CHAPTER XVIII
Grover Nealman had disappeared, and no search could bring him back toKastle Krags. The hope that we all had, that some way, some how he wouldreappear--destroying in a moment that strange, ghastly tradition thatthese last two nights had established--died in our souls as the daylighthours sped by. Even if we could have found him dead it would have beensome relief. In that case we could ascribe his death to something wecould understand--a sudden sickness, a murderer's blow, perhaps even hisown hand at his throat, all of which were within our bourne of humanexperience. But it was vaguely hard for us to have two men go, onsuccessive nights, and have no knowledge whence or how they had gone.
Of course no man hinted at this hardship. It was simply the sort ofthing that could not be discussed by intelligent men. Yet we were human,only a few little generations from the tribal fire and thewitch-doctors, and it got under our skins.
Grover Nealman's body was not lying in some unoccupied part of thehouse, nor did we find him in the gardens. Telephone messages weresent, but Nealman had not been seen. And after six hours of patientsearch, under that Floridan sun, it was no longer easy to believe thathe lay at the bottom of the lagoon.
The sheriff's men dragged tirelessly, widening out their field of searchuntil it covered most of the lagoon, but they found neither Nealman norFlorey. Some of the work was done in the flow-tide, when the wavesbreaking on the rocky barrier made the lagoon itself choppy and rough.They came in tired and discouraged, ready to give up.
In the meantime Van Hope had heard from Lacone--but his message was notvery encouraging either. It would likely be forty hours, he said, beforehe could arrive at Kastle Krags. Of course Van Hope and his friendsagreed that there was nothing to do but wait for him.
The sun reached high noon and then began his long, downward drift to theWest. The shadows slowly lengthened almost imperceptibly at first, butwith gradually increasing speed. The heat of the day climbed, reachedits zenith; the diamond-back slept heavily in the shade, a deadlyslumber that was evil to look upon; and the water-moccasin hunglifelessly in his thickets--and then, so slowly as to pass belief, thelittle winds from the West sprang up, bringing relief. It would soon benight at Kastle Krags. The afternoon was almost gone.
Not one of those northern men mentioned the fact. They wereAnglo-Saxons, and that meant there were certain iron-clad restraints ontheir speech. Because of this inherent reserve they had to bottle uptheir thoughts, harbor them in silence, with the risk of a violent nerveexplosion in the end. Insanity is not common among the Latin peoples.They find easy expression in words for all the thoughts that plaguethem, thus escaping that strain and tension that works such havoc on thenervous system. Slatterly and Weldon, native Floridans, had learned acertain sociability and ease of expression under that tropical sun,impossible to these cold, northern men; and consequently the day passedeasier for them. Likely they talked over freely the mystery of KastleKrags, relieved themselves of their secret dreads, and awaited thefalling of the night with healthy, unburdened minds. They were naturallymore superstitious than the Northerners. They had listened to Congomyths in the arms of colored mammies in infancy. But superstition, whilea retarding force to civilization, is sometimes a mighty consolationto the spirit. The tribes of Darkest Africa, seeing many things thatin their barbarism they can not understand, find it wiser to turnto superstition than to go mad. Thus they escape that bitter,nerve-wracking struggle of trying to adjust some inexplicable mysterywith their every-day laws of matter and space and time. They likely findit happier to believe in witchcraft than to fight hopelessly with fearin silence.
A little freedom, a little easy expression of secret thoughts might haveredeemed those long, silent hours just before nightfall. But no man toldanother what he was really thinking, and every man had to win his battlefor himself. The result was inevitable: a growing tension and suspensein the very air.
It was a strange atmosphere that gathered over Kastle Krags in thoseearly evening hours. Some way it gave no image of reality. It wasvaguely hard to talk--the mind moved along certain channels and couldnot be turned aside. We couldn't disregard the fact that the night wasfalling. The hours of darkness were even now upon us. And no man couldkeep from thinking of their possibilities.
I noticed a certain irritability on the part of all the guests.Their nerves were on edge, their tempers--almost forgotten in theiryears of social intercourse--excitable and uncertain. They were allpre-occupied, busy with their own thoughts--and a man started whenanother spoke to him.
It couldn't be truly said that they had been conquered by fear. Thesewere self-reliant, masterful men, trained from the ground up to bestrong in the face of danger. Yet the mystery of Kastle Krags wasgetting to them. They couldn't forget that for two nights running somepower that dwelt on that eerie shore had claimed one of the occupants ofthe manor house--and that a third night was even now encroaching overthe forest. Any legend however strange concerning the old house couldnot wake laughter now. It was true that from time to time one ofthe guests laughed at another's sallies, but always the sound rangshockingly loud over the verandas and was some way disquieting to everyone that heard it. Nor did we hear any happy, carefree laughter such ashad filled the halls that first night. Rather these were nervous,excited sounds, conveying no image of mirth, and jarring unpleasantly onus all.
