The DESTROYING ANGEL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 835, 2 December 1929, Page 5

The DESTROYING ANGEL

BY

LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE

(Copyright by Public Ledger.)

CHAPTER XXXI

‘Are you in the habit of declaring yourself first and confessing later? . . . Don't answer, if you don’t want to. I’ve no real right to know. I asked out of simple curiosity.*’ "If you’d only listen to me!” Whitaker broke out suddenly. "The filing’s so strange, so far off —dreamlike—that I forget it easily.” “So it would seem,” the girl put in cruelly. "Please hear me!” "Surely you must see T am listening, Mr. Whitaker.” "It was several years ago—nearly seven. I was on the point of death —had been told to expect death within a few months. . . In a moment of sentimental sympathy —I wasn't, at all myself—l married a girl i d never seen before, to help her out of a desperate scrape she'd got intp—meaning simply to give her the protection of my name. She was in deep trouble. . . . We never lived together, never even saw one another after that hour. She had every reason to think me dead —as I should have been, by rights. But : now she knows that I’m alive—is about to sue for a divorce . . . Now you know just what sort of a contemptible hound I am. and why it was so hard to tell you.” After a long pause, during which neither stirred, she told him, in a : faint voice: “Thank you.” She moved toward the house. "I throw myself upon your mercy ” 'Do you?” she-said coolly, pausing, j "It you will forgive me ” "Oh, I forgive you, Mr. Whitaker, j My heart is really not quite so fragile as all this implies.” "I didn’t mean that —you know I didn't. I’m only trying to assure you j that l won't bother you —with this | trouble of mine—again. 1 don't want you to be afraid of me.” "t am not.” The words were terse and brusque enough: the accompanying swift gesfure, in which her hand rested momentarily on his arm as if in confidence approaching affection, he found oddly contradictory. "You don’t see —anything?” she s aid with an abrupt change of man- , ber. swinging to the north. He shaded his eyes, peering intently through the night, closely sweeping j ■ rf * encompassing obscurity from north-west to south-east. "Nothing.” he said, dropping his hand, "if there were a boat heading i mis way, we couldn’t help seeing her iiShts.” | "Then there's no use waiting?’ “I'm afraid not. They’d hardly come . tonight, anyway; more likely by daylight, if they should happen to grow suspicious of our beacon.” ! 'Then I think I’ll go o bed. I’m very, very tired, in spite of my sleep °n the sands. That didn’t rest me, j really.” "Of course.” And you ?” “Oh, I'm ail right.” “Hut what are you going to do “Why— keep the fire going. I presume.” “is it necessary, do you think? Or worth while?” He made a doubtful gesture. “I wish." she continued —T wisa *>«■«! stay in the house. I—-I’m really a hit timid; unnerved, I presume

It's been, you know, rather a harrowing experience. Anything might happen in a place like this . . “Oh, certainly,” he agreed, somewhat constrainedly. “I’d feel more content, myself, to know I was within call if anything should alarm you.” They returned to the kitchen. In silence, while Whitaker fidgeted about the room, awkward and unhappy, the girl removed a glass lamp front the shelf above the sink, assured herself that it was filled and lighted it. Then, over her shoulder: “I hope you don’t mean to stay up all night.” “I —well. I’m really not sleepy.” “Oh, but you are,” she contradicted calmly. “Honestly; I slept so long down there on the beach ” “Please don’t try to deceive me. I know that slumbers like those —of exhaustion —don’t rest one as they should. Besides, you show how tired you are in every gesture, in the way you carry yourself, in your very eyes.” “You’re mistaken,” he contended, looking away for fear lest his eyes were indeed betraying him. “Beside, T mean merely to sit up here, to see that everything is all right." “How should it be otherwise?” She laughed the thought away, yet not unkindly. “This island is as empty as a last-year’s bird's nest. What could happen to harm or even alarm us or me ?” „ “And yet you never can tell “Nonsense! I’m not in the least frightened. And furthermore I shan't sleep a wink—shan’t even try to sleep unless you promise me not to be silly. There's a comfortable room right at the toot of the stairs. If you sleep there. I shall feel more than secure. Will you promise?” He gave in at discretion: "les, I promise.” “As soon as you feel the least need of sleep, you’ll go to bed?” “I promise.” “Very well- then.” The insistent note faded from her tones. She moved toward the table, put the lamp down, and hesitated in one of her strange, unpresaged moods of diffidence, looking down at the fingertips with which she traced a meaningless pattern on the oilcloth. “You are kind,” she said abruptly, her head bowed, her face hidden from “Kind!” he echoed, dumbfounded. ■You are kind and sweet and generous to me,” she insisted in a let el voice. “You have shown me your heart —the heart of a gentleman—without reserve: hut of me you have asked nothing.” “I don't understand “I mean, you haven't once referred to what happened last night, louve been content to let me preserve my confidence, to remain secretive and mysterious in your sight. . . . that is how I seem to you—isn t it. "Secretive and mysterious. But l have no right to your confidence; vour affairs are yours, inviolable, un less you choose to discuss them. “You would think that course!” Suddenly she showed him her face, illumined with its frank, shadowy smile, her sweet eyes, kind and as fearless as the eyes of a child. “Other men would not. I knov. And you have every right to know. “Von and I shall tell you. Rut not’now; there’s too much to tell,

