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DEEP LAKE MYSTERY
By CAROLYN WELLS Author _of_ “The Crime in the Crypt,” “All At Sea,” “Anything But the Truth,” “The Bronze Hand,” “The Daughter of the House,” “Face Cards,” “Feathers Left Around,” “The Fourteenth Key,” “The Furthest Fury,” “Prillilgirl,” “The Red-Haired Girl,” “The Vanity Case,” “Where’s Emily,” etc.
A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. Printed in U. S. A.
COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
TO MY DEAR FRIEND LUCY C. JOYCE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE I. “A STATELY PLEASURE DOME ...” 1 II. THE GIRL IN THE CANOE 16 III. THE TRAGEDY 32 IV. THE NAIL 48 V. THE LADY OF THE LAKE 63 VI. THE WATCH IN THE WATER PITCHER 78 VII. THE INQUEST 93 VIII. ALMA’S STATEMENTS 108 IX. CLUES 123 X. DISCUSSION 138 XI. EVIDENCE 153 XII. MY SECRET 168 XIII. AS TO TUESDAY AFTERNOON 183 XIV. POSY MAY 198 XV. JENNIE 213 XVI. WHISTLING REEDS 228 XVII. AMES TAKES A HAND 244 XVIII. ALL RIGHT AT LAST 260
DEEP LAKE MYSTERY
CHAPTER I “A STATELY PLEASURE DOME ...”
As I look back on my life, eventful enough in spots, but placid, evenmonotonous in the long stretches between spots, I think the greatestthrill I ever experienced was when I saw the dead body of Sampson Tracy.
Imagine to yourself a man, dead in his own bed, with no sign of violenceor maltreatment. Eyes partly closed, as he might be peacefully thinking,and no expression of fear or horror on his calm face.
Now add to your mental picture the fact that he had round his brow a fewflowers arranged as a wreath. More flowers diagonally across his breast,like a garland. Clasped in his right hand, against his heart, an ivorycrucifix, and in his left hand an orange.
Sticking up from behind his head showed the plume of a red featherduster!
And draped round all this, like a frame, was a red chiffon scarf, a filmybut voluminous affair, deftly tucked in here and there, and encirclingall the strange and bizarre details I have enumerated.
On a pillow, near the dead face, lay two small crackers and a clean,folded handkerchief.
As I stared, my imagination flew to the Indians or the ancient Egyptians,who provided their dead with food and toilet implements, which wereburied with them.
But in this case——
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who said: “If you have a story to tell,begin at the beginning, go through with the tale, and leave off at theending.” So, as I most assuredly have a story to tell, I will begin atthe beginning and follow the prescribed directions.
It all began, I suppose, the night Keeley Moore came to see me aboutfishing tackle. Kee is a wonderful detective and all that, but when itcomes to fishing he’s mighty glad to ask my advice.
And Lord knows I’m glad to give it to him.
We used to go fishing together, every summer. Then Kee took it into hissilly head to get married, and to a girl who cares nothing about fishing.
So from that you can see how things are.
But this time Kee seemed really excited about his prospects of fishingthrough the summer months.
“We’re going to Wisconsin,” he told me, with a note of joyousness in hisvoice, “and, Gray, do you know, there are more than two thousand lakes inone county out in that foolish old state?”
“I’d like to fish in all of ’em,” I said, with my usual lack ofmoderation.
“You can’t do that, but you can fish in a few, if you like. Lora sendsyou, and I back it up, an invitation to come out there as soon as we getsettled and stay as long as you can.”
“That’s a tempting bid,” I told him, “but I can’t impose on newlywedslike that. I’ll go to the inn or lodge or whatever they have out there,and see you every day.”
“No, we want you with us. We’ve taken a fairly good-sized house for theseason, and you must be our guest. Lora’s asking a few of her friends andI want you.”
Well, he had little trouble in persuading me, once I felt convinced thathis wife’s invitation was in good faith, and I planned to go out thereearly in August.