The hot spell of the previous night was fortunately broken, yet some ofus chose to sit on the verandas. Through rifts in the trees we couldwatch the darkness creeping over the sea and the lagoon. There was nopleasure here--but it was some way better than staying in our rooms andletting the night creep upon us unawares. It seemed better to face itand watch it, staring away into it with rather bright, wide-openeyes....
The trees blurred on the lawns. The trunks faded until they seemed likethe trunks of ghost-trees, haunting that ancient shore. It was no longerpossible to distinguish twig from twig where the branches overlapped.
The green grass became a strange, dusky blue; the gray sand of the shorewhitened; the blue-green waters turned to ink except for theirsilver-white caps of foam. Watching closely, our eyes gradually adjustedthemselves to the fading light, conveying the impression that thetwilight was of unusual length. Perhaps we didn't quite know when thetwilight ended and the night began.
The usual twilight sounds reached us with particular vividness from thelagoon and the forest and the shore. We heard the plover, as ever; anddeeper voices--doubtless those of passing sea-birds, mingled withtheirs. But the sounds came intermittently, sharp and penetrating out ofthe darkness and the silence, and they always startled us a little.Sometimes the thickets rustled in the gardens--little, hushed noisesnone of us pretended to hear. A frog croaked, and the hushed littlewind creaked the tree-limbs together. Once some wild creature--possiblya wildcat, but more likely a great owl--filled the night with his weird,long-drawn cry. We all turned, and Van Hope, sitting near by, smiledwanly in the gloom.
Darkness had already swept the verandas, and Van Hope's was the onlyface I could see. The others were already blurred, and even their formswere mere dark blotches of shadow. A vague count showed that there wassix of us here--and I was suddenly rather startled by the thought that Ididn't know just who they were. The group had changed from time to timethroughout the evening, some of the men had gone and others had takentheir chairs, and now the darkness concealed their identities. Itshouldn't have made any difference, yet I found myself dwelling, with astrange persistency, on the subject.
The reason got down to the simple fact that, in this house of mystery,a man instinctively wanted to keep track of all his fellows. He wantedto know where they were and what they were doing. He found himselfworrying when one of them was gone. I suppose it was the instinct ofprotection--a feeling that a man's absence might any moment result ina shrill scream of fear or death in the darkness. Van Hope sat to myleft, a little further to the right was Weldon, the coroner. There werethree chairs further to the right, but which of the five remainingguests occupied them I
did not know.
Three white men--two of the guests and the sheriff--were unaccountedfor. My better intelligence told me that they were either in theliving-room or the library, perhaps in their own rooms, yet it wasimpossible to forget that these men were of the white race, largely freefrom the superstition that kept the blacks safely from the perilousshores of the lagoon. Any one of a dozen reasons might send them walkingdown through the gardens to those gray crags from which they might neverreturn.
I found myself wondering about Edith, too. She had excused herself andhad gone to her room, ostensibly to bed, but I couldn't forget ourconversation of the previous night and her resolve to fathom the mysteryof her uncle's disappearance. Would she remain in the security of herroom, or must I guard her, too?
How slow the time passed! The darkness deepened over land and sea. Themoon had not yet risen--indeed it would not appear until after midnight.The great, white Floridan stars, however, had pushed through the darkblue canopy of the night, and their light lay softly over the gardens.The guests talked in muffled tones, their excited laughter ringing outat ever longer intervals. The coals of their cigars glowed likefireflies in the gloom.
By ten o'clock two of the six chairs were vacant. Two of the guests hadtramped away heavily to their rooms, not passing so near that I couldmake sure of their identity. Soon after this a very deep and curioussilence fell over the veranda.
The two men to my right, Weldon the coroner and one of the guests, weresmoking quietly, evidently in a lull in their conversation. I didn'tparticularly notice them. Their silence was some way natural and easy,nothing to startle the heart or arrest the breath. If they had beentalking, however, perhaps the moment would have never got hold of me asit did. The silence seemed to deepen with an actual sense of motion,like something growing, and a sensation as inexplicable as it wasunpleasant slowly swept over me.
It was a creepy, haunting feeling that had its origin somewhere beyondthe five senses. Outwardly there was nothing to startle me, unless itwas that curious, deepening silence. The darkness, the shore, thestarlit gardens were just the same. Nor was it a perceptible, abruptstart. It came slowly, growing, creeping through me. I had noinclination to make any perceptible motion, or to show that anything wasdifferent than it was before. I turned slowly to Van Hope, sitting to myleft.
