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

play across the barrier of death that we are afraid, almost unknown to our reasoning selves, of the possibility of conviction. For that matter the climate of this place, and its lonely, depressing atmosphere are enough to foster superstition. That required no trickery. That was all in his favour. And your talk of what you had suffered here, Tony’s overwhelming belief and fear, and Morgan’s carefully planned allusions—creeping allusions from the sanest, the most material of types!—All that was enough to make one doubt, even though he told himself, as I did, that there was no doubt.”

“We tried, Jim,” Anderson answered. ” We turned every stone. His scheme was too carefully planned, too subtle for us.”

“Yes, and as Molly says, it was not easy to suspect Morgan. He was too convincing a fellow victim. Then when we did turn from the unknown it was only to the unseen, to those oystermen that we knew were not far off in the marshes, and the possibility of some connection between the fisherman and them.”

“But how, Jim,” Molly asked, “could you have foreseen anything like this?”

“Andy told me the history of Noyer and his island,” he answered. “Since the days of the buccaneers, when they dared bring their ships in here to careen them, it has offered a refuge for lawlessness. He also spoke of that fisherman’s tub, moving silently through the water at night. That meant a new, expensive engine in a worthless boat; and no one was allowed on that boat. Noyer could smuggle slaves in here unmolested after the law had made it a deadly crime, because, as Andy explained, the island was completely isolated. He was king of it and of this inlet and of this lonely coast. Is the island any less isolated now than it was then? Isn’t the dweller in this plantation house as much of a king now as Noyer was before the war—provided, of course, that the coquina house doesn’t shelter strangers? Morgan had heard the history of the place, and, since he was out for that sort of thing, it suggested the ideal opportunity—everything. There is only a third rate revenue officer in Martinsburg, and this coast has seen no smuggling since before the war. The island has been uninhabited since then. Now a respectable northern family makes la winter home of it. There wasn’t the slightest ground for suspicion. It was ideal except for you and Molly. Your renting of the coquina house was the fly in the ointment. And you must confess it was hard on Morgan when both places had stood empty for fifty years. You can imagine his fury. He had to get you out of that house and off the island.”

“Yes,” Anderson agreed, “from his point of view we had to go. He had to have a clear field. But, Jim, you heard yourself there in the coquina house!”

“Yes, but inevitably that was the lever he’d use—the supernatural for which the island was notorious, with its rotten loneliness to back it, and the decayed, unhealthy atmosphere of the coquina house. You see he had time after he heard you were coining to arrange the trickery of your house to his fancy. He did it cleverly. Since you discovered nothing, we’ll have to grant him that.”

He glanced at the girl.

“Perhaps we can be guided to the tools. But I think probably in that thicket back of the kitchen—”

He stepped to the table and fingered the jewellery.

“He had to take chances. He was ready to go any length. There’s more profit in this stuff, you know, than there ever was in flesh and blood. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there was larger merchandise—furs, for instance. He was the man to do it on a huge scale, to squeeze the last drop from his opportunity.”

“Then where—” Anderson began.

“Certainly not in the house. It has no cellar, and he had to keep it free for your friendly visits. I’m afraid we’ll never see that evidence. It was probably stored in the slave quarters, in the ones he had repaired. The fire—”

He broke off, looking at Tony. Understanding flashed from the native’s eyes. He wanted to speak.

“What is it,Tony?”

The native’s lips parted. He pointed towards the ruined slave quarters.

“It was kept there,” he said.

“How can you be sure of that?” Miller asked.

“I saw it. I didn’t know then.”

“Tony! You idiot! And you never spoke! When?”

“Th—the night I was caught in the woods. I don’t know how that happened, but—”

Miller glanced significantly at Anderson.

“He was caught, as he calls it, after he had seen enough to give the whole game away. But why didn’t he know? Why did he see no one? Tony, why didn’t you tell me you had discovered the loot?”

“I only saw big packing cases. I guessed it was furniture they hadn’t unpacked. I didn’t think any more about it ‘til now.”

“Tell us how it happened. Talk now. Make yourself talk.”

The native swayed from foot to foot, embarrassed, unaccustomed and unhappy in the centre of the stage.

“I was waiting for you at the end of the avenue. It was light then. I wasn’t afraid. I reckoned I’d stand outside and peek through the window—they tell such stories about the quarters, you know. And it was daylight. I sorter dared myself. I went over. The window was broken. An old rag hung over it. I pushed it away. There were these packing cases. There was writing on them. I was going to read that, but somebody was coming out of the kitchen and down the avenue.”

He stopped and wet his lips.

“Go on,” Miller urged.

“That’s all. That’s all I saw.”

“All you saw! But how did you get there in the woods, practically unconscious, unable to move!”

