The man who ducked his head a little to enter was not an islander and Persis got to her feet quickly.
“Dr. Veering—! What is happening? Where is Captain Leverett? And-?”
He held up one hand defensively. “Not so fast, Miss Rooke. Though I can well understand your present bewilderment. Captain Leverett has sent me with a message—as well as to report upon how you fared after your ordeal. For reasons he himself shall later explain to you, he wishes you to keep out of sight. However, as soon as it grows dusk, Carrie here will get you into the house. If you will then at once go to your own chamber and dress as if for a regular dinner and then wait—”
“I don’t understand—”
Dr. Veering had come up to her and had taken her hands, seeming more intent on inspecting the damage now hidden by Carrie’s treatment than he was upon her beginning protest.
“Yes, yes, excellent. You may wash this off when you reach the house, Miss Rooke. I shall see some healing salve is there ready for you. Then I would suggest that you wear gloves upon your appearance. As for what Crewe Leverett plans—well, I left him growling like a veritable tiger because I would not let him undertake the first of it himself. Luckily he did not put out that shoulder again. No thanks to the strain with which he used it last night—”
“He might have died!” Persis said hotly.
“So he told me, very much to the point I must say. And how you, a slight female as you are and unable to swim, managed—” The doctor shook his head, “Though I have long ago learned that with females a man may never judge by appearance. The most fragile of ladies can on occasion develop the toughness of sword steel. Anyway—I would suggest that you rest all you can. The news I can give you is limited, for the simple fact that success depends on a number of ‘ifs,’ ‘ands,’ and ‘buts’—and had anyone but Crewe mapped out such a piece of recklessness I would not have given a fig for its chances.
“Briefly, he has rounded up a force of volunteers-most of his own men on shore had been drugged and locked into the warehouse. Thanks to the help of Mason they are out, with the door still locked behind them and a group of island boys left inside to hammer and yell at intervals. With his crew, six from the Arrow and two of the Dutchmen, they have taken off to intercept the Stormy Luck—with Lan Harvery in command—much to Crewe’s disgust. Though he had finally to admit that a willing spirit cannot induce a broken body only half-healed to do its best.”
“And Grillon—Lydia—?” Persis wanted to know.
“Grillon is patrolling the south beach and Miss Lydia has been, shall we say, persuaded, to return to the house. She believes Grillon will come for her. There is a guard of his men, but those have been judiciously whittled down by the islanders. If Crewe’s force can board and take the Stormy Luck, then Grillon is bottled up here—in a manner marooned. And by evening we shall know one way or the other.”
“But Captain Leverett is all right?” Persis returned to the question uppermost in her mind. That time they had spent in the water-filled darkness beneath the house had somehow lengthened in her own thoughts to such a space that she would never think of Crewe Leverett again as a stranger. It was as if their shared danger had somehow tied them together whether they would have originally willed it or no.
“Good enough,” Dr. Veering assured her. “He has an amazingly strong constitution and I can’t find that he has done anything to disturb the knitting of the broken bones. Had I had my way, of course, he would be in bed and asleep, if I had to pour a potion down his throat to assure that state. But with matters as they now are I cannot argue with him. You can help him best now by doing exactly as he asks—remain here in concealment until Carrie can get you into the house—”
“Molly, Mrs. Pryor—Shubal—?” she made a question of their names.
“They have all recovered from an amazing sleep. I had good reason to visit your man Shubal and so looked in upon the others. Mrs. Pryor is well aware of the situation and of what Captain Leverett intends. Your maid, after the manner of these island fevers, has again a temperature and so I gave her a soothing draft.”
Persis looked down at her glazed and discolored hands. “Dr. Veering, will the plan be a success?”
He shrugged. “I am no gambler, Miss Rooke. I know the men Crewe Leverett has chosen and if anything can be accomplished—they are the ones to do so. It is no more foolhardy than other ventures they have tried in the past. But we can only possess our souls in patience and hope for the best. And—”
His attention had shifted from Persis to the dagger fan lying beside her on the pallet.
“The opal-eyed fan—but how—why?”
The girl shook her head. “It is not that one—the one Lydia keeps. Look,” with ease of practice she slid the blade out of the mock fan.
“But where-?”
Dr. Veering was a man of science, a believer in the possible as ranked against those impossible things which had been happening. He might consider her bereft of part of her wits, but Persis needed his shrewd common sense to back her in her own belief that she was not under some disillusion.
She made her tale brief, of her finding the box after the second storm, of the strange way the fan had returned to her keeping even after she had repudiated it.
“But I was wrong in hating it,” she added now. “Had I not had it with me last night Captain Leverett might well have been drowned—or even both of us ended dead.”
Dr. Veering picked it up almost as if his hand moved against his will. He drew forth the dagger, sent it plunging back into its sheath again with a quick smack of his palm against its pommel. Then he inspected carefully the carving of the cats with their narrowed opal eyes which appeared to return his gaze with a knowingness that no artifact could have.
“Two fans—” he said slowly. “And one a weapon. It is a deadly trinket—I wonder who first devised such a deceit. But I think we can know now how the Lost Lady escaped her captor. It is very old, I think, and deadly—”
“Not always—it helped me,” Persis said soberly. “And the lady-” She hesitated. Though Dr. Veering had displayed no sign of incredulity over her story of the discovery of the fan, the fact she had returned it to the ground, and then it had appeared again—oddly when, in spite of her repulsion, there was a need for it. The other tale of the “impression” must certainly place her in his mind as one of those hysterical females credulous to the point of silliness.
“Miss Rooke,” he drew one of the stools away from the table and sat down, his expression one of serious consideration, “you have probably heard some of my past history. I have lived among native peoples—people who have beliefs—and, yes, talents—which our world would scoff at. I have seen, half-smothered by the jungle, parts of an unknown city, stone built, carved with forgotten beasts—or maybe gods—which has endured against the push of nature perhaps as long as the stones of that Rome, which our historians so revere, have been planted one on another.
“I have witnessed rites performed by those the outsider would term ‘naked savages’ which produced results our most learned doctors cannot begin to achieve. There is more in this world than we in our blind arrogance of race, we of the North, have been taught. Sometimes a fate or power beyond our conceiving moves and we are caught in that move—to play a part we do not even understand.
“This island has known many different peoples— and each has had their own beliefs. Did you ever think that belief in itself is a very powerful thing? It has caused men, yes, and women, too, to die painful deaths, by fire, wild beasts, hanging—even torture—because it was so much a part of their lives that they could not deny it. When I was very young Fox’s Book of Martyrs was a favorite reading for Sunday. I am afraid that my youthful reaction to the heroes and heroines held up to the admiration of the reader in that dark chronicle of fanaticism was that they were stupidly self-righteous. Now I wonder if they were not possessed by beliefs they could not make the uninitiated really understand.
“There are many strange and wonderful things to be discovered yet. We are, I think, on the edge of a new age in which man is going to set forth exploring—not only land, but within himself—I know the story of the Lost Lady, of course. I also have spoken with three people who do faithfully believe that they have seen her. A land so soaked in blood and tears and violence as this island, may well project to the sensitive some fragment of the past— not what the ignorant term ‘ghosts’ but rather ‘memories’ or dreams of an emotion so overriding that time means nothing to what is netted in it.”