KASTLE KRAGS

A STORY OF MYSTERY

BY

ABSALOM MARTIN

NEW YORK

DUFFIELD AND COMPANY

1922

Copyright, 1921, 1922
By Duffield & Company

Printed in U. S. A.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

KASTLE KRAGS

CHAPTER I

Who could forget the Ochakee River, and the valley through which it flows! The river itself rises in one of those lost and nameless lakes in the Floridan central ridge, then is hidden at once in the live oak and cypress forests that creep inland from the coasts. But it can never be said truly to flow. Over the billiard-table flatness of that land it moves so slowly and silently that it gives the effect of a lake stirred by the wind. These dark waters, and the moss-draped woodlands through which they move, are the especial treasure-field and delight of the naturalist and scientist from the great universities of the North.

It is a lost river; and it is still a common thing to see a brown, lifeless, floating log suddenly flash, strike, and galvanize into a diving alligator. The manatee, that grotesque, hair-lipped caricature of a sea-lion, still paddles in the lower waters; and the great gar, who could remember, if he would, the days when the nightmare wings of the pterodactyls whipped and hummed over his native waters, makes deadly hunting-trips up and down the stream, sword-like jaws all set and ready; and all manner of smaller fry offer pleasing possibilities to the sportsmen. The water-fowl swarm in countless numbers: fleet-winged travelers such as ducks and geese, long-legged dignitaries of the crane and heron tribe, gay-colored birds that flash by and out of sight before the eye can identify them, and bitterns, like town-criers, booming the river news for miles up and down the shores. And of course the little perchers are past all counting in the arching trees of the river-bank.

In the forests the fleet, under-sized Floridan deer is watchful and furtive because of the activities of that tawny killer, the “catamount” of the frontier; and the black bear sometimes grunts and soliloquizes and gobbles persimmons in the thickets. The lynx that mews in the twilight, the raccoon that creeps like a furtive shadow through the velvet darkness, the pink-nosed ’possum that can only sleep when danger threatens, and such lesser folk as rabbit and squirrel, weasel and skunk, all have their part in the drama of the woods. Then there are the game-birds: wild turkey, pheasant, and that little red quail, the Bob White known to Southern sportsmen.

Yet the Ochakee country conveys no message of brightness and cheer. Some way, there are too many shadows. The river itself is a moving sea of shadows; and if the sun ever gets to them, it is just an unhappy glimpse through the trees in the long, still afternoons. The trees are mostly draped with Spanish moss that sways like dark tresses in the little winds that creep in from the gulf, and the trees creak and complain and murmur one to another throughout the night. The air is dank, lifeless, heavy with the odors of vegetation decaying underfoot. There is more death than life in the forest, and all travelers know it, and not one can tell why. It is easier to imagine death than life, the trail grows darker instead of brighter, a murky mystery dwells between the distant trunks.... Ordinarily such abundant wild-life relieves the somber, unhappy tone of the woods, but here it some way fails to do so. No woodsman has to be told how much more cheerful it makes him feel, how less lonely and depressed, to catch sight of a doe and fawn, feeding in the downs, or even a raccoon stealing down a creek-bank in the mystery of the moon; but here the wild things always seem to hide when you want them most; and if they show themselves at all, it is just as a fleet shadow at the edge of the camp-fire. These are cautious, furtive things, fleet as shadows, hidden as the little flowers that blossom among the grass-stems; and such woodsfolk as do make their presence manifest do not add, especially, to the pleasure of one’s visit. These are two in particular—the water-moccasin that hangs like a growing thing in the wisteria, and the great, diamond-back rattlesnake whose bite is death.

The river flows into the gulf about half-way down the peninsula, and here is the particular field of the geologist, rather than the naturalist. For miles along the shore the underlying limestone and coraline rocks crop up above the blue-green water, forming a natural sea-wall. Here, in certain districts, the thickets have been cleared away, wide areas planted to rice, and a few ancient colonial homes stand fronting the sea. Also the sportsman fishes for tarpon beyond the lagoons.

A strange, unhappy land of mystery; a misty, enchanted place whose tragic beauty no artist can trace and whose disconsolate appeal no man can fathom! Forests are never cheerful, silent and steeped in shadow as they are, but these moss-grown copses beside the Ochakee, and crowding down to the very shores of the gulf, have an actual weight of sadness, like a curse laid down when the world was just beginning. Yet Grover Nealman defied the disconsolate spirit of the land. He dared to disturb the cathedral silence of those mossy woods with the laughter of carefree guests, and to hold high revelry on the shores of that dismal sea.

CHAPTER II

The allurement of a September day had brought me far down the trail, past the neck of the marsh, and far from my accustomed haunts. But I could never resist September weather, particularly when the winds are still, and the sun through the leaves dapples the trail like a fawn’s back, and the woods are so silent that the least rustle of a squirrel in the thicket cracks with a miniature explosion. And for all the gloom of the woods, and the tricky windings and cut-backs of that restless little serpent of a trail, I still knew approximately where I was. A natural sense of direction was seemingly implanted with less essential organs in my body at birth.

The Ochakee River wound its lazy way to the sea somewhere to my right. A half mile further the little trail ended in a brown road over which a motor-car, in favorable seasons, might safely pass. The Nealman estate, known for forty miles up and down the shore, lay at the juncture of the trail and the road—but I hadn’t the least idea of pushing on that far. Neither fortune nor environment had fitted me to move in such a circle as sometimes gathered on the wide verandas of Kastle Krags.

I was lighting a pipe, ready to turn back, when the leaves rustled in the trail in front. It was just a whisper of sound, the faintest scratch-scratch of something approaching at a great distance, and only the fact that my senses had been trained to silences such as these enabled me to hear it at all. It is always a fascinating thing to stand silent on a jungle-trail, conjecturing what manner of creature is pushing toward you under the pendulous moss: perhaps a deer, more graceful than any dancer that ever cavorted before the footlights, or perhaps (stranger things have happened) that awkward, snuffling, benevolent old gentleman, the black bear. This was my life, so no wonder the match flared out in my hand. And then once more I started to turn back.

I had got too near the Nealman home, after all. I suddenly recognized the subdued sound as that of a horse’s hoofs in the moss of the trail. Some one of the proud and wealthy occupants of the old manor house was simply enjoying a ride in the still woods. But it was high time he turned back! The marshes of the Ochakee were no place for tenderfeet; and this was not like riding in Central Park! Some of the quagmires I had passed already to-day would make short work of horse and rider.

My eye has always been sensitive to motion—in this regard not greatly dissimilar from the eyes of the wild creatures themselves—and I suddenly caught a flash of moving color through a little rift in the overhanging branches. The horseman that neared me on the trail was certainly gayly dressed! The flash I caught was pink—the pink that little girls fancy in ribbons—and a derisive grin crept to my lips before I could restrain it. There was no mistaking the fact that I was beginning to have the woodsman’s intolerance for city furs and frills! Right then I decided to wait.

It might pay to see how this rider had got himself up! It might afford certain moments of amusement when the still mystery of the Floridan night dropped over me again. I drew to one side and stood still on the trail.

The horse walked near. The rider wasn’t a man, after all. It was a girl in the simplest, yet the prettiest, riding-habit that eyes ever laid upon, and the prettiest girl that had ridden that trail since the woods were new.

The intolerant grin at my lips died a natural death. She might be the proud and haughty daughter of wealth, such a type as our more simple country-dwellers robe with tales of scandal, yet the picture that she made—astride that great, dark horse in the dappled sunlight of the trail—was one that was worth coming long miles to see. The dark, mossy woods were a perfect frame, the shadows seemed only to accentuate her own bright coloring.

It wasn’t simply because I am a naturalist that I instantly noticed and stored away immutably in my memory every detail of that happy, pretty face. The girl had blue eyes. I’ve seen the same shade of blue in the sea, a dark blue and yet giving the impression of incredible brightness. Yet it was a warm brightness, not the steely, icy glitter of the sea. They were friendly, wholesome, straightforward eyes, lit with the joy of living; wide-open and girlish. The brows were fine and dark above them, and above these a clear, girlish forehead with never a studied line. Her hair was brown and shot with gold—indeed, in the sunlight, it looked like old, red gold, finely spun.

