Kastle Krags Part 25

"Because you're going to have some real help--not a lot of bungling amateurs. You know who's coming?"

"Lacone--Van Hope's detective."

"Yes. He's a distinguished man--a real scientist in the study of crime.

He may do wonders, even in one day."

"I only hope he does! I don't care who clears it up--as long as it's cleared. Now to get a little sleep."

Tired out, we went to our rooms. The cool of early morning had swept through the halls, and the first glimmer of dawn was at the windows. How white the moon was in the sky, how mysteriously gray the whole sweep of sh.o.r.e and sea! So tired I dreaded the work of undressing, I sat down a moment before the window that overlooked the lagoon.

The moonlight and the dawn gave the appearance of a mist, a gray mist as is sometimes seen over water when the sky is overcast with heavy clouds.

At that moment it was impossible to conceive of anything but grayness.

The whole conception that the brain had, the only interpretation that the senses made was of this same, lifeless hue. If an artist had tried to paint the picture that was spread before my window he would have needed but one tube of paint.

It was in some way vaguely startling. It went home to some dark knowledge within a man, and left him fearful and expectant. The sh.o.r.e and the sea were gray, the gardens were swept with grayness, the lagoon itself had lost its many colors and only the same neutral tint remained.

The only way that the eye could distinguish sh.o.r.e from sea, and garden from sh.o.r.e, was the gradations of the same hue.

Surely dawn was almost at hand. The moon looked less vivid in the sky.

And nothing remained but to find what sleep I could.

But at that instant my senses quickened. I could hardly call it a start--it was just a sudden wakening of mind and body. I wasn't the least sure.... Perhaps in a moment the old lull, the well-remembered sense of well-being and security would return. It had seemed to me that a swift shadow glided through the grayness at the sh.o.r.e of the lagoon.

The window afforded a remarkably wide glimpse of that particular part of the estate. The rift in the trees permitted a view of scattered segments of the rock wall itself. And it wasn't to be that I could turn and leave them to the gray of morning. In that mysterious, eerie light I saw the whisking shadow again.

It was not merely some little creeping thing from the forest--some living creature such as stirs about at the first ray of dawn. The shadow was much too large. I would have thought, at the first glance, that it was the shadow of a man. But at that instant the figure emerged into the open, and I knew the truth.

The trim form on the sh.o.r.e of the lagoon was that of Edith Nealman. I could see her outline with entire plainness, dark against the gray. Some errand of stealth had taken her down to the sh.o.r.e of the lagoon the moment that it was left unguarded.

In an instant she disappeared, and in the interval I found out how deeply and inexplicably startled I was. And then I saw her again, walking out on the natural rock bridge, and carrying some heavy object, that dragged on the rocks, in her arms.

I could see her stooped figure, and the shadow of the thing that dragged. And there is no telling under Heaven the thoughts and the terrors that swept through me as to what that dragging thing might be.

But in an instant I saw what it was. It was a rather long, heavy plank, certainly of wood. She was about two hundred feet out on the rock wall by now, and I saw that she was launching the plank to the right of the wall, in the water of the lagoon. Before I could wonder or exclaim she herself had slipped in with it, her arms pale white from the shoulders of her dark bathing suit, wading out and guiding the heavy plank beside her.

No man who had read that mysterious script could doubt what her purpose was. She had gone fourteen rods out on the wall, and then she had turned to the right into the lagoon. Plainly she was searching for Jason's treasure.

She, too, knew the key. In that same flash of time, I understood the look of intent I had seen on her face earlier that night. She had kept her resolve--even now she was herself trying to sound the mystery of her uncle's disappearance. I understood her own exultation when I had talked of my many scientific plans, and how I lacked means to carry them out. Even then she had likely been working on the cryptogram. It was wholly possible that either Nealman or herself had encountered a copy of the script in the old house, and they had worked on it together.

But there had been some sort of a guard put over Jason's treasure! With what right had we been so smugly certain that the old legend was not true--that there was not still some evil, tentacled monster of the deep left to slay and drag to his cavern those that dared to penetrate the lagoon. Even now she was wading further and further from the rock wall.