to explain and make understandable; and I’m too terribly tired. Tomorrow, when I’ve had time to think things out ” “At your pleasure,” he assented gently. “Only—don’t let anything worry you.” Impulsively she caught both his hands in a clasp at once soft and strong, wholly straightforward and friendly. “Do you know,” she said in a laughing voice, her head thrown hack, soft shadows darkening her mystical eyes, the lamplight caressing her hair until it was as if her head were framed in a halo of pure gold, bright against the sombre background of that mean, bare room—“Do you know, dear man, that you are quite, quite blind?” “I think,” he said with his twisted smile, “it would be well for me if I were physically blind at this instant!” She shook her head in light reproof. “Blind, quite blind!” she repeated. “And yet—l’m glad it’s so with you. I wouldn’t have you otherwise for worlds.” * She withdrew her hand, took up the lamp, moved a little away from him. and paused, holding his eyes. “For Love, too, is blind,” she said, softly, with a quaint little nod of affirmation. ‘ Good night.” He started forward, eyes aflame; took a single pace after her; paused as if against an unseeh barrier. His hands dropped by his sides; his chin to his chest: the light died out of his face and left it; gray and deeply lined. In the hallway the lamp’s glow receded. hesitated, began to ascend, throwing upon the unpapered walls a distorted silhouette of the rude balustrade; then disappeared, leaving the hall cold with empty darkness. An inexplicable fit of tremblingseized Whitaker. Dropping into a chair, he pillowed his head on" his folded arms. Presently the seizure passed, but he remained moveless. With the drift of minutes, insensibly his taut muscles relaxed. Odd visions painted the dark tapestries of his closed eyes; a fragment of swinging seas shining in moonlight; white swords of light slashing the dark night round their unseen eyrie; the throat of a woman swelling firm and strong as a tower of ivory; tense from the collar of her cheap gown to the point of her tilted chin; a shrieking, swirling rabble of gulls seen against the fading sky, over the edge of a cliff. . . . He slept.

Through the open doorway behind him and through the windows on either hand drifted the sonorous song of the surf, a muted burden for the stealthy disturbances of the night in being.

CHAPTER XXXir. In time the discomfort of his posture wore through the wrappings of slumber. He stirred drowsily, shifted and discovered a cramp in his legs, the pain of which more effectually aroused him. He rose, yawned, stretched, grimaced with the ache in his stiffened limbs and went to the kitchen door. There was no way to tell how long he had slept. The night held black—the moon not yet up. The bonfire had burned down to a great glowing heap of embers. The wind was faint, a mere whisper in the void. There was a famous show of stars, clear, bright, cold and distant. Closing and locking the door, he

