The Flying Death
by Samuel Hopkins Adams · English · Gutenberg #44324 · 276,935 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Flying Death
Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams
Illustrator: C. R. Macauley
Release date: December 1, 2013 [eBook #44324]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44324
Credits: David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLYING DEATH ***
[Illustration]
The Flying Death
by Samuel Hopkins Adams
To
Schuyler C. Brandt
in token of a friendship which,
begun at old Hamilton,
has endured and strengthened,
as only college friendships can,
for an unbroken twenty years,
this book is dedicated.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE—THE INSOMNIAC
CHAPTER TWO—THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT
CHAPTER THREE—THE SEA-WAIF
CHAPTER FOUR—THE DEATH IN THE BUOY
CHAPTER FIVE—THE CRY IN THE DUSK
CHAPTER SIX—HELGA
CHAPTER SEVEN—THE WONDERFUL WHALLEY
CHAPTER EIGHT—THE UNHORSED NIGHTFARER
CHAPTER NINE—CROSS-PURPOSES
CHAPTER TEN—THE TERROR BY NIGHT
CHAPTER ELEVEN—THE BODY ON THE SAND
CHAPTER TWELVE—THE SENATUS
CHAPTER THIRTEEN—THE NEW EVIDENCE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN—THE EARLY EXCURSION
CHAPTER FIFTEEN—THE PROFESSOR ACTS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN—THE LOST CLUE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN—THE PROFESSOR’S SERMON
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN—READJUSTMENTS
CHAPTER NINETEEN—THE LONE SURVIVOR
CHAPTER ONE
THE INSOMNIAC
STANLEY RICHARD COLTON, M. D., heaved his powerful form to and fro in
his bed and cursed the day he had come to Montant Point, which chanced
to be the day just ended. All the world had been open to him, and his
father’s yacht to bear him to whatsoever corner thereof he might elect,
in search of that which, once forfeited, no mere millions may buy back,
the knack of peaceful sleep. But his wise old family physician had
prescribed the tip-end of Long Island. “Go down there to that suburban
wilderness, Dick,” he had said, “and devote yourself to filling your
lungs with the narcotic ocean air. Practise feeding, breathing and
loafing, and forget that you’ve ever practised medicine.”
Too much medicine was what ailed Dick Colton. Not that he had been
taking it. On the contrary he had been administering it to others. Amid
the unbounded amazement of his friends, who couldn’t see why the heir
of the great Colton interests should want to devote his energies
otherwhere, he had insisted on graduating from medical school, and,
with a fashionable practice fairly yearning for him, had entered upon
the grimy and malodorous duties of a dispensary among the
tenement-folk. There, because the chances of birth had given him a good
intelligence which his own efforts had kept brightened and sharpened,
because Providence had equipped him with a comely and powerful body,
which his own manner of life had kept attuned to strength and vigour,
and because Heaven had blessed him with the heart and the face of a
boy, whereof his own fineness and enthusiasm had kept the one untainted
and the other defiant of care and lines, he had become a power in the
slums. It was only by eternal vigilance that he had kept himself from
being elected an alderman from one of the worst districts in New York.
There came a week of terrible heat when the tenements vented forth
their half-naked sufferers nightly upon the smoking asphalt, and the
Angel of Death smote his daily hundreds with a sword of flame. Dick
Colton fought for the lives of his people, and was already at the limit
of endurance when Fate, employing as its dismayed instrument a
contractor with liberal views on the subject of dynamite, reduced the
dispensary outfit in one fell shock to a mass of shattered glass and a
mephitic compound of tinctures, extracts and powders. Only one thing
was to be done, and the young physician did it. He stocked up again,
attending to all details himself, using his own money and his own
energy freely, and proving to his own satisfaction that strong coffee
and wet towels about the head would enable a man to live and toil on
four hours’ sleep a night.
When, at length, a two days’ rain had drenched the fevered city to
coolness, Dick Colton drew a deep breath and said: “Now I’ll go to
sleep and sleep for a week.”
But the drugs which for so many weary days had filled his entire
attention declined now to be evicted from his thoughts. Disposing
themselves in neatly labelled bottles, all of a size, they marched in
monotonous and nauseating files before his closed eyes, each individual
of the passing show introducing itself by some outrageous and
incredible title utterly unknown to the art and practice of pharmacy.
To think upon sheep jumping in undulatory procession over a stone wall,
so the wisdom of our forebears tell us, is to invite slumber. To
contemplate misnamed medicine bottles interminably hurdling the bridge
of one’s nose, operates otherwise. From the family doctor Colton had
carried his vision to Montauk Point with him.
Now, on this cool September midnight he rose, struck a light, and found
himself facing two neat, little, beribboned perfume jars, representing
the decorative ideas of little Mrs. Johnston, the hostess of Third
House. It was too much. Resentment at this shabby practical joke of
Fate rose in his soul. Seizing the pair of bottles, he hurled them
mightily, one after the other, into outer darkness. The crash of the
second upon the stone wall surrounding the little hotel was rather
startlingly followed by an exclamation.
“I beg your pardon,” cried Colton, rather abashed. “Hope I didn’t hit
you.”
“You did not—with the second missile,” said the voice dryly.
“It was very stupid of me. The fact is,” Colton continued, groping for
an excuse, “I heard some kind of a noise outside and I thought it was a
cat.”
“Where did you hear it?” interrupted the voice rather sharply. “Did it
seem to be on the ground, or in mid-air?”
Colton’s frazzled nerves jumped all together, and in different
directions. “Have I been sent to a private lunatic asylum?” he inquired
of himself.
“Lest my manner of inquiry may seem strange to you,” continued the
voice, “I may state that I am Professor Ravenden, formerly connected
with the National Museum at Washington, D. C., and that your remark as
to an unrecognised noise may have an important bearing upon certain
phenomena in which I am scientifically interested.”
Dick Colton groaned in spirit. “Here I’ve told a polite and innocent
lie to this mysterious pedant,” he said to himself, “and of course I
get caught at it.” He leaned out of the window, when a broad, spreading
flare of lightning from the south showed, on the lawn beneath him, the
figure of a slight, compactly built man of fifty-odd, dressed with
rigorous neatness in Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, and carrying a
broken lantern and a butterfly net. His thin, prim and tanned face was
as indicative of character as his precise and meticulous mode of
speech.
“Did I break your lantern?” asked the young doctor contritely.
“As I do not carry my lantern in the small of my back, you did not,
sir,” returned the professor with an asperity which reminded Colton
that he had put considerable muscle into his throw. “A loose rock which
turned under my foot upset me,” he continued, “and the glass of my
lantern was broken in the fall. The rising gale prevented my relighting
it. Your opportune light, I may add, alone enabled me to locate the
house.”
“Perhaps my unintended rudeness may be pardoned because of my
involuntary service, then,” said Colton, with the courtesy which was
natural to him.
There was a moment’s pause. Then, “If I may venture to impose upon your
kindness,” said the man on the lawn, “will you put on some clothes and
join me here? It is a matter of considerable possible
importance—scientifically.”
“Anything to avoid monotony,” said the other, rather grimly. “I’m here
for excitement, apparently.”
Worming his way into a sweater, trousers and shoes, he went downstairs
and joined his new acquaintance on the veranda.
“My name is Colton, Dr. Stanley Colton,” he said. “What is it you want
me for?”
“I wish the testimony of your younger eyes and ears,” said the other.
“Would you object to a walk of a third of a mile?”
“Not at all,” returned the other, becoming interested. “Shall I see if
I can rustle up a lantern?”
“No,” said the professor thoughtfully. “I think it would be better not.
Yes; decidedly we are better without a light. Come.”
He led the way, swiftly and sure-footedly, though it was pitch-dark
except when the lightning lent its swift radiance.
“I was out in search of a rare species of Catocala—a moth of this
locality—when I heard the—the curious sound to which I hope to call
your attention,” he paused to explain.
He hurried on in silence, Colton following in puzzled expectation. At
the top of a mound they stopped, and were almost swept off their feet
by a furious gust of wind which died down, only to be succeeded by a
second, hardly less violent. In a glare of lightning that spread across
the south, Colton saw the fretted waters of a little lake below them.
“We’re going to get that storm, I think,” he said.
No reply came from his companion. In silence they stood, for perhaps
ten or fifteen minutes. Then the wind dropped temporarily. Colton was
wondering whether courtesy to the peculiar individual who had haled him
forth on this errand of darkness was going to cost him a wetting, when
the wind dropped and the night fell silent.
“There! Did you hear it?” the professor exclaimed suddenly.
Colton had heard, and now he heard again, a strange sound, from
overhead and seeming to come from a considerable distance; faintly
harsh, and strident, with a metallic sonance.
“Almost overhead and to the west, was it not?” pursued the other.
“Watch there for the lightning flash.”
The lightning came, in one of those broad, sheetlike flickers that seem
to irradiate the world for countable seconds. Professor Ravenden’s arm
shot out.
“Did you see?” he cried.
Darkness fell as the query was completed. “I saw nothing,” replied
Colton. “Did you? What did you see?”
A clap of wind blew away the reply, if there was any. This time the
wind rose steadily. They waited another quarter of an hour, the gale
blowing without pause.
“This is profitless,” said Professor Eavenden, at length. “We had best
go home.”
Thankful for the respite, the younger man rose from the little
depression where he had crouched for shelter from the wind. With a
thrill of surprised delight, he realised that he was healthily sleepy.
The quick, hard walk, the unwonted exercise, and the soft, fresh
sweetness of the air, had produced an anodyne effect. But was the air
so sweet? Colton turned and sniffed up wind.
“Do you smell anything peculiar?” he asked his companion.
“Unfortunately I am troubled with a catarrh which deadens my sense of
smell,” replied the scientist.
“There’s a peculiar reek in the air. I caught it with that last shift
of wind. It’s like something I’ve come across before. There!”
“Can you not describe it?”
“Why, it’s—it’s a sickish, acid sort of odour,” said Colton hesitantly.
“Where have I—— Oh, well, it’s probably a dead animal up to windward.”
As they reached the house, he turned to the other.
“What was it you thought you saw?” he asked bluntly. “What are you
looking for?”
“I am not satisfied that I saw anything,” answered Professor Ravenden
evasively. “Imagination is a powerful factor, when the eye must
accomplish its search in the instantaneous revelation of a lightning
flash. As for what I am seeking, you heard as much as I. I thank you
for your help, and, if you will pardon me, I will bid you good-night
here, as I wish to make a few notes before retiring.”
Leaving the professor busied by candle light at the desk in the main
room, Dick Colton cautiously tiptoed up the stairs. At the top he
stopped dead. From an open door at the end of the hall issued a shaft
of light. In the soft glow stood a girl. Her face was toward Colton.
Her eyes met his, but un-seeingly, for he was in the shadow, and her
vision was dazzled by the light she had just made. Her face was softly
flushed with sleep and her dark eyes were liquid under the heavy lids.
She was dressed in some filmy, fluffy garment, the like of which Colton
did not know existed. Nor had he realised that such creatures as this
girl who had so suddenly stepped into his world, existed. He held his
breath lest the sweetest, softest, most radiant vision that had ever
met his eyes, should vanish. The Vision pushed a mass of heavy black
hair back from its forehead, and spoke.
“Father,” it said.
“Father,” she said again. Then with a note of petulance in the soft,
rippling voice. “Oh, Dad, you’re not going out again.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Colton in a husky voice that belonged to
someone whom he didn’t know. “Your father is downstairs. I’ll call
him.” But the Vision had flashed out of his range. The light was shut
out, and all that remained to him was the echo of a soft, dismayed,
frightened little exclamation.
Having delivered the message to Professor Ravenden, and received his
absent-minded, “In a minute,” the insomniac returned to his room.
Strangely enough, it was while he was striving to fix on the
photographic lens of his brain every light and shadow of that radiant
girl-figure, that the solution of the strange noise came, unsought, to
him. He went to the foot of the stairs to tell the professor, who was
still writing.
“I think I know what the sound was that we heard, Professor Ravenden,”
he said. “It was very like the rubbing of one wire on another.”
“Very like,” agreed the professor.
“Probably a telegraph or telephone wire, broken and grating in the
gale, against the others.”
The professor continued to write.
“Good-night,” said Colton.
“Good-night, Dr. Colton,” said the scientist quietly, “and thank you
again. By the way, there is no wire of any kind within half a mile of
where we stood.”
Two problems Dick Colton took with him as exorcisers of the
processional medicine bottles, when he threw himself on his bed and
closed his eye. It was not the sound in the darkness, however, but the
face in the light that prevailed as he dropped to sleep.
CHAPTER TWO
THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT
BEFORE the dream had fairly enchained him Colton was buffeted back to
consciousness by a slamming of doors and a general bustling about in
the house. He sat up in bed, and looked out over the ocean just in time
to see a fiery serpent writhe up through the blackness and thrust into
the clouds a head which burst into wind-driven fragments of radiance,
before the vaster glory of the lightning surrounded and wiped it out.
“A wreck, I fear,” said Professor Eavenden in the hall outside. “I
shall go down to the shore, in case I can be of assistance.”
“Indeed you shall not!” came a quick contradiction from the room at the
end of the hall. “Not until I’m ready to go with you.”
It was the voice of the Vision. Colton observed that, soft as the tones
were, a certain quality of decisiveness inhered in them.
“Can’t Mr. Haynes bring you?” suggested the professor mildly. “I see a
light in his room.”
“He’ll have his hands full with Helga. Please wait, Dad. I won’t be ten
minutes.”
From downstairs rose a banging of doors, a tramping of feet and the
gruff voice of Johnston, the host, mingled with the gentle
remonstrances of his wife, in which a certain insistence upon rubber
boots was discernible. On the other side of Colton there was a swishing
and thumping, as of one in hasty search for some article that had
declined to stay put. “Where the devil is that sweater?” came in a sort
of growling appeal to whatever Powers of Detection might be within
hearing.
“Don’t swear, Mr. Haynes,” sounded in tones of soft gaiety from the end
room, and the sweaterless one responded: “The half of it hath not been
told you. Got a sweater to lend a poor man with a weak chest, Miss
Ravenden?”
“I’m just getting into my one and only garment of the kind,” was the
muffled answer.
A second woman’s voice, low, but with a wonderful, deep, full-throated
sonance in it, broke in:
“My dream has come true,” it said gravely. “The ship is coming in on
Graveyard Point. How long, Petit Père?”
“With you in a minute, Princess. Just let me get into my boots,”
returned the voice of the seeker, but so altered by a certain caressing
fellowship that Colton was half-minded to think he heard a new
participant.
“Are you dressed already, Helga?” demanded Miss Ravenden. “How _do_ you
do it?”
“I hadn’t undressed, Dolly,” said the other girl, gravely. “I knew—I
felt that something——”
She paused.
“Helga’s dreams always come to pass, you know,” said the man of the
elusive sweater half banteringly. “_What_ infernal kind of a knot has
that shoe lace tied itself into?”
“Pray God this dream doesn’t come to pass,” said the girl outside,
under her breath as she passed Colton’s door.
Another rocket and a third pierced the night and the response came, in
a rising glow of light from the beach. “The life-savers are at hand,”
observed the professor below. “Make haste, daughter. If we are—”
A burst of thunder drowned him out.
“This,” said Colton with conviction, as he dove into his heavy jersey
jacket and seized a cap from a peg, “is going to be a grand place for
an insomnia patient! I can see that, right at the start.”
As he ran out of his door he collided violently with a small, dark,
sinewy man who had hurriedly emerged from the opposite room.
“Don’t apologise, and I won’t,” said Colton as they clutched each
other. “My name is Colton. Yours is Haynes. May I go to the shore with
you? I don’t know the way.”
“Apparently you don’t know the way to the stairs,” returned the other a
trifle tartly. Looking at his keen, pallid and deeply lined face, the
young doctor set him down as a rather irritable fellow, and suspected
dyspepsia. “Everybody will be going to the beach,” he added. “If you
follow along you’ll probably get there.”
“Thanks,” said Dick undisturbedly. It was a principle of his that the
ill-temper of others was no logical reason for ill-temper in himself.
In this case his principle worked well, for Haynes said with tolerable
civility:
“You just came in this evening, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I seem to have met the market for excitement.”
By this time they had reached the large living-room, where they found
Mrs. Johnston presiding with ill-directed advice over the struggles of
her grey-bearded husband to insert himself into a pair of boots of
insufficient calibre.
“Twenty-five years o’ service in the life-savin’ corps an’ ain’t let to
go out now without these der-r-r-ratted contraptions!” he fumed.
A splendid, tawny-haired girl in an oilskin jacket stood looking out
into the night, her eyes vivid with a brooding excitement. She turned
as Haynes came in.
“Are you ready, Petit Père? I’m smothering in these things.”
Expressively she passed her hands down along the oilskins, which
covered her dress without concealing the sumptuous beauty of her young
figure.
Filled as was Colton’s mind with the image of another face, he looked
at her with astonished admiration. Such, thought he, must have been the
superb maids in whose inspiration the Vikings fought and conquered.
“If you knew what a gallant wet-weather figure you make,” Haynes
answered her (Colton wondered how he could ever have thought the face
disagreeable, so complete was the change of expression), “your vanity
would keep you comfortable.”
“Dinna blether,” returned the girl, smiling with affectionate
comradeship, and slipping her arm through his to draw him to the door.
“Father’s boots are on at last.”
“We’re to have company,” said Haynes. “Mr. Colton—I think you said your
name was Colton—wants to come along.”
“I’m sorry that you should have been awakened,” said the girl, turning
to him. “You don’t mind rough weather?”
“At least I’m not likely to blow away,” returned the young man
good-humouredly, looking down at her from his six-feet-one of height.
Inwardly he was saying: “You are never the daughter of that
weather-beaten old shore man and that mild and ancient hen of a woman.”
Haynes, who had caught up a lantern and was moving toward the door,
turned and said to him: “You had better keep between Mr. Johnston and
myself. What are you waiting for?”
“Aren’t there others coming? I thought I heard someone upstairs speak
of it.” He paused in some embarrassment, as he realised the intensity
of his own wish to see that dark and lovely face again.
“Oh, Dolly Ravenden. Her father will bring her,” said Miss Johnston.
“We shall meet them at the beach.”
With heads bent, the four plunged out into the storm. The wind now was
blowing furiously, but there was little rain. Over the sea hung a black
bank of cloud, from which spurted great charges of lightning. Colton,
implicitly following his guides, presently found himself passing down a
little gully where the still air bore an uncanny contrast to the gale
overhead. Hardly had they entered the hollow when Haynes checked
himself.
“Did you hear it?” he said in a low voice to the girl.
Colton saw her press closer to her companion, shudderingly. She poised
her head, staring with great eager, sombre eyes, into the void above.
“When haven’t I heard it, in my dreams!” she half whispered.
“There!” cried Haynes.
“Yes,” said the girl. “To seaward, wasn’t it?”
On the word, Colton, straining his ears, heard through the multiform
clamour of the gale aloft the same faint, strange, wailing note of his
earlier experience, not unlike the shrieking of metal upon metal, yet
an animate voice, infinitely melancholy, infinitely lonely.
“It chills me like a portent,” said Helga.
“Never mind, Princess,” reassured Haynes, in his caressing voice. “It
was stupid of me to say anything about it, and make you more nervous.”
“Nervous! I never knew I had nerves—until now.” She turned to Colton.
“Did you hear it too?”
“Yes. What was it?”
A furious flurry of the gale intervened. The girl shook her head.
Johnston in the lead now turned to climb a grassy knoll, and
conversation became impossible.
At the top they came in view of a score of busy figures outlined
sharply against a lurid background as the lightning spread its shining
drapery from horizon to zenith. Presently the four people from Third
House stood on the cliff overhanging the sledge-hammer surf, and
watched the life-saving crews of two stations, Bow Hill to the east,
Sand Spit to the west, play their desperate game for a hazard of human
lives. Straining their eyes, they could discern, in the whiteness of
the whipped seas, a dull, undefined lump, which ever and anon flashed,
like a magician’s trick, into the clean, pencilled outlines of a
schooner, lying on her beam ends, and swept by every giant comber that
rolled in from the wide Atlantic. She lay broadside to the surges,
harpooned and held by the deadly pinnacled reef of Graveyard Point.
CHAPTER THREE
THE SEA-WAIF
OF the scores of little capes that jut out from Montauk, there is none
but is ghostly with the skeleton of some brave ship. Three such relics
were bleaching their still vertebrate bones on the rocks where the
schooner lay trapped. It was only too evident that a like fate was
ordained to her, and that the promptest action of the life-savers alone
could avail the ten huddled wretches in her rigging.
What man could do, the crews of the two stations were doing; and now,
in a sudden lull of wind, they sent a life-line over her. One of the
men came over to the Third House group, and spoke to Helga Johnston,
bending so close that she shrank back a little.
“Can’t last—hour,” came to Colton’s ears in sentences disjointed by the
wind. “Old wooden—pound pieces. Get most of ’em—life-buoy—all right.”
At a word from Miss Johnston, Haynes shouted in Colton’s ear: “Come
down to the beach. When she smashes, some of ’em may come in there.”
“Not alive surely?” cried Colton, glancing at the surf.
“Yes,” the girl’s clear voice answered, with an accent of absolute
certainty. “We must watch.” Down a sharp declivity they made their way
to the gully, which debouched upon a sand beach. Johnston, the veteran,
who had preceded them, was gathering driftwood for a fire, with a
practical appreciation of the possibilities.
“Bear a hand, Helga!” he shouted. “And you, Mr. Haynes!”
Almost before he knew it, Colton too was hard at work dragging timber
to the centre marked by the lanterns. A clutch on his arm called his
attention to what was going on above him, as Johnston pointed seaward.
In the glint of the lightning, he saw clear against the windy void a
huddled mass, at which the waves leaped and clutched, as it moved
steadily shoreward. Another glimpse showed it risen above the reach of
the breakers. It was a breeches-buoy, bearing its first burden.
“Line’s working all right!” yelled the old coastguard. “They ought to
get ’em all in.”
