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Updated: June 25, 2025
Viewed from the veranda of the Marine Hotel, its vast flare on the horizon seems hardly more than an insignificant spark, like the glowing cigar-end of some guest strolling in the garden after dinner. It may very likely have been my lighted cigar that guided Eleanor Stanleigh to where I was sitting in the shadows.
How far I was from sharing his real confidence I was to discover later when Eleanor Stanleigh gave me hers. "My wife and niece will be much relieved to hear all this a family matter, you understand, Mr. Barnaby," he had said to me when we landed. "I should like to present you to them before we leave Port Charlotte for home."
I tried to conceive of Leavitt in so monstrous a rôle, tried to imagine the missing Farquharson still in the flesh and beguiling Major Stanleigh and myself with so outlandish a story, devising all that ingenious detail to trick us into a belief in his own death. It would indeed have argued a warped mind, guided by some unfathomable purpose.
I assured Miss Stanleigh that the Sylph was at her service. Mrs. Stanleigh was a large bland woman, inclined to stoutness and to making confidences, with an intense dislike of the tropics and physical discomforts of any sort. How her niece prevailed upon her to make that surreptitious trip to Muloa, which we set out upon two days later, I have never been able to imagine.
It may very likely have been my lighted cigar that guided Eleanor Stanleigh to where I was sitting in the shadows. Her uncle, Major Stanleigh, had left me a few minutes before, and I was glad of the respite from the queer business he had involved me in.
But, as it turned out, it was Eleanor Stanleigh who presented herself, coming upon me quite unexpectedly that night after our return while I sat smoking in the shadowy garden of the Marine Hotel. I had dined with the major, after he had explained that the ladies were worn out by the heat and general developments of the day and had begged to be excused.
Her uncle, Major Stanleigh, had left me a few minutes before, and I was glad of the respite from the queer business he had involved me in. The two of us had returned that afternoon from Muloa, where I had taken him in my schooner, the Sylph, to seek out Leavitt and make some inquiries very important inquiries, it seemed, in Miss Stanleigh's behalf.
But the peril of discovery, the chance that those sleeping below might awaken and hear us, held me in a vise of indecision. "If I could bring myself to reproach you, Captain," he went on, ironically polite, "I might protest that your last visit to this island savored to a too-inquisitive intrusion. You'll pardon my frankness. I had convinced you and Major Stanleigh that Farquharson was dead.
"I shall bless every saint in heaven when we have quite done with this dreadful business of Eleanor's," Mrs. Stanleigh confided to me from her deck-chair. "This trip that she insists on making herself seems quite uncalled for. But you needn't think, Captain Barnaby, that I'm going to set foot on that dreadful island not even for the satisfaction of seeing Mr.
Leavitt most of all." "A queer chap," I epitomized him. "Frankly, I don't quite make him out, Miss Stanleigh marooning himself on that infernal island and seemingly content to spend his days there." "Is he so old?" she caught me up quickly. "No, he isn't," I reflected. "Of course, it's difficult to judge ages out here. The climate, you know. Leavitt's well under forty, I should say.
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