There was a moon, and I suppose he thought he had a voice. It didn’t strike me so. After several somewhat melancholy songs, he let off his pistol two or three times and then subsided into silence.
I didn’t care; neither his songs nor his shots interrupted – but let that pass, also.
We were now sailing into the forest through pool after pool of interminable lagoons, startling into unseen and clattering flight hundreds of water-fowl. I could feel the wind from their whistling wings in the darkness, as they drove by us out to sea. It seemed to startle the pretty waitress. It is a solemn thing to be responsible for a pretty girl’s peace of mind. I reassured her continually, perhaps a trifle nervously. But there were no more pistol shots. Perhaps Kemper had used up his cartridges.
We were still drifting along under drooping sails, borne inland almost entirely by the tide, when the first pale, watery, gray light streaked the east. When it grew a little lighter, Evelyn sat up; all danger of sharks being over. Also, I could begin to see what was going on in the other boat. Which was nothing remarkable; Kemper slumped against the mast, his head turned in our direction; Grue sat at the helm, motionless, his tattered straw hat sagging on his neck.
When the sun rose, I called out cheerily to Kemper, asking him how he had passed the night. Evelyn also raised her head, pausing while bringing her disordered hair under discipline, to listen to his reply.
But he merely mumbled something. Perhaps he was still sleepy.
As for me, I felt exceedingly well; and when Grue turned his craft in shore, I did so, too; and when, under the overhanging foliage of the forest, the nose of my boat grated on the sand, I rose and crossed the deck with a step distinctly frolicsome.
Kemper seemed distant and glum; Evelyn Grey spoke to him shyly now and then, and I noticed she looked at him only when he was gazing elsewhere than her. She had a funny, conciliatory air with him, half ashamed, partly humorous and amused, as though something about Kemper’s sulky ill-humor was continually making tiny in-roads on her gravity.
Some mullet had jumped into the two boats – half a dozen during our moonlight voyage – and these were now being fried with rice for us by Grue. Lord! How I hated to eat them!
After we had finished breakfast, Grue, as usual, did everything to the remainder except to get into the fry-pan with both feet; and as usual he sickened me.
When he’d cleaned up everything, I sent him off into the forest to find a dry shell-mound for camping purposes; then I made fast both boats, and Kemper and I carried ashore our paraphernalia, spare batterie-de-cuisine, firearms, fishing tackle, spears, harpoons, grains, oars, sails, spars, folding cage – everything with which a strictly scientific expedition is usually burdened.
Evelyn was washing her face in the crystal waters of a branch that flowed into the lagoon from under the live-oaks. She looked very pretty doing it, like a naiad or dryad scrubbing away at her forest toilet.
It was, in fact, such a pretty spectacle that I was going over to sit beside her while she did it, but Kemper started just when I was going to, and I turned away. Some men invariably do the wrong thing. But a handsome man doesn’t last long with a pretty girl.
I was thinking of this as I stood contemplating an alligator slide, when Grue came back saying that the shore on which we had landed was the termination of a shell-mound, and that it was the only dry place he had found.
So I bade him pitch our tents a few feet back from the shore; and stood watching him while he did so, one eye reverting occasionally to Evelyn Grey and Kemper. They both were seated cross-legged beside the branch, and they seemed to be talking a great deal and rather earnestly. I couldn’t quite understand what they found to talk about so earnestly and volubly all of a sudden, inasmuch as they had heretofore exchanged very few observations during a most brief and formal acquaintance, dating only from sundown the day before.
Grue set up our three tents, carried the luggage inland, and then hung about for a while until the vast shadow of a vulture swept across the trees.
I never saw such an indescribable expression on a human face as I saw on Grue’s as he looked up at the huge, unclean bird. His vitreous eyes fairly glittered; the corners of his mouth quivered and grew wet; and to my astonishment he seemed to emit a low, mewing noise.
‘What the devil are you doing?’ I said impulsively, in my amazement and disgust.
