By accident or purpose, she found herself walking in tandem with Guy Warmsby, his tall figure muffled in a trenchcoat flung over his lean proportions. Ahead of them, the Cowles were marching briskly, leading the way with almost childish enthusiasm and sportiveness. Kathy’s Cardigan was a fine fit, since she and Anne were of similar size. She herself was outfitted in a three-quarter-length parka of white and black material, which made her look more stunning than ever. Peter Cowles was bundled up in a dark brown topcoat.
Even from a distance of about forty feet, Anne Fenner could see the slouching, insolent demeanor of Peter Cowles, for all his boyish outdoor zest. As well as the cool, trim, and eminently lithe movements of his sister’s tall figure. She was a winner, all right.
“Tell me about them,” Anne murmured, as Guy Warmsby, his firm hand closed about her own, led her along a twisting dirt pathway whose width was continually invaded by the naked, brittle branches of smaller trees which seemed to have died years ago. Guy Warmsby flung her an inquisitive glance, and she amended her command. “Kathy and Peter, I mean.”
“Oh.” He shook his head, almost smiling. “Had me going there, for a minute. In locales such as these—them has an entirely different meaning, as you will see. The Cowles? Nothing much to tell. A very brilliant, very attractive brother and sister act. That’s it.”
“That I will not believe. Come on, Guy. I want to know.”
He shrugged, slapping at a thin sapling springing before his face. It broke away at his touch and he pushed on, bringing her with him. For a moment, her body brushed up against him; then she drew away, conscious of some incredible inner electricity generated within her by the contact. Guy Warmsby did not seem to notice.
“What there is to tell is short and very sweet. Peter’s I.Q. is something like one-ninety-five, which puts him in the genius class. He’s cum laude out of dear old Rutgers. Class of ’63. Since then, he’s written three books of small, very eloquent, esoteric poetry, all on the relation of Modern Man to the Devil. They sold very poorly, though the critics hailed him as a coming giant. He’s got some sound stock investments, which enables him to pursue his hobbies. Or hobby, I should say. He’s a confirmed bachelor and a hopelessly dedicated Occultist. That’s all you need to know about him. Save that he’s a bit too cynical and caustic for his own good. You watch out for him. He has very sharp teeth. And he’s far too bitter for his years.”
“And Kathy? What about her?”
“Exactly what you see. Same kind of brilliance. Only of the Radcliffe stamp. She’s beautiful, spoiled, devoted to Peter, and gave up a career as a model—was on a few covers in the late Sixties—and then she found her niche. On the staff of a high-priced newspaper which pays her an outrageous salary to conduct fashion surveys and even do a little designing of her own.”
“Really? —Why, that’s marvelous—”
They were pushing out through the thicket of dead trees and long rows of shortened stumps when the full panorama of Craghold Lake hit Anne Fenner directly in the eyes. And heart and soul.
“Really,” Guy Warmsby said with complete seriousness. “They’re old friends of mine. I went to Rutgers when Peter was a freshman. I was on the verge of cap and gown and he—” Guy Warmsby broke off and stared at her in mock earnest. “What’s wrong, Anne? It’s only a lake, you know. Been here for centuries.”
“Yes—yes—I suppose it has—but, Lord, it’s so ugly and weird. And yet so—beautiful.”
Guy Warmsby’s eyes glittered in the pale yellow sunlight.
“I suppose it is. And it’s one of the biggest reasons I decided to come to Kragmoor in the first place. I’d like to dive into that lake, with all the proper equipment. I’d like to excavate beneath the very boards of Craghold House itself. And then—”
He broke off, grinning in the frosty bite of the air.
“I also see I am now telling you the life and times of Guy Warmsby, amateur archaeologist.” He sounded almost rueful.
“You are, and I’m glad,” Anne murmured, still looking out at the incredible stillness and eeriness of the lake. Even in daylight, it was like a page out of Time—something prehistoric, terrible, dating back to the dinosaurs. “Please go on. Tell me more. I should like to know. Honestly, Guy.”
He turned her around so that she had to look up at him. He held both her hands in his own, his dark eyes suddenly burning down into hers. “And you,” he said with soft steeliness. “What about you, Miss Boston? What might your secrets be?”
