The whaleboat laid alongside the small, coral-stone landing-pier, and
David Grief and his mate stepped ashore.
“You'd think the place deserted,” Grief said, as they walked up a sanded
path to the bungalow. “But I smell a smell that I've often smelled.
Something doing, or my nose is a liar. The lagoon is carpeted with
shell. They're rotting the meat out not a thousand miles away. Get that
whiff?”
Like no bungalow in the tropics was this bungalow of Swithin Hall. Of
mission architecture, when they had entered through the unlatched screen
door they found decoration and furniture of the same mission style. The
floor of the big living-room was covered with the finest Samoan mats.
There were couches, window seats, cozy corners, and a billiard table. A
sewing table, and a sewing-basket, spilling over with sheer linen in the
French embroidery of which stuck a needle, tokened a woman's presence.
By screen and veranda the blinding sunshine was subdued to a cool, dim
radiance. The sheen of pearl push-buttons caught Grief's eye.
“Storage batteries, by George, run by the windmill!” he exclaimed as he
pressed the buttons. “And concealed lighting!”
Hidden bowls glowed, and the room was filled with diffused golden light.
Many shelves of books lined the walls. Grief fell to running over
their titles. A fairly well-read man himself, for a sea-adventurer, he
glimpsed a wide-ness of range and catholicity of taste that were beyond
him. Old friends he met, and others that he had heard of but never read.
There were complete sets of Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Gorky; of Cooper
and Mark Twain; of Hugo, and Zola, and Sue; and of Flaubert, De
Maupassant, and Paul de Koch. He glanced curiously at the pages of
Metchnikoff, Weininger, and Schopenhauer, and wonderingly at those
of Ellis, Lydston, Krafft-Ebbing, and Forel. Woodruff's “Expansion of
Races” was in his hands when Snow returned from further exploration of
the house.
“Enamelled bath-tub, separate room for a shower, and a sitz-bath!” he
exclaimed. “Fitted up for a king! And I reckon some of my money went to
pay for it. The place must be occupied. I found fresh-opened butter and
milk tins in the pantry, and fresh turtle-meat hanging up. I'm going to
see what else I can find.”
Grief, too, departed, through a door that led out of the opposite end
of the living-room. He found himself in a self-evident woman's bedroom.
Across it, he peered through a wire-mesh door into a screened and
darkened sleeping porch. On a couch lay a woman asleep. In the soft
light she seemed remarkably beautiful in a dark Spanish way. By her
side, opened and face downward, a novel lay on a chair. From the
colour in her cheeks, Grief concluded that she had not been long in the
tropics. After the one glimpse he stole softly back, in time to see Snow
entering the living-room through the other door. By the naked arm he was
clutching an age-wrinkled black who grinned in fear and made signs of
dumbness.
“I found him snoozing in a little kennel out back,” the mate said. “He's
the cook, I suppose. Can't get a word out of him. What did you find?”
“A sleeping princess. S-sh! There's somebody now.”
“If it's Hall,” Snow muttered, clenching his fist.
Grief shook his head. “No rough-house. There's a woman here. And if it
is Hall, before we go I'll maneuver a chance for you to get action.”
The door opened, and a large, heavily built man entered. In his belt was
a heavy, long-barrelled Colt's. One quick, anxious look he gave them,
then his face wreathed in a genial smile and his hand was extended.
“Welcome, strangers. But if you don't mind my asking, how, by all that's
sacred, did you ever manage to find my island?”
“Because we were out of our course,” Grief answered, shaking hands.
“My name's Hall, Swithin Hall,” the other said, turning to shake Snow's
hand. “And I don't mind telling you that you're the first visitors I've
ever had.”
“And this is your secret island that's had all the beaches talking for
years?” Grief answered. “Well, I know the formula now for finding it.”
“How's that?” Hall asked quickly.
“Smash your chronometer, get mixed up with a hurricane, and then keep
your eyes open for cocoanuts rising out of the sea.”
“And what is your name?” Hall asked, after he had laughed perfunctorily.
“Anstey--Phil Anstey,” Grief answered promptly. “Bound on the _Uncle
Toby_ from the Gilberts to New Guinea, and trying to find my longitude.
This is my mate, Mr. Gray, a better navigator than I, but who has lost
his goat just the same to the chronometer.”
Grief did not know his reason for lying, but he had felt the prompting
and succumbed to it. He vaguely divined that something was wrong, but
could not place his finger on it. Swithin Hall was a fat, round-faced
man, with a laughing lip and laughter-wrinkles in the corners of his
eyes. But Grief, in his early youth, had learned how deceptive this type
could prove, as well as the deceptiveness of blue eyes that screened the
surface with fun and hid what went on behind.
“What are you doing with my cook?--lost yours and trying to shanghai
him?” Hall was saying. “You'd better let him go, if you're going to have
any supper. My wife's here, and she'll be glad to meet you--dinner, she
calls it, and calls me down for misnaming it, but I'm old fashioned. My
folks always ate dinner in the middle of the day. Can't get over early
training. Don't you want to wash up? I do. Look at me. I've been working
like a dog--out with the diving crew--shell, you know. But of course you
smelt it.”
V
Snow pleaded charge of the schooner, and went on board. In addition to
his repugnance at breaking salt with the man who had robbed him, it was
necessary for him to impress the in-violableness of Grief's lies on the
Kanaka crew. By eleven o'clock Grief came on board, to find his mate
waiting up for him.
“There's something doing on Swithin Hall's island,” Grief said, shaking
his head. “I can't make out what it is, but I get the feel of it. What
does Swithin Hall look like?”
Snow shook his head.
“That man ashore there never bought the books on the shelves,” Grief
declared with conviction. “Nor did he ever go in for concealed lighting.
He's got a surface flow of suavity, but he's rough as a hoof-rasp
underneath. He's an oily bluff. And the bunch he's got with him--Watson
and Gorman their names are; they came in after you left--real sea-dogs,
middle-aged, marred and battered, tough as rusty wrought-iron nails and
twice as dangerous; real ugly customers, with guns in their belts, who
don't strike me as just the right sort to be on such comradely terms
with Swithin Hall. And the woman! She's a lady. I mean it. She knows a
whole lot of South America, and of China, too. I'm sure she's Spanish,
though her English is natural. She's travelled. We talked bull-fights.
She's seen them in Guayaquil, in Mexico, in Seville. She knows a lot
about sealskins.
“Now here's what bothers me. She knows music. I asked her if she played.
And he's fixed that place up like a palace. That being so, why hasn't
he a piano for her? Another thing: she's quick and lively and he watches
her whenever she talks. He's on pins and needles, and continually
breaking in and leading the conversation. Say, did you ever hear that
Swithin Hall was married?”
“Bless me, I don't know,” the mate replied. “Never entered my head to
think about it.”
“He introduced her as Mrs. Hall. And Watson and Gorman call him Hall.
They're a precious pair, those two men. I don't understand it at all.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Snow asked.
“Oh, hang around a while. There are some books ashore there I want to
read. Suppose you send that topmast down in the morning and generally
overhaul. We've been through a hurricane, you know. Set up the rigging
while you're about it. Get things pretty well adrift, and take your
time.”