Smuggler's House

by J. Allan Dunn

 

Smuggler's House

A Mystery Story

By J. Allan Dunn

 

THE rattletrap car came squeakingly to a halt and the driver shut off the chattering engine to make himself more easily heard.

“There's the house! Used to stand close to the edge of the cliff one time, lookin' out to sea across Windy Bay. That was the name of it on the old charts. Water, from below where we are, clear across to the spur of rocky ground yonder. Long afore my time. More'n a hundred years ago. Then the sand started to work in. Choked the sea an' nigh swallered the cliff.”

Benson gazed across the waste of dunes. Some of the slopes were long, smooth drifts; others were rippled by the wind; tawny plumes of yellow sea-grass grew sparsely on the crests. Between the ancient headlands the sand had reclaimed the sea. Billows of sand replaced the waves that once had leaped in Windy Bay, formed with infinite persistence to a seemingly useless end: grain after grain, shifting, piling, year after year, choking the haven, forming a no-man's land between sea and shore.

He looked at the house, built of stone, grim, substantial, four-square, its seaward windows flaming with the afterglow, like deep-socketed eyes that glared defiance at the usurping sands. Where the dunes mounted now, salt-water had washed and roared and honeycombed the buried cliff. The conquering grit, carrying the cliff by slow assault, had marched up to the very lintel of the door, spreading a dun carpet where soft turf had grown, smothering the orchard that once bloomed and bore. The main trunks were buried; the higher boughs peeled, blanched and drained of life, protruded like the bleached antlers of mammoth elk, seeking resurrection.

 

“ROAD used to run down to the inlet,” said the lean, garrulous driver, humped over his wheel. “There, where ye see the gully. Tide-water there, one time. An' a wharf. You'll pass the timbers of an old ship juttin' out of the sand on your way to the house. Cap'n Jarvis Harmon's brig. Gran'father to the present Cap'n Harmon.

“Set down as Harmon Inlet on the maps. It's him—the old cap'n—they say was in league with the smugglers an' pirates of them days. That's why they call it Smuggler's House. Silks and wines an' Spanish landed to that wharf many a time, take lights on the cliffs an' sutteranean passages, they tell. Ships ashore an' the wreckers carryin' up the flotsum-jetsum.”

He smacked his lips with the tobacco stains at the corners and his eyes lit up with avarice.

“Nothin' goin' on like that nowadays. Can't even git a mug o' cider. The law's strict an' the law's carried out in Whitsands—prohibition to piracy. I'm constable. An' deputy-sheriff,” he added as he turned back his unbuttoned vest and displayed a badge pinned to his suspenders.

“'Nother crick beyond the house. Windy Brook. Back in the hills it's a live stream with trout in it. Fillin' up fast at the shore end. I go up it once in a while to git bait at tidewater. You aimin' to stay awhile? I cu'd take you out after scrod.”

“I'm going back to-morrow morning,” said Benson. “Can you be here at ten?”

“Count on me. The cap'n, he don't have many visitors. Nor his housekeeper. Reckon you're a friend of his—or her?”

Benson did not answer as he stepped from the car, and the driver climbed peevishly down to crank his engine. The tinny vehicle chugged and rattled off as Benson started down the slope of what had been the southern headland of Windy Bay.

There was wind there yet, though the evening was calm, with the sea lapping gently along the verge of the sands. But little breezes stirred in the hollows where the faint track led, shifting the sand along the slopes with sudden spurts of sliding grains that sounded like quick whispers.

A plume of sepia smoke came from the main chimney of the house. As he passed the remains of the old wharf and the timbers of the brig, mounting the sharper pitch that led to the brow of the original cliff, the wind blew stronger, in intermittent puffs. Weatherwise, Benson sensed a change. The sky was piled with clouds that glowed and gloomed, streaming in pink and orange vapors, like smoke above a dying furnace, as the sunset faded. The breeze began to whistle through the ghastly branches of the dead orchard, whorls of sand rose in little dancing spirals before and about him. As he moved on into this desert it seemed to him that the spirit of the place began to grip him in a tragic, infinitely lonesome way. The wreck, the dry bones of the trees, the sands that seemed to be whispering and creeping behind him in the gathering dusk, assembling for a night assault against the man-made citadel of the house; all cast their spell upon him.

And when he suddenly came across a fence of posts and pickets, slanting, half-buried, like the headstone they enclosed; he shivered a little from an inward chill as he stopped to read the carven letters in the marble. They formed one word. One only, unless others lay beneath the sand—

RAMAYA

Ramaya? That was a name dimly familiar. The name of what? Here might be a memorial to some faithful dog. It was an eery place for a grave, yet, if it had been made while the orchard turf was still green and blossoms dripped upon it in the spring, with ripe fruit knocking on the door of death in the fall, with birds in the branches, it might have been a restful enough burial-place.

Ramaya? He rolled the syllables over on his tongue, then, with a feeling of being over-inquisitive, turned toward the door of the house. It was deeply inset, of solid wood and dignified proportion, bare of paint, pitted by the wind-flung grains of hard, sharp sand.

An iron knocker sounded sharply to his rap. While he waited, the wind hurled a spatter of sand at the panels as if to second his summons.

 

THE door opened to the gaunt figure of a woman in black, holding a lamp that flickered to a gust as Benson stepped inside the narrow hall, closing the door behind him, conscious that the wind was rising fast with the setting of the sun. He glimpsed white doors and mahogany. Ancient patterned paper showed starey on the walls. A tall clock ticked woodenly.

Benson was six feet but the gaunt woman topped him. Flesh and skin had shrunk upon the bony plates of her face and her eyes were almost white, the paleness accented by the fine black line about the opalescent iris. Her scanty hair, yellowish-white like flax, showed the pink of her scalp between the flattened wisps. And her neck, above the high neck of her sable gown, was all outstanding cords and deep hollows.

He announced himself and her lips parted with a sudden display of artificial teeth, a travesty in the aged face. The sight of that ghastly smile created in Benson a dislike of the woman that he knew was unfair. He tried to dismiss it as he followed her to the door at the end of the hall.

The room they entered was of noble proportions and ran the full width of the house. A fire leaped in the half-light beneath a Colonial fireplace of white wood, delicately carven with wreaths, upheld by fluted pilasters, inset with figured tiles. On a great table, beside a terrestrial globe, the model of a full-rigged ship rode on a strip of Batik cloth, its sails half-screening the fire from Benson. On the mantel was one ornament that riveted his attention as the woman passed on through a door in the paneled fireplace wall, toward the back of the house.

