The Best Wadsworth Camp Mysteries. Charles Wadsworth Camp
Miller said.
“We’ll hope that’s it. You’re sure you don’t mind waiting here for the coroner, because I ought to be at the plantation. You see—”
He paused. Miller wondered if it was the girl who was calling him back. Morgan cleared his throat and verified his guess.
“My daughter is alone there, except for the cook. I am not in the habit—I suppose I ought to go back.”
“Certainly,” Miller said. “I’m right as can be here until the others arrive.”
“Come for me if you need me,” Morgan directed. “And tell the Andersons they’d better run on over and spend the night at the plantation. It won’t be very pleasant for them in the coquina house after this. If they’ve any scruples about leaving tell them to keep my man to help in any way he can. “
Miller thanked him absent-mindedly. Since Morgan had introduced the subject himself, here was an exceptional chance to speak of the girl, to lift, perhaps, the veil from her uncommon and fascinating personality. He crushed down the desire to speak. He couldn’t do it under these circumstances. So, reluctantly, he saw Morgan go.
It was nearly dark now. He was glad Morgan had brought the gun. He liked the feel of the sleek barrels as he carried it cradled under his arm.
The dusk deepened. Infernally the minutes lengthened. The night had an oily quality. He could almost feel it slipping down, thickly, chokingly. Pretty soon he couldn’t see the path. Jake’s body, which had grown dimmer and dimmer, was no longer before his eyes. The branches were so thick that he couldn’t be sure the stars were shining. Once or twice he stumbled, and he stood still, not daring to move for fear of leaving the path to flounder helplessly in that thicket whose revolting life had already done for one of them.
He heard rustling sounds increasing about him. He was practically certain that they were leaves whispering in the breeze, yet that feeling of the snakes, of which Anderson had spoken, came to him in all its force. It was easy to fancy these rustling sounds were made by snakes circling him and slowly closing their circle. It was difficult for him to argue reasonably as he stood by black night in the heavy repellent atmosphere of that forest, in a place he knew was avoided for two things : the supernatural and poisonous snakes. Jake’s invisible body testified how deservedly. Those sly noises, such as snakes might make, grew everywhere about him. And he was defenceless, to all purposes a blind man, unable to avoid the creeping horror.
He realised now the state of mind into which the island had thrown Anderson and Molly. He held his nerves in leash by a severe effort of the will. He lost all track of time. It seemed to him that midnight must have come and gone before he saw a lantern waving through the jungle.
“Here they are,” he thought. “I’m not sorry this is ended.”
But it was Molly, bravely strangling her terror, coming through the forest alone.
“Molly!” he called. “What’s the matter?”
She started to run. She had almost reached him when he saw her go down. He heard the tinkling of the lantern chimney as it shattered. He put out his hands against the darkness rushing in again. He stumbled towards her. He found her. He got his arms around her and lifted her up. She was half laughing, half crying—laughing hysterically from her accident and her relief at finding him, and crying because of her grief and her fear.
Anderson, she said, must have missed his boat for he had not returned. Morgan’s man had come back from Sandport alone. The coroner had refused to follow until morning. He had made no comprehensible excuse. Evidently he shared the general, ignorant fear of Captain’s Island. Even duty had failed to drag him there after dark.
Miller groaned.
“Where is Morgan’s man?” he asked.
Molly shivered.
“The coroner must have frightened him. Or else he had some experience on the road from the end of the island of which he won’t speak. When he got to the coquina house he refused to leave even to return to the plantation. Instead he was sitting cowed and shaking, over a blazing fire he’s built in our kitchen. Jim, this is dreadful! I can’t realise. Where—?”
But Miller reached out and found her arm. He grasped it.
“No, Molly, that would be foolish. It is dreadful, as you say. But we must face the facts and be sensible. You and Andy must not let this weigh on you. K you can’t rise above it you’ll have to leave Captain’s Island.”
“Feeling as we do! We can’t.”
“Then,” he said determinedly, “you can not brood over Jake.”
He felt her aim tremble.
“When it’s our fault!”
“That’s nonsense. Now listen, Molly. You must go right back to the coquina house. It’s hard luck you broke the lantern, but you can follow the path.”
The muscles of her arm tautened. She drew closer to him.
“And spend the night there alone, except for that frightened man! Jim, anyway, I came with the lantern, but I can’t—I can’t go through that path alone now, without light. Don’t ask it.”
Miller was in a quandary. He shrank from the only way out.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“It was nine o’clock when I left the house.”
Six or seven hours to daylight! He knew there was no chance of relief from Morgan. When his man failed to return to the plantation he would naturally conclude that everything had been attended to, and that the Andersons had acted on his suggestion and kept him for the night. There was no other course. Miller decided, indefensible as it was, that it would be wiser to leave Jake to the things that prowl by night than to keep Molly during those long hours in that piece of forest. When he proposed it, however, Molly refused even to consider the plan.
“Jake’s been faithful to Andy and me for a good many years. If we had let him go back to New York, instead of forcing him to stay here against his will, he would be alive now. No, Jim, we can be faithful to Jake for a few hours no matter what it costs. I’ll stay, Jim. I’ll watch with you. Don’t say anything more.”
Miller knew that argument was useless. So they stayed and suffered through the night. More than once Miller was tempted to fire his gun in the hope that Morgan might hear and come to them. It wasn’t merely that they could see nothing, that Jake’s body lay so near, even that those stealthy noises such as snakes might make caused their flesh to creep. It was something else; something which, Molly said, you felt in that piece of forest more than anywhere else on the island—felt, and loathed, and couldn’t analyse.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CORONER FROM SANDPORT
They suffered through those hours because they were together, yet when the dawn came they looked at each other as though they had been strangers. Molly, haggard and shaking, went down the path then on her way to the coquina house. Miller watched on alone in the sickly, early light. He pulled himself together with a struggle. It was easier now to find comfort in logic, to assure himself that his agitation had been caused by the night and the loneliness, aided by the state of mind Molly and Anderson had impressed upon him.
“First thing I know,” he said to himself, “they’ll have me as much under the spell as they are themselves.”
He could smile a little at that thought even now.
The night had chilled him. He paced up and down vigorously while the light strengthened. Here and there a sunbeam broke through and flashed across the foliage. He grew ashamed of his uncomfortable emotions of the dark hours.
It was still early when