Kitabı oku: «The Destroying Angel», sayfa 8
XI
THE SPY
Whitaker slept soundly but lightly: the adventures of the evening had not been so fatiguing as to render his slumbers profound, after three days of sheer loafing. And he awoke early, roused by a level beam of blood-red light thrown full upon his face by the rising sun.
He lay for a time languid, watching the incarnadined walls and lazily examining the curious thrill of interest with which he found himself anticipating the day to come. It seemed a long time since he had looked forward to the mere routine of existence with so strong an assurance of emotional diversion. He idled in whimsical humour with an odd conceit to the effect that the roots of his soul had somehow been mysteriously watered, so that it was about to burgeon like a green bay tree – whatever that might mean. And with this he experienced an exhilarating glow of well-being that had of late been more a stranger to his body than he liked to admit.
He wondered why. Was the change in the weather responsible? Or had the mere act of withdrawing from the world for a little time wrought some esoteric change in the inscrutable chemistry of his sentiments? Had the recent innocuous waste of time somehow awakened him to the value of the mere act of living? Or, again – absurd surmise! – was all this due simply to the instinct of sex: was it merely the man in him quickening to the knowledge that a pretty woman existed in his neighbourhood?
At this last he laughed openly, and jumped out of bed. At all events, no healthy man had any business dawdling away a single minute of so rare a morning.
Already the sun was warm, the faint breeze bland. Standing at the window and shading his eyes against the glare, he surveyed a world new-washed and radiant: the sun majestically climbing up and away from the purple lattice-work of cloud that barred the nitid mauve horizon; the distant beach, a violet-tinted barrier between the firmament and sea; the landlocked bay dimpled with vagrant catspaws and smitten with sunlight as with a scimitar of fire; the earth fresh and fragrant, steaming faintly in the ardent glow of dawn.
In another moment he was at the kitchen door, interrupting Sum Fat's first matutinal attentions to his teeth with a demand for a bathing-suit. One of Ember's was promptly forthcoming, and by happy accident fitted him indifferently well; so that three minutes later found him poised on the end of the small dock, above fifteen feet of water so limpid bright that he could easily discern the shapes of pebbles on the bottom.
He dived neatly, coming to the surface with his flesh tingling with delight of the cool water; then with the deliberate and powerful movements of an experienced swimmer, struck away from the land.
Two hundred yards out he paused, rolled over on his back and, hands clasped beneath his head, floated serenely, sunlight warming his upturned face, his body rejoicing in the suave, clean, fluid embrace, an almost overpowering sense of physical sanity and boundless strength rioting through him. Quietly, intimately, he smiled at the sound, good old world, athrill with the wonder and beauty of life.
Then something disturbed him: a dull fluttering, vibrant upon his submerged eardrums. Extending his arms and moving his hands gently to preserve his poise, he lifted his head from the water. The neighbouring shore-line leaped flashing to his vision like an exquisite disclosure of jewelled marquetry. His vision ranged quickly from Ember's landing-stage to that on the water-front of the Fiske place, and verified a surmise with the discovery of a motor-boat standing out from the latter. The churning of its propeller had roused him.
Holding its present course, the boat would clear him by several hundred yards. He lay quiet, watching. Despite its generous proportions – it was a fair-sized cabin cruiser, deep-seaworthy in any ordinary weather – he could see but a single person for all its crew. Seated astern, dividing her attention between the side steering-wheel and the engine, she was altogether ignorant of the onlooker. Only her head and shoulders showed above the coaming: her head with its shining golden crown, her shoulders cloaked with a light wrap gathered at the throat.
Whitaker, admiring, wondered…
Sweeping in a wide arc as it gathered speed, the boat presently shot out smartly on a straight course for the barrier beach.
Why? What business had she there? And at an hour so early?
No affair of his: Whitaker admitted as much, freely. And yet, no reason existed why he should not likewise take an impersonal interest in the distant ocean beach. As a matter of fact (he discovered upon examination) he was vastly concerned in that quarter. Already he was beginning his fourth day on the Great West Bay without having set foot upon its Great South Beach! Ridiculous oversight! And one to be remedied without another hour's delay.
Grinning with amused toleration of his own perverse sophistry, he turned over on his side and struck out in the wake of the motor-boat. He had over a mile to go; but such a distance was nothing dismaying to a swimmer of Whitaker's quality, who had all his life been on very friendly terms with the sea.