This was a carving in high relief, of greenish stone, nearly three feet in height; the figure of a dancing girl, barbaric, faulty of perspective but infinitely graceful, alluring. Benson knew what it was as he examined it more closely, fancying himself alone. He had seen such carvings in the crumbling walls of jungle temples in far-off Cambodia, he had seen such figures in the life in the palaces of Siamese princes—Apsaras—dancing girls of Angkor. The bas-relief aroused memories, it gave the room an added touch of romance, it fitted the occasion upon which he had come.

He took in other details. Books and magazines on the table and two branching candlesticks of brass. Weapons glinted on the walls, arranged in trophies, the flickering firelight brought out the palms, pagodas and mackaws upon a screen, pearl inlay winked from a high cabinet. Old mahogany reflected the light in polished bloom with twinkles of brass handles. The floor rugs were Chinese, of rare color and pattern.

Then he saw, deep caverned in a settle chair of black wood and leather, backed by another screen of gilded lacquer, gay with flowers and fruits, an old man asleep.

A strong face, framed by an abundance of coarse gray hair, finely, boldly featured, marked but not disfigured by storm and stress—not wholly from without, Benson landed, as the changing firelight played tricks of expression on the sleeping mask. There was a strong jut of jaw under the long beard that lifted to the even rise of a massive chest. The lips were firmly closed. Age showed most in the high veining of the folded, powerful hands, at the purple tracery above the temples. A beak of a nose rang out from bushy eyebrows, still holding traces of the black they once had been.

Here was a man, thought Benson, of stern, swift, certain judgments and unbending will. Once he had been burned almost black by sun and wind and he was still deeply bronzed. If the elder Captain Harmon had been the pirate that the driver of the tinny car had vaunted him, he must surely have looked like this descendant. Sudden and quick to quarrel, fierce in love and war. Suddenly the headstone with its single word came to the visitor's memory—Ramaya—a woman's name.

The fire danced in fluttering waves of green and violet along the driftwood logs. One broke in half upon the heavy andirons and a rush of sparks frisked up the chimney. The sleeper stirred and sighed, opening eyes that reflected the flare. He did not notice Benson. He muttered in his beard in a low tone that held a deep-sea quality, the volume of a muffled drum.

 

THEN he saw Benson as he turned slowly in his chair. His eyes widened. They were a tawny amber under upper lids that made a straight line above the full-pupiled orbs. They were the eyes of a sea-eagle, searching, dominant, and bottomless. They could be cruel as well as stern. He made no start—the ancient nerves were sound.

“Captain Harmon? I am Richard Benson.”

The skipper rose slowly but without apparent effort, rose until his massive bulk, for all of one bowed shoulder, towered above that of his guest. There was more than nervous vigor to the grip of his hand. A great hound, haw-eyed and heavy-jowled, came out from the shadows between chair and screen and sniffed at the visitor, letting a hand rest at last upon the smooth dome of its skull as Benson scratched its ears. Captain Harmon, showing teeth big, sound and white, laughed.

“Ha!” he said. “Cæsar accepts you. You are welcome. You must pardon my dozing. Old custom reasserts itself. I sleep off and on. My housekeeper had orders not to disturb me. You'll sit down. We'll have lights, then supper and then our business.”

He pulled a bellrope of heavy twisted cord and a bell tinkled at the back as Benson took the chair across the hearth, beside which he had already placed his grip. The housekeeper came gliding in. She lit the candles in the branching holders, drew down and lit a counterweighted hanging-lamp that swung in chains above the table, cleared one end of the board and spread it with a snowy cloth. From a mahogany cupboard she produced silver and glass and crystal and deftly set two places.

“Do you wish to go to your room, sir?” she asked Benson. “You are to have the one above the Captain's, in the southeast chamber, up-stairs.”

“No, thank you. And never mind the grip. There are some things in it I may want. I'll carry it up when I go.”

 

SHE glanced at him incuriously and went on with her preparations for the meal, passing silently in and out of the door. There were cutlets of broiled ham with poached eggs, creamed potatoes, hot biscuits, sweet butter, preserved quinces, honey, delicious coffee; all savory to Benson, too long used to city fare. But he ate almost alone.

“I lost my appetite,” said Captain Harmon, “when I gave up the sea. And I have to be careful.”

Benson eyed him more closely. “You don't seem much of an invalid,” he ventured.

“All sound but my heart. And that is rotten. I'm more than twice your age, I fancy—and I've not been careful before, so I must be now. One reason I got you to come down. I read your book,” he went on. “There's a lot of first-hand knowledge, and first-hand travel, I imagine, packed between those covers.”

“I have traveled a good deal. I hope to travel more,” said Benson. “I like first-handed information. I would rather collect personally then buy from owners, as a rule.”

The captain showed a square, squat bottle. “Here is something that has traveled,” he said. “I brought it over in the original of that ship. My ship. I built it, owned it. I'm ashore, but that ship is still sailing sound in the China Seas. Oak and teak outwear the flesh that molds them.” He poured out curaçao into two acorn glasses where it sparkled like liquid aromatic gold. Then he pushed across a small chest of cloisonné where cheroots nestled in tea.

“I envy your trips-to-come,” said the host and the envy showed in his voice, in the leaping flash of his eyes as he sipped the curaçao. “I did not grow old gracefully. No red-blooded man ever did. A swift life, well-packed, like the bag of a bee—there's your Browning for you—that, and a quick death.

“The lure of the jungle trail,” he continued, choosing a cheroot carefully, “sea, jungle or land. It all grips to the end.” Benson's glance went involuntarily to the bas-relief.

“You noticed that?” asked the captain. “So you've been to Siam, and you've seen the Apsaras. Eh, I saw thirty of them once in old King Noródon's palace. Thirty princesses of the blood royal, from girls of ten, with breasts like camellia buds, to gold-skinned virgins of fifteen. Under the silver lamps—they've got them wired for electricity now, I hear—under the lamps in tissue silks. Ruby-studded tiaras of gold gold pinions shaped like dolphins' fins on their shoulders, crusty with gems. Sheathes of gold on thighs and loins, writhing under the lamps like shining serpents, posturing about the King of the Monkeys with his mask of gold. Eh—ah!”

In his eyes there showed the fire still smoldering in the ash of lusts long since burned out. His look was fixed on the carven Apsara.

Ramaya. That was a Siamese name, of course. It came to Benson in a flash. Here was a man of the strong breed who had lived and loved and still loved to live if only in retrospect. Ramaya, Apsara, princess of the blood royal. Had she been one of those thirty virgins? Had she won the rubies he had come to value?

The dog got up from the hearth and walked to the door through which the housekeeper had served them. He barked at it twice and it opened to the touch of unseen fingers. Cæsar slipped through.

