As we entered, a tall, capable-looking gray-haired woman, in a Hoover apron, stepped aside to make way for us.
“You had better remain, Mrs. Schwarz,” the doctor suggested as we passed her.
On the far side of the room, near the window, stood Mrs. Stamm; and the sight of her sent a strange chill through me. She was leaning with both hands on the back of a chair, her head thrust forward in an attitude of fearful expectancy. Even in the brilliant light of the room her eyes seemed to contain a fiery quality. She was a small, slender woman, but she gave forth an irresistible impression of great strength and vitality, as if every sinew in her body were like whipcord; and her large-boned hands, as they grasped the back of the chair, were more like a man’s than a woman’s. (The idea occurred to me that she could easily have lifted the chair and swung it about.) Her nose was Roman and pinched; and her mouth was a long slit distorted into a sardonic smile. Her hair was gray, streaked with black, and was tucked back over prominent ears. She wore a faded red silk kimono which trailed the floor, showing only the toes of her knitted slippers.
Doctor Holliday made a brief, nervous presentation which Mrs. Stamm did not even acknowledge. She stood gazing at us with that twisted smile, as if gloating over something that only she herself knew. Then, after several moments’ scrutiny, the smile faded from her mouth, and a look of terrifying hardness came into her face. Her lips parted, and the blazing light in her eyes grew brighter.
“The dragon did it!” were her first words to us. “I tell you the dragon did it! There’s nothing more you can do about it!”
“What dragon, Mrs. Stamm?” asked Vance quietly.
“What dragon, indeed!” She gave a scornful hollow laugh. “The dragon that lives down there in the pool below my window.” She pointed vaguely with her hand. “Why do you think it’s called the Dragon Pool? I’ll tell you why. Because it’s the home of the dragon—the old water-dragon that guards the lives and the fortunes of the Stamms. When any danger threatens my family the dragon arises in his wrath.”
“And what makes you think”—Vance’s voice was mild and sympathetic—“that the dragon exercised his tutelary powers tonight?”
“Oh, I know, I know!” A shrewd fanatical light came into her eyes, and again that hideous smile appeared on her lips. “I sit here alone in this room, year in and year out; yet I know all that is going on. They try to keep things from me, but they can’t. I know all that has happened the last two days—I am aware of all the intrigues that are gathering about my house. And when I heard strange voices a while ago, I came to the top of the stairs and listened. I heard what my poor son said. Sanford Montague dived into the pool—and he didn’t come up! He couldn’t come up—he will never come up! The dragon killed him—caught him beneath the water and held him there and killed him.”
“But Mr. Montague was not an enemy,” Vance suggested mildly. “Why should the protective deity of your family kill him?”
“Mr. Montague was an enemy,” the woman declared, pushing the chair aside and stepping forward. “He had fascinated my little girl and planned to marry her. But he wasn’t worthy of her. He was always lying to her, and when her back was turned he was having affairs with other women. Oh, I’ve witnessed much these last two days!”
“I see what you mean,” nodded Vance. “But is it not possible that, after all, the dragon is only a myth?”
“A myth?” The woman spoke with the calmness of conviction. “No, he’s no myth. I’ve seen him too often. I saw him as a child. And when I was a young girl I talked with many people who had seen him. The old Indians in the village saw him too. They used to tell me about him when I would go to their huts. And in the long summer twilights I would sit on the top of the cliff and watch for him to come out of the pool, for water-dragons always come out after sundown. And sometimes, when the shadows were deep over the hills and the mists came drifting down the river, he would rise from the water and fly away—yonder—to the north. And then I would sit up all night at my window, when my governess thought I was asleep, and wait for his return; for I knew he was a friend and would protect me; and I was afraid to go to sleep until he had come back to our pool. But sometimes, when I waited for him on the cliff, he wouldn’t come out of the pool at all, but would just ripple the water a little to let me know he was there. And those were the nights when I could sleep, for I didn’t have to sit up and wait for his return.”
