Free Funeral By The Sea by George G. Gilman

parched.
    He reached the foot of the steps on the completion of his third circuit of the empty basement and looked up at the narrow strip of sunlight which showed where the two trapdoors came together. And his mind was now thinking clearly enough for him to realize that there should not have been such an uninterrupted line of light, that it should have been broken in two places by the securing bolts.
    He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and went up the steps, halted with his head cocked to one side, ear close to the crack. And could hear only the low thud of waves breaking on the beach and the occasional shrill cry of a seabird.
    The hinges creaked a little when he eased open the trapdoors and held them to either side of him, as he came further up the steps to look for whoever had made it possible for him to escape the basement. But the area between the side of the house and the southern headland of the bay was deserted.
    He stepped out from the access and lowered the doors, slid the bolts to refasten them closed. Then went to the front corner of the house and flattened himself to the wall, peered with one eye around it to look along the street.
    Three whores stood outside of the cantina, idly gossiping in the manner of women with time on their hands on any street of any town. Out front of the adobe houses, some small children played. At some doorways and windows, Mexican women gazed across the beach to the ridge of sand, where men were starting to shove the boats down the slope toward the water’s edge.
    The whores cursed and moved away when the fat Mexican woman vigorously pushed a broom under the batwings to sweep a pile of stale sawdust and a billowing cloud of dust out into the street.
    So, with no orders to the contrary, the second-class citizens of Oceanville were going about their business in the usual manner. While, up on the cliff top, there was neither sound nor sight of what Hal Delroy and his men were doing to find the sharpshooter.
    Barnaby Gold withdrew from the front corner of the house and went to the rear. He ducked beneath the four windows he had to pass, in case the ash-blonde Emily was in any of the rooms beyond, or the servants Eve Delroy had mentioned.
    The outbuildings behind the house were sited to form three sides of a square and he moved around the backs of them to stay out of sight of the house window. He was almost at the far corner of the big barn where he heard footfalls on the square area enclosed by the buildings and came to an abrupt halt. Then tensed to lunge forward when he saw a figure appear ten feet in front of him, stepping into view at the corner of the barn.
    It was a woman, tall and statuesque, with ash-blonde hair. She brought up a hand fast and a sense of fear greater than pain gripped Gold. But then he saw her hand was empty, clenched into a fist except for the forefinger that was extended. And Emily rested this finger to her lips in a sign for him to be silent.
    He felt incredibly weak and had to lean against the barn wall. She shot a glance along the side of the barn and quickly came toward him, her lovely face showing the same depth of fear which he had experienced a moment earlier.
    He jutted out his lower lip to blow a draught of cool air up over his sweat-beaded face as his green eyes asked countless tacit questions of her. But she kept her finger pressed to her lips as she shook her head. Then cocked her head in a gesture of listening.
    He continued to look at her, but without expression now, as he heard the footfalls approach the stable block, then the opening of the double doors. She wore the same white evening gown, low cut and full skirted, as when he had last seen her. Stained now with blood from her cut arm and dirty from being dragged in off the stoop. Her once elegant hairstyle was disheveled, her make-up was washed off and she no longer had expensive rings on her fingers.
    ‘All right, so you don’t feel like goin’ to work,’ Seth Harrow said