Free Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 by John Dickson Carr

with a covered table, a rack of cues, and a padded seat under the two windows facing front. With a conspiratorial air their guide led the way through it into the farthermost room on the top floor at the front of the north wing.
    A lumber-room of dingy white-plaster walls and bare board floor, it was as littered with old trunks, with discarded household effects, as the other rooms had been swept and neat. Unlike study or billiard-room, there was an air-conditioner in neither of two windows. Both were open, with fine-mesh screens hooked into place.
    "The rain has stopped," said Henry Maynard. "It lasted hardly more than ten minutes, as I predicted; the sun is coming out. Look here!"
    He bustled to the far window, and put the tip of an extended forefinger against the wire screen.
    "There is Fort Sumter, Dr. Fell."
    "Where?"
    "Where I am pointing. Over the top of that flagstaff below the window, take a line bearing slightly left out across the harbor. You see the smallish dark-gray mass against the water? One moment!"
    Opening the top of a cabin trunk near the window, he fished out a pair of heavy field-glasses in their leather case. He took the glasses from the case and handed them to Dr. Fell.
    "Put these to your eyes; adjust the focus . . ."
    "The focus, sir, is already adjusted."
    "Then take the line I have indicated. Move the glasses to your left. . .so! Have you got it now?"
    "Oh, ah!" Dr. Fell was puffing with concentration. "I have got the fort; I see it clearly. Some kind of small steamer appears to be drawing away from it"
    "That's the excursion-steamer returning. You would have been too late for it today in any case; it leaves the Municipal Yacht Basin at two o'clock. You can always go tomorrow, of course. Meanwhile, if a distant view will suffice . . . ?"
    "The distant view," said Dr. Fell, "will do admirably. Harrumph! A Union officer named Major Anderson, I understand, surrendered Fort Sumter to the Confederates in April of '61? When did Federal forces retake it?"
    "They never did 'retake' it in the sense you mean."
    "Oh?"
    "At the beginning of '65 the fort was a wreck. It had been under heavy bombardment for almost two years, notably from a monster Parrott gun on Cummings Point. But it was still defensible, with a garrison of six hundred. In February Sherman marched north from Georgia. Sumter's garrison, fearing they might be cut off if Sherman struck at Charleston—which he never did—slipped out and joined what remained of the Confederate Army. And Brigadier General Anderson, formerly Major Anderson, returned to raise the flag he had lowered four years before."
    Henry Maynard swept out his hand.
    "I set little store by history, gentlemen. The past is dead; let it remain buried; don't rattle the bones! And yet certain comments are called for."
    "What comments, sir?"
    "To the Union, from the very start of the war, Charleston and Fort Sumter had been symbols of Southern defiance they would have given anything to recapture. And they were always trying.
    "But by water they hadn't a hope. Any attacking ship could be caught in a murderous crossfire between Sumter and Moultrie. In April of '63 Admiral Du Pont tried to force a passage with nine Federal Ironclads. The ironclads took a beating without even getting close; five were disabled and one destroyed. This led to the combined land-and-sea attack by General Gillmore and Admiral Dahlgren. In August they tried again with ironclads; again they failed, as they failed in every direction until the defenders had abandoned all works. Your own comments, Dr. Fell?"
    Dr. Fell lowered the glasses and straightened up.
    "For one so scornful of the past, sir," he said, "you seem remarkably well informed about it."
    "I am conscientious; no more than that. I consider it my duty to be informed."
    "And have you no other duty?"
    "To whom?"
    "Come!" Dr. Fell inclined his head towards the window. "Look down there, I beg, much closer at hand than Fort Sumter."
    "Yes?"
    "There is the beach