“His supper, before he goes on watch outside,” explained the captain. “Now, if you will put another log on the hearth—for stooping is a bad business for me—and make yourself comfortable with your cheroot, we'll get down to business as soon as Mrs. Wood has cleared.”

“I am frank to say, Mr. Benson,” he said when the function was performed and they were alone, “that I had you looked up before I wrote to you. My lawyers tell me that you are responsible and honest. A rarer thing than most people think. You see, I have little idea of the real value of the stones.”

 

BENSON laughed as he answered. “I copied your precaution. I did not wish to take an idle trip. You wrote that you preferred cash. It was unusual I did not care to carry several thousand dollars in currency to a lonely spot without knowing something definite.”

“I am sorry if I put you to unusual trouble. I am not sure that I want to sell any of the rubies. I do want to set my estate in order. A valve here is leaky.” He touched his chest. “It bothers me. My will is made, save for some blank spaces that I would like to fill with amounts as specific as possible. I have not needed money for my running expenses. I have liked to keep the stones for their—associations.

“They are Siamese gems and, when you see them, you, as a connoisseur, a lover of jewels, will understand better. They are rich of color, crystals of blood, living blood and in one of them a star shines, like the soul of the ruby, a beating pulse of light. But you shall see.”

[Illustration: Here was a man, Benson thought, of stern, swift, certain judgments and unbending will.]

He rose and felt back of the metal frame that held the tiles of the fireplace in position. One of them came out into his hand and he set it on the mantel, groping with his right hand inside the cavity as if he twisted at a lever. There was a click and a section of the right-hand flattened column slid down part way into its base, disclosing an aperture several inches square. From this the captain took a small oblong box of black porcelain, or jet, or even obsidian, and laid it on the table. The lid rested closely upon a flange.

As he slowly lifted the cover, Benson held his breath at the rosy glow that shone from the little casket before the gems themselves became visible. Then Harmon pushed the box toward him and Benson gasped. Never had he seen such rubies, in such quantity and quality. Crystals of living blood. The phrase teemed cold and inadequate. The crossing, mingling play of radiance from their hearts diffused a light that was warm, exquisite crimson, transparent but with a shifting shimmer as of vapor. Under it the gems appeared to throb like living particles.

The general body-tone was an aurora red, the hue of the drop of blood that hangs from the beak of a dead pigeon. Captain Harmon picked up one stone delicately and laid it in Benson's palm. Its light was slightly milky, its surface convex and, in its center, like an enshrined spirit, trembled a six-rayed, luminous star.

An asteria,” said Benson almost reverentially as he watched the dancing change pulsing within the ruby corundum. “A star ruby.”

He took a jeweler's monocle from his vest pocket and set it in his eye socket. Presently he set down the jewel carefully. “I give you eight thousand dollars for that stone,” he said. “Now. If I sell it, it will be for more, but that is a fair price.”

“I do not doubt it, but that is the one I care least to sell. I accept your valuation. I will do more, I will give you an option of purchase at that sum when the gems are placed on sale. After—” he tapped his chest lightly. Suddenly his head went up, his heavy eyebrows joined and his eyes flashed golden as his deep voice challenged angrily.

“What does this mean, woman? You know I am not to be disturbed after supper!”

The housekeeper had entered, drifting like a shadow from a door leading to the room underneath the one specified as Benson's. She stood on the farside of the table, holding a candlestick, unmoved by the tirade of her employer.

 

SWIFTLY as a conjuror, Benson palmed the asteria, slid the lid on the box and shoved the thin stack of yellow-backed bills he had taken from his wallet under the shadow of the ship's hull. The woman showed no signs of having observed them or the cavities yawning in the fireplace. Later, Benson reflected that the canvas and rigging might well have hid them all from her.

“The oil did not come, sir,” she said in a toneless voice that matched her pallid orbs. “There is none for Mr. Benson's lamp, so I brought him a candle.” She set it down.

“One of these would have done as well, fool,” rumbled the captain, watching her under his penthouse brows as she glided out, this time into the hall. “You moved quickly, Benson,” he added with a note of approval. “I doubt if she saw anything. She has grown into something half-mechanical of late. This place has few excitements to keep one young. Tut! What do you think of the rest of the stones?”

Benson finished his appraisal, working deftly, sorting the rubies into little fiery heaps, making notes in a small book.

“The lot should bring at least eighty thousand dollars,” he said at last. “There are forty-one, all told. Ten of them in every way unusual. They may bring considerably more, according to the way they are marketed.”

“Eh! Five thousand better than my guess. It is a satisfaction, if one has anything to leave, to know the approximate value of one's estate.”

“You do not care to sell the asteria?”

“I think not. We will talk further to-morrow. I do not want you to have come down here just for your fee, if we can arrange anything. But—we will see. I should prefer not placing it upon the market myself. It is a whim.”

Benson had a swift vision of the captain in the middle watches of the night, working the sliding column, gazing at the pool of cold fire in the deep hollow of his hand, seeing it in memories. A dream of posturing Asparas, of one central figure of Ramaya with the star ruby on her brow?

Harmon put away the gems as Benson replaced his bills in the wallet and put the wallet in his inside coat pocket. As he did so, he noticed how closely tile and column fitted. Even with knowledge of some such combination, luck rather than observation would have revealed them to the closest seeker.

The wind went suddenly swooping round the old house with a roar, dashing grit against the long windows to the north, enveloping the sturdy edifice in a spiral of eddying air. The flames on the hearth shuddered and leaped upward, the soft ashes shifted. From without, the howl of Cæsar came faintly.

“He bays at the moon,” said the captain. “It will blow hard to-night. And it flings the sand. I trust it will not disturb you. If you care to sit up, there are the cheroots and the curaçao. And a book or magazine. If you will excuse me, I will leave you. I have some writing to do. You go back with Martin, I suppose. He drove you over?”

“He will be here at ten. He can wait, I imagine.”

“It will not be necessary. We'll breakfast as usual. At eight.”

The wind rushed again, mounting, circling, about the house. A gust roared in the throat of the chimney, fanned the fire to a spouting volcano, sending flaming flakes whirling out into the room, soaring far and fast. They settled on the Chinese rugs, burning smoldering rings. They pitched into the dried yellow canvas of the model ship and, instantly, sails, and rigging were in a crackling blaze.

Benson looked for water, thought of flinging a rug, wheeled and ran for the kitchen through the door the housekeeper had used. The captain stared at the flaring ruin in wordless, actless horror, as if he had suddenly seen hell through a rift. Then he beat at the leaping, licking flames with his hands, scattering spars, trailing snakes of burning twine and scraps of smoldering tinder about the room. When Benson came back with a pot of water from the stove the stately model was a wreck and Harmon was stamping out spreading rings in the rugs. Benson helped him but the valuable weaves were badly damaged. The captain ignored them and stared stonily at the hull.

