The Destroying Angel

"I? Nonsense! I'm shamelessly able-bodied – and not afraid to pull a trigger, besides. Moreover, there aren't any dangerous characters in this neighbourhood."

"Then I presume it's useless for me to offer my services as watch-dog?"

"Entirely so. And when I choose a protector, I shall pick out one sound of limb as well as wind."

"Snubbed," he said mournfully. "And me that lonesome… Think of the long, dull evening I've got to live through somehow."

"I have already thought of it. And being kind-hearted, it occurred to me that you might be one of those mean-spirited creatures who can enjoy double-dummy."

"It's the only game I really care for with a deathless passion."

"Then, if I promise to come over this evening and play you a rubber or two – will you permit me to go home now?"

"On such terms I'll do anything you can possibly suggest," he declared, enchanted. "You mean it – honest Injun?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die – "

"But … how will you get here? Not alone, through the woods! I can't permit that."

"Elise shall row me down the shore and then go back to keep cook company. Sum Fat can see me home – if you find it still necessary to keep up the invalid pose."

"I'm afraid," he laughed, "I shall call my own bluff… Must you really go so soon?"

"Good afternoon," she returned demurely; and ran down the steps and off to her boat.

Smiling quietly to himself, Whitaker watched her cast the boat off, get under way, and swing it out of sight behind the trees. Then his smile wavered and faded and gave place to a look of acute discontent.

He rose and limped indoors to ransack Ember's wardrobe for evening clothes – which he failed, perhaps fortunately, to find.

He regarded with an overwhelming sense of desolation the tremendous arid waste of time which must intervene before he dared expect her: a good four hours – no, four and a half, since she would in all likelihood dine at a sensible hour, say about eight o'clock. By half-past eight, then, he might begin to look for her; but, since she was indisputably no woman to cheapen herself, she would probably keep him waiting till nearly nine.

Colossal waste of time, impossible to contemplate without exacerbation…!

To make matters worse, Sum Fat innocently enough served Whitaker's dinner promptly at six, under the misapprehension that a decent consideration for his foot would induce the young man to seek his bed something earlier than usual.

Three mortal hours to fritter away in profitless anticipation …

At seven Whitaker was merely nervous.

By eight he was unable to sit still.

Half an hour later the house was too small to contain him. He found his cane and took to the veranda, but only to be driven from its shelter by a swarm of mosquitoes attracted by the illuminated windows. Not in the least resentful, since his ankle was occasioning him no pain whatever, he strolled down toward the shore: not a bad idea at all – to be there to welcome her.

The night was loud and dark. The moon was not to rise for another half-hour, and since sundown the wind had come in from the southwest to dissipate the immaculate day-long calm and set the waters and the trees in motion with its urgent, animating breath. Blowing at first fitfully, it was settling momentarily down into a steady, league-devouring stride, strong with the promise of greater strength to come.

Whitaker reflected: "If she doesn't hurry, she won't come by boat at all, for fear of a wetting."

He thought again: "And of course – I might've known – she won't start till moonrise, on account of the light."

And again, analyzing the soft, warm rush of air: "We'll have rain before morning."

He found himself at the end of the dock, tingling with impatience, but finding some little consolation in the restless sweep of the wind against his face and body. He stood peering up along the curve of the shore toward the other landing-stage. He could see little – a mere impressionistic suggestion of the shore-line picked out with the dim, semi-phosphorescent glow of breaking wavelets. The night was musical with the clash of rushing waters, crisp and lively above the long, soughing drone of the wind in the trees. Eastward the barrier beach was looming stark and black against a growing greenish pallor in the sky. A mile to the westward, down the shore, the landlocked lighthouse reared its tower, so obscure in gloom that the lamp had an effect of hanging without support, like a dim yellow Japanese lantern afloat in mid-air.

Some minutes elapsed. The pallor of the east grew more marked. Whitaker fancied he could detect a figure moving on the Fiske dock.

Then, startled, he grew conscious of the thick drone of a heavily-powered motor boat near inshore. Turning quickly, he discovered it almost at once: a black, vague shape not twenty yards from where he stood, showing neither bow nor side-lights: a stealthy and mysterious apparition creeping toward the dock with something of the effect of an animal about to spring.

And immediately he heard a man's voice from the boat, abrupt with anger:

"Not this place, you ass – the next."

"Shut up," another voice replied. "There's somebody on that dock."

At the same time the bows of the boat swung off and the shadow slipped away to westward – toward the Fiske place.

