The hours of the following day dragged as if on leaden wings. With nerves worn to single strands, Lucile was now literally living on excitement. The fact that she was to go with the mystery child on a night’s trip which held promise of excitement and possible adventure in it, went far toward keeping her eyes open and on their task, but for all this, the hours dragged.
At the library she was startled to note the worn and haggard look on Harry Brock’s face. She wanted to ask him the cause of it and to offer sympathy, but he appeared to actually avoid her. Whenever she found some excuse to move in his direction, he at once found one for moving away to another corner of the library.
“Whatever can be the matter with him?” she asked herself. “I wonder if I could have offended him in any way. I should hate to lose his friendship.”
Night came at last and with it the elevated station and Tyler street.
With her usual promptness, the child led them to a surface car. They rode across the city. From the car they hurried to an inter-urban depot of a steam line.
“So it’s to be out of the city,” Florence whispered to Lucile. “I hadn’t counted on that. It may be more than we bargained for.”
“I hope not,” shivered Lucile. “I’ve been all warmed up over this trip the whole day through and now when we are actually on the way I feel cold as a clam and sort of creepy all over. Do—do you suppose it will be anything very dreadful?”
“Why, no!” laughed Florence. “Far as feelings go mine have been just the opposite to yours. I didn’t want to go and felt that way all day, but now it would take all the conductors in the service to put me off the train.”
With all the seriousness of a grown-up, the child purchased tickets for them all, and now gave them to the conductor without so much as suggesting their destination to the girls.
“I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on my way,” whispered Florence with a smile.
“Seems strange, doesn’t it?” said Lucile.
“Sh,” warned Florence.
The child had turned a smiling face toward them.
“I think it’s awfully good of you to come,” she beamed. “It’s a long way and I’m afraid we’ll be late getting home, but you won’t have to do anything, not really, just go along with me. It’s a dreadfully lonesome place. There’s a long road you have to go over and the road crosses a river and there is woods on both sides of the river. Woods are awful sort of spooky at night, don’t you think so?”
Florence smiled and nodded. Lucile shivered.
“I don’t mind the city,” the child went on, “not any of it. There are always people everywhere and things can’t be spooky there, but right out on the roads and in the woods and on beaches where the water goes wash-wash-wash at night, I don’t like that, do you?”
“Sometimes I do,” said Florence. “I think I’m going to like it a lot to-night.”
“Oh, are you?” exclaimed the child. “Then I’m glad, because it was awfully nice of you to come.”
“A long road, woods and a river,” Florence repeated in Lucile’s ear. “Wherever can we be going? I supposed we would get off at one of the near-in suburbs.”
“Evidently,” said Lucile, forcing a smile, “we are in for a night of it. I’m going to catch forty winks. Call me when we get to the road that crosses the river in the woods.” She bent her head down upon one hand and was soon fast asleep.
She was awakened by a shake from Florence. “We’re here. Come on, get off.”
What they saw on alighting was not reassuring. A small red depot, a narrow, irregular platform, a square of light through which they saw a young man with a green shade over his eyes bending before a table filled with telegraph instruments; this was all they saw. Beyond these, like the entrance to some huge, magical cave, the darkness loomed at them.
The child appeared to know the way, even in the dark, for she pulled at Florence’s sleeve as she whispered:
“This way please. Keep close to me.”
There was not the least danger of the girls’ failing to keep close, for, once they had passed beyond sight of that friendly square of light and the green-shaded figure, they were hopelessly lost.
True, the darkness shaded off a trifle as their eyes became more accustomed to it; they could tell that they were going down a badly kept, sandy road; they could see the dim outline of trees on either side; but that was all. The trees seemed a wall which shut them in on either side.
“Trees are spooky at night,” Lucile whispered as she gripped her companion’s arm a little more tightly.
“Where are we?” Florence whispered.
“I couldn’t guess.”
“Pretty far out. I counted five stops after the lights of the city disappeared.”
“Listen.”
“What is it?”
“Water rushing along somewhere.”
“Might be the river. She said there was one.”
“Rivers rush like that in the mountains but not here. Must be the lake shore.”
