The Flying Death - Samuel Hopkins Adams (story reading .txt) 📗
- Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams
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Then the girl had cause to bless the darkness, for from her heart there surged a flood to her face, and with it woman’s first doubt and fear and glory. “Perhaps I do know,” she thought. For an instant, she closed her eyes and saw him as he had come draggled and staggering from the sea. She opened them upon his stalwart figure and the clean-cut, manly face, still drawn with anxiety, clear in the light of the lantern.
“It was good of you to brave the danger,” she said sweetly. “I have had a premonition of some tragedy overhanging, since we found the sheep.”
“Well, Professor! Hello, Miss Dolly!” called Haynes, as he swung up on a trot. “Are you all right? Better hurry in. There’s a storm coming.”
“It is something besides a storm that brought you gentlemen out on a search for us,” said Professor Ravenden shrewdly. “While properly appreciative, I should be glad to have an explanation.”
The explanation came swiftly, from the direction of the sea. It was a long-drawn, high-pitched scream. There was in it a cadence of mortal terror; the last agony rang shrill and unmistakable from its quivering echoes. Miss Ravenden’s horse bounded in the air; but Colton’s weight on the bridle brought it down shaking.
“That was a horse,” said the girl tremulously. “Poor thing!”
“In dire extremity, if I mistake not,” added the professor. “I am beginning to feel an interest which I trust is not unscientific in this succession of phenomena.”
“I think,” said Haynes quickly, “that the house is the place for us just now. That’s the end of your brother’s horse,” he added to Colton in a low tone.
When Dick Colton lifted the girl from her saddle at the front porch he said to her: “Miss Ravenden, may I ask you to promise me something?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl, in sudden apprehension. “What is it?”
“That you will not go out alone on the grassland again, nor go out even with your father after dusk, until Mr. Haynes or I tell you it is safe?”
“I promise. But won’t you tell me what you have found out?”
“Something unhorsed my brother as he came across the point in the darkness, and that was his mare’s death-cry you heard from the shore.”
When they were inside, Haynes suggested that they hold a brief consultation, at which all should be present. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston, Helga and Everard Colton were sent for. In the stress of the moment Haynes had forgotten that Helga had not been warned of the younger Colton’s coming. Everard came into the room first, and provided his brother with a surprise, by rushing at Miss Ravenden as if bent on devouring her.
“Little Dot, the butterfly’s Nemesis!” he cried. “When did you get here, and how? And Professor too! Well, this is a lark!” To which greeting the Ravendens responded with equal warmth.
“Dick, you scoundrel, why didn’t you tell me they were here?” cried Everard.
“I didn’t know you knew them,” returned the bewildered Dick.
“Know them? Why, I’ve spent a week of my latest vacation on their house-boat. The Lepidopter� of half the Southern States shriek aloud when they see Miss Ravenden and me approaching. Besides, I’m useful, am I not, Dolly?”
“Not in terms that could be reduced to an estimate,” said that young woman.
“Ungrateful maiden! Don’t I shoo off your swarming adorers, comprising all the polyglot of Washington and most of the blue blood of Philadelphia? I’m the only man in America who can be with Miss Dorothy Ravenden for three consecutive days without falling desperately in love with her. I escape only because I know it’s hopeless.”
“Oh, is that it?” said Dolly demurely. “I had heard there was a more tangible reason for my bereavement. Vardy, you’re looking serious in spite of all your nonsense. I believe, upon my soul, the stories are true.”
”Oh, Dick,” said Everard hastily, “I nearly forgot about that package of books. I dropped ‘em outside. Here they are and they’ll cost you just eight dollars and eighty cents and the price of a drink for my trouble in bringing them. Don’t know what they are, because I turned over your telegram to Towney; but by their weight they’re worth the money. Let’s have a look at them.”
Before Dick could protest he had opened the package.
“‘Summer reading for a young physician,’” he began, looking at the titles. “What have we here? Harris’ ‘Insects Injurious to Vegetation’; ‘The Butterfly Book,’ by Holland; ‘Special Report on the Spiders of Long Island’; ‘North American’ —well, by my proud ancestral halls!”
“Give me those books, Ev!” said Dick sharply.
“Little Everard, the Boy Wonder, has put a dainty foot in it again!” He laughed banteringly, looking from Dorothy Ravenden to Dick and back again. “Dick, too? Oh, Dolly, couldn’t you leave the family alone for my sake? Case of ‘Love me, love my bugs’!”
But even the much-allowanced Everard had gone too far. Dolly Ravenden turned upon him with an expression which boded ill for the venturesome young man, when a volume of song from the hallway, that seemed, controlled and effortless as it was, to fill full and permeate every farthest nook and corner of the house, stopped her. It was Helga singing a quaint and stirring old ballad.
“Where there is no place
For the glow-worm to lie,
Where there is no space
For receipt of a fly;
Where the midge dare not venture
Lest herself fast she lay,
If Love come he will enter
And will find out the way.”
“Heavens!” exclaimed Dick Colton. “What a voice! Who is it?”
“Haven’t you heard Helga sing?” said Dolly Ravenden, in surprise. “Isn’t it superb!”
