by Otto Penzler
“No, none. Boat may have come ashore directly they were out of it or it may have cruised around for an hour or more. No one noticed it.”
“The boat was entirely unharmed and, in any event, they would not have abandoned it ordinarily in the middle of the lake without the precaution of providing themselves with the life preservers so readily at hand. I’m sure there was no fire or you would have mentioned it.”
“Absolutely not,” White declared. “Not a trace of anything like fire. Anyhow, since it obviously didn’t burn up, they would have had plenty of time to throw over all the preservers in that case.”
I had a sudden thought. “How about some sort of fumes from the engine that might have affected all of them at once so that they were forced to jump without waiting for anything?”
White merely grunted and Tarrant’s tone was quizzical. “Hardly, Jerry. In an open boat proceeding at a fair speed no fumes would get much of a chance to affect the passengers. And some mysterious poison fumes that would make them jump instantly are simply incredible. If the engine burned ordinary gas, as it did, carbon monoxide is all that could possibly come off. So that if we grant the impossible and assume that it came through the floor instead of going out the exhaust—and then stayed near the deck—the result would surely have been to asphyxiate the people, certainly not to throw them overboard.… No, that’s out.
“There remain, of course, several alternatives,” he continued. “The first is that Black threw his wife and daughter out and followed them as a suicide. That’s the one you don’t care for, Morgan.”
“Can’t see it at all. Silly.”
“There are a number of reasons to account for such an action. A bitter quarrel is only one of them. There is temporary aberration, followed by remorse, for example.”
“Nonsense. Still silly. You didn’t know Black.”
“All right, we’ll reverse it. The wife hits the man over the head while he is running the boat, throws him out and then follows him with the child. The aberration theory fits a woman better than a man, anyhow; they are more highly strung. How about that?”
“Trevis, come off it.” White seemed almost provoked by the last notion. “Aside from Amelie’s being incapable of such a thing psychologically, I’ll tell you why it’s absurd. She was a little woman, much smaller than Black. She couldn’t possibly have tossed him out unless she hit him first. And he hadn’t been hit. The autopsies showed that neither of them had a single mark of violence on them.”
Undoubtedly Tarrant was smiling in the darkness as he said, “Very well, we’ll leave that theory entirely. I was only thinking abstractly, you know; no reflections intended.… Then we are left with one more hypothesis, the accident one.”
“Ugh.”
“Perhaps it’s the most reasonable of all, anyhow. The child falls overboard, the mother jumps to save it, the father, who is running the boat, is the last to act. He jumps to save them both, and they are all drowned, while the boat, which in the excitement he has failed to close off, speeds away.”
White answered at once. “Won’t do, either. Naturally, we’ve been over that possibility up here. There is not merely one, but three or four points, against it. Altogether too many. As I said, they all knew how to swim and the daughter was about ten, not helpless in the water by any means, even with her clothes on. In the second place, the Blacks have been aquaplaning for years, and aquaplaning behind a fast boat is no joke. Matter of fact, not even aquaplaning; they did it on water skis, much harder. The point is, if any one had fallen over, they would naturally have followed what they have done so often when there was a spill off the skis; swung the boat about and come up to the swimmer. They were used to doing that; they could do it quickly; it was a habit. They were all used to the water, to being on it and in it; couldn’t possibly have lost their heads completely over a mere tumble.
“But last and most impressive of all, I tell you that Black was a prosaic and methodical man, known for it. Supposing some real emergency—though what it could have been, God knows—supposing the wife did jump and he prepared to go after her. He would never have left his boat empty without shutting off the motor, it doesn’t take an instant. Granting even that impossibility, however, it is simply beyond belief that he would have jumped to their rescue himself before throwing them at least a couple of preservers, which would reach them more quickly than he and be of as much use. You must remember that they weren’t at all helpless in the water, either of them. He would surely have done that first. Then, I grant you, he might have gone in, just to make sure. But the theory you built won’t do.… No, it won’t.… Really.”
