Script_, the dean of the gathering. “We all feel alike, I guess, about
Professor Ravenden. I’ve heard funeral sermons by the greatest in the
country; but nothing that ever came home to me personally. Now, if we
print this pter-anodon story and back it up with interviews, it’s a big
thing; but where does the professor come in? We’ve got to save him from
himself. The pter-anodon feature has got to be suppressed. Is that
understood?”
There was no dissent. In all the days while the reporters stayed about
waiting for the “news interest” to peter out of the mystery, not one
hint of the professor’s “wild theory” found its way into print.
As time passed with no new developments, the reporters dropped in one
by one to say good-bye to Professor Ravenden before they took train for
New York. Since then the professor often has had cause to wonder why,
whenever he has spoken in public, the newspapers all over the country
have treated him with such marked consideration, often overshadowing
the utterances of more prominent speakers with his. He does not know
how small is the world of journalism and how widely and swiftly travels
“inside news.”
Of the newspaper crowd, Eldon Smith was the last to leave. He had a
talk with Dick Colton, who rode over to the train with him.
“Are you satisfied that Whalley was the author of all the killings?”
asked the reporter.
“No, I’m not,” returned the doctor. “It leaves altogether too much
unexplained. I wish I could believe in the professor’s pteranodon.”
“On account of the marks that Whalley showed you?”
“Not that alone. Just consider all the weak points in the theory that
Whalley is guilty of all the crimes. First: why should he confess part
and not all?”
“That’s not unusual.”
“But have you ever known such a case where the murderer was as frank as
Whalley? How are you going to ascribe any part in Petersen’s death to
the juggler? He couldn’t have thrown his knife in that blackness.”
“I suppose it must have been done aboard the vessel before the man left
in the breeches-buoy.”
“The evidence of the sailors is all against that. However, let it go at
that. How about the sheep? Why did he kill that?”
“For food. He was camping somewhere on the knolls, and he had to eat.”
“And he was frightened away before he could make way with the carcass?
Well, that’s tenable. Now we come to the unhorsing of my brother. That
might have been caused by poor Ely’s kites, as I figure it. They broke
away, came zigzagging past and frightened the mare into insanity.
Afterward they scared her over the cliff.”
“I don’t think so,” said Eldon Smith. “In fact, it’s impossible.”
“Impossible? How?”
“Dr. Colton, did it ever occur to you to look up the weather records
for that night?”
“No.”
“I’ve looked them up. The wind was from the southeast. Your brother was
less than a mile from the south shore. Mr. Ely was staying on the Sound
shore, northwest of there, and almost directly down the wind. Now, how
could the kites travel upwind from Ely to the place where your brother
had his alarm?”
Colton shook his head.
“Moreover,” continued the reporter, “the mare when she rushed to
destruction ran in the face of the wind. So the loose kites couldn’t
have pursued her.”
“That’s true; but I see no reason why Ely mightn’t have walked across
the point and flown from the ocean side that evening.”
“Here is what I copied from his calendar diary for that night: ‘Sept.
17th. Temperature notes of no value. Upper currents fluctuant. Flew
from hillock 14 mile from Sound. Kites moving northward out over the
Sound. Furled kites at 9:30.’ (The time of your brother’s experience
more than two miles away.) ‘Results unsatisfactory.’ Is that definite
enough?”
“Certainly, it seems so.”
“It certainly does. Now, about the aerologist. What was the cause of
death?”
“It might have been either the stab-wound or the crushing of the
skull.”
“The skull was badly crushed?”
“Yes, and the right arm and shoulder were fractured.”
“From what cause?”
“My reading of it is this: Whalley, crazy with desire to murder, crept
up on this poor fellow. Ely heard or saw him coming and fled into the
oak patch; but Whalley’s knife-throw cut him down. Then the juggler, in
a murderous frenzy, beat his victim with a heavy club.”
“Picked up his body and flung it to the spot where it was found?”
suggested the reporter as a conclusion.
“What do you mean? No man could throw a body that far.”
“That would be my judgment.”
“No,” mused Dick. “Whalley must have carried the body out and dropped
it where it was found.”
“For what conceivable reason.”
“Perhaps some idea that he was hiding it better. Perhaps for no reason
at all. Reason plays little part in an insane murderer’s processes.”
“But an insane murderer leave tracks the same as any other man, and
unless Haynes was completely fooled there were no such tracks or
breakage of the shrubbery around the spot where you found the body, as
must have been made by a man breaking his way through, particularly if
he were carrying a heavy body.”
