by Zenith Brown
Dinner was a very diverting affair. Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe had been all over the world, it turned out, and had seen a lot. He had as much charm and polish in his way as Mr. Baca had in his. He was of course intensely British, Baca intensely Southern. But they hit it off beautifully. Did I notice, or did I imagine, that there was a steely quality in the Englishman’s blue eyes when Baca wasn’t looking at him? I thought he was doing his best to recognize him.
Dinner was almost over when something happened that convinced me that I had been perfectly right about Baca. Miss Carter, with all the tact of the perfect hostess, turned to Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe and asked him if he’d been in Mexico or in the great ranching districts of New Mexico and Arizona.
I was sitting next to Sebastien Baca, and at the question I felt him stiffen with the clarity of an electric shock. It’s difficult to explain; but I actually felt the tenseness that he concealed outwardly with perfect urbanity. His spoon didn’t so much as touch his tall sherbet glass, and his manner as he waited for the Colonel’s answer was only politely interested.
“Yes, I have, Miss Carter, a number of times—in one capacity or another.”
He smiled as he said it, leaving us to guess what we would.
“As a matter of fact I’m rather interested in that country. The British Red Cross is trying to buy a large tract of land there for the hospitalization of tuberculosis cases. Our climate is so beastly wretched, you know. I’ve just been taking it up with your State Department.”
“What do they think of it?” asked Thorn, sitting next to him.
“Not bad, you know. Of course, we’d have all sorts of immigration and deportation provisions in any arrangement.”
“I think it’s a lousy idea,” Susan observed without rancour.
“Susan!” said Miss Carter.
“I do. We’ve got enough t.b.’s in the country without importing them. Why here in Maryland we’ve got a town named T.B.—did you know that, Uncle? It’s down in Southern Maryland. I saw it the other day when I was going to Leonardtown.”
The conversation turned off on odd names and English pronunciation and the like, until Miss Carter rose and we women left the men to pre-war port from Mr. Sutton’s New York stock and whatever tales they chose to tell. They must have been amusing, because we could hear them laughing from on the porch where we had coffee.
Later Dr. Knox dropped in. After a while Dan got out a bridge table in the back parlor, and Miss Carter and Ben went in to play with him and Sue.
Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe was sitting next to me on the swinging bench. Dr. Knox and Mr. Sutton were walking up and down on the terrace. We could follow them by the intermittent glow of their cigars. Mr. Baca and Wally had got very clubby since Wally’s awful exhibition of boredom at lunch and were—I suspect—having a drink somewhere. Bill and Thorn were talking in low earnest tones across the verandah.
“Was I right or wrong?” I asked, turning to my companion.
He blew a long fragrant meditative puff from his cigarette and shook his head.
“I was a little embarrassed,” he said after a second, with an engagingly ingenuous frankness, “when Miss Carter asked me if I knew Mexico. I’ve been avoiding the subject because of what you said.”
“You haven’t answered my question, of course.”
“Maybe not. You see I can’t really say. I’ve seen so many people like him. Not an unusual type, out there.”
“Meaning let Mrs. Niles mind her own affairs.”
“No indeed, Mrs. Niles. I make it my business to mind other people’s affairs. I should hardly condemn it in you.”
“Are you a detective?” I asked him abruptly.
He laughed.
“I’ve been a great many things in my day, Mrs. Niles. Do I look like one?”
I hesitated.
“Not entirely,” I admitted. “I think it’s probably Mr. Baca.”
He looked quickly at me, inquiringly.
“I don’t mean that he looks like a detective. But I think he looks very much like somebody a detective might be after. And of course, you just sort of arrived, you see.”
He grinned.
“I do see. Sort of like a story book.”
“Precisely,” I returned. I didn’t know how true his words were.
CHAPTER VIII
Looking back on that evening, it seems strange that we didn’t see that something serious was about to happen. Not that there was anything very definite, except perhaps the accident to Sebastien Baca, if indeed you could call that definite. There was one other thing that did seem strange to me too, even then. But mostly it was just that everything was out of joint someway.
