THE GHOST TREE
Claire Standish had followed Brice to the curtained doorway of
the library. She, too, had heard the light step in the hall.
Its sound, and the galvanizing effect it had had on Gavin,
aroused her sharp interest.
She reached the hallway just in time to see Hade swing open
the door and admit the thronging group of sailors from his
yacht.
But not even the sight of Hade, and these ruffians of his,
astounded her as did the action of Gavin Brice.
Brice had been close behind Hade as the door swung wide. His
incipient rush after his enemy had carried him thus far, when
the tables had so suddenly been turned against him and the
Standishes.
Now, without pausing in his onward dash, he leaped past Hade
and straight among the in-pouring sailors.
Hade had not been aware of Brice's presence in the hall. The
sailors' eyes were momentarily dazzled by the brightness of
the lights. Thus, they did not take in the fact of the
plunging figure, in time to check its flight.
Straight through their unprepared ranks Gavin Brice tore his
way. So might a veteran football halfback
smash a path through the rushline of a vastly inferior team.
Hade cried out to his men, and drew his pistol. But even as
he did so, the momentarily glimpsed Gavin was lost to his
view, amid the jostling and jostled sailors.
Past the loosely crowding men, Brice ripped his way, and out
onto the veranda which he cleared at a bound. Then, running
low, but still at top speed, he sped around the bottom of the
porch, past the angle of the house and straight for the far
side.
He did not make for the road, but for the enclosure into which
he had peeped that morning, and for the thick shade which shut
off the moon's light.
Now, he ran with less caution. For, he knew the arrival of so
formidable a body of men must have been enough to send the
Caesars scattering for cover.
Before he reached the enclosure he veered abruptly to one
side, dashing across a patch of moonlit turf, and heading for
the giant live oak that stood gauntly in its center.
Under the "Ghost Tree's" enormous shade he came to a stop,
glancing back to see if the direction of his headlong flight
had been noted. Above him towered the mighty corpse of what
had once been an ancestral tree. He remembered how it had
stood there, bleakly, under the morning sunlight,--its myriad
spreading branches and twigs long since killed by the tons of
parasitical gray moss which festooned its every inch of
surface with long trailing masses of dead fluff.
Not idly had Brice studied that weird tree and its
position. Now, standing beneath its black shade, he drew
forth a matchbox he had taken from the smoking table after
dinner.
Cautiously striking a match and shielding it in his cupped
palms, he applied the bit of fire to the lowest hanging spray
of the avalanche of dead gray moss.
A month of bone-dry weather had helped to make his action a
success. The moss ignited at first touch of the match. Up
along the festoon shot a tongue of red flame. The nearest
adjoining branch's burden of moss caught the fiery breath and
burst into blaze.
With lightning speed, the fire roared upward, the branches to
either side blazing as the outsputtering flames kissed them.
In a little more than a breath, the gigantic tree was a
roaring sheet of red-and-gold-fire, a ninety-foot torch which
sent its flood of lurid light to the skies above and made the
earth for a radius of two hundred yards as bright as day.
Far out to sea that swirling tower of scarlet flame hurled its
illumination. For miles on every hand it could be seen. The
sound of its crackle and hiss and roar was deafening. The
twigs, dry and dead, caught fire from the surrounding blaze of
moss, and communicated their flame to the thicker branches and
to the tree's towering summit.
And thus the fierce vividness of blazing wood was added to the
lighter glare of the inflammable moss.
The spectacle was incredibly beautiful, but still more awesome
and terrifying. The crackle and snap of burning wood broke
forth on the night air like the purr of fifty machine guns.
But Gavin Brice had not waited to gaze on what was perhaps the
most marvelous display of pyrotechnics ever beheld on the
Florida coast. At first touch of flame to the first festoon
of moss, he had taken to his heels.
