I hesitated. I didn’t like to leave all these people who were so blindly standing and sitting around us. But Smith’s face wasn’t the face of a cautious man. He had the look of one who might easily disregard the presence of a hundred witnesses.
I turned around and walked through the crowd. His right hand lay familiarly on my shoulder as he walked behind me; his left hand held his gun, under the overcoat, against my spine.
The deck was deserted. A heavy fog, wet as rain—the fog of San Francisco Bay’s winter nights—lay over boat and water, and had driven everyone else inside. It hung about us, thick and impenetrable; I couldn’t see so far as the end of the boat, in spite of the lights glowing overhead.
I stopped.
Smith prodded me in the back.
“Farther away, where we can talk,” he rumbled in my ear.
I went on until I reached the rail.
The entire back of my head burned with sudden fire … tiny points of light glittered in the blackness before me … grew larger … came rushing toward me. …