“Listen! What was that?”
For a moment the room was silent. Only the faint tick-tick of the clock in the wall disturbed the stillness. Then, faintly from outside there sounded a sort of metallic jingle.
“Someone out there, below,” whispered Marian. “He has kicked that tin can I threw out there; the third can of corn, remember?”
The answer was a faint “Ah.” Then again all was silence.
Two or three moments had elapsed when there came a faint scratching sound, seemingly upon the side of the yacht.
“Last time,” said Marian, setting her teeth tight, “he got away with his note tacking. This time he shall not.”
Tiptoeing down the room without the least sound, she climbed upon her berth, which was made up for the night. By propping herself upright on her knees she could just see through a small, circular window. This window was directly opposite the opening made by propping up the canvas.
Florence had placed herself between Marian and the candle. No light fell upon Marian to betray her presence. When one is in a dark room at night, he may peer into the moonlit outer world without being seen. Marian had poised there motionless for a full moment when, without altering her position other than turning her head, she whispered:
“Lucile, bring me that bottle of gas.”
Understanding at once what bottle was meant, Lucile tiptoed down the length of the room, managed to open the laboratory door without noise, then put her hand to the shelf where the “Quick Action Gas” was kept.
With this in her hand she returned to Marian. She whispered as she passed it up to her:
“Be careful not to drop it in here. It would drive us all out and we’re hardly dressed for that.”
Shrugging her shoulders beneath her dressing gown, Marian placed the bottle on the blankets, then reached for the catch which kept the window closed. This window was seldom opened and she was not sure but that the unused hinges would give out a rusty squeak. In this case her purpose would be thwarted. She could but try.
Catching her breath, she turned the handle, then gave a slight pull. To her immense relief, there came no sound as the window swung inward. Seizing the bottle, she brought her hand even with her head, then sat poised there quite motionless as if impersonating the statue of a hand-grenade thrower.
Then, suddenly, her whole body became tense. The hand holding the bottle flew back. It shot forward.
When they saw Marian’s hand go back for the throw, the two other girls, their fear overcome by curiosity, sprang silently to a position beside their companion.
What they saw made them draw back in fright. Two rounds of a ladder extended above the outer rim of the boat. Above the last round appeared a face. This face, though almost completely hidden by a heavy muffler, was undoubtedly that of a man.
Before they had time to move, however, they saw the bottle of liquid gas strike the top rail and burst. The liquid spattering over the man’s face and clothing, brought forth a sharp exclamation. The next instant, seeming to struggle against an invisible foe, he made desperate attempts to dismount from his lofty position. In this he was partially successful. He disappeared from sight. But the next moment there came the thud of a falling body. The ladder was still in position. The three girls held their breath.
“He fell,” said Lucile in a tremulous whisper.
“I only hope he—”
“No you don’t!” Lucile interrupted. “No one wishes a person seriously injured.” Lucile shuddered.
“Well, anyway he wasn’t,” said Florence, “for there he is. The gas is working splendidly.”
The man was dancing about below, swinging his arms and shouting madly.
“Like a drunken man,” whispered Marian, with a frightened laugh.
“He’ll be over it in a minute,” said Lucile. “Liquid’s all over his clothes—keeps evaporating and getting into his lungs.”
True to Lucile’s prophecy, the man, a few moments later, having calmed down, appeared to pause to consider. It was evident that he wavered between two opinions. Twice he started in the direction of the ship, each time sending cold chills creeping up Lucile’s spine.
“We have no more gas,” she whispered.
“Make it sulphuric acid this time!” Marian whispered savagely.
“No! No! You couldn’t!” Lucile shuddered.
Pausing each time, the man turned back. The second time he wheeled about and, racing madly down the beach, disappeared beyond a long line of pleasure boats.
“Well,” said Florence, gathering her dressing gown about her and springing through the window, “we have a ladder. Looks like a good one.”
“Itisa good one!” she exclaimed a moment later, “a brand new one. We’ll show it to Timmie. Perhaps it will serve as evidence to trap the rascal.”
“Speaking of rascals,” said Marian a few moments later as they sat looking at one another in silence, “what do you think is the meaning of all this?”
“Perhaps he came for the blue candlestick,” Lucile suggested.
“How could he?” demanded Florence. “How would he know we had it? What would he want of it? It’s only a curio. Belongs to the museum, I guess. Anyway, I’ll see to-morrow. I’m going to take it to the new museum and show it to one of the curators, a Mr. Cole. I met him at a party on the campus a short while ago.”
