For a period of perhaps twenty seconds the man and the girl remained
moveless, eyeing one another; she on the floor, pale, stunned and
pitiful, for the instant bereft of every sense save that of terror; he
in the doorway, alert, fully the master of his concentrated faculties,
swayed by two emotions only--a malignant temper bred of the night's
succession of reverses capped by the drunkenness of his caretaker, and
an equally malignant sense of triumph that he had returned in time to
crush the girl's attempt to escape.
He threw the door wide open and took a step into the room, putting away
his pistol.
"So--" he began in a cutting voice.
But his movement had acted as the shock needed to rouse the girl out of
her stupor of despair. With a cry she gathered herself together and
jumped to her feet. He put forth a hand as if to catch her, and she
leaped back. Her skirts swept the lamp on the floor and overturned it
with a splintering crash. Instinctively she sprang away--in the nick of
time.
She caught a look of surprise and fright in the eyes of the man as they
glared past her in the ghastly glow of the flickering wick, and took
advantage of this momentary distraction to leap past him. As she did so
there was a slight explosion. A sheet of flaming kerosene spread over
the floor and licked the chairboarding.
Ismay jumped back, mouthing curses; the girl had already slipped out of
the room. Turning, he saw her flying through the hall toward the main
door. In a fit of futile, childish spite, unreasonable and unreasoning,
he whipped out his pistol and sent a bullet after her.
She heard it whine near her head and crash through the glass panes of
the door. And she heard herself cry out in a strange voice. The next
instant she had flung open the door and thrown herself out, across the
veranda and down the steps. Then turning blindly to the left, instinct
guiding her to seek temporary safety by hiding in the wilderness of the
dunes, she blundered into somebody's arms.
She was caught and held fast despite her struggles to free herself: to
which, believing herself to be in the hands of Mrs. Clover or her
husband, she gave all her strength.
At the same time the first-floor windows of the hotel were illumined by
an infernal glare. All round her there was lurid light, setting
everything in sharp relief. The face of the man who held her was
suddenly revealed; and it was her father's.... She had left him inside
the building and now ... She was assailed with a terrifying fear that
she had gone mad. In a frenzy she wrenched herself free; but only to be
caught in other arms.
A voice she knew said soothingly: "There, Miss Searle--you're all right
now...."
Staff's voice and, when she twisted to look, Staff's face, friendly and
reassuring!
"Don't be afraid," he was saying; "we'll take care of you now--your
father and I."
"My father!" she gasped. "My father is in there!"
"No," said Iff at her side. "Believe me, he isn't. That, dear, is your
fondly affectionate Uncle Arbuthnot--and between the several of us I
don't mind telling you that he's stood in my shoes for the last time."
"But I don't," she stammered--"I don't understand--"
"You will in a minute," Staff told her gently. At the same time he
lifted his voice. "Look out, Iff--look out!"
He strove to put himself between the girl and danger, making a shield of
his body. But with a supple movement she eluded him.
She saw in the doorway of the burning house the man she had thought to
be her father. The other man, he whose daughter she really was, had
started to run toward the veranda steps. The man in the doorway flung up
his hand and, clear and vicious above the crackling of the flames, she
heard the short song of a Colt automatic--six shots, so close upon one
another that they were as one prolonged.
There was a spatter of bullets in the sandy ground about them; and then,
with scarcely an appreciable interval, a second flutter of an automatic.
This time the reports came from the pistol in Iff's hand. He was
standing in full glare at the bottom of the veranda steps, aiming with
great composure and precision.
The figure in the doorway reeled as if struck by an axe, swung half-way
round and tottered back into the house. The little man below the veranda
steps delayed only long enough to pluck out the empty clip from the butt
of his pistol and slip another, loaded, into its place. Then with
cat-like agility he sprang up the steps and dived into the furnace-like
interior of the hotel. A third stuttering series of reports saluted
this action, and then there was a short pause ended by a single shot.
