Murder Marsh

CHAPTER VII. FIGURES OF NIGHT

LATE the next afternoon, a trim coupe came whining upward on the far side of the mountain that loomed beyond the town of Rensdale. Its driver found a twisting, rocky road. With his car in second, he took the bumps until he neared the summit of the ridge. The road became impassable. The driver chose a clearing and the car rolled out of view behind a clump of heavy-leaved trees.

The man who alighted from the coupe was a clean-cut young chap who was businesslike in his procedure. He opened the rear of the coupe, took out a heavy box and a rolled-up pack, then stretched out a broad-centered leather strap that formed a loop above them.

Hoisting the joined box and pack, he thrust his forehead into the loop. Supporting the weight with head and shoulders, the young man clambered up the steep, rocky slope to the top of the ridge.

This arrival on the mountain was Harry Vincent, trusted agent of The Shadow. He was following instructions given him by Rutledge Mann. He was carrying his heavy burden with the aid of the familiar tump-line, used to transport luggage across portages between lakes in the Canadian wilds. This form of luggage-hauling made it possible for him to carry the huge load in a single trip.

Harry came puffing to his objective. He was at the foot of the air beacon on the mountain. A small shack was located close to the tower. Harry pushed open the door and eased the box and pack from his back.

His next act was to open the box. From it, he produced the necessary equipment for a short-wave radio.

Using the spreading posts of the beacon, Harry set up the apparatus. Inside the shack, he adjusted earphones to his head. He spoke into a microphone. A pause; then a voice came in response.

Harry Vincent had opened communication with Clyde Burke. The agent on the mountain was connected with the agent in the hotel. Through this communication, The Shadow could maintain a double vigil.

His call completed, Harry produced a pair of field glasses from the box. He left the shack and pushed through the underbrush until he discovered an overhanging rock. From this point, he could see the ground below.

FIRST came the sloping hillside. The cabins of the squatters were tiny, block-shaped objects. Then the hillside ended in the spread-out swamp. Wildemar Brent’s new home rested like a toy castle in the midst of a brackish plain. The road from it; the causeway across the marsh — both looked like thin lines furrowed through the bog.

The sun was setting over the mountain. Harry focused his glasses on the causeway. He saw the figure of a lone man standing by the tool house. This was the watchman posted for the night. Lowering the glasses, Harry let his gaze sweep to every portion of the panorama. A tiny, crawling figure caught his attention.

This was on the hillside. A man had come out from a clump of trees. He was moving downward toward an isolated cabin. His very manner of approach showed that he did not wish to be seen by any who might be looking up the hill from below. Harry raised the glasses.

Through the powerful lens, he sighted a tall man clad in somber garments of dark gray. This fellow was wearing the flat, wide-brimmed hat that was characteristic of the Dalwars. His face turned so that Harry could see it. The Shadow’s agent spied a bearded countenance, blacker than the hat which the fellow wore.

The door of the cabin was on the upper side of the house. Harry watched the Dalwar unlock it and enter.

The door closed. Harry looked off below, following the open space that stretched from cabin down to marsh.

Another figure attracted his attention. It was coming from the mansion. Harry used the glasses to discern a sober-looking individual who was moving toward the marsh. He saw the man pick his way along an invisible path. This was Wildemar Brent, setting forth on his sunset search for the ignis fatuus.

Dusk blotted Brent from Harry’s view. The airway beacon began to blink, high above Harry’s head. It had started automatically. Its sweeping rays flashed against the darkening sky. Tiny glimmers were showing from trees beyond the marsh. These were lights from the town of Rensdale.

Cloud banks had been gathering through the day. Though they did not mar the sunset, they blotted out the moonlight. Only occasionally did the silver glow come struggling through the clouds. Yet Harry could at times make out thin patches of white mist upon the broad bog.

Hours passed. On occasions, Harry caught faint traces of a tiny dot of light upon the bog. This was Wildemar Brent’s lantern. The naturalist was using it but intermittently. Evidently he did not want the glare to interfere with any sighting of the ignis fatuus.

When the spot of light did appear, it bobbed up in most surprising places. Brent seemed to be learning most of the pathways through the quagmire that most persons regarded as impassable.

The mansion was dark; Harry decided that the inside lights were probably subdued. Suddenly, he traced the lantern moving toward the house. A light came on within the alcove. Harry raised his field glasses and managed to distinguish a closing door. Evidently, Brent had returned.

Another hour. Harry patiently maintained his vigil. He was rewarded. A spot of light came suddenly from the alcove of the mansion. Its glare was focused directly up the hill toward the squatter’s shack that Harry had observed.

