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he disappeared.” Knox thought of Tinsley’s old crew, one dead here and one disappeared in Mexico—and of Orvil Curtis.
    He said, “Where do we go from here?” He poured the last of the brandy into their glasses. “I can go down there openly and claim I’m on a missing person’s case for an insurance company. But what about you?”
    Nat tossed off the brandy and let the glass roll across the rug. “Let
me
figure that out,” she said.

CHAPTER IV
    Knox hadn’t been in Mexico for some time, and never in this part—along the coast between Tampico and Vera Cruz. He was bouncing over a road that had obviously been built for especially trained mules. Some distance back a sign saying “La Cruz” had turned him from the narrow, roughly paved main road. By now, he thought, he should be very close to the Gulf of Mexico.
    It appeared without warning. He nosed over the top of a rise and there was the amazingly blue water spread out in magnificent panorama. At the foot of the hill lay a clustered handful of adobe huts. Knox was a little disappointed in La Cruz, but he had to admire the bay, with a tall, graceful line of palms dipping out over the water and a strip of shining sand curving up almost to the first buildings. The continuation of the hill he had just come over made one arm of the bay; a jetty to which a number of fishing smacks were tied seemed to be the other.
    Farther out, Knox could see long, narrow Horsetail Island, and south and somewhat west of it, the fantastic upthrust of black rock that looked as though it were on fire with the plume of fog mushrooming from it. Even in the bright afternoon sunlight, the little island had a foreboding air about it.
    Knox wrestled his car down a sandy track toward the town. At the base of the hill, the road branched, going to the left into La Cruz and to the right up the slope again. At the junction was a brightly painted arrow and beneath it, a sign: VIEWHOUSE. THE FISHERMAN’S HOME AWAY FROM HOME. A man in the pajama-like native costume was draped languidly over one corner of the sign. As Knox slowed the car, he straightened up and came forward.
    Knox was surprised to see him move. This was the siesta hour, and even so close to the ocean, the air was hot and heavy and the sun scorched down. Knox’s summer suit was plastered to his lean body and he had given up smoking some distance back.
    Taking off his sunglasses, he examined the man now leaning in the car window. He was young, although a fierce black mustache gave him a fairly mature appearance. He appeared slim and wiry, a man in his early twenties with good features, large dark eyes, and a thick head of black hair neatly plastered into a ducktail.
    “Hi,” he said. “There’s no place to stay in town. We got lots of room at the Viewhouse.”
    A shill, Knox thought. A barker, a come-on man for a tourist trap on the edge of nowhere. He looked toward the town and decided that the boy might be right. There was no place to stay, unless he could count the lone two-story building on which was painted faintly: CANTINA. ROOMS.
    “What is this Viewhouse?” Knox spoke Spanish with ease, but he saw no reason to advertise the fact. Besides, the boy spoke English with a strictly American accent.
    “It’s a real joint,” he said. “Brand new. Lots of class.” He was grinning, but his eyes were shrewd, obviously measuring Knox’s expensive suit, his ten thousand dollars’ worth of foreign automobile, and Knox himself. “They got everything you want.”
    “Let’s go then.”
    The boy went around the car and opened the door. Before he let himself down on the hot leather of the seat, he politely kicked dust from his rope-soled sandals. “Nice,” he said, looking admiringly at the intricate dashboard.
    The rough track took them around the brow of the hill. After a brief climb, Knox saw Viewhouse. He stopped the car to gape. Out of sight of the village, but with a sweeping view of the bay, the islands, and a good deal