Part 31 (1/2)
At seven Whitaker was merely nervous.
By eight he was unable to sit still.
Half an hour later the house was too small to contain him. He found his cane and took to the veranda, but only to be driven from its shelter by a swarm of mosquitoes attracted by the illuminated windows. Not in the least resentful, since his ankle was occasioning him no pain whatever, he strolled down toward the sh.o.r.e: not a bad idea at all--to be there to welcome her.
The night was loud and dark. The moon was not to rise for another half-hour, and since sundown the wind had come in from the southwest to dissipate the immaculate day-long calm and set the waters and the trees in motion with its urgent, animating breath. Blowing at first fitfully, it was settling momentarily down into a steady, league-devouring stride, strong with the promise of greater strength to come.
Whitaker reflected: ”If she doesn't hurry, she won't come by boat at all, for fear of a wetting.”
He thought again: ”And of course--I might've known--she won't start till moonrise, on account of the light.”
And again, a.n.a.lyzing the soft, warm rush of air: ”We'll have rain before morning.”
He found himself at the end of the dock, tingling with impatience, but finding some little consolation in the restless sweep of the wind against his face and body. He stood peering up along the curve of the sh.o.r.e toward the other landing-stage. He could see little--a mere impressionistic suggestion of the sh.o.r.e-line picked out with the dim, semi-phosph.o.r.escent glow of breaking wavelets. The night was musical with the clash of rus.h.i.+ng waters, crisp and lively above the long, soughing drone of the wind in the trees. Eastward the barrier beach was looming stark and black against a growing greenish pallor in the sky. A mile to the westward, down the sh.o.r.e, the landlocked lighthouse reared its tower, so obscure in gloom that the lamp had an effect of hanging without support, like a dim yellow j.a.panese lantern afloat in mid-air.
Some minutes elapsed. The pallor of the east grew more marked. Whitaker fancied he could detect a figure moving on the Fiske dock.
Then, startled, he grew conscious of the thick drone of a heavily-powered motor boat near insh.o.r.e. Turning quickly, he discovered it almost at once: a black, vague shape not twenty yards from where he stood, showing neither bow nor side-lights: a stealthy and mysterious apparition creeping toward the dock with something of the effect of an animal about to spring.
And immediately he heard a man's voice from the boat, abrupt with anger:
”Not this place, you a.s.s--the next.”
”Shut up,” another voice replied. ”There's somebody on that dock.”
At the same time the bows of the boat swung off and the shadow slipped away to westward--toward the Fiske place.
A wondering apprehension of some nameless and desperate enterprise, somehow involving the woman who obsessed his thoughts, crawled in Whitaker's mind. The boat--running without cruising lights!--was seeking the next landing-stage. Those in charge of it had certainly some reason for wis.h.i.+ng to escape observation.
Automatically Whitaker turned back, let himself down to the beach, and began to pick his way toward the Fiske dock, half running despite his stiff ankle and following a course at once more direct and more difficult than the way through the woods. That last would have afforded him sure footing, but he would have lost much time seeking and sticking to its meanderings, in the uncertain light. As it was, he had on one hand a low, concave wall of earth, on the other the wash of crisping wavelets; and between the two a yard-wide track with a treacherous surface of wave-smoothed pebbles largely enc.u.mbered with heavy bolster-like rolls of seaweed, springy and slippery, washed up by the recent gale.
But in the dark and formless alarm that possessed him, he did not stop to choose between the ways. He had no time. As it was, if there were anything evil afoot, no earthly power could help him cover the distance in time to be of any aid. Indeed, he had not gone half the way before he pulled up with a thumping heart, startled beyond expression by a cry in the night--a cry of wild appeal and protest thrown out violently into the turbulent night, and abruptly arrested in full peal as if a hand had closed the mouth that uttered it.
And then ringing clear down the wind, a voice whose timbre was unmistakably that of a woman: ”_Aux secours! Aux secours!_”
Twice it cried out, and then was hushed as grimly as the first incoherent scream. No need now to guess at what was towards: Whitaker could see it all as clearly as though he were already there; the power-boat at the dock, two women attacked as they were on the point of entering their rowboat, the cry of the mistress suddenly cut short by her a.s.sailant, the maid taking up the appeal, in her fright unconsciously reverting to her native tongue, in her turn being forcibly silenced....
All the while he was running, heedless of his injured foot--pitching, slipping, stumbling, leaping--somehow making progress.
By now the moon had lifted above the beach high enough to aid him somewhat with its waxing light; and, looking ahead, he could distinguish dimly shapes about the dock and upon it that seemed to bear out his most cruel fears. The power-boat was pa.s.sably distinct, her white side showing plainly through the tempered darkness. Midway down the dock he made out struggling figures--two of them, he judged: a man at close grips with a frantic woman. And where the structure joined the land, a second pair, again a man and a woman, strove and swayed....
And always the night grew brighter with the spectral glow of the moon and the mirroring waters.
For all his haste, he was too slow; he was still a fair thirty yards away when the struggle on the dock ended abruptly with the collapse of the woman; it was as if, he thought, her strength had failed all in an instant--as if she had fainted. He saw the man catch her up in his arms, where she lay limp and unresisting, and with this burden step from the stage to the boat and disappear from sight beneath the coaming. An instant later he reappeared, standing at full height in the c.o.c.kpit.
Without warning his arm straightened out and a tongue of flame jetted from his hand; there was a report; in the same breath a bullet buried itself in the low earth bank on Whitaker's right. Heedless, he pelted on.
The shot seemed to signal the end of the other struggle at the landing-stage. Scarcely had it rung out ere Whitaker saw the man lift a fist and dash it brutally into the woman's face. Without a sound audible at that distance she reeled and fell away; while the man turned, ran swiftly out to the end of the dock, cast off the headwarp and jumped aboard the boat.
She began to sheer off as Whitaker set foot upon the stage. She was twenty feet distant when he found himself both at its end and at the end of his resource. He was too late. Already he could hear the deeper resonance of the engine as the spark was advanced and the throttle opened. In another moment she would be heading away at full tilt.
Frantic with despair, he thrashed the air with impotent arms: a fair mark, his white garments s.h.i.+ning bright against the dark background of the land. Aboard the moving boat an automatic fluttered, spitting ten shots in as many seconds. The thud and splash of bullets all round him brought him to his senses. Choking with rage, he stumbled back to the land.