Sinister Island, Charles Wadsworth Camp [notion reading list txt] 📗

it was. She didn’t seem to know herself. Ellen, of course, had to see it. Their enthusiasm and satisfaction were dead.

“They wouldn’t go upstairs until we did. We had given them each a room, but they said they preferred to share one. They hung back from saying good night to Molly. This all drove our minds from ourselves. We went to bed talking about it, wondering what the upshot would be.

“A wild scream awakened me in the middle of the night. In such a place it was doubly startling. Molly was already up. I threw on a bathrobe and we hurried to Mary and Ellen. Their light was burning. They lay in bed trembling and clinging to each other.

“They wouldn’t talk at first—wouldn’t or couldn’t. Finally we got it out of them. They had heard something dreadful happening in the next room. Some one, they swore, had been murdered there. They had heard everything, and Mary had screamed. Jim, I know it sounds absurd, but those girls who had never dreamed of the existence of old Noyer or his Arab woman, described in detail such sounds as might have cursed that house seventy or eighty years ago the night of that vicious and unpunished murder.

“We tried to laugh them out of their fancy. We entered the next room—a large, gloomy apartment on the front, probably—if Balt’s story is true—the room in which the woman died. Of course there was nothing there, but we couldn’t get Mary and Ellen to see for themselves. Nor would they stay upstairs. They dressed, and spent the rest of the night in the diningroom. And when we came down for breakfast they told us what we had feared,—they wouldn’t spend another night in that house. They were ready even to pay their own fare home. They hated to leave Molly, they said, but they couldn’t help themselves. They were afraid. It was then that I sent for Jake. If Jake didn’t owe me so much, if he wasn’t so persistent in his gratitude and loyalty, he would have followed them long ago.”

“Nightmares! Nightmares!” Miller scoffed.

“Jim,” Anderson said slowly, “since then Molly and I have had the same nightmares.”

Miller glanced up.

“Possibly imagination after the girls’ story.”

“No,” Anderson answered with conviction. “We have heard—we still hear—sounds that are not imagination—sounds that suggest a monstrous tragedy. And the worst of it is there is no normal explanation—none, none. Jim, I’ve tried everything to trace these sounds, to account for them. And they’re not all. Aside from this recurrent experience the house is—is terrifying. It isn’t too strong a word. You remember all that stuff we used to laugh at in the reports of The Psychical Research Society—footsteps in empty rooms, doors opening and closing without explanation? Well, Molly and I don’t laugh at it now—but we want to laugh. Jim, make us laugh again.”

“Of course. Of course, Andy.”

“And always at night,” Anderson went on, “there’s that grewsome feeling of an intangible and appalling presence. In the dark halls and rooms you know it is there, behind you, but when you turn there is nothing.”

He shuddered. He drank some water.

“In an indefinite way the atmosphere of that house is the atmosphere of the entire island. I can’t explain that to you. It’s something one feels but can’t analyse—something you must know and—and loathe yourself before you can understand. As far as I can fix it, it’s the feeling of the snakes, of which I spoke, and something besides. It holds a threat of death.”

“And the snakes?” Miller asked; “you say they haven’t troubled y—?”

“I said we had seen none.”

Anderson paused.

“But,” he went on after a moment, “the other day we found Molly’s big Persian cat in the thicket between the shore and the old slave quarters. It had been struck by a rattlesnake.”

“Too inquisitive cat!” Miller said. “You know snakes don’t care about having their habits closely questioned by other animals.”

Anderson shook his head.

“If you had lived here the last two months as we have, you might feel as we do about it—that it’s a sort of warning. You know I said they were growing daring.”

“Andy! Andy!” Miller cried. “This won’t do.”

“That’s what Morgan’s always saying,” Anderson answered, “but in his quiet way he’s on tenterhooks himself. He’s resisting the impulse to go, too.”

“Has he a wife?” Miller asked.

“A daughter,” Anderson said slowly.

“Any company for Molly?”

Anderson turned away. He seemed reluctant to reply.

“No,” he said finally, “not even for her father. Jim, I wish you’d try to judge that girl for yourself—if you can, if you see her. You can’t tell about her. She’s queer, elusive, unnatural. She troubles Morgan. Of course it’s a subject we can’t discuss very well.”

“Off her head?”

“Judge her for yourself, Jim, if you can. Frankly she’s beyond me.”

“Another puzzle! And that’s the entire population!”

“Morgan’s two brothers from the North have visited him once or twice. They made it almost jolly. But they didn’t stay long. Don’t blame them.”

“And that’s all!”

“On the island proper. There’s that native of whom I spoke. One shrinks from him instinctively. He’s been hanging around ever since we’ve been here, living in a flat-bottomed oyster boat, anchored near the shore. At night I’ve thought I’ve seen him crawling silently around the inlet in his filthy old tub.”

“At least he doesn’t seem superstitious.” Miller put in drily.

“Rather a figure to foster superstition. He seems to symbolise the whole thing.”

“That’s a curious fancy. What has he to say for himself? You’ve been aboard his boat of course.”

