Grover Nealman had disappeared, and no search could bring him back to
Kastle Krags. The hope that we all had, that some way, some how he would
reappear--destroying in a moment that strange, ghastly tradition that
these last two nights had established--died in our souls as the daylight
hours sped by. Even if we could have found him dead it would have been
some relief. In that case we could ascribe his death to something we
could understand--a sudden sickness, a murderer's blow, perhaps even his
own hand at his throat, all of which were within our bourne of human
experience. But it was vaguely hard for us to have two men go, on
successive nights, and have no knowledge whence or how they had gone.
Of course no man hinted at this hardship. It was simply the sort of
thing that could not be discussed by intelligent men. Yet we were human,
only a few little generations from the tribal fire and the
witch-doctors, and it got under our skins.
Grover Nealman's body was not lying in some unoccupied part of the
house, nor did we find him in the gardens. Telephone messages were
sent, but Nealman had not been seen. And after six hours of patient
search, under that Floridan sun, it was no longer easy to believe that
he lay at the bottom of the lagoon.
The sheriff's men dragged tirelessly, widening out their field of search
until it covered most of the lagoon, but they found neither Nealman nor
Florey. Some of the work was done in the flow-tide, when the waves
breaking on the rocky barrier made the lagoon itself choppy and rough.
They came in tired and discouraged, ready to give up.
In the meantime Van Hope had heard from Lacone--but his message was not
very encouraging either. It would likely be forty hours, he said, before
he could arrive at Kastle Krags. Of course Van Hope and his friends
agreed that there was nothing to do but wait for him.
The sun reached high noon and then began his long, downward drift to the
West. The shadows slowly lengthened almost imperceptibly at first, but
with gradually increasing speed. The heat of the day climbed, reached
its zenith; the diamond-back slept heavily in the shade, a deadly
slumber that was evil to look upon; and the water-moccasin hung
lifelessly in his thickets--and then, so slowly as to pass belief, the
little winds from the West sprang up, bringing relief. It would soon be
night at Kastle Krags. The afternoon was almost gone.
Not one of those northern men mentioned the fact. They were
Anglo-Saxons, and that meant there were certain iron-clad restraints on
their speech. Because of this inherent reserve they had to bottle up
their thoughts, harbor them in silence, with the risk of a violent nerve
explosion in the end. Insanity is not common among the Latin peoples.
They find easy expression in words for all the thoughts that plague
them, thus escaping that strain and tension that works such havoc on the
nervous system. Slatterly and Weldon, native Floridans, had learned a
certain sociability and ease of expression under that tropical sun,
impossible to these cold, northern men; and consequently the day passed
easier for them. Likely they talked over freely the mystery of Kastle
Krags, relieved themselves of their secret dreads, and awaited the
falling of the night with healthy, unburdened minds. They were naturally
more superstitious than the Northerners. They had listened to Congo
myths in the arms of colored mammies in infancy. But superstition, while
a retarding force to civilization, is sometimes a mighty consolation
to the spirit. The tribes of Darkest Africa, seeing many things that
in their barbarism they can not understand, find it wiser to turn
to superstition than to go mad. Thus they escape that bitter,
nerve-wracking struggle of trying to adjust some inexplicable mystery
with their every-day laws of matter and space and time. They likely find
it happier to believe in witchcraft than to fight hopelessly with fear
in silence.
A little freedom, a little easy expression of secret thoughts might have
redeemed those long, silent hours just before nightfall. But no man told
another what he was really thinking, and every man had to win his battle
for himself. The result was inevitable: a growing tension and suspense
in the very air.
It was a strange atmosphere that gathered over Kastle Krags in those
early evening hours. Some way it gave no image of reality. It was
vaguely hard to talk--the mind moved along certain channels and could
not be turned aside. We couldn't disregard the fact that the night was
falling. The hours of darkness were even now upon us. And no man could
keep from thinking of their possibilities.
I noticed a certain irritability on the part of all the guests.
Their nerves were on edge, their tempers--almost forgotten in their
years of social intercourse--excitable and uncertain. They were all
pre-occupied, busy with their own thoughts--and a man started when
another spoke to him.
It couldn't be truly said that they had been conquered by fear. These
were self-reliant, masterful men, trained from the ground up to be
strong in the face of danger. Yet the mystery of Kastle Krags was
getting to them. They couldn't forget that for two nights running some
power that dwelt on that eerie shore had claimed one of the occupants of
the manor house--and that a third night was even now encroaching over
the forest. Any legend however strange concerning the old house could
not wake laughter now. It was true that from time to time one of
the guests laughed at another's sallies, but always the sound rang
shockingly loud over the verandas and was some way disquieting to every
one that heard it. Nor did we hear any happy, carefree laughter such as
had filled the halls that first night. Rather these were nervous,
excited sounds, conveying no image of mirth, and jarring unpleasantly on
us all.
