WHEN they carried Stokes to his room they thought him dying, so ghastly
was his appearance, so deathlike his collapse. Bassett telephoned to
Hayworth for a doctor and before the man came, Flora, singularly cold
and collected now the fight was over, told them her husband was a
morphia addict and showed them the case in his bag with the empty vial.
In the two days’ detention on the island his supply had been exhausted,
the greatest strain of the many that had ended in his frantic
confession.
When the doctor had made his examination and heard the facts he looked
grave--the man was in desperate case, a complete breakdown of the whole
organism and an overstrained heart. He thought there was little or no
hope, but there might be a return to consciousness. If there was he
promised to call the officers who were keen to get a fuller statement.
Meantime he wanted the room cleared of everybody but Mrs. Stokes, and
the men left, returning to the living-room to find Shine and get an
explanation of the picture.
In the excitement of the Stokes sensation they had forgotten all about
the picture and now, walking down the hall, they swung back to it.
Bassett and Williams were baffled and confounded by it; it was one
of the most startling of the whole chain of startling circumstances.
Rawson was neither baffled nor confounded having already arrived at a
solution: Shine had played a trick, done it on purpose to see if it
might not accomplish just what it had accomplished. He was loud in
his praise of the photographer, it was a clever ruse that had brought
things to a climax when they might have gone on bungling for days.
Rawson was willing to admit his mistakes--he’d been sure of the boy and
now it appeared that Bassett and Miss Tracy were right. Joe Tracy had
evidently lit out secretly on some business of his own.
He dismissed the company with a curt command and as they made their
hurried exits, jocularly congratulated Shine as the man who had pulled
off a successful hoax. But the photographer showed no responsive pride,
on the contrary he looked rather shamefaced and denied the charge. He’d
meant to take a picture, no funny business or fooling about it--but--he
rubbed his hand over his tousled hair and grinned sheepishly. He was
sleepy, that’s what had been the matter, just plain doped with sleep so
he didn’t know what he was doing.
“Well, how do you account for the picture?” said Rawson. “Are you one
of these people who can take spirit photographs?”
Shine wasn’t that--there was only one way of accounting for it. He
hadn’t opened the shutter and the picture was one of those he had taken
of Miss Saunders the day of his arrival.
“Of course,” he said, staring perplexedly at the carpet. “I’d swear I
opened the shutter and I’d swear I closed it after I got my wits back.
But there you are--you can’t take a picture of a dead woman and I
had a lot of her on that film. That’s how it came about, being waked
up sudden by Mr. Williams and trying to pretend I was on the job, and
being naturally rattled by all that’s transpired here. Oh, you can
understand it!”
“You’d taken her like that--coming through a doorway?”
He’d taken two or three like that--he couldn’t be sure how many. But
he did remember posing her at both the front and rear entrances of
the living-room, trying to get effects of a dark background with her
figure dimly suggested and the light on her face. It was evidently one
of those pictures, must have been the last he’d done, but he couldn’t
trust his memory on any small points. He’d been more shocked than he
had any idea of but he knew it now.
He described his amazement at having seen it in the negative. He said
he couldn’t believe his eyes and hadn’t mentioned it as he thought he
was “seeing things” what with the murder and all the excitement. And
he couldn’t study it or compare it with those on the rest of the film
because it was gone. After they’d taken Stokes away and he’d got the
women quieted down he’d turned to the sheet--and there it was, blank as
it is now and the negative melted. As for the explosion of the powder,
that was easy to explain, and he told of his precautions in unlatching
the door. Any light air could have swung it open and as he was sinking
to sleep, he had felt a breeze blowing in from the entrance. Rawson
verified this; a wind had arisen that had kept him on the _qui vive_ in
the kitchen, moving the curtains and making the doors creak.
So that was that! Nobody’s brains, nobody’s deductive powers, or
perspicacity or psychological insight had brought them to the goal. The
bungling of a sleepy man had done the trick.
They were talking it over when the sound of Flora’s voice stopped them.
She was standing in the doorway very white and very calm. Stokes was
asking for them. Yes, she nodded in answer to Rawson’s look, he was
quite himself. The doctor had wanted him to wait till he was stronger
but he had insisted:
“He says he must speak now while his mind is clear. He seems to know it
won’t last and he can’t rest till he’s told everything.”
They found him bolstered up in bed, a haggard spectacle, his eyes, sunk
in darkened hollows, seemed to hold all the life left in his body. They
hung on the entering men, then swerved to his wife and he made a motion
for her to sit beside him. When she had taken her place and he had
groped for her hand, his eyelids dropped and he lay for a moment as if
gathering strength.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” he whispered. “Glad it’s over. If I’m going on
now it can’t be to anything worse than this last thirty-six hours.”