Mrs. Stamm’s voice, as she related these strange imaginary things, was poetic in its intensity. She stood before us, her arms hanging calmly at her sides, her eyes, which now seemed to have become misty, gazing past us over our heads.
“That’s all very interestin’,” Vance murmured politely; but I noticed that he kept a steady, appraising gaze on the woman from beneath partly lowered eyelids. “However, could not all that you have told us be accounted for by the romantic imaginings of a child? After all, don’t y’ know, the existence of dragons scarcely fits in with the conceptions of modern science.”
“Modern science—bah!” She turned scornful eyes on Vance and spoke with almost vitriolic bitterness. “Science—science, indeed! A pleasant word to cover man’s ignorance. What does any man know of the laws of birth and growth and life and death? What does any man know of what goes on under the water? And the greater part of the world is water—unfathomable depths of water. My son collects a few specimens of fish from the mouths of rivers and from shallow streams—but has he ever plumbed the depths of the vast oceans? Can he say that no monsters dwell in those depths? And even the few fish he has caught are mysteries to him. Neither he nor any other fish collector knows anything about them.… Don’t talk to me of science, young man. I know what these old eyes have seen!”
“All that you say is quite true,” Vance concurred, in a low voice. “But even admitting that some giant flying fish inhabits this pool from time to time, are you not attributing to him too great an intelligence—too great an insight into the affairs of your household?”
“How,” she retorted contemptuously, “can any one gauge the intelligence of creatures of whom one knows nothing? Man flatters himself by assuming that no creature can have a greater intelligence than his own.”
Vance smiled faintly.
“You are no lover of humanity, I perceive.”
“I hate humanity,” the woman declared bitterly. “This would be a cleaner, better world if mankind had been omitted from the scheme of things.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Vance’s tone suddenly changed, and he spoke with a certain decisive positivity. “But may I ask—the hour is getting rather late, y’ know—just why you insisted on seeing us?”
The woman stiffened and leaned forward. The intense hysterical look came back into her eyes, and her hands flexed at her sides.
“You’re the police—aren’t you?—and you’re here trying to find out things.… I wanted to tell you how Mr. Montague lost his life. Listen to me! He was killed by the dragon—do you understand that? He was killed by the dragon! No one in this house had anything to do with his death—no one!… That’s what I wanted to tell you.” Her voice rose as she spoke, and there was a terrific passion in her words.
Vance’s steady gaze did not leave her.
“But why, Mrs. Stamm,” he asked, “do you assume that we think some one here had a hand in Montague’s death?”
“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think so,” she retorted angrily, with an artful gleam in her eyes.
“Was what you heard your son say, just before you screamed,” Vance asked, “the first inkling you had of the tragedy?”
“Yes!” The word was an ejaculation. But she added more calmly: “I have known for days that tragedy was hanging over this house.”
“Then why did you scream, Mrs. Stamm?”
“I was startled—and terrified, perhaps—when I realized what the dragon had done.”
“But how could you possibly have known,” argued Vance, “that it was the dragon who was responsible for Monta
gue’s disappearance under the water?”
Again the woman’s mouth twisted into a sardonic smile.
“Because of what I had heard and seen earlier tonight.”
“Ah!”
“Oh, yes! About an hour ago I was standing by the window here, looking down at the pool—for some reason I was unable to sleep and had gotten out of bed. Suddenly I saw a great shape against the sky, and I heard the familiar flutter of wings coming nearer…nearer.… And then I saw the dragon sweep over the tree-tops and down before the face of the cliff opposite. And I saw him dive into the pool with a great splash, and I saw the white spray rise from the water where he had disappeared.… And then all was silence again. The dragon had returned to his home.”
Vance walked to the window and looked out.
“It’s pretty dark,” he commented. “I’m dashed if I can see the cliff from here—or even the water.”
