The Best Wadsworth Camp Mysteries. Charles Wadsworth Camp
I’m not a fool. I’ll go carefully—slowly. I’ve had enough warning. I don’t expect to be ambushed by any one—anything.”
He threw off Anderson’s detaining hand.
“Don’t let’s have a scene. Don’t alarm them. Let me get off quietly. I’ve a gun for snakes or whatever isn’t bullet-proof, and the other thing—what I’ve heard here—has only hurt my nerves and my pride. It’s all right, Andy. That light shines on the key to the whole mystery.”
He tiptoed across the floor, but when he reached the hall he heard the girl trying to rise.
“Where is he going! Don’t let him go I He must not go! Let me up!”
She screamed:
“Don’t let him go!”
Miller threw the screen door open. He sprang into the clearing. He ran swiftly across it.
The wind had risen to a gale. The trees moaned and thrashed in the angry gusts. But the wind, Miller noticed, detached no flames from the blue, light. The whole mass, which was not as large or as high as he had thought at first, swayed bodily in a narrow arc.
When he reached the path that led to the shore where he had left his boat, he was a little sheltered from the wind, and the light, he found, did not penetrate to him.
He went slowly, his hand on the revolver in his pocket. He went silently, recalling that the girl had said the path-to the inlet was closed to him. His care and stealth availed, for he reached the shore without experience.
He paused there for a moment, leaning against the wind which now swept unimpeded across the water. He faced the entrance to the path through the dangerous forest where Jake had died, where Tony last night had been bound by the invisible force. The blue light was strong enough here to show him that entrance—a black cavern, flanked by trees that twisted and strained as though in an agony of warning.
He shrank from stepping between these Dantesque sentinels through that sombre portal.
His mind went to the lantern which he knew lay in the boat only a few feet away. But he had come so far by stealth and silence. Stealthily and silently he must go on. He realised it was his wisest campaign against that which conspired death beyond the frantic trees.
With an effort he stepped forward. Little by little he conquered his revulsion. He entered the path. Again the light failed to reach him. The darkness was like a cloak. It suffocated. In spite of the keen wind tearing past him he could scarcely breathe.
He had no illusions. He knew he was in danger—a danger all the more to be feared because it was uncharted. He slipped his revolver from his pocket. His other hand he carried outstretched before him. Painfully he crept up the path, momentarily expectant of the enemy’s first move.
His half serious remark to Anderson about firing this piece of woods came back to him. A match dropped in the dry underbrush at the will of this wind would surrender the forest to a swift destruction. Let the enemy make its first move, let him feel the symptoms of an overpowering lassitude, and he would drop that match, he would yield the woods to that cleansing conflagration.
But the enemy was wary. Its attack did not come. Almost gasping for breath he went on, pushing back the darkness with his outstretched hand as a swimmer cleaves the water.
He knew he must have come half way. He realised he must be in the vicinity of the place where Jake and Tony had been caught, yet he continued unimpeded.
Just beyond, however, he felt a return of the impression that had unnerved him in the coquina house, that Anderson had described as always lurking there in the dark halls. He knew he was not alone in the forest. There was some presence behind him in the path. He had heard no sound save the tearing of the wind, but he was sure. His retreat had been cut off.
He took his match box from his pocket. If he should sense anything ahead of him, if ho found himself hemmed in, he would fire the woods. There would be light enough then to disclose the nature of the attack.
But while the feeling of a presence in the rear persisted, he received no warning from the front. He knew the ruins must be near. In the semicircle of the slave quarters he would feel safer. He would be able to see the light from there, to study it, perhaps, to detect its source. Only a few steps morel
He stumbled. The underbrush snatched at his legs. He was off the path. He stopped abruptly, his throat contracting, on the point of striking his match. But a saving thought came to him. He turned to the right. The blue light played faintly there. He understood. He had reached the end of the path. Instead of turning with it through the ruins he had plunged straight ahead into the thicket.
Carefully picking his way, he regained the path and ran between the ruins into the semicircle. He had passed unmolested through the dangerous forest. He looked around. The light flickered now above the double row of trees that lined the avenue. It had grown very faint. While he looked at it, puzzled, at a loss, it faded out. The wind seemed to gather greater strength as though the passing of the light had unleashed its last restraint.
Miller was bewildered. Had his initiative, indeed, made itself felt and driven the solution beyond his reach? A reaction swept him. At the moment when he had fancied his hand at the throat of the mystery he was suddenly left as helpless as ever. In a burst of irritation he questioned if he, as well as the Andersons, was not the victim of some gigantic hoax. He brushed the question aside. There had been no trickery about the girl’s emotion or her fear for him.
He thought of going on to the plantation house, of arousing Morgan, of telling him of the injury to the girl’s wrists, of her terror, and of her warning; yet that might involve her in difficulties he could not foresee. Should he then retrace his steps through the forest and return empty-handed to the coquina house?
In the first place he did not want to go back through the forest before daylight. He had keyed himself to the strain of traversing it when he had expected to achieve a solution of the mystery. Now the strain was broken. And he recalled the sense of a presence behind him in the path.
He was aware of that sense again, so strongly that he glanced over his shoulder. He could see nothing. The darkness was absolute.
The idea came to him that some clue might hide within these ugly ruins. He had never had an opportunity to explore them, yet they must have sheltered the worst horrors of Noyer’s reign, and they bounded that piece of forest. He stepped forward. This definite objective tautened his courage. He walked faster. He had almost reached the door of the nearest of the quarters when the light flashed again. Only this time it was white and overwhelming. He felt himself consumed in its vicious flames. Immediately it snapped out. His consciousness went out with it.
CHAPTER XIX
WITHIN THE CIRCLE
He lay apparently for a long time while his memory stirred and his mind reluctantly resumed its functions.
He recalled the beginning of the night at the coquina house, the sounds and feelings that had disturbed him there, the cry from outside, the picture of the silent fisherman, erect against the dunes, the warning of the girl, the blue light, her terror, his journey through the woods, his determination to seek a clue in the ruins.
Where was he now? He lay in utter darkness. The rushing of the wind was as fierce as ever.
Then, gently at first, he heard a sound from the black cloak of the night—the sound he had heard in Anderson’s bedroom, the sound that had shared so often in the island’s manifestations. It was not far away—only six or seven feet, he thought—and straight ahead. After a moment the rattle came again. This time it was answered from the rear. It was taken up on either side. It I’ose. It died away. Its volume grew again. An acrid, loathsome odour reached his nostrils. He lay within a circle of snakes; and, although from the lack of pressure he knew he was not bound, he was powerless to move.
He