A wondering apprehension of some nameless and desperate enterprise, somehow involving the woman who obsessed his thoughts, crawled in Whitaker's mind. The boat – running without cruising lights! – was seeking the next landing-stage. Those in charge of it had certainly some reason for wishing to escape observation.

Automatically Whitaker turned back, let himself down to the beach, and began to pick his way toward the Fiske dock, half running despite his stiff ankle and following a course at once more direct and more difficult than the way through the woods. That last would have afforded him sure footing, but he would have lost much time seeking and sticking to its meanderings, in the uncertain light. As it was, he had on one hand a low, concave wall of earth, on the other the wash of crisping wavelets; and between the two a yard-wide track with a treacherous surface of wave-smoothed pebbles largely encumbered with heavy bolster-like rolls of seaweed, springy and slippery, washed up by the recent gale.

But in the dark and formless alarm that possessed him, he did not stop to choose between the ways. He had no time. As it was, if there were anything evil afoot, no earthly power could help him cover the distance in time to be of any aid. Indeed, he had not gone half the way before he pulled up with a thumping heart, startled beyond expression by a cry in the night – a cry of wild appeal and protest thrown out violently into the turbulent night, and abruptly arrested in full peal as if a hand had closed the mouth that uttered it.

And then ringing clear down the wind, a voice whose timbre was unmistakably that of a woman: "Aux secours! Aux secours!"

Twice it cried out, and then was hushed as grimly as the first incoherent scream. No need now to guess at what was towards: Whitaker could see it all as clearly as though he were already there; the power-boat at the dock, two women attacked as they were on the point of entering their rowboat, the cry of the mistress suddenly cut short by her assailant, the maid taking up the appeal, in her fright unconsciously reverting to her native tongue, in her turn being forcibly silenced…

All the while he was running, heedless of his injured foot – pitching, slipping, stumbling, leaping – somehow making progress.

By now the moon had lifted above the beach high enough to aid him somewhat with its waxing light; and, looking ahead, he could distinguish dimly shapes about the dock and upon it that seemed to bear out his most cruel fears. The power-boat was passably distinct, her white side showing plainly through the tempered darkness. Midway down the dock he made out struggling figures – two of them, he judged: a man at close grips with a frantic woman. And where the structure joined the land, a second pair, again a man and a woman, strove and swayed…

And always the night grew brighter with the spectral glow of the moon and the mirroring waters.

For all his haste, he was too slow; he was still a fair thirty yards away when the struggle on the dock ended abruptly with the collapse of the woman; it was as if, he thought, her strength had failed all in an instant – as if she had fainted. He saw the man catch her up in his arms, where she lay limp and unresisting, and with this burden step from the stage to the boat and disappear from sight beneath the coaming. An instant later he reappeared, standing at full height in the cockpit. Without warning his arm straightened out and a tongue of flame jetted from his hand; there was a report; in the same breath a bullet buried itself in the low earth bank on Whitaker's right. Heedless, he pelted on.

The shot seemed to signal the end of the other struggle at the landing-stage. Scarcely had it rung out ere Whitaker saw the man lift a fist and dash it brutally into the woman's face. Without a sound audible at that distance she reeled and fell away; while the man turned, ran swiftly out to the end of the dock, cast off the headwarp and jumped aboard the boat.

She began to sheer off as Whitaker set foot upon the stage. She was twenty feet distant when he found himself both at its end and at the end of his resource. He was too late. Already he could hear the deeper resonance of the engine as the spark was advanced and the throttle opened. In another moment she would be heading away at full tilt.

Frantic with despair, he thrashed the air with impotent arms: a fair mark, his white garments shining bright against the dark background of the land. Aboard the moving boat an automatic fluttered, spitting ten shots in as many seconds. The thud and splash of bullets all round him brought him to his senses. Choking with rage, he stumbled back to the land.

On the narrow beach, near the dock, a small flat-bottomed rowboat lay, its stern afloat, its bows aground – as it had been left by the women surprised in the act of launching it. Jumping down, Whitaker put his shoulder to the stem.

As he did so, the other woman roused, got unsteadily to her feet, screamed, then catching sight of him staggered to his side. It was – as he had assumed – the maid, Elise.

"M'sieur!" she shrieked, thrusting a tragic face with bruised and blood-stained mouth close to his. "Ah, m'sieur – madame – ces canailles-là – !"

"Yes, I know," he said brusquely. "Get out of the way – don't hinder me!"

The boat was now all afloat. He jumped in, dropped upon the middle thwart, and fitted the oars in the rowlocks.