“Hist—”
The child was whispering back at them. “We are coming to the bridge. It’s a very long bridge, and spooky. I think we better tiptoe across it, but we mustn’t run. The gallopin’ goblins’ll come after us if we do; besides, there’s an old rusty sign on the bridge that says, ‘No trotting across the bridge.’”
The next moment they felt a plank surface beneath their feet and knew they were on the bridge. It must have been a very ancient bridge. This road had never been remodelled to fit the need of automobiles. The planks rattled and creaked in an ominous manner in spite of their tiptoeing.
“I wonder how much more there is of it,” Florence groaned in a whisper when they had gone on tiptoes for what seemed an endless space of time. “If my toes don’t break, I’m sure my shoes will.”
As for Lucile, she was thinking her own thoughts. She was telling herself that if it were not for the fact that this night’s performance gave promise of being a link in the chain of circumstances which were to be used in dragging the gargoyle’s secret from its lair, she would demand that the child turn about and lead them straight back to the city.
Since she had faith that somehow the mystery was to be solved and her many worries and perplexities brought to an end, she tiptoed doggedly on. And it was well that she did, for the events of this one night were destined to bring about strange and astounding revelations. She was not to see the light of day again before the gargoyle’s secret would be fully revealed, but had she known the series of thrilling events which would lead up to that triumphant hour, she would have shrunk back and whispered, “No, no, I can’t go all that way.”
Often and often we find this true in life; we face seemingly unbearable situations—something is to happen to us, we are to go somewhere, be something different, do some seemingly undoable thing and we say, “We cannot endure it,” yet we pass through it as through a fog to come out smiling on the other side. We are better, happier and stronger for the experience. It was to be so with Lucile.
The bridge was crossed at last. More dark and silent woods came to flank their path. Then out of the distance there loomed great bulks of darker masses.
“Mountains, I’d say they were,” whispered Lucile, “if it weren’t for the fact that I know there are none within five hundred miles.”
For a time they trudged along in silence. Then suddenly Florence whispered:
“Oh, I know! Dunes! Sand dunes! Now I know where we are. We are near the lake shore. I was out here somewhere for a week last summer. By day it’s wonderful; regular mountains of sand that has been washed up and blown up from the bed of the lake. Some of them are hundreds of feet above the level of the lake. There are trees growing on them and everything.”
“But what are we doing out here?”
“I can’t guess. There is a wonderful beach everywhere and cottages here and there.”
“But it’s too late for summer cottages. They must all be closed.”
“Yes, of course they must.”
Again they trudged on in silence. Now they left the road to strike away across the soft, yielding surface of the sand. They sank in to their ankles. Some of the sand got into their shoes and hurt their feet, but still they trudged on.
The rush of waters on the shore grew louder.
“I love it,” Florence whispered. “I like sleeping where I can hear the rush of water. I’ve slept beside the Arctic Ocean, the Behring Sea and the Pacific. I’ve slept by the shore of this old lake. Once in the Rocky Mountains I climbed to the timber-line and there slept for five nights in a tent where all night long you could hear the rush of icy water over rocks which were more like a stony stairway than the bed of a stream. It was grand.
“When I am sleeping where I can hear the rush of water I sometimes half awaken at night and imagine I am once more on the shore of the Arctic or in a tent at the timber-line of the Rockies.”
While she was whispering this they felt the sand suddenly harden beneath their feet and knew that they had reached the beach.
“You know,” the child whispered suddenly and mysteriously back at them, “I don’t like beaches at night. I lived by one when I was a very little girl. There was a very, very old woman lived there too. She told me many terrible stories of the sea. And do you know, once she told me something that has made me afraid to be by the shore at night. It makes it spooky.”
She suddenly seized Lucile’s arm with a grip that hurt while she whispered, “That’s why I wanted you to come.
“She told me,” she went on, “that old woman told me,” Lucile fancied she could see the child’s frightened eyes gleaming out of the night, “about the men who were lost at sea; brave seamen who go on ships and brave soldiers too. Their bodies get washed all about on the bottom of the water; the fishes eat them and by and by they are all gone. But their souls can’t be eaten. No sir, no one can eat them. The old woman told me that.”
