Part 12 (2/2)
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, ”there _are_ a 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 c.h.i.n.ks, 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.”
”It _is_ queer 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 s.h.i.+vering all over, whether from a chill or from nervous excitement she could not tell.
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