she came forward. “Did you come in this evening? It always is wiser to
write ahead for rooms.”
“I don’t understand,” he stammered. “Are you—do you live here?”
“This is my father’s hotel,” she explained. “Father, this is Mr.
Everard Colton. Is there a room for him?”
“I’ve found my room,” said Everard hoarsely, and there followed a
silence which Miss Ravenden maliciously enjoyed, her eyes sparkling at
her erstwhile tormentor’s discomfiture.
Haynes broke the silence. “This is all very pleasant,” he said sharply
and with an effort, “but it isn’t business. And we have business of a
rather serious nature on hand. There is just this to say: Somewhere on
the point is this juggler. He is armed, and there is at least a strong
suspicion that he is murderous. The death of the sailor, the killing of
the sheep, and Mr. Colton’s adventure show plainly enough that there is
peril abroad. It may or may not have to do with the juggler. But until
the man is captured, I think the ladies should not leave the house
alone; and none of us should go far alone or unarmed. Is that agreed?”
“I agree for myself and my daughter to your very well-judged
suggestion,” said Professor Ravenden, “and I have in my room an extra
revolver which I will gladly lend to anyone.”
The others also assented to the plan, and at Haynes’ suggestion the
weapon went to Helga’s adopted father. Dick Colton had a navy revolver,
Everard had his cavalry arm, and Haynes had written for a pistol.
“Would it not be well,” suggested the professor, “to notify the
authorities?”
“The average town constable is appointed to keep him out of the
imbecile asylum,” said Haynes. “I believe we can organise a vigilance
committee right here and see it through. Besides,” he added with a
smile, “I want the story exclusively for my paper.”
CHAPTER NINE
CROSS-PURPOSES
HAS the generalissimo been disobeying his own orders?” called out Dolly
Ravenden from the porch, as Haynes came up the pathway early the next
morning. He did not respond to the rallying tone, habitual between
them, which covered a well-founded friendship. Instead he said:
“Miss Dolly, you heard that horse last night. What did you think of the
cry?”
“It went through me like a knife,” said the girl, shuddering. “I
thought it was a death scream. The horse I was on thought so, too.”
“I’d have sworn to it myself,” said Haynes, and fell into deep thought.
“Well?” queried the girl after waiting impatiently. “It isn’t a secret,
is it?”
“Something in that line. I’ve just been all over the ground between the
place where Mr. Colton was assailed and the beach, without finding hide
or hair of the horse. It must have escaped.”
“I for one won’t believe that until I see it alive.”
Haynes glanced at her sharply. “Woman’s intuition,” he said. “I won’t
either. Well, I’m going to breakfast.”
The girl lingered, looking out into the ruddy-golden morning. It was
late September weather, a day burnished with sunlight. A faint haze
softened the splendour of the knolls. The air was instinct with the
rare, fine quality of the vanishing summer. It was the falling cadence
of the season, one of the last few perfect, fulfilling notes of the
year’s love-melody. With all the knowledge that death and horror lurked
somewhere in the lovely expanse spread before her, Dolly Ravenden
yearned to it. Soon she would be back amid the cosmopolitan gaieties of
the Capital. She loved that too, but with a different and shallower
part of her nature. Sharply it came to her that this year she would
leave with a deeper regret than ever before, and the nature of that
regret was formulating itself against the stern veto of her will. “A
man I’ve not seen half a dozen times!” she half incredulously
reproached herself.
A certain feminine exasperation against herself was illogically and
perversely turned upon Dick Colton as he strode around the corner of
the piazza. The experienced wager of love-tilts might have interpreted
the expression she turned to him, and have fled the stricken field.
Poor Dick was the merest novice. His attitude toward women had always
been much the same as toward men, varying in degree according to the
charm or quality of the individual, but all of a kind, until he had
encountered Dolly Ravenden. To his unsuspecting mind it seemed that at
the present moment he was in the greatest luck. The sun was shining
with a special, even a personal, lustre. Abruptly it darkened several
million candle-power as Miss Ravenden gave him the most casual of
greetings and the curve of a shoulder while she scanned the spreading
landscape.
“Have I done anything, Miss Dol—Miss Ravenden?” asked blundering Dick.
“Done anything?” repeated she with indifferent inquiry. “I’m sure I
don’t know.”
This fairly nonplussed him. He sat down and wondered what to do next.