The hot spell of the previous night was fortunately broken, yet some of
us chose to sit on the verandas. Through rifts in the trees we could
watch the darkness creeping over the sea and the lagoon. There was no
pleasure here--but it was some way better than staying in our rooms and
letting the night creep upon us unawares. It seemed better to face it
and watch it, staring away into it with rather bright, wide-open
eyes....
The trees blurred on the lawns. The trunks faded until they seemed like
the trunks of ghost-trees, haunting that ancient shore. It was no longer
possible to distinguish twig from twig where the branches overlapped.
The green grass became a strange, dusky blue; the gray sand of the shore
whitened; the blue-green waters turned to ink except for their
silver-white caps of foam. Watching closely, our eyes gradually adjusted
themselves to the fading light, conveying the impression that the
twilight was of unusual length. Perhaps we didn't quite know when the
twilight ended and the night began.
The usual twilight sounds reached us with particular vividness from the
lagoon and the forest and the shore. We heard the plover, as ever; and
deeper voices--doubtless those of passing sea-birds, mingled with
theirs. But the sounds came intermittently, sharp and penetrating out of
the darkness and the silence, and they always startled us a little.
Sometimes the thickets rustled in the gardens--little, hushed noises
none of us pretended to hear. A frog croaked, and the hushed little
wind creaked the tree-limbs together. Once some wild creature--possibly
a wildcat, but more likely a great owl--filled the night with his weird,
long-drawn cry. We all turned, and Van Hope, sitting near by, smiled
wanly in the gloom.
Darkness had already swept the verandas, and Van Hope's was the only
face I could see. The others were already blurred, and even their forms
were mere dark blotches of shadow. A vague count showed that there was
six of us here--and I was suddenly rather startled by the thought that I
didn't know just who they were. The group had changed from time to time
throughout the evening, some of the men had gone and others had taken
their chairs, and now the darkness concealed their identities. It
shouldn't have made any difference, yet I found myself dwelling, with a
strange persistency, on the subject.
The reason got down to the simple fact that, in this house of mystery,
a man instinctively wanted to keep track of all his fellows. He wanted
to know where they were and what they were doing. He found himself
worrying when one of them was gone. I suppose it was the instinct of
protection--a feeling that a man's absence might any moment result in
a shrill scream of fear or death in the darkness. Van Hope sat to my
left, a little further to the right was Weldon, the coroner. There were
three chairs further to the right, but which of the five remaining
guests occupied them I did not know.
Three white men--two of the guests and the sheriff--were unaccounted
for. My better intelligence told me that they were either in the
living-room or the library, perhaps in their own rooms, yet it was
impossible to forget that these men were of the white race, largely free
from the superstition that kept the blacks safely from the perilous
shores of the lagoon. Any one of a dozen reasons might send them walking
down through the gardens to those gray crags from which they might never
return.
I found myself wondering about Edith, too. She had excused herself and
had gone to her room, ostensibly to bed, but I couldn't forget our
conversation of the previous night and her resolve to fathom the mystery
of her uncle's disappearance. Would she remain in the security of her
room, or must I guard her, too?
How slow the time passed! The darkness deepened over land and sea. The
moon had not yet risen--indeed it would not appear until after midnight.
The great, white Floridan stars, however, had pushed through the dark
blue canopy of the night, and their light lay softly over the gardens.
The guests talked in muffled tones, their excited laughter ringing out
at ever longer intervals. The coals of their cigars glowed like
fireflies in the gloom.
By ten o'clock two of the six chairs were vacant. Two of the guests had
tramped away heavily to their rooms, not passing so near that I could
make sure of their identity. Soon after this a very deep and curious
silence fell over the veranda.
The two men to my right, Weldon the coroner and one of the guests, were
smoking quietly, evidently in a lull in their conversation. I didn't
particularly notice them. Their silence was some way natural and easy,
nothing to startle the heart or arrest the breath. If they had been
talking, however, perhaps the moment would have never got hold of me as
it did. The silence seemed to deepen with an actual sense of motion,
like something growing, and a sensation as inexplicable as it was
unpleasant slowly swept over me.
