V
Then came the June wedding and the great sensation. Flatbush
was gay for the hour about high noon, and pennanted motors thronged the
streets near the old Dutch church where an awning stretched from door to
highway. No local event ever surpassed the Suydam-Gerritsen nuptials in
tone and scale, and the party which escorted bride and groom to the Cunard
Pier was, if not exactly the smartest, at least a solid page from the Social
Register. At five o'clock adieux were waved, and the ponderous liner edged
away from the long pier, slowly turned its nose seaward, discarded its
tug, and headed for the widening water spaces that led to old world wonders.
By night the outer harbour was cleared, and late passengers watched the
stars twinkling above an unpolluted ocean.
Whether the tramp steamer or the scream was first to gain
attention, no one can say. Probably they were simultaneous, but it is of
no use to calculate. The scream came from the Suydam stateroom, and the
sailor who broke down the door could perhaps have told frightful things
if he had not forthwith gone completely mad - as it is, he shrieked more
loudly than the first victims, and thereafter ran simpering about the vessel
till caught and put in irons. The ship's doctor who entered the stateroom
and turned on the lights a moment later did not go mad, but told nobody
what he saw till afterward, when he corresponded with Malone in Chepachet.
It was murder - strangulation - but one need not say that the claw-mark
on Mrs. Suydam's throat could not have come from her husband's or any other
human hand, or that upon the white wall there flickered for an instant
in hateful red a legend which, later copied from memory, seems to have
been nothing less than the fearsome Chaldee letters of the word 'LILITH'.
One need not mention these things because they vanished so quickly - as
for Suydam, one could at least bar others from the room until one knew
what to think oneself. The doctor has distinctly assured Malone that he
did not see IT. The open porthole, just before he turned on the lights,
was clouded for a second with a certain phosphorescence, and for a moment
there seemed to echo in the night outside the suggestion of a faint and
hellish tittering; but no real outline met the eye. As proof, the doctor
points to his continued sanity.
Then the tramp steamer claimed all attention. A boat put
off, and a horde of swart, insolent ruffians in officers' dress swarmed
aboard the temporarily halted Cunarder. They wanted Suydam or his body
- they had known of his trip, and for certain reasons were sure he would
die. The captain's deck was almost a pandemonium; for at the instant, between
the doctor's report from the stateroom and the demands of the men from
the tramp, not even the wisest and gravest seaman could think what to do.
Suddenly the leader of the visiting mariners, an Arab with a hatefully
negroid mouth, pulled forth a dirty, crumpled paper and handed it to the
captain. It was signed by Robert Suydam, and bore the following odd message.
In case of sudden or unexplained accident or
death on my part, please deliver me or my body unquestioningly into the
hands of the bearer and his associates. Everything, for me, and perhaps
for you, depends on absolute compliance. Explanations can come later -
do not fail me now.
- ROBERT SUYDAM
Captain and doctor looked at each other, and the latter whispered
something to the former. Finally they nodded rather helplessly and led
the way to the Suydam stateroom. The doctor directed the captain's glance
away as he unlocked the door and admitted the strange seamen, nor did he
breathe easily till they filed out with their burden after an unaccountably
long period of preparation. It was wrapped in bedding from the berths,
and the doctor was glad that the outlines were not very revealing. Somehow
the men got the thing over the side and away to their tramp steamer without
uncovering it. The Cunarder started again, and the doctor and a ship's
undertaker sought out the Suydam stateroorn to perform what last services
they could. Once more the physician was forced to reticence and even to
mendacity, for a hellish thing had happened. When the undertaker asked
him why he had drained off all of Mrs. Suydam's blood, he neglected to
affirm that he had not done so; nor did he point to the vacant bottle-spaces
on the rack, or to the odour in the sink which shewed the hasty disposition
of the bottles' original contents. The pockets of those men - if men they
were - had bulged damnably when they left the ship. Two hours later, and
the world knew by radio all that it ought to know of the horrible affair.
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