Unfortunately his thoughts turned upon his brother.
“Isn’t it great that you know Ev?” he pursued. “I’m so glad that I sent
for him to come down.”
“You sent for him?” cried the girl in a tone that straightened up Dick
like a pin.
“Certainly. Why not?”
“To see Helga, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“Of course you assumed that she was dying to see him.”
“Not in the least,” said Dick, with some spirit “Just to give him his
fair chance.”
“You didn’t think of being fair toward anyone else?”
“Toward whom?”
“Miss Johnston herself, in the first place. One expects a certain
degree of delicacy even from—from——”
“Don’t smooth it down on my account,” said Dick grimly. “You seem to be
in a fairly frank mood to-day.”
The imp of the perverse indeed was guiding Dolly’s words now. “From a
man one knows nothing whatever about,” she concluded.
“And isn’t interested in knowing,” suggested he. “I’m as fond of Helga
as of my own sister,” she went on vehemently. “She is only a year
younger than I, but I’ve been about so much more that I—well, I assume
some responsibility for her.” Her tone challenged Dick. He merely
bowed.
“You know how it is between Helga and your brother?”
“Something of it.”
“And knowing, do you think it was right to bring him down here?”
“Why not?”
“Because,” said Miss Ravenden hotly, “your family became panic-stricken
at the thought of Everard’s marrying Helga, before they even took the
trouble to find out anything about her. To insult a woman whom they
have never seen! Why—why—Helga is as—— If I had a brother, and Helga
Johnston was willing to marry him I should count it an honour to the
Ravendens.”
All the imperious pride of a family who had been landed gentry in the
South, while Colton’s sturdy forebears were wielding pick and shovel in
the far West, who had signed the Declaration of Independence before the
first American Colton had worked a toilsome passage across from his
North Country hovel to the land of sudden riches, shone in her eyes.
“So should I!” returned Dick quietly. “But surely Helga Johnston did
not tell you all this?”
“No, she did not. It was the same meddlesome friend who first told her
of your family’s objections. Oh, if I were Everard I would tell his
family to—
“To go to the devil,” suggested Dick helpfully.
“Please not to put words into my mouth! Yes, I should!” she returned
hotly. Then, illogically and severely added, “particularly such words.
And after what I told you about Harris Haynes I should have thought
that an ordinary sense of justice—Oh, it was unmanly of you!”
Dolly’s imp now had spurred her into a respectable state of rage, and
Dick’s wrath rose to meet hers.
“Just a moment,” he said. “What was that about Haynes?” Two wrinkled
lines appeared between his eyes. His mouth altered in its set, giving
to his naturally pleasant face an aspect of almost savage
determination.
“Why,” thought Dolly, “he’s looking at me as if I wasn’t a girl at all,
but just something in his path to beat down.” And her quick pang of
alarm had something pleasurable in it.
“I want that again about Haynes.”
“I say you were not fair to him. You know perfectly well that whatever
chance Mr. Haynes may have with Helga——”
“Chance of what? Of marrying her?”
“Certainly,” said Dolly boldly.
“Do you think she loves Haynes?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know. You think that she doesn’t. And do you think he loves
her?”
“Why should I tell you, when you will only browbeat and contradict me?
I know this, that there is the most beautiful affection between them
that I have ever known between a man and a girl. With two people less
fine than Helga and Harris Haynes it could not be so. You aren’t
capable of understanding that sort of thing. And so you would destroy
this for the mere whim of a boy!”
“It is not the whim of a boy,” returned Dick sternly. “It has made
Everard a man. I think she loves him.”
“What if she does?” said the girl recklessly.
“You mean you would have her marry Haynes without love?”
“Yes,” said Dolly, too far committed to back down now; but within
herself she was saying: “Oh, you wretched little liar!”
“Ah!” observed Dick with a change to cold courtesy that stung her more
than his wrath. “I haven’t had the good fortune to meet many girls so
advanced in their views. Myself, both as a physician and
unprofessionally, I am simple enough to think that loveless marriages
are unfortunate.”
“Oh, sentimentality has its place, I suppose,” said the imp within
Dolly.
“I think I understand you,” he said with an effort.
“You don’t! Oh, you don’t!” cried Dolly’s better spirit. “Don’t dare to
think of me so!” But the imp controlled the lips with silence.
