The Spanish Cape Mystery

Chapter One The Colossal Error of Captain Kidd

It was to all intents and purposes a sickening blunder. Criminals have made mistakes before, usually as a result of haste or carelessness or mental myopia, and nearly always to their own disservice; ultimately finding themselves, at the very least, contemplating their errors through steel bars and along a dismal vista of years. But this was a mistake for the books.

The whimsically named Captain Kidd did not number among his few virtues, it appeared, the quality of brilliance. He was an unbelievable mountain of a man; and in return for conferring upon him the gift of physical exaggeration it was assumed that his moody creator had penalized him with a paucity of brains. It seemed clear enough at the beginning that the blunder had been Captain Kidd’s, a development of his pure stupidity.

The pity of it was that this was one criminal mistake which seemed to work no hardship upon the rascal responsible for it, and still less apparently upon the mysterious person for whom this immense and dull creature was pulling the strings. All its consequences, as was evident, were massed upon the head of its victim.

Now, why fate in the incredible person of Captain Kidd should have chosen poor David Kummer for the sacrifice, every one agreed when it occurred (including Mr. Ellery Queen), was one of those cosmic problems the answer to which is swathed in veils. They could only nod in silent despair at his sister Stella’s hysterical requiem: “But David was always such a quiet boy! I remember... Once a Gypsy woman read his palm in our town when we were children. And she said that he had a ‘dark destiny.’ Oh, David!”

But this is a long hard tale, and how Mr. Ellery Queen became involved in it is another. Certainly, as a laboratory microscopist peering at the phenomena curiosa of the human mind, he had cause in the end to feel grateful for Captain Kidd’s grotesque mistake. For when the light came, as it did after those wild and astonishing days, he saw with etching clarity how essential to his solution the gigantic seaman’s error really was. In a sense, the whole fabric of Ellery’s thinking came to depend upon it. And yet, in the beginning, it merely muddled things.

The blunder would never have occurred, in all probability, had it not been for David Kummer’s dislike of crowds, on the one hand — it was a personal distaste rather than a pathological dread — and his affection for Rosa, his niece, on the other. Both were characteristic of him. Kummer had never cared for people; they either bored or irritated him. And yet, a social anchorite, he was admired and even liked.

At this time he was in his late thirties, a tall strong well-preserved man.

He was irrevocably set in his ways and almost as self-sufficient as Walter Godfrey, his famous brother-in-law. For most of the year Kummer maintained a bachelor’s eyrie in Murray Hill; in the summer he resided on Spanish Cape with the Godfreys. His brother-in-law, a bitter cynic, often suspected that it was not so much the proximity of his sister and niece that drew Kummer to the Cape as the peculiar grandeur of the place itself — a rather unfair suspicion. But the two did have something in common: both were solitary, quiet, and in their own way somehow magnificent.

Occasionally Kummer tramped off in boots and disappeared for a week’s shooting somewhere, or sailed one of the Godfrey sloops or the big launch along the coast. He had long since mastered the intricacies of the nine-hole golf-course which lay on the western hemisphere of Spanish Cape; he rarely played, calling golf “an old man’s game.” He might be induced to play a few sets of tennis if the competition were keen enough; but generally his sports were those which permitted solitary enjoyment. Naturally, he possessed an independent income. And he wrote a little, chiefly on outdoor subjects.

He was not a romantic; life had taught him certain hard lessons, he liked to say, and he believed firmly in the realities. A man primarily of action, he was constantly “facing the facts.” His life was not complicated by the sex-problem; except for his sister Stella and her daughter Rosa, women meant less than nothing to him. It was whispered in Mrs. Godfrey’s circle that he had had an unfortunate love-affair in his early twenties; none of the Godfreys ever discussed it and he, of course, was perennially silent.

So much for David Kummer, the victim, the tall dark athletic man who was hauled by Captain Kidd into oblivion.

Rosa Godfrey was a Kummer, with the slashing black brows of the clan, the strong straight nose, level eyes, and slim tough body; side by side, she and her mother might have been sisters, and Kummer an older brother of both. Intellectually she was serene, like her uncle; she had nothing of Stella’s nervous agility or social restlessness or essential shallowness of mind. And there was nothing, of course, between Rosa and her tall uncle — nothing in the malicious sense. Their affection respected the tie of blood; both of them would have been outraged by any other suggestion; besides, their ages were almost twenty years apart. Yet it was not to her mother that Rosa crept when she was in trouble, nor to her father, who pottered quietly about by himself and asked no greater boon than that he be let alone; but to Kummer. It had been that way since her pigtail days. Any other father but Walter Godfrey would have resented this usurpation of his emotional rights; but Walter Godfrey was as much an enigma to his family as to the blatting lambs from whose shearing he had amassed his heavy fortune.