They were going in July, which left them time enough to get settled andget their home in running order.
So I went to Wisconsin in August, glad enough to get away from the city’sheat and noise and dirt.
Deep Lake, the choice of the Moores, was in Oneida County, which isdesignated among the Scenic Sections of Wisconsin as North Woods—Eastern.
And scenic it surely was. The last part of the train ride had shown methat, and when we were motoring from the railroad station to the Moorebungalow, I was impressed with the weird beauty all about.
It was dusk, and the tall trees looked black against the sky. Longshadows of hemlocks and poplars fell across the road, as the last glow ofthe sunset was fading, and the reflection in the lakes of surroundingscenery was clear, though dark and eerie-looking.
We passed several lakes before we reached the journey’s end.
“Here we are!” Moore cried at last, as we turned in at the gates of amost attractive estate.
A short road led to the front door and Lora came out to greet us.
I liked Kee Moore’s wife, though I never felt I knew her very well. Shewas of a reserved type and while amiable and cordial, she was notresponsive and never seemed to offer or invite confidence.
But she greeted me heartily, and expressed real pleasure at having methere.
She was very good looking—a wholesome, bonny type, with an air ofexecutive ability and absolute _savoir faire_.
Her hair was dead gold, bobbed and worn straight, I think they call it aDutch bob. Anyway, she had a trace of Dutch effect and reminded me ofthat early picture of Queen Wilhelmina.
She sent me to my room to brush up but told me I needn’t change as thebungalow was run informally.
The place rejoiced in the name of “Variable Winds,” and though the Mooresguyed the idea of having a name for such an unpretentious affair, theyadmitted it was at least appropriate.
I returned to the living room to find the group augmented by a few morepeople: one house guest and two or three neighbours.
Cocktails appeared and the cheery atmosphere dispelled the darksome andgloomy effects that had marked our drive from the station.
I found myself next my fellow guest, a pleasant-faced lady, whointroduced hers
elf.
“I’m Maud Merrill,” she vouchsafed. “I’m staying here, so you must learnto like me.”
“No trouble at all,” I told her, and honestly, for I liked her at once.
She was a widow, perhaps thirty or so, with white hair and deep blueeyes. I judged her hair was prematurely grayed, for her face was youngand attractive.
“I’m an old schoolmate of Lora Moore’s,” she disclosed further, “and I’mup here for a fortnight. Are you staying long?”
“I’m invited indefinitely,” I returned. “I’ll stay a month, I think, ifthey seem to want me.”
“Oh, they will. They’ve both looked forward to your coming with realdelight. And you’ll like it here. There’s no end of things to do. Fishingof course, and bathing and boating and golf and tennis and dancing andflirting—in fact, you can have just whatever sport you want.”
“Sounds rather strenuous. I had hoped for a restful time.”
“Yes, you can have that if you really want it. Let me give you a hint ofthe other guests. The beautiful woman is Katherine Dallas. She’s about tobe married to our next-door neighbour. He isn’t here to-night. But one ofhis house guests is here. That tall, thin man,—he’s Harper Ames.”
I thanked her for her hints, though I wasn’t terribly interested. Butit’s good to know a little about new acquaintances, and often preventsunfortunate speeches. Especially with me. For I’ve a shocking habit ofsaying the wrong thing and making enemies thereby.
At the table I found myself seated at my hostess’s right hand and thebeautiful Mrs. Dallas on my other side.
It was a comfortable sort of party. The conversation, while not speciallybrilliant, was unforced and gayly bantering. Two youngsters were present,who added their flapper slang to the general fund of amusement.
These two were Posy May and Dick Hardy, and though apparently abouttwenty they seemed to have world-wide knowledge and world-old wisdom.
“My canoe upset this afternoon,” Posy told the company with an air ofbeing a heroine.
“You upset it on purpose,” declared Dick.