“What are you driving at?” asked Colton. “Well,” said the reporter
thoughtfully, “this Ely business seems to me just about the strangest
phase of this whole mystery. And it’s the strangest, most
incomprehensible features of a problem that most often give you your
clue.”
“Have you found one?”
“I’ve been thinking of another possible cause of such fractures as you
described. Might not a fall have caused them?”
“Not unless it was from a height. And how could he have fallen from a
height?”
“That is what I should like to know,” said Eldon Smith. “The scrub-oak
where you found the body is badly smashed down—much more crushed and
broken than the mere toppling over of a man would account for.”
Swift light broke in upon Colton. “That is what Haynes was trying to
determine when he fell into the oak,” he cried.
“Trust him for that. Did he get down on his hands and knees afterward?”
“Yes,” cried the doctor. “What was he after?”
“He was examining a deep indentation in the ground beneath the
shrubbery that just fits a man’s head and shoulders as it would strike
were the man falling headlong.”
“Headlong? From the empty air?”
“From the empty air,” assented the other.
“You mean that his kites were a sort of flying-machine?”
“It may be. Or he may have become entangled in the lines and carried up
after vainly struggling through the shrubbery.”
“But the wound? Could he have struck on some sharp-pointed stake, and
wriggled off in his death convulsions?” mused Colton.
“You’re a physician. Could he?”
“No, no, a thousand times no!”
“Well?”
“It was Whalley,” said Dick Colton reflectively. “Perhaps the
kite-flyer fell near him, and in his unreasoning terror Whalley used
his knife. And his own fear that he spoke of, of the terror impending
over him, may have driven him to the murder.”
“It must be so,” said the reporter. “I see nothing else for it. But I
don’t believe it all the same.”
“Well, I don’t know that I do, either, for that matter,” said Colton,
as they drew in at the station.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
READJUSTMENTS
IT was a week since the burial of Harris Haynes. What remained of the
mystery as a surplus over and above the Whalley confession was still
unenlightened by any further clue. The juggler had refused steadfastly
to add anything to his statement. Little opportunity had there been of
acquiring new information, for storm had followed storm in quick
succession, and though Dick and Everard Colton had been out on the
knolls at all hours of day and night, and the intrepid professor,
eluding his daughter by stealth, had covered many dark miles of
exploration, the shrouded foulness of the weather had preserved
whatever secret Montauk Point still might hold.
To Dick Colton had come a deep content, for he and Dolly had been drawn
to a close comradeship in the high pressure of events. Yet by a subtle
defence she had withheld from him anything more than comradeship. Once
again he had spoken; and she had stopped him.
“Please, Dr. Colton!” she said. “Nothing that you can say will make any
difference. If I come to you,” she looked at him with the adorable and
courageous straightforwardness that seemed in his eyes the final
expression of her lovableness, “I shall come of myself. As yet, I do
not know. I am growing to know you. It has been a very brief time.”
“It has been a crowded lifetime,” said Dick earnestly. “But I can wait,
Dolly. You don’t mind if I call you that?”
“Even Everard does that,” she said, smiling, and to his surprise there
followed a sharp blush. She had recalled the self-betraying
exasperation with which she had resented, the day before, Everard’s
addressing her, with apparent innocence, as “Sister Dot,” and that
youth’s meek enjoyment of her anger.
That had been the dying effort of Everard’s gaiety. In that week he had
grown worn and morose. More than once he would have left the place; but
Dolly Ravenden urged upon him that he should stay until Helga had
regained her normal balance. To the girl’s warm and full-blooded beauty
had succeeded a wan loveliness that made Everard’s heart ache whenever
he looked at her. Seldom did he see her alone; little had she to say to
him. Yet her eyes brooded upon him, and he felt vaguely that he was a
help to her in her grief. Dick too had insisted upon this. But Helga
seemed to make no effort at rallying from her sombre apathy.
The week of storm ended, and the sun blazed out over a landscape
bedecked with autumn’s royal colours. Helga, who had risen early to go
to the beach, found at her place an envelope which had not come by
mail. There was an enclosure in a woman’s handwriting. Once and again
she went through, turning from red to white. Then she turned to Dick
Colton.
“You did this?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Oh, I cannot, I cannot!” she cried passionately, and ran from the
door, out upon the knolls.
Dick saw her climbing the hill, the joyous wind wreathing the curves of
her lithe and gracious form, to the place where Haynes was buried, and
watched her until a shoulder of the knoll shut her completely from
view.
“It was high time for an antidote,” he said, nodding thoughtfully.
