Carrington pushed through the gate again with difficulty, hurried across the street, found an apothecary nearby and, jotting down an address given him, hurried away.
He was gone about ten minutes. When he came back he brought with him an old and rather decrepit physician. Westbrook’s haggard face was nearly as pale as that of his still-insensible wife.
“I can’t find Archie,” he cried in broken accents. “This is terrible. Clara has had some dreadful fright. She has been whispering. But all I can hear is that she says she saw a black man come out of the stable and carry off Archie. But she is out of her mind—of course.”
The old doctor knelt down over his patient.
“There has been some terrible shock,” said he, after examining her for some time. “We’d better get her away from here at once.”
“But my boy!” exclaimed Westbrook with a despairing moan. “We can’t leave him here!”
“I’ll attend to that,” said Carrington. “Archie is hiding in the stable, or may have got into the house. We’ll find him. You may be sure of that.”
Again they opened the gate; and while the barbarian crowd, repulsive in its greedy curiosity, pushed in, the three men carried the unconscious lady to the phaeton. When Westbrook and the doctor had driven away with her, Carrington came back to the garden. There a policeman, who had joined him, ordered out the crowd and locked the gate, after which the two men began a systematic search of the shrubbery and the ruined greenhouse. The shallow cistern, though without a floor, was dry and clean. There was no well in the garden. Apparently there had never been. In the stable, the carriage rooms, hay lofts, bins, and stalls were open and empty. Finding a key to one of the back doors of the house, Carrington gave his candle to his companion, and while the latter searched the upper floor, reëxamined the cellar and again and again reëchoed the shouts of the man upstairs; but in vain.
It had grown dark, the crowd had gone, when, baffled and discouraged, Carrington left the place with the officer, locked the garden gate, and went out into the street. As they looked up at the sinister building, he remarked to the officer that one of the upper windows was open.
“It must have blown open,” said the policeman. “I didn’t open it. Let it go tonight. I’ll go back to the station and start things going. We will find that boy,—if he can be found.”
ix
These words of the officer were all that Carrington had to console himself with that night. They cheered him for a time in his vigil as he waited at the corner, walked round and round the illuminated silent streets, and questioned the policemen as they came and went. But at last his spirits sank. The whole force had turned out. The entire district, including the deserted house across Belbridge Street, was ransacked. At Carrington’s suggestion, they roused the indignant tenants in its duplicate on Bridge Street. Several times Westbrook, distracted and longing for news, left his wife and joined the searchers,—only to return to her in despair.
When morning broke, the comforting assertion of the officer had not been justified by results,—nor was it in the days and nights of fruitless search that followed. Weeks went by until at last Mrs. Westbrook, who had slowly recovered from her shock, without any clear recollection of what had happened, on the doctor’s imperative order left Eastport for a short ocean voyage with her husband.
Meanwhile, the freedom of the press was demonstrated in another sensation. Dorrance had done his best to stimulate the efforts of the police, and for the sake of the suffering lady had urged her husband not to despair. So Westbrook, awaiting the predicted anonymous letters as his last chance, hoped on. But as time passed without sign of such clue, the great lawyer ceased to express a confidence he no longer felt. To him there was nothing supernatural,—nothing more than a very remarkable coincidence of place and circumstance,—in the dark deed, which he classed in the category of unpunished crimes untraced until the dying criminal defeats justice by confession on his death-bed. A last fatal blow had been struck, he declared at the reputation of the closed house, and the hopes of the owners. Nevertheless, as he told Carrington one day soon after the tragedy, while they sat together in his office, the archbishop, contrary to his advice, had had the place cleaned and repaired.
“I hope he destroyed those dolls in the cellar,” said Carrington.
“I am glad you mentioned that. There were no dolls.”
“No dolls!” exclaimed Carrington. “I saw them.”
“You must have been mistaken, or you may have mixed up the house with No. 1013 Bridge Street.”
“Really, Dorrance, this won’t do,” protested Carrington. “The cellar was full of dolls. Westbrook saw them; so did the policeman.”
“I remember your saying so,” Dorrance returned, “and I asked the policeman; but he says he never went into the cellar. The archbishop and I have just searched. There was nothing of that sort there; nor anywhere else.”
Carrington stared at him, no longer surprised, but at last overcome by the feeling of fear and mystery that had so long possessed him.
“As I have said before,” continued Dorrance, “the place ought to be pulled down. It is of no use to any one, and I suppose that, under the circumstances, you would hardly want to dignify it in the play you spoke of.”
“I am done with the play,” said Carrington. “It wasn’t to be a tragedy. And I am done with the house. I never want to see or hear of it again.”
THE SUNKEN CITY
i
When, in the early summer of 18—, my opportunity came, as a young mining engineer, to report upon the condemned deposits of antimony, in the Bosnian province of Borsowitz, no egotism on my part, no premature guess as to the possibilities in view, tempted me to doubt the verdict of my predecessor, the late Professor D——, who had declared that the Vars-Palanka mines were exhausted. But a series of startling discoveries, entirely my own, of facts, which had escaped him, made my fortune, when, contrary to all precedent, I found the evidence despaired of, in several volcanic cave-fissures beyond the range of the lime stone.
