Deep Lake Mystery Page 2

  “Sounds interesting. Shall I see the high-strung Alma?”

  “I didn’t say high-strung. She is a normal, lovely nature. But I did say high-handed, for she is a determined sort, and if she sets her mind to a thing it has to go through.”

  “She has admirers?”

  “Oh, of course. But she rather flouts them. One of Tracy’s secretaries is frightfully in love with her. But she scarcely notices him.”

  “Our friend has a multiplicity of secretaries, then?”

  “Two, that’s all. But Sampson Tracy is a man of large interests, and I fancy he keeps the two busy. Billy Dean is the one in love with Alma, but the other, Charles Everett, is his superior.”

  “He’s the chap who, they tell me, craves the Dallas lady.”

  “Yes, though of course Tracy doesn’t know it. Everett wouldn’t be there if he did.”

  “And Mrs. Dallas? What is her attitude toward the presumptuous secretary?”

  “Hard to say. I think she favours him, but she is too good a financier to throw over her millionaire for his underling.”

  “Well, I think I’ve had about all the local history I can stand for one night. Let’s go in the house.”

  To my surprise, Lora Moore and Mrs. Merrill were in the lounge, waiting for us.

  The house was admirably arranged. The great central room, with doors back and front, was called the lounge, and served as both hall and living room. Off this were two smaller rooms: the card room and the music room. To one side of these rooms were the bedrooms, and on the other side, the dining room and kitchen quarters.

  The furnishings were simple and attractive, with no “Mission” pieces or attempts at camping effects.

  I sat down on a wide davenport beside Lora, and said, tentatively:

  “I believe you and I agree in our estimate of the Dallas beauty.”

  “Then you have real good sense,” exclaimed Lora, heartily. “Kee won’t see her as I do.”

  “I won’t either,” put in Maud Merrill. “It’s disgraceful to knock a woman just because she’s going to marry a rich man. Rich men want wives as well as poor men. I’m all for Katherine Dallas. You’re jealous, Lora, because she is so beautiful.”

  Lora only smiled at this, and said:

  “I’ve really nothing against her, except that I believe she had Alma turned out of her uncle’s house.”

  “And why not?” demanded Maud Merrill. “No house is big enough for two families; and though I don’t know Miss Remsen well at all, I do know that she is a girl of strong will and decided opinions. They’d never be happy if Alma stayed there.”

  “I can’t say as to all that,” I put in, determined to have my word, “but I think, with Lora, that the Dallas is a lady of deep finesse and Machiavellian cleverness.”

  “Yes, just that!” cried Keeley Moore’s wife.

  “Well, then,” said Maud, “if she snared that millionaire by her cleverness, she deserves her reward. And she deserves a peaceful home, which I doubt she’d have with a young girl bossing around, too.”

  “Oh, you women!” and Moore wrung his hands in mock despair, “you’re making up all this. You don’t know a thing about it, really.”

  “We can see,” said Lora, sagely. “And there’s no use prolonging this futile discussion. Time will show you how right I am, and meantime, we’d better all go to bed.”

  CHAPTER II

  THE GIRL IN THE CANOE

  My room at Variable Winds was cheery and comfortable. Bright-hued curtains, painted furniture and bowls full of exquisitely tinted California poppies gave the place a colourful effect that pleased my aesthetic tastes. A perfectly appointed bathroom added to my content and I concluded I would stay with the Moores as long as I could keep my welcome in good working order.

  Keeley Moore was one of the best if not the best known detectives of the day, and while a quiet vacation would do him good, I was certain he was already itching to get back to his problems and mysteries, with which the city always supplied him.

  I threw off my coat and put on a dressing gown, for the lake breezes were chill, and sat at a window for a final smoke.

  I felt at peace with the world. Some houses give you that feeling, just as some others make you unreasonably nervous and irritable.

  The moon had risen, a three-quarter or nearly full moon, and its shimmering light across the lake made me turn off my room lights and gaze out at the scene before me.

