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Originally printed in Argosy, (1918-sep-12 to oct-19)
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CHAPTER XIThe Red-Black TrailA DEEP swoon is the anesthetic that Mother Nature offers her children when horror or pain becomes too great for bearing. Cliona's faint of terror passed into natural sleep, and when she at last opened her eyes the goblin-be-friendly moon had been ousted by the honest sun, and the room was yellow-bright with reflected light from a morning all cheer and sunshine. She became aware that a small tongue was licking at her face, and that someone was pounding lustily on the locked door. For a moment her brain refused any explanation of why she should be crouching there on the rug, with a joyful puppy wriggling beside her. "Mrs. Rhodes! Mrs. Rhodes, ma'am! Oh, my God, are you killed?" The veil lifted from Cliona's memory, and shaking off Snookums she struggled to rise ** in doing so, one hand fell on some hard, irregular object, and looking she saw that it was the bright-colored image that had been brought her from Mexico. In her fall she must have brushed it from the table. The godling's flat face smiled up as benignly as ever, but the serpent-headed crook it had grasped was gone. Only a thin fragment of porcelain standing out on either side of the clenched fist showed where the staff had been broken off. In a dull, detached way Cliona regretted this damage to Colin's gift. She even thought of searching for the shattered pieces, with an idea that they might be cemented together again. But the hammering on the door was too insistent. Staggering up, she went to unlock it. By the condition of that door the events of the night had been no dream. The lock and one hinge held it partly shut, but the upper hinge had been torn out, splitting a long piece off the jamb; the door itself was split half-way down from the top, and — yes, there was the very place where the white claw had pierced through, and the round, neat holes drilled by her bullets. Cliona had time to observe these things, for at first the key refused to turn. Finally, however, the strained lock yielded and with some trouble she got the door open. There stood Marjory King, gasping with terror and anxiety. As soon as Cliona could entangle herself from the large embrace in which she was received, she stepped past, took one look about the living-room, and sat down with a gasp on the side of an overturned chair. As might have been expected, the place was no more than a spoiled wreck of the cozy, homelike room she had left the night before. But the disorder and breakage were by no means all. On the floor just outside her room was a great pool of black, half coagulated blood, and from that pool a line of similiar dark blotches led through the arch into the dining-room. Cliona could not conceive how any creature that had bled so profusely could have lived even to drag itself from sight. The outer side of her door was literally ripped to flinders, and the door itself gashed and torn as though some mad carpenter had been at work there. The furniture was all upset, and most of it hopelessly smashed. "Mrs. Rhodes," questioned Marjory, "who was here last night?" Cliona shook her head. It ached, and she felt very dull and stupid. That odor of musk still permeated the air, though faintly. "I don't know. Snookums, come here!" The pup had emerged from the bedroom and was sniffing cautiously at the horrible, blackening stuff on the floor. He wore a very chastened expression, quite unlike his usual devil-may-care cocksureness. Cliona took him in her lap and looked wistfully at the cook. "I wish I'd minded you and gone in to the city, Marjory. Tell me, have you looked about the place at all?" "Indeed, no, Mrs. Rhodes. I had the key you give me and I come in through the front door and the veranda. Everything was right there, but when I seen this room, and when I seen that blood and that door, thinks I, 'Mrs. Rhodes has been murdered!'" "It's the mercy of Heaven I wasn't," conceded Cliona simply. "Where is David?" "At the station. They have a big crate down there that must be the sun-dial Mr. Rhodes was ordering. And they operated on our boy last night, ma'am, and they do say he'll get well, after all. But, oh, ma'am, if you should see him it would bring the tears to your eyes. So white, and — and — he knew me, ma'am — and ——" She was wiping her eyes with the black cotton gloves she carried, and Cliona realized that others than herself had been under a heavy strain the previous night, though of a different sort. "Poor, poor Marjory!" she cried impulsively. "Forgive me, my dear, for a selfish, heedless little cat that I never asked you for the word of your son! Would you not like to return to the city that you may be near the poor lad?" "No, indeed, ma'am!" Marjory swallowed her sobs with sudden heroism. "Leavin' you alone last night was bad enough in all conscience, though Lord knows what happened here. I'm sure you ain't told me nothing yet. But right by you I stick now till Mr. Rhodes and your brother gets back. My goodness, they'll be wild when they know!" Cliona slipped on a kimono and slippers, started for the dining room. The cook followed Both women stepped carefully to avoid setting foot in the blood. The dining-room was worse than the other, if possible, and still the trail led on, through the pantry, the kitchen, the summer-kitchen, and out the back door. That was clawed like Cliona's, and burst entirely from its fastenings so that it lay flat. She reflected that the crashing in of that door must have been the sound that was ringing through her brain when the dog awakened her in the night. Over it the creature had evidently passed on its outward way, still shedding its gore with incredible generosity, out into the yard, past the garage, across green lawns, and down the hill, and still Cliona followed the ghastly trail. She forgot that she was attired only in a nightgown, kimono and bedroom slippers. She was conscious of nothing but a horrible and growing curiosity as to what possible or impossible beast might lie at the trail's end. That it was dead seemed certain. No known creature could shed such gallons of blood and live long. The bare fact that no known creature could shed such gallons of blood, whether it continued to live or no, had not yet become apparent to her mind. Her usually acute brain was fogged by terror and the nerve-strain of a shock whose full effects she was yet to feel. Marjory knew it, however, with a certainty that was rapidly turning her mind to all the horrors of the supernatural. But her best efforts to induce her mistress to return to the house were vain. Cliona told the cook to go back if she pleased. For herself, she was going right along now until she found — it. At last the two women came to the foot of the hill and the boundary line of Rhodes' estate — Llewellyn Creek. And there the trail ended in a muck of crimson-streaked mud, as if the creature had rolled and splashed therein the ultimate convulsions of death. But of the creature itself there was no other sign. The far bank was green, peaceful, undisturbed The trail simply ended in the creek-bed, and the little stream flowed happily along, sparkling and chuckling as though it could have told an astonishing thing or two, had it felt at all inclined. It suddenly occurred to Cliona that she had stood staring blankly at the crimson mud for a long, long time. She turned dull, troubled eyes upon Marjory. "Send ——" She stopped Her throat was oddly constricted, as by an agony of unfelt grief. Mentally she was conscious of no emotion, but she experienced that feeling which overtakes a fever patient, as though mind and body were wholly detached from one another, or connected only by threads of gossamer, and those threads swiftly breaking. Again she tried to speak: "Send — Tony ——" Then the green and gold world swirled into blackness, and had Marjory not caught her she would have subsided into the brook. But the cook was a big, strong woman. Lifting Cliona like a child, she bore the small, unconscious form up the hill and into the house. There was David, agape at the wreckage. "Never mind staring!" she cried at him sharply. "Go back down the hill as fast as ever you can. Have a doctor here and phone in a telegram to Mr. Rhodes. You'll get him at the Hotel Metropole. I heard him tell that to this poor child yesterday. Tell him he's wanted at home as quick as he can get here. Move, now!" David, though burning up with curiosity, deemed it wise to obey the keen urge in his wife's voice. He knew her for a capable woman, better able than he to meet emergencies, and as Marjory laid her burden gently on the bed she heard him go out of the door and down the steps in two long strides. "Lord knows what will be the end of this," she muttered as she removed Cliona's slippers, "or what Mr. Rhodes will say or do when he comes home. It was the devil himself that was here last night, I'll swear to it. Not any creature that God ever made — no! The poor child! And her all alone here to meet it!"
"Come home quick," read the wire. "Mrs. Rhodes bad hurt — burglars or something. David B. King." David was not a person of tact. His message had been kept within the ten words he knew to be a telegram's proper length, and it fairly covered the situation as he knew it. But it drove the unlucky recipients into torments of speculative dread. The telegram was handed to Rhodes at the Hotel Metropole two hours after its receipt there, when the two men returned to the hotel for luncheon, and not bothering with the car, they caught the first fast express for home. At Carpentier they dropped from the train while it was still moving and made straight for the hill. To their amazement, as they ascended the winding, tree-shaded road, they began to pass people, men, women, and children. The road was private, and what they were doing here its owner could not conceive. Most of the faces seemed unfamiliar, and they were too many by far to be only the inhabitants of Carpentier. Rhodes stopped to make no inquiries, though had he and Colin not been too preoccupied to buy a paper on the train, the head-lines would have offered an explanation. It was then mid-afternoon. David had notified the central police-station early that morning, and the reporters had allowed no grass to grow under them nor waited for details. The bare story, as it stood, had been sufficient to attract every idle, horror-loving mortal who had the price of the half-hour's railroad journey to Carpentier. Glancing back, Rhodes and O'Hara perceived that more chattering, curious folk, who had arrived on the same train with themselves, were following. But the two asked no questions, even of each other. Shouldering their way through the throng, they at last reached the bungalow, only to be barred from its door by the blue-uniformed figure of a policeman on guard there. "Get out of this!" His tone was that of an officer sorely tried. "Can't you reporter fellows get enough copy without tryin' to butt into the house itself? Mrs. Rhodes can't see nobody." "She can see me," said Rhodes between his teeth "I am her husband. What has happened here?" "Never mind what's happened," growled O'Hara. "We've years to find that out, and — Cliona may be wanting us!" Rhodes obeyed his orders dumbly. He felt suddenly very ill, and as he passed through the veranda he had to support himself by grasping at the chairs. Colin followed him into the living-room, where they received a vague impression of wrecked furniture, restored to some semblance of order or stacked in a corner, heaped over with a ruined pile of beautiful, blood-stained rugs. But their real attention was focused on the strange lady in a white uniform who met them with raised brows and inquiring, hostile eyes. In the back of his mind Rhodes knew that none of this was real. This was some other man's home, not his. His home was a quiet, untroubled place, with Cliona waiting there to smile a welcome; with no throngs of strangers trampling its lawns, no police at the door, nor strange, white-capped women in uniform to meet him in a wrecked room stained with blood. And through the thought he heard his own voice asking: "For God's sake, what has happened to my wife?"
CHAPTER XIIThe Opinion of Mr. MacClellanTHE hostile look faded from the white-clad woman's eyes and her face brightened. "Oh, are you Mr. Rhodes? And the lady's brother? I'm so glad you've come! Dr. Glynn is with her now, and I am sure he will permit you to see her at once, for she is still unconscious." - Cliona was sunk in the depths of a deathlike coma in which she might remain for many hours; and to rouse her from it by the use of powerful restoratives would mean probable insanity, possible death. This was Dr. Glynn's verdict, and it was confirmed by the specialist called into consultation that evening at Glynn's request. In the meantime Rhodes and Colin had learned all that could be known until Cliona's own story should be told — if that time were destined to come. They had talked with Marjory and David; they had followed the same grim trail that Cliona had traced, somewhat overtrodden now, to the deep disgust of both detectives and themselves. By this time the crowd had dispersed and the place was lonely again. Cliona's men folks had returned, then, to talk over the wreckage of furniture, and the splintered doors and floor. The bullet-holes and the empty pistol formed a phase of the silent tale that Blake and MacClellan, the detectives, enlarged upon to the utmost. MacClellan, the elder of the two plainclothesmen, was a large, stolid, matter-of-fact man, and he delivered his verdict in the tone of an ultimatum. "Now then, the possibilities are these." He ticked them off on the stubby fingers of his left hand. "Number One, burglars. Nothing has been stolen, but that don't do away with the intent to steal. There may have been a gang of hoboes; and they may have got in a fight, torn up the place, knifed each other, and finally been scared off by the pistol. "Number two, a lunatic. I say one lunatic, because that sort don't generally hunt in couples. "Number three (and number three, I may as well tell you, is the number I'm banking on as the most probable and the one that fits best), that this whole business was done in the nature of a particularly horrid and vicious practical joke, carried out with elaborate care and directed not at Mrs. Rhodes, who they couldn't have known was alone here ——" "A joke, is it?" snarled O'Hara, eyeing the stolid detective with intense disgust. "A pretty joke it would be for a man to shed his blood by the bucketful and then vanish into thin air! Is it crazy you are?" MacClellan flushed angrily. "No, I ain't crazy. As for blood, how do you know all this red stuff is blood and not some kind of red paint or something?"
The detective continued, "I sent a sample of it in to be analyzed, but I don't believe it is blood at all. Crazy? Why, what kind of man or animal do you think could spill that much blood, anyway? It would take an elephant with wings to get away afterward. "A while ago, Mr. O'Hara, you suggested that some tiger or other wild beast might have escaped from a menagerie and broken its way in. There is nothing to bear that out except the claw marks, or rather the apparent claw marks. Anyway, the beast that could bleed like that would be too large to get in an ordinary doorway." "You've the right of it there," conceded O'Hara regretfully, for he had taken an instinctive dislike to the man and his cocksure way of speaking. By the very look of him he was a man of no imagination, and the type had no appeal for Colin. "You say," objected Rhodes, "that the brute would have needed wings to disappear so completely. Mightn't it have gone up of down the creek bed?" "Blake and me followed the creek pretty nearly a mile in both directions. There wasn't a sign on either bank. How far do you think a beast bleeding like that could get? It ain't even worth while to put dogs on it, though of course if you say so we might try bloodhounds. It won't be a particle of good, though. Whoever done this was human, and with all the other tracks that's been tracked around here, the bloodhounds ain't born that could pick up the trail. "I tell you, this job was done by some crazy fool or fools with a grudge against Mr. Rhodes here. Why didn't the burglar-alarm work?" "I couldn't say," answered Rhodes. "The company who installed it must tell that." "I know it. And when they do, you'll find it was put out of commission in some darned clever way. No beast could have done that, could they? Another thing, there ain't any tracks, except man tracks there. I'll admit that fool gardener of yours let the crowd tramp all over everything before we got here, though the chief warned him over the phone not to do that very thing. "When we came in he was gassing away to a couple of reporters in the house. Spilling everything he'd ever known about the whole family and showing 'em a china image he said had been right in the room with Mrs. Rhodes when this thing happened, and got busted when she fell — as if that gave it the biggest kind of news value! "The man's a fool! If he'd tended to business, instead of letting those reporters jolly him along, Blake and me would have had some show. But even with all the tramping, if the thing was an animal there ought to some trace left." "There is," put in Rhodes quietly. "There is a broad track, trodden over as you say, but still evident." "Where?" "Before your eyes." Rhodes pointed at to turf in front of them. The four men were standing where the trail left the macadamized drive and led off across the grass down the hill. Blake leaned forward and stared keenly at the place Rhodes indicated. Then he rose with a shake of the head. "I don't see anything." "You don't? Why, the grass is laid flat in a long swat." "Oh, that! I didn't know what you meant. That ain't tracks. Somebody's dragged something heavy over the ground." "Sure," put in MacClellan scornfully. "I saw that long ago. That's what I mean when I say this is all the work of some vicious practical joker. Whatever tub or can or thing he used to hold all that red stuff, he dragged it after him as he went along." "The marks on the doors?" MacClellan shrugged "How do I know? A chisel, maybe. This fellow was clean bughouse, perhaps, with just the infernal cleverness and devilish sense of humor that some lunatics have. Or else it's a scheme of some sort in connection with something I don't know about." He looked keenly from Rhodes to O'Hara, a flash of suspicion in his eyes. It was not the first hint he had given that he thought they were keeping something from him. "Ah, now, don't start that again," snapped Colin. "You've already asked us every question in the world, man. What is it you think? That Tony here and myself ran home from the capital yesterday night and raised all this devilment just to destroy his house and the happiness of both of us?" "Certainly not! What I am looking for and what you haven't helped me find, is the possible motive that lies behind. In our business — even you must know this — half the time to find the motive is to find the criminal. You ought to understand that, Mr. Rhodes, you being a lawyer." "If I were the district attorney," observed that young man thoughtfully, "it might be worth while to review my record in search of some desperate criminal who had taken a vow of vengeance against me. But since my only cases have been in the civil courts, and those cases, I must admit, most obscure and unimportant ones, such a review seems hardly worth while." He looked up with a faintly boyish smile. "So far as I know, I haven't a personal enemy in the world!" "Well," said the detective sulkily, "the analysis will show whether it's blood or not, and if you can't tell me anything else you — won't, that's all. Blake and I must be getting back to town." "Sorry we can't help you out," said Rhodes stiffly. "So am I. Well, I'll let you know what the analysis tells us about this stuff that's been spilled around here, and we'll keep right on the job till we get to the bottom of it. By the way, do you want me to send another man out to relieve Morgan for the night?" Morgan was the officer still on guard at the front entrance. But Rhodes shook his head and O'Hara volunteered gloomily: "No need. The harm's done. They'll not come back, whoever they are — though by all the powers, 'tis the one wish of my soul that they might do just that!"
