Weird Tales/Volume 11/Issue 2/The Isle of the Fairy Morgana
1. The Meeting
DESOLATE and lone it rises there in the midst of one of the loneliest reaches in all the lonely Sea of Bering. Flang Island it is called, this mass of rock, black, rent, smashed and jagged—the summit, perhaps, of a mountain range sunk beneath the waters in some lost age of the earth. It is barely a half-mile in length, its greatest width is but half of that, the highest point only about two hundred feet above the sea.
Flang Island (soon to be a place of tragedy, the scene of what is perhaps the strangest dénouement to murder on record) lies very near the fifty-fifth parallel of north latitude. The time was the beginning of July; to be precise, the date was the 2nd. At this season (unless the sky be overcast) darkness never settles upon that black and desolate place—the abode of a few seals and fewer sea-birds. The sun, his declination 23° north, does not set till near 9 o'clock; at midnight he is only twelve degrees below the (northern) horizon, so that there is no darkness but twilight only; and at half-past 3 he once more has emerged from out the wastes of ocean. How great the contrast at the opposite season! For, at the winter solstice, the sun does not rise till 8.30, to attain at midday an altitude of only a dozen degrees, and at half-past 3 he disappears. A strange place, forsooth, for any fairy to choose for a place of habitation — this dark and savage, this storm-beaten isle in the midst of the dark and tempestuous subarctic sea. A fairy's, though, it was, this Island of Flang. That, however, the lone watcher there on the summit was doomed never to know. But Cuthbert Griswold was to know it, know it soon and to his sorrow—that this was the Isle of the Fairy Morgana.
The little Gorgon, a twenty-five foot sloop, was actually passing Flang when Griswold saw him. The sloop was sailing on a northeast course before a very gentle breeze from the south. At the time Cuthbert Griswold (the only soul on board, except a half-grown wolf-dog) made the discovery, the eastern extremity of the island was on his port beam, distant perhaps a little less than a half-mile. This part of the island rises sheer to a height of fifty feet or so, and there, on the very edge of that rock wall, was the figure of a man, clear-cut against the blue of the sky and signaling frantically. Even as Griswold saw him, the voice of the castaway came across the water, the sound faint as that soft wash of the sea against the sides of the Gorgon. On the instant the wolf-dog raised himself up from his warm bed and thrust his savage visage above the cockpit coaming, his look fixed upon Flang.
"A man, Pluto," said Griswold. "See him there? But what on earth is a man doing in this accursed place? Well, I have been on that island myself a couple of times, and perhaps people, had any seen me there, would have wondered the same thing. And look at that, Pluto: he is signaling to us like a man gone mad. If he's a castaway, little wonder, for a dozen years might pass, and never a sail lift above the horizon of this bit of ocean. We'll run down into the bay and see what it means."
Griswold put his helm over, and the little vessel glided off in a direction at right angles to the course on which she had been standing, slowly drawing in, as she advanced, toward the rocks, along which the
surf broke with a sound like the low growl, so Griswold thought, of some savage beast.
A little space—the Gorgon was then about midway the isle—the sails were lowered and the gasoline engine was started. Slowly the little craft moved in toward the broken wall, passed in behind three rocks which thrust up out of the sea like monstrous black tusks and was heading into a passage, two hundred feet or so in width, that some convulsion of nature had riven into the island.
For a little distance the great fissure (which comes very near making of Flang two islets) ran slantingly. Then came a sharp turn to port, a gentle one to starboard, and the Gorgon was gliding out into a little oval-shaped basin, rock-walled and as placid as a mill-pond. On the left the rocks rose up sheer from the water's edge and to a height of one hundred feet. The other side was broken and smashed; in one place there was a bit of beach. Off went the engine, and, when he was abreast of this spot, Griswold let his anchor go in three fathoms water, it being low tide at the time.
"Hello!" he sang out to the figure, haggard and wobegone, that had just appeared on the ribbon of beach. "How the devil did you get here?"
"Mother Goose," was the answer.
Griswold stared.
"Mother Goose? Do you mean that the old girl brought you here on her broomstick?"
A wan smile flitted across the face of the castaway.
"Trading schooner," he explained. "She was smashed on those rooks at the western end of the island. Every soul was lost but me."
"When was that?" Griswold asked.
"In that storm—on the 27th. The captain thought that he was well to the eastward of this island. The schooner caved in like an empty barrel smashed against a stone. Never saw so much as a single plank afterward. Don't know how it happened, but I found myself flung up into a cleft in the wall, and somehow I managed to crawl to a place of safety."
"But found," said Griswold, "that you hadn't landed in Eden."
"In hell," returned the castaway. "I knew that years might pass and no ship ever sight this cursed island—or sight me on it. But I knew that I could not live for years—perhaps not even for months. I'm nearly starved. Tried to get a seal but couldn't make it."
"Well," Griswold told him, "there is no dearth of muckymuck in the Gorgon's lazaret, and you can make up for lost time."
Griswold, as he spoke, was launching his little dingey—dinkey, he called it.
"I thought," the castaway said, "that you would never see me."
"Lucky thing for you that I did! And 'tis horrible to think that I might have passed by and left you here to your fate. But—well, you're safe now. No use worrying about what might have been, you know."
Safe? Little did either man dream of that revelation which a few short minutes were to bring. In that moment in which Griswold had sighted him there on the rock wall, signaling so frantically—in that very moment the castaway (though neither man dreamed it) had received the doom of death.