“So ends the day,” he said as if to himself. Benson recognized the phrase as the that used by old-time skippers to close the record in their logs. “We had better put the guard in front of the fire,” said Harmon, his voice calm, but Benson saw his hands tremble as he set the wire screen in place.

Benson turned, not to appear to notice the weakness, somehow the destruction of the ship seemed symbolic, tragic. He looked up at the dismantled hull and he felt quite certain that he did not want to sit up with the wreck that had ridden so gallantly upon its Batik strip, next to the terrestrial globe. That has been a happy combination. Now the varnished surface of the globe was scorched and blistered. The portion principally injured showed the islands and peninsulas that ringed the China Sea, the Celebes Sea. And the ship that the captain had built had seemed so intimately a part of the captain and the captain's life. It would not have surprised Benson if he had been suddenly told the ship itself had foundered or been burned at sea—off Indo-China or Borneo.

 

ON THIS ship the captain had imported the curaçao, the rubies? Perhaps—? Benson stopped. The lettering on the stern had been shadowed by the canvas before that had burned. Now the gilt characters fairly caught his eye. And the name of the ship was—Ramaya.

He picked up his grip and his candle and turned to his host. Harmon looked dragged and tired. His eyes were dull.

“I think I shall turn in,” said Benson. The skipper looked moodily at him.

“Well,” he answered and then strode ahead through the hall to the foot of the staircase, opening his own door. There was a light within and Benson caught sight of a four-poster bed, valanced and canopied, an ancient desk. A gust of sand rattled on the front door like the rapping of a myriad tiny knuckles, insistent, imploring. The weird fancy touched Benson that they had come from the half-buried grave. The place and its happenings were getting on his nerves.

“Good night!” he said and started to ascend. Harmon stood watching him till he made the landing.

“The room above mine, Mr. Benson? I think you will find conveniences. Pardon me if I do not make certain of that myself. My mounting days are over. Good night!”

The resonance had gone out of his voice and he went heavily into his room and shut the door. Benson, on the landing, heard the wind moaning in the dead orchard, sweeping up from the dunes. There was a window on the cross landing, above the front door. Through it he made out the troubled wraith of a moon, struggling through a wrack of clouds.

 

HIS room was large, with three paneled doors of white, one the entrance, another opening to a closet beside a chimney with a stove hole, papered over; the third, ajar, leading to a room fitted with a table, a desk, an antique mirror above a bureau, chairs and hook-rugs; forming a sitting or dressing room to the little suite. His bedroom, was furnished in much the same way, with the addition of a bed. The air was stuffy and he attempted to open a window. There were three of these, the frames opened and shut by metal slugs on springs, fitting into slots in the casements. These fastenings were supplemented by more modern catches.

The two windows to the east had their small panes badly blurred by the sand, and the wind rattled them. The south window, in the lee of the prevailing storms, was in better transparency and through it he caught a glimpse of the corner of the orchard, blanched under the moon. And he saw Cæsar, running with his nose at trail, following the ridge of a dune, disappearing beyond it. But he could not budge the windows, either in bed or sitting-room. They might have been nailed up, to judge by their resistance to his efforts; he gave up only when he threatened to disrupt the slender framing.

In the sitting-room he opened a second door that led to a passage running the full length of the house, as he judged. He noted an orange line of light beneath a door at the far end, across the passage. The housekeeper was still awake. It was not late. His watch showed the time to be a few minutes after ten.

Benson unstrapped his grip and took out some things. Then he undressed, placing coat and vest across the back of a bedside chair, and turned in. But not to sleep. The close room, the wind howling in the chimney, shaking the windows, buffeting the sturdy house until beams creaked and the rugs lifted mysteriously as if snakes were beneath them, combined with a feather-bed and the incidents of his visit to keep him wide awake. He tried reading a book by candlelight, but was unable to concentrate.

Darkness did not help him. Once Cæsar bayed, out on the dunes. The breakers sounded in the rising storm like distant artillery, the moon showed fitfully opalescent through the blurry windows bringing out the pale woodwork of the doors. At last he fell into hazy dreams of rubies, Apsaras, a full-rigged ship that flamed like a volcano and sank at last to the final subsidence of consciousness.

He awoke with his senses thrilling to a still alarm. Not for nothing had he followed jungle trails and slept in the bush. There came a stealthy creak on the stairs. Not the wind. It sounded in a lull. He slid softly out of bed and slipped through the sitting-room and so to the passage.

The wind had risen again with redoubled fury after its pause. Sand pattered against the panes of the landing window, the glass rattled. Silhouetted against the milky light that came from without, Benson saw the figure of a man, stooping in the nervous tension of one who prowls in the night on forbidden ground. He saw vaguely the outline of a face, clean-shaven, hawklike. The crouching figure glided to the door of Benson's bedroom, tried the handle, turned it, opened the door inch by inch, swiftly, silently; then entered, with Benson gliding after.

The man advanced toward the bed, plain against the southern window. His bare feet showed upon the dark pattern of a hook-rug. He did not glance toward the bed, where Benson had thrust a pillow beneath the covers to suggest, in the darkness, a recumbent form; but reached out for the coat and vest that hung on the back of the bedside chair. This with his left hand. His right was close by his side. It suggested a weapon.

There was nothing of the coward about Benson. He had been in many straits that called for prompt action, and he answered his combatant impulse. Physically he was always fit, by birthright and by training.

 

TIPPED on his own bare feet, Benson took three quick strides and leaped. His left arm slid about the man's neck, his right hand caught the other's wrist and, in one coordination, his knee, upflung, formed a fulcrum at the back of the intruder's elbow while he applied leverage. The man twisted sideways to avoid the breaking of his arm, with a stifled oath at the unexpected attack and at the pain. Under the bruising, wrenching grip of Benson's fingers the weapon tinkled to the floor.

And then the hook-rug slid on the planking and they went down together. The man was supple, wiry, slippery as an eel, twining himself about Benson as they writhed, close-locked and desperate, fighting for possession of the knife. After the first thud of their fall they made but little noise but Benson expected any moment to hear the captain coming up the stairs. Not that he counted on it or had time for anything but try to subdue his assailant, who was fighting with a desperate frenzy.

