Far out in the Sound, two sail-boats were drifting along like tired ghosts. Presently the fringe of the opposite shore became magically outlined by tiny strands of lights. As the gloom of night slowly enveloped the scene, an island lighthouse, a mile away, began to flash its beacon over the dark, graying water with clock-like regularity.
Against this flashing light, the ruins of our own lighthouse showed dark and jagged, on a small, rocky island, rising out of the Sound about a quarter of a mile off our shore, and within easy rowing distance from the yacht landing. Henry had recently purchased the island from the Government, and it was now a part of our Sands Cliff estate. The old beacon tower of stone was built in 1800. In oil-burning days, its light had counted for something, but now it was nothing but a picturesque ruin, and largely populated during the summer by bats.
I had no sooner turned my gaze on the ruined lighthouse when a big bat swooped down at me out of the darkness. Only the night before, one of them had got into my bedroom. I've never been able to overcome my early fear of these nocturnal flying mammals. To my childish imagination, they were the very spirits of evil. I was in no mood this night to be pestered by them. A vague uneasiness possessed me, an uneasiness caused on one hand by Henry's strained and haggard look, and on the other, by his encouraging Prince Matani's attentions to Pat.
Perhaps at the moment, his crazy quest in interstellar communication annoyed me most. I had already suggested to Jane that we send him to a psychoanalyst to be overhauled. This delving into the unknown was too ponderable a matter for a man of his years. It had become fixed on his mind with all the power of an obsession. All that day he had not stirred from his observatory, and now Olinski was coming from town to give a verbal report of his own findings. Much cogitation, much secrecy was, in effect, nothing at all. Unless they now had found the key. Was it possible that Olinski might be bringing a transcribed cipher of a radio message from Mars? His eager acceptance of the invitation to dinner seemed to hold an important significance for Henry.
Desperately bothered by both problems which confronted me, the bats made things more annoying still. Then, sudden-like, in the haunting stillness, I saw something moving towards me from the blackish void of trees and shrubbery bordering the west end of the terrace. At first, I was conscious only of an oncoming shadow, advancing with a rapid, noiseless movement.
I could feel my pulse jumping. Whoever or whatever it was, there was a risk. Rather than face the risk, I moved quietly but swiftly across the terrace towards the front door. But that did not stop the oncoming something; it had suddenly changed its direction and was coming right at me.
Luckily at that moment, the lights were turned on in the lower part of the castle. Then Orkins opened the front door, and gave voice to a surprised exclamation as he saw me making hurriedly for the doorway.
Suddenly I stopped, and turned. The glow of a floor lamp in the entrance hall had spread fanwise across the terrace, and into this arc of light strode—Serge Olinski.
"Oh, hello, Olinski!" I exclaimed, with respectful familiarity, and very cordially, stretching out my hand, and smiling to myself at the start he had given me, coming like an abortive something out of the shadows of the terrace. "That you?"
"Yes; it is I," Olinski replied, shaking my proferred hand, and breathing rather heavily.