At this point a lack of equipment for underground work, interrupted my survey. Reluctantly compelled to abandon my camp at Jaros, I had just demolished my comfortable laboratory and had set out upon a discouraging but necessary return journey to Ragusa, when my strange narrative begins with a well-remembered incident that happened early in the afternoon of a hot day in August.
My small caravan of pack mules, led by a dragoman and two servants and headed by myself, on horseback, had left the lower hills for a succession of barren rocky ledges bordering the coast. Several minor descents had brought us to an open bridlepath, commanding an immense view of water, sky, and mountains, where, beyond a fringe of breakers interrupted by cliffs, the white walls of Ragusa, beautiful as “Tyrus in the midst of the sea,” gleamed against the distant blue.
The way had grown steeper and rougher as we went on, and because the hot rocks at this point were bare of vegetation and very slippery, and because, as we approached several dangerous fissures, my sure-footed horse had twice proceeded in mountain style by holding all four feet together and sliding down the declines, I had dismounted and was leading him by the bridle. It was then, when the path rose again to cross a ledge, that I noticed two broad stripes of white paint, smeared at right angles upon the over-hanging rock.
As I passed the place, my dragoman, who followed me closely, stopped, touched the spot, and held up his whitened finger.
“Some accident, I suppose,” said I, halting to examine the thing. “A white cross. No doubt for a death or murder.”
The man shook his head. “No, signor,” he answered. “No one would paint a white cross for murder. It is a signal. You know the smugglers.”
Leaving his mule, he walked ahead, stood awhile looking down the slope, and came back again. Then, suddenly stooping, he picked up a small dark object at h
is feet.
The little, brown, leather-bound book that he handed me was polished with recent wear and was in bad condition. Under the loose cover, the title, a masterpiece of Venetian printing, in red and black, with the device of a flaming volcano, proved it to be an odd volume of a Latin edition of the historian Ammianus. Here and there the worn and loosened pages, as I turned them over, showed interlineations and marginal notes in fine manuscript.
“This is not the book of a smuggler,” I said, “but of a scholar. Whoever painted the rocks must have lost it, and not long ago, at that.”
But our time-consuming search of the neighboring rocky levels showed no further sign, and as our shouts were only mocked by empty echoes, I put the volume in my pocket and we went on.
About half-an-hour of careful descent, quickened by dangerous slides, brought us to the foot of the mountain, where a long and very ancient wall, connecting several towered gateways, overhung the great coastal road. Passing under one of these openings, I reached the hard highway, crossed it, and stopped by its outer parapet to wait for the others.
Several hundred feet below, under the cliffs, a small sailboat lay, half out of water, upon the sand. In it, beneath the loosely furled sail, flapping in the wind, I saw a large box, several packages scattered upon the seats, and then a glittering object half-hidden under a piece of black cloth.
Just as I thought I had identified this as a telescope, a tremendous noise and concussion close behind me almost threw me off my feet. I felt the horse’s bridle dragged from my hand. Staggering, I turned round, to see a cloud of dust and, close upon me, a mass of moving stones. I ran for my life till the noise had stopped; then looked up. A part of the overhanging wall had crashed down upon the road, and through the blinding dust and still resounding stones and rubbish I saw the figure of a man struggling on the brink above. He wore a white shirt, and for a moment his small, wiry body, with its kicking legs, hung suspended in mid-air. He seemed to be clinging to a bush. But I had scarcely noticed this, when the outline of a bearded face swung out against the sky above him, and a down-thrust bare arm seized him and pulled him out of sight.
A moment later the man’s head and shoulders appeared, leaning over the wall-top. He waved his arms in answer to my instinctive shout of sympathy, and as he did so and drew back again, I noticed that his face was splashed with blood.
Shocked and wondering, I stood for some time watching the place, still half-hidden by a cloud of dust whirled upward by the wind. Then, as I walked cautiously backward, to my surprise, the injured man suddenly came out of the nearest gateway and stepped across the road. A bloody handkerchief, tied through several long strands of yellowish hair, under the shining bald head, concealed his lower face. But I saw one side of a small turned-up nose, a very large nostril, and protruding grey eyes, almost without lashes, which flashed with audacious energy. His little sinewy arms were bare and his sandalled feet and well-formed legs, enclosed in tight-fitting trousers, were splattered with white. Just behind him came a very tall, muscular man, with broad-brimmed felt hat and a grizzled beard. He wore spectacles with very large lenses and carried a pair of field-glasses slung over his shoulder.
“I hope you are not hurt?” I inquired of the small man as he advanced.
He laid his hand upon his bandaged mouth, and his tall companion spoke for him in a deep, sonorous voice. “Nothing serious,” said he as, with a laugh, he pointed to a whitened bucket that had bounded across the road. “Only a loss of material. We are painters, you see.”
Until interrupted by their accident, he went on to say that he and his companion had been painting signals on the rocks. They had mounted the dangerous wall, in order to mark one of the turrets, when a part of it, probably loosened by some of the recent earth-tremors, had given way.