For this man, as Cuthbert Griswold was soon to learn, was Ferdinand Chantrell.
2. "You!"
"All alone?" queried the castaway as Griswold stepped into the little skiff.
"All alone, save for Pluto there. On my way from Antatu to Tamahnowis."
"I should think that you'd want a bigger boat and a crew of one at Griswold laughed.
"Some folks," said he, "think that I'm crazy to be Christopher-Columbusing about in a craft like the Gorgon; but I've been half-way around the world in that little tub. Maybe some day I'll circumnavigate the globe in it—just to show them that I'm not dippy."
Griswold was now moving toward the beach. The sloop was only fifty or sixty feet out.
"You seemed," said the other, "to know this place."
"Oh, yes. I have been here before, more than once. Queer place, this."
The next moment the bow rumbled up the strand and the little craft became stationary. Cuthbert Griswold arose and thrust forth a hand.
"Welcome, stranger," said he. "The little Gorgon isn't just what you'd call a palatial yacht, but I fancy that you'll find her better than these naked rocks of Flang. You are welcome to the best that she has to offer."
"You have saved my life!" exclaimed the other, wringing Griswold's hand—which was soon to send a bullet crashing into the speaker's heart. "And I am not a man that forgets. My name is Chantrell—Ferdinand Chantrell."
Griswold gave a low cry and dropped the other's hand as though it had been a deadly serpent.
"You!"
"What—what?" faltered the castaway, recoiling from that fearful visage which was thrust toward him.
"You!" Griswold cried. "At last you!"
"What—what are you talking about?"
"So you don’t know me?"
"I don’t. I never saw you before."
"I know that. But you ought to know who I am."
"Who are you?"
Griswold laughed—the sound sardonic, horrible. Pluto, the wolf-dog, out there on the Gorgon, was watching; but (as regards things like this meeting and what followed) wolfdogs, like dead men, can tell no tales. But (what Griswold never dreamed) fairies can. And this was the Isle of the Fairy Morgana.
"Who am I?" Griswold said. "Can't you guess?"
"No."
"Well, well! He can't guess. Handsome Ferdy Chantrell, that devil with the ladies—so he can't guess who I am! Well, well! But why should I be surprized at that? For, of course, I am not the only one who has a score to settle with Handsome Ferdy, and he's wondering which one it can be. Of course! I might have known that. She wasn't the only one."
"She?" exclaimed Ferdinand Chantrell. "Whom do you mean?"
"See there, you hovering angels!" cried Griswold. "He admits it. He doesn't know whom I mean. If there had been only one, he wouldn't be puzzled the least; he would know who I am."
"Can't you tell me?"
"Yes!" half screamed Griswold. "I can tell you, all right! Her name was Amanda!"
Chantrell recoiled a step, and his haggard face went pale as ashes.
"You—you!"
"Yes! It is I—I! It is Cuthbert Griswold!"
"I thought that you were dead." Griswold laughed.
"So that's your explanation? And, I suppose, that isn't the only thing that you thought. But you see that I am not dead, that I am very much alive. And at last I've got you—got you right where I want you. There is no one here to see, and Flang will hold its secret well. Why, it couldn't have been better if I had had the ordering of it all myself. It is almost too good to be true!"
Chantrell's look became hard, defiant.
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean? That I am going to kill you," Griswold told him, "kill you and feed you to the fishes. Before I am done with you, Handsome Ferdy, you will wish that you had gone down with that schooner—wish to God that you had never been born."
"So you are going to murder me?"
"Call it what you like. No!" Griswold cried, whipping out a revolver. "Don't edge an inch nearer, or I'll drill you through this very instant. I intend to let you live a while, but that, of course, is contingent upon your good behavior."
"I am indeed grateful," said Chantrell, bowing with mock gravity.
Cuthbert Griswold stared, and then he laughed.
"You don't know what you are grateful for!"
"You!" exclaimed the other. "You! Millions of men—this island in the sea—and it had to be you that came!"
"Well, Handsome Ferdy, they say that truth is stranger than any fiction, you know. And who can guess what Nemesis may do? Handsome Ferdy! Well, well, and at last he stands before me. You know, I often wondered what you were like. What did Amanda see so wonderful in you, anyway? Well, well."
And he eyed Chantrell down and up and from this side and from that as though the man belonged to some strange species.
"Handsome Ferdy! How do you lady-killers do it, anyway? I can't say that I am a bit the wiser now that you stand here before me, even though I see that the name was not wholly unmerited. Oh, I can see that Handsome Ferdy is one of those guys that women go crazy over. But why do they do it? And I thought that my Amanda was far, far above any such weakness as that. Why did she fall for you? Well, well! She might have done the decent thing, though: she, the both of you, might have waited until she had divorced poor me. But no, while I was gone, slaving away for her, you had to steal her."
"Steal her!"
Chantrell laughed—a laugh that cut Griswold to the very heart.
"Steal her? No man has to steal a woman from the likes of you! As for a divorce, you know that she was afraid—afraid that you would murder her, as you threatened her more than once that you would. If ever fear, stark fear, had a woman's heart in its grip, it had Amanda's. No use trying any camouflage with me, Griswold. I know."
"I suppose so. What a lot you know! But Fate has given you into my hands to wreak my vengeance upon you. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. You have had your hour of triumph. Now I shall have mine."
