CHAPTER VII
After the dinner hour Nealman came for me, in the room just off the hallfrom his own that he had designated for my use. I'd never seen him inquite so gay a humor. His eyes sparkled; happiness rippled in his voice.His tone was more companionable too, lacking that faint but unmistakableair of patronage it had always previously held. He had never forgotten,until now, that he was the employer, I the employee. Now his accent andmanner was one of equality, and he addressed me much as he had addressedhis wealthy guests.
He had been drinking; but he was not in the least intoxicated. Perhapshe had been stimulated, very slightly. He wore a dinner coat with whitetrousers.
"Killdare, I want you to come downstairs," he said. "Some of my friendswant to talk to you about shootin' and fishin'. They're keen to knowwhat their prospects are."
"I'd like to," I answered. "But I'll have to come as I am. I haven't adinner coat----"
"Of course come as you are."
His arm touched mine, and he headed me down the hallway to the stairs.Then we walked side by side down the big, wide stairway to the bigliving-room.
Already I heard the sound of the guests' laughter. As I went further thehall seemed simply ringing with it. There could be no further doubt ofthe success of Nealman's party. Evidently his distinguished guests hadthrown all dignity to the winds, entering full into the spirit of play.
The glimpse of the big living-room only verified this first impression.The guests were evidently in that wonderful mood of merriment that isthe delight and ambition of all hosts, but which is so rarely obtained.Most men know the doubtful temper of a mob. Few had failed to observethat the same psychology extends to the simplest social gatherings. Howoften stiffness and formality haunt the drawing-room or dining-table,where only merriment should rule! How many times the social spiritwholly fails to manifest itself. To-night, evidently, conditions werejust right, and hilarity ruled at Kastle Krags.
As I came in Joe Nopp--the portly man with the clear, gray eyes--wastelling some sort of an anecdote, and his listeners were simply shoutingwith laughter. Major Dell and Bill Van Hope were shooting craps on thefloor, ten cents a throw, carrying on a ridiculous conversation with thedice. A big phonograph was shouting a negro song from the corner.
There was a slight lull, however, when Nealman and I came in. Van Hopespoke to me first--he was the only one of the guests I had met--and theothers turned toward me with the good manners of their kind. In a momentNealman had introduced me to Joe Nopp's listeners and, an instant later,to Major Dell.
"Mr. Killdare is down here doing some work in zoology for hisuniversity," Nealman explained, "and he's agreed to show you chaps whereto find game and fish. He knows this country from A to Izzard."
I held the center of the floor, for a while, as I answered theirquestions; and I can say truly I had never met, on the whole, abetter-bred and more friendly company of men. They wanted to know allabout the game in the region, what flies or lures the bass were taking,as to the prevalence of diamond-backs, and if the tarpon were strikingbeyond the natural rock wall. In their eagerness they were like boys.
"You'll talk better with a shot of something good," Nealman told me atlast, producing a quart bottle. "Have a little Cuban cheer."
The bottle contained old Scotch, and its appearance put an end to allserious discussion. From thence on the mood of the gathering was everlighter, ever happier; and I merely sat and looked on.
"The question _ain't_," Hal Fargo said of me with considerable emphasis,"whether he knows where the turkeys are, but whether or not he knows hiscollege song!"
I pretended ignorance, but soon Van Hope and Nealman were singing "ACow's Best Friend" at the top of their voices, while Nopp tried to drownthem out with "Fill 'em up for Williams."
Even now it could not be said that any of the group were intoxicated.Fargo was certainly the nearest; his cheeks were flushed and his speechhad that reckless accent that goes so often with the first stages ofdrunkenness. The distinguished Pescini was only animated and fanciful,Van Hope and Marten perhaps slightly stimulated. For all the charm oftheir conversation I couldn't see that Nopp or Major Dell were receivingthe slightest exhilaration from their drinks.
But the spirit of revelry was ever higher. These men were on a holiday,they had left their business cares a thousand miles to the north, mostlythey were tried companions. None of us was aware of the passing of time.I saw at once that my presence was not objectionable to the party, so Ilingered long after the purpose for which I had been brought among themhad been fulfilled--purely for the sake of entertainment. I had neverseen a frolic of millionaires before, and needless to say I enjoyedevery moment of it.
In the later hours of night the revellers ranged further over the house.Joe Nopp was in the billiard room exhibiting fancy shots and pretendingto receive the plaudits of a great multitude; Pescini and Van Hope werein conversation on the veranda, and Fargo was wholly absent andunaccounted for. I had missed Marten, the financier, for a moment; buthis reappearance was the signal for a fresh rush to the living-room.
The whole party met him with a yell. In the few moments of his absencehe had wrought a startling change in his appearance. Over his shouldershe had thrown a gayly colored Indian blanket, completely hiding his trimdinner coat. He had tied a red cloth over his head and waxed the pointsof his iron-gray mustache until they stood stiff and erect, giving anappearance of mock ferocity to his face. A silver key-ring and his owngold signet dangled from his ears, tied on with invisible black thread.And to cap the climax he carried a long, wicked-looking carving-knifebetween his teeth.
Of course he was Godfrey Jason himself--the same character I hadportrayed in the invitations. Fargo made him do a Spanish dance to theclang of an invisible tambourine.
