dummy! Elaborately, he demonstrated to Doug his understanding, embarrassment, apology, by throwing both hands up in the air, then smacking himself on the ear, shaking his head, punching himself on the jaw, pounding his right fist into his left palm…

Doug grabbed both his wrists. When Kelp looked inquiringly at him, Doug released the wrists and made down-patting gestures: take it easy.

Oh. Sure. Kelp nodded, flashing his headlamp up and down Doug’s person.

Next, Doug selected one of several more nylon cords hooked to his weight belt and tied the other end to Kelp’s belt. Now they could be up to eight feet apart but wouldn’t lose each other.

Great. Kelp expressed his pleasure in this move by firmly shaking Doug’s hand with both of his. Doug nodded, a bit impatiently, pulled his hand free, and made walking movements with his fingers.

Right. Kelp nodded emphatically again, and would have turned and walked from here to the library but that Doug suddenly lifted up into the air—into the water—and started swimming away. Hastily, before the rope linking them could get taut, Kelp launched himself off the platform and followed.

The thing about needing a cloudy night to do whatever it is you want to do, that means you have to be prepared to accept clouds with all their implications.

Dortmunder sat in the rubber boat, bored, sleepy, a little chilly, also apprehensive about Andy Kelp. Was he okay down there? Would Doug find him? If there was some sort of trouble, wouldn’t Doug have come back to say so by now?

Plip, on the back of his hand. Thinking it was some kind of splash from the water all around him, he brushed it off.

Plip. Forehead this time. Plip-plip-plip.

No. Dortmunder lifted his head toward the completely beclouded sky. Plipliplipliplplplppppppp…

“Of course,” Dortmunder said, and hunched his shoulders against the rain.

They kept off the bottom as much as possible to limit turbidity, but they were near the bottom all the time. First, the end of the measuring cord with the red ribbon tied around it was placed by Doug at the right rear corner of the library, while Kelp ranged as far as the connecting rope would permit, found a rock, brought it back, and used it to hold the red-ribboned cord in place. Then they moved along the rear wall like wasps under a house eave, setting the cord against the base of the building, till they came to the knot.

This time it was Kelp who held the cord in position, while Doug swam this way and that, exactly like a fish in a too-small aquarium, and eventually came back with a rock of his own, which was placed atop the knot.

The next part would be tricky. They wanted to mark a distance out across the field at right angles to the library wall. They’d rehearsed this in daylight, on dry land, in the back yard at 46 Oak Street, but doing it under present conditions was still kind of strange. For instance, they hadn’t spent all their time flying over the back yard.

First, Kelp stood straddling the knot, his back—or the scuba tank, actually—against the library wall, his face turned outward so the beam from his headlamp marked the right angle. Then Doug, paying out the cord as he went, swam eight feet away along that light beam and paused there with the new line of cord resting on the bottom. Kelp now lifted into the water, kick-swam forward about four feet, and put his second flashlight on the ground beside the cord, switched on, the beam running out along the rest of the cord. Then he came forward to where Doug waited, straddled the cord again, and Doug backed away slowly, paying out more cord, keeping his alignment with the two lights until he’d gone another eight feet. Then they repeated the procedure all over again.

According to Wally’s calculations, the center of the buried casket would be thirty-seven feet out from the library wall, which meant they had to go through their slow underwater gavotte five times before they reached the second knot in the measuring cord, the one that said, Dig here.

At last. Floating over the spot, heads close, haloed in sepia illumination, Kelp and Doug grinned around their mouthpieces at each other. Victory was in their grasp.

What happens when the boat fills with rainwater? It can’t sink, can it? These doughnut sides are filled with air.

But the damn thing can sure wallow, all right. In fact, with Dortmunder’s weight in it, the boat’s attitude seemed to be that if it filled with water it would be perfectly happy to loll around just a few inches below the surface, soaking Dortmunder to the bone and ruining the little 10hp motor.

Number one, he wasn’t dressed for this crap. He’d known he was going to be outdoors, on the reservoir, in a boat, in the dark, in June, with the temperature fairly cool, so he’d worn solid thick-soled shoes and wool socks and black chinos and a zipper-front weatherproof jacket. But none of that was enough. Not in this rain. Not underwater.

And that was number two. NO UNDERWATER. That was the deal this time, that’s why Dortmunder wasn’t suited up like Kelp and Doug. He would go along with everybody else, he would even go on the water if it would help, but in the water, no.