CHAPTER IX
_The Light on the Water_
Let it be noted carefully that so far Merritt had not the slightestsuspicion that the terror of Midlingham was quick over. Meirion. Lewishad watched and shepherded him carefully. He had let out no suspicion ofwhat had happened in Meirion, and before taking his brother-in-law tothe club he had passed round a hint among the members. He did not tellthe truth about Midlingham--and here again is a point of interest, thatas the terror deepened the general public cooperated voluntarily, and,one would say, almost subconsciously, with the authorities in concealingwhat they knew from one another--but he gave out a desirable portion ofthe truth: that his brother-in-law was "nervy," not by any means up tothe mark, and that it was therefore desirable that he should be sparedthe knowledge of the intolerable and tragic mysteries which were beingenacted all about them.
"He knows about that poor fellow who was found in the marsh," saidLewis, "and he has a kind of vague suspicion that there is something outof the common about the case; but no more than that."
"A clear case of suggested, or rather commanded suicide," said Remnant."I regard it as a strong confirmation of my theory."
"Perhaps so," said the doctor, dreading lest he might have to hear aboutthe Z Ray all over again. "But please don't let anything out to him; Iwant him to get built up thoroughly before he goes back to Midlingham."
Then, on the other hand, Merritt was as still as death about the doingsof the Midlands; he hated to think of them, much more to speak of them;and thus, as I say, he and the men at the Porth Club kept their secretsfrom one another; and thus, from the beginning to the end of the terror,the links were not drawn together. In many cases, no doubt, A and B metevery day and talked familiarly, it may be confidentially, on othermatters of all sorts, each having in his possession half of the truth,which he concealed from the other. So the two halves were never puttogether to make a whole.
Merritt, as the doctor guessed, had a kind of uneasy feeling--itscarcely amounted to a suspicion--as to the business of the marsh;chiefly because he thought the official talk about the railwayembankment and the course of the river rank nonsense. But finding thatnothing more happened, he let the matter drop from his mind, and settledhimself down to enjoy his holiday.
He found to his delight that there were no sentries or watchers tohinder him from the approach to Larnac Bay, a delicious cove, a placewhere the ashgrove and the green meadow and the glistening brackensloped gently down to red rocks and firm yellow sands. Merrittremembered a rock that formed a comfortable seat, and here heestablished himself of a golden afternoon, and gazed at the blue of thesea and the crimson bastions and bays of the coast as it bent inward toSarnau and swept out again southward to the odd-shaped promontory calledthe Dragon's Head. Merritt gazed on, amused by the antics of theporpoises who were tumbling and splashing and gamboling a little way outat sea, charmed by the pure and radiant air that was so different fromthe oily smoke that often stood for heaven at Midlingham, and charmed,too, by the white farmhouses dotted here and there on the heights of thecurving coast.
Then he noticed a little row-boat at about two hundred yards from theshore. There were two or three people aboard, he could not quite makeout how many, and they seemed to be doing something with a line; theywere no doubt fishing, and Merritt (who disliked fish) wondered howpeople could spoil such an afternoon, such a sea, such pellucid andradiant air by trying to catch white, flabby, offensive, evil-smellingcreatures that would be excessively nasty when cooked. He puzzled overthis problem and turned away from it to the contemplation of the crimsonheadlands. And then he says that he noticed that signaling was going on.Flashing lights of intense brilliance, he declares, were coming from oneof those farms on the heights of the coast; it was as if white fire wasspouting from it. Merritt was certain, as the light appeared anddisappeared, that some message was being sent, and he regretted that heknew nothing of heliography. Three short flashes, a long and verybrilliant flash, then two short flashes. Merritt fumbled in his pocketfor pencil and paper so that he might record these signals, and,bringing his eyes down to the sea level, he became aware, withamazement and horror, that the boat had disappeared. All that he couldsee was some vague, dark object far to westward, running out with thetide.
Now it is certain, unfortunately, that the _Mary Ann_ was capsized andthat two schoolboys and the sailor in charge were drowned. The bones ofthe boat were found amongst the rocks far along the coast, and the threebodies were also washed ashore. The sailor could not swim at all, theboys only a little, and it needs an exceptionally fine swimmer to fightagainst the outward suck of the tide as it rushes past Pengareg Point.
But I have no belief whatever in Merritt's theory. He held (and stillholds, for all I know), that the flashes of light which he saw comingfrom Penyrhaul, the farmhouse oh the height, had some connection withthe disaster to the _Mary Ann_. When it was ascertained that a familywere spending their summer at the farm, and that the governess was aGerman, though a long naturalized German, Merritt could not see thatthere was anything left to argue about, though there might be manydetails to discover. But, in my opinion, all this was a mere mare'snest; the flashes of brilliant light were caused, no doubt, by the sunlighting up one window of the farmhouse after the other.
Still, Merritt was convinced from the very first, even before thedamning circumstance of the German governess was brought to light; andon the evening of the disaster, as Lewis and he sat together afterdinner, he was endeavoring to put what he called the common sense of thematter to the doctor.
"If you hear a shot," said Merritt, "and you see a man fall, you knowpretty well what killed him."
There was a flutter of wild wings in the room. A great moth beat to andfro and dashed itself madly against the ceiling, the walls, the glassbookcase. Then a sputtering sound, a momentary dimming of the lamp. Themoth had succeeded in its mysterious quest.