"Come," said Staff. He took her arm gently. "Come away...."
Shuddering, she suffered him to lead her a little distance into the
dunes. Here he released her.
"If you won't mind being left alone a few minutes," he said, "I'll go
back and see what's happened. You'll be perfectly safe here, I fancy."
"Please," she said breathlessly--"do go. Yes, please."
She urged him with frantic gestures....
He hurried back to the front of the hotel. By now it was burning like a
bonfire; already, short as had been the time since the overturning of
the lamp, the entire ground floor with the exception of one wing was a
roaring welter of flames, while the fire had leaped up the main
staircase and set its signals in the windows of the upper story.
Iff was standing at some distance from the main entrance, having pushed
his way through the tangle of undergrowth to escape the scorching heat
that emanated from the building. He caught sight of Staff approaching
and waved a hand to him.
"Greetings!" he cried cheerfully, raising his voice to make it heard
above the voice of the conflagration.
"Where's Nelly?"
Staff explained. "But what about Ismay?" he demanded.
Iff grinned and hung his head as if embarrassed, rubbing a handkerchief
over the smoke-stained fingers of his right hand.
"I got him," he said simply.
"You left him in there?"
The little man nodded without reply and turned alertly to engage Mrs.
Clover, who was bearing down upon them in the first stages of hysterics.
But at sight of Iff she pulled up and calmed herself a trifle.
"Oh, sir," she cried, "I'm so glad you're safe, sir! I was asleep in the
kitchen when the fire broke out--and then I thought I heard pistol
shots--and I didn't know but somethin' had happened to you--"
"No," said Iff coolly; "you can see I'm all right."
"And Eph, sir? Where's my husband?" she shrieked.
"Oh," said Iff, at length identifying the woman. "You'll find him down
at the dock--dead drunk in the motor-boat," he told her. "If I were you
I'd go to him right away."
"But whatever will we do for a place to sleep tonight?"
"Help yourself," Iff replied with a generous wave of his hand "You've
all Pennymint to ask shelter of, if you can manage to make your husband
run the boat across."
"But you--what'll you do?"
"I've another boat handy," Iff explained. "We'll go in that."
"And will you rebuild, sir?"
"No," he said gravely, "I don't think so. I fancy this is the last time
I'll ever set foot on Wreck Island. Now clear out," he added with a
sharp change of manner, "and see if you can't sober that drunken fool
up."
Abashed, the woman cringed and turned away. Presently she broke into a
clumsy run and vanished in the direction of the landing-stage.
"You've accepted the identity of Ismay," commented Staff disapprovingly,
as they moved off together to rejoin Eleanor.
"For the last time," said the little man. "Until I get aboard Bascom's
boat again, only. It's the easiest way."
"How do you mean?"
Iff nodded at the blazing building. "That wipes out all scores," he
replied. "What they find of Cousin Artie when that cools off won't be
enough to hold an inquest over; he will be simply thought to have
disappeared, since I won't return to this place. And that's the
easiest way: we don't got any use for inquests at the wind-up of this
giddy dime-novel!"
[Illustration: The light of the great fire illumined not only all the
island, but the waters for miles around
_Page 319_]
* * * * *
The light of the great fire illumined not only all the island but the
waters for miles around. As Bascom's boat drew away, its owner called
Staff's attention to a covey of sails, glowing pink against the dark
background of the mainland as they stood across the arm of the Sound for
the island.
"Neighbours," said Mr. Bascom; "comin' for to see if they can lend a
hand or snatch a souvenir or so, mebbe."
Staff nodded, with little interest. Out of the corners of his eyes he
could see Iff and his daughter, on the opposite side of the boat. Iff
was talking to her in a gentle, subdued voice strangely unlike his
customary acrid method of expression. He had an arm round his daughter's
shoulders; her head rested on his....
Staff looked away, back at the shining island. He could not grudge the
little man his hour. His own would come, in time....