Viola's first movement was of concealment—to toss over the scattered letters on her desk a lace shawl she had been wearing earlier in the evening. Then satisfied that should the unknown knocker prove to be some one whom she might admit—her Aunt Mary or one of the maids—satisfied that no one would, at first glance, see the letters which might mean nothing or much, Viola asked in a voice that slightly trembled:
“Who is it?”
“I did not mean to disturb you,” came the answer, and with a sense of relief Viola recognized the voice of Colonel Ashley. “But I have just returned from New York, and, seeing a light under your door, I thought I would-report, as it were.”
“Oh, thank you-thank you!” the girl exclaimed, relief evident in her voice.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” the colonel went on, as he stood outside the closed door. “Has anything happened since I went away?”
“No—no,” said Viola, rather hesitatingly. “There is nothing new to tell you. I was sitting up—reading.”
Her glance went to the desk where the letters were scattered.
“Oh,” answered the colonel. “Well, don't sit up too late. It is getting on toward morning.”
“Have you anything to tell me, Colonel Ashley?” asked Viola. “Did you discover anything?”
There was silence on the other side of the door for a moment, and then came the answer, given slowly:
“No, nothing to report. I will have a talk with you in the morning.”
And then the footsteps of the detective were heard, lessening in their sound, as he made his way to his room.
Viola, perplexed, puzzled, and bewildered, went back to her desk. She took up the letters again. The torn one with its strange reference: “As members of the same—”
What could it be? Was it some secret society to which her father and Gerry Poland belonged, the violation of the secrets of which carried a death penalty?
No, it could not be anything as sensational as that. Clearly the captain was in love with her—he had frankly confessed as much, and Viola knew it anyhow. She was not at all sure whether he loved her for her position or because she was good to look upon and desirable in every way.
As for her own heart, she was sure of that. In spite of the fact that she had tried to pique him that fatal day, merely to “stir him up,” as she phrased it, Viola was deeply and earnestly in love with Harry Bartlett, and she was sure enough of his feeling toward her to find in it a glow of delight.
Then there was in the letter the hint of a threat. “Let me hear from you by the twenty-third, or—”
“Oh, what does it mean? What does it mean?” and Viola bent her weary head down on the letters and her tears stained them. Puzzled as she was over the contents of the letters—torn and otherwise—which she had found hidden in the drawer of the private safe, Viola Carwell was not yet ready to share her secret with her Aunt Mary or Colonel Ashley. These two were her nearest and most natural confidants under the circumstances.
“I would like to tell Harry, but I can't,” she reasoned, when she had awakened after a night of not very refreshing slumber. “Of course Captain Poland could explain—if he would. But I'll keep this a secret a little longer. But, oh! I wonder what it means?”
And so, when she greeted Colonel Ashley at the breakfast table she smiled and tried to appear her usual self.
“I did not hear you come in,” said Miss Carwell, as she poured the coffee.
“No, I did not want to disturb any one,” answered the colonel. “I saw a light under Miss Viola's door, and reported myself to her,” he went on. “But I don't imagine you slept much more than I did, for your eyes are not as bright as usual,” and he smiled at the girl.
“Aren't they?” countered Viola. “Well, I did read later than I should. But tell me, Colonel Ashley, are you making any progress at all?”
He did not answer for a moment. He seemed very much occupied in buttering a piece of roll—trying to get the little dab of yellow in the exact center of the white portion. Then, when it was arranged to his satisfaction, he said:
“I am making progress, that is all I can say now.”
“And does that progress carry with it any hope that Harry Bartlett will be proved innocent?” asked Viola eagerly.
“That I can not say—now. I hope it will, though.”
“Thank you for that!” exclaimed Viola earnestly.
Miss Carwell said nothing. She had her own opinion, and was going to hold to it, detectives or no detectives.
“Will you send Shag to me?” the colonel requested a maid, as he arose from the table. “Tell him we are going fishing.”
“Isn't there anything you can do—I mean toward—toward the—case?” faltered Viola. “Not that I mean—of course I don't want to seem—”
“I understand, my dear,” said the colonel gently. “And I am not going fishing merely to shirk a responsibility. But I have to think some of these puzzles out quietly, and fishing is the quietest pastime I know.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” Viola hastened to add. “I shouldn't have said anything. I wish I could get quiet myself. I'm almost tempted to take your recipe.”