CHAPTER XIIIThe Bungalow Sold"MR. O'HARA, is it really true that you are going down into South America to find a gold-mine?" The speaker's sister, a tall, dignified girl, frowned slightly and wished again that she had left Alberta, better known as "Bert", at home. The child was nearly fifteen, but her frank curiosity was a trait for which her sorrowing family had yet to find means of restraint. Colin, however, rather liked "Bert" Fanning, and he smiled upon her pleasantly enough. "That's my intention. Though," he added whimsically "if I don't find it, 'twill not be the first mine I've dropped the gold into instead of taking it out." "How could you drop it in a mine you couldn't find?" inquired Bert, the matter-of-fact. "Ah, the mine you don't find is an Irish mine — a bit of a bull like that never troubles it at all!" Everyone laughed, and O'Hara beamed, amiably at their appreciation. Again he was seated on a stone bench in Cliona's garden. But the luxuriant growth of Virginia rambler that covered the arbor above him was blossomless and with reddening leaves, for the season was mid-September. Nor was this the hilltop garden at Carpentier. A short distance off rose the gray walls and moss-colored roofs of Green Gables, the new home purchased by Rhodes when it became evident that his wife should be removed to other surroundings than the unlucky bungalow. By the time that Cliona's condition permitted her to be moved, he had acquired this house in a suburb many miles from Carpentier and working together, he and Colin had labored to furnish it in as different a style from the bungalow as be could. On this day, which heralded her return to the freedom of the outer world, Cliona was holding a sort of miniature court in the rose garden. Her throne, a great invalid's chair, gave her more than ever the look of a little girl, and the day being cool though sunny she was half buried in a fluffy tumble of blue-and-white wool wraps. Comfortably cuddled on the foot-rest sound asleep, lay the only memento of her terrible experience for which she had ever expressed a desire — the bull-pup, Snookums. For some minutes Cliona had been sunk in silent reflections. At last, breaking into her brother's conversation with Bert Fanning, she inquired irrelevantly: "Have you heard anything lately from Mr. MacClellan, Colin?" "I have not." He shrugged a trifle contemptuously. "Has he dropped the case, then?" "It's still in his hands." "Those chaps are not an overly brilliant lot, are they?" put in young Stockton Repplier. He was a fresh-faced, intelligent-looking boy, a distant relative of old Elbert Marcus, another guest. "As I understand it, they simply ignored your story, Mrs. Rhodes, and went off on a blind lead. Now any reasonable person must concede that the thing was some sort of wild beast and not ——" The young man suddenly broke off and subsided, with a scared glance at his hostess. Rhodes had caught his eye. But the invalid only laughed. "Come round here, Tony — and don't alarm poor Mr. Repplier like that! I know the doctor has told you that I am not to talk of that night, but really, I'm long past the hysterical stage. I was foolish about it for a while, but not any more. Are you perfectly sure, Tony, that this Mr. Brandon is going to buy the bungalow?" "Perfectly. I am to meet him tomorrow at the office of his lawyers to conclude the deal. In another twenty-four hours the last thread of connection will be severed between ourselves and poor Cousin Roberts' bungalow. Are you glad, Cliona?" She pondered, as if not sure of her reply, then said slowly: "Yes, I am glad. Forgive me, people, for bringing up so unpleasant a subject, but — you don't know how I think and think about it! And whenever the picture of the place rises in my mind, it is as if a horrible red shadow had been laid on the house. "Don't laugh — had you been there that night you'd not even smile, Tony dear! I tell you there's a red, red shadow hangs over it — and there's a thing that waits and hides watching for us three to come back there. I couldn't bear that any one of us should walk under the edge of that red shadow again!" She was sitting straight up in her chair, her eyes shining and her lately pale face burning with a dangerous color. "I am sure," said old Mr. Marcus earnestly, "that it would be far better if you could put the whole affair out of your mind, Mrs. Rhodes." "Yes," agreed Colin with elaborate carelessness, "the place is sold now, so Tony will have no business there. And for myself, there'll soon be a few thousand miles' curve of the earth betwixt me and Carpentier. You've no cause to fret any more, Cliona." His sister regarded him with puzzled, troubled eyes. Slowly the color faded and she sank back wearily, still with her gaze fixed on him. "You said you'd not leave till I was well again," she reminded, in the tone of one renewing some former discussion. "Nor do I — the doctor himself told me yesterday that all danger is past and gone." "And — and you said you would not go till you'd got at the true secret of all that happened!" Sensing a certain strain in the atmosphere, the two Fanning girls and young Repplier drifted off into conversation with Marcus on a different subject. "I showed you Finn's letter," Colin said. "A good man he is, Charley Finn. I learned him well in the Klondike. When he says he's on the trail of a big find, you may reckon on the weight of his word. And it doesn't seem we'll solve our mystery now." "And so your foot to the stirrup and off you go!" "But surely, Cliona, you'd not ask me to live my whole life out like a cat at a rat-hole, and maybe the rat dead or gone on his travels?" "N-no — oh-no, Colin. If you really feel so about it, and as Mr. Finn is expecting you, in Buenos Aires, then go by all means." But as she finished Cliona turned away her face and bit at a trembling lower lip. She was yet very weak, and this was the first time in her life that her big brother had turned from her when her need actually called to him. A little later, all the guests save Marcus had departed, and the convalescent, complaining of weariness, had been wheeled into the house by the trained nurse still in attendance. "It's a darned shame!" ejaculated Marcus, and Colin started guiltily. But as the old man continued he realized that the remark was not intended to apply to him. "If we had any detectives worthy of the name the scoundrel, responsible for that outrage would not go unpunished!" "What can one do?" inquired Rhodes resignedly. "MacClellan is firmly convinced, I know, that we have withheld some information that would have helped solve the problem. It has seemed to me that in consequence his work was very half-hearted. He believes, too, that Cliona's memories were confused with subsequent delirium and thereby robbed of value. "It is true that the analysis showed real blood to have been shed, and that it was the blood of another animal than man. But he contends that it would have been easy to bring the stuff from a slaughter-house. The alarm wires had not been interfered with. The trouble lay in the insulation where a leaking drain had rotted it. I'll admit the fault as my own, since I had not tested the system for a week. "But though that does away with one of MacClellan's objections to the beast theory, nothing will shake his conviction that the affair was one of revenge, and that I know a cause for it. It may be that he hides behind that as an excuse for not solving the problem. I don't know. I spent some time over it, myself, but every clue I could find ended, like that red-black trail down the hill, in emptiness and air." "Well, if a lawyer and a detective can't find the answer, I suppose it is useless for a layman like myself to attempt it. I hope you will have the best of fortune in Argentina, Mr. O'Hara. Since you are leaving in a few hours, I shall say goodby, now," said Marcus. "Thanks. Doubtless I'll have the fortune I deserve — they say every man gets that in the end. Goodby and good luck to yourself, also." But when Marcus had gone, Colin spoke somewhat uneasily. "Tell me, Tony, do you think Cliona will fret herself at my going — enough to harm her, I mean?" "Why should she? Don't worry, old man. I'll take care of her, and when you return, believe me, you'll find the warmest welcome a man ever had. By Heaven, I hate to see you go! I shall miss you as I never thought I'd miss the company of any man!" O'Hara's freckled face darkened with an embarrassed flood of color. "That's a kindly thing to say, Tony, and it's not just any man I'd have trusted Cliona to in marriage. As for coming back, the trip may not take so long after all. But think little of it if you hear nothing from me in long whiles. I'm a bad correspondent, and where I'm going I may not care to write from, lest the message be traced. This is rather a secret expedition, you must understand!" Exactly how secret it was, and how easily a message might have led to discovery, Rhodes would have more readily comprehended had he stood at O'Hara's side two days later. Colin's surroundings did not remotely resemble the decks of the passenger steamer on which he was supposed to be then en route for the distant South American republic. In fact, he had just descended from a fussy, self-important little local train, and the sign that stared him in the face above the door of the tiny station would have explained to his sister in one word all the mystery of his seeming indifference to her welfare. That was "Carpentier." "No man or beast," said Colin to himself, "can frighten my little sister out of her five wits, and me to take no proper heed of it! Charley Finn will forward her the letters I have sent him from Buenos Aires, and the place where I am need make no difference, just so she believes me elsewhere. "Now we'll see if the job of that poor fool MacClellan cannot be improved on, even though the trail is so old and stale! Cliona has the seeing eye, and I know she felt sure that if any of us three should live here there would be another visitation. One O'Hara gave them the welcome of a few friendly bullets. Now let them call on the other! Maybe he'll do yet better. 'Tis my own house now, that I've paid Tony well for, though of that the lad has no notion, and here I'll receive whom I please and Cliona be none the wiser or more worried!"
CHAPTER XIVThe Second VisitationMR. COSMO STACKFIELD, rounding a sharp curve with no warning hornblast, swerved, swore, and bringing his car to a halt, turned in his seat. "I say," he called back, "I wasn't trying to run you down, O'Hara!" "Oh! I thought you were." "Are you people back at the bungalow?" inquired Stackfield. "I trust Mrs. Rhodes is recovered from the results of her fright." "She is," retorted the other with intentional briefness. "She's not here. I came out by myself for the solitude. When a man's used to the open, he wearies of just hearing people chatter. So I'm living alone for a while. Good day to you, sir." Colin's rudeness was too gross and too obviously intentional for Stackfield to ignore longer. A slow flush tinged his flabby cheeks, and with a muttered word that sounded less like "good day" than some term not so polite, he sped past on his road to the city. O'Hara smiled grimly after his defeated interrogator, but the incident gave him food for thought. Had he too greatly relied on not being acquainted with people is this neighborhood? Having arrived only yesterday, Stackfield was the second man who had greeted him on his early morning stroll. Secrecy promised to be a difficult achievement. Laying the matter aside as one that must be left to chance, O'Hara turned back toward Carpentier. Having no particular fancy for housekeeping, he had engaged a middle-aged woman to come up by the day, cook his meals, and keep the bungalow in order. Luncheon that day proved one sad fact conclusively. Promising of all housewifely virtues as had been the neat vine-covered cottage from which Colin had wrested her to his own service, Mrs. Bollinger could not cook. The house had been thoroughly repaired, even to the laying of new planks in the scarred living-room floor, and the furniture left undamaged was plenty for his needs. Four days he spent, reading — an occupation of which he was always fond — and wandering about the now-neglected gardens. Ten o'clock of the fifth evening found him going about his usual preparations for the night. They were painstaking, though of a sort which would have astonished Mrs. Bollinger. Most people expecting an undesirable caller do not leave doors and windows unlocked — certainly not invitingly ajar. Nor does the burglar-expecting householder prefer his home to be in utter darkness from ten o'clock on throughout the night. Having little use for the police at any time, Colin had disconnected the burglar alarm. Now he sought the kitchen and returned, his arms laden with tin aluminum utensils, to be stacked in high tottery piles behind the doors opening inward upon the living-room from the veranda and from the pantry into the dining-room, placing them so, rather than at the outer doors, lest the intruder be frightened away too early for successful pursuit. As he carried out this simple and homely expedient for providing noise when noise should be least welcome, he whistled quite cheerfully for a man expecting so very strange a visitation. Then he lay down fully dressed, in the room that had been his sister's.
Four nights his light slumber had been unbroken, but on this fifth night he suddenly awakened, every sense alert in the black darkness. Something, he knew, was imminent. Something had telegraphed a warning to his sleeping brain. A sound? He listened keenly, intently. From far away came the faint whistle of a locomotive. Against his window he heard a slight tapping sound — then a flutter, accompanied by a mouselike squeaking. A wind-blown vine tapping the pane — the squeak of a bat. Those sounds should not have roused him. With stealthy noiselessness, O'Hara slid from his bed and stole across the floor. The night was moonless, with an overcast sky, and save for the dim, oblong shapes of the windows the darkness within the bungalow was absolute. But O'Hara saw the location of every piece of furniture in the light of a carefully schooled memory, and he made no blunders. Every sense quivering with a vivid expectation, he peered into the living-room. What had awakened him? A dream? He had not been dreaming. Sheer nervousness? He knew himself too well for that to receive consideration. He heard no sound, felt no vibration. He had fallen asleep in a house empty save for himself. It was not empty now. He knew it, felt it, yet could give himself no reason for the assurance. As noiselessly as he had crossed the bedroom he passed through the living-room. From the portièred arch he stared on into further silent blackness. On turning back, however, O'Hara became aware that a change had befallen the space behind him. Vaguely he could now perceive dark masses — chairs, a table; even, though faintly, the rug on which he stood. It was some seconds before he perceived the source of this illumination, which was, by infinitesimal degrees, growing steadily brighter. Between living-room and veranda the partition was pierced by two windows, glazed and hung with thin, ivory-yellow curtains. Three other windows, similarly draped, opened upon a lawn beyond the angle formed by the veranda's end wall. On sunny days nearly as much light was reflected through one set of windows as the other, for the veranda was finished in yellow spruce and faced south. Now, however, the windows toward the lawn were invisible behind their curtains, while those opening upon the veranda had become faintly glowing rectangles of yellowish light. It was not a steady light. It throbbed, first dim, then brighter, in a long, regular pulsation. O'Hara's first impulse was to spring across the room and sweep the curtains aside. His second was better. A view through the window might gratify his curiosity, but he wanted a more practical satisfaction than that. He would take no chance of giving a premature alarm by spying between curtains. The light, which until now had continually increased, ceased to grow, but continued to throb. Still no sound came from the other side of the partition, nor could he see anything through the translucent window draperies. He stood there in the dim twilight of the living-room and the two windows hung like yellow, oblong Chinese lanterns, pulsing between light and shadow, but giving no other hint of the presence that must be back of them. At last Colin moved. Crouchingly he stole toward the door, body half bent, ready at any moment to leave creeping and spring. Even to him the stillness had become somewhat ghastly. If enemies were there, why did they make no move? What could be the object of this ghostly and silent illumination? They did not, could not know that he was aware of their presence. What was there in the veranda to hold their attention for so long a time? Then Colin committed a folly for which he never afterward quite forgave himself. In the intensity of his desire to reach the door, fling it wide and take the enemy unaware, he forgot his own precautions against its noiseless opening. As his hand closed on the knob one foot grazed the little pile of precariously balanced tinware. Over it went, clashing and clattering, a most satisfactory alarm — had he not been the one to spring it!
CHAPTER XVThe Third VisitationTHE racket so startled its originator that he leaped backward, collided with a taboret, and sent that over. The oblongs of light in the southern wall vanished abruptly. Further stealth was absurdly useless. Colin flung himself at the door, wrenched it open and, reaching upward, snapped on the general light switch of the veranda. It sprang into dazzling visibility, but no one was there. Colin made sure of its emptiness in one swift look that included the space beneath a large table and a wicker divan, snapped off the light — he had no desire to form a mark for bullets — and was at the outer door. It stood ajar as he had left it. Outside, the darkness was nearly as impenetrable as within the house, but for that there was a remedy. Opening a concealed steel switch-box, Colin pulled a lever and sprang down the steps. The lever completed the circuit for several powerful lamps about the grounds, and by their aid he began a search which he felt in the beginning would be fruitless. He had only himself to blame. The unknown foe had walked into the trap, so he told himself, and his own careless foot had kicked it open. Raging, he darted from tree-shadow to tree-shadow, cautious even in his fury, but lawns, gardens, and outbuildings were empty as the veranda itself. For any signs to the contrary, that dim irradiation of the windows might have been a product of his over-stimulated imagination. "The cowards — the sneaking, crawling cowards!" he muttered angrily. "Afraid of the noise of a tin pot or so! 'Tis myself has a notion to give them no further attention!" But as he flung himself into a chair in the living-room he knew that he would sit there the balance of the night, nourishing the hope that again those two windows might slowly, uncannily illuminate themselves. They did, but it was by the matter-of-fact light of a desolate dawn. Disgustedly Colin replaced his too-efficient burglar-alarms in the kitchen, undressed, got into bed, and slept soundly until nearly noon.
"It's busted, but I didn't do it, Mr. O'Hara. It was laying broke on the floor when I come in!" "That? Where were you finding it?" Colin's brows knit as he took from his housekeeper the shattered object of her protestation. "I tell you it was laying on the veranda floor when I come in. Honest, I never even seen it before, Mr. O'Hara!" Mrs. Bollinger's lean, corded hands twisted themselves nervously in her apron. Though no ceramic expert, there was a quaint beauty about the broken manikin that warned her of possible value. "H-m!" ejaculated Colin. "It must have been left here with the rest of the furniture when we took Cliona away — though I can't remember seeing it about. All right, Mrs. Bollinger, I likely knocked it down myself last night." When she had gone he stood for some minutes eyeing the image in his hands. The poor little "Lord of the Air" had certainly found bad fortune in the alien land to which Colin had brought him. First he had lost his serpent crook, and now the round, feather-trimmed shield on the other arm had been broken off, arm and all. Yet still he smiled patient benignity. "'Tis odd," muttered Colin, "that I never saw you standing about in the veranda, little man. It's a wonderful faculty you have for being broke in the midst of a mystery! Well, your bit of staff is gone for good, but the shield and arm here can be restored to you, and shall be for the sake of the dream you will always bring to memory. Smile away, little man! Cement will work miracles!" With a whimsical smile he set the image and its broken part on a shelf and promptly forgot them both. That there could be any actual connection between the Lord of the Air and their troubles at the bungalow never once occurred to him. How should it? Dream or reality, that strange night of so long ago had held nothing for him that could have led him to suspect the truth — a nightmare, dreadful truth for whose discovery he was at the last to pay a heavy price. When a full fortnight had slipped by, its monotony unrelieved, Colin's patience wore decidedly threadbare. He did not at all like this game of waiting and watching. He dared make no new acquaintances, and rebuffed what advances were offered him. Afternoons and evenings he spent in reading, or in taking long tramps through the autumn woods, while at all times he kept a sharp lookout for any clue, small or large, that might serve to simplify his problem. But September passed, and October struck the woods to sharp reds and gold, and still he had discovered nothing. The time began to drag intolerably. What people he met looked at him with irritating curiosity, born of his unusual appearance and solitary habits. The last week of October crept in. The thick foliage that hid the bungalow was beginning to thin in places, and the lawns were a-rustle with bright leaves, when that occurred which led Colin to take renewed hope of his long vigil. The sun had set, a blood-red ball behind the purple autumn haze, and Colin stepped out of his front door to take a few long breaths of the crispy cool night air. Then he would go in to the lonely and ill-cooked dinner which Mrs. Bollinger had laid out before departing for the night. That good woman glanced back through the twilight at the dark mass of screening foliage that still concealed the bungalow, and went her way with many shakes of the head and a hastening step. It was already night beneath the trees that overhung her road. "The poor man will have to get some one else to wait on him," she reflected as she hurried along, "or else I must leave earlier. It's all right for him to live in a house that the devil visited, if he likes that sort of thing. But goodness knows, Mr. O'Hara is big enough to thrash even Satan himself, but I'll never stay in that house again after dark, no matter how bad we need the money. And I'll tell him so tomorrow morning, first thing. There was that rustling in the trees last night as I went home, and I was a perfect fool to stay so late — oh!" The woman suddenly picked up her skirts and fled like a rheumatic but badly frightened deer. A little distance from the road there had begun a great rustling and crackling of fallen leaves, and at the same time something whizzed through the air and struck her a painful blow on the cheek. The missile was only a chestnut burr, but its sharp prickles more than made up for its light weight. Poor Mrs. Bollinger dashed into Carpentier at a gallop, under the firm impression that she had been shot in the face by a rifle bullet. Her story, however, was somewhat skeptically met. A bullet is supposed to leave some visible mark of its passage, and anyway no neighbor of hers was quite neighborly enough to care for investigating those dark woods with their evil reputation. So the injured lady retrieved her children from the care of a friend and retired to her home, nursing a stung face and the firm resolve that not even daylight should tempt her to return to the bungalow on the hill.
