Stellan put on an old oilskin and went up on the captain’s bridge:
“Are you quite sure of the chart?” he asked the man at the wheel.
“Yes, sir, I was born in this neighbourhood.”
Between the seas Stellan took the opportunity of looking down into the engine room. Because he had his suspicions of Laura’s vibration. The mechanic, who was a handsome dark youth, might also have something to do with it.
Stellan was an old gambler, who was very frightened of leaving anything to chance.
The rocking of the boat soon made Laura leave the fumes from the engine room and quietly creep into the saloon.
They were approaching Järnö. Tall and foreboding rose the dark, rusty-looking hill surmounted by its log castle. The boat steered straight for the entrance to the harbour.
Was the madman really going to shoot? Not even through his Feiss-glasses could Stellan distinguish any sign of life.
Bang! A shot rang out above the lapping of the waves but nobody saw where it went.
“One ought to come here in warships,” the man mumbled.
Stellan slowed down. They slipped under the lee of the hill beside a dilapidated old shed.
Another shot of welcome! This time the shot struck only a few yards to starboard. But it was impossible to discover who had fired it.
Laura cried out that she wanted to go back. Stellan looked as if he felt sick. He waved a handkerchief eagerly as a flag of truce. There were no more shots. The boat floated quietly in towards a tumbledown fishing pier. But still no living soul was visible.
Stellan had some trouble in getting Laura out of the saloon. Not that he had any illusions about Tord’s chivalry, but he felt safer all the same when he had her with him. Silent and hesitating they went ashore, still with the reports of the shots on their nerves. They passed through an old field which was now running wild and full of little shoots of birches and aspens, then they cut across a little garden quite overgrown with pestilence weed out of which a few half suffocated black currant bushes stretched up their arms like drowning people, whilst the poor naked apple trees writhed in grey despair in front of a rotting cottage wall with broken windows and grass-grown porch. Nature crept in over the work of man and began to resume its power. Over the whole there lay, in the gloomy autumn day, an indescribable odour of dampness, decay and dismal neglect.
Shivering, Laura and Stellan took the path up the hill. Up there, whipped by the winds, the big house lay with its weathered logs, surrounded by a litter of empty tins and broken bottles.
Nobody came out when Stellan knocked. The door was not locked and they walked in. The big hall was cold, dirty and filled with a strange smell of animals. The whole house shook in the gale, and on the windows towards the north a pine branch knocked persistently as if the wind wished to enter as a guest.
They cautiously penetrated further. On one of the folding beds in the bedroom something lay huddled up under a reindeer skin. It moved when Laura lifted the fur rug and an untidy head peeped out. It was Dagmar. She stared in dull amazement at the visitors, without recognizing them.
“I am Laura … Laura Selamb … and this is Stellan.”
“Oh, I see, it’s you. …”
Dagmar crept down. She was dressed in some grey rags. She had the grey complexion of the really poor, she looked emaciated, worn out. She gave at the same time the horrible and pitiful impression of a starved and tormented woman. She shook herself, and her teeth chattered:
“I am lying down as I am not quite well.”
“We wanted to speak to Tord,” said Stellan. “Where is he?”
Dagmar’s face hardened:
“I don’t know at all.”
“He greeted us with his gun, so he must be in the neighbourhood.”
“I suppose he ran away when he recognized you. He is not very fond of visitors.”
Then Dagmar suddenly approached Laura and stroked the smooth sleeve of her raincoat timidly, like a frightened dog:
“Goodness, how pretty you are! Do you know I have not talked to a woman for several years.”
Laura shrugged her shoulders and giggled:
“Well, that is nothing to long for.”
An expression of terror suddenly came over Dagmar’s face.
“You must be hungry,” she mumbled. “And I have only got a little salted herring.”
Stellan went out and blew three short sharp signals on a whistle. Then he returned.
“Don’t trouble about food,” he said. “My men will bring up all we need. But how shall we get hold of Tord?”
“Oh, he has not eaten anything today, and when he is hungry he will come and feed out of your hand.”
The men soon arrived carrying up boxes of food and wine. Dagmar excused herself for a moment and dived into a wardrobe to make herself smart. … She returned dressed in an old-fashioned, frayed red silk frock which hung round her thin body. But there still glimmered a last spark of beauty in her features.
When dinner was over she went out into the porch and hammered a broken zinc tub with a poker and shouted into the forest:
“Food, food, food!”
It sounded like the cry of an angry bird through the roaring of the wind.
Tord did not come.
“Well, then we can eat without the beast,” said Dagmar.
Her eyes suddenly grew wet as she sank down by the dazzlingly white tablecloth. Such a lot of lovely food—so many fine bottles! And then there was the man with “Rapid” in white letters across his jersey, just like a footman behind her chair! And then Laura’s jewels and Stellan’s yachting suit!
“Goodness me,” she mumbled. “Goodness me!”
And then she drank her first cocktail.
Stellan pointed to Tord’s empty chair:
“How has our amiable host got into the habit of shooting at people who call on him?”
Dagmar quickly drank her second cocktail. A wild smile lit up her face like lightning:
“He is afraid
