reminded me too much of our scaley little mouse. It's hard to say without having ; the 
mouse right here to make comparisons, but there seemed to me to be some similarity 
between the shell on that mouse's lower body and that big shell upstairs.'
    I switched off the Country Squire's engine so that we wouldn't all die of carbon 
monoxide poisoning. It was warm enough now to last us until Sheriff Wilkes arrived. 
Shelley yawned and stretched and curled himself up into a hairy, tabby ball. It really 
needed talent to be as lazy as that.
    I took out a cigarillo. It was my last. I stuck it between my teeth and said: 'You 
think some bigger animal could have drunk the well water, just like the mouse, and had 
the same thing happen to it?'
    'If the water a>as to blame, then the odds are in favour of it, I'd say,' said Dan. 
'It could have been a dog, maybe. The Bodines do have a dog, don't they, and we haven't 
seen any sign of that.'
    'We haven't seen any sign of the Bodines, either,' I reminded him.
    He looked away. 'That's been on my mind, too. But until we know if it is the water 
for sure, and until we know if those organisms affect humans, then that's the kind of 
conjecture I don't think I want to make.'
    I took out my matches. 'At least it didn't affect Oliver. I mean, he drowned, but he 
must have drunk the well water just as much as Jimmy and Alison, and there weren't any 
signs of scales on him.'
    Dan rubbed his eyes. 'I don't seriously think that Jimmy and Alison are walking 
around looking like some kind of advertisement for Schwom's Sea-food Shanty, do you?'
    I struck a match, and at that moment I thought I saw somebody crossing the front lawn 
of the house. The flaring orange reflection of the match on the inside of the windshield 
made it difficult to make sure, and so I quickly blew out the match and stared into the 
darkness again.
    'What's the matter?' asked Dan.
    'I don't know. It loods like there's someone out there. Hold on a minute.'
    I opened the station wagon door and got out. For a brief split-second, I thought I 
saw a man walking away from me, over by the far fence. It was too dark to see very 
clearly, but he appeared to be hunched and bulky, and moving with an odd kind of swaying 
step. I called: 'Jimmy? Is that Jimmy?' and the man appeared to turn towards me, but so 
quickly that I couldn't see who it was before he vanished into the grainy shadows. I 
called out: 'Jimmy!' once more, and then I started to run across the grass towards the 
fence. Behind me, I heard Dan open his door and come loping in hot pursuit. My breath 
froze in the cold air, and the sound of my heartbeat and my rustling clothes seemed to be 
the loudest noises in the whole world.
    I reached the rail. Beyond it, there was a thick hedge of thorn
    bushes, impossible for a man to penetrate without scratching himself to hamburger 
meat. I stopped, panting, and Dan came gasping and wheezing after me, and we both stood 
there and looked at the hedge in bewilderment.
    'Did you see who it was?' asked Dan.
    'I don't know. It could have been anybody. Maybe it was just the shadows. I don't see 
how anyone could have gotten through those bushes.'
    We walked a little way along the rail in each direction, but there didn't appear to 
be any gaps in the hedge at all. If there had been somebody there, he must have cleared 
the hedge with one tremendous bionic leap, or else he'd simply run the length of it under 
the cover of the shadows. I didn't think he could have done that, though, without my 
seeing him. When I started running, he couldn't have been much farther than one hundred 
and fifty feet away. Only an Olympic-class athlete could have run right down to the road 
and out of sight before I got there; and from what I'd seen of this fellow, he was heavy 
and gimpy
    and slow.
    We listened. The wind blew soft and cold through the hedge, and the dead leaves 
curled among the thorns crackled with a sound that was too much like cracking lobster 
claws for comfort.
    'I don't know what we're being so damned nervous about,' said Dan, cross with 
himself, and equally irritated with me. 'We don't have any evidence of anything, and yet 
we're jumping around like a couple of college students in a haunted house.'
    I started to walk back towards the station wagon, and Dan followed me. I didn't know 
whether I was over-reacting or not. I knew that a certain amount of the adrenalin that 
was rushing around my bloodstream had been evoked by imagination. Under the 
circumstances, it was pretty difficult not to have horrible images of Jimmy and Alison 
Bodine being slowly overtaken by some kind of scaley growth. But I knew I had seen 
something, or somebody, and considering young Oliver had been drowned only a few hours 
earlier, I think I could be forgiven for feeling edgy. I'm not a coward. I'll bend a 
pipe-wrench over anybody's head without a qualm, if it's necessary. But I'm not so sure 
about things that whisper in the dark, or creep about gardens at midnight, and I'm 
certainly not sure about bedrooms that can be unnaturally flooded in deserted houses.
    We had almost reached the station wagon when there was a single whoop of a siren, and 
Sheriff Wilkes' car came around the curve in the road with its red light flashing. It 
pulled up right behind my Country Squire and Sheriff Wilkes got out, accompanied by three 
of his deputies.
    'The coroner's on his way, too,' called Carter. 'Can you tell me where the body is?'
    'Upstairs, second bedroom on the right.'
    Carter Wilkes was a big man, almost six-four, with a belly to match. His face was 
coarse and broad, with intent, crow's-footed eyes, and shaggy eyebrows. His uniforms were 
always immaculately laundered, and his shoes always sparkled, and he was a lifelong 
devotee of dental floss. He had a pretty Chinese wife and a son who played basketball for 
Hartford.
    'You guys want to come up with me, show me what you found?' asked Carter.
    'If you think it's absolutely necessary,' I said. 'It isn't very pleasant in there.'
    'Sudden death doesn't often improve a home too much,' countered Carter.
    'I guess not,' I told him.
    We showed Carter and his deputies the way through the kitchen to the sodden-carpeted 
hallway. He wanted to know when we'd arrived, and what we were doing there, and what had 
first made us suspicious. Had we seen any footprints on the wet staircarpet? Had we heard 
any suspicious noises? Where did I think the water had come from? Why hadn't I turned it 
off at the main stopcock straight away?
    All six of us squelched upstairs, and I pointed to young Oliver's bedroom. Two of the 
deputies carried heavy-duty flashlights, and they lit the place up in all its damp, 
clammy sadness. Oliver was still lying where we had left him, his face blue and his eyes 
wide open. Sheriff Wilkes squatted down beside him and stared at him for a long time. He 
didn't touch him. Then he looked up and all around the room, taking in the peeling 
wallpaper, the dripping furniture, the tidemark around the picture-rail.
    'You're the plumber,' he said, turning to me. 'What do you think could have caused 
all this?'
    'I don't know," I admitted. 'The room wasn't even sealed up, so it must have been 
some kind of freak flash flood. But I don't know where the water came from, or how it 
could have filled up the place so fast. A room this size would take anything up to five