The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  “Who is this Lawler who was with Mr. Axton then?” Trant looked up interestedly from the last page of the letter.

  “I only know he was a friend Howard made in London—an interesting man who had traveled a great deal, particularly in America. Howard was lonely after his mother’s death; and as Mr. Lawler was about his age, they struck up a friendship and traveled together.”

  “An English younger son, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know anything else except that he had been in the English army—in the Royal Sussex regiment—but was forced to give up his commission on account of charges that he had cheated at cards. Howard always held that the charges were false; but that was why he wanted to travel.”

  “You know of no other trouble which this Lawler had?”

  “No, none.”

  “Then where is he now?”

  “Dead.”

  “Dead?” Trant’s face fell.

  “Yes; he was the friend I spoke of that was lost—drowned in the wreck of the Gladstone just before Howard started home.”

  Trant picked up the next letter, which was dated and postmarked at Calcutta.

  “Miss Waldron, I have seen him again,” he read. “Who, you ask? My Moslem friend with a taste for your correspondence. You see, I can again joke about it; but really it was only last night and I am still in a perfect funk. It was the same man—I’ll swear it—shoeless and turbaned and enjoying the pleasant pursuit of going through my writing desk for your letters. Did he follow us down the Red Sea, across the Indian Ocean—over three thousand miles of ocean travel? I can imagine no other explanation—for I would take oath to his identity—the very same man I saw at Cairo, but now here in this Great Eastern Hotel at Calcutta, where we have two rooms at the end of the most noisome corridor that ever caged the sounds and odors of a babbling East Indian population, and where the doors have no locks. I had the end of a trunk against my door, notwithstanding the fact that an Indian servant I have hired was sleeping in the corridor outside across the doorway, but it booted nothing; for Lawler in the next room had neglected to fasten his door in any way, trusting to his servant, who occupied a like strategic position outside the threshold, and the door between our two rooms was open. I had been asleep in spite of everything—in spite of the snores and stertorous breathing of a floorful of sleeping humans, for the partitions between the rooms do not come within several feet of the ceiling; in spite of the distant bellowing of a sacred bull, and the nearer howl of a very far from sacred dog, and a jingling of elephant bells which were set off intermittently somewhere close at hand whenever some living thing in their neighborhood—animal or human—shifted its position. I was awakened—at least I believe it was this which awakened me—by a creaking of the floor boards in my room, and, with what seemed a causeless, but was certainly one of the most oppressive feelings of chilling terror I have ever experienced, I started upright in my bed. He was there, again at my writing desk, and rustling the papers. For an instant I remained motionless; and in that instant, alarmed by the slight sound I had made, he fled noiselessly, pattered through the door between the rooms and loudly slammed it shut, slammed Lawler’s outer door behind him, and had gone. I crashed the door open, ran across the creaking floor of the other room—where Lawler, awakened by the slamming of the doors, had whisked out of bed—and opened the door into the corridor. Lawler’s servant, aroused, but still dazed with sleep, blubbered that he had seen no one, though the man must have stepped over his very body. A dozen other servants, sleeping before their masters’ doors in the corridor, had awakened likewise, but cried out shrilly that they had seen no one. Lawler, too, though the noise of the man’s passage had brought him out of bed, had not seen him. When I examined my writing desk I found, as before at Cairo, that nothing had been taken. The literary delight of looking over your letters seems to be all that draws him—of course, I am joking; for there must be a real reason. What it is that he is searching for, why it is that he follows me, for he has never intruded on anyone else so far as I can learn, I would like to know—I would like to know—I would like to know! The native servants asked in awe-struck whispers whether I noticed if his feet were turned backwards; for it seems they believe that to be one of the characteristics of a ghost. But the man was flesh and blood—I am sure of it; and I am bound that if he comes again I will learn his object, for I sleep now with my pistol under my pillow, and next time—I shall shoot!”