The child paused. Her breath was coming quick. Her grip tightened on Lucile’s arm as she whispered:
“And sometimes I’m afraid one of their souls will get washed right up on the sand at night. That’s what frightens me so. What do you think it would look like? What do you? Would it be all yellow and fiery like a glowworm or would it be just white, like a sheet?”
“Florence,” whispered Lucile, with a shiver, “tell her to be quiet. She’ll drive me mad.”
But there was no need. There is much courage to be gained by telling our secret fears to others. The child had apparently relieved her soul of a great burden, for she tramped on once more in silence.
Several moments had passed when she suddenly paused before some dark object which stood out above the sand.
“A boat,” whispered Lucile.
“If you’ll just help me,” said the child, “we can push it into the water.”
“What for?” Florence asked.
“Why, to go in, of course. It’s the only way.”
For a moment the two girls stood there undecided. Then Florence whispered:
“Oh, come on. It’s not rough. Might as well see it through.”
A moment later they were listening to the creak of rusty oarlocks and the almost inaudible dip-dip of the oars as the child herself sent the boat out from the beach to bring it half about and skirt the shore.
The boat was some sixteen feet long. A clinker-built craft, it was light and buoyant, but for all that, with three persons aboard, the rowing of it was a tax on the strength of the child’s slender arms. To add to her troubles, the water began to rubber up a bit. Small waves came slap-slapping the boat’s side. Once a bit of spray broke in Florence’s face.
“Here,” she whispered, “it’s too heavy for you. Let me have the oars, then you tell me which way to go.”
“Straight ahead, only not too close in. There’s a wall.”
“A wall?” Lucile thought to herself. “Sounds like a prison. There’s a parole camp out here somewhere. It can’t be!” she shuddered. “No, of course not. What would that old man and child have to do with prisons?”
Then, suddenly an ugly thought forced its way into her mind. Perhaps after all these two were members of a gang of robbers. Perhaps a member of the gang had been in prison and was at this moment in the parole camp. What if this turned out to be a jail-breaking expedition?
“No, no!” she whispered as she shook herself to free her mind of the thought.
“There’s the wall,” whispered Florence, as a gray bulk loomed up to the right of them.
They passed it in silence. To Lucile they seemed like marines running a blockade in time of war.
But Florence was busy with other thoughts. That wall seemed vaguely familiar to her. It was as if she had seen it in a dream, yet could not recall the details of the dream.
A storm was brewing off in the west. Now and then a distant flash of lightning lighted up the surrounding waters. Of a sudden one of these, more brilliant than the rest, lighted up the shore, which, at a word from the child, they were now nearing. What Florence saw was a small, artificially dredged buoy with a dock and large boathouse at the back.
Instantly what had been a dream became a reality. She had seen that wall and the little buoy and boathouse as well. Only the summer before she had spent two nights and a day with a party on the dunes. They had hired a motor boat and had skirted the shore. This place had been pointed out to her and described as the most elaborate and beautiful summer cottage on the shore.
“Why,” she whispered, with a sigh of relief, “this is the summer cottage of your friend, R. Stanley Ramsey, Jr., the young man you saw at Frank Morrow’s place and whom we saw later at the mystery cottage. This isn’t any brigandish thieving expedition. It is merely a business trip. Probably the old man has sold him one of his books.”
Lucile’s first reaction to this news was intense relief. This was not a jail-breaking expedition; in fact, was not to be in any way an adventure. But the next instant doubt came.
“What would that young man be doing in a summer cottage at this time of year?” she demanded. “All the cottages must have been closed for nearly a month. Society flies back to the city in September. Besides, if it’s plain business, why all this slipping in at the lake front instead of passing through the gate?”
Florence was silent at that. She had no answer.
“Does seem strange,” she mused. “There’s a very high fence all about the place, but of course there must be a gate.”
The next instant the boat grated on the sandy beach and they were all climbing out.
Lucile shivered as she caught sight of a large, low, rambling building which lay well up from the shore.
“What next?” she whispered to herself.