“Yes, I think I understand,” continued Dick. “I have had little time
for my social obligations; but I have seen enough to have met and been
sickened by this before. That associations of what we call good society
can have so corrupted the view of life in a girl like you—Oh, it seems
incredible! Probably because it never happened to hit me personally
before.”
The girl went perfectly white under the bitterness of his contempt.
“There is nothing further to say, Dr. Colton,” she said, rising. There
were a thousand things to say; but the imp of the perverse would not
let her say them. “You have only convinced me that for any woman to be
connected with your family would be the direst misfortune.”
When Dick found himself alone there was a blur over his mental vision
such as extreme pain brings to the physical eye. The whole wretched
scene repeated itself over and over. How readily he could have defended
himself with Haynes’ own words against the charge of unmanly treachery
to Haynes! How easily he could have refuted!—but to what purpose, since
she was unworthy? Hatless and aimless, he wandered out upon the
grass-land.
Almost before he knew it he had reached the beach and was approaching
Graveyard Point. Coming around a jut in the cliff he was amazed to see
Professor Ravenden digging energetically at the sand with an improvised
shovel. At once the professor hailed him for help. Now, the normal man,
no matter how miserable his mood, will rouse to the solution of a
mystery, and when Dick Colton saw the form of a horse partly revealed,
he pitched in heartily.
“How did you find it?” he asked the professor.
“In passing I noticed that the cliff had given way above,” was the
reply. “As there had been no rain, some unusual occurrence must have
caused this. Closer examination revealed the leg of a horse, upon which
I inferred that here was buried the mare ridden by my young friend,
your brother. Doubtless we soon shall perceive some clue as to the
manner of death.”
But the body being wholly uncovered revealed no wound.
“Must have run off the cliff in her flight,” suggested Colton.
“An almost untenable hypothesis,” said Professor Ravenden
argumentatively. “The place where your brother was unhorsed is a mile
from here, at least. We heard the animal’s death-cry an hour after your
brother’s encounter. Could you devise any form of terror which would so
afflict a horse as to drive it over a hundred-foot cliff, a full hour
after the origin of the panic?”
“No, I couldn’t. Whatever it was that terrified, the poor brute must
have followed it. The juggler, I suppose.”
“But for what purpose? However, I think we would best climb the cliff,
and taking opposite directions examine the ground for any possible
indications.”
So the professor struck off westward, while Colton took the line toward
the lighthouse. Soon his path led him down into one of the precipitous
gullies. Inland from him a sharp turn shielded by large rocks cut off
the view, beyond which appeared the upper foliage of a scrub-oak patch.
From among the rocks Dick heard a strange sound, like a gasp.
His hand went to his revolver, and he stopped short. Again the sound
came in a succession of cadences, like interrupted breathing. Dick
moved forward. A stone slipped under his foot and rattled down among
other stones. There was instant silence.
Keeping himself sheltered, he walked firmly forward. Before a large
rock he paused, then holding the weapon ready he stepped around it.
Helga Johnston stood there, her hands pressed to her breast, her face
tear-stained. She gave a little cry of relief.
“Ah, it is you!” she said.
“Did I frighten you?” asked Dick. “I’m awfully sorry. You’ve been
crying.”
“Yes,” said the girl.
“Was it as bad as that? I must have alarmed you very much.”
“No,” said the girl with the simple directness which he had admired in
her from the first. “I was frightened; but that was not why I was
crying.”
“Has Everard been with you?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Helga,” said Dick soberly, “will you believe that I am your
friend?”
“I don’t know,” replied the girl dubiously. “Why did you bring your
brother down here?”
“Do you remember, I said to you that I wished I had a sister like you?
That is why.”
Helga flushed deeply. “It was not fair,” she said. “Miss Johnston, is
there any reason why you should not marry my brother?”
“Yes.”
“Is it because some day you may marry Mr. Haynes?”
“There has never been the suggestion of such a thing. Why you and Dolly
Ravenden both insist on believing that Petit Père wants to marry me,
is—it’s stupid!” said the girl indignantly.
“Ah! And Miss Ravenden has been advising you to marry Mr. Haynes?”
“She has been advising me not to,” retorted Helga. “Harris Haynes is
the best man I have ever known, and I owe him everything; but Dolly
knows that I don’t—really, Dr. Colton, I don’t know why I should be
telling you all these things.”
