Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: J Allan Dunn (1872-1941) was a British/US prolific pulp writer of novels and short stories in a number of genres. He is reputed to have written over 1000 books and short stories, including juveniles. This new (2025) collection of short fiction includes one "complete novel" puublished in a pulp magazine; at 24,000 words it is really a novella. 1: The Ferret and the Bet 2: The Gray God 3: Skull Manor 4: The Crowing Hens of Totulu 5: Wild Justice 6: The Screaming Skull 7: Black Cat 8: The Man With the Mole 9: The Gold Ship 10: The Flying Skull 11: The Pearls of Paruki 12: On the Account 13: The P

THE SCREAMING SKULL
and other Stories

J. Allan Dunn

1872-1941

Contents

1: The Ferret and the Bet

2: The Gray God

3: Skull Manor

4: The Crowing Hens of Totulu

5: Wild Justice

6: The Screaming Skull

7: Black Cat

8: The High Rigger

9: The Man With the Mole

10: The Gold Ship

11: The Flying Skull

12: The Pearls of Paruki

13: On the Account

14: The Pigeons of Wong Foo

15: Dark Laughter

16: The Crime Master

_________

1: The Ferret and the Bet

Adventure, 18 Aug 1918.

THE "FERRET" could have reported the conversation between the warden and the man from headquarters very accurately, that part of it, at least, that generalized upon himself and the three others who were to leave the penitentiary that morning, having, it was supposed, if not generally practised, fully expiated their crimes and being restored to freedom if not full citizenship. For the Ferret was very, very far from being a fool.

"Once a crook, always a crook!" announced the detective, somewhat wearily. "You wait till they begin coming back to you. I ain't running down your dope or your methods but you're new to the game, if you'll pardon my saying so. There's a heap of improvement needed in penitentiaries, I'll grant you, but all your honor system, your free talk and your baseball games ain't going to make an honest man out of a blown-in-the-glass crook. Do what you will with 'em, they figure the mistake they made was in getting caught, not in the crime itself.

"They come in sore and they go out sore, for all your coddling of 'em. You can't make 'em glad to be here. A man in a cell nurses a grouch and a guy with a grouch ain't going to repent. He may think it pays best to run straight but he gets out and he reads about something good that was pulled off and then he meets his woman or some woman and then some of the gang come around and show him an easy thing. Well— he's sick of prison grub and prison fare and so's his woman of the skimping she's done while he was in. The excitement gets him— and then we get him and you see him registering at your hotel inside of a few months at best.

"Take it from me, Mr. Warden, I know 'em. 'Once a crook, always a crook.' Take the Ferret, first-class cracksman and high-flier, going out today after five years less eight months for behaving himself; he'll be back. I'll bet you a month's pay he'll be back inside of six months, or, if he isn't, we'll be looking for him. Why was he good in quod? Because he wanted to get out of quod. Not because he means to go straight."

"I'll take that bet, Henderson," said the new warden quietly. "Call it an even hundred. You know only the seamy side of human nature. There's a right and wrong side to every man, but you never turn over the goods to have a look at the pattern that was intended to be shown. A crook may be always a crook, but all convicts are not crooks, Henderson. Circumstance, environment, desire of that same excitement you mentioned, the same sort of desire that sent men viking in old times, have a lot to do with it. The Ferret," he broke off to smile, "do you know what the Ferret has been doing and what he wants to do?"

"I'd make another little bet on the last end of it. What has he been doing?"

"Doing wonderful things in my garden and greenhouse. The man is a born genius with grafting and crossing."

"I believe all of that," said Henderson. "Double-crossing and grafting are easy to him."

"And he wants— wait, we'll have him in and ask him."

The Ferret was escorted in. He might have been anywhere between forty and fifty. His hair, that had been allowed to grow since his time of freedom approached, was long enough to be laid back hi a smooth gray pompadour. The forehead was well- shaped, the nose well-chiseled and the mouth neither small nor thin-lipped. His eyes— Henderson would have called them cunning— to the warden they were shrewd. He was slight but built with all the suggestive agility of the animal after which the underworld had christened him.

The work among the warden's shrubs and flowers had banished all trace of prison pallor, his cheap, ready-made suit fitted him surprisingly well, he looked not at all like a discharged prisoner, not at all like a malefactor, a wizard at coaxing combinations and blowing stubborner safes— he had used oxy-acetylene on the last one. His hands might have been those of a woodcarver, a musician even, or a master-gardener. Though Henderson would have set them down as the hands of a forger or a master-cracksman. And he stood respectful with a certain dignity, quite at his ease, the hint of an ironic smile on his lips for Henderson, the gleam of a friendly one in his eyes for the warden.

"What are you figuring on doing, Rogers?" asked the latter in kindly fashion.

"I should like to take up the raising of fancy shrubs, sir," answered the Ferret, ignoring Henderson's grin at his words. "It takes more capital than I have. To go into it properly it would take a thousand dollars before I'd get any return but I'll go at it quietly, if I can get an opening."

Henderson snickered. "Be careful of the kind of opening you choose, Ferret," he said. "Too bad you ain't got something tucked away to start you out. Now, see here, Ferret, I ain't up here on your account so don't let that worry you."

"I won't, Mr. Henderson."

Henderson flushed a little at the irony. He had been the chief instrument in sending the Ferret up for his stretch but it had not been his cleverness, it had been through the treachery of a stool-pigeon and he felt that the Ferret did not rate his professional acumen over-highly.

"The warden tells me you are trying to go on the level," he said. "You go ahead and raise fancy shrubs all you want, I'll never bother you. But I'm going to be on the level with you. I've made a little bet with the warden here, never mind for how much or how long, that you'll be tapping the tumblers again. Now I'll warn you, I'm going to keep close tabs on you, but I am warning you and if you win I lose."

The Ferret raised his expressive eye- brows.

"That's mighty square of you, Mr. Henderson," he said. "And mighty nice of you to take a chance on me, sir," he said to the warden. But he made no protestation of his determination or ability to win the warden's bet.

"That's all, Rogers," said the latter, rising. "Good-by and good luck."

They shook hands, warden and ex-convict and the latter passed from the private office quietly, unobtrusive but unslinking and, presently, went out of the Gate of Sorrow and down to the train with the others who had also shaken off the shackles of judgment.

"Want to hedge, Henderson?" asked the warden.

"Not me. Wait till he sees Broadway and a Jane he wants and who wants a flash. You can book that bet."

And the warden booked it.

IT HAPPENED that Henderson got through with his penitentiary business in time to take the same train as the Ferret, whom he found in the smoking-car. Being a sport, Henderson, known to all the trainmen, did not help to make the Ferret conspicuous by even nodding to him but he took a seat across the aisle and a little back of his man, lit one of the warden's cigars and kept a casual, but keen eye on the Ferret.

The Ferret looked out of the window for a while at the green meadows of Westchester County, at the green woodlands, the blue distance, the nigh flowers, the birds, at a butterfly that vagrantly fluttered with the train for a few seconds and there was a look in the eyes that would have surprised Henderson, almost a suggestion of the dew that might still be moist on the ferns in the shady coppices.

Then he bought a paper from the news-butcher, a paper and an orange, and glanced at one long-forbidden luxury while he. slowly swallowed the other, segment by segment.

