The Flying Death - Samuel Hopkins Adams (story reading .txt) 📗

a man. He was swart, so swart as obviously to be of Southern European extraction. In spite of the sea’s terrific battering, he apparently had escaped any serious injury, and already had regained consciousness; but, to Colton’s surprise, kept his head buried in his arms. From time to time a convulsive shudder ran through him.

“Seems to be kind of crazy-like,” volunteered old Johnston, who stood beside him. “Begged me, with his hands clasped, to help him out of the light of the fire, first thing.”

“How do you feel, my friend?” asked the young doctor, bending over the survivor.

The man lifted a dark and haggard face. “To a house! Take me to a house! I weesh to go inside!” His voice was a mere wheeze of terror.

“We’ll get you to a house presently,” Colton assured him, presenting the brandy flask to his lips, “Can you make out to climb that cliff?”

“Up there? So plain to be see? No, no!” cried the man vehemently, roving the dark heavens with his eyes.

Colton looked at him in perplexity. The man got painfully to his feet, and cupped a hand to his windward ear.

“I t’ink I hear eet again,” he whispered, and shook like a rag in the wind.

“What are you talking about?” asked Colton.

“Somesing up zere,” said the stranger, thrusting both hands in an uncouth and fearful gesture upward and outward.

“Oh, you’re not quite yourself yet,” said Colton.

“I tell you I hear eet!” broke out the man with extraordinary vehemence. “I feel eet! What? I do not know. But when eet come back”—he made a motion as of a winged creature swooping—“I fear an’ I jump into ze waves.” A harsh tremour went through his frame and left him panting.

“You jumped?” said Johnston. “When she broke up?”

“No. Before. Before she break.”

“He’s crazy,” said the old lifesaver. “What’d you jump for?”

“Eet come after me,” shuddered the man. Again he made that extraordinary gesture. “Take me to a house out of ze night.”

“Someone must go with him to the station,” said Colton.

“Let me,” Helga Johnston volunteered.

The stranger faced the girl, and advanced a swift step. It was a meeting of satyr and goddess. Suddenly the satyr cast himself at the goddess’ feet and kissed them. Startled, she drew back.

“Eet is you that safe me!” he cried, lifting wild and adoring eyes to her. “I see you just before all go black. You walk out on ze wave to reach me.”

“Come along, you!” cried old Johnston, lifting him to his feet. “No such heathen goin’s-on for my Helga. Not that I think you know what you’re doin’,” he added.

“You mustn’t go with him alone, Princess,” said Haynes quickly. “He seems to be insane.”

“Father will go with me,” she replied; “though I’m safe enough. It isn’t there the danger lies.”

“Helga,” said Haynes seriously, “I wish you wouldn’t let yourself be so influenced by your dreams.”

“I’ll try not to, Petit P�re,” said the girl gently. “But, look how it has all come about. Yet I can’t see how a strange creature like that could possibly influence all our lives.”

“You don’t half believe it yourself,” said Haynes positively.

“Sometimes I don’t,” she agreed. “But we who are born of the sea, dream the sea’s dreams, you know, Petit P�re.”

“Well, get into dry clothes as soon as you get to the station, Princess. Oh, and get me that fellow’s name and address, will you?”

“Yes,” said the girl, as, with her father, she led her strange charge away toward the Sand Spit station.

“Now,” said Haynes to Colton, “will you come up on the cliff and look at my man?”

Together they clambered to the top. In the light of the dying fire they saw the man stretched out near the brink of the cliff.

Another of the wrecked sailors and two lifesavers stood over him. One of the lifesavers Colton recognised as the guard who had come over to speak to Helga Johnston, a hulking, handsome fellow named Serdholm, from the Sand Spit station. The other was a quiet-looking young fellow of the Blue Hill corps, Bruce by name. As Haynes and Colton approached, Bruce drew away a coat which was spread over the prostrate figure, and lifted his lantern.

“He is dead,” said Colton at once.

“Yes,” replied Haynes; “but see how he came by his death.”

Rolling the body over, he exposed a deep, broad, clean-driven wound through the back. “What do you make of that?” he asked.

Colton examined it carefully. “I don’t make anythin’ of it,” he said frankly, “except that the poor fellow never knew what struck him.”

“What did strike him?”

“A very large blade, sent home with tremendous force, apparently.”

“By some other person?”

“Certainly not by himself; and it doesn’t seem like accident. Was he washed ashore this way?”

`‘Supposing I told you that the man left the ship, alive and sound in the breeches-buoy, and got here in this condition.”

“Does the buoy carry more than one at a time?”

“No.”

“Then it isn’t possible.”

“Well, there’s plenty of evidence as to his arrival. Now let’s see about his departure. Were you aboard when this man left the schooner?” Haynes asked, turning to one of the two sailors at hand.

“Yes, sir. Me an’ Darky John came after him. We helped fasten him in.”

“Who else was there?”

“The Old Man, an’ Buckley the mate, an’ that queer Dago feller.”

“There wasn’t any fight or trouble about who should come first?”

“No, sir. The Old Man gave his orders. Petersen, here, he leaves fifth, I think. ‘Goodbye, boys. See you later,’ he says, an’ off he goes. Next I see of him, he lies here dead. What killed him or how, I don’t know, no more than a blind fish.”

