for me; and a minute later we were gliding through orange groves along
one of those broad smooth roads that amaze the European whose
impressions of California have been obtained from tales of the
forty-niners. The keen scent of the orange blossom yielded to a tang of
new incense, as we turned into the Sunset Boulevard and ran down the
long vista of tall eucalyptus trees that stand out so darkly and
distinctly against the lilac-colored ranges of the Sierra Madre in the
distance, and remind one of the poplar-bordered roads of France. Once we
passed a swarthy cluster of Mexicans under a wayside palm. Big
fragments, gnawed half-moons, of the blood-red black-pipped watermelon
they had been eating, gleamed on the dark oiled surface of the road, as
a splash of the sunset is reflected in a dark river. Then we ran along
the coast for a little way between the palms and the low white-pillared
houses, all crimson poinsettias and marble, that looked as if they were
meant for the gods and goddesses of Greece, but were only the homes of a
few score lotus-eating millionaires. In another minute, we had turned
off the good highway, and were running along a narrow sandy road. On one
side, rising from the road, were great desert hills, covered with
gray-green sage-brush, tinged at the tips with rusty brown; and, on the
other, there was a strip of sandy beach where the big slow breakers
crumbled, and the unmolested pelicans waddled and brooded like goblin
sentries.
In three minutes more, we sighted a cluster of tiny wooden houses ahead
of us, and pulled up on the outskirts of a Japanese fishing village,
built along the fringe of the beach itself. It was a single miniature
street, nestling under the hill on one side of the narrow road and built
along the sand on the other. Japanese signs stood over quaint little
stores, with here and there a curious tinge of Americanism. RICE CAKES
AND CANDIES were advertised by one black-haired and boyish-looking
gentleman who sat at the door of his hut, playing with three brown
children, one of whom squinted at us gleefully with bright sloe-black
eyes. Every tiny house, even when it stood on the beach, had its own
festoon of flowers. Bare-legged, almond-eyed fishermen sat before them,
mending their nets. Wistaria drooped from the jutting eaves;
and--perhaps only the Japanese could explain the miracle--tall and
well-nourished red geraniums rose, out of the salt sea-sand apparently,
around their doors. A few had foregone their miracles and were content
with window boxes, but all were in blossom. In the center of the
village, on the seaward side, there was a miniature mission house. A
beautifully shaped bell swung over the roof; and there was a miniature
notice-board at the door. The announcements upon it were in Japanese,
but it looked as if East and West had certainly met, and kissed each
other there. Some of the huts had oblong letter boxes of gray tin,
perched on stumps of bamboo fishing poles, in front of their doors. It
is a common device to help the postman in country places where you
sometimes see a letter-box on a broomstick standing half a mile from the
owner's house. But here, they looked curiously Japanese, perhaps because
of the names inscribed upon them, or through some trick of arrangement,
for a Japanese hand no sooner touches a dead staff than it breaks into
cherry blossom. We stopped before one that bore the name of Y. Kato. His
unpainted wooden shack was the most Japanese of all in appearance; for
the yellow placard underneath the window advertising SWEET CAPORAL was
balanced by a single tall pole, planted in the sand a few feet to the
right, and lifting a beautiful little birdhouse high above the roof.
Moreton Fitch knocked at the door, which was opened at once by a dainty
creature, a piece of animated porcelain four feet high, with a
black-eyed baby on her back; and we were ushered with smiles into a very
bare living-room to be greeted by the polished mahogany countenance of
Kato himself and the shell-spectacled intellectual pallor of Howard
Knight, professor in the University of California.
"Amazing, amazing, perfectly amazing," said Knight, who was wearing two
elderly tea-roses in his cheeks now from excitement. "I have just
finished it. Sit down and listen."
"Wait a moment," said Fitch. "I want our friend here to see the original
log of the _Evening Star_."
"Of course," said Knight, "a human document of the utmost value." Then,
to my surprise, he took me by the arm and led me in front of a kakemono,
which was the only decoration on the walls of the room.
"This is what Mr. Fitch calls the log of the _Evening Star_," he said.
"It was found among the effects of Mr. Kato's brother on the schooner;
and, fortunately, it was claimed by Mr. Kato himself. Take it to the
light and examine it."
