Читать книгу The Best Wadsworth Camp Mysteries - Charles Wadsworth Camp - Страница 20

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One thing admitted no question. This cold was unnatural unless the state of one’s mind could affect the body so materially.

He strode to one of the windows. He flung it open. Leaning across the sill, he took deep breaths of the outside air. That, too, was cold, and a biting wind stole down from the north.

He drew his coat tighter. He tried to realise that a few hours ago he had perspired and gasped for breath in the dangerous forest. He looked at the sullen sky. A dim and formless moon was suspended above the dunes. It showed him a tiny patch of the inlet, but the water did not sparkle. From far across the inlet and the sands came the muffed pounding of the breakers.

Shivering, he faced the room again. The tarnished arabesques of the wall paper caught his eye. He leaned against the bureau with a sense of loathing. For in the flickering light of the candles the arabesques seemed to writhe and twine—like awakening snakes.

He slammed the window shut. The candles burned steadily. The arabesques were still. He crossed the room, and, conquering his distaste, ran his finger over the surface of the paper. It felt cold and damp. He confessed to no feeling of shame in doing this. As he had told Anderson, he acknowledged nothing, but he was prepared to let commonsense go by the board and to take experiences here at their face value until their causes materialised.

At present this attitude was, in a measure, defensive. At his first entrance in the room he had been aware of a stealthy sense of antagonism. He had felt that he could not find sleep between its tarnished, stained, and damp walls. Now he combated a strong desire to step out of it, to leave the house, to seek whatever there might be of contest in the open. Yet, he remembered, the only open spaces on the island were the clearings here and at the plantation house. Any struggle against the mysteries of Captain’s Island must probably take place beneath a roof of ugly memories or in the forest where an unaccountable force unleashed death on its helpless victims.

He turned from the wall. He opened the window again. Although the arabesques resumed their creeping illusion he strangled his revulsion. He placed his revolver beneath the pillow. When he was half undressed he blew out the candles. He climbed into the great bed. He surrendered himself to its soft, dank embrace.

He had only half undressed because he wished to be prepared for any eventuality. He had been sincere in telling Molly that if he was disturbed he would disturb back. Moreover, he anticipated four or five hours of wakefulness until daylight. Four or five hours of waiting. That was what Anderson had said. That was why he was so restless, why his depression had become reasonless, overwhelming. He waited. Yet for what? Anderson, it was clear, had meant apparently supernatural manifestations which came with the night and ceased at dawn.

In an undefined way Miller knew that he waited for more than that—anticipated, in fact, some exceptional adventure that would begin in this house and would end heaven knew where.

He strove uselessly to drive the premonition from his mind. Premonitions, he had always said, were an invention to annoy weak-minded people needlessly. He smiled. Had it come to the point where he was to be so classified? As a matter of fact it should be simple to go to sleep here. Determined to try, he rolled over.

He could not find a comfortable position. Always he combated a tingling desire to hurl the covers back and leap from the chilling depths of this huge bed. And when he closed his eyes the illusion of the arabesques writhed vaguely across the darkness—a circle of snakes, closing in with unsheathed tongues, ready to strike. He wished now that Anderson had never spoken of that fancy.

A sly whispering filled the room—or a hissing? It grew. It died away. It began again. Miller clenched his fists and forced himself to listen calmly, appraisingly. At last he relaxed. That at least was normally explained. The rising wind was setting the cedars in motion. Thus, he told himself, are supernatural stories born and nourished. If he had been so easily moved, what could be expected of ignorant natives like Tony? No doubt it was the type of phenomena to which Anderson and Molly had bared their nerves.

He turned and tried again to sleep, but it was impossible. He had no idea how much time had passed. He had been foolish to blow out the candles. He might have looked at his watch—

All at once he was aware of another noise—a noise he could not mistake. Some one was walking softly, either in the hall, or—it was possible, the footsteps were so nearly inaudible—in his own room, within a few feet of his bed.

He flung back the covers. He sat upright. He listened intently, wishing to be sure, unwilling to make a ridiculous mistake. But there was no doubt. Some one was in his room approaching the bed.

“Who’s there?” he muttered.

No answer came. For a moment the sound ceased. Then he heard it again retreating. Outside the whispering of the wind increased. A casement rattled in a sharper gust.

He reasoned. Could these evident footsteps be the pallid tatters of the wall paper flapping in the wind? He remembered they were near the ceiling, while this sound had come from the floor. It appeared now to be in the hall. Then Anderson, Molly, or Tony—Yet none of them would have entered his room in that stealthy fashion, or, entering, would have refused to answer.

Slipping out of bed, he tiptoed to the door. As he had agreed with Molly he had left it open only a crack. Now it stood wide. The wind, he argued, might be responsible. Yet he hurriedly pushed it to. He felt a physical aversion for the black void of the hall where the footsteps strayed.

“Andy!” he said under his breath. “Tony!”

No one answered. The house was completely silent now except for the rattling of the casements.

He returned to the bed, arguing that the footsteps had been imagination or some trickery of the wind, but he could not convince himself.

Little by little, as though the footsteps had started the train, his mind began to play with the thought of a woman’s violent death in this room. He knew practically nothing beyond the bare fact. After pampering her, Anderson and the agent had said, Noyer had killed her, had cut her throat; and that had almost certainly happened in this room, perhaps, in this bed, with the arabesques writhing in the candle-light.

He pictured the lawless slaver coming swiftly down that path through the dangerous forest; tramping up the stairs; furiously bursting through that door, which he had just now found mysteriously open; leaning over the bed; killing there that which in his uncouth way he had loved. Had she struggled in the bed? Had she had time to cry out before the great hands had tortured her throat and the knife had flashed?

The theory that the essence of tragedy lingers at the place of its making had never impressed Miller. He did not yield to it now. Yet in spite of his mental struggles, these fancies, these questions persisted. Even the thought of the girl was powerless to guide his imagination to solider ground, although he realised that his future in relation to hers depended on his conquest of a subtle force to which his present experience might, indeed, be traced. He found himself listening for the footsteps again. Were they what Molly awaited when she held her head on one side in an attitude of strained expectancy?

The footsteps did not return, but soon another sound stole into his consciousness—a slow, even, heavy dripping. This time there was no doubt. The sound was in his room, within hand’s reach, close to the head of the bed, as though—

He shuddered. He sat upright. The quick motion set the arabesques writhing behind his eyelids. He brushed his hand across his face. He made an effort to regain his sense of proportion. He would find out what that sound was. No matter how much courage it took to reach for his slippers beneath the bed in the vicinity of that sodden, suggestive dripping, he would get up. He would light the candles.

His unwilling fingers found the slippers. He stepped to the floor. He pushed through the inky blackness to the bureau.

The dripping sound followed him. He paused, the match in his hand, wondering if Noyer had heard something like that—had heard and fled from his lifeless, disfigured victim.

Then what he had half expected rang through the echoing house—the cry of a woman, full of terror, strangled, suddenly broken off.