“Scarcely. Morgan tried that once out of bravado. He found no one there—no sign of life. I’ve attempted time after time to get a word with the man. I’ve hailed him from the shore. But he pays no attention—either isn’t to be seen at all, or else stands on his deck, gaunt and lean and hairy, etched against the sunset. You look at him until you hate him, until you fear him.”

“I can try my own hand there,” Miller said. “Then that’s the total of your neighbours?”

“There’s a colony of oystermen working the marsh banks to the north of the island. They live in thickets. They have the appearance of savages. Bait said there’s a queer secret organisation among them.”

Miller smoked in silence for some moments, while Anderson watched him with an air of suspense. Miller lowered his cigar and leaned forward.

“This girl, Andy?”

“It’s hard to say anything more definite about her, and, if you stay, I’d rather you followed my wishes there. Judge her for yourself, Jim. And—and are you going to stay and help us back to mental health?”

“What do you think?” Miller asked a little impatiently. “You mustn’t grow too fanciful.”

“If’s asking a great deal,” Anderson said, “because, sane and strong-willed as you are, Jim, it isn’t impossible you should feel the taint yourself.”

“I’m not afraid of that,” Miller laughed. “I’ll stay, but not in your house at first. I’ll live on the boat here in the inlet where I can keep my eye on that fisherman of yours and get a broad view of the whole island and its mystery. I’ll hold myself a little aloof. You see it would be perfectly natural for you to row out and call on a stranger anchoring here and invading your loneliness; natural for you to bring Molly, say tomorrow; natural for me to return your call, and eventually to visit you at the coquina house over night and experience its dreadful thrills. That’s the way we’ll let it stand, if you please, for the present. I’m a total stranger.”

“Do as you think best,” Anderson agreed gratefully.

“Then that’s settled,” Miller said. “Now how about dinner? You’ll stay?”

Anderson arose.

“No, Molly and Jake are waiting. I know they’re worried, Jim. They won’t have any peace until I’m safely back. These woods—we don’t like them even by day.”

Miller smiled.

“I’ll do my best to purify them of everything but snakes. I can’t promise about the snakes.”

As he led the way up the ladder he heard Tony open the sliding door. Glancing back, he saw the native, fear in his face, waiting to follow.

“There is something here that gets the natives,” he whispered to Anderson. “Go home now and sleep, and tell Molly to sleep. We’ll straighten things out in no time.”

“You’ll do it, if it can be done,” Anderson said. “If it can be done—”

He grasped the painter and drew his boat forward against the resisting tide. Miller held the line while Anderson stepped in.

Anderson clearly shrank from the short journey back to the coquina house. A sense of discomfort swept Miller. He felt the necessity of strengthening his friend with something reassuring, with something even more definite than reassurance.

“And, Andy,” he said, leaning over the rail. “if anything comes up—if you need me at any moment, send Jake, or, if there isn’t a chance for that, call from the shore or fire a gun three times. I should hear you.”

“Thanks, Jim. I’ll remember,” Anderson answered.

He pushed his boat from the side of the Dart. The tide caught it and drew it into the black shadows even before he had seated himself and arranged the oars.

Miller remained leaning over the rail, straining his eyes to find the vanished boat. After a moment he tried to penetrate the darkness for a light, for some sign of that other boat, the boat of the fisherman. He could make out nothing. Yet it must lie somewhere over there, harbouring that grim, provocative figure to which Anderson attached such unnatural importance.

As he leaned there he felt troubled, uncertain. It had been a shock to see a man so, exceptionally sane as Anderson suddenly deprived of his healthy outlook on life and death, and struggling in this desperate fashion to regain it.

He told himself he had no slightest fear of the island or its lonely mysteries. That might after all be a satisfactory explanation:—the loneliness, the climate, the clinging mass of native superstition, the brooding over the servants’ fancies, the consequent growth of sleeplessness, and, finally, when nerves were raw, this first reminder of the snakes. It was enough to work on the strongest minds.

Miller smiled at Anderson’s fear that he might become a victim too. Yet the impression of unhealth the place had carried to him and which he had fought down before Anderson, had returned. He leaned there wondering.

He swung around at a sharp noise. Tony was at the anchor chain again.

“Afraid we’ll drag?”

The native pointed to the sky.

Only a few stars gleamed momentarily as heavy clouds scudded southward. For the first time Miller felt the stinging quality of the wind.

“It’ll blow hard,” he said. “What a night! I’m going below. I’ll be hungry by the time you have dinner ready.”

He went down the companionway. The other followed him so closely he could feel his warm breath on the back of his neck.

Tony went in the kitchen and started to get dinner. Miller stretched himself on a locker. He arranged the cushions luxuriously behind his head. He took from the shelf a book which he had found fascinating only last night. He lighted his pipe. He tried to fancy himself supremely comfortable and cosy.

Tony came in after a few moments and commenced to set the table. Miller blew great clouds of smoke ceilingward.

“Not so bad down here, Tony!” he said. “Confess, it couldn’t look a bit different if we were tied up at the dock in Martinsburg. Well?”

He lowered his book. He glanced up. The pallor that had invaded the native’s face at the command to anchor in Captain’s Inlet had not retreated. The fear, too, that had burned