Colin strode up and down the macadamized drive, beneath the arching trees. He had that day received his first letter from Cliona, which had gone the long route to Buenos Aires and back, remailed by the faithful Charles Finn. She was much better, it seemed, in fact practically well, but Tony babied her dreadfully, and they were going down to St. Augustine the first of December. They missed him, Colin, very much indeed, but she presumed and hoped that he was happy and having a good time. She supposed by now he must be well on his way across the Pampas. In that case this letter might never reach him, but she hoped it would so that he might know how well she was and enjoy his chosen road untroubled by care for her. Tony sent his love with hers, and Snookums had caught a rat, but it bit him and got away. She hoped he would think of her sometimes, and remember that she was always his faithfully loving sister, Cliona Rhodes. "Now, why," said Colin as he paused beneath a spreading oak and kicked at the dry leaves with an impatient foot, "why Cliona Rhodes? That's the first time she was ever any other than just Cliona, or maybe Cli, to her poor runabout brother. And I wonder, have I left Buenos Aires or no? If I have not, 'twould be an easy matter to lay up poor Charley with a broken leg and postpone the expedition; or myself with a fever requiring immediate return that I be cured of it. "I'm thinking the O'Hara has made a fool of himself. Now, will he be the bigger fool to stay here, or to throw up the whole business and return for a pleasant reconciliation with this Cliona Rhodes that's so formal of a sudden with her only born brother?" He pondered a while longer, then threw back his red head in a gesture of decision. What that decision may have been is immaterial, for just then something rustled the boughs above him with a violent, crashing motion, and two enormous, hairy hands closed in a strangling grip about the Irishman's throat. Colin had so, nearly resigned any hope of being attacked, and had so little reason to expect attack to descend upon him out of a tree and at that early hour of the night, that he came near to being strangled before he could realize what was taking place. The hands that had gripped him were unnaturally long and sinewy. The fingers overlapped on his by-no-means slender throat as his own might have twined about the neck of a child. And as they squeezed inward they pulled upward. Colin's two hundred and thirty pounds of bone and muscle actually rose into the air, till only his toes touched the ground. He enjoyed all the sensations of a man being unexpectedly hanged, and as such a man would grasp at the rope over his head, so his hands flew up to seize the thing above him. His fingers closed on shaggy hair over iron-hard muscles. The blood was pounding in his ears, and the transparent darkness brightened to a red, star-spangled mist. If it had been a rope about his neck, his effort to raise himself might have relieved the strain, but in this case the rope was alive and squeezing inward with murderous intent. Fortunately for Colin, though his assailant was strong enough to raise his victim clean off the ground, the tree limb which supported the operation was less efficient. As Colin struggled there came a sharp, loud crack. Next instant he was down on the macadam, part of a frantic, writhing tangle of legs, arms, and the dry bough that had saved his life by breaking. The fall loosened his assailant's hold and they met on equal terms. Over and over they rolled, the Irishman breathing in great gasps as he at first strove only to keep those terrible hands from regaining their grip on his throat.
Devil or man or monkey, it was the strongest, most thoroughly energetic antagonist he had ever encountered. It had been silent, but now it was snarling in a slobbering, avid sort of way that made Colin's gorge rise in disgust even as he fought. But his own strength was fast returning, and with one mighty effort he tore the great thing loose, flung it back off his body, and got to his feet, half crouched and straining his eyes through the gloom. A pale bulk rose at him in a long leap, its grasping arms outstretched. With the quickness of a trained wrestler Colin caught one of the wrists in both his hands, turned his back, and with the arm over one shoulder bore down with all his force. There was a cracking noise, as when the branch snapped off, but not so loud, accompanied by a snarl of pain. The white thing came flying over Colin's head and landed with a heavy thud on the macadam before him. Releasing his hold on the arm, he grasped at the body of his victim, but the creature evaded him. Showing remarkable activity, in view of its broken arm and the bad fall it had sustained, the thing was on its feet in an instant, rustling and pattering across the leaf-strewn lawn with Colin in furious pursuit. The latter was unarmed. Though he had brought with him to the bungalow a large-caliber pistol whose bullets would pierce a four-inch hardwood plank, he had, quite characteristically, never even removed it from his suitcase. Each night he had sat watchful, content in the confidence of his own great strength, but now he wished with all his heart that he had the weapon with him. Had the season been summer, the fugitive might have easily escaped. Beneath the scattered trees it was dark as a cellar, and only the creature's own whiteness made it dimly visible in the starlit open spaces. But the dry leaves of autumn traced its progress, and though Colin ran against more than one tree-trunk and had to stop occasionally to distinguish the noise of its flight from his own he managed to follow down the hill, across Llewellyn Creek, and into some denser woods beyond. There began an increased rustling and a crashing of boughs ahead. Colin realized that his former assailant had left the ground and was swinging itself from bough to bough through the forest. To follow farther seemed folly. Nevertheless, the Irishman kept doggedly on, following the trail of noise and never getting very far behind it. Perhaps its broken arm retarded the creature's speed. At any rate, though he stumbled among vines, tore his clothes and flesh on briers, climbed fences, fell headlong over rotting logs, and generally suffered great personal inconvenience, the pursuer kept always within hearing distance of the pursued. It was heart-breaking work. Only a man of supernal strength, stamina, and stubbornness could have held to that mad hunt, mile after mile, as did Colin O'Hara. The fugitive avoided houses, and for that reason they by no means went as the crow flies. Several times they crossed roads, and once Colin dashed across a turnpike just in front of a whizzing automobile. The driver slowed to look back and swear, but Colin had neither time nor attention to spare for his grievance. On, on, on, and still ahead of him the October foliage betrayed that wild flight from tree-top to leaf-strewn glade, and up to the branches again. Colin had lost all sense of direction. Save for the occasional roads and fences they crossed, and judged by the route they had come, this section of suburbia one vast and trackless forest. Colin was no mean woodsman, but never before had he explored such an apparent wilderness, through black night and at so breathless a pace. He had begun to believe that the chase would never end, and that so long as he followed the untiring thing ahead would flee, when the noise ceased. Stopping in his tracks he listened intently. Only the small, usual sounds of night broke the stillness, the chirp of a late cricket, the thud of a ripe chestnut burr falling to the ground and far away a honking auto horn. Had his quarry taken counsel of common sense and hidden itself in a treetop? If so, then the chase was indeed ended. In that darkness, without dogs or torches, he could not hope to find its hiding place. Again Colin began to move forward as silently and swiftly as he might, still listening for any significant rustle before or above him. He came to a deep ditch, just missed falling into it, leaped across and found himself on a broad, smooth road, electrically illuminated at wide intervals. An explanation of the silence occurred to him. This road was practically bare of the telltale leaves. Was it possible that the fugitive had left the false protection of the trees and taken to the road? If so, in which direction had it gone? To the right, far down the way, a pale, squat bulk glided into view, slinking on short-bowed legs — into the light of a lamp and out again like a fleeting white shadow. Colin gave vent to a wild hallo and dashed in pursuit. He caught occasional glimpses of the thing ahead as it passed beneath the road-lamps, and thought that he was at last gaining ground. In a foot-race, over smooth going, the creature of the trees had the worst of it. The road curved, crossed a stream, and a high stone wall replaced the forest on the left-hand side. Scarcely the length of a city square now separated the Irishman from his quarry. Then he saw it pause directly beneath a lamp, a semihuman shape, and shake one long, thin arm at him, as if in defiance. The other hung limp at its side. Colin shouted again and increased his speed. His feet pounded over the hard oiled road in giant strides, but again the creature flitted from the circle of light, this time to one side. Colin pulled up and came on more slowly, for a shrill bell was ringing somewhere behind the wall. There followed a rattle, a clang as of iron, and then the creaking of hinges. A voice spoke, mumbling indistinctly, and Colin arrived at a pair of wrought-iron gates just in time to have them shut in his face with a vicious clang.
CHAPTER XVIAdmittedO'HARA stepped up and, grasping the elaborate iron scroll-work, shook the gate angrily. "Here, you," he cried, "if this is the city zoo, what do you mean by letting your ferocious baboons and gorillas roam the country at large?" The guardian of the gate, he who had opened it for the ape's entrance and closed it in the face of its pursuer, made no reply, unless an incoherent mutter could be so accounted. He seemed a tall, thin man, dressed in rough corduroys, and his narrow, triangular face peered out at Colin through the floral scrolls with a curiously furtive looks. Colin could see him very well by the light of the road-lamp, and thought that his face had a whiteness, as if the man had been badly frightened, or was just risen from a sick bed. "What's that?" demanded Colin, his indignation growing as he recalled the difficulties and discomforts of his long run and the unpleasant combat preceding it. "You need make no excuses to me! I saw the brute come in here, though I do not see him now, and I wish to come in myself and talk with the man who has charge of this place and takes in raging gorillas like they were invited guests at a parish lawn party! Will you admit me, or will I break down this fancy gate of yours?" He gave it so violent a shake that the man inside jumped back. "Stop!" he cried excitedly. "Stop it instantly! You are making a noise — a big noise! Stop it!" The man's voice came out of his lips as if there were no teeth behind them, in a kind of hushed and mumbling shriek. But he had teeth, for as Colin loosened his grasp and the man again thrust his face against the scroll, they were bared in an animal snarl. His glaring eyes reflected the lamplight with a reddish gleam. A little shiver of cold crept down the Irishman's spine. Almost involuntarily he retreated a step. But Colin O'Hara was not the one to be done out of satisfaction for his wrongs by a white-faced, red-eyed, silly-mouthed booby hiding behind a gate, and so he intimated in very positive terms. "And," he concluded, "you will now permit me to speak with the gentleman who has the bad taste to keep you and your brother that you just let in for household pets! And if you do not, I'll come in, whether or no. We'll see if the O'Hara must chase wild apes over bog and ditch and win his pains for his trouble!" At that the keeper of the gate moved sulkily away, mumbling over his shoulder: "You must wait, then, till I go to the master." "I'll wait, but don't try my patience too far now!" The figure vanished into the darkness that lay beyond the wall. O'Hara, peering after him, could see only a few square yards of leaf-matted gravel, on which the pattern of the gate was laid in shadow by the lamp behind him. Beside it rose a roughly peaked cubic mound of reddening ivy, which he took to be either a much-neglected gate-lodge or a monument of some sort. Probably the latter, for there was no sign of door or window. Beyond only dark tree masses loomed against the starry sky. No lights gleamed through the branches, nor did any sound come out save when the night-breeze faintly rustled the dry leaves. "A queer place and no mistake," muttered Colin; "and I'm thinking that once in the O'Hara may wish himself out again. I wonder has this beast I've chased here anything at all to do with the other matters? Could a monkey, however knowing, have done the things that were performed at the bungalow? No, likely this is an occurrence by itself, and I'll just give the beast's owner a piece of my mind and go home again." Having reached this conclusion, Colin began to weary of such long waiting. The gate-keeper had now been absent at least a quarter of an hour, and for any evidence of life the Irishman might have been the only human being within miles. Not even a car had passed on the pike behind him. He shifted from one foot to the other and swore softly. "The white-faced fool has played me some trick!" he grumbled. "Very like 'twas through his fault that the beast got loose, and he's never gone near his precious master." Well, there was a bell connected with this gate. He had heard it sing. Searching for a moment he located a push-button and set his thumb firmly against it. The bell rang; but it rang inside the ivy-covered heap beside the gate. It was a lodge, then. The shrill clamor sounded so startlingly near and out of place in the silence that Colin hesitated a moment before ringing again. Was that vague rustling sound from inside the lodge, or was it the wind among the leaves? It ceased after a moment. Colin waited, then as no one came he rang again. For fully five minutes he continued to ring, first steadily, then in long and short assaults on the bell-push. But the noise he made was his sole reward. Disgusted, and at last really angry, O'Hara drew back from the gate and contemplated the wall. Fully ten feet high it extended right and left in an unbroken barrier. "My coat to the wall," said Colin, proceeding to take it off, "and I'll soon be over." The garment with which he intended padding the sharp, wicked-looking spikes was in his hand, and he was about to fling it upward when he arrested his arm and hastily slipped the coat on again. A sound had reached his ear from beyond the gate. Either the gatekeeper was returning or the bell had at last roused someone else to action.
Again he, peered into the grounds. Out of the darkness a figure emerged, walking with a brisk, firm tread, and close behind glimmered the white face and red eyes of his first acquaintance, the gate-keeper. As the newcomer advanced, Colin could perceive, even in the dim, shadow-streaked light, that he was a bearded man, that he wore a pair of round glasses with tortoise rims, and that he was frowning angrily. "Are you the ruffian who broke that poor brute's arm? Marco, open the gate and have him come in!" O'Hara was so taken aback by this forestalling of his own complaint that Marco, he of the white face, had time to unlock and swing wide the portals before he could think of any fit reply. But he had no hesitation about entering. In he stalked and confronted the newcomer, while behind him the gates shut, clanging. "I am the man your beast would have strangled," he began indignantly; "and for why do you let him run wild at night, the way he might have killed me had I been a small, weak man? Strangling at the throat of me when I am meditating in my own dooryard! Or is it that you are training the handsome creature for murder?" At that the bearded man laughed. His tone was low, amused, with just the faintest hint of a sneer somewhere about it. "Pray, my dear sir, don't carry your accusation to the point of absurdity. If, as you hint, it was Khan who attacked you first, I owe you an apology. Perhaps we had best go to the house and discuss this quietly. Will you follow me, sir?" O'Hara hesitated, but only momentarily. He was possessed of a dubious feeling, scarcely amounting to suspicion, that wisdom would carry his feet elsewhere than inward. To O'Hara, however, discretion was ever an uninteresting virtue. When the bearded man led the way into the dark shadows of the trees, after him went Colin. He was still conscious of a sense of repulsion toward the white-faced gate-keeper, following close at his heels, and of a generally eerie and disagreeable impression. But no doubt this was folly, and no man, not even such a one as this gate-keeper, can help the looks he is born with. As for the ungainly monster he had chased here, it was most likely a valuable pet, whose ferocity might or might not be known to its master. Barely able to see his way, Colin was not aware that they had approached a house until the drive curved sharply aside and they arrived at an entrance, the light of whose open door was shielded by a deep stone porch and a porte-cochère, arching above the driveway. From the look of these he judged the mansion to be one of considerable size and dignity, but whether a private residence or a public institute of some kind, he was not yet able to determine. The three men ascended the steps, passed through the porch, and came into a square, old-fashioned reception hall. Within the door the master of the house turned to his guest. He was an older man than the latter had at first supposed, for the carefully trimmed Vandyke beard was thickly streaked with gray. But the dark eyes behind the great, round lenses were very bright, his expression was keenly intelligent, and these characteristics, together with his quick, alert way of moving, lent him a deceptive look of youth. As he stood, Colin noticed that he kept his left hand in the pocket of his coat. He noticed it, because that hand had been in that pocket since the first moment of their meeting. Colin had seen other men's left or right hands concealed in the same consistent manner, and it generally meant one thing. He himself was unarmed. "Will you be seated, sir?" inquired the man courteously enough. "I must ask you to excuse me while I give Marco some directions for the setting of Khan's arm. The poor brute is suffering." O'Hara acquiesced. As Marco passed across the room in his master's wake, the visitor received one quick, full view of him and of his face. The man's singular pallor was explained, for Marco was an albino. He had removed his cap and disclosed a smooth, oval skull, sparsely covered with bristling white hairs. By this more revealing light, his eyes, that had gleamed red in the shadow-shot gloom, were a reddish pink, and in that one clear glimpse of them O'Hara had a sickening notion that those eyes saw not out but inward. The pupils were like black pin-points. The effect was as if the man had literally reversed his vision and contemplated not his outer surroundings but the secrets of his own stealthy soul. A childish and an unjust idea, for what had he against Marco save his unfortunate appearance? Alone in the hall O'Hara looked about with a judging, curious eye. His first impression had been pleasant. The room was agreeably lighted by a hanging fixture, whose translucent, cream-colored globe diffused a mellow radiance. A log glowed in the depths of a fireplace of black dignity and size. The furniture, while severely plain, was good. There was certainly no hint of mystery or danger in that well-lighted, well-ordered, empty hall. And yet as he stood there, O'Hara was again keenly conscious of the feeling he had experienced on entering the gate. It was as though the very atmosphere were charged with discomfort and some incomprehensible warning. It was indubitably charged beside with a faint but unpleasant odor. Very like it was that which troubled him. He wondered again if Reed kept other beasts than Khan on the premises, and if the bungalow mystery were not indeed near its solution. A door opened and his host reentered. "What? Still standing?" began the man, but Colin broke in on his hospitable protestations — which might have seemed more friendly had not that left hand remained in ambiguous concealment. "I will not sit down. I am not fit to be seated on a decent chair, for I am mud and mold from the head to the feet of me." "And for that it seems that we — or rather Khan, is responsible. You must let me make amends, Mr. ——" "O'Hara," supplied the other. "My own name is Chester Reed. When you first came here, Mr. O'Hara, and from Marco's account, I believed that you had met Khan on the road and broken his arm with a club or bullet in an effort to capture him. Now I am inclined to believe that an explanation is due you. Before I offer it, would you give me an outline of exactly what occurred?"