Claire Standish gazed in unbelieving horror at the seemingly
panic flight of the man who had so strangely dominated her
life and her brother's, during these past few hours. He had
faced death at Rodney Hade's pistol, he had been lazily calm
at the possibility of a rush from the Caesars. He had shown
himself fearless, amusedly contemptuous of danger. Yet here
he was fleeing for his very life and leaving the Standishes at
the mercy of the merciless!
More,--unless she had deceived herself, grossly, Claire had
seen in his eyes the lovelight that all his assumption of
indifference had not been able to quench. She had surprised
it there, not once but a score of times. And it had thrilled
her, unaccountably. Yet, in spite of that, he was deserting
her in her moment of direst peril!
Then, through her soul surged the gloriously, divinely,
illogical Faith that is the God-given heritage of the woman
who loves. And all at once she knew this man had not deserted
her, that right blithely he would lay down his life for her.
That, somehow or other, he had acted for her good. And a
feeling of calm exultation filled her.
Hade stood in the doorway, barking sharp commands to several
of his men, calling to them by name. And at each call, they
obeyed, like dogs at their master's bidding. They dashed off
the veranda, in varying directions, at a lurching run, in
belated pursuit of the fleeing Brice.
Then, for the first time, Hade faced about and confronted the
unflinching girl and Standish who had lumbered dazedly out of
the library and who stood blinking at Claire's side.
Lifting his yachting cap, with exaggerated courtesy, Hade
bowed to them. The eternal smile on his face was intensified,
as he glanced from one to the other of the pair.
"Well," he said, and his black eyes strayed as if by accident
to Claire's face, "our heroic friend seems to have cracked
under the strain, eh? Cut and ran, like a rabbit. Frankly,
my dear Milo, you'd do better to put your reliance on me. A
man who will run away,--with a woman looking on, too--and
leaving you both in the lurch, after promising to--"
There was a clatter on the veranda, and Roke's enormous bulk
shouldered its way through what was left of the group of
sailors, his roustabout costume at ugly variance with their
neat attire.
"Did you find him?" demanded Hade, turning at the sound.
"No!" panted Roke, in keen excitement. "But we'd better clear
out, Boss! All Dade County's liable to be here in another
five minutes. The old Ghost Tree's on fire. Listen! You can
hear--"
He finished his staccato speech by lifting his hand for
silence. And, in the instant's hush could be heard the
distant roar of a million flames.
"He didn't desert us!" cried the girl, in ecstatic triumph.
"I knew he didn't! I knew it! He--"
But Hade did not stop to hear her. At a bound he reached the
veranda and was on the lawn below, running around the side of
the house with his men trailing at his heels.
Out in the open, he halted, staring aghast at the column of
fire that soared heavenward and filled the night with lurid
brightness. Back to him, one by one, came the four sailors he
had sent in pursuit of Gavin. And, for a space, all stood
gazing in silence at the awesome spectacle.
Roke broke the spell by tugging at Hade's coat, and urging
eagerly:
"Best get out, at the double-quick, Boss! This blaze is due
to bring folks a-runnin', an'--!"
"Well?" inquired Hade, impatiently. "What then? They'll find
us looking at a burning tree. Is there any law against that?
I brought you and the crew ashore, to-night, to help shift
some heavy furniture that came from up North last week. On
the way, we saw this tree and stopped to look at it. Where's
the crime in that? You talk like a--"
"But if the Standishes blab--"
"They won't. That Secret Service sneak has bolted. Without
him to put backbone in them, they'll eat out of my hand.
Don't worry. They--"
"Here comes some of the folks, now," muttered Roke, as running
figures began to appear from three sides. "We'd be safer to--"
His warning ended in a gurgle of dismay.
From three points the twenty-five or thirty new arrivals
continued to run forward. But, at a word from some one in
front of them, they changed their direction, and wheeled in
triple column, almost with the precision of soldiers.
The shift of direction brought them converging, not upon the
tree, but upon the group of sailors that stood around Hade.
It was this odd change of course which had stricken Roke dumb.
