Sinister Island by Charles Wadsworth Camp (readict books TXT) 📖

Chapter I THE DANGEROUS HABITATION

Captain’s Island is not far from civilisation as one measures space. Dealing with the less tangible medium of custom, it is—or was—practically beyond perception.

James Miller didn’t know this. When ho had thought at all of his friend Anderson’s new winter home he had pictured the familiar southern resort with hotels and cottages sheltering Hammonds peerage, and a seductive bathing beach to irritate the conservative.

That background, indeed, was given detail by his own desires. For he had received Anderson’s letter concerning the new move while still in bed with a wearisome illness. Now, after two months’ convalescence in quiet waterways, he was ready to snare pleasure where it was most alluring before returning to the North and Wall Street. So he sent a telegram from Allairville, instructing Anderson to meet him in Martinsburg and conduct him to the revels of his tropical resort. As a matter of fact it was this wire, despatched with such smiling anticipation, that became the leash by which he was drawn into the erratic, tragic, and apparently unaccountable occurrences which at the time added immeasurably to the lonely island’s evil fame.

Still it went, and Miller, ignorant of what he faced, went after it as quickly as he could, which was with the speed of a snail. It took his small cruising launch forty-eight hours, including a minimum of rest, to conquer the fifty miles between Allairville and Martinsburg. Because of this aversion of his boat to anything approximating haste he had caused the name Dart to be painted across the stern in arresting letters.

As the droll craft loafed down into the busy roadsteads of the southern metropolis this warm May morning. Miller, in perfect consonance with its bland indifference, lay in a steamer chair on the upper deck. Clothed in white flannels and smoking a pipe, he surveyed with gentle calm a petulant, unreasonable world. He smiled pleasantly at enraged tug-boat and barge captains. Crawling through the railroad drawbridge, he waved a greeting free from malice at the keeper, who, arms akimbo, chin uptilted, bawled his expectations of a train by midnight and his reasonable ambition to clear the draw before that hour.

Nor did the native, leaning against the wheel forward, respond even by a glance to these studied incivilities. His ears seemed to be occupied exclusively by the engine as capricious symptoms; his eyes, by his goal, at last within view; his hands, by the wheel as he coaxed the Dart to the urgencies of traffic.

Miller eyed the fellow approvingly. By rare good luck he had hired him down the state when he had bought this boat as the first ingredient of the doctor’s prescription for a long rest in the South. At the start the man had proved his fitness by exposing an abnormal affection for diseased gasoline motors. Since then he had served Miller acceptably as captain, engineer, deck-hand, cook, and, in a sketchy sense, valet. Moreover he knew obscure, uncharted channels. He had a special intuition for the haunts of fish and game. In the villages where they paused for supplies he out-bargained the storekeepers almost without words. Miller appreciated that it was due only to his devotion and ingenuity that the Dart at present indifferently blocked traffic in the river before Martinsburg. With the inexcusable confidence most of us bring to the contemplation of the immediate future he regretted his early parting with this admirable Crichton.

When the Dart was made fast to her appointed place at the dock Miller lowered his legs, arose, and stretched himself to his full height comfortably. He glanced at his watch. It was noon. He had wired Anderson to meet him at the boat at one o’clock. For the first time he realised he had made a thoughtless rendezvous. Why had he not mentioned an hotel? This thriving town might have offered comparative culinary splendour after the plainness to which he had abandoned himself on the Dart. As it was he must offer his hospitality to Anderson at that hour, and Anderson, no doubt, after two months of heavy luxury at his winter resort, would gratefully accept.

“Tony,” he said, “you deserve the rest of the day. Why should injustice always trouble the deserving?”

Tony, standing below, leaned his elbows on the break of the upper deck. His eyes behind the bushy brows expressed no positive emotion—certainly not chagrin or revolt.

“I’ve asked some one to meet me here at one o’clock,” Miller went on. “I must offer him luncheon unless you strike, in which case I wouldn’t be much annoyed. In fact I’d take you back tonight. Do as you wish. I’m going up-town.”

Tony lowered his bearded face and slid down the companionway. Miller stepped to the dock.

“Tony!” he called.

The native thrust his head through the hatch and waited impassively. Miller handed him some silver.

“For what we lack in case your sense of duty throttles commonsense.”

A brown hand closed over the money. The emotionless face was withdrawn.

