Back to the Source
The tiny dot materialised from a mark on a map to a point on blue water.
At first, when Hazeldean directed Dora’s straining eyes towards it, she could see nothing. The horizon looked as deserted and unbroken as it had looked for many days—ever since, in fact, they had finally left the African coast and a continent had dissolved into an endless sea; but soon the dot grew into her vision, and as it expanded, gaining breadth and height while Spray II rode forward on a fresh north-easterly breeze, she discovered that not until now had she really and truly believed in it. That dot had been a thing to talk about, a horribly fascinating magnet for theories. It could never become solid ground over which they would one day walk towards the secret in its heart. But here was the day, and here was the solid ground—no longer theories, but realities. The dot became a bleak, grey thing, puffing itself out slowly like a jagged, evil monster.
The eyes of her male companions were alive with eager elation, but Dora herself endured some moments of secret panic. Wouldn’t it have been better to let the monster sleep on, instead of permitting it to raise its head from the sea and notice them?
“You stay on board, eh, while Kendall and I investigate,” came Hazeldean’s voice in her ear.
She turned to him with a smile.
“What made you suggest that?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I thought it might be a good idea.”
“In case there’s any danger?”
“Of course there’ll be no danger!”
“Then why should I stay on board?” She shook her head. “Thanks, I’m going with you.”
“And thus she forced the truth out of him!” said Hazeldean. “The reason I suggested it was because you looked worried—I mightn’t have known if you hadn’t made such a grim effort to look happy! Now, then, it’s your turn for frankness. Am I talking through my hat?”
She laughed and answered, “No, you’re not. I was going through some funny moments; but one doesn’t pay any attention to them, so that’s that!”
Before long, however, she went through another funny moment. Her eyes opened wide with astonishment. They had altered their course, and were beginning to run round the isle to find some accessible spot, and now the formidable masses of rock, often dropping sheerly into angry, noisy water, gave way to a sudden stretch of beach that appeared to be densely populated.
“Look!” she gasped.
“Yes, and I keep on looking,” retorted Hazeldean. “You don’t really suppose those are cousins and aunts, do you, who’ve come along to give us a welcome?”
The reception committee turned out to be a large group of penguins, watching their approach from the shore with vaguely indignant apathy. As the boat drew closer inshore, the indignation became less vague, and agitation set in.
“Don’t disturb ’em yet,” said Kendall. “I’d like to go all round before we land.”
Hazeldean glanced at him, then nodded, and once more altered the course. He realised Kendall’s object. It was to find out whether Spray I had preceded them. But there was no sign of the ship, or of any life at all on the island apart from the penguin colony and the sea birds that swooped or floated above them.
“O.K.?” queried Hazeldean, when they had completed the circle.
“O.K.,” replied Kendall; but his rather puzzled expression added mutely: “Let’s hope so!”
A few minutes later, Spray II lay at anchor in the shelter of a rock-formed harbour, and the little landing boat, an Indian cayuca, had slid across to the strip of beach where the agitated penguins were already in retreat. By the time Kendall, Hazeldean, and Dora had landed and the boat had been pulled ashore, the last of the displaced population were waddling over a ledge to join an invisible indignation meeting.
“Well, here we are!” exclaimed Hazeldean.
“And I can’t say I’d choose the spot for a summer holiday.”
“Nor would I,” agreed Dora.
“Probably the last people who stayed here weren’t choosers,” observed Kendall.
“True,” murmured Hazeldean. “Any sign of them?”
Kendall did not answer, but stood still, gazing about him. Hazeldean was reminded of the moment when the detective had originally arrived at Haven House, and had delayed investigation till he had registered and fixed his first impressions. The moment returned to his memory so vividly that the horrible sound made by the “buzzer” seemed to echo once more in his ears…
“Ha!”
The exclamation came swiftly and sharply, and an instant later Kendall was running towards a rock. His abrupt movement was like a continuation of the memory, under strangely different circumstances, for he had also run suddenly into Haven House to bawl to the telephone operator to stop the buzzer.
“I—I wonder what he’s seen?” gulped Dora, moving a little closer to Hazeldean.
“We’ll know in a second,” he replied, resisting the temptation to follow. “My sight’s good, but his is better!”
They watched him reach the rock, bend, and study its flattish face. Then they watched him turn and begin pacing his way back. He paced with the methodical regularity of measurement, and Hazeldean found himself counting the paces while wondering what on earth it was all about. Seventeen—eighteen—nineteen—twenty—twenty-one—twenty-two.
He stopped and beckoned to them. When they reached him he took something from his pocket with a very odd expression. It was the old cricket ball.
“Cracked William Miles stood here and bowled this ball at that rock,” he said, with a solemnity that was almost reverent. “That rock has three rough wickets carved upon it.”
“Whew!” murmured Hazeldean, while Dora’s heart raced.
“Yes, they’ve all been here,” said Kendall. “All seven of them. No, eight of them. Fenner, too. They’ve all been here. And what happened? What happened?”
Ghosts peopled the lonely beach. A sense of stifling unreality pervaded the place, providing the atmosphere of a dream under gas… gas…
“What’s that over there?” said Kendall.
He was off again, and this time they followed him. They caught him up at the back of the beach as he paused under a rocky cliff and bent over a circular object. It was a broken, blackened hoop.
“This was once round a barrel,” he said.