Suddenly Lucile sprang to her feet, then rushed to the other end of the room.
“Wha—what’s the matter?” demanded Marian.
“Going to prepare some more gas,” Lucile called back over her shoulder. “Nothing like having a little chemist in the family these days. Gas is almost as useful in times of peace as it was in the days of war.”
Next morning Marian showed the ladder to the aged dry dock keeper.
“No,” he said after examining it carefully, “I never saw that before. It’s new and not very heavy. Probably bought for the purpose and carried here. You say you didn’t see the man’s face?”
“Not much of it.”
“Wouldn’t recognize him?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, I’ll go round and see the folks close to here that sell ladders, but I guess it won’t be any use. There’s too many places where you can get ladders in a big city like this. He might ’a’ stole it too. Mighty queer!” He shook his head as he walked away.
That same day Florence wrapped the blue candlestick carefully in tissue paper, snapped three rubber bands about it, then made her way with it to the surface line where she took a car for down town. She kept a close watch to the right, to the left and back of her for any signs of being followed. She scrutinized the faces of those who entered the car with her and even cast a glance behind the car to see if there chanced to be a taxi following.
Truth was, the events of the last hours had played havoc with her nerves. The candlestick in her possession was like the presence of some supernatural thing. It haunted her even in the day, as a thought of ghosts in a lonely spot at night might have tormented her.
It was with a distinct sense of relief that, after leaving the car and passing over a half mile of board-walk, she entered the massive door of the new museum.
For a moment, after entering, she permitted her eyes to roam up and down its vast, high-vaulted corridors, to catch the echo of voices which came murmuring to her from everywhere.
She saw the massive pillars, the polished floors, the miles of glass cases, then a distinct sense of sorrow swept over her, a feeling of pity for the ragged giant of a building out by the lake front which had once housed all these treasures of beauty, antiquity and wealth.
“Temporary! Temporary” kept running through her mind. “Too hastily built and of poor material. Now it is abandoned to decay. Life is like that. That’s why one should struggle to lay foundations, to prepare one’s self for life. For eighteen years, without education, one may be good enough. Then, like the old museum, one is cast aside, abandoned to decay.”
As these thoughts swept through her mind she resolved more strongly than before, that, come what might, she would continue her battle for a university education.
Suddenly recalling her mission, she asked the attendant to tell her where she might find Mr. Cole.
“Mr. Cole’s office,” said the man courteously, “is in the left wing, third floor. See those stairs at the other end of this hall?”
“Yes.”
“Take those stairs. Go to the third floor. At the last landing go straight ahead. His door is the fourth to your right.”
“Thank you,” and Florence hurried on her way.
A moment later she was knocking at the door of the great archaeologist’s studio.
“Why, it’s Miss Huyler!” he exclaimed as he opened the door to her. “Come right in. What may I do for you?”
Ruthaford Cole was one of those rare men who have studied their subject so thoroughly and who have traveled so widely in search of further knowledge that they have no need to assume a false air of importance and dignity to make an impression. Under middle age, smooth-shaven, smiling, he carried the attitude of a boy who has picked up a few facts here and there and who is eager to learn more.
But show him a bit of carving from the Congo and he is all smiles; “Oh! Yes, a very nice bit of modern work. Good enough, but done to sell to traders. Possesses no historical value, you know.”
A bit of ivory from the coast of Alaska, rudely scratched here and there, a hole torn out here, an end broken off there, browned with age, is presented and he answers, his face lighting up with genuine joy, “Now there is really a rare specimen. Handle of a bow-drill; made long before the white man came, I’d say. Tells stories, that does. Each crudely scratched representation of reindeer, whale, wolf or bear has its meaning.”
That was the type of man Cole was. Frank and friendly to all, he gave evidence in an unassuming way, of a tremendous fund of knowledge.
Now, as Florence unwrapped the blue candlestick, he watched the movement of her hands with much the same look that a terrier wears when watching his master dig out a rat. Once the candlestick was in his hand, he held it as a merchant might a bit of costly and fragile china-ware.
Florence smiled as she watched him. She had hoped he would say at first glance: “Why, where did you chance to find that? It was lost from one of our cases while we were moving! We believed it stolen.” Florence had had quite enough of adventure and mystery. She was convinced that holding this trophy she was sure to experience more trouble.