The house was full of people; at least it seemed full of people to Kummer. His sister Stella’s penchant for the socializing influences had resulted, as he remarked grimly to his silent brother-in-law on Saturday afternoon, in a particularly slimy group of guests.

The season was drawing to a close; its passing had brought an irritating visitation of nondescripts. Marco, of course, had been there, suavely indifferent to black looks from the male relations of his hostess, for many weeks; trust Marco for that. He had been one of Stella Godfrey’s less happy inspirations, as her husband grunted on one rare occasion. Handsome John Marco... who had not a male friend in the world, was not a man to stand upon the little ceremonies; once invited, he hung on — as Kummer said, “with the bland persistence of a crab-louse.” Marco had quite spoiled the better part of the summer even for Walter Godfrey, who normally trotted about his rock-gardens in dirty ancient overalls frankly oblivious to the creatures brought into his house by his wife. The others spoiled what was left of the season: Laura Constable, “fat, frenetic, and forty,” as Rosa characterized her with a giggle; the Munns, husband and wife, of whom it was patent that nothing civilized could be said; and blond Earle Cort, an unhappy young man who haunted Spanish Cape on weekends, languishing after Rosa. They were not many, but — with the possible exception of Cort, whom he rather contemptuously liked — to Kummer they constituted a veritable battalion.

It was after a late dinner Saturday night that the big man drew Rosa from the cool patio into the still warm gardens sloping down from the huge Spanish house. In the flagged inner court Stella conversed with her guests; while Cort, entangled in Mrs. Munn’s arch web, could only hurl a furiously yearning glance after uncle and niece. It was already dusk, and Marco’s really extraordinary profile was silhouetted against the sky as he perched gracefully on the arm of Mrs. Constable’s chair, presumably posing for the benefit of all the females within range. But he was always posing, so there was nothing remarkable in that. The chatter in the court, dominated by Marco, was shrill and empty; utterly without distinction, like the cackling of fowl.

Kummer sighed with relief as they strolled down the stone steps. “God, what a crew! I tell you, Rosa, that blessed mother of yours is becoming a problem. With the bugs she brings here, she’s becoming positively a menace to decent society. I don’t know how Walter stands it. Those howling baboons!” Then he chuckled and took her arm. “My dear, you look very charming tonight.”

Rosa was dressed in something white and cool and billowy that swept to the stone. “Thank you, sir. It’s really very simple,” she said with a grin. “A combination of organdie and the black art of Miss Whitaker. You’re the most naive creature, David — and also the most anti-social. But you do notice. More,” she added, the grin fading, “than most people.”

Kummer lit a bulldog pipe and puffed thankfully, looking at the pink-flecked sky. “Most people?”

Rosa bit her lip, and they reached the bottom of the stairs. With tacit accord they turned toward the beach terrace, deserted at this hour and quite out of sight and hearing of the house above. It was a small cosy place, beautiful in the dusk; there were colored flags underfoot, and white beams formed an open roof overhead. Steps led down to the terrace from the walk, and steps led down from the terrace to the half-moon of beach below. Rosa seated herself rather petulantly in a basketwork chair under a large gay beach umbrella and folded her hands to stare with pursed lips out over the small beach and the waves lapping the sand in the Cove. Through the narrow mouth of the Cove white-bellied sails could be made out, far off, on the swelling blue expanse.

Kummer watched her quietly, smoking his pipe. “What’s troubling you, Skeezicks?”

She started. “Troubling me? Troubling me? Why, whatever makes you think—”

“You act,” chuckled Kummer, “just about as expertly as you swim, Rosa. I’m afraid you don’t shine in either department. If it’s that young Hamlet of yours, Earle—”

She sniffed. “Earle! As if he could. Trouble me, I mean. I can’t imagine why mother’s given him the freedom of the house. She must be going off her mind. Having him around... I don’t want him. We’d definitely settled all that, you know, David. Oh, I... I suppose I was silly about him once, that time we were engaged—”

“Which time was that?” asked Kummer gravely. “Oh, yes! The eighth, I believe. The first seven times, I suppose, you two were merely playing house. My dear child, you’re still the merest infant emotionally—”

“Thanks, grandpa!” she jeered.

