Part 14 (1/2)

That was one time when Lucile was right; in this queer old world you never can tell.

When Florence returned from the university the shades of night were already falling. There was, however, sufficient light to enable her to follow the track of the sled she had seen the night before. This track led straight across the park to the beach, then along the beach in the direction of the dry dock. A few hundred yards from the dry dock it turned suddenly to the left and was at once lost among the tumbled ma.s.ses of ice, where no trace of it could be found.

”Sled might be hidden out there,” she mused.

For a time she contemplated going out in search of it. When, however, she realized that it was growing quite dark, and recalled Lucile's unpleasant experience of the night before, she decided not to venture.

”If they come back to the beach again,” she told herself, ”I can pick up their tracks in the snow farther down.”

Walking briskly, she covered the remaining distance to the spot on the beach opposite the O Moo.

”Not yet,” she whispered, and climbing over the trestle she made her way on down the beach. Her eyes were always on the ground. Now she climbed a trestle, now walked round an anchor frozen into the sand, but always her eyes returned to the tracks in the snow. Tracks enough there were, footprints of men, but never a trace of a sled leaving the ice.

She had gone a considerable distance when she became conscious of some person not far away. On looking up she was startled to note that she had reached a point opposite the great black scow where the Orientals lived.

At the end of the scow stood a man. His face disfigured by a scowl, he stood watching her. He was dressed in the black gownlike garb of the Chinese. He wore a queue. There was, however, something strange about his face. She fancied she had seen him somewhere before, but where she could not tell.

Then the man moved out of the light that shone on him from a window and was swallowed up by the shadows.

”No use going farther,” she told herself. ”If the sled belongs on the dry dock somewhere it would be the easiest thing in the world for two persons to lift it on their shoulders and carry it in from the ice. That would throw one completely off the trail.”

Turning, she retraced her steps along the beach to the trestle work on which the O Moo rested, then swinging about to the right she made her way to the yacht's side.

Once on deck, she made certain that the other girls were aboard, then retraced her steps to the deck's side, where she pulled down the canvas and tied it securely. For a moment she stood listening to the lash of ropes on the mast. The canvas covering bulged and sagged. Cool air fanned her cheeks.

”Going to be a bad storm,” she told herself. ”Offsh.o.r.e wind, too. All the ice will go out to-night, and everything with it that isn't tied down.”

When all was tight on deck she slipped into the cabin.

Lucile, who ate very little dinner that night, retired early. Marian studied until nine-thirty. The clock pointed at eleven when Florence, with a sigh of regret, put down her psychology to prepare for sleep.

”Whew!” she breathed, ”what a storm! Listen to the canvas boom! Like a schooner at sea! Hope it doesn't tear the canvas away. Hope it doesn't--”

She did not finish the sentence. The thought which had come to her was too absurd.

Once snugly tucked in her bed, she found her mind returning to the morning's discovery. What did that new ice on the lagoon mean? Why had the hole been cut? Why was the ice blue? Did the sled and the man sitting on the ice the night before have anything to do with it? Did the man cut that hole? If so, why?

He might, she told herself, have had something to conceal, some valuables, stolen diamonds or gold. But how could he hope to recover it if he dropped it through a hole in the ice. The water beneath the ice was always murky and there was a strong current there. Anything dropped beneath that ice would be lost forever.

She remembered the two policemen whom Lucile had seen on the beach that same night. Perhaps those two men had been running from the officers, trying to conceal something. But how had the man come there on the ice?

Perhaps--she started at the thought--perhaps this man rode there beneath the sled. The runners had been extraordinarily broad. A man could easily ride between them. The thought gave her a start.

She thought of Lucile's experience in the old Mission, and of her own with the blue candlestick. Perhaps, she told herself, they dropped the blue G.o.d through the ice.

Then she smiled at herself. How could the blue G.o.d be in Chicago? If it were they would never drop it in the water beneath the ice where it could never be recovered. Yet why had the ice been blue? Why--

She fell asleep, to listen in her dreams to the lash of ropes, the boom of canvas and to dream of riding a frail craft on a storm-tossed sea.

It would be difficult to determine just why it is that one knows how long he has slept, yet we very often do know. One wakens in the middle of the night and before the clock strikes the hour he says to himself, ”I have slept three hours.” And he is right.