  My room looked out on the lake, and the house itself was not more than a dozen yards from the water. The ground sloped gently down to a tiny bit of beach, a little crescent that had been selected for the site of the house. On the right of this placid little piece of shore was the boathouse, a large one, with canoes, rowboats and motor boats. Under the same roof was the bath house, and in front of that, out in the lake, were springboards, diving ladders and all the contrivances on which the bathers like to disport themselves.

  To the left was a bit of wild, rocky shore, for the edge of the lake was greatly diversified and rocks abounded, both in and out of the water.

  A line of light came across the lake, but was now and then blotted out as the swiftly drifting clouds obscured the moon.

  I liked it better in the darkness, for the sight was impressive.

  From my window I could see a great stretch of water, and as a background, dense black growth of trees, which came in many places down to the water’s edge.

  Often these trees were on a slope and rose to a height almost to be called a hill, while again the ground stretched on a low-lying level.

  As I looked, the details of the landscape became clearer and I discerned a few faint lights here and there in the houses.

  The big house nearest us I took to be Pleasure Dome. Not only because it was the next house, but because I could dimly distinguish a large building surmounted by a gilded dome.

  How could any man in his sober senses construct such a place to live in?

  It seemed like a cross between the Boston State House and the Taj Mahal.

  I was really anxious to go over there and see the thing at closer range. I decided to ask Moore to take me over the next day.

  Suddenly the lights all went out and the house and its dome disappeared from view. Looking at my watch I saw it was just one o’clock and concluded that the master of the house had his home darkened at that hour.

  But after I again accustomed my eyes to the darkness I could see the outlines of Pleasure Dome, and it looked infinitely more attractive in the half light than it had done in the brightness of its own illumination.

  As a whole, though, the lake scene was depressing. It had a melancholy, dismal air that seemed to lay a damper on my spirits. It was like a cold, clammy hand resting on my forehead. I even shook my head impatiently, as if to fling it off, and then smiled at my own foolishness. But it persisted. The lake was mournful, it even seemed menacing.

  With an exclamation of disgust at my own impressionableness, I sprang up from my chair, flashed on the lights and prepared for bed.

  The bright, pleasant room restored my equilibrium or equanimity or whatever it was that had been jarred, and I found myself all ready for bed, in a peaceful, happy frame of mind.

  I turned off the lights, and then the lake lured me back to a last glimpse of its wild, eerie beauty.

  Again I flung on my robe and sat at the window. It seemed as if I couldn’t leave it. The black, sinister water, the dark shores, with deep hollows here and there, the waving, soughing trees, with thick underbrush beneath them, all seemed possessed of a spirit of evil, a frightful, uncanny spirit, that made me shiver with an unreasonable apprehension, that held me in thrall.

  I have no use for premonitions, I have no faith in presentiments, but I had to admit to myself then a fear, a foreboding of some intangible, ghastly horror. Then would come the moonlight, pale and sickly now, and lasting but a moment before the clouds again
blotted it out.

  Yet I liked the darkness better, for the moon cast such horrendous shadows of those black trees into the lake that it seemed to people the lake with monstrous, maleficent beings, who leered and danced like devils.

  Though I knew the hobgoblins were only the waving trees, distorted in the moonlight, I was none the less weak-minded enough to see portentous spectres that made my flesh creep.

  With a half laugh and a half groan at my utter imbecility, I declared to myself that I would go to bed and go to sleep.

  But as I started to rise from my chair, I saw something that made me sink back again.

  The moon now was behind a light, translucent cloud, that caused a faint light on the lake.

  Round a jutting corner I saw a canoe come into my line of vision.

  A moment’s attention convinced me that it was no ghostly craft, but an ordinary canoe, propelled by a pair of human arms.

  This touch of human companionship put to rout all my feelings of fear and even my forebodings of tragedy.

