gone. I suppose it was the instinct of
protection--a feeling that a man's absence might any moment result in
a shrill scream of fear or death in the darkness. Van Hope sat to my
left, a little further to the right was Weldon, the coroner. There were
three chairs further to the right, but which of the five remaining
guests occupied them I did not know.

Three white men--two of the guests and the sheriff--were unaccounted
for. My better intelligence told me that they were either in the
living-room or the library, perhaps in their own rooms, yet it was
impossible to forget that these men were of the white race, largely free
from the superstition that kept the blacks safely from the perilous
shores of the lagoon. Any one of a dozen reasons might send them walking
down through the gardens to those gray crags from which they might never
return.

I found myself wondering about Edith, too. She had excused herself and
had gone to her room, ostensibly to bed, but I couldn't forget our
conversation of the previous night and her resolve to fathom the mystery
of her uncle's disappearance. Would she remain in the security of her
room, or must I guard her, too?

How slow the time passed! The darkness deepened over land and sea. The
moon had not yet risen--indeed it would not appear until after midnight.
The great, white Floridan stars, however, had pushed through the dark
blue canopy of the night, and their light lay softly over the gardens.
The guests talked in muffled tones, their excited laughter ringing out
at ever longer intervals. The coals of their cigars glowed like
fireflies in the gloom.

By ten o'clock two of the six chairs were vacant. Two of the guests had
tramped away heavily to their rooms, not passing so near that I could
make sure of their identity. Soon after this a very deep and curious
silence fell over the veranda.

The two men to my right, Weldon the coroner and one of the guests, were
smoking quietly, evidently in a lull in their conversation. I didn't
particularly notice them. Their silence was some way natural and easy,
nothing to startle the heart or arrest the breath. If they had been
talking, however, perhaps the moment would have never got hold of me as
it did. The silence seemed to deepen with an actual sense of motion,
like something growing, and a sensation as inexplicable as it was
unpleasant slowly swept over me.

It was a creepy, haunting feeling that had its origin somewhere beyond
the five