Suddenly he sat up, absorbed in an item. Henderson noticed the swift change, noticed the heading of the paper, bought one himself when the boy came through again and read where the Ferret was reading for the second time. There was no dewy look in the Ferret's eyes now, only the hard shine of gray steel. And into Henderson's eyes crept a look of triumph.

"What did I tell the warden," said Henderson to himself, "what'd I tell him. What he's reading is like catnip to an old Tom. He's sore he wasn't in on it. His mouth's watering now, I'll bet. Wonder if I'll get on the case?"

And he settled himself to read the item with professional absorption. There had been a week-end gathering at the Long Island home of a Wall Street successful broker, whose wife affected the close acquaintanceship of Bohemia. Her guests had many names famous in the Four Arts plus the Art of the Theater and the Roof Garden and there were others more eccentric than famous, a rollicking, unconventional crew who had participated in a fancy-dress dance, starting in the house, transferred to the moonlit, lantern-painted lawn and winding up with an early breakfast at the Country Club. And the next morning the pearls of the hostess were missing, after many of the guests had departed. It was not a matter for the police, declared the hostess. Not yet, at all events. They might have been taken in mistake. There had been necessarily a great confusion in the leave-takings and donning of wraps. She hoped, she expected, they would be returned. Followed a detailed description of the necklace of matched pearls with a sapphire clasp. Henderson bit savagely into the stub of his cigar.

"Bah!" he told himself. "One of the Bohemian bums hooked 'em. Lot's of 'em 'ud starve if it wasn't for a lot of crazy women who want to entertain 'em. I'll bet she suspects one of them right  now. Not a matter for the police? Rot. If some of those spangled poets and paint-daubers was jugged once in a while it 'ud do 'em all good. I wonder— yes, there it is."

He had turned over the sheets to the advertising columns and there in the personals he found what he expected.

$500 REWARD and no questions asked for the return of the pearl necklace owned by a certain hostess and missed yesterday morning after a dance. Apply to Throop & Towne, Jewelers, New York City.

Curiously enough, the Ferret had also turned to that column. But now he was reading the sporting page with zest. Apparently his interest had ceased with the fact that the job had been turned— and turned by an amateur.

But Henderson still mentally spluttered.

"—fool ad. Wrote it herself. Got her husband to put up the five hundred. It's a cinch she not only guesses who it was and wants to cover them but she wants to help 'em out of the mess that put them up to the swipe. Maybe—"

His eyes narrowed as his mind wandered down the devious and dirty alleys that his profession sometimes led him to. An infatuated, foolish woman, a shrewd adventurer, the five hundred an acknowledgment of attempted blackmail and an implied willingness to meet it. Busy husband and idle wife. The old triangle stuff. It was old to Henderson.

Presently he too was deep in the possibilities of war-time baseball. But he kept the Ferret in view when the train got in.

The Ferret wandered along almost jauntily, an idler in New York. He bought a gardenia from a police-dodging vender, smelled it and set it in his lapel and strolled on again, the flower utterly redeeming the cheapness of his suit.

At Fifth Avenue he made his way to the library steps and, standing beside one of the supercilious twin lions, a woman met him. She was no taller than the Ferret and she was slender, her clothes giving her a youth that still lingered in her quick, impetuous rush, matched by the Ferret's embrace. Henderson caught sight of a carefully tinted face, that yet did not avoid the Ferret's kiss, of hair carefully made golden, and he smiled as he passed on. He was through with the Ferret for the present. But he felt reasonably sure of his bet. He even pondered as to how he should spend it.

"A painted moll. They all fall for them," he told himself. He was looking at the only side he knew, the seamy one; he did not guess that rouge and powder and eyebrow-pencils that hide the ravages of time are sometimes the camouflage of love, love that seeks to hold and is a little afraid.

"You're lookin' fine, Jim. Who gave you the gardenia?"

"I bought it for you, Nan. Lookin' great yourself. Let's get out of here. Let's get a regular meal. Somewhere where there's music and singing stuff and dancing."

"Got any money, Jim?"

"Seven dollars, old girl. Enough for eats."

"I've got nearly four hundred left, Jim." "You wonder! You ain't been starving yourself, have you?"

"Not me. Do I look it? But I moved to a smaller place."

"Good dope. Keep the bunch off for a while."

She looked earnestly at him. "Don't you want to see them, Jim? I saw Flynn on the street. He told me to tell you he had something good that needed you. They was waiting for you to come out, he said."

"Did you tell him where you was living?"

"No, Jim. He told me where I could find him."

"Good! Nan," he took her arm, "I'm going to cut out all that stuff."

"Jim! You mean it?" Her voice rang out so that people turned to look at them.

The Ferret nodded. "We'll talk it over later. But I'll tell you this much. I'm going into growing fancy shrubs. Got it all doped out. Remember how I always could make things grow? Remember the first garden we had? You was always good at it too, Nan— brace up, old girl, here's the grill."

She winked back the happy tears that welled and they turned into the grill.

Looking at things dispassionately it seemed as if the chances of winning lay even between Henderson and the warden at that moment.

Later that afternoon the Ferret started down-town to take the Long Island ferry. There was a famous arboriculturist whose plantations and nurseries were located there, close to many of his customers, and the Ferret, who never allowed the grass to grow under his feet, intended to get his prices and other information at first-hand as well as look for a likely piece of land for the leasing. Just how he was going to tackle the problem of an independent nursery on the three hundred-odd dollars that constituted his and Nan's capital he could not figure out but his consuming energy to get going forced him to a start.

Also, at the arboriculturist's he might hear of a job. For the warden had promised to give him references that would not hold the taint of his work having been done in the penitentiary. And, to the Ferret, the warden was a good deal of a surprise and somewhat of a god, a superman, at least, one who never failed in his promises.

WHEN he walked aboard the ferry and made his way forward to the bows, a red-headed, pasty-faced man spotted him and followed him. The Ferret did not see the man, for he walked silently as a cat, until the latter caught him by the elbow and, as the Ferret swiftly slewed his neck to look at him, led the way to the rail.

It was Flynn. Flynn of his old crowd, Flynn who found the plants and did the scouting and preliminary investigation.

"Been looking for you, Jim," said Flynn. "Figured you'd ring up some time tomorrow. I gave Nan the number. But the sooner the better. We been waiting for you to get back. Where you bound?"

"To look at a place on the Island, Flynn. Where you off to?"

Flynn grinned. "I got a date," he said. "There's a flash maid over at this plant we're figuring on you for, and she and me is keeping company. Where's this dump you're after? Who put you wise to it. Tip from up there, eh?"

"You're a way off, Flynn," said the Ferret. "I'm through."

"Through what?"

"I'm going straight, Flynn."

"The —— you are. Say, what's the idea. You ain't got converted to that Billy Sun- day stuff have you?"

"Figure it how you want to, Flynn. I'm through."

The other fell back and studied the Ferret's face, inflexible with purpose. Then he whistled softly.

"You've gone balmy up there, Jim. You'll come out of it after a while, after what you got salted is used up. Nan didn't seem to be extra flush, at that. Say, Jim, you ain't in earnest, are you? Listen, this plant is a cinch. Five thou' apiece in it, easy. Don't be a mutt, Jim. What's your lay?"