No one held a watch on him; but when at length he waded ashore he was complacent in the knowledge that he had made very good time.
He found the motor-boat moored in shallow water at the end of a long and substantial dock. The name displayed in letters of brass on its stern was, frankly, Trouble. He paused waist-deep to lean over the side and inspect the cockpit; the survey drew from him an expression of approval. The boat seemed to be handsomely appointed, and the motor exposed by the open hatch of the engine pit was of a make synonymous with speed and reliability. He patted the flanks of the vessel as he waded on.
"Good little boat!" said he.
A weather-beaten sign-board on the dock advertised a surf-bathing station. Ashore a plank walk crossed first a breadth of sedge marsh and then penetrated a tumbled waste of dunes. Where the summits of the latter met the sky, there were visible a series of angular and unlovely wooden edifices.
Whitaker climbed up on the walk and made seawards. He saw nothing of the lady of the motor-boat.
In fact, for some time he saw nothing in human guise; from other indications he was inclined to conclude that the bathing station was either closed for the season or else had been permanently abandoned within a year or so. There was a notable absence of rowboats and sailing craft about the dock, with, as he drew nearer to the shuttered and desolate cluster of bath-houses, an equally remarkable lack of garments and towels hanging out to dry.
Walking rapidly, he wasn't long in covering the distance from shore to shore. Very soon he stood at the head of a rude flight of wooden steps which ran down from the top of a wave-eaten sand bluff, some ten or twelve feet in height, to the broad and gently shelving ocean beach. Whipping in from the sea, a brisk breeze, from which the dunes had heretofore sheltered him, now cooled his dripping bathing-suit not altogether pleasantly. But he didn't mind. The sight of the surf compensated.
He had long since been aware of its resonant diapason, betokening a heavy sea; but the spectacle of it was one ever beautiful in his sight. Whitecaps broke the lustrous blue, clear to its serrated horizon. Inshore the tide was low; the broad and glistening expanse of naked wet sand mirrored the tender blueness of the skies far out to where the breakers weltered in confusion of sapphire, emerald and snow. A mile offshore a fishing smack with a close-reefed, purple patch of sail was making heavy weather of it; miles beyond it, again, an inward-bound ocean steamship shouldered along contemptuously; and a little way eastwards a multitude of gulls with flashing pinions were wheeling and darting and screaming above something in the sea – presumably a school of fish.
Midway between the sand bluff and the breaking waters stood the woman Whitaker had followed. (There wasn't any use mincing terms: he had followed her in his confounded, fatuous curiosity!) Her face was to the sea, her hands clasped behind her. Now the wind modelled her cloak sweetly to her body, now whipped its skirts away, disclosing legs straight and slender and graciously modelled. She was dressed, it seemed, for bathing; she had crossed the bay for a lonely bout with the surf, and having found it dangerously heavy, now lingered, disappointed but fascinated by the majestic beauty of its fury.
Whitaker turned to go, his inquisitiveness appeased; but he was aware of an annoying sense of shame, which he considered rather low on the part of his conscience. True, he had followed her; true, he had watched her at a moment when she had every reason to believe herself alone with the sky, the sand, the sea and the squabbling gulls. But – the beach was free to all; there was no harm done; he hadn't really meant to spy upon her, and he had not the slightest intention of forcing himself upon her consciousness.
Intentions, however, are one thing; accidents, another entirely. History is mainly fashioned of intentions that have met with accidents.
Whitaker turned to go, and turning let his gaze sweep up from the beach and along the brow of the bluff. He paused, frowning. Some twenty feet or so distant the legs of a man, trousered and booted, protruded from a hollow between two hummocks of sand. And the toes of the boots were digging into the sand, indicating that the man was lying prone; and that meant (if he were neither dead nor sleeping) that he was watching the woman on the beach.
Indignation, righteous indignation, warmed Whitaker's bosom. It was all very well for him to catch sight of the woman through her cottage window, by night, and to swim over to the beach in her wake the next morning, but what right had anybody else to constitute himself her shadow?.. All this on the mute evidence of the boots and trousers: Whitaker to his knowledge had never seen them before, but he had so little doubt they belonged to the other watcher by the window last night that he readily persuaded himself that this must be so.