I took it to the window and looked at it with curiosity, though I did
not quite see its bearing on the mystery of the _Evening Star_. It was a
fine piece of work, one of those weird night-pictures in which the
Japanese are masters, for they know how to give you the single point of
light that tells you of the unseen life around the lamp of the household
or the temple. This was a picture of a little dark house, with jutting
eaves, and a tiny rose light in one window, overlooking the sea. At the
brink of the sea rose a ghostly figure that might only be a drift of
mist, for the curve of the vague body suggested that the off-shore wind
was blowing it out to sea, while the great gleaming eyes were fixed on
the lamp, and the shadowy arms outstretched towards it in hopeless
longing. Sea and ghost and house were suggested in a very few strokes of
the brush. All the rest, the peace and the tragic desire and a thousand
other suggestions, according to the mood of the beholder, were
concentrated into that single pinpoint of warm light in the window.
"Turn it over," said Fitch.
I obeyed him, and saw that the whole back of the kakemono, which
measured about four feet by two, was covered with a fine scrawl of
Japanese characters in purple copying-pencil. I had overlooked it at
first, or accepted it, with the eye of ignorance, as a mere piece of
Oriental decoration.
"That is what we all did," said Fitch. "We all overlooked the simple
fact that Japanese words have a meaning. We didn't trouble about it--you
know how vaguely one's eye travels over a three-foot sign on a Japanese
tea-house--we didn't even think about it till Mr. Kato turned up in our
office a week or two ago. You can't read it. Nor can I. But we got Mr.
Knight here to handle it for us."
"It turns out to be a message from Harper," said Knight. "Apparently, he
was lying helpless in his berth, and told the Japanese to write it down.
A few sentences here and there are unintelligible, owing to the
refraction of the Oriental mind. Fortunately, it is Harper's own
message. I have made two versions, one a perfectly literal one which
requires a certain amount of re-translation. The other is an attempt to
give as nearly as possible what Harper himself dictated. This is the
version which I had better read to you now. The original has various
repetitions, and shows that Harper's mind occasionally wandered, for he
goes into trivial detail sometimes. He seems to have been possessed,
however, with the idea of getting his account through to the owners;
and, whenever he got an opportunity, he made the Japanese take up his
pencil and write, so that we have a very full account."
Knight took out a note-book, adjusted his glasses, and began to read,
while the ghostly original fluttered in my hand, as the night-wind blew
from the sea.
"A terrible thing has happened, and I think it my duty to write this, in
the hope that it may fall into the hands of friends at home. I am not
likely to live another twenty-four hours. The first hint that I had of
anything wrong was on the night of March the fifteenth, when Mrs.
Burgess came up to me on deck, looking very worried, and said, 'Mr.
Harper, I am in great trouble. I want to ask you a question, and I want
you to give me an honest answer.' She looked round nervously, and her
hands were fidgeting with her handkerchief, as if she were frightened to
death. 'Whatever your answer may be,' she said, 'you'll not mention what
I've said to you.' I promised her. She laid her hand on my arm and said
with the most piteous look in her face I have ever seen, 'I have no
other friends to go to, and I want you to tell me. Mr. Harper, is my
husband sane?'
"I had never doubted the sanity of Burgess till that moment. But there
was something in the dreadfulness of that question, from a woman who had
only been married a few months, that seemed like a door opening into the
bottomless pit.
"It seemed to explain many things that hadn't occurred to me before. I
asked her what she meant and she told me that last night Burgess had
come into the cabin and waked her up. His eyes were starting out of his
head, and he told her that he had seen Captain Dayrell walking on deck.
She told him it was nothing but imagination; and he laid his head on his
arms and sobbed like a child. He said he thought it was one of the
deckhands that had just come out of the foc'sle, but all the men were
short and smallish, and this was a big burly figure. It went ahead of
him like his own shadow, and disappeared in the bows. But he knew it was
Dayrell, and there was a curse on him. To-night, she said, half an hour
ago, Burgess had come down to her, taken her by the throat, and sworn he
would kill her if she didn't confess that Dayrell was still alive. She
told him he must be crazy. 'My mind may be going,' he said, 'but you
sha'n't kill my soul.' And he called her a name which she didn't repeat,
but began to cry when she remembered it. He said he had seen Dayrell
standing in the bows with the light of the moon full on his face, and he
looked so brave and upright that he knew he must have been bitterly
wronged. He looked like a soldier facing the enemy, he said.