"I'll tell you what my lay is, Flynn. I'm sick of this hide-out game. There's nothing in it to offset what you lose. I want to be able to live in one place and know it's mine and it ain't going to be taken away from me and Nan, or me taken away from it. Nan feels the same way about it. She's always wanted to be on the level, Flynn, and I guess she's got something coming to her after my trip up the river."

"Lost your nerve up there?" sneered Flynn.

"No," said the Ferret, looking him straight in the eyes, "I don't believe I have, Flynn. I hope not, I'm going to need it all. But I'm through."

Flynn shrugged his shoulders.

"You know your own business best," he said. "Anyway Nan's got my 'phone number. So long."

He turned away and the Ferret lost him when they took different trains. He looked out at the fields and gardens and the earth seemed calling to him.

What he had told Nan was quite true. Things grew for him, he was a born gardener, a real craftsman. A vision of peace grew slowly, of him with his shrubs and Nan with her flowers— she always loved flowers— there were geraniums struggling in the tiny apartment he had just left. But it would be a hard road and he did not yet see the start.

And then, timed to his own pulse, the wheels seemed clacking out a rhythm that presently voiced itself persistently.

"Five  thou'- apiece. Five- thousand- easy."

To turn this one trick and then the way would be clear! He saw what he could do with that. Land, a house, tools, young plants in the upturned soil.... He swept the thoughts from his brain and sat frowning until his station was reached. The big grower was cordial and sympathetic but the Ferret was soon convinced how utterly impracticable was his plan. With war-prices and war-payments he would have to spend all his scanty hundreds for fertilizer alone. The grower offered him a certain credit for plants when he was once established but where was the rent to come from for the land, the dwelling, the living-expenses?

"You say you can get recommendations," said the grower. "I can place you in a job. Good salary. I wouldn't wonder if they could find a place for your wife if she's handy. No kids, you say?"

"No," said the Ferret slowly, "no kids."

"Well, I know they are having a hard time with their help. It isn't far from here, Mr. Rogers. You can tell them I sent you up. They are a bit upset at this time. Had a robbery night before last. But I dare say Mrs. Haskins'll see you."

The Ferret listened to the directions and started for the Haskins place. It would be the best thing to do for the present, especially if Nan got on, and that should be easy. For Nan was more than just handy, she had been a maid when he first met her, much as Flynn was going to meet the girl he mentioned.

But there was a peculiar irony in it all. He and Nan, ex-con and ex-con's wife, applying for a job in a place where a pearl necklace had been stolen, for this was the Mrs. Haskins of the news item. It was risky. If he was ever tipped off of course he had an alibi as to the necklace; no one could accuse a man of robbery who was in jail when it occurred. But every place was risky in a way and, since he had no capital, he could not turn down the first chance.

The warden would manage his credentials. The warden did not believe in showing the seamy side of a man who was trying to make good. He would only say that he recommended the pattern.

"Mrs. Haskins is somewhere in the garden," the maid told him, and, if he had come about a gardener's position, he might as well see her there. So the Ferret trod the walks between trim lawns and flower-beds, through a rose garden and so down, as directed by a man who was handling watering-hose, to a terrace backed by a yew hedge, high as the Ferret's head.

He walked along the hedge toward the gap of its entrance on to the terrace, screened himself by masses of shrubbery, and his trained ears caught the syllables of earnest talk and, from a nature not yet subdued, listened with the habit of his recent profession.

"So, when I saw the news in the paper this morning, Helen, I made up my mind to come over and see what could be done. I got up late but I came as soon as I could. I'm terribly sorry about it."

Now the Ferret had learned to read men in many ways, by looks, by apparently trivial actions and by the intonations of the voice. This voice sounded frank, sympathetic as it was cultured, but there was a purring quality to it that made the Ferret distrust its owner before he saw him, and feel sure that his suspicion was well placed. It was the voice of a man accustomed to talk much with women— a voice that could flatter readily and did— that could charm and woo, the voice of a stage lover. The woman's voice was harder to interpret. It held a hint of fear, a hint of insincerity, or offence, but it was charming. And the Ferret, rooted suddenly, still listened.

"Did you see the reward I offered, Clinton? Harry was very kind about it. He offered to make it more but I thought it was enough. And I want my pearls back, Clinton. I love them. The money does not matter so much but they were Harry's wedding-gift to me and I want them."

The insincerity, or whatever it was, left the voice as she spoke of her desire for the gems. Then it came back.

"Can you suggest anything, Clinton?"

"I can't. I'm a dub at such things. I suppose you might double the reward if you don't get any response. The necklace is worth much more." "It cost ten thousand dollars. But— whoever took it— would not be easily able to dispose of it, Harry says. Mr. Throop, the jeweler, told him that the pearls would lose value immediately they were separated or sold unmatched, and of course the full description was in the paper."

"Yes. But I think I should double that reward tomorrow." The Ferret did not shift his position but his eyes hardened and his fists clenched.

"Clinton," went on the woman. "Do you remember you promised to return to me those two letters I sent you. They did not mean anything. They were just foolish letters but Harry— won't you let me have them?"

"I will, tomorrow, Belle. If there is nothing else I can do, I'll be getting back on the 5:50. That is, if you're not going to ask me to stay to dinner."

He laughed as he spoke.

"No, it isn't convenient tonight, Clinton." "If I were you I'd telephone to those jeweler people and also to the paper, doubling that reward. I think it will bring results. You say your husband was willing to increase it. And I'll send you those — foolish—letters you speak of."

The Ferret looked at his cheap but competent watch. It was 5.30 and the station was a full mile back. He intended to catch the 5.50. The job— could wait.

The man and the woman moved on. Doubtless they were going back to the house. The Ferret ambuscaded behind the shrubs, glimpsed the graceful figure and pretty face of the woman and paid especial attention to the man, a handsome, somewhat haggard chap, faultlessly dressed, who passed on with a covert smile as he passed out of sight.

Within a hundred yards of the station a car sped by the hurrying Ferret and in it sat the man whose first name was Clinton. He got out at the station and the car returned toward the Haskins place.

Up-town, and later, the man whose first name was Clinton descended from the elevated in the nineties and walked to the door of a bachelor-apartment house which he opened with a key. He entered. A minute later the Ferret inspected the small foyer and noted a card that read:

Clinton Howard Bowdin. Apt. 8.

He looked at the rest of the names, apparently comparing them with an envelop he carried, frowned and crossed the street, seemingly looking at numbers. But he glanced back at the house he had left, quite casually. It was dark and some of the windows were already illuminated.

"Apartment eight," mused the Ferret. "That should be on the top floor back. Seven is in front. No one home there." He walked up the street and back again slowly. Three doors from the house that Clinton Bowdin had entered was one evidently vacant—"To Let" signs in its windows.

NAN greeted the Ferret expectantly. Supper was ready for him.

"The first home meal, Jim," she said. "Any news? Or do you want to keep it until after supper?"

"No news, old girl," he said. "But prospects. And I have to go out after supper."

She did not question him but, after he had gone, she went into the bedroom where he had been rummaging in a closet and herself reached down a box on the back of the shelf. Hardly knowing she carried it she bore it into the next room and sat down heavily with the box on her lap. Her face was old now, old and pinched between the lines, and gray.