“The objections are strong,” Tarrant acknowledged. “Of course, I didn’t know the people at all.… Well, that’s the end of the list, so far as I can see now. You discard them all; the first as being impossible on grounds of character, the second on physical grounds, the third on grounds of habit and familiarity with the water and its hazards. I——”
For the first time during the discussion Valerie interrupted. She had been sitting quietly beyond Tarrant and smoking while the talk went on. Now she said, “May I suggest something? Perhaps it’s pretty wild.… What about this? The parents had received some kind of threat, kidnapping or something. No, this is better. They were hailed from the shore while they were riding about and they landed. There the child actually was kidnapped. The parents were stricken with grief, they were quite out of their heads for a time. They went out on the lake again and presently made a suicide pact and both honoured it at once. That covers it all, doesn’t it? The child’s body, I understood, hasn’t been found.”
Tarrant’s chair creaked as he turned towards her and a match, flaring in his hand, showed his surprised and interested expression. “Valerie,” he said, “you have constructed the best theory yet. Really, that’s very good. It covers all the facts of the case except one. So I’m afraid it won’t work, but I can see that you and I are going to get on famously. It’s too bad you have forgotten that one little point. Black was a well-to-do man. Kidnapping is done for ransom; and surely he would have paid a ransom as an alternative to his wife’s and his own suicide. It is unreasonable to suppose that even a week’s separation would cause him to choose so absurdly. The only possibility would be that the child was taken by some enemy for revenge and no return intended. That’s too much like a bad shocker; I’m afraid it won’t do.… It was a good try, though.”
He rose and stretched. “I’m going to take a stroll for a bit and then turn in early. I imagine Valerie and Jerry would like to, too, after their ride.” He turned and wandered slowly down the verandah.
“So you give it up?” White called after him. “No answer?”
“No. All the first answers are washed out. I’ll grant you this, though, Morgan. You have a very good replica of the Mary Celeste; all the essential items are there. It’s a problem all right; I’m not through thinking about it yet.”
The matter remained in this state of suspense while we were sitting about the following morning after breakfast. The day was bright and clear but gave promise of becoming even hotter than the previous one; I was distinctly glad that Valerie and I were not to be touring the roads again.
A half-hour or so later Morgan White made the suggestion that we try his tennis court, since if we delayed much longer it might well become too uncomfortable for playing. Every one was agreeable and we trouped down to the court, which turned out to be of clay in excellent condition. “Jim Duff, the Constable’s hired man, rolls it for me every other morning before he goes up to their place,” White confided.
We proceeded to enjoy the fruits of Duff’s labours. After several sets it was getting considerably hotter and Valerie voted for doubles. We won, though I am not at all sure it was due entirely to our play; during the second and last set I, for one, was beginning to feel a touch weary.
Every one agreed, at the conclusion of that set, that swimming was the form of exercise now indicated. All of us except Val were dripping.
In fifteen minutes or less we had reassembled at White’s boathouse in bathing suits and stood smoking a final cigarette along the little platform by the side of the boathouse proper that covers his Grey Falcon. I remarked upon the diving-board protruding over the water at the platform’s end and White assured us all that the lake here was seven or eight feet deep, so that diving was feasible. The afternoon before I had simply jumped off the end of his dock.
“I think I’ll be trying it,” I informed the rest, just as White turned to Tarrant and pointed out over the water.
“There, see that boat?” he said. “About two-thirds across the lake, heading north. That’s Torment IV, the one we were discussing last night. Wait till I get my glasses from the boathouse and you can have a good look at her, Trevis.”
He unlocked the boathouse door and disappeared inside, returning at once with a pair of binoculars which he handed over. At the moment, however, I was more interested in getting wet than seeing a motor-boat. Valerie was already in the water, shouting that it was perfect and calling the rest of us sissies. “You look,” I told Tarrant. “I’m for a dive.” White apparently felt the same way, for upon turning the glasses over to his friend, he immediately took a header into the lake.
