Price took Bébita to Grasslands, handed her over to Annie and telephoned
in to the Janneys. Then he left to rejoin Ferguson who was to go to the
shore and find out the meaning of the shots. Price, missing the leading
car, had decided that it had turned from the pike and scouring the side
roads in a blind chase had heard the shots, agreeing with Ferguson that
they came from the direction of the Sound.
Ferguson went that way, driving at breakneck speed. He had almost
reached the shore, felt the water’s coolness, saw the wood’s vista widen
when, to avoid a deep rut, he slewed his machine to the left. The lights
penetrated a thicket, revealing behind the woven foliage, a dark, large
body, black among the tangled green. He drew up, peering at it—it was
not a rock; its side showed smooth through the boughs. He jumped out and
pushed his way through the bushes. It was a taxi, its lamps
extinguished, broken branches and crushed foliage marking its track.
It gave evidence of a violent flight and a hasty desertion, careened to
one side, its door open, a rug hanging over the step. He went to the
back, struck a match and looked at the license tag—the number was that
of the motor he had followed. Covered by the darkness, driven deep among
the trees, it could easily have passed unnoticed until the daylight
betrayed it.
The plan of escape revealed a new artfulness—the man had made off either
on foot or in another vehicle. It accounted for the license—he knew his
pursuers would mark it and look for a car carrying that number. In the
face of such a crafty completeness of detail the young man felt himself
reduced to a baffled indecision. Cogitating on the various routes his
quarry might have taken, he ran out on to the shore road and here again
halted.
Before him the Sound lay, a smooth dark floor, along which glided the
small golden glimmerings of river craft. He looked up and down the road,
discernible as a gray path between the upstanding solidity of the woods
and the flat solidity of the water. Some distance in front a black blot
took shape under his exploring glance as a small house. He started the
car and ran toward it, seeing as he approached a dancing yellow spot
come from behind it in swaying passage. He stopped, the yellow spot
steadied, rose, swung aloft—a lantern in the hands of a man, half
dressed, who came toward him spying out from under the upraised glow.
Ferguson spoke abruptly:
"Did you hear shots a while ago?"
The man setting his lantern on the ground, spoke with the slow phlegm of
the native:
"I did—close here. I bin down to the waterside seein’ if I could make
out what they was."
The house was skirted by a balcony along which a second light now came
into view; this time from a lamp carried in the hand of a woman. She was
wrapped in a bed gown, a straggle of loose hair hanging round a
frightened face.
"We was asleep and they woke us up. They was right off there," she
jerked her head to the Sound behind her.
"From the water?" Ferguson asked.
"Sounded that way," the man took it up. "We wasn’t sure at first what it
was; then they come crack, crack, one after the other, from somewheres
beyont. My wife, she said it was motor boats, said she heard ’em off
across the water. But by the time we got something on and was outside it
was over. There wasn’t no more and we couldn’t see nothing. I bin down
on the beach lookin’ round, thinkin’ they might have come from there,
but I ain’t found no tracks or signs of anybody."
"I was wonderin’," said the woman, "if may be it was that patrol
boat—the one they got this summer runnin’ along the shore for
thieves—That they caught a sight of one and went after him."
Ferguson was silent for a moment then said:
"Is there any place round here where a boat could be hidden, deep enough
water for a launch?"
The man answered:
"Yes, right down the road a step there’s a cove and an old dock; used to
belong to the folks that lived on the bluff but the house burned down a
while back and ain’t been rebuilt and no one’s used the dock since. A
feller could hide a boat there fine; it’s all overgrown so you can’t see
it unless you know where it is."
"I’d like to take a look at it," said Ferguson. "Come along with the
lantern."
The place was only a few yards from the mouth of the wood road. Trees
and shrubs sheltered it, concealing with their rank growth a small
wharf, rotted and sagging to the water line. The lantern rays revealed a
recent presence, scattered leaves and twigs on the wooden planking, the
long marshy grasses showing a track from the road to the wharf’s edge.
"Yes, sir," said the native, much impressed; "some one’s been here
to-night and not s’long ago either. You can see where the dew’s been
swep’ off the grasses right to the water."
Ferguson said nothing; he now saw the whole plan of escape—the coupé
left in the woods, a short run to the cove where a boat had been
concealed, the get-away down on across the Sound. What had the shots
meant? Was the woman right in thinking the police patrol had come upon
the fleeing criminal? And if they had what had been the result?
Lantern in hand, the man at his heels, he crushed through the swampy
copse to the shore. There his glance swept the long stretch of the
water, sewn in the distance with a pattern of moving sparks. Two of
them, red and green, stole over the ebony surface toward him, advancing
with an even, gliding smoothness, piercing and steady, like the eyes of
a stealthily approaching animal, fixing him with a meaning scrutiny. He
snatched up the lantern and ran for a point that jutted out in a pebbly
cape. Standing on its tip he raised and waved the light, letting his
voice ring out across the stillness:
"Boat ahoy!"
The lights drew closer, their reflections stabbing down into the oily
depths, gleam below gleam. The pulsing of a muffled engine came with
them, a prow took shape, a shine of wood and brass above the lusterless
tide. Ferguson called again:
"Who are you?"
An answer rose in a man’s surly voice:
"What’s that to you?"
"A good deal. I’m Ferguson of Council Oaks and I’m looking for the boat
that fired on some one round here about an hour ago."
The voice replied, its tone changed to sudden conciliation:
"Oh, Mr. Ferguson; couldn’t see who it was. We’re what you’re looking
for—the police patrol. We have the launch here in tow."
"Have you got the man?"
"Yes, sir. He didn’t answer our challenge and fired on us. We chased and
gave it back to him—a running fight. One of us got him—he’s dead."