“But I can see—I can see,” the woman protested shrilly, turning on Vance and shaking her finger at him. “I can see many things that other people can’t see. And I tell you I saw the dragon return—”
“Return?” repeated Vance, studying the woman calmly. “Return from where?”
She gave a shrewd smile.
“I won’t tell you that—I won’t give away the dragon’s secret.… But I will tell you this,” she went on: “he had taken the body away to hide it.”
“Mr. Montague’s body?”
“Of course. He never leaves the bodies of his victims in the pool.”
“Then there have been other victims?” Vance inquired.
“Many victims.” The woman spoke in a strained sepulchral voice. “And he always hides their bodies.”
“It might upset your theory a bit, Mrs. Stamm,” Vance pointed out to her, “if we should find Mr. Montague’s body in the pool.”
She chuckled in a way that sent a shiver through me.
“Find his body? Find his body in the pool? You can’t find it. It’s not there!”
Vance regarded her a moment in silence. Then he bowed.
“Thank you, Mrs. Stamm, for your information and help. I trust the episode has not disturbed you too much and that you will rest tonight.”
He turned and walked toward the door, and the rest of us followed him. In the hall Doctor Holliday stopped.
“I’m staying up here for a while,” he told Vance. “I think I can get her to sleep now.… But, for Heaven’s sake, don’t take anything she said tonight seriously. She often has these little periods of hallucinosis. It’s really nothing to worry about.”
“I quite understand,” Vance returned, shaking hands with him.
CHAPTER VI
A CONTRETEMPS
(Sunday, August 12; 2.20 a. m.)
We descended to the main hallway, and Vance led the way back to the drawing-room.
“Well, are you through now?” Markham asked him irritably.
“Not quite.”
I had rarely seen Vance so serious or so reluctant to postpone an investigation. I knew that he had been deeply interested in Mrs. Stamm’s hysterical recital; but I could not understand, at the time, his reason for prolonging an interview that seemed to me both futile and tragic. As he stood before the fireplace his mind seemed far away, and there was a puzzled corrugation on his forehead. He watched the curling smoke from his cigarette for several moments. Suddenly, with a slight toss of the head, he brought himself back to his surroundings and turned to Leland who was leaning against the centre-table.
“What did Mrs. Stamm mean,” he asked, “when she referred to other victims whose bodies the dragon had hidden?”
Leland moved uneasily and looked down at his pipe.
“There was a modicum of truth in that remark,” he returned. “There have been two authentic deaths in the pool that I know of. But Mrs. Stamm was probably referring also to the wild stories which the old crones tell of mysterious disappearances in the pool in the old days.”
“Sounds something like the old-timers’ tales of Kehoe’s Hole in Newark.185… What were the two authentic cases you speak of?”
“One happened about seven years ago, shortly after Stamm and I returned from our expedition to Cocos Island. Two suspicious characters were scouting the neighborhood—probably with a view to burglary—and one of them fell off the cliff on the far side of the pool, and was evidently drowned. Two schoolgirls from this vicinity saw him fall, and later the police picked up his companion who eventually, under questioning, verified the other’s disappearance.”
“Disappearance?”
Leland nodded grimly.
“His body was never found.”
There was the suggestion of a skeptical smile on Vance’s mouth as he asked: “How do you account for that?”
“There is only one sensible way of accounting for it,” answered Leland, with a slightly aggressive accent, as if endeavoring to convince himself with his own words. “The stream gets swollen at times, and there is quite a flow of water over the dam—sufficient to carry a floating body over, if it happened to be caught by the current at a certain angle. This fellow’s body was probably washed over the dam and carried down to the Hudson River.”
“A bit far-fetched, but none the less tenable.… And the other case?”
“Some boys trespassed here one afternoon and went swimming. One of them, as I recall, dived from a ledge of the cliff into the shallow water, and did not come up. As soon as the authorities were notified—by an unidentified telephone call, incidentally—the pool was drained, but there was no trace of the body. Later, however, after the newspapers had made a two-days’ sensation of the affair, the boy’s body was found in the Indian Cave on the other side of the Clove. He had fractured his skull.”