"He has taken his keys and his gun," she repeated to herself over and over as she rocked, her face a mask of dread— dread and sorrow.

THE Ferret entered the doorway of the vacant house like a shadow and deftly set in the lock a twisted piece of tempered wire. A little pull, a pause, a quick thrust and a turn and the lock slid, the shadowed door opened and closed again. Two minutes later the scuttle leading to the roof lifted and the Ferret emerged, keeping well back from the front coping and making his swift and subtle progress over the roofs. He tried the scuttle-hatch of the house that stood the third below and found it tightly fastened from within. Hardly visible in the gloom, he glided to the back of the roof, peered over, tested a gutter, let himself down with the agility of a gymnast, swinging to his hands, and dropped without noise on to the top landing of a fire-escape. The landing was outside a room before whose window a blind was drawn, almost to the bottom, all but an inch. The Ferret bent— looked through. Handsome Clinton Bowdin was seated at a table gazing at a lustrous string of pearls clasped by a sapphire.

"Wondering if she's doubled that reward," the Ferret told himself. "He's figuring on getting up early tomorrow to see that paper. But he can't cash in until the jeweler opens."

He stood upright, struck silently a safety match, showing the barest glimmer through his shielding fingers while he briefly surveyed the latch of the window. With the precision of an expert he inserted something between the sashes upward, gave a twist to the handle of the instrument and the catch was sprung with the tiniest of clicks.

Within, Bowdin did not move. The Ferret nosed the breeze, almost imperceptible, tried its strength with a wet finger and then a loosely held bit of paper. He eased up the bottom sash with the tool that had started the catch and, inch by inch under his wide-spread fingers, quick to sense any lack of balance, the lower pane moved upward, back of the blind. Bowdin put back the necklace into its case and took up two letters that he read through with a sneering smile. "Cheap at the price," he said. "The little fool to— Hell!"

He jumped to his feet as the spring blind rushed up and flapped about its roller. Coming through the window was a slight man of whose face nothing could be seen but a resolute chin and two eyes, hard as steel, showing through a mask. One remarkably steady hand held an automatic aimed for Bowdin's heart.

Bowdin did not move.

"I'll put up my hands if you want me to," he said. "But you've come to the wrong apartment. I am broke, my murderous friend, always, perennially broke. Nothing worth your while shooting for. Besides the house is full, some one might hear the shot."

"You wouldn't," said the Ferret. "You'd see the flash and feel the smash of the bullet and that would be the end of you. I'll look out for myself afterward. But I'll shoot."

Bowdin turned pale, sweat broke out on his forehead and the fingers of his hand on the table trembled. The brutal description and the tone that backed it had broken his bravado.

"What do you want?" he said in a low voice.

"The necklace you were admiring. Don't move!"

He shoved the automatic forward so that its grim muzzle brushed the serge of Bowdin's coat and picked up the case with one hand, sliding it into his own pocket. Then he took up the letters.

"What do you want those for? They are private letters—"

"Same thing you wanted them for. Now, Mr. Bowdin, don't start anything after I go. I'm going out the front way. It might be awkward for you to explain how you got that necklace. Get me?"

He deftly ran his hand over Bowdin in a search for a weapon.

"Now then," he said, "you climb out that window on to the fire-escape. Go on."

With a glance of furious but futile resentment Bowdin obeyed.

"You can break the glass after a while if you can't open the sash like I did. Or you can climb down and stir up the janitor. Good night."

He pulled down the pane and set the catch, leaving the discomfited Bowdin glaring at him through the glass, went down the stairs, opened the front door-latch and passed into the street, confident that he would not be followed.

NAN looked up with a white face and red-rimmed eyes as he entered and tossed the jeweler's case into her lap.

"Jim," she said. Jim! You said—"

"Nan. There's a reward of one thousand hung up for this and no questions asked. I fell on to it. The thousand means everything to us just now. I turned down Flynn's job, though there was five times the amount in it. The people who put up this reward won't miss a thousand as much as we would ten cents. A cheap thief swiped it and I took it from the thief. I took something else from him, two letters a woman would give the thousand for without a murmur."

"You said you'd go straight, Jim. I was so happy till I saw what you'd taken from the box."

"We'll chuck them all in the river tomorrow, Nan, after I get the thousand."

"But it's stealing, Jim. Stealing and blackmail."

"Where do you get that? I ain't selling the letters. I ain't read 'em and I ain't going to. I'm sending 'em back. I didn't take the necklace. Luck chucked it my way when I most needed it and I'm going to get that thousand."

His face was dogged.

"Jim, it's just the same. You didn't earn the thousand."

"The —— I didn't."

"Jim, I'll put it to you this way. Maybe I don't put it well but I know it ain't straight. Which way would the warden look at it?"

The Ferret flushed. He sat down with a straight line between his brows. Then he laughed.

"The warden! If the warden knew he'd figure he'd lost his bet, I reckon."

"How's that, Jim?" And he told her of the wager.

THROOP, senior partner of Throop & Towne, Fifth Avenue jewelers, looked in perplexity at the slight, gray-headed man who sat opposite him in his private office. Between them the Haskins necklace lay on the leather-topped desk like a coiling snake.

"You say you don't want any reward?" he asked. "But the money is here. I give you my word the matter goes no further."

The Ferret shook his head. "Won't you leave your name— confidentially? This is most extraordinary. Do you realize the necklace is worth ten thousand dollars?"

"Yes, I realize that, Mr. Throop. But you are breaking the compact."

"What compact?"

"No questions asked. Good morning, sir."

Outside the store the Ferret dropped a letter in a mail-box. It was addressed to Mrs. Belle Haskins of Long Island and marked "personal."

As he turned away, some one tapped him on the shoulder and he whirled.

"Hello, Ferret," said Henderson." What are you doing in Throop & Towne's?"

"Pricing diamonds with Mr. Throop," said the Ferret. "If you don't believe me, ask him."

Henderson looked at him with a halfgrin.

"You're a foxy one, Ferret, but I've got my eye on you. I'm going to collect that bet."

"Will you do me a favor, Mr. Henderson?"

"What is it?"

"Just how much did you bet with the warden about me?"

The detective looked at him quizzically.

"A century. Why? Want to pay it for the warden?"

"I might. I'm going up to see him this afternoon."

He walked off, leaving Henderson looking after him in a muddle of speculation.

Presently the detective shadowed him, the Ferret perfectly conscious of the operation. And, when Henderson, flashing his badge, asked his question at the ticket office, the puzzle on his face deepened at the answer.

"Ossining. Round trip."

In the train the Ferret skinned off his roll. Five twenties he put in his vest pocket, the balance, a little over two hundred and seventy dollars, he returned to his hip.

"I'LL tell you what I think of it, Rogers," said the warden as he handed the Ferret a cigar. "I should like to meet that wife of yours. I wish you'd arrange it."

"Why, of course, I'm proud to, sir."

"For one thing I want to ask her if she considers I've lost this bet to Henderson. Because I'm not at all sure about it myself, Rogers, and her vision is rather wonderful. So you had better keep the hundred till we talk it over. I've been thinking about you, Rogers. How would you like to have me as a business partner?"

