THE HOUSE ON THE DUNES
Having come to agreeable terms with Mr. Yancy and having secured the
name and location of Babylon’s best restaurant, Dorothy left the
waterfront and walked uptown. A glance at her wrist-watch told her it
was not yet seven o’clock. She was in no hurry, for she had more than
two hours to wait before it would be dark enough to start. So she
strolled along the bustling streets of the little city, feeling very
much pleased with the way things were progressing.
Arrived at the restaurant, she ordered a substantial meal and while
waiting for it to be served, sought a telephone booth. She asked for the
toll operator and put in a call for New Canaan. A little while later she
was summoned to the phone.
“Is that you, Lizzie? Yes. I—no, no, I’m perfectly all right—” she
spoke soothingly into the transmitter. “Don’t worry about me, please.
I’ve had to go out of town, and I wanted to let you know that I won’t be
back till morning. Never mind, now. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good-by!” She
replaced the receiver and went back to her table, a little smile on her
lips at the memory of Lizzie’s distracted voice over the wire.
“Poor Lizzie! She’s all worked up again at what she calls my ‘wild
doin’s’,” she thought. And with a determined glint in her eyes, she
proceeded to eat heartily.
When she had finished, she asked at the desk for a sheet of paper and an
envelope. She took these over to her table, ordered a second cup of
coffee, and began to compose a letter. This took her some time, for in
it she explained her maneuvers during the afternoon, and gave the exact
location of the cottage on the dunes, where she believed the Mystery
Plane’s pilot had been bound. She ended with a sketch of her plans for
the evening and addressed the envelope to Terry Walters’ father. With
her mind now easy in case of misadventure, she paid her bill and walked
back to the water front.
“Good evening, Miss Dixon,” greeted Yancy as she stepped into his
office. “I’ve done what you asked me to. You’ll find a pair of clean
blankets, some fresh water and eatables for two days stowed in the Mary
Jane’s cabin. I know you don’t intend to be out that long, but it’s
always wise to be on the safe side with the grub.”
“Thanks. You’re a great help. Now, just one thing more before I shove
off. Although I’ve rented your boat for twenty-four hours, I really
expect to be back here tomorrow morning at the latest. If I don’t turn
up by noon, will you please send this letter by special delivery to Mr.
Walters in New Canaan?”
“I sure will, Miss Dixon. But you’re not lookin’ for trouble, are you?”
Dorothy shook her head and smiled. “Nothing like that, Mr. Yancy. I just
want Mr. Walters to know where I am and what I’m doing.”
“Good enough, Mam. Anything else I can do?”
“Not a thing, thank you. Don’t bother to come down to the wharf with me.
I’ve got several things I want to do aboard before I set out.”
“Just as you say. Good luck and a pleasant trip.” Yancy’s honest face
wore a beaming grin as he doffed his tattered cap to Dorothy.
“Thank you again. Good night.”
Dorothy went outside and found that Yancy’s prediction of rain earlier
in the evening had been justified.
“Lucky this is drizzle instead of fog,” she thought as she hurried down
to the landing stage. “I’d be out of luck navigating blind on Great
South Bay!”
She dove into the Mary Jane’s cabin and after lighting the old fashioned
oil lamp in its swinging bracket, put on her slicker and sou’wester.
Then she fished the chart of the bay out of the locker and spent the
next quarter of an hour in an intensive study of local waters.
Having gained an intimate picture of this part of the bay, she plotted
her course, and checked up on the blankets and food. That done, she blew
out the lamp, picked up the anchor and left the cabin, closing the door
behind her.
Outside in the drizzle, she deposited her burden in the bow, making the
anchor rope fast to a ring bolt in the decking. Then she put a match to
the side lights and coming aft, cast off from the staging. Next, she
started the motor, a difficult undertaking. At the third or fourth heave
of the heavy flywheel it got away with a series of barking coughs. She
slid in behind the steering wheel and they headed out across the bay.