Presently another traveller came in foot by foot over that slender and
hopeful thread, then a third and a fourth, until seven of the crew were
huddled on the cliff. Out went the breeches-buoy again, for there were
three lives yet to be saved, when in a broad electric glare a monster
surge could be seen sweeping the schooner up. There was a crash of
timbers, a wild cry, and the line fell slack from the cliff-head. Old
Johnston dropped to his knees on the sand and bared his head, but only
for a moment; for he was up again and had set the pile of fuel burning
with a cleverly placed twist of paper.
Up leaped the flames. A brilliant glow wavered and spread. Colton,
stupid with horror, stood entranced, while Johnston, Helga and Haynes
ran, as if to established stations, along the surfs edge, the old man
nearest the wreck, then Haynes, and finally the girl. Of a sudden,
Colton came to himself with a dismal and unaccustomed sensation of
being out of it. No one had asked him to help. He was just a guest, a
negligible quantity when men’s and women’s work was to be done.
“What a useless thing the average summer boarder must be!” he thought,
as he passed beyond the girl and bent his attention on the boiling
cauldron of the ocean.
He had not long to wait. On the foaming crest of a breaker something
dark appeared, and vanished in the smother of the surge as it whizzed
up the sand. Another instant, and it was rolling within a rod of the
young fellow, showing the set, still face of a man. Colton hardly had
to wade ankle-deep to seize the form; but the back drag tore at his
feet with a power that amazed and appalled him. To haul the man ashore
took all his unusual strength. As he threw the form over his shoulder
and ran toward the fire, he became aware of a man and a woman
approaching from the cliff side. Laying down his burden, he knelt
beside it. One look was enough. The man’s skull had been crushed like
an egg-shell. Mechanically he felt for the pulse, when Professor
Ravenden’s precise tones, rendered a little less pedantic by the effort
required to overcome the gale, reached his ear:
“Perhaps I can be of some service. I am not entirely unskilled in
medical subjects.”
Colton shook his head. “He’s beyond all skill,” he answered.
“Oh!” cried a voice from the darkness behind the professor, rising to a
shriek. “Look! Helga! Help her!”
At the same moment, Helga’s own ringing voice sounded in a call for
aid, abruptly cut short. Colton jumped to his feet and turned. He saw,
with a sickening recollection of the waves’ power, which he had just
experienced, the girl up to her knees in water, her strong young frame
braced back and her arms clasping a body. A fringed comber, breaking
heavily, was driving a vortex of white water in upon her. It boiled up
beyond her, and the two figures were gone. As Colton, with a shout of
horror, leaped forward, like a sprinter from the mark, he saw Haynes,
running with terrific speed, launch himself head foremost into the
swirl of waters, at a rolling mass there.
“Lord! What a tackle!” thought Colton as he ran. “Yet they say that a
foot-ball education is of no practical use.”
His own was to come swiftly into play. For though Haynes had caught
Helga about the knees, he had no purchase for resistance, and the
deadly undertow was dragging them out.
Colton had the athlete’s virtue of thinking swiftly in the stress of
action. His was the cool courage that appreciates peril and reasons out
the most advantageous encounter. The human flotsam was far beyond his
grasp now; but he figured that an approaching surge, sweeping them in
shoreward again, would give him his chance,—the only chance,—for the
recession in all probability would carry them beyond help. He must meet
them feet forward, as a trained player meets and falls upon a foot-ball
rolling toward him; thus he might get his heels into the sand, and so
anchor them all against the back-drift. If he could not—well, there
were no _materia medica_ bottles out there beyond the surf anyhow, and
an ocean lullaby would be the sure cure for all sleeplessness.
Fortunately the coming wave was a broad-backed one, on which the
tangled figures rode in plain view, and Colton saw, with that thrill of
pride in his fellow-being which courage wakes in the courageous, that
the girl’s arms still clasped her trove, clinging below the
life-preserver which was fastened around the man’s body. Calculating
the drift down the beach, Colton moved forward. In they
came—nearer—nearer—and to his amazement Colton heard a strangled shout
from the waves:
“Get Helga! Never mind me. Get Helga in!”
“I’ll get you too, or break something,” muttered the young man, as with
a rush and a leap he plunged feet forward to meet the onset.
It was Haynes that he caught, just above the knees. His heels sunk in
the sand. The surge spread, stood, receded. “Here’s tug-of-war in
earnest,” thought Colton, as he set the muscles which had helped to win
many a victory for his college. The next instant it seemed as if those
muscles must rend apart; as if all the might of the unbounded ocean was
straining to drag away his prize of lives. He set his face grimly
toward the savage waves. His chest was bursting. One heartbeat more he
would hold out. Human endeavour could go no further. That heart-throb
sledged against his ribs, passed and found the bulldog grip unrelaxed.
One more, then! surely the last; after that—abruptly the strain
slacked.
A sob of compressed breath burst from Colton. Oh, how good was the
full, deep inhalation that followed! How it filled the muscles and
inspired the will to the final effort! With a mighty heave he rolled
the three clear over his own body up the beach. Then he lay still, for
he was tired and sleepy and didn’t care what became of him. He had made
a touch-down—anyway. Why didn’t—somebody—pull—them off—him?
“I’ve got ’em!” twittered a voice in his ear, a dim and ridiculous
voice, that nevertheless was like old Johnston’s. “You saved the lot,
God bless you!”
“Let me get my arm under his shoulder,” said the calm and precise
accents of Professor Ravenden, also in that strange faraway tone.
Oh, thought Dick in sudden but dim enlightenment, they were
telephoning. Of course. That’s the way voices sounded over a ’phone
when the wire was working badly. But why should they be telephoning?
And how, at the other end of a wire, could they be hauling him, Dick
Colton, to his feet?
When consciousness came in on the full flood, Colton found himself
staggering toward the fire, with someone’s support. From out the
flickering circle of light an angel came to meet him. She seemed a
thing born of the wedding of radiance and shadows. The whiteness of her
face, rich-hued where the blood flushed the cheek, was enhanced by the
dusky masses of her hair. Her lips were parted, and her rounded chest
rose and fell palpably with her swift breathing. Her eyes, deep,
velvety with the soft glamour of questing womanhood in their liquid
depths, looked straight into his. It was his Vision of the hallway.
“Ah, it was splendid!” she said, and there was a thrill in the soft
drawl of the voice that went straight to his heart.
She moved forward toward him into the fuller glow of the fire, and
Colton, his hungry eyes fixed on hers, thought of the moon emerging
from behind a filmy cloud.
“How did you dare?” she pursued. “You saved them all! I—I—want you to
take this.”
Mechanically he stretched forth his hand to meet hers, and she pressed
into it something light and soft.
“It was nothing,” he said dazedly, wondering. “Thank you. I—my head
feels queer—but I—think—I—could—go to sleep—now.”
He lay gently down on the soft sand, which seemed to rise to meet him.
Half swooning and wholly engulfed in sleep, he stretched his great bulk
and lay gratefully down, and the _materia medica_ bottles trooped out
into the troubled night and were lost in its depths.
Dolly Eavenden stood and looked down, musing upon the strong-limbed
figure, and at the hand whose fingers, alone of all the frame, were
unrelaxed.
“I wonder if I’ve made a mistake,” she said with misgivings which were
strange to her positive and rather self-willed character. “Pshaw! No;
it is all right.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DEATH IN THE BUOY
HALF an hour’s sleep is short rations for a man who has experienced
little untroubled unconsciousness for five weeks. Colton struggled
angrily against the flask.
“I don’t want it, I tell you! Go to the devil and take it with you.” He
struck out blindly, angrily. A cool, firm hand, closed around his
wrist.
“You must get up,” said Helga Johnston’s voice firmly. “Swallow some of
this brandy.”
“I’m sorry,” said Colton penitently. “Did I curse you out? Please let
me sleep.”
The girl was quick-witted. “We want your help,” she said.
Colton sat up. She had struck the right note. Docilely he took the
brandy, and got to his feet.
Haynes came up and steadied him. “Miss Johnston and I have our lives to
thank you for,” he said briefly. “You’d better get home. Some of the
life-savers will help you.”
“No, I’m all right,” declared Colton. “Where’s the man Miss Johnston
saved? Let’s have a peep at him. I’m a physician.”
“Are you?” said Haynes eagerly. “Then I want you to look at one of the
men on the cliff, as soon as you’ve finished with Helga’s waif.”
Colton looked around him, memory now aroused. “Professor Ravenden!” he
said. “I want to thank him for getting me out.”
“He and Miss Ravenden have gone to the station,” said Helga, “to help
care for the rescued men. The captain and the mate have been washed in,
dead.”
“Oh,” said Colton blankly. His mind was still blurred. He looked at his
tight-clutched left hand and wondered if there was something inside.
Cautiously he opened it, looked, started, choked down an exclamation,
and thrust the hand into the pocket of his dripping trousers. Then he
walked over to the man whom Miss Johnston had saved.
Someone had stripped the life-preserver from the castaway’s body, and
as he lay sprawled upon the ground Colton noted the breadth and depth
of the chest, remarkable in so small a man. He was swart, so swart as
obviously to be of Southern European extraction. In spite of the sea’s
terrific battering, he apparently had escaped any serious injury, and
already had regained consciousness; but, to Colton’s surprise, kept his
head buried in his arms. From time to time a convulsive shudder ran
through him.
“Seems to be kind of crazy-like,” volunteered old Johnston, who stood
beside him. “Begged me, with his hands clasped, to help him out of the
light of the fire, first thing.”
“How do you feel, my friend?” asked the young doctor, bending over the
survivor.
The man lifted a dark and haggard face. “To a house! Take me to a
house! I weesh to go inside!” His voice was a mere wheeze of terror.
“We’ll get you to a house presently,” Colton assured him, presenting
the brandy flask to his lips, “Can you make out to climb that cliff?”
“Up there? So plain to be see? No, no!” cried the man vehemently,
roving the dark heavens with his eyes.
Colton looked at him in perplexity. The man got painfully to his feet,
and cupped a hand to his windward ear.
“I t’ink I hear eet again,” he whispered, and shook like a rag in the
wind.
“What are you talking about?” asked Colton.
“Somesing up zere,” said the stranger, thrusting both hands in an
uncouth and fearful gesture upward and outward.
“Oh, you’re not quite yourself yet,” said Colton.
“I tell you I hear eet!” broke out the man with extraordinary
vehemence. “I feel eet! What? I do not know. But when eet come back”—he
made a motion as of a winged creature swooping—“I fear an’ I jump into
ze waves.” A harsh tremour went through his frame and left him panting.
“You jumped?” said Johnston. “When she broke up?”
“No. Before. Before she break.”
“He’s crazy,” said the old life-saver. “What’d you jump for?”
“Eet come after me,” shuddered the man. Again he made that
extraordinary gesture. “Take me to a house—out of ze night.”
“Someone must go with him to the station,” said Colton.
“Let me,” Helga Johnston volunteered.
The stranger faced the girl, and advanced a swift step. It was a
meeting of satyr and goddess. Suddenly the satyr cast himself at the
goddess’ feet and kissed them. Startled, she drew back.
“Eet is you that safe me!” he cried, lifting wild and adoring eyes to
her. “I see you just before all go black. You walk out on ze wave to
reach me.”
“Come along, you!” cried old Johnston, lifting him to his feet. “No
such heathen goin’s-on for my Helga. Not that I think you know what
you’re doin’,” he added.
“You mustn’t go with him alone, Princess,” said Haynes quickly. “He
seems to be insane.”
“Father will go with me,” she replied; “though I’m safe enough. It
isn’t there the danger lies.”
“Helga,” said Haynes seriously, “I wish you wouldn’t let yourself be so
influenced by your dreams.”
“I’ll try not to, Petit Père,” said the girl gently. “But, look how it
has all come about. Yet I can’t see how a strange creature like that
could possibly influence all our lives.”
“You don’t half believe it yourself,” said Haynes positively.
“Sometimes I don’t,” she agreed. “But we who are born of the sea, dream
the sea’s dreams, you know, Petit Père.”
“Well, get into dry clothes as soon as you get to the station,
Princess. Oh, and get me that fellow’s name and address, will you?”
“Yes,” said the girl, as, with her father, she led her strange charge
away toward the Sand Spit station.
“Now,” said Haynes to Colton, “will you come up on the cliff and look
at my man?”
Together they clambered to the top. In the light of the dying fire they
saw the man stretched out near the brink of the cliff.
Another of the wrecked sailors and two life-savers stood over him. One
of the life-savers Colton recognised as the guard who had come over to
speak to Helga Johnston, a hulking, handsome fellow named Serdholm,
from the Sand Spit station. The other was a quiet-looking young fellow
of the Blue Hill corps, Bruce by name. As Haynes and Colton approached,
Bruce drew away a coat which was spread over the prostrate figure, and
lifted his lantern.
“He is dead,” said Colton at once.
“Yes,” replied Haynes; “but see how he came by his death.”
Rolling the body over, he exposed a deep, broad, clean-driven wound
through the back. “What do you make of that?” he asked.
Colton examined it carefully. “I don’t make anything of it,” he said
frankly, “except that the poor fellow never knew what struck him.”
“What did strike him?”
“A very large blade, sent home with tremendous force, apparently.”
“By some other person?”
“Certainly not by himself; and it doesn’t seem like accident. Was he
washed ashore this way?”
“Supposing I told you that the man left the ship, alive and sound in
the breeches-buoy, and got here in this condition.”
“Does the buoy carry more than one at a time?”
“No.”
“Then it isn’t possible.”
“Well, there’s plenty of evidence as to his arrival. Now let’s see
about his departure. Were you aboard when this man left the schooner?”
Haynes asked, turning to one of the two sailors at hand.
“Yes, sir. Me an’ Darky John came after him. We helped fasten him in.”
“Who else was there?”
“The Old Man, an’ Buckley the mate, an’ that queer Dago feller.”
“There wasn’t any fight or trouble about who should come first?”
“No, sir. The Old Man gave his orders. Petersen, here, he leaves fifth,
I think. ‘Good-bye, boys. See you later,’ he says, an’ off he goes.
Next I see of him, he lies here dead. What killed him or how, I don’t
know, no more than a blind fish.”
“Straight enough story,” commented Haynes, “particularly as Hawkins,
the coloured man, gives the same version. We’ll try the foreigner
later. I want to get to the bottom of this. If murder has been done in
mid-air, between the reef where the schooner lay and this cliff, it’s
about the strangest case in my experience.”
“How are you so sure it’s murder?” demanded Serdholm the life-guard.
“Anyone can make out murder if they’re looking for sensation hard
enough.” There was an undisguised hostility in his tone as he addressed
Haynes which surprised Colton.
“Why do you think it wasn’t?” asked Colton quickly.
“Did I say I thought it wasn’t?” retorted the guard. “Maybe it was; but
I’ve seen a sharpened stake shoved clean through a man in a surf.”
“You needn’t be so fresh about it, Serdholm,” put in the other guard.
“It’s true, though, what he says, Mr. Haynes,” he added. “And there was
plenty of driftwood afloat.”
Colton bent over the dead man again. “It’s almost too clean an incision
for anything except steel,” he said. “Besides, wood leaves splinters.”
“You saw the man come in?” Haynes asked Bruce.
“Helped to lift him out. Look!” He held out his hands, showing great
stains of blood.
“You didn’t see anything that would give a clue?”
“No, I didn’t see anything,” returned Bruce after a moment’s
consideration; “but some of the men thought they heard a scream, when
he was about halfway in. It was just after a lightning flash. They
thought a bolt might have gone through him.”
“Lightning doesn’t wound that way,” said Colton.
“No, I didn’t think so. But I thought I’d better tell you. Only in the
noises of a gale you can hear all sorts of voices.”
“They didn’t say anything about a kind of rasping, creaking sound?”
asked Haynes after a moment’s hesitation.
“No, sir,” said the man, surprised. “Nothing like that.”
Haynes turned away impatiently. “Come down to the Blue Hill station,”
he said to Colton. “We’ll see if Miss Johnston’s patient can throw any
light on this.”
During the walk Haynes was so deeply in thought and replied to Colton’s
questions so curtly that the latter fell into silence. At the door of
the station they were met by Helga.
“How’s your salvage, Princess?” queried Haynes. “Able to stand a
cross-examination?”
“More than able—willing,” replied the girl with a smile. “He’s been
telling us all about himself. Nothing queerer than he ever came ashore
on Montauk. I’m afraid the sea-water has got into his brain a little.”
“Tell us what he said.”
“In the first place, he is some sort of a travelling juggler and
magician. As soon as he is recovered he will give us a private
exhibition in honour of his rescue. He calls himself ‘The Wonderful
Whalley,’ though his real name is something like Cardonaro. An injury
to his hand stranded him in Maine, and he took passage on the _Milly
Esham_ because it was a cheap way to New York. Age, forty-two;
nationality, Portuguese; occupation, the theatrical profession.
Anything else, Petit Père?”
“Good work! Did he say anything of a man’s being killed on board!”
The girl’s face became grave at once. “No,” she said. “How was he
killed? Who was it?”
“A sailor named Petersen. He was stabbed, and came ashore dead.”
“The man has two enormous knives in sheaths fastened to his belt,” she
said, turning white. “He uses them in his performances.”
Haynes and Colton looked at each other.
“If he did it, he wasn’t responsible,” Helga went on impetuously. “He’s
such a pitiful creature—just like a dog, with his great eyes. I feel as
if we had saved a baby. And he is terrified like a baby.”
“At some phantom of the darkness?”
The girl nodded. “Something that he hasn’t even seen. He thinks it came
down from the upper air after him as the ship was going to pieces.
While the others were being taken off in the breeches-buoy he was
crawling down the main ratlines to escape from this thing. Finally his
fears drove him overboard.”
“Just as well for him,” said Colton. “If he had stayed he would have
been killed in the wreckage with the mate and captain.”
“Dr. Colton thinks the man is insane,” said Haynes. “What is your view,
Princess?”
“I think so too. But I think some strange thing has terrified him.
Perhaps one of the sails tore loose and blew on him. Or it may have
been the lightning.”
“That might be it, and in his panic he may have struck out and killed
Petersen by accident. But in that case, why should the other sailors,
who must have seen it, shield him? I guess the best thing is to put it
to him straight, concluded Haynes.
Followed by Colton, he went into the room where the suspect lay.
“See here!” began Haynes abruptly. “We want to know why you killed
Petersen the sailor.”
The stranger’s dark eyes widened. He stared at his questioner with
dropped jaw.
“Yes; why you killed him—with this.” Haynes touched the hilt of one of
the knives that protruded from the man’s belt.
“No, no!” protested the man. “I not got nothing against Petersen. I not
know Petersen.”
“You were on board when he left?”
“Yes; I see zem go—one—two—three—so many—seven. Not me; I haf to stay.
No one care to safe ze wonderful Whalley.”
“Did you see anyone fight with Petersen or strike him?” asked Colton.
“No; see nothing.”
After fifteen minutes of fruitless cross-questioning the investigators
called in the negro, Hawkins.
“Him kill Petersen?” repeated Hawkins. “No—sir—ee, boss! He wasn’t
nowheyah nigh when Petersen went off, safe an’ wavin’ his hand
goodbye.”
“Someone killed him,” said Haynes. “This man, yourself, Corliss and the
captain and mate were the only ones aboard.”
“That’s right, boss. Corliss and the Old Man and I stood right by and
saw him off. No, sir, if he wa’n’t killed by the lightnin’ or on the
cliff, somethin’ got him on the way in.”
“You think he may have met his death after he landed, then?”
“No, sir; that cain’t hardly be,” replied the negro after a moment’s
consideration. “Some of our crew was in a’ready. The life-savers was
there. Couldn’t anyone a-give it to him without the othahs seein’ it.”
“So, you see, he must have been dead when he left the ship. Now,
Hawkins, you’ll save yourself trouble by telling me what you know of
this.”
“’Fo’ Heaven, boss, I do’ know a livin’ thing!” And nothing more could
Haynes get from the negro. After dismissing him, Haynes said to Colton:
“You go around, and under pretence of looking after their injuries,
question all the sailors as to whether there was bad blood between the
dead man and any of his shipmates. I’ve got some work to do.”
At another time the young doctor might have resented the assumption of
authority, but now he was too deeply interested in the case. Half an
hour later he returned empty of results.
“Not a bit of trouble that I can get wind of. What’s that you’re
writing, a report for the coroner?”
“No; this will never get to the coroner. I’m certain it’s a murder; but
I’m equally certain that there’s no case against any individual. I’m
writing up the wreck for my paper.”
“Are you down here working?” asked Colton.
“No, I’m on vacation; but a reporter is always on duty for an emergency
like this.”
“You’re Harris Haynes of _The New Era_, aren’t you?” asked Colton.
“You’re the man that proved the celebrated Bellows suicide and saved
Dr. Senderton.”
“He saved himself by telling a straight story, even though it seemed
damaging, where most men would have tried to lie,” said Haynes. “Anyone
except a Central Office detective would have had the sense to know that
the letter was written to bear out a grudge. They never should have
arrested him.”
“I was one of the men called in on the case. You’ve shaved your beard,
or I should have remembered you.”
“Well, we shan’t have any such satisfactory result in this case,” said
the reporter. “Hello! What’s Bruce doing down here?”
The life-guard from the Bow Hill station came hurrying to him. “They’ve
just got in the life-line, Mr. Haynes,” he said, “and I examined it as
you told me. It’s blood-soaked in the middle, and there are
blood-stains all along the shoreward half. There’s nothing on the end
toward the ship.”
“Great Scott!” cried Colton, as the meaning of this poured light into
his mind. “Then the poor fellow was killed between the ship and the
shore!”
“It looks that way,” said Haynes, scowling thoughtfully. “No, by Jove,
it can’t be! I’ve missed a trick somewhere. There’s some other
explanation.”
“Mightn’t the blood-stains have got washed out?” suggested the guard.
“Why should half of the rope be clean and not the other half, then?”
countered Haynes. “You didn’t make a mistake as to which was the shore
end of the buoy rope?” he cried in sudden hopefulness.
“Bit o’ spar came in with the clean end,” returned Bruce briefly, and
that hope was gone.
“It’s at least curious,” observed Colton thoughtfully, “that the
juggler’s shrinking from some aerial terror should so correspond with a
murder in mid-air.”
“You’re becoming pretty imaginative,” retorted the other disagreeably.
