The man looked older. The lines of his face seemed more deeply graven, the flesh-sacks were swollen under his eyes, he was some way shaken and haggard. Yet you didn"t get the idea of impotence. The hands at his side had a man"s grasp in them. Nopp was still able to handle most of the problems that confronted him.
Slatterly, too, had not escaped unscathed. The danger and his own failure to solve the mystery had killed some of the man"s conceit, and he was more tolerant and sympathetic. There was a peculiar, excited sparkle in his eyes, too.
Slatterly turned to Nopp. "He says he"s got a pistol."
The second that ensued had an unmistakable quality of drama. Nopp turned to me, exhaling heavily. "Killdare, we"ve beat the devil around the stump all along--and it"s time to stop," he said. "I don"t like to talk like a crazy man, but we"ve got to look this infernal matter in the face. When you come out to-night come armed with the biggest gun you can find--a high-powered rifle."
No man argued with another, at a time like this. "I don"t know where I can get a rifle," I told him.
"Every man in the house has got some kind or another. I"m going to be frank and tell you what I"m carrying--a big .405, the biggest quick-shooting arm I could get hold of. Whatever comes to-night--we"ve got to stop."
We gathered again at the big mahogany table, dined quietly, and the four of us excused ourselves just before dessert. The twilight was already falling--like gray shadows of wings over land and sea--and we wanted to be at our post. We didn"t desire that the peril of the lagoon should strike in our absence. And we left a more hopeful spirit among the other occupants of the manor house.
They were all glad that armed men would guard the lagoon sh.o.r.e that night. I suppose it gave them some sense of security otherwise not known. The four of us procured our rifles, and walked, a grim company, down to the sh.o.r.e of the lagoon.
"We want to guard as much of the sh.o.r.e line as we can, and still keep each other in sight," Slatterly said. "And there"s no getting away from it that we want to be in easy rifle range of each other."
He posted us at fifty-yard intervals along the craggy margin. I was placed near the approach of the rock wall, overlooking a wide stretch of the sh.o.r.e, Weldon"s post was fifty yards above mine, the sheriff"s next, and Nopp"s most distant of all. Then we were left to watch the tides and the night and the stars probing through the darkening mantle of the sky.
We had no definite orders. We were simply to watch, to fire at will in case of an emergency, to guard the occupants of the manor house against any danger that might emerge from the depths of the lagoon. The tide, at the lowest ebb at the hour of our arrival, began soon to flow again. The gla.s.sy surface was fretted by the beat and crash of oncoming waves against the rocky barrier. We saw the little rivulets splash through; the water"s edge crept slowly up the craggy sh.o.r.e. The dusk deepened, and soon it was deep night.
We were none too close together. I could barely make out the tall figure of Weldon, standing statuesque on a great, gray crag beside the lagoon.
His figure was so dim that it was hard to believe in its reality, the gun at his shoulder was but a fine penciled line, and with the growing darkness, it was hard to make him out at all. Soon it took a certain measure of imagination to conceive of that darker spot in the mist of darkness as the form of a fellow man.
The sense of isolation increased. We heard no sound from each other, but the night itself was full of little, hushed noises. From my camp fire beside Manatee Marsh I had often heard the same sounds, but they were more compelling now, they held the attention with unswerving constancy, and they seemed to penetrate further into the spirit. Also I found it harder to identify them--at least to believe steadfastly the identifications that I made.
We hadn"t heard a beginning of the sounds when we had listened from the verandas. They had been m.u.f.fled there, dim and hushed, but here they seemed to speak just in your ear. Sea-birds called and shrieked, owls uttered their mournful complaints, brush cracked and rustled as little, eager-eyed furry things crept through. Once I started and the gun leaped upward in my arms as some great sea-fish, likely a tarpon, leaped and splashed just beyond the rock wall.
"What is it, Killdare?" Weldon called. His voice was sharp and urgent.
"Some fish jumped, that was all," I answered. And again the silence dropped down.
The tide-waves burst with ever-increasing fury. The stars were ever brighter, and their companies ever larger, in the deep, violet s.p.a.ces of the sky. The hours pa.s.sed. The lights in the great colonial house behind us winked out, one by one.
There was no consolation in glancing at my watch. It served to make the time pa.s.s more slowly. The hour drew to midnight, after a hundred years or so of waiting; the night had pa.s.sed its apex and had begun its swift descent to dawn. And all at once the thickets rustled and stirred behind me.
No man can be blamed for whipping about, startled in the last, little nerve, in such a moment as this. Some one was hastening down to the sh.o.r.e of the lagoon--some one that walked lightly, yet with eagerness. I could even hear the long, wet gra.s.s lashing against her ankles.
"Who is it?" I asked quietly.
"Edith," some one answered from the gloom.
Many important things in life are forgotten, and small ones kept; and my memory will harbor always the sound of that girlish voice, so clear and full in the darkness. Though she spoke softly her whole self was reflected in the tone. It was sweet, tender, perhaps even a little startled and fearful. In a moment she was at my side.
"What do you mean by coming here alone?" I demanded.
