"He told me that his name was Nicholas Brandt," Millie noted in her
dull voice.
A new gravity possessed John Woolfolk.
"You must not go back to the house," he decided.
"Wait," she replied. "I was terribly frightened when he went up to his
room. When he came down he thanked me for cleaning it. I told him he
was mistaken, that I hadn't been in there, but I could see he was
suspicious. He cried all the time he was cooking dinner, in a queer,
choked way; and afterward touched me--on the arm. I swam, but all the
water in the bay wouldn't take away the feel of his fingers. Then I
saw the boat--you came ashore.
"Nicholas was dreadfully upset, and hid in the pines for a day or
more. He told me if I spoke of him it would happen, and if I left it
would happen--to father. Then he came back. He said that you
were--were in love with me, and that I must send you away. He added
that you must go today, for he couldn't stand waiting any more. He
said that he wanted to be right, but that things were against him.
This morning he got dreadful--if I fooled him he'd get you, and me,
too, and then there was always father for something extra special.
That, he warned me, would happen if I stayed away for more than an
hour." She rose, trembling violently. "Perhaps it's been an hour now.
I must go back."
John Woolfolk thought rapidly; his face was grim. If he had brought a
pistol from the ketch he would have shot Iscah Nicholas without
hesitation. Unarmed, he was reluctant to precipitate a crisis with
such serious possibilities. He could secure one from the _Gar_, but
even that short lapse of time might prove fatal--to Millie or
Lichfield Stope. Millie's story was patently fact in every detail. He
thought more rapidly still--desperately.
"I must go back," she repeated, her words lost in a sudden blast of
wind under the dilapidated roof.
He saw that she was right.
"Very well," he acquiesced. "Tell him that you saw me, and that I
promised to go tonight. Act quietly; say that you have been upset, but
that you will give him an answer tomorrow. Then at eight o'clock--it
will be dark early tonight--walk out to the wharf. That is all. But it
must be done without any hesitation; you must be even cheerful, kinder
to him."
He was thinking: She must be out of the way when I meet Nicholas. She
must not be subjected to the ordeal that will release her from the
dread fast crushing her spirit.
She swayed, and he caught her, held her upright, circled in his steady
arms.
"Don't let him hurt us," she gasped. "Oh, don't!"
"Not now," he reassured her. "Nicholas is finished. But you must help
by doing exactly as I have told you. You'd better go on. It won't be
long, hardly three hours, until freedom."
She laid her cold cheek against his face, while her arms crept round
his neck. She said nothing; and he held her to him with a sudden throb
of feeling. They stood for a moment in the deepening gloom, bound in a
straining embrace, while the rats gnawed in the sagging walls of the
store and the storm thrashed without. She reluctantly descended the
stair, crossed the broken floor and disappeared through the door.
A sudden unwillingness to have her return alone to the sobbing menace
of Iscah Nicholas, the impotent wraith that had been Lichfield Stope,
carried him in an impetuous stride to the stair. But there he halted.
The plan he had made held, in its simplicity, a larger measure of
safety than any immediate, unconsidered course.
John Woolfolk waited until she had had time to enter the orange-grove;
then he followed, turning toward the beach.
He found Halvard already at the sand's edge, waiting uneasily with the
tender, and they crossed the broken water to where the _Gar's_ cabin
flung out a remote, peaceful light.
X
The sailor immediately set about his familiar, homely tasks, while
Woolfolk made a minute inspection of the ketch's rigging. He descended
to supper with an expression of abstraction, and ate mechanically
whatever was placed before him. Afterward he rolled a cigarette, which
he neglected to light, and sat motionless, chin on breast, in the warm
stillness.
Halvard cleared the table and John Woolfolk roused himself. He turned
to the shelf that ran above the berths and secured a small, locked tin
box. For an hour or more he was engaged alternately writing and
carefully reading various papers sealed with vermilion wafers. Then he
called Halvard.