The accident to Mr. Baca was rather surprising.
It must have been about ten o’clock when Bill suggested we go for a swim. It was a gorgeous soft moonlight night, early enough in the season so that the water hadn’t got lukewarm and full of sea nettles.
Dr. Knox offered to take Susan’s hand at bridge so she could go along. Miss Carter protested mildly—she doesn’t approve of night swimming, nor of Dr. Knox’s bridge—but she was overruled at once, as always, by everybody. Mr. Sutton clinched the matter by taking Dan’s hand and telling us to run along.
About half-way down the linden avenue to the river we came on Wally and Mr. Baca sitting on a marble bench under a light at the side of the path. Wally was hunched forward, when I first saw him, his head in his hands, his ordinarily sleek hair unpleasantly ruffled. The Mexican was sitting beside him, his long legs crossed elegantly, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. He saw us first and spoke to Wally, who straightened up at once, pushed his hair back into place and got up.
“Hullo,” said Bill. “We’re swimming. Want to come along?”
I thought Wally looked a little displeased; but Mr. Baca was as charmed as always, and they came along with us.
The bathing pier at Seaton Hall is as elaborately complete, under the guise of being all very simple, as that of any beach club in the world, I suppose. One of the boys turned on the great lights that make it as bright as midday for blocks around and draw every mosquito and assorted insect in the entire river. We separated into the pavilion, where there were bathing suits of every size, color and style to fit the largest impromptu party.
“I wonder if Montezuma can swim,” Susan remarked, slipping her smooth wavy hair into a green rubber turban.
“All snakes can swim,” replied Thorn coolly. “Look at Cousin Wally.”
Susan, not having had much to take off and considerably less to put on, was all ready. She perched her slim figure perilously on a towel rack and regarded Thorn with exasperating superiority.
“It must be ghastly to be in love,” she said calmly. “Thorn’s been a perfect pig all day. All because good old Franklin has gone back home. I’m going to ask Uncle to retain him to fight the service station. Keep him in town so the rest of us can have some peace.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Thorn retorted hotly.
“Sha’n’t I just. Only first I’m going swimming. Look, Martha—she actually wears a slip. No wonder it takes her forever to get ready.”
We joined the men on the pier, where Susan regarded her uncle’s guests with the practised and severe eye of a stockman appraising cattle.
“They’ll do,” she whispered to us.
“Let’s have the lights off, Dan,” Thorn said, ignoring her. “These bugs are beastly. It’s almost as light without them. Anyway, the only thing to remember to keep away from is out in the middle. There’s a bad current. Right, Dan?”
“Okay. Okay, Bill?”
Bill nodded and went in the pavilion. In a second the lights were out and Seaton River turned from a dark glittering sheet to a multitude of glistening lapping little waves rustling forward to break lightly against the wall.
Susan, first in as always, looked like something from another world, her smooth white arms and slim body moving gracefully out into the pale silver night.
“It’s sw
ell,” she called. “Come along, Bill, I’ll race you to the raft.”
Bill dived in, and in a minute all of us were in, laughing, shouting, splashing on our way out to the raft and diving towers.
Mr. Baca turned out to be a marvellous swimmer. He and Wally, who seemed to get back his spirits as soon as he hit the water—if indeed I was right in thinking he’d lost them before—did some almost breath-taking stunts. Mr. Baca’s glistening swan dive was the loveliest thing of its kind I’d ever seen. I gathered from Susan’s comments, not knowing authoritatively about it myself, that Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe, while he swam well enough, wasn’t quite as much at home in the water as the others, especially Wally and Mr. Baca. Those two, with Bill and Susan, kept making rapid excursions out into the river, where we could only see an occasional arm flash in the pale light and disappear. Suddenly they’d turn up almost at the raft and disappear again under the surface for what seemed impossible lengths of time, and bob up again with a shout yards and yards away. At first Dan, Thorn, Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe and I watched their antics with an admiring derision. Finally we lost interest and amused ourselves with the polo ball and some less spectacular diving.