He looked at me, his eyes still glittering, the corners of his mouth still wet; but the curious sounds had ceased.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. I thought you spoke.’ I didn’t know what else to say.
He made no reply. Once, when I had partly turned my head, I was aware that he was warily turning his to look at the vulture, which had alighted heavily on the ground near the entrails and heads of the mullet, where he had cast them on the dead leaves.
I walked over to where Evelyn Grey and Kemper sat so busily conversing; and their volubility ceased as they glanced up and saw me approaching. Which phenomenon both perplexed and displeased me.
I said:
‘This is Black Bayou forest, and we have the most serious business of our lives before us. Suppose you and I start out, Kemper, and see if there are any traces of what we are after in the neighborhood of our camp.’
‘Do you think it safe to leave Miss Grey alone in camp?’ he asked gravely.
I hadn’t thought of that:
‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘Grue can stay.’
‘I don’t need anybody,’ she said quickly. ‘Anyway, I’m rather afraid of Grue.’
‘Afraid of Grue?’ I repeated.
‘Not exactly afraid. But he’s – unpleasant.’
‘I’ll remain with Miss Grey,’ said Kemper politely.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, ‘I couldn’t ask that. It is true that I felt a little tired and nervous, but I can go with you and Mr Smith and Grue—’
I surveyed Kemper in cold perplexity. As chief of the expedition, I couldn’t very well offer to remain with Evelyn Grey, but I didn’t propose that Kemper should, either.
‘Take Grue,’ he suggested, ‘and look about the woods for a while. Perhaps after dinner Miss Grey may feel sufficiently rested to join us.’
‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘that a few hours’ rest in camp will set me on my feet. All I need is rest. I didn’t sleep very soundly last night.’
I felt myself growing red, and looked away from them both.
‘Oh,’ said Kemper, in apparent surprise, ‘I thought you had slept soundly all night long.’
‘Nobody,’ said I, ‘could have slept very pleasantly during that musical performance of yours.’
‘Were you singing?’ she asked innocently of Kemper.
‘He was singing when he wasn’t firing off his pistol,’ I remarked. ‘No wonder you couldn’t sleep with any satisfaction to yourself.’
Grue had disappeared into the forest; I stood watching for him to come out again. After a few minutes I heard a furious but distant noise of flapping; the others also heard it; and we listened in silence, wondering what it was.
‘It’s Grue killing something,’ faltered Evelyn Grey, turning a trifle pale.
‘Confound it!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’m going to stop that right now.’
Kemper rose and followed me as I started for the woods; but as we passed the beached boats Grue appeared from among the trees.
‘Where have you been?’ I demanded.
‘In the woods.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Nothing.’
There was a bit of down here and there clinging to his cotton shirt and trousers, and one had caught and stuck at the corner of his mouth.
‘See here, Grue,’ I said, ‘I don’t want you to kill any birds except for camp purposes. Why do you try to catch and kill birds?’
‘I don’t.’
I stared at the man and he stared back at me out of his glassy eyes.
‘You mean to say that you don’t, somehow or other, manage to ca
tch and kill birds?’
‘No, I don’t.’
There was nothing further for me to say unless I gave him the lie. I didn’t care to do that, needing his services.
Evelyn Grey had come up to join us; there was a brief silence; we all stood looking at Grue; and he looked back at us out of his pale, washed-out, and unblinking eyes.
‘Grue,’ I said, ‘I haven’t yet explained to you the object of this expedition to Black Bayou. Now, I’ll tell you what I want. But first let me ask you a question or two. You know the Black Bayou forests, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you ever see anything unusual in these forests?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
The man stared at us, one after another. Then he said:
‘What are you looking for in Black Bayou?’
‘Something very curious, very strange, very unusual. So strange and unusual, in fact, that the great Zoological Society of the Bronx in New York has sent me down here at the head of this expedition to search the forests of Black Bayou.’
‘For what?’ he demanded, in a dull, accentless voice.