“—as is your sullen young swain. I believe strongly in the mating of emotional likes. For the... er... good of the stock. You could do worse than Cort, you know, Rosa, for all his Weltschmerz.”

“I’d like to know where! And I’m not an infant. And he... he’s intolerable. Imagine a grown man licking the pumps of that overdressed, underdone, half-baked imitation of a cheap little ex-chorus-girl...”

“True to type,” sighed Kummer. “The feline strain. The best of you are none too good. Skeezicks, my child, be reasonable. If there was any licking done, Mrs. Munn’s pretty tongue did it, not Earle’s, I’m sure. He looked after you a moment ago like a sick calf. Come, come, Rosa, you’re covering up.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Rosa, staring out at the sea. It lay below them no longer blue, but purple. The pink flecks in the sky had died to the accompaniment of musical breakers.

“I believe you do,” murmured Kummer. “I believe you’re on the thin edge of doing something utterly mad, Rosa darling. I assure you it’s mad. If the man were any one but Marco I should mind my own business. But under the circumstances...”

“Marco?” she faltered, not very convincingly.

Kummer’s cynical blue eyes smiled a little. Even in the gathering murk she saw the smile, and lowered her own blue eyes. “I think I warned you, my dear, once before. But I didn’t think it would come to this—”

“To what?”

“Rosa.” His reproachful tone made her blush a little.

“I... I thought,” said Rosa in a muffled voice, “that Mr... Mr. Marco’s paid considerably more attention to... well, to Mrs. Munn, and to Mrs. Constable, and... yes, to mother, tool — than to me, David.”

“That,” said the big man grimly, “is something else again. At the moment we’re discussing a younger, although perhaps not sillier, woman.” His eyes narrowed as he bent over her. “Skeezicks, I tell you the man’s impossible, a worthless adventurer. No visible source of income. A smelly reputation, from what I heard; I’ve gone to some trouble to look the fellow up. Oh, I grant you his physical charms—”

“Thank you. Didn’t you know, David darling,” said Rosa with a sort of breathless malice, “that physically he resembles you a good deal? Perhaps it’s a sexual compensation of some sort—”

“Rosa! Don’t be obscene. It’s scarcely a joking matter to me. Your mother and you are the only women in this universe I care a rap about. I tell you—”

She rose suddenly, still looking at the sea. “Oh, David, I don’t want to discuss him!” Her lips trembled.

“But you do, honey.” He put his pipe on the table and gripped her shoulders, turning her about so that her blue eyes were very close to his. “I’ve seen it coming for a long time. If you do what you intend to do—”

“How do you know what I intend to do?” she asked in a low voice.

“I can guess. Knowing Marco’s filthy kind...”

She grasped his arm. “But, David, I haven’t really promised him—”

“You haven’t? From the gloating look in his eye I gathered a different impression. I tell you I’ve heard that the man’s a—”

She dropped her hand violently. “It’s nonsense what you’ve heard! John’s so good-looking all the men dislike him. Naturally, there would be women in the life of such a handsome man... David, please! I shan’t listen to another word.”

He released her shoulders, looked quietly at her for a moment, and then turned aside, picked up his pipe, knocked out the ashes, and dropped the brier into his pocket. “Since you’ve my own stubbornness,” he murmured, “I’ve no right to complain, I suppose. You’ve quite made up your mind, Rosa?”

“Yes!”

Then they both fell silent and turned toward the terrace stairs, moving a little closer together. Some one was coming down the upper path toward the terrace.

It was the oddest thing. They could hear heavy steps in the gravel, crunching sounds which held a note of clumsy stealth. Like a giant tiptoeing on broken glass, inhumanly oblivious to pain.

It was almost dark now. Kummer suddenly looked at his wrist-watch. It was thirteen minutes past eight.

Rosa felt her skin crawl and she shivered, quite without knowing why. She shrank back against her uncle, staring into the depths of the shadowy path above them.

“What’s the matter?” asked Kummer coolly. “Rosa, you’re trembling.”

“I don’t know. I wish we could — I wonder who it is.”

“Probably Jorum making one of his eternal rounds. Sit down, darling. I’m sorry if I’ve made you nerv—”

From such small beginnings are large endings made. It seemed, too, an ending inspired by coincidence. Kummer was clad in spotless whites; a big man, brunette both as to hair and complexion, clean-shaven, not ill-looking... And it was growing dark very fast, the kind of thick black night peculiar to moonless country and seaside.