"Why— why?" The Ferret gasped and choked.

"I've got a thousand or so I could invest in, say the fancy shrub business, Rogers. Like to go into it?"

"You'd trust me?"

"I'd trust you and that wife of yours, together, anywhere, Rogers. You've won your own best bet."

In the eyes of the Ferret, riding through Westchester County in the early evening, was a look that might have suggested the dew on the ferns in the shady coppices that graced the verdant hills. And a vision came again, to stay, a vision of upturned earth and the balm of shrubs, of fragrant flowers, and, tending them, himself and Nan.

_____________

2: The Gray God

Argosy  16 Mar 1929

1. “Typical Tropical Tramp!”

STANTON walked along the main street of Suva, painfully conscious that people looked at him as if he was a beach comber. He was not quite that—yet—though he was not many degrees removed from it, he told himself. His ducks and his linen, if they were frayed, were clean; he managed, with old blades and the horrible soap supplied by his landlady, to keep shaved; the soles of his shoes were broken, but the uppers were carefully pipe-clayed. He was still respectable, but his hair needed cutting and his browned features were beginning to wear an expression that made even the kilted native police look at him askance. Not to mention the tourists. A steamer was in. Men and women were strolling or driving, tropic clad, agog for entertainment, planning luncheon, Some had Jet garlands about their necks placed there by welcoming friends. Friends! There were certainly times when a fellow needed one, Stanton reflected. There might be Americans in that laughing crowd intent upon enjoyment. Perhaps if they knew the plight he was in, from no fault of his own—

He shoved his hands deeper in his empty pockets, crossing over from the row of stores with plate glass fronts, hotels and clubs, to the shore side of the street. He walked in the checkered, changing shadow of the palms and poincianas, which patterned the path with purple and gold.

Across the stretch of seagrass lawn the Goro Sea showed incredibly blue, blue as laundry blueing. The sky was hardly less vivid. Cliffs of pearly trade wind clouds lifted on the horizon.

The breeze raised the banners of bananas, rustled in the fronds of coconut and royal palms, sent down a drift of scarlet poinciana blossoms like carnival confetti. A glorious, gorgeous mockery of a day.

He had the makings of two cigarettes, perhaps three thin ones, and that was all. No tobacco, no money to buy any. He was three weeks in debt to his half-caste landlady, three weeks in board-arrears to Cheung Li. Broke. Stony broke.

They hadn’t said a thing about it yet, but they would not, could not trust him forever.

There was the sting of it; they had trusted him. He had not lied to them about coming remittances, but had frankly said he was flat, and they had smiled and said he was an American and they knew he would pay them when he could. That seemed a long way off right now.

A girl was coming toward him, from the steamer, unaccompanied. She was simply dressed, she was slender, but walked with a certain agile vigor that distinguished her. Stanton almost bumped into her on the narrow path in his absorption. He got a glimpse of a pair of dark blue eyes, large, clear, but not carefree; a short nose, red lips that drooped a little, a hint of coppery hair under the close-fitting hat.

He raised his own, in apology, and the girl bowed. She did not smile, but looked at him curiously, sympathetically. He did not analyze that look for a few minutes. Then he realized that her face, like his own, must have betrayed worriment, was not in accord with the gorgeous day. She was in trouble of some sort, even as he was, and she had recognized the latter fact.

ABOUT ten paces behind the girl a man was walking with a curious ease of gait, pantherish, slightly furtive for all his swagger, for all his linen tunic and pants, his silk shirt and cummerbund, the smart puggaree on his hat of woven palm fiber, the short gold-tipped malacca cane, the silken socks and shoes of buckskin and tan leather.

His skin was the color of saddle leather, splotched by darker blots, like freckles. His eyes were jet-black, set aslant, the lids smooth and unwrinkled, the mouth full-lipped, cruel. A cunning, sensual “breed,” half Chinese and half native, swaggering along with a knife under his cummerbund, and gambler’s gold in his pockets, Stanton fancied.

The American suddenly wondered, with a hunch that flashed into his mind, whether the man was following the ‘girl, For a moment Stanton halted, rolling his cigarette, looking back. The girl had crossed the. street, the half-breed kept straight on. He might be following her, but he did not seem inclined to annoy her. Too careful of his own skin, Stanton decided. He would behave himself in the open, but he was no more to be trusted in the shadows than a roving shark in a lagoon.

Stanton knew him by name—Loo Fong—and by his reputation, or lack of it, along the waterfront where Stanton had his cheap but clean room with Panakaloa, the stout half-white widow of a trading skipper.

Loo Fong, petty pirate, smuggler, gambler, half Malay, half Manchu, and treacherous as a snake, was just back from one of his occasional disappearances. He had given Stanton a look, tinged with a sneer of derision on his twisting mouth, that made the American’s fists double automatically.

He crossed the street himself, caught sight of his reflection in a store window as he checked to let a jovial group pass out of the car that had brought them from the ship and enter the Victoria Hotel.

A woman glanced at him and said something in a whisper to her escort. The man was less tactful of tone in his answer.

“T. T. T.,” he replied. “ Eh, what? Typical Tropical Tramp! Beach bum! Never has worked, can’t get work, and doesn’t want to.”  The woman looked at him again and shrank a little. It was then the plate glass revealed to Stanton his mask of a face, grim, almost haggard, the long hair covering the collar of his coat, the set jaws and smoldering eyes.

"Got to snap out of that,” he told himself. “You’re nursing a grouch. It won’t get you a thing, not a damn’ thing, Bob Stanton! It’s the grin that wins.”

He was not so sure of that. He had been grinning a long time, but the grin  had frayed, like the bottoms of his pants and the cuffs of his coat and shirts. There was no job in Suva, in all the Fijis, for a “Yank.” It was fair enough, perhaps. Jobs seemed to be scarce and anything that a self-respecting white man would do was held out for a Britisher.

He had come out to join a man he had known in the States. They had been comrades in the Argonne, as a matter of fact. It was after an Armistice Day dinner that Raymond had told him of his plan to log and ship the valuable hardwoods of the Fijis to American cabinet-makers. The islands off the north and west of Viti Levu were crammed with such trees, it appeared. Stanton had put in his share for preliminaries and had left for Fiji after the jubilant letter saying that the lease was secured and the prospects rosy. It had taken almost all he had by the time he reached Suva and, while he was en route, the bubble had been pricked.

The British commissioner had received word from the colonial secretary that no leases or concessions were to be granted on Fijian products to other than bona-fide British concerns. The bill had passed “as of ” a date before that of Raymond’s concessions. It was a washout. The commissioner was polite, bored, and his expressed sorrow was tinged with a suggestion that Americans had better stick to their own possessions,

There were hardwoods, the commissioner believed, in the Philippines. Whether or not he knew the Washington policies that protected the countrymen of Aguinaldo to the exclusion of all outside capital, they did not learn.

Raymond cursed heartily and ingeniously, outside the commissioner’s stately residence. He offered Stanton his fare back, but Stanton knew his friend had little enough left for himself. The lure of the tropics had gripped Stanton, and he had no doubt but that he could get along. He had, for twelve weeks of enforced loafing, on fifty dollars.

