CHAPTER XXVIII--THE MAN IN THE BOAT
Price took Bebita to Grasslands, handed her over to Annie and telephonedin to the Janneys. Then he left to rejoin Ferguson who was to go to theshore and find out the meaning of the shots. Price, missing the leadingcar, had decided that it had turned from the pike and scouring the sideroads in a blind chase had heard the shots, agreeing with Ferguson thatthey came from the direction of the Sound.
Ferguson went that way, driving at breakneck speed. He had almostreached the shore, felt the water's coolness, saw the wood's vista widenwhen, to avoid a deep rut, he slewed his machine to the left. The lightspenetrated a thicket, revealing behind the woven foliage, a dark, largebody, black among the tangled green. He drew up, peering at it--it wasnot a rock; its side showed smooth through the boughs. He jumped out andpushed his way through the bushes. It was a taxi, its lampsextinguished, broken branches and crushed foliage marking its track.
It gave evidence of a violent flight and a hasty desertion, careened toone side, its door open, a rug hanging over the step. He went to theback, struck a match and looked at the license tag--the number was thatof the motor he had followed. Covered by the darkness, driven deep amongthe trees, it could easily have passed unnoticed until the daylightbetrayed it.
The plan of escape revealed a new artfulness--the man had made offeither on foot or in another vehicle. It accounted for the license--heknew his pursuers would mark it and look for a car carrying that number.In the face of such a crafty completeness of detail the young man felthimself reduced to a baffled indecision. Cogitating on the variousroutes his quarry might have taken, he ran out on to the shore road andhere again halted.
Before him the Sound lay, a smooth dark floor, along which glided thesmall golden glimmerings of river craft. He looked up and down the road,discernible as a gray path between the upstanding solidity of the woodsand the flat solidity of the water. Some distance in front a black blottook shape under his exploring glance as a small house. He started thecar and ran toward it, seeing as he approached a dancing yellow spotcome from behind it in swaying passage. He stopped, the yellow spotsteadied, rose, swung aloft--a lantern in the hands of a man, halfdressed, who came toward him spying out from under the upraised glow.
Ferguson spoke abruptly:
"Did you hear shots a while ago?"
The man setting his lantern on the ground, spoke with the slow phlegm ofthe native:
"I did--close here. I bin down to the waterside seein' if I could makeout what they was."
The house was skirted by a balcony along which a second light now cameinto view; this time from a lamp carried in the hand of a woman. She waswrapped in a bed gown, a straggle of loose hair hanging round afrightened face.
"We was asleep and they woke us up. They was right off there," shejerked her head to the Sound behind her.
"From the water?" Ferguson asked.
"Sounded that way," the man took it up. "We wasn't sure at first what itwas; then they come crack, crack, one after the other, from somewheresbeyont. My wife, she said it was motor boats, said she heard 'em offacross the water. But by the time we got something on and was outside itwas over. There wasn't no more and we couldn't see nothing. I bin downon the beach lookin' round, thinkin' they might have come from there,but I ain't found no tracks or signs of anybody."
"I was wonderin'," said the woman, "if may be it was that patrolboat--the one they got this summer runnin' along the shore forthieves--That they caught a sight of one and went after him."
Ferguson was silent for a moment then said:
"Is there any place round here where a boat could be hidden, deep enoughwater for a launch?"
The man answered:
"Yes, right down the road a step there's a cove and an old dock; used tobelong to the folks that lived on the bluff but the house burned down awhile back and ain't been rebuilt and no one's used the dock since. Afeller could hide a boat there fine; it's all overgrown so you can't seeit unless you know where it is."
"I'd like to take a look at it," said Ferguson. "Come along with thelantern."
The place was only a few yards from the mouth of the wood road. Treesand shrubs sheltered it, concealing with their rank growth a smallwharf, rotted and sagging to the water line. The lantern rays revealed arecent presence, scattered leaves and twigs on the wooden planking, thelong marshy grasses showing a track from the road to the wharf's edge.
"Yes, sir," said the native, much impressed; "some one's been hereto-night and not s'long ago either. You can see where the dew's beenswep' off the grasses right to the water."
Ferguson said nothing; he now saw the whole plan of escape--the coupeleft in the woods, a short run to the cove where a boat had beenconcealed, the get-away down on across the Sound. What had the shotsmeant? Was the woman right in thinking the police patrol had come uponthe fleeing criminal? And if they had what had been the result?
Lantern in hand, the man at his heels, he crushed through the swampycopse to the shore. There his glance swept the long stretch of thewater, sewn in the distance with a pattern of moving sparks. Two ofthem, red and green, stole over the ebony surface toward him, advancingwith an even, gliding smoothness, piercing and steady, like the eyes ofa stealthily approaching animal, fixing him with a meaning scrutiny. Hesnatched up the lantern and ran for a point that jutted out in a pebblycape. Standing on its tip he raised and waved the light, letting hisvoice ring out across the stillness:
"Boat ahoy!"
The lights drew closer, their reflections stabbing down into the oilydepths, gleam below gleam. The pulsing of a muffled engine came withthem, a prow took shape, a shine of wood and brass above the lusterlesstide. Ferguson called again:
"Who are you?"
An answer rose in a man's surly voice:
"What's that to you?"
"A good deal. I'm Ferguson of Council Oaks and I'm looking for the boatthat fired on some one round here about an hour ago."
The voice replied, its tone changed to sudden conciliation:
"Oh, Mr. Ferguson; couldn't see who it was. We're what you're lookingfor--the police patrol. We have the launch here in tow."
"Have you got the man?"
"Yes, sir. He didn't answer our challenge and fired on us. We chased andgave it back to him--a running fight. One of us got him--he's dead."
