The Deep Lake Mystery

“Announce you, is it? When I’m tellin’ you she isn’t home!”

He hadn’t told us that before, but he seemed to think he had, and he stood directly in our path, so that we could advance no step.

“Where is she, please?”

“She and Merry – that’s my wife, sir – have gone down to the village.”

“And nobody’s home?”

“Nobody but me and one or two kitchen servants.”

“Well, let us sit on the porch a few moments. Mr. Norris is all tuckered out with his row over here, and I’ve got to row back. So, maybe you’ll give us a drink of water; if Mrs. Merivale was at home, I’d ask for tea.”

The strange-looking man seemed to relent a little.

He was an enormous, strapping fellow, not fierce-looking but of powerful build and a strong, forceful countenance. He gazed at us out of deep-set eyes overhung with shaggy eyebrows of stiff gray hair.

“Come along, then,” he said. “You can sit on the porch, and I’ll make you a cup of tea. I can make better tea than Merry.”

But as he turned to leave us, he said, with a slight smile:

“If so be you gentlemen could put up with a drop of Scotch and soda, it’d save me boilin’ the kettle.”

We agreed to put up with the substitute, and he went off.

We said little during the old man’s absence. I felt relieved that Kee did not insist on going into the house, and I sat looking about at the beautiful though gloomy landscape.

Yet, viewed from the porch, it was not so bad. The flower beds gave enough colour, and the near-by trees were mostly white birch, with their graceful shapes and pale, lovely trunks.

Yet between us and the lake was a solid wall of dark, dense woodland that shut off all view of the outer world and shut in the Island and its buildings and people.

“I can’t see why Alma likes this place,” I said, in a low voice. “She doesn’t seem at all morbid or despondent herself.”

“Do you know her?” Keeley asked me, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t know her at all! But, I promised myself, that was a defect that time should remedy and that, I hoped, soon.

From where I sat, I could see into the house through a window. I looked into the same room we had been in the other day I had called here, the day when Merry had told us if we were men to let the poor girl alone.

As I looked, not curiously, only idly, I saw the old man, Merivale, come into the room and adjust a record and then turn on a victrola.

The strains of Raff’s Cavatina floated out to us, and Kee gave a little smile of enjoyment.

A moment later, Merivale appeared with glasses on a tray, and I said, pleasantly, “Your music sounds fine, out here on the lake.”

He looked up suddenly, saw the open window and frowned.

“That Katy!” he exclaimed. “She’s forever turnin’ on that machine! Do you mind it, sir?” He looked anxiously at Kee.

“No,” was the reply, but I marvelled as to why this cheerful old liar should put the blame on poor, innocent Katy, for a deed that I had seen him do himself.

CHAPTER XIII

AS TO TUESDAY AFTERNOON

And then Alma came home.

I watched her as she paddled her canoe, with long, clear-cut strokes, and I remembered what Billy Dean had said about her paddling being unmistakable.

Perhaps this was an exaggeration, but surely her method was that of an expert. She brought the pretty, graceful craft to a landing and sprang out, followed more leisurely by the gaunt figure of the ever-watchful Merry.

She wore an exceedingly becoming sports costume of white with borderings of black, and a little white felt hat with a black cockade.

I watched her as she came nearer and I realized anew that this was the one girl in the world for me. And I knew, too, that she needed a friend, needed some one to lean on, in the ordeal that was ahead of her. For whatever the outcome of the inquest, she faced new responsibilities and burdens in the adjustment of her uncle’s estate.

I suppose a more conscientious nature would have hesitated to aspire to a girl set apart by a sudden acquisition of great wealth, but I was too deeply in love to think of that. I had a competent income myself, and I should have been glad to marry Alma Remsen had she been penniless, but all those considerations were as nothing to the all-absorbing thought of how I loved her.

She was so appealing as she raised her eyes to mine, when she greeted me, and her sweet face was so wistful, that it was all I could do to keep from grabbing her up in my arms and carrying her off.

As it was, I took her hand and made conventional inquiries, the while devouring her with my eyes.

I think she sensed my restraint, for her handclasp was friendly, even trustful, and we sat down together on a porch settee.

“You’re a frequent caller, Mr. Moore,” she said, almost gaily. “I’m sorry I was so unsatisfactory on the occasion of your other visit; I’ll try to do better this time.”

I looked at her in some apprehension. I felt sure her light manner was assumed, to cover the depths of worry and anxiety that, it seemed to me, showed themselves in her dark eyes.

“I don’t want to bother you too much, Miss Remsen,” Keeley said, “but you can be a real help, if you choose.”

“Of course I choose. Ask me anything you like – I’ll answer.”

She gave a little smile and tossed her head with a pretty gesture.

Both the Merivales had disappeared. I had an uncanny feeling that they were watching from behind some window curtain, but I had no real reason for this. The victrola had ceased its music – doubtless Katy had turned it off.

“It’s about that last call you made on your uncle,” Keeley proceeded, and I could see he was watching her closely, though he seemed not to do so. “It was the last time you saw him alive, was it not? That Tuesday afternoon?”

“Yes,” said Alma, in a quiet, steady voice. “Yes, that was the last time.”

“What did you go there for?”

“On no especial errand; only to see him. I always go over two or three times a week, or thereabouts.”

“And, according to Mr. March, you raised a window in your uncle’s sitting room, thereby leaving your fingerprints on the white enamel paint?”

“So Mr. March told me. I know little of fingerprints – I mean as evidence – but I well know how they mar white paint. I am a tidy housekeeper, and I am continually at war with fingerprints on white paint.”

I glanced around the porch and looked through the window into the living room. Everything was immaculate and I could well believe that the girl made a fetish of tidiness.

“Yes. Then it scarcely seems like you to have your hands in such condition that they would leave marks on the window frame.”