CHAPTER IV
Nealman had me take a chair, then seated himself before the window fromwhich he could overlook the lagoon. "I always like to sit where I canwatch it," he told me--rather earnestly, I thought. "I can't see much ofit--just a glimpse--but that's worth while. The room I've designated foryour use has even a better view. You can't imagine, Killdare, untilyou've lived with it, how really marvelous it is--how many colors playin the lagoon itself, and in the waves as they break over theBridge----"
"The Bridge----"
"That's the name we've given to the natural rock wall that cuts off thelagoon--rather, the inlet--from the open sea," he explained.
"It's one of the most interesting natural formations I've ever seen," Itold him.
"It is, isn't it?" He spoke with genuine enthusiasm. "And don't thecrags take peculiar shapes around it? You see it makes a veritablesalt-water lake out of all this end of the inlet. But Killdare--if youcan overlook the dreariness and the desolation of it all, it certainlyis beautiful----"
I nodded. "With a creepy kind of beauty," I told him. "I wish some greatartist could come here and paint it. But it would take a great one--toget the atmosphere. I've never seen a more wonderful place for adistinguished home."
It was rather remarkable how pleased he was by the words--particularlycoming from a humble employee. Evidently Kastle Krags was close to hisheart. His face glowed and his eye kindled.
"I'm wild about it myself," he confessed. "My friends want to know why Ibought 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 getshold of 'em, they won't want to leave."
From thence the talk led to business, and he questioned me in regard tothe game and fish of the region. I assured him that his friends wouldhave sport in plenty, that I knew where to lead them to turkey andpartridge, and that no better fishing could be found in the whole souththan in the Ochakee River. He seemed satisfied with my knowledge of thecountry; and told me a little of his own plans. Just as Edith Nealmanhad told me, he was planning a week's fish and hunt for a half dozen ofhis man friends, beginning a fortnight from then. They were coming along way--so he wanted to give them sport of the best. The servantproblem had been easily solved--he had recruited from the negro sectionof 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 ofcourse they are not to be found. Besides, only a small part of the partywill want to go out at once. Most of them will be content to hang aroundhere, 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--andthey fight like fiends. The rocks are just full of little crevices andcaves, and I suppose the fish live in 'em. These same crevices are thesource of one of the most interesting of the many legends connected withthis house."
It's a dull man that doesn't love legends, and I felt my intereststirring. "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 almostinvariably accumulate about such an ancient and famous manor-house asthis, had the greatest fascination for him; and he was glad of thechance to narrate them to any listener. He lighted a cigarette: thenturned to me with glistening eyes.
"Of course I don't believe them," he began. "Don't get that in your headfor an instant. All these old houses have some such yarns. But theysurely do lend a flavor to the place--and I wouldn't have them disprovedfor thousands of dollars. And one of them--the one I just referredto--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 tofor love nor money--especially when they are doomed to stay around herefor a few weeks. You won't believe it, but some men are so nervous, sonaturally credulous, that they'd actually have some unpleasant dreamsabout it. But I consider it one of the finest attractions of the place.
"The yarn's very simple. About 1840, a schooner, sailing under thePortuguese flag, sailed from Rio de Janeiro. Her name was the _Arganil_,she had a mixed cargo, and she was bound for New Orleans. These arefacts, Killdare. You can ascertain them any time from the marinerecords. But we can't go much further.
"Among the crew were two brothers, Jason by name. Legend says that theywere Englishmen, but what Englishmen were doing on a Portuguese ship Ican't tell you. The name, however, might easily be South-European--itappears, you remember, in Greek mythology. Now this point also has someindications of truth. There was certainly one Jason, at least, shippedas boatswain--the position of the other is considerably in doubt.
"Now we've got to get down to a matter of legend, yet with somesubstance of truth. The story goes that there was a treasure chest onthe ship, the property of some immensely rich Brasilian, and that itcontained certain treasures that had been the property of a Portugueseprince at the time that the court of Portugal was located in Rio deJaneiro. This was from 1808 to 1821--breaking up in a revolution just ahundred years ago. This is history, as you know. Just what was thenature of the treasure no one seems to have any idea. It was a rathersmall chest, so they say, bound with iron, and not particularlyheavy--but it was guarded with armed men, day and night. Of course theprevailing 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 thingsthat had been stolen from early heathen temples--again it might havebeen jewels. No estimation of its value was ever made, as far as Iknow--except that, like all unfound-treasures, it was 'incalculable.'
"You can believe as much of this as you like. Gold, however, is heavystuff--no one can carry much over twenty thousand dollars worth. If thechest wasn't really very heavy, and really was of such incalculablevalue, it had to contain something more than gold.