“No,” she whispered, her eyes locked with his. “Not now. I can’t tell you anything about me just yet. Give me time.”
“Certainly.” He released her hands. “We have all the time in the world. Besides which, there’s still the Caves of Hex, Goblin Wood. The old burial site on the other side of the lake. All that. I’ve got a world to explore. A man could make a real reputation for himself if he uncovered something out here—”
He had changed the subject—intentionally, she knew—and he was now talking blithe sophisticated riddles in the same sort of paternal tone he affected with Peter Cowles. With her, his vocal manner and wordage had been far more familiar and less grandiose; she had not been deaf to the difference. She was also pleased with herself on several other accounts. She had fairly accurately gauged the ages of both Peter Cowles and Guy Warmsby, and how right she had been about beautiful Katharine posing for a magazine cover! Nothing else would have made sense for a woman so stunning.
Yet—about Guy and Katharine——
A loud hoot from Peter Cowles had snapped her from her sudden reverie. She saw him now, standing on the edge of the shore, only inches from the green and murky lake waters, scaling bits of rock and stone across the flat surface. He was very good at it. One of the thin slivers of rock cut the water three times with bouncing expertise before it disappeared for the last time somewhere close to the further shore. Katharine Cowles was clapping her hands loudly, shouting “Ole!” and “Bravo!” applauding her brother’s throwing skill. Guy Warmsby joined in the acclaim, crying out, “Shows you what a college education can do for a man! Go get ’em, Tiger!”
It should have been a joyous scene. A lark, a romp, a fine display of adult camaraderie, but for Anne Fenner there was something wrong with the scene. She could not have said why. Three such fine specimens of wealth, intelligence and attractiveness—and yet the entire tableau seemed like something rehearsed, something repeated from before. Perhaps it was the miserably gloomy lake, the brooding, so-dead lake, that made her feel so. In any case, she felt cold again and wrapped the Cardigan more tightly about herself. The pale sun, fitfully moving across the leaden skies above, lent a pitifully feeble glare to the setting. The landscape was as lifeless as ever.
“Throw a rock, Anne,” Kathy called. “Come on, girl! Let’s show these poor males how it’s really done.”
“Oh—they seem to be doing all right—”
Guy Warmsby himself had joined the frolic and was matching Peter Cowles, throw for throw. A Guy-thrown missile skipped like a torpedo across the flat surface of the lake and geysered four times before it vanished beneath the water. Guy chortled his glee, and Peter Cowles grimaced. One-upsmanship between the two seemed to be an endless game. A perpetual sort of competition. A constant duel.
Both men were like two boys once more, competing for Milady’s hand, or first turn into the bathtub. Anne Fenner moved back, leaning against a slope of rock, to get a broader view of the contest. Katharine Cowles had already joined the sport, but her delicate underhand tosses were no match for the stronger throws of the men.
Anne could not hear the rock missiles hit the water. They seemed to skip silently, scaling majestically, splashing with no sound to accompany the sight. That too added to the unreality of the tableau. All about her, the steady silence, unbroken by birdcalls or any noises whatsoever, save for the sporadic shouts and yells of the men and Katharine Cowles, was like an impenetrable wall behind which Time stood still. She felt she was like a statue, like one of
the ancient trees doomed to stand for all eternity on the shores of Craghold Lake. It was another uneasy moment, adding on to a score of such moments she had experienced in this place. It was difficult to define her feelings. The Craghold Blues?
The notion made her smile in spite of herself.
And then, before the smile could build to a broad self-conscious grin and perhaps a silly giggle, something happened.
Something for which, once again, there was no explanation.
Only clear, cold, untrammeled terror.
Guy Warmsby had turned from his fun to wave a long arm at her, and she waved back. Then she saw his expression abruptly twist in an expression of sheer disbelief. His entire figure jerked spasmodically like a puppet suddenly activated by its strings, and then he was racing toward her, clambering over the rocky shoreline, shouting and yelling something. It was uncanny, for further along the shore, Peter Cowles halted and looked in the direction of his friend, and then he, too, galvanized. As did his sister. But Katharine Cowles could only put her hands to her lovely face and shudder violently. In that split-second of rapidly evolving flash impressions, Anne Fenner suddenly interpreted the nature and the meaning of Guy Warmsby’s thundering shouts.
