Part 3 (1/2)

It came about, in the twilight hour, that we walked together down to the craggy sh.o.r.e of the lagoon. Then we stood and watched the light dying on the blue-green water.

Once more the tide was rolling in. The waves beat with a startling fury over and against the rock wall, and in the half-light the white stones looked like the foam-covered fangs of a mighty sea-monster, raging at our intrusion. The water swept through the little crevices in the wall, and the cool spray, refres.h.i.+ng after the tropic day, swept against our faces.

The gray sand stretched down to the desolate sea. A plover uttered his disconsolate, wailing cry far out to sea. Some dark heron or bittern rose croaking from beside the lagoon, then flapped awkwardly away. I felt the girl's hand on my arm as she drew closer to my side.

A worthy place--this manor house of Nealman. Vague thoughts, not quite in keeping with the ordered dimensions of life, had hold of my mind.

Presently the girl's grip tightened, and she pointed toward the lagoon.

I saw her face before I followed her gesture. I didn't get the idea that she was frightened. Rather she was smiling, quietly, and her eyes glistened.

Seventy yards out, and perhaps fifteen yards back from the Bridge, great bubbles were bursting upward through the blue-green troubled waters.

Some mysterious action of the currents, stirred by the tides, was the unquestioned cause; yet both of us were stirred by the same fancy. It was as if some great, air-breathing sea-monster was exhaling beneath the waves.

CHAPTER VI

The next two weeks sped by as if with one rise and fall of the tides. I spent the time in locating the various fields of game: the tall holly-trees where the wild turkeys roosted, the sloughs where the ba.s.s were gamest, and marked down the cover of the partridge. In the meantime I collected specimens for the university.

It came about that I didn't always go out alone. The best time of all to study wild-life is in late twilight and the first hours of dawn--and at such times Edith was unemployed. Many the still, late evenings when we stood together on the sh.o.r.e and watched the curlews in their strange, aerial minuet that no naturalist has even been able to explain; many the dewey morning that we watched the first sun's rays probe through the mossy forest. She had an instinctive love for the outdoors, and her agile young body had seemingly fibers of steel. At least she could follow me wherever I wanted to go.

Once we came upon the Floridan deer, feeding in a natural woods-meadow, and once a gigantic manatee, the most rare of large American mammals, flopped in the mud of the Ochakee River. We knew that incredible confusion and bustle made by the wild turkeys when they flew to the tree-tops to roost; and she learned to whistle the partridge out from their thickets.

Of course we developed a fine companions.h.i.+p. I learned of her early life, a struggle against poverty that had been about to overwhelm her when her uncle had come to her aid; and presently I was telling her all of my own dreams and ambitions. She was wholly sympathetic with my aim to continue my university work for a higher degree; then to spend my life in scientific research. I described some of the expeditions that I had in mind but which seemed so impossible of fulfillment--the exploration of the great ”back country” of Borneo, a journey across that mysterious island, Sumatra, the penetration of certain unknown realms of Tibet.

”But they take thousands of dollars--and I haven't got 'em,” I told her quietly.

She looked out to sea a long time. ”I wish I could find Jason's treasure for you,” she answered at last.

I was used to Edith's humor, and I looked up expecting to see the familiar laughter in her eyes. But the l.u.s.ter in those deep, blue orbs was not that of mirth. Fancies as beautiful as she was herself were sweeping her away....

Most of the guests arrived on the same train at the little town of Ochakee, and motored over to Kastle Krags. A half dozen in all had accepted Nealman's invitation. I saw them when they got out of their cars.

Of course I straightened their names out later. At the time I only studied their faces--just as I'd study a new specimen, found in the forest. And when Edith and I compared notes afterward we found that our first impression was the same--that all six were strikingly similar in type.

They might just as well have been brothers, chips off the same block.

When Nealman stood among them it seemed as if he might change names with any one of them, and hardly any one could tell the difference. There was nothing distinguis.h.i.+ng about their clothes--all were well-dressed, either in white or tweeds; their skins had that healthy firmness and good color that is seen so often in men that are free from financial worry; their hair was cut alike; their linen was similarly immaculate; their accent was practically the same. Finally they were about the same age--none of them very young, none further than the first phases of middle-age.

Lemuel Marten was of course the most distinguished man in the party.

Born rich, he had pushed his father's enterprises into many lands and across distant seas, and his name was known, more or less, to all financiers in the nation. His face was perhaps firmer than the rest--his voice was more commanding and insistent. He was, perhaps, fifty years of age, stoutly built, with crinkling black hair and vivid, gray eyes. From time to time he stroked nervously a trim, perfectly kept iron-gray mustache.

Hal Fargo had been a polo-player in his day. Certain litheness and suppleness of motion still lingered in his body. His face was darkly brown, and white teeth gleamed pleasantly when he spoke. A p.r.o.nounced bald spot was the only clew of advancing years. He was of medium height, slender, evidently a man of great personal magnetism and charm.

Joe Nopp was quite opposite, physically--rather portly, perhaps less dignified than most of his friends. I put down Nopp as a dead shot, and later I found I had guessed right. For all his plump, florid cheeks and his thick, white hands, he had an eye true as a surveyor's instrument, nerves cold and strong as a steel chain. He was a man to be relied upon in a crisis. And both Edith and I liked him better than any of the others.

Lucius Pescini was an aristocrat of the accepted type--slender, tall, unmistakably distinguished. His hair was such a dark shade of brown that it invariably pa.s.sed as black, he had eyes no less dark, sparkling under dark brows, and his small mustache and perfectly trimmed beard was in vivid contrast to a rather pale skin.

Of Major Kenneth Dell I had never heard. He had been an officer in the late war, and now he was Bill Van Hope's friend, although not yet acquainted with Nealman. The two men met cordially, and Van Hope stood above them, the tallest man in the company by far, beaming friends.h.i.+p upon them both. Dell was of medium size, st.u.r.dily built, garbed with exceptionally good taste in imported flannels. He also had gray, vivid eyes, under rather fine brows, gray hair perfectly cut, a slow smile and quiet ways. Solely because he was a man of endless patience I expected him to distinguish himself with rod and reel.