“Haynes would have bade me do it; I know he would.”
Helga knelt by a high boulder that crowned the knoll and arranged the
flowers that she had brought up that morning for her friend’s grave.
“Oh, Petit Père,” she whispered sobbingly, “if you only were here to
tell me! It is hard to know what is best. So hard!”
Something moved in the bushes not far away. The shrubbery parted, and
there emerged on all fours the squat and powerful figure of “The
Wonderful Whalley.” He was unkempt and white; the murderousness was
gone from his face. As a dog cringes, expectant of a blow, he moved
reluctantly forward. The girl faced him with a tense carriage in which
was no inkling of fear.
“Ze lady shall forgive ze poor arteest,” he said, holding out hands of
supplication.
“I would kill you if I could,” she said, very low.
“The Wonderful Whalley’s” hand went to his belt, but the great-bladed
knives no longer were there. Fumbling in his pocket, he drew forth
another knife, opened it and threw it at her feet.
“I am ready,” he said.
Helga looked at the knife, and then at him with unutterable loathing.
The man gave a little groan.
“Do not!” he said. “I was cr-r-razy! Eet ees gone, now. Eet was ze
beating of ze sea. I haf not know zat I keel until now I break out of
my preeson las’ night an’ come here to ask you to forgive.”
“No,” said the girl stonily.
“To beg you to forgive an’ to warn you.” With a strikingly solemn
gesture he raised his hand, and swept it through the circle of the
heavens.
“We may not know when eet strike,” he said slowly. “Ze danger ees
there. Eet ees hanging over you an’ over me. Me, I may not escape my
fate. Eet ees not matter. But you, so young, so lofely, so brave, so
kind to ze poor arteest—I come to warn you, perhaps to safe you.”
“Do you know that this is the grave of the man you killed?” she said,
her eyes fixed upon his.
Simply, and as a child might, the juggler kneeled at the grave. He
clasped his hands and raised his face, the eyes closed. With a pitying,
yet abhorrent surprise, the girl watched him. His lips moved. She
caught a half whispered word, here and there, in the soft southern
tongue. In the midst of his prayer the murderer leaped to his feet His
muscles stiffened; he was all attention.
“Someone come!” he cried.
Over the brow of the knoll came Everard Colton. “My God!” he cried, and
bounded toward them.
Like a flash, the juggler wormed himself into the oak patch, and
emerging from the farther side sprinted over the hill and disappeared.
“Has he hurt you?” cried the young man.
“Helga, my dear! tell me he has not hurt——”
“No,” she said very low. “He was quite peaceable. He has escaped from
jail. I think he is sane again and remorseful.”
“You must let me take you home,” he said. “You must! Good heavens,
Helga, anything might have happened.”
Everard was shaking as with an ague. A wonderful softness came into the
girl’s face. “Were you coming to speak to me?”
“To say good-bye,” he said.
“Good-bye?” she repeated. “So soon? Must it——”
He stopped her with a swift, savage gesture. “Helga, I can’t stand it
any longer! I would give you the last drop of my blood, gladly,
willingly, if it would help you. But to be here as I am, to see you
every day, is more than I can endure. I must get away. There is one
other thing; I know something of what Harris Haynes did for you.” He
spoke more gently, looking with a wistful respect at the grave. “Now
that he has gone, you must not let that make any difference in your
opportunities. You must go on as you were; your music, your studies.”
The girl made a little gesture of refusal. They walked toward the house
in silence, for a time. Then Everard spoke again.
“Yet that is what he would have wished. I know that you haven’t the
money to do this.” Dick, having a gift of silence, had said nothing of
Haynes’ bequest. “I have more than I can use. I know I can’t give it to
you outright. But I can give it to Mr. Johnston. Or, if you can’t take
it from me, you could from my family. It wouldn’t mean anything; it
wouldn’t bind you to the slightest thing. Oh, Helga, dear, let me do
that much for you!”
“Only one man can have the right to do that,” she said, hardly above a
whisper.
“He is gone,” said Everard, not comprehending. “I cannot fill his
place, except this one, poor way.”
“No,” she said. From her bosom she drew out a note and handed it to
him.
“From mother!” he cried. “To you!”
It was the letter of a worldly but kind-natured and essentially
sound-hearted woman, an appeal for a deeply-loved son. “That’s Dick’s
work,” said the young man fondly, after running through it. “And it
comes too late! _Does_ it come too late, Helga?”
“If I only knew what was right,” said the girl. “If only Petit Père was
here to tell me!”
“Do you mean that you didn’t care for him that way?” cried Everard.