“Didn’t, either. I turned around too quickly——”
“Yes, and if I hadn’t been on the job you’d be turning around there yet.”
“Posy,” Keeley said, reproachfully, “you must be more careful. Deep Lakeis one of the deepest and most treacherous lakes in all Wisconsin. Now,don’t cut up silly tricks in a canoe.”
“Oh, I know how to manage a canoe.”
“You managed to upset,” said Lora Moore, accusingly, and pretty Posychanged the subject.
After dinner there was a little bridge, but the youngsters were going toa dance, and Mrs. Dallas seemed to want to go home early, so Ames carriedher off, and our own quartet was left alone.
I was glad of it, for I like a chat with a few better than the rattle ofthe crowd. And it was not very long before Lora and Mrs. Merrill left us,and Keeley and I had the porch to ourselves.
“Pleasant people,” I said, by way of being decently gracious.
“Good enough,” he agreed. “To-morrow, Gray, we’ll fish. It’s open seasonfor everything now and the limits are generous. Except muskellonge. Youmay bag only one per day of those. But trout, all kinds, bass, all kinds,pickerel, rock sturgeon—oh, we’ll have the biggest time!”
“Sounds good to me,” I returned, heartily. “I’m happy to be here, oldscout, and we’ll fish and all that, but don’t put yourself about toentertain me.”
“I sha’n’t; but you must fall in with Lora’s plans, won’t you? I mean,seem pleased to attend her kettledrums and whatnot, even if it boresyou.”
“Of course I will. Your lady’s word is law. She’s a brick, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” and Moore smiled happily at my somewhat crude compliment. “She’sjust that. And such a help in my work.”
“Your detective work?”
“What else? She’s more than a Watson, she’s a real helpmate. Her insightand intuition are marvellous, and she sees through a bit of evidence andgets the very gist of it quicker than I can.”
“Then you surely got the right one.”
“I certainly did. But I hope to Heaven there’ll be no cases this summer.I want a real vacation, that’s why I came ’way off here, to get away fromall crime calls.”
“Don’t crow before you’re out of the woods. Crimes can happen even inWisconsin. And to me, this whole country round looks like a perfectsetting for a first-class criminal to work in.”
“Hush! I’m not superstitious, but your suggestion of such a thing mightbring it about. And I don’t want it!”
“You think you don’t,” I smiled a little, “but deep in your heart you do.You can’t fish all the time, and you’re even now restively hankering tobe back in harness.”
“Shut up!” he growled. “Talk of something pleasanter. How do you like theDallas queen?”
“Stunning, seductive, and serpentine,” I summed up the lady in question.
Moore laughed outright. “I must tell Lora that,” he said. “You see, sheagrees with you. Now, I think the right words are stately, gracious, andcharming.”
“All right,” I said, “you know her better than I do, She is verybeautiful, I concede.”
“What do you mean, concede? Are you against her?”
“How you do snap a fellow up! No, not exactly. But I wouldn’t trust heras far as I could see her,—and I’m near-sighted.”
“Sometimes I think I’m no detective after all,” Moore said, slowly. “Nowshe gives me no effect of hypocrisy or insincerity.”
“But she does hint those things to Lora?”
“Y—yes, in a way.”
“Then Lora’s more of a detective than you are. But after I see more ofthe siren, I may change my mind. I didn’t talk with her alone at all.What about the grumpy Mr. Ames? Is he in love with the Dallas?”
“Not at all. In the first place, he wouldn’t dare be, for she is engagedto Sampson Tracy, and Tracy is not one to take kindly to any poaching onhis domain. Besides that, Ames is a woman hater, also a man hater, and Ithink, an animal hater.”
“Pleasant man!”
“Yes. He’s always in a fierce mood. I don’t know, but I imagine he had anaffair once....”
“Oh, crossed in love and it made him queer.”
“Rather say, queered in love and it made him cross.”
“Yes, he looks cross. Does he always?”
