“I can’t just recollect,” he said.
“Did he come here alone?”
“Don’t believe I recollect that, either.”
HARRY left the store, and went across the road to the garage. The building was a converted stable. It had space for several cars. Harry arranged to leave his coupe there.
The garage owner was away; but the man on duty, who did mechanical work and attended to the small filling station, volunteered to drive him to Harvey’s Wharf.
The fellow expressed mild surprise, when Harry stated where he was going. Then he climbed into the coupe, and Harry drove along the road.
“You goin’ over to see Professor Whitburn?” asked the man.
“Yes,” replied Harry.
“Ain’t many goes over to see him.”
“Why not?”
“The old man don’t seem to like visitors.”
“They call his place Death Island. Why?”
“It’s always been called that,” said the man. “Folks say that there was an Indian massacre there — back before the Revolution. Lot of white people killed. The place has been kinda jinxed ever since.”
Harry looked at the man, encouraging him to say more.
“There’s only one house on the island,” the garage man stated. “Built more than a hundred years ago. They say highwaymen used to hide their stuff there. When I was a kid, we used to go over and dig around. We never found nothing, though.
“Then some fellow from the city bought the place — fifteen years ago, I reckon. Lived there in the summer. Only a couple of years, though. He was murdered there.
“After that, nobody went around the place, until this here professor took it, last year. Queer old duck, he is. Well, he’s welcome to the place. I wouldn’t take it if it was given to me.”
“Why not?” questioned Harry.
“Well, for one thing,” the man replied, “folks say it’s haunted. I ain’t no believer in ghosts — but if ghosts would hang out anywhere, it would be on Death Island.
“Some folks say it was ghosts killed the fellow who come there fifteen years ago. An’ lately — well, I’ve heard things said by people who ain’t superstitious.”
“What, for instance?”
“Strange kinds o’ noises out over the lake. Little blinkin’ lights, up over the island.
“One fellow — I ain’t sayin’ who — tells me he was out in a rowboat, one cloudy night. Somethin’ come right up outa the water, an’ hissed over his head. Then it plopped in again.”
“It might have been a large fish.”
“No fish woulda acted the way he says. He was scared right, I tell you. He… Whoa, boy! Turn left here for the wharf.”
Harry applied the brakes, and turned the car into a dirt road, that led through a thick woods. The sun had nearly set, and it was dark beneath the trees. Harry turned on the bright headlights.
His companion was silent. The car moved almost noiselessly, as Harry steered it slowly along the narrow, winding road. Following his companion’s talk of ghosts and eerie happenings, the woods seemed filled with spectral stillness.
Suddenly they turned into a clearing. The road ended on the shore of a lake, where the waters sparkled beneath the rays of the setting sun.
In front of them was a small wharf; beyond — a mile out in the lake — towered a tree-clad island. A thin wisp of smoke curled upward from the trees, indicating the presence of a house.
“See them rocks?”
Harry’s companion pointed to the headland of the island, which was a solid mass of stone, rising to a height of thirty feet. Blackened flaws in the rocky front gave it a peculiar appearance.
“Looks like a big skull, don’t it? Some folks say that’s why it’s called Death Island.”
HARRY noted the resemblance. In the mysterious, dulling light which now hung over the lake, the rocky headland looked amazingly like a monstrous death’s head, its sightless eyes directed toward the wharf. Harry felt a creepy feeling come over him.
The features of the huge skull seemed more pronounced in the settling gloom. They were intensified as Harry watched.
Neither he nor his companion spoke. Death Island seemed to hold a fascinating spell that cast its influence over them.
The chugging of a motor brought Harry from his reverie. A boat had appeared in front of the island. It was speeding across the water toward the wharf.
“Comin’ for you,” observed his companion.
Harry repressed a shudder. The man’s words, spoken suddenly in the semidarkness, seemed to carry a hidden significance.
The boat grew larger; then it neared the wharf. Harry clambered from the coupe, and took out his traveling bag.
The garage man backed the car, and turned toward the road. In a few seconds he was gone.
The boat docked at the wharf. Harry approached and eyed its single occupant.
The man grunted in greeting. His appearance was well-suited to the environment. He was stockily built, and roughly dressed. His face was covered with a heavy beard, of pronounced blackness.
Harry entered the boat; the man turned it from the wharf, and they chugged across the lake.
Death Island loomed more formidably than before. The skull-like features of the rock seemed to increase in size, until they were almost beneath the overhanging bluff.
The man turned off the motor. The boat coasted along, and passed the rocky headland. As they glided through the still water, Harry could not detect a single sound.
A small dock shone white as they came into the darkness of overhanging trees. The boat came to a stop; Harry stepped on the dock, and the man tossed his bag after him.
While he waited for his strange companion to tie up the boat and conduct him to the house, Harry Vincent tried to study his surroundings.
But, this was now impossible. Daylight had faded; all that was visible before Harry’s eyes was the beginning of a path that led up a steep hill.
Strange, gloomy, and forbidding, Death Island was as silent as death itself.
CHAPTER XVI
PROFESSOR WHITBURN
THE bearded man led Harry Vincent up the path on the island. After a few hundred feet they came to a large house that loomed black in the darkness.
The hill had been short and abrupt. Harry estimated that they were not more than fifteen or twenty feet above the shore of the lake.
The man knocked at the side door of the building. It was opened, and Harry was ushered in. The house was lighted by electricity, but the room into which Harry came was gloomy because of sparse illumination.
The man who had admitted them was as unusual a character as the individual with the beard. He was clean-shaven, but sallow-faced, and his features had a peculiar twist that Harry instinctively disliked.
Without a word the man pointed to a chair on the other side of the room. Harry sat down. The bearded man disappeared; the fellow with the twisted face knocked at a door and entered a moment later.
This room in which Harry sat alone could hardly have been termed a living room; yet that appeared to be its purpose. It had very little furniture; and the single table and few chairs were plain and of cheap construction. The only inviting feature of the place was a large fireplace in one wall. But there was no fire burning.
A clock ticked away on the mantel above the fireplace, but the light was so poor that Harry could not see the time.
His enthusiasm to reach Death Island had cooled somewhat during the journey across the lake. Now, Harry found himself wishing that he had followed the advice of the girl who had phoned him at the Baronet Hotel.
Adventure was a real part of Harry Vincent’s existence; but he preferred bright lights to gloom. Without companionship, he was a moody individual; and so far he had met with no signs of friendship on Death Island.