CHAPTER XXXVII
IN THE GLADES
"What the devil is the matter with you, Carl?" demanded Dick Sherrillirritably. "If I'd known you were going to moon under a tree andwhistle through that infernal flute half the time, I'd never havesuggested camping. Are you coming along to-night or not?"
"No. I've murdered enough wild turkeys now."
Sherrill plunged off swampwards with the guides.
Left to himself Carl laid aside his flute and sat very quiet, staringat the cloud-haunted moon which hung above the Glades. He had beendrinking and gaming heavily for weeks. Now floundering deeper anddeeper into the mire of debt and dissipation, forced to a feveredalertness by distrust of all about him, he found the weird gloom of theEverglades of a piece with the blackness of his mood. For days he hadtaken wild chances that horrified Sherrill inexpressibly; drinkingclear whiskey in the burning white tropical sunlight, tramping off intotrackless wilds without a guide, conducting himself, as Sherrillaggrievedly put it, with the general irrationality of a drunken madman.
"The climate or a moccasin will get you yet!" exclaimed Sherrillheatedly. "And it will serve you right. Or you'll get lost. And tolose your way in this infernal swamp is sure death. They used to enterrunaway niggers who came here, on the undertaker's list. I swear Iwon't tell your aunt if you do disappear. That's a job for a deafmute. And only yesterday I saw you corner a moccasin and tantalize himuntil the chances were a hundred to one that he'd get you, and then youblazed your gun down his throat and walked away laughing. Faugh!"
With the perversity of reckless madmen, however, Carl went hisfoolhardy way unharmed. But his nights were fevered and sleepless andhaunted by a face which never left him, and the locked hieroglyphics onThemar's cuff danced dizzily before his eyes.
Carl presently lighted a lantern, seated himself at the camp table andfell moodily to poring over the tormenting hieroglyphics which hadhaunted him for days.
The night was cloudy. Only at infrequent intervals the moon soaredturbulently out from the somber cloud-hills and glinted brightlythrough the live oaks overhead.
Carl had been drinking heavily since the morning, with vicious recourseto the flute when his mood was darkest. Now he felt strung to acurious electric tension, with pulse and head throbbing powerfully likea racing engine. Still there was satanic keenness in his mindto-night, a capacity for concentration that surprised him. Somewherein his head, taut like an overstrung ligament or the string of a greatviolin, something sinister droned and hummed and subtly threatened.For the hundredth time he made a systematic list of recurrent symbols,noting again the puzzling similarity of the twisted signs, but no signappeared frequently enough to do vowel work.
To-night somehow the cipher mocked and gibed and goaded him to frenzy.The mad angles pointing up and down and right and left--it wasimpossible to sort them. They danced and blurred and creptirresistibly into the wrong list.
And in error came solution. Carl glanced intently at the jumbled listand fell feverishly to working from a different viewpoint. From thecryptic snarl came presently the single English word in the cipher--hisname. The keen suspicion of his hot brain had, at last, been right.For every letter in the alphabet, four symbols had been usedinterchangeably but whether they pointed up or down or right or left,their significance was the same. There were no word divisions.
When at last Ronador's frantic message to the Baron lay before him,Carl was grateful for the quiet monastery days in Houdania with FatherJoda. They had given him an inkling of the language.
Some of the message, to be sure, was missing--for Themar had beeninterrupted--and some of it unintelligible. But clear and cold beforehis fevered eyes lay the words which marked him irrevocably for theknife of a hired assassin. There was no suggestion of sealing his lipswith gold, as in a drunken moment he had suggested in his letter. Theseal of death was safer than the seal of gold. Seeing the sinistercommand there before him, even though the knowledge was not new, Carlfelt a nameless fury rise in his reeling brain. He mustlive--live--live! he told himself fiercely. With the vivid, lovelyface of Keela tormenting him to sensual conquest, he must live nomatter what the price! How safeguard his life from the men who werehunting him?
What if Diane were to--_die_? Carl shuddered. Then the sirocco offear and hate centering about her, would blow itself out forever andhis own life would be safe, for the secret would be worthless. Thesemen--Tregar, Ronador, Themar--scrupled for vastly different reasons totake the life of a woman.