She was tanned by the Florida sun, yet there was a bright color-spot in each cheek. I thought she had rather a wistful mouth, rather full lips, half-pouting in some girlish fancy. Of course she hadn’t observed me yet. She was riding easily, evidently thinking herself wholly alone.

Her form was slender and girlish, of medium height, yet her slender hands at the reins held her big horse in perfect control. The heels of her trim little shoes touched his side, and the animal leaped lightly over a fallen log. Then she saw me, and her expression changed.

It was, however, still unstudied and friendly. The cold look of indifference I had expected and which is such a mark of ill-breeding among certain of her class, didn’t put in its appearance. I removed my hat, and she drew her horse up beside me.

It hadn’t occurred to me she would actually stop and talk. It had been rather too much to hope for. And I knew I felt a curious little stir of delight all over me at the first sound of her friendly, gentle voice.

“I suppose you are Mr. Killdare?” she said quietly.

Every one knows how a man quickens at the sound of his own name. “Yes, ma’am,” I told her—in our own way of speaking. But I didn’t know what else to say.

“I was riding over to see you—on business,” she went on. “For my uncle—Grover Nealman, of Kastle Krags. I’m his secretary.”

The words made me stop and think. It was hard for me to explain, even to myself, just why they thrilled me far under the skin, and why the little tingle of delight I had known at first gave way to a mighty surge of anticipation and pleasure. It seems to be true that the first thing we look for in a stranger is his similarity to us, and the second, his dissimilarity; and in these two factors alone rests our attitude towards him. It has been thus since the beginning of the world—if he is too dissimilar, our reaction is one of dislike, and I suppose, far enough down the scale of civilization, we would immediately try to kill him. If he has enough in common with ourselves we at once feel warm and friendly, and invite him to our tribal feasts.

Perhaps this was the way it was between myself and Edith Nealman. She wasn’t infinitely set apart from me—some one rich and experienced and free of all the problems that made up my life. Nealman’s niece meant something far different than Nealman’s daughter—if indeed the man had a daughter. She was his secretary, she said—a paid worker even as I was. She had come to see me on business—and no wonder I was anticipatory and elated as I hadn’t been for years!

“I’m glad to know you, Miss——” I began. For of course I didn’t know her name, then.

“Miss Nealman,” she told me, easily. “Now I’ll tell you what my uncle wants. He heard about you, from Mr. Todd.”

I nodded. Mr. Todd had brought me out from the village and had helped me with some work I was doing for my university, in a northern state.

“He was trying to get Mr. Todd to help him, but he was busy and couldn’t do it,” the girl went on. “But he said to get Ned Killdare—that you could do it as well as he could. He said no one knew the country immediately about here any better than you—that though you’d only been here a month or two you had been all over it, and that you knew the habits of the turkeys and quail, and the best fishing grounds, better than any one else in the country.”

I nodded in assent. Of course I knew these things: on a zoological excursion for the university they were simply my business. But as yet I couldn’t guess how this information was to be of use to Grover Nealman.

“Now this is what my uncle wants,” the girl went on. “He’s going to have a big shoot and fish for some of his man friends—they are coming down in about two weeks. They’ll want to fish in the Ochakee River and in the lagoon, and hunt quail and turkey, and my uncle wants to know if—if he can possibly—hire you as guide.”

I liked her for her hesitancy, the uncertainty with which she spoke. Her voice had nothing of that calm superiority that is so often heard in the offering of humble employment. She was plainly considering my dignity—as if anything this sweet-faced girl could say could possibly injure it!

“All he wanted of you was to stay at Kastle Krags during the hunting party, and be able to show the men where to hunt and fish. You won’t have to act as—as anybody’s valet—and he says he’ll pay you real guide’s wages, ten dollars a day.”

“When would he want me to begin?”

“Right away, if you could—to-morrow. The guests won’t be here for two weeks, but there are a lot of things to do first. You see, my uncle came here only a short time ago, and all the fishing-boats need overhauling, and everything put in ship-shape. Then he thought you’d want some extra time for looking around and locating the game and fish. The work would be for three weeks, in all.”

Three weeks! I did some fast figuring, and I found that twenty days, at ten dollars a day, meant two hundred dollars. Could I afford to refuse such an offer as this?

It is true that I had no particular love for many of the city sportsmen that came to shoot turkey and to fish in the region of the Ochakee. The reason was simply that “sportsmen,” for them, was a misnomer: that they had no conception of sport from its beginnings to its end, and that they could only kill game like butchers. Then I didn’t know that I would care about being employed in such a capacity.

Yet two or three tremendous considerations stared me in the face. In the first place, I was really in need of funds. I had not yet obtained any of the higher scholastic degrees that would entitle me to decent pay at the university—I was merely a post-graduate student, with the complimentary title of “instructor.” I had offered to spend my summer collecting specimens for the university museum at a wage that barely paid for my traveling expenses and supplies, wholly failing to consider where I would get sufficient funds to continue my studies the following year.

Scarcity of money—no one can feel it worse than a young man inflamed with a passion for scientific research! There were a thousand things I wanted to do, a thousand journeys into unknown lands that haunted my dreams at night, but none of them were for the poor. The two hundred dollars Grover Nealman would pay me would not go far, yet I simply couldn’t afford to pass it by. Of course I could continue my work for my alma mater at the same time.

Yet while I thought of these things, I knew that I was only lying to myself. They were subterfuges only, excuses to my own conscience. The instant she had opened her lips to speak I had known my answer.

To refuse meant to go back to my lonely camp in the cypress. I hoped I wasn’t such a fool as that. To accept meant three weeks at Kastle Krags—and daily sight of this same lovely face that now held fast my eyes. Could there be any question which course I would choose?

“Go—I should say I will go,” I told her. “I’ll be there bright and early to-morrow.”

I thought she looked pleased, but doubtless I was mistaken.

CHAPTER III

It didn’t take long to pack my few belongings. At nine o’clock the following morning I broke camp and walked down the long trail to Kastle Krags.

No wonder the sportsmen liked to gather at this old manor house by the sea. It represented the best type of southern homes—low and rambling, old gardens and courts, wide verandas and stately pillars. It was an immense structure, yet perfectly framed by the shore and the lagoon and the glimpse of forest opposite, and it presented an entirely cheerful aspect as I emerged from the dark confinement of the timber.

It was a surprising thing that a house could be cheerful in such surroundings: forest and gray shore and dark blue-green water. The house itself was gray in hue, the columns snowy white, the roof dark green and blending wonderfully with the emerald water. Flowers made a riot of color between the structure and the formal lawns.

But more interesting than the house itself was the peculiar physical formation of its setting. The structure had been erected overlooking a long inlet that was in reality nothing less than a shallow lagoon. A natural sea-wall stretched completely across the neck of the inlet, cutting off the lagoon from the open sea. There are many natural sea-walls along the Floridan coast, built mostly of limestone or coraline rock, but I had never seen one so perfect and unbroken. Stretching across the mouth of the lagoon it made a formidable barrier that not even the smallest boat could pass.

It was a long wall of white crags and jagged rocks, and I thought it likely that it had suggested the name of the estate. It was plain, however, that the wall did not withstand the march of the tides. The tide was running in as I drew near, and the waves broke fiercely over and against the barrier, and little rivulets and streams of water were evidently pouring through its miniature crevices. The house was built two hundred yards from the shore of the lagoon, perhaps three hundred yards from the wall, and the green lawns went down half-way to it. Beyond this—except of course for the space occupied by the lagoon itself—stretched the gray, desolate sand.