  Normally interested now, I watched to see who might be out at that time of night, and for what purpose.

  The cloud dispersed itself, and the full clear moonlight shone down on the boat and its occupant. To my surprise it was a girl, a young-appearing girl, and she was paddling softly, but with a skilled stroke that told of long practice.

  Her hair seemed to be silver in the moonlight, but I realized the light was deceptive and the curly bob might be either flaxen or gold.

  She wore a white sweater and a white skirt—that much I could see plainly, but I could distinguish little more. She had no hat on, and I could see white stockings and shoes as the craft passed the house.

  She seemed intent on her work, and her beautiful paddling aroused my intense admiration. She did not look up at our house at all; indeed, she seemed like an enchanted princess, doomed to paddle for her life, so earnestly did she bend to her occupation. She passed the house and kept on, in the direction of Pleasure Dome.

  Could she be going there? I hardly thought so, yet I watched carefully, hanging out of my window to do so.

  To my surprise she did steer her little craft straight to the great house next door, and turned as if to land there.

  The Tracy house was on a line with the Moore bungalow, that is, on a curving line. They were both on the same large crescent of lake shore. Pleasure Dome had a cove or inlet behind it, Moore had told me, but that was not visible from my window. The front of the house was, however, and I distinctly saw the girl beach her canoe, step lightly out and then disappear among the trees in the direction of the house.

  I still sat staring at the point where she had been lost to my vision. I let the picture sink into my mind. I could see her as plainly in retrospect as I had in reality. That lissome, slender figure, that graceful springy walk—but she had limped, a very little. Not as if she were really lame, but as if she had hurt her foot or strained her ankle recently.

  I speculated on who she might be. Kee had told me of no young girl living in the Tracy house now, since the niece had left there.

  Ah, the niece. Could this be Sampson Tracy’s niece, perhaps staying at her uncle’s for a visit and coming home late from a party? But she would have had an escort or chaperon or maid—somebody would have been with her.

  Yet, how could I tell that? Kee had said she was high-handed, and might she not elect to go about unescorted at any hour?

  I concluded it must be the niece, for who else could it be? Then I remembered that there might be other guests at Pleasure Dome besides the morose and glum-looking Ames. This, then, might be another house guest, and perhaps the young people of the Deep Lake community were in the habit of running wild in this fashion.

  Anyway, the whole episode had helped to dispel the gloom engendered by the oppressive and harrowing atmosphere of the lake scene, and I felt more cheerful. And as there was no sign of the girl’s returning, I concluded she had reached the house in safety and had doubtless already gone to bed.

  I tarried quite a while longer, listening to the quivering, whispering sounds of the poplars, and an occasional note from a bird or from some small animal scurrying through the woods, and finally, with a smile at my own thoughts, I snapped off the lights and got into bed.

  I couldn’t sleep at first, and then, just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard the light plash of a paddle.

  As soon as I realized what the sound was, I sprang up and hurried to the window. But I saw no boat. Whether the same girl or some one else, the boat and whoever paddled it, were out of sight, and though I heard, or imagined I heard, a faint and diminishing sound as of paddling, I could see no craft of any sort.

  I strained my eyes to see if her canoe was still beached in front of Pleasure Dome, but the moon was unfriendly now, and I could not distinguish objects on the beach.

  Again I began to feel that sickening dread of calamity, that nameless horror of tragedy, and I resolutely went back to bed with a determination to stay there till morning, no matter what that God-forsaken lake did next.

  I carried out this plan, and when the morning broke in a riot of sunshine, singing birds, blooming flowers and a smiling lake, I forgot all the night thoughts and their burdens and gave myself over to a joyous outlook.

  Breakfast was at eight-thirty and was served on an enclosed porch looking out on the lake.

  “You know, you don’t have to get up at this ungodly hour,” Lora said, as she smiled her greeting, “but we are wideawakes here.”

  “Suits me perfectly,” I told her. “I’ve no love for the feathers after the day has really begun.”