“This crazy Whalley stabbed Petersen aboard the ship. What his motive
was, or how he got away with it, or why the others don’t give him away,
is beyond me. But he did the job, and this bogy-man scare of his is the
weak cunning of a disordered mind to divert suspicion. Circumstantial
evidence to the contrary, that’s what’s what!” Then, with his quick
change of tone: “Princess! Oh, Princess!”
“What is it, Petit Père?” said the girl.
“Will you come along home with us?”
“Right away. We don’t always welcome our guests with so much
excitement, Dr. Colton,” she added, as she slipped her arm through
Haynes’. After a moment’s pause she asked him:
“Do you think Paul Serdholm knows anything of the—the murder?”
“Why?”
“Because he thinks you believe he does. And he’s ugly about it. Do
watch him, Petit Père. He doesn’t like you, you know.”
“Ah,” said Haynes as the three set out across the billowy grass-land.
“Perhaps he’ll bear a little watching.”
They walked in silence, home. Once Helga stopped short on a hill-top
and turned her face toward the sea, listening intently, but almost
immediately shook her head.
Dick Colton got to bed just before dawn, with a mind divided in
speculation between the mystery of the dead man and the more personal
mystery of a small, wadded treasure in his pocket.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CRY IN THE DUSK
MONTAUK POINT rises and falls like a procession of mighty swells fixed
in eternal quietude and grown over with the most luxurious of grasses
and field-blooms. One walks from hill to hill, passing between the
down-curving slopes to hollows wherein flourish all-but-impenetrable
thickets of the stunted scrub-oak, and abruptly walks forth upon a
noble cliff-line overlooking the limitless ocean to the far-off
southern horizon. Steep and narrow gullies at intervals give
rock-studded access to the beach. Outside of the miniature forests in
the hollows there is no tree-growth on the whole forty square miles of
land, excepting the deep-shaded tangle of the Hither Wood on the far
northwest, into which none makes his way except an occasional sportsman
on a coon hunt.
Except for the lighthouse family at the eastern tip, the three
life-saving stations with their attendant houses, and a little huddle
of fisher-huts on a reach of the Sound, there were no habitants in the
mid-September of 1902, the few summer cottagers having fled the
sharpened air. All day long the pasturing sheep of the interior might
rove without the alarm of a single human. Short of the prairies, a
lonelier stretch of land would be difficult of discovery.
To Dick Colton, rising late with a thankful heart after a sleep unvexed
of labelled bottles, this loneliness was a balm, provided only it
proved to be loneliness for two. For, with an eagerness strange and
disquieting to his straightforward and rather unsentimental soul, he
longed to look again upon the girl whose eyes had met his when he
staggered back from the clutching hands of death. And with that longing
was mingled an amused curiosity to clear up the puzzle of the impetuous
souvenir she had left him. Within himself he resolved to solve this
problem at the first opportunity; but just at this moment the
opportunity was receding.
Far and clear against the sky-line, he could see from his window two
mounted figures. Miss Ravenden and her father were riding to
Amagansett, to be gone, as he learned later with disgust, all day.
Helga Johnston had gone up to the lighthouse to stay until the
following morning, and Haynes was working on his investigation of
Petersen’s death.
Nothing was left for the lone guest except to amuse himself as best he
might.
The morning he spent in wandering meditation. Leisure for thought is a
quick developer of certain processes. The Ravendens were to be at Third
House for the month, he understood. One might get very well acquainted
in a month, under favourable circumstances. At present the immediate
circumstances were far from favourable. But Dick slapped the pocketbook
to which he had transferred his keepsake from Miss Ravenden.
“That’ll break _some_ ice, I guess,” he observed.
At dinner he contemplated a vacant place with an expression of such
unhappiness that old Johnston took pity on him.
“The white perch’ll likely be risin’ in the lake yonder this evening,”
he said.
Here was antidote for any bane. Dick took his rod and went. The fish
nobly fulfilled Johnston’s word of them, and Dick had just landed a
handsome one, when glancing up he saw a net moving along the line of a
small ridge.
“The bug-hunter,” he surmised.
“Oh, Professor Ravenden!” he called; and was instantly stricken with
the dilemma: “What the dickens shall I say to him?”
The net paused, half-revolved and ascended, and Dick gasped as not
Professor Ravenden, but his daughter, mounted the ridge.
“Did you want my father?” she asked.
“Oh—er—ah, good-evening, Miss Ravenden,” stammered Colton. “I—I—I’ve
been wanting to see you.”
“There is some mistake,” said she coldly. “I don’t know who you are.”
“My name is Colton,” he said. “I’m staying at Third House, and——”
“Does the mere fact of your staying at the same hotel give you the
privilege of forcing your acquaintance upon people?” she asked sharply.
Then—for Dick Colton was good for the eye of woman to look upon, and
not at all the sort of man in appearance to force a vulgar
flirtation—she added:
“I don’t want to be unpleasant about it, but really, don’t you think
you take things a little too much for granted?”
“But you spoke to me first,” blurted out Dick. “I’m awfully sorry to
have you think me rude, but I want to know what this is.”
Curiosity drew Dorothy Ravenden as powerfully as it commonly draws less
imperious natures.
Somewhat peculiar this man might be, but it seemed a harmless
aberration, and it certainly took an interesting guise. She bent
forward to look at the object extended to her.
“Why, it’s a twenty-dollar bill!”
“Then my eye-sight is still good,” he observed contentedly. “Question
number two: Why did you give it to me?”
“To you?” To Dick Colton, as she stood there poised, the gracious
colour flushing up into her cheeks, her lips half-opened, she was the
loveliest thing he ever had seen. The hand that held the bill shook.
“To you?” she repeated. “I didn’t.”
“It was just like an operatic setting,” he expounded slowly.
“Background of cliffs, firelight in the middle, ocean surf in front.
Out of the magic circle of fire steps the Fairy Queen and hands to the
poor but deserving toiler what in common parlance is known as a double
saw-buck. Please, your Majesty, why? And do you want a receipt?”
“Oh!” she said in charming dismay. And again “Oh!” Then it came out: “I
took you for one of the life-savers.”
“The life-savers?” repeated Dick.
“Yes. Is that strange? You were so big and shaggy and——” she stopped
short of the word “splendid” which was on her lips. “How could I tell?
You looked as much like a seal as a man.” The ripple of her laughter,
full of joyousness, yet with a little catch of some underlying feeling
in it, was a patent of fellowship, which would have astonished most of
Miss Ravenden’s hundreds of admirers, among whom she was regarded as a
rather haughty beauty. “I don’t know many men who would have done it—or
could have done it,” she added simply, and gave him her eyes, full.
Dick turned red. “Anyone would have,” he said. “It was the only thing
to do.”
She nodded slowly as if an impression had been confirmed to her
satisfaction.
“As for this,” he continued, looking from her to the greenback, and
striving to speak calmly, when his heart was a-thrill with the desire
to tell her how altogether lovely and lovable she was, “if it’s
intended as a reward of merit, I’ll turn it over to Miss Johnston.”
“Wasn’t she magnificent?” cried the girl. “I’ll slay Helga!” she added
with a sudden change of tone. “She’s a beast of the field. She knew
about the—the bill and she never told me.”
“That’ll cost her just twenty dollars,” declared Colton judicially,
“because now I won’t turn it over to her.”
“Give it back to me, please,” said the girl, holding out a tanned and
slender hand.
“Give it back?” cried Colton in assumed chagrin. “Why, I already had
spent that twenty in imagination.”
“On what?” asked the girl rather impatiently.
“It’s a long list,” replied Colton cunningly. “You’d better sit down
while I tell it over.” He threw his coat over a rock, and she perched
herself on it daintily.
“First, a hundred packages of plug tobacco. All coast-guards use plug,
I believe. Then five dollars’ worth of prints of prominent actors and
actresses in gaudy colours. The rest in Mexican lottery tickets,” he
concluded lamely, his invention giving out.
“It wasn’t worth sitting down for,” she said disparagingly. “If you had
intended to get something really useful, I might have let you keep it.
Please!” The little hand went forth again.
Hastily he produced a ten-dollar bill and two fives. “You don’t mind
having it in change?” he said anxiously. “You see, this is the first
money I ever earned outside of my profession, and I mean to frame it.”
“If twenty dollars means so little to you that you can have it hanging
around framed——”
“This particular twenty means a great deal to me,” he interrupted.
She rose. “I was going down to try a cast or two,” she said.
“With a net?” asked Dick. “I should like to see that.”
“There’s a fishing rod in the handle of the net,” she explained,
ignoring the hint. “I keep the net rigged because I help my father
collect. Entomology is his specialty, and there are a few rare moths
here that he hopes to get.”
“Am I sufficiently introduced now to ask if I may walk along with you?”
“I’m sorry I was so—so snippy,” she said sweetly. “To make up for it,
you may.”
“Are you here particularly for collecting moths?” he asked, stepping to
her side.
“Yes, one or two kinds that my father and I are studying. I play
butterfly in the winter and hunt them in the summer. Everyone here has
a purpose. Father and I are adding to the sum of human knowledge on
_Lepidoptera_. Mr. Haynes is spending his vacation with Helga. Helga is
resting, before taking up her musical studies. You ought to have a
purpose. What has brought you here?”
Now, Dick Colton, like many big men, was awkward, and like most awkward
men, was shy about women. Therefore, it was with a sort of stunned
amazement and admiration for his own audacity that he found himself
looking straight into Dorothy Ravenden’s unfathomable eyes as he
replied briefly:
“Fate.”
“Well, upon my soul!” gasped that much-habituated young woman of the
world, surprised for a brief instant out of her poise. Quickly
recovering, she added: “A fortunate fate for Helga, surely. Except for
you, she and Mr. Haynes must have been drowned.”
“You knew her before, didn’t you?”
“Yes; we visit at the same house in Philadelphia, and father and I have
been coming down here for several years. I know her well. If I were a
man, I should go the world over for Helga Johnston.”
“She and Haynes are engaged, are they not?”
“No, not engaged,” said the girl. “She is everything in the world to
Mr. Haynes; but she isn’t in love with him. He has never tried to make
her. There is some reason; I don’t know what. Sometimes I think he
doesn’t care for her in that way either. Or perhaps he doesn’t realise
it.”
“Surely she seems fond of him.”
“She is devoted to him. Why shouldn’t she be? He has done everything
for her.”
“How happens that?”
“It’s the kind of story that makes you love your kind,” said the girl
dreamily. “When Mr. Haynes first came here he was a young reporter with
a small income, and Helga was a child of twelve with an eager mind and
the promise of a lovely voice. He gave her books and got the Johnstons
to send her to a good school. Then as she grew up and he came to be
‘star man’ (I think they call it) on his paper, he went to the
Johnstons, who had come to know him well, and asked them to let him
send Helga to preparatory school and then to college. It was agreed
that she was not to know of the money that he put in their hands, and
she never would have known except for something that happened in her
freshman year. She held her tongue to save a classmate. They were going
to expel her, when Mr. Haynes got wind of it, took the first train,
ferreted out the truth, and went to the president.
“‘Here are the facts,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave them for you to act on, or
I’ll take them with me for publication, as you decide.’
“The case was hushed up; but in the adjustment Helga found out about
Mr. Haynes’ part in her education. Now he is arranging for her musical
education. He has no family, nor anyone dependent on him; all his
interests in life are centred in her. And the best of it is that she is
worthy of it.”
“It must be a great deal to such a man to inspire such absolute trust
in a woman as he has in her,” said Colton after a pause. “‘I knew he
would come after me,’ she said when I asked her how she dared take so
desperate a chance.”
Miss Ravenden nodded at him appreciatively. “Yes; you see it too,” she
said. “You did something worth while when you saved those two. But what
about your Portuguese? Do you really think he had anything to do with
killing that poor sailor? Helga told me about it. What an extraordinary
case it is!”
“What puzzles Haynes with his trained mind is surely too much for me,”
said Colton. “It seems that the man—great Heaven! What was that?” From
the direction of the beach came a long-drawn, dreadful scream of agony,
unhuman, yet with something of an appeal in it, too. The pair turned
blanched faces toward each other.
“I must go over there at once,” said Colton. “Someone is in trouble.
Miss Ravenden, can you make your way to the house alone?”
The girl’s small, rounded chin went up and outward. “I shall go with
you,” she said.
“You must not. There’s no telling what may have happened. Please!”
With a swift, deft movement she parted the heavy handle of her
net-stock, disclosing an ingeniously set revolver, which she pressed
into his hand.
“I’m going with you,” she repeated, with the most alluring obstinacy.
“Come, then,” said Colton, and her pulses stirred to the tone. He
caught her by the hand, and they ran, reaching the cliff-top
breathless.
Barely discernible, on the sand, a quarter of a mile east of Graveyard
Point where the wreck had struck, was a dark body. They hurried down
into the ravine and out of it, Colton in advance. Suddenly he burst
into a laugh of nervous relief.
“It’s a dead sheep,” he said. “I thought it was a man.”
He bent over it and his jaw dropped. “Look at that!” he cried.
Across the back of the animal’s neck, half-sever-ing it from the head,
was a great gash, still bleeding slightly. They peered out into the
dusk. As far as the eye could see, nothing moved along the sand.
CHAPTER SIX
HELGA
GALLOPING easily, an early riser may come from Montauk Light over to
Third House in time for breakfast. Helga was an early riser and a
skilled horsewoman. Flushed like the dawn, she came bursting into the
living-room upon Dick Colton who, his mind being absent on another
engagement, had forgotten to wind his watch when he went to bed the
evening previous, and consequently had risen, on suspicion, one hour
too early.
“I haven’t had a chance to speak to you since the wreck,” she said,
giving him her firm young hand. “Are you any the worse for the rough
usage our ocean gave you? And how can I half thank you for your
courage?”
“Don’t try,” said Dick uncomfortably. “And don’t talk to me about
courage,” he added. “I wish I could tell you how I choked all up with
three cheers when you went in after that fellow.”
“Oh,” said the girl quietly, “we Montauk folk are bred to that sort of
thing. Besides, I only paid a debt.”
“A debt? To that Portuguese?”
“No, indeed! I never set eyes on the poor man before. It’s just one of
our local proverbs. Our fisher people here have a saying that those who
are rescued from the sea can never find their heart’s happiness until
they have evened the tally by saving a life.”
“Then you’ve had your own shipwreck adventure?” asked Dick.
“Twenty years ago I was washed to shore in just such a storm. Father
Johnston was nearly killed, getting me. The only name I could tell them
was Helga. They adopted me. Ah, they have been good to me, they and
Petit Père.”
“Haynes? He’s a full-size man!” declared Colton warmly. “‘Save Helga!’
he called to me, when he saw me floundering in.”
“Yes, I knew he would come after me,” said the girl simply; “but I
didn’t know you would come after him. So there’s the chain,” she added
gaily. “I went in to clear off my debt and win my heart’s
happiness—though I do hope it isn’t the Portuguese man. Petit Père went
in to get me. And you,” she paused and looked him between the eyes, “I
think you came after us because you couldn’t help it; because that is
the sort of man you are. Why,” she cried with a ring of laughter,
“you’re actually blushing!”
“I’m not used to the praises of full-blown heroines,” retorted Dick. “I
wondered what you meant when you said that the children of the sea
dream the sea’s dreams?”
“As for the dreams,” began Helga. She did not conclude the sentence,
but said gravely, “Yes, I’m a true sea-waif.”
“I’d like to adopt you for a sister,” said Dick, smiling, but with such
an honesty of admiration that it was the girl’s turn to blush.
“Haven’t you any of your own?” she asked.
“‘I am all the sisters of my father’s house,’” he misquoted cheerily.
“And all the brothers too?” she capped the perversion.
“No; I’ve a brother a year younger than I. There may be in this
universe,” he continued reflectively, “people who don’t like Everard.
If there are, they live in Mars. Everybody on this old earth—and he
seems to know pretty much all of ’em—takes to him like a duck to water.
He’s a wonder, that youth!”
“Everard?” said the girl. There was a quick and subtle change in her
tone. “Is Everard Colton your brother? I should never have guessed it.
You don’t resemble each other in the least.”
“No; he’s the ornament of the family. I’m the plodder. And we’re the
greatest chums ever. Where did you know him?”
“Oh, he used to ride over to Bryn Mawr while I was at college,” she
said carelessly, “in an abominable yellow automobile and kill the
gardener’s chickens on an average of one a trip. The girls called his
machine ‘The Feathered Juggernaut.’”
“Bryn Mawr?” exclaimed Dick. “What an idiot I am! You’re the Helga
Johnston that——” He broke off short and regarded his feet with a colour
so vividly growing as to suggest that they had suddenly occasioned him
an agony of shame.
“Yes, I’m the girl that so alarmed your family lest I should marry your
brother,” she said calmly. “You need not have feared. I have not——”
“Don’t say ‘you’!” interrupted Colton. “Please don’t! I had no part in
that. I hadn’t the faintest idea who the girl was, but when I saw how
Ev steadied down and settled to work I knew it was a good influence,
and I told the family so. Now that I’ve met you——” he broke off
suddenly. “Poor Ev!” he said in a low tone.
Had his boots been less demanding of attention, Colton would have seen
the deep blue of her eyes dimmed to grey by a sudden rush of tears.
“Let us agree to leave your brother out of future conversations, Dr.
Colton,” she said decisively. “Good-morning, Petit Père,” she greeted
Haynes as he came into the room.
“I salute you, Princess,” said Haynes with a low bow. “You beat me in.”
“Have you been out trying to gather more evidence against my poor
juggler?”
“If I have, it’s been with no success.”
“I wish you failure,” she returned as she left the room.
“Here’s something that may interest you,” said Colton to Haynes, and
related the episode of the sheep.
The reporter sat down. Colton thought he looked white and worn. Haynes
meditated, frowning.
“You say the sheep lay on the hard sand?” he said at length.
“Yes; halfway between the cliff-line and the ocean.”
“That ought to help a lot,” said Haynes decisively. “What marks were
around it?”
“Marks?” repeated Colton vacantly.
“Yes; marks, footmarks,” impatiently.
“Why, the fact is, I don’t know what I could have been thinking of, but
I didn’t look.”
“The Lord forgive you!”
“I’ll go back now and find them.”
“An elephant’s spoor wouldn’t have survived half an hour of the rain we
had last night,” Haynes said with evident exasperation.
“Miss Ravenden might have noticed something,” suggested Colton
hopefully.
On the word Haynes was out in the hallway, up the stairs, and knocking
at the girl’s door.
“Oh, Miss Dolly!” he called. “I want your help.”
“What can I do for the great Dupin, Jr.?” asked the girl, coming out
into the hall.
“Show that you’ve profited by his learned instructions. Did you see any
marks on the sand around the dead sheep?”
“I’m an idiot!” said the girl contritely. “I never thought to look.”
“It’s well that your eyes are ornamental; they’re not always useful,”
said Haynes in accents of raillery which did not conceal his
disappointment.
“What have the great Dupin, Jr.’s eyes discovered to-day?” she asked.
“Nothing, You and Colton have provided an unsatisfactory ending to an
unsatisfactory day. I’ve been talking with the survivors of the wreck
and couldn’t get any light at all. They’ve all left except ‘the
Wonderful Whalley.’ He’s pretty badly bruised, and anyway he won’t go
before paying his respects to Helga.”
“I should think not, indeed!” said Miss Ravenden. “And to you.”
“It’s a curious thing, but he doesn’t seem to be inspired by that
devotion to me which my highly attractive character would seem to
warrant. In fact he looks at me as if he would like to stick me with
one of those particularly long, lean and unprepossessing knives which
he cherishes so fondly.”
“You don’t really think,” said Miss Ravenden in concern, “that there is
any——”
“Figure of speech,” interrupted Haynes. “But the man certainly isn’t
normal. I’ll have to trace his movements of yesterday evening. First,
however, I’ll have a look at that sheep.”
“Surely the Portuguese had nothing to do with that? Why should he kill
a harmless animal?”
“There is such a thing as murderous mania,” said Haynes after some
hesitation.
Here Professor Ravenden entered. “I had rather a strange experience
yesterday evening,” he said.
“Did you hear the sheep too?” asked Colton eagerly.
“Not unless sheep fly, sir. What it was I heard I should be glad to
have explained. To liken it to a rasping hinge of great size would
hardly give a proper idea of its animate quality; yet I can find no
better simile. Were any of the local inhabitants given to nocturnal
aeronautics, however, I should unhesitatingly aver that they had passed
close over me not half an hour since, and that their machinery needed
oiling.”
“I have heard such a noise,” said Haynes quietly. “Did it affect you
unpleasantly?”
“No, sir. I cannot say it did. But it roused my interest. I shall make
a point of pursuing it further.”
“Miss Johnston is calling us to breakfast,” said Colton.
“I’m just going to take a quick jump to the beach and a glimpse at the
sheep,” said Haynes, and a moment later they saw him passing on his
horse.
From her place at the head of the breakfast-table Helga Johnston called
Dr. Colton to sit next to her, and while talking to him kept one eye on
the door. Presently in came Miss Ravenden.
“Come up to this end, Dolly,” called Helga. “I want to introduce to you
our new guest. Dr. Colton, Miss Ravenden.”
“Dr. Colton and I already have——” began Dorothy.
“I was fortunate enough to find Miss Ravenden—-” said the confused Dick
in the same breath.
“Dr. Colton,” continued Helga, cutting them both off, “is here making a
collection of government paper currency. I mention this because Miss
Ravenden has a well-known reputation for discerning contributions——”
“Helga,” said Miss Ravenden calmly, “I have a few withering remarks
waiting for you. Dr. Colton, you probably didn’t know that you were
saving a practical joker when you——”
“Earned that twenty-dollar bill,” put in Helga. “But how did you two
adjust your financial relations?”
To Dick’s relief the outer door opened, admitting Haynes. They turned
to him instantly, with questioning faces.
With the change of voice which he kept for Helga alone, he said:
“Princess, another of your courtiers is coming over this evening to
display his talents.”
“Who, Petit Père?”
“Your juggler, ‘The Wonderful Whalley.’”
“Did you find out anything about him, Monsieur Dupin?” asked Miss
Ravenden.
“Nothing worth while. If he was out last night, no one knows it.”