I could see just her head and the top of her shoulders above water, the heavy plank still guided beside her.

Fear is an emotion that speeds like lightning through the avenues of the nerves. In the instant that these thoughts went home--thoughts that would have taken moments to narrate in speech but which whipped through the mind in the twinkling of an eye--I plumbed the utter depths of fear.

There can be no other word. The gray expanse seemed the waters of death itself; the whole scene, in the gray of dawn, was eerie, savage, unutterably dreadful. And the girl that had come to be my own life was even now wholly within the power of any monstrous foe that should leave its cavern to attack her.

Why had we been so sure! Why hadn't we guarded those deadly waters every hour, day and night. Every day teaches that many things that seemed incredible a day ago are true: how had we dared to be so arrogant in regard to the legend of the lagoon. Even when three men, one after another, had disappeared without trace we had refused to change our ancient habits of thought: we had still refused to believe. I knew now the fate of the missing men. They had gone in search of Jason's chest--and the treasure guard that dwelt in the lagoon had put them to death. And just before my eyes the girl I loved was following the path they made, making the same quest.

And in that breathless, never-to-be-forgotten moment, I heard a resounding splash of water. Against the craggy, opposite sh.o.r.e the water flew far and white as some living thing that had been concealed in the far crags dived toward her through the still waters of the lagoon.

The whole scene had seemingly occupied less than a second. Already, before I could breathe, I was leaping down the corridor towards the stairs. I called once for help--a door behind me opened. Then I was out in the gray dawn, racing toward the lagoon.

There seemed no interlude of time between the instant that I saw that splashing water and that in which I had plunged full into the gray depths myself. In reality there was a s.p.a.ce of several seconds--the gray light showed me that the drama of the lagoon had progressed immeasurably further. The girl was fifty or sixty feet from the rock wall now, just her head showing above water, her arms locked tight about the plank and facing her approaching foe. And something that swam swiftly made streaming ripples toward her.

I swam with amazing ease and swiftness. The terror, innate love of life, were all forgotten in the hope that I might reach Edith's side in time.

And now, by the gray light of dawn, I saw that her foe was upon her.

They were struggling with a desperate frenzy, and for an instant the splashing water almost obscured them. The plank had been torn from her grasp, and by some circ.u.mstance had been sped hopelessly out of her reach. And now, the water clearing from my eyes, I could determine the ident.i.ty of her a.s.sailant. No matter what further fate the lagoon had in store for her, this foe was human, at least. Terrible and drawn with pa.s.sion as it was, I saw the face of Major Kenneth Dell, the man who had disappeared the preceding night.

I yelled, trying to give hope. Already I was almost upon them; and Dell had released his hold of the girl. Whatever had been his purpose it had been forgotten in the face of some greater extremity. Their fight was no more with each other: rather they seemed at death grips with some resistless foe that tore at them from beneath the waves.

I saw Dell's face. An unspeakable terror, that of one who in wickedness goes down to an awful death, was on his face. It was such a terror as men can know but once, for they never live to tell of it, and which blasts the heart of any one that beholds it. No artist, delving into the abnormal, could have portrayed that fear. It was a thing never to forget, but ever to see again in dreams.

Edith was terrified too, but such a terror as Dell knew was impossible for her. The fear of death that curses a G.o.dless man is perhaps the most dreadful retributive force in this world or the next, and Dell knew it to the full. No one who had seen his face could doubt but that all the iniquity of a long life had been atoned for, in one little moment, in the scales of justice. But only a measure of it could oppress her. The only fear that her fine young soul could know was that born of the elemental love of life. And with what seemed to be a final effort she raised her head to call a warning to me.

But even if I had heeded it, it would have come too late. I saw the heads of the man and woman in front of me go down as if drawn by quicksand. And there was no escape for me. The death that dwelt in the lagoon had already seized me in its resistless grasp.

But the guard over Jason's treasure was not merely some monster implanted from the sea, a mortal thing that years could claim or muscular strength oppose. Rather it was a power that had dwelt there since the world's young days, ever claiming tribute, and which would continue on until the very sea itself was changed. The demon that had hold of me was merely that of rushing waters. They swept me forward and sucked me down with remorseless force.

