Part 12 (1/2)
”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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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.”