The desire to free his mind possessed him. Rest, he said, rest was all
he wanted and it was not for him till he had unloaded the intolerable
burden he had carried since Sybil Saunders’ death. In his own words the
recital was broken by digressions, memories of his torturing passion,
assurances of good intentions that failed of execution, remorse for the
wrong he had done his wife. Robbed of the theatrical quality that was
of the man’s essence, it was the stark revelation of a soul’s tragedy.
He had never intended to kill her--that was the one point of
exculpation he insisted on. His love had made him mad, carried him
beyond the inhibiting forces of honor, feeling, reason. That it was
hopeless seemed to increase its obsessing power, and she had never for
one moment led him to think it was anything but hopeless. Unwaveringly,
from the first, her attitude had been dislike, aversion, a horror of
his state of mind and himself.
His knowledge of the coming separation had been the igniting motive
that caused the inner explosion. After their stay on the island she
would go her way, keep her whereabouts hidden from him, and he might
never see her again. The thought became unbearable, and led him to
a resolution of wild desperation--he would get her alone, once
more confess his passion, and if she met it with the old scorn and
abhorrence, kill himself before her eyes. He had seen the revolver in
the drawer of the desk and on the day of the performance, taken it. To
prevail upon her to grant him the interview was the problem, and the
evil inspiration came to him to tell her he had news of Dallas, her
lover. It was a lie, he knew nothing of the man, but truth, decency,
self-respect no longer existed for him.
He described the interview in the living-room, her roused interest and
demand for the information. The intrusion of his wife worked with his
plan and he had insisted on a rendezvous where they would be free from
interruption. They started for the summer-house on the Point, saw Shine
there, and made the arrangement to meet in the place at seven. Then she
had gone up-stairs to her room and he to the balcony to wait for her.
When he saw her pass the balcony he had risen and followed her. She
had moved rapidly, not waiting for him, and he had not tried to catch
up with her as he knew she did not want any one to see them together.
When he entered the summer-house she was sitting on the bench close to
the table on which her elbows rested. His hysterical state, accelerated
during the long wait, had reached a climax of distraction and he burst
into a stream of words--he had lied to her, he knew nothing, but he
had to see her, he had lured her there for a last interview, a final
clearing up, and he drew out the pistol. The sight of it, his mad
babble of disconnected sentences, evidently terrified her. She leaped
to her feet and made a rush like a frightened animal for the opening.
Before he could speak or catch her she had brushed past him and fled
from the place.
Then something had gone wrong in his head--he couldn’t explain--a
breaking of some pressure, a stoppage of all mental processes. In the
vacuum one fact stayed--that she had got away from him and he never
would see her again. A blind fury seized him and he shot at her as
she ran. She was at the summit of the cliff, staggered, threw up her
arms and went over. When he saw her body lurch and topple forward the
darkness lifted from his brain. He came back to himself as if from a
period of unconsciousness and realized what he had done.
He described his state as curiously lucid and far-seeing. The insane
outbreak seemed to have freed his intelligence and temporarily
suspended the torment of his nerves. The situation presented itself
with a vision-like clarity and all the forces of his mind and will
sprang into action, combining to achieve his safety. From the shadow of
the vines he looked at the house, saw Bassett come to the living-room
entrance, glance about and go back. The sound of the shot had evidently
roused no forebodings and when no face appeared at window or door, he
ran to the pine grove. There he was safe and slipped unobserved to the
balcony. He waited here for a moment to get his breath and compose his
manner. He was the actor, playing a difficult part with a high-keyed,
heady confidence when he entered the room.
His wife--that had been the unforeseen retribution. He had not realized
that suspicion would turn on her, and then saw that it might, saw that
it did. His hell began when he grasped the danger she was in, listened
to Rawson’s questions on the night of their arrival, sensed Williams’
line of thought when the scene was rehearsed on the shore. He had tried
to turn them to Joe Tracy, snatching at anything to gain time, but he
would have told, he was ready to tell. He kept reiterating the words,
his burning eyes moving from one face to the other--he had broken her
heart, ruined her life, but he was not so utterly lost as that.
It was her assurances that quieted him. She had known from the first he
would tell as she had known from the first he had done it. He relaxed
and sank back, his eyes closing, and the doctor motioned them to go.
Flora followed them to the door and held them there a moment to repeat
what she had said--as if, like him, wanting to rid her mind of all its
secret agony. It wasn’t surmise; she had seen him. When she had turned
from the water after her attempt to catch the body she had had a clear
view of him stealing through the pine wood, moving noiselessly and
watching the house.
“He never knew it,” she said. “That night when you, Mr. Williams,
nearly caught me on the stairs, I was going to see him, say I knew what
he’d done and that I’d help him and lie for him and stand by him. Oh,
yes--I don’t care what I tell now. He was my husband, I’d loved him and
he’d been cursed--cursed and destroyed.”