“Helga, do you mean that I had my chance? Is there still——”
They had come around the corner of the piazza, and there sat Dick
Colton, tipped back on two legs of his chair. He rose quickly and made
for the door. Helga called him back, and spoke brokenly: “You must
write to your mother. I cannot yet. Oh, if I only dared be happy!” she
wailed. “I know how strongly Petit Père felt against him, against your
family. I could not——”
“Helga,” said Dick, catching her hands in his. “Listen, little girl,
little sister. Haynes made me one of his trustees for you. Do you know
why? Because he trusted me. Will you trust me too?” Helga’s
tear-stained eyes looked into his. “Who would not?” she said.
“He left this charge in my honour: ‘Use your influence to guard her
against marrying under circumstances that you would not approve for the
woman you loved best in the world.’ With that charge upon me I solemnly
tell you that you may come to us as with Harris Haynes’ blessing!”
He put her hand in Everard’s and disappeared through the door. The next
instant Miss Dolly Ravenden, a heap of indignant fluff, was frowning at
him from the wall against which she had staggered.
“What a way to come in!” she cried. “You bear! You—you untamed
locomotive! Is anything chasing you?”
Impulse wild and unreckoning upleaped in the heart of Dick Colton then
and there. Without a struggle he gave way to it.
Swinging her up in his powerful arms, he set her upon her feet, and
bending, kissed her most emphatically upon the lips. Then he went
upstairs in two bounds, saying at the first bound:
“Good Lord! Now I have ruined myself.” And at the second: “It was her
own fault.”
And while he was making his Adamite excuse, Miss Ravenden, red,
confused, and annoyed because she couldn’t seem to be properly angry,
had walked out upon Helga sobbing in Everard’s arms.
“Ah,” she said thoughtfully, as she effected a masterly retreat, “it’s
in the air to-day.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE LONE SURVIVOR
SLEEP lay heavy and sweet upon Dick Colton that night. Not even the
excitement of the prospective man-hunt—for the juggler was to be
rounded up on the morrow—could overcome his healthy weariness. The
intense and tragic events amid which his life had moved for a fortnight
had been a cure for his insomnia as effectual as unexpected. Now when
he slept, he slept; great guns could not wake him. In fact, at this
particular midnight of September’s last day great guns did not wake
him, for the intermittent booming of cannonade for some fifteen minutes
had left his happy dreams undisturbed.
Not so with the others. Helga was stirring below; the Ravendens were
moving about in their respective rooms. Everard was delivering a
passionate rhapsody to an elusive match-box, and Mrs. Johnston was
addressing the familiar argument regarding the preventive merits of
rubber boots to her exasperated husband. Into the submerged
consciousness of Dick Colton drifted scraps and fragments of eager
talk. “Wreck ashore.... Graveyard Point again.... Won’t need the
lanterns.... Drat the rubber boots!... All go together.” Then said the
wizard of dreams, who mismanages such things, to Dick Colton: “It was
all a phantasy, the imaginings of a moment. The crowded wonders in
which you have taken part never happened. There have been no murders;
there has been no juggler, no kite-flyer, no mystery. Haynes is alive;
you can hear him moving about. You are back where you belong, at the
night of the shipwreck, and I have befooled you well with an empty
panorama.”
“And Dolly?” cried the unhappy dreamer in such a pang of protest that
he came broad awake at once. The wizard fled.
From below, the magic of Helga’s voice rang out, sounding once more, as
he had not heard it since Haynes’ death, the vital ring of
unconquerable youth, but with a new and deeper undertone.
“Oh-ho! Yo-ho-ho, Everard! Come down! There’s a wreck ashore!”
And the quick answer: “All right! Be with you in a minute.”
Once more Dick’s mind swung back. All was so exactly parallel to the
first night he had spent there. But the next instant he was plunging
into what garments came readiest to hand. Out into the hall he bolted
and came upon Dolly Ravenden and her father so sharply that for a
moment his conscience was in abeyance; then, stricken with the
recollection of his moment’s madness, he turned away to Everard’s door
and caught that impulsive youth’s charge full in the chest.
“You up, Dicky?” cried the younger brother. “And Dolly, too! We’ll have
a wreck party?”
“I wouldn’t take it too much as an entertainment, Ev,” said his brother
quietly.
“Of course! What a brute I am!” cried Everard contritely. “Not having
been here for the other wreck, I forgot all that it brought about. You
going with Dolly?”