And now he saw these oncomers were not farmhands or white-clad
neighbors, and that there were no women among them. They were
men in dark clothes, they were stalwart of build and
determined of aspect.. There was a certain confident teamwork
and air of professionalism about them that did not please Roke
at all. Again, he caught at his master's arm. But he was too
late.
Out of nothingness, apparently, darted a small figure,
directly behind the unsuspecting Hade. It was as though he
had risen from the earth itself.
With lightning swiftness, he attached himself to Rodney's
throat and right arm, from behind. Hade gave a convulsive
start, and, with his free hand reached back for his pistol.
At the same time Roke seized the dwarfish stranger.
Then, two things happened, at once.
Roke wallowed backward, faint with pain and with one leg numb
to the thigh, from an adroit smiting of his instep. The
little assailant's heel had come down with trained force on
this nerve center. And, for the moment, Roke was not only in
agony but powerless.
The second thing to happen was a deft twist from the
imprisoning arm that was wrapped around Hade's throat from
behind. At the pressure, Rodney's groping hand fell away from
his pistol pocket, and he himself toppled, powerless, toward
the ground, the skilled wrench of the carotid artery and the
nerves at the side of the throat paralyzing him with pain.
Roke, rolling impotently on the earth, saw the little fellow
swing Hade easily over his shoulder and start for the house.
At the same time, he noted through his semi-delirium of agony
that the stalwart men had borne down upon the knot of gaping
sailors, and, at pistol-muzzle, had disarmed and handcuffed
them.
It was all over in less than, fifteen seconds. But not before
Roke's beach combing wits could come to the aid of his
tortured body. Doubling himself into a muscular ball, he
rolled swiftly under the shadow of a sprawling magnolia
sapling, crouching among the vine roots which surround it.
There, unobserved, he lay, hugging the dark ground as
scientifically as any Seminole, and moving not an eyelash.
From that point of vantage, he saw the dark-clothed men line
up their sullen prisoners and march them off to the road,
where, a furlong below, the fire revealed the dim outlines of
several motor cars. Other men, at the direction of the same
leader who had commanded the advance, trooped toward the
house. And, as this leader passed near the magnolia, Roke
knew him for Gavin Brice.
From the edge of the veranda, Claire and Standish had
witnessed the odd drama. Wordless, stricken dumb with
amazement, they gazed upon the fire-illumined scene. Then,
toiling across the grass toward them came the little man who
had overcome Rodney Hade. On his shoulders, as unconcernedly
as if he were bearing a light sack, he carried the inert body
of his victim. Straight past the staring brother and sister
he went, and around the house to the front steps.
Milo started to follow. But Claire pointed toward a clump of
men who were coming along not far behind the little burden-bearer.
At their head, hurried some one whose figure was silhouetted
against the waning tree-glare. And both the watchers recognized
him.
Nearing the veranda, Brice spoke a few words to the men with
him. They scattered, surrounding the house. Gavin came on
alone. Seeing the man and girl above him, he put his hands up
to the rail and vaulted lightly over it, landing on the floor
beside them.
"Come!" he said, briefly, leading the way around the porch to
the front door.
They followed, reaching the hallway just in time to see the
little man deposit his burden on the couch. And both of them
cried-out in astonishment. For the stripling who had reduced
Rodney Hade to numb paralysis was Sato, their own recreant
Japanese butler.
At sight of them, he straightened himself up from the couch
and bowed. Then, in flawless English,--far
different from the pigeon-talk he had always used for their
benefit,--he said respectfully, to Gavin:
"I brought him here, as you said, sir. He's coming around,
all right. After the pressure is off the carotid, numbness
doesn't last more than two minutes."
"Sato!" gasped Claire, unbelieving, while Milo gurgled,
wordless. The erstwhile butler turned back to the slowly
recovering Hade. Brice laughed at their crass astonishment.
"This is one of the best men in the Service," he explained.
"It was he who took a job under Hade and who got hold of that
raised check. Hade passed him on to you, to spy for him.