Something about the man, or the tones of his voice, struck O'Hara as faintly familiar. Disagreeably familiar, too, as if the former association, if there had really been one, was of a distinctly unpleasant nature. Yet the name was new to him and the face called up no recollections. Doubtless the familiarity was no more than a resemblance to someone he had once known. He began his narrative, but not until Reed had insisted that he be seated, mud or no mud, and had brought out a decanter, glasses, and a humidor of strong but good cigars. For this service he used his right hand only. The left was still in his pocket. Colin began to believe his suspicions unjustified. Perhaps the man's hand was in some way deformed, and thus a mere personal habit, because he scowled over the inconvenience of his one-handed hospitality, and two or three times very obviously overcame an impulse to bring the left hand to the aid of its mate. The tale ended, Reed shook his head with a frown of annoyance. "This is the result of Marco's carelessness. He is an excellent trainer, but he will persist in regarding Genghis Khan as a human being rather than a monkey. I myself had no idea that Khan had a trace of viciousness. He is as gentle and tractable as a child, eats his meals at table, dresses himself in the morning, helps Marco with the other animals — in fact does everything human except read, write and talk. I suppose that in the woods Khan cast aside his clothes and his gentility together. I must congratulate you, Mr. O'Hara. I should not myself care to try a fall with Genghis Khan." "Have we met before, Mr. Reed?" The irrelevant question took his host by surprise. For just an instant Colin thought that the lids behind the round lenses flickered curiously. Then he replied with a quietness tinged by natural surprise. "I am sure we have not, Mr. O'Hara. You are not the sort of person whom one forgets." Colin met his quizzical smile and glanced down at himself ruefully. "You may say so — but I'm not always the wild barbarian I do look just now. Your pet led me a wild dance and that's the truth. You spoke of other animals. Will you tell me this — what kind of beasts do you keep, and did one other of them break loose early in the summer?" "Never!" Reed put a strong emphasis on the word which he seemed to regret, for he qualified it instantly. "Never, that is, that I am aware of. I have a rather queer assortment, I'll admit. By methods of my own I breed and raise animals which I intend later to dispose of to menageries, museums, and the like. That is my business. "But all precautions are taken, and there is no more danger than there might be in connection with any ordinary menagerie or breeding farm. That is what this place really is — a stock farm. Only, instead of cows and sheep we handle — more peculiar beasts. But there are none of them large enough or savage enough to do any particular harm if they did break loose — and they are all shut behind bars and strong fences." "Genghis Khan?" suggested O'Hara, with a lift of his red brows. "I have explained that. Hereafter Khan will not be given so much liberty. Some time, if you care to come around by daylight, I shall be glad to show you over my place. It is a privilege I extend to few, but ——" Breaking off in the midst of speech, Reed grasped the arm of his chair with his free hand and half rose with an indistinct ejaculation. Somewhere — though it was hard to say from what direction — there had begun a peculiar groaning sound. The very floor quivered to its vibration, and Colin was momentarily conscious of a strange feeling of nausea. The sound persisted for perhaps ten seconds, then ceased as abruptly as it had begun. There followed a sudden patter of feet across the floor of the room over their heads, a faint scream — that was a woman's voice. Colin sprang to his feet, bewildered, but with an innate conviction that something had gone very much wrong somewhere. Reed, however, laid a staying hand on his arm. "Do not disturb yourself, I beg. That voice — I may as well tell you, as you will hear of it perhaps from other sources. I live here alone with Marco and — my daughter. She is — deranged. There! It is a painful subject, and the great sorrow of my life, but such things are given us to endure by God, or Providence, or whatever arbitrary force rules the universe. She cannot bear my poor animals, and will often scream like that at a noise from the cages or yards." As he spoke, the expression of almost savage impatience which twisted Reed's features had faded and smoothed into one of deep and painful sadness. Colin stared. "Was that first noise made by one of your beasts, then? 'Twould be a queer animal with a voice like that. I'd like to see the creature." "That noise?" Reed looked oddly uneasy. "I really couldn't say, Mr. O'Hara. It might have been Marco dragging around one of the small cages — or a box. Yes," he continued with more assurance, "he probably dragged some heavy box across the floor. But my poor daughter takes alarm at the most innocent sounds." It was on O'Hara's tongue to ask why, if the proximity of the beasts so distressed his daughter, Reed did not send her away to a sanatorium or asylum. But he repressed the question. After all, it was no affair of his. Instead, he said gravely: "You have my sympathy, sir, and I understand your feelings entirely. But as to the invitation, 'twould give me pleasure to visit you on some other day and in a manner more formal." "If you feel yourself to have been injured by Genghis Khan, or if he damaged your property in any way, I shall be glad to ——" "Nothing of the sort. I more than squared accounts with the poor ape in person. To tell the truth, there's a deal of time on my hands now, and I've a fancy for animals. Would it trouble you should I run over tomorrow afternoon?" "Not at all. Do so, by all means." Reed spoke with a great appearance of cordiality. "Come at any time, and ring the bell at the gate. Marco will let you in." "Then thank you, and I'll be going. By the way ——" He broke off with a laugh — then explained: "Your Genghis Khan knows the country hereabouts better than myself. He led me about and about, the way I've no notion at all what part of America I'm in now." "This house is only a short walk from Undine," smiled his host, "and Carpentier, where I suppose you wish to return, is the next station up the line. I keep no car, or I would send you back that way, but at least Marco can show you the road to the station. If you would care to — er — straighten your attire ——" "And wash off the mud and the blood," put in Colin. "'Tis a fine idea, for I doubt they'd take me onboard in my present condition. But no need to trouble your man. I can find my own way, if you'll point it and thanks to you." "As you like."
Reed led the way upstairs and introduced him to a well-appointed bathroom. "Here is a clothes-brush, and help yourself to the soap and clean towels. I will wait for you in the hall below. You have half an hour for there is a train at ten five. Sorry I can't offer you the services of a valet, but we live very simply, and Marco and Genghis Khan are my only servants." "I've already been valeted by Genghis Khan," jested O'Hara, "and do not care to repeat the performance. I'll be with you in ten minutes, Mr. Reed." Alone, as he brushed at his clothes, Colin reflected on the singular make-up of this household. "A mad daughter and a menagerie to care for, and he keeps one servant! Yet is it poverty that ails him? The one room I've seen is well-furnished enough, and here he has an elegant bath-room — clean towels by the dozen. And himself is not poorly dressed. Strange he'd not have one woman at least to be company for the unfortunate girl. And he says his beasts could not break loose! And that noise was the dragging of a cage! It would be a heavy cage that shook the house like that, though I myself find it hard to account for by any other cause. Nevertheless, had MacClellan a head on his shoulders he'd have found out this place and explored it. But no, he would not believe that Cliona's wild beast was aught but human." Having done the best possible by his clothes, he began cleansing his face and hands. "An odd thing, now I think of it, that the people hereabout kept quiet. So close to Carpentier, and the papers so full of it and all. How Mr. Chester Reed was not dragged into our business, man-monkey, stock-farm, and all, is a bigger puzzle than the other. I'll be kind to the poor man and courteous, and perhaps tomorrow I'll step on the tail of the whole mystery. There, I'm decent to pass in a crowd — and three minutes of the ten yet to spare." He passed out toward the stair. As he did so a door opened at the end of the hall behind him, and hearing the soft click of its latch, he glanced around. There, framed in the doorway, stood the most melancholy and at the same time the most oddly beautiful figure that Colin had ever seen. She could be none other than Reed's mad daughter, but the Irishman forgot that in amazement at her loveliness. What she thought of him O'Hara could not know. The slight parting of her lips and her wide eyes might have expressed either amazement, alarm, or expectation. Curiously enough O'Hara was convinced, both then and afterward, that her emotion was really the last named, though what she could expect of him, whom she had never before set eyes on, seemed hard to surmise. He was also convinced — and this belief was as lacking in practical foundation as the other — that she had some information to impart — something which it was highly important that he should know and which concerned them both. Heretofore O'Hara had compared all women with Cliona, to their disparagement, but here was one who could be compared to no one. She was herself alone and utterly a creature apart, almost unearthly, and who yet suggested in an odd way all the natural beauties of earth. So the darkness of her hair and eyes hinted at mystery of dusk and the recurring miracle of starshine. She was tall and slender, and her height and slim, bare arms made one think of dryads that live in willow-trees and come out to dance at moonrise. Her hair hung down in rippling, dark curls over the green gown she was dressed in, and Colin saw the beauty of her hair and did not perceive that the gown was so worn and old that it hung in tatters about her bare ankles, and so threadbare in places that her white limbs shone through it. Her face was long and oval, and her large eyes were too bright, as if suffused with unshed tears. She had the loveliness of night, and the sorrowful beauty of forest pools that hold the stars and the trees in their bosoms. That was the wonder which appeared to Colin O'Hara. But had he not been Colin O'Hara, or had he ever loved any other woman save his sister, then it may be that the wonder would not have appeared to him. So he might have seen only a slim girl in a torn, green gown; beautiful, perhaps, — but thin and very melancholy. And how should either of them guess of a former meeting? Fifteen years are a gulf to swallow memories, and in fifteen years a girl-baby finds magic indeed to change her. Their first glance for each other was of recognition; but it was not a recognition to save suffering. Being not of the flesh and earthly it spared them no after pain. Colin had no idea of how long he had stood there, staring at the girl and waiting for the message she had for him. But it could hardly have been more than a few moments until Reed's voice floated up to him from below. "Is that you, O'Hara? You haven't long to catch that train." Colin roused with a start, and the girl, who had seemed on the very edge of speaking, laid two slim fingers on her lips in a gesture of silence and slipped back into her room. O'Hara went down the stairs like a man descending out of a dream. He did not know what had happened to him, but that something had happened he was gloriously aware. Every nerve and fiber of his giant body tingled with vivid life, and had she not made that gesture of silence and warning, he would have gone to the girl, not to Reed. The latter met him at the stair-foot with a glance sharply suspicious. "I heard you stop there on the floor above. Did my daughter speak to you? Poor child, she is as ready to address a stranger as her own father!" Colin came to earth with a jolt. That, then, had been the mad girl, Reed's daughter! And he had — he had — Why, he had done nothing; only life had for him turned a somersault and seemed right-sideup for the first time. But mad! Was it madness that gave her that elfin look, that made her so differently, so marvelously beautiful? "I had no word from your daughter, sir," he replied gravely and sadly, for he was wishing he had. "Will you show me the road to the station?" "You will have no trouble in finding it. Go out the gate, turn to your right, and keep straight on by the wall. From where it ends you can see the lights at the station. Good night, sir!" The door closed with needless sharpness as Colin went down the steps. Then it opened again. "If you want any further directions," Reed called, and there was a strange hint of laughter in his voice, "ask the gatekeeper!" And once more he banged the door. Colin had turned at the first word, had seen Reed standing in the lighted doorway, and had caught an odd impression of some trifling difference in his appearance. He stood stock-still on the drive, staring at the shut dooor. Then he scratched his bare head reflectively. "Ask — the — gatekeeper!" he muttered. "Now, what in the devil did the fool mean by that — and him laughing when he said it? And what was it about him now — oh, his hand!" That hand had been out of its pocket at last, and it had been large — white — furry. "To keep a glove on one's hand is not strange," thought Colin, "but why the like o' that white fur one? Mr. Reed, Mr. Reed, 'tis a man of mysteries you are, both small and large, and I do not like you! But your daughter ——" It was hard enough to follow the path in the dark, and twice he thought he had lost his way. At last a gleam of light ahead resolved itself into the gaslight on the pike outside. Against its yellow radiance the gates hung, an elaborate silhouette, and he could see the red sheen of the ivy-covered lodge. Then, as he came toward it, a slight sound came to his ears. Straining eyes dazzled by the light beyond, it seemed to him that in the side of the lodge facing the grounds a door stood open. Yes, there was an oblong blackness there, blacker than the shadowed ivy about it and near the center of the oblong — a whitish oval patch — a face? It disappeared abruptly, and when Colin came up to the little lodge there were only a closed door and silence. Any windows there might be were hidden by the clinging ivy. As the gates were unlocked, Colin had no desire to disturb Reed's repulsive servant. The gates opened at a touch and he went his way.
CHAPTER XVIIA Surprise and a Disappointment
THE following day brought Colin a surprise as great and in a way, more disconcerting than had been given him by Genghis Khan when he descended upon him out of an oak-tree the evening before. Cliona arrived at the bungalow, and she was a Cliona indignant and filled with the just wrath of a woman deceived. She was so angry that she had forgotten all dread of the place and marched into the dining-room unannounced, like a small avenging angel. Colin was alone. Mrs. Bollinger had made good her resolve and renounced his service in a wonderfully spelled note, which a small boy thrust under the front door that morning. So Colin had cooked his own breakfast and luncheon. He was a good cook, within the limits of his cuisine, as this ran chiefly to wild game "of which he had none," fried ham, eggs, flapjacks, and coffee. There promised to be a certain monotony of diet unless he could persuade some other Mrs. Bollinger to dare the goblins of the bungalow. He was somewhat sadly reflecting upon this fact when Cliona surprised him. Unexpectedly long though his residence here had been, and though the continuance of its secrecy had seemed a daily increasing miracle, yet the worst he had anticipated was discovery by his brother-in-law, who might have got wind of his presence there through the gossip of some Carpentierian in business circles. He would be unlikely to carry word of it to his wife, but would investigate on his own account. For Cliona herself to descend upon him was lightning from a clear sky, and he had never felt more astonished and embarrassed in his life. He choked on his coffee, but this was fortunate. By the time he was able to speak he had thought of something to say. "Cliona, my dear," he beamed, coming around table with outstretched arm, "it's a fine thing to see you looking so well and all!" But she ran away from him, barricading herself behind a chair. She regarded her brother scornfully. "You lied to me!" She was fairly ablaze with the white-hot anger that occasionally flared up in both the O'Haras. "You lied, and you never went away at all!" Because he was dear to her, the discovery of his incomprehensible deception had hurt her intolerably. As she had written him, her health and strength had practically returned, and she had begun to go about much as usual. While in the city shopping, she had chanced to meet a lady whose husband owned an extensive property adjoining Rhodes' former possessions at Carpentier. Cliona could not understand the woman's meaning when she said: "Your brother looks so well, Mrs. Rhodes. I often see him, though only at a distance." Then it had all come out. Cliona said nothing to her husband. This was between her and Colin, and as soon as Rhodes left her to return to his office, she took the first train to Carpentier. "Why, no," confessed Colin, halting to run his fingers through his hair and reflect. "Sure, I didn't go away. Did you think I would really travel off to the far end of the earth and leave you so sick and all? I ——" The matter of the lie Colin excused on the ground that if he had told the truth Rhodes would have insisted on coming with him, or at least occasionally sharing his nightly watch. Cliona shuddered at the thought. She heard the story of his last night's adventure, somewhat toned down and denatured, for Colin had no notion of increasing her concern for him. He told her of his suspicion that Reed's strange "stock-farm" was responsible for her own experience, and in that case, of course, there was no danger in his remaining at the bungalow. Reed would now take the utmost care that none of his creatures, whatever they might be, should again escape. But even to her O'Hara could not bring himself to tell of Reed's daughter. Deranged or sane, to him she was sacred, a vision bestowed upon him by the friendly gods, and he would not speak of her. "So I am going there again this day," he concluded, "and when I come away I may have news to phone you or not, but at least if such a creature is there as your ears informed you of, and your eyes saw the white claw of him, he will not be hard to pick out. So let me live here a while longer, Cliona, and do you go back to Tony. Then in a few days I will join you, and perhaps I'll visit St. Augustine with yourselves." To this she finally agreed, stipulating, however, that he should telephone her daily so that she might know he was safe. "Night and morning I'll phone you," Colin promised. "And now will you sit at my table, Mrs. Rhodes, and enjoy the elegant menu provided by my fine Irish chef? There's little variety, but plenty of quantity, which, you know, is the main thing as shown in my own person!" After all, except her husband, there was no one in the world so nice as Colin. Her wounded affection healed by the knowledge that his deception had been carried out for the purpose of avenging her own wrongs, the two had a very merry meal together, and later Colin rode with her to the train.