Besides, it was possible that the man was Drummond.
Anyway, nobody was licensed to skulk among sand-dunes and spy upon unescorted females!
Instantly Whitaker resolved himself into a select joint committee for the Promulgation of the Principles of Modern Chivalry and the Elucidation of the Truth.
He strode forward and stood over the man, looking down at his back. It was true, as he had assumed: the fellow was watching the woman. Chin in hands, elbows half-buried in sand, he seemed to be following her with an undeviating regard. And his back was very like Drummond's; at least, in height and general proportion his figure resembled Drummond's closely enough to leave Whitaker without any deterring doubt.
A little quiver of excitement mingled with anticipative satisfaction ran through him. Now, at last, the mystery was to be cleared up, his future relations with the pseudo suicide defined and established.
Deliberately he extended his bare foot and nudged the man's ribs.
"Drummond…" he said in a clear voice, decided but unaggressive.
With an oath and what seemed a single, quick motion, the man jumped to his feet and turned to Whitaker a startled and inflamed countenance.
"What the devil!" he cried angrily. "Who are you? What do you want? What d'you mean by coming round here and calling me Drummond?"
He was no more Drummond than he was Whitaker himself.
Whitaker retreated a step, nonplussed. "I beg pardon," he stammered civilly, in his confusion; "I took you for a fr – a man I know."
"Well, I ain't, see!" For a moment the man glowered at Whitaker, his features twitching. Apparently the shock of surprise had temporarily dislocated his sense of proportion. Rage blazed from his bloodshot, sunken eyes, and rage was eloquent in the set of his rusty, square-hewn chin and the working of his heavy and begrimed hands.
"Damn you!" he exploded suddenly. "What d'you mean by butting in – "
"For that matter" – something clicked in Whitaker's brain and subconsciously he knew that his temper was about to take the bridge – "what the devil do you mean by spying on that lady yonder?"
It being indisputably none of his concern, the unfairness of the question only lent it offensive force. It was quite evidently more than the man could or would bear from any officious stranger. He made this painfully clear through the medium of an intolerable epithet and an attempt to land his right fist on Whitaker's face.
The face, however, was elsewhere when the fist reached the point for which it had been aimed; and Whitaker closed in promptly as the fellow's body followed his arm, thrown off balance by the momentum of the unobstructed blow. Thoroughly angered, he had now every intention of administering a sound and salutary lesson.
In pursuance with this design, he grappled and put forth his strength to throw the man.
What followed had entered into the calculations of neither. Whitaker felt himself suddenly falling through air thick with a blinding, choking cloud of dust and sand. The body of the other was simultaneously wrenched violently from his grasp. Then he brought up against solidity with a bump that seemed to expel every cubic inch of air from his lungs. And he heard himself cry out sharply with the pain of his weak ankle newly twisted…
He sat up, gasping for breath, brushed the sand from his face and eyes, and as soon as his whirling wits settled a little, comprehended what had happened.
Half buried in the débris of a miniature landslide, he sat at the foot of the bluff, which reared its convex face behind and over him. Immediately above his head a ragged break in its profile showed where the sand, held together solely by beach grass, had given way beneath the weight of the antagonists.
A little distance from him the other man was picking himself up, apparently unhurt but completely surfeited. Without delay, with not even so much as a glance at Whitaker, he staggered off for a few paces, then settled into a heavy, lumbering trot westward along the beach.
This conduct was so inconsistent with his late belligerent humour that Whitaker felt inclined to rub his eyes a second time. He had anticipated – as soon as in condition to reason at all – nothing less than an immediate resumption of hostilities. Yet here was the fellow running away. Incomprehensible!
And yet, save at the first blush, not so incomprehensible: the chief of the man's desire had been unquestionably to see without being seen; his rage at being detected had led him to a misstep; now he was reverting to his original plan with all possible expedition. He did not wish the woman to recognize him; therefore he was putting himself out of her way. For she was approaching.
When Whitaker caught sight of her, she was already close at hand. She had been running. Now as their glances met, hers keenly inquiring of Whitaker's still bewildered eyes, she pulled up abruptly and stood astare. He saw, or fancied, something closely akin to fright and consternation in her look. The flush in her cheeks gave way to a swift pallor. The hands trembled that drew her beach-cloak close about her. She seemed to make an ineffectual effort to speak.