Everard had risen and was looking hungrily toward the door. Dolly looked keenly at him, and saw in his face a look that she had seen in many a man’s eyes, but that no woman but one had ever before seen in Everard Colton’s.
“It is true,” she said to herself. The voice went on:
“There is no striving
To cross his intent,
There is no contriving
His plots to prevent;
For if once the message greet him
That his true-love doth stay,
Though Death come forth to meet him,
Love will find out the way.”
The soft, deep, triumphant final note died away. There was a moment’s silence.
“Dick, you ought to have told me,” said Everard, unsteadily.
But Dick paid no heed. He was looking at Haynes, upon whose cold and rather hard-lined face was such an expression of loving pride and yearning, as utterly transfigured it.
“I ought to be kicked for bringing Everard down here,” thought the gentle-hearted young doctor.
The door opened and Helga entered. As if drawn magnetically, her gaze went straight to Everard Colton. She stopped short.
“Helga!” said he.
The girl caught her breath sharply. Her hand fluttered toward her breast, and fell again. Her colour faded; but instantly she was mistress of herself.
“Good-evening, Mr. Colton,” she said quietly, and gave him her hand as she came forward. “Did you come in this evening? It always is wiser to write ahead for rooms.”
“I don’t understand,” he stammered. “Are you—do you live here?”
“This is my father’s hotel,” she explained. “Father, this is Mr. Everard Colton. Is there a room for him?”
“I’ve found my room,” said Everard hoarsely, and there followed a silence which Miss Ravenden maliciously enjoyed, her eyes sparkling at her erstwhile tormentor’s discomfiture.
Haynes broke the silence. “This is all very pleasant,” he said sharply and with an effort, “but it isn’t business. And we have business of a rather serious nature on hand. There is just this to say: Somewhere on the point is this juggler. He is armed, and there is at least a strong suspicion that he is murderous. The death of the sailor, the killing of the sheep, and Mr. Colton’s adventure show plainly enough that there is peril abroad. It may or may not have to do with the juggler. But until the man is captured, I think the ladies should not leave the house alone; and none of us should go far alone or unarmed. Is that agreed?”
“I agree for myself and my daughter to your very well-judged suggestion,” said Professor Ravenden, “and I have in my room an extra revolver which I will gladly lend to anyone.”
The others also assented to the plan, and at Haynes’ suggestion the weapon went to Helga’s adopted father. Dick Colton had a navy revolver, Everard had his cavalry arm, and Haynes had written for a pistol.
“Would it not be well,” suggested the professor, “to notify the authorities?”
“The average town constable is appointed to keep him out of the imbecile asylum,” said Haynes. “I believe we can organise a vigilance committee right here and see it through. Besides,” he added with a smile, “I want the story exclusively for my paper.”
“Has the generalissimo been disobeying his own orders?” called out Dolly Ravenden from the porch, as Haynes came up the pathway early the next morning. He did not respond to the rallying tone, habitual between them, which covered a well-founded friendship. Instead he said:
“Miss Dolly, you heard that horse last night. What did you think of the cry?”
“It went through me like a knife,” said the girl, shuddering. “I thought it was a death scream. The horse I was on thought so, too.”
“I’d have sworn to it myself,” said Haynes, and fell into deep thought.
“Well?” queried the girl after waiting impatiently. “It isn’t a secret, is it?”
“Something in that line. I’ve just been all over the ground between the place where Mr. Colton was assailed and the beach, without finding hide or hair of the horse. It must have escaped.”
“I for one won’t believe that until I see it alive.”
Haynes glanced at her sharply. “Woman’s intuition,” he said. “I won’t either. Well, I’m going to breakfast.”
The girl lingered, looking out into the ruddy-golden morning. It was late September weather, a day burnished with sunlight. A faint haze softened the splendour of the knolls. The air was instinct with the rare, fine quality of the vanishing summer. It was the falling cadence of the season, one of the last few perfect, fulfilling notes of the year’s love melody. With all the knowledge that death and horror lurked somewhere in the lovely expanse spread before her, Dolly Ravenden yearned to it. Soon she would be back amid the cosmopolitan gaieties of the Capital. She loved that too, but with a different and shallower part of her nature. Sharply it came to her that this year she would leave with a deeper regret than ever before, and the nature of that regret was formulating itself against the stern veto of her will. “A man I’ve not seen half a dozen times!” she half incredulously reproached herself.
A certain feminine exasperation against herself was illogically and perversely turned upon Dick Colton as he strode around the corner of the piazza. The experienced wager of love-tilts might have interpreted the expression she turned to him, and have fled the stricken field. Poor Dick was the merest novice. His attitude toward women had always been much the same as toward men, varying in degree according to the charm or quality of the individual, but all of a kind, until he had encountered Dolly Ravenden. To his unsuspecting mind it seemed that at the present moment he was in the greatest luck. The sun was shining with a special, even a personal, lustre. Abruptly it darkened several million candle-power as Miss Ravenden gave him the most casual of greetings and the curve of a shoulder while she scanned the spreading landscape.
“Have I done anything, Miss
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