It was a creepy, haunting feeling that had its origin somewhere beyond
the five senses. Outwardly there was nothing to startle me, unless it
was that curious, deepening silence. The darkness, the shore, the
starlit gardens were just the same. Nor was it a perceptible, abrupt
start. It came slowly, growing, creeping through me. I had no
inclination to make any perceptible motion, or to show that anything was
different than it was before. I turned slowly to Van Hope, sitting to my
left.
Instinctively I knew that here was the source of my alarm. It was
something that my subconscious self had picked up from him. He was
sitting motionless in his chair, his hand that held his cigar half
raised to his lips, staring away into the distant gardens.
There is something bad for the spirit in the sight of an entirely
motionless figure. The reason is simply that it is out of accord with
nature--that the very soul of things, from the tree on the hill to the
stars in the sky, is motion never ending. A figure suddenly changed to
stone focuses the attention much more surely than any sudden sound or
movement. Perhaps it has its origin in the deep-hidden instincts,
harking back to those long ago times when the sudden arresting of all
motion on the part of the companion indicated the presence of some great
danger and an attempt to escape its gaze. Even to-day it indicates a
thought so compelling that the half-unconscious physical functions are
suspended: a fear or a sensation so violent that life seems to die in
the body.
Van Hope couldn't get his cigar to his lips. He held it between his
fingers, a few inches in front. He was watching so intently that his
face looked absolutely blank. A little shiver that was some way related
to fear passed over me, and I had all the sensations of being violently
startled. Then Van Hope suddenly got to his feet with a short, low
exclamation.
Our nerves on edge, instantly all three of us were beside him--Weldon,
myself, and Joe Nopp. All of us tried to follow his gaze into the gloom.
"What is it?" Weldon asked.
Van Hope, seemingly scarcely aware of us before, instantly rallied his
faculties and turned to us. In a single instant he had wrenched back
complete self-control--an indication of self-mastery such as I had
rarely seen surpassed. He smiled a little, in the gloom, and dropped his
hand to his side.
"I suppose it was nothing," he answered. "I guess I'm jumpy. Maybe half
asleep. But I saw some one--walking through the gardens down by the
lagoon."
Van Hope spoke rather lightly, in a wholly commonplace voice. He had not
been, however, half asleep. The frozen face I had seen was of complete
wakefulness.
"A man, you say--down by the lagoon?" Weldon asked.
"Yes. Of course there's always a chance for a mistake. Probably it
wouldn't be anything anyway--just one of the men getting a little air.
Watch a minute--maybe you'll see him again."
We watched in silence, and listened to one another's breathing. But the
faint shadows, in that starlit vista, were unwavering.
"It wasn't likely anything----" Van Hope said apologetically. "I was
thinking, though, that any stranger ought to be investigated----"
"He had, too," Weldon agreed. "Not just any stranger. Any one who goes
walking down there in the darkness ought to be questioned--whether he's
one of us or not. But are you sure you saw anything?"
"Not sure at all. I thought I did, though. I thought I saw him step,
distinctly, through a rift in the trees. Excuse me for bothering you."
None of us felt any embarrassment on Van Hope's account, or any
superciliousness if he had been unnecessarily alarmed. It was wholly
natural, this third night of three, to wonder and be stirred by any
moving thing in the darkened gardens.
But we waited and watched in vain. There were no cries from the shore of
the lagoon. The silence remained unbroken, and after awhile the thought
turned to other channels.
Van Hope rose at last, hurled his cigar stub to the lawns and for a
breath stood watching its glowing end pale and die. The disappearance of
his old friend had gone hard with him. You could see it in the stoop of
his shoulders. He looked several years older.
"Nothing to do now--but go to bed," he commented quietly. "Maybe we can
get some sleep to-night."
"The third night's the charm," Nopp answered grimly. "How do we know but
that before this night is over we'll be gathered out here again." He
paused, and we tried to smile at him in the darkness. Nopp was speaking
with a certain grim humor, yet whatever his intentions, none of us got
the idea that he was jesting. "It's worked two nights--why not three.
I'd believe anything could happen at this goblin house----"
We listened to him with relief. It was some way good for our spirits to
have one of us speak out what we had all been thinking and had strained
so hard to hide. Nor did we think less of him for his frankness. We knew
at first, and we knew now, that Nopp's nerve was as good or better than
any man in the gathering, and he had never showed it better than in
speaking frankly now.
"Bunk, Nopp," Van Hope answered. "You're mixing coincidence up with
atmosphere. It was a strange and a devilish thing that those two crimes
should have happened two nights running, but it will work out perfectly
plausible--mark my words. And coincidences don't happen three times in a
row."
Nopp lifted his face to the starlit skies. "My boy," he said, rather
superciliously, "_anything_ could happen at Kastle Krags."