Benson still clung to the wrist, trying to get a lock. The other forced it close to his mouth and tried to sink his teeth into the tendons of Benson's wrist. They touched the flesh but before they could snap and close, Benson, with a burst of strength, let loose his grip and smashed at the other's jaw. As he dodged, snarling and panting, like a beast, Benson saw his chance and kicked the haft of the weapon, a knife, sending it beneath the bed.

With a convulsive heave the man bridged himself in wrestler's fashion and, his knees helping, strove to throw Benson over his head. They smashed into the chair and it toppled. The clothes came down, the brass candlestick fell with a thump beside the book Benson had been reading. In a flash the other grasped the heavy candlestick and beat up with it at Benson's face. One blow got home, gashing his eyebrow so that the blood started. Then, as always with Benson, something snapped within him. Neither coolness nor judgment, but a measure of restraint that sometimes served and sometimes handicapped him. He buried his head in his opponent's face, careless of the flailing blows, he got astride of him, forcing down the left arm and grinding his knee into the biceps. And his right hand found the other's neck, sought and compressed the leaping artery, boring with a relentless thumb while his fingers clutched the nape. The movement was swift and sure as the outcoil of a snake: a trick learned from a Chinese compradore, merciless, agonizing, capable of administering death.

 

THE man's feet drummed on the floor as pain and nausea swept over him and he wilted, unconscious.

Benson picked him up and laid him on the bed. He took the long straps from his suitcase and trussed him securely. Then he lit the candle, restored the chair and fished up the weapon. It was a Malay kris, with curving, double-edged blade, a stabbing knife from one of the trophies on the living-room wall. He stood with it in one hand, the candlestick in the other, gazing down at the marauder, his pajama-coat torn, blood on the sleeve, blood on his face, on the rug; breathing heavily. It had not lasted long but it had been no child's play. Yet it had apparently alarmed no one.

The chap was a sailor, from his clothes, his bare feet tanned, like the rest of his exposed flesh. He was in shapeless blue-serge trousers, salt-stained and wrinkled. A blue flannel shirt was belted into them. An anchor was tattooed on the right wrist. Benson had seen that as he had bound him, with a girl's name above it, partly erased—Lucy.

The face was not unhandsome, with a reckless look even in unconsciousness. The chin was stubborn rather than determined, the lips thin, the forehead low and the eyes close together.

They opened as Benson, who had rapidly flung on some clothes, and mopped the blood from his forehead, bent over the bed searching the man. His first thought was he might have been followed from Whitesands, his errand guessed as one to do with money, perhaps ready cash. That happened once before. His second idea was the rubies.

He found nothing. The man wore a singlet under his shirt. The three garments, with the belt, constituted his clothing. The wide bottoms of his trousers were damp and sandy. The pockets gave up only a few small coins and a bunch of keys. Benson felt a sense of relief. Apparently the man was only a common thief.

He held the candle closer to the face and the pupils of the eyes dilated and then shrank to pinpoints. Their look was defiant. In the life they imparted to his face it seemed to Benson vaguely familiar.

“What were you after?” demanded Benson. “Who put you up to this?”

The man stared back sullenly.

“Won't talk, eh? We'll see about that.” He picked up the kris. “I can charge you with attempted murder, besides robbery.”

The eyes changed at sight of the weapon. They became cunning. “You were too quick for me, boss, with that ju-jutsu stuff. But I wasn't meanin' to use that sticker. I had it for a bluff. I'm not chuckin' myself at the Chair. I come up the back stairs first an' I butted in the wrong room. There was an old dame in it. I had to tie her up. If you don't want her to choke to death you'd better ease her up a bit or you may be 'sessory to murder yourself. I was a bit rough, bein' in a hurry.”

His volubility showed bravado, Benson thought, behind which lurked a certain strain. For which the gagged housekeeper might well be the reason. After tying her he had gone down the back-stairs and up the front way, rather than risk the long length of creaky passage.

Benson examined the bonds carefully, tightened a strap, took the candle and went down the passage to where he had seen the strip of orange light. Still outside, he heard a curious, gobbling moan and hurried inside just as the dog howled again, a long drawn ululation that cut through the uproar of the wind. The swift question of how the man had passed Cæsar came to him before the sight on the bed dismissed it.

With hands fastened behind her back, her bony ankles tied with cord, a towel over her mouth, the gaunt figure of the housekeeper tossed in her nightgown of flannel. Her knees were drawn up so that the pans showed sharply under the drag of the long gown, caught by the binding of her ankles. The thin ridge of the shins was visible. She looked more like a skeleton than ever. Her pale eyes rolled wildly and fearfully in the candlelight. The gag was formed of the towel and a handkerchief, stuffed between her toothless jaws. She made queer choking noises as he relieved her. A glass stood on a little table with her false teeth soaking in water.

Benson removed them gingerly, rinsed the glass with water from the pitcher on a marble-topped chamber-stand and refilled it, assisting her to drink.

 

SHE took a swallow or two and clutched for her teeth, turning away while she clicked them into place, then grasped at Benson's arm.

“The man,” she gasped. “You're wounded! Did you kill him?”

“No,” he soothed. “He's bound in my room.”

“You've got him? He's still alive?” Her voice was shrill with terror. Her fishy eyes stared at him as if she could not grasp his meanings.

“Yes. You're all right. I'm going down-stairs. You'd better get dressed. It must be close to morning.”

“The dog!” she cried. “Listen to Cæsar.”

“I hear him. On the fellow's scent. After he let him pass.”

“He came—in the dark. He choked me. I—Oh, my God!”

Benson looked at her sharply. “You get some clothes on,” he said crisply. “The man's safe. “You're not hurt?”

“No. Only faintish. I'll be all right.”

Her eyes rolled after him as he left, going down the back way to the kitchen. He noticed that the back door of the house was locked and bolted. A lamp was on the kitchen-table and he lit that and carried it into the living-room and through it to the hall. Cæsar was baying incessantly outside the front door, scratching imperatively for admission. The skipper's door was ajar. With a sudden premonition of greater tragedy Benson unshot two bolts and opened the door, shielding the lamp behind it. The wind swept in, forcing him back with the weight of the gale against the stout panels. He heard the roar of the surf and saw the graying light outside as Cæsar leaped in, jaws open and slavering, his ruff lifted, bounding past Benson as he shut the door with some difficulty; half crouching, snuffing at the bottom of Harmon's door and then flinging back his head to a bell note that echoed dolefully through the house.

The door was not locked. The lamp showed the great bed with the captain lying, one arm outside the rumpled quilt. His eyes were open, they caught the light. But there was no life in them. There was blood dabbled on the end of the great beard. The hilt of a dagger, shagreen and silver-mounted, showed where it had been deep-driven to the heart that had failed at last, not to disease, but to the stroke of an assassin.