“Why don't you?” urged the colonel. “Come along with me. I can soon teach you the rudiments, though to become a finished angler, so that you would be not ashamed to meet Mr. Walton, takes years. But I think it would rest you to come. Shall I tell Shag to fit you out with one of my rods?”
Viola hesitated a moment. This might give her an opportunity for talking with the colonel in secret and confidence. But she put it aside.
“No, thank you,” she answered. “I'll go another time. I must stop at the office and leave some bills that have come here to the house. Mr. Blossom attends to the payment.”
“Let me leave them for you,” offered the colonel. “I have to go into town for some bait, and I can easily stop at the office for you.”
“If you will be so good,” returned Viola, and she got the bundle of bills—some relating to Mr. Carwell's funeral and others that had been mailed to the house instead of to the office.
The colonel might have sent Shag to purchase the shedder crabs he was going to use for bait that day in fishing in the inlet, and the colored servant might have left the bills. But the colonel was particular about his bait, and would let none select it but himself. Consequently he had Jean Forette drive him in, telling Shag to meet him at a certain dock where they would drop down the inlet and try for “snappers,” young bluefish, elusive, gamy and delicious eating.
“You have not yet found a place?” asked the colonel of the chauffeur, as they rolled along.
“No, monsieur—none to my satisfaction, though I have been offered many. One I could have I refused yesterday.”
“You liked it with Mr. Carwell, then?”
“Truly the situation was in itself delightful. But I could not manage the big car as he liked, and we had to part. There was no other way.”
The detective narrowly observed the driver beside whom he sat. Jean did not look well. He had much of the appearance of the “morning after the night before,” and his hand was not very steady as he shifted the gear lever.
“How much longer have you to stay here, Jean?”
“About two weeks. My month will be up then.”
“And then you go—”
“I do not know, monsieur. Probably to New York. That is a great headquarters.”
“So I believe.”
“If monsieur should hear of a family that—”
“Yes, I'll bear you in mind, Jean. You are steady and reliable, I presume?” and the colonel smiled.
“I have most excellent letters!” he boasted, and for the moment he seemed to rouse himself from the sluggishness that marked him that morning.
“I'll bear it in mind,” said the colonel again.
But as they drove on, and Colonel Ashley noted with what exaggerated care Jean Forette passed other cars—giving them such a wide berth that often his own machine was almost in the ditch—the impression grew on the detective that the Frenchman was not as skillful as he would have it believed.
“He drives Like an amateur, or a woman out alone in her machine for the first time,” mused the colonel. “He'd never do for a smart car. Wonder what ails him. He wasn't drunk last night by any means, and yet—”
They reached the town, and paused at the only place where there was any congestion of traffic—where two main seashore highways crossed in the center of Lakeside. Jean held the runabout there so long, waiting for other traffic to pass, that the officer who was on duty called:
“What's the matter—going to sleep there?”
Then Jean, with a start, threw in the clutch and shot ahead.
“That's queer,” mused the colonel. “He seems afraid.”
The purchase of the shedder crabs was gone into carefully, and having questioned the bait-seller as to the best location in the inlet, the detective again got into the machine and was driven to the office of the late Horace Carwell. It was a branch of the New York office, and thither, every summer, came LeGrand Blossom and a corps of clerks to manage affairs for their employer.
Colonel Ashley, who by this time was known to the office boy at the outer gate, was admitted at once.
“Mr. Blossom is at the telephone,” said the lad, “but you can go right in and wait for him.”
This the colonel did, having left Jean outside in the car.
The telephone in LeGrand Blossom's private office was in a booth, put there to get it away from the noise of traffic in the street outside. And, as the boy had said, Blossom was in this booth as Colonel Ashley entered.
It so happened that the chief clerk was standing in the booth with his back turned to the main door, and did not see the colonel enter. And the latter, coming in with easy steps, as he always went everywhere, heard a snatch of the talk over the telephone that made him wonder.
Though the little booth was meant to keep sounds from entering, as well as coming out, the door was not tightly closed and as LeGrand Blossom spoke rather loudly Colonel Ashley heard distinctly.