Mr. Cole did not do the expected thing. What he did was to turn the candlestick over and over. A look of amazement spread over his usually smiling face.
“No,” he murmured, “it can’t be.”
Two more turns. He held it to the light. “And, yet, it does seem to be.”
Stepping to a door which led to a balcony, with an absent-minded “Pardon me,” he disappeared through the door, but Florence could still see him. As he held the thing to the light, turning, turning, and turning it again, the look of amazement grew on his face.
As he re-entered the room, he exclaimed:
“It is! It most certainly is! I am astounded.”
Motioning Florence to a seat he dropped into the swivel chair before his desk. For a moment he sat staring at the candlestick, then he asked:
“Would you mind telling me where you found this?”
“In the old museum.”
“The old museum!”
“Yes, I thought you might have lost—”
“No, no,” he interrupted, “we never possessed one of these. There is one in the Metropolitan Museum. It’s the only one I ever saw save one I chanced upon on the east coast of Russia. I tried to buy it from the natives. They would not name a price. Decamped that very night; utterly disappeared. Thought we might steal it, I suppose. Suspicious. Superstitious lot.
“The question is,” he said after a moment, “now you have it what are you going to do with it?”
“Why,” smiled Florence, “return it to the owner if—if he can be found.”
“The owner,” Cole’s eyes narrowed, “I fancy will not call for it. I have reason to believe that were you to advertise your find in the papers he would not venture to call for it. And yet,” he said thoughtfully, “it might be worth trying.”
He sat for a long time in a brown study.
“Miss Huyler,” he said abruptly, “this is a strange affair. I am not at liberty, at the present moment, to tell you all I know. One thing is sure: it is not safe for you to be carrying this thing about, for in the first place it is valuable, and in—”
“Valuable? That?” exclaimed the girl.
“Quite valuable. Well worth stealing. I’d almost be tempted myself,” he smiled. “But there is another reason why it is not safe. I am not at liberty to tell you. But if you will trust me with it, I will place it in one of the gem cases. Our gem room is guarded day and night. It will be safe there, and neither it nor you will be safe if you keep it. By the way,” he broke off suddenly, “what is your address?”
Florence gave the address of a friend where her mail was left.
“You live there?”
“No, but no mail is delivered where I do live.”
“Where can that be?” he asked in some surprise.
“In a boat,” she smiled. “In a pleasure yacht. Oh, it’s not afloat,” as he looked at her in astonishment.
“Might I ask the name of the boat and the location?” he half apologized. “Someone might wish to visit you. It will be proper and very important that he should. Otherwise I would not ask.”
“The O Moo,” answered Florence quietly. “Foot of 71st Street.”
She rose to go. He grasped her hand for a second, looking as if he would like to say more, then bowed her out of the door.
As she entered the corridor, she was conscious of a strange dizziness. It was as if she had spent the better part of a night poring over an absorbing story. She had come to the museum to rid herself of the blue candlestick and the mystery attached to it. The candlestick was gone but the mystery lay before her deeper and darker than ever.
The next short chapter in the story of the mystery of the blue candlestick followed closely upon Florence’s visit to the new museum.
It was on the following morning, as she and Lucile were strapping up their books preparatory to leaving the O Moo, that they heard a sudden loud rapping on the hull of the yacht.
“Who can that be?” exclaimed Lucile.
“I’ll see,” said Florence racing for the door.
Much to her astonishment, as she peered down over the rail she found herself looking into the blue eyes of a strapping police sergeant.
“Florence Huyler?” he questioned.
“Ye—yes,” she stammered.
“How do I git up?” he asked. “Or do you prefer to come down? Gotta speak with you. Nothin’ serious, not for you,” he added as he saw the startled look on her face.
With trembling hand Florence threw the rope ladder over the rail. As the officer set the ladder groaning beneath his weight, questions flew through her mind. “What does he want? Will he forbid us living in the O Moo? What have we done to deserve a visit from the police?”
Then, like a flash Mr. Cole’s words came back to her: “Someone else may wish to talk with you.” That someone must be this policeman.
“Will you come in?” she asked, as the officer’s foot touched the deck.
“If you please.”
“You see,” he began at once, while his keen eyes roamed from corner to corner of the cabin, “my visit has to do with a bit of a curio you found lately.”
“The blue candlestick?” suggested Florence.