"While she was telling me this, she was looking around her in a very
nervous kind of way, and we both heard some one coming up behind us very
quietly. We turned round, and there--as God lives--stood the living
image of Captain Dayrell looking at us, in the shadow of the mast. Mrs.
Burgess gave a shriek that paralyzed me for the moment, then she ran
like a wild thing into the bows, and before any one could stop her, she
climbed up and threw herself overboard. Evans and Barron were only a few
yards away from her when she did it, and they both went overboard after
her immediately, one of them throwing a life-belt over ahead of him as
he went. They were both good swimmers, and as the moon was bright, I
thought we had only to launch a boat to pick them all up. I shouted to
the Kanakas, and they all came up running. Two of the men and myself got
into one of the starboard boats, and we were within three feet of the
water when I heard the crack of a revolver from somewhere in the bows of
the _Evening Star_. The men who were lowering away let us down with a
rush that nearly capsized us. There were four more shots while we were
getting our oars out. I called to the men on deck, asking them who was
shooting, but got no reply. I believe they were panic-stricken and had
bolted into cover. We pulled round the bows, and could see nothing.
There was not a sign of the woman or the two men in the water.
"We could make nobody hear us on the ship, and all this while we had
seen nothing of Captain Burgess. It must have been nearly an hour
before we gave up our search, and tried to get aboard again. We were
still unable to get any reply from the ship, and we were about to try to
climb on board by the boat's falls. The men were backing her in, stern
first, and we were about ten yards away from the ship when the figure of
Captain Dayrell appeared leaning over the side of the _Evening Star_. He
stood there against the moonlight, with his face in shadow; but we all
of us recognized him, and I heard the teeth of the Kanakas chattering.
They had stopped backing, and we all stared at one another. Then, as
casually as if it were a joke, Dayrell stretched out his arm, and I saw
the moonlight glint on his revolver. He fired at us, deliberately, as if
he were shooting at clay pigeons. I felt the wind of the first shot
going past my head, and the two men at once began to pull hard to get
out of range. The second shot missed also. At the third shot, he got the
man in the bows full in the face. He fell over backwards, and lay there
in the bottom of the boat. He must have been killed instantaneously. At
the fourth shot, I felt a stinging pain on the left side of my body,
but hardly realized I had been wounded at the moment. A cloud passed
over the moon just then, and the way we had got on the boat had carried
us too far for Dayrell to aim very accurately, so that I was able to get
to the oars and pull out of range. The other man must have been wounded
also, for he was lying in the bottom of the boat groaning, but I do not
remember seeing him hit. I managed to pull fifty yards or so, and then
fainted, for I was bleeding very badly.
"When I recovered consciousness I found that the bleeding had stopped,
and I was able to look at the two men. Both of them were dead and quite
cold, so that I must have been unconscious for some time.
"The _Evening Star_ was about a hundred yards away, in the full light of
the moon, but I could see nobody on deck. I sat watching her till
daybreak, wondering what I should do, for there was no water or food in
the boat, and I was unarmed. Unless Captain Burgess and the other men
aboard could disarm Dayrell, I was quite helpless. Perhaps my wound had
dulled my wits; for I was unable to think out any plan, and I sat there
aimlessly for more than an hour.
"It was broad daylight, and I had drifted within fifty yards of the
ship, when, to my surprise, Captain Burgess appeared on deck and hailed
me. 'All right, Harper,' he said, 'come aboard.'
"I was able to scull the boat alongside, and Captain Burgess got down
into her without a word and helped me aboard. He took me down to my
berth, with his arm around me, for I almost collapsed again with the
effort, and he brought me some brandy. As soon as I could speak, I asked
him what it all meant, and he said, 'The ship is his, Harper; we've got
to give it up to him. That's what it means. I am not afraid of him by
daylight, but what we shall do to-night, God only knows.' Then, just as
Mrs. Burgess had told me, he put his head down on his arms, and began to
sob like a child.
"'Where are the other men?' I asked him.
"'There's only you and I and Kato,' he said, 'to face it out aboard this
ship.'