Dick, thunderstruck at the new light on Miss Ravenden’s views, paid no
attention to this mild suggestion that he mind his own business. Indeed
it suddenly had become his own business with a vengeance.
“Miss Ravenden advised you not to marry Haynes? It can’t be. She told
me——”
“You and Dolly seem to be very much interested in my affairs.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Dick. “Some day I hope to explain to you. Let
us get back to Everard, You say there is a reason why you should not
marry him?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you care for him?”
“That is a question you have no right to ask.”
“Ah!” said Dick with satisfaction. “Then it is that wretched business
of the family’s opposition.” Helga made no reply.
“Listen, Miss Helga,” said Dick after a few moments’ thought. “Someone
told my mother lies about you. I don’t know what they were; but I do
know that they gave Mother a wrong impression. My mother is the best
mother in the world, and a good and noble woman, only she has one
attribute of the domestic hen. When alarmed she moves hurriedly, and
usually in the wrong direction. The liar in this case alarmed her. Now,
then: my father is a broken man; he has not long to live. I am
virtually the head of the family. In this case the family will accept
my decision. I ask you in their name if you will honour us by marrying
my brother? Will you shake hands on the promise?”
He held out his hand, looking her in the eyes. Helga flushed deeply;
but answered the smile with her own as she said:
“Dr. Colton, you are a good man, and”—she hesitated for a moment—“some
girl will be very proud of you. But you aren’t very wise about women,
or you would know that there is only one man a girl can give that
promise to. And,” she added meaningly, “no one else can give it for
her.”
“I understand,” he replied. “I say nothing.”
“Then I’ll shake hands on _your_ promise,” she said gravely.
“Well, well, well!” said a thick voice above them. “That’s a nice
picture. Whatcher think this is, Central Park? I’ll tell that pup,
Haynes.”
Paul Serdholm, the life-guard from the Sand Spit station, stood on the
brink of the ravine. It was evident that he had been drinking.
“You go about your business,” said Colton slowly.
“Oh, that’s easy said,” retorted the fellow. “I’m on the trouble-hunt
to-day. Went over to Bow Hill an’ licked that shrimp Bruce for callin’
me down the night of the wreck. Comin’ back, I seen the Portuguese
sneakin’ along by an oak patch; so I dropped on him an’ punched his
face up. I don’t like Dagoes. Now I’m going to do you up, you fresh
guy.”
“Serdholm, you’re drunk,” said Helga contemptuously. “And you’re making
a fool of yourself.”
“An you’ll report me at the station, hey? Just becuz you was washed
ashore here you think you own Montauk! Well, report an’ be——!”
“That will do!” said Colton.
“Will it? Come up here and make it!” taunted Serdholm. “No? All right,
I’ll come down.” Colton met him halfway. It was no fight; for though
Serdholm was brawny the young physician was as greatly his superior in
strength as in science and condition. The coast-guard rolled to the
bottom of the gully and lay there cursing feebly.
“He will lose his place for this,” said Helga as they went shoreward.
“I hope he will, the beast!”
“Do you suppose he really thrashed the juggler, or was that only
boasting?”
“He has the reputation of being quarrelsome when he has been drinking,”
said Helga.
“Haynes ought to know about it, then.”
“I’ll tell him. But, please, Dr. Colton, say nothing about Serdholm’s
rudeness. It would only make Petit Père angry, and cause trouble, and
I’ve felt some danger overhanging him. Dr. Colton, do you believe in
dreams?”
“We men whose business it is to deal with the human body, get to
realise how much of mystery there is in the human soul,” said Dick. “Is
that an answer?”
“I don’t know,” replied the girl doubtfully-“Some day, perhaps, I shall
tell you. Meantime,” she added, as they approached Third House, “you
won’t forget your promise, will you?”
“No.”
“As you’ve been interesting yourself in my affairs a good deal,” said
the girl with friendly raillery, “I’ll just give you a bit of free
advice. Don’t take everything about Dolly Ravenden too seriously. She’s
had loads of attention and seen a great deal of the world, and she is
pretty high-spirited; but she is in every way a splendid girl and a
right-minded one. I imagine she is not always easy to understand.”
“Heaven knows I’ve made one awful blunder!” groaned Dick.
“Then don’t apologise for it too soon,” said the girl quickly. “There,
I’ve been a traitor to my sex. But I like you, Dick Colton. And,” she
added as they reached the door, “if you can sue as well for yourself as
for another I think you might well win any woman.”