“I told you,” he answered. “A little after that it got dark and I was frightened. I started down the path to the boat. I don’t know.”

“But what happened before that—after you had looked in the window? Who was it disturbed you by coming out of the kitchen?”

“The woman—the cook.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“Yes.”

“Well—what!”

“She told me Mr. Morgan had said I was to have a jolt of whiskey.”

Miller grasped Anderson’s arm.

“That’s it! Of course he had been watched. And you drank it! Did you drink it all?”

“Oh, I ain’t thought much of that. Maybe half. I’m not much of a whiskey drinker.”

“Half of it, you see! It worked slowly. He wasn’t drugged blind. Probably he lost himself for only a few minutes. They caught him in the woods and bound him in case he should come out of it before the snake had finished him. He began to come out. That wouldn’t have made any difference, but they heard the girl and me talking by the ruins. They didn’t know how much she was telling me. It was probably Morgan’s man and the fisherman. They may have been unarmed. Perhaps they thought I might charge down the path prepared for them. They didn’t dare risk it. It was easier to throw Morgan down and let their share in the smuggling come out than to face a murder charge. So they flung his cords off. It was the looped snake he heard rattling. That’s why Morgan rushed out to the boat the next morning—to find out what I knew. He saw he was safe.”

He smiled mirthlessly.

“By and by, Tony, you’ll be ashamed to look a ghost in the face. You ought to be ready now to go to Sandport. Are you?”

The man nodded sheepishly.

“That’s right,” Anderson said. “This was evidently to be a big haul. The authorities ought to be warned. They might catch the man and possibly those alleged brothers in the river or the marshes.”

“Take Morgan’s’ launch,” Miller directed, “and swing around to the beach where we left the dingy. The fire’s gone to the right. You ought to find the path open to the river end of the island. Take the boat you hired this afternoon and rouse Sandport. Tell them to send a fast launch to Martinsburg with the news, and to do what they can themselves.”

When Tony had gone, still shame-faced but reluctant in spite of it, Miller walked over to the girl. He touched her shoulder hesitatingly.

“I am sorry,” he said. “But you see what we know already.”

She turned. Her eyes were red from weeping. Her lips drooped.

“You were there that night,” he said softly. “You warned me not to go through the path, therefore you knew what they were doing with Tony.”

She did not answer. He spread his arms helplessly.

“I don’t want to believe these things.”

She spoke. Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

“I wasn’t waiting—to warn you at first.”

He sat on the edge of the sofa.

“Then you didn’t know it was to be done.”

“No. I knew other things, but I didn’t know that. While I waited I saw him stumble down the path. I saw them follow swiftly with the snake in a loop. It came to me all at once how the other man had died,”

“You must have known those snakes were kept there.”

“They told me the fisherman caught them to sell their skins in Martinsburg. They are valuable. I believed that. I wanted to save the man, but you were the only one to whom I could turn, and that meant probably killing him—my uncle. But when you came I only thought of saving you. I knew if you went down that path and discovered them they would try to kill you, too.”

“Yes,” Miller said, “they would have done that if they could. It would have been necessary.”

“But murder!” Anderson said. “These cunning preparations for death, always ready, always waiting!”

“Essential from Morgan’s point of view,” Miller said. “He regretted it, but it was that or get out and let the whole scheme go to blazes. Until he drove you off the island he had to be prepared. He couldn’t keep your household from his under the circumstances of your loneliness and propinquity without arousing suspicion at the start. Therefore, if any of you stumbled on the evidence that would ruin him and send the lot of them to jail, your silence had to be assured. He had used one of the island’s curses, its superstition, to help the climate drive you out. For death, if it was necessary, he chose the other, its poisonous snakes. If any one was found dead of snake-bite in such a place, why should he or any man be suspected? He didn’t miss the value of a single card, but I’ll do him the credit of saying he hoped he wouldn’t have to play that one. But you wouldn’t be driven out. Then the other day Jake saw too much, and his friends, the cook and the man, clinked glasses with him.”

“Horrible!” Molly said; “and if she hadn’t told us, guided us, you, too, Jim—”

“Yes,” he answered softly. “I know.”

He turned back to the girl.

“But when you came to the beach the next morning you evaded my questions. You told me things that were not quite true.”

She sat up. The colour came back to her face.

“Yon can’t misunderstand that now—The struggle, the dreadful uncertainty of the road I ought to follow! I hoped to persuade you to leave the island, for I knew you would try to find out, and sooner or later they would kill you, I tried to make myself tell you everything, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t. He was my uncle—the only father I have ever known. I was given to him a baby, when my mother died. And I loved him. We were happy until this trouble in New York.”