Blink — blink — blink—

The light sparkled like a coded signal. Then it went out altogether. Producing a flashlight of his own, Harry went back to the shack beside the airway beacon. A few minutes later, he was talking to Clyde Burke.

Until he had seen the blinks from the mansion, Harry had given but little thought to the bearded man who had entered the squatter’s shack. Under present circumstances, the appearance of that prowler had become important. Harry reported all that he had seen from the rock.

DOWN in his hotel room, Clyde Burke wrote a message to The Shadow. He sealed it in an envelope, strolled down to the second floor and thrust the billet under the door of the closed room. This was in accord with new instructions. The message lay untouched after Clyde had delivered it. The Shadow would read it later. For the present, he was elsewhere.

LIGHTS were out in the house in the marsh. All had retired. Wildemar Brent was sleeping in a secluded room on the first floor. Dorothy had chosen an upstairs room on the side of the house toward the causeway — a room which also had a window above the alcove on the hillside of the house. Twindell occupied a far room on the same floor.

Half an hour had elapsed since Harry Vincent’s call to Clyde Burke when Dorothy Brent awakened from a sound slumber. Struggling moonlight was coming through the window toward the causeway. Its glimmer ended as a cloud intervened.

Croaking of frogs — the dull, monotonous sound was all that the girl could hear. Yet Dorothy had a sense that all was not well. Rising, the girl donned dressing-gown and slippers. She tiptoed to the hallway.

There she could hear the crackle of dying embers in the fire place below. Then came a sound that was plainly the closing of a door.

Wildemar Brent was a sound sleeper. Dorothy knew that the noise could not have awakened him.

Twindell’s room was in a remote spot of the house. Bravely, Dorothy descended the stairs. She knew that if she reached the ground floor, she could call her uncle.

Halfway down, Dorothy paused. From deep below in the cellar, she fancied that she heard a tap-tap-tap. The sound came in constant repetition. Intervals; then the tapping. Slowly, the girl reached the foot of the stairs. She moved toward a passage that led to a doorway into the cellar.

Then came footsteps, from the cellar stairs themselves. Dorothy stood petrified. She did not know where to find a light switch. She heard the footsteps pause at the door. Low whispers seemed to follow.

Roused by increasing fright, the girl sprang back toward the hall. Screaming, she stumbled toward one of the doorways that led to her uncle’s room. An answering call responded. It came from another passage.

It was Wildemar Brent, hurrying toward the hall. Frightened for her uncle’s safety, Dorothy dashed back in that direction.

Lights came on. They glowed in the side brackets of the hall. Dorothy saw two persons; one was her uncle, clad in pajamas. The other was Twindell. The cadaverous servant was wearing shoes, trousers and shirt.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Wildemar Brent, as his niece clutched the side of a doorway.

“I–I heard something,” gasped Dorothy. “Like a tapping — from the cellar.”

“Help her in here, sir,” suggested Twindell, pointing toward the room with the tapestried panels. “There is a couch where Miss Brent can rest.”

The servant went ahead. He turned on the mellow side brackets. Dorothy followed, half supported by her uncle. The girl refused the couch; she sat upon a chair just within the door.

“I believe I heard the same noise, sir,” declared Twindell, turning to Wildemar Brent. “I began to dress, thinking I should look about a bit. I opened the door of my room. I heard Miss Dorothy scream.”

“The noise was a tapping?” inquired Brent, staring from beside the big table.

“Yes,” said Dorothy, with a nod.

“A tapping, sir,” agreed Twindell. “Of course, I must remind you that this house is full of strange noises.”

“To what do you attribute them?”

“I can’t say, sir.”

Dorothy had recovered from her fright. She felt annoyed because she had screamed in such terrified fashion. Her lips were firm as she spoke.

“It was not the tapping at first,” declared the girl. “The noise that came in the beginning was like the closing of a door—”

Like an echo to her statement, Dorothy heard a repetition of the very sound that she was describing. For an instant, she stood stock-still. She was positive that the sound had come from the top of the cellar stairs. Acting upon sudden impulse, Dorothy sprang into the end of the long hall.

This time she saw a door closing. It was the outer door of the house, at the other end of the hall. The girl was just in time to see the barrier shut. The door opened inward into the hall; some person, sneaking from the cellar steps, had drawn the outer door shut behind him!

“Come quickly!” called Dorothy, as she rushed through the hall. “Quickly, uncle! Some one just went out!”

THERE were tiny, grilled windows at the sides of the massive floor. Dorothy was the first to reach them.

A surge of moonlight had arrived. Staring, the girl glimpsed a figure that was hastening across the driveway.