“Exactly, I—”
“We really don’t know much—”
“You may know more than you think. Now sit down nice and easy and tell me all you do know and about all the queer things that have happened to you since you came to live in this here boat.”
Florence seated herself on the edge of her chair, then told in dramatic fashion of her adventures in the old museum.
“Exactly!” said the officer emphatically when she had finished. “Queer! Mighty queer, now, wasn’t it? And now, is that all?”
“Lucile, my friend here, had a rather strange experience in the Spanish Mission. Perhaps she’ll tell you of it.”
Lucile’s face went first white, then red.
“Oh, that! That was nothing. I—I went to sleep and dreamed, I guess. You see,” she explained to the officer, “I had been out in the storm so long, I was sort of benumbed with the cold, and when I got inside I fell asleep.”
“And then—” the officer prompted with an encouraging smile.
“It won’t do any harm to tell,” encouraged Florence.
Stammering and blushing at first, Lucile launched into her story. Gaining in confidence as she went on, she succeeded in telling it very well.
When she came to the part about the blue face, in his eagerness to drink in every detail the officer leaned forward, half rising from his chair.
“Hold on,” he exclaimed excitedly. “You say it was a blue face?”
“Yes, blue. I am sure of that.”
“Blue like the candlestick?”
“Why, yes—yes, I think it was.”
“Can’t be any mistake,” he mumbled to himself, as he settled back in his chair. “It’s it, that’s all. Wouldn’t I like to have been there! All right,” he urged, “go on.”
Lucile finished her story.
“And is that all?” he repeated.
“All except something that happened the night Florence was caught in the old museum and didn’t get home,” said Lucile, “but what happened wasn’t much. You see, we went out to search for her, and a boy named Mark Pence, who lives in a boat here too, joined us. We couldn’t rouse anyone at the old scow where the Chinamen live, so he went in. He didn’t find anyone, but when he came out he said it was such a queer sort of place. He said there was a winding stairway in it twenty feet high. But I guess he doesn’t know much about winding stairways, because the scow is only ten feet high altogether. So the stairs couldn’t be twenty feet deep, could they?”
The officer, who had again half risen from his chair, settled back.
“No,” he said, “no, of course they couldn’t.”
But Florence, who had been studying his face, thought he attached far greater importance to this last incident than his words would seem to indicate.
“Well, if that’s all,” he said rising, “I’ll be going. You’ve shed a lot of light upon a very mysterious subject; one which has been bothering the whole police force. I’m from the 63d street station. If anything further happens, let me know at once, will you? Call for Sergeant Malloney. And if ever you need any protection by day or night, the station’s at your service. Good day and thank you.”
“Now what do you think of that?” said Florence as the officer’s broad back disappeared beyond the black bulk of a tug in dry dock.
“I—I don’t know what to think,” said Lucile. “One thing I’m awfully sure of, though, and that is that living on a boat is more exciting than one would imagine before trying it.
“I wish,” said Lucile that night as she lay curled up in her favorite chair, “that I could create something. I wish I could write a story—a real story.”
Then, for a long time she was silent. “Professor Storris,” she began again, “told us just how a short story ought to be done. First you find an unusual setting for your story; something that hasn’t been described before; then you imagine some very unusual events occurring in that setting. That makes a story, only you need a little technique. There must be three parts to the story. You look about in the story and find the very most dramatic point in the narrative—fearfully exciting and dramatic. You begin the story right there; don’t tell how things come to be happening so, nor why the hero was there or anything; just plunge right into it like: ‘Cold perspiration stood out upon his brow; a chill ran down his spine. His eyes were glued upon the two burning orbs of fire. He was paralyzed with fear’.”
Florence looked up and laughed. “That ought to get them interested.”
“Trouble is,” said Lucile thoughtfully, “it’s hard to find an unusual setting and the unusual incidents.
“After you’ve done two or three hundred words of thrill,” she went on, “then you keep the hero in a most horrible plight while his mind runs like lightning back over the events which brought him to this dramatic moment in his career. Then you suddenly take up the thrill again and bring the story up to the climax with a bang. Simple, isn’t it? All you have to do is do it; only you must concentrate, concentrate tremendously, all the while you’re doing it.”
For a long while after that she lay back in her chair quite silent, so silent indeed that her companions thought her asleep. But after nearly an hour she sprang to her feet with sudden enthusiasm.
“I have it. Three girls living in a yacht in dry dock. That’s an unusual setting. And the unusual incident, I have that too but I shan’t tell it. That’s to be the surprise.”