Beyond the wall the inlet widened rapidly, and the rolling waves gave the impression of considerable depth. I had never seen a more favorable place for a sportsman’s home. Besides the deep-sea fishing beyond the rock wall, it was easy to believe that the lagoon itself was the home of countless schools of such hard-fighting game-fish as loved such craggy seas. The lagoon was fretful and rough from the flowing tide at that moment, offering no inducements to a boatman, but I surmised at once that it would be still as a lake in the hours that the tide ebbed. The shore was a favorable place for the swift-winged shorebirds that all sportsmen love—plover and curlew and their fellows. And the mossy, darkling forest, teeming with turkey and partridge, stretched just behind.

Yet the whole effect was not only of beauty. I stood still, and tried to puzzle it out. The atmosphere talked of in great country houses is more often imagined than really discerned; but if such a thing exists, Kastle Krags was literally steeped in it. Like Macbeth’s, the castle has a pleasant seat—and yet it moved you, in queer ways, under the skin.

I am not, unfortunately, a particularly sensitive man. Working from the ground up, I have been so busy preserving the keen edges of my senses that I have quite neglected my sensibilities. I couldn’t put my finger on the source of the strange, mental image that the place invoked; and the thing irritated and disturbed me. The subject wasn’t worth a busy man’s time, yet I couldn’t leave it alone.

The house was not different from a hundred houses scattered through the south. It was larger than most of the larger colonial homes, and constructed with greater artistry. If it had any atmosphere at all, other than comfort and beauty, it was of cheer. Yet I didn’t feel cheerful, and I didn’t know why. I felt even more sobered than when the moss of the cypress trees swept over my head. But soon I thought I saw the explanation.

The image of desolation and eery bleakness had its source in the wide-stretching sands, the unforgettable sea beyond, and particularly the inlet, or lagoon, up above the natural dam of stone. The rocks that enclosed the lagoon would have been of real interest to a geologist—to me they were merely bleak and forbidding, craggy and gray and cold. Unquestionably they contained many caverns and crevices that would be worth exploring. And I was a little amazed at the fury with which the incoming waves beat against and over the rocky barrier. They came with a veritable ferocity, and the sea beyond seemed hardly rough enough to justify them.

Grover Nealman himself met me when I turned on to the level, gravel driveway. There was nothing about him in keeping with that desolate driveway. A familiar type, he looked the gentleman and sportsman that he was. Probably the man was forty-four or forty-five years old, but he was not the type that yields readily to middle-age. Nealman unquestionably still considered himself a young man, and he believed it heartily enough to convince his friends. Self-reliant, inured to power and influence, somewhat aristocratic, he could not yield himself to the admission of the march of the years. He was of medium height, rather thickly built, with round face, thick nose, and rather sensual lips; but his eyes, behind his tortoise-shell glasses, were friendly and spirited; and his hand-clasp was democratic and firm. By virtue of his own pride of race and class he was a good sportsman: likely a crack shot and an expert fisherman. Probably a man that drank moderately, was still youthful enough to enjoy a boyish celebration, a man who lived well, who had traveled widely and read good books, and who could carry out the traditions of a distinguished family—this was Grover Nealman, master of Kastle Krags.

I didn’t suppose for a moment that Nealman had made his own fortune. There were no fighting lines in his face, nor cold steel of conflict in his eyes. There was one deep, perpendicular line between his eyes, but it was born of worry, not battle. The man was moderately shrewd, probably able to take care of his investments, yet he could never have been a builder, a captain of industry. He dressed like a man born to wealth, well-fitting white flannels whose English tailoring afforded free room for arm and shoulder movements; a silk shirt and soft white collar, panama hat and buckskin shoes.

He was not a southerner. The first words he uttered proved that fact.

“So you are Mr. Killdare,” he said easily. He didn’t say it “Killdaih,” as he would had he been a native of the place. “Come with me into my study. I can tell you there what I’ve got lined up. I’m mighty glad you’ve come.”

We walked through the great, massive mahogany door, and he paused to introduce me to a middle-aged man that stood in the doorway. “Florey,” he said, kindly and easily, “I want you to meet Mr. Killdare.”

His tone alone would have identified the man’s station, even if the dark garb hadn’t told the story plainly. Florey was unquestionably Nealman’s butler. Nor could anyone have mistaken his walk of life, in any street of any English-speaking city. He was the kind of butler one sees upon the stage but rarely in a home, the kind one associates with old, stately English homes but which one rarely finds in fact—almost too good a butler to be true. He was little and subdued and gray, gray of hair and face and hands, and his soft voice, his irreproachable attitude of respect and deference seemed born in him by twenty generations of butlers. He said he was glad to know me, and his bony, soft-skinned hand took mine.

I’m afraid I stared at Florey. I had lived too long in the forest: the staring habit, so disconcerting to tenderfeet on their first acquaintance with the mountain people, was surely upon me. I think that the school of the forest teaches, first of all, to look long and sharply while you have a chance. The naturalist who follows the trail of wild game, even the sportsman knows this same fact—for the wild creatures are incredibly furtive and give one only a second’s glimpse. I instinctively tried to learn all I could of the gray old servant in the instant that I shook his hand.

He was the butler, now and forever, and I wondered if, beneath that gray skin, he were really human at all. Did he know human passion, human ambition and desires: sheltered in his master’s house, was he set apart from the lusts and the madnesses, the calms and the storms, the triumphs and the defeats that made up the lives of other men? Yet his gray, rather dim old eyes told me nothing. There were no fires, visible to me, glowing in their depths. A human clam—better still, a gray mole that lives out his life in darkness.

From him we passed up the stairs and to a big, cool study that apparently joined his bedroom. There were desks and chairs and a letter file. Edith Nealman was writing at the typewriter.

If I had ever supposed that the girl had taken the position of her uncle’s secretary merely as a girlish whim, or in some emergency until a permanent secretary could be secured, I was swiftly disillusioned. There was nothing of the amateur in the way her supple fingers flew over the keys. She had evidently had training in a business college; and her attitude towards Nealman was simply that of a secretary towards her employer. She leaned back as if waiting for orders.

“You can go, if you like, Edith,” Nealman told her. “I’m going to talk awhile with Killdare, here, and you wouldn’t be able to work anyway.”

She got up; and she threw me a smile of welcome and friendliness as she walked out the study door.

CHAPTER IV

Nealman had me take a chair, then seated himself before the window from which he could overlook the lagoon. “I always like to sit where I can watch it,” he told me—rather earnestly, I thought. “I can’t see much of it—just a glimpse—but that’s worth while. The room I’ve designated for your use has even a better view. You can’t imagine, Killdare, until you’ve lived with it, how really marvelous it is—how many colors play in the lagoon itself, and in the waves as they break over the Bridge——”

“The Bridge——”

“That’s the name we’ve given to the natural rock wall that cuts off the lagoon—rather, the inlet—from the open sea,” he explained.

“It’s one of the most interesting natural formations I’ve ever seen,” I told him.

“It is, isn’t it?” He spoke with genuine enthusiasm. “And don’t the crags take peculiar shapes around it? You see it makes a veritable salt-water lake out of all this end of the inlet. But Killdare—if you can overlook the dreariness and the desolation of it all, it certainly is beautiful——”

I nodded. “With a creepy kind of beauty,” I told him. “I wish some great artist could come here and paint it. But it would take a great one—to get the atmosphere. I’ve never seen a more wonderful place for a distinguished home.”

It was rather remarkable how pleased he was by the words—particularly coming from a humble employee. Evidently Kastle Krags was close to his heart. His face glowed and his eye kindled.

“I’m wild about it myself,” he confessed. “My friends want to know why I bought such a place—miles from a habitation—and guy me for a hermit, and all that. Once they see the place, and its devilish fascination gets hold of ’em, they won’t want to leave.”

From thence the talk led to business, and he questioned me in regard to the game and fish of the region. I assured him that his friends would have sport in plenty, that I knew where to lead them to turkey and partridge, and that no better fishing could be found in the whole south than in the Ochakee River. He seemed satisfied with my knowledge of the country; and told me a little of his own plans. Just as Edith Nealman had told me, he was planning a week’s fish and hunt for a half dozen of his man friends, beginning a fortnight from then. They were coming a long way—so he wanted to give them sport of the best. The servant problem had been easily solved—he had recruited from the negro section of the nearest city—but until he had talked with my friend, Mr. Todd, he had been at a loss as to where he could procure a suitable guide.