A huge, slouched form, with a head that wore a broad flat hat. The head turned at the instant that Dorothy saw the figure. The girl caught a glimpse of a black, bearded face. Then the fleeing man had reached a clump of bushes by the edge of the swamp. His figure disappeared from view.

“I saw him!” exclaimed Dorothy. “I saw him!”

“Who?” demanded Wildemar Brent, coming up behind her. “Where?”

“A man — with a beard. Going into the swamp.”

“Turn on the outer light, Twindell.”

The servant obeyed. Wildemar Brent stared through the grilled window. He could see no one. He grunted as he shrugged his shoulders.

“Your imagination, Dorothy,” he declared.

“But the door is not bolted, uncle,” returned the girl. “I am sure some one could have gone out this way.”

“What! The door unbolted?” Brent was furious. “What does this mean, Twindell.”

“I am sure I bolted it, sir.” The cadaverous servant was nervous. “I have bolted that door every night for years.”

“Humph. This is one time you failed. You think the man came from the cellar, Dorothy?”

“Yes.” The girl was still peering through the pane. “The door must have been unbolted for him to have gotten through so quickly.”

“Bolt the door, Twindell,” ordered Brent. “Then go about and make sure that all the windows are locked.”

“No need for that, sir. If the man came through a window, he must have entered by your room.”

“How so? What about these other windows?”

“They are solid grillework, sir. Old Mr. Culeth had them made so. All the windows on the ground floor, sir. That is, except those in the little room that you chose to occupy. That door was always kept locked, sir.”

“Look, uncle!” exclaimed Dorothy, as Twindell was closing the bolts on the big door. “I see some one — beyond the drive — by that tree—”

“Which tree?” Brent peered through the other window.

“The one just on the edge of the light. The largest one.”

“Look more closely,” suggested Brent, with a depreciating laugh. “What you are viewing is nothing but a shadow. No human being could stand so motionless.”

The girl stared for a full minute. At last she turned away from the window and smiled weakly.

“It was my imagination,” she confessed. “All that I saw there by the tree was a shadow. But the man that went into the marsh—”

“Was also your imagination. You have been hearing things and seeing things. Come. Let us forget this folly. But remember, Twindell, the bolting of the door must not be neglected in the future.”

“I understand, sir.”

The cadaverous servant watched Dorothy go upstairs to her room. He saw Brent go back to his room on the ground floor. Twindell picked up a log beside the fire place; with surprising strength, the old servant tossed it on the fire, so that the heat might absorb the damp marsh air that had penetrated the ground floor.

The old servant’s face was strangely solemn. It was more pallid than usual. It seemed to quiver as the man turned out the hall light. Then Twindell noted that he had not extinguished the light that shone above the outside alcove. He pressed the switch. The light went out. By the glow of the fire, Twindell stalked slowly up the stairs.

BLACKNESS had enveloped the old mansion with the extinguishing of that outside light. A soft swish sounded in the darkness close by the tree toward which Dorothy Brent had stared. The girl’s first impression had been correct. She had seen more than a shadow. She had seen The Shadow.

By remaining motionless, the black-garbed visitant had deceived the observers from within the house.

Cloaked by darkness, this silent watcher was free to move. Noiselessly, his invisible figure traveled toward the marsh. No glimmers from the tiny flashlight aided The Shadow to-night. He had learned the paths that he wanted through the bog. His soft, whispered laugh was caught by the clammy remnants of the mist that spread across the swamp. The Shadow’s course remained untraceable.

ONE hour later, just as the distant chimes of a steeple clock were tolling midnight, The Shadow’s silent form was standing by the roadway that skirted the side of the swamp. Dull moonlight showed the contour of the road. The Shadow, invisible beneath the blackness of a thick-leaved tree, discerned a striding form. His keen ears caught the soft thud of footsteps in the thick dust of the road.

The pacing man strode by. Moonlight revealed the set features of a hard face. The midnight hiker was Philo Halthorpe. The lawyer was ending one of his late evening walks. He was heading townward.

The last chime ended. Halthorpe had turned a bend in the road. Creaking frogs alone disturbed the stilly silence of the countryside. Then came the repetition of an eerie, whispered laugh, that might have been the echo of a ghostly voice.

The Shadow, unseen, had seen. He had witnessed the flight of the bearded squatter who had come from the house in the marsh. He had observed Philo Halthorpe, pacing the deserted road. Silently, cloaked in darkness, The Shadow turned back into the bogland. Paths which he had discovered amid the impassable mire were to form his shortcut back into town.

The Shadow’s work was ended for the night. He was to find repose within the closed room at the little hotel — the room that only he had entered since murder had struck within its walls.