"Go on to my wharf; I'll be there when you come."
On his way along the shore road he met Price, paused for a quickexplanation, and the two cars ran at a racing clip to Ferguson's wharf.The men were standing on its end when the police boat glided into thegush of light that fell from the high electric lamps at either side ofthe ship. Behind it, lifted and dropped by the languid wavelets, was alaunch, a covered shape lying on the floor.
The story of the police was quickly told. The night, dark and windless,was the kind chosen by the water thieves for their operations. The menhad been on the watch faring noiselessly with engine muffled and hoodedlamps. It was nearly the end of their run, a length of shore with fewestates, when they saw a boat glide from a part of the beach peculiarlydark and deserted. The craft carried no lights, a fact that instantlyroused their suspicions, and they waited. As it drew out for the openwater they challenged. There was no answer, but a sudden acceleration ofits speed, shooting by them like a streak for the mid reaches of theSound.
They started in pursuit, repeating their challenge and then an order tolie to. Again there was no response and they clapped on top speed andraced in its wake. They were gaining on it when, in answer to a louderhail, the man fired on them, the bullet passing between two of them andburying itself in the gunwale. They replied with a return fire, therewas a fusillade of shots, and the two boats sped in a darkling rushacross the Sound. They knew something was wrong with their opponent; hislaunch headed in a straight line swept through the wash of steamers, cutacross the bows of tugs and river craft, rocking like a cockleshell,menaced by destruction, shouts and objurgations following its madcourse. They were up with it, almost alongsid
e on the last lap. He madeno answer to their hails, sat upright and motionless, sat so when hisbow crashed against the rocks of the Connecticut shore. They found himdead, a bullet in his brain, the wheel still gripped in his hands.
Ferguson dropped into the launch and drew down the coat that had beenthrown over the body. The face, the false beard gone, was handsome, thebody large and powerful, the hands fine and well kept--it was not thetype he had expected to see. He felt in the pockets and found the moneystill in its envelope, clasped by the rubber bands. There were no otherpapers, no means of identification. After a short colloquy with the men,he and Price drove back to Council Oaks.
Price left the next morning. His presence was necessary in the city, hesaid, and he seemed preoccupied and anxious to go. He hinted atforthcoming revelations which would clear up what was still unexplained,but declared himself unable at present to say more.
When he had gone, Ferguson walked to Grasslands where he found thefamily recuperating in a relief too deep for words. Bebita was in bedstill asleep. The doctor, sent for the night before, said she wassuffering from the effects of a drug, but that rest and quiet would soonrestore her.
They collected on the balcony to hear his story. When it was over,questions answered, amazement and horror vented in various forms, Mr.Janney said he would like to walk over to the wharf and have a talk withthe police himself. Ferguson decided to go with him; there would be alot of business to be gone through, an inquest with all its unpleasantdetail.
As they rose to leave, Suzanne announced that she wanted to come too.She looked a wreck, in her hysterical jubilation forgetful of her rougeand powder; a worn little wraith of a woman whose journey to the heartof life had stripped her of all coquetry and beauty. They tried todissuade her, but, as usual, she was insistent; she wanted to see themen herself, she wanted to hear everything. On this day of thanksgivingno one had the will to thwart her, so they accepted with the best gracethey could and she walked through the woods with them.
There was a group of men on the wharf, the local police, the coroner,some of Ferguson's employees. The body had been put in the boathouse,laid on a table under a sheltering tarpaulin. Ferguson and Mr. Janneydrew off to the end of the dock in low-toned conference with theofficials. They were relieved to see that Suzanne had no mind to listen,but stayed by herself in the shade of the boathouse wall.
She leaned against it, looking out over the sparkling reaches of theSound. Her thoughts were of the dead man, close behind her there, on theother side of the wooden partition. She wondered with an awed amaze athis wild act and its dark ending. She wondered what manner of man hewas, what he was like--a human creature, unknown to her, who could wantonly to cause her such anguish.
She shot a glance over her shoulder and saw that the door of theboathouse was half open--the coroner had been in and had neglected toclose it. She looked at the men at the end of the wharf; they stood in alittle cluster, backs toward her, heads together in animated discussion.She moved from the wall, advanced on tip-toe through the slant of shade,and slipped through the open doorway.
The place was very still, its clear, varnished brownness impregnatedwith the sea's salty tang, through its windows the golden gleam of thewaves reflected in rippling lights that chased across its peakedceiling. She stole to the table where the grim shape lay and lifted thetarpaulin with a trembling hand. The other shot suddenly to her mouth,strangling a scream, and she dropped the heavy cloth as if it burnedher. Both hands went up over her face, flattened there until the nailswere empurpled, and she stood, bent as if cramped with pain, for themoment all movement paralyzed.
Ferguson, informed of all he wanted to know, turned from the others tojoin her. She was not where he had left her, and moving down the wharfhe looked about and, seeing no sign of her, decided that she had gonehome. He was passing the boathouse doorway when she came through italmost upon him.
"Good heavens!" he said angrily, "have you been in _there_?" Then,seeing her face, he caught her arm and held her. Would there ever be anend to her willfulness!
"Come home," he said, sharply, and led her away. She tottered besidehim, drooping and ghastly. As they crossed the road to the path up thebluff he could not forbear an exasperated:
"What in the name of common sense did you do that for? Didn't you knowit was not a thing for you to see?"
Her hands locked on his arm; she leaned against him lifting a haggardglance to his face. Her voice was a husky whisper:
"It's not that, Dick. It wasn't just the dead man. It was--it was--hewas my detective--Larkin!"