Avalon by Francis Stevens

Author:Francis Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI - WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE.

WHEN Commodore Danby Griggs was called from his bed shortly after two o’clock in the morning to view the lifeless remains of another of his unlucky seamen, he neither raved, swore, nor made hasty accusations.

With a borrowed dressing-gown flung over his borrowed pajamas, he descended to the living hall, where Avalon had an oil-lamp burning at last. Randolph and Brant Fielding, who had also been called, stopped to dress, but they, too, soon appeared on the scene. Mrs. Griggs had been allowed to sleep on, and Doris, though warned of the murder, had declined to leave her unconscious charge for that or any other reason. Navarre, who had done the summoning, returned to the hall with her uncle.

The lamp had been set on a chair near the doorway, casting into full illumination the man who lay dead there.

He was a Swede, Olaf Lindholm by name, and had been the Ulysses’s boatswain. His feet were bare. He was dressed in shirt and trousers, but the shirt hung partly out at the belt, as though he had donned his clothes under pressure of great haste. Aside from the barbaric weapon thrust through his throat there were other peculiarities in Lindholm’s condition. A towel was bound tightly over his mouth, one wrist was involved in a tangle of cord and the other had been scraped raw by a successful struggle against bondage.

Certain facts seemed obvious. Lindholm had been a prisoner; he had burst the cord on his hands; his captors had slain him; and the weapon used was the mate of several others in a trophy of such spears which hung behind a round bull’s-hide shield on the opposite wall.

But the reasons for either his captivity or the desperate measure taken against escape were far from clear.

“You tell me,” said Griggs slowly, addressing his host, “that you found the servants’ rooms empty except for my three other men, and that they were lying bound on their beds. Where are they now?”

Avalon raised a haggard face.

“They should be in here soon. I untied the steward and left him to do the same for Carson and Peele, the two sailors. I told them to dress and report to you here. You had better hear their story direct. As for the house servants, they seem to have cleared out in a body, taking their belongings with them. The lights are off because the wires at the main-switch panel are cut. Somebody took a lot of pains to wreck the panel, too. So far, that is all I’ve had time to discover.”

“It’s enough,” muttered Randolph.

Griggs dropped into a chair, as if he were suddenly very tired. He looked from the corpse, lying in a pool of blood, to Avalon, and from Avalon to Navarre.

“You were with him when he found Lindholm?”

“Yes. And also when he drove off the murderers.” Navarre was careful to speak very firmly and clearly. Even in the midst of this horror she thanked God that she had followed the man she loved down those stairs.

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