The men closed the door softly as upon the dead. What they had heard
and left behind them had taken the zest from their accomplishment and
in the glow of the hall lights their faces looked drawn and hollowed
with fatigue. Rawson drew out his watch--half past two. The best thing
they could do was to get a little sleep. The day would be on them in a
few hours, there would be a lot of business to get through and he, for
one, was dead beat. They wouldn’t take off their clothes, just turn in
on the sofa and divan, and stepping gently, as befitted a place where
so dark a doom had fallen, he and Williams passed into the library.
Sleep was far from Bassett. He would like to have seen Anne, but
it would have been inhuman to rouse her, and he went toward the
living-room where he could think in quiet. The screen still covered
by the sheet and the projector facing it were untouched and gave the
place the air of a scene set for a play. Silence brooded over the room,
a silence so peaceful and profound that it seemed as if the hideous
tumult of the last hour must be a nightmare illusion. He dropped into
a chair, his breath expelled with a groaning note, then heard Anne’s
voice from the gallery above:
“I’ve been waiting for you. May I come down?”
There she was, dressed, leaning against the railing.
“Come,” he beckoned, his heart expanding, his depression lightened,
and as she disappeared he pulled up a chair for her. She came in,
soft-footed across the rugs, with the whispering words:
“I couldn’t rest till I’d seen you and heard. He’s told?”
“Everything.” They sat, facing each other, close together. “It’s solved
and ended--the Gull Island murder.”
“Is it all right for you to tell me?”
It was all right and he told her.
She listened absorbed, eyes intent on his, now and then nodding her
head in confirmation of an agreement in her own mind. When he had
finished, she sat looking down, apparently lost in musing contemplation
of the story.
“So, as it turns out, Anne dearest, all that misery you and I went
through was unnecessary.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “It wasn’t Joe, he wasn’t in it at all. But
I don’t understand. I’ve been sitting in my room while you were with
Stokes thinking about it and I can’t make it out. Hugh”--she leaned
forward and rested her hand on his knee, dropping her voice though no
one was there to hear--“this is what I can’t explain--_whom_ did I see
in here last night?”
Bassett’s answer was prompt, delivered in the brisk tone of common
sense:
“I can. It’s very simple. You didn’t see anybody.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody. I’ve been thinking about it, too. There’s only one
explanation, and that’s it.”
She looked beyond him at the lamp, her eyebrows drawn in a puzzled
frown:
“You think I imagined it?”
“I know you did. Just consider:--You were in a wrought-up condition,
you expected to see him, came down for that purpose. The room was
almost dark, quite dark under the gallery where you say he came from.
After what you’d gone through--first a murder, then a suspicion that
would have undermined the strongest nerves--you were in a state to see
anything.”
She continued to stare at the light, her face set in troubled thought.
“I suppose that could be.”
“Why, Anne dear, it must have been, it could have happened to any one.
And there’s another point--if it had been Joe, wouldn’t he have spoken
to you, one question even to find out what was going on, what we were
doing?”
“Yes, yes. I’ve thought of that. It didn’t occur to me at the time. But
he would have said something.”
“Of course he would. You never saw anything more substantial than a
shadow in the moonlight.”
“That must be it,” she murmured.
“I ought to have realized it but I was stampeded myself. We were all
ready to go off like a pack of fire-crackers. God”--he took her hand
and held its soft coldness against his forehead--“its a wonder we
didn’t all break to pieces like Stokes.”
She was silent for a moment then said:
“Well, where _is_ Joe? What’s he doing?”
“Gone off on some business of his own. You were telling the truth
when you told Rawson and Williams that Joe’s actions weren’t always
calculable, weren’t you?” He saw her answering nod. “Well, he’s
evidently chosen the occasion of his leaving the island to light out in
some new direction. You can’t tell what may have been in his head--a
joke on Jimmy Travers, on us, any sort of lark or tom-foolery. We’ll
find it all out soon.”
He had his own opinion of Joe’s behavior which he was not going to tell
her now. The boy, found out in his spying, knowing himself condemned by
his associates and black-listed in his profession, might have departed
for good, taken the opportunity to disappear from a part of the country
where closed doors and averted faces would be his portion. It would be
like him and Bassett fervently hoped that it might be the case.
“Come,” he said, rising and drawing her to her feet. “There’s no good
bothering about that any more. Leave it to me and when we’ve got
through the rest of this horrible business I’ll look around for him.
And anyway, he’ll see it in the papers, and if he wants to show up,
he’ll do it himself within the next few days. Now you must go to bed
and let your poor tired brain rest.”
They walked to the door and there he caught her against his breast and
looked into her face:
“It’s all over--that fighting and struggling alone, Anne. After this
we’ll be together, as soon as we can get away from here and find a
clergyman to marry us.”
They kissed and parted, Bassett going to his room--he could sleep
now--and Anne faring slowly up the stairs to hers.