Money! Money! He must have money! And if Diane were to _die_, thegreat estate of Norman Westfall would revert to him of course; therewas no other heir. Why had he not thought of that before? In thatinstant he knew that barely a year ago the treacherous thought wouldhave been for him impossible, that slowly, insistently he had beensliding deeper and deeper into the dark abyss of degradation where allthings are possible.
There had been intrigue and dishonor of a sort in the letter toHoudania, but not this--Oh, God! not this horrible, beckoning Circewith infamous eyes and scarlet robes luring him to the uttermost pit ofthe black Inferno.
But Diane had flashed and mocked him as a child when he was sensitiveand lonely. She had always mocked the memory of his mother. Brown andlovely his cousin's face rose before him in a willful moment oftenderness--and then from the shadows came again the flash of topaz andVenetian lamps and the lovely face of Keela.
Something in Carl's haunted brain snapped. With a groan of horror andsuffering, he pitched forward upon the ground, breathing PhilipPoynter's name like an invocation against the things of evil crowdinghorribly about him.
It was Dick Sherrill who at last found him.
"Nick!" he called in horror to one of the guides. "For God's sakebring some brandy! No! he's had too much of that already. Water!Water--can't somebody hurry!"
"Leave him to me, Mr. Sherrill!" said Nick with quiet authority. Andbending over the motionless figure under the oak, he gently loosenedthe flannel shirt from the throat, laid a wet cloth upon the foreheadand fell to rubbing the rigid limbs.
Presently, with a long, shuddering sigh, Carl opened his eyes, staredat the scared circle of faces about him and instantly tried to rise.
"Don't, don't, Carl," exploded Dick Sherrill solicitously. "Lie still,man! I was afraid something would get you."
Carl fell back indifferently.
Presently with a slight smile he sat up again.
"I'm all right now, Dick," he insisted. "It's nothing at all. I'vehad something like it once before. Don't mention it to my aunt. She'dlikely fuss."
Dick readily promised.
"Nevertheless," he insisted, "we're going to break camp in the morning.This infernal bog's got on my nerves. There are more creepy, oozythings in that cypress swamp over there than a man can afford to meetin the dark. To the devil with your wild turkeys, Nick! Quail andduck are good enough for me."
The camp wagons drove back to Palm Beach in the morning. Carl was veryquiet and evaded Sherrill's anxious eyes. He seemed to be broodingmorosely over some inner problem which frequently furrowed his foreheadand made him very restless.
"Cheer up!" exclaimed Dick reassuringly. "You'll feel better when youget a shower and some other clothes. As for me, I'm going to huntfield mice and ground doves from now on. Lord, Carl, I'll never forgetthat beastly swamp. Did I tell you that last night, after all ourdiscomfort, I got nothing but a smelly buzzard? Ugh!" Dick's huntinginterest was steadily on the wane. He finally came down to birds andhumble bees, though when they started he had talked magnificently ofalligators and bears.
Carl laughed and relapsed into brooding silence.
A little later on the Sherrill porch he found himself listening withtired patience to Aunt Agatha's opinion of camping in the Everglades.
"What with your Esquimaux," she puffed tearfully, "and the immigrantwho wasn't an immigrant--and I must say this once, Carl, for all Ipromised to ask no further questions, that you never a
ttempted toexplain that performance to my satisfaction--the young man with theeye, you know, and the immigrant with his feet on the lace spread--tosay nothing at all of Diane's losing herself in the flat-woods over acart wheel of flame, I wonder I'm not crazy, I do indeed! And ridingoff to Jacksonville with the Indian girl, for all I've lain awake nightafter night seeing her scalp lying by the roadside! It was bad enoughto have you in those horrible Glades, but Diane--"
"Aunt Agatha," said Carl patiently, "what in thunder are you driving atanyway?"
"Why," said Aunt Agatha in aggrieved distress, "Diane's gone and leftJohnny at some funny little hamlet and she's gone into the Evergladesto a Seminole village with the Indian girl. There's a letter in myroom. You can read for yourself."
Aunt Agatha burst into tears. Carl patiently essayed a comforting wordof advice and followed Dick indoors to seek relief in less calamitousshowers. Before he did so, however, he read his cousin's letter.
For that night and the night following Carl did not sleep. On themorning of the third day, after a careless inquiry he went to West PalmBeach and interviewed some traders who were reported to be on the eveof an expedition into the Everglades with a wagonload of scarlet calicoand beads to trade for Indian products.
The fourth day he was missing.