He--"
"But," blithered Standish, "I saw him tackle Hade, before all
the crew. He was playing with death. Yet, when you tackled
him, this evening, he was scared helpless."
"He was 'scared' into coming into the room and asking in
Japanese for my orders," rejoined Brice. "I gave the orders,
when you thought I was airing my Jap knowledge by bawling him
out. I told him to collect the men we'd posted, to phone for
others, and to watch for the signal of the burning tree. If
the Caesars weren't going to attack in force, I saw no need in
filling the house with Secret Service agents. But if they
should attack, I knew I could slip out, as far as that tree,
without their catching me. When Hade's tea-party arrived,
instead, I gave the signal. It was Sato who got my message
across to the key, this morning, too. As for my pitching him
out of here, this evening,--well, it was he who taught me all
I know of jiu-jutsu. He used to be champion of Nagasaki. If
he'd chosen to resist, he could have broken my neck in five
seconds. Sato is a wonder at the game."
The Jap grinned expansively at the praise. Then he glanced at
Hade and reported:
"He's getting back his powers of motion, sir. He'll be all
right in another half-minute."
Rodney Hade sat up, with galvanic suddenness, rubbing his
misused throat and darting a swift snakelike glance about him.
His eye fell on the three men between him and the door. Then,
at each of the two hallway windows, he saw other men posted,
on the veranda. And he understood the stark helplessness of
his situation. Once more the masklike smile settled on his
pallid face.
"Mr. Hade," said Brice, "for the second time this evening, I
beg to tell you you are my prisoner. So are your crew. The
house is surrounded. Not by Caesars, this time, but by
trained Secret Service men. I warn you against trying any
charlatan tricks on them. They are apt to be hasty on the
trigger, and they have orders to shoot if--"
"My dear Brice," expostulated Hade, a trifle wearily, "if we
were playing poker, and you held four aces to my two
deuces--would you waste breath in explaining to me that I was
hopelessly beaten? I'm no fool. I gather that you've marched
my men off to jail. May I ask why you made an exception of
me? Why did you bring me back here?"
"Can't you imagine?" asked Brice. "You say you're no fool.
Prove it. Prove it by--"
"By telling you where I have cached as much of the silver as
we've jettisoned thus far?" supplemented Hade. "Of course,
the heroic Standish will show you where the Caesar cache is,
down there in the inlet. But I am the only man who knows
where the three-quarter million or more dollars already
salvaged, are salted down. And you brought me here to argue
me into telling? May I ask what inducements you offer?"
"Certainly," said Gavin, without a moment's hesitation.
"Though I wonder you have not guessed them."
"Lighter sentence, naturally," suggested Hade. "But is that
all? Surely it's a piker price for Uncle Sam to pay for a
gift of nearly a million dollars. Can't you better it?"
"I am not the court," returned Brice, nettled. "But I think I
can promise you a fifty per cent reduction in what would be
the average sentence for such an offense, and a lighter job in
prison than falls to the lot of most Federal criminals."
"Good," approved Hade, adding: "But not good enough. I'm
still in the thirties. I'm tougher of constitution than I
look. They can't sentence me for more than a span of years.
And when my term is up, I can enjoy the little batch of 1804
dollars I've laid by. I think I'll take my chance, unless you
care to raise the ante."
Brice glanced around at the men who stood on the veranda.
Then he lowered his voice, so as not to be heard by them.
"You are under courtmartial sentence of death as a spy, Mr.
Hade," he whispered. "The war is over. That sentence won't
be imposed, in full, I imagine, in times of peace. But your
war record will earn you an extra sentence that will come
close to keeping you in Atlanta Penitentiary for life. I
believe I am the only member of the Department who knows that
Major Heidenhoff of the Wilhelmstrasse and Rodney Hade are the
same man. If I can be persuaded to keep that knowledge from
my superiors, in return for full information as to where the
1804 dollars are cached--those you've already taken from the
inlet--and if the mortgage papers on this place are
destroyed--well--?"