IT looked like the bush or the beach for him, living on fruit and fish, a down-and-outer. It was getting hard to be philosophical, to believe in such platitudes as “ It is always darkest before the dawn,” and “Every cloud has a silver lining.”

Nevertheless, after that self-revealing glance at the grim mask that was his face, Bob Stanton mentally girded up his loins and marched on, resolved to borrow a pair of scissors from Panakaloa to trim the frayed edges of his garments and essay a haircut. He was getting morbid. He whistled as he marched along. and looked a sergeant of police squarely in the eyes. Lately he had been bothering a bit about deportation, or a request to move on.

Confound that fellow with his T. T. T. What did he know about them? T. T. T.’s were the salt of the earth, often prosperous,. always efficient, cursed or blessed with the roving heel. The chap had said Stanton didn’t want to work, whereas he had been hunting it high and low until he could feel the grit working through his shoes at every step. He whistled the swinging march song:

Pack all your troubles in your old kitbag,

And smile, smile, smile.

Lots of craft in the harbor, freight steamers, sailing ships, the big passenger boat, native craft, launches shuttling back and forth. Usually they made him restless, emphasized his marooned condition. Now he grinned at them. Much magic in a grin, after all. But he didn’t get his haircut.

He reached the wharf and swung south to where Panakaloa’s little house was set among scrubs and papaia trees on the limits of white residency. A topsail schooner was moored to bollards, her cargo of copra and turtle shell being discharged.

A black man lay on a bale, shivering in the sun. He was almost a dwarf, a Melanesian, not a Fijian. His frizzy hair was dull red from lime bleaching, his dark skin showed tribal weals and other scars. His only clothing was a scanty loincloth. The lobes of his ears were stretched to flaps of torn leather, a short clap pipe thrust through one of the convenient holes. A. South Sea savage, sick and shuddering, ugly, ill-shaped, dirty. His ribs showed like those of a starved dog. His eyes were closed and his limbs were huddled about his emaciated body.

Any blackbirder would have despised him. Stanton wondered how he had come to Suva, derelict and unhappy as a mangy cur.

A man in a peaked cap, dressed in dungarees and a grimy pyjama top was directing the last of the unloading, chewing and spitting tobacco between curses in beach-English. As the file-closer of the Kanakas he had been bossing disappeared into the warehouse shed, the man, apparently mate of the schooner, turned and saw the wretched figure on the bale. He had a rope’s end tucked in his belt, a length of coil ending in a turkshead knot, symbol of authority over his Solomon Island crew.

He swung it aloft and brought it down on the cowering creature who woke to his shouted oaths. It curled with a vicious hiss and sounded like a drum-stroke as it raised a blistering mark.

“You walk along damn’ quick out of this, you blasted stowaway monkey, before I flay you,” he cried and swung up his arm again as the man leaped from the bale and crouched, long apelike arms wrapped about his head, jabbering something inarticulate. The rope’s end writhed around his ribs with the same hideous strum. The third blow did not fall. The mate’s arm remained aloft as he gazed in astonishment at the sudden appearance of Stanton between him and his victim.

“Git out of here, you lousy beach bum!” the mate yelled. He started to say more, but Stanton’s fist muzzled him.

INDIGNATION at the wanton cruelty had caused Stanton to interfere, but all the resentment he had swallowed in the sneer of Loo Fong and the words of the woman’s escort outside the hotel, went into that wallop when the mate called him a bum. He had been hard up, but, thanks to Cheung and Panakaloa, he had not starved or lacked decent quarters. He was husky and he knew how to use his fists. The mate didn’t. He was a bucko, a good brawler, and he was tough, inside and out, but he made a serious first mistake in underestimating his adversary, and rushing him.

Stanton ducked neatly and smote him hard over the liver as the mate’s haymaker swung overhead and the mate swung with it, off balance, staggering sidewise with a clip on the side of the jaw. He went to one knee and hand, and Stanton let him up, which was chivalrous but wasted.

“Get up, you coward, and take a licking from a bum!” Stanton snapped, while the mate spat blood and tobacco from his battered lips, uttered a roar and rushed again. The seaman got a straight left to his face which checked him, but he closed in, bellowing and bludgeoning. The Kanakas had come out of the warehouse and were looking on, eyes rolling, grinning. The cook came out of the schooner’s galley and stood with folded arms, another spectator who seemed not opposed to the prospects of the mate’s getting trimmed. ‘

They clinched and Stanton appreciated what a bucko might do at close quarters, The mate got his arms about his ribs and nearly cracked them as he forged on with the advantage of his weight, using his knee, trying to trip, cursing constantly, threatening, putting out his full strength. Stanton beat a tattoo on his kidneys and he didn’t like it. They struck the string-piece and went down together, rolling over and over, rebounding as the side of the schooner saved them from the water.

As they rolled the mate made another mistake. Every time Stanton was on top he slogged at the bucko’s head and jaws, and hurt him badly enough to make the mate try the same tactics. The bucko got home more than once, but it gave Stanton the chance to get up and away. He intended to keep away. The mate was as hard as an automobile tire, strong as a gorilla; he had the weight and superior strength. Stanton had the science and the better wind. The other was blowing as he got to his feet and, before fie got set, Stanton got in a jolt to the belly and a second smash over the mouth. The combination settled it, together with the quid the mate had neglected to eject. The force of the blow sent it into his windpipe, choking and half strangling him. Upset muscular control juggled it into his gullet and Stanton’s third and final blow in that rally drove it deep. His disturbed stomach received and ejected it. His tanned face turned a sickly green. He heaved violently and was distressingly and unpleasantly sick, teetering up the gangway, using the scupperway, weaving down the companionway to his cabin.

Stanton straightened his clothes, felt gingerly a fiery ear and a bruised cheek, looking for the cause of his interference.

“You did ’m in proper, mister. You ’andled your dukes pretty. It served the bloody blighter right,” said the cook. “I’m quittin’ ’ere. ’E ain’t got no idea of decency, ’e ain’t. Called my grub ‘stinkin’ ’ash.’ I ’ope the beggar "eaves up his spotted soul.”

The miserable black was clasping Stanton’s knees, jabbering at him, his eyes moist with gratitude. It embarrassed the American. The Kanakas were gathered in an uncertain eae but the cook shouted at them and they went aboard.

“Looks like you ’ad ’im on your ’ands, mister,” the cook said to Stanton, “All syme stray dorg. You'll ‘ave a ‘ard time gittin’ rid of ’im.’

“Where did he come from? What’s the matter with him?”

“We figger ’e must ’ave swum off and ’id aboard, the time we watered at Tuimoto. Probably was in wrong with ’is wizard. Thought the ship ’u’d be better than the ovens. I’ll bet ’e’s changed ’is mind more’n once. We was glad enough to git clear without trouble. ‘Tuimoto is no picnic-ground. The skipper was sick—island fever— an’ mate run things. ’E, kicked the daylights out of that boy. Come night throwin’ ’im overboard to the sharks. °E, ain’t ’ad too much to eat. Don’t like white man’s katkat an’ the Kanakas wouldn’t share theirs with ’im. That’s part of what’s the matter with 'im. And ’e’s got yaws. You better tyke my tip and ’and ’im over to the police, mister. ’E belongs in the ’orsepittle, ’e does. Croak on your ’ands if you don’t. ’Is nyme’s Tiki and I bet ’e’s full of ’em.”