  Twice during our cosy breakfast I was moved to tell about the girl in the canoe, but both times I suddenly decided not to do so. I couldn’t tell why, but something forbade the telling of that tale, and I concluded to defer it, at any rate.

  The chat was light and trifling. Somehow it drifted round to the subject of happiness.

  “My idea of happiness,” Lora said, “which I know full well I shall never attain, is to do something I want to do without feeling that I ought to be doing something else.”

  “Heavens and earth,” exploded her husband, “any one would think you a veritable slave! What are these onerous duties you have to perform that keep you from doing your ruthers?”

  Lora laughed. “Oh, not all the time, but there is much to do in a house where the servants are ill-trained and incompetent——”

  “And where one has guests,” Maud Merrill smiled at her, and I smiled, too.

  “I’m out of it,” I cried. “You ought to help your friend out, Mrs. Merrill, but, being a mere man, I can’t do anything to help around the house.”

  Lora laughed gaily, and said, “Don’t take it all too seriously. I do as I please most of the time, but—well, I suppose the truth is, I’m too conscientious.”

  “That’s it,” Kee agreed. “And you know, conscience is only a form of vanity. One wants to do right, so one can pat oneself on the back, and feel a glow of holy satisfaction.”

  “That’s so, Kee,” Lora quickly agreed, “and I oughtn’t to pamper my vanity. So, I won’t make that blackberry shortcake you’re so fond of this morning, I’ll read a novel, and bear with a smile the slings and arrows of my conscience as it reproves me.”

  “No,” Kee told her, “that’s carrying your vanity scourging too far. Make the shortcake, dear girl, not so much for me, as for Norris here. I want him to see what a bird of a cook you are.”

  Lora shook her head, but I somehow felt that the shortcake would materialize, and then Kee and I went out on the lake.

  We went in a small motor launch, and he proposed that I should have a survey of the lake before we began to fish.

  “It’s one of the most beautiful and picturesque lakes in the county,” he said, and I could easily believe that, as we continually came upon more and more rugged coves and strange rock formations.
br />   “Those are dells,” Kee said, pointing to weird and wonderful rocks that disclosed caves, grottoes, chasms, natural bridges and here and there cascades and waterfalls. “Please be duly impressed, Gray, for they are really wonderful. You know Wisconsin is the oldest state of all, I mean as to its birth. Geologists say that this whole continent was an ocean, and when the first island was thrust up above the surface of the waters, it was Wisconsin itself. Then the earth kindly threw up the other states, and so, here we are.”

  “I thought all these lakes were glacial.”

  “Oh, yes, so they are. But you don’t know much, do you? The glacial period came along a lot later, and as the slow-moving fields of ice plowed down through this section they scooped out the Mississippi valley, the beds of the Great Lakes and also the beds of innumerable little lakes. There are seven thousand in Wisconsin, and two thousand in Oneida County alone.”

  “I am duly impressed, Kee, but quite as much by the way you rattle off this information as by the knowledge itself. Where’d you get it all?”

  “Out of the Automobile Book,” he returned, unabashed. “Most interesting reading. Better have a shy at it some time.”

  “I will. Now is this Pleasure Dome we’re coming to?”

  “Yes. Thought you’d like to see it. It’s really a wonder house, you know. We’ll be invited there to dine or something, but I want you to see it now as a picture.”

  It was impressive, the great pile rising against the background of dark trees, and with a foreground of brilliant flower beds, fountains, and arbours.

  A critic might call it too ornate, too elaborate, but he would have to admit it was beautiful.

  A building of pure white marble, its lines were simple and true, its proportions vast and noble, and save for the gilded dome, all its effects were of the utmost dignity and perfection.

  And the dome, to my way of thinking, was in keeping with the majesty of it all. No lesser type of architecture could have stood it, but this semi-barbaric pile proudly upheld its glittering crown with a sublime daring that justified the whole.