Children of the Storm

kids,” Bill explained.
        “Why would he do that?” Blenwell asked. “What percentage would there be in it, for him?”
        “He could isolate us,” Peterson said.
        “You're not isolated so long as we have boats,” Blenwell said.
        “But he might not know that.”
        “I suppose…”
        Blenwell stepped back, motioning for Peterson to enter Hawk House. The foyer was poorly lighted, and the house curiously still except for the overly loud blare of a television set tuned to a cops and robbers story.
        Blenwell, seeing Peterson's grimace at the rat-a-tat-tat of a phoney submachine gun, smiled and said, “My grandparents watch a lot of television these days.”
        Peterson nodded and said, “If I could use your radio, it might not be necessary to take one of your boats.”
        “Of course,” Blenwell said, then stopped as if jerked on puppet strings. “What's wrong with your own radio?”
        “Someone smashed it.”
        Blenwell looked worried. “Rudolph has no idea who might have-”
        “Perhaps an idea, but no proof,” Peterson said.
        Blenwell looked at him oddly, then said, “Of course. Well, you can use our radio-phone, sure enough.”
        They went the length of the hall, past the lounge where the television set vaguely illuminated two old, motionless people who stared intently at the gray images that danced before them. At the end of the hall, they went into a small, back room which was isolated from most of the house-and here they found the Blenwells' set, as damaged as Dougherty's set had been.
        “You don't seem surprised,” Peterson had said, when Ken Blenwell discovered the trouble.
        “I'm not.”
        “Oh?”
        “I'm sure this man who's after the Dougherty kids is mad,” Blenwell explained. “And madness, rather than breeding stupidity, usually generates abnormal cunning. He wouldn't have smashed your radio and overlooked ours.”
        “You make him sound like a damned formidable opponent,” Peterson said, not trying very hard to conceal his irritation with Blenwell's off-handed manner.
        In the orange light of the lamp that rested on a pedestal beside the ruined radio-telephone, Blenwell grimaced, wiped at his face as if he were suddenly weary, and said, “Well, my friend, to date, hasn't he proved himself to be just that?”
        “He won't succeed.”
        “We hope.”
        “I know.”
        “Then you know much more than most mortal men,” Blenwell had said, looking at him oddly again, as if probing for something, trying to guess how much-of what?-Peterson might know or suspect.
        Peterson had turned away from the other man and walked to the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “Where are your boats?”
        “I'll take you to them,” Blenwell said, shouldering past Bill, taking him across the kitchen and out the back door. He walked hurriedly over the rear lawn, to the beach steps and then down. In the center of the cove, in a boathouse alongside the pier where Sonya had first seen Blenwell, they found the sailboat and the cabin cruiser.
        Scuttled.
        Blenwell just stood there, smiling ruefully at the boats as they lay like rocks in the water of the boathouse, so heavy with water that they were not rocked at all by the tide that rolled through the open doors.
        Peterson, his mouth abruptly punk dry with fear, said, “We're really in a tight jam, now, aren't we?” He looked at Blenwell, puzzled by the other man's equanimity in the face of his personal losses, and he said, “You expected this, too, didn't you?”
        “It occurred to me,” Blenwell admitted, “that if he'd destroyed your boat and your radio, he might also have visited my boatshed. In fact, I thought it highly probable.”
        “You're taking it awfully well.”
        “It's done.”
        Blenwell turned, and he walked away from the two boats, out of the boathouse and back toward the mansion.
        Following him, Peterson noted his dirty trousers and the slowly drying water stains from cuffs to knees.
        “Surf fishing tonight?” Peterson had asked.
        Blenwell turned.
        He said, “What?”
        Peterson motioned at his wet slacks. “I wondered if you were surf fishing?”
        “Oh. Yes, I was, in fact.”
        “Catch anything?”
        “No.”
        Back at the house, Peterson said, “You don't have a gun, by chance, do