“And the dead sheep?”
But Haynes only shook his head and attacked his breakfast.
After breakfast the party separated, Haynes riding over to see some of
the fishermen, Helga busying herself with household affairs, Miss
Ravenden joining her father in a butterfly expedition to the Hither
Wood, and Colton going off alone in ill-humour after a signal
discomfiture.
He had endeavoured to convince Miss Ravenden that he cherished a
passionate fondness for entomology, hoping thereby to gain an
invitation to join the party. Unfortunately he undertook the role of a
semi-expert, and being by nature the most honest and open of men had
fallen into the pit she dug. Upon his profession of faith she at once,
so he flattered himself, accepted him as a fellow enthusiast, and began
to describe to him a procession of _Arachnidae_ across a swamp.
“In the lead was one great, tiger-striped fellow,” she said. “Are you
familiar with the beautiful, big _arachnid_ with the yellow-and-black
wings?”
“Yes, indeed!” said Colton eagerly. “I used to see’em flitting around
the roses at our summer place.”
“Then,” she said mischievously, “you ought to alter your habits. The
_arachnids_ are spiders. Anyone who sees winged spiders is safer
fishing than on a butterfly hunt. Good-bye, Dr. Colton.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE WONDERFUL WHALLEY
THUS cruelly disabused of his hopes, Dick Colton went fishing. But his
heart was not in the sport. Absentmindedly he made up a cast of flies
and spent an hour of fruitless whipping before it dawned upon him that
he had been using a scarlet ibis and a white miller in a blaze of
direct sunshine. Having changed to a carefully prepared leader of grey
and black hackles, he had better luck; but for the first time in his
life successful angling had lost its savour. Laying aside his rod, he
climbed a hillock to look over the landscape. It was a blank. Nowhere
in the range of vision could he discern a butterfly net. The rock where
he had spread his coat suggested a seat. He sat down there, and for one
solid hour proved with irrefutable logic that that which was, couldn’t
possibly be so, because he had known Dolly Ravenden only two days.
Having attained this satisfactory conclusion, he took out the
twenty-dollar bill and regarded it with miserly fervour. Haynes, coming
over the hill, caused a hasty withdrawal of currency.
The reporter seemed tired and worried. In answer to the physician’s
inquiry whether anything new had developed, he shook his head. Colton
dismissed that subject, and with his accustomed straightforwardness
went on to another, upon which he had been deliberating with an uneasy
mind.
“Mr. Haynes,” he said, “I want to speak to you on rather a difficult
subject.”
The reporter looked at him keenly. “Most difficult subjects are better
let alone,” he said shortly.
“In fairness to you I can’t let this one alone. It concerns Miss
Johnston.”
“Whom you have known since Monday, I believe.” Haynes’ face was
disagreeable.
“Pardon me,” said the other. “My interest is in my brother.”
“I can’t pretend to share it,” returned Haynes.
“His name is Everard Colton. Do you know him?”
“Perhaps when I tell you that I know something of your family’s
entirely unnecessary solicitude as to Miss Johnston, you will
appreciate the bad taste of pursuing the subject,” said Haynes.
Dick’s equable temper and habituated self-control stood him in good
stead now.
“I am regarding you as standing in the place of Helga Johnston’s
brother,” he said.
“Are you appealing to me for help in your family affairs?” asked the
reporter rather contemptuously.
“I am trying to be as frank with you as I should like you to be with
me,” returned the other steadily. “I want your consent to my sending
for Everard to come down here.”
Haynes stared at him, amazed. “What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I say. There have been some hotheaded and unfortunate
judgments on the part of my family, which report has greatly magnified.
I realise now the full extent of the error.”
“And what has brought about this change of heart?” sneered the other.
“My acquaintance with Miss Johnston. There are some women who carry the
impress of fineness and of character in their faces and their smallest
actions. Even if I had learned nothing else about her, after seeing
Helga Johnston I would think it an honour for any family to welcome
her.”
Haynes’ face softened, but it still was with some harshness that he
said: “There are other Coltons who think otherwise.”
“That is because they don’t know,” was the quick reply. “I want Everard
to have his chance, and I’ve put this case before you because I know
and respect your relation to Miss Johnston, and because I believe it is
your right.”
“Yes, you’re fair about it,” said Haynes, and fell into deep thought.
“Of course,” said Dick uneasily, “if having Everard here is going to
be—er—painful to you, I won’t ask him. I should have thought of that
first. I don’t know that Everard would have a chance anyway.”
“Dr. Colton, I believe that Helga did care for your brother.”
“But is it an open field?” asked Dick impulsively.
A slight smile appeared on Haynes’ lined face. “You mean, do I want to
marry Helga myself? She has never thought of me in that way. In a way
it would be painful, yet I should be glad to know, while I have time,
that she was going to marry some good man—but not any man whose family
could not accept her as she deserves.”
“While you have time,” said the young physician slowly. “While you
have——” He broke off, advanced a step and peered into the other’s face.
Haynes bore the scrutiny with a grim calmness.
As Colton scrutinised, the harsh lines that he had translated into
irritable temperament leaped forth into the terrible significance of
long-repressed pain.
“I don’t want to be professionally intrusive,” said the young doctor
slowly, “but I think—I’m afraid—I know what you mean.”
“Ah, I see you are something of a diagnostician,” said Haynes quietly.
“How long has it been going on?”
“Nearly a year. It’s just behind the left armpit. Rather an unusual
case, I believe. You see, I’m not on the lists as a marrying man.”
Colton walked to and fro on the little level stretch, half a dozen
times. He had seen sickness and suffering in its most helpless forms;
but this calm acceptance of fate affected him beyond his professional
bearing.
“Do your people know?”
“I have no people. It hasn’t seemed worth while to mention it to my
friends. So you will regard this as a professional confidence?”
“Oh, look here!” burst out Colton. “I can’t sit around and watch this
go on. I’ve got more money than I can rightly use. You don’t know me
much, and you don’t like me much, but try to put that aside. Let me pay
your——” he glanced at Haynes and swiftly amended—“let me lend you
enough to take you abroad for a year. I’ll write to some people in
Vienna and Berlin. They’re away ahead of us in cancerous affections.
I’d go with you, only——”
He stopped short, as he realised that the controverting reason was Miss
Dorothy Ravenden’s presence on the American side of the ocean.
The reporter walked over and put his hand on Colton’s shoulder. His
harsh voice softened to something of the tone that he used toward
Helga, as he said: “My dear Colton, all the money in the world won’t do
it. If it would, well,” with a sudden, rare smile, “I’m not sure I
wouldn’t take yours, provided I needed it.”
“Try it,” urged the other. “You don’t know how much those foreign
experts may help you.”
Haynes shook his head. “_O, terque quaterque beati, queis ante ora
patrum contigit oppetere_,” he quoted. “That’s one of my few remnants
of Virgil. It means a great deal to me. I shall not die in exile. Well,
Colton, send for your brother.”
“And what will you do?”
“Stay here and work. There’s something in life besides pain when
inexplicable strokes from the void kill men and sheep. I’m going over
to do some more investigating.”
“And I to wire my brother,” said Colton.
“Don’t forget that ‘The Wonderful Whalley’ is to give his exhibition
this evening.”
They met at dinner, and before they had finished the juggler was
announced. The whole party joined him outside, where he had been
arranging his simple paraphernalia. Running to Helga, he dropped on his
knee in exaggerated and theatrical courtliness.
“Mademoiselle, I am your adoring slave for always,” he said, lifting
his brilliant, unsteady eyes to her for a moment. “Weeth your kind
permission I exheebit my powers.”
He led them to the barnyard, where there was a favourable open space,
and began with some simple acrobatics. His audience was Mr. and Mrs.
Johnston, Helga, Haynes, Colton, and the servants. Professor Ravenden
and his daughter had not returned. After the acrobatics came
sleight-of-hand with cards and handkerchiefs.
“Now I show you ze real genius,” said the performer.
From his belt he drew the two heavy blades which had so interested
Haynes. These he supplemented with smaller knives, until he held half a
dozen in hand. Facing the great barn door, he dexterously slanted a
card into the air. As it rose he poised one of the smaller knives. Down
came the card, paralleling the surface of the door. Swish! The knife
shot through the air and nailed the card to the wood. Another card
flew. Thud! It was pinned fast. A third, less accurately reckoned,
fluttered by one corner.
“Now, ze ace of hearts!” cried the juggler. “We shall face it.”
Forward he flipped it. It turned in air, showing the central spot. It
struck the door at a slight angle and was about turning when the knife
met it Straight through the single heart passed the blade. “The
Wonderful Whalley” struck an attitude.
“Well, by Jove!” exclaimed Colton. “I’ve seen knife-play in Mexico by
the best of the Greasers, but nothing like this.”
“Zere is no one like ‘Ze Wonderful Whalley,’” declared that artist
coolly, as he gathered his knives, all except the one that held the ace
of hearts. He stepped back. “You look at ze spot,” he added, addressing
Haynes.
Haynes moved forward to draw out the blade.
There was a cry from Helga and Colton. Something struck the wood so
close to his ear that he felt the wind of it, and the handle of one of
the big blades quivered against his cheek.
“Eet is for warning,” said “The Wonderful Whalley” urbanely. “Ze heart,
eet could——”
He choked as the powerful grasp of Johnston closed on his throat.
Haynes and Colton ran forward; but there was no need. The man was
passive.
“Eeet was onlee a trick,” he said. “I am insult. I go home.”
“Shall we let him go?” said Haynes undecidedly.
The question was settled for them. With a sudden blow, the juggler
knocked down Johnston, dodged between Haynes and Colton, caught his
knife from the door as he ran with great swiftness, and threatening
back pursuit at the ready point, disappeared not toward the Sand Spit
station, but straight over the hills. The baffled captors looked at
each other in dismay.
“We’ve got a loose wild animal to deal with now,” said Colton.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE UNHORSED NIGHTFARER
ROUND the big fireplace with its decorations of blue-and-white Colonial
china, which many a guest by vast but vain inducements had tried to buy
from the little hostelry, sat Dick Colton, Haynes and old Johnston. The
clock had struck nine some minutes earlier.
“Your brother couldn’t have caught the afternoon train,” remarked
Haynes. “Was he to ride over?”
“Yes, I arranged for a saddle-horse to meet him at Amagansett,”
answered Colton.
“Reckon the Professor and Miss Dolly stopped at the fishermen’s for
dinner,” opined the old man, as a soft and sudden breeze stirred the
curtains. “If they ain’t in pretty quick they’ll get wet. There’s
somebody now!”
A tramp of feet clumped on the porch, the door was thrown open and a
young man limped in. He was tall, almost as tall as Dick Colton, but
much slenderer, and extremely dark. Despite his unsteady gait, he bore
himself with an inimitably buoyant and jocund carriage. His well-made
riding-suit was muddied and torn, his head was bare, and from a long
but shallow cut on his forehead blood had trickled down one side of his
handsome face, giving him an appearance of almost theatrical
rakishness.
“Hello, Dick, old man!” he cried. “How goes the quest for slumber?”
“Good Lord, Ev!” responded Dick Colton, hurrying to meet him. “What’s
the matter with you? Are you hurt?”
Keenly watching the greeting, Haynes noted the evident and open
affection between the two brothers.
“Just a twisted knee,” said the younger. “Thrown, Dick—thrown like a
riding-school novice. I’d hate to have it get back to the troop.”
“It must have been something extraordinary to get you out of the
saddle,” said Dick, for Everard Colton was one of the best of the
younger polo men.
“It was extraordinary enough, all right,” acquiesced the younger man,
“Let me clean up and I’ll tell you about it.”
“Wait a moment,” said Dick Colton, and introduced his brother to the
other men. “Several queer things have been happening here lately,” he
continued. “We’re all interested in them, particularly Mr. Haynes. Tell
us now—unless you’re in pain,” added Dick anxiously. “Let’s look at
your knee.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. I’m not suffering any except in my temper. Things
I don’t understand disturb my judicial poise.”
“Did your horse roll into one of the gullies?” asked Haynes. “There are
some nasty slides if you get off the road.”
“No, my horse didn’t; but I did,” replied the other. “The Professor of
Prevarication who keeps the Amagansett livery stable told me that the
mare knew the road. If she did know it, she carefully concealed her
knowledge, for as soon as the pitch darkness fell (by the way, I don’t
remember a blacker night) she began to stroll across the verdant meads
like a man chewing a straw and thinking of his troubles. Except for the
sound of the surf, I had no way to steer her, so I just said to her:
‘If you lug me back to Amagansett, I’ll break every rib in your
umbrella,’ and let her amble. About half an hour ago I sighted your
light here. Without any cause that I could make out, my lady friend
began to toss her head upward and sniff the air and tremble.”
“You think the horse heard something?” asked Haynes.
“If I’d been in a big game country I should have said she scented
something. It was a dead calm, and I could have heard any noise, I
think. Well, Jezebel began to buck-jump, and I was rather enjoying
myself when suddenly she did a thing that was new to me in the equine
line. Her legs just seemed to give way from under her, and she slumped
so completely that I was flipped off sidewise. As I got to my feet I
felt a little gust of air that brought a curious odour very plainly to
me.”
“That’s a new development,” said Haynes quietly. “What was it like?”
“Did you ever smell a copperhead snake?”
“Often. Like ripe cucumbers.”
“Yes. Well, this was something on that order, only much stronger and
pretty sickening. Are there any copperheads in Montauk?”
“No, nor ever was,” said Johnston positively. “Anyway, I think it was a
snake. The mare thought it was something uncanny. She went crazy, and
began to rave and tear like a bucking automobile. Just as I thought I
was getting her calmed I stepped on a round stone, that slid me down
into a gully on one side of my face. Again I felt that strange rush of
foul air. Jezebel gave a yell and broke away, and I was adrift on the
broad prairies. There’s one thing I noticed—oh, well, I suppose I
imagined it.”
“No. Go on. Tell us what it was.”
“Well, the draft of wind seemed to come from opposite directions. It
seemed as if something had passed and repassed above me.”
Dick Colton turned to Haynes. “‘The Wonderful Whalley’ is somewhere on
the knolls,” he said.
“Yes; but he isn’t flying around in the air on a broomstick.”
“One could almost believe he had other attributes of the vampire
besides the blood-thirst,” replied Colton. “Ev, Mr. Johnston will show
you your room. Come down when you’re ready. I’ve got something to look
after.”
“You’re worried about Miss—about the Ravendens,” said Haynes to Dick as
the junior Colton left the room. “Wait a moment, till I get lanterns.
I’m going with you.”
“Thank you,” said Dick quietly. “I thought you would. Ev won’t like it
much when he finds there’s something afoot and he has been left out.”
“He’s had his share. I’ve an idea that your brother has been near to
death to-night.”
“The more reason for haste, then.”
“I’ll strike off inland. You take the sea side,” said Haynes, as the
two lighted lanterns and passed out into the dead blackness. “And, by
the way,” he added, “I wouldn’t make my light any more conspicuous than
necessary.”
“All right,” said Dick. “I’ve no particular desire to attract Whalley’s
attention.”
Within ten minutes the young doctor heard voices, and called. Professor
Ravenden’s dry accents answered him. With a hail to Haynes, Colton ran
forward. He almost plunged into Dolly Ravenden’s horse, which reared
and snorted.
“What is it?” cried the girl. “Oh, it’s Dr. Colton. Are you hunting the
night-flying _arachnida?_”
“I was looking for you.”
“Has anything happened?” asked the girl quickly, sobered by his tone.
“Helga? Mr. Haynes?”
“No, all are safe.” He laid his hand on the neck of her mount. “But you
must come home at once. There is danger abroad.”
“Why, Dr. Colton, you’re trembling! I wouldn’t have believed you knew
what it was to be afraid.”
“You don’t know what it is to care——” he cut off the words with
something like a sob. “Thank God, we found you!”
Then the girl had cause to bless the darkness, for from her heart there
surged a flood to her face, and with it woman’s first doubt and fear
and glory. “Perhaps I do know,” she thought. For an instant, she closed
her eyes and saw him as he had come draggled and staggering from the
sea. She opened them upon his stalwart figure and the clean-cut, manly
face, still drawn with anxiety, clear in the light of the lantern.
“It was good of you to brave the danger,” she said sweetly. “I have had
a premonition of some tragedy overhanging, since we found the sheep.”
“Well, Professor! Hello, Miss Dolly!” called Haynes, as he swung up on
a trot. “Are you all right? Better hurry in. There’s a storm coming.”
“It is something besides a storm that brought you gentlemen out on a
search for us,” said Professor Ravenden shrewdly. “While properly
appreciative, I should be glad to have an explanation.” The explanation
came swiftly, from the direction of the sea. It was a long-drawn,
high-pitched scream. There was in it a cadence of mortal terror; the
last agony rang shrill and unmistakable from its quivering echoes. Miss
Ravenden’s horse bounded in the air; but Colton’s weight on the bridle
brought it down shaking.
“That was a horse,” said the girl tremulously. “Poor thing!”
“In dire extremity, if I mistake not,” added the professor. “I am
beginning to feel an interest which I trust is not unscientific in this
succession of phenomena.”
“I think,” said Haynes quickly, “that the house is the place for us
just now. That’s the end of your brother’s horse,” he added to Colton
in a low tone.
When Dick Colton lifted the girl from her saddle at the front porch he
said to her: “Miss Ravenden, may I ask you to promise me something?”
“_I_ don’t know,” said the girl, in sudden apprehension. “What is it?”
“That you will not go out alone on the grassland again, nor go out even
with your father after dusk, until Mr. Haynes or I tell you it is
safe?”
“I promise. But won’t you tell me what you have found out?”
“Something unhorsed my brother as he came across the point in the
darkness, and that was his mare’s death-cry you heard from the shore.”
When they were inside, Haynes suggested that they hold a brief
consultation, at which all should be present. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston,
Helga and Everard Colton were sent for. In the stress of the moment
Haynes had forgotten that Helga had not been warned of the younger
Colton’s coming. Everard came into the room first, and provided his
brother with a surprise, by rushing at Miss Ravenden as if bent on
devouring her.
“Little Dot, the butterfly’s Nemesis!” he cried. “When did you get
here, and how? And Professor too! Well, this is a lark!” To which
greeting the Ravendens responded with equal warmth.
“Dick, you scoundrel, why didn’t you tell me they were here?” cried
Everard.
“I didn’t know you knew them,” returned the bewildered Dick.
“Know them? Why, I’ve spent a week of my latest vacation on their
house-boat. The _Lepidoptero_ of half the Southern States shriek aloud
when they see Miss Ravenden and me approaching. Besides, I’m useful, am
I not, Dolly?”
“Not in terms that could be reduced to an estimate,” said that young
woman.
“Ungrateful maiden! Don’t I shoo off your swarming adorers, comprising
all the polyglot of Washington and most of the blue blood of
Philadelphia? I’m the only man in America who can be with Miss Dorothy
Ravenden for three consecutive days without falling desperately in love
with her. I escape only because I know it’s hopeless.”
“Oh, is that it?” said Dolly demurely. “I had heard there was a more
tangible reason for my bereavement. Vardy, you’re looking serious in
spite of all your nonsense. I believe, upon my soul, the stories are
true.”
“Oh, Dick,” said Everard hastily, “I nearly forgot about that package
of books. I dropped’em outside. Here they are and they’ll cost you just
eight dollars and eighty cents and the price of a drink for my trouble
in bringing them. Don’t know what they are, because I turned over your
telegram to Towney; but by their weight they’re worth the money. Let’s
have a look at them.”
Before Dick could protest he had opened the package.
“‘Summer reading for a young physician,’” he began, looking at the
titles. “What have we here? Harris’ ‘Insects Injurious to Vegetation
‘The Butterfly Book,’ by Holland; ‘Special Report on the Spiders of
Long Island’; ‘North American’—well, by my proud ancestral halls!”
“Give me those books, Ev!” said Dick sharply. “Little Everard, the Boy
Wonder, has put a dainty foot in it again!” He laughed banteringly,
looking from Dorothy Ravenden to Dick and back again. “Dick, too? Oh,
Dolly, couldn’t you leave the family alone for my sake? Case of ‘Love
me, love my bugs’!”
But even the much-allowanced Everard had gone too far. Dolly Ravenden
turned upon him with an expression which boded ill for the venturesome
young man, when a volume of song from the hallway, that seemed,
controlled and effortless as it was, to fill full and permeate every
farthest nook and corner of the house, stopped her. It was Helga
singing a quaint and stirring old ballad.
“Where there is no place
For the glow-worm to lie,
Where there is no space
For receipt of a fly;
Where the midge dare not venture
Lest herself fast she lay,
If Love come he will enter
And will find out the way.”
“Heavens!” exclaimed Dick Colton. “What a voice! Who is it?”
“Haven’t you heard Helga sing?” said Dolly Ravenden, in surprise.
“Isn’t it superb!”
Everard had risen and was looking hungrily toward the door. Dolly
looked keenly at him, and saw in his face a look that she had seen in
many a man’s eyes, but that no woman but one had ever before seen in
Everard Colton’s.
“It _is_ true,” she said to herself. The voice went on:
“There is no striving
To cross his intent,
There is no contriving
His plots to prevent;
For if once the message greet him
That his true-love doth stay,
Though Death come forth to meet him,
Love will find out the way.”
The soft, deep, triumphant final note died away. There was a moment’s
silence.
“Dick, you ought to have told me,” said Everard, unsteadily.
But Dick paid no heed. He was looking at Haynes, upon whose cold and
rather hard-lined face was such an expression of loving pride and
yearning, as utterly transfigured it.
“I ought to be kicked for bringing Everard down here,” thought the
gentle-hearted young doctor.
The door opened and Helga entered. As if drawn magnetically, her gaze
went straight to Everard Colton. She stopped short.
“Helga!” said he.
The girl caught her breath sharply. Her hand fluttered toward her
breast, and fell again. Her colour faded; but instantly she was
mistress of herself.
“Good-evening, Mr. Colton,” she said quietly, and gave him her hand as
she came forward. “Did you come in this evening? It always is wiser to
write ahead for rooms.”
“I don’t understand,” he stammered. “Are you—do you live here?”