“I’d like to have a guide for each man, if I could,” he went on, “but of course they are not to be found. Besides, only a small part of the party will want to go out at once. Most of them will be content to hang around here, drinking my brandies and fishing in the lagoon.”

“How is fishing in the lagoon?” I asked.

“The best. Sometimes we even take tarpon. All kinds of rock fish—and they fight like fiends. The rocks are just full of little crevices and caves, and I suppose the fish live in ’em. These same crevices are the source of one of the most interesting of the many legends connected with this house.”

It’s a dull man that doesn’t love legends, and I felt my interest stirring. “There are some tales here, eh?”

“Tales! Man, that’s one of the reasons I bought the place.”

Nealman needed no further urging. Evidently the old stories that almost invariably accumulate about such an ancient and famous manor-house as this, had the greatest fascination for him; and he was glad of the chance to narrate them to any listener. He lighted a cigarette: then turned to me with glistening eyes.

“Of course I don’t believe them,” he began. “Don’t get that in your head for an instant. All these old houses have some such yarns. But they surely do lend a flavor to the place—and I wouldn’t have them disproved for thousands of dollars. And one of them—the one I just referred to—surely is a corker.”

He straightened in his chair, and spoke more earnestly. “Killdare, you’re not troubled with a too-active imagination?”

“I’ll take a chance on it,” I told him.

“I’ve seen a few men, in my time, that I wouldn’t tell such a yarn to for love nor money—especially when they are doomed to stay around here for a few weeks. You won’t believe it, but some men are so nervous, so naturally credulous, that they’d actually have some unpleasant dreams about it. But I consider it one of the finest attractions of the place.

“The yarn’s very simple. About 1840, a schooner, sailing under the Portuguese flag, sailed from Rio de Janeiro. Her name was the Arganil, she had a mixed cargo, and she was bound for New Orleans. These are facts, Killdare. You can ascertain them any time from the marine records. But we can’t go much further.

“Among the crew were two brothers, Jason by name. Legend says that they were Englishmen, but what Englishmen were doing on a Portuguese ship I can’t tell you. The name, however, might easily be South-European—it appears, you remember, in Greek mythology. Now this point also has some indications of truth. There was certainly one Jason, at least, shipped as boatswain—the position of the other is considerably in doubt.

“Now we’ve got to get down to a matter of legend, yet with some substance of truth. The story goes that there was a treasure chest on the ship, the property of some immensely rich Brasilian, and that it contained certain treasures that had been the property of a Portuguese prince at the time that the court of Portugal was located in Rio de Janeiro. This was from 1808 to 1821—breaking up in a revolution just a hundred years ago. This is history, as you know. Just what was the nature of the treasure no one seems to have any idea. It was a rather small chest, so they say, bound with iron, and not particularly heavy—but it was guarded with armed men, day and night. Of course the prevailing belief is that it contained simply gold—the same, yellow, deadly stuff that built the Armada and made early American history. It might have been in the form of cups and vessels, beautiful things that had been stolen from early heathen temples—again it might have been jewels. No estimation of its value was ever made, as far as I know—except that, like all unfound-treasures, it was ‘incalculable.’

“You can believe as much of this as you like. Gold, however, is heavy stuff—no one can carry much over twenty thousand dollars worth. If the chest wasn’t really very heavy, and really was of such incalculable value, it had to contain something more than gold.

“This part of the story is pretty convincing. I’ve investigated, and the legends contain such a wealth of detail concerning the appearance of the chest, how it was guarded, and so on, and the various accounts dovetail so perfectly one with another, that I am personally convinced that the treasure was a reality—at least that such a chest existed on the old ship. When you get into the contents of the chest, however, you find only a maze of conflicting rumors. To me they tend to make the story as a whole even more interesting—and I’ll confess I’d love to know what was in that chest.

“Well, the Arganil broke to pieces off the west coast of Florida, not more than twenty miles from here. That fact can not be doubted. There are accounts of the wreck on official record. And legend has it that through Heaven knows what wickedness and bloodshed and cunning, the two Jason brothers not only managed to get off in the stoutest of the ship’s boats, but that they carried the treasure with them.

“If there were any other members of the crew in the boat with them they were unquestionably murdered. Nothing was ever heard of them again. The two brothers are said to have landed somewhere close to this lagoon.

“But naked treasure breeds murder! It is a strange thing, Killdare, but the naked, yellow metal, as well as glittering jewels, gets home to human wickedness as nothing else in the world can. If that chest had been full of valuable securities, even paper currency, it wouldn’t have left such a red trail from Rio to Florida. Gold and jewels waken a fever of possession out of all proportion to their actual value. When they landed on the shore one of the Jasons neatly murdered the other and made off with the chest.

“The same old yarn—Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus. Killdare, did you know that fratricide is shockingly common? There are three kinds of brothers, and the Jasons were simply one of the three kinds. Sometimes you find brothers that love each other beyond belief, with a self-sacrificing devotion that is beautiful to see. Then you find the great mass of brothers—liking each other fairly well, loyal in a family scrap, fair pals but much closer to other pals that aren’t their brothers. Then you come to this third class, a puzzle to psychologists the world over! Brothers that hate each other like poison snakes.

“Why is it, Killdare? Jealousy? A survival from the beast? These were the kind of brothers that go through life bitter and hating and at swords’ points. And all too often they get to the killing stage.”

“You find it in the beast-world, too,” I commented. “Look at the case of the wolves and the dogs. They are blood-brothers, drop for drop—and they hate each other with a fervor that is simply blood-curdling.”

“True enough. I remember hearing about it. Well, one of the Jasons—the one whose cunning conceived of the whole wickedness to start with—killed the other, disposed of his body, and then through some unknown series of events, concealed the treasure.

“He went away awhile, the old wives say—taking a small portion of the treasure with him. At this point the name of Jason is lost, irremediably, in the mist of the past. But it is true that some two years later a seafaring man, one who had worn earrings and who cursed wickedly as he talked, came back and bought a great colonial home where the treasure was supposed to have been concealed.

“This part of the story can not be doubted. The county books contain records of the sale, and it’s written, plain as day, on the abstract. The man gave his name as Hendrickson.

“Legend has it that this Hendrickson was no one but Godfrey Jason, that he had sold and turned into cash a small part of the treasure, temporarily evaded his pursuers, and had bought the big manor house with the idea of living in luxury the rest of his life. Incidentally, he was accompanied by a Cuban wife.

“It seemed, however, that like most evil-doers, he got little good out of his treasure. He paid only a small amount down on the estate, and after a year or two let it go back to the original owners. He went away, but it doesn’t seem likely he took the treasure with him. At least he died wretchedly in poverty some months later, and had spent no large amount of money in between. The report of his death can be found in the records of the city of Tampa, in this state.

“Now all this is unquestionably a mixture of truth and fact. Unquestionably there is a vein of truth in it; and I don’t see but that most of it is fairly credible. But the rest of the yarn is simply laughable.

“I tell it only because it goes with the rest—not that I believe one word of it myself. After you hear what it is you’ll wonder I ever took the trouble to tell you that I disbelieved it. It’s just the sort of thing imaginative old niggers make up to tell their children. And of course—the niggers on the place believe every word of it.

“They say that this Jason—or Hendrickson—put a guard over his treasure. He was a deep-sea fisherman at one time, when he wasn’t a seaman, with considerable acquaintance with the various man-eating monsters of the deep. It is known that Hendrickson did some queer exploring and fishing along the rocky shores beyond the estate. What did the villainous old pirate do but catch some big octopus—or some other such terrible ocean creature—and transplanted him to the lagoon where he was said to have concealed the treasure.