found another lamp, lighted it and took it with him to the corner bedchamber, where he lay down without undressing. He had, indeed, nothing to change to. A heavy lethargy weighed upon his faculties. No longer desperately sleepy, he was yet far from rested. His body continued to demand repose, but his mind was ill at ease. He napped uneasily throughout the night, sleeping and waking by fits and starts, his brain insatiably occupied with an interjninable succession of wretched dreams. The mad, distorted face of Drummond, bleached and degraded by his slavery to morphine, haunted Whitaker’s consciousness like some frightful and hideous Chinese mask. He saw it in a dozen guises, each more pitiful and terrible than the last. It pursued him through eons of endless night, forever at his shoulder, blind and weeping. Thrice he started from his bed, wide awake and glaring, positive that Drummond had been in the room hut the moment gone. . . . And each time that lie lay back and sleep stole in numbing waves through his brain, he passed into subconsciousness with the picture before his ej r 6S of a seething cloud of gulls seen against the sky, over the edge of a cliff. He was up and out in the cool of dawn, before sunrise, delaying to listen for some minutes at the foot of the stairway. But he heard no sound in that still house, and there was no longer the night to affright the woman with hinted threats of nameless horrors lurking beneath its impenetrable cloak. He felt no longer bound to stand sentinel on the threshold of her apprehensions. He went out. They clay would be clear; he drew promise of this from the grey bowl of the sky, cloudless, touched with spreading scarlet only on its eastern rim. There was no wind; from the cooling ashes of yesternight’s beacon fire a slim stalk of smoke grew straight ancl tall before it wavered and broke. The voice of the sea had fallen to a muffled throbbing.

In the white magic of air like crystal translucent and motionless, the world seemed more close-knitted and sane. What yesterday’s veiling of haze had concealed was now bold and near. In the north the lighthouse stood like a horn on the brow of the headland. the lamp continuing to flash even though its light was darkened, its beams outstripped by the radiant forerunners of the sun. Beyond it. an ocean-going tug with three barges in tow and a becalmed lumber schooner, a low-lying point of land (perhaps an island) thrust out into the west. On the nearer land human life was quickening; here and there pale streamers of smoke swung up from hidden chimneys on its wooded rise.

Whitaker eyed them with longing. But they were distant from attain- ! ment by at the least three miles of j tidev'ay through which strong waters ; raced—as he could plainly see from his elevation, in the pale, streaked and wrinkled surface of the channel. He wagged a doubtful head, and scowled: no sign in any quarter of a boat heading for the island, no telling when they’d be taken off the cursed place! In his mutinous irritation, the screaming of the gulls over in the west seemed to add the final touch of annoyance, a superfluous addition to the sum of his trials. Why need they have selected that island for their insane parliament? Why must his nerves be racked forever by their incessant bickering. He had dreamed of them all night; must he endure a day made similarly distressing?

What was the matter with the addlepated things, anyway? There was nothing to hinder him from investigating for himself. The girl would probably sleep another hour or two. He went forthwith.

dulling the keen edge of his exasperation with a rapid tramp of half a mile or so over the uneven uplands. The screaming was -well-nigh deafening by the time he stood upon the verge of the bluff. Beneath him gulls clouded the air like bees swarming. And yet he experienced no difficulty in locating the cause of their excitement. Below, a slow tide crawled, slavering, up over the boulder-strewn sands. In a wave-scooped depresion between two of the larger boulders, the receding waters had left a little limpid pool. In. the pool lay the body of a man, face downward, limbs frightfully sprawling. The discovery brought with it no shock of surprise to the man on the bluff —horror alone. He seemed to have known all along that such would be the cause. Yet he had never consciously acknowledged the thought. It had lain sluggish in the deeps beneath surfaces agitated by emotions more poignant and immediate. Still, it had been there —that understanding. That, and that only, had so poisoned his rest. . . . But he shrank shuddering from the thought of the work that lay to Ins hand —-work that must be accomplished at once and completely; for she must know nothing of it. She had suffered enough as it was. Hastening back to the farmstead, he secured a spade from the barn and made his way quickly down to the beach by way of the road through the cluster of deserted fishermen’s huts. Fifteen minutes’ walk brought him to the pool. Teu minutes’ hard work with the spade sufficed to excavate a shallow trench in the sands above high-water mark. He required as much time again to nerve himself to the point of driving off the gulls and moving the body. . . . When it was accomplished, and he had lifted the last heavy stone into place above the grave, he dragged himself back along the beach and round a shoulder of the bluff: to a spot warmed by the rays of the rising sun. There. stripping off his rags, he waded out into the sea and cleansed himself as best he might, scrubbing sand Into his flesh until it was scored and angry; then crawled hack, re sumed his garments, and lay down for a time in the strength-giving light, feeling giddy and faint with the after effects which had prolonged intolerably his loathsome task. Very gradually the bluish shadows faded from about his mouth and eyes, and natural colour replaced his pallor. And presently he rose and went slowly up to the house, all his being in a state of violent rebellion against the terror and mystery of life. Whitaker had buried Drummond.

