cautiously into the room.
“It’s all right, Percy. This is just an insane specialist from New York.”
“Everything’s a little insane tonight,” announced Percy in a frightened voice. “For the last hour I’ve been hearing the sound of oars.”
The eyes of Aunt Jo and Aunt Cal fluttered open simultaneously.
“There’s a fog all over the Point,” went on Percy dazedly, “and it’s got voices in it. I couldn’t see a foot before my face, but I could swear there was boats offshore, and I heard a dozen people talkin’ and callin’ to each other, just as if a lot of ghosts was havin’ a picnic supper on the beach.”
“What was that noise?” cried Aunt Jo, sitting upright.
“The door was locked,” explained Percy, “so I knocked on it with my gun.”
“No, I mean now!”
They listened. Through the open door came a low, groaning sound, issuing out of the dark mist which covered shore and sea alike.
“We’ll go right down and find out!” cried Doctor Gallup, who had recovered his shattered equilibrium; and, as the moaning sound drifted in again, like the last agony of some monster from the deep, he added, “I think you needed more than a psychoanalyst here tonight. Is there another gun in the house?”
Aunt Cal got up and took a small pearl-mounted revolver from the desk drawer.
“You can’t leave us in this house alone,” she declared emphatically. “Wherever you go we’re going too!”
Keeping close together, the four of them, for Fifi had suddenly disappeared, made their way outdoors and down the porch steps, where they hesitated a moment, peering into the impenetrable haze, more mysterious than darkness upon their eyes.
“It’s out there,” whispered Percy, facing the sea.
“Forward we go!” muttered Doctor Gallup tensely. “I’m inclined to think this is all a question of nerves.”
They moved slowly and silently along the sand, until suddenly Percy caught hold of the doctor’s arm.
“Listen!” he whispered sharply.
They all became motionless. Out of the neighboring darkness a dim, indistinguishable figure had materialized, walking with unnatural rigidity along the shore. Pressed against his body he carried some long, dark drape that hung almost to the sand. Immediately he disappeared into the mist, to be succeeded by another phantom walking at the same military gait, this one with something white and faintly terrible dangling from his arm. A moment later, not ten yards away from them, in the direction in which the figure had gone, a faint dull glow sprang into life, proceeding apparently from behind the largest of the dunes.
Huddled together, they advanced toward the dune, hesitated, and then, following Doctor Gallup’s example, dropped to their knees and began to crawl cautiously up its shoreward side. The glow became stronger as they reached the top, and at the same moment their heads popped up over the crest. This is what they saw:
In the light of four strong pocket flashlights, borne by four sailors in spotless white, a gentleman was shaving himself, standing clad only in athletic underwear upon the sand. Before his eyes an irreproachable valet held a silver mirror which gave back the soapy reflection of his face. To right and left stood two additional men-servants, one with a dinner coat and trousers hanging from his arm and the other bearing a white stiff shirt whose studs glistened in the glow of the electric lamps. There was not a sound except the dull scrape of the razor along its wielder’s face and the intermittent groaning sound that blew in out of the sea.
But it was not the bizarre nature of the ceremony, with its dim, weird surroundings under the unsteady light, that drew from the two women a short, involuntary sigh. It was the fact that the face in the mirror, the unshaven half of it, was terribly familiar, and in a moment they knew to whom that half-face belonged—it was the countenance of their niece’s savage wooer who had lately prowled half-naked along the beach.
Even as they looked he completed one side of his face, whereupon a valet stepped forward and with a scissors sheared off the exterior growth on the other, disclosing, in its entirety now, the symmetrical visage of a young, somewhat haggard but not unhandsome man. He lathered the bearded side, pulled the razor quickly over it and then applied a lotion to the whole surface, and inspected himself with considerable interest in the mirror. The sight seemed to please him, for he smiled. At a word one of the valets held forth the trousers in which he now incased his likely legs. Diving into his open shirt, he procured the collar, flipped a proper black bow with a practiced hand and slipped into the waiting dinner coat. After a transformation which had taken place before their very eyes, Aunt Cal and Aunt Jo found themselves gazing upon as immaculate and impeccable a young man as they had ever seen.
“Walters!” he said suddenly, in a clear, cultured voice.
One of the white-clad sailors stepped forward and saluted.
“You can take the boats back to the yacht. You ought to be able to find it all right by the foghorn.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When the fog lifts you’d better stand out to sea. Meanwhile, wireless New York to send down my car. It’s to call for me at the Marsden house on Montauk Point.”
As the sailor turned away, his torch flashed upward accidentally wavering upon the four amazed faces which were peering down at the curious scene.
“Look there, sir!” he exclaimed.
The four torches picked out the eavesdropping party at the top of the hill.
“Hands up, there!” cried Percy, pointing his rifle down into the glare of light.
“Miss Marsden!” called the young man eagerly. “I was just coming to call.”
“Don’t move!” shouted Percy. And then to the doctor, “Had I better fire?”
“Certainly not!” cried Doctor Gallup. “Young man, does your name happen to be what I think it is?”
The young man bowed politely.
“My name is George Van Tyne.”
A few minutes later the immaculate young man and two completely bewildered ladies were shaking hands. “I owe you more apologies than I can ever make,” he confessed, “for having sacrificed you to the strange whim of a young girl.”
“What whim?” demanded Aunt Cal.
“Why”—he hesitated—“you see, all my life I have devoted much attention to the so-called niceties of conduct; niceties of dress, of manners, of behavior——”
He broke off apologetically.
“Go on,” commanded Aunt Cal.
“And your niece has too. She always considered herself rather a model of—of civilized behavior”—he flushed—“until she met me.”
“I see,” Doctor Gallup nodded. “She couldn’t bear to marry anyone who was more of a—shall we say, a dandy?—than herself.”
“Exactly,” said George Van Tyne, with a perfect eighteenth-century bow. “It was necessary to show her what a—what an——”
“——unspeakable egg,” supplied Aunt Josephine.
“——what an unspeakable egg I could be. It was difficult, but not impossible. If you know what’s correct, you must necessarily know what’s incorrect; and my aim was to be as ferociously incorrect as possible. My one hope is that someday you’ll be able to forgive me for throwing the sand—I’m afraid that my impersonation ran away with me.”
A moment later they were all walking toward the house.
“But I still can’t believe