Part 20 (2/2)

”What a plight to put one in!” she exclaimed. ”Who could have done it and why did they do it?”

This question set her mind running over the mysterious incidents which, she could not but believe, had led up to this present moment.

There had been Lucile's seeing of the blue face in the old Mission, her own affair with the stranger in the museum; the blue candlestick; the visit to Mr. Cole in the new museum; Lucile's frightful adventure on the lake ice; the incident of the two men with the sled on the ice of the lagoon and the single man sitting on the ice; then the spot of blue ice discovered next day.

”Blue ice!” she exclaimed suddenly, stopping still in her tracks. ”Blue!

Blue ice!”

Florence frowned, as she considered it.

A new theory had come to her regarding that spot of blue ice on the lagoon, a theory which made her wish more than ever to get away from this island.

”Ho, well,” she whispered at last, ”there'll probably be a thaw before we get back or those men will come back and tear it up. But if there isn't, if they don't then--well, we'll see what we'll see.”

She was still puzzling over these problems when a strange noise, leaping seemingly out of nowhere, smote her ear.

It was such a rumble and roar as she had heard but once before in all her life. That sound had come to her over a telephone wire as she pressed her ear to the receiver during a thunderstorm. But here there was neither wire nor receiver and the very thought of a thunderstorm on such a night was ridiculous.

At first she was inclined to believe it to be the sound of some disturbance on the lake, a sudden rush of wind or a tidal wave.

”But there is little wind and the sea is calm,” she told herself.

She was in the midst of these perplexities when the sound broke into a series of sput-sput-sputs. Her heart stood still for a second, then raced on as her lips framed the word:

”Wireless.”

So ridiculous was the thought that the word died on her lips. There was no wireless outfit on the yacht; could be none on the island, for had they not made the entire round? Had they not found it entirely uninhabited? Whence, then, came this strange clash of man-made lightning?

The girl could find no answer to her own unspoken questions.

After a moment's thought she was inclined to believe that she was hearing the sounds created by some unknown electrical phenomena. Men were constantly discovering new things about electricity. Perhaps, all unknown to them, such isolated points as this automatically served as relay stations to pa.s.s along wireless messages.

Not entirely satisfied with this theory, she left the beach and, feeling her way carefully among the small evergreens, came at last to the base of a fir tree which capped the ridge. This tree, apparently of an earlier growth, towered half its height above its fellows.

Reaching up to the first branch she began to ascend. She climbed two-thirds of the way to the top with great ease. There she paused.

The sound had ceased. Only the faint wash-wash of wavelets on ice and sh.o.r.e, mingled with the mournful sighing of the pines, disturbed the silence of the night.

For some time she stood there clinging to the branches. Here she caught the full sweep of the lake breeze. She grew cold; began to s.h.i.+ver; called herself a fool; decided to climb down again, and was preparing to do so, when there came again that rumbling roar, followed as before by the clack-clack-clack, sput-sput.

”That's queer,” she murmured as she braced herself once more and attempted to pierce the darkness.

Then, abruptly, the sound ceased. Strain her ears as she might she caught no further sound. She peered into the gloom, trying to descry the wires of an aerial against the sky-line, but her search was vain.

”It's fairly spooky!” she told herself. ”A phantom wireless station on a deserted island!”

Ten minutes longer she clung there motionless. Then, feeling that she must turn into a lump of ice if she lingered longer, she began to climb down.

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