Kastle Krags: A Story of Mystery

by Absalom Martin

  CHAPTER XIV

  Nealman did not come down to dinner. He sent his apologies to theguests, pleading a headache, and through some mayhap of circumstance thecoroner took his place at the head of the great, red-mahogany table.There was a grim symbolism in the thing. No one mentioned it, not one ofthose aristocratic sportsmen were calloused enough to jest about it, butwe all felt it in the secret places of our souls.

  The session at Kastle Krags was no longer one of revelry. I could fancythe wit, the repartee, the gaiety and laughter that had reigned over theboard the evening previous; but Nealman's guests were a sober groupto-night. At the unspoken dictates of good taste no man talked of lastnight's tragedy. Rather the men talked quietly to one another or elsesat in silence. A burly negro, rigged out in a dinner coat of ancientvintage, helped with the serving in Florey's place.

  After dinner I halted the sheriff in the hall, and we had a singlemoment of conversation. "Slatterly," I said, "I want you to give me someauthority."

  "You do, eh?" He paused, studying my face. "What do you want to do?"

  "I want your permission--to go about this house and grounds where andwhen I want to--and no complications in case I am caught at it. Maybeeven go into some of the private rooms and effects of the guests. I wantto follow up some ideas that I have in mind."

  "And when do you want to do it?"

  "Any time the opportunity offers. I'm not going to do anythingindiscreet. I won't get in your way. But I'm deeply interested in thisthing, I've had scientific training, and I want to see if I can't dosome good."

  His eyes swept once from my shoes to my head. "From amateur detectives,as a rule--Good Lord deliver us," he said with quiet good humor. "ButKilldare--I don't see why you shouldn't. Two heads are better thanone--and I don't seem to be getting anywhere. Really, the moreintelligent help we can get--from people we can co-operate with, ofcourse--the better."

  "I'm free, then, to go ahead?"

  "Of course with reasonable limits. But ask my advice before you make anyaccusations--or do anything rash."

  By previous arrangement Mrs. Gentry, the housekeeper, was waiting forme on the upper floor. There could be no better chance to search theguests' rooms. All of the men were on the lower floor, smoking theirafter-dinner cigars and talking in little groups in the lounging-roomand the veranda. Of course Nealman was in his room, but even had he beenabsent, a decent sense of restraint would have kept me from histhreshold. And of course Marten and Van Hope had established perfectalibis at the inquest.

  We entered Fargo's room first. It was cluttered with his bags, his gunsand rods, but the thing I was seeking did not reveal itself. I looked inthe inner pockets of his coat, in the drawers of his desk, even in thewaste-paper basket without result. Such personal documents as Fargo hadwith him were evidently on his person at that moment.

  Nopp's room was next, but I was less than twenty seconds across histhreshold. He had been writing a letter, it lay open on his desk, and Ineeded to glance but once at the script. If my theory was right Noppcould be permanently dropped from the list of suspects of Florey'smurder.

  But the next room yielded a clew of seemingly inestimable importance.After the drawers had been opened and searched, and the desk examinedwith minute care, I searched the inner pocket of a white linen coat thatthe occupant of the room had worn at the time of his arrival. In it Ifound a letter, addressed to some New York firm, sealed, stamped, andready to send.

  How familiar was the bold, free hand in which the address was written!Not a little excited, I compared it with the script of the "George"letter I had taken from Florey's room. As far as my inexperienced eyecould tell the handwriting was identical.

  The room was that of Lucius Pescini. If I had not been mistaken in thehandwriting, I had proven a previous relationship and acquaintance,extending practically over the whole lifetime of both men, between thedistinguished, bearded man that came as Nealman's guest and the graybutler who had died on the lagoon shore the previous night.

  I put the letter back in the man's coat-pocket; then joined Mrs. Gentryin the hall. She went to her own room. I turned down the broad stairs tothe hall. And the question before me now was whether to report mydiscovery to the officials of the law.

  I had started down the stairs with the intention of telling them all Iknew. By the time I had reached the hall I had begun to have seriousdoubts as to the wisdom of such a course. After all I had learnednothing conclusive. Handwriting evidence is at best uncertain; evenexperts have made mistakes in comparing signatures. In this regard itwas quite different from finger-prints--those tell-tale stains thatnever lie. True, the handwriting looked identical to the naked eye, buta microscope might prove it entirely dissimilar. Was I to cast suspicionon a distinguished man on such fragile and uncertain grounds?

  Pescini had been in the lounging-room only a few minutes before thecrime was committed. It seemed doubtful that he would have had time tocover the distance between the house and the lagoon, strike Florey low,and get back to the place where we met him in the short time of hisabsence.

  Besides, I wanted to work alone. I couldn't bring myself to share mydiscoveries with Slatterly and Weldon.

  The hall below was deserted and half in darkness. I met Marten and Noppon the way to their rooms: passing into the library I found Hal Fargoseated under a reading-lamp, deep in "Floridan fauna." Major Dell wassmoking quietly on the veranda, gazing out over the moonlit lawns. VanHope and Pescini himself were seated at the far end of thelounging-room, evidently in earnest conversation.