“ANNE! BEHIND YOU—THE TREE!”
Terrified, startled, she recoiled from her shelf of rock and whirled, trying to see—and in an instant of perfect horror, she saw. Directly behind her, and above, a giant cypress had begun to topple. Even as she staggered back, her heart leaping into her throat, her ears filled with the aching, rasping, groaning fury of a tree falling, Anne Fenner herself could not bear to look. As if in a trance, she remained transfixed where she stood, conscious only of a terrible swath of air cutting the atmosphere somewhere close to her. She heard the hideous thump and crash of an object thundering to the hard rock, clattering terrifyingly across the shelf where she had leaned, and then whooshing to the hard earth in a mad medley of cracking limbs, bursting trunk, and disintegrating dead splinters. Before she could emerge from her trance, strong arms had seized her, pulled her to one side, and other, hurrying, anxious figures were all about her, crying out, speaking rapidly, blurring in a counterpoint of confusion, fear and, oddly enough, anger.
Shaking like an aspen leaf in a high wind, she struggled back to reality, opening her eyes, her mind swimming with dazed amazement. As if in a dream, she saw the mute evidence of her close brush with Death. Lying across the shore, its spiked top thrust into the murky waters of Craghold Lake, its solid bulk like some loathsome monster still half-alive, was an enormous old cypress, burrowed into the softer soil at water’s edge, the point of impact literally a forest of scattered splinters and broken boughs and limbs. She also saw the ring of faces above her: Guy Warmsby, Peter Cowles, Katharine Cowles. Each of their faces was a study in mixed emotions. Skepticism was uppermost in Peter’s face; Katharine was biting her lower lip, her dark eyes somehow moist; and Guy Warmsby’s expression was an amalgam of concern and rage. He was helping her to her feet, one arm wrapped around her middle, alternately shaking his head, looking at the toppled tree, and asking her how she felt. Peter Cowles had stepped over to the tree and was examining its length, then turning to look back toward its point of departure, the low bank of ground just above the shelf of rock.
“How do you like those apples?” he asked aloud to no one in particular. “Bet that tree’s been standing up there for a hundred years. And just today it decides to lie down and rest.”
“Peter,” Guy Warmsby rasped in an unfriendly voice. “Shut up, just this once? No aphorisms, no quotations, no funny remarks. Okay? Can’t you see she’s still in shock?”
“Sure. Sorry—” Peter forgot about the tree and came back, managing a smile for Anne Fenner. “You’re too beautiful to quit this mortal soil so soon, you know. On my word, ladybird.”
Dully, Anne Fenner nodded. Guy Warmsby growled low.
And suddenly, surprisingly, Katharine Cowles took her two cold and trembling hands, squeezing them affectionately, her regal manner all gone with the wind of near tragedy. Her eyes searched Anne Fenner’s face worriedly, and her shapely mouth quivered.
“Oh, baby,” Katharine Cowles moaned in a legitimate soprano. “You could have been killed!”
Yes.
That, too.
At the polished counter of the Registration Desk, there was no one in sight. When the badly frightened group of hotel guests had returned from their perilous outing at the Lake, Katharine Cowles had accompanied Anne Fenner up to her room. There was nothing quite like the company of another woman at such a bad time. Especially a sympathetic one. Beyond that, a cup of hot tea or coffee and some time to pull herself together was all that Anne Fenner needed now. That, at least, was Guy Warmsby’s considered opinion. So when the ladies went upstairs, he and Peter Cowles loitered in the lobby, looking for Mr. Carteret. Guy Warmsby was still in a cold rage, whereas Peter Cowles was very much his c’est la querre self. The hotel seemed deserted, in spite of its cheery atmosphere and the muted crackle and roar of the steadily blazing fire in the huge earthern hearth. There was a tall wooden Grandfather’s Clock in the alcove close to the front doors. If one listened real close, one could hear its solemn ticking away of seconds, minutes, hours. Now it was nearly eleven o’clock. And Guy Warmsby was very impatient.
