“I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Vandermeulen, querulously timid. “Do tear it up, William! I am sure harm will come of it!--It is the Devil tempting you!”
“So long as he’s serious, he can tempt me sure easy!” said the old ruffian in a tone of cool blasphemy which sent the colour out of his wife’s face. He rang the bell and the negro steward appeared. “Sam! Ask Captain Higgins to step in here for a moment!”
Captain Higgins, the skipper of the yacht, was a level-headed mariner of middle age whom nothing ever ruffled. He was competence itself.
“Good evening, Captain Higgins,” said old Vandermeulen, fixing him with the keen eyes under shaggy gray brows, eyes which defied you to divine his purpose whilst they probed yours. “What’s the latitude and longitude of the island of St. Lucia?”
“Fourteen North, sixty-one West,” replied Captain Higgins promptly.
“Then it’s not St. Lucia, young man,” he said. He picked up Geoffrey’s transcription. “Well, now, Captain Higgins, is there any place thirteen-twenty-four North, eighty-one twenty-seven West?”
“No place of importance, certainly. I’ll get the chart.”
He returned with it, spread it out on the saloon table, ran his forefinger across it.
“Here you are!” he said. “A small island called Old Providence. It belongs to Colombia.”
Geoffrey, who was peering over his shoulder, uttered a startled exclamation.
“And look!” he cried. “There’s your Katalina!” He pointed to a small islet just north of Old Providence, a mere dot on the chart. “Santa Katalina!--My hat! that is weird!”
It certainly was. From whatever stratum of Pauline’s consciousness her writing had emanated, it was an amazing thing that she should have written down the exact latitude and longitude of a tiny island off the Nicaraguan coast and named it correctly. Even I could not help feeling that it was more than a fortuitous coincidence, that it was uncanny. The others surrendered themselves straight away.
I turned to look at Pauline. She was deathly white; evidently frightened at being made the vehicle of this message from the beyond. Her mother clutched at her, as though protecting her from unseen dangers. Geoffrey’s imagination had caught fire, his eyes were bright with excitement.
“My sakes! Pauline!” he cried. “I believe you now! You couldn’t have written that out of your head. I’ve read of things like this before--I guess you’re a medium and didn’t know it!--Father! We’ll track this message down, wherever it comes from, say now?”