"So be it, then."
"You'll sing a very different tune before I am done with you, Handsome Ferdy. You'll curse the very hour that you were born into this world."
Ferdinand Chantrell laughed.
"You poor fool! Curse the hour I was born when I have known the heaven of a noble woman's love?"
"Bosh!" cut in Griswold, gnashing his teeth.
"Of course it is bosh to a warped, niggard soul such as yours. Love! You don't know what love is. You never can know."
"I should have had you to lesson me! But you are mine, mine at last, and you'll rue the day that you set eyes on Amanda!"
"Never!" cried Chantrell, his dark eyes flashing with a light that, to Griswold, for an instant, seemed to belong to some world more wonderful and mysterious than this. "She was mine—mine, mine! though I had her for one short year only. Rue the day? Nothing that you can do could make me do that. Rue the day that I saw Amanda? If I had a thousand thousand lives, and you a thousand thousand fiends to torture each one in a thousand thousand ways for a hundred thousand thousand years—if that were so, yet I would glory in my love for Amanda!"
"Gosh!" said Griswold. "They ought to have called you Ferdy the Hyperbolical."
For some moments, in silence, he gazed at Ferdinand Chantrell, then he said:
"But, poetics aside, was she, is she so very dear to you, though now she is?"
"An angel," Chantrell exclaimed, "in heaven!"
"A skull and some bones," Griswold said, "unless, that is, she is a few ashes in an urn."
Chantrell stood silent. A strange change was coming over the face and mien of Griswold. He thrust the weapon into his pocket and smiled at the other in a mysterious manner.
"So you thought that, I meant it?" he laughed. "Well, well!"
"What are you talking about?"
"That bit of play-acting of mine," Cuthbert Griswold told him. "So you thought that I meant it, Ferdy? Just a little joke, and"
"Joke!"
"A bit of melodramatics, Ferdy," smiled Griswold. "So you thought that I was going to kill you? Forget all that. Amanda—a skull and a few bones now or a handful of ashes—is nothing to me, the memory of her even less than that. The world is full of fools, but there is not a bigger fool in it than the man or woman who would keep husband or wife when the heart of that husband or wife belongs to another. Of course, if you love the one who is going—as I loved Amanda—the loss is a bitter one. But it is in such moments that a man proves himself either a philosopher or a fool. If a fool, he is going to kill the lover or kill them both. If a philosopher, he says, 'Since she no longer cares for me and wants another, let her go,' and he consoles himself with the thought that she isn't the only fish in this puddle that men call life.
"As for the threats that you mentioned—well, I admit them, though they were largely melodramatics, Ferdy, as witness to the fact that, when the test came, I proved myself a philosopher. For do not think that I didn't follow you because I couldn't find you. I repeat, I was a philosopher. It was a bitter hour, but I said, 'Let her go, and may she find with him the happiness that she failed to find with me.' Yes, Ferdy, it was a cruel stroke; but that is what I said. And I would say it again."
"I am glad," said Chantrell after some hesitation, "that you look at it in so sensible a manner."
"The only thing, Ferdy, I wish that she had done the sensible, the decent thing—that she had waited and got a divorce. But I, with my cursed melodramatics—always was that way, Ferdy—am to blame for that, I suppose, and I hope that she'll forgive me for it. Well, it is done, and it can not be mended. Peace to her soul."
Ferdinand Chantrell made no response. He was regarding the other in a searching, wondering manner. What was he to make of this strange business? Had Griswold's fearful threat, after all, been nothing but melodramatics? Or was this some fiendish cunning of a man fiendish and half mad?
"But come," said Griswold, turning. "Step into the tub, and we'll go out to the Gorgon, and I'll get you something to eat. Deuce of a way ttreat a man who is half famished—telling him that you are going to murder him and feed him to the fishes! But sometimes, you know, Ferdy, a fellow must have his little joke."
"Joke! If all your jokes are of that grisly species, I hope that you'll never spring another on me."
"Ha, ha!" said Griswold, shoving off. "I fooled you that time. Admit it, Ferdy: you thought that I really meant it—meant to kill you."
"You certainly had a bloodthirsty, horrible look in your eye."
"Ha, ha!" barked Griswold.
"But why," Chantrell asked, "did you do it?"
"Just my idea of a little joke, Ferdy. Just a bit of melodramatics, as I said. Always was a weakness of mine. It has got me into a scrape more than once, but I could never resist it when the chance offered. I have been told a good many times that I missed my true vocation when I did not become an actor."
"If," said his victim, "all yonr acting could have been as real as that of a few minutes ago, you certainly did."
"I suppose so, Ferdy. But here's the Gorgon, and I'll have you a feed in a jiffy."
Joke? Griswold grinned and chuckled to himself. A joke? It was a joke indeed. An actor? If that infernal fool only knew the truth! But he didn't. That was what made it a joke. Ferdy thought that he was going to live; that his, Griswold's, fearful threat had been nothing but melodramatics; thought that he, Griswold, was—a philosopher! Yes, Ferdy thought that he was going to be taken back to the world of men (and women) in the Gorgon! Ha, ha! That was delectable. Ferdy had visions of safety—undoubtedly of other Amandas. That would add to the bitterness of the cup when he drained it—perhaps in an hour, probably in two hours. Griswold didn't know yet; all he knew was that he was going to kill Handsome Ferdy, kill him here on this desolate and forbidding Island of Flang.