I was beginning to get a little chillier than I like to be when I heard the great clock of St. Margaret’s strike the half hour.
“I’m going in, Thorn,” I called.
“Me too,” said Dan. We climbed up on the pier together.
It occurred suddenly to Susan that we ought to have something hot to drink sent down from the house.
“Who’ll have soup, coffee or Scotch?” she called out to the rest of them still in the water.
“Soup!” shouted Bill promptly.
“Scotch!” shouted Wally and Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe.
“Coffee for me,” I said, and Dan and Thorn joined in with me.
“What about you, Mr. Baca?” She looked about.
That was the first time any of us had missed him.
I don’t know why I, and apparently the others too, just assumed that something had happened to him. Maybe it was Susan herself. She stood stock still on the pier, staring out over the gently moving water. Her little hands were clenched tightly. I could see the fear gradually growing on her that I felt myself.
“Mr. Baca!” she called.
There was no answer.
“He’s probably gone out in the river again, ’sall,” Bill put in, unconvincingly I’m afraid. At any rate he followed it with a shout: “Baca!”
We waited in dead silence. There was no sound but the lap lap of the waves against the wall. Someone else called; this time we heard a faint hollow mocking echo from the other shore.
Then Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe put his hands to his mouth and shouted “Ho! Baca! Baca!” It seemed that only the dead could fail to hear that colossal roar. Again the hollow “baca baca” from across the river.
“If he can’t hear that he’s out on the Russian steppes,” Susan said. All her usual levity was in her voice, but I could feel her frightened anxiety.
“Turn on the lights, Dan,” Bill said quietly. “I’ll get the boat. The rest of you had better get dressed.”
“I’ll go with you,” Susan said quickly.
“You get dressed. We’ll take care of this.”
They got out the boat. Thorn stood on the edge of the pier without saying a word. When Bill and Dan came around she jumped lightly down.
“I’m going along,” she said. “Head straight out; if he got in the current he may be on the shoal . . . like Agnes.”
That’s all I heard as they slipped quickly away from the pier.
Susan turned to me. Her face was curiously grave and a little bewildered.
“What’s the matter with Thorn?” she asked. “I’ve never seen her stir herself before, no matter how many people were getting drowned.”
Wally and Arbuthnot-Howe were still on the pier with us. My teeth were chattering violently, although I really wasn’t very cold.
“You’d better get dressed, Mrs. Niles,” Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe said. “Fenton and I will see about the first aid kit.”
Wally started as if he had suddenly waked up. “Of course,” he said quickly. “Stupid of me—I’ll get it. Got a cigarette, anybody?”
Susan handed him a limp package of Camels out of the pocket of her robe. I glanced at her. She was watching Wally’s shaking trembling fingers, trying to extract a cigarette, with an expression of complete contempt on her curled lips. Suddenly she looked at the Englishman, who was looking gravely out in the direction in which the boat had gone.
“I’m going to get dressed,” she said shortly, and went inside.
“What about this, Mrs. Niles—is it dangerous out there? Miss Thorn said there was a current?”
“It’s not dangerous if he does hit the current,” I said. “For the simple reason that it will force him onto the shoal or into the crab grass—unless he hits it too far down. It’s funny, he’s such a splendid swimmer. He’s probably just out there somewhere, having a good time by himself.”
But I didn’t believe what I was saying, and neither did the Englishman.
“You’d better dress before you take cold,” he said, tossing his cigarette butt into the river. I heard it strike the water with a sharp sizzle and go out.
CHAPTER IX
I went into the bath house to get dressed. Susan was sitting on a three-legged stool carefully flicking cigarette ash into the little puddle of water forming on the floor by her wet sandals.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked, shaking out my hair that someway always manages to get wet no matter what kind of a cap I wear.
“Nothing.”
Obviously there was something. The mere fact of Susan’s sitting by herself when there were people ten yards away from her was sufficient evidence, even if I hadn’t seen her deadly serious young face.