“Always. He and Samp Tracy are old friends, and Samp can manage him, butnobody else can.”
“Pleasant guest for Mr. Tracy to have about.”
“He doesn’t mind. Pleasure Dome is usually full of guests and if any wantto sulk they are at liberty to do so.”
“Pleasure Dome?”
“Yes, that’s the Tracy place. It’s next to this, but it’s some distanceoff. You see, Deep Lake has a most irregular boundary line. It has allsorts of coves and inlets, and there’s one that juts in behind the Tracyhouse. It’s so deep and black and so surrounded by trees that it’s calledthe Sunless Sea.”
“Why, that’s from Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan,’ too.”
“Yes, these are the lines:
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately Pleasure Dome decree; Where Alph, the sacred river ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
“You know it, of course, but that will refresh your memory. Well, oldTracy——”
“Is he old?”
“Oh, no, he’s forty-five, but he seems older, somehow. Well, anyway, he’sromantic and poetic and imaginative. And he has a fad for Coleridge.Collects editions of him and all that. So he built his enormous andgorgeous house and called it Pleasure Dome. And the deep arm of the lake,which is right beneath his own window, he calls the Sunless Sea. And itis. It’s on the north side of the house, and so hemmed in with great firsand cypresses that the sun never gets a look-in.”
“Must make a delightful sleeping room!”
“Oh, there’s plenty of sunlight from
the east and west. His rooms are ina wing, a long L, and you bet they have sunlight and all other modernimprovements. The house is a palace.”
“That all sounds nice for Mrs. Dallas.”
“It is. And Samp is so drivellingly, so besottedly in love with her, thatshe will have everything her own way when she takes up the sceptre.”
“Nobody else in the family? The Tracy family, I mean.”
“No. Not now. There was. You see, Tracy’s sister, Mrs. Remsen, and herdaughter used to live with him. Then Mrs. Remsen died, about a year ago,or a little more, and then Mrs. Dallas came into the picture, and somethink it was at her request Tracy put his niece out——”
“The brute!”
“Oh, come now, you don’t know anything about it. Alma is a lovely girl,but she’s a high-handed sort—all the Tracys are—and her uncle gave her abeautiful home on a near-by island——”
“On an island? A girl, alone!”
“She has with her an old family nurse, who took care of her as a baby,and old nurse’s husband is her gardener and houseman, and old nurse’sdaughter is her waitress, and oh, Lord, Alma Remsen is fixed all right.”
“But on an island!”
“But she likes being on an island. It was her own choice. She didn’t wantto stay with the new wife any more than the new wife wanted to have her.You always fly off half-cocked!”
“All right, all right,” I soothed him. “Tell me more.”
“Well, that’s all about Alma. She’s a general favourite, has lots offriends, and all that, but of course, when the new mistress of PleasureDome comes in at the door, Alma’s prospects will fly out of the window.”
“Cut off entirely?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ve heard so. I suppose her uncle will always takecare of her, but she will no longer be the Tracy heiress.”
“And how does Miss Alma take that?”
“Not so good. She has had several talks with the family lawyer, and shehas tried to wheedle her uncle, but he’s a queer dick, is Samp Tracy, andhe obstinately refuses to make a new will or even consider its termsuntil after he’s married.”
“And his present will?”
“Leaves everything to Alma. She’s his only living relative. But hismarriage will automatically cancel that will, and his wife will be soleinheritor unless he fixes the matter up.”
“Which he will doubtless do.”
“Oh, I hope so. I hope the new wife will see to it that he does. Butthere’s where Lora has her doubts. She doesn’t like Katherine Dallas,somehow.”
“Lora is of great perspicacity,” I said. “Where does Ames come in?”
“Regarding the fortune? Nowhere, that I know of. He is an old friend ofTracy’s, both socially and in a business way. They’re as different as dayand night. Ames is surly, sulky, and blunt. Tracy is suave, gentle, andof the pleasantest manners.”
