“They have arranged to ship Mr. Ely’s body back to Connecticut where he lived,” he said. “The fishermen are in a state of almost superstitious terror.”
“Anything new?”
“Yes and no. It’s too indefinite to talk about. What little there is only tends to make the whole question more fantastic and less possible.”
Colton looked at him. “You need sleep, and you need it badly,” he said. “Any pain?”
“Oh, the usual. A little more, perhaps.”
“Take this,” said the other, giving him a powder. “That’ll fix you. I wish it would me; I feel tonight as if sleep had become a lost art.”
Nodding his thanks, the reporter left. Dick threw himself on his bed; but the strange events of the few days at Montauk crowded his brain and fevered it with empty conjectures. When finally he closed his eyes there returned upon him the nauseating procession of medicine bottles. Then came a bloody sheep, which fled screaming from some impending horror. The sheep became a man frantically struggling in an oak patch, and the man became Dick himself. Almost he could discern the horror; almost the secret was solved. Blackness descended upon him. He threw himself upward with a shriek—and was awake again. When at length he lay back, the visions were gone; a soft drowsiness overcame him, and at the end the deep eyes of Dorothy Ravenden blessed him with peace.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE BODY ON THE SAND
FOUR days had passed since the schooner came ashore on Graveyard Point. It now was the twentieth of September. The little community in Third House, which had bade fair to be such a happy family, was in rather a split-up state. After their tilt of the day before, Dolly Ravenden and Dick Colton were in a condition of armed neutrality. Dolly was ashamed that her guardian imp had led her to so misrepresent herself to Dick, ashamed too of the warm glow at her heart because he cared so deeply. Thus a double manifestation of her woman’s pride kept her from making amends.
Dick was longing to abase himself, but wisely took Helga’s advice, which he wholly failed to understand. Helga’s beautiful voice rang like an invocation to happiness through the house, but Everard Colton sat in gloom and reviled himself because he had promised Dick to stay several days longer. Haynes was irritable because the puzzle was getting on his nerves. Professor Ravenden brooded over the loss of a fine specimen of Lycona which had proved too agile for him, after a stern chase which developed into a long chase early that morning. Breakfast was not a lively meal.