  I sat down across the room where from time to time I could glance up andobserve the bearded face of my suspect. How animated he was, howeffective the gestures of his firm, strong hands. Was that the hand Ihad seen in the flashlight over my table the preceding night? He hadrather thin, esthetic lips, half concealed by his mustache. Yet itwasn't a cruel or degenerate face.

  But soon I forgot about Pescini to marvel at the growing, oppressiveheat of the night. The chill that usually drops over the West coast inthe first hours of darkness, did not manifest itself to-night. It wasthe kind of heat that brings a flush to the face and a ghastly crawlingto the brain, swelling the neck glands until the linen collar chokeslike strangling fingers, and heightens the temper clear to theexplosion-point. Van Hope and Pescini tore at their collars, seeminglyat first unaware as to the source of their discomfort.

  In reality the heat wave had overspread us rather swiftly, and what wasits source and by what shiftings of the air currents it had been sentto harry us was mostly beyond the wit of man to tell. The temperaturemust have been close to a hundred in that big, coolly furnished room,and the veranda outside seemed to offer no relief. The dim warmth fromthe electric lights above, added to the sweltering heat of the air, waswholly perceptible on the heated brain, and seemed to stretch theover-taut nerves to the breaking-point.

  "Isn't this the devil?" Van Hope exclaimed as I came out. "It wasn'thalf so hot at sunset. For Heaven's sake let's have a drink."

  "Whiskey'd only make us hotter, would it not?"

  "The English don't think so--but they're full of weird ideas. Have thatbig coon bring us some lemonade then--iced tea--anything. This is thekind of night that sets men crazy."

  Men who have spent July in India, when the humidity is on the land,could appreciate such heat, but it passed ordinary understanding. Itharassed the brain and fevered the blood, and warned us all of lawlessdemons that lived just under our skins. A man wouldn't be responsible,to-night. The devil inside of him, recognizing a familiar temperature,escaped his bonds and stood ready to take any advantage of openings.

  It was a curious thing that there was no perceptible wind over thelagoon. Perhaps the reason was that we invariably associate wind withcoolness, rather than any sort of a hushed movement of the air--and theimpulse that brushed up on the veranda to us was as warm as a child'sbreath on the face. There was simply no whisper of sound on shore or seaor forest. The curlews were stilled, the wild creatures were likelylying motionless, tryi
ng to escape the heat, the little rustlings andmurmurings of stirring vegetation was gone from the gardens. But thatfirst silence, remarkable enough, seemed to deepen as we waited.

  There is a point, in temperature, that seems the utter limit of cold.Mushers along certain trails in the North had known that point--whenthere seems simply no heat left in the bitter, crackling, biting air.The temperature, at such times, registers forty--fifty--sixty below. Yetthe scientist, in his laboratory, with his liquid hydrogen vaporizing ina vacuum, can show that this temperature is not the beginning of thefearful scale of cold. To-night it was the same way with the silence.There simply seemed no sound left. But as we waited the silence grew andswelled until the brain ceased to believe the senses and the image ofreality was gone. It gave you the impression of being fast asleep andin a dream that might easily turn to death.

  The mind kept dwelling on death. It was a great deal more plausible thanlife. The image of life was gone from that bleak manor house by thesea--the sea was dead, the air, all the elements by which men view theirlives. The forest, lost in its silence, its most whispered voicesstilled, was a dead forest, incomprehensible as living.

  I went upstairs soon after. I thought it might be cooler there.Sometimes, if you go a few feet off the ground, you find it XXXXcooler--quite in opposition to the fact that hot air rises. There was noappreciable difference, however; but here, at least, I could take off myouter clothes. Then I got into a dressing-gown and slippers and waited,with a breathlessness and impatience not quite healthy and normal, forthe late night sea breeze to spring up.

  Seemingly it had been delayed. The hour was past eleven, the swelteringheat still remained. There was no way under Heaven to pass the time. Onecouldn't read, for the reason that the mental effort of following thelines of type was incomprehensibly fatiguing. I had neither the energynor the interest to work upon the cryptogram--that baffling column offour-lettered words. Yet the brain was inordinately active. Ungovernedthought swept through it in ordered trains, in sudden, lunging waves,and in swirling eddies. Yet the thoughts were not clean-cut, whollytrue--they overlapped with the bizarre and elfin impulses of the fancy,and the fine edge of discrimination between reality and dreams was someway dulled. It wasn't easy to hold the brain in perfect bondage.

  To that fact alone I try to ascribe the curious flood of thoughts thatswept me in those midnight hours. Except for the heat, perhaps in ameasure for the silence, I wouldn't have known them at all. I got tothinking about last night's crime, and I couldn't get it out of mind.The conceptions I had formed of it, the theories and decisions, seemedless and less convincing as I sat overlooking those shadowed, silentgrounds. So much depends on the point of view. Ordinarily, our willgives us strength to believe wholly what we want to believe and nothingelse. But the powers of the will were unstable to-night, the whole seatof being was shaken, and my fine theories in regard to Pescini seemed tolack the stuff of truth. I suppose every man present provided somesatisfactory theory to fit the facts, for no other reason than that wedidn't want to change our conception of Things as They Are. Such acourse was essential to our own self-comfort and security. But myPescini theory seemed far-fetched. In that silence and that heat,anything could be true at Kastle Krags!

