Sinister Island, Charles Wadsworth Camp [notion reading list txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Wadsworth Camp
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When they were close he hailed the tub, but the fisherman gave no sign. They circled the hull. Its few portholes were covered with dirty sacking so that they could see nothing of the interior.
“Closer!” Miller said resolutely. “I’m going on board.”
He climbed over the broken rail. He examined the deck. It was empty. There was only one hatch. Miller faced that. His hand on the revolver in his pocket, he called :
“Hallo, below there!”
Aware of something like the reasonless hatred Anderson had described, he kicked and pounded on the hatch. He called again and again.
“If I were certain he’s there I’d break the thing in,” he said to Tony. “There’s something out of the way here.”
He lowered himself to the dingy in a bad temper, and directed Tony to continue to the shore.
“Draw the dingy above high water level, then keep your eye on that boat while I look over the scene of your affair.”
Tony shook his head.
“It’s day,” Miller said. “The snakes are drowsy in sunny places.”
He went up the path, carefully examining the underbrush on either side. About half way to the slave quarters, at the spot where Morgan and he had found Jake’s body, he saw several freshly broken palmetto fronds. That undoubtedly was where Tony had wandered from the path, where he had been held helpless by some compelling, intangible force while the snake had crept near. But there was nothing else; nothing the whole length of the path to give a clue to the nature of this force, nothing if one excepted the hot, damp air that made breathing almost painful.
In this heavy atmosphere Miller’s depression grew. His feeling of helplessness kept pace with it. His nerves jangled. Turning, he harried back to the shore of the inlet.
“Not a thing, not a thing,” he said irritably in reply to Tony’s questioning look.
He pointed at the fisherman’s boat.
“And that fellow—”
Tony shook his head.
The native at his heels, Miller hurried to the coquina house. Anderson and Molly met him at the steps.
“Jim!” Molly called. “What’s the matter?”
“Enough,” he answered. He told them of Tony’s experience.
“And there’s something more,” he said. “Altogether it’s put me out of humour with myself. My nerves seem to be on edge this afternoon.”
“You, Jim?” Molly said. “I prayed it wouldn’t get you.”
Miller made an impatient gesture.
“Nothing has me, but I’ve ceased blaming you for staying here. One can’t be beaten by such madness.”
With an effort he forced himself to speak of the girl.
“Andy, there’s one thing—that girl.”
Anderson’s glance questioned him,
“Yes,” Miller said, “I’ve seen her. I want to know all you can tell me about her.”
“You don’t think she had anything to do with last night? ” Molly asked.
“I can’t think that.”
“She is so strange,” Molly sighed.
“I asked you on the Dart, Andy, when you spoke of her as so strange if she was off her head. She is queer, I grant you that—perhaps consciously so. That’s a question. Actually she is as sane as you or I. Now what can you tell me about her?”
“Very little,” Anderson replied, “that can be put into words. Molly, you—”
“It’s so indefinite—the feeling you have about her,” Molly said. ” We’ve never seen her much—scarcely at all lately. Occasionally we’ve spied her running or walking through the forest—always with that curious detached expression on her pretty face. But what to me has seemed hardest to account for is the way she makes you feel when she looks at you out of those big, deep eyes, the way she seems to hold you aloof. But I have never thought she was crazy.”
“I’d stake my life she isn%” Anderson said. “The girl suffers, and I believe it’s this island that makes her suffer. Perhaps it affects her even more than it does us. She may be more receptive.”
“I’ve thought of that,” Miller answered. “Have you never asked Morgan about her? I tried yesterday and he froze solid.”
“He always does,” Molly said. “I wanted to be friendly with her, but she wouldn’t let me. She made me feel I can’t tell you how ill-at-ease. Then she ran away. I spoke to her father. He let me see it made him very unhappy to talk about her.”
“But why?” Miller cried.
“Because,” Anderson answered, “I think Morgan fears it may be the other thing, or at any rate imagines we suspect it. That would hurt him, anger him,”
“And that’s all you can tell me of her!” Miller said. “It’s how everything appears in this place—elusive, just out of reach. If we could only get our hands on one fact to start a theory that would hold water!”
“I hate to see you this way, Jim,” Molly said gloomily.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get that fact if it’s to be had. Meantime we must deal with something we can’t define, something apparently impossible. But we can’t sit back in our ignorance and say that and risk its running over us. No matter how preposterous it seems to our commonsense we must take the island at its face value. In the first place, I understand you have to hail a boat every time you go to Sandport. There is no boat at the southern end of the island, opposite Sandport?”
Anderson shook his head.
“There ought to be one,” Miller went on. “I’ll send Tony to Sandport to hire a rowboat. We can keep it tied on this side.”
Molly nodded approvingly, but Anderson wanted reasons..