A muffled roar came from below and the cook winked at Stanton.

“ That’s the mate,” he said. “ Wants a nurse. I’ll nurse “im!” He sauntered aft.

The miserable devil who seemed to have been wished on Stanton, ill-treated and frightened by his surroundings, groveled at his feet. He shivered like a frightened dog when Stanton put a hand on his skinny shoulder. He didn’t quite know what to do with the wretch—he’d die in the hospital from sheer loneliness. Turn his face to the wall and let his soul leach out of him.

Stanton could put a meal into him, let him know he had a friend. His own plight was pleasant compared to that of this spiritless remnant of humanity. Perhaps Panakaloa would let him stay, give him something he could assimilate.

“You come with me,” he said. “We get kaikai.”

Tiki understood the meaning and followed him like a black dog, his eyes shining. Panakaloa was a bit difficult. She wanted no black fellows, she declared, but at last Stanton persuaded her to let Tiki—who stood on one bow leg, scratching with the toes of the other at his yaws while they discussed him—stay in a shed in the little garden on some old matting. He lay down, curled up, sacking over him and presently Panakaloa set down beside him a bowl of native poi and some dried fish. His eyes glittered. His spirit revived. He was in the house of friends and he ate avidly. Stanton went off to his own meal.

2. Cheung’s Plan

CHEUNG LI’S restaurant did not cater to the social element of Suva, but it was neat and clean, the food savory, wholesome and cheap, so that he did a good waterfront business with white skippers, mates and supercargoes,

He lived above the place, a placid, stout, sphinx-faced Chinaman with a dignity all his own, getting together his fortune. Some said the restaurant was a blind for his other affairs, but no one seemed to definitely know what they might be. He extended credit from time to time and seemed to find it profitable in the long run. It was he himself who had suggested to Stanton that he need not worry about his bill.

“Some time soon, something come along,” he told him. “You ’Melican. You make good bimeby.”

He presided over the restaurant at rush hours, leaving its conduct the rest of the time to two assistants. One of these, Moy, long, sallow, cadaverous and chary of any speech but his own, set before Stanton his meal. There was teal turtle soup, excellent fish, turtle steak with boiled taro-root and greens, fresh coconut pudding with caramel sauce, and coffee the Ritz patrons might have envied. All for fifty cents; a dollar and twenty cents for three daily meals, seven dollars a week.

When Moy brought the pudding he had a message.

“Cheung Li like speak along of you topside when you finish up,” he said.

It spoiled the dessert for Stanton. It must mean that his credit was over, It had to come. Cheung had been mighty decent. But it looked like the beach. He couldn’t stay at Panakaloa’s and not eat. He couldn’t honestly stay there any longer and pile up a debt he saw no means of paying off. Panakaloa could always rent her rooms. He saw himself for a moment roaming the beach with Tiki at his heels, adventuring in the bush with a cannibal. Tiki would know more about making a living there than he did.

He shrugged his shoulders, his hands steady as he rolled his second cigarette. There was not enough left for a third, so he made this fat and smoked it slowly with long inhalations before he got up, unable to tip Moy. An outside staircase led to a balcony that ran all round the house, covered and awninged. At the rear it looked over a compound garden behind a high plank wall where Cheung took his ease with his family.

Stanton had never mounted before. He was surprised at the signs of comfort, of taste, even of luxury. There were easy chairs of bamboo, stands of teak that held flowering plants, big vases of porcelain with foliage shrubs and ferns in them, rugs, cushions, two Java thrushes singing in cages, a gorgeous blue macaw in a ring, statuesque, disdainful.

The front veranda, where Stanton thought the entrance must be, looked over the harbor and the shipping, and across Kadavu Passage to the distant isles of Ono and Kadavu, almost sixty miles away. The lure of the horizon, of the unknown tropics, savage but fascinating, gripped him hard. Then sliding glass doors opened and Cheung asked him inside.

He had never before seen Cheung except in white clothes, and he was surprised at the quiet richness of his brocades, the assurance of his manner, polite, unostentatious. He might have been greeting a distinguished official rather than a man whose clothing proclaimed his poverty.

He offered Stanton a deep and cosy seat and a cheroot faintly smelling of tea, gratifying of flavor. Then he poured out two tiny goblets of amber fluid that scented the whole room as if with orange groves and tasted like sublimated Chartreuse.

His English was not perfect, but he spoke without hesitation, straight to the purpose. It was as if he guessed Stanton’s interpretation of the request for the visit, and wished to relieve him promptly. The shady chamber had an atmosphere of courtesy. From the interior Stanton heard the tinkle of a stringed instrument, the sudden laughter of a child. The Java thrushes were singing madly.

“I tell you some time, soon, something come along,” said Cheung in his mellow tones. “I not know then this come. One time, some one tell me about one place where there are plenty pearl, on island where nobody go. No landing there, no loadstead; no lagoon. Leef come up close, evely place. Native not live that place now. Name Motutabu. Plenty magic along that place. Bad magic. Maybe you not believe that?”

“I don’t know,” said Stanton simply. “I’ve heard a lot of curious things.”

Cheung grunted as if satisfied with the answer.

“This black man’s magic,” he said. “Not evil to white man, yellow man. unless they too much meddle. You savvy?”

“I savvy,” said Stanton. His pulses were quickening, his blood beginning to tingle. He felt that he was on the threshold of adventure, mysterious, dangerous.

"ON that island one big image,” Cheung went on. “Not idol, all same symbol. Symbol of evil spilits native men speak velley soft along, make gift so he leave alone. Some one meddle along that god, not savvy how, die velly quick. Suppose you go this place, you leave god alone. I send white man I know along this Motutabu—that mean fo’bidden island. He is good man, I tlust him plenty. I send Kanaka with him to dive. No one come back. Long time now they should come back. Something happen. Maybe he meddle too much along that god, maybe all get sick, maybe schooner get on leef. I not know.

“I am lil’ aflaid some one else speak along the Kanaka who tell me about that place. Li'l’ while since he speak with me, they find him dead along beach. Maybe because he talk, maybe because he no talk. Nobody savvy who kill him. I no savvy. I think maybe one man, half Chinaman, he savvy something. Maybe he go along Motutabu, but suppose he did he not find pearl. If he find pearl he not come back to Suva. He go to Sigapo’. Belong that place. But I like find out.”

Singapore! Stanton had the flash, half intuition, half reasoning, that is called a hunch. Singapore meant the Malay Peninsula. In his mind’s eye he saw the lithe figure of the Malay Manchu, swaggering but furtive, like a stalking panther, trailing the girl. He did not know then how illuminating his hunch had been. But the name came to his lips. “Loo Fong!”

Cheung grunted again.

“I always think you smaht,” he said. “Li'l bad luck, maybe, jus’ now. Loo Fong come back. I think he been along that island. Maybe he kill. But I think he no find pearl. I like send you.”

“I'm no sailor,” Stanton disclaimed. “I’ve knocked about in a pleasure boat or two, yachting, but I’m no navigator."

