Almost before we"d thought the order given, the _Naiad_ slowed down, and came to rest like a great Lohengrin swan in the clear azure wavelets. A boat was quickly lowered, and we saw that Roger himself accompanied the two rowers.
A few moments before he had looked so happy, so at peace with the world, that the tragic shadow in his eyes had actually vanished. His whole expression and bearing had been different, and he had seemed years younger--almost boyish, in his dark, shy, reserved way. But as he went down in the boat, he was again the Roger Fane I had known and wondered about.
"If he"s superst.i.tious, this will seem a bad omen," I thought. "That is, if the thing _does_ turn out to be a coffin."
None of us remembered the tea we"d been pining for, though a white-clad steward was hovering with trays of cakes, cream, and strawberries. We could do nothing but hang over the rail and watch the _Naiad"s_ boat. We saw it reach the Thing, in whose neighbourhood it paused with lifted oars, while a discussion went on between Roger and the rowers.
Apparently they argued, with due respect, against the carrying out of some order or suggestion. He was not a man to be disobeyed, however.
After a moment or two, the work of taking the black thing in tow was begun.
We were very near now, and could plainly see all that went on. Coffin or not, the mysterious object was a long, narrow box of some sort (the men"s reluctance to pick it up pretty well proved _what_ sort, to my mind), and curiously enough a rope was tied round it. There appeared to be a lump of knots on top, and a loose end trailing like seaweed, which made the task of taking the derelict in tow an easy one. To this broken rope Roger deftly attached the rope carried in the boat, and it was not long before the rescue party started to return.
"Is it a coffin or a treasure chest?" girls and men eagerly called down to Roger. Everyone screamed some question--except Shelagh and me. We were silent, and Shelagh"s colour had faded. She edged closer to me, until our shoulders touched. Hers felt cold to my warm flesh.
"Why, you"re shivering, dear!" I said. "You"re not _afraid_ of that wretched thing--whatever it is?"
"We both _know_ what it is, without telling, don"t we?" she replied, in a half whisper. "I"m not _afraid_ of it, of course. But--it"s awful that we should come across a coffin floating in the sea, on our first day out. I feel as if it meant bad luck for Roger and me. How can they all squeal and chatter so? I suppose Roger is bound to bring the dreadful thing on board. It wouldn"t be decent not to. But I wish he needn"t."
I rather wished the same, partly because I knew how superst.i.tious sailors were about such matters, and how they would hate to have a coffin--presumably containing a dead body--on board the _Naiad_. It really wasn"t a gay yachting companion! However, I tried to cheer Shelagh. It would take more than this to bring her bad luck _now_, I said, when things had gone so far; and she might have more trust in me, whom she had lately named her _mascotte_.
All the men frankly desired to see the _trouvaille_ at close quarters, and most of the women wanted a peep, though they weren"t brutally open about it. If there had been any doubt, it would have vanished as the Thing was being hauled on board by grave-faced, suddenly sullen sailors.
It was a "sure enough" coffin, and--it seemed--an unusually large one!
It had to be placed on deck, for the moment, but Roger had the dark shape instantly covered with tarpaulins; and an appeal from his clouded eyes made me suggest adjourning indoors for tea. We could have it in the saloon, which was decorated like a boudoir, and full of lilies and roses--Shelagh"s favourite flowers.
"Let"s not talk any more about the business!" Roger exclaimed, when Shelagh"s uncle seemed inclined to mix the subject with food. "I wish it hadn"t happened, as the men are foolishly upset. But it can"t be helped, and we must do our best. The--er--it sha"n"t stop on deck. That would be to keep Jonah under our eyes. I"ve thought of a place where we can ignore it till to-morrow, when we"ll land it as early as we can at St.
Heliers. I"m afraid the local authorities will want to tie us up in a lot of red tape. But the worst will be to catechize us as if we were witnesses in court. Meanwhile, let"s forget the whole affair."
"Righto!" promptly exclaimed all three of the younger guests; but Mr.
Pollen was not thus to be deprived of his morbid morsel.
"Certainly," he agreed. "But before the subject is shelved, _where_ is the "place" you speak of? I mean, where is the coffin to rest throughout the night?"
Roger gave a grim laugh, and looked obstinate. "I"ll tell you this much," he said. "None of you"ll have it for a near neighbour, so none of you need worry."
After that, even Mr. Pollen could not persist. We disposed of an enormous tea, after the excitement, and then some of us played bridge.