“Well, Heaven bless you for that!” said Dick Colton to the closing
door.
CHAPTER TEN
THE TERROR BY NIGHT
IN every department of scientific inquiry, Professor Ravenden was,
above all else, methodical. The extraordinary or unusual he set aside
for calm analysis. When he came to a dark passage in his
investigations, he made full notes and relied on patience and his
reasoning powers for light. Facts of ascertained relations and
proportions he catalogued. In crises of doubt, after exerting his own
best efforts, he was not too proud to ask counsel, were there any at
hand in whose judgment he felt confidence. But first he strove to make
his own mind master of the problem.
Thus it was that on the night of September 19, after an evening’s
moth-hunt, he went to his room and sat down to write. First, however,
he changed to pyjamas and dressing-gown, for a sudden shower had soaked
his clothing. He then selected from a box a cigar of a brand whose
housing and apparel proclaimed it of high price and special flavour,
lighted it, and smoked with deep, long puffs. To his daughter or any
other who knew him well this would have signified some unusual mental
condition, for the abstemious professor used tobacco most sparingly. On
this occasion he needed it as a sedative. Professor Ravenden had
undergone a severe shock.
For more than three hours he wrote, with long pauses for consideration.
Once he rose, strode on slippered feet up and down the room and
communed aloud with himself:
“Undeniably I was terrified.... Why otherwise should I have fled?... An
object that may well have been harmless and must inevitably have
presented aspects of scientific interest.... Perhaps the repetition...
the instinct of peril deceived me, fostered by the previous
inexplicable occurrences... yet, even in my fright, I incline to
believe that I preserved my powers of observation.”
When he slept upon the conclusion of his work, there lay amid the
wreckage of scriptive revision upon his table three closely written
sheets of manuscript.
Waking early the next morning, he aroused Haynes and Dick Colton, and
asked them to come to his room as soon as they had dressed. Upon their
entrance he bade them to seats, and took up the manuscript.
“In a case of this importance,” he said formally, “I shall not
apologise, except by mention, for the disorder of my room. It has been
my practice in cases presenting difficult aspects to reduce the salient
facts to writing, thus preserving the more important features
unencumbered with obstructive detail. This method it was which enabled
me to throw some new light upon the dimorphic female of the _Papilio
turnus_ as found in the Blue Ridge chain. In the present instance I
design to read to you, gentlemen, a report upon certain strange
happenings of last night, and to ask your opinion as bearing upon the
mysterious events which have crowded so fast upon each other recently.
Before beginning to read, I may state that I never have been afflicted
with any aberration of the senses, that I am in sound health, and that
after the experiences which I am about to state I tested both
temperature and pulse for possible indications of fever. My temperature
was 98.5, which is normal for me, and my pulse, while a trifle
irregular, owing to nervous disturbances, was not unusually rapid. Do I
present to you, Dr. Colton, any external indications of nervous or
functional disorder?”
“Absolutely none, sir,” replied the physician promptly. “I should
estimate your temperament to be an unusually calm and rational one.”
“Then I shall proceed,” said Professor Ravenden, and turning to his
manuscript he read: “Report on certain events noted by Willis Ravenden,
F. R. S., Sc.D., at Montauk Point, Long Island, on the evening of
September 18, 1902.
“On the evening named I had set forth from Third House with the purpose
of seeking a specimen of the _Catocala_. Besides my capturing net, a
can of molasses and rum for an insect lure, and the poison jar, I
carried, in pursuance of general agreement, a thirty-two-calibre
revolver. Passing around the south end of the lake, I selected for my
operations a patch of _Quercus ilicifolia_ several hundred feet beyond
the western shore and perhaps a mile distant from my point of
departure, and smeared the leaves with the adhesive mixture. Some
success was rewarding my efforts, among other captives being fine
specimens of the _Saturnia maia_ and the _Dryocampa imperialis_, when a
cloud-bank obscured the moon, and the wind which had been blowing
lightly from the north became capricious and gusty. Conditions such as
these are unfavourable to the pursuit of the nocturnal _lepidoptero_.
Moreover, the darkness was becoming very dense. Hastily closing and
packing my net, I set out for home. As nearly as I can estimate it then
was about 10 o’clock p. m.