‘For a totally new species of human being, Grue. I wish to catch one and take it back to New York in that folding cage.’
His green eyes had grown narrow as though sun-dazzled. Kemper had stepped behind us into the woods and was now busy setting up the folding cage. Grue remained motionless.
‘I am going to offer you,’ I said, ‘the sum of one thousand dollars in gold if you can guide us to a spot where we may see this hitherto unknown species – a creature which is apparently a man but which has, in the back of his head, a third eye—’
I paused in amazement: Grue’s cheeks had suddenly puffed out and were quivering; and from the corners of his slitted mouth he was emitting a whimpering sound like the noise made by a low-circling pigeon.
‘Grue!’ I cried. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘What is he doing?’ screamed Grue, quivering from head to foot, but not turning around.
‘Who?’ I cried.
‘The man behind me!’
‘Professor Kemper? He’s setting up the folding cage—’
With a screech that raised my hair, Grue whipped out his murderous knife and hurled himself backwards at Kemper, but the latter shrank aside behind the partly erected cage, and Grue whirled around, snarling, hacking and even biting at the wood frame and steel bars.
And then occurred a thing so horrid that it sickened me to the pit of my stomach; for the man’s sagging straw hat had fallen off, and there, in the back of his head, through the coarse, black, ratty hair, I saw a glassy eye glaring at me.
‘Kemper!’ I shouted. ‘He’s got a third eye! He’s one of them! Knock him flat with your rifle-stock!’ And I seized a shotgun from the top of the baggage bundle on the ground beside me, and leaped at Grue, aiming a terrific blow at him.
But the glassy eye in the back of his head was watching me between the clotted strands of hair, and he dodged both Kemper and me, swinging his heavy knife in circles and glaring at us both out of the front and back of his head.
Kemper seized him by his arm, but Grue’s shirt came off, and I saw his entire body was as furry as an ape’s. And all the while he was snapping at us and leaping hither and thither to avoid our blows; and from the corners of his puffed cheeks he whined and whimpered and mewed through the saliva foam.
‘Keep him from the water!’ I panted, following him with clubbed shotgun; and as I advanced I almost stepped on a soiled heap of foulness – the dead buzzard which he had caught and worried to death with his teeth.
Suddenly he threw his knife at my head, hurling it backward; dodged, screeched, and bounded by me towards the shore of the lagoon, where the pretty waitress was standing, petrified.
For one moment I thought he had her, but she picked up her skirts, ran for the nearest boat, and seized a harpoon; and in his fierce eagerness to catch her he leaped clear over the boat and fell with a splash into the lagoon.
As Kemper and I sprang aboard and looked over into the water, we could see him going down out of reach of a harpoon; and his body seemed to be silver-plated, flashing and glittering like a burnished eel, so completely did the skin of air envelop him, held there by the fur that covered him.
And, as he rested for a moment on the bottom, deep down through the clear waters of the lagoon where he lay prone, I could see, as the current stirred his long, black hair, the third eye looking up at us, glassy, unwinking, horrible.
A bubble or two, like globules of quicksilver, were detached from the burnished skin of air that clothed him, and came glittering upward.
Suddenly there was a flash; a flurrying cloud of blue mud; and Grue was gone.
After a long while I turned around in the muteness of my despair. And slowly froze.
For the pretty waitress, becomingly pale, was gathered in Kemper’s arms, her cheek against his shoulder. Neither seemed to be aware of me.
‘Darling,’ he said, in the imbecile voice of a man in love, ‘why do you tremble so when I am here to protect you? Don’t you love and trust me?’
‘Oo—h—yes,’ she sighed, pressing her cheek closer to his shoulder.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, passed them without noticing them, and stepped ashore.
And there I sat down under a tree, with my back towards them, all alone and face to face with the greatest grief of my life.
But which it was – the loss of her or the loss of Grue, I had not yet made up my mind.
