Seven Dead
Page 21
He came upon something else. His teeth began to chatter. It was the cricket bat.
How did the bat come to be here? Wasn’t it down on the beach? He shook his head, to clear it. Things were growing more and more muddled in his mind. Of course, the bat on the beach was the ghosts’ bat. He’d blow that away the moment he was himself again! Ghosts? Hell, everybody knew there weren’t such things! But this bat here was real. This was the bat they had played with…
Yes, but how had it remained here? You’d have thought that fool Miles would have stuck to it as a memento!
Then another strange vision swept through the muddled mind of George Cauldwell, like a streak of revealing lightning in a chaotic sky. Beyond the rocky jut he was approaching were, he knew, three caves. Ghosts poured out of them, and came leaping towards him in violent spectral frenzy. Whish! They were gone! He even turned, to watch them vanish down the track to the beach, towards which was drifting the miracle of an empty but provisioned boat.
In that mad rush, much might be forgotten. A souvenir cricket bat, as well as a diary. In Cauldwell’s own last moments on the island he had forgotten to search for the little note-book in which he had seen his fellow cave-mate writing, never thinking of it again until its existence had been indicated by the writer’s final, uncompleted message in that gas-choked, shuttered drawing-room…
“Visions! Visions!” shouted Cauldwell. “Visions!”
They were trying to down him, but they wouldn’t. He swept his arm round fiercely, to fight them off. The ghosts withdrew. He laughed derisively. They crept forward again. Again he lunged at them.
“Ha, ha!” he laughed. “Ha, ha! Ghosts and such hell bosh? I’ll show you! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”
Violent with laughter, he went forward again. Once he nearly fell. Recovering his balance, he found himself standing before something he had never seen before. Here was no memory. Here was something completely new! His laughter increased in volume, to blot it out. The hysterical sounds ceased suddenly, as he read the words on the little rough monument that pointed skywards like an accusing finger:
FIAT JUSTICIA ruat CÆLUM
It was a full minute before George Cauldwell’s eyes became unglued from the inscription, and slid down to identify an object lying at the monument’s base.
The object was a revolver. Whether he knew it was the revolver John Fenner had fired at him from the doomed drawing-room, missing him by an inch and hitting a picture instead—whether he even knew that his hand shot out, seized the revolver and pressed the trigger—will never be told, for now Cauldwell’s brain snapped completely. And when Kendall and Hazeldean descended from their observation point, Cauldwell’s earthly troubles were over.
“Well?” asked Kendall as he picked up the revolver and replaced it in his pocket. “Was I right?”
“I expect so,” answered Hazeldean, hesitating. Then repeated: “Yes, I expect so.”
They buried him underneath the monument.
***
That evening, in the midst of preparations for departure, Kendall suddenly asked:
“When are you two going to announce your engagement?”
Hazeldean glanced at Dora and laughed.
“I’m afraid it’s too late,” he answered. “We’re married.”
Kendall raised his eyebrows.
“Really? Why wasn’t I told?”
“We didn’t want you to feel de trop,” responded Dora, “and—it was such fun cheating a detective!”
Then Kendall laughed.
“September 17th,” he said, “at Freetown, Sierra Leone.”
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