“That’s all there is to it. The beast is supposed to be there yet, growing bigger and fiercer and more terrible year by year. An octopus is supposed to live indefinitely, you know. Once in awhile, the story goes, it creeps up on the rocky shore of the lagoon and grabs off a colored man. When any one searches around for the chest he’s apt to meet up with Mr. Monster! Sure proof of his existence, the niggers say, is that Mas’r Somebody or other, the son of one of the subsequent owners of the estate, also mysteriously disappeared and has never been heard of since. When the blacks lose one of their own number they seem to regard it as a mere matter of course—but when ‘one of de white folks’ is taken, it’s another matter! And of course, even to this day, you can’t get a colored man to go within two hundred yards of the lagoon at night, and they hate to approach it even in the daylight.

“The lagoon where the chest is supposed to be hidden is the one just outside my window, cut off from the sea by the natural rock wall you just saw. The big crags and rocks and crevices are supposed to conceal his ferociousness the sea-monster, growing bigger and hungrier and fiercer every day. The house that Jason—or Hendrickson—bought, neglected, and let return to the owners is the one you’re sitting in, right now.”

CHAPTER V

After Nealman and I had each smoked a cigarette, I thought of a little plan that might increase his guest’s interest in the week’s shoot and hunt. He had been right when he said that even incredible legends, believed by no one, still add flavor to the country manor. I didn’t see why we shouldn’t turn them into account.

“I’ve got an idea,” I told him, “and it all depends whether or not you’ve already sent the invitations to your guests.”

“No, I haven’t—just haven’t got around to it,” he answered. “All I was going to do was to write to about nine or ten of my men friends. I don’t suppose all of them can come.”

“Good. I thought it might be interesting if we worked that legend into the invitation—just to add a little spice to the fishing and hunting. It might serve to waken a little extra interest in your party. Of course—it includes poking fun at the ferocious Jason and his treasure.”

“They’ll have a lot more fun poked at them before we’re done. As I told you—only the colored people take them seriously at all.”

I took out my fountain pen, found a scrap of paper, and drew something like this:

As my only drawing experience consisted in portraying specimens, it had no artistic pretensions whatever.

He seemed pleased, adopted the plan in an instant, then began to write down the names of his guests so that I could prepare an invitation for each. Most of them, I observed, lived in great cities to the North, New York and Boston particularly, and one or two of the men were more or less nationally known. The first half dozen names came easy. Then he paused, frowning.

“I wish I knew what to do about this bird,” he muttered, as much to himself as to me. “Killdare, I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of him—Major Kenneth Dell?”

I shook my head. “Not that I remember.”

“Well, I haven’t either—yet I suppose he’s a good sportsman. In the last few weeks he’s got close to my best friend, Bill Van Hope, and Bill asked me to ask him down for this shoot. Says he’s a distinguished man, the best of fellows, and is simply wild to try Floridan game. Oh, I’ll put him down. If Bill recommends him he must be the goods.”

He completed the list in a moment, then his duties calling him elsewhere, he left me in the study to prepare the invitations. And the hour turned out fortunately for me, after all. Thinking that the room was empty, Edith Nealman came back to her desk.

All the gold in Jason’s chest could not have bought a more lovely picture than she made, standing framed in the doorway. She was dressed in a spotless cotton middy-suit, and the red scarf at her throat brought out to perfection the light in her eyes and the high color in her cheeks. Then she came in and inspected the invitations.

There was no occasion for me to leave at once. We talked a while, on everything under the sun, and every minute something that was like delight kept growing within me. She’d been up against the world, this girl that chattered so gayly in the big, easy office-chair. She had known poverty, a veritable struggle for existence; yet they hadn’t hardened her in the least. No one I had ever met had possessed a sweeter, truer outlook, an unfeigned friendliness and comradeship for every decent thing that lived. Maybe you’d call it a childish simplicity, but I didn’t stop to consider what it was. I only knew that she was the prettiest and the sweetest girl I’d ever seen, and I was going to spend every moment possible in her presence.

Oh, but I loved to hear her laugh! I kept my brain busy thinking up things to say to her, that might waken that rippling sound of silver bells! I liked to see her eyes grow serious, and her lips half-pout as some delightful, fanciful thought played hide-and-seek in her mind. She had imagination, this niece of Grover Nealman. Perhaps, after all, it was the secret of her charm. I didn’t doubt for a moment but that she read romantic novels by the score, but I, for one, wouldn’t hold the fact against her.

We talked over the legend of Jason’s chest; and I was a little surprised at her devoted interest in it. Evidently the savage tale had gone straight home to her imagination. Whether she put the least credence in it I couldn’t tell.

It came about, in the twilight hour, that we walked together down to the craggy shore of the lagoon. Then we stood and watched the light dying on the blue-green water.

Once more the tide was rolling in. The waves beat with a startling fury over and against the rock wall, and in the half-light the white stones looked like the foam-covered fangs of a mighty sea-monster, raging at our intrusion. The water swept through the little crevices in the wall, and the cool spray, refreshing after the tropic day, swept against our faces.

The gray sand stretched down to the desolate sea. A plover uttered his disconsolate, wailing cry far out to sea. Some dark heron or bittern rose croaking from beside the lagoon, then flapped awkwardly away. I felt the girl’s hand on my arm as she drew closer to my side.

A worthy place—this manor house of Nealman. Vague thoughts, not quite in keeping with the ordered dimensions of life, had hold of my mind. Presently the girl’s grip tightened, and she pointed toward the lagoon.

I saw her face before I followed her gesture. I didn’t get the idea that she was frightened. Rather she was smiling, quietly, and her eyes glistened.

Seventy yards out, and perhaps fifteen yards back from the Bridge, great bubbles were bursting upward through the blue-green troubled waters. Some mysterious action of the currents, stirred by the tides, was the unquestioned cause; yet both of us were stirred by the same fancy. It was as if some great, air-breathing sea-monster was exhaling beneath the waves.

CHAPTER VI

The next two weeks sped by as if with one rise and fall of the tides. I spent the time in locating the various fields of game: the tall holly-trees where the wild turkeys roosted, the sloughs where the bass were gamest, and marked down the cover of the partridge. In the meantime I collected specimens for the university.

It came about that I didn’t always go out alone. The best time of all to study wild-life is in late twilight and the first hours of dawn—and at such times Edith was unemployed. Many the still, late evenings when we stood together on the shore and watched the curlews in their strange, aerial minuet that no naturalist has even been able to explain; many the dewey morning that we watched the first sun’s rays probe through the mossy forest. She had an instinctive love for the outdoors, and her agile young body had seemingly fibers of steel. At least she could follow me wherever I wanted to go.

Once we came upon the Floridan deer, feeding in a natural woods-meadow, and once a gigantic manatee, the most rare of large American mammals, flopped in the mud of the Ochakee River. We knew that incredible confusion and bustle made by the wild turkeys when they flew to the tree-tops to roost; and she learned to whistle the partridge out from their thickets.

Of course we developed a fine companionship. I learned of her early life, a struggle against poverty that had been about to overwhelm her when her uncle had come to her aid; and presently I was telling her all of my own dreams and ambitions. She was wholly sympathetic with my aim to continue my university work for a higher degree; then to spend my life in scientific research. I described some of the expeditions that I had in mind but which seemed so impossible of fulfillment—the exploration of the great “back country” of Borneo, a journey across that mysterious island, Sumatra, the penetration of certain unknown realms of Tibet.

“But they take thousands of dollars—and I haven’t got ’em,” I told her quietly.

She looked out to sea a long time. “I wish I could find Jason’s treasure for you,” she answered at last.

I was used to Edith’s humor, and I looked up expecting to see the familiar laughter in her eyes. But the luster in those deep, blue orbs was not that of mirth. Fancies as beautiful as she was herself were sweeping her away....

Most of the guests arrived on the same train at the little town of Ochakee, and motored over to Kastle Krags. A half dozen in all had accepted Nealman’s invitation. I saw them when they got out of their cars.