Thus it happened that the first intimation of excitement reached me in mid-air. I had struck the end of the board hard and it threw me high. At the top of the spring I was just touching my feet for a jack-knife when Tarrant’s shout came to me. “Morgan! Morgan, come here! Hurry! We must get your——” Swish into the water went my head and his words were cut off; but on the way I got an upside-down view of Tarrant holding the binoculars steadily to his eyes, his mouth suddenly grim as he called out.
Under the water I twisted back towards the dock and, reaching an arm over the platform above me, pulled myself partway up. “What ho?” I demanded.
White was already clambering up and Tarrant disappearing through the door. “The boat,” he called after him. “Hurry up! How fast can we get her out?”
Tarrant’s calm is proverbial, but when he wants to, he can certainly work quickly. By the time I got inside he had the slide-door at the end almost up and White, dropping into the driving seat of the Grey Falcon, was pushing the starter-button. “All clear,” called Tarrant; the rat-tat-tat of the motor fell to a grind as the clutch went into reverse. Just as the boat began to back out, Valerie jumped down into the rear deck.
We came around in a wide circle and headed out into the lake, the motor coughing a little as it was opened full without any preliminary warning. Tarrant said, “They jumped. You’ll have another tragedy unless we can get there in time.”
“What is this about?” cried Valerie. “Who jumped where? Have you boys all gone crazy?” Valerie has noticed, I think, that men of Tarrant’s age rather like to have her call them boys.
His voice was unpleasantly serious as he answered. “The people in that boat I was watching, this Torment of yours, Morgan. There were two people in her, a big man and a little one, or maybe a man and a boy——”
“Tom Constable and junior, his son, undoubtedly,” White put in, without turning his head.
“Suddenly the man who was driving scrambled out of his seat and into the rear deck, where the boy was riding. He grabbed the boy’s arm and immediately jumped overboard, pulling the boy with him.… Here, Morgan, don’t follow the boat! There’s no one in it. The place where they went out is almost on a direct line between your boat and that big rock on the other shore.”
All of us except White were on our feet looking helplessly across the water to where, a good two miles away now, Torment IV was still speeding up the lake with her bow waves curving high on both sides. It gave me a queer feeling, that boat which I could just see was empty (now that I had been told), driving along as if operated by an invisible pilot. The sun was burning down, making such a glare on the lake that it was impossible to discern any small object on the surface. Such as a man’s head, for example. Tarrant had the binoculars (being Tarrant, of course, he had not failed to bring them) held to his eyes with one hand, attempting to shade their glasses with the other.
“Have you got her at top speed, Morgan?” he demanded. “Best part of a mile yet to go, as I judge it.”
“Everything she’s got,” grunted White. “Full out. Check my direction if you see anything.”
“Thought I saw them a minute ago. Right together. Lost them now.”
“Not good swimmers. Nowhere nearly as good as the Blacks. Doubt if they can stay up long enough.”
“Oh,” said Valerie, and sat down abruptly, her rubber bathing trunks making a squdging sound on a cushion. “Hurry, Mr. White. Oh, hurry!”
White said, “Agh!”
“Lost ’em,” Tarrant announced definitely. “Not a sign.”
Nor was there a sign when, some minutes later, we came up to the spot where, as closely as Tarrant was able to guess, the thing had happened. For five or ten minutes we floated, with the motor cut off, peering over the sides and in all directions around the Grey Falcon. Nothing but the calm, bright water of Winnespequam, ruffled by the lightest of breezes, met our gaze. Valerie, too, searched with the rest of us, although I could see from her expression that she wasn’t very anxious to discover anything. “Of course,” Tarrant pointed out, “I can’t be positive as to the spot. The line is right, but the exact distance from your boathouse, Morgan, is another thing.”