“This is my father’s hotel,” she explained. “Father, this is Mr.
Everard Colton. Is there a room for him?”
“I’ve found my room,” said Everard hoarsely, and there followed a
silence which Miss Ravenden maliciously enjoyed, her eyes sparkling at
her erstwhile tormentor’s discomfiture.
Haynes broke the silence. “This is all very pleasant,” he said sharply
and with an effort, “but it isn’t business. And we have business of a
rather serious nature on hand. There is just this to say: Somewhere on
the point is this juggler. He is armed, and there is at least a strong
suspicion that he is murderous. The death of the sailor, the killing of
the sheep, and Mr. Colton’s adventure show plainly enough that there is
peril abroad. It may or may not have to do with the juggler. But until
the man is captured, I think the ladies should not leave the house
alone; and none of us should go far alone or unarmed. Is that agreed?”
“I agree for myself and my daughter to your very well-judged
suggestion,” said Professor Ravenden, “and I have in my room an extra
revolver which I will gladly lend to anyone.”
The others also assented to the plan, and at Haynes’ suggestion the
weapon went to Helga’s adopted father. Dick Colton had a navy revolver,
Everard had his cavalry arm, and Haynes had written for a pistol.
“Would it not be well,” suggested the professor, “to notify the
authorities?”
“The average town constable is appointed to keep him out of the
imbecile asylum,” said Haynes. “I believe we can organise a vigilance
committee right here and see it through. Besides,” he added with a
smile, “I want the story exclusively for my paper.”
CHAPTER NINE
CROSS-PURPOSES
HAS the generalissimo been disobeying his own orders?” called out Dolly
Ravenden from the porch, as Haynes came up the pathway early the next
morning. He did not respond to the rallying tone, habitual between
them, which covered a well-founded friendship. Instead he said:
“Miss Dolly, you heard that horse last night. What did you think of the
cry?”
“It went through me like a knife,” said the girl, shuddering. “I
thought it was a death scream. The horse I was on thought so, too.”
“I’d have sworn to it myself,” said Haynes, and fell into deep thought.
“Well?” queried the girl after waiting impatiently. “It isn’t a secret,
is it?”
“Something in that line. I’ve just been all over the ground between the
place where Mr. Colton was assailed and the beach, without finding hide
or hair of the horse. It must have escaped.”
“I for one won’t believe that until I see it alive.”
Haynes glanced at her sharply. “Woman’s intuition,” he said. “I won’t
either. Well, I’m going to breakfast.”
The girl lingered, looking out into the ruddy-golden morning. It was
late September weather, a day burnished with sunlight. A faint haze
softened the splendour of the knolls. The air was instinct with the
rare, fine quality of the vanishing summer. It was the falling cadence
of the season, one of the last few perfect, fulfilling notes of the
year’s love-melody. With all the knowledge that death and horror lurked
somewhere in the lovely expanse spread before her, Dolly Ravenden
yearned to it. Soon she would be back amid the cosmopolitan gaieties of
the Capital. She loved that too, but with a different and shallower
part of her nature. Sharply it came to her that this year she would
leave with a deeper regret than ever before, and the nature of that
regret was formulating itself against the stern veto of her will. “A
man I’ve not seen half a dozen times!” she half incredulously
reproached herself.
A certain feminine exasperation against herself was illogically and
perversely turned upon Dick Colton as he strode around the corner of
the piazza. The experienced wager of love-tilts might have interpreted
the expression she turned to him, and have fled the stricken field.
Poor Dick was the merest novice. His attitude toward women had always
been much the same as toward men, varying in degree according to the
charm or quality of the individual, but all of a kind, until he had
encountered Dolly Ravenden. To his unsuspecting mind it seemed that at
the present moment he was in the greatest luck. The sun was shining
with a special, even a personal, lustre. Abruptly it darkened several
million candle-power as Miss Ravenden gave him the most casual of
greetings and the curve of a shoulder while she scanned the spreading
landscape.
“Have I done anything, Miss Dol—Miss Ravenden?” asked blundering Dick.
“Done anything?” repeated she with indifferent inquiry. “I’m sure I
don’t know.”
This fairly nonplussed him. He sat down and wondered what to do next.
Unfortunately his thoughts turned upon his brother.
“Isn’t it great that you know Ev?” he pursued. “I’m so glad that I sent
for him to come down.”
“You sent for him?” cried the girl in a tone that straightened up Dick
like a pin.
“Certainly. Why not?”
“To see Helga, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“Of course you assumed that she was dying to see him.”
“Not in the least,” said Dick, with some spirit “Just to give him his
fair chance.”
“You didn’t think of being fair toward anyone else?”
“Toward whom?”
“Miss Johnston herself, in the first place. One expects a certain
degree of delicacy even from—from——”
“Don’t smooth it down on my account,” said Dick grimly. “You seem to be
in a fairly frank mood to-day.”
The imp of the perverse indeed was guiding Dolly’s words now. “From a
man one knows nothing whatever about,” she concluded.
“And isn’t interested in knowing,” suggested he. “I’m as fond of Helga
as of my own sister,” she went on vehemently. “She is only a year
younger than I, but I’ve been about so much more that I—well, I assume
some responsibility for her.” Her tone challenged Dick. He merely
bowed.
“You know how it is between Helga and your brother?”
“Something of it.”
“And knowing, do you think it was right to bring him down here?”
“Why not?”
“Because,” said Miss Ravenden hotly, “your family became panic-stricken
at the thought of Everard’s marrying Helga, before they even took the
trouble to find out anything about her. To insult a woman whom they
have never seen! Why—why—Helga is as—— If I had a brother, and Helga
Johnston was willing to marry him I should count it an honour to the
Ravendens.”
All the imperious pride of a family who had been landed gentry in the
South, while Colton’s sturdy forebears were wielding pick and shovel in
the far West, who had signed the Declaration of Independence before the
first American Colton had worked a toilsome passage across from his
North Country hovel to the land of sudden riches, shone in her eyes.
“So should I!” returned Dick quietly. “But surely Helga Johnston did
not tell you all this?”
“No, she did not. It was the same meddlesome friend who first told her
of your family’s objections. Oh, if I were Everard I would tell his
family to—
“To go to the devil,” suggested Dick helpfully.
“Please not to put words into my mouth! Yes, I should!” she returned
hotly. Then, illogically and severely added, “particularly such words.
And after what I told you about Harris Haynes I should have thought
that an ordinary sense of justice—Oh, it was unmanly of you!”
Dolly’s imp now had spurred her into a respectable state of rage, and
Dick’s wrath rose to meet hers.
“Just a moment,” he said. “What was that about Haynes?” Two wrinkled
lines appeared between his eyes. His mouth altered in its set, giving
to his naturally pleasant face an aspect of almost savage
determination.
“Why,” thought Dolly, “he’s looking at me as if I wasn’t a girl at all,
but just something in his path to beat down.” And her quick pang of
alarm had something pleasurable in it.
“I want that again about Haynes.”
“I say you were not fair to him. You know perfectly well that whatever
chance Mr. Haynes may have with Helga——”
“Chance of what? Of marrying her?”
“Certainly,” said Dolly boldly.
“Do you think she loves Haynes?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know. You think that she doesn’t. And do you think he loves
her?”
“Why should I tell you, when you will only browbeat and contradict me?
I know this, that there is the most beautiful affection between them
that I have ever known between a man and a girl. With two people less
fine than Helga and Harris Haynes it could not be so. You aren’t
capable of understanding that sort of thing. And so you would destroy
this for the mere whim of a boy!”
“It is not the whim of a boy,” returned Dick sternly. “It has made
Everard a man. I think she loves him.”
“What if she does?” said the girl recklessly.
“You mean you would have her marry Haynes without love?”
“Yes,” said Dolly, too far committed to back down now; but within
herself she was saying: “Oh, you wretched little liar!”
“Ah!” observed Dick with a change to cold courtesy that stung her more
than his wrath. “I haven’t had the good fortune to meet many girls so
advanced in their views. Myself, both as a physician and
unprofessionally, I am simple enough to think that loveless marriages
are unfortunate.”
“Oh, sentimentality has its place, I suppose,” said the imp within
Dolly.
“I think I understand you,” he said with an effort.
“You don’t! Oh, you don’t!” cried Dolly’s better spirit. “Don’t dare to
think of me so!” But the imp controlled the lips with silence.
“Yes, I think I understand,” continued Dick. “I have had little time
for my social obligations; but I have seen enough to have met and been
sickened by this before. That associations of what we call good society
can have so corrupted the view of life in a girl like you—Oh, it seems
incredible! Probably because it never happened to hit me personally
before.”
The girl went perfectly white under the bitterness of his contempt.
“There is nothing further to say, Dr. Colton,” she said, rising. There
were a thousand things to say; but the imp of the perverse would not
let her say them. “You have only convinced me that for any woman to be
connected with your family would be the direst misfortune.”
When Dick found himself alone there was a blur over his mental vision
such as extreme pain brings to the physical eye. The whole wretched
scene repeated itself over and over. How readily he could have defended
himself with Haynes’ own words against the charge of unmanly treachery
to Haynes! How easily he could have refuted!—but to what purpose, since
she was unworthy? Hatless and aimless, he wandered out upon the
grass-land.
Almost before he knew it he had reached the beach and was approaching
Graveyard Point. Coming around a jut in the cliff he was amazed to see
Professor Ravenden digging energetically at the sand with an improvised
shovel. At once the professor hailed him for help. Now, the normal man,
no matter how miserable his mood, will rouse to the solution of a
mystery, and when Dick Colton saw the form of a horse partly revealed,
he pitched in heartily.
“How did you find it?” he asked the professor.
“In passing I noticed that the cliff had given way above,” was the
reply. “As there had been no rain, some unusual occurrence must have
caused this. Closer examination revealed the leg of a horse, upon which
I inferred that here was buried the mare ridden by my young friend,
your brother. Doubtless we soon shall perceive some clue as to the
manner of death.”
But the body being wholly uncovered revealed no wound.
“Must have run off the cliff in her flight,” suggested Colton.
“An almost untenable hypothesis,” said Professor Ravenden
argumentatively. “The place where your brother was unhorsed is a mile
from here, at least. We heard the animal’s death-cry an hour after your
brother’s encounter. Could you devise any form of terror which would so
afflict a horse as to drive it over a hundred-foot cliff, a full hour
after the origin of the panic?”
“No, I couldn’t. Whatever it was that terrified, the poor brute must
have followed it. The juggler, I suppose.”
“But for what purpose? However, I think we would best climb the cliff,
and taking opposite directions examine the ground for any possible
indications.”
So the professor struck off westward, while Colton took the line toward
the lighthouse. Soon his path led him down into one of the precipitous
gullies. Inland from him a sharp turn shielded by large rocks cut off
the view, beyond which appeared the upper foliage of a scrub-oak patch.
From among the rocks Dick heard a strange sound, like a gasp.
His hand went to his revolver, and he stopped short. Again the sound
came in a succession of cadences, like interrupted breathing. Dick
moved forward. A stone slipped under his foot and rattled down among
other stones. There was instant silence.
Keeping himself sheltered, he walked firmly forward. Before a large
rock he paused, then holding the weapon ready he stepped around it.
Helga Johnston stood there, her hands pressed to her breast, her face
tear-stained. She gave a little cry of relief.
“Ah, it is you!” she said.
“Did I frighten you?” asked Dick. “I’m awfully sorry. You’ve been
crying.”
“Yes,” said the girl.
“Was it as bad as that? I must have alarmed you very much.”
“No,” said the girl with the simple directness which he had admired in
her from the first. “I was frightened; but that was not why I was
crying.”
“Has Everard been with you?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Helga,” said Dick soberly, “will you believe that I am your
friend?”
“I don’t know,” replied the girl dubiously. “Why did you bring your
brother down here?”
“Do you remember, I said to you that I wished I had a sister like you?
That is why.”
Helga flushed deeply. “It was not fair,” she said. “Miss Johnston, is
there any reason why you should not marry my brother?”
“Yes.”
“Is it because some day you may marry Mr. Haynes?”
“There has never been the suggestion of such a thing. Why you and Dolly
Ravenden both insist on believing that Petit Père wants to marry me,
is—it’s stupid!” said the girl indignantly.
“Ah! And Miss Ravenden has been advising you to marry Mr. Haynes?”
“She has been advising me not to,” retorted Helga. “Harris Haynes is
the best man I have ever known, and I owe him everything; but Dolly
knows that I don’t—really, Dr. Colton, I don’t know why I should be
telling you all these things.”
Dick, thunderstruck at the new light on Miss Ravenden’s views, paid no
attention to this mild suggestion that he mind his own business. Indeed
it suddenly had become his own business with a vengeance.
“Miss Ravenden advised you not to marry Haynes? It can’t be. She told
me——”
“You and Dolly seem to be very much interested in my affairs.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Dick. “Some day I hope to explain to you. Let
us get back to Everard, You say there is a reason why you should not
marry him?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you care for him?”
“That is a question you have no right to ask.”
“Ah!” said Dick with satisfaction. “Then it is that wretched business
of the family’s opposition.” Helga made no reply.
“Listen, Miss Helga,” said Dick after a few moments’ thought. “Someone
told my mother lies about you. I don’t know what they were; but I do
know that they gave Mother a wrong impression. My mother is the best
mother in the world, and a good and noble woman, only she has one
attribute of the domestic hen. When alarmed she moves hurriedly, and
usually in the wrong direction. The liar in this case alarmed her. Now,
then: my father is a broken man; he has not long to live. I am
virtually the head of the family. In this case the family will accept
my decision. I ask you in their name if you will honour us by marrying
my brother? Will you shake hands on the promise?”
He held out his hand, looking her in the eyes. Helga flushed deeply;
but answered the smile with her own as she said:
“Dr. Colton, you are a good man, and”—she hesitated for a moment—“some
girl will be very proud of you. But you aren’t very wise about women,
or you would know that there is only one man a girl can give that
promise to. And,” she added meaningly, “no one else can give it for
her.”
“I understand,” he replied. “I say nothing.”
“Then I’ll shake hands on _your_ promise,” she said gravely.
“Well, well, well!” said a thick voice above them. “That’s a nice
picture. Whatcher think this is, Central Park? I’ll tell that pup,
Haynes.”
Paul Serdholm, the life-guard from the Sand Spit station, stood on the
brink of the ravine. It was evident that he had been drinking.
“You go about your business,” said Colton slowly.
“Oh, that’s easy said,” retorted the fellow. “I’m on the trouble-hunt
to-day. Went over to Bow Hill an’ licked that shrimp Bruce for callin’
me down the night of the wreck. Comin’ back, I seen the Portuguese
sneakin’ along by an oak patch; so I dropped on him an’ punched his
face up. I don’t like Dagoes. Now I’m going to do you up, you fresh
guy.”
“Serdholm, you’re drunk,” said Helga contemptuously. “And you’re making
a fool of yourself.”
“An you’ll report me at the station, hey? Just becuz you was washed
ashore here you think you own Montauk! Well, report an’ be——!”
“That will do!” said Colton.
“Will it? Come up here and make it!” taunted Serdholm. “No? All right,
I’ll come down.” Colton met him halfway. It was no fight; for though
Serdholm was brawny the young physician was as greatly his superior in
strength as in science and condition. The coast-guard rolled to the
bottom of the gully and lay there cursing feebly.
“He will lose his place for this,” said Helga as they went shoreward.
“I hope he will, the beast!”
“Do you suppose he really thrashed the juggler, or was that only
boasting?”
“He has the reputation of being quarrelsome when he has been drinking,”
said Helga.
“Haynes ought to know about it, then.”
“I’ll tell him. But, please, Dr. Colton, say nothing about Serdholm’s
rudeness. It would only make Petit Père angry, and cause trouble, and
I’ve felt some danger overhanging him. Dr. Colton, do you believe in
dreams?”
“We men whose business it is to deal with the human body, get to
realise how much of mystery there is in the human soul,” said Dick. “Is
that an answer?”
“I don’t know,” replied the girl doubtfully-“Some day, perhaps, I shall
tell you. Meantime,” she added, as they approached Third House, “you
won’t forget your promise, will you?”
“No.”
“As you’ve been interesting yourself in my affairs a good deal,” said
the girl with friendly raillery, “I’ll just give you a bit of free
advice. Don’t take everything about Dolly Ravenden too seriously. She’s
had loads of attention and seen a great deal of the world, and she is
pretty high-spirited; but she is in every way a splendid girl and a
right-minded one. I imagine she is not always easy to understand.”
“Heaven knows I’ve made one awful blunder!” groaned Dick.
“Then don’t apologise for it too soon,” said the girl quickly. “There,
I’ve been a traitor to my sex. But I like you, Dick Colton. And,” she
added as they reached the door, “if you can sue as well for yourself as
for another I think you might well win any woman.”
“Well, Heaven bless you for that!” said Dick Colton to the closing
door.
CHAPTER TEN
THE TERROR BY NIGHT
IN every department of scientific inquiry, Professor Ravenden was,
above all else, methodical. The extraordinary or unusual he set aside
for calm analysis. When he came to a dark passage in his
investigations, he made full notes and relied on patience and his
reasoning powers for light. Facts of ascertained relations and
proportions he catalogued. In crises of doubt, after exerting his own
best efforts, he was not too proud to ask counsel, were there any at
hand in whose judgment he felt confidence. But first he strove to make
his own mind master of the problem.
Thus it was that on the night of September 19, after an evening’s
moth-hunt, he went to his room and sat down to write. First, however,
he changed to pyjamas and dressing-gown, for a sudden shower had soaked
his clothing. He then selected from a box a cigar of a brand whose
housing and apparel proclaimed it of high price and special flavour,
lighted it, and smoked with deep, long puffs. To his daughter or any
other who knew him well this would have signified some unusual mental
condition, for the abstemious professor used tobacco most sparingly. On
this occasion he needed it as a sedative. Professor Ravenden had
undergone a severe shock.
For more than three hours he wrote, with long pauses for consideration.
Once he rose, strode on slippered feet up and down the room and
communed aloud with himself:
“Undeniably I was terrified.... Why otherwise should I have fled?... An
object that may well have been harmless and must inevitably have
presented aspects of scientific interest.... Perhaps the repetition...
the instinct of peril deceived me, fostered by the previous
inexplicable occurrences... yet, even in my fright, I incline to
believe that I preserved my powers of observation.”
When he slept upon the conclusion of his work, there lay amid the
wreckage of scriptive revision upon his table three closely written
sheets of manuscript.
Waking early the next morning, he aroused Haynes and Dick Colton, and
asked them to come to his room as soon as they had dressed. Upon their
entrance he bade them to seats, and took up the manuscript.
“In a case of this importance,” he said formally, “I shall not
apologise, except by mention, for the disorder of my room. It has been
my practice in cases presenting difficult aspects to reduce the salient
facts to writing, thus preserving the more important features
unencumbered with obstructive detail. This method it was which enabled
me to throw some new light upon the dimorphic female of the _Papilio
turnus_ as found in the Blue Ridge chain. In the present instance I
design to read to you, gentlemen, a report upon certain strange
happenings of last night, and to ask your opinion as bearing upon the
mysterious events which have crowded so fast upon each other recently.
Before beginning to read, I may state that I never have been afflicted
with any aberration of the senses, that I am in sound health, and that
after the experiences which I am about to state I tested both
temperature and pulse for possible indications of fever. My temperature
was 98.5, which is normal for me, and my pulse, while a trifle
irregular, owing to nervous disturbances, was not unusually rapid. Do I
present to you, Dr. Colton, any external indications of nervous or
functional disorder?”
“Absolutely none, sir,” replied the physician promptly. “I should
estimate your temperament to be an unusually calm and rational one.”
“Then I shall proceed,” said Professor Ravenden, and turning to his
manuscript he read: “Report on certain events noted by Willis Ravenden,
F. R. S., Sc.D., at Montauk Point, Long Island, on the evening of
September 18, 1902.
“On the evening named I had set forth from Third House with the purpose
of seeking a specimen of the _Catocala_. Besides my capturing net, a
can of molasses and rum for an insect lure, and the poison jar, I
carried, in pursuance of general agreement, a thirty-two-calibre
revolver. Passing around the south end of the lake, I selected for my
operations a patch of _Quercus ilicifolia_ several hundred feet beyond
the western shore and perhaps a mile distant from my point of
departure, and smeared the leaves with the adhesive mixture. Some
success was rewarding my efforts, among other captives being fine
specimens of the _Saturnia maia_ and the _Dryocampa imperialis_, when a
cloud-bank obscured the moon, and the wind which had been blowing
lightly from the north became capricious and gusty. Conditions such as
these are unfavourable to the pursuit of the nocturnal _lepidoptero_.
Moreover, the darkness was becoming very dense. Hastily closing and
packing my net, I set out for home. As nearly as I can estimate it then
was about 10 o’clock p. m.
“Owing to the darkness and the irregularity of the ground, my progress
was difficult. When I had almost reached, as I estimated, the shore of
the lake, I stumbled and fell. As I regained my feet, a strange sound
which appeared to come from above and a trifle to the northwest of me
attracted my attention. It suggested the presence of some winged
creature, although it resembled rather a crackling than a beating or
flapping of pinions. It seemed to differ from the strange creaking
which I had before noted when abroad at night, and which I at once
recalled. Somewhat alarmed, I drew my revolver and cocked it. At this
moment the wind, which had been dead from the north, veered in a sharp
gust to the northwest. A rushing noise from the blackness above seemed
to be drawing near me at a high speed, and as I braced myself for some
assault, an object which I believe to have been very large, struck the
ground with great violence a few rods, as I judged, to the west of me
and came bounding over the earth in my direction. At the same time I
discerned a faintly perceptible oily odour.
“For a moment I was paralysed with alarm. I make no concealment or
palliation of the emotion. As it seemed, without volition, I then
leaped backward, and ran toward the end of the lake. Thus I avoided the
advancing object, but only to run into further danger (if danger there
was), for I heard another crackling noise of passage, and this time
dimly saw in the void a great body pass swiftly above my head. Of the
dimensions or shape of this phenomenon I can give no accurate
description; but it seemed larger and of more solid bulk than any bird
known to me as inhabiting this locality, and its movement suggested
rather a skimming progress, borne by the wind, than a measured flight.