"H'm!" mused Hade, his black eyes brooding and speculative.
"H'm! That calls for a bit of rather careful weighing. How
much time will you give me to think it over and decide? A
week?"
"Just half an hour," retorted Gavin. "My other men, who took
your silly band of cutthroats to jail, ought to be back by
then. I am waiting here till they report, and no longer. You
have half an hour. And I advise you to make sane use of it."
Hade got slowly to his feet. The smile was gone from his
lips. His strange black eyes looked indescribably tired and
old. There was a sag to his alert figure.
"It's hard to plan a coup like mine," he sighed, "and then to
be bilked by a man with not one-tenth my brain. Luck was with
you. Blind luck. Don't imagine you've done this by your
wits."
As he spoke he shuffled heavily to the adjoining music-room, and
let his dreary gaze stray toward its two windows. On the veranda,
framed in the newly unshuttered window-space, stood four Secret
Service men, grimly on guard.
Hade strode to one window after the other, with the cranky
mien and action of a thwarted child, and slammed the shutters
together, barring out the sinister sight of his guards. Gavin
did not try to prevent him from this act of boyish spite. The
master-mind's reaction, in its hour of brokenness, roused his
pity.
From the windows, Hade's gloomy eyes strayed to the piano. On
it lay a violin case. He picked it up and took out an
age-mellowed violin.
"I think clearer when I play," he said, glumly, to Brice.
"And I've nearly a million dollars' worth of thinking to do in
this half hour. Is it forbidden to fiddle? Milo's father
paid $4,000 for this violin. It's a genuine Strad. And it
gives me peace and clear vision. May I play, or--?"
"Go ahead, if you want to," vouchsafed Gavin, fancying he read
the attempt of a charlatan to remain picturesque to the end.
"Only get your thinking done, and come to a decision before
the half hour is up. And, by the way, let me warn you again
that those men out there have orders to shoot, if you make a
move to escape."
"No use in asking you to play my accompaniments, Claire?"
asked Hade, in pathetic attempt at gayety as he walked to the
hallway door. "No? I'm sorry. Nobody else ever played them
as you do."
He tried to smile. The effort was a failure. He yanked the
curtains shut that hung between music room and hall. Then,
at a gesture from Gavin, he pulled them halfway open again, and,
standing in the doorway, drew his bow across the strings.
Gavin sat down on the long hall couch, a yard outside the
music-room door, beside Claire and the still stupefied Milo.
The Jap took up his position back of them, alert and tense as
a fox terrier. The three Secret Service men in the front
doorway stood at attention, yet evidently wondering at the
prisoner's queer freak.
From under the deftly wielded bow, the violin wailed forth
into stray chords and phrases, wild, unearthly, discordant.
Hade, his face bent over the instrument, swayed in time with
its undisciplined rhythm.
Then, from dissonance and incoherence, the music merged into
Gounod's Ave Maria. And, from swaying, Hade began to walk.
To and fro, urged by the melody, his feet strayed. Now he was
in full view, between the half-open curtains. Now, he was
hidden for an instant, and then he was crossing once more
before the opening.
His playing was exquisite. More--it was authoritative,
masterly, soaring. It gripped the hearers' senses and
heartstrings. The beauty and dreaminess of the Ave Maria
flooded the air with loveliness. Brice listened, enthralled.
Down Claire's cheek rolled a teardrop, of whose existence she
was not even aware.
The last notes of the melody throbbed away. Brice drew a long
breath. Then, at once the violin spoke again. And now it sang
forth into the night, in the Schubert Serenade,--gloriously sweet,
a surge of passionate tenderness.
Back and forth, under the spell of his own music, wandered
Hade. Then he stopped. Gavin leaned forward. He saw that
Hade was leaning against the piano, as he played. His head
was bowed over the instrument as though in reverence. His
black eyes were dreamy and exalted. Gavin sat back on the
couch and once more gave himself over to the mystic
enthrallment of the music. The Serenade wailed itself into
silence with one last hushedly exquisite tone. Brice drew a
long breath, as of a man coming out of a trance.