When we separated, however, to pace the deck--two by two, for a "const.i.tutional" before dinner--one could see by the absorbed expression on faces, and guess by the low-toned voices, what each pair discussed.
My companion, Lord Glencathra, thought that Somebody must have died on Some Ship, and been thrown overboard. But I argued that this could hardly be, because--surely--bodies buried at sea were not put into coffins, were they? I had heard that the custom was to sew them up in sailcloth or something, and weight them well. Besides, there was the broken rope tied round the coffin, which seemed to show that it had been tethered, and got loose--in the storm, perhaps. How did Lord Glencathra account for that fact? He couldn"t account for it. Nor could any one else.
CHAPTER V
WHAT I FOUND IN MY CABIN
I did all I could to make dinner a lively meal, and with iced Pommery of a particularly good year as my aide-de-camp, superficially at least I succeeded. But whenever there was an instant"s lull in the conversation, I felt that everyone was asking him or herself, "_Where_ is the coffin?"
The plan had been to have a little moonlight fox-trotting and jazzing on deck; but with that Black Thing hidden somewhere on board, we confined ourselves to more bridge and star-gazing, according to taste. I, as professional Brightener, n.o.bly kept Mr. Pollen out of everybody"s way by annexing him for a stroll. This deserved the name of a double brightening act, for I brightened the lives of his fellow guests by saving them from him; and I brightened his by encouraging him to talk of Well-Connected People.
"Who _was_ she before she married Lord Thingum-bob?" ... or, "Yes, she was Miss So-and-So, a cousin of the Duke of d.i.n.k.u.m," might have been heard issuing sapiently from our lips, had any one been mentally dest.i.tute enough to eavesdrop. But I had my reward. Dear little Shelagh Leigh and Roger Fane seemed to have cheered each other. I left them standing together, elbows on the rail, as they had stood before the affair of the afternoon. The moonlight was shining full upon Shelagh"s bright hair and pearl-white face, as she looked up, eager-eyed, at Roger; and _he_ looked--at least, his _back_ looked!--as if there were n.o.body on land or sea except one Girl.
Having lured Mr. Pollen to make a fourth at a bridge table where the players were too polite to kill him, I ventured to vanish. There being no one on board with whom I wished to flirt, my one desire after two hard hours of Brightening was to curl up in my cabin with a nice book. I quite looked forward to the moment for shutting myself cosily in, for the cabin was a delicious pink-and-white nest--the biggest room on board, as a tribute to my princesshood.
Hardly had I opened the door, however, when my dream-bubble broke. A very odd and repellent odour greeted me, and seemed almost to push me back across the threshold. I held my ground, however, and sniffed with curiosity and disgust.
Somebody had been at my perfume--my expensive pet perfume, made especially for me in Rome (one drop exquisite; two, oppressive), and must have spilt the lot. But worse than this, the heavy fragrance was mingled with a reek of stale brandy.
Anger flashed in me, like a match set to gun-cotton. Some impertinent person had sneaked into my stateroom and played a stupid practical joke.
Or, if not that, one of the pleasantly prim, immaculate women (a cross between the stewardess and ladies"-maid type) engaged to hook up our frocks and make up our cabins, was secretly a confirmed--_ROTTER_!
I switched on the light, shut the door smartly without locking it, and flung a furious glance around. The creature had actually dared to place a brandy bottle conspicuously upon my dressing table, among gold-handled brushes and silver gilt boxes, and, as a crowning impertinence, had left a tumbler beside the bottle, a quarter full of strong-smelling brown stuff. Close by lay my lovely crystal flask of "Campagna Violets,"
empty. I could get no more anywhere, and it had cost five pounds! I could hardly breathe in the room. Oh, evidently a stewardess must have gone stark mad, or else some practical joker had waited to play the _coup_ until the stewardesses were in bed!
As I thought this, my eyes as well as my nostrils warned me of something strange. The rose-coloured silk curtains which, when I went to dinner, had been gracefully looped back at head and foot of my pretty bed (a real bed, not a mere berth!) were now closely drawn with a secretive air. This made me imagine that it was a practical joke I had to deal with, and my fancy flew to all sorts of weird surprises, any one of which I might find hidden behind the draperies.