Before paying his call, O'Hara determined to obtain some outside information regarding his new acquaintance, Chester Reed. For this purpose there seemed no one more convenient than the station agent, for Undine, excelling therein most such small suburban points, boasted a real, live agent. O'Hara found him to be a pleasant young fellow, ready to handle passengers with admirable impartiality. Yes, certainly he knew Mr. Reed. Reed had bought the old Jerrard place a year ago last April. Beautiful old estate. Dated clean back to revolutionary days, and been in the Jerrard family ever since, till — well, Mr. Charles Sutphen Jerrard was the last of 'em. Too bad he had to come such a cropper. Five years ago it was. Hanged himself in the gatelodge. His creditors had been trying ever since to rent or sell the place at a decent profit, but nobody seemed to want it till this man Reed came along. Makes a place mighty unpopular to have a memory like that hanging over it. Say, if you'd hear some of the stories about that gatelodge — what? Oh, well, Reed had taken the place anyway, and didn't seem to care a tinker's cuss for all the dead Jerrards that ever walked. Not the sort that cared to have living outsiders about, though. Yes, be believed Reed did handle some breeds of stock. His animals were brought there on the hoof, or in crates and boxes, and he for his part had never seen that any of them were unusual. Just sheep and calves, chickens and rabbits. Nothing even very fancy, so far as he had noticed. Here a man who was lounging against a packing-case put in his word. "Y'know, that guy Reed is funny. When he first come here he give out that he was goin' in for what he called 'scientific stock raisin'.' There's two or three real stock-farms hereabout, and some fellows went and offered him some nice prize stock, but he says no, he don't want nothing like that. What he was goin' to begin on must be imported.... "So he puts up a lot of wire fencin', the strongest I ever seen, an' then outside o' that he shuts in the Jerrard grounds with high board fences all along Llewellyn Creek and the other sides away from the pike. Then he nails up 'No Trespass' signs about every five feet, like he was goin' to start a dynamite factory." "Well," broke in the agent, "he has a right to keep people off his grounds, hasn't he?" "I ain't sayin' he ain't. I'm only tellin' you what a funny guy he is. You only gotta look at the poor old house to see that. What'd he want t'stick that big round cupuly thing right in the middle of the roof for — huh? What's a cupuly got to do with stock raisin'? Then he imports this here fancy stock, and — haw! Say, I got a good look at a lot of it when it come in. By jiminy, they was the commonest, orneriest bunch o' cattle that anybody ever turned out in the road to get rid of! They was ——" "There were some fine Belgian hares in the last shipment," cut in the agent. "Them brown rabbits, you mean? I dunno nothin' about them — but, say I do know cattle. I was raised on a real stock-farm. Them calves and sheep of his couldn't sneak up on a blue ribbon that was give out by a blind judge at midnight! An' the poultry — oh-h, my!" Here his feelings overcame him. He fairly doubled up with mirth. All this was very puzzling to O'Hara. Had not Reed distinctly stated that his farm was not for the purpose of breeding ordinary domestic animals? "And what do you think of his taste in monkeys?" he suggested tentatively. Both his informants seemed to take this query as delightfully facetious. The agent had appeared inclined to defend Reed, but he, too, laughed saying: "That bleached out man of his is the limit, isn't he? I always said he was more like a white rat than a human being, but I guess an albino monkey does come nearer the mark." Colin stared. Could it be possible that Genghis Khan was unknown in the neighborhood? "You don't take my meaning," he said frankly. "I'm not referring to Marco, but to the real monkey, the one he calls Genghis Khan." The agent shook his head. Both men looked blank. "Didn't know he had one, mister. Must be some pet that came in one of the small boxes. Well, I've got my bills of lading to check over. If you want to go out to Reed's place, Jimmy here will show you the way. Won't you, Jimmy? That is, unless you've been there before." "I know the way," nodded O'Hara, "and thanks for the time you've given me!" As he started up the road the lounger called after him. "Say, mister, don't be surprised at nothing you hear there. That Miss Reed, his girl that lives there with him, is loony! I never seen her, but I've heard she takes on somethin' awful every wunst in a while. An' say, don't buy none of his imitation fancies, neither. I c'n put you next to some real good ——" But with an impatient wave of the arm O'Hara strode out of hearing. Without reason he resented intensely the man's reference to the girl. And to follow it up with advice about live stock! Had the fool no sense of what was fitting? Though he resolutely declined to face the fact, O'Hara was taking an astonishing amount of interest in this mad girl, to whom he had never spoken, whom he had seen for a scant three minutes. He might refer to her as a "blessed and miraculous memory" all he pleased, but it was not so much memory as a faint hope of seeing her again that made this present visit the most exciting he had ever planned paying in his life.
The day had begun fine and sunny, but a high wind had arisen. Now, at four in the afternoon, masses of dark cloud were surging across the sky, threatening rain before nightfall. Dust and dry, brown leaves swirled around and past him, and he had to cling to his hat lest it follow the leaves. The branches of the trees whipped and writhed in a wind that was stripping away the last of their October splendors. Colin walked slowly, for he wished to think over the things he had just learned. "Sheep, calves, poultry, and hares. Now which of those four could groan like an — earthquake? Faith, it sounds like a riddle! Something did moan last night, and 'twas no cage dragged over a floor, either. It frightened the poor little Dusk Lady upstairs. But if the people about here know nothing of Genghis Khan, why may it not be that Reed has other secrets — for museums, says he, and menageries? "Now, what sort of beasts would those be? I never did hear of a man that could breed the larger carnivora with any success at all in captivity — or not in these latitudes. Freaks, then. Maybe. Now, what is this queer 'science' of Reed's? Does he cut the poor brutes up alive and hang the fore part of one on the hind part of another?" O'Hara had been reading "The Island of Dr. Moreau," and its vivisectionary horrors had stirred his imagination. "If there's anything like that going on here," he thought, "'tis high time it was put a stop to. I did not like that man Reed at first, and now, after thinking him over, I do not at all. He's too smooth and too polite, and behind it he hides a nasty temper. And his glasses are too big and ridiculous. I'd like to see the lad with them off, and his beard off too. A man might as well wear a mask as all that adornment. I may have seen him before, and I may not, but if I could see him shaved it would help me decide." Here he postponed further reflection, for he had come up to the wrought-iron gates. He sought the button of the electric bell and pressed it. It rang in the gate-lodge, as before, but since it seemed unlikely that the entire time of Reed's one servant was spent in that sepulchral refuge, Colin assumed that the button had two connections, one of them at the house. It was in that lodge, the agent had said, that the last owner had hanged himself. Recalling his experience of last night, a doubt flashed through Colin's mind like a flying spark. It was gone in an instant. He had his superstitious side, but seldom allowed it to get the better of him. That pale oval in the gate-lodge doorway had been Marco's face. Ghosts do not push doors open, nor close them to, and, anyway, it would be a very inefficient "haunt" that showed itself only to disappear so instantly. Colin smiled at the thought and looked beyond the lodge. Within, the grounds seemed more desolate, though less mysterious, than on the previous night. Through the trees, which had shed so many of their leaves that afternoon, he caught glimpses of gray granite walls, and above them the roofs of the old, many-gabled house — and yet above them, like a misplaced reminiscence of the Orient — a strange, round, domed affair. The dome form is one of the glories of architecture, but this one was not beautiful at all. It somehow suggested that an incredibly large, white fungus had sprouted there in the night and not yet been discovered and removed by the outraged dwelling's owner. Somewhere, some time — where and when, thought Colin, had he once before received that impression of a dome? A fugitive memory that he could not place — and now Marco came rustling down through the leaves on the unswept drive. He met O'Hara with that same frightened stealthy look which seemed his habitual expression, and opened the gate with the air of a conspirator. "What ails you, man?" demanded O'Hara as he entered. "You're shivering like a wet poodle dog. Is it the ague you have?" The man shook his head and replied in his mumbled toothless voice: "Last night — you made great noise last night. Too much noise! Silence — silence!" Colin stared. He had supposed the man normal save in appearance, but it appeared he was only half-witted. "All right, my lad," he said soothingly. "Since noise troubles you so I'll try and make less of it today. Will I find Mr. Reed at the house?" Again Marco shook his head and, putting a hand in the pocket of his worn corduroys, pulled out a crumpled envelope. "Here," he mumbled, extending it to O'Hara. "There are words on the white paper inside!" "A note, eh? Now, what ——" Colin tore open the envelope. As the albino had phrased it, there were indeed words on the white paper inside, and words, moreover, which he read with considerable disappointment. The letter ran:
Colin glanced from Reed's note to find the albino's eyes fixed on his face, but, as usual, not with the least appearance of seeing him. One could hardly believe that those black, pointlike pupils were designed to look outward. "So, your master has left you in charge here?" queried Colin thoughtfully. "I am here — yes." "But I mean, is it alone you are? No one to look after — Miss Reed?" Marco frowned and pointed, first to the note, then to the gate. "The master said — after reading, go!" "Faith, you've a polite way of dismissing his guests, friend Marco!" Colin hesitated. Could it be possible that Reed had actually gone away and left his pitifully lovely daughter in the charge of this red-eyed and possibly degenerate creature? If so, what had been none of his business became his business or that of any other decent man. There must be some law of the State to cover such a situation. He decided to consult his brother-in-law. That clever lawyer could surely advise him. In the meantime —— "Marco," he said, "look me in the eye and heed well what I say. Should any harm come to Miss Reed in her father's absence, be sure I'll know of it, and be sure that it's myself you'll have to deal with for it. D'ye understand? I could tear you to bits, little man, and well you know it!" "The master said — after reading, go!" "Oh, I'll go! But do you think of my words and heed them! And tell your master that the O'Hara was here. Good day to you, Marco!" The gates clicked shut behind him. Colin paused outside to light a cigar, with difficulty shielding the match from the gale. When he glanced back through the iron scrolls Marco had disappeared. "'Tis ashamed of myself I am," mused Colin, "threatening violence to a weak, white worm like him! But that's the best I could think of to do. I do not know what is wrong with that place, nor with the master of it, but that something is wrong I am sure as sure can be. And I could hardly invade the man's premises by force to look into the matter. Or could I?" He stared thoughtfully through the beautiful gates that Sutphen Jerrard himself had imported from Italy. As he looked, the first few drops of driven rain beat stingingly upon Colin's face, and the wind ripped through the trees like the breath of a giant's shouting — violent, impetuous, intolerant of all foul vapors and secret vileness.
CHAPTER XVIIIA Voice BUT Colin did not invade Reed's place that afternoon. For one thing he wanted Rhodes' opinion before acting. He knew himself for an impetuous man, more used to the rough, forthright ways of the open than the ruled order of civilization. He feared committing some blunder, overriding the law in some way that might injure the girl rather than help her. Yes, he must talk to Rhodes. He returned to his lonely bungalow in a mood so meditative that he was scarcely aware of the wild tempest that raved and tore at his drenched figure as he ascended the hill-road from Carpentier. Night had fallen — a roaring blackness, and there had been no one to light up against his coming. He stumbled in, switching on the lights through the house as he went. They were comfortable, cheery rooms that sprang into view, still wearing some few of the homelike touches given them by Cliona, but for some reason the sight of them only emphasized the trouble of his mind. Still pondering gloomily, Colin exchanged his dripping clothes for dry ones. Then he called Green Gables on the telephone. His sister answered, and, having informed her of the negative result of his visit to Undine, he asked for Tony. But Tony, it seemed, was in town, having been detained on business. He would be home later in the evening. "I'll call him later, then," said Colin, and bade his sister goodby. He went through the dining-room, and from a bracket of the sideboard there a little porcelain image smiled benignly at his passing form. The broken shield still lay beside it. He had kept the godling "for the sake of the dream it would always bring to mind," but that "dream" was far from his thoughts tonight. He passed Quetzalcoatl's small eidolon without a glance, and sought the kitchen, where he began preparing his supper. The cold rain had given him an appetite that even vague worry could not spoil. Having made a wonderfully good meal, he pushed the dishes to one side of the kitchen-table and lighted his pipe with a deep sigh of physical contentment. But the satisfaction of his appetite had by no means quieted his mind. Back and forth fled his thoughts, spinning an invisible, intangible web between the bungalow at Carpentier and the house at Undine, till it seemed as if the cords of it had entangled his very body and were dragging him forth into the storm again. What was the real connection between the huge, bloody thing that left its trail on this hill and that grating, vibratory roar he had heard last evening as he sat in Reed's entrance-hall? Was there a connection? And why did Reed keep a mad girl in the very surroundings best calculated to increase her dementia? And why should he, Colin O'Hara, care so very intensely what Reed did for his daughter, or left undone? Could insanity rouse love? No. Common sense told him that the barrier of madness was higher than he could cross. Then it must be only pity that he felt for this poor daughter of Chester Reed. Pity, it seemed, was a force of fearful power! What was she doing now? What fate hung over her? Or was this feeling of indefinite dread no more than a film of his too active fancy? Now and again, while Colin sat smoking and frowning through the smoke, the whole bungalow would shake, quivering as if in the grasp of some fierce monster. It was just that, and the monster was the living, raving wind. It dashed rain against the windows with savage roars, and shouted among the branches, daring the man within to match his strength to its violence. Colin wished that Rhodes had been in. He wanted authority — authority to remove the girl definitely and forever from the care of a father not fit to have charge of her. Did he take her by force and prematurely, it might weaken the case. How could he tell? Rhodes was the law-wise lad —— The wind's voice no longer defied him — it was calling, pleading with him in great shouts and gasps of terror. It was a reckless, impetuous messenger, tearing at his windows and his heart in gusty throbs of wordless passion. There he sat, stolid, content in his animal comfort, and the wind knew that which should drag him through storm, fire, or hell's self, could it but impart its dread information. Colin laid down his pipe and rose with a troubled frown. Wandering into the living-room he touched a match to the pile of kindling and logs in the fireplace. For a while the snapping, friendly flames were a solace to his rising discontent, but soon the feeling of unrest returned like a flowing tide. The wind — the wind! Its invisible hand was shaking at the latch. Down it plunged through the chimney and spat contemptuous smoke and ashes at his stubborn inertia. It howled scorn at him for an irresolute, doubting fool, and wailed sorrowfully about the house in a long prophecy of bitterness and lifelong regret. Till at last he could bear no more. "Colin O'Hara," said he, "you're a fool; but if go you must, then go and have done with it!"
Suddenly he tramped to his room and again changed, this time to heavy hunting clothes, with stout, water-proof boots, donned an ulster and pulled a steamer-cap well down over his ears. Then he hesitated. Should he carry the blued steel weapon that still lay in his suitcase? Colin had a certain scorn for any weapons other than the very efficient ones provided him by nature. To his mind there was something childish, even cowardly, about the look of a pistol in that great right hand of his. In the end he flung the thing into a drawer, hunted out and thrust in his overcoat pocket a small flashlight, extinguished the living-room fire, and marched from the house, nose in air in defiance of his own folly. The gale fairly snatched the breath from his nostrils, but Colin lowered his head and lunged onward down the hill. He knew where he was going, and if he were thrusting himself in where no one wanted or needed him — well, let it be that way. It was then eight o'clock, and he was just in time to catch the local that ran every two hours until midnight. At Undine he descended and was glad to observe that even the socially minded agent had been driven to cover by the storm. Passing through the small group of stores and dwellings beyond the station, Colin walked on out the pike, fairly leaning his weight against the blast, and too blinded by rain to get much good of the flaring and far-separated roadlights. Instinctively it was toward the gate that he directed his steps, but reaching it he found his purpose too indefinite for convenience. Should he ring the bell and Marco answer it, what reason could he offer to gain him admittance? If he were going in at all, it was clear that the entry must be clandestine. Once more he eyed that spike-topped wall with speculative glance. Then he recalled that the station-lounger had spoken of board-fences enclosing part of the estate. A fence might be easier to, scale, and might just possibly be spikeless. Ten minutes later found Colin standing on the further bank of Llewellyn Creek, a spot he had reached by following the pike across the bridge and turning in at a little foot-path branching off beyond. It led a hundred yards or so along the bank and ceased at what his flashlight showed to be another bridge, a single, narrow arch of stone, crumbling and without hand-rail or parapet. On the other side, there appeared to be a small building, rising flush with the stream's bank and standing out somewhat from a high wooden barrier. Crossing the bridge, Colin found himself faced by a plain wooden door set in a windowless wall of granite. What interested him was that this door was not only unlocked, but slightly open. He entered, and his light playing over walls and floor showed a large, bare, dusty place. Boxes and packing-cases were stacked on one another, and in a corner lay a few rusty bits of old machinery. Nothing alive here save rats. Perhaps it was the contents of one of those packing cases that gave off so unpleasant an odor. There was the dusty, disused smell natural to such a place, and through it whiffs of this other, and by no means agreeable, exhalation. Colin wrinkled his nose and sniffed. Failing to identify its source, he dismissed the matter and looked for an inner exit. Crossing the old wooden floor, broken in more than one place, he discovered a pair of double doors, like those of a carriage-house. These, too, were unbarred and slightly ajar. Someone had surely been careless. Colin wondered if Genghis Khan were once more abroad, but thought not. No sensible monkey would choose a night like this for its rambles. Emerging from the storehouse he found his feet on a narrow plank walk that skirted a length of twelve-foot-high wire-fencing. It looked strong enough. Those springy steel meshes might have withstood the attack of a mad elephant. Curiosity, subordinated before to his concern for the girl, welled up now, and, yielding to it, Colin sent the light of his flash through the meshes. The darting ray disclosed an expanse of trampled mud and wet turf, and beyond that a small, semi-enclosed shed. He held his light steady upon it. The rain, which had for a few moments diminished, descended again in driven, slanting sheets, but he thought he had glimpsed a heap of something gray that stirred as his light found it. Then a plaintive, long-drawn "Ba-a-a!" reached his ears. Colin snapped off his light in disgust. He had disturbed the innocent rest of some harmless sheep. Following the plank walk, he squelched heavily along in what he felt must be the direction of the house. Now and again he allowed himself another brief glance beyond the wire fence, but most of the space seemed empty. One mournful cow, unprovided with even so flimsy a shelter as the sheep-shed, mooed at him dolefully as he splashed by. "This I am sure of," thought Colin indignantly, "if that Reed man treats all his creatures like this, he'll soon have no stock to play scientist with. Sure, they'll all die of pneumonia!" He had traversed a considerable distance, and still he saw nothing but on one hand that absurdly strong wire fence, on the other, shrubbery and a multitude of lashing, wind-tormented trees. "I'll get nowhere at this rate save the other end of the estate." So, turning aside, he plunged into pathless shrubbery. It was bad going and, except for his flash, would have been worse. They were blackberry and currant bushes, run wild and malignant with thorns and prickles. Out of their clutches at last, he, for the first time, glimpsed a light other than his own, which latter he promptly extinguished. "That'll be the house," he said decisively, and hoped he was right. Plowing toward it through a wet wilderness of weeds that had once been close-cropped lawn, he came among trees again and shortly found himself within a stone's throw of his goal. It was a double light for which he had been heading, and proved to emanate from two windows set close together in the second story. Presently, using his own light cautiously, he identified near by the deep porch and porte-cochère of his last night's visit.