  Trant, as he finished the last words, looked up suddenly at Miss Waldron, as though about to ask a question or make some comment, but checked himself, and hastily laying aside this letter he picked up the next one, which bore a Cape Town date line:

  “My affair with my mysterious visitor came almost to a conclusion last night, for except for a careless mistake of my own I should have bagged him. Isn’t it mystifying, bewildering—yes, and a little terrifying—he made his appearance here last night in Cape Town, thousands of miles away from the two other places I had encountered him; and he seemed to have no more difficulty in entering the house of a Cape Town correspondent, Mr. Arthur Emsley, where we are guests, than he had before in entering public hotels, and when discovered he disappeared as mysteriously as ever. This time, however, he took some precautions. He had moved my night lamp so that, with his body in shadow, he could still see the contents of my desk; but I could hear his shoulders rubbing on the wall and located him exactly. I slipped my hand noiselessly for my revolver, but it was gone. The slight noise I made in searching for it alarmed him, and he ran. I rushed out into the hall after him. Mr. Emsley and Lawler, awakened by the breaking of the glass, had come out of their rooms. They had not seen him, and though we searched the house he had disappeared as inexplicably as the two other times. But I have learned one thing: It is not a turban he wears, it is his coat, which he takes off and wraps around his head to hide his face. An odd disguise; and the possession of a coat of that sort makes it probable he is a European. I know of only two Europeans who have been in Cairo, Calcutta and Cape Town at the same time we were—both travelers like ourselves; a guttural young German named Schultz, a freight agent for the Nord Deutscher Lloyd, and a nasal American named Walcott, who travels for the Seric Medicine Co. of New York. I shall keep an eye on both of them. For, in my mind at least, this affair has come to be a personal and bitter contest between the unknown and myself. I am determined not only to know who this man is and what is the object of his visits, but to settle with him the score which I now have against him. I shall shoot him next time he comes as mercilessly as I would a rabid dog; and I should have shot him this time except for my own careless mistake through which I had let my revolver slip to the floor, where I found it. By the bye, we sail for home—that is, England—next week on the steamer Gladstone, but, I am sorry to say, without my English servant, Beasley. Poor Beasley, since these mysterious occurrences, has been bitten with superstitious terror; the man is in a perfect fright, thinks I am haunted, and does not dare to embark on the same ship with me, for he believes that the Gladstone will never reach England in safety if I am aboard. I shall discharge him, of course, but furnish him with his transportation home and leave him to follow at his leisure if he sees fit.”

  “This is the first time I have heard of another man in their party who might possibly be the masquerader, Miss Waldron.” Trant swung suddenly in his revolving chair to face the girl again. “Mr. Axton speaks of him as his English servant—I suppose, from that, he left England with Mr. Axton.”

  “Yes, Mr. Trant.”

  “And therefore was present, though not mentioned, at Cairo, Calcutta and Cape Town?”

  “Yes, Mr. Trant; but he was dismissed at that time by Mr. Axton and is now, and also was, at the mysterious man’s next appearance, in the Charing Cross Hospital in London. He had his leg broken by a cab; and one of the doctors there wrote Mr. Axton two days ago telling him of Beasley’s need of assistance. It could not have been Beasley.”

  “An
d there was no one else with Mr. Axton, except his friend Lawler who, you say, was drowned in a wreck?”

  “No one else but Mr. Lawler, Mr. Trant; and Howard himself saw him dead and identified him, as you will see in that last letter.”

  Trant opened the envelope and took out the enclosure interestedly; but as he unfolded the first page, a printed sheet dropped out. He spread it upon his desk—a page from the London Illustrated News showing four portraits with the caption, “Sole survivors of the ill-fated British steamer Gladstone, wrecked off Cape Blanco, January 24,” the first portrait bearing the name of Howard Axton and showing the determined, distinctly handsome features and the full lips and deep-set eyes of the man whom the girl had defied that morning.

  “This is a good portrait?” Trant asked abruptly.