Of course I straightened their names out later. At the time I only studied their faces—just as I’d study a new specimen, found in the forest. And when Edith and I compared notes afterward we found that our first impression was the same—that all six were strikingly similar in type.

They might just as well have been brothers, chips off the same block. When Nealman stood among them it seemed as if he might change names with any one of them, and hardly any one could tell the difference. There was nothing distinguishing about their clothes—all were well-dressed, either in white or tweeds; their skins had that healthy firmness and good color that is seen so often in men that are free from financial worry; their hair was cut alike; their linen was similarly immaculate; their accent was practically the same. Finally they were about the same age—none of them very young, none further than the first phases of middle-age.

Lemuel Marten was of course the most distinguished man in the party. Born rich, he had pushed his father’s enterprises into many lands and across distant seas, and his name was known, more or less, to all financiers in the nation. His face was perhaps firmer than the rest—his voice was more commanding and insistent. He was, perhaps, fifty years of age, stoutly built, with crinkling black hair and vivid, gray eyes. From time to time he stroked nervously a trim, perfectly kept iron-gray mustache.

Hal Fargo had been a polo-player in his day. Certain litheness and suppleness of motion still lingered in his body. His face was darkly brown, and white teeth gleamed pleasantly when he spoke. A pronounced bald spot was the only clew of advancing years. He was of medium height, slender, evidently a man of great personal magnetism and charm.

Joe Nopp was quite opposite, physically—rather portly, perhaps less dignified than most of his friends. I put down Nopp as a dead shot, and later I found I had guessed right. For all his plump, florid cheeks and his thick, white hands, he had an eye true as a surveyor’s instrument, nerves cold and strong as a steel chain. He was a man to be relied upon in a crisis. And both Edith and I liked him better than any of the others.

Lucius Pescini was an aristocrat of the accepted type—slender, tall, unmistakably distinguished. His hair was such a dark shade of brown that it invariably passed as black, he had eyes no less dark, sparkling under dark brows, and his small mustache and perfectly trimmed beard was in vivid contrast to a rather pale skin.

Of Major Kenneth Dell I had never heard. He had been an officer in the late war, and now he was Bill Van Hope’s friend, although not yet acquainted with Nealman. The two men met cordially, and Van Hope stood above them, the tallest man in the company by far, beaming friendship upon them both. Dell was of medium size, sturdily built, garbed with exceptionally good taste in imported flannels. He also had gray, vivid eyes, under rather fine brows, gray hair perfectly cut, a slow smile and quiet ways. Solely because he was a man of endless patience I expected him to distinguish himself with rod and reel.

Bill Van Hope, Nealman’s friend of whom I had heard so much, was not only tall, but broad and powerful. He had kind eyes and a happy smile—altogether as good a type of millionaire-sportsman as any one would care to know. Nealman introduced him to me, and his handshake was firm and cordial.

Nealman took them all into the great manor house: I went with Nealman’s chauffeur to see about the handling of their luggage. This was at half-past four of a sunlit day in September. I didn’t see any of the guests again until just before the dinner hour, when a matter of a broken fly-tip had brought me into the manor house. Thereupon occurred one of a series of incidents that made my stay at Kastle Krags the most momentous three weeks of my life.

It was only a little thing—this experience in Nealman’s study. But coming events cast their shadows before—and certainly it was a shadow, dim and inscrutable though it was, of what the night held in store. I had passed Florey the butler, gray and sphynx-like in the hallway, spoke to him as ever, and turned through the library door. And my first impression was that some other guest had arrived in my absence.

A man was standing, smoking, by the window. I supposed at once that he was an absolute stranger. There was not a single familiar image, not the least impulse to my memory. I started to speak, and beg his pardon, and inquire for Nealman. But the words didn’t come out. I was suddenly and inexplicably startled into silence.

It is the rare man who can analyze his own mental processes. Of all the sensations that throng the human mind there is none so lawless, so sporadic in its comings and departure, so utterly illogical as fear—and great surprise is only a sister of fear. I can’t explain why I was startled. There was no reason whatever for being so. I must go further—I was not only startled, but shaken too. It has come about that through the exigencies of the hunting trail I have been obliged to face a charging jaguar—in a jungle of Western Mexico—yet with nerves holding true. My nerves didn’t hold true now—and I couldn’t tell why. They jumped unnecessarily and quivered under the skin.

I did know the man beside the window after all. He was Major Kenneth Dell that I had observed particularly closely—due to having heard of him before—when he had first dismounted from the car. The thing that startled me was that in the hour and a half or so since I had seen him his appearance had undergone an amazing change.

It took several long seconds to win back some measure of common sense. Then I knew that, through some trick of nerves, I had merely attached a thousand times too much importance to a wholly trivial incident. In all probability the change in Dell’s appearance was simply an effect of light and shadow, wrought by the window in front of which he stood.

But for the instant his face simply had not seemed his own. Its color had been gone—indeed it had seemed absolutely bloodless. His eyes had been vivid holes in his white face, his features were drawn out of all semblance to his own, the facial lines were graven deep. His lips looked loose, as with one whose muscle-control is breaking.

But my impression had only an instant’s life. Either the man drew himself together at my stare, or my own vision got back to normal. He was himself again—the same, suave, genial sportsman I had seen dismount from the car. He answered my inquiry, and I turned through the library door.

If I had seen true, there could be but one explanation: that Major Dell had undergone some violent nervous shock since he had entered the door of the manor house of Kastle Krags.

CHAPTER VII

After the dinner hour Nealman came for me, in the room just off the hall from his own that he had designated for my use. I’d never seen him in quite so gay a humor. His eyes sparkled; happiness rippled in his voice. His tone was more companionable too, lacking that faint but unmistakable air of patronage it had always previously held. He had never forgotten, until now, that he was the employer, I the employee. Now his accent and manner was one of equality, and he addressed me much as he had addressed his wealthy guests.

He had been drinking; but he was not in the least intoxicated. Perhaps he had been stimulated, very slightly. He wore a dinner coat with white trousers.

“Killdare, I want you to come downstairs,” he said. “Some of my friends want to talk to you about shootin’ and fishin’. They’re keen to know what their prospects are.”

“I’d like to,” I answered. “But I’ll have to come as I am. I haven’t a dinner coat——”

“Of course come as you are.”

His arm touched mine, and he headed me down the hallway to the stairs. Then we walked side by side down the big, wide stairway to the big living-room.

Already I heard the sound of the guests’ laughter. As I went further the hall seemed simply ringing with it. There could be no further doubt of the success of Nealman’s party. Evidently his distinguished guests had thrown all dignity to the winds, entering full into the spirit of play.

The glimpse of the big living-room only verified this first impression. The guests were evidently in that wonderful mood of merriment that is the delight and ambition of all hosts, but which is so rarely obtained. Most men know the doubtful temper of a mob. Few had failed to observe that the same psychology extends to the simplest social gatherings. How often stiffness and formality haunt the drawing-room or dining-table, where only merriment should rule! How many times the social spirit wholly fails to manifest itself. To-night, evidently, conditions were just right, and hilarity ruled at Kastle Krags.

As I came in Joe Nopp—the portly man with the clear, gray eyes—was telling some sort of an anecdote, and his listeners were simply shouting with laughter. Major Dell and Bill Van Hope were shooting craps on the floor, ten cents a throw, carrying on a ridiculous conversation with the dice. A big phonograph was shouting a negro song from the corner.

There was a slight lull, however, when Nealman and I came in. Van Hope spoke to me first—he was the only one of the guests I had met—and the others turned toward me with the good manners of their kind. In a moment Nealman had introduced me to Joe Nopp’s listeners and, an instant later, to Major Dell.

“Mr. Killdare is down here doing some work in zoology for his university,” Nealman explained, “and he’s agreed to show you chaps where to find game and fish. He knows this country from A to Izzard.”