And now, having achieved the goal for whose attainment he had laid himself open to a charge of felonious trespass, Colin found himself somewhat at a loss. Standing there in the rain it seemed to him that the strong inner force that had hitherto driven him, and which constituted his only real excuse for being there, now mockingly withdrew. He shivered and scowled morosely at the dark, inhospitable entrance. For the first time he knew what a prowling, prying fool he must seem to Reed, could that gentleman have guessed his presence. He glanced again toward the lighted windows above him. To his surprise he saw that the lower sash of one was raised. The drenched white curtains were flapping inward with the wind-driven rain. Then, as he looked, a figure appeared there, backing slowly into view, and O'Hara gasped at the desired but unexpected apparition. There she stood, and though her back was toward him and the rain slanted between, he could make no mistake. He knew every curving line of those green-clad shoulders, that erect, white neck, and well-poised head. Had she been his closest comrade for years, instead of the stranger common sense called her, he could have felt no keener sense of familiar recognition. Still keeping her face to the room, she stretched back one slim arm, feeling for the window-ledge. A wet curtain lashed and wrapped itself about the arm. With a quick, frantic energy she strove to free it. Then another arm flashed into view, and at last Colin knew the meaning of the silent drama of whose actors he had yet seen but one. That darting arm was neither charming nor graceful. White, shaggy, rough as a length of pale, thick vine, it clutched toward her throat, with hand and fingers extravagantly long and terrible. Colin knew that hand, for he had felt it on his own throat. With a great shout he sprang across the drive and was under the window. "Jump!" he yelled through the sheeting rain. "Throw yourself backward and jump!" He commanded a difficult feat, and from where he now waited could see nothing of what was going on above him. How might she possibly elude that near and gripping hand? And why should she obey his own roaring command from the outer darkness? Three seconds passed, four, five. This was folly. He must break his way in somehow, before it was too late, and —— Above him there leaned out a head and a pair of slim shoulders, while a low voice called: "I am coming! You frightened it!" A pair of white, bare feet swung out over the window-ledge. Sitting so, the girl was instantly drenched. To emerge into the raging maw of the tempest, blinded by rain, and swing off into a vacancy which might or might not receive her tenderly, must have required a courage — or a recklessness — of uncommon quality. Yet sitting so, without pause or hesitation, the girl pushed herself off and dropped. Colin caught her in his arms and did not even stagger to the shock. It seemed to him that she had fallen lightly as a leaf drifting earthward, or a bird with the air cupped in its wings. How had his strength increased that she lay in his arms so lightly? He closed them about her in a quick fierceness of protection. That brute — that hairy, clutching ape-thing — had dared clutch at her — at his Dusk Lady! "Are you hurt?" he whispered. "Is it hurt you are that you lie so still?" She answered in the same low, sweet tones that had addressed him from the window. "No, my lord. But it was well that you came when you came, and well that you called to me! The demon above there would have killed me, I think, had you not frightened him with the trumpet of your voice. My lord, will you take me away now?" "My lord" scarcely knew what to do. To some queer deep part of his being it seemed quite natural that she should call him so; quite reasonable and satisfactory that she should speak to him with the quiet confidence of one who appeals to an old friendship — old and sure. But his surface mind was less easy. Her father had spoken no more than truth — the girl was demented! "Sure and I'll take you away," he declared. "And isn't that the very reason I was waiting under your window? But first we'll go into the house and make all straight and proper, the way none may say I've been stealing you, little lady." "What? Return behind the walls of hate? But why?" "It's a matter of decency, my dear. And, besides, before I can take you away you must be dry and better clothed. You're shivering this minute." "Not for cold," she began, but just then a light sprang up close to Colin's head. Startled, he fumed and saw that he was close by a window of the entrance hall. Two forms flashed, running across his field of vision, and a moment later he heard the door within the deep porch flung open. Carrying the girl, he stalked around toward the steps, for he was no sneaking marauder, and felt neither shame nor further need of excuse for his presence. It had been too amply justified. Marco met him, behind him a crouching, snarling, bestial form, but of that latter Colin had a very brief glimpse. Genghis Khan may have recognized the enemy who had chased him across five miles of rough going after breaking his right arm, now bandaged in splints at his side. Khan promptly retreated, sliding through, the door and out of sight with the streaking speed of a giant white cockroach. But Marco held his ground. "You — you!" he mumbled, pointing a shaking, furious finger. "You come again? You touch her — my lady?" "Better I than some others less respectful," retorted O'Hara calmly. "Is your master here?" "Well, you know he is not! You fear him — everyone fears him! You come when he is gone! Put her down — let me take my lady!" Coming at him, the albino thrust his hand beneath the girl's shoulders as if to tear her away. At that she screamed for the first time, clutching at Colin with small, convulsive fingers. Then Colin struck Marco with the full weight of his fist, and with all his really terrible strength at the back of the blow. It was a needless, savage act, as he afterward condemned it. Marco was no possible match for him. In cold blood he would have brushed the albino aside without harming him. But the sight of that repulsive, red-eyed, pallid thing clawing at the girl, and the loathing and the terror in her voice acted upon him like a draft of maddening liquor. He struck without thought or premeditation, as at some noxious insect, desiring only to crush it, obliterate it from the world it polluted by living. The blow caught Marco just under the point of the chin. His head flew back with an audible snap, his body jerked through the air, and sliding full length across the porch, brought up at the inner threshold. It twitched spasmodically and lay quiet.
Colin stood, and the girl clung to him, silent and quivering. Very softly he ascended the steps, crossed the porch, and gently disengaging her arms set his burden down within the doorway, her bare feet on the dry softness of a rug. Then he bent over Marco. He had hit him hard — too hard, and well he knew it. A thin, scarlet trickle was running from a corner of the flaccid mouth. He was not at all surprised when, lifting the albino's shoulders, the head dropped back with the limpness of a broken stick held together by a few torn fibers. He felt for Marco's heart and examined his neck with inquiring fingers. Then he laid him back and rose. From the dead man he looked up to his mad Dusk Lady. She was watching him with dark, wondering eyes. Her wet, green gown clung to limbs and body, close as the green bark of a young tree, and the thick curls of her hair glistened black and shining. Like some sorrowful spirit of the storm-torn forest she stood there, and Colin was ashamed before her. He, who had come to protect and guard her, had been betrayed by his temper and thereby involved them in Heaven only knew what entanglements. "My lord, why do you look so sad and stern? Have I given you offense?" "You! Poor child, no, 'tis myself has offended — but how, never mind. Go to your room, little lady, and dress yourself so that I may take you to a kinder place. At least, Marco will trouble you no more the night. He is — hurt." "Hurt? Is he not dead?" She said it so simply and with so childlike an inflection of disappointment that the words took Colin aback. "Never mind that!" he retorted almost sharply. "Never mind that! Go dress yourself dry and warm, and put on a coat, if you have one, against the rain." Frowning, she looked down at her one inadequate but becoming garment. "I owe you gentle obedience, my lord, but I had vowed never to don robes of his giving. Must I, then, break my solemn vow?" "Indeed, and I fear you must. They'll not let us on the train otherwise." She meditated a moment longer. Then, "I will put on me a coat, since my lord desires it," and she started for the stair. Remembering Genghis Khan, O'Hara followed. She led him straight to the door at the end of the second floor hall, where he had first seen her. It stood open, and as she entered he looked in over her shoulder. He saw a large bedroom, well, even luxuriously furnished. Clearly, careless though he might be of her welfare in other respects, Reed did not begrudge money spent on his daughter's immediate surroundings. Having made sure that the great ape was lurking nowhere in the room, and having closed the window above a rain-flooded Persian rug, O'Hara left his charge alone. She had said nothing in that while, only watched hum with attentive eyes that followed every move with quiet interest, and he himself had little mind for conversation. But in the act of closing her door he turned back. "Where's the phone?" said he. "The — the phone?" "The telephone — the box they talk through when a bell rings," explained O'Hara patiently. She shook her head, with a look of perplexed distress that was to him unutterably pathetic. Dusk Lady indeed, ever wandering through the twilight of a darkened mind! "I'll find it myself," said he hastily, and closed the door. Down the stairs he went, heavy and slow, weighed down by a great sickness of the spirit. Despite Reed's assurance, despite the dictates of everyday reason, O'Hara had until the last hour been possessed of a secret, unvoiced hope that this girl, the glamour of whose elfin personality had drawn him as no woman ever drew him before, might prove to be a sane and normal being. That hope was dead now — dead as the unlucky albino slain in his master's doorway. And for the sake of a mad girl he had committed a crime which in his own eyes debased him to the level of any common thug. Coming at last to the stair foot, he turned and crossed toward the corpse of his poor, repulsive victim. And reaching the threshold of the hall, lo, it was empty! The body of Marco lay there no more, nor any trace of it.
CHAPTER XIXCliona Receives a Guest "I'LL pay the fare, for I've no tickets." The conductor nodded and counted out change. "A nasty sort of night, Mr. O'Hara," he observed affably. Like every man on that short line, he knew half his passengers by sight, many by name, and there was little gossip going about at any of the smaller stations with which he was not acquainted. O'Hara had ridden with him only a few times, but the conductor was familiar with every extraneous fact concerning the Irishman's life at Carpentier. He remembered taking him to Undine earlier in the evening. Now O'Hara was going in town, where he was said never to go, and accompanied by a mysterious female. At that hour — eleven thirty — there was not another passenger on the inbound train, so the conductor had plenty of leisure for curious thoughts. Sitting on the dusty red plush cushions beside his silent Dusk Lady, O'Hara's mind dwelt grimly on the results of his little expedition. The disappearance of Marco's body troubled him, though he had made no effort to find it. Perhaps in the few moments that he was absent above-stairs, Genghis Khan had carried it away; or it might be that another witness than the girl had seen the slaying of Marco, someone who feared to show himself to this savage invader of Reed's domicile. One idea he clung to. Whatever he himself had done, Reed's daughter should not spend another night in that house of mysterious human and bestial inhabitants. She was silent and unquestioning, and he glad of her silence. When she talked his reason continually rebelled against the eccentricities of her speech. Silent, he felt renewed that intangible bond which seemed to exist between his nature and hers. Silent, he could almost forget that between them was also the dread specter of insanity. "My lord, are you still angered with me?" At the sound of that low, slightly tremulous voice, O'Hara turned reluctantly to the girl beside him. Toward her when she spoke he felt only gentleness and pity, but he dreaded what she might say, feeling a sort of personal shame in her irrationality. "I have no anger with you, little lady," he answered kindly. "Ill pleased, then. Is it because I have told you nothing of my story? One and another person I have told, but they had no — no understanding ——" She broke off, hesitating, and O'Hara groaned inwardly, thinking, "And how should they understand? Poor lass, only God understands foolishness!" "But you are not as others; you will believe, for you are great and strong and noble, and, moreover, you are bound to me by the Golden Thread." Colin started. "Tell me nothing!" he broke in hastily. Then, seeing that she shrank away with a little hurt motion, he added, "We've no time just now for the length of your tale. Do you just wait, little lady, till we are safe at home with my sister. It's but a few minutes now till we get off the train." "I will wait," she answered with a submissive sigh, and indeed there was no more time for talk. They were then entering the trainshed at the city terminal, and shortly thereafter Colin was hurrying his charge toward the gates and through them, thankful for the late hour and bad weather. But there were few people about on the train floor, and in any case his fears proved needless. As they went she clung tightly to his arm, shrinking against him.
Green Gables at last, and as Colin, standing in the shelter of the porte-cochère, paid off his driver, another car swung in and came to a halt just behind the taxi. This midnight motorist was Rhodes, very much belated — for him — but aglow with the results of a successful business day. A few minutes later that satisfaction was obliterated in pure astonishment. Colin, full of the trouble and excitement of the past few hours, had clean forgotten that by Rhodes he was still supposed to be several thousand miles away, and it was a moment before he could see any reason for his brother-in-law's thunderstruck amazement. Between that and genuine delight at finding him there, Rhodes did not notice the girl standing so silent at O'Hara's side until the latter, protesting that explanation must come later, called attention to this mysterious companion. "Little lady," said he, drawing her forward, "here is a good friend of mine who will be a friend to you, too, I am thinking. This is Mr. Anthony Rhodes, the husband of my sister. Tony, Miss Reed has come far and is needing rest." "My wife will be delighted to welcome you, Miss Reed. Won't you come in?" For all his cordial tone Rhodes was secretly filled with growing amazement. O'Hara's abrupt and unheralded return had surprised him, but that he should drop out of nowhere at 12:45 A.M. accompanied by a mysterious and lovely female who appeared to be dumb — for she had acknowledged neither the introduction nor his invitation to enter save by a barely perceptible inclination of the head — this struck him as unreasonably queer, and altogether out of keeping with O'Hara's known character. The latch-key was scarcely withdrawn from the opening door when Cliona appeared at the head of the stairs. She had sent the servants to bed, but herself waited up for her husband. Having planned a pleasant little supper à deux with her beloved Tony, and having donned for his benefit a most charming negligée, all soft white frills and chiffon rues with little gold bands to their edges, her glimpse of two other figures entering after him disconcerted her. Then, recognizing Colin, she came flying down the stairs like a small white whirlwind of welcome. Colin laughed, holding her off at ands length. "Rues and ribbons," said he, "do you not see that I am dripping from the rain?" "We have a visitor, Cliona," put in Rhodes in his pleasantest manner. "Miss Reed, let me make you acquainted with my wife." "Oh," murmured Cliona, peering around her brother, behind whose shielding bulk the visitor seemed to have retreated. "I'm so glad to know you, Miss Reed. Won't you come upstairs and remove your wraps? I see that as usual Colin has scorned to carry an umbrella, and I fear has let you suffer the consequences." Pause and silence. "As for that, though, I don't suppose any umbrella would survive a wind such as we have had all evening. We'll have a little supper in a few minutes, and something hot to prevent all three of you from catching your death of cold." No answer nor acknowledgment from the mysterious one. "Will you come with me, Miss Reed?" No response to that, either. It is rather difficult to continue a flow of cordial welcome addressed to a dark, motionless, speechless figure, whose very presence carries an ominous foreboding. And while her tongue had run lightly enough, Cliona's mind was a confusion of surmise. Who on earth could this strange woman be? Reed? Reed? Why, that Evan the name of the man who owned the queer stock-farm. And Colin had come openly to Green Gables, which he was not to do till the bungalow affair was finished. Was the mystery solved, then? And what had this Miss Reed to do with it? Why lead Colin brought her here, in the middle of the night and without warning? When he had phoned her at seven o'clock there had been nothing definite to report, or so he said. Cliona ceased to speak, and one of those sudden ghastly silences overtook all four of them — the kind that the ideal hostess is supposed never to allow. Cliona wanted to be an ideal hostess — she looked appealingly from Rhodes to Colin. The latter realized that the time had come when he must begin to explain. With a sigh for the task ahead of him, he turned to his Dusk Lady. "Take off your coat, child," he said gently. "This is my sister that I told you of. You'll find only kindness in this house." Cliona and Tony looked at her, fascinated. The situation had passed beyond conventional handling. There was something here which only Colin understood. They beheld a magnolia pale face, with crimson lips and starry, frightened eyes, but no words came from her. "Oh!" cried Cliona again involuntarily, and Rhodes echoed the exclamation in his mind. Where had Colin discovered this girl with her unearthly beauty and equally unearthly manner? In South America? Spanish, perhaps? She looked like a Latin of some sort. "Let me take your things," offered Cliona, realizing that the girl's coat was as wet as Colin's own. "Shall I remove them here?" The mysterious Miss Reed asked the question of O'Hara, as though she regarded him as the arbiter of even her smallest acts. "You may as well." He took off his own ulster and thoughtfully flung it over the umbrella-stand in the entry. It was too wet for Cliona's hall-rack. Miss Reed wore no hat, only the hood of her coat. Unfastening the coat itself, she slipped lithely out of it, leaving it in O'Hara's hands. A startled and simultaneous gasp issued from three mouths at once, but Colin's was the most expressive. Saints above, he was glad there had been no occasion for her to remove that coat in the train or station! Save that her feet were no longer bare, there stood his Dusk Lady exactly as she had stood upon the rug in Reed's entrance-hall while he stooped to examine Marco's body. Her green gown, wet as ever, clung to body and limbs in the revealing lines of a thin bathing suit. Her dark hair hung in the same beautiful but informal curls, and for the first time Colin was painfully aware of those worn places in her gown through which bare limbs shone whitely. Her eyes darted from one face to another of those about her, frightened, questioning. They were all, even her "lord," looking at her in the strange way that no one had ever regarded her before the beginning of her long time of sadness. In the place of her nativity, no such tremendous and burdensome value was laid on mere costume as "civilization" places there, and little indeed had been her chance to learn. In the house at Undine she had been kept close and guarded. Something was wrong. What was it? Glancing at his sister's flushed, astounded face, O'Hara wished with all his heart that he had not so much — so very much explaining ahead of him. To introduce a crazed and half-clad maiden and the fact that he was in his own opinion a murderer, all in the same hour — well —— With another deep, weary sigh Colin undertook the beginning of his task.