On his part, Whitaker tried to get up. A keen twinge in his ankle, however, wrung an involuntary grunt from him, and with a wry grimace he sank back.
"Oh!" cried the woman, impulsively. "You're hurt!" She advanced a pace, solicitous and sympathetic.
"Oh, not much," Whitaker replied in a tone more of hope than of assurance. He felt tenderly of the injured member. "Only my ankle – twisted it a few days ago, and now again. It'll be all right in a moment or two."
Her gaze travelled from him to the edge of the bluff.
"I didn't see – I mean, I heard something, and turned, and saw you trying to sit up and the other man rising."
"Sorry we startled you," Whitaker mumbled, wondering how the deuce he was going to get home. His examination of the ankle hadn't proved greatly encouraging.
"But I – ah – how did it happen?"
"A mere misunderstanding," he said lightly. "I mistook the gentleman for some one I knew. He resented it, so we started to scrap like a couple of schoolboys. Then … I wish to Heaven it had been his leg instead of mine!"
"But still I hardly understand…"
She was now more composed. The colour had returned to her face. She stood with head inclined a trifle forward, gaze intent beneath delicate brows; most distractingly pretty, he thought, in spite of the ankle – which really didn't hurt much unless moved.
"Well, you see, I – ah – I'm visiting Ember – the cottage next to yours, I believe. That is, if I'm not mistaken, you have the Fiske place?"
She nodded.
"And so, this morning, it struck me as a fine young idea to swim over here and have a look at the beach. I – ah – you rather showed me the way, with your motor-boat. I mean I saw you start out."
He felt better after that: open confession is a great help when one feels senselessly guilty. He ventured an engaging smile and noted with relief that it failed either to terrify or to enrage the young woman.
On the other hand, she said encouragingly: "I see."
"And then I found that chap watching you – "
That startled her. "How do you mean – watching me?"
"Why – ah – that's what he seemed to be doing. He was lying at full length up there, half hidden – to all appearances watching you from behind a screen of beach grass."
"But – I don't understand – why should he have been watching me?"
"I'm sure I don't know, if you don't."
She shook her head: "You must be mistaken."
"Daresay. I generally am when I jump at conclusions. Anyway, he didn't like it much when I called him out of his name. I gathered, in fact, that he was considerably put out. Silly, wasn't it?"
"Rather!" she agreed gravely.
For a moment or two they eyed one another in silence, Whitaker wondering just how much of a fool she was thinking him and dubiously considering various expedients to ingratiate himself. She was really quite too charming to be neglected, after so auspicious an inauguration of their acquaintance. Momentarily he was becoming more convinced that she was exceptional. Certain he was he had never met any woman quite like her – not even the fair but false Miss Carstairs of whom he had once fancied himself so hopelessly enamoured. Here he divined an uncommon intelligence conjoined with matchless loveliness. Testimony to the former quality he acquired from eyes serenely violet and thoughtful. As for the latter, he reflected that few professional beauties could have stood, as this woman did, the acid test of that mercilessly brilliant morning.
"I don't seem to think of anything useful to say," he ventured. "Can you help me out? Unless you'd be interested to know that my name's Whitaker – Hugh Whitaker – ?"
She acknowledged the information merely by a brief nod. "It seems to me," she said seriously, "that the pressing question is, what are you going to do about that ankle? Shall you be able to walk?"
"Hard to say," he grumbled, a trifle dashed. He experimented gingerly, moving his foot this way and that and shutting his teeth on groans that the test would surely have evoked had he been alone. "'Fraid not. Still, one can try."
"It isn't sprained?"
"Oh, no – just badly wrenched. And, as I said, this is the second time within a week."
With infinite pains and the aid of both hands and his sound foot, he lifted himself and contrived to stand erect for an instant, then bore a little weight on the hurt ankle – and blenched, paling visibly beneath his ineradicable tan.
"I don't suppose," he said with effort – "they grow – crutches – on this neck of land?"
And he was about to collapse again upon the sands when, without warning, he found the woman had moved to his side and caught his hand, almost brusquely passing his arm across her shoulders, so that she received no little of his weight.
"Oh, I say – !" he protested feebly.
"Don't say anything," she replied shortly. "I'm very strong – quite able to help you to the boat. Please don't consider me at all; just see if we can't manage this way."