I held the center of the floor, for a while, as I answered their questions; and I can say truly I had never met, on the whole, a better-bred and more friendly company of men. They wanted to know all about the game in the region, what flies or lures the bass were taking, as to the prevalence of diamond-backs, and if the tarpon were striking beyond the natural rock wall. In their eagerness they were like boys.

“You’ll talk better with a shot of something good,” Nealman told me at last, producing a quart bottle. “Have a little Cuban cheer.”

The bottle contained old Scotch, and its appearance put an end to all serious discussion. From thence on the mood of the gathering was ever lighter, ever happier; and I merely sat and looked on.

“The question ain’t,” Hal Fargo said of me with considerable emphasis, “whether he knows where the turkeys are, but whether or not he knows his college song!”

I pretended ignorance, but soon Van Hope and Nealman were singing “A Cow’s Best Friend” at the top of their voices, while Nopp tried to drown them out with “Fill ’em up for Williams.”

Even now it could not be said that any of the group were intoxicated. Fargo was certainly the nearest; his cheeks were flushed and his speech had that reckless accent that goes so often with the first stages of drunkenness. The distinguished Pescini was only animated and fanciful, Van Hope and Marten perhaps slightly stimulated. For all the charm of their conversation I couldn’t see that Nopp or Major Dell were receiving the slightest exhilaration from their drinks.

But the spirit of revelry was ever higher. These men were on a holiday, they had left their business cares a thousand miles to the north, mostly they were tried companions. None of us was aware of the passing of time. I saw at once that my presence was not objectionable to the party, so I lingered long after the purpose for which I had been brought among them had been fulfilled—purely for the sake of entertainment. I had never seen a frolic of millionaires before, and needless to say I enjoyed every moment of it.

In the later hours of night the revellers ranged further over the house. Joe Nopp was in the billiard room exhibiting fancy shots and pretending to receive the plaudits of a great multitude; Pescini and Van Hope were in conversation on the veranda, and Fargo was wholly absent and unaccounted for. I had missed Marten, the financier, for a moment; but his reappearance was the signal for a fresh rush to the living-room.

The whole party met him with a yell. In the few moments of his absence he had wrought a startling change in his appearance. Over his shoulders he had thrown a gayly colored Indian blanket, completely hiding his trim dinner coat. He had tied a red cloth over his head and waxed the points of his iron-gray mustache until they stood stiff and erect, giving an appearance of mock ferocity to his face. A silver key-ring and his own gold signet dangled from his ears, tied on with invisible black thread. And to cap the climax he carried a long, wicked-looking carving-knife between his teeth.

Of course he was Godfrey Jason himself—the same character I had portrayed in the invitations. Fargo made him do a Spanish dance to the clang of an invisible tambourine.

Some of the gathering scattered out again, after his dramatic appearance, drifting off on various enterprises and as the hour neared midnight only four of us were left in the drawing-room. Marten stood in the center, still in his ridiculous costume. Van Hope, Nealman, Pescini and myself were grouped about him. And it might have been that in the song that followed Pescini too slipped away. I know that I didn’t see him immediately thereafter.

With a little urging Marten was induced to sing Samuel Hall—a stirring old ballad that quite fitted his costume. He had a pleasant baritone, he sung the song with indescribable spirit and enthusiasm, and it was decidedly worth hearing. Indeed it was the very peak of the evening—a moment that to the assembled guests must have almost paid them for the long journey.

“For I shot a man in bed, man in bed—
For I shot a man in bed, and I left him there for dead,
With a bullet through his head—
Damn your eyes!”

But the song halted abruptly. Whether he was at the middle of the verse, a pause after a stanza, or even in the middle of a chord I do not know. On this point no one will ever have exact knowledge. Marten stopped singing because something screamed, shrilly and horribly, out toward the lagoon.

The picture that followed is like a photograph, printed indelibly on my mind. Marten paused, his lips half open, a strange, blank look of amazement on his face. Nealman stared at me like a witless man, but I saw by his look that he was groping for an explanation. Van Hope stood peculiarly braced, his heavy hands open, beads of perspiration on his temples. Whether Pescini was still with us I do not know. I tried to remember later, but without ever coming to a conclusion. He had been standing behind me, at first, so I couldn’t have seen him anyway. I believed, however, without knowing why, that he walked into the hall at the beginning of the song.

The sound we had heard, so sharp and clear out of the night, so penetrating above the mock-ferocious words of the song, was utterly beyond the ken of all of us. It was a living voice; beyond that no definite analysis could be made. Sounds do not imprint themselves so deeply upon the memory as do visual images, yet the remembrance of it, in all its overtones and gradations, is still inordinately vivid; and I have no doubt but that such is the case with every man that heard it.

It was a high, rather sharp, full-lunged utterance, not in the least subdued. It had the unrestrained, unguarded tone of an instinctive utterance, rather than a conscious one—a cry that leaped to the lips in some great extremity or crisis. Yet it went further. Every man of us that heard it felt instinctively that its tone was of fear and agony unimagined, beyond the pale of our ordered lives.

“My God, what’s that?” Van Hope asked. Van Hope was the type of man that yields quickly to his impulses.

None of us answered him for a moment. Then Nealman turned, rather slowly. “It sounded like the devil, didn’t it?” he said. “But it likely wasn’t anything. I’ve heard some devilish cries in the couple of weeks I’ve been here—bitterns and owls and things like that. Might have been a panther in the woods.”

Marten smiled slowly, rather contemptuously. “You’ll have to do better than that, Nealman. That wasn’t a panther. Also—it wasn’t an owl. We’d better investigate.”

“Yes—I think we had better. But you don’t know what hellish sounds some of these swamp-creatures can make. We’ll all be laughing in a minute.”

His tone was rather ragged, for all his reassuring words, and we knew he was as shaken as the rest of us. A door opened into the hall—evidently some of the other guests were already seeking the explanation of that fearful sound.

It seemed to all of us that hardly an instant had elapsed since the sound. Indeed it still rang in our ears. All that had been said had scarcely taken a breath. We rushed out, seemingly at once, into the velvet darkness. The moon was incredibly vivid in the sky.

We passed into a rose-garden, under great, arching trees, and now we could see the silver glint of the moon on the lagoon. The tide was going out and the waters lay like glass.

Through the rifts in the trees we could see further—the stretching sands, gray in the moonlight, the blue-black mysterious seas beyond. What forms the crags took, in that eerie light! There was little of reality left about them.

We heard some one pushing through the shrubbery ahead of us, and he stopped for us to come up. I recognized the dark beard and mustache of Pescini. “What was it?” he asked. Excitement had brought out a deep-buried accent, native to some South European land. “Was it further on?”

“I think so,” Nealman answered. “Down by the lagoon.”

He joined us, and we pushed on, but we spread out as we neared the shore of the lagoon. Some one’s shadow whipped by me, and I turned to find Major Dell.

The man was severely shaken. “My God, wasn’t that awful!” he exclaimed. “Who is it—you, Killdare?” He stared into my face, and his own looked white and masque-like in the moonlight. Then all of us began to search, up and down the shore of the lagoon.

In the moonlight our shadows leaped, met one another, blended and raced away; and our voices rang strangely as we called back and forth. But the search was not long. Van Hope suddenly exclaimed sharply—an audible inhalation of breath, rather than an oath—and we saw him bending over, only his head and shoulders revealed in the moonlight. He stood just beside the craggy margin of the lagoon.

“What is it?” some one asked him, out of the gloom.

“Come here and see,” Van Hope replied—rather quietly, I thought. In a moment we had formed a little circle.

A dead man lay at our feet, mostly obscured in the shadow of the crags of the lagoon. We simply stood in silence, looking down. We knew that he was dead just as surely as we knew that we ourselves were living men. It was not that the light was good; that there was scarcely any light at all. We knew it, I suppose, from the huddled position of his form.

Joe Nopp scratched a match. He held it perfectly steadily. The first thing it showed to me was a gray face and gray hair, and a stain that was not gray, but rather ominously dark, on the torn, white front of the man’s evening shirt. Nealman peered closely.

“It’s my butler, Florey,” he said.