“I think I’ll go with you and Helga,” said Dick. “You needn’t,”
returned the other so promptly that Dick laughed aloud. “Oh, of course,
we’ll be glad to have you,” he continued hastily, “only I thought you
meant——”
“Never mind, old man. We’ll probably all be together.”
The Ravendens, Helga, her father, and the two Coltons went out together
into a night of moonlit glory. A flying cloud-fleet, sailing homeward
to port in the eastern heavens, dappled the far-stretched landscape
with shadows. The air was keen and clear, with an electrifying quality
that made the blood bound faster. Dick felt a wild, inexplicable
elation, as if some climax of life were promised by this marvel of the
night’s beauty.
His eager glance quested for Dolly. Her eyes met his, and she turned
away to her father. Yet there was no anger in her mein, rather a soft
confusion and a certain pathetic timidity as she put her hand on
Professor Ravenden’s arm, that made Dick’s heart jump. But when he
would have gone to her she shrank; and the lover, divining something of
her unexpressed plea, turned away to lead the little procession. Once
he dropped back to speak to Helga, fearing for the effect of the
excitement and the fresh pang of recollection upon her. Like two
trustful children, she and Everard were swinging along, hand in hand.
The girl’s eyes were wet with tears, but there was an exaltation in her
face as she looked at her companion that brought a lump into Dick’s
throat.
“Ev,” he said in his brother’s ear, “if you aren’t all that a man could
be to her to your last breath, you’ll have me to reckon with!”
The younger man looked at him with shining eyes: “Loyal old Dick!” he
said, and laughed unsteadily. “May the gods be as good to you!”
Having reached the cliff summit, the little party had full view of the
wreck. In reality it was not a wreck at all: the steamer lay easily on
the sand to the west of Graveyard Point, solidly wedged and in no
apparent danger. After one long contemplation of the ship and a brief
glance at the bright sky, the veteran Johnston delivered himself of his
opinion:
“Captain drunk. Mate drunk. Lookout blind drunk. Crew rum-soaked. Cook
boiled, and ship’s cat paralysed. It’s the only way they could’a’ got
her ashore a night like this. And they’re as safe with this wind as if
they were in dry-dock.”
He went down to the beach to join the coastguards, whose surf-boat was
just returning from the ship, and presently brought the report back to
his party in the triumph of corroboration.
“Guess I was about right, except as to the cat,” he said. “They ain’t
got any cat aboard; it’s a parrot. We might as well go along home.”
Before the little party had covered one-third of the distance, Dick
Colton, profiting by Johnston’s momentary engagement of Professor
Ravenden’s attention, moved over to Dolly.
“I don’t know what you will think of me,” he began in a low tone. “I
never meant to. It was a moment’s overwhelming folly. Will you forgive
me?”
Seemingly the girl paid no attention. Her gaze was fixed on a knoll
which rose in front of them.
“Dolly,” implored the young man, “don’t think too harshly of me for a
moment’s rashness.”
“Look!” said the girl. “Did you see that?”
“Where? What was it?”
“On that hill almost in front of us. What is a man doing there at this
time?”
“The juggler!” exclaimed Dick.
“Yes, I think it was. There! See him moving just under the brow?”
A dark figure travelling low and swift, as of a man doubled over, could
be discerned faintly against the waving grasses to the north. A moment
more and it disappeared.
The landscape which they overlooked was one of the most broken
stretches on all Montauk. It was like an Indian-mound burial-place
hugely magnified, with thick patches of vegetation scattered between
the mounds. Despite the difficulties of the situation, Dick’s mind was
made up at once. They must capture the juggler.
“Ev! Professor! Mr. Johnston!” he called.
The others hurried to him; there was no mistaking the anxiety in his
voice.
“Miss Ravenden has just seen a man coming toward us over the downs,” he
explained rapidly. “I think it is the juggler. We must get him. Which
of you have pistols?”
“Just my luck! I left mine home,” groaned Everard.
“Although I have no firearms, the loaded butt of my capturing net is
not a despicable weapon,” said Professor Ravenden, brandishing it
scientifically.
Johnston produced a revolver. His own weapon Dick handed to Professor
Ravenden, saying:
“I’ll trade for your loaded club. You’re the best shot of us,
Professor. Please stay here and guard the girls. Ev, you go to the west
along that ridge and keep a sharp lookout. Don’t let him get near
enough to throw his knife, but draw him that way if you can. Mr.
Johnston, take the east. Don’t shoot unless he attacks you or I call
for help. I’ll go down the ravine and stop him.”
Dolly Ravenden started forward.
“Oh, please!” she said tremulously. “Not without a pistol. Oh, Dick!”