Instinctively I knew that here was the source of my alarm. It wassomething that my subconscious self had picked up from him. He wassitting motionless in his chair, his hand that held his cigar halfraised to his lips, staring away into the distant gardens.
There is something bad for the spirit in the sight of an entirelymotionless figure. The reason is simply that it is out of accord withnature--that the very soul of things, from the tree on the hill to thestars in the sky, is motion never ending. A figure suddenly changed tostone focuses the attention much more surely than any sudden sound ormovement. Perhaps it has its origin in the deep-hidden instincts,harking back to those long ago times when the sudden arresting of allmotion on the part of the companion indicated the presence of some greatdanger and an attempt to escape its gaze. Even to-day it indicates athought so compelling that the half-unconscious physical functions aresuspended: a fear or a sensation so violent that life seems to die inthe body.
Van Hope couldn't get his cigar to his lips. He held it between hisfingers, a few inches in front. He was watching so intently that hisface looked absolutely blank. A little shiver that was some way relatedto fear passed over me, and I had all the sensations of being violentlystartled. Then Van Hope suddenly got to his feet with a short, lowexclamation.
Our nerves on edge, instantly all three of us were beside him--Weldon,myself, and Joe Nopp. All of us tried to follow his gaze into the gloom."What is it?" Weldon asked.
Van Hope, seemingly scarcely aware of us before, instantly rallied hisfaculties and turned to us. In a single instant he had wrenched backcomplete self-control--an indication of self-mastery such as I hadrarely seen surpassed. He smiled a little, in the gloom, and dropped hishand to his side.
"I suppose it was nothing," he answered. "I guess I'm jumpy. Maybe halfasleep. But I saw some one--walking through the gardens down by thelagoon."
Van Hope spoke rather lightly, in a wholly commonplace voice. He had notbeen, however, half asleep. The frozen face I had seen was of completewakefulness.
"A man, you say--down by the lagoon?" Weldon asked.
"Yes. Of course there's always a chance for a mistake. Probably itwouldn't be anything anyway--just one of the men getting a little air.Watch a minute--maybe you'll see him again."
We watched in silence, and listened to one another's breathing. But thefaint shadows, in that starlit vista, were unwavering.
"It wasn't likely anything----" Van Hope said apologetically. "I wasthinking, though, that any stranger ought to be investigated----"
"He had, too," Weldon agreed. "Not just any stranger. Any one who goeswalking down there in the darkness ought to be questioned--whether he'sone of us or not. But are you sure you saw anything?"
"Not sure at all. I thought I did, though. I thought I saw him step,distinctly, through a rift in the trees. Excuse me for bothering you."
None of us felt any embarrassment on Van Hope's account, or anysuperciliousness if he had been unnecessarily alarmed. It was whollynatural, this third night of three, to wonder and be stirred by anymoving thing in the darkened gardens.
But we waited and watched in vain. There were no cries from the shore ofthe lagoon. The silence remained unbroken, and after awhile the thoughtturned to other channels.
Van Hope rose at last, hurled his cigar stub to the lawns and for abreath stood watching its glowing end pale and die. The disappearance ofhis old friend had gone hard with him. You could see it in the stoop ofhis shoulders. He looked several years older.
"Nothing to do now--but go to bed," he commented quietly. "Maybe we canget some sleep to-night."
"The third night's the charm," Nopp answered grimly. "How do we know butthat before this night is over we'll be gathered out here again." Hepaused, and we tried to smile at him in the darkness. Nopp was speakingwith a certain grim humor, yet whatever his intentions, none of us gotthe idea that he was jesting. "It's worked two nights--why not three.I'd believe anything could happen at this goblin house----"
We listened to him with relief. It was some way good for our spirits tohave one of us speak out what we had all been thinking and had strainedso hard to hide. Nor did we think less of him for his frankness. We knewat first, and we knew now, that Nopp's nerve was as good or better thanany man in the gathering, and he had never showed it better than inspeaking frankly now.
"Bunk, Nopp," Van Hope answered. "You're mixing coincidence up withatmosphere. It was a strange and a devilish thing that those two crimesshould have happened two nights running, but it will work out perfectlyplausible--mark my words. And coincidences don't happen three times in arow."
Nopp lifted his face to the starlit skies. "My boy," he said, rathersuperciliously, "_anything_ could happen at Kastle Krags."
Kastle Krags: A Story of Mystery Page 18