CHAPTER VIII

There was nothing in particular to say or do. We simply stood looking down, that huddled body from which life had been struck as if by a meteor, in the center. From time to time we looked up from it to stare out over the ensilvered waters of the lagoon.

We all shared this same inclination—to look away into the misty distance, past the lagoon, past the gray shore, into the sea so mysterious and still. The tide was running out now, so there was no tumult of breaking waves on the Bridge. At intervals, and at a great distance, we could hear the high-pitched shriek of plover.

Of course the mood lasted just an instant. It was as if we had all been stricken silent and lifeless, unable to speak, unable to act, with only the power left to look and to wonder and to dream. I suppose the finding of that huddled body, under those conditions, was a severe nervous shock to us all. Joe Nopp, he of the true eye and the steady nerve, was the first to get back on an every-day footing with life.

“It’s a fiendish crime,” he said in the stillness. He spoke rather slowly, without particular emphasis. “Of all the people to murder—that gray, inoffensive little butler of yours! Nealman, let’s get busy. Maybe we can catch the devil yet.”

Nealman came to himself with a start. “Sure, Joe. Tell us what to do. We need a directing head at a time like this.”

Nealman had dropped his accent. He spoke tersely, more like a man in the street than the aristocrat he had come to believe himself to be.

“The first thing is to get word into town—Ochakee, you call it. Get hold of the constable, or any other authority, and tell him to notify the sheriff.”

“Ochakee’s the county seat—we can reach the sheriff himself.”

“Good. Tell him to take steps to guard all roads for suspicious characters. Get out posses, if they would help. Get the coroner and all the official help we can get out here.” He turned to me, with a whip-like, emphatic movement. “Killdare, you might help us here. You likely know the roads. Tell us what to do.”

“You’ve said what to do,” I told him. “There’s not enough white men in this part of the country to make a posse—and a posse couldn’t find any one that wanted to hide in the cypress swamps. The thing to do—is to cut off the murderer’s escape and starve him out. Nealman, isn’t yours the only road——”

“As far as I know——”

“The marshes are almost impassible to the left, and on the other side is the river. If we can keep him from getting as far as Nixon’s——”

“Who’s Nixon——”

“Next planter up the road, five miles up. Get a phone to him right away. Young Nixon will watch all night and stop any one who tries to pass. The sheriff can put a man there to-morrow. Let’s find a phone.”

Hal Fargo, seemingly as cold as a blade, started to bend over the body for further examination of the wound, but two of the men caught his arm.

“Don’t touch him, Hal,” Major Dell advised, quietly. “The less we track up the spot and muss things up the better. The detective’ll have a better chance for thumb prints, and things like that.”

“You’re right, Dell,” the man agreed. “And now let’s get to a phone.”

“Good.” It was Joe Nopp’s cool, self-reliant voice again. “In the meantime, have any of you got a gun?”

Lemuel Marten alone responded—he carried a little automatic pistol in the pocket of his dinner coat. “Here,” he said. He drew the thing out, and it made blue fire in the moonlight in his hand.

“Then, Marten, you head a hunt through these grounds. The murderer might still be hiding in the shrubbery. Stop every one—shoot ’em if they don’t stop. Now Nealman, Van Hope, Killdare—where’s the phone?”

Nopp, Nealman, and myself started for the house; Fargo, Major Dell, and Pescini and Van Hope followed Marten into the more shadowed parts of the gardens and lawns. Before ever we reached the house we heard their excited shouts but we paused only an instant. “They can handle him if they’ve got him,” Nopp said. “We’d better go and do our work.”

We divided in the hall. Nopp and I went to the phone, Nealman and Van Hope, at Nopp’s suggestion, to round up all the servants. “Keep ’em in one room, and watch ’em,” Nopp advised. “We’ll like enough find the murderer among them—some domestic jealousy, or something like that. Don’t give any of ’em a chance to get away or to destroy evidence.”

I telephoned to Nixon’s first. The sleepy, country Central rang long and often, and at last a drowsy voice answered the ring.

“This Charley Nixon?” I asked.

“Yes.” He awakened vividly at the sound of his own name.

“This is Ned Killdare—I met you on the way out. I’m at Nealman’s—Kastle Krags. A man has been murdered here, just a few minutes ago! I want you to watch the road with your dogs—that strip between the river and marsh, and not let any one go through from this way. Can you handle it?”

Charley Nixon had borne arms in France, his father had ridden with the Clansmen of long ago, and his answer was clear and unhesitating over the wire. “Any one who tries to get by me will be S. O. L.,” he said.

A moment later I reached the coroner at Ochakee. He promised he could start for the scene at once, in his car, bringing the sheriff or his deputy, and that he would take all the precautions he could to cut off the murderer’s escape. Then Nopp and I returned to the living-room.

It was an unforgettable picture—that scene in the big living-room where Nealman’s guests had been so merry a few minutes before. A bottle of whiskey still stood on the table in the center, half-filled glasses, in which the ice had not yet melted, stood beside it and on the window-sills and smoking stands. Little, unwavering filaments of blue smoke streamed up from half-burned cigarettes. In the places of the revelers stood a group of sobbing, terrified negroes.

We were not native southerners, accustomed to seeing the black people in their paroxysms of fear, and the sight went straight home to all of us. These were the “cotton field niggers” of which old-time planters speak, slaves to the blackest superstitions that ever cursed the tribes of the Congo, and the night’s crime had gone hard with them. Their faces were gray, rather than black, the whites of their eyes were plainly visible, and they made a confused babble of sound. The women, particularly, were sobbing and praying alternately; most of the men were either stuttering or apoplectic with sheer terror. Some of them cowered, shrieking, as we opened the door.

“Shut up that noise,” Nopp demanded. A dead silence followed his words. “No one is going to hurt you as long as you stay in here and shut up. Where’s the boss.”

One of them pointed, rather feebly, to the next room. And I took the instant’s interval to reach the side of some one that sat, alone and silent, in a big chair in the chimney-corner.

It was Edith Nealman, and she had been rounded up with the rest of the house employees. Her bare feet were in slippers, and she wore a long dressing-gown over her night-dress. Her hair hung in two golden braids over her shoulders.

I was glad to see that the terror of the blacks had not passed, in the least degree, to her. Of course she was pale and shaken, her eyes were wide, but her voice when she spoke was subdued and calm, and there was not the slightest trace of hysteria about her. “It’s a dreadful thing, isn’t it?” she said. “Poor little Florey—who’d want to murder him!”

“Nobody knows—but we’re going to get him, anyway,” I promised rashly. And what transpired thereafter did not come out in the inquest.

It was only a little thing, but it meant teeming worlds to me. One of her hands groped out to mine, and I pressed it in reassurance.

Besides the native southern blacks that acted as gardeners and chambermaids and table hands about the place, Nealman had rounded up his mulatto chauffeur. Mrs. Gentry, his white housekeeper, sat a little to one side of the group of negroes.

In a moment Nealman and Van Hope rejoined us, and we turned once more through the still hall that had been Florey’s particular domain. An instant later we were out on the moonlit driveway.

“I wonder if those birds will have sense enough to stay away from the body,” Nopp said gruffly. “It would be easy to mess up and destroy every bit of evidence——”

“Major Dell warned them,” I said. “I think they’ll remember.”

“Nevertheless, I think we’d better post a guard over it.” He paused, eyeing an approaching figure. It was Marten, and he was almost out of breath.

“Any luck?” Nealman asked.

“Nothing.” Marten paused, fighting for breath. “Something stirred over in the thicket—we chased it down and tried to round it up. I guess it wasn’t anything—certainly if it had been a man we’d scared it out. Have you a dog?”

“Haven’t shipped my dogs down here yet, but coons and such things come out of the woods every once in a while. Where are your men——”

“They’ll round up here in a minute. We’ve been beating through the grounds.”

In a moment Major Dell and Fargo approached us from opposite sides of the garden, and once more we headed down toward the lagoon. A voice called after us, and Pescini caught up.