“And there’s a bit of the barrel,” answered Hazeldean, pointing.
Along a rough path leading inland and upwards between the rocks they found other things: a split plank, two empty rusty tins, the indecipherable cover of a book, a fragment of rock wedged in a grotesquely-shaped wooden handle. The theory that this was used as a hammer gained colour from a long bent nail lying near it. A game of “Noughts and Crosses,” scratched on a large stone; some filthy, sodden material that had once been part of a sail; a broken oar.
Each object had some story; each formed a part of the hidden history of eight ghosts who flitted formlessly along the trail.
Presently the trail widened into a scarred, uneven plateau. To continue meant steeper climbing, for the plateau was half-enclosed by precipitous heights. On the beach side, however, the ground dropped, and beyond untidy slopes of tangled vegetation, through which ran a stream, were glimpses of the sea. One glimpse revealed Spray II looking like a toy.
“I expect this was their camp,” said Kendall.
“Yes, there’s more debris here,” replied Hazeldean.
Dora slipped on something loose. As she looked down to see what she had stepped on, she felt a queer little tug at her heart.
“What is it?” asked Hazeldean.
She picked up the object. It was a home-made cricket bat.
“I feel like crying,” she said.
“Perhaps I do, too,” he answered, “only, you know, we mustn’t.” He turned to Kendall. “What do you make of all this? Are you developing any theory?”
“Are you?” returned Kendall.
He moved towards a mound of stones. A stake had been firmly planted in the centre, and across the top of the stake was an oblong of wood, resembling a notice-board.
“Keep off the grass?” inquired Hazeldean.
He was joking purposely, but the joke fell flat. Kendall did not respond. He was reading four other words carved deep into the wood:
FIAT JUSTICIA RUAT CÆLUM
Dora asked their meaning. Hazeldean translated soberly: “Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.”
“It shall be done,” promised Kendall.
Hazeldean looked at him curiously.
“You feel this pretty much, don’t you?” he asked.
“It’s just another case,” replied the detective.
“Only it’s got you?”
“Somehow.” He glanced again at the cricket bat, then suddenly exclaimed, “Yes, but we weren’t brought all this way just to see relics!”
“This monument is a pretty good one,” commented Hazeldean. “Still, I agree there must be something else.”
“Of course there’s something else,” answered Kendall, “and we’ve got to find it! What do we know so far? Eight people were washed up here—”
“Do we know that?”
“I know it, and you know it, and—”
“I know it,” interposed Dora.
“Well, that’s enough to go on with. The jury can wait. They were washed up here, and they played cricket. One got home first, and gave out that he was the only one. The other seven followed him—after erecting this monument. Fiat justicia ruat cælum. They must have felt those words pretty deeply to have cut them so deeply! Fiat justicia ruat cælum. I suppose a few stores got washed up with them, and they had birds, fish and berries. There’s some vegetation here. Fiat—where did they sleep? In the open? You’d look for caves, wouldn’t you? Let’s look for caves. I don’t see any. What about round that jut? Come on!”
He started off again. They clambered over the rough ground towards a rocky projection that screened a portion of the plateau from their view. Beyond, they found what they sought: three holes in the cliff, two large, one small.
They entered a large one. It led to dark, cold space. As Kendall struck a match, and the light flickered on the walls, he remarked, “Bedroom for three.” They found a few pathetic evidences of occupation.
The second large hole took them into a second cave of similar size. “Bedroom for three,” repeated Kendall as he struck another match. “That’s six.”
The smaller hole led to a space of different shape. It was long and narrow, and the end twisted through rocky walls. “Bedroom for two,” said Kendall when they reached the end. “Which two?”
They waited while the match flame moved slowly along the little length of wood. The walls blinked, as though unused to light.
“Well—just this,” murmured Hazeldean, as the light began to die.
“Just what?” came Kendall’s voice a second later through the darkness.
“Just a cave.”
“You missed something in that last flicker.”
“Did I? What?”
Kendall struck another match. The cave glowed into life again. He advanced the flame to a ledge in the wall. On the ledge was a small pencil stump.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Hazeldean.
“Recognise the breed?” asked Kendall.
“I—I’m not sure.”
“Never mind. Go on.”
“Red. Wasn’t the pencil stump you found in the grey-haired man’s hand red?”
“It was.”
“But, after all, there are millions of red pencils.”
“Quite correct. And—again, after all—we know that grey-haired man was here. Still, it’s interesting that the end of this stump isn’t smooth, so may be a portion of a longer pencil that was broken in half. I wonder whether the other half found its way to Haven House?”
“And I wonder what this half wrote,” added Hazeldean.
“We’re going to find what it wrote,” said Kendall.
Now he moved the match flame along the wall. Its rough, uneven surface became alive with little moving black shadows as the light passed along. The shadows looked like black slits that grew fat and thin, and vanished. But one black slit did not vanish or change its size. Kendall inserted two fingers in it, and drew out a thin note-book. The match went out. Hazeldean felt something leaning against him.
“I think I’m suffocating!” gasped Dora. “Please—I must get out.”
They turned and left the cave. In the free air, she sat upon a rock, recovering from a fit of trembling.
“I’m sorry—but that grey-haired man,” she murmured, “he seemed to be there.”
Kendall looked up from the book he had opened.
“He was there,” he said. “And now he’s going to talk to us.”