At this, mentioning our suspicion, I described the freshly-painted cross seen by us on the mountain above.
“Smugglers? No,—nothing so dramatic,” he returned with a laugh; “we are only studying the marine mollusca along the coast, dredging, hence obliged to fix the position of the deeper shell-beds by bearings visible from a boat. Unless, however, you have gone into the matter, you would hardly know that the murex shell,—that is the purple dye made by the Romans, the royal purple——”
At this, a high-pitched mumble of comment from his wounded comrade interrupted him. But the pack-mules had passed me, and with a few final words of congratulation on the escape, I hurried down the road and soon overtook my dragoman.
This swarthy little man, Silvio by name, with grotesque, beardless face and sparkling black eyes, who, because of his origin, was known in Ragusa as the “Maltese,” had caught my runaway horse, and was holding him by the bridle, when I came up.
To my comments on the sensational incident, which had thus suddenly explained the painting on the rocks, he listened without reply. Then, after I had remounted, and had ridden on for some time by his side in silence, he spoke, in a solemn, positive tone:
“This is a very unlucky place.”
Under the circumstances, the remark provoked me. But my contention that the hairbreadth escape just seen had turned on good luck rather than bad, failed to convince him. He declared that the massive wall was said to be earthquake proof.
“Yet,” he grumbled on, “when this gentleman steps upon it, down it comes. Below here, on the beach, the Count Seismo was standing, when a rock rolled down and broke his leg; and out beyond is Epidauro.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“That, signor, is a whole city under water,—drowned in the sea.”
Though, during my short stay at Ragusa, I had listened to fanciful rumors of a submarine town or city, shown to visitors by native boatmen, I had not yet heard the place named, and I questioned him as to the nature of the wonder until he had entertained me for half-an-hour with accounts of houses, towers, and streets under water, a view of which depended on the state of the tide, the time of day, and even the season of the year. He ended with a description of the discoveries of Count Seismo, just mentioned, a very rich and learned man, who had not only seen the sunken city, but had dug up wonderful things, made by the ancients, upon the beaches just below.
At this point the man’s gossip was interrupted by the collision of our mules with two overloaded carts, ending in the usual exchange of drivers’ oaths; after which we followed the hot and dusty road for nearly an hour in silence.
ii
It was late in the afternoon when we reached the southern harbor-front of the city enclosing a quay, built, according to tradition, by Diocletian. Near a row of moored ships the way led through a gateway, above which the “Lion and Book,” carved symbols of the fallen power of Venice, glowed in the western sun beams. We crossed the now deserted Fish Market, and passing under grocers’ awnings, and up a steep street in the spicy air of roasting coffee, ended our journey at a dilapidated house, where, looking down from her smoke-stained kitchen, our old housekeeper welcomed us home. Mounting a stone staircase, we crossed the street by a gallery, and while the mules filed into the garden beyond, reached the once magnificent room that I had transformed into a laboratory.
The old woman opened the shutters. As the sea-breeze filled the place, I threw off my coat, and sinking into an easy chair, to wait for supper, lit a cigar and soon forgot my surroundings in an absorbing mental review of what had happened.
Compared with the immense value of my newly-found cave-buried deposits, not only of antimony but of bismuth, what cared I for difficulties, delays, the equipment of a new expedition, or the fresh concessions extorted by the avaricious governor of Borsowitz? In the roseate light of reverie, certain opening sentences of the Preliminary Report, in which, with studied modesty, I would set forth the fabulous results, so engrossed me, that I might not have noticed, at its start at least, a series of low, intermittent explosions, as of blasts at a quarry, had not a
slight shaking of the floors and walls of the room lasted long enough to rouse me completely. I sprang to my feet and called Silvio.
“Is this an earthquake?” I cried, as he came out of the adjoining bedroom, while my hour glass fell from the table and rolled across the floor without breaking.
Beyond a sarcastic shifting of the mouth, the wrinkled beardless face and deep-set glittering eyes showed no emotion. “Yes,” said he, with a shrug of the shoulders, “when the earth shakes here, we say, ‘God bless you.’ If it never shook, people would be afraid.”
Surprised at the indifference of the man, I walked to the window and looked outward, expecting to see some sinister darkening of the heavens. But the sky was clear. No diabolical vapor, as from the Fisherman’s bottle, in the Thousand-and-One-Nights, marred the fair fall of evening upon the sea that flashed in the sun, or faded under summer clouds into the distant mountain tints.
I waited for a recurrence of the noises; but nothing happened. To the southward, a moving speck on the water caught my eye, which, when focussed with a pair of field-glasses, proved to be a boat. In it, against the brightness, I could see the dark figures of two men, one of whom I made out to be grasping the shoulders of a third person, swimming in the water.
“Can you see,” I asked, handing the glasses to the old servant, “what is going on there among the fishermen?”
He looked for a while, turned the instrument shoreward several times, then handed it back. “These are not fishermen, signor,” said he, in his confident tone. “They are the gentlemen who painted the rocks.”
As we had met only two persons, I objected: “There was a third man in the water.”
“What we see in the water, signor, is not a man.”
“A dog perhaps?”
“No, signor, a water-glass.”
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