When, an hour later, the swimming teacher, his guilty conscience pricking him, and the knowledge of having been false to his superior strong within him, came sneaking into the kitchen, he was startled and horrified to find the lightkeeper awake and dressed. Mentally he braced himself for the battery of embarrassing questions which, he felt sure, he should have to answer. It might be that he must face something more serious than questions. Quite possible Seth, finding him absent, had investigated--and seen. Well, if he had, then he had, that was all. The murder would be out, and Eastboro Twin-Lights would shortly be shy a substitute assistant keeper.
But there were no embarrassing questions. Atkins scarcely noticed him. Seated in the rocker, he looked up as the young man entered, and immediately looked down again. He seemed to be in a sort of waking dream and only dimly conscious of happenings about him.
"Hello!" hailed the assistant, with an assumption of casual cheerfulness.
"Hey? Oh! how be you?" was Mr. Atkins's reply.
"I've been for my dip," explained Brown. "The water was fine to-day."
"Want to know!"
"You're up early, aren't you?"
"Hey? Yes, I guess likely I be."
"What's wrong? Not sick, are you?"
"No. Course I ain't sick. Say!" Seth seemed to take a sudden interest in the conversation, "you come straight up from the cove, have you?"
"Yes. Why?"
"You ain't been hangin' around outside here, have you?"
"Hanging around outside? What do you mean?"
"Nothin'. Why do you stand there starin' at me as if I was some sort of dime show curiosity? Anything queer about me?"
"No. I didn't know I was staring." The young man was bewildered by this strange behavior. He was prepared for suspicion concerning his own actions; but Seth seemed rather to be defending himself from suspicion on the part of his helper.
"Humph!" The lightkeeper looked keenly at him for a moment. Then he said:
"Well, ain't there nothin' to do but stand around? Gettin' pretty nigh to supper time, ain't it? Put the kettle on and set the table."
It was not supper time, but Brown obeyed orders. Seth went to cooking. He spoke perhaps three words during the culinary operations, and a half dozen more during the meal, of which he ate scarcely a mouthful. After it was over, he put on his cap and went out, not to his usual lounging spot, the bench, but to walk a full half mile along the edge of the bluff and there sit in the seclusion of a clump of bayberry bushes and gaze stonily at nothing in particular. Here he remained until the deepening dusk reminded him that it was time the lights were burning. Returning, he lit the lanterns and sat down in the room at the top of the left-hand tower to think, and think, and think.
The shadows deepened; the last flush of twilight faded from the western sky; the stars came out; night and the black silence of night shrouded Eastboro Twin-Lights. The clock in the tower room ticked on to nine and then to ten. Still Seth sat, a huddled, dazed figure in the camp chair, by the great lantern. At last he rose and went out on the iron balcony. He looked down at the buildings below him; they were black shapes without a glimmer. Brown had evidently gone to bed. In the little stable Joshua thumped the side of his stall once or twice--dreaming, perhaps, that he was again pursued by the fly-papered Job--and subsided. Atkins turned his gaze across the inlet. In the rear window of the bungalow a dim light still burned. As he watched, it was extinguished. He groaned aloud, and, with his arms on the railing, thought and thought.
Suddenly he heard sounds, faint, but perceptible, above the low grumble of the surf. They were repeated, the sounds of breaking sticks, as if some one was moving through the briers and bushes beyond the stable. Some one was moving there, coming along the path from the upper end of the cove. Around the corner of the stable a bulky figure appeared. It came on until it stood beneath the balcony.
"Seth," called a low voice; "Seth, are you there?"
For a moment the agitated lightkeeper could not trust his voice to answer.
"Seth," repeated the voice; "Seth."
The figure was moving off in the direction of the other tower. Then Seth answered.
"Here--here I be," he stammered, in a hoarse whisper. "Who is it?"
He knew who it was, perfectly well; the question was quite superfluous.
"It's me," said the voice. "Let me in, I've got to talk to you."
Slowly, scarcely certain that this was not a part of some dreadful nightmare, Seth descended the iron ladder to the foot of the tower, dragged his faltering feet to the door, and slowly swung it open.
The bulky figure entered instantly.
"Shut the door," said Mrs. Bascom.
"Hey? What?" stammered Seth.
"I say, shut that door. Hurry up! Land sakes, HURRY! Do you suppose I want anybody to know I'm here?"
The lightkeeper closed the door. The clang reverberated through the tower like distant thunder. The visitor started nervously.
"Mercy!" she exclaimed; "what a racket! What made you slam it?"
"Didn't," grumbled Seth. "Any kind of a noise sounds up in here."
"I should think as much. It's enough to wake the dead."
"Ain't nobody BUT the dead to wake in this place."
"Yes, there is; there's that young man of yours, that Brown one. He ain't dead, is he?"
"Humph! he's asleep, and that's next door to dead--with him."
"Well, I'm glad of it. My nerves are pretty steady as a general thing, but I declare I'm all of a twitter to-night--and no wonder.
It's darker than a pocket in here. Can't we have a light?"
Atkins stumbled across the stone floor and took the lantern from the hook by the stairs. He struck a match, and it went out; he tried another, with the same result. Mrs. Bascom fidgeted.
"Mercy on us!" she cried; "what DOES ail the thing?"
Seth's trembling fingers could scarcely hold the third match. He raked it across the whitewashed wall and broke the head short off.
"Thunder to mighty!" he snarled, under his breath.
"But what DOES--"
"What does? What do you s'pose? You ain't the only one that's got nerves, are you?"