Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“You can’t leave us in this house alone,” she declared emphatically. “Wherever you go we’re going too!”

Keeping close together, the four of them, for Fifi had suddenly disappeared, made their way outdoors and down the porch steps, where they hesitated a moment, peering into the impenetrable haze, more mysterious than darkness upon their eyes.

“It’s out there,” whispered Percy, facing the sea.

“Forward we go!” muttered Doctor Gallup tensely. “I’m inclined to think this is all a question of nerves.”

They moved slowly and silently along the sand, until suddenly Percy caught hold of the doctor’s arm.

“Listen!” he whispered sharply.

They all became motionless. Out of the neighboring darkness a dim, indistinguishable figure had materialized, walking with unnatural rigidity along the shore. Pressed against his body he carried some long, dark drape that hung almost to the sand. Immediately he disappeared into the mist, to be succeeded by another phantom walking at the same military gait, this one with something white and faintly terrible dangling from his arm. A moment later, not ten yards away from them, in the direction in which the figure had gone, a faint dull glow sprang into life, proceeding apparently from behind the largest of the dunes.