“This business of Tony’s,” Miller answered, “has taught me a lesson. I’ve concluded that stubbornness is a poor relation of discretion. It’s brought you nothing but the loss of—well, your peace of mind. It’s nearly cost me Tony. I acknowledge nothing except that there appears to have been an incomprehensible and fatal force at large in that piece of forest last night and the night Jake died. Because we haven’t been able to get a physical clue to it we can’t afford to sit back and say it doesn’t exist. It’s there. It’s dangerous. Suppose it should spread to this house? You haven’t been able to get any physical clue to the apparently supernatural manifestations of this house either, have you? Suppose the force should grow stronger and sweep the island? It would come from that direction. You could not get to the Dart, but if you had any warning you might escape to a boat and Sandport.”
“It looks like surrender,” Anderson said helplessly.
“Nonsense. I’m no more friendly to the supernatural than I was in Martinsburg. We’re fighting an unseen enemy,’ that’s all. We must skirmish against the only line he indicates to us.”
He called Tony, gave him some money, and sent him to Sandport to hire the boat. For the sake of the others he forced his depression down. He called out with an attempt at cheerfulness :
“Out of our minds with it! It will be dark soon enough. Andy, bring some kind of a table out here and a pack of cards. We’ll try a little three-handed auction, and tonight you’ll open that demonstrative bottle of wine—two if we want them. The supernatural’s as friendly to cheerfulness as the devil to a clergyman.”
“What a blessed change!” Molly said.
“We’ve done what we could for the present. I repeat I’m not friendly to phantoms. My hands itch to get at their throats.”
Anderson brought the table and the cards. It was difficult at first, but finally they grew interested in the game. Before they realised he had had time to complete his errand, Tony was back. He explained briefly that he had hired a good boat, and described its location at the river end of the island.
They resumed their game. It held them until the sun had set, until the dejection that came with the twilight drove their minds from the cards.
“I must think of dinner,” Molly sighed, listlessly scoring a hand.
“Tell Tony what to do and look upon it as done,” Miller suggested. “0r better yet, why not all of us pitch in and get dinner! It will be good fun. Tony can clean up afterwards while we finish this rubber.”
Molly and Anderson agreed uninterestedly.
Tony, who had been sitting on the steps, arose, and, as a matter of course, entered the house with them.
They kept close to each other in the cold, dark interior until Anderson had struck a match and lighted the diningroom lamp.
While Tony made a light in the kitchen Miller brought the lamps from the parlour and the library, and placed them with the one already in the diningroom. They left no shadowed corners there. He called to Molly and Anderson, who were in the kitchen :
“Where’s the spirit substantial enough to face this battery of kerosene?”
Tony looked at him disapprovingly. Miller laughed.
“Set the table, Tony, then fill that fireplace as full of wood as you can and set it blazing. Do you mind, Molly, my taking your castle thus by storm?”
“Mind!” she called. “If you had been here every night!”
Miller wandered back to the kitchen. The size of the room made it appear bare, unfurnished in spite of the old-fashioned stove, the iron pump and sink, the table, and the two or three chairs scattered around. There were two windows in the rear wall. One of them was open. Walking over to it. Miller gazed out for a moment, then slammed it shut and locked it.
“I don’t see,” he said to Anderson, “why you didn’t have this brushwood cleared out. It’s against this back wall. It’s a definite menace. Give me an axe and I’ll start on it myself in the morning. If the wind’s right we might set fire to it.”
He paused.
“For that matter,” he resumed thoughtfully, “we might fire that unholy piece of woods.”
“Too dry,” Anderson said. ” There’s been no rain here in more than a month. The whole island might go.”
“What of it! Small loss!” Miller muttered.
He took off his coat. He rolled up his sleeves.
“Molly, pin an apron on me. I’m to be queen of the kitchen while Andy there does alchemy with bottles. Those chops won’t take long. Hurry your magic, Andy.”
As she leaned over the stove a little colour came to Molly’s face. The sizzling of the meat and the clinking of glass from the table, where Anderson was trying to discount the lack of ice, combined with Miller’s constant chatter to raise their spirits.
“It’s like a studio feast in the Eue d’Assass,” Molly said.
“Remember,” Miller said, “the night I came in from Saint Cloud with the new bull pup? We called him Buffalo Bill because his chief aim was the breaking of china and glass.”
So they went on, reminiscing almost contentedly until dinner was ready, and they had carried the steaming dishes into the diningroom. Tony spoiled their illusion. He leaned against the mantel, uncomfortably near the fire he had built, staring at the open door to the hall. There was a tortured expression on his face.
“See here, Tony—” Miller began.
But he recalled what the man had suffered last night. He went on more kindly :
“Sit in the kitchen doorway if you wish. Now, Molly, Andy, we’ll drink to good health, peaceful minds, and victory,”
The meal went better than they had hoped. They toasted themselves with a semblance of laughter. They drank enthusiastically to the carefree party they would have—if nothing happened—in the most crowded, most brilliant restaurant in New
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