The storm was still rumbling in the west. The sky to the east was clear. Out from the black waters of the lake the moon was rolling. Its light suddenly brightened up the shore. The girls stared about them.
Up from the beach a little way was an affair which resembled an Indian tepee. It was built of boards and covered with birch bark. Its white sides glimmered in the moonlight. Through the shadows of trees and shrubbery they made out a rustic pavilion and beyond that the cottage which was built in rustic fashion as befits a summer residence of a millionaire, although little short of a mansion.
“Wouldn’t you like to see the inside of it?” breathed Florence. “I’ve always wondered what such a place was like.”
“Yes,” whispered Lucile, “but I’d prefer daylight.”
They had been following the child. She had led them as far as a rustic arbor. Built of cedar poles with the bark left on, this presented itself as an inviting place to rest.
“You stay here,” the child whispered. “I’ll come back.”
She vanished into the shadows.
“Well!” whispered Lucile.
“What do you make of it?” Florence asked.
“Nothing yet.”
“Is someone here to meet her or is she entering the place to get something?”
“Don’t know. I—”
Lucile stopped short. “Did you see that?” she whispered tensely as she gripped her companion’s arm.
“What?”
“There was a flash of light in the right wing of the building, like the flicker of a match.”
“She can’t have reached there yet.”
“No.”
“Do you think we should warn her? I can’t help thinking she’s going to break into the place.”
“If she is, she should be caught. If we think she is, perhaps we should notify the police.”
“The police? In such a place? You forget that we are many miles from the city and two or three miles from even a railroad station. Guess we’ll have to see it through.”
“Let’s do it then?”
The two girls rose and began making their way stealthily in the direction the child had taken.
Now and again they paused to listen. Once they heard a sound like the creaking of a door. Lucile caught a second flash of light.
They paused behind two pine trees not ten feet from the side entrance.
The wind rustled in the pine trees. The water broke ceaselessly on the shore. Otherwise all was silence.
“Creepy,” whispered Lucile.
“Ghostly,” Florence shivered.
“I believe that door’s ajar.”
“It is.”
“Let’s creep up close.”
The next moment found them flattened against the wall beside the door.
This door stood half open. Suddenly they caught a flash of light. Leaning far over to peer within, they saw the child bent over before a huge bookcase. The room, half illumined by her flashlight, was a large lounging room. The trimmings were rustic and massive. Beamed ceiling and heavy beams along the walls were flanked by a huge fireplace at the back. The furniture was in keeping, massive mission oak with leather cushions on chairs.
“What a wonderful place!” Florence whispered. “What wouldn’t one give to have it for a study?”
The child had taken three books from the shelves. All these she replaced. She was examining the fourth when Lucile whispered, “That’s the one she has come for.”
“Why?”
“The light fell full upon the inside of the cover. I saw the gargoyle there.”
The prediction proved a true one, for, after carefully closing the case, the child switched off the light.
Scarcely realizing what they were doing, the girls lingered by the door. Then suddenly Lucile realized their position. “She’ll be here in a second,” she whispered.
They turned, but not quickly enough, for of a sudden a glare of light from a powerful electric flashlight blinded them while a masculine voice with a distinctly youthful ring to it demanded:
“Who’s there?”
To their consternation, the girls felt the child bump into them as she backed away and there they all stood framed in a circle of light.
The glaring light with darkness behind it made it impossible for them to see the new arrival but Lucile knew instantly from the voice that it was the millionaire’s son.
For a full moment no one spoke. The tick-tock of a prodigious clock in one corner of the room sounded out like the ringing of a curfew.
“Oh! I see,” came at last in youthful tones from the corner; “just some girls. And pretty ones, too, I’ll be bound. Came to borrow a book, did you? Who let you in, I wonder. But never mind. Suppose you’re here for a week-end at one of the cottages and needed some reading matter. Rather unconventional way of getting it, but it’s all right. Just drop it in the mail box at the gate when you’re done with it.”
The girls suddenly became conscious of the fact that the child was doing her best to push them out of the door.
Yielding to her backward shoves, they sank away into the shadows and, scarcely believing their senses, found themselves apparently quite free to go their way.
“That,” breathed Florence, “was awful decent of him.”
