Part 2

There was a gravel path, beginning where the wharf met the shore, and Miss Chalmers followed it. Even in the gloom of the trees this was not difficult, for the gravel was white, and lay before her like a ghostly streak. Besides, it crunched under the twenty-dollar shoes.

Miss Chalmers was displeased with herself. She felt foolish. Something had gone wrong with her poise; something seemed to have been subtracted from the considerable sum of her dignity. The world was not playing flunky as usual. Her old austerity was there, perhaps, but it lacked confidence and authority.

The path forked, and Miss Chalmers paused to consider. The house was still invisible.

"Why does a strange path always fork when one is alone and in a hurry, and particularly at night?" asked Miss Chalmers aloud.

There was no answer; so, after an instant of indecision, she took the fork that led to the right. Naturally it was the wrong fork. It simply had to be, under the circumstances. It brought her back to the shore of the island, where a summer pavilion was erected on a rocky point.

She retraced her steps back to the fork and took the left branch of the gravel path. In not more than two minutes it guided her to the edge of a lawn. Beyond this she could see the house--a large, solid, black mass against a background of trees.

"Not a single light!" she exclaimed impatiently. "It's positively--_uncouth_!"

She crossed the lawn and paused again at the foot of a flight of steps that led to a broad piazza.

"It's almost as if the place was closed," she commented as her glance roved upward toward the windows. "But of course it's not. Oh, well!"

She ascended the steps, crossed the piazza, and found a push-button in the framing of a closed door. She pushed and waited--but not long; she was too impatient for dalliance.

Several times she pushed the button in rapid succession, holding her thumb upon it for extended periods. Nobody came to the door, which angered her anew. Then she realized that she herself could hear no ringing of a bell.

"Out of order, of course," she said bitterly.

She rapped smartly with her gloved knuckles upon the paneling of the door time after time until they ached. Then she dropped her grip, went back to the lawn, and looked up at the house again. It slept calmly.

Miss Chalmers made a circuit of the Witherbee dwelling. Not a ray of light filtered out of it from any side, not a sound--not even a snore. She returned to the front door and rapped again. Then, she seated herself in a porch-rocker and frowned.

"I absolutely will not shout," she told herself. "I am sufficiently absurd as it is. I will not be laughed at!"

She placed particular emphasis upon the last thought, as if somebody, somewhere, was displaying amusement at her plight. If there was one thing Rosalind Chalmers would not for an instant endure it was mirth of her own unintentional provoking. She was not a lady to be laughed at.

In the first place, she was too dignified, even to the point of a certain severity in manner. Where she lacked severity she substituted condescension. In the second place, she was too coldly handsome, too tall, too slimly erect. In the third place, she was too old--twenty-five. In the fourth place, she was a Vassar graduate. In the fifth place, she was too rich. In the sixth place--

Oh, why continue? It is already plain that under no circumstances was Miss Chalmers a lady to be laughed at, even by equals--to say nothing of a common river-man.

Yet she knew exactly what would happen when she succeeded in arousing the sleepers on Witherbee's Island. First, they would grumble and stumble and rub their eyes. Then they would shuffle to a window or a door and discover her. Then there would be surprise and hurry and a scene. And then--then, when everybody was thoroughly awake--would come the laughter. She reasoned it very logically and found no flaw in her conclusions.

"I will not wake them," she decided. "I will get into that house somehow, find myself a couch downstairs, and get my sleep. It's not that I mind waking them up; not a bit. But I won't be--"

She left the murmured sentence unfinished, arose from her chair, and walked briskly to the nearest window. The sash was either securely locked or thoroughly jammed, like a parlor-car window. She could not move it.

She tried the next window; the result was the same. A third window gave her no access to the dark interior of Witherbee House. She vented her annoyance in a sharp exclamation and turned the corner of the porch. The next window rattled encouragingly in its frame. It moved half an inch. She slipped the tips of her fingers under the sash, drew a deep breath, and heaved valiantly. The window ascended abruptly and with a clatter. And then--

A great bell clanged!

