The breathless circle nodded.
It was a strange setting for the working out of the drama. Overhead a suspended oil-lamp flamed and smelled. Outside the crash of surf against the rocks came to them, and the wind whistled about the eaves of the little stone building.
"Now the mirror," she said to Code, and, still wondering, he handed the trinket to her. "Tell about this," she directed him with a smile and a long look from her deep dark eyes.
And Code told them. He told of the time his father first gave it to him, of his experiments in astronomy, and of Nat"s coveting the mirror. He told of that night after the first race when he had looked for the log-book of the _May_ and had seen the mirror in its drawer.
He told of its final discovery in the secret box of the storeroom on the _Nettie_.
As he talked the memory of the wrongs against him flamed in his breast, and he directed his story at Nat, who sat silent and immovable in the corner.
"If I found this aboard the _Nettie_ it proves that he must have come and got it!" he cried. "He boarded the old _May_, but it was not for this that he came!"
"What, then?" asked Hardy.
"To damage the schooner so that she would break down under the strain of the next race," flared Code, facing Nat dramatically. Burns only clenched his jaws tighter on his cigar.
"You don"t believe this, perhaps, squire, but listen and I"ll tell you how the old _May_ sank." And once again he described the crashing calamity aboard the overloaded boat as she struggled home to Freekirk Head with the last of her strength.
"You, squire, you"ve sailed your boats in your time! You know that never could have happened even to the old _May_ unless something had been done. And something _was_ done! Burns had weakened the topm"st and the mainstay!"
All eyes were fixed on Nat, but he did not move. He was very pale now, but apparently self-possessed. Suddenly, with a hand that appeared firm, he removed the cigar from his mouth and cast it on the floor.
"That," he said with deadly coolness, "is a blasted fine plot that you have all worked out together. But every word of it is a lie, for the whole thing is without a single foundation in fact. Prove it!"
"I"ll give you a last chance, Burns," said Elsa in a level voice that contained all the concentrated hatred that Code had detected in her before. "Dismiss these charges against Code."
"Never!" The word was catapulted from him as though by a muscular convulsion. "He murdered my father, and he shall pay for it!"
Without a word Elsa rose from her chair and walked back into the adjoining room. A moment later she reappeared, leading a beautiful girl who was perhaps twenty years old.
The effect was electric. The people in the little group seemed frozen into the att.i.tudes they had last a.s.sumed.
Only in Nat Burns was there a change.
He seemed to have shrunk back into his clothes until he was but a little, wizened man. His face was ghastly and clammy perspiration glittered on his forehead in the lamplight.
"Caroline!" he cried in a hoa.r.s.e voice that did not rise above a whisper.
"Yes, Caroline," said Elsa, her black eyes flashing fire. "You had forgotten her, hadn"t you? You had forgotten the girl who loved you, that you drove away from the island! You had forgotten the girl that gave you everything and got nothing! But that has come back upon you now, and these people are here to see it. Even your father, in his log-book, mentioned when my sister left Grande Mignon, apparently to work in the factory at Lubec. As though my sister should ever work in a factory!"
"So this explains why she went that time," said Squire Hardy gently.
"We all wondered at it, Elsa--we all wondered at it."
"And well you might. But he is the cause! And he wouldn"t marry her! I have waited for this chance of revenge, and now he shall pay."
Caroline Fuller, who was even more beautiful than her sister, looked at Nat in a kind of daze. Suddenly there was a spasmodic working of her features.
"Oh, that I could ever have loved him!" she said in a faint voice.
"Here, Elsa, read it to them all!"
From under her cloak she drew a crumpled envelope which she pa.s.sed to her sister.
With a snarl like that of a wild animal Nat leaped from his chair toward the girl, but Durkee struck him violently and he reeled back into it.
"You swore you burned them all!" muttered Nat. "You swore it! You swore it!"
"Yes, and she did, the innocent child--all but this one that she had mislaid in a book you once sent her," cried Elsa. "But I found it, Burns. Where do you think I"ve been all this while? At St. John"s, where she lives with my aunt. And do you think there was no reason for that letter being saved? G.o.d takes care of things like this, and now you"ve got to pay, Nat Burns! I knew there would come a time. I knew there would!"
She was still standing, and she drew the letter out of the envelope.
"Look, squire, Code, any of you who know. Is this Nat"s writing?"
"Yes," they all declared as the letter pa.s.sed from hand to hand.
"Read it," said the squire, forcing Caroline Fuller to sit down in his chair.
"I"ll spare him hearing the first of it," said Elsa. "It is what men write to women they love or feign to love, and it belongs to my sister. But here"--she turned the first sheet inside out--"listen to this."
Involuntarily they all leaned forward, all except Durkee, who went over and stood beside Nat. The latter gave no sign except a dry rattling sound in his throat as he swallowed involuntarily.
"I"ve got him, Caroline--I"ve got him!" she read. "He"ll beat me again, will he? Well, not if I know it! Everybody in the Head seems tickled to death that he won, but you know how little that means to me. It is simply another reason why I should beat him the next time.
"Dearest little girl, it"s the easiest thing in the world. I"ve just come back from going over the _May_ (it"s midnight), and the thing looks good. You know Schofield is a great hand to carry sail. Well, when you hear about the race, maybe you"ll hear that his foretopmast came down in a squall. If you don"t, I"ll be much surprised, for I"ve attended to it myself, and I don"t think it will take much of a squall.
"Maybe you"ll hear, too, that his mainstay snapped and his sticks went into the water all because he carried too much sail. I shouldn"t be surprised. I"ve attended to that, too. So I guess with his foretopmast cracked off and his mainstay snapped the old _M. C._ ought to romp home an easy victor, if she is an old ice-wagon. I tried to get Schofield to bet, but he"s so tight with his cash he wouldn"t shake down a five-cent piece. Good thing for him, though, he doesn"t know it. Nothing would do me more good than to get his roll, the virtuous old deacon!"
She stopped reading as a rumble of mirth went round the circle. Code in the role of a virtuous deacon was a novelty. Even the hard lines of Elsa"s face relaxed and she smiled, albeit a trifle grimly.
"That"s all," she said, folding up the letter and putting it back into the envelope. "The rest is personal and not ours. Now, Mr. Durkee, if you still care to consider Captain Schofield as the defendant in those two suits I want your arguments."
"I don"t, Mrs. Mallaby," said the detective, and called the Freekirk Head jailer. "But I know who is going to take Schofield"s place."
He glared at Nat Burns, who cowered silent and miserable in his corner. Despite his sailing as Nat"s guest he had never brought himself to like the man, and now he was glad to be well rid of him.
Code stepped out a free man, and his first action was to take both of Elsa"s hands and try to thank her. Her eyes dropped and she blushed.
When he had stammered through his speech he turned to Caroline Fuller and repeated it, but the sad smile she gave him tore at his heart.
"I came because Elsa asked me to save a friend," she said, "not because I wished to revenge myself on Nat. I am glad it was you, for I would do anything on earth for Elsa."
Code turned mystified eyes upon Mrs. Mallaby.
"I thought you did this to revenge yourself on Nat," he half whispered.
"I did, partly," she replied. She lifted her eyes to his and he saw something in them that startled him--something that, in all his a.s.sociation with her, he had never seen before. He stood silent, amazed, overwhelmed while she turned her face away.
CHAPTER x.x.x