“Miss Remsen’s parents both dead?”
“Oh, yes. Her father died about fifteen years ago. Her mother recently.Had her mother lived, I suppose Tracy would have put them both out of thehouse, just the same. But Mrs. Remsen being gone, he sent Alma and theservants to the island house.”
“Then the girl is utterly alone in the world except for the suave uncleand her faithful servants.”
“Just that. There was a sister. Alma had a twin. But she died as a baby,or as a small child. Her little grave is in a small God’s Acre on thePleasure Dome grounds. The mother and father are buried there too. Andsome other relatives.”
“I didn’t know they had homestead cemeteries in Wisconsin. I thought theywere confined to the New England states.”
“It isn’t usual, I believe. But the Tracys are New England stock, and,anyway, the graves are there. And beautifully kept and tended, aseverything about the place has to be.”
“Sounds interesting. Shall I see the high-strung Alma?”
“I didn’t say high-strung. She is a normal, lovely nature. But I did sayhigh-handed, for she is a determined sort, and if she sets her mind to athing it has to go through.”
“She has admirers?”
“Oh, of course. But she rather flouts them. One of Tracy’s secretaries isfrightfully in love with her. But she scarcely notices him.”
“Our friend has a multiplicity of secretaries, then?”
“Two, that’s all. But Sampson Tracy is a man of large interests, and Ifancy he keeps the two busy. Billy Dean is the one in love with Alma, butthe other, Charles Everett, is his superior.”
“He’s the chap who, they tell me, craves the Dallas lady.”
“Yes, though of course Tracy doesn’t know it. Everett wouldn’t be thereif he did.”
“And Mrs. Dallas? What is her attitude toward the presumptuoussecretary?”
“Hard to say. I think she favours him, but she is too good a financier tothrow over her millionaire for his underling.”
“Well, I think I’ve had about all the local history I can stand for onenight. Let’s go in the house.”
To my surprise, Lora Moore and Mrs. Merrill were in the lounge, waitingfor us.
The house was admirably arranged. The great central room, with doors backand front, was called the lounge, and served as both hall and livingroom. Off this were two smaller rooms: the card room and the music room.To one side of these rooms were the bedrooms, and on the other side, thedining room and kitchen quarters.
The furnishings were simple and attractive, with no “Mission” pieces orattempts at camping effects.
I sat down on a wide davenport beside Lora, and said, tentatively:
“I believe you and I agree in our estimate of the Dallas beauty.”
“Then you have real good sense,” exclaimed Lora, heartily. “Kee won’t seeher as I do.”
“I won’t either,” put in Maud Merrill. “It’s disgraceful to knock a womanjust because she’s going to marry a rich man. Rich men want wives as wellas poor men. I’m all for Katherine Dallas. You’re jealous, Lora, becauseshe is so beautiful.”
Lora only smiled at this, and said:
“I’ve really nothing against her, except that I believe she had Almaturned out of her uncle’s house.”
“And why not?” demanded Maud Merrill. “No house is big enough for twofamilies; and though I don’t know Miss Remsen well at all, I do know thatshe is a girl of strong will and decided opinions. They’d never be happyif Alma stayed there.”
“I can’t say as to all that,” I put in, determined to have my word, “butI think, with Lora, that the Dallas is a lady of deep finesse andMachiavellian cleverness.”
“Yes, just that!” cried Keeley Moore’s wife.
“Well, then,” said Maud, “if she snared that millionaire by hercleverness, she deserves her reward. And she deserves a peaceful home,which I doubt she’d have with a young girl bossing around, too.”
“Oh, you women!” and Moore wrung his hands in mock despair, “you’remaking up all this. You don’t know a thing about it, really.”
“We can see,” said Lora, sagely. “And there’s no use prolonging thisfutile discussion. Time will show you how right I am, and meantime, we’dbetter all go to bed.”