Some of the gathering scattered out again, after his dramaticappearance, drifting off on various enterprises and as the hour nearedmidnight only four of us were left in the drawing-room. Marten stood inthe center, still in his ridiculous costume. Van Hope, Nealman, Pesciniand myself were grouped about him. And it might have been that in thesong that followed Pescini too slipped away. I know that I didn't seehim immediately thereafter.
With a little urging Marten was induced to sing Samuel Hall--a stirringold ballad that quite fitted his costume. He had a pleasant baritone, hesung the song with indescribable spirit and enthusiasm, and it wasdecidedly worth hearing. Indeed it was the very peak of the evening--amoment that to the assembled guests must have almost paid them for thelong journey.
"_For I shot a man in bed, man in bed-- For I shot a man in bed, and I left him there for dead, With a bullet through his head-- Damn your eyes!_"
But the song halted abruptly. Whether he was at the middle of the verse,a pause after a stanza, or even in the middle of a chord I do not know.On this point no one will ever have exact knowledge. Marten stoppedsinging because something screamed, shrilly and horribly, out toward thelagoon.
The picture that followed is like a photograph, printed indelibly on mymind. Marten paused, his lips half open, a strange, blank look ofamazement on his face. Nealman stared at me like a witless man, but Isaw by his look that he was groping for an explanation. Van Hope stoodpeculiarly braced, his heavy hands open, beads of perspiration on histemples. Whether Pescini was still with us I do not know. I tried toremember later, but without ever coming to a conclusion. He had beenstanding behind me, at first, so I couldn't have seen him anyway. Ibelieved, however, without knowing why, that he walked into the hall atthe beginning of the song.
The sound we had heard, so sharp and clear out of the night, sopenetrating above the mock-ferocious words of the song, was utterlybeyond the ken of all of us. It was a living voice; beyond that nodefinite analysis could be made. Sounds do not imprint themselves sodeeply upon the memory as do visual images, yet the remembrance of it,in all its overtones and gradations, is still inordinately vivid; and Ihave no doubt but that such is the case with every man that heard it.
It was a high, rather sharp, full-lunged utterance, not in the leastsubdued. It had the unrestrained, unguarded tone of an instinctiveutterance, rather than a conscious one--a cry that leaped to the lips insome great extremity or crisis. Yet it went further. Every man of usthat heard it felt instinctively that its tone was of fear and agonyunimagined, beyond the pale of our ordered lives.
"My God, what's that?" Van Hope asked. Van Hope was the type of man thatyields quickly to his impulses.
None of us answered him for a moment. Then Nealman turned, ratherslowly. "It sounded like the devil, didn't it?" he said. "But it likelywasn't anything. I've heard some devilish cries in the couple of weeksI've been here--bitterns and owls and things like that. Might have beena panther in the woods."
Marten smiled slowly, rather contemptuously. "You'll have to do betterthan that, Nealman. That wasn't a panther. Also--it wasn't an owl. We'dbetter investigate."
"Yes--I think we had better. But you don't know what hellish sounds someof these swamp-creatures can make. We'll all be laughing in a minute."
His tone was rather ragged, for all his reassuring words, and we knew hewas as shaken as the rest of us. A door opened into the hall--evidentlysome of the other guests were already seeking the explanation of thatfearful sound.
It seemed to all of us that hardly an instant had elapsed since thesound. Indeed it still rang in our ears. All that had been said hadscarcely taken a breath. We rushed out, seemingly at once, into thevelvet darkness. The moon was incredibly vivid in the sky.
We passed into a rose-garden, under great, arching trees, and now wecould see the silver glint of the moon on the lagoon. The tide wasgoing out and the waters lay like glass.
Through the rifts in the trees we could see further--the stretchingsands, gray in the moonlight, the blue-black mysterious seas beyond.What forms the crags took, in that eerie light! There was little ofreality left about them.
We heard some one pushing through the shrubbery ahead of us, and hestopped for us to come up. I recognized the dark beard and mustache ofPescini. "What was it?" he asked. Excitement had brought out adeep-buried accent, native to some South European land. "Was it furtheron?"
"I think so," Nealman answered. "Down by the lagoon."
He joined us, and we pushed on, but we spread out as we neared the shoreof the lagoon. Some one's shadow whipped by me, and I turned to findMajor Dell.
The man was severely shaken. "My God, wasn't that awful!" he exclaimed."Who is it--you, Killdare?" He stared into my face, and his own lookedwhite and masque-like in the moonlight. Then all of us began to search,up and down the shore of the lagoon.
In the moonlight our shadows leaped, met one another, blended and racedaway; and our voices rang strangely as we called back and forth. Butthe search was not long. Van Hope suddenly exclaimed sharply--an audibleinhalation of breath, rather than an oath--and we saw him bending over,only his head and shoulders revealed in the moonlight. He stood justbeside the craggy margin of the lagoon.
"What is it?" some one asked him, out of the gloom.
"Come here and see," Van Hope replied--rather quietly, I thought. In amoment we had formed a little circle.
A dead man lay at our feet, mostly obscured in the shadow of the cragsof the lagoon. We simply stood in silence, looking down. We knew that hewas dead just as surely as we knew that we ourselves were living men. Itwas not that the light was good; that there was scarcely any light atall. We knew it, I suppose, from the huddled position of his form.
Joe Nopp scratched a match. He held it perfectly steadily. The firstthing it showed to me was a gray face and gray hair, and a stain thatwas not gray, but rather ominously dark, on the torn, white front of theman's evening shirt. Nealman peered closely.
"It's my butler, Florey," he said.