"Then I heard the computer switched on. A low green light emanated from the monitor.

"What a nuisance, I thought. 'Goblin, why do you do these things?' I murmured, but then I heard a strange sound. It was the clicking of the computer keys.

"I shot up out of bed and came into this parlor and stared at the computer. He had most certainly typed out a message: QUINN, DANGER EVERYWHERE; I'M AFRAID.

"I was stultified. Never had he done this before. Turn it on and off, yes, but to write on it without my hand? I sat down at the computer and I wrote out the words as I recited them aloud: " 'Goblin, I love you. I couldn't have come home without you. Explain what you mean about danger.'

"I moved my hands away from the keyboard and watched the rapid, seemingly magical 126.

depression of the keys as he wrote out: I SEE IT NEAR AND FAR. GO AWAY. I LOVE YOU. DON'T LOVE REBECCA.

"I began to whisper my response to him, that is, to talk aloud to him as I had always done --that he needn't worry --when the keys started firing again, and I saw the writing on the screen: THROUGH THE COMPUTER, QUINN. I AM STRONG IN THE ELECTRICITY, NOT.

STRONG NOW IN ANY OTHER WAY. TOO TIRED FROM SWAMP. QUINN, GO.

"This all but dumbfounded me, but it fitted with my growing understanding of him, and so I hammered out: " 'Goblin, who was the stranger? Who were the bodies?'

" 'I don't know,' came his answers. 'The bodies were dead.'

"That was a typical example of Goblin's reasoning. For a long breathless moment I sat there, and then I typed out: 'Goblin, I love you. Don't ever think that I don't love you. Put up with me and my off-and-on ways.'

"There came no answer, and then, before I could hit the save b.u.t.ton to preserve this little dialogue, the computer switched itself off. Or rather Goblin switched it off.

" 'What does that mean?' I said aloud, looking about me. But no answer came from the darkness. There was nothing to be done but to go back to bed. . .

"And to lie there, awake, pondering all that had happened, including the fact that Goblin could now write on the computer without using my left hand to do so --a frightening discovery, though one which was all bound up in my head with the awareness that he had led me out of the swamp.

"In summary, what I mean is I felt guilty for how shabbily I'd treated Goblin.

"Goblin had my admiration again, the way he had gotten it when I was a little boy and he taught me to spell big words. Goblin and I were close again. Goblin knew I was telling the truth. Goblin understood everything.

"I felt it excitedly while at the same time rejecting totally his message. We were close, that's what mattered.

"But we were to come even closer.

"Sometime during the night, as Big Ramona snored and I dozed in a half sleep, dreaming of Rebecca, there came into the room a stranger.

"Goblin, with a hand on my shoulder, awakened and alerted me. Sleeping on the left side of the bed I was turned to my left, and I opened my eyes to see Goblin staring past me in the direction of the fireplace. There came the tight squeeze from Goblin which on the island had meant caution.

"I rolled over as if it were merely natural in my sleep.

"I could see the figure at the mantel, and measuring it by that marker I calculated it was a tall man --and I knew by its outline that it was no man I knew, but its shape conformed with the shape of the man I'd seen in the swamp in the moonlight.

"I could see the outline of a bold head, well squared-off shoulders, and the glint of a hand on the mantelpiece. I was certain it was the same man! There came a tapping sound from the mantelpiece. There was something white on the mantelpiece.

"And then there came a low utterance of laughter.

"I climbed out of bed lickety-split, though Goblin tried with all his effort to stop me. And as I rushed across the room in my bare feet I heard the sound of paper crumpled and I picked out of the shadows the sight of a white paper ball tossed into the fireplace.

"Before I took another step the man had vanished.

127.

"My eyes searched the room. I rushed through the open doorway only to find the hallway empty. Attic and ground floor revealed n.o.body.

"All the guests of Blackwood Manor slept and so did its residents. And from the kitchen window I could see Clem, the night man, in the brightly lighted shed, sitting back with his feet up, watching the television.