"But I've no right to impose – "
"Don't be silly! Please do as I say. Won't you try to walk?"
He endeavoured to withdraw his arm, an effort rendered futile by her cool, firm grasp on his fingers.
"Please!" she said – not altogether patiently.
He eyed her askance. There was in this incredible situation a certain piquancy, definitely provocative, transcending the claims his injury made upon his interest. Last night for the first time he had seen this woman and from a distance had thought her desirable; now, within twelve hours, he found himself with an arm round her neck!
He thought it a tremendously interesting neck, slender, not thin, and straight and strong, a milk-white column from the frilled collar of her bathing-cloak to the shimmering tendrils that clustered behind her ears. Nor was the ear she presented to his inspection an everyday ear, lacking its individual allure. He considered that it owned its distinctive personality, not unworthy of any man's studious attention.
He saw her face, of course, en profile: her head bowed, downcast lashes long upon her cheeks, her mouth set in a mould of gravity, her brows seriously contracted – signifying preoccupation with the problem of the moment.
And then suddenly she turned her head and intercepted his whole-hearted stare. For a thought wonder glimmered in the violet eyes; then they flashed disconcertingly; finally they became utterly cold and disdainful.
"Well?" she demanded in a frigid voice.
He looked away in complete confusion, and felt his face burning to the temples.
"I beg your pardon," he mumbled unhappily.
He essayed to walk. Twenty feet and more of treacherous, dry, yielding sand separated them from the flight of steps that ascended the bluff. It proved no easy journey; and its difficulty was complicated by his determination to spare the woman as much as he could. Gritting his teeth, he grinned and bore without a murmur until, the first stage of the journey accomplished, he was able to grasp a handrail at the bottom of the stairs and breathe devout thanks through the medium of a gasp.
"Shall we rest a bit?" the woman asked, compassionate, ignoring now the impertinence she had chosen to resent a few moments ago.
"Think I can manage – thanks," he said, panting a little. "It'll be easier now – going up. I shan't need help."
He withdrew his arm, perhaps not without regret, but assuredly with a comforting sense of decent consideration for her, as well as with some slight and intrinsically masculine satisfaction in the knowledge that he was overcoming her will and her resistance.
"No – honestly!" he insisted. "These handrails make it easy."
"But please be sure," she begged. "Don't take any chances. I don't mind…"
"Let me demonstrate, then."
The stairway was comfortably narrow; he had only to grasp a rail with either hand, and half lift himself, half hop up step by step. In this manner he accomplished the ascent in excellent, if hopelessly ungraceful, style. At the top he limped to a wooden seat beside one of the bath-houses and sat down with so much grim decision in his manner that it was evident to the woman the moment she rejoined him. But he mustered a smile to meet her look of concern, and shook his head.
"Thus far and no farther."
"Oh, but you must not be stubborn!"
"I mean to be – horrid stubborn. In fact, I don't mind warning you that there's a famous strain of mule in the Whitaker make-up."
She was, however, not to be diverted; and her fugitive frown bespoke impatience, if he were any judge.
"But seriously, you must – "
"Believe me," he interrupted, "if I am to retain any vestige of self-respect, I must no longer make a crutch of you."
"But, really, I don't see why – !"
"Need I remind you I am a man?" he argued lightly. "Even as you are a very charming woman…"
The frown deepened while she conned this utterance over.
"How do you mean me to interpret that?" she demanded, straightforward.
"The intention was not uncomplimentary, perhaps," he said gravely; "though the clumsiness is incontestable. As for the rest of it – I'm not trying to flirt with you, if that's what you mean – yet. What I wished to convey was simply my intention no longer to bear my masculine weight upon a woman – either you or any other woman."
A smile contended momentarily with the frown, and triumphed brilliantly.
"I beg your pardon, I'm sure. But do you mind telling me what you do mean to do?"
"No."
"Well, then – ?" The smile was deepening very pleasantly.
"I mean to ask you," he said deliberately, taking heart of this favourable manifestation: "to whom am I indebted – ?"
To his consternation the smile vanished, as though a cloud had sailed before the sun. Doubt and something strongly resembling incredulity informed her glance.
"Do you mean to say you don't know?" she demanded after a moment.
"Believe me, I've no least idea – "
"But surely Mr. Ember must have told you?"