“He’ll be all right.”
“It’s funny though, do you know, Martha,” she answered without looking up.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“You’re too definite.”
“I mean it’s funny they haven’t found him.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
I finished my shower, put on my clothes and pinned up my hair. Still she said nothing.
“You’re like Falstaff,” I said at last. “If reasons were as thick as blackberries you wouldn’t give any under compulsion. I’m going out. You can sit here as long as you like.”
“Did you see him swim? And then I think it’s funny because this is what happened to Agnes last year.”
“What do you mean?” I stared in amazement at her. “You’re not pretending that just because you have two accidents in two years they’re in any way connected, are you? When you think of the hundreds of people who’ve been swimming off this pier, it’s much funnier, as you call it, that you don’t have more of this sort of thing.”
She mumbled something under her breath. I think she was about to be more coherent about it when we heard a shout from Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe. Both of us ran outside.
We saw the boat coming swiftly toward us and watched breathlessly while Dan swerved in and straightened his bow. bringing the light boat flush against the dock. Sebastien Baca was lying perfectly still in the bottom.
“He’s all right,” Dan shouted. “Give a hand, Arbuthnot.”
They lifted the limp form of the Mexican to the float and carried him up on the pier. Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe somehow seemed to take charge without a word. He listened for a second with his head at Baca’s chest and felt his pulse. The rest of us stood stock still watching him. He turned Baca on his stomach and began the rhythmic raising and lowering of his torso. He seemed so enormously capable and professional about it—as if he had resuscitated thousands of drowned people.
It seemed ages, and probably was a minute or two, before he straightened up, a grave smile on his lips.
“He’s coming along. Have you got some spirits here?”
Thorn took the brandy bottle that Wally had brought from the pavilion medicine chest and handed it to him. He turned the Mexican over on his back, raised his head and poured a few drops into his mouth. Sebastien Baca’s eyelids flickered.
“Good man,” said Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe quietly.
The Mexican’s eyes opened their full width for one instant, and he smiled faintly.
“Gracias!” he whispered.
They laid him down again. He seemed entirely exhausted.
“We’ve got to get him to the house,” Thorn said. “What’s the best way?”
She turned to Dan, who was standing a little to one side, his arms folded, looking down at the Mexican.
If I hadn’t had ample proof of Dan’s good sense in the six years I’d known him, I should have thought that like Susan he was seeing something “funny” about this too. He was so obviously puzzled about something, looking down at Mr. Baca with the queerest, expression on his face. At Thorn’s question he glanced up sharply.
“Sure,” he said, as though he hadn’t until then thought there was anything else to do. “I’ll phone Matthews to send my car down. That’s quickest.”
They took Sebastien Baca to the house in the rumble seat of Dan’s Cadillac roadster, all wrapped up in blankets and robes from the pavilion. Bill and Dan and Thorn went with him. Wally and the colonel walked up to the house with Susan and me.
We didn’t say anything until about half way up the linden avenue. Then Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe, who had been working abstractedly with a funny stump of pipe that wouldn’t draw, said abruptly, “The bruise on the fellow’s cheek is rather odd, what, Fenton?”
“What bruise?” Susan said quickly. But not quickly enough to keep me from hearing Wally’s sharp intake of breath.
I glanced at him. In the bluish light of the high moon his face was ghastly. It isn’t a strong face at best; at worst, as I saw it that instant, it was unbelievably weak, contorted, almost, with something so close to sheer terror that it was almost indecent. I’m afraid the tree-shaded streets and faded mauve façades of our tiny Georgian town sap one’s capacity for anything very primitive in the way of human emotions. We like such things covered up. I suppose if I’d known that Wally was suffering some horrible revulsion but keeping his mask in place, I’d have been alarmed maybe; at any rate I’d have been terribly sorry for him. As it was, my feeling was exactly as if the Reverend Lucius Button, the fundamentalist of Landover, had appeared on York Road naked. It was not only indecent. In some way it was revolting.