No decent, friendly, hospitable bell, but a raucous, brazen, mocking gong, pounded upon at the rate of a hundred or so strokes to the minute by a fiendish electric hammer.

The sound of the bell echoed in the gloom of the house and flung itself boisterously through the open window into the astonished and dismayed ears of Miss Chalmers. She fell back a step and raised her hands protectingly in front of her.

"A burglar-alarm!" she cried.

The din was appalling. It seemed to grow steadily in volume. Miss Chalmers was not truly frightened, but she was thoroughly amazed and startled. She was incontinently hurled from her pedestal of calm assurance.

For five seconds she hesitated. The bell boomed on. She stepped close to the window, placed her hands upon the sill, and leaned inward. From somewhere above she heard a heavy footstep, then a medley of sleepy voices.

She turned and ran.

She was dimly conscious in her precipitate retreat that, mingled with the clanging of the gong, there was another sound--a rattling of something on the porch floor. But it was not a propitious moment for investigation.

Around the corner of the porch she fled, upsetting a wicker table and scattering its burden of magazines. From its resting-place at the front door she scooped up her satchel. Down the steps to the lawn she leaped recklessly and then across the space of level sward.

Her skirt was not fashioned for running. With one hand she swept it up to her knees, a maneuver which added perhaps a knot to her speed. Give her a fair chance and Miss Chalmers was an excellent runner. She could even invest running with a certain stateliness and dignity--but not on this occasion.

Somebody had left a rocking-chair on the Witherbee lawn. She had not observed it when she approached the house, but now she fell over it. It bumped her knee cruelly, in addition to depositing her at full length upon the grass.

Within a second she was on her feet again, flaming with anger. She groped for her fallen satchel, recovered it, and ran on toward the shelter of the trees At the edge of the trees she paused and looked back. Lights were moving in the windows of Witherbee House. She heard voices, some shrill with alarm. Again she turned and fled.

Just why Miss Chalmers ran away from the haven of refuge she had been so long in reaching she could not clearly have explained. She was flurried in mind, yet not to such an extent as to dim the fact that her conduct was quite illogical. For fifteen minutes she had been trying to rouse the house; now that she had succeeded, she was in flight.

In among the trees she hesitated again. The simple and obvious thing to do was to walk straight back and announce herself. After that she would be in bed in ten minutes. But they might laugh. In fact, it was a certainty they would laugh. The alarm, the silly panic of a resolute lady, the chair on the lawn, her gown--oh, it was impossible. She ran once more, dodging among the trees and praying that she might find a path.

Presently she felt the gravel under her feet and followed the trail until it brought her back to the wharf, where her trunks crouched like black monsters in the faint light of the lantern. Here she paused to recover breath while she listened.

Through the little wood that had once seemed so dense she saw a glimmering of lanterns passing to and fro.

"I am _not_ frightened!" panted Miss Chalmers hotly. "I am merely a fool! Yes--a complete fool! But they'll not find me--not now! Not for anything in the world! I'll go back; I'll find some way. I _won't_ stay on this island. The whole thing is perfectly beastly and absurd!"

The moving lanterns among the trees seemed to be coming nearer. Men were calling to each other. She could hear footsteps on the gravel path.

There was no concealment on the wharf, yet Miss Chalmers was determined to be concealed. There could be no backing out now. She looked quickly about her.

Close to the wharf, at the very edge of the water, she now observed what looked like a boat-house. She sprang toward it and stepped out upon a small float that was anchored in front of it to find herself barred from refuge by padlocked doors.

The lanterns were now close to the wharf. Miss Chalmers had no time to waste picking a lock, even if she knew how. She slipped around the corner of the boat-house and flattened herself close against it, trying desperately to breathe noiselessly.

A moment later there was a shuffling of feet on the wharf, then an exclamation of surprise in a man's voice. Her curiosity urged her to risk a peep. Very cautiously she advanced her head beyond the corner of the building that screened her.

What Miss Chalmers saw shocked her. Three men in pajamas, each carrying a lantern, were standing upon the wharf. Their feet were shod in bedroom slippers. Two of them carried walking-sticks gripped tightly at the wrong end, evidently intended to perform service as clubs. The third had a revolver.