"Ember seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that the Fiske place was without a tenant."
"Oh!"
"And I'm sure he was sincere. Otherwise it's certain wild horses couldn't have dragged him back to New York."
"Oh!" Her tone was thoughtful. "So he has gone back to town?"
"Business called him. At least such was the plausible excuse he advanced for depriving himself of my exclusive society."
"I see," she nodded – "I see…"
"But aren't you going to tell me? Or ought I to prove my human intelligence by assuming on logical grounds that you're Miss Fiske?"
"If you please," she murmured absently, her intent gaze seeking the distances of the sea.
"Then that's settled," he pursued in accents of satisfaction. "You are Miss Fiske – Christian name at present unknown to deponent. I am one Whitaker, as already deposed – baptized Hugh. And we are neighbours. Do you know, I think this a very decent sort of a world after all?"
"And still" – she returned to the charge – "you haven't told me what you mean to do, since you refuse my help."
"I mean," he asserted cheerfully, "to sit here, aping Patience on a monument, until some kind-hearted person fetches me a stick or other suitable piece of wood to serve as emergency staff. Then I shall make shift to hobble to your motor-boat and thank you very kindly for ferrying me home."
"Very well," she said with a business-like air. "Now we understand one another, I'll see what I can find."
Reviewing their surroundings with a swift and comprehensive glance, she shook her head in dainty annoyance, stood for an instant plunged in speculation, then, light-footed, darted from sight round the side of the bath-house.
He waited, a tender nurse to his ankle, smiling vaguely at the benign sky.
Presently she reappeared, dragging an eight-foot pole, which, from certain indications, seemed to have been formerly dedicated to the office of clothes-line prop.
"Will this do?"
Whitaker took it from her and weighed it with anxious judgment.
"A trifle tall, even for me," he allowed. "Still…"
He rose on one foot and tested the staff with his weight. "'Twill do," he decided. "And thank you very much."
But even with its aid, his progress toward the boat necessarily consumed a tedious time. It was impossible to favour the injured foot to any great extent. Between occasional halts for rest, Whitaker hobbled with grim determination, suffering exquisitely but privately. The girl considerately schooled her pace to his, subjecting him to covert scrutiny when, as they moved on, his injury interested him exclusively.
He made little or no attempt to converse while in motion; a spirit of bravado alone, indeed, would have enabled him to pay attention to anything aside from the problem of the next step; and bravado was a stranger to his cosmos then, if ever. So she had plenty of opportunity to make up her mind about him.
If her eyes were a reliable index, she found him at least interesting. At times their expression was enigmatic beyond any rending. Again they seemed openly perplexed. At all times they were warily regardful.
Once she sighed quietly with a passing look of sadness of which he was wholly unaware…
"Odd – about that fellow," he observed during a halt. "I was sure I knew him, both times – last night as well as to-day."
"Last night?" she queried with patent interest.
"Oh, yes: I meant to tell you. He was prowling round the bungalow – Ember's, I mean – when I first saw him. I chased him off, lost him in the woods, and later picked him up again just at the edge of your grounds. That's why I thought it funny that he should be over here this morning, shadowing you – as they say in detective stories."
"No wonder!" she commented sympathetically.
"And the oddest thing of all was that I should be so sure he was Drummond – until I saw – "
"Drummond!"
"Friend of mine… You don't by any chance know Drummond, do you?"
"I've heard the name."
"You must have. The papers were full of his case for a while. Man supposed to have committed suicide – jumped off Washington Bridge a week before he was to marry Sara Law, the actress?"
"Why … yes. Yes, I remember. But… 'Supposed to have committed suicide' – did you say?"
He nodded. "He may have got away with it, at that. Only, I've good reason to believe he didn't… I may as well tell you: it's no secret, although only a few people know it: Ember saw Drummond, or thinks he did, alive, in the flesh, a good half-hour after the time of his reported suicide."
"Really!" the girl commented in a stifled voice.
"Oh, for all that, there's no proof Ember wasn't misled by an accidental resemblance – no real proof – merely circumstantial evidence. Though for my part, I'm quite convinced Drummond still lives."
"How very curious!" There was nothing more than civil but perfunctory interest in the comment. "Are you ready to go on?"
And another time, when they were near the boat:
"When do you expect Mr. Ember?" asked the girl.