"My heart was racing.

"What was the point of sounding an alarm? Who would believe me this time? I went back up to my room and I retrieved the crumpled paper from the fireplace. I knew what it was before I read it. It was my letter to the trespa.s.ser of Sugar Devil Island, warning him to get off the property.

"I straightened it out and turned it over. There was no response written on it. Then I remembered the tapping on the mantelpiece, and sure enough there was a letter there, or at least a piece of folded white paper.

"I was incalculably excited! Here was the smoking gun. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up this paper with literally trembling hands and took it to my desk where I turned on my small halogen lamp in hopes of not awakening Big Ramona.

"The white paper was thick and fancy, and the writing was in script of a florid and large design. I could smell the India ink in which it had been written. This is an approximation of what it said: Tarquin, my beloved boy, I am not as amused by your notice as one might expect. On the contrary, I rather resent your intrusion into a portion of Sugar Devil Swamp to which I hold unwritten t.i.tle, thanks to the generosity and foresight of your great-great-great-grandfather Manfred. If I had not set eyes on you tonight and not recognized you for the sensitive and serious young man which you are, I might take even greater umbrage than I do.

As it stands, allow me to explain that I want the island undisturbed by you, and it is my express wish that none of you or your family come there. I treasure my privacy, Tarquin, perhaps more than you treasure your life. Think on it, my boy.

The Resident of the Hermitage.

"I folded the letter, and, without bothering with a robe or slippers any more than I had during my earlier perambulation, I went downstairs to Aunt Queen's bedroom. I pushed open the door with a child's license.

"The light was on of course, and Aunt Queen was on her chaise lounge, swaddled in diamonds and satin covers, eating a pint of pink ice cream.

"Jasmine, who was bunking in with her, lay sound asleep in the bed.

"From the television there came the muted voices of Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland.

" 'Tarquin,' Aunt Queen said at once, 'what is it?' She muted the murmuring television. 'You look like you've seen Banquo's ghost. Come here and kiss me.'

"I kissed her more than willingly.

" 'He's come into my room, Aunt Queen,' I said breathlessly, waving the letter in her face. 'And he's left me this note. I saw him, Aunt Queen. He stood at my fireplace. Goblin told me he was there. And this is the note which he's left me. Aunt Queen, I tell you something involving murder is afoot out there. And mad as it may sound it's some sort of secret Byronic society.'

" 'Let me see this letter,' she said. She set her ice cream aside. Meanwhile Jasmine had raised her head and was sliding out from under the blankets.

"I told them both what had transpired upstairs. Jasmine then read the note, and Aunt Queen read it a second time. I was too excited to do anything but pace.

" 'We've got to start locking the front and back doors,' Jasmine said, 'if people are going to come 128.

just walking right in without knocking.'

" 'We don't lock the front and back doors?!' I asked, appalled.

" 'No, you know we don't,' said Jasmine. 'The guests come back at all hours from New Orleans. You ever had a key to the front or back door, Tarquin Blackwood?'

" 'This guy laughed at me,' I said as calmly as I could, which wasn't calm at all. 'He laughed, I tell you. I heard him laugh and. . .' I stopped. It was the laughter I heard in those dizzy spells. It was the laughter that had accompanied Rebecca's piteous pleas. Oh, but who would ever believe that!

" 'Tarquin, what is it!' Aunt Queen pressed. 'Don't stand there staring. Jasmine, go run and tell Clem to check the entire property. Tell Clem we've had an intruder. Hurry.'

"Jasmine headed out.

" 'Tarquin, stop staring like that,' said Aunt Queen. 'There has to be a reason for this, I mean something that makes sense here. Maybe you've hit it. It is a secret society that meets out there, you know, a sort of romantic clandestine thing, and one of them has come into this house, which you know is open at all times, you know, and he has dared to go upstairs. . ."

" 'There's nothing romantic about dumping dead bodies,' I said.

" 'Darling, maybe he was dumping something else, and it just looked that way.'