  From this point my mind led logically to the most disquieting andfearful thing of all. What was to prevent last night's crime fromrecurring?

  It isn't hard to see the basis for such a thought. Some way, in theselast, stifling, almost maddening hours, it had become difficult to relyimplicitly on our rational interpretation of things. Certain things arecredible to the every-day man in the every-day mood--things such asaeronautics and wireless, that to a savage mind would seem a thousandtimes more incredible than mere witchcraft and magic--and certain thingssimply can not and will not be believed. Society itself, our laws, ourcustoms, our basic attitude towards life depends on a fine balance ofwhat is credible and what is not, an imperious disbelief in anymanifestation out of the common run of things. It is altogether good forsociety when this can be so. Men can not rise up from savagery until itis so. As long as black magic and witchcraft haunt the souls of men,there is nothing to trust, nothing to hold to or build towards, nothingpermanent or infallible on which to rely, and hope can not escape fromfear, and there is no promise that to-day's work will stand tillto-morrow. Men are far happier when they may master their own beliefs.There is nothing so destructive to happiness, so favorable to thedominion of Fear, as an indiscriminate credulity. Those Africanexplorers who have seen the curse of fear in the Congo tribes need notbe told this fact.

  But to-night this fine scorn of the supernatural and the bizarre wassome way gone from my being. It wasn't so easy to reject them now. Thosehide-and-seek, half-glimpsed, eerie phantasies that are hidden deep inevery man's subconscious mind were in the ascendancy to-night. They hadbeen implanted in the germ-plasm a thousand thousand generations gone,they were a dim and mystic heritage from the childhood days of the race,the fear and the dreads and horrors of those dark forests of countlessthousands of years ago, and they still lie like a shadow over thefear-cursed minds of some of the more savage peoples. Civilization hasmostly got away from them, it has strengthened itself steadily againstthem, building with the high aim of wholly escaping from them, yet noman in this childlike world is wholly unknown to them. The blind,ghastly fear of the darkness, of the unknown, of the whispering voice orthe rustling of garments of one who returns from beyond the void is anexperience few human beings can deny.

  The cold logic with which I looked on life was in some way shaken anduncertain. The fanciful side of myself crept in and influenced all mythought-processes. It was no longer possible to accept, with implicitfaith, that last night's crime was merely the expression of ordinary,familiar moods and human passions, that it would all work out accordingto the accepted scheme of things. Indeed the crime seemed no longer_human_ at all. Rather it seemed just some deadly outgrowth of theseweird sands beside the mysterious lagoon.

  The crime had seemed a thing of human origin before, to be judged byhuman standards, but now it had become associated, in my mind, withinanimate sand and water. It was as if we had beheld the sinisterexpression of some inherent quality in the place itself rather than themen who had gathered there. It was hard to believe, now, that Florey hadbeen a mere actor in some human drama that in the end had led to murder.He had been little and gray and obscure, seemingly apart from humandrama as the mountains are apart from the sea, and it was easier tobelieve that he had been merely the unsuspecting victim of some outerperil that none of us knew. Slain, with a ragged, downward cut throughthe breast--and his body dragged into the lagoon!

  What was to prevent the same thing from happening again? Before theweek was done other of the occupants of that house might find themselveswalking in the gardens at night, down by the craggy shore of thelagoon! Nealman, others of the servants, any one of the guests--Edithherself--wouldn't circumstance, sooner or later, take them into theshadow of that curse? Who could tell but that the whole thing might bereenacted before this dreadful, sweltering night was done!

  The occupants of the house wouldn't be able to sleep to-night. Some ofthem would go walking in the gardens, rambling further down thebeguiling garden paths that would take them at last to that craggymargin of the inlet. Some of them might want a cool glimpse of thelagoon itself. Would we hear that sharp, agonized, fearful scream againstreaming through the windows, gripping the heart and freezing theblood in the veins? Any hour--any moment--such a thing might occur.

  But at that point I managed a barren and mirthless laugh. I was lettingchildlike fancies carry me away--and I had simply tried to laugh them toscorn. Surely I need not yield to such a mood as this, to let thesweltering heat and the silence change me into a superstitious savage.The thing to do was to move away from the window and direct my thoughtin other channels. Yet I knew, as I argued with myself, that I wascuriously breathless and inwardly shaken. But these were nothing incomparison with the fact that I was some way _expectant_, to
o, with adreadful expectancy beyond the power of naming.

  Then my laugh was cut short. And I don't know what half-strangledutterance, what gagging expression of horror or regret or fulfilleddread took its place on my lips as a distinct scream for help, agonizedand fearful, came suddenly, ripped through the darkness from thedirection of the lagoon.