"The phone rang--in the upper corridor," she told me almost breathlessly. "The negroes were afraid to answer it. I went--and it was a telegram for you. I thought I"d better bring it--it was only two hundred yards, and four men here. You"re not angry, are you?"
No man could be angry at such a time; and she handed me a written copy of the message she had received over the wire. I scratched a match, saw her pretty, sober face in its light and read:
Am sending picture of George Florey, brother of murdered man. Watch him closely. Am writing.
It wasn"t an urgent message. The picture would have reached me, just the same, and I had every intention of watching closely the man I believed was the dead butler"s brother. Yet I was glad enough she had seen fit to bring it to me. We would have our moment together, after all.
What was said beside that craggy, mysterious margin, what words were all but obscured by the sound of the tide-waves breaking against the natural wall of rock, what oaths were given, and what breathless, incredible happiness came upon us as if from the far stars, has little part in the working out of the mystery of Kastle Krags. Certain moments pa.s.sed, indescribably fleet, and certain age-old miracles were reenacted. Life doesn"t yield many such moments. But then--not many are needed to pay for life.
After a while we told each other good-night, and I scratched a match to look again into her face. Some way, I had expected the miraculous softening of every tender line and the unspeakable l.u.s.ter in her blue eyes that the flaring light revealed. They were merely part of the night and its magic, and the joy I had in the sight was incomparable with any other earthly thing. But what surprised me was a curious look of intentness and determination, almost a zealot"s enthusiasm in her face, that the match-light showed and the darkness concealed again.
She went away, as quietly as she had come. Whether Weldon had seen her I did not know. There was something else I didn"t know, either, and the thought of it was a delight through all the long hours of my watch.
Edith Nealman had worlds of common sense. I wondered how she had been able to convince herself that the message was of such importance that she needs must carry it through the darkness of the gardens to me at once.
CHAPTER XXIII
The tide reached its full, shortly after two o"clock, and then began to ebb. Almost at once the little waves of the lagoon smoothed out, they lapped no more against the craggy margin, and the water lay like a sheet of gray gla.s.s. I had seen the same transformation on several previous occasions, but to-night it seemed to get hold of me as never before.
Seemingly it partook of a miraculous quality to-night--as if winds had been suddenly stilled by a magician"s art. The water was of course flowing out between the crevices of the rock wall, yet there was no sense of motion. The water-line dropped slowly down.
It is an unescapable fact that the whole atmosphere of the Ochakee country is one of death. The moss-draped forests seem without life, the rivers convey no sense of motion, the air is dead, and vegetation rots underfoot. To-night the lagoon was without any image or indication of life. The whole vista seemed like some dead, forgotten wasteland in a dream--a place where living things had never come and was forever incompatible with life.
It was a mysterious hour. The half-crescent moon rose at last, at first a silver tinting of the skyline, a steadily growing wave of light and then the sharply outlined moon itself above the eastern forest. The dark shadows that were my companions took form, strengthened; again I could see their erect figures on the gray crags and the gleam of their rifles in their arms. The perspective widened, the rock wall seemed to extend, stretch ever further across the lagoon, and now the sky was graying in the East.
A moment later I heard Weldon"s voice, ringing full in the hush of the dying night, as he spoke Slatterly"s name. The latter answered at once.
"Yes. What is it?"
"Let"s go in. The night"s over and nothing"s happened. It"s pretty near bright day already."
It was true that the eastern sky had begun to be tinged with gray. I could see the lines of my hands and the finer mechanisms of the rifle.
The hour, however, seemed later than it really was, simply because of the effulgence of the moon. The dread atmosphere of Kastle Krags had in a moment been wholly destroyed. Instead of a place of mystery and peril, it was simply an old-time manor-house fronting the sea, built between the forest and a calm lagoon.
There didn"t seem any use of watching further. If the night was not yet, in fact, completely over, the moon and the graying east gave the effect of morning. Perhaps the fact that the outgoing tide had stilled the lagoon had its effect too. The ominous sound of breaking waves was gone, and it gave a perfect image of quietude and peace.
Slatterly waited an instant before he answered. "Wait a little more," he said in a resigned tone. "But you"re right--it"s almost morning."
I don"t think it was five minutes later that I saw Weldon leave his post and saunter over to the sheriff"s side. I suppose, bored with his task, the time seemed much longer to him. True, the lagoon was gray, the shadows of the garden had lost their mystery, and there didn"t seem any use of waiting. Indeed, I don"t think any of us escaped a sense of inner embarra.s.sment--something akin to ignominy and chagrin--that we should be standing beside that quiet water-body, with high-powered rifles in our hands. It made us feel secretly ridiculous.
Nopp called over, cheerily, "Through for the night?"
"Might as well," Slatterly answered. "It was a fool party anyway."
Very glad that the watch was over, I left my own post, and we had a cigarette apiece beside the still lagoon. Then we went through the gardens to the house.
"We"ve disrupted the regular schedule, anyway," Nopp said. "I think we"ve come to the end of our trouble, and nothing more to fear. Man, do you think to-day will clear the thing up?"
"What chance is there to clear up such a mess in one day?" The sheriff spoke moodily.