"I turned around in a small circle. I saw the faint outline of Goblin by one post of the fancy bed. Goblin nodded to me vigorously.

"I looked at her. She was looking past me to the place where Goblin stood.

" 'They were dead bodies, Aunt Queen,' I said. 'I know because Goblin knows and Goblin is afraid.'

"A deep silence fell over her, and then she looked up at me. 'My sweet boy,' she said. 'I shall have this investigated in every conceivable way, make no mistake on it. But I am going to get you out of here.' "

15.

"ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Sugar Devil Island, which had always been the biggest secret of Blackwood Farm, became host to a dozen crime fighters, including not only the sheriff of Ruby River Parish and his deputies but two private investigators hired directly by Aunt Queen, two private laboratory technicians and two gentlemen from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"In this way, the Hermitage became public knowledge. And as I stood there on the banks, directing people to the locality where I saw the bodies dumped in the open swamp, I was treated to the semi-welcome sight of people trooping all over Manfred's sacred retreat.

"Pops had had real bad indigestion after breakfast and said that he just couldn't go with us. It made him feel really bad, but he just wasn't up to it.

"Aunt Queen, of course, could not be expected to make such a journey, but she did, handsomely turned out in khaki sportswear, which made her look like a nineteenth-century archaeologist. (I had forgotten that she had been to the Amazon only the year before for a retreat in the jungle.) "And of course Jasmine was with us, in blue jeans, which she never wore, b.r.e.a.s.t.s poking through one of my hand-me-down checkered shirts, smoking Camel cigarettes and eyeing everybody with suspicion if not downright scorn.

"And I stood there, listening for anything that would lessen my feelings of being isolated and 129.

ridiculed.

"Of course, dead bodies in the swamp were nowhere to be found.

"But probing some six to ten feet of soft-bottomed muck was no easy task, and the alligators surrounding the island were particularly obtrusive and 'friendly,' which to me meant only one thing: they were expecting to be fed and they had probably just been fed on the bodies I'd seen given over to them.

"As for the remains, or the second-floor 'residue,' as it became officially called, a good sample of it was removed from the premises by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and by laboratory technicians from the private laboratory of Mayfair Medical, the giant private establishment only recently built by the famous Mayfair family of New Orleans, the family of which Fr. Kevin Mayfair was a Yankee member --which I've mentioned to you before.

"The FBI was there because they had the wherewithal to collect and test the residue, and because they had extensive files on missing persons which might just provide a DNA match to seal the story for some miserable victim's family.

"Mayfair Medical was there because they too had a state-of-the-art laboratory, and Aunt Queen had hired them to do the test on our behalf, the Hermitage being a dwelling on our property.

"The sheriff was there to traffic in plat.i.tudes and truisms and puffed-up stories about the practical jokes he played on his friends, and in general to be a source of comic relief.

"As for the letter which the mysterious stranger had given me, this had not been given to the FBI as I had requested, but to Mayfair Medical. Would that destroy a 'chain of evidence' if DNA from recent missing persons was found in the Hermitage? No. Because nothing linked the letter to the Hermitage except my meager testimony.

"Or so I understood the situation to be on the morning of this wholesale melee in which interstate officialdom and southern recalcitrance met head-on in a dense and reeking bog full of reptiles and insects.

"The men from the FBI were respectable and respecting, which is probably why the sheriff and his men would hardly acknowledge their existence. I gave my full statement to anyone who asked, and that included the technicians from Mayfair Medical, both of whom were tremendously curious about the task at hand, i.e., the collection of the data.

"n.o.body fingerprinted the mysterious marble desk and Roman chair, but just about everybody sooner or later touched it.

"Everybody --even the sheriff --was impressed with the gold mausoleum, if that was what it was, and repeated efforts by various parties failed to discover any way to open it. The gold plates (the sheriff insisted they were bra.s.s), I repeat, the gold plates were so securely fitted into the granite framework that only a very destructive crowbar might have managed to loosen them, which we, the proud owners of the mausoleum, refused to allow.