"Can you tell me," said Lewis as if he were answering Merritt, "whymoths rush into the flame?"
* * * * *
Lewis had put his question as to the strange habits of the common mothto Merritt with the deliberate intent of closing the debate on death byheliograph. The query was suggested, of course, by the incident of themoth in the lamp, and Lewis thought that he had said, "Oh, shut up!" ina somewhat elegant manner. And, in fact Merritt looked dignified,remained silent, and helped himself to port.
That was the end that the doctor had desired. He had no doubt in his ownmind that the affair of the _Mary Ann_ was but one more item in the longaccount of horrors that grew larger almost with every day; and he wasin no humor to listen to wild and futile theories as to the manner inwhich the disaster had been accomplished. Here was a proof that theterror that was upon them was mighty not only on the land but on thewaters; for Lewis could not see that the boat could have been attackedby any ordinary means of destruction. From Merritt's story, it must havebeen in shallow water. The shore of Larnac Bay shelves very gradually,and the Admiralty charts showed the depth of water two hundred yards outto be only two fathoms; this would be too shallow for a submarine. Andit could not have been shelled, and it could not have been torpedoed;there was no explosion. The disaster might have been due tocarelessness; boys, he considered, will play the fool anywhere, even ina boat; but he did not think so; the sailor would have stopped them.And, it may be mentioned, that the two boys were as a matter of factextremely steady, sensible young fellows, not in the least likely toplay foolish tricks of any kind.
Lewis was immersed in these reflections, having successfully silencedhis brother-in-law; he was trying in vain to find some clue to thehorrible enigma. The Midlingham theory of a concealed German force,hiding in places under the earth, was extravagant enough, and yet itseemed the only solution that approached plausibility; but then againeven a subterranean German host would hardly account for this wreckageof a boat, floating on a calm sea. And then what of the tree with theburning in it that had appeared in the garden there a few weeks
ago, andthe cloud with a burning in it that had shown over the trees of theMidland village?
I think I have, already written something of the probable emotions ofthe mathematician confronted suddenly with an undoubted two-sidedtriangle. I said, if I remember, that he would be forced, in decency,to go mad; and I believe that Lewis was very near to this point. He felthimself confronted with an intolerable problem that most instantlydemanded solution, and yet, with the same breath, as it were, denied thepossibility of there being any solution. People were being killed in aninscrutable manner by some inscrutable means, day after day, and oneasked "why" and "how"; and there seemed no answer. In the Midlands,where every kind of munitionment was manufactured, the explanation ofGerman agency was plausible; and even if the subterranean notion was tobe rejected as savoring altogether too much of the fairytale, or ratherof the sensational romance, yet it was possible that the backbone of thetheory was true; the Germans might have planted their agents in some wayor another in the midst of our factories. But here in Meirion, whatserious effect could be produced by the casual and indiscriminateslaughter of a couple of schoolboys in a boat, of a harmlessholiday-maker in a marsh? The creation of an atmosphere of terror anddismay? It was possible, of course, but it hardly seemed tolerable, inspite of the enormities of Louvain and of the _Lusitania_.
Into these meditations, and into the still dignified silence of Merrittbroke the rap on the door of Lewis's man, and those words which harassthe ease of the country doctor when he tries to take any ease: "You'rewanted in the surgery, if you please, sir." Lewis bustled out, andappeared no more that night.
The doctor had been summoned to a little hamlet on the outskirts ofPorth, separated from it by half a mile or three-quarters of road. Onedignifies, indeed, this settlement without a name in calling it ahamlet; it was a mere row of four cottages, built about a hundred yearsago for the accommodation of the workers in a quarry long sincedisused. In one of these cottages the doctor found a father and motherweeping and crying out to "doctor bach, doctor bach," and two frightenedchildren, and one little body, still and dead. It was the youngest ofthe three, little Johnnie, and he was dead.
The doctor found that the child had been asphyxiated. He felt theclothes; they were dry; it was not a case of drowning. He looked at theneck; there was no mark of strangling. He asked the father how it hadhappened, and father and mother, weeping most lamentably, declared theyhad no knowledge of how their child had been killed: "unless it was thePeople that had done it." The Celtic fairies are still malignant. Lewisasked what had happened that evening; where had the child been?
"Was he with his brother and sister? Don't they know anything about it?"
Reduced into some sort of order from its original piteous confusion,this is the story that the doctor gathered.
All three children had been well and happy through the day. They hadwalked in with the mother, Mrs. Roberts, to Porth on a marketingexpedition in the afternoon; they had returned to the cottage, had hadtheir tea, and afterwards played about on the road in front of thehouse. John Roberts had come home somewhat late from his work, and itwas after dusk when the family sat down to supper. Supper over, thethree children went out again to play with other children from thecottage next door, Mrs. Roberts telling them that they might have halfan hour before going to bed.
The two mothers came to the cottage gates at the same moment and calledout to their children to come along and be quick about it. The two smallfamilies had been playing on the strip of turf across the road, just bythe stile into the fields. The children ran across the road; all ofthem except Johnnie Roberts. His brother Willie said that just as theirmother called them he heard Johnnie cry out:
"Oh, what is that beautiful shiny thing over the stile?"