She was shocked, not because she regarded pajamas and bedroom slippers as improper, but because they seemed so utterly common, so plebeian, so lacking in anything that approached character or smartness or form--in short, to the eyes of Miss Chalmers they were sheer vulgarity, even though of possible utility. She shuddered a little.

One of the men she recognized; it was Mr. Witherbee. She was well aware that Mr. Witherbee was stout, but not until now did she realize that he actually bulged. It was the first time she had ever seen a fat man in pajamas, and she was impressed with the fact that the effect was more robust than artistic.

One of the other men was tall and blond, with a drooping mustache. His pajamas were far too short in the legs and his bare ankles were inelegant.

The other man had his back toward her. She thought he might be Tom Witherbee. He looked more fashionable than the others. It was also he who held the pistol, which, perhaps, gave him just a suggestion of devil-may-care.

The three men were gravely regarding the six trunks. Miss Chalmers caught her breath.

Too late now! She could never disappear from Witherbee's Island and explain those trunks. Yet she knew this, too; she never, though the heavens might fall upon her otherwise, would step forth and proclaim herself to three men in pajamas.

Mr. Witherbee advanced to the nearest trunk and inspected it by the light of his lantern.

"Well, what do you know about that!" he exclaimed.

"'Pon my word, I know nothing whatever about it, my dear fellow," said the tall one.

"These are Miss Chalmers's trunks," declared Mr. Witherbee in a voice of wonder as he examined another.

The young man with the revolver made an inspection of his own and avowed that Mr. Witherbee was right. The tall one stroked his mustache and said nothing.

"But she's not expected till to-morrow!" cried Mr. Witherbee. "How the deuce did her trunks get here?"

"Must have sent them on ahead," observed the armed one.

"But who brought 'em? When? The boat didn't stop here to-night."

Mr. Witherbee stared at the trunks in succession and juggled one of them as if to assure himself that it was real. All the time he was muttering.

"Well, this isn't finding the burglar," remarked the man with the pistol. "He's probably gone by now, anyhow. Ah-h-h--I'm sleepy."

Mr. Witherbee pondered the trunks again.

"I've got a theory," he said presently.

"Shoot."

Miss Chalmers winced, divining that this was slang.

"Why, it's like this," said Mr. Witherbee, putting down his lantern and diagraming his remarks with his cane. "There's a prowler about these islands--you know of that, of course.

"Well, Miss Chalmers sends her trunks on in advance. Some boat brings 'em down, probably after we're all in bed.

"This chap cruises around and spots the trunks. Then he comes ashore. He finds the house dark. He makes up his mind that everybody has gone away and that the trunks are waiting to be taken aboard the morning boat. So he makes a try at the house. Burglar-alarm goes off--he gets scared--runs like the Old Harry--hops into his boat--_an revoir_. How's that?"

"By Jove, it's wonderful!" said the tall man. "By the way, old man, are your ankles cold? Mine are."

"Accepting your theory, then," remarked the man with the pistol, "whoever rang the burglar-alarm has already escaped, so we can all go to bed."

"Clever as the deuce!" said the tall man.

"I don't suppose there is much more use in looking," admitted Mr. Witherbee reluctantly.

(His ankles were not cold.)

"You don't guess he could have hid in the boathouse, do you?"

Miss Chalmers shivered.

"It's locked," said the armed one. "He wouldn't bother with the boat-house. You can bet he's not on the island now. What'll we do with the trunks?"

"Leave 'em until morning. It's not going to rain," Mr. Witherbee observed. "But, by jingo! I'd like to get that fellow!"

"So would I. But what's the use now? Listen! The folks are calling. I guess we'd better go back and tell them it's all over."

"All right," sighed Mr. Witherbee, picking up his lantern.

The trio in pajamas turned back toward the path. Miss Chalmers put her head forward cautiously for another glance. She was just in time to see the figure of the tall man disappear, his pajamas flapping disconsolately about his ankles, his lantern swinging listlessly.