"Go on to my wharf; I’ll be there when you come."
On his way along the shore road he met Price, paused for a quick
explanation, and the two cars ran at a racing clip to Ferguson’s wharf.
The men were standing on its end when the police boat glided into the
gush of light that fell from the high electric lamps at either side of
the ship. Behind it, lifted and dropped by the languid wavelets, was a
launch, a covered shape lying on the floor.
The story of the police was quickly told. The night, dark and windless,
was the kind chosen by the water thieves for their operations. The men
had been on the watch faring noiselessly with engine muffled and hooded
lamps. It was nearly the end of their run, a length of shore with few
estates, when they saw a boat glide from a part of the beach peculiarly
dark and deserted. The craft carried no lights, a fact that instantly
roused their suspicions, and they waited. As it drew out for the open
water they challenged. There was no answer, but a sudden acceleration of
its speed, shooting by them like a streak for the mid reaches of the
Sound.
They started in pursuit, repeating their challenge and then an order to
lie to. Again there was no response and they clapped on top speed and
raced in its wake. They were gaining on it when, in answer to a louder
hail, the man fired on them, the bullet passing between two of them and
burying itself in the gunwale. They replied with a return fire, there
was a fusillade of shots, and the two boats sped in a darkling rush
across the Sound. They knew something was wrong with their opponent; his
launch headed in a straight line swept through the wash of steamers, cut
across the bows of tugs and river craft, rocking like a cockleshell,
menaced by destruction, shouts and objurgations following its mad
course. They were up with it, almost alongside on the last lap. He made
no answer to their hails, sat upright and motionless, sat so when his
bow crashed against the rocks of the Connecticut shore. They found him
dead, a bullet in his brain, the wheel still gripped in his hands.
Ferguson dropped into the launch and drew down the coat that had been
thrown over the body. The face, the false beard gone, was handsome, the
body large and powerful, the hands fine and well kept—it was not the
type he had expected to see. He felt in the pockets and found the money
still in its envelope, clasped by the rubber bands. There were no other
papers, no means of identification. After a short colloquy with the men,
he and Price drove back to Council Oaks.
Price left the next morning. His presence was necessary in the city, he
said, and he seemed preoccupied and anxious to go. He hinted at
forthcoming revelations which would clear up what was still unexplained,
but declared himself unable at present to say more.
When he had gone, Ferguson walked to Grasslands where he found the
family recuperating in a relief too deep for words. Bébita was in bed
still asleep. The doctor, sent for the night before, said she was
suffering from the effects of a drug, but that rest and quiet would soon
restore her.
They collected on the balcony to hear his story. When it was over,
questions answered, amazement and horror vented in various forms, Mr.
Janney said he would like to walk over to the wharf and have a talk with
the police himself. Ferguson decided to go with him; there would be a
lot of business to be gone through, an inquest with all its unpleasant
detail.
As they rose to leave, Suzanne announced that she wanted to come too.
She looked a wreck, in her hysterical jubilation forgetful of her rouge
and powder; a worn little wraith of a woman whose journey to the heart
of life had stripped her of all coquetry and beauty. They tried to
dissuade her, but, as usual, she was insistent; she wanted to see the
men herself, she wanted to hear everything. On this day of thanksgiving
no one had the will to thwart her, so they accepted with the best grace
they could and she walked through the woods with them.
There was a group of men on the wharf, the local police, the coroner,
some of Ferguson’s employees. The body had been put in the boathouse,
laid on a table under a sheltering tarpaulin. Ferguson and Mr. Janney
drew off to the end of the dock in low-toned conference with the
officials. They were relieved to see that Suzanne had no mind to listen,
but stayed by herself in the shade of the boathouse wall.
She leaned against it, looking out over the sparkling reaches of the
Sound. Her thoughts were of the dead man, close behind her there, on the
other side of the wooden partition. She wondered with an awed amaze at
his wild act and its dark ending. She wondered what manner of man he
was, what he was like—a human creature, unknown to her, who could want
only to cause her such anguish.
She shot a glance over her shoulder and saw that the door of the
boathouse was half open—the coroner had been in and had neglected to
close it. She looked at the men at the end of the wharf; they stood in a
little cluster, backs toward her, heads together in animated discussion.
She moved from the wall, advanced on tip-toe through the slant of shade,
and slipped through the open doorway.
The place was very still, its clear, varnished brownness impregnated
with the sea’s salty tang, through its windows the golden gleam of the
waves reflected in rippling lights that chased across its peaked
ceiling. She stole to the table where the grim shape lay and lifted the
tarpaulin with a trembling hand. The other shot suddenly to her mouth,
strangling a scream, and she dropped the heavy cloth as if it burned
her. Both hands went up over her face, flattened there until the nails
were empurpled, and she stood, bent as if cramped with pain, for the
moment all movement paralyzed.
Ferguson, informed of all he wanted to know, turned from the others to
join her. She was not where he had left her, and moving down the wharf
he looked about and, seeing no sign of her, decided that she had gone
home. He was passing the boathouse doorway when she came through it
almost upon him.
"Good heavens!" he said angrily, "have you been in _there_?" Then,
seeing her face, he caught her arm and held her. Would there ever be an
end to her willfulness!
"Come home," he said, sharply, and led her away. She tottered beside
him, drooping and ghastly. As they crossed the road to the path up the
bluff he could not forbear an exasperated:
"What in the name of common sense did you do that for? Didn’t you know
it was not a thing for you to see?"
Her hands locked on his arm; she leaned against him lifting a haggard
glance to his face. Her voice was a husky whisper:
"It’s not that, Dick. It wasn’t just the dead man. It was—it was—he was
my detective—Larkin!"