Although the man's back was turned toward me, I was uncomfortably
conscious that he was watching me. How he could possibly be watching
me while I stood directly behind him, I did not ask myself; yet,
nevertheless, instinct warned me that I was being inspected; that
somehow or other the man was staring at me as steadily as though he and
I had been face to face and his faded, sea-green eyes were focussed upon
me.
It was an odd sensation which persisted in spite of logic, and of which
I could not rid myself. Yet the little waitress did not seem to share it.
Perhaps she was not under his glassy inspection. But then, of course, I
could not be either.
No doubt the nervous tension incident to the expedition was making me
supersensitive and even morbid.
Our sail-boat rode the shallow torquoise-tinted waters at anchor, rocking
gently just off the snowy coral reef on which we were now camping. The
youthful waitress who, for economy's sake, wore her cap, apron, collar
and cuffs over her dainty print dress, was seated by the signal fire
writing in her diary. Sometimes she thoughtfully touched her pencil point
with the tip of her tongue; sometimes she replenished the fire from a
pile of dead mangrove branches heaped up on the coral reef beside her.
Whatever she did she accomplished gracefully.
As for the man, Grue, his back remained turned toward us both and he
continued, apparently, to scan the horizon for the sail which we all
expected. And all the time I could not rid myself of the unpleasant idea
that somehow or other he was looking at me, watching attentively the
expression of my features and noting my every movement.
The smoke of our fire blew wide across leagues of shallow, sparkling
water, or, when the wind veered, whirled back into our faces across the
reef, curling and eddying among the standing mangroves like fog drifting.
Seated there near the fire, from time to time I swept the horizon with my
marine glasses; but there was no sign of Kemper; no sail broke the far
sweep of sky and water; nothing moved out there save when a wild duck
took wing amid the dark raft of its companions to circle low above the
ocean and settle at random, invisible again except when, at intervals,
its white breast flashed in the sunshine.
Meanwhile the waitress had ceased to write in her diary and now sat with
the closed book on her knees and her pencil resting against her lips,
gazing thoughtfuly at the back of Grue's head.
It was a ratty head of straight black hair, and looked greasy. The rest
of him struck me as equally unkempt and dingy--a youngish man, lean,
deeply bitten by the sun of the semi-tropics to a mahogany hue, and
unusually hairy.
I don't mind a brawny, hairy man, but the hair on Grue's arms and chest
was a rusty red, and like a chimpanzee's in texture, and sometimes a
wildly absurd idea possessed me that the man needed it when he went about
in the palm forests without his clothes.
But he was only a "poor white"--a "cracker" recruited from one of the
reefs near Pelican Light, where he lived alone by fishing and selling his
fish to the hotels at Heliatrope City. The sail-boat was his; he figured
as our official guide on this expedition--an expedition which already had
begun to worry me a great deal.
For it was, perhaps, the wildest goose chase and the most absurdly
hopeless enterprise ever undertaken in the interest of science by the
Bronx Park authorities.
Nothing is more dreaded by scientists than ridicule; and it was in spite
of this terror of ridicule that I summoned sufficient courage to organize
an exploring party and start out in search of something so extraordinary,
so hitherto unheard of, that I had not dared reveal to Kemper by letter
the object of my quest.
No, I did not care to commit myself to writing just yet; I had merely
sent Kemper a letter to join me on Sting-ray Key.
He telegraphed me from Tampa that he would join me at the rendezvous; and
I started directly from Bronx Park for Heliatrope City; arrived there in
three days; found the waitress all ready to start with me; inquired about
a guide and discovered the man Grue in his hut off Pelican Light; made my
bargain with him; and set sail for Sting-ray Key, the most excited and
the most nervous young man who ever had dared disaster in the sacred
cause of science.
Everything was now at stake, my honour, reputation, career, fortune. For,
as chief of the Anthropological Field Survey Department of the great
Bronx Park Zoölogical Society, I was perfectly aware that no scientific
reputation can survive ridicule.
Nevertheless, the die had been cast, the Rubicon crossed in a sail-boat
containing one beachcombing cracker, one hotel waitress, a pile of
camping kit and special utensils, and myself!
How was I going to tell Kemper? How was I going to confess to him that I
was staking my reputation as an anthropologist upon a letter or two and
a personal interview with a young girl--a waitress at the Hotel Gardenia
in Heliatrope City?
* * * * *
I lowered my sea-glasses and glanced sideways at the waitress. She was
still chewing the end of her pencil, reflectively.
She was a pretty girl, one Evelyn Grey, and had been a country
school-teacher in Massachusetts until her health broke.
Florida was what she required; but that healing climate was possible to
her only if she could find there a self-supporting position.
Also she had nourished an ambition for a postgraduate education, with
further aspirations to a Government appointment in the Smithsonian
Institute.
All very worthy, no doubt--in fact, particularly commendable because the
wages she saved as waitress in a Florida hotel during the winter were her
only means of support while studying for college examinations during the
summer in Boston, where she lived.
Yet, although she was an inmate of Massachusetts, her face and figure
would have ornamented any light-opera stage. I never looked at her but
I thought so; and her cuffs and apron merely accentuated the delusion.
Such ankles are seldom seen when the curtain rises after the overture.
Odd that frivolous thoughts could flit through an intellect dedicated
only to science!
The man, Grue, had not stirred from his survey of the Atlantic Ocean. He
had a somewhat disturbing capacity for remaining motionless--like a
stealthy and predatory bird which depends on immobility for aggressive
and defensive existence.
The sea-wind fluttered his cotton shirt and trousers and the tattered
brim of his straw hat. And always I felt as though he were watching me
out of the back of his ratty head, through the ravelled straw brim that
sagged over his neck.
The pretty waitress had now chewed the end of her pencil to a
satisfactory pulp, and she was writing again in her diary, very intently,
so that my cautious touch on her arm seemed to startle her.
Meeting her inquiring eyes I said in a low voice:
"I am not sure why, but I don't seem to care very much for that man,
Grue. Do you?"
She glanced at the water's edge, where Grue stood, immovable, his back
still turned to us.
"I never liked him," she said under her breath.
"Why?" I asked cautiously.
She merely shrugged her shoulders. She did it gracefully.