An inky shape loomed at the head of the terrace stairs. It was monumental and yet composed of shadows. It moved, fluidly. And then it froze still and seemed to search their faces.

A hoarse bass voice said: “Quiet. Both of ye. You’re covered,” and they saw something small in what might have been a hand.

Kummer said coldly: “Who in hell are you?”

“Never mind who I am.” The immense paw never wavered. Rosa was very still, and she could feel the tension of Kummer’s body beside her. She groped for his hand in the darkness and pressed it, warningly, pleadingly. His fingers closed over hers with a warm electric strength and she sighed noiselessly, reassured. “Now come on up here,” continued the bass voice, “an’ make it snappy an’ make it quiet.”

“Is that really,” demanded Rosa, surprised at the steadiness of her voice, “a revolver you’re pointing at us?”

“Step!”

“Come on, Rosa,” said Kummer softly, and he shifted his hand to grip her bare arm. They marched across the intervening flags and began to mount the stairs. The formless shadow retreated a little before them. Rosa felt like giggling, now that the intangible fear had materialized. It was all so perfectly silly! And on Spanish Cape, of all places. Probably, now that she came to think of it, it was all an inane joke of some one’s. No doubt Earle’s! It would be just like him, the... the—

Then the giggle turned into a gasp. At arm’s length the creature with the bass voice became real. She saw him now, not clearly, but well enough to establish certain horrible truths.

The man — it could only have been a man — stood so tall that by contrast Kummer, who himself measured over six feet, looked a pigmy. He must have been at least six feet eight inches in height. And he was gross, a Chinese wrestler of a man, an inflated Falstaff, with an enormous belly and the shoulders of a Percheron. Really, he was too big and too fat, thought Rosa with a shiver, to be — to be human. The .38 revolver which nestled in the palm of his hand was a child’s toy. He was clothed in something roughly sailorish: a pair of dirty tattered dungarees like windblown canvas, a black or dark blue pea-jacket with tarnished brass buttons and the spread of a mainsail, and a cap with a chipped and broken visor.

And, to complete the horror, over the expanse of his globular face there was a handkerchief, a very dark handkerchief; probably a bandanna. It came up to the eyes. Rosa gaped: the man had only one eye. That was all this impossible creature needed — one eye. A black patch over the left... Rosa felt suddenly like laughing again. Not a very subtle robber! As if his mask were an insurance of anonymity! A brute over six and a half feet tall, weighing in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds, with only one eye... It was ridiculous. He was something out of Gilbert and Sullivan.

“You may as well,” said Rosa breathlessly, “take that foul thing off your face. We could describe you—”

“Rosa,” said Kummer. She stopped. They heard the giant draw his breath in slowly.

“But you ain’t goin’ to,” said the bass voice. They detected a little uncertainty in it. “You ain’t goin’ to, lady.” There was something bovine, ponderous, and stupid in his vibrating undertones; he was like an ox. “The two o’ ye walk on up this here path till ye git to the place where the autos turn in an’ go up to the house; see? I’ll be walkin’ behind ye, an’ my shooter’s ready.”

“If it’s robbery you’ve come for,” said Rosa with contempt in her voice, “take my ring and bracelet and be off with you. I’m sure we won’t—”

“Ain’t trinkets I’m after. Git goin’.”

“Look here,” said Kummer calmly; his hands were at his sides. “There’s no point in dragging the lady into this, whoever you are. If it’s I you want, why—”

“You Rosa Godfrey?” demanded the giant.

“Yes,” said Rosa, feeling a little frightened once more.

“That’s all I want to know,” the man rumbled with a sort of thunderous satisfaction. “Then I ain’t made no mistake. You and this here fr—”

Kummer’s hard fist sank into the fat man’s belly. Rosa’s nostrils flared and she turned to run. Several astonishing things happened at once. The giant, for all his obesity, had iron under his lard. The blow seemed to make no impression upon him; he neither doubled up nor grunted. Instead, he dropped the gun into one of his pockets almost carelessly, flung an enormous arm about Kummer’s neck, jerking him off his feet as if he were a boy, and with the other paw clutched Rosa’s shoulder. Rosa opened her mouth to scream and closed it again. David was gasping, choking...

The giant said mildly: “None o’ your tricks, either o’ ye. You goin’ to be good, Mr. Marco?”

The ground heaved beneath Rosa’s feet and the cliff-walls flanking the path whirled before her eyes. Kummer moved a little, his face white under its tan and his legs jerking like the legs of a hanged man.

