The Secret Mark Part 19

For three full moments she battled the waves; then, all but breathless, she slipped over on her back to do the dead man's float.

"Just for a few seconds. Got to save my strength, but I can't waste time."

Now for the first time she realized that there was a possibility that she would lose this fight. The realization of what it meant if she did lose, swept over her and left her cold and numb. To go back was impossible; the wind and waves were too strong for that. To fail to reach the boat meant death.

Turning back again into swimming position, she struck out once more. But this time it was not the crawl. That cost too much. With an easy, hand-over-hand swing which taxed the reserve forces little more than floating, she set her teeth hard, resolved slowly but surely to win her way to the boat and to safety.

Moments pa.s.sed. Long, agonizing moments.

Lucile on the sh.o.r.e, by the gleam of a flare of lightning, caught now and then a glimpse of the swimmer. Little by little she became conscious of the real situation. When it dawned upon her that Florence was in real peril, she thought of rus.h.i.+ng to the cottage and calling to her a.s.sistance any who might be there. Then she looked at the bundle of clothing in her arms and flushed.

"She'd never forgive me," she whispered.

Florence, still battling, felt the spray break over her, but still kept on the even swing. Now and again, high on the crest of a wave, she saw the boat. She was cheered by the fact that each time it appeared to loom a little larger.

"Gaining," she whispered. "Fifty yards to go!"

Again moments pa.s.sed and again she whispered, "Gaining. Thirty yards."

A third time she whispered, "Twenty yards."

After that it was a quiet, muscle-straining, heart-breaking, silent battle, which caused her very senses to reel. Indeed at times she appeared conscious of only one thing, the mechanical swing of her arms, the kick, kick of her feet. They seemed but mechanical attachments run by some electrical power.

When at last the boat loomed black and large on the crest of a wave just above her she had barely enough brain energy left to order her arms into a new motion.

Striking upward with her right hand, she gripped the craft's side. The next instant, with a superhuman effort, without overturning it she threw herself into the boat, there to fall panting across a seat.

"Wha--what a battle!" she gasped. "But I won! I won!"

For two minutes she lay there motionless. Then, drawing herself stiffly up to a sitting position, she adjusted the oars to their oarlocks and, bending forward, threw all her magnificent strength into the business of battling the waves and bringing the boat safely ash.o.r.e.

There are few crafts more capable of riding a stormy sea than is a clinker-built rowboat. Light as a cork, it rides the waves like a seagull. Florence was not long in finding this out. Her trip ash.o.r.e was one of joyous triumph. She had fought a hard physical battle and won.

This was her hour of triumph. Her lips thrilled a "Hi-le-hi-le-hi-lo"

which was heard with delight by her friends on land. Her bare arms worked like twin levers to a powerful engine, as she brought the boat around and shot it toward sh.o.r.e.

A moment for rejoicing, two for dressing, then they all three tumbled into the boat to make the tossing trip round the wall to sh.o.r.e on the other side.

For the moment the book tightly pressed under the child's arm was forgotten. Florence talked of swimming and rowing. She talked of plans for a possible summer's outing which included days upon the water and weeks within the forest primeval.

As they left the boat on the beach, they could see that the storm was pa.s.sing to the north of them. It had, however, hidden the moon. The path through the forest and across the river was engulfed in darkness.

Once more the child prattled of haunts, spooks, and goblins, but for once Lucile's nerves were not disturbed. Her mind had gone back to the old problems, the mystery of the gargoyle and all the knotty questions which had come to be a.s.sociated with it.

This night a new mystery had thrust its head up out of the dark and an old theory had been exploded. She had thought that the young millionaire's son might be in league with the old man and the child in carrying away and disposing of old and valuable books, but here was the child coming out to this all but deserted cottage at night to take a book from the young man's library.

"He hasn't a thing in the world to do with it," she told herself. "He--"

She paused in her perplexing problem to grip her companion's arm and whisper, "What was that?"

They were nearing the plank bridge. She felt certain that she heard a footstep upon it. But now as she listened she heard nothing but the onrush of distant waters.

"Just your nerves," answered Florence.

"It was not. I was not thinking of the child's foolish chatter. I was thinking of our problem, of the gargoyle's secret. Someone is crossing the bridge."

Even as she spoke, as if in proof of her declaration, there came a faint pat-pat-pat, as of someone moving on the bridge on tiptoe.

"Someone is shadowing us," Lucile whispered.

"Looks that way."

"Who is it?"

"Someone from the cottage perhaps. Watching to see what the child does with the book. She must take it back."

"Yes, she must."

"It might be," and here even stout-hearted Florence shuddered, "it might be that someone had shadowed us all the way from the city."

"The one who followed me the night I got caught in that wretched woman's house, and other times?"

"Yes."

"But he couldn't have gone all the way, not up to the cottage. He couldn't get through the fence and there was no other boat."

"Well, anyway, whoever it is, we must go on. Won't do any good standing here s.h.i.+vering."

Once more they pressed into the dark and once more Lucile resumed her attempt to disentangle the many problems which lay before her.

CHAPTER XVIII FRANK MORROW JOINS IN THE HUNT

That she had reached the limit of her resources, her power to reason and to endure, Lucile knew right well. To go on as she had been day after day, each day adding some new responsibility to her already overburdened shoulders, was to invite disaster. It was not fair to others. The set of Shakespeare, the volume of Portland charts, the hand-bound volume from the bindery and this book just taken from the summer home of the millionaire, were all for the moment in the hands of the old man and the child. How long would they remain there? No one could tell save the old man and perhaps the child.

That she had had no part whatever in the taking of any of them, unless her accompanying of the child on this trip might be called taking a part, she knew quite well. Yet one is responsible for what one knows.

"I should have told what I knew about the set of Shakespeare in the beginning," she chided herself. "Then there would have been no other problems. All the other books would be at this moment in their proper places and the old man and child would be--"

She could not say the words, "in jail." It was too terrible to contemplate! That man and that child in jail! And, yet, she suddenly remembered the child's declaration that she would not return the book to the summer cottage. She had said the book belonged to the old man.

Perhaps, after all, it did. She had seen the millionaire's son in the mystery room talking to the old man. Perhaps, after all, he had borrowed the book and the child had been sent for it. There was some consolation in that thought.

"But that does not solve any of the other problems," she told herself, "and, besides, if she has a right to the book, why all this creeping up to the cottage by night by way of the water. And why did he a.s.sume that she was borrowing it?"

And so, after all her speculation, she found herself just where she had left off; the tangle was no less a tangle than before.