Simon Cameron had jumped into Claire's lap. But, receiving no
attention from the music-rapt girl, the cat now dropped to the
floor, and started toward the stairs.
At the same time, the violin sounded anew. And Gavin frowned
in disappointment. For, no longer was it singing its heart
out in the magic of an immortal melody. Instead, it swung
into the once-popular strains of "Oh, Promise Me!"
And now it seemed as though Hade were wantonly making fun of
his earlier beautiful playing and of the effect he must have
known it had had upon his hearers. For he played heavily,
monotonously, more like a dance-hall soloist than a master.
And, as though his choice of an air were not sharp enough
contrast to his other selections, he strummed amateurishly and
without a shred of technique or of feeling.
Jarring as was the result upon Brice, it seemed even
more so on Simon Cameron. The cat had stopped in his progress
toward the stairs, and now stared round-eyed at the music-room
doorway, his absurd little nostrils sniffing the air. Then,
deliberately, Simon Cameron walked to the doorway and sat down
there, his huge furry tail curled around round him, staring
with idiotic intentness at the player.
Gavin noted the cat's odd behavior. Simon Cameron was far too
familiar with Hade's presence in the house to give Rodney a
second glance. Indeed, he had only jumped up into Claire's
lap, because the fascinatingly new Secret Service men at the
front door smelt strongly of tobacco,--the smell a Persian cat
hates above all others. But now, he was gazing in delighted
interest at the violinist.
At the sight, a wild conjecture flashed into Gavin's brain.
With a sharp order to the Jap, he sprang up and rushed into
the music room.
Leaning against the piano, playing the rebellious violin, was--Roke!
Rodney Hade had vanished.
The windows were still shuttered. No other door gave exit
from the music room. There were no hangings, except the
door-curtains, and there was no furniture behind which a child
could hide unseen. Yet Hade was no longer there.
Roke laid aside his violin, at sight of Gavin and the Jap. At
the former's exclamation of amaze, two more of the Secret
Service men left their post at the front door and ran in. The
tramp of their hurrying feet made the guards outside the open
windows of the music room fling wide the closed shutters.
Clearly, Hade had not escaped past them.
Folding his arms, and grinning impudently at the astounded
cordon of faces, Roke drawled:
"I just dropped in to say 'Howdy' to Mr. Standish. Nobody was
around. So I made bold to pick up the fiddle and have a
little spiel. I ain't done any harm, and there's nothing
you-all can hold me on."
For ten seconds nobody answered. Nobody spoke or moved.
Then, Gavin Brice's face went crimson with sudden fury at his
own outwitting. He recalled the musical afternoon at
Roustabout Key which his presence had interrupted, and Roke's
fanatical devotion to Hade.
"I begin to understand," he said, his voice muffled in an
attempt to subdue his anger. "You and Hade were fond of the
violin, eh? And for some reason or other you long ago worked
up a series of signals on it, as the mind-reader with the
guitar-accompanist used to do in the vaudeville shows. Those
discordant phrases he started off with were your signal to
come to the rescue. And you came. But how did you come? And
how did he go? Both by the same way, of course. But--there
isn't even a chimney-piece in the room."
Once more, Roke grinned broadly. "I ain't seen hide nor hair
of Mr. Hade, not since this afternoon," said he. "I been
spendin' the evenin' over to Landon's. Landon is a tryin' to
sell me his farm. Says the soil on it is so rich that he
ships carloads of it up North, to use for fertilizer. Says--"
"Sato!" broke in Brice. "Can you make him talk? Miss
Standish, will you please go somewhere else for five minutes?
This is not going to be a pretty sight."
As the girl turned, obediently yet reluctantly, from the room,
the Jap, with a smile of perfect bliss on his yellow face,
advanced toward Roke.