 

THERE was no need to test for pulse. Captain Jarvis Harmon was dead. There seemed to have been no struggle. He had been stabbed in his sleep with devilish swiftness and sureness. One pillow was misplaced as if search had been made for valuables. In the hall the big clock ticked woodenly on. The dog had its forepaws on the bed and was licking the cold hand of its master, its haw-eyes turned to Benson as if in entreaty for vengeance.

Fierce anger against the cold-eyed devil up-stairs flamed in Benson. He did not touch bed nor weapon. That was a job for the coroner or the sheriff. He rushed up-stairs struggling with a desire to take punishment in his own hands. On the threshold of his room he halted in dismay.

The room was empty. The grip straps lay on the floor. Benson's wallet, rifled, lay on the bed. He put down the lamp and jumped to the windows. The catches were all set. In both rooms. He raced down the hall in apprehension of more tragedy, marveling how the man had escaped from the stout straps. The woman's door was half open, as he left it. She lay on the bed, still in her nightgown, arms extended, her eyes blank, rolled upward. But she seemed unhurt.

He dashed water in her face and she revived, sighed and thrust up her turtle's neck with her skull face palsied on its corded column.

“Eh?” she cried. “What's this?”

“Get up, woman. Murder's been done! The man's gone. Did you see him?”

“Murder?”

“Captain Harmon! Stabbed by the man I bound. And he's got away.”

She sat up, raising herself by her arms. Her face worked horribly and her pallid eyes projected as she strove for speech. It came thickly, with sweat starting over her forehead. “Cap'n Harmon murdered! Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” She rocked herself to and fro, her wispy hair all about her face and shoulders. Benson shook her, none too gently.

“Get up and come down,” he called to her. “I'm going to search the house.”

With a sudden gathering of forces she sprang from the bed and began to don petticoat and skirt over her nightgown, regardless of Benson, who was examining the window. It was partly open but over it had been tacked some netting against insects. This was intact. He passed from room to room up-stairs, six of them in all, but, with the one exception, all the windows were locked or jammed. There had been no egress that way.

The kitchen door was still bolted. In the living-room he saw what he had missed before, the tile misplaced, the column yawning, the black casket, that had held the rubies, empty on the table. Yet he had searched the man for the gems.

The long windows were locked. So were those of the room opposite the dead man's chamber. There were two casements in the skipper's room and they too were fastened from within. The front door he had rebolted and the locks were still close-socketed. There was a double mystery here. How had the man got in, as well as out?

He thought of the cellar, opening from the kitchen. It was divided into three by fieldstone partitions, doors between. These had been supplemented by square brick piers. And there were the bases of two chimneys. The smell of apples, a litter of boxes, cord wood, barrels, but no sign of the fugitive. Three oblong lights, gray now with dawn, would barely have given egress to the dog. And they were nailed.

A trap caught his eye and he tugged fiercely at it, remembering the driver's tale of subterranean passages. But stale, stinking water gleamed iridescently up at him less than two feet down. If this was a passage it was impassable. It was more likely a well. Man and rubies had vanished. Houdini-like, he had got out of the stout straps and, like a greater wizard, he had disappeared, with every exit barred!

 

A COLD fury took possession of Benson. His own loss—ten thousand dollars in currency—entered into it, but predominant was the foul murder of Captain Harmon and the manner in which the assassin had tricked him. The rubies were no slight matter, aside from their great value. That such gems should pass into hands so dastardly exasperated him and clinched the determination to solve the mystery, to bring the murderer and thief to book.

Once more he went swiftly but carefully over the house, noting several things, fitting them together with certain incidents but, though they furnished him with a theory, they gave him no actual clue as to how the man had entered nor, what was of prime importance, how he had got clear—in which direction he had fled. The housekeeper had passed him in the living-room, walking like a fantom of death herself, her face seamed with emotion, toward the death chamber where the dog still kept guard beside the clay that had once been his master.

If the man had got clear of the house—it seemed certain that he was not within it—he might have left traces. The wind, still blowing a gale in the graying dawn, would have eliminated footprints to a great extent with the scudding sand, yet in some sheltered hollow of a dune he might find the imprint of a naked foot. On the lee side of the house they should show, if he had gone that way.

He entered the death chamber. The woman had touched nothing but stood beside the bed wringing her hands, her spare frame shaken. Benson warned her to leave the bed alone. He opened the desk, searching for some better weapon than the two krises that had been taken from the wall, now sacred to the law. He saw a folded paper lying there and, with one glance at the back of the woman, a second at its contents, placed it in his pocket. In places the ink showed fresh as if the dead man had written after Benson had retired. He had so expressed his intention, Benson remembered.

 

IN A pigeon-hole he saw the butt of a revolver protruding and he took it out. It was of heavy caliber and fully loaded. If the old man had kept it under his pillow—but Benson dismissed that thought, the blow had been too quick, the attack too stealthy. Harmon had died in his sleep.

With the pistol in his hand he unbolted the front door and went out. The wind blew so strongly that he was hard put to it to advance. He leaned his weight against the strength of it while he shielded his face with one crooked arm from the flying grains. Then it momentarily slackened. Across an angry sea, tumbling at cross-purposes, a streak of pale yellow split the wrack of clouds, wan herald of the day. And he saw a schooner plunging under shortened staysail and main in a three-point reef, holding up in the wind. He wondered why it did not beat out to open sea and then, the salty gusts clearing his brain, he realized purpose in its holding on to such a perilous course. It was waiting for some one.

He glanced to right and left. On the left must lie the creek that the driver had mentioned as still partly navigable for shallow draft. If the murderer was connected with this schooner, hanging on in the mouth of the snarling storm, he had come by boat. And he would so return, if a boat could live in that criss-cross of shifting pyramids, yeasty with foam, topped by spume flying parallel like snow in a blizzard.

A shout came faintly to him and he began to run across the dunes, to his left. Suddenly a figure showed, climbing out of a valley between hills, a man in blue trousers and shirt, surely his quarry. He was a fair hundred yards ahead, too far for range of the pistol. And he, too, ran fast on his bare feet. He topped a dune and disappeared as Benson labored through the dragging sand and fought the gusts that sometimes held him stopped, his laboring lungs seeming to be blown bare of air.

He reached the dune where the man had vanished and found himself looking down upon ebbing waters of the creek. The wind lashed at the stream and, favored by the tide, fighting the gale, he saw a dory with one man laboring at the oars and another in the stern.