Throwing myself upon the ground to avoid its notice, I remained until a
heavy splash told of its having reached the lake. Then I rose and ran.
“With my first exhaustion of breath came reason. I turned, and while
one hardly can answer for his own performances, I intended to return
and investigate, for shame burned hot within me. Indeed, I already had
retraced my steps for perhaps a hundred feet when there burst upon me a
rain-squall so furious that I lost my way completely and was soon
floundering in the edge of the lake. Realising my helplessness in this
onslaught of the elements, I set out for home, and after an hour’s
wandering, according to my estimate, reached Third House at ten minutes
past eleven.
“Conclusions: That the two objects were presumably a pair of living
creatures; that they were either in a state of panic flight, or were
water-creatures hastening to refuge, since at least one of them
terminated its course in the lake; that they probably were the same
creatures whose presence has been noted overhead previously by myself,
Mr. Haynes, Mr. Everard Colton and others.
“Query: What relation, if any, do they bear to the death of the sheep
on the beach and of the sailor Petersen?”
Professor Ravenden laid his manuscript on the table and looked at his
auditors. Haynes had been making notes. Colton sat in rapt attention.
Each drew a long breath as the reading closed, and the professor said:
“Gentlemen, have you any suggestions that will throw light upon these
phenomena?”
Colton spoke first. “You suggested, before, an air-craft of some kind,
perhaps in joke.”
“Partly,” agreed the professor. “But these were by no means large
enough. Air-ships, as you doubtless are aware, are of vast extent.”
“Besides, they usually don’t travel in pairs,” said Haynes. “You can
locate the spot where you saw the things, I suppose, Professor?”
“Approximately.”
“Then let’s start at once,” said the reporter, rising.
They made good speed to the lake, and examined its western shore
without making any discovery. Spreading out, they scouted carefully,
and had gone perhaps fifty yards, studying the ground for possible
signs, when Dick Colton, who was in the middle, gave a shout and began
to exhibit signs of strangulation. The others ran to him, and he turned
a suffused and twitching face toward them, pointing to an oak patch
near by.
“Excuse me,” he gasped; “but look at that!” Tangled in the patch was
the dilapidated ruin of a large kite of the Malay or tailless type.
Most of the paper had blown away, but what remained was of an oily
finish, and exhaled a slight odour. Professor Ravenden looked at it
carefully, and an expression of deep humiliation overspread his mild
face.
“I do not resent your amusement, Dr. Colton,” he said. “To you
gentlemen I must seem, as indeed I do to myself, an unworthy and
fearful disciple of science.”
“Not in the least,” said Haynes quickly. “Your experience was enough to
frighten anyone.”
“I should have run like a rabbit,” declared Colton positively. “I
laughed because it seemed such a ridiculous ending to my own
forebodings.”
“Perhaps it isn’t entirely ridiculous either,” said Haynes, who had
been examining the kite cord, slowly. “There’s something queer about
this. Where did those kites come from, and how?”
“Broke away, of course,” said Dick.
“Supposing you try to break that string. You’re a husky specimen.”
“Can’t do it,” said the doctor, after exerting his strength. “It’s the
finest kind of light braided line.”
“And it hasn’t been broken, in my opinion,” said the reporter. “Look at
those ends.”
“Cut! Clean cut!” exclaimed Colton.
“And within twenty feet of the bellyband,” added Haynes. “Now, if
someone will kindly explain to me how—”
“This kite,” said the professor, who had been studying it, “is, if I
mistake not, one of a string such as are used for aerostatic
experiments. The oiled paper is for rain-shedding purposes. It is a
subsidiary kite, used to raise the slack of the main line. Therefore
the string has not parted at the point of greatest tension.”
“And it’s as badly crumpled up,” added Colton, “as if it had collided
with a brick block.”
“Its mate ought to have drifted to the opposite shore of the lake,”
said Haynes. “I’ll go look.” Presently he returned with the second
kite. It was twin in size and type to the first. The skeleton was
intact, though the paper showed signs of its rough trip across the
ground before it reached the lake.
“About sixty feet of string left on this one,” said the reporter. “Cut
clean, just like the other.” He laughed nervously. “Begins to look
pretty interesting, doesn’t it?”
“How many kites do you think there were in the string?” Colton asked
the professor.
“Seven is by no means an unusual number in experiments of this nature.”
“Then where are the rest?”
“If the main line was severed they may well have been carried out over
the ocean. Particularly this would be true if these were the two lowest
subsidiary kites.”
“Hello! What’s this?” said Colton, looking up. Over the breast of the
hill toward the Sound strolled a man. He wore the characteristic garb
of the Montauk fishermen, and evidently was from the little colony on
the north shore.
Haynes walked forward to meet him, “G’-morning,” he said pleasantly.
“Did you happen to see anything of a gentleman in a black suit an’
eye-glasses, wanderin’ absentmindedly about this part of the world?”
“No,” said Haynes. “Have you lost such a one?”
“Reckon he’s lost himself, Hain’t showed up since last evenin’. Just
the kind o’ man to lose himself in open country. Sort o’ crank, always
makin’ exper’ments.”
“What kind of experiments?”
“Foolish doin’s with kites, like a kid.”
“Is he staying with you?”
“Boardin’. Been there a week. Says he’s study-in’ air currents. Goes
out in the evenin’s an’ puts up a lot o’ kites. I’ve seen him with as
many as seven onto one string. He’s mighty smart at it.”
“What time did he start out yesterday evening?” asked Haynes.
“Long about ha’-past seven. Looked for him back when the wind dropped
and come again so uneasy, just before that shower. But no Mr. Ely.”
“Is that one of his kites?” asked the reporter, pointing to the broken
rhomboid which he had laid in the long grass.
“Certain, sure!” said the fisherman. “Where’d you find it?”
“It came down near here. So did one of the others.”
“That so?” said the fisherman, seeming somewhat concerned. “Hope he
ain’t come to no harm.” While they were talking Professor Ravenden had
been making a rapid calculation on a pad.
“I believe that I can lead you approximately to the point whence these
kites were flown,” he said. “Will you follow me?”
For more than a mile the small and slight professor set them an
astonishing pace. Presently he stopped short and picked up the end of a
string at the foot of a small hillock.
“This also seems to have been cut,” he said, and followed its course.
Beyond the knoll was a hollow, and on the slope of this a small
windlass.
“That’s his’n!” cried the fisherman. “But where’s he?”
Haynes walked over to a small oak patch beyond. For several yards in
from the edge the shrubbery showed, by its bent twigs, the passage of a
large body. Patches of cloth on the twigs told that a man had torn
through in hot haste. On the soil underneath were footprints. But at
the end of the path and the footprints was nothing.
“Look here!” Haynes exclaimed. “He rushed in here to escape something.
Here’s where the trail ends. You can see-”
“My God! Come quick!”
It was the fisherman on the other side of the oak patch. They ran
around and found him bending over a body almost hidden in the edge of
the thicket, where the scrub was low.
“That’s Mr. Ely!” he cried. “He’s been murdered!”
The head was crushed in as by a terrific blow. Near the right shoulder
the arm-bone protruded from the flesh. Colton lifted the corpse, and
there through the breast was the same kind of gash that had slain
Petersen.
“It’s that cursed juggler,” said Haynes bitterly. “Why did we let him
get away?”
“This man has been dead for several hours,” said the young doctor in a
low tone.
“As long ago as ten o’clock last night?” asked Haynes.
“Very probably.”
“What killed him; the crashing of the skull or the stab-wound?”
“Whichever came first.”
“Assuming the correctness of your hypothesis that this unhappy man
rushed into the oak patch from the other side, Mr. Haynes, how is the
fact that we find his body here, several rods distant from the apparent
end of his flight, to be explained?” asked the professor.
“On the ground that he rushed out again,” replied the reporter dryly.
“Then you discerned returning footprints?”
“No; there was none there, so far as I could see.”
“And there is none here,” said Colton, who had been examining the
grassless soil under the thick canopy. “But see how the thicket is
broken, almost as if he had flung himself upon it. Haynes! What’s
wrong?”
Without any warning the reporter had thrown up his hands and fallen at
full length into the oak. They rushed to his aid, but he was up at
once.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, smiling. “I’m all right. Just an
experiment. I shall go over with this man to make some inquiries at the
fishing colony and arrange for the disposal of the body. It may take me
all day. In that case, I’ll see you this evening.”
He took the fisherman by the arm. The man seemed dazed with horror, and
went along with hanging jaw. Colton and Professor Ravenden returned to
Third House, in pondering silence.
At the house Dick found himself suffering from a return of his old
restlessness. In the afternoon he saw Miss Ravenden, but she evaded
even the necessity of speaking to him. With a vague hope of diverting
his mind and perhaps of finding some fresh clue, he returned to the
lake, and studied the land not only near the spot where the kites had
fallen, but between there and the sea-cliff, without finding anything
to lighten the mystery.
At nine o’clock Haynes came in, pale and tired, and stopped at Dick’s
room.
“They have arranged to ship Mr. Ely’s body back to Connecticut where he
lived,” he said. “The fishermen are in a state of almost superstitious
terror.”
“Anything new?”
“Yes and no. It’s too indefinite to talk about. What little there is
only tends to make the whole question more fantastic and less
possible.”
Colton looked at him. “You need sleep, and you need it badly,” he said.
“Any pain?”
“Oh, the usual. A little more, perhaps.”
“Take this,” said the other, giving him a powder. “That’ll fix you. I
wish it would me; I feel tonight as if sleep had become a lost art.”
Nodding his thanks, the reporter left. Dick threw himself on his bed;
but the strange events of the few days at Montauk crowded his brain and
fevered it with empty conjectures. When finally he closed his eyes
there returned upon him the nauseating procession of medicine bottles.
Then came a bloody sheep, which fled screaming from some impending
horror. The sheep became a man frantically struggling in an oak patch,
and the man became Dick himself. Almost he could discern the horror;
almost the secret was solved. Blackness descended upon him. He threw
himself upward with a shriek—and was awake again. When at length he lay
back, the visions were gone; a soft drowsiness overcame him, and at the
end the deep eyes of Dorothy Ravenden blessed him with peace.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE BODY ON THE SAND
FOUR days had passed since the schooner came ashore on Graveyard Point.
It now was the twentieth of September. The little community in Third
House, which had bade fair to be such a happy family, was in rather a
split-up state. After their tilt of the day before, Dolly Ravenden and
Dick Colton were in a condition of armed neutrality. Dolly was ashamed
that her guardian imp had led her to so misrepresent herself to Dick,
ashamed too of the warm glow at her heart because he cared so deeply.
Thus a double manifestation of her woman’s pride kept her from making
amends.
Dick was longing to abase himself, but wisely took Helga’s advice,
which he wholly failed to understand. Helga’s beautiful voice rang like
an invocation to happiness through the house, but Everard Colton sat in
gloom and reviled himself because he had promised Dick to stay several
days longer. Haynes was irritable because the puzzle was getting on his
nerves. Professor Ravenden brooded over the loss of a fine specimen of
_Lycona_ which had proved too agile for him, after a stern chase which
developed into a long chase early that morning. Breakfast was not a
lively meal.
The morning was thick. A still mist hung over the knolls. It was an
ideal day for quiet and secret reconnoissance.
“This is our chance,” said Haynes after breakfast to Dick Colton and
Professor Ravenden. “We’ll get the horses and ride out across the
point. We may happen on something.”
The others readily agreed, and soon they had disappeared in the
greyness. Their tacit purpose was to find some trace of the Wonderful
Whalley. All the morning they rode, keeping a keen outlook from every
hilltop, but without avail. They lunched late at First House and
started back well along in the afternoon.
“He may be in any one of those thousand scrub-oak patches,” said Haynes
as they remounted. “It’s like hunting a crook on the Bowery. This fog
is thickening. Let’s hustle along.”
To hustle along was not so easy, for presently a fine rain came driving
down, involving the whole world in a grey blur. For an hour the three
circled about, lost. From the professor came the first suggestion:
“I believe that I hear the surf,” said he. “Guiding our course by the
sound, we may gain the cliff, by following the line of which we easily
should reach our destination.”
“Bravo, Professor!” said Haynes, and they made for the sea.
As they reached the crest of the sand-cliff some eighty feet above the
beach, the rain ceased, a brisk puff of wind blew away the mist, and
they found themselves a quarter of a mile west of Graveyard Point.
A short distance toward the point a steep gully debouched upon the
shore, and a few rods out from its mouth the riders saw the body of a
man stretched on the hard sand.
The face was hidden. Something in the huddled posture struck the eye
with a shock as of violence. With every reason for assuming, at first
sight, the body to have been washed up, they immediately felt that the
man had not met death by the waves. Where they stood, the cliff fell
too precipitously to admit of descent; but the ravine farther on
offered easy access. Half-falling, half-slipping, they made their way
down the abrupt declivity to the gully’s opening, which was partly
blocked by a great boulder, and came upon a soft and pebbly beach,
beyond which the hard clean level of sand stretched to the receding
waves. As they reached the open a man appeared around the point to the
eastward, sighted the body, and broke into a run. Haynes recognised him
as Bruce, the Bow Hill station patrol, who had been on the cliff the
night of the wreck. Dick Colton also started forward, but Haynes called
to him:
“Hold on, Colton. Don’t go out on the sand for a moment.”
“Why not,” he asked in surprise.
“No use marking it all up with footsteps.”
At this moment the coast-guard hailed them. “How long has that been
there?”
“We’ve just found it,” said Colton.
“I’m on patrol duty from the Bow Hill station,” said the other. “Oh,
it’s you, Mr. Haynes,” he added, recognising the reporter.
“These gentlemen are guests at Third House, Bruce,” said Haynes.
“Here’s fresh evidence in our mystery, I fear.”
“Looks so,” said the patrol. “Let’s have a closer look.” He walked
toward the body, which lay with the head toward the waves. Suddenly he
stood still, shaking.
“Good God! it’s Paul Serdholm!” he cried. Then he sprang forward with a
great cry: “He’s been murdered!”
“Oh, surely not murdered!” expostulated Professor Ravenden. “He’s been
drowned and——”
“Drowned?” cried the man in a heat of contempt. “And how about that
gash in the back of his neck? It’s his day on patrol from the Sand Spit
station, and this is where the Bow Hill and Sand Spit lines meet. Three
hours ago I saw him on the cliff yonder. Since then he’s come and gone
betwixt here and his station. And——” he gulped suddenly and turned upon
the others so sharply that the professor jumped—“what’s he met with?”
“Perhaps the surf dashing him on a rock made the wound,” suggested
Haynes.
“No, sir!” declared the guard with emphasis. “The tide ain’t this high
in a month. It’s murder, that’s what it is—bloody murder!” and he bent
over the dead man with twitching shoulders.
“He’s right,” said Colton, who had been examining the corpse hastily.
“This is no drowning case, The man was stabbed and died instantly.”
“Was the unfortunate a friend of yours?” asked Professor Ravenden
benevolently of the coastguard.
“No, nor of nobody’s, was Paul Serdholm. No later than yesterday he
picked a fight with me, and——” he broke off and looked blankly at the
three men.
“How long would you say he had been dead?” asked Haynes of Colton.
“A very few minutes.”
“Then we may catch the murderer!” cried the reporter energetically.
“Professor Ravenden, I know I can count on you. Colton, will you take
orders?”
“You’re the captain,” was the quiet reply.
“Then get to the cliff top and scatter, you three. The murderer must
have escaped that way. You can see most of the gully from there. Not
that way. Make a detour. I don’t want any of our footprints on the sand
between here and the cliff.”
The patrol hesitated.
“Bruce, I’ve had twenty years’ experience in murder cases,” said Haynes
quickly. “I’ll be responsible. If you will do as I direct for the next
few minutes we should clear this thing up.”
“Right, sir,” said the man.
“Come back here in fifteen minutes, then, if you haven’t found
anything. Professor Ravenden, I will meet you at the Sand Spit station
in half an hour. You the same, Dr. Colton.”
As the three started away, Haynes moved up to Colton and said in a low
tone: “The same wound?” Dick nodded. “Without a shadow of doubt. It’s
Whalley of course. What will you do?”
“Stay here and collect the evidence we shall need.”
No sooner had the searchers disappeared up the gully than Haynes set
himself whole-heartedly to the work he loved. His nerves were tense
with the certainty that the answer was writ large for him to read.
Indeed, it should have been almost ridiculously simple. On three sides
was the beach, extending eastward and westward along the cliff and
southward to the water-line. Inland from where he stood over the body,
the hard sand stretched northward, terminating in the rubble at the
gully’s mouth. In this mass of rubble, footprints would be
indeterminable. Anywhere else they would stand out like the mark on a
coin.
On their way forward to meet the patrolman the party from Third House
had passed along the pebble beach and stepped out on the hard sand at a
point east of the body, making a circuitous route. Haynes had contrived
this, and as he approached he noted that there were no trail marks on
that side. Toward the ocean there was nothing except numerous faint
bird tracks, extending almost to the water. Now, taking off his shoes,
Haynes followed the spoor of the dead man. Plain as a poster it stood
out, to the westward. For a hundred yards he trailed it. There was no
parallel track. To make doubly certain that the slayer had not crept
upon Serdholm from that direction, Haynes examined the prints for
evidences of superimposed steps. None was there. Three sides, then,
were eliminated. As inference at first had suggested, the killing was
done from the cliff side.
Haynes’ first hasty glance at the sand between the body and the
ravine’s opening had shown him nothing. Here, however, must be the
telltale evidence. Striking off from the dead man’s line of approach,
he walked out upon the hard surface. The sand was deeply indented
beyond the body, where his three companions had hurried across to the
cliff. But no other shoe had broken its evenness.
Not until he was almost on a line between the body and the mouth of the
gully did he find a clue. Clearly imprinted on the clean level was the
outline of a huge claw. There were the five talons and the nub of the
foot. A little forward and to one side was a similar mark, except that
it was slanted differently.
Step by step, with starting eyes and shuddering mind, Haynes followed
the trail. Then he became aware of a second, confusing the first, the
track of the same creature. At first the second track was distinct,
then it merged with the first, only to diverge again. The talons were
turned in the direction opposite to the first spoor. From the body of
Serdholm to the soft sand stretched the unbroken lines. Nowhere else
within a radius of many yards was there any other indication. The sand
lay blank as a white sheet of paper; as blank as the observer’s mind,
which struggled with one stupefying thought: that between the body of
the dead life-saver and the refuge of the cliff no creature had passed
except one that stalked on monstrous, taloned feet.
Sitting down upon the beach, Haynes reasoned with himself aloud: “This
thing,” he said, “cannot be so. You ought not to have sent the others
away. Someone in full command of his eyesight and faculties should be
here.”
Then, the detective instinct holding faithful, he hastily gathered some
flat rocks and covered the nearest tracks, in case of rain. A field
sparrow hopped out on the rubble and watched him.
“To-morrow,” said Haynes to the sparrow, “I’ll pick up those rocks and
find nothing under them. Then I’ll know that this was a phantasm. I
wonder if you’re an illusion.”
Selecting the smallest stone, he threw it at the sparrow. With a shriek
of insulted surprise the bird flew away. Haynes produced a pencil, with
which he drew, upon the back of an envelope, a rough but pretty
accurate map of the surroundings. He was putting on his shoes when
Bruce came out of the gully.
“See anything?” called Haynes.
“Nothing moving to the northward,” replied Bruce, approaching. “Have
you found anything?”
“Not that you could call definite. Don’t cross the sand there. Keep
along down. We’ll go to Sand Spit and report this.”
But the man was staring beyond the little column of rock shelters.
“What’s that thing?” he said, pointing to the nearest unsheltered
print. “My God! It looks like a bird track. And it leads straight to
the body!” he cried in a voice that jangled on Haynes’ nerves. But when
he began to look fearfully overhead, into the gathering darkness,
drawing in his shoulders like one shrinking from a blow, that was too
much.
Haynes jumped up, grabbed him by the arm and started him along.
“Don’t be a fool!” he said. “Keep this to yourself. I won’t have a lot
of idiots prowling around those tracks. Understand? You’re to report
this murder, and say nothing about what you don’t know. Later we’ll
take it up again.”
The man seemed stunned. He walked along quietly, close to his
companion, to whom it was no comfort to feel him, now and again, shaken
by a violent shudder. They had nearly reached the station, when
Professor Ravenden and Colton came down to the beach in front of them.
Colton had nothing to tell. The professor reported having started up a
fine specimen of sky-blue butterfly, which led him astray. This went to
show, he observed, that a man never should venture out lacking his net.
“Whalley might have bumped into him, and he probably wouldn’t have
noticed it,” remarked Haynes aside to Colton. “It takes something
really important, like a bug, to attract the scientific notice. A mere
murderer doesn’t count.”
“Then you’ve found evidence against the juggler?” asked Colton eagerly.
“I’ve found nothing,” returned the reporter, “that’s any clearer than a
bucket of mud.”
He refused to say anything more until they were close to the station.
Then he tested a hopeless theory.
“The man wasn’t stabbed; he was shot,” he observed.
“What’s the use?” said Colton. “You know that’s no bullet wound. You’ve
seen the same thing twice before, not counting the sheep, and you ought
to know. The bullet was never cast that could open such a gap in a
man’s head. It was a broad-bladed, sharp instrument with power behind
it.”
“To Dr. Colton’s opinion I must add my own for what it is worth,” said
Professor Ravenden.
“Can you qualify as an expert?” asked the reporter with the rudeness of
rasped nerves. He was surprised at the tone of certainty in the
scientist’s voice as he replied:
“When in search of a sub-species of the _Papirlionido in the Orinoco
region, my party was attacked by the Indians that infest the river.
After we had beaten them off, it fell to my lot to attend the wounded.
I thus had opportunity to observe the wounds made by their slender
spears. The incision under consideration bears a rather striking
resemblance to the spear gashes which I saw then. I may add that I
brought away my specimens of _Papilionidointact, although we lost most
of our provisions.”
“No man has been near enough the spot where Serdholm was struck down to
stab him,” Haynes said. “Our footprints are plain: so are his. There
are no others. What do you make of that?” He was not yet ready to
reveal the whole astounding circumstance.