CHAPTER XXX! If. By the time Whitaker got back to the farmhouse, the woman was up, dressed in the rent and stained but dry remnants of her own clothing (for all their defects, infinitely more: becoming than the garments to which she had been obliged to resort the previous day) and busy preparing breakfast. There was no question but that her rest had been sound and undisturbed. If her recuperative powers had won

his envy before, now she was wholly marvellous in his eyes. Her radiant freshness dazzled, her elusive but absolute quality of charm bewitched —and her high spirits dismayed him. He entered her presence reluctantly, yielding alone to the ‘spur of necessity. To keep out of her way was not only an impossibility, but would have ] served to rouse her suspicions; and j she must not know; however difficult I the task, he must dissemble, keep her | in ignorance of his discovery. On that point he was resolved. “Well, sir!” she called heartily over j her shoulder. “And where, pray, have j you been all this long time?” “I went for a swim.” he said evasively—“thought it might do me good.” “You’re not feeling well?” She turned to look him over. He avoided her eye. “I had a bad night —probably because I had too much sleep during the day. I got up feeling pretty rusty —the weight of my years. Cold water’s ordinarily a specific for that sort of thing, but it didn’t seem to work this time.” “Still got the hump, eh?** “Still got the hump,” he assented, glad thus to mask his unhappiness. “Breakfast and a strong cup of tea or two will fix that,” she announced with confidence. “It’s too bad there’s no coffee.” “Yes/’ he said —“sorry!” “No Siam* of response to our 5.0.57” “None as yet. Of course, it’s early."

He lounged out of the kitchen with a tin bowl, a towel and a bar of yellow soap, and splashed conscientiously at the pump in the doorvard. taking more time for the job than was really necessary. From her place by the stove, she watched him through a window, her eyes like a sunlit sea dappled with j shadows of clouds speeding before the wind. | He lingered outside until she called ; him to breakfast. ! His stout attempts to match her | cheerfulness during the meal fell disj mally short of conviction. After two or three false starts he gave it up I and took refuge in his plea of in- | disposition. She humoured him with a covert understanding that suri mised more in a second than he could have compressed into a ten-minute j confession. The meal over, he rose and sidled \ awkwardly toward the door. “You’ll be busy for a while with the dishes and things, won't you?" he asked with an air meant to seem guileless. “Oh, yes; for some time,” she replied quickly. “I—l think I’ll take a stroll round the islaud. There might be something like a boat hidden away some- . where along the beach.” “You prefer to go alone?” L | “If you don’t mind." . ; “Not in the least. I’ve plenty to Flytox kills flies, mosquitoes, etc. instantly. Spray rooms freely. H. rm- ; less to people; will not stain.

occupy my idle hands. If I can find needle and thread, for instance . . .’*■ She indicated her clothing with a humorously rueful gesture. “To be sure,” he agreed, far too visibly relieved. Then his wits t umbled. “I want to think out some things,” he added most superfluously. “You won’t go out of sight?” she pleaded through the window. “It can’t be done,” he called back, strolling out of the dooryard with much show of idle indecision. His real purpose was. in fact, nite. There was another body to be accounted for. It was quite possible that the sea might have given it up | at some other point along the island coast. True, there was no second ; gathering of gulls to lend colour *o * this grisly theory: jet. the danger was j one to be provided against, since she was not to know. To be Continued Tomorrow.