“Yes,” said the head clerk over the wire, “I'll pay the money tonight sure. Yes, positive.” There was a period of waiting, while he listened, and then he went on: “Yes, on the Allawanda. I'll be there. Yes, sure! Now don't bother me any more.”
Colonel Ashley, through the glass door of the telephone booth, saw LeGrand Blossom make a move as though to hang up the receiver. And then the detective turned suddenly, and swung back, as though he had entered the room at the moment Blossom had emerged from the booth.
“Oh!” exclaimed the head clerk, and, for a second, he seemed nonplused. But Colonel Ashley took up the talk instantly.
“I will keep you but a minute,” he said. “Miss Viola asked me to leave these bills for you. I came in to town to buy some bait. There they are. I'm going fishing,” and before LeGrand Blossom could answer the colonel was saying good-bye and making his way out.
“I wonder,” mused the colonel, as he started for the car where Jean awaited him, “what or who or where the Allawanda is? I must find out.”
He found further cause for wonder as he started off in the car with the French chauffeur for the boat dock, at the conduct of Jean himself.
For the man appeared to be a wholly different person. His face was all smiles, and there was a jaunty air about him as though he had received good news. His management of the car, too, left nothing to be desired. He started off swiftly, but with a smoothness that told of perfect mastery of the clutch and gears. He took chances, too, as he dashed through town, cutting corners, darting before this car, back of the other until, used as the colonel was to taxicabs in New York, he held his breath more than once.
“What's the matter—in a hurry?” he asked Jean, as they narrowly escaped a collision.
“Oh, no, monsieur, but this is the way I like to drive. It is much more—what you call pep!”
“Yes,” mused the colonel to himself, “it's pep all right. But I wonder what put the pep into you? You didn't have it when we started out. Some French dope you take, I'll wager. Well, it may put pep into you now, but it'll take the starch out of you later on.”
Jean left the colonel at the dock, whither Shag had already made his way, coming in a more prosaic trolley car from The Haven, and soon they were ready to row down the inlet in a boat.
“Shall I call for you?” asked Jean, as he prepared to drive back.
“No,” answered the colonel, “I can't tell what luck I'll have. We'll come home when it suits us.”
“Very good, monsieur.”
And so the colonel went fishing, and his thoughts were rather more on the telephone talk he had overheard than on his rod and line.
Contrary to the poor luck that had held all week, so the dockman said, the colonel's good luck was exceptional. Shag had a goodly string of snappers of large size to carry back with him.
“How'd you do it?” asked the boatman, as he made fast the skiff.
“Oh, they just bit and I hauled 'em in,” said the colonel. “By the way,” he went on, “is there a place around here called Allawanda?”
“Yes, there's a little village named that, about ten miles back in the country,” said the boatman.
“Nothing there, though, but a few houses and one store.”
“Oh, I thought it might be quite a place.”
“No, and nobody'd know it was there if there wasn't a boat around here named after it.”
“Is there a boat called that?” asked the colonel, and he tried to keep the eagerness out of his voice.
“Yes. The ferryboat that runs from Lakeside to Loch Elarbor is named that. Seems that one of the men in the company that owns it used to live at Allawanda when he was a boy, and he called the boat that. It's an old tub of a ferry, though, about like the town itself, I guess. Well, you sure did have good luck!”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed the colonel, and his luck was better than the boatman guessed, and of a different kind.
It was in pursuance of this same luck that caused the colonel, later that day, when the shadows of evening were falling, to take his limp satchel and slip out of the house. He went afoot to the ferry dock, and when the Allawanda floundered in like a porpoise he went on board. It was his first visit to this part of the inlet that separated Lakeside from Loch Harbor, and this means of getting to the yachting center was seldom used by any guests of The Haven. They went around by the highway in automobiles.
“Well,” mused the colonel, as he went to the men's cabin with his limp valise, “I hope Mr. Blossom keeps his promise and comes here to-night. I shall be interested in noting to whom he pays the money.”
Then, seeing that the little cabin of the ramshackle boat was deserted at that hour, the colonel went to a dark corner, and from it emerged, a little later, with a beard on that would have done credit to the most orthodox inhabitant of New York's Ghetto.