“Decent?” Lucile exploded. “It—it was grand. Look here,” she turned almost savagely upon the child, “you didn’t intend to give that book back but you’re going to do it. You’re going to put it in that mail box to-night.”
“Oh, no, I’m not,” the child said cheerfully.
“You—you’re not?” Lucile stammered. “What right have you to keep it?”
“What right has he? It does not belong to him. It belongs to Monsieur Le Bon.”
“Why, that’s nonsense! That—” Lucile broke off suddenly. “Look!” she exclaimed. “The boat’s gone!”
It was all too true. They had reached the beach where they had left the boat. It had vanished.
“So we are prisoners after all,” Florence whispered.
“And, and he was just making fun of us. He knew we couldn’t get away,” breathed Lucile, sinking hopelessly down upon the sand.
“Oh, brace up!” exclaimed Florence, a note of impatience creeping into her voice. “We’ll get out of this place some way. Perhaps the boat wasn’t taken. Perhaps it has—”
She stopped to stare away across the water.
“I believe it’s out there away down the beach. Look, Lucile. Look sharp.”
The moon had gone behind a small cloud. As it came out they could see clearly the dark bulk of the boat dancing on the water, which was by now roughening up before the rising storm.
“It’s out there,” exclaimed Florence. “We failed to pull it ashore far enough. There is a side sweep to the waves that carried it out. We must get it.”
“Yes, oh, yes, we must!” the child exclaimed. “It wasn’t mine; it was borrowed.”
“You borrow a lot of things,” exclaimed Florence.
“Oh, no, indeed. Not many, not hardly any at all.”
“But, Florence, how can we get it?” protested Lucile.
“I’m a strong swimmer. I swam a mile once. The boat’s out only a few hundred yards. It will be easy.”
“Not with your clothes on.”
Florence did not answer. She threw a glance toward the millionaire’s cottage. All was dark there.
“Here!” Lucile felt a garment thrust into her hands, then another and another.
“Florence, you mustn’t.”
“It’s the only way.”
A moment later Florence’s white body gleamed in the moonlight as she raced away down the beach to gain the point nearest the boat.
To the listening ears of Lucile and the child there came the sound of a splash, then the slow plash, plash, plash of a swimmer’s strokes. Florence was away and swimming strong. But the wind from off a point had caught the boat and was carrying it out from shore, driving it on faster than she knew.
Confident of her ability to reach the goal in a mere breath of time, she struck out at once with the splendid swing of the Australian crawl. Trained to the pink of perfection, her every muscle in condition, she laughed at the wavelets that lifted her up only to drop her down again and now and again to dash a saucy handful of spray in her face. She laughed and even hummed a snatch of an old sea song. She was as much at home in the water as in her room at the university.
But now, as she got farther from the shore, the waves grew in size and force. They impeded her progress. The shore was protected by a rocky point farther up the beach. She was rapidly leaving that protection.
Throwing herself high out of the water, she looked for the boat. A little cry of consternation escaped her lips. She had expected to find it close at hand. It seemed as far away as when she had first seen it.
“It’s the wind off the point,” she breathed. “It’s taking it out to sea. It—it’s going to be a battle, a real scrap.”
Once more she struck out with the powerful stroke which carries one far but draws heavily upon his emergency fund of energy.
For three full moments she battled the waves; then, all but breathless, she slipped over on her back to do the dead man’s float.
“Just for a few seconds. Got to save my strength, but I can’t waste time.”
Now for the first time she realized that there was a possibility that she would lose this fight. The realization of what it meant if she did lose, swept over her and left her cold and numb. To go back was impossible; the wind and waves were too strong for that. To fail to reach the boat meant death.
Turning back again into swimming position, she struck out once more. But this time it was not the crawl. That cost too much. With an easy, hand-over-hand swing which taxed the reserve forces little more than floating, she set her teeth hard, resolved slowly but surely to win her way to the boat and to safety.
Moments passed. Long, agonizing moments.