Night had fallen, but notwithstanding the light rain, visibility on the
water was good. The tide, as Dorothy knew, was at the flood, so she cut
straight across for the dull, intermittent glow of the Fire Island
Light. The boat ran strongly and well and Dorothy gave the engine full
gas. She knew from experience that one of its primitive type was not apt
to suffer from being driven, but on the contrary was inclined to run
more evenly.
It had been at least two years since she had sailed on Great South Bay,
but she remembered it to be a big, shallow puddle, where in most places
a person capsized might stand on bottom and right the boat.
“No danger of capsizing with the Mary Jane,” she reflected, “she’s built
on the lines of a flounder—I’ll bet she’d float in a heavy dew!”
The two and a half feet of tide made it possible for her to hold a
straight course and presently she could see the dim outline of sand
dunes. The faint easterly draft of air brought the roar of the Atlantic
swell as it boomed upon the beach outside. It was time to change her
course.
A quarter turn of the wheel swung the Mary Jane to port and
straightening out, she headed across the inlet. Five minutes later she
had picked up the dunes on the farther side. With the dunes off her
starboard quarter, Dorothy made the wheel fast with a bight of cord she
had cut for the purpose, and going forward, extinguished her side
lights.
Back at the wheel again, she steered just as close to the shore as
safety permitted. For the next couple of miles she ran along the
shallows.
“Thank goodness!” she muttered at last. Swinging the Mary Jane inshore,
she cut her motor and headed into a small cove, to ground a moment later
on a pebbly beach.
Springing ashore, Dorothy dragged the anchor up the beach and buried it
at its full length of rope in the sand. Then with a sigh of
satisfaction, she straightened her back and took a survey of her
surroundings.
The little beach ran up to a cup-shaped hollow, encompassed by high sand
dunes. She had noticed the inlet on the large-scale chart, and chose it
because she figured that it lay about a mile on the near side of the
cottage she sought. And since she had decided to use the motor boat
instead of the plane because she wanted to cover her approach, this spot
seemed made to order for her purpose.
Her eyes scanned the skyline, and for a moment her heart almost stopped.
Surely she had seen the head of a man move in that clump of long, coarse
grasses at the top of the incline! Standing perfectly still, although
her body tingled with excitement, she continued to stare at the
suspicious clump.
Then with characteristic decision, she drew a revolver from her pocket
and raced up the side of the dune. But although she exerted herself to
the utmost, her progress was much too slow. Her feet sank deep in the
shifting sand until she was literally wading, clawing with her free hand
for holds on the waving sandgrass.
Panting and floundering, she pulled herself to the top, only to find no
one there. Nor so far as she could see was there any living thing in
sight. The deep boom of the surf was louder here, and peering through
the rain, she made out the long stretch of beach pounded by combers, not
more than a couple of hundred yards away. Some distance to the right,
facing the ocean twinkled the lights of a row of summer cottages. To her
left nothing could be seen but tier after tier of grass-topped dunes, a
narrow barrier of sand between Great South Bay and the Atlantic Ocean,
bleak and desolate, extending farther than the eye could reach.
Despite this evidence to the contrary, Dorothy still retained the
impression that she was not alone. She had an uneasy conviction that she
was being watched. She shivered.
“My nerves must be going fuzzy,” she thought disgustedly. “I can’t risk
using a flash, and if there were any tracks this stiff breeze from the
sea would have filled them in while I was climbing up here. Well, get
going, Dorothy, my girl—this place is giving you the creeps—good and
plenty.”
The Colt was slipped back into her slicker, and she trudged through the
loose sand to the black stretch of ocean beach. Here, walking was
better, and turning her back on the lighted cottages, she set out along
the hard shingle by the surf.
Several times during that walk, Dorothy stopped short and scanned the
long line of dunes above her. Try as she might, it seemed impossible to
rid herself of the idea that someone was following. When she judged the
remaining distance to the cottage to be about a quarter of a mile, she
left the beach and continued her way over the dunes.