THE SEAL OF SOLOMON
I
The news of Gatewood’s fate filled Kerns with a pleasure bordering upon melancholy. It was his work; he had done it; it was good for Gatewood too – time for him to stop his irresponsible cruise through life, lower sail, heave to, set his signals, and turn over matters to this charming pilot.
And now they would come into port together and anchor somewhere east of Fifth Avenue – which, Kerns reflected, was far more proper a place for Gatewood than somewhere east of Suez, where young men so often sail.
And yet, and yet there was something melancholy in the pleasure he experienced. Gatewood was practically lost to him. He knew what might be expected from engaged men and newly married men. Gatewood’s club life was ended – for a while; and there was no other man with whom he cared to embark for those brightly lighted harbours twinkling east of Suez across the metropolitan wastes.
‘It’s very generous of me to get him married,’ he said frequently to himself, rather sadly. ‘I did it pretty well, too. It only shows that women have no particular monopoly in the realms of diplomacy and finesse; in fact, if a man really chooses to put his mind to such matters, he can make it no trumps and win out behind a bum ace and a guarded knave.’
He was pleased with himself. He followed Gatewood about explaining how good he had been to him. An enthusiasm for marrying off his friends began to germinate within him; he tried it on Darrell, on Barnes, on Yates, but was turned down and severely stung.
Then one day Harren of the Philippine Scouts turned up at the club, and they held a determined reunion until daylight, and they told each other all about it all and what upper-cuts life had handed out to them since the troopship sailed.
And after the rosy glow had deepened to a more gorgeous hue in the room, and the electric lights had turned into silver pinwheels; and after they had told each other the story of their lives, and the last siphon fizzed impotently when urged beyond its capacity, Kerns arose and extended his hand, and Harren took it. And they executed a song resembling ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
‘Ole man,’ said Kerns reproachfully, ‘there’s one thing you have been deuced careful not to mention, and that is about what happened to you three years ago—’
‘Steady!’ said Harren; ‘there is nothing to tell, Tommy.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing. I never saw her again. I never shall.’
Kerns looked long and unsteadil
y upon his friend; then very gravely fumbled in his pocket and drew forth the business card of Westrel Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.
‘That,’ he said, ‘will be about all.’ And he bestowed the card upon Harren with magnificent condescension.
And about five o’clock the following afternoon Harren found the card among various effects of his, scattered over his dresser.
It took him several days to make up his mind to pay any attention to the card or the suggestion it contained. He scarcely considered it seriously even when, passing along Fifth Avenue one sunny afternoon, he chanced to glance up and see the sign
KEEN & CO.
TRACERS OF LOST PERSONS
staring him in the face.
He continued his stroll, but that evening, upon mere impulse, he sat down and wrote a letter to Mr Keen.
The next morning’s mail brought a reply and an appointment for an interview on Wednesday week. Harren tossed the letter aside, satisfied to let the matter go, because his leave expired on Tuesday, and the appointment was impossible.
On Sunday, however, the melancholy of the deserted club affected his spirits. A curious desire to see this Tracer of Lost Persons seized him with a persistence unaccountable. He slept poorly, haunted with visions.
On Monday he went to see Mr Keen. It could do no harm; it was too late to do either harm or good, for his leave expired the next day at noon.
The business of Keen & Co., Tracers of Lost Persons, had grown to enormous proportions; appointments for a personal interview with Mr Keen were now made a week in advance, so when young Harren sent his card, the gayly liveried Negro servant came back presently, threading his way through the waiting throng with pomp and circumstance, and returned the card to Barren with the date of appointment rewritten in ink across the top. The day named was Wednesday. On Tuesday Harren’s leave expired.
‘That won’t do,’ said the young man brusquely; ‘I must see Mr Keen today. I wrote last week for an appointment.’
The liveried Negro was polite but obdurate.
‘Dis here am de ’pintment, suh,’ he explained persuasively.
‘But I want to see Mr Keen at once,’ insisted Harren.
Out of the Dark Page 37
