Two telegrams had come for Mr. Nealman during the inquest; but the negro
messenger who had brought them had been too frightened by the august
session in the living-room to disturb him. It came about that Nealman
didn't get them until he and Van Hope left the room together.
The yellow envelopes were lying on a little table in the hall, and
Nealman started, perceptibly, at the sight of them. Except for that
nervous reflex through his body I wouldn't have given the messages a
second thought. Nealman picked them up, and still carrying on a
fragmentary conversation with his friend, tore out the messages.
He did not merely tear off the edges. In his eagerness his clawing
fingers ripped the envelopes wide open, endangering the messages
themselves within. He opened one of them, and his eye leaped over the
script.
He took one curious, short breath, then opened the second message, more
carefully now. Then he crowded both of them into his outer coat pocket.
At that point his conversation with Van Hope took a curious trend. He
still seemed to be trying to talk in his usual casual voice; yet a
preoccupation so deep, so engrossing was upon him that his friend's
words must have seemed to reach him from another sphere. It was a brave
effort; but his disjointed sentences, his blurred perceptions, told the
truth only too plainly.
Nealman had received disastrous news. His lips were smiling, but his
eyes were filled with some alien light. What that light was neither Van
Hope nor I could tell. It might have been frenzy. Quite likely it was
fear.
"Bad news, old man?" Van Hope blurted out at last, impulsively. They
were old friends--he was risking the charge of ill-bred curiosity to
offer sympathy to the other.
"Not very good, old man. I'll see you later about it. If you'll excuse
me I'll go to my room--and answer 'em."
He turned up the stairs--Van Hope walked out onto the verandas. I waited
for Edith, and in a moment we were walking under the magnolias,
listening to the twilight boomings of a bittern on the lagoon.
"And what do you think of it?" I asked her.
No human memory could forget her lustrous eyes, solemn and yet lighted
by the beauty of her thoughts, as she gazed out over the waters,
troubled by the flowing tide.
"I can't make anything out of it," she told me at last. "It doesn't seem
to make good sense. Yet there have been hundreds of more baffling
mysteries, and they all were cleared up at last. Cleared up
intelligently, too, if you know what I mean."
"You mean--with credible motives and actions behind them."
"Yes, and _human_ actions. I'm thinking about--you know what. Human
agents were the only agents in this crime. In the end it will prove out
that way."
"Then you aren't at all superstitious about--this." I indicated that
eery, desolate lagoon with its craggy margin, stretching away like a
ghost-lake in the gray light. As always the tidal waves were bursting
with ferocious, lunging onslaughts on the natural rock wall, and the
foam gleamed incredibly white against the dark water.
"Not in the least," she answered me. "I don't like the place when the
tide's rolling in--it's too rough and too fierce--but it's lovely in
the ebb-tide! Did you ever see anything so still as it is then--the
water's edge creeping inward, and such a wonderful blue-green? No, I'm
not superstitious about it at all. I'm going swimming, one of these
nights, when the tide's going out. I'd cross it to-night in an
emergency."
"You're a strong swimmer, then."
"I can swim well enough--nothing to boast of though. Ned"--for we had
got to the first name stage, long since--"this whole matter will be
cleared up in a few days more. Such things always do come out right. I
wouldn't be surprised if that poor man's body should be found any day,
dragged into some thicket. The rocks are full of caves--perhaps the drag
hooks simply failed to find it."
"And your uncle--he feels the way you do?"
"Of course. If you are talking about that silly legend--it gives him
only the keenest delight as a big story to tell his friends. He has no
more superstitious fear about this lagoon than I have."
"Have you talked to him since the inquest?"
"You know I haven't."
"He got two telegrams to-day. They seemed to go mighty hard with him. I
was wondering--whether you ought to go to him now."
A little line came between her straight brows. "I can't imagine what
they could be----" she said.
"The loss of some friend? Financial loss, perhaps----?"
"I don't know. The latter, if anything. For I do know he's been buying
certain stocks--awfully heavy."
"Playing the stock market, eh----?"
"I don't think I should have told you that. But I know you won't say
anything about it. Oh, I do hope he hasn't had any real misfortune----"
Our talk veered to other subjects, and for a while we stood and watched
the twilight descending over the lagoon. The crags were never so
mysterious. They seemed to take weird shapes in the half-light, and the
water sucked and lapped about their stony feet.
In a little while her hand stole into mine. It rested softly, and
neither of us felt the need of words. The twilight deepened into that
pale darkness of the early Floridan night.
"How I'd like to help him, if he's in trouble," she said at last, almost
whispering. "And how I'd like to help you--do all the things you want to
do."
"I'm glad--that you care about it," I told her, not daring to look down
into that sober, wistful face.
"I _do_ care about it," she declared. She bent, until her lips were
close to my ear. "And I believe I see the way."