And how beautifully everything had befallen! No one would ever know what had happened to the schooner. No one would ever know that Ferdy Chantrell had even set foot on the island. And no living soul would ever know that he himself, Cuthbert Griswold, had met Chantrell there and killed him. Not a soul was there to see, not a sign would remain, and the Island of Flang could never tell.
"A joke!" thought the schemer. "Ha, ha! He is yet to learn what a grim joke it really is!"
Never once, however, did the thought flicker athwart the dark brain of Cuthbert Griswold that he himself might learn that, too.
3. The Murder
They stood upon the very summit of the isle—Griswold, Chantrell and the wolf-dog, Pluto.
"Queer place, this Flang," said Griswold.
"Yes," thought the other, "but no more queer than you are yourself. Now, why did we come up to this summit? Maybe my imagination is playing me tricks; but I'll be mighty glad when I am once more back in the world of men."
A covert watch upon Cuthbert Griswold as he stood there would have enhanced those vague and sinister misgivings that the victim tried, butin vain, to banish. This visit to the summit of Flang had been no mere whim on Griswold's part. He had come with a definite object in view. This would be one murder that would never out. Though alone with his victim on an uninhabited isle in the midst of a deserted sea, he would take no chances, would make sure that the sea was deserted. One could never tell. Ships had a strange way of suddenly appearing in the most unlikely places and at the most unlikely times.
Slowly, covertly his eye made the circuit of the distant horizon. Not a spot visible anywhere. The sea was deserted indeed. And he was alone with his victim, alone with Handsome Ferdy—who soon would be a thing the very antithesis of handsome, a thing from which an Amanda would recoil in horror. Alone, alone! Ha, ha, he had now made sure that the secret could never out. Why did he wait? The wolf-dog, the dark rocks—they could never tell.
"But not here," said Griswold. "I am going to fling him into the sea, feed him to the fishes. Why should I drag him over there when he can walk to the spot himself?"
"I wonder," Chantrell said, "how far it is out to that skyline."
"About sixteen nautical miles," Griswold told him, "nineteen statute; we are at a height of just about two hundred feet."
"Only nineteen miles? I thought it was much farther than that."
"Oh, no. At a height of fifty feet, one can see out only nine miles, statute; one hundred feet, thirteen miles; three hundred feet, twenty-three; four hundred, only twenty-six miles;
"I didn't know that. But how still," said Chantrell, gazing curiously about him, "it has become! I wasn't aware of the change until this moment. There is but the softest movement of the air now."
"'Tis true," Griswold nodded, turning his head as though listening. "I didn't notice myself how marked the change was."
"And," added the other, "it seems warmer up here."
"It does. Probably that is because the breeze, gentle though it was, has fallen."
A thermometer at sea-level and another here at the summit would have shown a difference of more than 15°, Fahrenheit. Not that Griswold, had he known it, would have given this fact a second thought. Nor did he once think that something might be hidden there beyond that distant skyline. Nor would he have given that more than a second thought had he known it.
Already the Fairy Morgana was waving her wand—she whose magic was to bring the secret of Griswold and the man himself to wrack and utter ruin.
"Well,” Griswold said suddenly, "let's go down, Ferdy."
His victim arose with alacrity.
"But," Griswold added, "not to the Gorgon just yet. Let's go over there," waving a hand toward the eastern extremity of the island. The other made no response, and they made their way down in silence, the wolf-dog following, savage of visage and almost as noiseless as some gliding shadow.
Suddenly—they were then drawing near the edge of the rock wall, here some fifty feet in height—Griswold jerked out his revolver.
"Watch me," he said, his look upon a passing gull, "plug that fellow."
"What," Chantrell asked, "do you want to shoot the poor devil for?"
"Sport, Ferdy, sport. And just to see if my eye and hand are in trim. I used to be considered a crack shot with a revolver, Ferdy. But no," said Griswold, turning until the weapon was bearing directly upon the other, "why should I send a bullet into the bird? It never harmed me."
"Look out!" cried Chantrell. "Turn that thing the other way!"
He stepped quickly to one side, but the weapon followed him.
"Watch what you're doing! That thing's pointed right at me!"
"At you?" queried Griswold with simulated surprize. "I'm glad you told me, Ferdy. You see, I was thinking of something else."
The victim made another swift movement, but it was only to find, as before, that the weapon was still bearing upon him.
Then of a sudden Ferdinand Chantrell understood, and he stood very straight and still, looking squarely into the terrible, fiendish eyes of Griswold.
"Ha, ha!" said Griswold, his voice harsh and quivering with passion. "You see the joke now, Handsome Ferdy! You thought that I didn't mean it. You thought that I was acting when I wasn't and that I wasn't when I was. Ha, ha! If you have a prayer to make, Handsome Ferdy, be about it quick, for I am going to kill you as I said I would, and as I said I wouldn't—kill you and feed you to the fishes and the slimy things. You'll never steal another Amanda."
"You beast! You insane, cowardly beast!"
Griswold's answer was a taunting laugh.
Of a sudden the eyes of the victim moved, and the next instant they had fixed themselves, it seemed, on some object directly behind Griswold.
"Look!" cried Ferdinand Chantrell, pointing. "Look at that!"
But Griswold chuckled and shook his head knowingly.
