The cycle! The infernal and accursed cycle again!
Well, whoever it was, they would play with Shadow Varne, would they? Fools! Did they think he was one, too—that he could not see the weak spot in their attack? Something was holding them back here on the island from a shot as on the liner; here, for some reason, an attempt to inspire fear was evidently being resorted to instead. Something kept them from coming out into the open; something necessitated this cat-and-mouse game. Something, if exposure were actually within their power, prevented them from exposing him.
That was it! That was it exactly—the one point on which he would stake everything and play out the game. Curse them and their childish tricks to frighten him! Exposure was the only thing he feared, because that would ruin every chance of success here; but if he was safe from exposure, or if exposure were only delayed long enough—and it need not be very long delayed, at that—he would have got, as he meant to get, in spite of God, or man, or the devil, what he had come for!
There was another angle. What had transpired might not have anything to do with what had brought him here.
Of course not! Why should it—essentially? But it was a menace, a hideous thing. It made him think of a picture he had seen somewhere—a gibbet at a bleak, wind-swept, dark-skyed cross-road with a figure dangling from it. One of those damned steel-plate engravings of the highwaymen days in England!
The unknown!
For a moment he stood still—and then suddenly both fists were raised above his head. That was a reason above all others why he should go on. The stakes were on the table. It was not merely a question of old Marlin's money. Win or lose here, the menace of that voice that shrieked the name of Shadow Varne for all to hear now hung over his whole future. It must either be removed, or he, Shadow Varne, promised with ghastly certainty to take the place of that dangling, swaying thing upon the gibbet chain. The menace was here. What better chance was there to fight it than here and now? Who was the more cunning? Who would misplay a card?
Not Shadow Varne!
A grim and cold composure came. He had two birds to kill with one stone now—that was all! Frighten Shadow Varne away? Bah! They did not know Shadow Varne—save only as a name to be screeched out from some safe retreat in the darkness! What might transpire in the secret recesses of his heart, the purely human fact that dismay and fear might prey at ugly moments upon him, was one thing; to halt him, to make him even hesitate, was another! He had never hesitated; he had but moved the more quickly, speeded up his plans, for time was a greater object now. He was at work at this very moment—waiting until the house was quiet for the night.
Well, it was time now, wasn't it?