Benson ran along the dunes that bordered the creek, gaining a little. The rower saw him and redoubled his efforts. Benson stopped and fired but the pace had unsteadied him and the bullet went wide and short, spurting up the water. He tried a second without effect. The windage was hard to judge and counteract, the creek was widening to an estuary and the dory hugged the opposite shore. In a lull it shot ahead as Benson raced down to water-level, firing again, uselessly. The two were out of range and he could only watch them as the dory struggled across the turmoil of the bar and started across the wider turbulence of the waves that threatened every instant to engulf it.

The man in the stern put out a oar in the notch and strove to keep the boat head on. Now they were hidden in a valley, now tossed up a heaving slope, clawing a way with frantic strokes, making some progress, the rower skilful at his task.

A man appeared at the rail of the schooner and shouted something out of cupped hands. Benson caught a wind-shredded remnant of the shout and guessed at its call for haste. Though he fancied the wind was lessening, the waves were mounting perceptibly, rolling in from beneath the widening streak of yellow and every second increased the hazard of the schooner if she hoped to clear the shallow crescent of Windy Bay and work out past the reeds that marked the almost vanished headlands.

 

ON THE wet shingle Benson stood impotent, drenched, watching the struggling dory. He saw it turn broadside to the rearing wave, saw the steering oar snap and a roaring mass of water engulf the little craft, pounding it viciously, smashing it, striking with the weight of tons of raging sea. A bobbing head—an upflung hand, and a last glimpse of wreckage—and the certain end had come.

He stood fixed, strained against the wind and saw the schooner fall off a little, then come up, with figures on deck staring where the dory had been. Then she fell off again, and, not daring to ease her sheets, her canvas hard as a board, began to sidle her way close-hauled, seaward, making dangerous leeway till she tacked, came about handsomely and buffeted her way out of her extremity. Inch by inch, foot by foot, she clung to the wind as a man might hand himself along a rope, gaining little by little, seeking her own safety, relinquishing the two men to the death that had already claimed them, swashing them about in the sub-currents, to fling them up at the flood, battered, sodden, broken husks.

Benson turned away, the gun still tight in his grip. His efforts at recall, at punishment, had been futile as the petty anger of a child. And he had other things to do. The bodies might come ashore somewhere on that rockbound coast, but the murder was yet to be reported, the question of the rubies settled. For he did not think they were taken with the men in the dory. The shadow of the tragedy had deepened, though he fancied he dimly saw a trail in the wild tangle of the night's events.

[Illustration: Suddenly a figure showed, climbing out of a valley between hills, a man in blue trousers and shirt, surely his quarry.]

Above him, on a dune, her strange hair streaming, her clothes whipped about her bony frame in a thousand convolutions, her pallid eyes gazing wildly out to sea, her lips moving above the gleam of her ridiculous teeth, stood the housekeeper, her features in such a wild twist of frenzy, of unutterable woe, that Benson's impulse to go to her was checked. But he mounted and touched her on the shoulder. She turned to him, pointing to the tumbling fury of the waves that beat upon the shingle and sent spray sprouting inland, to fly in spindrift flakes above the dunes; greeting him with a maniacal laugh—

“So ends the day! So ends the day! But we will wait—wait until the sea gives up its dead.”

She clawed at him wildly when he would have led her away.

A hail barely reached him. He turned to see a tall man coming over the dunes from the road's end, leaning against the gusts, a hand on his hat, the spare folds of his clothing lashing out. A stouter figure toiled behind. With relief, Benson recognized the driver of the car—Martin—deputy sheriff and constable.

Martin caught at him for balance as he reached him, gasping for breath, his Adam's apple working as he strove for speech, his eyes shifting from the woman to the schooner, laboring hard to gain an offing. Once they turned suspiciously to Benson.

“She'll make it,” he cried at last. “She'll make it! Dad burn 'em but they can handle her! It's the Miriam! Old Job Bollard, runnin' in from the storm, sighted her foolin' about in the bay here at daybreak. Thought she might be tryin' to land a cargo. Rum-runner she is. Contraband. Why in time they put in so close here beats me. She'll fetch it, sure. Look at her scoon, will ye?”

Benson saw the Miriam come about for a short tack, then fetch another and go lunging past the point in a smother of spray.

“Sheriff,” he said, “you are the man that's needed. There's been murder done. Captain Harmon has been stabbed. Valuable jewels have been stolen. Ten thousand dollars of mine has gone with them.”

Both men opened their mouths as their eyes goggled. The wind blew away the half formulated “Murder?” that formed on their lips.

“Then what in time are you and the woman standin' here watchin' the schooner fur?” demanded Martin. He had taken a visible brace. His loose-jointed frame coordinated into something authoritative, his eyes became keen. Benson approved his new aspect. The man had qualities, after all. His companion seemed of duller clay, awed, swollen with curiosity, yet stolid.

 

“I BELIEVE the man came off from the schooner. Two men tried to make her in a dory from the creek and were drowned. One of them is, I think, the murderer.”

“I want to know.” Martin scrutinized the shore line and the breakers. “Body'll be comin' in before long.” he said. “Both of 'em. Land this side of the p'int. Strong current sets in. Nothin' doin' till tide turns. Davis, you stay here an' keep an eye out for 'em. I'm going up to the house.

“What's come to her?” he went on, looking at the housekeeper, who had hunkered down atop the dune, her eyes searching the waves.

“We need her at the house,” said Benson. The deputy sheriff looked sharply at him, caught some special meaning and sucked in his lips. Then he tapped the woman on the shoulder.

“You come back to the house along of me, Mrs. Woods,” he said. “I want to have a talk with you.”

She stared at him blankly. Her eyes gleamed like pale opals that suddenly reflect the light. Then they became stony. But she rose. Martin took her by the arm, and though she stiffened she seemed suddenly to resign herself and went back, between Benson and Martin, with head erect and lips firmly pressed together, though her scant bosom rose and fell as unevenly as the warring seas. They entered the house. Benson told some details as they walked and Martin looked once into the room where the captain lay, the dog beside him, which growled at Martin and then subsided.

“Nothin' teched?” asked Martin. “Good. We'll send for the medical examiner. Acts as coroner up here,” he explained to Benson as the three of them went into the living-room. Martin led the woman to a chair and motioned Benson to another.

 

“NOW then,” he said, his eyes alert. “Suppose you tell me the whole story as you come into it, Mr. Benson.” As the latter talked, the sheriff fingered the empty casket and peered into the cavities in the fireplace. He glanced at the spaces in the trophy from which the krises had been taken, but said nothing until Benson stopped talking.

“You got anything to add to that?” he challenged the woman. She sat gazing at the ruins of the ship. Silent, rigid.

“Funny how he got clear of them straps,” he continued. “Funny about them bolts. You got any theory, mister?” His eyes, no longer merely inquisitive, but official, sounded Benson's. Apparently he expected an answer.