  “Very good, indeed,” the girl answered, “though it was taken almost immediately after the wreck for the News. I have the photograph from which it was made at home. I had asked him for a picture of himself in my last previous letter, as my mother had destroyed every picture, even the early pictures, of him and his mother.”

  Trant turned to the last letter.

  “Wrecked, Miss Waldron. Poor Beasley’s prophecy of disaster has come only too true, and I suppose he is already congratulating himself that he was ‘warned’ by my mysterious visitor and so escaped the fate that so many have suffered, including poor Lawler. Of course you will have seen all about it in the staring headlines of some newspaper long before this reaches you. I am glad that when found I was at once identified, though still unconscious, and my name listed first among the very few survivors, so that you were spared the anxiety of waiting for news of me. Only four of us left out of that whole shipload! I had final proof this morning of poor Lawler’s death by the finding of his body.

  “I was hardly out of bed when a mangy little man—a German trader—came to tell me that more bodies had been found, and, as I have been called upon in every instance to aid in identification, I set out with him down the beach at once. It was almost impossible to realize that this blue and silver ocean glimmering under the blazing sun was the same white-frothing terror that had swallowed up all my companions of three days before. The greater part of the bodies found that morning had been already carried up the beach. Among those remaining on the sand the first we came upon was that of Lawler. It lay upon its side at the entrance of a ragged sandy cove, half buried in the sand, which here was white as leprosy. His ears, the sockets of his eyes, and every interstice of his clothing were filled with this white and leprous sand by the washing of the waves; his pockets bulged and were distended with it.”

  “What! What!” Trant clutched the letter from the desk in excitement and stared at it with eyes flashing with interest.

  “It is a horrible picture, Mr. Trant,” the girl shuddered.

  “Horrible—yes, certainly,” the psychologist assented tensely; “but I was not thinking of the horror,” he checked himself.

  “Of what, then?” asked Caryl pointedly.

  But the psychologist had already returned to the letter in his hand, the remainder of which he read with intent and ever-increasing interest:

  “Of course I identified him at once. His face was calm and showed no evidence of his last bitter struggle, and I am glad his look was thus peaceful. Poor Lawler! If the first part of his life was not all it should have been—as indeed he frankly told me—he atoned for all in his last hour; for undoubtedly, Miss Waldron, Lawler gave his life for mine.

  “I suppose the story of the wreck is already all known to you, for our one telegraph wire that binds this isolated town to the outside world has been laboring for three days under a load of messages. You know then that eighteen hours out of St. Vincent fire was discovered among the cargo, that the captain, confident at first that the fire would be got under control, kept on his course, only drawing in somewhat toward the African shore in case of emergency. But a very heavy sea rising, prevented the fire-fighters from doing efficient work among the cargo and in the storm and darkness the Gladstone struck several miles to the north of Cape Blanco on a hidden reef at a distance of over a mile from the shore.