Still the colonel did not look like a Jew, and he was not going to attempt that character. He made his way to the stern of the craft, where he could watch all who came aboard, and finding a deck hand who was sweeping, said:
“I'm not feeling very well. Thought maybe a ride back and forth across the inlet would do me good if I stayed out in the air. So if you see me here don't think I'm trying to beat my fare. Here's a dollar, you may keep the change.”
“Thanks—ride all you like,” said the man. At five cents a trip, with the boat stopping at midnight, there would still be a good tip in it for him. The colonel ensconced himself in a dark corner and waited.
The first two trips over and back were fruitless as far as his object was concerned. But just as the Allawanda was about to pull out for her third voyage across the inlet, there came on board a woman, with a shawl so closely wrapped about her that her features were completely hidden. There were only a few oil lamps on the old-fashioned craft, and the illumination was poor.
The colonel thought there was something vaguely familiar about the figure, but he was not certain. He tried to get near enough to her, in a casual walk up and down the deck, to view her countenance, but, either by accident or design, she turned away and looked over the rail. He was close enough, however, to note that the shawl was of fine texture and of a peculiar pattern.
Retiring again to his corner in the stern of the boat, and noting that the woman kept her place there, Colonel Ashley waited in patience. And he had his reward.
The Allawanrda was whistling to tell the deck hands to cast off the mooring ropes, when LeGrand Blossom came running down the inclined gangway and got on board. He seemed in a hurry and excited, and, apparently unaware of the presence of the detective in the dark corner, he went directly to the woman in the shawl. The boat began to move from her slip.
“Did you think I was never coming?” asked LeGrand Blossom.
“No, I was detained,” the woman answered, and at the sound of her voice Colonel Ashley started and uttered a smothered exclamation. “I but just arrived,” the woman went on. “Did you bring it?”
“Hush! Yes. Not so loud. Some one may hear you.”
“There is no one here. One man, with a heavy beard, passed by me as I came on board. At first I thought it was you, disguised, but when I saw it was not I kept to myself. There is no one here.”
“I hope not,” murmured LeGrand Blossom, as he looked cautiously around. The after deck was but dimly lighted.
For a time the woman and man talked in tones so low that the detective could hear nothing, and he dared not leave his hidden corner to come closer.
But, just as the Allawanda was nearing her slip on the other side, the man spoke in louder tones. “And so we come to the end!” he said.
“No, please don't say that!” begged the woman.
“I must,” Blossom answered. “We can't go on this way any longer. Here is what I promised you. It is all I can raise, and I had a hard time doing that. Every one is suspicious, and that detective is all eyes and ears. It is the best I can do. You must not bother me any more.”
The lights from a passing boat fell on the couple as they stood close to the rail, and, from his vantage point in the darkness, the colonel saw LeGrand Blossom hand the woman in the shawl a package. She took it eagerly, and thrust it into her bosom. Then, turning to the man, she said reproachfully:
“You say this is the end. Then you don't love me any more?”
LeGrand Blossom did not answer for a moment.
“You don't—do you?” the woman insisted.
“No,” was the slow reply. “I might as well be brutally frank about it, and say I don't. And you don't care either.”
“Oh, I do! I do!” she eagerly protested.
“No, you only think you do. It is better for both of us to have it end this way. But let us make sure that it is an end. There must be no more of it. I have given you all I can. You must go away as you promised.”
“Yes, I suppose I must,” and her voice was broken. “Oh, I wish I had never met you!”
“Perhaps it would have been better that way,” was Blossom's cold response. “However, it's too late for that now. Good-bye,” he added, as the boat was grating her way along the Loch Harbor slip. “I'm not going to get off. Don't telephone me again. This is all I can ever give you.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose, now you've finished, you can get rid of me. Well, let it be so,” she said bitterly. And then, as the boat bumped to a landing she cried: “If I could only find—”
But the rattle of the chains and the clatter of the wheels on the ferry bridge drowned her voice. She rushed away from LeGrand Blossoms's side and, clutching her shawl close around her as if to make sure of the package the man had given her, she disappeared into the interior of the ferryboat.
Colonel Ashley started to follow, but as LeGrand Blossom remained on board he decided to watch him instead of the woman, though he was vaguely disquieted trying to remember where he had heard her voice before.
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