There was a sink-hole in the floor of the lagoon. No wonder the water that rushed in at high-tide had seemed to go so quietly away. I was being carried down a subterranean outlet, through some water pa.s.sage under the rock wall, and into the open sea.

CHAPTER XXIV

The water surrounding the underground outlet was not of great depth--an inch or so over five feet--but the suction of the sink-hole was irresistible. Once caught in those sinking waters meant to go down with them; and a moth would have struggled to equal advantage. If fate had given me the choice of fighting to save myself it would not have changed the outcome in the least. The plank had floated too far away to seize.

The water was deep enough that if, by a mighty wrench of muscles, I was able to seize with my hands some immovable rock on the lagoon floor my head would have been under water.

Fate, however, didn't give me that fighting choice. Edith Nealman had already gone down, a single instant before. Loss of life itself couldn't possibly mean more. There was nothing open but to follow through.

But while the trap itself was infallible, irresistible to human strength, there might be fighting aplenty in the darkness of the channel and beyond. The time hadn't come to give up. The slightest fighting chance was worth every ounce of mortal strength. And as the waters seized me I gave the most powerful swimming stroke I knew, a single, mighty wrench of the whole muscular system, in an attempt to get my lips above water for a last breath.

Partly because I have always been a strong swimmer, but mostly by good fortune, I won that instant's reprieve. I had already exhaled; and in the instant that my lips were above the smooth surface of the lagoon I filled my lungs to their utmost capacity, breathing sharp and deep, with the cool, sweet, morning air. The force of my leap carried me over and down, the descending waters seized me as the sluice in a sink might seize an insect, and slowly, steadily, as if by a giant's hand, drew me into darkness.

I had been drawn into the subterranean outlet of the lagoon, the pa.s.sageway of the waters of the outgoing tide. Life itself depended on how long that under-water channel was. I only knew that I was headed under the rock wall and toward the open sea.

At such times the mental mechanics function abnormally, if at all. I was not drowning yet. The thousand thoughts and memories and regrets that haunt the last moments of the lost did not come to me. The whole consciousness was focussed on two points: one of them a resolve to do what I could for Edith, and the other was fear.

Besides the seeming certainty of death, it was unutterably terrible to be swept through this dark, mysterious channel under the sea. Perhaps the terror lay most in the darkness of the pa.s.sage. It was a darkness simply inconceivable, beyond any that the imagination could conjure up--such absolute absence of light as shadow the unfathomable caverns on the ocean floor or fill the great, empty s.p.a.ces between one constellation and another. In the darkest night there is always some fine, almost imperceptible degree of light. Here light was a thing forgotten and undreamed of.

The waters did not move with particular swiftness. They flowed rather easily and quietly, like the contents of a great aqueduct. Perhaps it would have been better for the human spirit if they had moved with a rush and a roar, blunting the consciousness with their tumult, and hurling their victim to an instantaneous death. The death in that undersea channel was deliberate and unhurried, and the imagination had free play. Already we three were like departed souls, lost in the still, murky waters of Lethe--drifting, helpless, fearful as children in the darkness. It was such an experience that from sheer, elemental fear--fear that was implanted in the germ-plasm in darkness tragedies in the caves of long ago--may poison and dry up the life-sustaining fluids of the nerves, causing death before the first physical blow is struck.

It was an old fear, this of darkened waters. Perhaps it was remembered from those infinite eons before the living organisms from which we sprang ever emerged from the gray s.p.a.ces of the sea. And I knew it to the full.

But I didn't float supinely down that Cimmerian stream. The race was certainly to the swift. Knowing that the only shadow of hope lay in reaching the end of the pa.s.sage before the air in my lungs was exhausted, I swam down that stream with the fastest stroke I knew.

Carried also by the waters, I must have traveled at a really astounding pace, at momentary risk of striking my head against the rock walls of the channel.

An interminable moment later my arms swept about Edith's form. I felt her long tresses streaming in the flood, but her slender arms had already lost all power to seize and hold me. Had death already claimed her? Yet I could not give her the little store of life-giving air that still sustained me. Holding her in one arm and swimming with every ounce of strength I had, we sped together through that darkened channel.