"With that, he got up and left me, saying that he would send Kato to me
with some food, if I thought I could eat. But I knew by this time that I
was a dying man.
"There was only one thing I had to do, and that was to try to get this
account written, and hide it somehow in the hope of some one finding it
later, for I felt sure that neither Burgess nor myself would live to
tell it. There was no paper in my berth, and it was Kato that thought of
writing it down in this way.
"_About an hour later._ Burgess has just been down to see me. He said
that he had buried the two men who were shot in the boat. I wanted to
ask him some questions, but he became so excited, it seemed useless.
Neither he nor Kato seemed to have any idea where Dayrell was hiding.
Kato believes, in fact, in ghosts, so that it is no use questioning him.
"I must have lost consciousness or slept very heavily since the above
was written, for I remembered nothing more till nightfall, when I woke
up in the pitch darkness. Kato was sitting by me. He lit the lamp, and
gave me another drink of brandy. The ship was dead still, but I felt
that something had gone wrong again.
"I do not know whether my own mind is going, but we have just heard the
voice of Mrs. Burgess singing one of those sentimental songs that
Captain Dayrell used to be so fond of. It seemed to be down in the
cabin, and when she came to the end of it, I heard Captain Dayrell's
voice calling out, '_Encore! Encore!_' just as he used to do. Then I
heard some one running down the deck like mad, and Captain Burgess came
tumbling down to us with the whites of his eyes showing. 'Did you hear
it?' he said. 'Harper, you'll admit you heard it. Don't tell me I'm mad.
They're in the cabin together now. Come and look at them.' Then he
looked at me with a curious, cunning look, and said, 'No, you'd better
stay where you are, Harper. You're not strong enough.' And he crept on
the deck like a cat.
"Something urged me to follow him, even if it took the last drop of my
strength. Kato tried to dissuade me, but I drained the brandy flask, and
managed to get out of my berth on to the deck by going very slowly,
though the sweat broke out on me with every step. Burgess had
disappeared, and there was nobody on deck. It was not so difficult to
get to the sky-light of the cabin. I don't know what I had expected to
see, but there I did see the figure of Captain Dayrell, dressed as I had
seen him in life, with a big scarf round his throat, and the big peaked
cap. There was an open chest in the corner, with a good many clothes
scattered about, as if by some one who had been dressing in a hurry. It
was an old chest belonging to Captain Dayrell in the old days, and I
often wondered why Burgess had left it lying there. The revolver lay on
the table, and as Dayrell picked it up to load it, the scarf unwound
itself a little around his throat and the lower part of his face. Then,
to my amazement, I recognized him."
"There," said Knight, "the log of the _Evening Star_ ends except for a
brief sentence by Kato himself, which I will not read to you now."
"I wonder if the poor devil did really see," said Moreton Fitch. "And
what do you suppose he did when he saw who it was?"
"Crept back to his own berth, barricaded himself in with Kato's help,
finished his account, died in the night, with Dayrell tapping on the
door, and was neatly buried by Burgess in the morning, I suppose."
"And, Burgess?"
"Tidied everything up, and then jumped overboard."
"Probably,--in his own clothes; for it's quite true that we did find a
lot of Dayrell's old clothes in a sea-chest in the cabin. Funny idea,
isn't it, a man ghosting himself like that?"
"Yes, but what did Harper mean by saying he heard Mrs. Burgess singing
in the cabin that night?"
"Ah, that's another section of the log recorded in a different way."
Moreton Fitch made a sign to the little Japanese, and told him to get a
package out of his car. He returned in a moment, and laid it at our feet
on the floor.
"Dayrell was very proud of his wife's voice," said Fitch as he took the
covers off the package. "Just before he was taken ill he conceived the
idea of getting some records made of her songs to take with him on board
ship. The gramophone was found amongst the old clothes. The usual
sentimental stuff, you know. Like to hear it? She had rather a fine
voice."
He turned a handle, and, floating out into the stillness of the
California night, we heard the full rich voice of a dead woman:
"_Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low,
And the flickering shadows softly come and go._"
At the end of the stanza, a deep bass voice broke in with, "_Encore!
Encore!_"
Then Fitch stopped it.
