“Bad news, old man?” Van Hope blurted out at last, impulsively. They were old friends—he was risking the charge of ill-bred curiosity to offer sympathy to the other.
“Not very good, old man. I’ll see you later about it. If you’ll excuse me I’ll go to my room—and answer ’em.”
He turned up the stairs—Van Hope walked out onto the verandas. I waited for Edith, and in a moment we were walking under the magnolias, listening to the twilight boomings of a bittern on the lagoon.
“And what do you think of it?” I asked her.
No human memory could forget her lustrous eyes, solemn and yet lighted by the beauty of her thoughts, as she gazed out over the waters, troubled by the flowing tide.
“I can’t make anything out of it,” she told me at last. “It doesn’t seem to make good sense. Yet there have been hundreds of more baffling mysteries, and they all were cleared up at last. Cleared up intelligently, too, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean—with credible motives and actions behind them.”
“Yes, and human actions. I’m thinking about—you know what. Human agents were the only agents in this crime. In the end it will prove out that way.”
“Then you aren’t at all superstitious about—this.” I indicated that eery, desolate lagoon with its craggy margin, stretching away like a ghost-lake in the gray light. As always the tidal waves were bursting with ferocious, lunging onslaughts on the natural rock wall, and the foam gleamed incredibly white against the dark water.