Kastle Krags: A Story of Mystery

by Absalom Martin

  CHAPTER XV

  The most outstanding thing about that sound was its amazing loudness. Itwas hard to believe that a human voice could develop such penetrationand volume. It had an explosive quality, bursting upon the eardrums withno warning whatsoever, and the man who had cried out had evidently giventhe full power of his lungs. It was probably true that the moist, hotatmosphere, hanging almost without motion, was a perfect medium fortransmitting sound. Besides, my windows were open, facing the lagoon.

  I heard the sound die away. The silence dropped down again to find mestanding wholly motionless before the window, one hand resting on thesill, seemingly with all power of action gone. It was a shattering blowto spirit and hope that there was no further sound from that deathlystill lagoon. Further calls would indicate that the outcome of theaffair was still in doubt, that there was still use to hope andstruggle. But there was a sense of dreadful finality in that unbrokensilence. The drama that had raged on that craggy shore was alreadyclosed and done.

  The sound had not been only a cry for help. It had been charged full ofthe knowledge of impending death.

  Motion came back to my body; and I sprang to the door. The interludeof inactivity couldn't have been more than a second in duration. Thatstill, upper corridor was coming to life. Some one flashed on a light atthe end of the hall, and the door of the room just opposite mine flewopen. Van Hope, also in dressing-gown and slippers, stood on thethreshold.

  He saw me, and pushed through into the hall. His face had an almostincredible pallor in the soft light. In a moment his strong hand hadseized my arm.

  "Good God, I didn't dream that, did I?" he cried. "I was dozing--youheard it, didn't you----"

  "Of course I heard----"

  "Some one screamed for help! I heard the word plain. Good Lord, it'slast night's work done over----"

  What he said thereafter I didn't hear. I was running down the halltoward the stairway, and at the head of the stairs I almost collidedwith Major Dell, just emerging from his room. He had evidently gone tobed, and he had just had time to jerk on his trousers over his pajamasand slip on a pair of romeos. The light was brighter here, and I got aclear picture of his face.

  It is a curious thing what details imprint themselves ineffaceablyon the memory in a moment of crisis. Perhaps--as in the world ofbeasts--all the senses are incalculably sharpened, the thought processesare clean-cut and infallible, and images have a clarity unequalled atany other time. I got the idea that Dell had been terribly moved by thatscream in the darkness. His emotion had seemingly been so violent thatit gave the impression of no emotion. His face looked blank as a sheetof white paper.

  I rushed by him, and I heard him and Van Hope descending the stairs justbehind me. The hall was still lighted, but long shadows lay across thebroad veranda. Fargo, his book still in his hand, stood just outside thedoor.

  "What was it, Killdare?" he asked me. "I couldn't tell from where itwas----"

  "The lagoon!" I answered. In the instant Van Hope and Dell caught upwith me, and the four of us raced down the driveway.

  Instinctively we went first to the place on the shore where Florey hadbeen slain the night before. The action was a clear indication of whatwas in our minds--that this matter was in some way darkly related to thecrime of the night before. But the sand was bare, and the grassunshadowed in the moonlight.

  For a moment we stood, aghast and shaken, gazing out over the lagoon. Itwas still as glass. The tide was running out, and not a wave stirred inall its darkened expanse. We saw the image of the moon far out, scarcelywavering, and the long, bright trail that it made across the water toour eyes. The night was still stifling hot, and the lagoon conveyed animage of coolness.

  "Don't stand here!" Fargo cried. "We've got to make a search. Some poordevil is likely lying somewhere in these gardens----"

  The house was lighted now, and in an uproar, and some of the otherguests were racing down the driveway to us. In this regard it might havebeen last night's tragedy reenacted. There was, however, one significantchange.

  The iron self-control, the coolness, the perfect discipline of mind andmuscle that had marked the finding of the dead body on the shore thepreceding night was no longer entirely manifest. These northern men,cold as flint ordinarily, were no longer wholly self-mastered. Oneglance at their faces, loose and pale in the moonlight, and the firstsound of their voices told this fact only too plainly. It was not,however, that they were completely broken. Their training and theirmanhood was too good for that.