"They're worse than the boatman," she commented.

Not until the last sign of a light had disappeared, and only when she could no longer hear sounds from the direction of the house, did Miss Chalmers venture from her seclusion. She went back to the dock and sat down on the string-piece.

"This is a fine state of affairs," she reflected. "Now I've _got_ to say. I never thought about the trunks.

"But how will I ever explain? I'll die before I admit I set off that burglar-alarm. I'll not only die, but I'll lie. I'll die lying. Some time to-morrow morning I've got to announce myself.

"But how? I'm an idiot--but I won't admit that either.

"Why did I run? That's what I should like to know--why? I've been behaving like a child."

Presently she shuddered, but it was not because there was a chill in the air. She was thinking of pajamas.

"I shall never wear them again," she murmured. "Thank Heaven, I brought--"

At this point her thoughts very naturally drifted to a consideration of some place to sleep. She had no liking for camping out under the stars if she could help it. She wanted a roof over her head.

Sneaking back to the open window in the Witherbee House was out of the question; anyhow, it was probably shut and fastened by this time. She wondered if there was a way to get into the boat-house.

Back she went, armed with the dock lantern, and began an inspection of the lock. It was a solid-looking padlock, but Miss Chalmers thought the staple through which it was passed showed signs of weakness. She looked about for an instrument and finally found a stick that seemed as if it might do.

The stick broke several times during the process of prying the staple loose, yet she made headway. Under most conditions an impatient and somewhat imperious young lady, Miss Chalmers was curiously persistent when she set her hand to any mechanical task. She labored uncomplainingly at the staple for fifteen minutes, and gave a satisfied little nod when it fell loose from the woodwork.

The interior of the boat-house was not inviting. A rowboat and two canoes were piled along one side, with a lot of loose gear, a collection of ill-smelling paint-pots and some oars and paddles.

At the farther end was a pile of canvas. She tilted her nose slightly, but did not retreat.

"It's a roof at any rate," she observed. "I'll sleep on the canvas. Nothing can hurt this gown now. It's gone."

She put down the lantern, sat on the canvas, and slipped off her twenty-dollar shoes. Then she lay down and attempted to convince herself that the bed was comfortable.

It was an entirely laudable effort at self deception, but quite useless. The bed was anything but comfortable. It had some pulley-blocks under it, for one thing.

Nevertheless she became drowsy. This ordinarily delicious sensation crept upon her with unwelcome quickness. She wanted time to think about to-morrow morning. It might require considerable planning, she feared.

"Oh, well," she murmured in a resigned tone, "I guess it will come to me better after I sleep a little."

Then she almost slept. The reason she did not quite sleep was an abrupt volley of shots. She sprang to her feet with an angry exclamation.

"Haven't they stopped hunting me yet?" she snapped.

*CHAPTER III*

*MISS ACCESSORY-AFTER-THE-FACT*

Her initial impulse was to dash out of the boat-house, confront her pursuers, and visit them with a merited rebuke for having disturbed her rest. Not for an instant did it occur to Miss Chalmers that anybody else's rest had been disturbed by her.

But she remembered that she was not yet announced upon Witherbee's Island; that she would not, in fact, arrive until morning, so far as the official statement was concerned. So she checked her rush and occupied a wise half-minute in putting on her shoes.

Tiptoeing across squeaking boards to the open doorway, she looked out and turned her head in either direction. Silence had followed the shots. She could see no lights on the island. Everything was as restful and somnolent as a lecture on metaphysics.

She stepped out on the little float, from which she could obtain a better view of the wharf and the beginning of the gravel path. There was neither sign nor sound of the pajama squad, facts that contributed greatly to her satisfaction. Not a glimmer came from the direction of the house.

The shots puzzled her. She was wide-awake now, and she was quite sure she had not dreamed a volley. Pausing for a couple of minutes on the float, she made her way noiselessly to the dock, where she stopped to listen again.

"I know perfectly well I heard shooting," she remarked. "I'm not given to imagining things. There!"