The other girls were preparing to retire. Lucile took down her hair, slipped on a loose dressing-gown, arranged a dark shade over her lamp, then, having taken a quantity of paper from a drawer and sharpened six pencils, she sat down to write.
When she commenced it was ten by the clock built into the running board at the end of the cabin. When she came to an end and threw the last dulled pencil from her it was one o’clock.
For a moment she shuffled the papers into an oblong heap, then, throwing aside her dressing-gown and snapping off the light, she climbed to her berth and was soon fast asleep.
But even in her dreams, she appeared to be experiencing the incidents of her story, for now she moved restlessly murmuring, “How the boat pitches!” or “Listen to the wind howl!” A moment later she sat bolt upright, exclaiming in a shrill whisper, “It’s ice! I tell you it’s ice!”
Marian was the first one up in the morning. It was her turn for making toast and coffee. As she passed Lucile’s desk she glanced at the stock of paper and unconsciously read the title, “The Cruise of the O Moo.”
Gladly would she have read the pages which followed but loyalty to her cousin forbade.
“To-day,” said Lucile at breakfast, “I am going to have my story typed, and next day I shall take it to the office of the Literary Monthly.”
“I hope the editor treats you kindly,” smiled Marian. “You must remember, though, that we are only freshmen.”
But Lucile’s faith in her product, her first real “creation,” was not to be daunted. “I did it just as Professor Storris said it should be done, so I know it must be good,” she affirmed stoutly.
That night Lucile spent an hour working over the typewritten copy of her story. Tracing in a word here, marking one out there, punctuating, comparing, rearranging, she made it as perfect as her limited knowledge of the story writing art would permit her.
“There now,” she sighed, tossing back the loose-flung hair which tumbled down over her shapely shoulders, “I will take you to ye editor in ye morning. And here’s hoping he treats you well.” She patted the manuscript affectionately, then stowed it away in a pigeon-hole.
If the truth were to be told, she was due for something of a surprise regarding that manuscript. But all that lay in the future.
Florence and Marian were away. They had gone for a spin on the lagoon before retiring. She was alone on the O Moo. Tossing her dressing-gown lightly from her she proceeded to put herself through a series of exercises such as are calculated to bring color to the cheek and sparkle to the eye of a modern American girl.
Coming out of this with glowing face and heaving chest, she threw on her dressing-gown and leaped out of the cabin and into the moonlight which flooded a narrow open spot on deck.
Away at the left she saw the ice on the lake shore stand out in irregular piles. Here was a huge pile twenty feet high and there a single cake on end. There was a whole forest of jagged, bayonet-like edges and here again pile after pile lay scattered like shocks of grain in the field.
“For all the world like the Arctic!” she breathed. “What sport it would be to play hide-and-go-seek with oneself out there in the moonlight.”
She paused a moment in thought. Then, clapping her hands she exclaimed, “I’ll do it. It will be like going back to good old Cape Prince of Wales, in Alaska.” Hastening inside, she twisted her hair in a knot on the top of her head, drew on some warm garments, crowned herself with a stocking-cap, and was away toward the beach.
Since the O Moo was on the track nearest to the shore, she was but a moment reaching the edge of the ice which, packed thick between two breakwaters, lay glistening away in the moonlight. Here she hesitated. She was not sure it was quite safe. The wind had been blowing on shore for days. It had brought the ice-packs in. Under similar conditions in the Arctic, the ice would have been solidly frozen together by this time, but she was not acquainted with lake ice; it might be treacherous.
“Pooh!” she exclaimed at last. “Wind’s still onshore; I’ll try it.”
Stepping out upon the first flat cake, she hurried across it to dodge into the shadow of a towering pile of broken fragments.
“Catch me!” she exclaimed joyously aloud. “Catch me if you can!”
She had reverted to the days of her childhood and was playing hide-and-go-seek with herself. First behind this pile, then that, she flitted in the moonlight like a ghost. On and on, in a zigzag course, she went until a glance back brought from her lips an exclamation of surprise: “How far I am from the shore!” For a moment she stood quite still. Then the startled exclamation came again.
“That cake of ice tips. It moves! I must go back.”
Springing from the cake, she leaped upon another and another. She had just succeeded in reaching a spot where the rise and fall of the ice in response to the swells which swept in from the lake, was lessening, when something caused her heart to flutter wildly.