"Finally, at midafternoon it was decided to call off the search for remains and the sheriff and his men made their way out, cursing their little pirogues and their poles and the cypress trees with their outrageous roots and knees, the wisteria and the blackberries and the heat and the mosquitoes. The FBI gentlemen went the same route, behaving altogether in a more reserved manner, as our local handyman, Jackson, was steering their boat and it did not seem to be the FBI style to curse at things.

"Aunt Queen, Jasmine and I, along with our Shed Men, Clem and Felix (both Jasmine's brothers, and one Aunt Queen's oftentimes chauffeur), not wishing to remain on the island alone --Jasmine had seen the letter --hurried behind the FBI right back to the landing.

"Once safe within the orbit of Blackwood Manor I told Clem and Felix that I wanted to wire the Hermitage for electricity in the near future, and to please not forget where they had just been. Aunt Queen gave her consent and so they paid attention to me.

"Also they were too kind to snicker. Also they were tired, and I gave them both a cash bonus, of 130.

which Jasmine expressed a certain refined jealousy. So I gave her a cash bonus too, which I was positive she wouldn't accept but she did, conspicuously stuffing it into her bra.s.siere and winking at me.

"On that account I grabbed her and bent her way back and kissed her hard, to which she said in a whisper: 'Once you go black, you never go back.' And I nearly died laughing.

" 'Where did you hear that?' I asked.

" 'Forever and a long time ago,' she said. 'I'm surprised you never heard it. Watch your step, Little Boss.' Off she went, helping Aunt Queen up the slope, the two of them whispering suspiciously together.

"I don't know why I was so afraid. Everybody knew I'd told the truth about the existence of the island. Everybody had seen the marble desk and the golden chair. Everybody had seen the strange inscription on the mausoleum.

"Had I not gloried in those first few moments this morning when the chain of little pirogues came within sight of the island? Yes, I had! And had I not gloried in the moment of shock when everyone crowded onto the second floor of the Hermitage to see the evil rusted chains and the blackened mora.s.s on the floor? Yes, I had.

"But what did it mean now?

"It was four o'clock. The sun was lowering. The property, for all its vain magnificence, looked forlorn.

"I went low, very low.

"I stood out front, beyond Pops' close and beautiful flower beds, staring at the big columns of the house until Aunt Queen came out on the front porch and told me she'd been looking for me everywhere. I knew I ought to answer her but it seemed difficult for me to break the silence that surrounded me.

"I knew on some level that her genial, sweet face was just what I needed in my selfish little soul, but I couldn't speak. I thought of the mysterious stranger, I thought of the bodies slipping into the muck. I saw the moonlight as if it were shining on me now. I saw the dim figure who had stood at my bedroom fireplace. Glint of light on hand, on forehead, on cheek. Terror. I felt mystery, yes, but cold panic.

"Aunt Queen came near to me. She said words but I didn't hear them. Then out of the silence I heard her voice. . . something about men being on the property to guard it. Men paid from an agency in New Orleans, excellent security men.

"Cerebrally I knew these words meant something. They meant something good, and I formed mental images of these men --of their being at the doors, and sitting in the parlor, the kitchen, the dining room. I pictured. When I can't think or register, I picture. I listened.

"But nothing could touch the cold panic I felt, and my only recourse seemed a motionlessness.

" 'Quinn!' she said. She put her hand on my neck, and I looked at her and I thought, How long How long will it be before she dies? will it be before she dies? And my throat was so tight I couldn't speak. And my throat was so tight I couldn't speak.

"Finally I came to the surface. I took her hand and kissed it, and I said, 'Let me help you up the steps, you always wear these impossible shoes, look at you, and what if you fall and you break a hip, what then, my beloved aunt, you won't be able to go to Katmandu or Timbuktu or Iceland.'

"She took my arm and into the house we went, and after seeing her to her room, and nodding to the security guard who sat in the far corner of the dining room, I went up the stairs.