Four shots there were this time; she had not counted the first group. Instantly she ran to the end of the dock and looked out across the water. As she stared into the darkness there was another shot, preceded some three or four seconds by a yellow flash.

"It's on another island," she told herself rapidly. "Can it be possible that there are burglars about? Heavens! Suppose they really did come here!"

She listened for more shots and watched for more flashes. Presently a light showed again, but it did not come from the muzzle of a gun.

She knew it to be the white, steady beam of an electric torch. A moment later another showed. Then they began moving in opposite directions. A little after that she heard the faint bark of a dog. She glanced behind her into the woods of Witherbee's Island. Nobody else seemed to be paying the least attention to what was going on across the water.

Miss Chalmers's curiosity was unleashed and stalking from its lair. It was possessed with a consuming desire. She found it dragging her along, with little or no effort on her part to hold it back. Its enthusiasm infected her. She, too--all the rest of her--wanted to know what was going on out there in the river.

Curiosity is a subtly cunning creature. Almost before she knew it, it guided Miss Chalmers to a St. Lawrence skiff, the existence of which she had not noticed before. The skiff was moored to the wharf; it did not take her more than two seconds to lower herself into it, cast off the line, and pick up the two light oars that lay in the bottom.

"I might just as well," she remarked in extenuation. "It's out of the question to sleep. Nobody will know anything about it. And--well, it cannot be much more than half a mile."

She fitted the oars to the swivel-locks, swung the skiff around, took her bearings from one of the electric torches, and fell into a long, steady stroke. The boat moved lightly and easily. She found something exhilarating in the exercise. She could not remember having touched a pair of oars since she rowed with her class-crew at Vassar.

She rowed well. That, of course, was characteristic of Miss Chalmers. Things that she could not do well, she did not do at all. For instance, holding her temper; almost invariably she bungled that, so she had given up trying. Besides, there is no particular reason why a rich, handsome, and imperious lady should hold her temper if she happens not to want to.

For a quarter of a mile she rowed without pausing, then made another observation over her shoulder. She was holding her course admirably, for the lights on the land ahead of her were much nearer. Now she could hear voices, particularly that of a man, who cursed a barking dog and then did something to it to make it yelp.

"It's another island," commented Miss Chalmers as she rested a second time, now not more than a hundred yards from the shore. "It's another burglar-hunt, too. Oh, dear! I suppose it means pajamas."

It did. Somebody struck a match to light a cigar, and the brief illumination revealed two men who were most palpably dressed for bed. She allowed the boat to drift quietly while she listened. The match burned out and the figures were hidden again, but she could hear their voices distinctly.

"The dogs aren't worth a hoot," growled one of the voices.

"Seems like they ain't quite as noticin' as they used to be, sir," admitted the other.

"I gave them the scent, right where we found the footprints in the flower-bed, but they didn't even seem excited."

"No, sir."

"Did you see him at all?"

"Not a sign, sir; nor heard him either."

"It's a deuce of a note," complained the first speaker. "I've got watch-dogs and servants and locks on my doors and windows, and yet I can't keep thieves out of my house."

"If only Mr. William was here, sir, we might--"

"Confound Mr. William! He's not here and he won't be here, so we've got to do without him-- Listen! What was that?"

"I think that's James and Eliza hunting along the other side of the island, sir."

"Eliza! Is she at it, too?"

"She stopped to dress, sir," explained the voice apologetically and hastily. "She's awful particular about James, sir. She don't want nothing to happen to him unless she's--"

"Never mind that. If she wants to make a fool out of herself, she may, so long as she continues to get the washing done. We'll go on up the shore until we meet them. But I suppose it won't be any use."

"Probably not, sir."

"Here, Duke! Where's that blooming dog now? Oh, well; let him go. I suppose he's eating out of the burglar's hand."

The torch carried by one of the speakers began moving along the edge of the island. Miss Chalmers was slightly bored. Being a watcher was not nearly so exciting as playing the quarry. But she decided to follow.

One of the oars rattled in its swivel, and she heard the two searchers halt.

"He's in a boat!" exclaimed the one in authority.

"I don't think it was that, sir. It sounded more like--"