Had she seen a dark form disappear behind that ice-pile off to her right?
In an instant she was hugging the shadow of a great, up-ended cake. No, she had not been mistaken. Out of the silence there came the pat-pat of footsteps.
“What can it mean?” she whispered.
Locating as best she could the position of the intruder, she sprang away in the opposite direction. She was engaged in a game of hide-and-go-seek, not with herself, but with some other person, a stranger probably. What the outcome of that game would be she could not tell.
Pausing to listen whenever she gained the protecting shadow of an ice-pile, Lucile caught each time the pit-pat of footsteps. This so terrified her that she lost all knowledge of direction, her only thought to put a greater distance between herself and that haunting black shadow.
Suddenly she awoke to her old peril. The ice beneath her was heaving. Before her lay a dark patch of water. In her excitement she had been making her way toward open water. With a shudder she wheeled about, and forcing her mind to calmer counsel, chose a circling route which would eventually bring her to the shore.
Again she dodged from ice-pile to ice-pile, again paused to hear the wild beating of her own heart and the pit-pat of the shadow’s footfalls.
But what was this? As she listened she seemed to catch the fall of two pairs of feet.
In desperation she shot forward a great distance without pausing. When at last she did pause it was with the utmost consternation that she realized that not one or two, but many pairs of feet were dropping pit-pat on the ice floor of the lake.
As she dodged out for another flight, she saw them—three of them—as they suddenly disappeared from sight. One to the right, one to the left, one behind her, they were closing in upon her.
There was still a space between the two to right and left. Through this she sprang, only to see a fourth directly before her. As she again dodged into a sheltering shadow she nerved herself for a scream. The girls were away, but someone, Mark Pence, the fishermen, old Timmie, might hear and come to her aid.
But what was this? She no longer caught the shuffle of moving feet. All was silent as the tomb.
For a moment she hovered there undecided. Then she caught the distant, even tramp-tramp of two pairs of heavy, marching feet. Glancing shoreward, she saw two burly policemen, their brass buttons gleaming in the moonlight, marching down the beach. It had been the presence of these officers which had held her pursuers to their shadowy hiding-places.
If she but screamed once these officers would come to her rescue! But she had, from early childhood, experienced a great fear of policemen. When she endeavored to scream, her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth. And so there she stood, motionless, voiceless, until the officers had passed from her sight.
* * * * * * * *
While Lucile was experiencing the strange thrills of this terrible game out on the lake ice, Florence and Marian were witnessing mysterious actions of strange persons out on the lagoon.
In spite of the lateness of the hour, there were a number of persons skating on the north end of the lagoon, so the two girls experienced no fear as they went for a quarter-mile dash down the southern channel which lay between an island and the shore. At the south end of the lagoon the channel, which became very narrow, was spanned by a wooden bridge.
This bridge, even in the daytime, always gave Marian a shock of something very like fear, for it was here that a great tragedy ending in the death of a prominent society woman had occurred.
Now, as she found herself nearing it, preparing for a long skimming glide beneath it, she felt a chill shoot up her spine. Involuntarily she glanced up at the bridge railing. Then she gripped Florence’s arm tightly.
“Who can that be on the bridge at this hour of the night?” she whispered.
“Probably someone who has climbed up there to take off his skates,” said Florence with her characteristic coolness.
“But look! He’s waving his arms. He’s signaling. Do you suppose he means it for us?”
“No,” said Florence. “He’s looking north, toward the edge of the island. Come on; pay no attention to him. Under we go.”
With a great, broad swinging stroke she fairly threw her lighter partner across the shadow that the bridge made and out into the moonlight on the other side.
Marian was breathing quite easily again. They had made half the length of the island on the return lap, when she again gripped Florence’s arm.
“A sled!” she whispered.
“What of it?” Florence’s tone was impatient. “You are seeing things to-night.”
The sled, drawn by two men without skates, was passing diagonally across the lagoon. It was seven or eight feet long and stood a full three feet above the ice. The runners, of solid boards, were exceedingly broad.
“What a strange sled,” said Marian as they cut across the path of the two men.
“Sled seems heavy,” remarked Florence. “At least one would think it was by the way they slip and slide as they pull it.”
They had passed a hundred yards beyond that spot when Florence turned to glance back.
“Why! Look!” she exclaimed. “There’s a man sitting on the ice, back there a hundred yards or so.”
“One of the men with the sled?”
“No, there they go.”
