CHAPTER LII

THE VOICE IN THE DARK

Barbara rested ill in her cabin bed that night. Confused dreams troubled her, mingling familiar thoughts in kaleidoscopic confusion, dragging her from one tangle to another in a wearying rapidity against which she struggled in vain. One thing ran through them all--the gold-lacquer Buddha that had stood on the Sendai chest in her bedroom at the Embassy; only it seemed to be also that lost image before which she had used to sit as a child.

She had no feeling of awakening, but all at once the visions were gone and she lay open-eyed, swinging to the movement of the sea, feeling the night to be very long. There came over her a creeping oppression--a sense of terror of the night, of its hidden mysteries and occult forces. The darkness seemed to be holding some dreadful, stolid, lethargic thing that sprawled from horizon to horizon.

A small, noiseless clock was hung beside the bed. She could see its pale face in the light of the thick ground-glass bulb that served as night-lamp. It was nearly four o'clock.

She twisted back the tawny-brown surge of her hair, rose, and dressed as hastily as she could in the lurching space. Then she opened the door and passed into the saloon. A roll of the yacht slammed to the cabin door and left her in darkness. She felt for the electric switch, but before she could find it, another movement sent her reeling against a stand. She threw out her arm to stay her fall and struck something.

There was a clicking sound, a soft whir, and then the music of _samisen_ filled the dark room. She realized that she had staggered against the phonograph in the corner and that the shock had started its mechanism. Wincing, she groped her way to a chair and sat down trembling.

The music died away. There was a pause, a sharp click, a curious confusion of sounds, and then husky and filmy, _a human voice_:

"Barbara!"

She caught her hands to her throat, her blood chilling to ice. It was the voice of Austen Ware, speaking, it seemed to her, from the world beyond. She crouched back, breathing fast and hard, while the voice went on, in strange broken periods, threaded by a whir and clamor that seemed the noise of the wind outside.

"What is that I knocked over? It's buzzing and wheels are turning in it--or is it the pain? Can't you stop it, Barbara? No, I know you aren't here, really. I'm all alone ... I must be light-headed. How stupid!"

The strange truth came to her in a stab of realization. What she heard was no supernatural voice. In its fall that night the phonograph's spring had been released and the _samisen_ record had registered also the delirious muttering of the dying man. She felt herself shuddering violently.

"I can't go any farther.... You--you've done it for me, Phil. It ... was the second blow. It seemed to crash right through...."

Barbara's heart was beating to bursting. "Austen, Austen," she whispered to herself, in an agony. "Tell me! Was it _Phil_? You can't know what you're saying!"

"No one must know it. The law would ... no, no! What good would it do now? He's a bad egg, but I ... I was always proud of the family name. Barbara! Remember, it _wasn't Phil_! It _wasn't Phil_!"

She fell on her knees, her hands clasping the arms of the chair, thrilling to the truth beneath that pitiful denial. Phil, not Daunt! The man she had loved had no stain of blood on his soul! She sobbed aloud. With the whir of the machinery there mixed a grating, scratching discord, as though an automaton had attempted to laugh.

"How ridiculous it seems to die like this! Only this morning I was so near ... so near to what I wanted most. It was your losing the locket that checkmated me. Why couldn't I have found it instead of Phil?... Did I tell you I was there that day, Barbara--behind the _shikiri_, when you followed the Japanese girl into the house? I could see just what you were thinking ... I would never have told you the truth ... never."

With a faint cry Barbara dragged herself backward. In the illusion, everything about her for the instant vanished. The yacht's walls had rolled away. She was on a gloomy hillside, and a stricken man was speaking--confessing.

Again the ghastly attempt to laugh.

"A contemptible thing, wasn't it! I knew that. I've ... I've felt it.... I never seemed contemptible to myself before. But I should have had you, and that ... would have repaid. It was all coming my ... way. Then, just the dropping of a locket, and ... Phil ... and now, it's all over!"

Barbara felt herself engulfed in a wave of complex emotions. She was torn with a great repugnance, a greater joy, and a sense of acute pity that overmastered them both. Then there rolled over all the recollection that what she now listened to was but a mechanical echo. The hillside faded, the walls of the yacht came back.

"I never believed in much, and I'm going without whining. Are you near, Barbara? Sometimes there are many people around me ... and then only you. I ... I think I'm beginning to wander!"

She was weeping now, unrestrained.

There was a long pause, in which the whir of the wheels rasped on. Then--

"Is it your ... arms I feel, Barbara? Or ... is it...."

That was all. The wheels whirred on a little longer, a click and--silence. Only the rush of the wind outside and the passionate sobbing of the girl who knelt in the dark room, her face buried in her hand, her heart tossed on the cross-tides of anguish and of joy.

A long time she knelt there. She was recalled by a confusion on the deck above her--shouts and a hastening of feet. She lifted her face. The dawn had come--its pale, faint radiance sifted through the heavy glass ports and dimly lit the room. The shouts and running multiplied.

She sprang to her feet, opened the door and hurried up the companion-way.