When we were in the car on our way home, I asked if there were any clue
to the fate of the Japanese cook, in the last sentence of the log of the
_Evening Star_.
"I didn't want to bring it up before his brother," said Knight, "they
are a sensitive folk; but the last sentence was to the effect that the
_Evening Star_ had now been claimed by the spirit of Captain Dayrell,
and that the writer respectfully begged to commit _hari kari_."
Our road turned inland here, and I looked back toward the fishing
village. The night was falling, but the sea was lilac-colored with the
afterglow. I could see the hut and the little birdhouse black against
the water. On a sand dune just beyond them, the figures of the fisherman
Kato and his wife were sitting on their heels, and still watching us.
They must have been nearly a mile away by this time; but in that clear
air they were carved out sharp and black as tiny ebony images against
the fading light of the Pacific.
VII
GOBLIN PEACHES
The big liner was running like a ghost, with all lights out on deck and
every porthole shrouded. This might seem to the layman almost humorously
inconsistent; for, every minute or two the blast of her foghorn went
bellowing away into the night, loudly enough to disturb the slumbers of
any U-boat lying "doggo" within five miles.
Duncan Drew and I were alone in the smoking-room when the steward
brought us our coffee. There were very few passengers; and the first
cabin-folk were curiously different from those of peace-time. Most of
them, I fancied, were crossing the Atlantic on some business directly
connected with the war. There was a Belgian professor from Louvain, for
instance, who was taking his family over to the new post that had been
found for him at an American University; and there was the wife of an
Italian statesman, an American woman, who was returning home to raise
funds for the Red Cross of her adopted country. There were others whom
it was not so easy to place; and Duncan Drew would have been among them,
I think, if I had not known him. Nobody could have looked more like a
civilian and less like an officer of the British Navy than Duncan did at
this moment. But I knew the job on which he was engaged. When he found
that I knew the Maine coast, he asked me to help him in a certain
matter.
It was in the days before America entered the war; and his mission was
to present certain evidence of a widespread German conspiracy to the
United States Government. If they approved, he was to cooperate in
unearthing the ring-leaders. The conspiracy was a very simple one. It
seemed likely, at the time, that the U-boats would soon be unable to
operate from European bases; and the German admiralty, always looking a
few months ahead, though perhaps ignoring remoter possibilities, was
calmly planning, with the help of its agents in America, to work from
the other side of the water. The thousand-mile coast line of the United
States had many advantages from the German point of view, especially in
its lonelier regions, where there are hundreds of small islands, either
uninhabited or privately owned, and not necessarily owned by American
citizens. The U-boats, it is true, would have to travel further if they
were to work in European waters. But already they had been forced by the
British patrols to travel more than fifteen hundred miles from their
European bases, far to the north of Scotland and west of Ireland, before
they could operate against the Atlantic shipping. The slight increase in
the distance would be more than repaid by the comparative safety of the
submarines. They planned, in short, to work from American bases, while a
dull-witted British Navy should be vainly endeavoring to close European
doors, which the enemy was no longer using.
We didn't talk "shop" in the smoking-room, even when we were alone, for
the ground had been covered so often. On this particular evening, I
remember, we talked chiefly about food. The dinner had been excellent;
and it had been a curious sensation to pass from the slight but obvious
restrictions of London, to a ship which seemed to possess all the
resources of the United States.
"I've only been in Berlin once," said Duncan, "but I was there long
enough to know that they will feel the pinch first, and feel it worst.
They are rum beggars, the Boches. Think of the higher command marking
out the early stages of the war by the dinners it was going to
have,--every menu carefully planned, one for Brussels, one for Paris,
and probably one for London! I remember lunching at a hotel when I was
in Berlin, and seeing rather a curious thing. There was a table in the
center of the room, laid for what was evidently going to be a very grand
affair. It was laid for about twenty people, and I saw a thing I had
never seen before. Every champagne glass contained a peach. I asked my
waiter what it meant, and he said that von Schramm, the fellow who is
one of the moving spirits behind this new submarine campaign, was
entertaining some of his pals that day; and this was one of his pretty
little fads. He thought it improved the wine, and also that it prevented
gout, or some rot of that sort."
"How very German! My chief objection would be that there wouldn't be
much room left for the champagne."