"Don't think that you can play that old trick on me!" he said. "Don't you ever think, Handsome Ferdy, that I'm going to look behind me. You are too close for one thing, and there isn't anything to see there, anyway."
"But there is something—in the sky!"
"In the sky! Ferdy, Ferdy! This puerile nonsense will never save you. No! Don't move another inch! Well, then, take that and that!"
Chantrell went staggering and collapsed upon his face, two bullets in his chest. With a heavy groan, he rolled over onto his back, his look upon the twisted, grinning face of Griswold.
"Not dead yet?" Griswold said. "Then take another. But no. I'll give you time, all the time you'll want, perhaps, to think over your sins and of what you will look like when the fishes are making of your handsome face a death's-head. Ah, you wince at that thought, Handsome Ferdy! You had your hour of triumph, and now I have mine. Glare away! If looks were daggers, my heart would be cut throbbing from my chest. But no look or word of yours can hurt me now. Probably, however, this will give you something else to think about."
He raised the revolver, took deliberate aim and sent a shattering bullet into Chantrell's right knee-cap. Again he fired, the bullet this time burying itself in the joint, right between the bones. Chantrell screamed. Cuthbert Griswold looked down upon his victim and laughed in triumph and gloating.
"I told you!" he cried. "Now you are paying for those stolen kisses. You scream. What do you think of the price, eh? I told you that, before I was done with you, you would rue the day that you set eyes on Amanda."
"For God's sake," cried Chantrell, "kill me—kill me! If you are a man and not a fiend, send a bullet into my heart and end it!"
"Not yet, Handsome Ferdy. But here is one for your other knee-joint."
As the last word left his lips, Griswold fired. Chantrell did not scream this time, but his fingers dug at the rock until the flesh broke.
"Ha, ha! Were her kisses worth the price that you are paying, Handsome Ferdy? And I wonder if you know how sweet is this, the hour of my triumph. And it is all the sweeter because I shall never be called to account for it. Flang will keep its secret well, Ferdy."
Again he raised the weapon and, firing twice, smashed the left knee of his victim. Then he sent shattering bullets into Chantrell's elbows and wrists.
"Fainted at last," Griswold laughed. "A bullet into the heart and end it all? Well, here it is, Ferdy—now when you can not feel the mercy of it."
And so at last it was ended. There on the black rock lay the lifeless body of Ferdinand Chantrell—who had known the glory of a noble woman's love and the horror of a husband's vengeance. There it lay, a thing horrible to look upon but not so horrible, in blood and death, as the thing that stood and looked down upon it.
The wolf-dog crept forward and sniffed blood and corpse, then slunk back as though a sudden fear had entered the savage heart of it.
"Even Pluto!" Griswold said aloud. "Yes, even a wolf-dog slinks from the blood that warmed the false heart of him."
How long he stood there by the corpse, Griswold himself never knew—though another did. At last, however, he thrust the revolver into his pocket, seized the body, dragged it to the edge and sent it over into the sea.
For some moments—he did not know how long it was, but one watchwatching did—he crouched there at the edge. The water was shallow there below, and he could make out the body of Chantrell, indistinct, blurred. At times it moved, for all the world like a thing endowed with life, but that was caused by the movements of the water itself.
Of a sudden these words of Chantrell flashed through Griswold's brain:
"But there is something—in the sky!"
Ha, ha! Ferdy had thought that he would fall for that old, old trick. Ferdy had thought that he would turn to look and that Ferdy could leap upon him. But he, Griswold, had been no such fool as that. Something behind you! That, whether spoken or looked, had brought many a man to grief; but it had not brought him. But—in the sky? Why had Ferdy said that it was in the sky?
Cuthbert Griswold arose and turned his look in the direction in which Chantrell had pointed.
What was that? There, there—in the sky! A dim, fading, hideous face, its look fixed upon him! A face!
Griswold dashed a hand across his. eyes. A face? He laughed aloud. There was nothing there! His eyes, his brain had tricked him. A face, a face dim and fading and hideous and in the distant sky there above the sea! He would be seeing spirits next, fairies and goblins. What a strange weakness of nerves and brain! He had never dreamed that he would go like that. Such things were for women. But it would not happen again. A face—and in the sky! Again Griswold laughed aloud. A momentary weakness. Yes, nothing more—only the weakness of a moment. But he was himself now—was Cuthbert Griswold, he of the steady nerves and the sober brain. This, too, his hour of triumph! And Flang would keep his secret well!
4. Guy Oxford
"Well, Pluto," said Griswold as he made his way back toward the Gorgon, "it's a little after 12; fine breeze, too, springing up now; but we won't get under way until the morning. Yes, we'll stay, tillicum—if for no other reason, just to show the spirit of Handsome Ferdy that we are not afraid to linger near his sepulcher. His spirit! Ha, ha! I wonder where the spirit of Ferdy is right now, Pluto."