It was morning. Wind and rain had followed night into the past, and a glorious late October sun was doing its utmost to cast a last glamour of summer over the shivering, storm-denuded trees and to gild the sodden leaf-carpet that covered lawns and gardens. But it found more success when it peered in the windows of Cliona's breakfast room, already a sufficiently cheerful apartment. Though the hour was near noon, Cliona and Rhodes were first at table. With a very thoughtful brow she was putting slices of bread into an electric toaster, while her husband glanced mechanically through the morning paper. Casting it aside, he picked up the first edition of a so-called afternoon journal which had a paradoxical habit of appearing at 11 A.M. Therein he came on an item which changed his perfunctory interest to keen attention and caused him, after twice reading it, to fold up the sheet and with a very pale face thrust it in his pocket. Cliona's attention had been riveted on the toast, but, glancing up, she saw that something was wrong. "Are you not feeling well?" she asked quickly. "What's the matter, Tony?" He smiled reassuringly. "Nothing that coffee won't mend, dear. A slight headache. Last night's revelations were a trifle upsetting, though you weren't upset, were you?" He gave her an admiring glance. Dainty and fresh in her plain house-gown of blue linen, her appearance denied the sleepless night behind them. "You are the only woman in the world, I believe, who could bear such a strain in the way you are doing. Frankly, I thought Colin was crazy himself to come here with that girl and that story so soon after your illness. But I see he knows you better than I do!" "Not better — differently." She smiled back at him, then grew extremely grave. "Tony, are we going to let him do it?' "What? Give himself up? Now, Cliona, I don't see what else he can do. If he had been content to leave the girl where he found her, go quietly home and keep still afterward, I doubt if he could have been connected with the mur— the death of this man Marco. No one would have paid any attention to her story, even if she had the sense to tell it. "But as it is, and having removed the girl from her father's house, and having been recognized by that conductor and very likely several other people, there is no possibility of his not being connected with it. No one who knows Colin is ever going to believe that he meant to kill the man, and the provocation was probably greater than he says. His bringing the girl here is proof enough of his good intentions, and now that the thing has gone so far the only course for him is to plead either justifiable or involuntary manslaughter. "I'm no criminal lawyer, but I think when Reed's place is investigated, and everything is cleared up and the evidence laid before an impartial jury, Colin will get off scot free. This beautiful insane girl, left to the mercy of a huge ape and a probable degenerate, is bound to appeal to popular sympathy amazingly. "But you and I have our work cut out in dealing with that unruly conscience of Colin's. He says he meant to kill the man and that he wishes to take the consequences. If he says the same thing in court, and when the relative bulk of Colin and Marco is considered, the court is likely to take him at his word! I'm not trying to frighten you, darling, but I wish you to realize that Colin must — be — persuaded!" Cliona looked at him quite calmly. "He has to be persuaded to more than that — he has to be persuaded that 'twas not he but that big monkey, Genghis Khan, who killed Marco!" Rhodes opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. A woman's conscience is a tender thing, but it is not like a man's. Cliona, most innocent of women, considered perjury a small price for her brother's life and liberty. Yet after all it was no more perjury than what her husband had himself proposed. Rhodes possessed a deep and genuine friendship for his wife's brother. But he also knew the violence and impetuosity of the man. In his heart he believed that Colin had, as he insisted, intended for one furious moment the death of Marco. However, to his masculine mind there was a difference between the lie involved in a plea of involuntary manslaughter and the bolder lie which shifted the whole burden to another's shoulders, even though they were the shoulders of a beast. And at that moment Colin himself appeared. If possible he looked more depressed than on the previous night. Having shamed himself before these two, he must now go and shame himself before a less sympathetic audience at city hall. And the girl he loved was as mad as a hatter! The world looked very cold and bare to Colin O'Hara that morning, despite its sunshine. "Where's my — Miss Reed?" he demanded as he seats himself. "Your Miss Reed is still in bed," retorted Cliona with an attempt at lightness. "I ordered her breakfast sent up." "Oh! All right." Colin attacked his breakfast, served by the dignified butler whom the Rhodes had acquired with their large menage. But he found his appetite surprisingly slight. The instant they were alone he laid down his grapefruit spoon, leaned back and thrust his hands in his pockets. "I'm going in town now." "Yes," said Cliona quietly. "And we are going with you." "You're not." "Before anyone goes," Rhodes interposed with great firmness, "we shall have to talk things over a little further." "There's nothing to talk about," began Colin in his most obstinate manner, but just then the door opened and a timid, beautiful face appeared in the aperture. "May I — is it fitting that I enter?" "Of course — come right in, dear. Did you find it too lonely in your room?" Cliona, though she had good cause to dislike this ************** who had brought sorrow to all of them, was incapable of treating her in other than a kindly manner. Rising she went to the door and opened it for her fair and singular guest. The green gown was no longer in evidence, though Colin darkly suspected it of being somewhere beneath the pale lavender peignoir which now adorned her person. Cliona knew better. That unfortunate garment had been removed by herself at 3 A.M., after an expenditure of diplomacy sufficient to settle the fate of nations, but barely enough to persuade her guest out of it and into one of her own dainty nightrobes.
Under Cliona's guidance the girl entered and seated herself in the fourth chair at the small, square table, facing Colin. Every motion she made, every glance of her bright, mournful eyes, expressed the timidity of a graceful wild creature, anxious to please and to believe in the sincerity of those about it, but intensely conscious of the strangeness of its surroundings. She had been given no opportunity to tell her story. Last night they had all seemed desperately concerned over the killing of one who she well knew deserved his death — so concerned that no attention could be spared her, and every effort she made to speak — went wrong, some way. They would look at her, kindly, pityingly — and very courteously indicate that silence on her part was greatly to be preferred. The more important part of her story she had not dared even begin on. That was for her lord's ear alone. Surely he, who was so irrevocably bound to her, must understand and believe. Strange how the speaking or withholding of one word will sometimes affect whole destinies! One word — one of several names that were on her very tongue-tip — and the hindering veil of miscomprehension would have fallen. But she deemed her "lord" as ignorant of those names as everyone else of the few she had been allowed to meet in this mad world that lay outside her native hills. She knew him and he her, and they knew each other not at all — a paradox that was to cost dear before the finish. The girl was beautiful enough, in all conscience — more beautiful in the morning sunshine than he had thought her by the lights of night. Her hair was dry now, and had that dull black softness about her face which had caused O'Hara to name her "Dusk Lady" on first sight. Her smooth skin possessed a pearly, translucent whiteness, almost like alabaster with a faint pink light behind it, and her eyes were pleadingly, deceptively intelligent. Yet just now Rhodes felt that Colin himself was a sufficient problem and the presence of his insane protégée superfluous. "Did you sleep well, Miss Reed?" he inquired. And she replied with an admirable simplicity: "I slept." "And why not?" demanded Colin, heavily cheerful. "You're out of that house, and not even your father shall put you back there, little lady." "My — father? Oh! You mean he who names himself Chester Reed? He is not my father." "No?" Rhodes tried to look interested. "Your name not Reed, then?" The girl drew herself up with a funny little air of hauteur, and replied surprisingly: "I have no name!" A pained expression flashed across O'Hara's frank face. Again he was troubled by that double emotion — shame for her pitiful speeches, and, deeper than that, a sympathy which took no count of madness. She saw the pain in his eyes, the momentary astonishment of the two other faces, and its instant veiling behind that kindly, intolerable tolerance with which well-bred sanity confronts an unsound mind. She saw, for she shrank back in her chair and her dark eyes glimmered. "You know, dear child," said Cliona gently, "because we all have names ourselves, we get in the habit of expecting other people to have them, too. But indeed, if you are wishing it to be so, you need have no name with us." Frowning, the girl glanced from one to another, as if trying to determine exactly what they, their surprise and Cliona's too-soothing assurance might really mean. The she said in a very low tone, speaking only to herself, it seemed: "All the customs are so strange!" "They are that," conceded O'Hara with suspicious heartiness. "But now don't you be troubling your mind for the matter a minute longer. What do we care for names — the four of us here? Faith, 'tis the same to us if there were no names at all in the world — you need none, little lady, nor your mother nor your father ——" "Oh," cried the girl, brightening unexpectedly, "but of course my father had a name, and gave one to my mother likewise, but for me, I am not wed. Do your unwed maidens bear names, then?" "Generally." Rhodes sighed. He supposed they must humor the poor girl. "If you would tell us your father's name we could call you that, you know — that is if you object to 'Miss Reed.'" For the first time she laughed. "To call me as if I were my father! How strange are your customs!" Then she looked anxiously about the table. "I have heard him say that some harm had come to his name — what, I did not understand — so that it would bring him sorrow in this, the land of his birth. But you are my friends — you will not speak it to others. You are friends, are you not?" Colin, though he groaned in the soul of him, nodded and smiled bravely. Rhodes laughed in a kindly, encouraging way, and Cliona, filled with pity, leaned over and kissed the poor, sick girl on her beautiful forehead. "We are friends," she replied softly. Then: "Oh — what is it, Masters?" The butler, who had just entered, straightened himself with a resolutely passive face. "There are two men in the reception hall, and they asked me to tell you, Mr. Rhodes, that they are from headquarters and wish to see Mr. O'Hara at once. One of them says his name is MacClellan, sir." Masters had come to Green Gables shortly after O'Hara's departure for "South America," and consequently, though MacClellan had previously visited the house several times, he was unknown to the butler. But Masters did know that he disapproved of a household in which red-haired giants appeared at breakfast dressed in worn, water-proofed khaki, and were then called upon by plain-clothes men. However, Masters' inward disturbance was nothing compared to the consternation roused by his announcement in the bosoms of three of his hearers.
No one said anything, but their eyes, meeting across the table, spoke volumes. Then Rhodes turned to his stately servitor with what calmness he could command at the moment. "All right, Masters. Go tell them to wait a few minutes — right there in the hall." "Very well, sir." Masters' restraining presence removed, O'Hara came straight to the point. "They traced me so soon! Indeed, I've never given that lad MacClellan credit for such intelligence. Well, it's sorry I am, Tony, that they should take me from your house." But as Colin was rising from the table, Rhodes stopped him. "Wait a minute! I don't think they've come for that, and I want you not to see them. I have something to tell you ——" "Let it wait!" Colin shook off his brother-in-law's hand and stood up. His face was darkly flushed but his eyes shone with a grim determination. He dominated the rest of them like a giant at a pigmies tea-party. "Not see them? Would you have me sneak out the back door, then? Be sure they'll see me if I'm in the house — and I'll not run away. Do you stay here." He strode to the door, but his last command was disregarded. When he entered the reception hall Rhodes was behind him, still protesting, while Cliona and the strange girl brought up the rear. "Ah, Mr. O'Hara!" And MacClellan's rather heavy and stolid, countenance brightened as he beamed upon the advancing Irishman in a manner singularly cordial to be bestowed upon a murder-suspect. "I thought I might find you here. Quick work, eh? I suppose you've read all about it in the early afternoon editions?" "No." Colin favored his prospective captor with a morose stare. "I'd no notion they'd be having it — so early." "Oh, they got it at headquarters. We tried to phone out to Mr. Rhodes here, but they said you didn't answer. Line out of order?" "Not that I know of." Rhodes was nervous. He was becoming more and more positive that MacClellan was innocent of any knowledge dangerous to O'Hara, but at the same time there was imminent peril of his acquiring such information within the next few moments. O'Hara must be kept quiet until there was time for further conference. "More likely something wrong with the operator," he continued. "But I read the paper, MacClellan, and was just going to show it to the rest when you arrived." "And I was just on my way," began O'Hara, but Rhodes forestalled him, speaking very loudly and quickly. "It's the bungalow again, Colin. The bungalow received another visitation last night!" And pulling the folded newspaper from his pocket, he thrust it into O'Hara's hands, pointing to the column in question and for the moment at least effectually distracting his attention. Cliona, keyed to a worse calamity, laughed and exclaimed involuntarily: "Is that all?" "Ain't it enough?" MacClellan looked a trifle offended. No man likes to bear news of a mountain and hear it called a mole-hill. "I tell you, Mrs. Rhodes, it was enough to send me and Forester here shooting out to Carpentier within ten minutes after we got word of it. The news was phoned in by a milkman — name of Walker — and he said when he went up there to deliver the milk, there wasn't, in a manner of speaking, any place to deliver it at. Said you'd been living there alone, Mr. O'Hara, and the way he talked we got the idea you was murdered and laid out in the ruins. "So Forester, here, and me shot out there, and sure enough the place was pretty well smashed up, but not a sign of you or anybody else hurt. So on the train comin' in we got talkin' with the conductor — we central office men pick up lots of valuable clues just talking, here and there — and he says the night man told him how you and a lady went in town somewhere after eleven-thirty last night. "Well, we was anxious to get in touch with you, just to let you know we're on the job, so I tried to get Mr. Rhodes by phone. While I was trying, Forester, he called up the hotels and drew them blank, so I says the best thing was to come straight out here, and we did and here's Mr. O'Hara, just like I thought." MacClellan was so enamored of his own perspicacity in locating Colin that he was quite good-natured again. But to that gentleman himself it seemed a childishly simple feat — particularly when compared to the one which he had suspected MacClellan. He had meant to make the whole of last night's doings known to the complacent detective, but now he hated to do it. Somehow MacClellan would arrogate to himself as much credit as if he had captured a desperate criminal in the red act of assassination. Besides, there was the bungalow. After waiting six weeks for that visit, it had come in earnest during his one night of absence!
"So the place was pulled down?" he asked slowly, scanning the headlines. "Oh, no. That was Walker's exaggeration. But it was pretty well wrecked up all right — worse than the first time. And Walker said that when he got up there, there was a horrible smell about the place. Some sort of chemical, I guess, though that may have been some more of his imagination. It didn't look to me like there'd been any explosion." "I smelled something queer myself when we went inside." This from Forester, an intelligent-looking but very young man. "Don't you remember I called your attention to it?" "Yes, and I said you was dreamin'," snapped his superior. "If there was any smell it got out the windows before we reached there." Forester shrugged and subsided. But to O'Hara this talk of a mysterious odor called up a memory. The scene was a large, bare, dusty interior, illuminated by one leaping white ray. Faith, and it was a most unpleasant stench the place had been filled with! The front and the back door of that storehouse had stood open — open! And it was from Reed's place that Genghis Khan had wandered all the way to Carpentier — and tried to strangle him! Had Khan "wandered"? "I'll be returning to the bungalow," he announced. "Oh, no!" To Cliona, Carpentier and its vicinity were by this time doubly enhanced with terror. "Colin, darling, promise me you'll never go near there again!" "I'll have to. Sure, every stitch of clothes I have but these are out there. You'd not have me sacrifice my entire wardrobe, Cliona?" "You can send for them — besides, that's not your reason!" she added suspiciously. "And what if it's not? In broad daylight! For shame, little sister, 'tis not like yourself to be so unreasonable!" "I don't mean to be," Cliona considered, while MacClellan turned away to examine a picture — and grin. He disliked this domineering Irishman as instinctively as O'Hara despised him, and it was highly amusing to hear him plead against petticoat rule as meekly as the least of his fellows. "You may go," decreed Cliona at last, "if you'll take these gentlemen with you." Rhodes laughed. "I'm going myself, so you'll have quite a bodyguard, Colin." Somewhat to his surprise Cliona offered no objection to that. Perhaps she felt there was safety in numbers, and anyway, on reflection, a daylight expedition to the bungalow could rouse little dread. There must be people all over the place, too, as she had been told there were while first she lay there unconscious. "Where's the — the — Miss Reed?" It was Rhodes who asked. All the time they talked, the girl had stood close to Cliona, partly in shadow and so motionlessly silent as to be practically forgotten by all save Colin. He never quite forgot her, but she had been pushed to the back of his mind by these more pressing matters. "I think — perhaps she went back in the breakfast room. Shall I look for her?" Cliona made a motion toward the door, but her brother checked her, drawing her somewhat aside from the rest. "'Tis as well," he said in a guarded tone, "that MacClellan does not see her just now. Who knows what the day may bring? I'll not bid her farewell, either, for the poor lass might not understand. Just tell her I've gone and will return soon, and do you try and get at the truth of this business of her father. I'd not be surprised if there was real truth behind that. Be good to her and gentle — ah, I know there's no need to say that! Were you ever aught else in your life, little sister? But indeed, I'm that troubled ——" "Colin, MacClellan says he has only another hour or so to spare. If we're going we'd better start." This from Rhodes. "I'll take care of her, Colin." Cliona gave his arm a reassuring pat as he turned to obey Rhodes' summons. But she looked after him with a sadness in her eyes. Though so much younger, she understood Colin, as a mother understands a beloved son, and she knew that it was not only shame or despair for his deed at Undine that had taken all the buoyancy from his step, all the happiness from his face. She had seen him look at the girl he had brought here, heard his voice when he spoke of her — and the girl was so lovely — so hopelessly, pitifully lovely!