The big man wheeled, contemptuously, upon him. Sato sprang at
him. With a hammerlike fist, Roke smote at the oncoming
pigmy. The arm struck, to its full length. But it did not
reach its mark, nor return to the striker's side. By a
queerly crablike shift of his wiry body, the Jap had eluded
the blow, and had fastened upon the arm, above the elbow and
at the wrist.
A cross-pull wrench of the Jap's body brought a howl of pain
from Roke and sent him floundering helplessly to his knees,
while the merest leverage pressure from his conqueror held him
there. But the Jap was doing more. The giant's arm was
bending backward and sideways at an impossible angle. Nor
could its owner make a move to avert the growing unbearable
torture. It was one of the simplest, yet one of the most
effective and agonizing, holds in all jiujutsu.
Thirty seconds of it, and Roke's bull-like endurance went to
pieces under the strain. Raucously and blubberingly he
screeched for mercy. The Jap continued happily to exert the
cross-pull pressure.
"Will you speak up?" queried Brice, sickened at the sight, but
steeling himself with the knowledge of the captive's crimes
and of the vast amount at stake.
Roke rolled his eyes horribly, grinding his yellowed teeth
together to check his own cries. Then, sobbingly, he blurted:
"Yes! Lemme loose!"
"Not till you tell," refused Gavin. "Quick, now!"
"Second panel from left-hand window," moaned the stricken and
anguished Roke. "Push beading up and then to right. He's--he's
safe away, by now, anyway," he blubbered, in self-justification
of the confession which agony had wrung from him. "All you'll
get is the--the--"
And, the pain having eaten into his very brain, he yelled
incoherently.
Ten minutes later, Milo Standish sought out his sister, in the
upper room whither she had fled, in fear, to escape from the
racket of Roke's outcries.
"Listen!" he jabbered boyishly, in utter excitement. "Brice
made him tell how Rodney got out! How d'you s'pose? One of
the old panels, in the music room, slides back, and there's a
flight of stone steps down to a cellar that's right alongside
our regular cellar, with only a six inch cement-and-lath wall
between. It leads out, to the tunnel. Right at that turn
where the old-time shoring is. The shoring hides a little
door. And we never dared move the props because we thought it
held up the tunnel-roof. It's all part of the old
Indian-shelter stunts that this house's builders were so daft
about, a hundred years ago. Hade must have blundered on it or
studied it out, one of those times when he used to go poking
around in the tunnel, all by himself. And--"
"Did Mr. Brice find him?" interposed Claire.
"Not he!" said Milo, less buoyantly. "Rodney had a good ten
minutes start of us. And with a start like that, they'll never
lay hands on him again. He's got too much cleverness and he
knows too many good hiding places. But Brice found the next best
thing. You'd never guess! Rodney's secret cache for the treasure
was that walled-up cellar. It's half full of canvas bags. Right
under our feet, mind you, and we never knew a thing about it. I
supposed he was shipping it North in some way. Roke says that
Rodney kept it there because, when he got it all, he was going to
foreclose and kick us out, and then dispose of it at his leisure.
The swine!"
"Oh!"
"The crypt seems to have been a part of our own cellar till it
was walled off. It--"
"But how in the world did Roke?"
"He was with the crew. Rodney and he went together to the
yacht for them. The Secret Service men didn't get him, in the
round-up. He crept as close to the house as he dared. And he
heard Rodney sounding the signal alphabet they had worked up,
on the violin. He got into the tunnel and so to the cellar,
and then sneaked up, and took Rodney's place at fiddling. He
seems to have been as willing to sacrifice himself for his
master as any dog would have been. Or else he counted on
Brice's not having any evidence to hold him on.
"By the way, do you remember that conch, Davy, over at
Roustabout Key? Brice says he's a Secret Service man. He and
Brice used to fish together, off the keys, when they were
boys. Davy volunteered for the war. And Brice made good use
of him, over there, and got him into the Secret Service when
they came back. It's all so queer--so--!"
