The Deep Lake Mystery

“Have you made any headway at all, Kee?”

“Not much, I confess. Mr. Everett here inclines to Ames – ”

“And Ames inclines to Everett,” was the somewhat surprising observation of the secretary himself.

“Yes,” he went on, as I looked at him in amazement, “but I think, I hope, Ames only suspects me because it’s the conventional thing to do. In stories, you know, nine tenths of the crimes are committed by the confidential secretary.”

“Not so many,” I said, judicially: “Four tenths, at most. Then, three tenths by the butler, three tenths by the inheriting nephew, and two tenths by – ”

“Hold up, Gray,” Keeley cried, “you’ve used up your quota of tenths already. But Ames is a really fine suspect.”

“Except that he can’t dive and I can,” Everett helped along. “And there’s no way out of this locked apartment except through a window. And all the windows are on the Sunless Sea.”

“Could you dive into that and come up smiling?” asked Kee.

“I could,” Everett said, “but I’d rather not. I know the rocks and all that, but it’s a tricky stunt. Ames could never do it.”

“Unless he’s been hoaxing you all as to his prowess in the water,” Moore suggested.

“Yes, that might be,” Everett assented, thoughtfully.

Then Moore and I started for home. As we left the house, he proposed we go in a boat, of which there seemed to be plenty and to spare at the dock.

In preference to a canoe, Keeley selected a trim round-bottomed rowboat, and we started off.

He did the rowing, by choice, and he bent to his oars in silence. I too felt disinclined to talk, and we shot along the water, propelled by his long steady strokes.

I looked about me. The whole scene was a setting for peace and happiness – not for crime. Yet here was black crime, stalking through the landscape, aiming for Pleasure Dome, and clutching in its wicked hand the master of the noble estate.

I looked back at the wonderful view. The great house, built on a gently sloping hill, shone white in the summer sunlight. The densely growing trees, judiciously thinned out or cut into vistas, made a perfect background, and the foreground lake, shimmering now as the sun caught its wavelets, veiled its dangers and treachery beneath a guise of smiling light.

We went on and on and I suddenly realized that we had passed the Moore bungalow.

“Keeley,” I said, thinking he had forgotten to land, “where are you going?”

“To the Island,” he replied, and his face wore an inscrutable look, “Come along, Gray, but for Heaven’s sake don’t say anything foolish. Better not open your mouth at all. Better yet, stay in the boat – ”

“No,” I cried, “I’m going with you. Don’t be silly, Kee, I sha’n’t make a fool of myself.”

“Well, try not to, anyway,” he said, grimly, and then we made a landing at Alma Remsen’s home.

It was a tidy little dock and trim boathouse that received us, and I realized the aptness of the name “Whistling Reeds.”

For the tall reeds that lined some stretches of its shore were even now whistling faintly in the summer breeze. A stronger wind would indeed make them voiceful.

Back of the reeds were trees, and I had a passing thought that never had I seen so many trees on one island. So dense that they seemed like an impenetrable growth, the path cut through them to the house was not at once discernible.

“This way,” Kee said, and struck into a sort of lane between the sentinel poplars and hemlocks.

But a short walk brought us out into a great clearing where was a charming cottage and most pleasant grounds and gardens.

There were terraces, flower beds, tennis court, bowling green and a field showing a huge target, set up for archery practice.

It fascinated me, and I no longer wondered that Miss Remsen loved her island home. The house itself, though called a cottage, was a good-sized affair, of two and a half stories, with verandahs and balconies, and a hospitable atmosphere seemed to pervade the porches, furnished with wicker chairs and chintz cushions.

Yet the place was so still, so uninhabited looking that I shuddered involuntarily. I became conscious of a sinister effect, an undercurrent of something eerie and strange.

I glanced off at the trees and shrubbery. It was easily seen that the Island, of two or three acres, I thought, was bright and cheerful only immediately around the house. Surrounding the clearing for that, the trees closed in, and the result was like an enormous, lofty wall of impenetrable black woods.

I quickly came back to the house, and as we went up the steps, Alma Remsen came out on the porch.

I shall never forget how she looked then.

For the first time I saw her close by without a hat. Her hair, of golden brown, but bright gold in the sunlight, was in soft short ringlets like a baby’s curls. I know a lot, having sisters, about marcel and permanent, about water waves and finger curls, but this hair, I recognized, had that unusual attribute, longed for by all women: it was naturally curly.

The tendrils clustered at the nape of her neck and broke into soft, thick curls at the top of her head. I had never seen such fascinating hair, and dimly wondered what it was like before she had it cut short.

She wore a sort of sports suit of white silk with bands of green.

She glanced down at this apologetically.

“I ought to be in black,” she said, “or, at least, all white. But I am, when I go over to the mainland. Here at home, it doesn’t seem to matter. Does it?”

She looked up at me appealingly, though with no trace of coyness.

“Of course not,” I assured her. “Our affection is not made or marred by the colour of a garment.”

This sounded a bit stilted, even to me, but Kee had told me not to make a fool of myself and I was trying hard to obey.

“Sit down,” she said, hospitably, but though calm, she was far from being at ease.

“We’re only going to stay a minute,” Kee said. “We must get home to luncheon. It’s late now, and my wife will be furious. Miss Remsen, I think I’ll speak right out and not beat about the bush.”

She turned rather white, but sat listening, her hands clasped in her lap and her little white-shod foot tapping nervously on the porch floor.

“I want to ask you,” Keeley Moore spoke in a tone of such kindness that I could see Alma pluck up heart a bit, “about the waistcoats. Though it may be a trifling matter, yet great issues may hang on it. When you said your uncle gave them to you, were you strictly truthful?”

She sat silent, looking from one to the other of us. When she glanced at me I was startled at the message in her eyes. If ever a call of SOS was signalled, it was then. Without a word or a gesture her gaze implored my help.

But with all the willingness in the world, what could I do? Keeley had warned me against making a fool of myself, and though I would gladly have defied him to serve her, I could see no way to do so, fool or no fool. All I could do, was to give her back gaze for gaze and try to put in my eyes all the sympathy and help that were surging up in my heart.

I think she understood, and yet I could see a shadow of disappointment that I could, as she saw, do nothing definite.

Moore was waiting for his answer, but she was deliberate of manner and speech.

“By what right are you questioning me, Mr. Moore?” she said.

“Principally by right of my interest in you and your welfare and my great desire to be of service to you.” Kee’s sincerity was beyond all doubt.