CHAPTER XXThe Fourth Visitation O'HARA stood on the macadamized drive beneath the same tree from which Genghis Khan had reached for his throat two nights ago. MacClellan alone was with him, for at the last moment Rhodes had received a telephone call from his partner — that line was in working order, after all — begging that he come in town at once on a matter of considerable business importance. O'Hara urged him to go, and in the end he did, but with a promise to join them later if possible. So they had run down to the city in Rhodes' car, dropped its owner at his office, set Forester down at city hall — his superior having denied any need of the young man loafing away any more time on this job — and proceeded straight to Carpentier. O'Hara was his own chauffeur, and he had MacClellan in the tonneau, so at least he was spared any converse with him during the trip. Once at the bungalow, however, the detective gave his tongue and his opinions a loose rein. As he had told them, this fresh bit of apparently objectless destruction bore a broad resemblance to the earlier attempt, save that this time its perpetrators had left no visible trace of themselves save their work. Every room in the house had been visited, as if by a small invading whirlwind. An indiscriminating whirlwind, too, that had scattered and smashed with no regard for relative values. A finely carved and heavily constructed sideboard which had escaped the first visitation had been broken to bits in the most difficult and painstaking manner. But equally the cheap deal table, at which Colin had taken supper the night before, lay about the kitchen in well-nigh unidentifiable fragments. In the bedroom that had been first Cliona's and then Colin's, nothing had been touched except the bed, and that was irrevocably smashed, even to the twisted mass of wire which had been the springs. So everywhere things common and valuable were broken or left intact with the whimsicality of choice that distinguishes those three insentient destroyers — fire, storm, and concussion. Yet there were no signs of an explosion, no fire had raged here, and, though a storm there had been, it must have been a strange one to have shattered windows and doors, ravaged inner rooms, and left roof and walls uninjured. The milkman's statement that he "came up to leave the milk and found no place to leave it" was not entirely unfounded. His custom had been to put O'Hara's quart bottle of the healthful fluid on the front steps, but these steps, which were wooden, had been torn away and lay some distance off. Every one of the veranda windows was broken, sash and all, and the door was flat and in two pieces. Having gloomily inspected the remains of his premises, Colin stood in the dining-room and listened with acute boredom to MacClellan's views. Something small and bright-colored caught his eye, and stooping, he plucked it from amidst the sideboard's débris. It was the last surviving remnant of that unfortunate Aztec godling — the head, minus its miter, and part of the red and blue tunic. Colin stared grimly down at the still patiently smiling face. "So they got you at last, little man," he muttered, half-abstractedly. The face smiled on — patient forever with the blindness of mankind. "What's that?" demanded MacClellan. "Nothing." Colin tossed the fragment aside, and led the way toward the door. "Just a bit of pottery that was worth a few thousand before we began receiving midnight callers. There's no luck to this house — no luck all. I shall live here no more. Drop the case or keep on with it as you like — its a matter of no further interest to myself." This annoyed MacClellan. It annoyed him more than O'Hara's insistence that he solve the previous case. There could be drawn an inference that the Irishman had lost all faith in his ability to solve anything whatever, but in that he was mistaken. O'Hara could not lose what he had never possessed. "We shall continue to investigate," he declared with stolid dignity. "We have sent word down the line to round up every hobo between here and headquarters, and ——" "Hoboes!" The ejaculation had a quality of bitter scorn that dissipated the last of MacClellan's patience. "Yes, hoboes!" he snapped. "If you're so sure that I don't know anything, then you have some good reason for being sure! When you get ready to tell it, let me know. I'm going back by train. Good day!" Colin viewed his retreating figure with wide, amused eyes. "And that's the only really clever thing he ever said in his life! Good day to you, Mr. MacClellan! Sure, I'll let you know — but not until I'm ready!" The detective, on his early morning visit, had again called out a patrolman to stand guard over O'Hara's possessions, and there he stood, MacClellan having departed in too great a rage to remember his patient sentinel. "Go or stay as you please," said O'Hara to the officer. "I'll send up a man presently to pack what's left worth packing and ship it in town. I doubt if I'll return here myself." "I'll see that your man makes a good job," volunteered the policeman agreeably. O'Hara had just slipped a bit of green paper into his willing hand — extended for that purpose, perhaps from habit, discreetly and with back half turned. "Thanks. I wish you would." As Colin climbed into the driving seat of his borrowed car he gave a last glance about the now desolate hilltop. Here and there strayed some idle and amateur seeker of "clues." A reporter or so, ruthlessly repelled by the gloom-stricken Irishman, still hovered hungrily in the offing. One individual hurried toward him as he started the car. Had Colin looked he would have seen a lean, worn-looking man, white-haired, with the mark of an old scar across his lower forehead. "Mr. O'Hara!" he called. "Hey, there! O'Hara! Wait a minute!" "Go to the devil with the rest of 'em!" muttered Colin without even a glance, and fairly shot out of hearing. He wanted to get away from it all. He had by no means surrendered hope of achieving a final solution — in fact he was grimly certain that the solution would not be much longer delayed. But he was sick of the bungalow — sick of everything. No matter if he exposed Reed as the deus ex machina of these lawless manifestations; no matter if in exposing him he discovered the reason of Reed's grudge, if he had one. No matter, even, if for one reason or another the killing of Marco should be publicly applauded as a righteous act — though that last seemed to him unlikely enough. No matter for anything. Was he not indeed linked by a "golden thread" to the one girl in the world for him — and was she not hopelessly, unquestionably insane?
He determined that he would not go back to Green Gables. She was safe in his sister's keeping, and he determined that before yielding himself to the police he would have one final interview with Reed — providing that is, that he could easily locate him. Yet before going on that errand, he brought the car to a halt before Bradshaw's shop, entered and with a nod to the storekeeper made for the little telephone booth. But Bradshaw halted him. "Say, Mr. O'Hara, your sister called up a while ago. Said the bungalow line was out of order. Did you find out ——" "Did Mrs. Rhodes want me, then? How long ago was that?" "Oh, about an hour, more or less, the first time. She's called twice since and says for you to phone her right away. Did that detective fellow ——" "Why didn't you send up the hill after me?" demanded O'Hara indignantly. "Nobody to send. Been looking around for a boy, but they're all up round your place, I guess. Did you find out ——" "I did not!" O'Hara disappeared in the booth, banging the door in poor Bradshaw's aggrieved face. That is, he tried to bang it, but the booth never having been built for his bulk, the attempt was a miserable failure. In an uncomfortably stooped position Colin went through the customary struggle to get Green Gables from Carpentier through a matter of three exchanges, and in the end was rewarded by Cliona's voice on the wire. She had been waiting anxiously for the call and before he could ask a question she imparted her news. "Colin — she's gone!" "What? Who's gone?" But he knew very well. "That Miss Reed, or whoever she was. She's gone — and I've been trying to get you for nearly two hours. Where have you been?" "Here." Colin's voice was a trifle hoarse. Of course they would find her again — she had wandered away, but he would find her —— Again Cliona was speaking. She had, it appeared, seen her guest safely bestowed in the bedroom assigned to her use, and herself gone to lie down for a short time. When she returned to offer the girl a cup of tea the room was empty. She was nowhere in the house and her coat had also disappeared. And — "Colin, she had taken that dreadful green dress again!" "Taken it? She didn't wear it?" "I — I'm afraid she did. The clothes I gave her were on the bed — they were laid out very nicely and in order, Colin dear — she must have had a beautiful bringing up ——" "Never mind consoling me, Cliona. What have you done to find her?" It seemed she had sent every one of the servants to search the neighborhood and had tried to get in touch with him before notifying the police. And three reporters had been there already about the bungalow — and the servants had all returned with nevus, and she had waited and waited —— "Yes, to be sure. But do you tell me, darling. Did she say anything to you before you left her? Tell me word for word all she said. I may get some trace of her by it." "Let me think. I asked her about her father, but she would tell me nothing. She said that already she loved me, but only to you would she speak. She said: 'I have seen kindness in the eyes of others than you, but it has been as the mockings of the shadow people. They went and returned not. But between me and my lord hangs a Golden Thread, and therefore there is trust between us.' Something like that. I'm trying to remember exactly, but ——" "You've a wonderful memory, and you're doing fine. And then?" "Well, she seemed disturbed because you had gone to Carpentier, and asked me to take her and follow you. Then she said she left the reception hall because you disliked the fat, clean man — Mr. MacClellan, I suppose — so much that you were making her hate him. She hates Marco and you — you struck him. And she thought that striking Marco had made you sad, she knew not why. So she went away lest you strike the fat, clean man also. Forgive me, Colin, but you wanted to know exactly." "And so I do. Then?" "That was all. When I wouldn't take her after you, she asked to lie down in her room and she did. She wad so perfectly nice and — and pleasant that I never — never thought ——" "And why would you? There's no blame at all to you, darling." His exoneration of Cliona was quite mechanical, a matter of habit, for in truth his thoughts were not on her. From head to foot he thrilled with a bitter, uncanny joy that shocked but refused to be banished by his reasoning mind. She had felt his dislike for MacClellan, sensed and sympathized with it to the point of hatred, in the same way that he had flamed to deadly, unjustifiable passion for her sake! What fire was this in which fleshly barriers melted and their two spirits fused? A dangerous blaze, surely, that expressed itself only in hate! No, that was the chance of unlucky circumstance. What opportunity had there been for happiness to, leap between them? Oh, all madness, madness! Somewhere in him there must lurk a weak, abnormal strain that responded to her insanity. He forced thought of it from him as something to be faced another time, and resolutely set his mind to the present exigency. "Don't be telling the police — yet. I've an idea where she may have gone. Had she any money, do you think?" "How do I know?" wailed his harassed sister. "She might have had some in her coat." "Cliona, do you take your mind off this business entirely. I'm the one that's responsible for her, and it's myself will find the poor lass. If any more reporters or detectives come bothering you, have Masters send them about their business. All will be well and 'twill be less than a help should you fret yourself into another sickness. Call up Tony at the office and tell him I'm leaving Carpentier and he had best return straight home when he can, so I'll know where to find him. Will you do all that for me, darling?" "Where are you going?" Her voice hinted of indefinite alarm. "Well, the railroad station would be a good place to seek first trace of her, don't you think?" "Perhaps — yes, I believe you're right, Colin. And then try the police stations. She's certainly quiet and well-behaved enough one way, but you can't tell what she might do outside and alone. Then will you come home — whether you find her or not?" "Oh, I'll come home. Goodby, Cliona, and mind all I told you." He hung up the receiver without waiting for a reply. Having purposely misled her in regard to the direction his search would take, he wished to answer no more questions.
There was one place to which his Dusk Lady, had she been of sound mind, would have been supremely unlikely to return. Being what she was, in O'Hara's opinion that was the first covert to draw. She had expressed to Cliona alarm for his safety and a desire to follow him. Danger and the house at Undine must be to her synonymous terms. There she had known misery and terror, there she had barely escaped the clutches of danger carnified in the person of Genghis Khan; there, she had seen him, O'Hara, kill a man and felt vicariously his own after-horror. There, then, if she thought of danger, would she picture him, and since she wished to follow him, it was to Reed's house that she would straightway go. It was sketchy theorizing, perhaps, but Colin had been trained in a rough school that turns out excellent and not often mistaken psychologists. He swung out of Bradshaw's, and almost into the arms of the white haired man, who had followed him down the hill. "Mr. O'Hara," he began again, but Colin brushed ruthlessly past. "I've nothing to say," he flung back. He had an impression that the persistent journalist sprang after him, tried to get a foothold on the running board, and fell. But his thoughts were a rushing torrent that fairly bore him with them. The outer consciousness that repulsed the man and set the car in motion was as mechanical as the motor itself. And so went Colin's last chance of escape from that which awaited him, swept under by the impetuous nature that no experience could lessen — that would be still impetuous to the very hour of its death. The road to Undine was well enough known to him, when he was not led cross-country. The big car ate up those few miles at reckless speed. Of course, there was a possibility that the lost maiden might have started for home in a vague, wandering way, without the wits or the money to reach it. But O'Hara deemed otherwise. The cleverness of lunacy is notorious, and who knew how familiar she might be with ways and means of getting about the city? Ten minutes after leaving Carpentier, he pulled up with a jerk at the iron gates upon whose intricate beauty he gazed for the fourth time in two days. It was then after five o'clock, and dusk was spreading its mantle of indistinctness and mystery. Behind those iron scrolls the gate-lodge loomed as a dim, sepulchral mass. O'Hara was out of the car almost before it had stopped, and at the gate in two long strides. But with his hand on the bell he paused. The thought of another clandestine intrusion on these premises was distasteful. He wanted to ring the bell and make his demands boldly of whoever should answer. But would anyone answer? Why had he so taken it for granted, because of last night's havoc at the bungalow, that Reed had never gone further from home than Carpentier — that the note transmitted by Marco's hand contained a lie? What if, up there at the house whose gray roofs so melted into the gray dusk as to be invisible behind their screen of skeleton boughs, what if no one was there save the monster ape and Marco? Marco, deaf forever to the ringing of that or any earthly bell? Had Reed returned, from however nefarious an expedition, would his own criminal proceedings have stopped him from sending out a general alarm, that the slayer of his servant and the abductor of his daughter might be immediately traced? And it would have been so easy to trace him! Surely, even MacClellan could have picked up that trail, followed so obvious a clue as the conductor's story. But if Reed were not at his "farm," if no one were there save Genghis Khan, and it had been he who caused Marco's body to vanish so disturbingly, then the girl could not be there either. Had she come, there was no one to admit her — ah, stupidity! What of that open storehouse door through which Colin himself had showed her the way? And if she had gone in — had found Khan there, alone, masterless —— Filled with an increasing horror of possibilities conjured up by his own imagination, O'Hara laid his hand on the gate, shaking it slightly — and at that light impulsion it swayed inward an inch or so. The loud complaint of its hinge smote his ears like a blow. The gate was unlocked! Anyone might have entered here — anyone. Half reluctantly, like a man who approaches some sight too terrible for human bearing, O'Hara pushed the gate wider and set his foot on the sodden leaves of the drive. He had left that house, left the man-ape loose there and given no warning that should save any harmless intruder from its unrestrained and cunning savagery. He knew what reward had been meted out to him, the double offender — knew it as though the torn, dismembered body of his Dusk Lady lay at his feet. Yet, since he must, he entered and turned his footsteps toward the unseen house. Tonight there was no wind; only silence, intense, painful as an evil dream, which the soft sound of wet leaves beneath his feet only served to make more lifeless. A thin haze had risen from the sodden ground, so that about him there was neither light nor darkness, only gray neutrality from which gaunt trees lifted their skeleton tracery against a sky only a little brighter than the mist below. Yet objects close at hand were still discernible. He passed the vine-hidden gate-lodge, and as he did so, and because of the general stillness, a sound reached his ears, a just perceptible rustling, as of wood gently rubbed upon wood. Whirling quickly, he stared through the thin haze toward the inner wall of the lodge. From where he stood, ten feet away, its outlines were somewhat blurred, its vines a mass without detail. And yet he was almost sure that again, as on that first night, a blacker oblong had appeared in the dark wall of vines. Then and for the first time in his life O'Hara learned the meaning of stark, horrible fear — fear that shut his throat against breath, and turned the strength of his giant limbs to water! In the center of that vague black oblong, faintly gleaming through the mist by a pallid light of its own, appeared an oval shape that swayed slightly from side to side — the oval of the gate-keeper's barely visible countenance. And to Colin the gatekeeper was Marco. And Marco lay dead by Colin's hand! Had the Irishman been given time to reflect, time to set the stern clamp of reason on his slipping faculties, what followed might have happened differently. But time was not granted. The oval wavered and rose a foot or so, then shot itself outward straight for O'Hara's face. He screamed out, loud and harsh, twisting his head to one side. Something struck his neck a terrible blow, and the gray mist flared red about him, to vanish, roaring, into blank unconsciousness.
He was lying beneath the sea, lapped in the slimy ooze of its deepest profundity. He could feel the rocking of his body to some slow, dense current, and the awful pressure of the depths crushed the flesh inward upon his vital organs, squeezing out the very life. Yet struggling to breathe — why, he could breathe, though shortly. He felt the air in his nostrils. How was that? Was there air on the sea-bottom? With that question, awakening reason dissipated the dream and roused him from unconsciousness. But the pressure it did not dissipate, nor the slow rocking motion. With an effort he forced open his eyes. It was night. He was lying on the ground somewhere in the open air, for he was looking upward through mist not dense enough to obscure the larger stars. His mind, still dazed, refused at once to resume the business of life. Marco? Marco? What was it concerning Marco? Reluctantly, then with gathering power, memory took up its office, showing him the day as he had lived it, action by action and scene by scene, till it brought him to an iron gate — the lodge within — the face that had hung poised in the doorway, unbearable horror of its flashing out at him, then that great blow and — darkness. But what after that? Why was he lying here, with body and limbs surrounded by some strange, tightening substance? Heavily he raised his head. He saw his own chest as a dim, whitish mass that seemed to stir with a slow, creeping motion. And now he knew that continually, through the paralyzing pressure, he had felt that sluggish creep, creep of the thing about him. There was a pounding in his ears, his temples throbbed and his eyes were dim with a suffusion of blood. But he perceived that the coiled mass round his chest was becoming faintly luminescent — that it was by its own light he saw the flat broadness of the coil nearest his face; noted, with a great effort of attention, its thin edge and the translucent parallel corrugations of its upper surface. Like the body of a worm it was, seen by transmitted light — a gigantic, living, shining worm that had no right to existence, even in a bad dream. And it was around him — he felt its naked coldness pressed against the skin of his right wrist, where the sleeve had been pushed above the protecting leather of his heavy glove. The coils tightened, contracted, with that continual revolting deliberation of movement, that drawing together and expanding of the corrugations that each time slid them a little further along. From chest to feet this — thing had wrapped itself about him, and still rocked him gently to its leisurely and sliding compassion. The luminance of its body was not constant, but increased and faded, increased and faded in a long, slow pulsation. Letting his head fall back on the sodden leaves he strove to move his limbs, to struggle. It was like straining against tight, thick rubber that gave a little but overcame the resistance of his deadened muscles simply by pressure. Then came the worst, for up from beneath his left shoulder a head rose and stretched itself on a thin, flat, tapering neck. It was a head that seemed mostly mouth, a great triangular aperture, gaping, tongueless, with soft drooping lips, and behind it on either side a fleck of red that might have been eyes or their remnants. It reared a good two feet above Colin's face, and he, staring, saw that its under side was dark, opaque, and that it was only from its upper surface that the light came. Then the head drooped and lowered, the neck curved backward. For one instant there was presented that same pale, shimmering oval which had hung in the doorway and that he had believed to be Marco's dead face. It descended with a swift, darting motion and Colin felt flabby lips muzzling at his neck. A dreadful, groaning cry rang in his ears, and he did not know that it was his own voice. He writhed in that close embrace, and its flat, contractible coils tightened around his chest — till the lungs collapsed and could no longer expand themselves — till he could utter not so much as a whisper of sound. Mental torment gave way to acute physical pain and that again to the merciful blankness of negation. |
(End of part two.)
(Prepared with assistance from Carolyn Dougherty)