“Didn’t I hear somethin’ about that juggler that was cast ashore from
the _Milly Esham_ bein’ a knife-thrower?” asked Bruce timidly. “Maybe
he spiked Serdholm from the gully.”
“Then where’s the knife!” said Haynes. “He’d have to walk out to get
it, wouldn’t he?”
“You must have overlooked some vestigia,” said the professor quietly.
“The foot may have left a very faint mark, but it must have pressed
there.”
“No; I’m not mistaken. Had you used your eyes, you would have seen.”
“How far did Bruce’s footprints go?” asked Colton.
The three looked at the coast-guard, who stirred uneasily. “Gentlemen,”
said he, “I’m afraid there’s likely to be trouble for me over this.”
His harassed eyes roved from one to the other.
“Quite likely,” said Haynes. “They may arrest you.”
“God knows, I never thought of killing Serd-holm or any other man!” he
said earnestly. “But I had a grudge against him, and I wasn’t far away
when he was killed. Your evidence will help me, unless-” he swallowed
hard.
“No; I don’t believe you had any part in it,” said Haynes, answering
the unfinished part of the sentence. “I don’t see how you could have
unless you can fly.”
The man smiled dismally. “And then about those queer tracks——”
“Nothing about that now,” interrupted Haynes quickly. “You’d better
report to your captain and keep quiet about this thing.”
“All right,” said Bruce. “Good-night, gentlemen.”
“What’s that about tracks?” asked Colton.
“I want you and the professor to come to my room sometime this
evening,” said the reporter. “I’ll have a full map drawn out by then,
and I want your views. Perhaps you’d better feel my pulse first,” he
added, with a slant smile.
Colton looked at him hard. “You’re excited, Haynes,” he said. “I
haven’t seen you this much worked up. You’ve got something big, haven’t
you?”
“Just how big I don’t know. But it’s too big for me.”
“Well, after you’ve got it off your mind on paper you’ll probably feel
better.”
“On paper?”
“Yes; you’ll report it for your office, won’t you?”
“Colton,” said the reporter earnestly, “if I sent in this story as I
now see it, it would hit old Deacon Stilley on the telegraph desk. The
Deacon would say: ‘Another good man gone wrong,’ and he’d take it over
to Mr. Clare, the managing editor. Mr. Clare would read it and say:
‘Too bad, too bad!’ Then he’d work one of the many pulls that he’s
always using for his friends and never for himself, and get board and
lodging for one, for an indefinite period at reduced rates, in some
first-class private sanitarium. The ‘one’ would be I. Let’s go inside.”
For two hours Haynes talked with the men in the life-saving station.
Then he and Professor Ravenden and Colton walked home in silence,
broken only by the professor.
“I wish I could have captured that _Lyccena_” he said wistfully.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE SENATUS
ALL five of the men who composed the male populace of Third House
gathered in Haynes’ room at ten o’clock that night. Everard Colton and
old Johnston had been told briefly of the killing of Serdholm.
“Thus far,” said Haynes, addressing the meeting, “this vigilance
committee has been a dismal failure. Had anyone told me that five
intelligent men could fail in finding the murderer, with all the
evidence at hand, I should have laughed at him.”
“Some features which might be regarded as unusual have presented
themselves,” suggested Professor Ravenden mildly.
“Unusual? They’re absurd, insane, impossible! But there are the dead
bodies, man and brute. We’ve got to explain them, or no one knows who
may come next.”
“We’ve got to be careful, certainly,” said Colton; “but I think if we
can capture Whalley, we’ll have no more mysterious killings.”
“Oh, that does very well in part; but it doesn’t fill out the
requirements,” said the reporter impatiently. “Now, I’m going to run
over my notes briefly, and if anyone can add anything, speak up. First,
the killing of the seaman, Petersen, on the night of the shipwreck.
That was on the thirteenth, an uncanny date, sure enough. Next, the
killing of the sheep by the same wound, on the fourteenth, and on the
same evening Professor Ravenden’s experience with some threatening
object overhead.”
“Pardon me; I did not ascribe any threatening motive or purpose to the
manifestation,” put in the professor. “Indeed, if I may challenge your
memory, I suggested an air-ship. It seems that the unhappy
aero-expert’s kites well may have been the source of the sound I
heard.”
“Let us assume so for the present. Next we come to Mr. Colton’s
encounter and the death of the mare on the evening of the fifteenth.”
“The kites again, of course,” said Everard. “Even allowing that—and I
expect to get conclusive proof against it later—what, then, chased the
animal over the cliff?”
“Maybe the kites came down later and blew along the ground after her.
If you were a horse, and a string of six-foot kites came bounding along
in the darkness after you, wouldn’t you jump a cliff?”
“Ask Professor Ravenden,” suggested Haynes maliciously.
“The jest is not an unfair one,” said the scientist good-humouredly. “I
fear that I should.”
“Charge the death of the mare to the kites, then. Pity we can’t lay the
sheep to their account too. The third count against them is Professor
Ravenden’s adventure of the eighteenth, and the death of the aeronaut.
As to Professor Ravenden’s part, there remains to be explained the
cutting of the kite strings, if they were cut.”
“That must have been done, it would seem, in mid-air, just as Petersen
the sailor was killed,” said Dick Colton.
Haynes looked at him quickly. “Colton, you’re beginning to show signs
of reasoning powers,” he said. “I think I’d better appoint you my
legatee for the work, if my turn should come next.”
“My dear Haynes,” Professor Ravenden protested, “under the
circumstances that remark at least is somewhat discomforting.”
“You’re quite right, Professor. Down with presentiments! Well, as Dr.
Colton suggests, there’s a rather interesting parallel between the
mid-air killing of the sailor and the mid-air cutting of the kite cord.
Let that go, for the present. Mr. Ely’s death we can hardly ascribe to
his own kites. There’s the cutting of the string near his hand.”
“That blasted Portuguese murderer, Whalley,” said Johnston.
“Most probably. The wound is such as his big knife would make; we know
he’s abroad on the knolls. But why should he kill Mr. Ely, whom he
never saw before, and why in the name of all that’s dark should he cut
the kite strings?”
“Murderous mania; the same motive that drove him to kill the sheep,”
said Dick Colton. “As for the kite string, perhaps he got tangled in
it.”
“There is no tangle,” replied the reporter, “except in the evidence.
But we’ll call that Whalley’s work. We come to to-day’s murder now. Who
did that?”
“Without assuming any certainty in the matter, I should assume the
suspicion to rest upon the juggler,” said Professor Ravenden.
“Motive is there,” said Dick Colton. “What Serdholm told us about his
thumping Whalley shows that.”
“Yes; but there is motive in the case of Bruce also. And we know that
Bruce was there. Moreover, he was on the cliff-head when Petersen came
in, and the two wounds are the same.”
“Surely,” began the young doctor, “you don’t believe that Bruce-”
“No, I don’t believe it,” interrupted the reporter; “but it’s a
hypothesis we’ve got to consider. Suppose Bruce and Serdholm recognised
this man Petersen as an enemy, and Bruce slipped a knife into him as he
took him from the buoy?”
“But I thought Petersen was killed halfway to the shore.”
“So we suppose; but it is partly on the testimony of these two that we
believe it, corroborated by circumstantial evidence. Now, if Bruce
killed the sailor, Serdholm knew it. The two guards quarrelled and
fought. Bruce had reason to fear Serdholm. There’s the motive for the
murder of Serdholm. He met him alone—there is opportunity. I think the
case against him is stronger than that against Whalley, in this
instance. I’ve looked into his movements on the night of the
sheep-killing and the murder of Mr. Ely. He was out on the former, and
in on the latter.”
“That weakens the case,” said Everard Colton. “Yes; but what ruins the
case against both Bruce and Whalley in the killing of Serdholm is
this.” Haynes spread out on his table a map which he had drawn. “There
is the situation, sketched on the spot. You will see that there are no
footprints other than our own leading to or going down from the body.
Gentlemen, as sure as my name is Haynes, the thing that killed Paul
Serdholm never walked on human feet!”
There was a dead silence in the room. Dick Colton’s eyes, narrowed to a
mere slit, were fixed on the reporter’s face. Johnston’s jaw dropped
and hung. Everard Colton gave a little nervous laugh. Professor
Ravenden bent over the map and studied it with calm interest.
“No,” continued Haynes, “I’m perfectly sane. There are the facts. I’d
like to see anyone make anything else out of it.”
“There is only one other solution,” said Professor Ravenden presently:
“the fallibility of the human senses. May I venture to suggest again
that there may be evidences present which you, in your natural
perturbation, failed to note?”
“No,” said the reporter positively. “I know my business. I missed
nothing. Here’s one thing I didn’t fail to note. Johnston, you know
this neck of land?”
“Lived here for fifty-seven years,” said the innkeeper.
“Ever hear of an ostrich farm hereabouts?”
“No. Couldn’t keep ostriches here. Freeze the tail-faithers off’em
before Thanksgiving.”
“Professor Ravenden, would it be possible for a wandering ostrich or
other huge bird, escaped from some zoo, to have its home on Montauk?”
“Scientifically quite possible in the summer months. In winter, as Mr.
Johnston suggests, the climate would be too rigorous, though I doubt
whether it would have the precise effect specified by him. May I
inquire the purpose of this? Can it be that the tracks referred to by
the patrol were the cloven hoof-prints of-”
“Cloven hoofs?” Haynes cried in sharp disappointment. “Is there no
member of the ostrich family that has claws?”
“None now extant. In the processes of evolution the claws of the
ostrich, like its wings, have gradually——”
“Is there any huge-clawed bird large enough and powerful enough to kill
a man with a blow of its beak?”
“No, sir,” said the professor. “I know of no bird which would venture
to attack man except the ostrich, emu or cassowary, and the fighting
weapon of this family is the hoof, not the beak.”
“Professor,” interrupted Haynes, “the only thing that approached
Serdholm within striking distance walked on a foot armed with five
great claws. You can see the trail on this map.” He produced a large
sheet of paper on which was a crude but careful drawing. “And there is
its sign-manual, life-size,” he added, pushing a second sheet across
the table to the scientist.
Imagination could hardly picture a more precise, unemotional and
conventially scientific man than Professor Ravenden. Yet, at sight of
the paper his eyes sparkled, he half started from his chair, a flush
rose in his cheeks, he looked keenly from the sketch to the artist, and
spoke in a voice that rang with a deep under-thrill of excitement:
“Are you sure, Mr. Haynes—are you quite sure that this is substantially
correct?”
“Minor details may be inexact. In all essentials that will correspond
to the marks made by something that walked from the mouth of the gully
to the spot where we found the body and back again.” Before he had
fairly finished the professor was out of the room. He returned almost
immediately with a flat slab of considerable weight. This he laid on
the table, and taking the drawing, sedulously compared it with an
impression, deep-sunken into the slab. For Haynes a single glance was
enough. That impression, stamped as it was on his brain, he would have
identified as far as the eye could see it.
“That’s it!” he cried with the eagerness of triumphant discovery. “The
bird from whose foot that cast was made is the thing that killed
Serdholm.”
“Mr. Haynes,” said the entomologist dryly, “this is not a cast.”
“Not a cast?” said the reporter in bewilderment. “What is it, then?”
“It is a rock of the cretaceous period.”
“A rock?” he repeated dully. “Of what period?”
“The cretaceous. The creature whose footprint you see there trod that
rock when it was soft ooze. That may have been one hundred million
years ago. It was at least ten million.”
Haynes looked again at the rock, and superfluous emotions stirred among
the roots of his hair. “Where did you find it?” he asked presently.
“It formed a part of Mr. Johnston’s stone fence. Probably he picked it
up in his pasture yonder. The maker of the mark inhabited the island
where we now are—this land then was distinct from Long Island—in the
incalculably ancient ages.”
“What did this bird thing call itself?” Haynes demanded. A sense of the
ghastly ridiculousness of the affair was jostling, in the core of his
brain, a strong shudder of mental nausea born of the void into which he
was gazing.
“It was not a bird. It was a reptile. Science knows it as the
pteranodon.”
“Could it kill a man with its beak?”
“The first man came millions of years later—or so science thinks,” said
the professor. “However, primeval man, unarmed, would have fallen a
helpless victim to so formidable a brute as this. The pteranodon was a
creature of prey,” he continued, with an attempt at pedantry which was
obviously a ruse to conquer his own excitement. “From what we can
reconstruct, a reptile stands forth spreading more than twenty feet of
bat-like wings, and bearing a four-foot beak as terrible as a bayonet.
This monster was the undisputed lord of the air; as dreadful as his
cousins of the earth, the dinosaurs, whose very name carries the
significance of terror.”
“And you mean to tell us that this billion-years-dead flying swordfish
has flitted out of the darkness of eternity to kill a miserable
coast-guard within a hundred miles of New York, in the year 1902?”
broke in Everard Colton.
“I have not said so,” replied the entomologist quickly. “But if your
diagram is correct, Mr. Haynes, if it is reasonably accurate, I can
tell you that no living bird ever made the prints which it reproduces,
that science knows no five-toed bird, and no bird whatsoever of
sufficiently formidable beak to kill a man; furthermore, that the one
creature known to science which could make that print, and could slay a
man or a creature far more powerful than man, is the tiger of the air,
the pteranodon.”
“Evidence wanted from the doctor!” cried Haynes. “Colton, can you add
anything to this theory that Serdholm was killed by a bayonet-beaked
ghoul that lived ten or a hundred or a thousand million years ago?”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said the doctor: “The wound isn’t unlike
what a heavy, sharp beak would make.”
“And that would explain the sailor being killed while he was coming in
on the buoy!” exclaimed Everard Colton. “But—but this pteranodon—is
that it? Oh, the deuce! I thought all those pteranothings were dead and
buried long before Adam’s great-grandfather was a protoplasm.”
“My own belief is that Mr. Haynes’ diagram is faulty,” said Professor
Ravenden, to whom he had turned.
“Will you come and see?” challenged Haynes.
“Willingly. Would it not be well to take the rock along for
comparison?”
“Then we’d better all go,” said Everard Colton, “and carry the rock in
shifts. It doesn’t look as if it had lost any weight with age.”
As the party reached the large living-room, Helga Johnston sprang up
from the long cushioned rest near the fireplace. Her face was flushed
with sleep. In the glow of the firelight an expression of affright lent
her beauty an uncanny aspect. Her breath came in little gasps, and her
hands groped and trembled.
“What is it, Miss Helga?” cried Everard, running eagerly forward.
Unconsciously her fingers closed on his outstretched hand, and clung
there.
“A dream!” she said breathlessly. “A horrid dream!” Then turning to
Haynes: “Petit Père, you aren’t going out to-night?” she said, glancing
at the lanterns which her foster-father had brought.
“Yes, Princess, we’re all going.”
“Into danger?” asked the girl. She had freed herself from Colton’s
grasp, but now her eyes fell on his again.
“No; just to clear up a little point. We shall all hang together.”
“Don’t go to-night, Petit Père!” There was an imploring intonation in
the girl’s flute-like voice.
Haynes crossed over to her rapidly. “Princess, you’re tired out and
nervous. Go to bed, won’t you?”
“Yes; but promise me—father, you too, all of you—promise me you won’t
any of you let yourselves be alone.”
“My dear child,” said Professor Ravenden, “I’ll give you my word for
the party, as I am the occasion of the expedition.”
“I—I suppose I am foolish,” Helga said; “but I have dreamed so
persistently of some terrible danger overhanging—floating down like a
pall.” With a sudden gesture she caught Haynes’ hand to her cheek. “It
hung over you, Petit Père!” she whispered.
“I’ll throw a pebble at your window to let you know I’m back alive and
well,” he said gaily. “I’ve never seen you so nervous before,
Princess.”
“You’ll hardly need the lantern,” said the girl, walking to the door,
and looking up at the splendid moon, sailing in the unflecked sea of
the Heavens.
“When you’re looking for foot-prints on the sands of time,” observed
Everard, “you need the light that never was on sea or land.”
He dropped back as the exploring party filed out into the night, and
fell into step with Professor Ravenden.
“Isn’t it true,” he asked, “that all these flying monsters are
extinct?”
“Science has assumed that they were extinct,” said the Professor. “But
a scientific assumption is a mere makeshift, useful only until it is
overthrown by new facts. We have prehistoric survivals. The gar of our
rivers is unchanged from its ancestors of fifteen million years ago.
The creature of the water has endured; why not the creature of the
air?”
“But,” said Colton combatively, “where could it live and not have been
discovered?”
“Perhaps at the North or South Pole,” said the professor. “Perhaps in
the depths of unexplored islands; or possibly inside the globe.
Geographers are accustomed to say loosely that the earth is an open
book. Setting aside the exceptions which I have noted, there still
remains the interior, as unknown and mysterious as the planets. In its
possible vast caverns there well may be reproduced the conditions in
which the pteranodon and its terrific contemporaries found their
suitable environment on the earth’s surface, ages ago.”
“Then how would it get out?”
“The recent violent volcanic disturbances might have opened an exit.”
“Oh, that’s too much!” Haynes broke in. “I was at Martinique myself,
and if you expect me to believe that anything came out of that welter
of flame and boiling rocks alive-”
“You misinterpret me again,” said the professor blandly. “What I
intended to convey was that these eruptions were indicative of great
seismic changes, in the course of which vast openings might well have
occurred in far parts of the earth. However, I am merely defending the
pteranodon’s survival as an interesting possibility. As I stated
before, Mr. Haynes, I believe the gist of the matter to lie in some
error of your diagram.”
“We’ll see in a moment,” said Haynes; “for here’s the place. Let it
down easy, Johnston. Wait, Professor, here’s the light. Now I’ll
convince you.”
Holding the lantern with one hand, he uncovered one of the tracks with
the other. The mark was perfectly preserved. “Good God!” said the
professor under his breath.
He dropped on his hands and knees beside the print, and as he compared
the to-day’s mark on the sand with the rock print of millions of years
ago, his breath came hard. Indeed, none of the party breathed as
regularly as usual. When the scientist lifted his head, his face was
twitching nervously.
“I have to ask your pardon, Mr. Haynes,” he said. “Your drawing was
faithful.”
“But what in Heaven’s name does it mean?” cried Dick Colton.
“It means that we are on the verge of the most important discovery of
modern times,” said the professor. “Savants have hitherto scouted the
suggestions to be deduced from the persistent legend of the roc and
from certain almost universal North American Indian lore,
notwithstanding that the theory of some monstrous, winged creature
widely different from any recognised existing forms is supported by
more convincing proofs. In the north of England, in 1844, reputable
witnesses found the tracks, after a night’s fall of snow, of a creature
with a pendent tail, which made flights over houses and other
obstructions, leaving a trail much like this before us. There are other
corroborative instances of a similar nature. In view of the present
evidence, I would say that this unquestionably was a pteranodon, or a
descendant little altered, and a gigantic specimen, for these tracks
are distinctly larger than the fossil marks. Gentlemen, I congratulate
you both on your part in so epoch-making a discovery.”
“Do you expect a sane man to believe this thing?” Haynes demanded.
“That’s what I feel,” said Everard Colton. “But, on your own showing of
the evidence, what else is there to believe?”
“But, see here,” Haynes expostulated, all the time feeling as if he
were arguing in and against a dream. “If this is a flying creature, how
explain the footprints leading up to Serdholm’s body, as well as away
from it?”
“Owing to its structure,” said the professor, “the pteranodon could not
rise rapidly from the ground in flight. It either sought an acclivity
from which to launch itself, or ran swiftly along the ground, gathering
impetus for a leap into the air with outspread wings. Similarly, in
alighting, it probably ran along on its hind feet before dropping to
its small fore feet. Now, conceive the pteranodon to be on the cliff’s
edge, about to start upon its evening flight. Below it appears a man.
Its ferocious nature is aroused at the sight of this unknown being.
Down it swoops, skims swiftly with pattering feet toward him, impales
him on its dreadful beak, then returns to climb the cliff and again
launch itself for flight.”
All this time Haynes had been holding one of the smaller rocks in his
hand. Now he flung it toward the gully and turned away, saying
vehemently: “If the shore was covered with footprints, I wouldn’t
believe it! It’s too—”
He never finished that sentence. From out of the darkness there came a
hoarse cry. Heavy wings beat the air with swift strokes. In that
instant panic fell upon them. Haynes ran for the shelter of the cliff,
and after him came the Coltons. Johnston dropped on hands and knees and
scurried like a crab for cover. Only the professor stood his ground;
but it was with a tremulous voice that he called to his companions:
“That was a common marsh or short-eared owl that rose. The _Asio
accipitrinus_ is not rare hereabouts, nor is it dangerous to mankind.
There is nothing further to do to-night, and I believe that we are in
some peril remaining here, as the pteranodon appears to be nocturnal.”
The others returned to him ashamed. But all the way home they walked
under an obsession of terror hovering in the blackness above.
It was a night of restless and troubled sleep at Third House. For when
the incredible takes the form of undeniable reason, and demands
credence, the brain of man gropes fitfully along dim avenues of
conjecture. Helga’s premonition of impending disaster lay heavy upon
the household.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NEW EVIDENCE
THE morning of September 21 impended in sullen splendour from a bank of
cloud. As the sudden sun struggled into the open it brought a brisk
blow from the southwest, dispelling a heavy mist. The last of the fog
was being scoured from the earth’s face when Dick Colton was awakened
from an unrefreshing sleep by a quick step passing down the hall.
Jumping out of bed, he threw open the door and faced Haynes.
“Don’t wake the others,” said the reporter in a low voice.
“Where are you off to?” inquired Colton.
“To the beach. I’ve got a notion that I can settle this Serdholm
question here and now.”
“Wait fifteen minutes and I’ll go with you.”
“If you don’t mind, Colton, I’d rather you wouldn’t. I want to go over
the ground alone, first. But if I’m not back for breakfast, meet me
there and I’ll probably have something to tell you.”
“Very well. It’s your game to play. Good luck! Oh, hold on. Have you
got a gun?”
“No, mine hasn’t come yet.”
“Better take mine.”
“You must have been having bad dreams,” said the other lightly. “What
sleep I’ve had has banished the professor’s cretaceous jub-jub bird
from my mental premises. Anyhow, I don’t think a revolver would be much
use against it, do you?”