Lucile on the shore, by the gleam of a flare of lightning, caught now and then a glimpse of the swimmer. Little by little she became conscious of the real situation. When it dawned upon her that Florence was in real peril, she thought of rushing to the cottage and calling to her assistance any who might be there. Then she looked at the bundle of clothing in her arms and flushed.
“She’d never forgive me,” she whispered.
Florence, still battling, felt the spray break over her, but still kept on the even swing. Now and again, high on the crest of a wave, she saw the boat. She was cheered by the fact that each time it appeared to loom a little larger.
“Gaining,” she whispered. “Fifty yards to go!”
Again moments passed and again she whispered, “Gaining. Thirty yards.”
A third time she whispered, “Twenty yards.”
After that it was a quiet, muscle-straining, heart-breaking, silent battle, which caused her very senses to reel. Indeed at times she appeared conscious of only one thing, the mechanical swing of her arms, the kick, kick of her feet. They seemed but mechanical attachments run by some electrical power.
When at last the boat loomed black and large on the crest of a wave just above her she had barely enough brain energy left to order her arms into a new motion.
Striking upward with her right hand, she gripped the craft’s side. The next instant, with a superhuman effort, without overturning it she threw herself into the boat, there to fall panting across a seat.
“Wha—what a battle!” she gasped. “But I won! I won!”
For two minutes she lay there motionless. Then, drawing herself stiffly up to a sitting position, she adjusted the oars to their oarlocks and, bending forward, threw all her magnificent strength into the business of battling the waves and bringing the boat safely ashore.
There are few crafts more capable of riding a stormy sea than is a clinker-built rowboat. Light as a cork, it rides the waves like a seagull. Florence was not long in finding this out. Her trip ashore was one of joyous triumph. She had fought a hard physical battle and won. This was her hour of triumph. Her lips thrilled a “Hi-le-hi-le-hi-lo” which was heard with delight by her friends on land. Her bare arms worked like twin levers to a powerful engine, as she brought the boat around and shot it toward shore.
A moment for rejoicing, two for dressing, then they all three tumbled into the boat to make the tossing trip round the wall to shore on the other side.
For the moment the book tightly pressed under the child’s arm was forgotten. Florence talked of swimming and rowing. She talked of plans for a possible summer’s outing which included days upon the water and weeks within the forest primeval.
As they left the boat on the beach, they could see that the storm was passing to the north of them. It had, however, hidden the moon. The path through the forest and across the river was engulfed in darkness.
Once more the child prattled of haunts, spooks, and goblins, but for once Lucile’s nerves were not disturbed. Her mind had gone back to the old problems, the mystery of the gargoyle and all the knotty questions which had come to be associated with it.
This night a new mystery had thrust its head up out of the dark and an old theory had been exploded. She had thought that the young millionaire’s son might be in league with the old man and the child in carrying away and disposing of old and valuable books, but here was the child coming out to this all but deserted cottage at night to take a book from the young man’s library.
“He hasn’t a thing in the world to do with it,” she told herself. “He—”
She paused in her perplexing problem to grip her companion’s arm and whisper, “What was that?”
They were nearing the plank bridge. She felt certain that she heard a footstep upon it. But now as she listened she heard nothing but the onrush of distant waters.
“Just your nerves,” answered Florence.
“It was not. I was not thinking of the child’s foolish chatter. I was thinking of our problem, of the gargoyle’s secret. Someone is crossing the bridge.”
Even as she spoke, as if in proof of her declaration, there came a faint pat-pat-pat, as of someone moving on the bridge on tiptoe.
“Someone is shadowing us,” Lucile whispered.
“Looks that way.”
“Who is it?”
“Someone from the cottage perhaps. Watching to see what the child does with the book. She must take it back.”
“Yes, she must.”
“It might be,” and here even stout-hearted Florence shuddered, “it might be that someone had shadowed us all the way from the city.”
“The one who followed me the night I got caught in that wretched woman’s house, and other times?”
“Yes.”
“But he couldn’t have gone all the way, not up to the cottage. He couldn’t get through the fence and there was no other boat.”
“Well, anyway, whoever it is, we must go on. Won’t do any good standing here shivering.”
Once more they pressed into the dark and once more Lucile resumed her attempt to disentangle the many problems which lay before her.