I trust that I have a sense of humour, and I can laugh at a jest against myself as well as any woman, perhaps better than most. But to-night I was in no mood to laugh at jests, and I wondered how anybody had the heart (not to mention the _cheek_!) to perpetrate one after the shock we had experienced. Besides, I couldn"t think of a person likely to play a trick on me. Certainly my host wouldn"t do so. Shelagh, my best and most intimate pal, was far too gentle and sensitive-minded. As for the other guests, none were of the noisy, bounding type who take liberties even with distant acquaintances, for fun.
All this ran through my mind, as a cinema "cut-in" flashes across the screen; and it wasn"t until I"d pa.s.sed in review the characters of my fellow guests that I summoned courage to pull back the bed-curtains.
When I did so, I gave a jerk that slipped them along the rod as far as they would go. And then--I saw the last thing in the world I could have pictured.
A woman, fully dressed, was stretched on the pink silk coverlet fast asleep, her head deep sunk in the embroidered pillow.
It was all I could do to keep back a cry--for this was no woman I had seen on board, not even a drunken or sleep-walking stewardess. Yet her face was not strange to me. That was the most horrible, the most mysterious part! There was no mistake, for the face was impossible to forget. As I stared, almost believing that I dreamed, another scene rose between my eyes and the dainty little cabin of the _Naiad_.
It also was a scene in a dream. I knew it was a dream, but it was torturingly vivid. I was a prisoner on a German submarine, in war-time, and signals from my own old home--Courtenaye Abbey--flashed into my eyes. They flashed so brightly that they set me on fire. I wakened from the nightmare with a start. A strong light dazzled me, and, striking my face, lit up another face as well. Just for an instant I saw it; then the revealing ray died into darkness. But on my retina was photographed those features, in a pale, illumined circle.
A second sufficed to bring back to my brain this old dream and the waking reality which followed, that night at the Abbey, long ago--the night which Shelagh and I called "Spy Night." For here, in my cabin on the yacht _Naiad_, on the crushed pillow of my bed, was that face.
As I realized this, without benefit of any doubt, a faint sickness swept over me. It was partly horror of the past; partly physical disgust of the brandy-reek--stronger than ever now--hanging like an unseen canopy over the bed; and partly cold fear of a terrifying Presence.
There she lay, sunk in drugged and drunken sleep, the Woman of Mystery, in whose existence no one but Shelagh and I had ever quite believed: the woman who had visited us in our sleep, and who--almost certainly--had fired the Abbey, hoping that we and the Barlows might suffocate in our beds.
The face was just the same as it had been then: "beautiful and hideous at the same time, like Medusa," I had described it; only now it was older, and though still beautiful, somehow _ravaged_. The hair still glowed with the vivid auburn colour which I had thought "unreal looking"; but now it was tumbled and unkempt. Loose locks strayed over the dainty pillow, and at the bottom of the bed, pushed tightly against the footboard by a pair of untidy, high-heeled shoes, was a dusty black toque half covered with a very thick motor-veil of gray tissue. There was a gray cloak, too, in a tumbled ma.s.s on the pink coverlet, and a pair of soiled gloves. Everything about the sleeper was sordid and repulsive, a shuddering contrast to the exquisite freshness of the bed and room--everything, that is, except the face. Its half-wrecked beauty was still supreme, and even in the ruin drink or drugs had wrought, it forced admiration.
"_A German spy_--here in my cabin--on board Roger Fane"s yacht!" I said the words slowly in my mind, not with my tongue. Not a sound, not the faintest whisper, pa.s.sed my lips. Yet suddenly the long, dark lashes on bruise-blue lids began to quiver. It was as if my _thought_ had shaken the woman by the shoulder, and roused what was left of her soul.
I should have liked to dash out of the room and with a shriek bring everyone on board to my cabin. But I stood motionless, concentrating my gaze on those trembling eyelids. Something inside me seemed to say: "Don"t be a coward, Elizabeth Courtenaye!" It was exactly like Grandmother"s voice. I had a conviction that _she_ wanted me to see this thing through as a Courtenaye should, shirking no responsibility, and solving the mystery of past and present without bleating for help.
The fringed lids parted, shut, quivered again, and flashed wide open. A pair of pale eyes stared into mine--wicked eyes, cruel eyes, green as a cat"s. Like a cat, too, the creature gathered herself together as if for a spring. Her muscles rippled and jerked. She sat up, and in chilled surprise I thought I saw recognition in her stare.
CHAPTER VI
THE WOMAN OF THE PAST