And so it was, some hours later, that they found him there. Ships, Cuthbert Griswold had told himself, have a strange way of suddenly appearing in the most unlikely places and at most unlikely times. And there was the schooner Queen Mab, three-masted, white and beautiful, come to Flang, though Griswold did not know, what with the rock wall that shut off the view, until her little launch came putting in through the fissure. Of the six occupants of the launch, which came up alongside the sloop, two at once held the look and thoughts of Griswold. The first he knew at a glance to be a ship's officer—the Queen Mab's skipper, as he soon learned, Captain Spar. But it was the other man who really held Griswold's look. This individual was tall, lean to emaciation and with the blackest eyes that Cuthbert Griswold had ever seen in a human head, his look so impassive that Griswold wondered if a smile had ever touched a single lineament of that lean, swarthy visage of his. Cuthbert Griswold had not the slightest idea who or what this man was, but he distinctly felt, though he could not have told why, that the being before him was one amongst a million. And, in spite of himself, the murderer felt a chill pass through his heart when he learned that this man was the noted scientist, and (at times) criminologist, Guy Oxford.
The next instant, however, he inwardly flung a savage curse at this weakness of his. Afraid? Why should he be afraid because this was Guy Oxford? True, the man had solved many a mystery that other investigators, the best to be had, had given up as insoluble; the powers of which this man sometimes showed himself the master seemed well-nigh uncanny; but, bah, what had he, Cuthbert Griswold, to fear from the presence, mysterious though that presence was, of Guy Oxford here on the Island of Flang? Mysterious? But why should there be anything mysterious about it? He was letting his imagination run riot. The Queen Mab and Guy Oxford would have come whether he, Griswold, had ever set foot on the island or not. It had just happened, that was all. But why had they come to Flang?
And then another fear, a fear sudden and terrible, went through the heart of the murderer. The blood! The blood there in that spot in which he had killed Chantrell! If he had only known, he would have removed that. But he had never dreamed. And the body too! But, then, one would have to look closely to see it; and why should anyone do that? The blood—but what on earth was the matter with him, anyway? For he could explain that. Explain it easily. Yes, that would be his explanation. What a fool to let such a fear get him! But would it work? Of course it would work—unless this cursed Guy Oxford were to place some of Chantrell's blood under the microscope. But why should Guy Oxford ever do that?
But the Queen Mab. Why had the Queen Mab come here to Flang?
"This is indeed a surprize, Mr. Oxford," said Cuthbert Griswold, "meeting you here in this God-forsaken sea, on this Island of Flang."
"The cruise of the Queen Mab," returned Oxford, "is a purely scientific one, and scientists, you know, sometimes visit strange places."
"Yes, yes; of course! Too bad, though," Griswold smiled, "that we haven't a mystery here for you to solve. But there is no mystery here."
"No, Mr. Griswold; there is no mystery here—to be solved."
Griswold chuckled to himself. Another joke, and wasn't it a good one, too? No mystery here. Ha, ha, if Guy Oxford only knew! Wasn't it a joke, though? Too bad he couldn't share it with them! It was a joke indeed. For Guy Oxford, as the murderer was soon to learn, did know.
"However," Griswold added, "if you had been here about noon, you would have seen murder done."
What a strange look was that which the captain flashed at Oxford! Strange, too, was that expression which, for a fleeting moment, Griswold saw in those strange black eyes of the scientist.
"Oh, don't misunderstand me, gentlemen!" Griswold laughed. "The victim was Buck, a wolf-dog, father to Pluto here. Went mad, and I had to kill the poor brute."
"Where," Captain Spar asked rather quickly, "did that happen?"
"Over there," replied Griswold, waving a hand, "at the eastern end of the island."
"I should like," Oxford said, "to visit that spot."
"That spot?"
The other nodded.
"Of course," said Griswold. "At once?"
"At once. Will you guide us to it?"
"With pleasure," Cuthbert Griswold told him with an inward shiver. "But—but why, Mr. Oxford, are you so interested in that spot? There is nothing there but blood."
"What did you do with the body?"
"Ah, I see; you are interested in rabies, as well as in all those scientific subjects—and in crime."
"I am interested," the scientist answered, "in everything."
"Of course, of course. As for the body, unfortunately I cast it into the sea. Poor Buck! I hated to kill the noble creature; but, when they go mad, there is nothing else that you can do."
"Of course," said Oxford. "But—well, Mr. Griswold, I am anxious to see that spot, anyway."
"Yes, yes; of course."
Still Griswold made no movement to conduct the other to it. The blood, that cursed telltale blood! Why had he mentioned it? But there. He had done the wise thing. Of course he had. They would, in all likelihood, have chanced upon the spot. And the blood was not telltale—unless examined under a microscope. And, now that he had mentioned it—mentioned it in so nonchalant a manner—there would be no suspicion, no examination under a microscope. So why was he hesitating? He must not hesitate a moment longer. That was the worst thing that he could do.
A few minutes, therefore, and they had reached the scene of the tragedy—the murderer himself, Oxford, Captain Spar and two sailors. Though he evinced not the slightest hesitation, the slightest uneasiness, yet a horrible fear had Griswold in its grip. It was as though this dark, mysterious Oxford knew something. Why had he been so anxious to come to this spot? Why, on the arriving there, had he motioned for the others to keep back, and why was he examining the place so keenly? And there! Look at that! He was thrusting a finger of his right hand right into a mass of the coagulated blood—the coagulated blood of Ferdinand Chantrell!
Griswold did not see Oxford's signal, but of a sudden he discovered that the others had come up to him, up to Griswold, that is—that Captain Spar stood at his right side, those two husky sailors at his left.
"Hum!" said Oxford, raising his look from his finger and fixing it upon the eyes of Cuthbert Griswold. "You say that this is the blood of a dog?"