“Some skater tightening his strap.”
“Wasn’t one in sight a moment ago. Tell you what,” Florence exclaimed; “let’s circle back!”
Marian was not keen for this adventure, but accompanied her companion without comment.
Nothing really came of it, not at that time. The man sat all humped over on the ice, as if mending a broken skate. He did not move nor look up. Florence thought she saw beside him a somewhat bulky package but could not quite tell. His coat almost concealed it, if, indeed, there was a package.
“Two men drawing a strange sled,” she mused. “One man on the ice alone. Possibly a package.” Turning to Marian she asked:
“What do you make of it?”
“Why, nothing,” said Marian in surprise. “Why should I?”
“Well, perhaps you shouldn’t,” said Florence thoughtfully.
There was something to it after all and what this something was they were destined to learn in the days that were to follow.
* * * * * * * *
Out among the ice-piles between the breakwaters, cowering in the shadows too frightened to scream, Lucile was seeing things. Hardly had the policemen disappeared behind the boats on the dry dock than the dark figures began to reappear.
“And so many of them!” she breathed.
She was tempted to believe she was in a trance. To the right of her, to the left, before, behind, she saw them. Ten, twenty, thirty, perhaps forty darkly enshrouded heads peered out from the shadows.
“As if in a fairy book!” she thrilled. “What can it mean? What are all these people doing out here at this ghostly hour?”
Suddenly she was seized with a fit of calm, desperate courage. Gliding from her shadow, she walked boldly out into the moonlight. Her heart was racing madly; her knees trembled. She could scarcely walk, yet walk she did, with a steady determined tread. Past this ice-pile, round this row of up-ended cakes, across this broad, open spot she moved. No one sprang out to intercept her progress. Here and there a dark head appeared for an instant, only immediately to disappear.
“Cowards!” she told herself. “All cowards. Afraid.”
Now she was approaching the sandy beach. Unable longer to restrain her impulses, she broke into a wild run.
She arrived at the side of the O Moo entirely out of breath. Leaning against its side for a moment, she turned to look back. There was not a person in sight. The beach, the ice, the black lines of breakwaters seemed as silent and forsaken as the heart of a desert.
“And yet it is swarming with men,” she breathed. “I wonder what they wanted?”
Suddenly she started. A figure had come into sight round the nearest prow. For an instant her hand gripped a round of the ladder, a preparatory move for upward flight. Then her hand relaxed.
“Oh!” she breathed, “It’s you!”
“Yes, it is I, Mark Pence,” said a friendly boyish voice.
“I—I suppose I should be afraid of you,” said Lucile, “but I’m not.”
“Why? Why should you?” he asked with a smile.
“Well, you see everyone about this old dry dock is so terribly mysterious. I’ve just had an awful fright.”
“Tell me about it.” Mark Pence smiled as he spoke.
Seating herself upon the flukes of an up-ended anchor she did tell him; told him not alone of her experience that night, but of the one of that other night in the Spanish Mission.
“Do you know,” he said soberly when she had finished, “therearea lot of mysterious things happening about this dock. I don’t think it will last much longer, though. Things are sort of coming to a head. Know what those two policemen were here for?”
Lucile shook her head.
“Made a call on the Chinks, down there in the old scow. Came to look for something. But they didn’t find it. Heard them say as much when they came out. They were mighty excited about something, though. Bet they thought it was mighty strange that there was a stairway in that old scow twenty feet deep.”
“Are—are you sure about that stairway?”
The boy’s reply was confident:
“Sure’s I am that I’m standing here.”
Lucile protested:
“But most folks don’t use circling stairways much. They don’t know—”
“I do though. I work in a library. There are scores of circling stairways among the stacks and I know just how high each one is.”
“Itisqueer about that stairway,” Lucile breathed. “I must be going up. I’m getting chill sitting here.”
“Well, good-bye.” Mark Pence put out his hand and seized hers in a friendly grip. “Just remember I’m with you. If you ever need me, just whistle and I’ll come running.”
“Thanks—thanks—aw—awfully,” said Lucile, a strange catch in her throat.
Her eyes followed him until the boat’s prow had hidden him; then she hurried up the rope-ladder and into the cabin. She was shivering all over, whether from a chill or from nervous excitement she could not tell.
The other girls came in a few moments later. For an hour they sat in a corner, drinking hot chocolate and telling of their night’s adventures. Then they prepared themselves for the night’s rest.