“Simmer down, Guy,” Peter Cowles rumbled caustically. “When Dracula comes back, you can ask him. Though I don’t see how you can make him responsible for the trees in this benighted terrain. The hotel is his province, not Craghold Lake and the Environs, you know. What are you going to do? Sue him?”
“Peter, that tree didn’t just fall.”
“Really, now? Are you suggesting we saw a mirage? Or had a mass hypnosis attack? Would you care to pick some splinters off Miss Fenner’s clothes again?”
“Cut it. Right now. I’m trying to tell you that tree was sawed through. Right at the base. Just enough so that it would fall with the first good gust of wind.”
Peter Cowles stared at his friend in sudden bewilderment. For a moment, he obviously didn’t know what to think or say. It was as if, for a very rare instant, the flip and glib young poet had been deprived the power of speech. But then he snorted, and a lop-sided grin of disbelief contorted his surly Cupid’s face.
“Come on, old sport. So a tree was sawed. The woods around here are full of crackpots. Like those Hex nuts down in the valley past Goblin Wood. So what? Somebody started to chop a tree down and gave up and—hey! What are you trying to say?”
Guy Warmsby’s almost religiously fanatical expression had at last come home to Peter Cowles. Never had the younger man seen old Guy so stern and purposeful. The older man’s eyes were like two icily frozen chips of diamond. Hard, flinty, gleaming.
“That tree was meant to kill somebody, Peter.”
“Who? Eeenie, meenie, minie, moe?” Cowles snorted again. “Look, I can see you like the girl. Can’t blame you for that. I’d go for her myself, but women haven’t interested me since the day I learned they lived longer than men and the moment I found out why. But there—there’s going to be your real trouble, Guy. You break Kathy’s heart again and I won’t be responsible for the results—Hey, what is all this tree cockamamie, anyway? Why would anybody want to kill anybody else up here? And just who gets killed, for God’s sakes? Nobody could have counted on Anne Fenner being right under that tree when it toppled.”
“I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”
“Sure. By asking Carteret?”
“Maybe. At any rate, I intend to keep my eyes open. Listen, it sounds hare-brained, I know, but the newspapers announced I was coming down here. To dig around. I do have a reputation, even for a famous amateur. Who knows? Maybe some of the people around here don’t want me messing around, probing into their cults and secrets. I wonder now—”
Before Peter Cowles could wonder what Guy Warmsby was wondering, the taller man had gone to the Registration Desk and briskly palmed the silvery bell. It tinkled loudly in the si
lence of the lobby. Peter Cowles frowned and joined him—just as a tiny door to the rear of the alcove opened and out stepped a wholesome, well-endowed young woman with her taffy-blonde hair piled atop her head. It was the most glamorous thing about her. The rest of her appearance was rather dull, owing to a plainly pretty, print yellow dress that severly masked her womanly assets. The girl was young, perhaps nineteen or twenty. About her bosom dangled the only piece of jewelry or adornment she wore, a dime-sized replica of the Hex sign that Anne Fenner had seen above the huge fireplace in the main room.
The young woman was milk-skinned, cherry-lipped, blue-eyed, and utterly blooming with good health. But she wasn’t a beauty in the true sense of the word; that might come later, with added years, experience and sophistication. Right now, she beamed at Guy Warmsby and Peter Cowles, wordlessly awaiting their pleasure.
“Hello, Hilda,” Guy Warmsby said with even emphasis. “Where is Mr. Carteret, pray tell us. We would like to speak with him.”
Hilda fingered her Hex symbol, all unconsciously. Her smile remained—pleasant, happy, yet almost bovine.
“He is in town. Kragmoor. He will be back this evening. Later.”
“How early?”
“Seven. Maybe eight. Can I be of help to you gentlemen?”
Peter Cowles snorted and raised his eyes ceilingward.
“Listen to the Dutch treat.” He laughed harshly and leaned over the counter, winking at Hilda. “You may be only the bookkeeper around here, but I personally count you among Life’s jewels—”
The Craghold Legacy Page 5
