Stranded in Arcady — Context and Discussion

There was no break in the encircling forest, and at the end of the mile they came to a deeply indented bay, where the continuing shore was in plain view for a doubling of another mile. The search for inhabitants seeming to promise nothing in this direction, they turned and retraced their steps to the breakfast camp, still puzzling over the tangle of mysteries.

"Can't you think of _any_ way of accounting for it?" the young woman urged for the twentieth time in the puzzlings.

"I can think of a million ways--all of them blankly impossible," said Prime. "It's simply a chaotic joke!"

The young woman shook her head. "I have lost my sense of humor," she confessed, adding: "I shall go stark, staring mad if we can't find out something!"

More to keep things from going from bad to worse than for any other reason, Prime suggested a walk in the opposite direction--southward from the breakfast camp. While they were still within sight of the ashes of the breakfast fire they made a discovery. The loose beach sand was tracked back and forth, and in one place there were scorings as if some heavy body had been dragged. Just beyond the footprints there were wheel tracks, beginning abruptly and ending in the same manner a hundred yards farther along. The wheel tracks were parallel but widely separated, ill-defined in the loose sand but easily traceable.

"A wagon?" questioned the young woman.

"No," said Prime soberly; "it was--er--it looks as if it might have been an aeroplane."

LUCETTA MILLINGTON--she had told Prime her name on the tramp to the northward--sat down in the sand, elbows on knees and her chin propped in her hands.

"You say 'aeroplane' as if it suggested something familiar to you, Mr. Prime," she prompted.

Truly it did suggest something to Prime, and for a moment his mouth went dry. Grider, the man he was to have met in Quebec, was a college classmate, a harebrained young barbarian, rich, an outdoor fanatic, an owner of fast yachts, a driver of fast cars, and latterly a dabbler in aviatics. Idle enough to be full of extravagant fads and fancies, and wealthy enough to indulge them, this young barbarian made friends of his enemies and enemies of his friends with equal facility--the latter chiefly through the medium of conscienceless practical jokes evolved from a Homeric sense of humor too ruthless to be appreciated by mere twentieth-century weaklings.

Prime had more than once been the good-natured victim of these jokes, and his heart sank within him. It was plain now that they had both been conveyed to this outlandish wilderness in an aircraft of some sort, and there was little doubt in his mind that Grider had been at the controls.

"It's a--it's a joke, just as I have been trying to tell you," he faltered at length. "We have been kidnapped, and I'm awfully afraid I know the man who did it," and thereupon he gave her a rapid-fire sketch of Grider and Grider's wholly barbarous and irresponsible proclivities.

Miss Millington heard him through without comment, still with her chin in her hands.

"You are standing there and telling me calmly that he did this--this unspeakable thing?" she exclaimed when the tale was told. Then, after a momentary pause: "I am trying to imagine the kind of man who could be so ferociously inhuman. Frankly, I can't, Mr. Prime."

"No, I fancy you can't; I couldn't imagine him myself, and I earn my living by imagining people--and things. Grider is in a class by himself. I have always told him that he was born about two thousand years too late. Back in the time of Julius Caesar, now, they might have appreciated his classic sense of humor."

He stole a glance at the impassive face framed between the supporting palms. It was evident that Miss Millington was freezing silently in a heroic effort to restrain herself from bursting into flames of angry resentment.

"You may enjoy having such a man for your friend," she suggested with chilling emphasis, "but I think there are not very many people who would care to share him with you. Perhaps you have done something to earn the consequences of this wretched joke, but I am sure _I_ haven't. Why should he include me?"

Prime suspected that he knew this, too, and he had to summon all his reserves of fortitude before he could bring himself to the point of telling her. Yet it was her due.