"Yes, yes! Of course it was a dog! The blood of Buck!"
"Imaginary dogs," said the scientist, "don't have any blood at all."
"Why, why do you think, Mr. Oxford, that, that?"
"I don't think," the other interrupted; "I know: this is not the blood of any canine; it is the blood of a human being, the blood of a man!"
"A man?"
Griswold barked out a sardonic laugh.
"I confess," he said, "that I don't see your little joke. There was no man here, only poor Buck."
"There was no dog here," Oxford told him, "save Pluto there. The victim was a man."
"Ha, ha!" said Griswold. "I must say, though, that you have a queer idea of humor, Mr. Oxford. Your humor is a little too grisly for me—even though your victim is only an imaginary one."
"Come, Griswold! You might as well make a clean breast of it. Why did you kill him and in a manner so brutal?"
"As I told you, because he went mad; and there was nothing brutal about it. Poor Buck! He was a noble creature."
Then a strange thing happened: Guy Oxford laughed. And that laugh sent a chill through and through the heart of the murderer.
"You—you fiend!" Griswold cried.
"Why a fiend?" Oxford queried sweetly.
"Well, you look like one, and you laugh like one, too."
"I do? Gently there, Griswold!" Oxford exclaimed softly. "I would suggest that you keep your hand away from that revolver. Better get that weapon, Captain. No telling what he may try to do when he learns the truth."
Griswold's right hand made a sudden movement toward the piece, but the hand of Captain Spar was swifter, and thus, in a flash, Griswold found himself disarmed.
He laughed defiantly.
"Say, what’s the idea? Is this the Island of?"
"'Tis the Island of the Fay."
"The fay?" Griswold ejaculated. "What fay?' '
"For the present," Guy Oxford answered, "she shall be nameless."
"So there is a fairy here?" And Griswold laughed harshly. "A fairy on Flang? Ha, ha! Why not Circe, Mr. Scientist, and make a good job of it?"
"My fairy," Guy Oxford told him, "did better than even Circe herself could have done."
"Oh, gosh!" Cuthbert Griswold exclaimed. "I suppose I’ll be hearing about gnomes and spooks and goblins next. So Flang is the Island of the Fay? I thought, from the way you fellows are acting, that it was a movie studio in Hollywood. But what’s the meaning of all this hocus-pocus and flubdub, anyway? What's the meaning of this grisly mummery—putting your finger into that gore and pretending you can see that it is human blood? No, you see more than that; you can even tell the sex of this imaginary victim that in reality was Buck. The victim, you say, was a man. Might it not have been a woman, or a baby, or—or a fairy?"
"It might, but it wasn't. And that isn't the only thing that I saw."
"On that bloody finger of yours?" Griswold asked.
Guy Oxford raised his hand and eyed the finger more closely than before.
"Do you want me to tell you?" he asked after some moments of silence.
"Of course. Tell me everything."
"It was not a dog," Guy Oxford said, "that you killed in this spot, Griswold. It was a man, and you murdered him in cold blood, in a manner most brutal and revolting. You felled him with two bullets in, in"
Oxford eyed his finger very keenly.
"Yes, in the chest. Then you proceeded to torture him by smashing—at any rate, I believe that the bullets smashed them—his knee-joints, his elbows and his wrists."
A fierce, inhuman cry burst from Griswold.
"Shall I tell you more?" Guy Oxford queried. "Shall I tell you that you dragged the body over there to the edge and tumbled it off into the sea?"
"You—you cunning fiend!" Griswold cried. "You cunning, cursed fiend! Where were you hiding?"
"Then you confess the deed?"
"Why should I deny it any longer when you—oh, you cunning devil!—when you know everything? You fiend, oh, you crafty fiend! Yes, I confess it. Go over there to the edge and you can see his body."
"We'll do that presently, and we'll recover the body if that is possible. So you admit that you killed him?"
"Yes, I killed Handsome Ferdy—Handsome Ferdy Chantrell. And I would kill him again. Do you hear that? I would kill him again. I glory in the deed! I wish that I had him here so I could torture him once more! I would make a better job of it the second time. But you—you!"
Griswold glanced about a little wildly.
"Where were you hiding? There was no sail in sight. I went up to the very summit and made sure of that before I killed him. This, I thought, was one murder that would never out. But you—you saw it all."
"Yes," said Guy Oxford; "I saw it all."
"But where was your Queen Mab then? In God’s name, where were you?"
Oxford turned and waved a hand to the southward.
"The Queen Mab was down there, distant something over thirty-five miles, statute, and so below the horizon to one standing on the very summit of this island."
"And you? Where were you hiding, and how had you got here on Flang?"
"I wasn’t hiding," Guy Oxford told him. "And I wasn’t here. I was on board the Queen Mab, and the vessel herself, as I have said, even the very tips of her masts, was hidden from here."
"Do you expect me to believe that? Why not give over this flubdub, Oxford? You were here, or you could not have seen. But you were seen! And I thought that it was only a trick of Ferdy's! Yes, you were seen, and I—I never dreamed it."
"You mean when he pointed—just before he made to spring at you and you shot him?"
"Yes," said Griswold. "But how could it have been you? He said that you—he said it was in the sky!"
Guy Oxford looked at Captain Spar, and Griswold saw a smile in those black (and to the murderer terrible) eyes of his.
