THE HAUNTED SWAMP
Drenched by rain, almost blinded by the incessant lightning, Chick drew
up on the narrow footway among the grasses that the wind swept against
his face.
"I'm lost!" he muttered.
All around him, as far as his sight could reach in the flashes, tall,
waving, unbroken marsh grass showed.
"Somewhere I took a wrong path," Chick told himself.
Shivering, he stood, fumbling at the buttons of his coat.
"That man who tried to make me think he was a spook, calling himself
'the Thing that never was, and the Man who Never Lived,'" he said
bitterly, "tore my coat pocket."
He put a hand inside his garment to estimate the damage.
A great feeling of elation crowded out his momentary shudder of fear on
realizing his dreadful situation.
"He didn't get--the tracing!" cried Chick to the storm-swept grass.
He laughed in exultant delight.
"That Doc!" he exclaimed. "He was in such a hurry that instead of
getting the tracing I had folded down on itself, he grabbed out the
envelope of stamps I had in that pocket!"
Crowded into a long manila envelope Chick always kept a loose lot of
assorted postage stamps, ready to "trade" for new varieties to add to a
collection he was making.
In his haste the unknown--but easily guessed--adversary had caught hold
of the fat envelope, crushed down as Chick had pinned in the other
paper. Released, it had popped up. That had been his trophy. Chick
danced and shouted triumphantly.
"He's welcome to all those Bavarian and Venezuelan duplicate stamps!"
cried Chick, making sure that the precious tracing was secure from any
chance rip of the pocket allowing it to drop out, "and if he can make
anything by selling a hundred cancelled American two-cent stamps, he
will do better than I ever did!" He felt elated; but the distressing
situation he was in came back to him and his face sobered in the
glaring light of the tempest.
"I see the boathouse," he told himself. "I guess I'd better go back
there, and not try to get out of here in this storm."
By guiding himself in the revealing light from the skies, he managed to
get back to the right path, pushing through clutching clumps of the
soggy, clinging grass that had hidden the way out but did not wholly
conceal the way back. He had heard the Dragonfly, knew it had gone up.
Once more sheltered he shivered in his wet clothing, but made the best
of a bad condition by righting an old, rickety chair and turning up the
lantern wick till it gave a better light.
"Now," he remarked to himself, "let's see--Doc was here, and for all
his denials I am sure he had taken the tracing--maybe others! I
remember that I was sorting out the drawings of the new, all-metal
ship, to make blue-prints in the morning. Scott came in and I guess I
was so excited at the prospect of guarding the airlanes that I left
those drawings on the big table."
There it would be easy for Doc, sweeping up, to find them, to abstract
any--or many.
"But he might have told the truth about not 'celebrating,'" he said,
thoughtfully. "He never has any money to buy big bottles of alcohol. If
he had been paid by anybody for the new designs, he wouldn't have had
the one I discovered. He must have been waiting for somebody else to
come."
He recalled the course of events that had transpired. Had the "other
man" come? Was it he who had played ghost? Chick wondered, clutching
his torn, soggy coat as tightly about him as possible. Not that it
warmed him much; but the act was involuntary as his mind focused on the
weird apparition he had seen.
Instinctively his eyes went to that dark, gloom-crowded corner of the
hovel.
In a lull of the storm he seemed to hear something gurgling, slapping,
like water against pilings. It was too clear to come from the channels
beyond the closed door.
"I wonder--if there was a trap door--" he meditated.
Summoning his courage he walked over to the corner. To his surprise he
discovered, in the gloom that had concealed it, an unclosed flap of the
flooring, leaning back against the wall. In the dull light from the
lantern it had not been noticed, against the similarly dark wall boards.
"It's a trap door to steps so the boatman can get down to the dories he
keeps tied under the place," Chick decided.
He did not care to explore the mysterious depths below, however.
Closing the square of flooring on the fury of the water beneath, he
returned to his chair.
"I know about the Man who Never Lived, now," he told himself. "It was
Doc Morgan. He saw I had the tracing. He told me all that made-up
stuff, and then went out. He came back, over the dories, maybe, under
the place, and came up the ladder, in oilskins and rubber cap and
gloves. Pouff! I guess that's all there was to the ghost."
That made him wonder if, in some way, they might find an equally
sensible explanation for the spectre that had appeared and vanished so
mysteriously in the clouds.
"But Don flew right into that cloud!" Chick objected to his own hopeful
theory. "There wasn't a thing there."
He sat, shivering with the chill of his wet garb, wondering how long
the successively approaching storms would continue.
Long hours seemed to pass. Chick got up, exercised, flailed his arms
and did gymnastic exercises to promote circulation. Nevertheless, time
dragged slowly.
The intensity of the storm lessened: lightning came more fitfully, rain
ceased, thunder grumbled and ceased to crash, dying away in the South.
Chick went to the door, looking out.
"There are stars," he observed the bright sparks showing through the
drifting, scattering shreds of the tempest, "maybe I ought to try to
get home. They'll be worried about me. I wonder where Don and Garry
landed and if they got down all right."
They had, but far up the Hudson.
Swamp life began to make itself heard--and felt.
Fish leaped, hungry for insects. Frogs began to sing their uncanny
songs. Mosquitos, made ferocious by the cooling air, attacked Chick in
swarms. He retired to the house, closing the door, killing as many of
the pests as he could.
The bites decided him against a foray into the marsh paths. He had read
of several cases of people, lost in marshy country, who had been
dangerously bitten and infected by the swarms of nocturnal pests, swamp
mosquitos.
He sat down again, drawing out and spreading the map before him on his
table.
Damp, softened, the paper was very hard to handle. He wondered, as he
studied it, why Doc had chosen that special one, if it was all he had
taken.
"It doesn't show much of the real construction detail," he mused. "If
I'd wanted to sell plans, I'd have taken the detail drawings--the new
pontoon design, the special tail construction plans, the details of the
way the plates would fit together for strength and lightness. Oh, well,
maybe Doc took what first came to hand and was looking it over--with
his bottle to help him think it was valuable!"
He looked up, startled.
"Was that a step?" he asked himself, straining his ears.
With instinctive caution he slipped the curled paper back into his
coat, buttoning its loose buttons across his chest.
A low, hollow thumping came to his tense ears.
"What's that?" he wondered. "Where is it coming from?"
He kept mouse-still, listening.
"It's--at the door!"
His heart was in his throat.
"Has Doc come back?" he watched the door. Something--or someone--was
fumbling at the latch, striking knuckles against the wood.
In spite of his earlier assurance that the supposed spook had been only
a man made horrible by light and queer clothing, Chick felt a chill
strike to his marrow.
The latch clicked.
Slowly the door began to open.
With wide--staring eyes--Chick fixed his gaze on the widening crack.
He jumped. With a slam the door came inward, banging against the inner
boards.
In the dark square--there was nothing visible.
He summoned his wit and by sheer force of will made himself run to the
door. He looked out. The path, the planking, the platform on which the
house stood, were devoid of sign of human life.
He ran back, closing the door. He dragged the table against it, bracing
it against another strange attack. He stood over the trap door to
prevent its uncanny opening without warning.
Then the lantern flame flared up, guttered--went out!
A sound, half squeal, half groan, assailed Chick's ears as he cowered
in the dark hovel. He realized at once what it was.
Pushing the table across the floor, the door was being opened.