“The man got past the dog,” said Benson. “He was let into the house. Let loose. Mrs. Woods, what time did your son come to this house last night?”

The sheriff whistled softly. The woman started to her feet, her look wild, shocked into galvanic action out of her repression.

“My son? Who says it was my son? My God!”

“You lied last night, Mrs. Woods,” went on Benson. “You said there was no oil for my lamp. The can in the kitchen is half full. You made that an excuse to spy on the captain and myself. And the man I caught in my room had your eyes. There were other things about him that struck me.”

“Stop!” she cried, in a croaking, choking voice. “Stop, I say!”

“She has got a boy,” said Martin. “He warn't no good. Cap'n kicked him out five years back for stealin'. Loose bills, it was. Wouldn't prosecute. Said he'd thrashed him. You'd better talk out, Mrs. Woods. 'Pears you're mixed up some in this yourself. An' your boy, if it was your boy, is——”

“Drowned,” she wailed. “Drowned. But he didn't know. I swear it.”

She stopped suddenly, glancing at them, at Benson's hard face and the Yankee's keen features and accusing eyes. Then, her arm outflung to the figure of the Apsara on the mantel, she faced them.

“I'll talk,” she said. “I'll talk. Let the world know what I have kept until my heart was caked. She—the wanton. And him, cruel and cold, seeking his own lusts, denying his own flesh and blood, forsaking me. Cruel and cold, a lying, crafty devil.” She shifted her gesture to the door that led to the dead man's chamber. The floodgates of her speech were open, her eyes reckless.

“Lizzie Woods, I was. A beauty once. No puny thing like her. His housekeeper and his mistress. Strong I was, with a will of my own, but he was stronger. And I loved his mastery. He would have married me, but for her. Though he broke his oath as a man might break twigs, yet he would have married me and righted me. But he brought her back, thirty long years ago, in that ship that sits scorched there, a forewarning of the hell that has opened to him.

“And when I told him of the child that was coming, he laughed at me and said 'twas none of his. He had broken me by then, after five years, as he broke her. I've watched her sitting in the sun, looking out to sea, and smiled to see her pine away for her hot, green land and look to him for the caress he had tired of giving, as he did with me.

“Aye, I laid her out at last. I watched him dig her grave and carve the stone. Perhaps he loved her. He brought no more light-of-loves to Windy Bay. And the hardness of him shelled about him. He drove away my boy. His own son. And I, the broken fool, stayed on.

“For what? To get the inheritance for my boy. It was his. His and mine. I hoped that Harmon might grow less hard. I tended him. And he left the sea. His heart failed him, drained of its strength by wanton living. He saw the sand creep on as it has always done, to kill the orchard and to cover the shame of her grave. I was his cast-off, his slave. And I could have had a dozen proud to wed me once."

Martin nodded confirmation at Benson. It was difficult to believe that beauty once bloomed on that warped and dessicated vine. But her voice rang with truth

 

“I DID not spy,” she said, turning on Benson. “I but made sure. I have watched him many a night in front of the fire, looking at his rubies. At my rubies. My boy's. They may have been hers once. She gave him—all—all—to mastery. A man like him is born as woman's master. To make a mock of them. But they belonged to my boy, since he would not give him a name. None knew of them but me. Sometimes he would look at me and laugh, and I knew he was figuring to fool me at the end.

“I guessed why you had come. I read the Sunday paper where he first learned of you. He took the supplement to his room and I found it. I read your book when he was out, walking the cliffs with the fog. I knew when he wrote you, when you would come. And the luck was against him. For I had a letter from my boy and I knew he would be coming yesterday, as he has sometimes come before. Wild he was, with his father's blood in him. Wild with my wildness. But my boy.

“I told him of the rubies. Of the money you had brought. He had paid the schooner to bring him here and set him of. He meant to take some of his own. Could I blame him, knowing his father's treacherous heart? I knew the trick of the fireplace, watching him from the hall doorway the night, trying it when he was out.

“But he wanted the money. Most of all he needed money. The rubies he dared not sell. What more is there to tell?” She dropped her arms heavily, the life seemed to suddenly wane in her. But she regathered force.

“I did not know he had killed. I swear it. And he—ah, God!—he did not know that he had killed his father.”

“You never told him?” asked Benson.

“Would I tell him his own shame? He thought my husband—his father—dead. Long ago.”

“Yet he was willin' to take the jewels and the money,” said Martin.

“One thing more,” said Benson. “You let him into the house. You undid the strips while I was down-stairs and then pretended to have swooned. How did he get away?”

“The cupboards,” she said faintly, clutching at the table. “The cupboards between your sitting-room and the next. There is a space between, with a sliding panel. It leads to a chute—with a ladder. It leads down to one of the piers in the cellar. It is hollow. There is an old passage leading to the ruined wharf and the creek. He went that way. Now let me go.”

“Your son had no right to this man's money.” said Martin.

“I thought he had paid it to the captain for a stone. I thought it was in the mantel—or beneath the captain's pillow. And I could not stop him after I had told him. It would have been sent back, from the sale of the rubies.”

“Where are the rubies?” asked Martin.

“Under the mattress on my bed. I was to keep them for a while. I—look!” she shrilled.

 

THROUGH the window they saw figures approaching the house, slowly. Two groups each carrying something that sagged—and dripped.

She broke from them, rushing through the hall, out through the door, where the stolid Davis, at a nod from Martin, trailed her as she went to meet her son.

“Likely'll have your notes in his pocket, if the sea ain't washed 'em out,” said Martin, “Better look after them rubies. She's implicated, of course, but—” He looked, uncertainly, at Benson.

“You haven't guessed all of it, Martin,” said Benson. “Look at this.” He took from his pocket the paper he had taken from the captain's desk. “This is Harmon's will. He wrote in it last night, after I had appraised his jewels: There are a few bequests and, listen:”

“To my housekeeper, Mrs. Eliza Woods, in recognition of her years of service and in recompense for certain wrongs she has suffer at my hands; to her and to her issue after her, I bequeath the sum of sixty thousand dollars, to be derived from the sale of my rubies this day appraised.”

The sheriff stared dumbly at Benson for a moment. “He left 'em to her after all. If that don't beat all. I want to know.”

The front door opened. The heavy tread of men sounded, the broken sobbing of a woman, of a mother. From the dead man's room the dog suddenly howled. The door to the living-room opened. The sun, breaking through the clouds, sent level rays through outer door and passage, across the living-room of Smuggler's House. The beam touched the shriveled masts of the ship and rested on the face of the Apsara.