"I'll get you to witness these signatures," he said, rising. Poul
Halvard hesitated; then, with a furrowed brow, clumsily grasped the
pen. "Here," Woolfolk indicated. The man wrote slowly, linking
fortuitously the unsteady letters of his name. This arduous task
accomplished, he immediately rose. John Woolfolk again took his place,
turning to address the other, when he saw that one side of Halvard's
face was bluish and rapidly swelling.
"What's the matter with your jaw?" he promptly inquired.
Halvard avoided his gaze, obviously reluctant to speak, but Woolfolk's
silent interrogation was insistent. Then:
"I met that Nicholas," Halvard admitted; "without a knife."
"Well?" Woolfolk insisted.
"There's something wrong with this cursed place," Halvard said
defiantly. "You can laugh, but there's a matter in the air that's not
natural. My grandmother could have named it. She heard the ravens that
called Tollfsen's death, and read Linga's eyes before she strangulated
herself. Anyhow, when you didn't come back I got doubtful and took the
tender in. Then I saw Nicholas beating up through the bushes, hiding
here and there, and doubling through the grass; so I came on him from
the back and--and kicked him, quite sudden.
"He went on his hands, but got up quick for a hulk like himself. Sir,
this is hard to believe, but it's Biblical--he didn't take any more
notice of the kick than if it had been a flag halyard brushed against
him. He said 'Go away,' and waved his foolish hands.
"I closed in, still careful of the knife, with a remark, and got onto
his heart. He only coughed and kept telling me in a crying whisper to
go away. Nicholas pushed me back--that's how I got this face. What was
the use? I might as well have hit a pudding. Even talk didn't move
him. In a little it sent me cold." He stopped abruptly, grew sullen;
it was evident that he would say no more in that direction. Woolfolk
opened another subject:
"Life, Halvard," he said, "is uncertain; perhaps tonight I shall find
it absolutely unreliable. What I am getting at is this: if anything
happens to me--death, to be accurate--the _Gar_ is yours, the ketch
and a sum of money. It is secured to you in this box, which you will
deliver to my address in Boston. There is another provision that I'll
mention merely to give you the opportunity to repeat it verbally from
my lips: the bulk of anything I have, in the possibility we are
considering, will go to a Miss Stope, the daughter of Lichfield Stope,
formerly of Virginia." He stood up. "Halvard," Woolfolk said abruptly,
extending his hand, expressing for the first time his repeated
thought, "you are a good man. You are the only steady quantity I have
ever known. I have paid you for a part of this, but the most is beyond
dollars. That I am now acknowledging."
Halvard was cruelly embarrassed. He waited, obviously desiring a
chance to retreat, and Woolfolk continued in a different vein:
"I want the canvas division rigged across the cabin and three berths
made. Then get the yacht ready to go out at any time."
One thing more remained; and, going deeper into the tin box, John
Woolfolk brought out a packet of square envelopes addressed to him in
a faded, angular hand. They were all that remained now of his youth,
of the past. Not a ghost, not a remembered fragrance nor accent, rose
from the delicate paper. They had been the property of a man dead
twelve years ago, slain by incomprehensible mischance; and the man in
the contracted cabin, vibrating from the elemental and violent forces
without, forebore to open them. He burned the packet to a blackish ash
on a plate.
It was, he saw from the chronometer, seven o'clock; and he rose
charged with tense energy, engaged in activities of a far different
order. He unwrapped from many folds of oiled silk a flat, amorphous
pistol, uglier in its bleak outline than the familiar weapons of more
graceful days; and, sliding into place a filled cartridge clip, he
threw a load into the barrel. This he deposited in the pocket of a
black wool jacket, closely buttoned about his long, hard body, and
went up on deck.
Halvard, in a glistening yellow coat, came close up to him, speaking
with the wind whipping the words from his lips. He said: "She's ready,
sir."
For a moment Woolfolk made no answer; he stood gazing anxiously into
the dark that enveloped and hid Millie Stope from him. There was
another darkness about her, thicker than the mere night, like a black
cerement dropping over her soul. His eyes narrowed as he replied to
the sailor: "Good!"