"Up in the sky!" Guy Oxford said. "We were! Yes, we were in two places at once, though, of course, we didn't know that until I saw Chantrell point."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"About our being on the Queen Mab's deck and yet up in the sky. You should have turned, Griswold, turned and seen us there. Then, perhaps, your hour of triumph would not have proved your hour of disaster and ruin. And a fairy—Griswold, 'twas a fairy that did it all! I told you this is the Island of the Fay."
5. The Fairy Morgana
"A fairy?" Cuthbert Griswold exclaimed. "Do you expect me to believe such bosh? You a scientist and talking about fairies!"
"Your scientist," Oxford returned, "is the true believer in fairies—only he doesn’t call them that, unless he happens to be in a poetic mood."
"You and all your fairies and your hocus-pocus and your flubdub be damned!" Griswold cried. "What I want to know is this: where were you hiding, and how had you got here? Handsome Ferdy no more dreamed than I did myself that another man was on this island, on this—ha, ha, this Island of the Fay."
"I told you that I wasn’t here, that I was on board the Queen Mab. But I had an excellent little telescope. Oh, not one of your spy-glasses but an astronomical, fitted, of course, with a terrestrial eyepiece, so that the image is upright."
"But you were thirty-five miles away! A line drawn from the very summit of Flang—and I was one hundred and fifty feet below that—to the very tip of the Queen Mab's mainmast would be intercepted by the ocean. Can you, with this wonderful telescope of yours, see around curves?"
"No. But you forget my fairy! No telescope can enable a man to see what is on the other side of a hill; but my fairy has shown men that more than once. Do you want an instance? Here you are:
"Between Ramsgate, England, and Dover Castle, a hill intervenes—or did when this happened. Above this hill—to an observer at Ramsgate—only the turrets of the castle were visible. Yet Dr. Vince and a companion, on the 2nd of August, 1806, saw the whole castle itself. And not only did they see the whole of it, but the castle seemed to be on their side of the hill! Oh, she's a wonderful fairy, Griswold."
The murderer groaned.
"Then," continued Guy Oxford, "there were the horsemen seen on Sonterfell, a hill in Scotland, in the year 1744. These figures, performing various military evolutions, were visible for over two hours, until darkness concealed them. Yet there was no man there where those troopers were moving; but a body of rebels were going through their exercises on the other side of the fell!
"There is the well-known Specter of the Brocken, too. Our fairy again, Griswold. And she visits the Lake of Killamey, also. Men moving along the shore of that romantic sheet often appear to be walking (or riding) out on the very lake itself—a phenomenon that doubtless explains the legend of O'Donoghue.
"'And spirits, from all the lake's deep bowers,
Glide o'er the blue waves scattering flowers,
Around my love and thee.'
"And we have a record of her visit in 1595 to desolate Nova Zemhla, where, ending the long arctic night, she brought the sun to some shipwrecked Dutch sailors sixteen days before that on which he should have appeared according to calculation. The sun was more than four degrees below the horizon at the time; but our fairy waved her wand, and there he was shining in the sky.
"On Sunday, December the 17th, 1826, she was in the vicinity of Poitiers, and before three thousand worshipers (and just as one of the divines was speaking of that emblem of the Christian faith seen in the heavens by Constantine and his army) a cross suddenly took form in the sky—a great cross 'of a bright silver color, tinged with red.' A miracle, said the devout, while, according to the scientist, a magnified image of a cross which had been placed near the church had been 'cast on the concave surface of some atmospheric mirror.'
"In 1822, in the polar sea, she revealed her presence to Captain Scoresby by limning in the sky an inverted image of his father's ship, the Fame, which was almost as far from his own vessel as the Queen Mab was distant from Flang. In 1839 she was with Wilkes off Cape Horn. A favorite spot of hers is the Strait of Messina, so often transformed by our fairy's magic into a catoptric theater. There, for centuries, with her spectral witchery, she amazed and awed the ignorant and set at naught the explanations of the wise.[1]
"I think, Griswold," Oxford concluded, "that you know the name of my fairy now."
The murderer nodded and groaned aloud in bitterness of soul.
"The Fay Morgana!"
"The Fay Morgana," said Guy Oxford.
"I was so careful," Griswold cried, "so sure; this was one vengeance that would never out; and then, by a cursed mirage, to be brought to this!"
"There were two images of the isle," said Guy Oxford, "the lower inverted, the upper erect. Undoubtedly they were greatly magnified, certainly they appeared to be no farther off than five or six miles. Everything was extraordinarily distinct, so that, with telescopic aid, I saw you and your victim almost as plainly as though I had been here close at hand, instead of thirty-five miles away. In all likelihood, too, the image, or images, of the Queen Mab (seen by Chantrell) were as remarkable as those of the island itself."
"And I thought," exclaimed Griswold bitterly, "that Flang would keep the secret well, the secret that in reality never was a secret at all, what with that cursed looming—that cursed Fairy Morgana, to use your poetical term. But the blood? Why did you put your finger into that blood?"
"I suppose I ought to be somewhat ashamed of that mummery," said Guy Oxford; "but I did it so that my perfect knowledge of the crime might be to you all the greater mystery. Revelation of the truth at that moment would have been premature.
"And, besides," he added, "you didn’t believe in fairies then."
- ↑ "The complexity of these phenomena [looming and mirage] is enormous, nor, except in the most general terms, have they been adequately explained.—Hastings.