Francis Stevens - Citadel of Fear

Alone, as he brushed at his clothes, Colin reflected on the singular make-up of this household.

"A mad daughter and a menagerie to care for, and he keeps one servant! Yet is it poverty that ails him? The one room I've seen is well-furnished enough, and here he has an elegant bath-room-clean towels by the dozen. And himself is not poorly dressed. Strange he'd not have one woman at least to be company for the unfortunate girl. And he says his beasts could not break loose! And that noise was the dragging of a cage! It would be a heavy cage that shook the house like that, though I myself find it hard to account for by any other cause. Nevertheless, had MacClellan a head on his shoulders he'd have found out this place and explored it. But no, he would not believe that Cliona's wild beast was aught but human."

Having done the best possible by his clothes, he began cleansing his face and hands.

"An odd thing, now I think of it, that the people hereabout kept quiet. So close to Carpentier, and the papers so full of it and all. How Mr. Chester Reed was not dragged into our business, man-monkey, stock-farm, and all, is a bigger puzzle than the other. I'll be kind to the poor man and courteous, and perhaps tomorrow I'll step on the tail of the whole mystery. There, I'm decent to pass in a crowd-and three minutes of the ten yet to spare."

He passed out toward the stair. As he did so a door opened at the end of the hall behind him, and hearing the soft click of its latch, he glanced around.

There, framed in the doorway, stood the most melancholy and at the same time the most oddly beautiful figure that Colin had ever seen. She could be none other than Reed's mad daughter, but the Irishman forgot that in amazement at her loveliness.

What she thought of him O'Hara could not know. The slight parting of her lips and her wide eyes might have expressed either amazement, alarm, or expectation. Curiously enough O'Hara was convinced, both then and afterward, that her emotion was really the last named, though what she could expect of him, whom she had never before set eyes on, seemed hard to surmise. He was also convinced-and this belief was as lacking in practical foundation as the other-that she had some information to impart-something which it was highly important that he should know and which concerned them both.

Heretofore O'Hara had compared all women with Cliona, to their disparagement, but here was one who could be compared to no one. She was herself alone and utterly a creature apart, almost unearthly, and who yet suggested in an odd way all the natural beauties of earth. So the darkness of her hair and eyes hinted at mystery of dusk and the recurring miracle of starshine.

She was tall and slender, and her height and slim, bare arms made one think of dryads that live in willow-trees and come out to dance at moonrise. Her hair hung down in rippling, dark curls over the green gown she was dressed in, and Colin saw the beauty of her hair and did not perceive that the gown was so worn and old that it hung in tatters about her bare ankles, and so threadbare in places that her white limbs shone through it.

Her face was long and oval, and her large eyes were too bright, as if suffused with unshed tears. She had the loveliness of night, and the sorrowful beauty of forest pools that hold the stars and the trees in their bosoms.

That was the wonder which appeared to Colin O'Hara.

But had he not been Colin O'Hara, or had he ever loved any other woman save his sister, then it may be that the wonder would not have appeared to him. So he might have seen only a slim girl in a torn, green gown; beautiful, perhaps, — but thin and very melancholy.

And how should either of them guess of a former meeting? Fifteen years are a gulf to swallow memories, and in fifteen years a girl-baby finds magic indeed to change her. Their first glance for each other was of recognition; but it was not a recognition to save suffering. Being not of the flesh and earthly it spared them no after pain.

Colin had no idea of how long he had stood there, staring at the girl and waiting for the message she had for him. But it could hardly have been more than a few moments until Reed's voice floated up to him from below.

"Is that you, O'Hara? You haven't long to catch that train."

Colin roused with a start, and the girl, who had seemed on the very edge of speaking, laid two slim fingers on her lips in a gesture of silence and slipped back into her room.

O'Hara went down the stairs like a man descending out of a dream. He did not know what had happened to him, but that something had happened he was gloriously aware. Every nerve and fiber of his giant body tingled with vivid life, and had she not made that gesture of silence and warning, he would have gone to the girl, not to Reed.

The latter met him at the stair-foot with a glance sharply suspicious.

"I heard you stop there on the floor above. Did my daughter speak to you? Poor child, she is as ready to address a stranger as her own father!"

Colin came to earth with a jolt. That, then, had been the mad girl, Reed's daughter! And he had-he had-Why, he had done nothing; only life had for him turned a somersault and seemed right-sideup for the first time. But mad! Was it madness that gave her that elfin look, that made her so differently, so marvelously beautiful?

"I had no word from your daughter, sir," he replied gravely and sadly, for he was wishing he had. "Will you show me the road to the station?"

"You will have no trouble in finding it. Go out the gate, turn to your right, and keep straight on by the wall. From where it ends you can see the lights at the station. Good night, sir!"

The door closed with needless sharpness as Colin went down the steps. Then it opened again.

"If you want any further directions," Reed called, and there was a strange hint of laughter in his voice, "ask the gatekeeper!"

And once more he banged the door.

Colin had turned at the first word, had seen Reed standing in the lighted doorway, and had caught an odd impression of some trifling difference in his appearance. He stood stock-still on the drive, staring at the shut dooor. Then he scratched his bare head reflectively.

"Ask-the-gatekeeper!" he muttered. "Now, what in the devil did the fool mean by that-and him laughing when he said it? And what was it about him now-oh, his hand!"

That hand had been out of its pocket at last, and it had been large-white-furry.

"To keep a glove on one's hand is not strange," thought Colin, "but why the like o' that white fur one? Mr. Reed, Mr. Reed, 'tis a man of mysteries you are, both small and large, and I do not like you! But your daughter — "

It was hard enough to follow the path in the dark, and twice he thought he had lost his way. At last a gleam of light ahead resolved itself into the gaslight on the pike outside. Against its yellow radiance the gates hung, an elaborate silhouette, and he could see the red sheen of the ivy-covered lodge.

Then, as he came toward it, a slight sound came to his ears. Straining eyes dazzled by the light beyond, it seemed to him that in the side of the lodge facing the grounds a door stood open. Yes, there was an oblong blackness there, blacker than the shadowed ivy about it and near the center of the oblong-a whitish oval patch-a face?

It disappeared abruptly, and when Colin came up to the little lodge there were only a closed door and silence. Any windows there might be were hidden by the clinging ivy.

As the gates were unlocked, Colin had no desire to disturb Reed's repulsive servant. The gates opened at a touch and he went his way.

THE following day brought Colin a surprise as great and in a way, more disconcerting than had been given him by Genghis Khan when he descended upon him out of an oak-tree the evening before.