She saw it at last. It was a plot, a plot directed against John Marco, whom all women loved and all men hated. And poor David! It was the clothes chiefly, no doubt; Marco was wearing whites tonight, too. And both men were of an age, a height, and a build. If this hulking idiot had been provided with a description of Marco, it would have been easy under the circumstances to blunder and seize David Kummer instead. But how did he know where to find them on the sprawling grounds of Spanish Cape? No one had followed them, she was sure. And who had told him how Marco would be dressed? For he must have been told... A thousand thoughts raced through her brain. She came to her senses with a feeling that hours had passed.

“Let him go!” she cried. “You’ve the — the wrong man! Let him—”

The giant released her shoulder and clapped his paw, redolent of sour dirt, whisky, and cordage, over her mouth. Then he lowered Kummer to the gravel and hooked the fingers of his other hand into Kummer’s collar at the nape. Kummer choked, fighting to regain his breath.

“March,” rumbled the giant, and they marched.

Rosa made inarticulate sounds behind the steel hand; once she tried her teeth on it. But the giant merely cuffed her mouth lightly, and she gave up, tears of pain in her eyes. They marched, their captor between them, gripping Kummer’s collar on one side and cupping Rosa’s mouth on the other. In this way, and in a silence broken only by the assaults of their shoes on the gravel, they made their way awkwardly but rapidly back along the road. They walked between walls of sheer cliff, towering above them on both sides to form a geometric canyon.

At last they reached the point in the path where it branched off to the left in the wide ascending automobile road. In the shadows of the cliffs just before this branch stood an old sedan, without lights, and already turned around to face the main road leading out of Spanish Cape.

The giant said evenly: “Miss Godfrey, I’m goin’ to take my hand off your mouth. Scream, an’ I swear I’ll shove your teeth down your throat. You open the front door of that there auto. Mr. Marco, when I let go that collar o’ yourn, I want ye to jump into the front an’ git behind the wheel. I’ll climb in the back an’ tell ye where to drive to. No noise, either o’ ye. Now do as I tell ye.”

He released them. Kummer fingered his throat gingerly and essayed a pallid grin. Rosa wiped her lips with a dainty cambric handkerchief and flashed an angry glance at her uncle. But Kummer shook his head the slightest bit, as if in warning.

“I tell you,” whispered Rosa desperately, whirling on the giant, “this isn’t John Marco! It’s Mr. Kummer, Mr. David Kummer, my uncle. You’ve caught the wrong man. Oh, don’t you see—”

“Uncle, hey?” said the giant with a low chuckle of admiration. “He ain’t Marco, hey? Jump in, girlie; I’d hate to have to mess ye up. Ye’ve got guts.”

“Oh, you stupid oaf!” she cried, but she pulled the door open and crawled into the car. Kummer stepped in after her with sagging shoulders; he seemed to have felt a presentiment of his dark destiny even then, and perhaps he was husbanding his strength for a final struggle. That was the impression Rosa, her brain a stew of panic, received. She twisted in the front seat and glared balefully at the giant. He had opened the back door and set his foot upon the running-board.

She realized with a start that the moon had risen, for the gravel road was dimly illuminated now and there were patches of silver light on the striated walls of the cliff looming up to the face of Spanish Cape. And then she saw the giant’s foot... It was shod in ripped black leather; it was his right foot; and on the inner side there was a hole and a bulge, where a bunion of gargantuan size grew. A foot of such dimensions that she blinked. It was simply incredible that a human being... Then the foot vanished as the big man thrust himself through the doorway and crashed down upon the cushions. The screams of the springs made the girl want to laugh. She checked herself with a horrified consciousness of her incipient hysteria.

“Git movin’, Mr. Marco,” said the bass voice. “Ye’ll find the key in the switch, an’ I know ye can drive by that yaller roadster o’ yourn.”

Kummer leaned forward, touched the light-switch, turned the ignition-key, and stepped on the starter. A quiet motor hummed, and he released the hand-brake. “Where to?” he asked in a dry, cracked undertone.

“Straight ahead off the Cape. Right smack through the sunk road here, acrost the neck, straight through the park, an’ out onto the main stem. Turn left there an’ keep goin’.” A note of impatience crept into the heavy voice. “Come on, come on. An’ you give one move I don’t like an’ I’ll choke the life out o’ ye. You keep still, girlie.”

