“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 shore 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 shore 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 shore from sea, and garden from shore, 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 shore 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 shore 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 shore of the lagoon the moment that it was left unguarded.