“Take it, anyway,” urged Colton.
“All right,” assented the reporter. “Much obliged. I’ll take it along
if you want me to.”
The doctor handed out his long Colt’s. “Well, good luck!” he said
again, and with a strange impulse he stretched out his hand.
Haynes seemed a little startled; but he said nothing, as he shook
hands, except: “See you in a couple of hours, then.”
Although it was only six o’clock, Dick Colton could not get back to
sleep. A sound of splashing water from Everard’s room showed that he
too was up. Dick was dressing with those long pauses between each
process which are the surest sign of profound thought in the masculine
creature, when he heard a knock on Haynes’ door followed by the music
of Helga Johnston’s voice.
“Petit Père. Oh, Petit Père!”
Before Dick could reach the door and explain, the low call came again:
“Petit Père! Oh, please wake up!”
“Miss Helga,” began Dick, thrusting out his head.
“Oh, Dr. Colton, I’ve—I’ve had such a dreadful dream again. I want to
speak to Mr. Haynes.”
“He started for the beach fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh-h-h!” It was a long, shuddering gasp. The next instant he heard her
swift footsteps patter downstairs, through the living-room and out upon
the porch. A few minutes later Everard Colton in trousers and shirt
came into the room.
“Was that Helga’s voice I heard?”
“Yes.”
“Anything wrong?” asked the young man anxiously.
“Haynes has gone to the beach, and she has followed. She’s had a
dream-warning or some fool thing”—Colton had the professional
impatience of the supernatural—“and would be hysterical if she was of
that type.”
Everard exploded into a curse. “And you let her go alone?”
“Am I likely to do a cross-country run in my underclothes?” demanded
his brother.
The young man was down the stairs in two leaps, and out upon the lawn.
Helga’s fair head shone far to the south on a hillock’s top. She was
running.
“Take the cross-cut!” shouted Dick Colton. “You can head her off at
Graveyard Point. I’ll follow.”
There were few men of his time who could keep near Everard Colton to
the end of a mile run. Heartbreaking country this was, with its ups and
downs; but the young man had the instinct of a cross-country runner,
and subconsciously his feet led him along the easiest course. When he
came out on the summit of the cliff above Graveyard Point, his eyes,
eagerly searching, saw the flying figure of the girl he loved coming
down the beach, a quarter of a mile away.
“Helga, Helga!” he shouted. “I’m coming to you!”
Her ringing soprano came back to him, like an echo magically transmuted
into golden beauty: “The other side! Around the point.”
She waved him vehemently toward the hidden shore beyond the headland.
Something of her foreboding terror passed into the soul of her lover.
Plunging down into the gully, Everard ran out upon the beach and
doubled the point. Whatever peril there was, if any existed, lay there;
he would reach it first. The waves almost washed his feet as he toiled
through the loose sand at the base of the little ravine. Breathless, he
pushed on until he reached the point, where he had full view of the
stretch of sand. Then at what he saw the breath came back to him in one
gasping inhalation. He stopped short in his tracks, and stood shaking.
The sun had just risen above the cloudbank. Black, on the shining glory
of the beach, a man lay sprawled grotesquely. It was almost at the spot
where Serdholm had been found. Though the face was hidden and the
posture distorted, Everard knew him instantly for Haynes, and as
instantly knew that he was dead. He ran forward and bent over the body.
Haynes had been struck opposite the gully, by a weapon driven with
fearful impetus between his ribs from the back, piercing his heart. A
dozen staggering prints showed where he had plunged forward before he
fell. The flight was involuntary—for he was dead almost on the
stroke—the blind, mechanical instinct of escape from the death-dealing
agency. There was no mistaking that great gash in the back. Haynes had
been killed as Serdholm was.
Sickening with the certainty of what he was to find, Everard Colton
turned his eyes to the tablet of the sand. There, exactly as the
ill-fated reporter had drawn it on his map, the grisly track of the
talons stretched in double line across the clean beach, toward the
gully’s mouth. Except for this the sand was blank.
For a few steps he followed the trail, then turned back to the body. In
the pocket he found his brother’s revolver. So Haynes had been struck
down without warning! For the moment, shock had driven from Colton’s
mind the thought of Helga. Now he rose to fend her from the sight of
this horror, and saw her moving swiftly around the point.
“Go back!” he cried. “You must not come nearer!”
With no more heed of him than if he were a rock in her path, the girl
made a half-circle of avoidance, and sinking upon the sand gazed into
the dead man’s face. The eyes were closed, and from the calm features
all the expression of harshness had fled. Gone were the lines of pain;
the dead face wore for Helga the same sweetness and gentleness that,
living, Haynes had kept for her alone, and the lips seemed to smile to
her as she lifted the head to her lap and smoothed back the hair from
the forehead.
“He is dead?” she asked dully, looking up at Everard.
“Yes,” said the young man.
“I warned him,” she whispered. “I saw it so plainly—death flying across
the sands to strike him. Oh, Petit Père, why didn’t you heed me?
Couldn’t you trust the loving heart of your little princess?”
In that moment Everard Colton forgot his hopes. A great surge of pity
and grief for the girl rose within him. It came to him that she had
loved the better man, the man who lay dead on the sands, and as the
first pang of that passed there was left in him only the sense of
service. Throwing his coat across Haynes’ body, he bent over Helga.
“My dear,” he said, “my dear.”
That was all; but her woman’s swift intuition recognised the new
feeling and responded to it. She groped for his hand and clung to it.
“Don’t leave us!” she said pitifully.
“I will wait here with you,” he answered.
Slowly the tide rose toward the mournful little group on the sand. An
investigating gull swooped down near to them, and the girl roused with
a shudder from her reveries, thrusting out her hands as if to ward off
the bird.
“It was like that in my dream,” she said, looking up at Everard with
tearless eyes. “Oh, why did I not compel him to heed my warning! He
used to say the sea-spirits that brought me in from the storm had given
me second sight. Why did he not trust in that?”
“He loved you very dearly,” said Everard gently. “Ah, you do not know
what he was to me!” cried the girl. “Everything that was noble,
everything that was generous. From the time when I was a child—Oh, he
_can’t_ be dead. Can’t you do something?”
Everard choked. Before he could command himself for a reply, there was
a rattle of stones down the face of the cliff. Necessity for action was
a boon to his tortured sensibilities. Catching up the revolver from the
spot where he had laid it, he walked toward the sound. A confused noise
of voices caused him to drop the muzzle of his weapon, as Dick Colton,
Professor Ravenden and his daughter came into view.
“Too late, Dick,” said Everard.
“Good God!” said Dick. “Not Haynes?”
Everard nodded. “He was dead when we got here.”
With a little, broken cry, Dolly Ravenden flew to Helga and threw her
arms around the girl’s neck.
Dick Colton drew the coat from the body, looked at the wound, and then
followed the tracks to the spot where they disappeared in the soft
rubble. Returning, he said to Dolly Ravenden:
“Get Miss Helga away.”
“She won’t come. I can’t persuade her to move,” said Dolly.
Everard came and knelt beside the girl. “Helga,” he said, “Helga, dear,
you must go back home. We will bring him as soon as we can. Will you go
back with me now, dear?”
“Yes,” said the girl.
Bending over, she kissed Haynes’ forehead. She got to her feet, and
Everard and Dolly Ravenden led her away. Dick leaned over the dead face
and looked down upon it with a great sense of sorrow and wrath. So
gazing, he recalled the reporter’s half-jesting charge that he should
take up the trail, “if my turn comes next.”
“It’s a promise, old man,” he said softly to the dead. “You might have
left me your clue; but I’ll do my best. And until I’ve found your
slayer or my turn comes I’ll not give up the work that you’ve left to
me.”
Meantime Professor Ravenden had been examining the marks with every
mark of deep absorption. “Professor Ravenden!” called Dick somewhat
impatiently.
The professor turned reluctantly.
“This—is—a very interesting case,” he muttered brokenly. “I—I will
notify the coast-guard.”
And Dick saw, with amazement, before the dry-as-dust scientist turned
again to post down the beach, that his eyes were filled with tears.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE EARLY EXCURSION
IN every Anglo-Saxon there is something of the bloodhound. Sorrow for
Haynes’ tragic death had merged with and intensified in the mind of
Dick Colton a haggard demand for vengeance. He was surprised to find
how strong a liking for the reporter had grown out of so brief an
acquaintance. With equal surprise, he realised that his every instinct
now was set to the blood-trail, that the duty of following the mystery
to a definite conclusion possessed his mind to the exclusion of all
else. Not quite all, either, for the thought of Dolly Ravenden lay
deeper than the mind.
One salient fact asserted itself: Whatever may have been the agency of
the other murders, Harris Haynes’ slaying was indubitably the same as
that of Paul Serdholm. But what possible motive of murder could
comprise these two? Could Bruce be the solution? Following what he
thought would have been the processes of the reporter’s keen mind,
Colton, after sending necessary telegrams, visited the Bow Hill
station. Bruce was not in. He had gone out early that morning,
ostensibly to fish. To the officer in charge Colton briefly stated the
facts, and suggested that Bruce be detained when he returned, which was
agreed to readily, though not without the expression of a hearty
disbelief in the coast-guard’s having had anything to do with the
killing.
“Give a dog a bad name!” said the officer. “Because Bruce was around
when Serdholm was killed, he’s suspected of this job. He told me Mr.
Haynes was helping to clear him of the other killing.”
“That is true,” replied Colton. “Haynes did not think him guilty. Nor
do I. But there are suspicious circumstances.”
It was late in the afternoon when the Coroner, who had driven fifteen
miles to reach the spot, had finished his work, and Haynes’ body was
brought to the house. From the official investigation nothing had
resulted. Bruce was examined, and was pitifully nervous, but told a
straight enough story of his fishing and exhibited several fish in
corroboration.
Colton felt helpless in this maze. Late in the afternoon Dolly Ravenden
came to him. Her brilliant beauty was dimmed and softened by traces of
tears, and to the man’s longing heart she never had appealed with so
irresistible a charm.
“Dr. Colton,” she said, “I don’t know what to do about Helga. She is
like a dazed person. Your brother and I have been with her constantly.
She has not broken down once. The tears seem frozen within her. I am
frightened for her reason. She seems to blame herself for this dreadful
thing.”
“There is something I want her to know,” said Dick. “Will you tell
her?”
“Had you not better see her yourself?”
“I think not. You will tell her better. It is this: Poor Haynes had not
a year to live. He knew this himself.”
“How did you know?” asked the girl incredulously.
“He told me of the disease that was killing him. It was when I asked
him whether I might send for Everard to come down.”
“Then you let me accuse you wrongly,” she said very low. “Why did you
not tell me that Mr. Haynes knew of Everard’s coming? Was it fair in
you to let me be so unfair? I am ashamed of myself for the way I spoke
to you. I have been ashamed——”
She raised her appealing eyes to his and moved a step nearer him. Dick
held his breath like a man afraid of dispelling some entrancing vision.
“I did not mean it,” she went on bravely, though her eyes fell before
his look. “When I saw how it hurt you I was sorry.”
“It is for me to beg your pardon,” said Dick hoarsely, “for believing
your words against what my own heart told me of you. You know why it
hurt me so?”
“Yes,” she said, in sweet acceptance of his reason.
“Dolly, do you care at all?” he cried, stretching out his hands to her.
“I don’t know,” she faltered. “Don’t ask me yet. It has been so short a
time. I must speak of Helga now.”
“Yes,” said Dick, “I shall wait, and wait happily.” And—so strange a
thing is the heart of woman—a pang of disappointment accompanied the
quick thrill of admiration in Dolly’s heart at her lover’s loyalty and
self-repression.
“I will tell her what you say,” said Dolly. She paused for a moment,
and then a wonderful smile flickered over her sobered beauty.
“It ought to have been Helga you cared for,” she said. “But I’m glad it
isn’t!” And she was gone.
The evening train brought, in response to Dick’s telegram, a grave and
quiet young fellow who introduced himself as Eldon Smith, a reporter
from _The New Era_, Haynes’ paper, and an older man with a face of
singular beauty, whose name was a national word by virtue of his gifts
as an editorial writer. Archer Melbourne had been the dead man’s only
confidant. He at once took charge.
“I have heard from Mr. Haynes within a week,” he said to Dick Colton.
“If I believed in such things, I should say that he had a premonition
of death. He is to be buried in the hill behind Third House, so he
wrote me. His property, which is considerable, including his life
insurance, goes to Miss Helga Johnston, in trust, until her marriage. I
am named as one trustee, and he writes me to ask you to act as the
other.”
“Surely Haynes must have had friends of older standing,” began Dick,
“who——”
“Haynes had few intimates. He was a quick and keen judge of men, and
you seem to have inspired a strong confidence. There is a peculiar
request attached. He asks that you use all your influence to guard Miss
Johnston against making any marriage under conditions which you could
not approve for the woman you loved best in the world.”
“God helping me, I will!” said Dick solemnly.
“As for the circumstances of Haynes’ death, the stories I heard are too
wild for credence.”
“So are the facts,” said Dick briefly.
“Eldon Smith came down on the train with me. There is no keener mind in
the newspaper business than his. Of course, he comes to represent his
paper at Haynes’ funeral. The managing editor and others of the staff
will be down to-morrow. Meantime, I think Smith will be investigating.
Perhaps you will tell him what you know.”
To the two newspaper men Dick Colton recited the facts. Smith took an
occasional note, and left with the brief comment: “I’ve never come
across anything like this before. If Mr. Haynes couldn’t make it out,
there isn’t much chance for anyone else. But I’ll do my best.”
After the close of the interview, Everard Colton came into Dick’s room.
“Good Heavens, Ev,” said Dick. “You look ten years older. Brace
yourself up, man.”
“Dick,” said his brother, “I’ve given up. I see now I was a fool to
think I ever could win Helga. I’m going to stick by her until this
thing is over, and then I’ll go back.”
“Don’t be too sure,” began Dick; but checked himself, remembering his
promise to the girl.
“That is what Dolly said,” replied the other hopelessly. “But I’ve had
my eyes opened. I know now what sort of fellow Haynes really was. How
could a man such as I win out against that kind of man?”
“Anyway,” said Dick, “Helga needs you at this time; you and Miss
Ravenden. You won’t leave now, Ev.”
“Oh, I’ll stand by,” came the weary answer. “I don’t mean to whine; but
I’ll be glad when I can get away. Even if I thought there was any
chance—Oh, a fellow can’t fight the dead; it’s too cowardly!”
“Ev,” said Dick affectionately, “you don’t know—How is she now?” he
asked, breaking off suddenly.
“Just the same. Mr. Melbourne saw her for a few minutes, and brought
her some old letters of Haynes’. She has them, but we can’t rouse her
to read them.”
“Has Miss Ravenden told her of Haynes’ illness?”
“What illness? Dolly’s been trying to tell her something; but Helga
doesn’t seem to comprehend.”
“She will come out of that daze presently,” said Dick. “You’d better go
back to her, Ev.”
Late that evening Eldon Smith knocked at Dick’s door, and found Dick
talking with Professor Ravenden.
“It certainly is the most extraordinary case in my experience,” said
the young reporter. “So many people had wallowed all over the place
before I got there that there was nothing to be had from the sand,
except two trampled remains of those remarkable tracks. You are sure
there were no footprints?”
“Absolutely,” replied the professor and Colton in a breath.
“And you say Mr. Haynes was sure that there was none leading to the
body of the man Serd-holm?”
“So he positively declared.”
“Of course the pteranodon theory is out of the question.”
“Professor Ravenden does not so consider,” said Dick.
“I beg your pardon, Professor; I understand—”
“That the pteranodon still exists is by no means impossible,” said
Professor Ravenden. “That the mysterious marks correspond to the fossil
track is undeniable. I cannot so lightly dismiss the theory that a
reptile of this supposedly extinct species did the killing.”
“Well, all that I can do is to try again tomorrow. Good-night,” and the
reporter left.
“If Haynes were alive,” said Colton as the young man went, “he would go
down to the beach the first thing in the morning. That is what I am
going to do.”
“Do you think it safe?” queried the professor. “Not entirely,” replied
the other frankly; “but I’ll have a revolver.”
“Little enough avail was that to our poor friend,” said Professor
Ravenden. “Suppose I accompany you?”
“Thank you, sir,” said Dick. “If you care to go, I should be glad to
have you. But suppose you come across the knolls while I follow Haynes’
course along the beach. We’ll meet at the spot. You of course will go
armed?”
“Certainly. Yes, I think your plan a good one.”
For Dick Colton there was little sleep that night. After midnight he
was sent for to see Helga. At last she had come out of her semi-stupor,
and had given way to such a violence of grief that Dolly and Everard
were terrified. Having given her an opiate and ordered Everard to bed,
Dick sat up with his own troubled conjectures until nearly dawn. Barely
three hours of dozing had been his portion when he woke again.
With his shoes in his hand, he crept downstairs and started for the
beach. He had set out early, because, despite the chill in the air, he
wished to take a plunge in the sea to freshen himself up. Brief indeed
was the plunge; consequently Dick Colton was in a fair way to reach the
rendezvous some minutes before the arrival of the professor.
At Graveyard Point he climbed the cliff and took a long look around. A
mist, moving along from east to west, cut off his view in one
direction. Descending to the beach, he readily found the spot where
Haynes’ body had lain. By way of precaution he made sure that his
revolver was in condition for instant use. Although a slight rain had
fallen, blurring the writings on the sand, and there had been almost
total destruction by the trampling of those who had taken Haynes’ body
away, there still was left some material for study. The remains of the
five-taloned marks Colton set himself to consider.
Once there came a startling interruption, in the sliding of some gravel
down the gully. Pistol in hand, Dick whirled, and for ten monstrously
elongated seconds listened to the irregular beats of his heart as he
waited. Satisfied at length that it was only a chance avalanche in
miniature, he got down on his hands and knees above the plainest of the
vestigia. There was the secret, if he only could read it. Had Haynes
solved it and met his death at the moment of success? For perhaps two
or three minutes the young doctor remained in his crouched posture, his
mind immersed in speculation. Then he rose, facing the sea, and as he
stood and looked down there came to him a sudden glow of illumination.
“By the heavens! I’ve got it!” he cried.
He started forward to the next mark. As he advanced, something sang in
the air behind him. He knew it was some swiftly flying thing; knew in
the same agonised moment that the doom of Haynes and Serdholm was upon
him: tried to turn and face his death—and then there was a dreadful,
grinding shock, a flame with jagged edges tore through his brain, and
he fell forward into darkness.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE PROFESSOR ACTS
PROMPTITUDE was one of Professor Ravenden’s many virtues. Only one
thing could make him forget the obligation of an engagement; that was
his dominant ardour for the hunt. In time this had become an instinct.
So it is not strange that, on leaving Third House to keep his
rendezvous with Dick Colton, he should have absentmindedly hung his
heavy poison-jar for specimens around his neck, and taken up his
butterfly net, while entirely forgetting his revolver.
As chance would have it, there rose about the same hour as Professor
Ravenden a delicate little butterfly with wings like the azure glory of
the mid-June heavens. It was taking the air on a leaf of scrub-oak,
while waiting for the sun to come out, when the entomologist came
striding over the knolls, and brushed against the shrub. Up fluttered
the beautiful insect, and the blue of its wings caught the eager eye of
Professor Ravenden. It was of the same species which once before had
lured him from the greater pursuit.
“_Lycama pseudargiolus_,” he muttered, as he hastily affixed his
collapsible net. “From its brightness, it should be a fall specimen,
and undoubtedly shows the variations on the lower wing which I am
studying. Wait one moment, my friend, and I shall welcome you to the
hospitality of my cyanide jar.”
After a brief flight the insect settled down well toward the centre of
another patch of shrubbery. Having prepared his net, the hunter set
about forcing his way into this patch, but before he was in reach of
his prey the pressure on the close-knit vegetation had disturbed the
sensitive insect and again it rose, this time in alarm. Though barely
an inch across the wings, this species exhibits capacities for flight
greater than that of much larger butterflies. When again it alighted,
the pursuer, panting and perspiring, had been drawn in a semicircular
course, some hundreds of yards inland. This time he did not get near
enough for a trial of his net before the elusive creature was off
again. The third flight was a briefer one. After tentative flutterings,
the _pseudargiolm_ alighted on a marshmallow leaf in a hollow. Taking
profit of his previous failures, Professor Ravenden sat down and got
his breath while waiting for the quarry to lapse into a state of
undisturbed quietude. Thus, it was easy presently for the hunter to net
it and transfer it to the cyanide jar. This done, he realised with a
start of conscience that he had wasted ten minutes, and was a quarter
of a mile off the track of his engagement. With all speed, he pointed
across the knolls toward the beach.
Fog was drifting in from the ocean, giving added incentive to haste.
Wisest it would be, the professor judged, to make for the near point of
the cliff, so that he might have a line to follow should mist blot the
landscape. The beach below was just dimming with the advance of the
first folds of grey when Professor Ravenden reached the brink. The
nearer sands were cut off from his vision by a rise between himself and
the rendezvous. As his eye ranged to the west for the readiest access
to the level, it was caught and held by the outstretched body of Dick
Colton lying upon the hard sand out from the mouth of the ravine where
Serdholm and Haynes had met their death.
For the moment the scientist was stunned into inaction. Suddenly the
body twitched, and there swept over the unhappy entomologist a dreadful
sense of his own negligence and responsibility. Along the heights
paralleling the beach-line he ran at utmost speed, dipped down into a
hollow where, for the time, the prospect was shut off, and surmounted
the slope beyond, which brought him almost above the body, and a little
to the east of the gully. Meantime the fog had been closing down, and
now, as the professor reached the spot, it spread a grey and wavering
mantle between him and what lay below.
Already he had attained the gully’s edge, when there moved out upon the
hard sand a thing so out of all conception, an apparition so monstrous,
that the professor’s net fell from his hand, and a loud cry burst from
him. Through the enveloping medium of the mist, the figure swayed
vaguely, and assumed shapes beyond comprehension. Suddenly it doubled
on itself, contracted to a compact blur, underwent a swift inversion,
and before the scientist’s straining vision there arose a man, dreadful
of aspect indeed, but still a human being, and as such, not beyond
human powers to cope with. The man had
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