Miller strolled through the city. After his months of exile from so familiar a setting he experienced a sense of elation at the thud of a hard pavement beneath his feet, at the cacophony of street noises, at the air of badly-guarded impatience given out by these men and women who crowded him at the crossings. It was good to be well, to be on the threshold of that vaster, more selfish hubbub of his own city. No more days and nights on the boat in lonely places, he reminded himself. And he was glad.

This was the frame of mind in which he returned to the dock to meet his first dampening and significant disappointment. He saw Tony leaning, sphinx-like, against the rail of the Dart, but there was no sign of Anderson.

“Any word from the guest?” he asked Tony as he came up.

The native drew a crumpled, soiled envelope from his pocket. He handed it over the rail.

As he took the envelope Miller recognised his friend’s writing. While he read the brief note a frown drove the satisfaction from his face, leaving bewilderment.

Anderson had commenced in his customary affectionate manner, but beyond that everything was unexpected’, puzzling.

“It is far from convenient for me to leave Molly” the letter ran; and Miller could frame no satisfactory explanation for that except the serious illness of Anderson’s wife. Yet the rest of the letter said nothing of illness; did not even suggest it.

“For heaven’s sake,” it went on, “or more strictly for our own, come down to Captain’s Island, Jim. Come this afternoon if it is humanly possible. Anchor in the inlet if you can get anybody to steer you through. The channel is hard to negotiate, but you won’t find that the chief difficulty in hiring a pilot. I’ll watch for you. If you make it I’ll row out immediately and tell you the rest. Then you can decide if you want to help us out of this mess and back to commonsense. Molly sends her anxious best.”

Miller read the letter twice before returning it to the soiled envelope. The only clear fact was that Anderson and Molly were in trouble. Anderson had written that he would tell him the rest on his arrival. But the rest of what! For he had told him nothing.

“How did this come?” he asked Tony.

The native pointed to a steamboat, diminutive and unkempt, made fast to a neighbouring dock.

“Boy brought it over,” he mumbled.

Miller glanced at his watch. Curiosity was useless. His friends needed him. He would leave at the earliest possible moment.

“This letter, Tony,” he said, “is unexpected and important. If you’ve the usual plans of seafaring men while in port banish them.”

He swung on his heel.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He hurried from the dock to a telegraph office which he had noticed during his walk. He saw only one operator on duty and he found himself the only patron. He wrote a despatch to Anderson, saying he was leaving at once, and handed it to the agent, a good-natured young fellow in his shirt sleeves.

The man glanced at the address, raised his eyes quickly to Miller’s face, and let the yellow slip flutter to the counter.

“Well!” Miller demanded.

“Can’t send that to Captain’s Island.”

“Place censored or quarantined?” Miller asked impatiently.

“Might as well be quarantined—for the yellow fever,” the agent drawled, “but the main point is there isn’t any wire there. Of course I can send a messenger boy down on the little boat to Sandport this afternoon. He might get somebody to row him across the river, and he could walk the three miles or so. Sent one down to Mr. Anderson that way yesterday. But this doesn’t seem important, and you can figure the expense.”

Miller’s preconceived notions of Captain’s Island began to crumble.

“Not worth it,” he said.

“Besides,” the agent went on, “it’s hard to get anybody to walk that island at night. Since you’re going yourself—”

Again he stared curiously and with a sort of wonder at Miller.

“I don’t want to pry, but mighty few people go—”

Miller laughed.

“It seems to me my question comes first. What’s the matter with Captain’s Island?”

The agent picked the yellow form up and handed it to Miller.

“And you ask me I—I don’t know. Nobody knows. People been asking that for a good many more years than I am old.”

Miller tore the message up. He glanced around the somnolent office.

“I’m not good at riddles either,” he said, “but if you’ll let me have this one I’ll try. You see I’m going there.”

The agent shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

“It’s this way,” he said at last. “It’s all talk, but it’s been going on a long while, as I said, and we understand it down here. Now you’re from the North. I don’t want to make myself a laughing stock!”

Miller smiled. Then he recalled the troubled tone of Anderson’s letter and his smile died,

“I promise I won’t laugh,” he said. “Of course I can guess. Superstition?”

“That’s it,” the agent answered. “The negroes and the fishermen around Sandport have given the island a bad name. They won’t go near it if they can help themselves, and even the people here have got in the habit of leaving it a wide berth. I went down one Sunday with a crowd of wild boys, and I’ve never wanted to go back—not that I saw anything. Don’t think that. But there’s a clammy, damp, unhealthy feeling about the place. I’ll say this much: if there’s such things as ghosts that’s the