"Is Mr. Brice still downstairs?" interrupted Claire, her eyes
straying involuntarily toward the door of the room.
"No. He had to go. He left his good-byes for you. His work
here is done. And he has to start for Washington on the 2
A.M. train from Miami. By the way, the best part of it all
is that he says a fugitive from justice can't bring legal
proceedings in a civil court. So Rodney can never foreclose
on us or take up those notes of mine. Lord, but that chap,
Brice, is a wonder!"
Vital as was the news about the notes and the mortgage, Claire
scarce heard it. In, her ears, and through the brain and
heart of her, rang drearily the words:
"He had to go. He left his good-byes for you. His work here
is done."
His work was done! Yes. But was that to be all? Had the
light in his eyes and the vibrant tremor in his voice as he
talked with her--had these been part of his "work," too? Was
it all to end, like this,--and before it had begun?
To her own surprise and to her brother's greater astonishment,
the usually self-contained Claire Standish burst into a
tempest of weeping.
"Poor, poor little girl!" soothed Milo. "It's all been too
much for you! No one could have stood up under such a strain.
I'll tell you what we're going to do: We're going to Miami,
for a week or two, and have a jolly time and make you try to
forget all this mystery and excitement. We'll go to-morrow
morning, if you say so."
The Miami season was at its climax. The half-moon driveway
outside the front entrance to the Royal Palm Hotel was crowded
thick with waiting motor cars, whose occupants were at the
hotel's semi-weekly dance. On the brightlit front veranda men
in white and in dinner-clothes and women in every hue of
evening dress were passing to and fro. Elderly folk, sitting
in deep porch chairs, watched through the long windows the
gayly-moving dancers in the ballroom. Out through wide-open
doors and windows pulsed the rhythmic music.
Above hung the great white stars in the blue-black Southern
skies. The bay stretched glimmering and phosphorescent away
from the palm-girt hotel gardens. The trade-winds set the
myriad dry palm-fronds to rustling like the downpour of summer
rain.
Up the steps from the gardens drifted promenaders and dancers,
in groups or in twos and threes. Then, up the stairway moved
a slender, white-clad figure, alone.
Claire Standish had sought to do as her brother had wished,
and to forget, in the carefree life of the White City, the
happenings she had been through. Dutifully she had come to
Miami with him. Dutifully, for the past three days, she had
joined him in such gayeties as he had suggested. Dutifully,
to-night, she had come with him to this dance. And all the
time her heart had been as heavy as lead.
Now, getting rid of her partner on some pretext, she had gone
out into the softly illumined gardens to be alone with the
yearning and heartache she could not shake off. Then, fearing
lest Milo, or some other of the men she knew, might come in
search of her and wonder at her desire to mope alone under the
stars, she had turned back to the hotel.
As she mounted the last stair to the veranda, a man in dinner
clothes stepped forward from one of the porch's great white
pillars, and advanced to meet her.
"There's a corner table at the Cafe de la Paix, in Paris," he
greeted her, striving to control his voice and to speak
lightly, "that every one on earth must pass by, sooner or
later. The front veranda of the Royal Palm is like that.
Soon or late, everybody crosses it. When I got back this
afternoon, I heard you had left home and that you were
somewhere in Miami. I couldn't find you. So I came here--and
waited."
Claire had halted, at first sound of Gavin Brice's pleasantly
slow voice, and she stood facing him, wide-eyed and pale, her
breath failing.
"I had to go to Washington to make my report," said he,
speaking low and fast. "I came back to you by the first train
I could catch. Didn't you know I would?"
"Yes," she breathed, her gaze still lost in his. "Yes. I--I
knew."
And now she realized she had known, even while she had told
herself she would never see him again.
"Come!" he said, gently, holding out his hand to her.
Unashamed, under the battery of a hundred curious eyes, she
clasped the proffered hand. And, together, they turned back
toward the sheltering dimness of the gardens.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Black Caesar's Clan, by Albert Payson Terhune