  We didn't stop to answer their queries. We began to search through thegardens, examining every shadow, peering into every covert. We tried todirect each other according to our several ideas as to the source of thesound. We all agreed, however, that the sound had seemed to come fromthe immediate vicinity of the natural rock wall that formed the lagoon.

  The next few moments were not very coherent. We called back and forth,encountered one another in the shadows, knew moments of apprehensionwhen the brush walls cut us off from our fellows, but we found nothingthat might have explained that desperate cry of a few moments before. Atlast some one called out commandingly from the shores of the lagoon.

  "Come here, every one," he said. The voice rose above our confusedutterances, and all of us, recognizing a leader, hurried to him. Pesciniwas standing beside the craggy shore, a strange and imposing figure inthe wealth of moonlight, at the edge of that tranquil water.

  Pescini, after all, was showing himself one of the most self-masteredmen among us. Any one could read the fact in his voice. How white hisskin looked in the moonlight, how raven-black his mustache and beard! Hewas still in the garb he had worn at dinner, immaculate and unruffled.

  "We're not getting anywhere," he said. "Is every one here?"

  "Here!" It was Joe Nopp's voice, and he immediately joined us. We waitedan instant, seeing if any further searchers were yet to come in. But thethickets were as hushed as the lagoon itself.

  "Let's take another tack," Pescini said. "There's nothing in thesegardens. If there is we'll find it in an organized search. Remember--oursearch got us nowhere last night. Let's count up, and see if we're allall right."

  We waited for him to continue. All of us breathed deeply and hard.

  "Then let's go up to the house to do it," Nopp suggested. "We know we'renot all here now--there's no use getting alarmed before we're sure. Goup to the living-room."

  His voice was oddly penetrative, wakening a whole flood of unwelcomethoughts.... We were not all here, he said--seemingly not even all thewhite occupants of Kastle Krags had obeyed the common instinct to answerand investigate that cry! Yet it all might come to nothing, after all. Aclose tabulation might account for every one--and that the remainder ofour party had merely not yet wakened. Stranger things have happened.We told ourselves, in silent ways, that we had heard of men sleepingthrough more fearful sounds than that! I agreed with Nopp that the thingto do was to go to the living-room, make a careful count, and then seewhere we stood.

  In a moment we had started back. We were not afraid we had left some ofour party still searching through the gardens. No man cared to be aloneout there to-night, and all of us kept close track of our fellows. Edithwas standing just before the veranda, on the driveway, as we came up.The coroner, who had taken time fully to dress, met us half-way down thelawns.

  We walked almost in silence; and quietly, rather grimly, Joe Noppflashed on all the lights of the big living-room.

  "Go ahead, Slatterly," he said to the sheriff, "See that we're allhere."

  "Let Killdare do it. I don't know you all, you know----"

  So I made the count, just as sometimes we did after raids over No Man'sLand. The sheriff and the constable were both present, Mrs. Gentry, thehousekeeper, was standing, pale but remarkably self-possessed, at theinner door of the room. Of course I couldn't count up the blacks. Mostof them were evidently hiding in their rooms. And every one of the sixguests answered his name.

  "There's just one more name to give," Nopp sai
d at last.

  "But there's no use naming it," some one answered in a queer, flatvoice. "He's not here."

  Nopp turned, and bounded like a deer up the stairs. All of us knew whathe had gone to do: to see if the missing man was in his room. And therewas nothing for us but to wait for his report.

  But in a moment we heard his step on the stairs. He sprang down amongus, and evidently his fine self-mastery was breaking within him. Hisfine eyes held vivid points of light.

  "My God, he's gone," he said. "Not a sign of him."

  "It can't be true," Pescini answered.

  "It is. His bed is rumpled--but not thrown back or slept in."

  Von Hope, the missing man's closest friend, suddenly gasped aloud. "ButI won't believe it--not until we make a search!" he cried. "It can't betrue."

  "Believe it or not. Search through the grounds or call through thehouse. Nealman's gone just as Florey's body went last night."