“And do you, by any chance, have an explanation for that episode also?” Vance asked, with a tinge of curtness.
Leland shot him a quick glance.
“I should say the boy struck his head in diving, and the other boys in the party became frightened and, not wanting to leave the body in the pool, lest they become involved, carried it down to the cave and hid it. It was probably one of them that telephoned to the police.”
“Oh, quite. Very simple, don’t y’ know.” Vance looked into space meditatively. “Yet both cases have ample esoteric implications to have taken root in Mrs. Stamm’s weakened mind.”
“Undoubtedly,” Leland agreed.
A short silence ensued. Vance walked slowly across the room and back, his hands in his outer coat pockets, his head forward on his chest, his cigarette drooping from his lips. I knew what this attitude signified:—some stimulus had suddenly roused a train of thought in his mind. He again took up his position before the mantel and crushed out his cigarette on the hearth. He slowly turned his head toward Leland.
“You mentioned your expedition to Cocos Island,” he said lazily. “Was it the lure of the Mary Dear treasure?”
“Oh, yes. The other famous caches are all too vague. Captain Thompson’s treasure, however, is undeniably real and unquestionably the largest.”
“Did you use the Keating map?”186
“Not altogether.” Leland seemed as puzzled as the rest of us by Vance’s line of questioning. “It is hardly authentic now, and I imagine several purely romantic directions entered into it—such as the stone turnstile to the cave. Stamm ran across an old map in his travels, which antedated, by many years, the original British survey of Cocos Island of 1838. So similar was it to this chart that he believed it to be genuine. We followed the directions on this map, checking them with the navigators’ chart in the Hydrographic Office of the United States Navy Department.”
“Did this map of Stamm’s,” pursued Vance, “indicate the treasure as hidden in one of the island caves?”
“The details were a bit hazy on that point. And that was what so impressed Stamm and, I must confess, myself also. You see, this old map differed in one vital respect from the United States Navy navigators’ chart, in that it indicated land where
the United States chart shows Wafer Bay; and it was on this section of land that the hiding-place of the treasure was indicated.”
A flicker came into Vance’s eyes, but when he spoke his tone was casual and but mildly animated.
“By Jove! I see the point. Most interestin’. There’s no doubt that landslides and tropical rains have altered the topography of Cocos Island, and many of the old landmarks have doubtless disappeared. I presume Mr. Stamm assumed that the land where the treasure was originally hidden now lies under the waters of the bay which is indicated on the more recent charts.”
“Exactly. Even the French survey of 1889 did not show as large a bay as the American survey made in 1891; and it was Stamm’s theory that the treasure lay beneath the waters of Wafer Bay, which is rather shallow at that spot.”
“A difficult undertaking,” Vance commented. “How long were you at the island?”
“The better part of three months.” Leland smiled ruefully. “It took Stamm that length of time to realize that he did not possess the proper equipment. The shoals in the bay are treacherous, and there are curious holes at the bottom of the water, owing, no doubt, to geological conditions; and our diving equipment would have been scorned by any good pearl-fisher. What we needed, of course, was a specially constructed diving-bell, something like Mr. Beebe’s bathysphere. Even that would have been just a beginning, for we were helpless without powerful submarine dredges. The one we took along was wholly inadequate.…”
Markham, who had been noticeably chafing under Vance’s discussion of hidden treasure, now rose and strode forward, his cigar held tightly between his teeth.
“Where is all this getting us, Vance? If you are contemplating a trip to Cocos Island, I’m sure Mr. Leland would be willing to make a future appointment with you to discuss the details. And as for all the other investigations you have made here tonight: I can’t see that anything has been brought to light that hasn’t an entirely normal and logical explanation.”
The Philo Vance Megapack Page 166
