The After House - Mary Roberts Rinehart (new books to read .TXT) 📗

The night passed without incident, except for one thing that we were unable to verify. At six bells, during the darkest hour of the night that precedes the early dawn of summer, Adams, from the crow’s-nest, called down, in a panic, that there was something crawling on all fours on the deck below him.

Burns, on watch at the companionway, ran forward with his revolver, and narrowly escaped being brained - Adams at that moment flinging down a marlinespike that he had carried aloft with him.

I heard the crash and joined Burns, and together we went over the deck and, both houses. Everything was quiet: the crew in various attitudes of exhausted sleep, their chests and dittybags around them; Oleson at the wheel; and Singleton in his jail-room, breathing heavily.

Adams’s nerve was completely gone, and, being now thoroughly awake, I joined him in the crow’s-nest. Nothing could convince him that he had been the victim of a nervous hallucination. He stuck to his story firmly.

“It was on the forecastle-head first,” he maintained. “I saw it gleaming.”

“Gleaming?”

“Sort of shining,” he explained. “It came up over the rail, and at first it stood up tall, like a white post.”

“You didn’t say before that it was white.”

“It was shining,” he said slowly, trying to put his idea into words. “Maybe not exactly white, but light-colored. It stood still for so long, I thought I must be mistaken - that it was a light on the rigging. Then I got to thinking that there wasn’t no place for a light to come from just there.”

That was true enough.

“First it was as tall as a man, or taller maybe,” he went on. “Then it seemed about half that high and still in the same place. Then it got lower still, and it took to crawling along on its belly. It was then I yelled.”

I looked down. The green starboard light threw a light over only a small part of the deck. The red light did no better. The masthead was possibly thirty feet above the hull, and served no illuminating purpose whatever. From the bridge forward the deck was practically dark.

“You yelled, and then what happened?”

His reply was vague - troubled.

“I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “It seemed to fade away. The white got smaller - went to nothing, like a cloud blown away in a gale. I flung the spike.”

I accepted the story with outward belief and a mental reservation. But I did not relish the idea of the spike Adams had thrown lying below on deck. No more formidable weapon short of an axe, could be devised. I said as much.

“I’m going down for it,” I said; “if you’re nervous, you’d better keep it by you. But don’t drop it on everything that moves below. You almost got Burns.”

I went down cautiously, and struck a match where Adams had indicated the spike. It was not there. Nor had Burns picked it up. A splintered board showed where it had struck, and a smaller indentation where it had rebounded; but the marlinespike was gone, and Burns had not seen it. We got a lantern and searched systematically, without result. Burns turned to me a face ghastly in the oil light.

“Somebody has it,” he said, “and there will be more murder! Oh, my God, Leslie!”

“When you went back after the alarm, did you count the men?”

“No; Oleson said no one had come forward. They could not have passed without his seeing them. He has the binnacle lantern and two other lights.”

“And no one came from the after house?”

“No one.”

Eight bells rang out sharply. The watch changed. I took the revolver and Burns’s position at the companionway, while Burns went aft. He lined up the men by the binnacle light, and went over them carefully. The marlinespike was not found; but he took from the cook a long meat-knife, and brought both negro and knife forward to me. The man was almost collapsing with terror. He maintained that he had taken the knife for self-protection, and we let him go with a warning.

Dawn brought me an hour’s sleep, the first since my awakening in the storeroom. When I roused, Jones at the wheel had thrown an extra blanket over me, for the morning was cool and a fine rain was falling.

The men were scattered around in attitudes of dejection, one or two of them leaning over the rail, watching the jollyboat, riding easily behind us. Jones heard me moving, and turned.

“Your friend below must be pretty bad, sir,” he said. “Your lady-love has been asking for you. I wouldn’t let them wake you.”

“My - what?”

He waxed apologetic at once.

“That’s just my foolishness, Leslie,” he said. “No disrespect to the lady, I’m sure. If it ain’t so, it ain’t, and no harm done. If it is so, why, you needn’t be ashamed, boy. ‘The way of a man with a maid,’ says the Book.”

“You should have called me, Jones,” I said sharply. “And no nonsense of that sort with the men.”

He looked hurt, but made no reply beyond touching his cap. And, while I am mentioning that, I may speak of the changed attitude of the men toward me from the time they put me in charge. Whether the deference was to the office rather than the man, or whether in placing me in authority they had merely expressed a general feeling that I was with them rather than of them, I do not know. I am inclined to think the former. The result, in any case, was the same. They deferred to me whenever possible, brought large and small issues alike to me, served me my food alone, against my protestations, and, while navigating the ship on their own responsibility, took care to come to me for authority for everything.

Before I went below that morning, I suggested that some of the spare canvas be used to erect a shelter on the after deck, and this was done. The rain by that time was driving steadily - a summer rain without wind. The men seemed glad to have occupation, and, from that time on, the tent which they