  “On the night it occurred I awakened with so strong a sense of something being wrong that I rose, partly dressed myself, and went out into the cabin, where I found a white-faced steward going from door to door arousing the passengers. Heavy smoke was billowing up the main companionway in the light of the cabin lamps, and the pitching and reeling of the vessel showed that the sea had greatly increased. I returned and awoke Lawler, and we went out on deck. The sea was a smother of startling whiteness through which the Gladstone was staggering at the full power of her engines. No flame as yet was anywhere visible, but huge volumes of smoke were bursting from every opening in the fore part of the vessel. The passengers, in a pale and terrified group, were kept together on the after deck as far as possible from the fire. Now and then some pallid, staring man or woman would break through the guard and rush back to the cabin in search of a missing loved one or valuables. Lawler and I determined that one of us must return to the stateroom for our money, and Lawler successfully made the attempt. He returned in ten minutes with my money and papers and two life preservers. But when I tried to put on my life preserver I found it to be old and in such a condition as made it useless. Lawler then took off the preserver that he himself had on, declaring himself to be a much better swimmer than I—which I knew to be the case—and forced me to wear it. This life preserver was all that brought me safely ashore, and the lack of it was, I believe, the reason for Lawler’s death. Within ten minutes afterward the flames burst through the forward deck—a red and awful banner which the fierce wind flattened into a fan-shaped sheet of fire against the night—and the Gladstone struck with terrific force, throwing everything and everybody flat upon the deck. The bow was raised high upon the reef, while the stern with its maddened living freight began to sink rapidly into the swirl of foaming waters. The first two boats were overfilled at once in a wild rush, and one was stove immediately against the steamer’s side and sank, while the other was badly damaged and made only about fifty yards’ progress before it went down also. The remaining boats all were lowered from the starboard davits, and got away in safety; but only to capsize or be stove upon the reef. Lawler and I found places in the last boat—the captain’s. At the last moment, just as we were putting off, the fiery maw of the Gladstone vomited out the scorched and half-blinded second engineer and a single stoker, whom we took in with difficulty. There was but one woman in our boat—a fragile, illiterate Dutchwoman from the neighborhood of Johannesburg—who had in her arms a baby. How strange that of our boatload those who alone survived should be the Dutchwoman, but without her baby; the engineer and stoker, whom the fire had already partly disabled, and myself, a very indifferent swimmer—while the strongest among us all perished! Of what happened after leaving the ship I have only the most indistinct recollection. I recall the swamping of our boat, and cruel white waters that rushed out of the night to engulf us; I recall a blind and painful struggle against a power infinitely greater than my own—a struggle which seemed interminable; for, as a matter of fact, I must have been in the water fully four hours and the impact of the waves alone beat my flesh almost to a jelly; and I recall the coming of daylight, and occasional glimpses of a shore which seemed to project itself suddenly above the sea and then at once to sink away and be swallowed by it. I was found unconscious on the sands—I have not the faintest idea how I got there—and I was identified before coming to myself (it may please you to know this) by several of your letters which were found in my pocket. At present, with my three rescued companions—whose names even I probably never should have known if the Gladstone had reached England safely—I am a most enthralling center of interest to the white, black and parti-colored inhabitants of this region; and I am writing this letter on an antiquated typewriter belonging to the smallest, thinnest, baldest little American that ever l
eft his own dooryard to become a missionary.”

  Trant tossed aside the last page and, with eyes flashing with a deep, glowing fire, he glanced across intensely to the girl watching him; and his hands clenched on the table, in the constraint of his eagerness.

  “Why—what is it, Mr. Trant?” the girl cried.

  “This is so taken up with the wreck and the death of Lawler,” the psychologist touched the last letter, “that there is hardly any more mention of the mysterious man. But you said, since Mr. Axton has come home, he has twice appeared and in your room, Miss Waldron. Please give me the details.”

  “Of his first appearance—or visit, I should say, since no one really saw him, Mr. Trant,” the girl replied, still watching the psychologist with wonder, “I can’t tell you much, I’m afraid. When Mr. Axton first came home, I asked him about this mysterious friend; and he put me off with a laugh and merely said he hadn’t seen much of him since he last wrote. But even then I could see he wasn’t so easy as he seemed. And it was only two days after that—or nights, for it was about one o’clock in the morning—that I was wakened by some sound which seemed to come from my dressing-room. I turned on the light in my room and rang the servant’s bell. The butler came almost at once and, as he is not a courageous man, roused Mr. Axton before opening the door to my dressing-room. They found no one there and nothing taken or even disturbed except my letters in my writing desk, Mr. Trant. My aunt, who has been taking care of me since my mother died, was aroused and came with the servants. She thought I must have imagined everything; but I discovered and showed Mr. Axton that it was his letters to me that had appeared to be the ones the man was searching for. I found that two of them had been taken and every other typewritten letter in my desk—and only those—had been opened in an apparent search for more of his letters. I could see that this excited him exceedingly, though he tried to conceal it from me; and immediately afterwards he found that a window on the first floor had been forced, so some man had come in, as I said.”