"This part of the story is pretty convincing. I've investigated, and thelegends contain such a wealth of detail concerning the appearance of thechest, how it was guarded, and so on, and the various accounts dovetailso perfectly one with another, that I am personally convinced that thetreasure was a reality--at least that such a chest existed on the oldship. When you get into the contents of the chest, however, you findonly a maze of conflicting rumors. To me they tend to make the story asa whole even more interesting--and I'll confess I'd love to know whatwas in that chest.
"Well, the _Arganil_ broke to pieces off the west coast of Florida, notmore than twenty miles from here. That fact can not be doubted. Thereare accounts of the wreck on official record. And legend has it thatthrough Heaven knows what wickedness and bloodshed and cunning, the twoJason brothers not only managed to get off in the stoutest of the ship'sboats, but that they carried the treasure with them.
"If there were any other members of the crew in the boat with them theywere unquestionably murdered. Nothing was ever heard of them again. Thetwo brothers are said to have landed somewhere close to this lagoon.
"But naked treasure breeds murder! It is a strange thing, Killdare, butthe naked, yellow metal, as well as glittering jewels, gets home tohuman wickedness as nothing else in the world can. If that chest hadbeen full of valuable securities, even paper currency, it wouldn't haveleft such a red trail from Rio to Florida. Gold and jewels waken a feverof possession out of all proportion to their actual value. When theylanded on the shore one of the Jasons neatly murdered the other and madeoff with the chest.
"The same old yarn--Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus. Killdare, didyou know that fratricide is shockingly common? There are three kindsof brothers, and the Jasons were simply one of the three kinds.Sometimes you find brothers that love each other beyond belie
f, with aself-sacrificing devotion that is beautiful to see. Then you find thegreat mass of brothers--liking each other fairly well, loyal in a familyscrap, fair pals but much closer to other pals that aren't theirbrothers. Then you come to this third class, a puzzle to psychologiststhe world over! Brothers that hate each other like poison snakes.
"Why is it, Killdare? Jealousy? A survival from the beast? These werethe kind of brothers that go through life bitter and hating and atswords' points. And all too often they get to the killing stage."
"You find it in the beast-world, too," I commented. "Look at the caseof the wolves and the dogs. They are blood-brothers, drop for drop--andthey hate each other with a fervor that is simply blood-curdling."
"True enough. I remember hearing about it. Well, one of the Jasons--theone whose cunning conceived of the whole wickedness to start XXXXwith--killed the other, disposed of his body, and then through someunknown series of events, concealed the treasure.
"He went away awhile, the old wives say--taking a small portionof 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 twoyears later a seafaring man, one who had worn earrings and who cursedwickedly as he talked, came back and bought a great colonial home wherethe treasure was supposed to have been concealed.
"This part of the story can not be doubted. The county books containrecords 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 withthe idea of living in luxury the rest of his life. Incidentally, he wasaccompanied by a Cuban wife.
"It seemed, however, that like most evil-doers, he got little good outof his treasure. He paid only a small amount down on the estate, andafter 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 hedied wretchedly in poverty some months later, and had spent no largeamount of money in between. The report of his death can be found in therecords 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 thatmost of it is fairly credible. But the rest of the yarn is simplylaughable.
"I tell it only because it goes with the rest--not that I believe oneword of it myself. After you hear what it is you'll wonder I ever tookthe trouble to tell you that I disbelieved it. It's just the sort ofthing imaginative old niggers make up to tell their children. And ofcourse--the niggers on the place believe every word of it.
"They say that this Jason--or Hendrickson--put a guard over histreasure. He was a deep-sea fisherman at one time, when he wasn't aseaman, with considerable acquaintance with the various man-eatingmonsters of the deep. It is known that Hendrickson did some queerexploring and fishing along the rocky shores beyond the estate. Whatdid the villainous old pirate do but catch some big octopus--or someother such terrible ocean creature--and transplanted him to the lagoonwhere 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 issupposed 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 coloredman. When any one searches around for the chest he's apt to meet up withMr. Monster! Sure proof of his existence, the niggers say, is that Mas'rSomebody or other, the son of one of the subsequent owners of theestate, 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 amere matter of course--but when 'one of de white folks' is taken, it'sanother matter! And of course, even to this day, you can't get a coloredman to go within two hundred yards of the lagoon at night, and they hateto approach it even in the daylight.
"The lagoon where the chest is supposed to be hidden is the one justoutside my window, cut off from the sea by the natural rock wall youjust saw. The big crags and rocks and crevices are supposed to concealhis ferociousness the sea-monster, growing bigger and hungrier andfiercer 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."
Kastle Krags: A Story of Mystery Page 4