Although Dorothy had no tangible fact to connect the Mystery Plane with
her holdup in New Canaan and Terry’s disappearance, she approached the
lonely cottage with the stealth of a red Indian. And even if this night
reconnoiter should prove only that the bearded aviator had a sweetie
living on the shore of Great South Bay, or that he was making daily
trips to visit friends, she had no intention of being caught snooping.
No matter what she should learn of the cottage’s inmates, if anything,
she proposed to return with the Mary Jane to Yancy’s wharf and spend the
rest of the night aboard. She had no desire to tramp about Babylon after
midnight, looking for a hotel that would take her in.
As she slowly neared the cottage, taking particular pains now not to
appear on the skyline, she wished that this adventure was well over. She
still felt the effects of her adventure with the thunderhead. The tiny
cabin of the motor boat seemed more and more inviting to the weary girl.
Trudging through the rain over sand dunes was especially trying when one
was walking away from bed rather than toward it.
Then she caught sight of the house roof over the top of the next dune
and her flagging interest in her undertaking immediately revived.
Dorothy skirted the shoulder of the sandy hill, using the utmost
precaution to make not the slightest sound. Then she squatted on her
heels and held her breath. Directly ahead, not more than thirty or forty
feet at most, gleamed the light from an open window, and from where she
crouched, there was an unobstructed view of the room beyond.
There were three men sitting about an unpainted kitchen table which held
three glasses and as many bottles. All were smoking, and deep in
conversation. One man she knew immediately to be the bearded aviator
with whom she had talked on the Beach Club shore. But although Dorothy
strained her ears to the bursting point, the heavy pounding of the surf
from the ocean side prevented her from catching more than a confused
rumble of voices.
For a moment or two she waited and watched. The other two men wore golf
clothes, were young, and though they were not particularly prepossessing
in appearance, she decided that they were American business men on a
holiday. They certainly did not look like foreigners.
Miss Dixon, crouching beside the sand dune, felt vaguely disappointed.
She did not know exactly what she had expected to find in the cottage,
but she had been counting on something rather more exciting than the
tableau now framed in the open window. But since she had come this far,
it would be senseless not to learn all that was possible. Taking care to
keep beyond the path of the light, she crept forward on her hands and
knees until she was below the window. Here it was impossible to see into
the room, but the voices now came to her with startling distinctness.
“Why?” inquired a voice which Dorothy immediately recognized as
belonging to the aviator, though oddly enough, it was now without
accent. “You surely haven’t got cold feet, Donovan?”
“Cold feet nothing! The man don’t live that can give me chills below the
knee,” that gentleman returned savagely. “But I won’t be made a goat of
either, nor sit in a poker game with my eyes shut. Why should I? I’ve
got as much to lose as you have.”
“Those are my sentiments exactly,” drawled a third voice, not
unpleasantly. “Listen to that surf. There’s a rotten sea running out by
the light. Raining too, and getting thicker out there by the minute. By
three o’clock you’ll be able to cut the fog with a knife. What’s the
sense in trying it—we’re sure to miss her, anyway.”
“Perhaps you chaps would prefer my job,” sneered the aviator. “You make
me sick! But you’ll have to do what the old man expects of you,—so why
argue?”
“How come the old man always picks days like this to run up his red
flag?” Donovan was talking again. “There’s just as much chance of our
picking up that stuff tonight as—as—”
“As finding a golf ball on a Scotchman’s lawn,” the third man finished
for him. “I know there’s no use grousing—but it’s a dirty deal—and
well, we’ve got to talk about something in this God-forsaken dump!”
“I don’t blame you much,” the aviator admitted, “but look at the
profits, man. Well, I must be shoving off, myself. We’ll have another
bottle of beer apiece and—”
But Dorothy did not hear the end of that sentence. Her vigil was
suddenly and rudely interrupted. Someone behind her thrust a rough arm
under her chin, jerking back her head and holding her in an unbreakable
grip. The sickly-sweet odor of chloroform half suffocated her. For a
moment more she struggled, then darkness closed in about her.