The Phantom Violin Read online

  CHAPTER IV CAPTIVATING PHANTOM

  The music to which Greta listened was unfamiliar. "Is it a song?" shewhispered, "or an evening prayer? Who can have written it? Perhaps noone. It may have come direct from heaven."

  She could not believe it. Someone was playing that violin. Real fingerstouched those strings. She longed to search them out, to come before thatmysterious person of great enchantment and whisper, "Teach me!"

  Ah yes, but which way should she go? Already the shades of night werefalling.

  "No! No!" she cried as the music ended. "Don't stop! Go on, please goon!" It was as if the phantom violin were at her very side.

  The music did not go on, at least not at once. Emerging from its spell asone wakes from a dream, she became once more conscious of the goodnightsong of birds, the dull put-put-put of a distant motor, the cold blackrocks beneath her feet, the dark waters far below where some object,probably Florence and Jeanne in the boat, moved slowly forward.

  And then her lips parted, her eyes shone, for the phantom had resumed hissong of the strings.

  * * * * * * * *

  In strange contrast to all this, Florence continued her battle with thebig fish. In this struggle she was meeting with uncertain fortune. Nowshe had him, and now he was gone. She reeled in frantically, only to loseher grip on the reel and to see her catch disappear in a swirl of foam.At last, when her muscles ached from the strain, the fish appeared togive up and come in quite readily.

  "There! There he is!" Jeanne all but fell from the boat when she caughtone good look at the monster. He was fearsome beyond belief, a great headlike that of a wolf, two rows of gleaming teeth, a pair of small,snake-like eyes. And, to complete the picture at that moment over thebottle-green waters a long ripple ran like a long green serpent.

  "Florence!" she screamed. "Let go! It's a snake! A forty-foot longsnake!" The slight little girl hid her eyes in her hands.

  No need for this appeal. In a wild whirl of foam the thing was goneagain. But still fastened to his bone-like jaw was the three-barbed hook.And the line, as Florence had said, was "stout as a cowboy's lariat." Shehad him. Did she want him? Who, at that moment, could tell?

  Strangely enough, at that moment one of those thoughts that come to usall uninvited, entered the big girl's mind. "What did that diver on theblack boat want on our wreck?"

  No answer to this disturbing question entered her mind. They had left theship unguarded. They had come to Duncan's Bay prepared to stay at leastfor the night. That they would stay she knew well, for the wind wasrising again. To face those dark, turbulent waters at night would beperilous. "What may happen to the ship while we are gone?" she askedherself. Again, no answer.

  * * * * * * * *

  The melody, faint, coming from afar, indistinct yet unbelievablybeautiful, having reached Greta's ears once more and entered into hervery soul, she stood as before, entranced, while the light faded. Shewas, however, thinking hard.

  "Where can it be, that violin?" she whispered.

  Where indeed? On that end of Isle Royale there are two small settlements.To reach the nearest one from that spot would require three hours ofstruggling through bushes, down precipices and over bogs. The travelerwould be doing very well indeed if he did not completely lose his way inthe bargain. It was unthinkable that any skilled violinist wouldundertake such a journey only that he might fling his glorious music tothe empty air about the Greenstone Ridge. It was even more unthinkablethat anyone could have taken up his abode somewhere among the crags ofthat ridge. On Isle Royale there are summer homes only along the shoreline, and there are very few of these. The three hundred and more squaremiles of the island are for the most part as wild and uninhabited as theymust have been before the coming of Columbus.

  "It is a phantom!" Greta whispered, "A phantom of the air, a phantomviolin."

  Had she willed it strongly enough, she might have gone racing away infear. She did not will it. The music was too divine for that. It held hercharmed.

  What piece was it the mysterious one played? She did not know or care;enough that it was played. So she stood there drinking it in whiletwilight faded into night. Only once had she heard such music. In acrowded hall a young musician had stood up and, all unaccompanied, hadplayed like that.

  Could it be he? "No! No!" she murmured. "It cannot be. He is far, faraway."

  Then a thought all but fantastic entered her mind. "Perhaps I haveradio-perfect ears." She had heard of people, read of them in somemagazine, she believed, whose ears were so attuned to certain radiosounds that they could receive messages, listen to music with theirunassisted ears.

  "It has never been so before," she protested. "Yet I never before havebeen in a place of perfect peace and silence." The thought pleased her.

  And then, as it had begun, the marvelous music died away into silence.

  For ten minutes the girl stood motionless. Then, seeming to awake with ashudder to the darkness all about her, she snapped on her flashlight andwent racing over the narrow moose trail leading away to the distantcamping grounds of Duncan's Bay.