We began to circle slowly, in wider and wider courses.
“Any use diving?” I asked, having some vague notion that these people could possibly be brought up and resuscitated.
“No good. Deep here; take a deep-sea diver to fetch bottom. Besides, we don’t know where they went down. Even if the line is right, they may have swum some distance in any direction before they gave out.… Not to the shore, though. They never made that.”
Our search went on. But though we circled over a large area for more than two hours, not a trace did we find either of the man or of the boy. Finally, “Nothing more we can do,” said White gloomily. “They sink in this lake. Didn’t recover the others for three days.… Might as well run up towards Winnespequam and see what happened to the boat.” He turned the wheel and we headed north.
Scarcely had we gone a mile when on the shore off our starboard side we saw a knot of persons gathered at the edge of the lake; and a little distance from them, what was obviously the boat we sought. I wondered, as we approached, at the unmistakable signs of excitement evidenced by the small group, for surely Torment IV must have grounded here nearly two hours previously.
We landed a hundred yards to the south at a disused and ramshackle dock, and made our way to the scene. An old man passed us as we drew near; he was hobbling along, shaking his head, and his mumbling reached us clearly enough—“ ’Tis bewitched, she be a devil’s boat.”
It took us some time to discover, from the excited replies of the people we came up with, that yet a further tragedy had occurred. They interrupted each other and told the story backwards rather than forwards, but at last we pieced together the following account.
Torment IV, after the affair that Tarrant had witnessed, had run ashore upon a small island so close to the town wharf that she had been seen by numerous loungers. Among these was Jim Duff, in the village on an errand, and he had at once procured another boat and been taken out to salvage that of the Constable’s. The latter seemed, at any rate, to possess her own luck, for neither in running afoul of the island nor in her present landing had she suffered much harm. Duff had put himself aboard and, finding all in good order, had set off towards the Constable’s dock alone, after expressing his fears to his companions that some ill must have befallen his employers.
The story then passed to four fishermen who, having been almost where we now stood, had witnessed the sequel. Duff, they asserted, had been passing not far from shore on his way south when, without any evident cause, he leapt from the seat he occupied and dived overboard. No doubt he twisted the wheel as he jumped away,
for Torment IV turned and headed in. Two of the fishermen, however, seeing their friend struggling in the water, had immediately put out in their row-boat and gone to his rescue. Duff was a strong swimmer, accustomed to the lake since boyhood, but to their astonishment, no sooner did he note their approach than he turned and, in place of coming ashore, swam out into the lake with every appearance of panic. They were still some distance away from him when this happened and, though they made all possible efforts to overtake the man, he had sunk three times before they reached him, and he had drowned. Nevertheless, after much exertion they had been able to recover his body.
For the first time we noticed a still form, covered by one of the fisherman’s blankets, lying farther up the bank among the trees.
“Have you tried resuscitation?” asked Tarrant sharply.
“More’n an hour an’ a half we tried,” he was told. “He be dead, he be.”
White and Tarrant walked over to the body and, after sending Valerie back to the Grey Falcon, I followed. When I arrived, they had drawn back the blanket and were looking at the corpse. It was not a pleasant sight. I have been led to believe that persons who have drowned wear a peaceful expression but this one assuredly did not. He was a man of about forty-eight or fifty, a native New Hampshireman, bony and obviously strong. But on his face there was stamped a hideous grimace, an expression so obviously of extreme horror that it would have been essentially identical on any cast of features.
With a grunt Morgan quietly replaced the blanket. “That’s him, all right; that’s Jim Duff.”
When we returned to the shoreline, arrangements were being made to tow Torment IV back to the Constable’s dock. No one seemed anxious to pilot her, and I noted a bit absently that our host did not volunteer his services this time, however willing he may have been on the first occasion he had told us about. Once more in the Grey Falcon, we backed out on the water and steered for home. A subdued party. It was Tarrant who broke the silence after it had continued to several minutes.