Rosa shut her eyes and sank back as the car trundled off. This was just a bad dream. Soon she would shudder into wakefulness and laugh at the whole preposterous thing. She’d find David and tell him about it, and they would laugh together... Then she felt Kummer’s rigid right arm next to hers, and she shivered. Poor David! It was brutal for him, unnecessary, a cruel caprice of fate. And as for her... Her skin crawled. She was too sick to encompass all the possibilities.

When she opened her eyes they had left behind them the narrow strip of parkland beyond the neck of the Cape, and were turning left into the main highway. Across the road, directly opposite the entrance to the park-road, were the lights of a filling-station. She could see the white-overalled figure of old Harry Stebbins stooped over the gasoline tank of a car, gas-hose in hand. Good old Harry! If she only dared scream, once... And then she felt the hot sour breath of the monster on her neck and heard his warning rumble in her ear and sank back, nauseated.

Kummer drove quietly, almost humbly. But she knew David. Under his black thatch there was a keen brain, and she knew that it must be working furiously. She prayed silently that he would concoct a plan. It would take gray matter to defeat this ogrish creature. Brawn, even Kummer’s, would be futile against the man’s negligent power.

They skimmed along the concrete highway. There was a good deal of traffic; cars headed for Wayland Amusement Park ten miles up the road. Saturday night... Rosa wondered what the others were doing at the house. Mother. John Marco— Was David right? About John? Had she made a hideous mistake after all? But then— It was quite possible, she reflected bitterly, that it would be hours before she and David were missed. People were always wandering off at Spanish Cape, especially David; and of late she herself had been moody...

“Turn left here,” said the giant.

They both started. Surely something was wrong? They had travelled barely a mile since turning off the Spanish Cape road. Kummer muttered something beneath his breath, but Rosa could not hear. Turn left— That must be the private road that led down to the Waring shack off the public beach — in sight, almost within reach, of the cliffs of Spanish Cape!

Again they swept through deserted parkland, and all too soon were out on the road in open country. The bathing beach... They began to skim along beside a high fence, and the ground turned to sand beside the road. Kummer switched on the headlights; directly in their path stood a little cluster of rather decrepit buildings. He slowed the car.

“Where to, Cyclops?” he said quietly.

“Lay off. Smack up to them there buildings.” Then the giant chuckled at Rosa’s gasp. “Don’t bank on anything, girlie; ain’t nobody here. This here Waring owns the place ain’t been here pretty near all summer. Shut down tight, she is. Go on, Marco.”

“I’m not Marco, you know,” said Kummer in the same quiet voice; but he drove on, slowly.

“You, too?” growled the giant in disgust. Rosa sank back in despair.

The car rolled to a stop beside a cottage, unilluminated and obviously deserted. Beyond it lay a small building which looked like a boathouse; and nearby another which might have been a garage. The buildings were quite near the beach. As they got stiffly out of the car they could see the towering black cliffs of Spanish Cape across the moon-flecked water, only a few hundred yards away. But it might have been a few hundred miles away, for all the good it could do them. For the cliffs were perpendicular, and at least fifty feet high, and at their base lay sharp tumbled rocks against which the lashing tides raged. Even here, on Waring’s beach, there was no approach to the Cape. The cliff stopped high above the little structures, and there was scarcely a handhold in its entire side, which was only slightly less high than the cliffs in the sea.

Off to the other side, where the public bathing beach lay, there was nothing but paper-littered sand. The sand glistened under the moon.

Rosa saw her uncle casting quick secret glances all about, with what seemed to her desperation. The giant stood slightly behind them, his one eye tolerantly watchful. He acted as if he were in no hurry at all, but permitted them to inspect the deserted premises to their hearts’ content. A ramp-like structure led from the boathouse to the water’s edge, and half in the surf lay a small powerful-looking cabin cruiser. Several rollers lay scattered about in the sand, and the doors of the boathouse stood open. Apparently, then, the giant had broken into the place, rolled the boat out himself, in readiness for... what?

“That’s Mr. Waring’s boat!” exclaimed the dark girl, staring at it. “You’re stealing it, you — you monster?”

“Never mind about the names, lady,” said the giant gruffly, almost as if he were offended. “I’ll do what I damn want to. Now, Mr. Marco—”

Kummer had turned and was walking slowly toward his captor. Rosa, catching sight of his blue eyes glinting in the moonlight, saw that he had determined to act upon some last desperate plan. Resolution was written all over his hard, clean face. There was no fear in it at all as he stalked the immense figure of the man in sailor’s costume, who stood watching him quite expressionlessly.