“Straight enough story,” commented Haynes, “particularly as Hawkins, the coloured man, gives the same version. We’ll try the foreigner later. I want to get to the bottom of this. If murder has been done in mid-air, between the reef where the schooner lay and this cliff, it’s about the strangest case in my experience.”

“How are you so sure it’s murder?” demanded Serdholm the life-guard. “Anyone can make out murder if they’re looking for sensation hard enough.” There was an undisguised hostility in his tone as he addressed Haynes which surprised Colton.

“Why do you think it wasn’t?” asked Colton quickly.

“Did I say I thought it wasn’t?” retorted the guard. “Maybe it was; but I’ve seen a sharpened stake shoved clean through a man in a surf.”

“You needn’t be so fresh about it, Serdholm,” put in the other guard. “It’s true, though, what he says, Mr. Haynes,” he added. “And there was plenty of driftwood afloat.”

Colton bent over the dead man again. “It’s almost too clean an incision for anything except steel,” he said. “Besides, wood leaves splinters.”

“You saw the man come in?” Haynes asked Bruce.

“Helped to lift him out. Look!” He held out his hands, showing great stains of blood.

“You didn’t see anything that would give a clue?”

“No, I didn’t see anything,” returned Bruce after a moment’s consideration; “but some of the men thought they heard a scream, when he was about halfway in. It was just after a lightning flash. They thought a bolt might have gone through him.”

“Lightning doesn’t wound that way,” said Colton.

“No, I didn’t think so. But I thought I’d better tell you. Only in the noises of a gale you can hear all sorts of voices.”

“They didn’t say anything about a kind of rasping, creaking sound?” asked Haynes after a moment’s hesitation.

“No, sir,” said the man, surprised. “Nothing like that.”

Haynes turned away impatiently. “Come down to the Blue Hill station,” he said to Colton. “We’ll see if Miss Johnston’s patient can throw any light on this.”

During the walk Haynes was so deeply in thought and replied to Colton’s questions so curtly that the latter fell into silence. At the door of the station they were met by Helga.

“How’s your salvage, Princess?” queried Haynes. “Able to stand a cross-examination?”

“More than able—willing,” replied the girl with a smile. “He’s been telling us all about himself. Nothing queerer than he ever came ashore on Montauk. I’m afraid the sea-water has got into his brain a little.”

“Tell us what he said.”

“In the first place, he is some sort of a travelling juggler and magician. As soon as he is recovered he will give us a private exhibition in honour of his rescue. He calls himself ‘The Wonderful Whalley,’ though his real name is something like Cardonaro. An injury to his hand stranded him in Maine, and he took passage on the Milly Esham because it was a cheap way to New York. Age, forty-two; nationality, Portuguese; occupation, the theatrical profession. Anything else, Petit P�re?”

“Good work! Did he say anything of a man’s being killed on board!”

The girl’s face became grave at once. “No,” she said. “How was he killed? Who was it?”

“A sailor named Petersen. He was stabbed, and came ashore dead.”

“The man has two enormous knives in sheaths fastened to his belt,” she said, turning white. “He uses them in his performances.”

Haynes and Colton looked at each other.

“If he did it, he wasn’t responsible,” Helga went on impetuously. “He’s such a pitiful creature—just like a dog, with his great eyes. I feel as if we had saved a baby. And he is terrified like a baby.”

“At some phantom of the darkness?”

The girl nodded. “Something that he hasn’t even seen. He thinks it came down from the upper air after him as the ship was going to pieces. While the others were being taken off in the breeches-buoy he was crawling down the main ratlines to escape from this thing. Finally his fears drove him overboard.”

“Just as well for him,” said Colton. “If he had stayed he would have been killed in the wreckage with the mate and captain.”

“Dr. Colton thinks the man is insane,” said Haynes. “What is your view, Princess?”

“I think so too. But I think some strange thing has terrified him. Perhaps one of the sails tore loose and blew on him. Or it may have been the lightning.”

“That might be it, and in his panic he may have struck out and killed Petersen by accident. But in that case, why should the other sailors, who must have seen it, shield him? I guess the best thing is to put it to him straight,” concluded Haynes.

Followed by Colton, he went into the room where the suspect lay.

“See here!” began Haynes abruptly. “We want to know why you killed Petersen the sailor.”

The stranger’s dark eyes widened. He stared at his questioner with dropped jaw.

“Yes; why you killed him—with this.” Haynes touched the hilt of one of the knives that protruded from the man’s belt.

“No, no!” protested the man. “I not got nothing against Petersen. I not know Petersen.”

“You were on board when he left?”

“Yes; I see zem go—one—two—three—so many—seven. Not me; I haf to stay. No one care to safe ze wonderful Whalley.”

“Did you see anyone fight with Petersen or strike him?” asked Colton.

“No; see nothing.”

After fifteen minutes of fruitless cross-questioning the investigators called in the negro, Hawkins.

“Him kill Petersen?” repeated Hawkins. “No—sir—ee, boss! He watn’t nowheyah nigh when Petersen went off, safe an’ wavin’ his hand goodbye.”

“Someone killed him,” said Haynes. “This man, yourself, Corliss and the captain and mate were the only ones aboard.”

“That’s right, boss. Corliss and the Old Man and I stood right by and saw him off. No, sir, if he watn’t killed by the lightnin’ or on the cliff, somethin’ got him on the way in.”

“You think he may have