“I can give you more money than you ever saw in—” began David Kummer in a smooth conversational voice, as without haste he strolled toward the giant.

He never finished; Rosa never learned what he had intended to do. Struck dumb with horror, she could only feel her legs go weak beneath her and marvel dully at the extraordinary monster who had kidnaped them. For, so swiftly that her dazed eye barely followed, the giant lunged forward with upheld fist. The huge club of bone and skin thumped soggily against something, and the next thing she saw was Kummer’s face sinking below the fixed level of her stricken eves. And then he was sprawled on the sand, very still.

Something snapped in the girl’s brain and with a scream she flung herself with clawing fingers at the vast back of the giant. He was kneeling calmly by the unconscious man, listening to his breathing. When he felt the weight of her body he merely rose and twitched his shoulders, and she fell off to land in a sobbing heap on the sand. Without a word he picked her up and carried her, weeping and kicking, toward the dark cottage.

The door was locked, or bolted. He tucked her under one arm and with the other heaved against the panels. They gave with a splintering crash; he kicked the broken door open and strode in.

The last thing Rosa saw as her captor toed the door shut behind her was David Kummer’s face on the sand before the silent cruiser under the moon.

It was a living-room, quite habitable, as she noted with glazed surprise in the ray of the giant’s flashlight. She did not know Hollis Waring, had never met him; he was a New York business-man who occasionally spent a week or a few days there. She had often seen him cruising about beyond the Cape (as she told Mr. Ellery Queen later) in the very boat beached outside — a tiny fragile gray man in a linen cap, always alone. She had known vaguely that he had not visited his cottage since the beginning of the summer, long before John Marco had appeared in his yellow roadster with multitudinous luggage; and some one — her father, she vaguely recalled — had mentioned that he had gone to Europe. She had never known that her father and Waring were acquainted; certainly they had never met here at the shore; for that matter they may merely have known of each other through a business connection; her father had so many...

The giant set her on the rug before the fireplace. “Sit down in that there chair,” he directed in the gentlest of voices. He set the flashlight on a divan nearby so that its powerful beam concentrated on the chair.

Silently, she sat down. On a small table not three feet from her elbow stood a telephone. From the appearance of the instrument she saw that it was a local telephone, on which service had probably not been discontinued. If she could reach it, snatch off the receiver, shriek for help... The giant took the telephone and put it down on the floor ten feet away, stretching the cord to its utmost. She wilted in the chair, finally beyond resistance.

“What are you going to... to do with me?” she asked in a dry, small voice.

“Ain’t goin’ to hurt ye. Don’t git scared, girlie. It’s jest this here Marco bird I want. Took ye along to keep ye from raisin’ an alarm. Ye would, too.” As he chuckled admiringly, he took a coil of heavy cord from one of his pockets and began to unwind it. “Sit still now, Miss Godfrey. Be good an’ ye’ll be all right.” And before she could move he had, with his incredible quickness, tied her hands behind her back and to the back of the chair. She tugged and pulled in sudden desperation; the knots only tightened. Then he stooped and bound her ankles to the legs of the chair. She could see the coarse grayish hair beneath his cap, and an ugly depression covered with old scar-tissue at the back of his ruddy neck.

“Why don’t you gag me, too?” she demanded bitterly.

“What for?” he chuckled, apparently in good humor. “Screech your head off if ye like, lady; won’t no one hear ye. Up we go I”

He lifted her, chair and all, and carried her to another door. Opening it with a kick of one huge foot, he carried her through into a stuffy little bedroom and deposited her and the chair near the bed.

“You’re not leaving me here?” she cried, appalled. “Why, I’ll... I’ll starve, I’ll suffocate!”

“Now, now, ye’ll be all right,” he said soothingly. “I’ll see to it ye’ll be found.”

“But David — my uncle — that man outside,” she panted. “What are you going to do with him?”

He strode to the door to the living-room, making thunder in the small chamber. “Hey?” he growled, without looking back. His back expressed sudden menace.

“What are you going to do with him?” shrieked Rosa, frantic with fear.

“Hey?” he said again, and went out. Rosa sank back in the chair to which she was tied, her heart pounding painfully in her throat. Oh, he was stupid, stupid — a hulking, murdering clown. If ever she got out of this — quickly enough — it would be easy to track him down. There could be only one like him in the world; such travesties on the human form, she thought bitterly, do not happen in pairs. And then — if only it wasn’t too late — revenge would be sweet...

She sat there, a helpless trussed fowl, listening with all the power of her small ears. She could hear the monster plainly enough as he tramped back and forth in the living-room. And then she heard something else: a minute tinkle, crystal-clear. She frowned and bit her lip. What was— The telephone! Yes, she could hear the metallic click of the instrument as he dialed some number. Oh, if only she could—

She tried desperately to rise and succeeded only in achieving a sort of squat, the chair lifting a bit from the floor. How she managed she did not know, but she found herself making painful progress toward the door, one foot after another in a waddle, the chair bumping along derisively behind her. She made a good deal of noise, but the giant in the next room apparently was too absorbed to hear.

When she reached the door and set her ear against it, trembling more from excitement than exertion, she heard nothing. He couldn’t be through already! But then she realized that he must be waiting for the connection. She concentrated all her energies in a single fierce application of will. She must hear what he said, if possible find out to whom he talked. She held her breath as the vibrating tones of his voice rumbled through the door.

But the first tones came through garbled, indistinguishable. He might have been asking for some one. If he was, she could not make out the name. If it was a name... Her head spun with vertigo and she shook it impatiently, biting her lower lip until the pain cleared her brain. Ah!

“...job’s done. Yeah... Got Marco outside row. Had to slug him, one... Naw! He’ll keep. When I slug ’em they stays slugged.” Silence. Rosa wished for wings, second sight, anything. Oh, if only she could hear the voice of the man or woman at the other end of the wire! But the giant’s bass reached her again. “Miss Godfrey’s all right. Got her tied up in the bedroom... Ain’t hurt. No, I tell ye! Only better see she don’t have to stay here too long. She ain’t done nothin’ to ye, has she?... Yeah, yeah!.. out to sea an’ then... You’re the doctor... All right, all right! I tell ye he’ll keep...” For a moment she could hear nothing more than a blurred vibrato of hoarse sound. Wouldn’t he ever mention that murderous creature’s name? Anything, anything. Some clue... “Okay. Okay! I’m goin’ now. Marco won’t bother you no more. But don’t forgit about the girl. She’s got guts, that one.” And Rosa, with a sickness in her stomach, heard the crash of the instrument and the giant’s slow, stupid, rather good-natured chuckle.

She sank back again, exhausted, closing her eyes. But she opened them again quickly; she had heard the slam of the living-room door. Had he gone out, or had some one come in? But there was only silence, and she knew that the giant had left the cottage. She must see... She squirmed back, opened the door, and in the same awkward duck-like fashion waddled across the floor of the living-room to the nearest front window. The giant’s flashlight was gone and the room was pitch-dark; she bumped into things and once bruised her strapped right arm painfully. At last she reached the window.

The moon was high now, and the white sand of the beach before the cottage and the calm surface of the sea acted like reflectors. The whole beach was smothered in a gentle glow of silver light; visibility was perfect.

She forgot the pain in her arm, the needles stinging in her cramped muscles, the dryness of her throat and lips. The scene outside the window was so perfect, so brilliant, so flat in its lights and shadows, that it might have come from a motion-picture reel. Even the figure of their gigantic captor looked small, as if some invisible director had ordered a long shot. At the moment Rosa reached the uncurtained window he was stooping over the figure of David Kummer, who lay in precisely the same tumbled, unconscious position as when she had last seen him. She watched the mountainous creature lift Kummer without effort, sling the limp body over his shoulder, and stalk to the beached cruiser. He dumped Kummer into the boat with little ceremony, dug his huge feet into the ramp, set his shoulders against the hull, and shoved...

The cruiser began to move, gathering speed as the giant pushed, and finally rode clear in the water, the giant up to his knees in the sea. He grasped the gunwale and clambered overside as nimbly as an ape. A moment later the cruiser’s riding lights winked calmly on. And she saw the giant stoop on deck, lift her uncle’s still form, and carry it into the cabin. A motor roared then, there was a thrashing of purple-white sea, and the slim craft scudded away from shore.

Rosa watched it until her eyes ached. She never took them off the riding lights. They bobbed and swam — toward the south, away from Spanish Cape. And finally they vanished as if a wave had extinguished them.

And it seemed to the dark girl suddenly in her crushed and dirtied gown, strapped to her chair like a felon, that she was going mad, and that the beach was rising with stealth to smother her, and that the sea formed animate waves with leering, changing faces.

And as she sank back into unconsciousness, through her spinning brain flashed the conviction that she should never see David Kummer again.