“I give you ship,” Cheung purred on. “Captain and clew all same, they lun ship. Chinamen. On island you boss. You find out what happen. Mari I send to island is ’Melican, all same you 'Melican. Suppose I send Chinamen, suppose Loo Fong been that place, my man no tlust any one but white man. His name Haines. I pay you good. Suppose you bling back pearls, I give you plenty.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” said Stanton. He was not demurring to the proposition, but it had taken him off his feet a bit. It sounded like a large order.

He did not lack confidence in himself, but this was a strange situation he was asked to take command of. He could not immediately see himself on a boat manned by Chinese, going to an island where some god, some symbol of evil, was supposed to reign with malign influence; where murder might have been done. He wanted to think it over, though he wanted to go, aside from obliging Cheung.

“I savvy plenty,” Cheung went on suavely. “You have bad luck; you live cheap, not dlink, not lun up big bill at big hotel. You tly all time find any kind of job. Not easy fo’ ’Melican along this place. Li’l’ time ago you fight mate of Lehua. I like ’Melican who not blag, not dlink, can fight. I like you velly much to go this tlip.”

Stanton wondered a little at the other’s knowledge of the fight, but it was not surprising. Such news traveled fast. The restaurant was a sort of club, in some ways. He was to wonder more how closely Cheung had studied him.

“To-day steameh come,” Cheung went on. “Haines, he had bad luck too, long time. He tlade in copla, have bad luck. He go fo’ shell an’ pearl, have bad luck. Lose schooneh, find shell eaten by oyster worm. His wife die in United States. Then he catch job with me. He lite back to his daughteh, pletty soon he make money. She no heah flom him long time befo’. Now velly glad. She come to Suva. Come to-day. She nice gel. I tell about her fatheh. She wollied, but she keep up chin all same you, ’Melican fashion. She want to go look fo’ him. I say she can go along with you.”

Stanton gasped. Things were developing fast. He knew who the girl was. She would recognize him when she saw him. He guessed why Loo Fong had trailed her. Loo Fong knew of the island if he had not been there. It was likely he had tried to pump the native who had first given Cheung the information, and killed the poor devil. Why the latter had chosen to confide in Cheung did not matter now. It was Cheung’s affair. Probably the man was indebted to him.

“I saw Loo Fong following a girl who came in on the Austral, I think,” he said. Again Cheung gave one of his soft grunts of comprehension.

“Loo Fong plenty slick,” he said. “I think he savvy gel ask fo’ me. She go along hotel now she come my place. Mo’ betteh she stay this place. Loo Fong savvy that, savvy you come see me, maybe savvy why. Maskee! I think maybe you have to kill Loo Fong some time.”

HE spoke placidly enough, but, to Stanton, the room seemed suddenly filled with a mist in which vague, battling figures moved, while in the background there loomed the statue of a great, gray god and the suggestion of fantastic cliffs and jungle.

He was looking on, now, but he was about to be involved in this. Pearls, magic, murder. Mystery and sudden death. Romance. ‘The girl’s face with the big eyes that had changed when they saw him, as if there had been between them some affinity, was plain before him. He heard Cheung clap his hands, and then the girl herself was in the room, in the flesh, gazing at him as he rose.

“Missy Haines,” Cheung was saying. “This Misteh Stanton. I think he go along Motutabu fo’ me.”

Her hand was in his, cool and firm, her gaze was searching him, frank, friendly.

“You don’t mind if I go along?” she said. “I want to know what has happened to my father, I want to see him again. He left me in school, six years ago.”

"Mind?” Stanton was filled with an idiotic desire to say the things that crowded his brain, to give utterance to the impulses that thrilled him. To acknowledge the joy that surged through him at the prospect of being her knight-errant, her champion. There was no question now of his not going. If Cheung had reserved this argument for the last, he had chosen wisely. Stanton’s actual answer was stiff, awkward.

“I shall be glad to serve you, if I can, to help your father, to be of use to Cheung Li, who has befriended me.”

“As he did my father,” said the girl. Stanton thought he heard Cheung chuckle, but his face was immobile.

“That settled,’ he said. “Now Stanton, talk business along with me. Much to fix, quick as possible. Tomollow, maybe nex’ day, you go.”

The girl left and Cheung talked business. His schooner, with the Chinese skipper and crew, were at Levuka on the island of Ovalau, former capital of Fiji. It was not far away, less than fifty miles, and he had sent word to them, expecting them tomorrow. He gave Stanton money to buy necessary personal things, promising to furnish him weapons. Motutabu was not on the regulation charts. It lay far to the south and west, below the Kermadec Islands. Cheung showed its position on a chart. At the end of the interview he gave certain grave warnings.

“I think Loo Fong go that place,” he said. “Not find pearl. If he savvy I send you I think he go back. Follow you, make plenty tlouble. Much betteh he stay along that place.”

There was a grim note in his voice that more than hinted his meaning. Cheung had not attempted to dodge the fact that the trip was dangerous. He seemed at once to value life and consider it of little value, like the money changer who promptly throws out spurious coin. The crew of his schooner would be armed. He had not sent Chinese in the first place because natives were better divers; his own men were unused to pearling, he used them for inter-island trading. But they were fighters. They were his men.

Stanton was convinced that those who worked for Cheung were loyal, bound by a fealty that went beyond pay. He saw depths to this man who was running a lowly restaurant and living in something close to luxury. He realized that the restaurant was a clearing house for gossip, valuable to such a person as Cheung; shrewd, daring, efficient, he bent .his energies toward fortune, but was endowed with philosophy, a mode of thought and life that raised him far above the ordinary.

“You not meddle along that god,” Cheung said, the last thing. “And you look out along of Loo Fong, You look out along that mate you fight. Suppose you want take along that Tiki, can do. Maybe he can be useful along in bush. ‘That mate name Johnson. Schooneh Lehua. Captain Fenwick, he sick, he stay in Suva. Cook quit too. Loo Fong he hold share in Lehua. You look out. Take this now.”

He took from a drawer in a lacquered cabinet a flat automatic of German make, a vicious-looking thing of heavy caliber. As it lay cold in Stanton’s palm it seemed like some sort of fetish that was a tangible link connecting him with the adventure, making it real, Cheung gave him extra clips.

“Knife betteh,” he said. “Make no noise. Suppose you have to shoot, may make tlouble. But knife need plactice. You take. Johnson got no use fo’ you. Loo Fong may think you savvy where to find pearl. I no savvy that. I think Haines hide all time, but I not know what place. Suppose he dead, you tly find pearl. I see you this time to-mollow.”

STANTON slid the automatic away into his hip pocket, and Cheung shook his head.

“Pocket no good,” he said. “Wait, I find.”

He opened a chest and produced a spring clip-holder and leather shoulder harness which Stanton fitted then and there, taking off his coat. The flat weapon lay close to his chest, snug and handy. There would be other revolvers on board, with belts and holsters for open use, but this manner was best, when one wore a coat, in Suva:

The police did not like foreigners to swank about with visible weapons. It was an orderly and peaceful town, but many strange things went on near by. There was the Rewa River, up which there was said to be a hidden headquarters for fugitives and outlaws of all kinds and races, waiting for secret transportation beyond extradition. Back of that, in the mountains, drums sounded on certain moonlit midnights, and the natives were still said to practice ancient and horrible rites of cannibalism and sacrifice.

Suva was civilized. Fiji was pacified. But savagery lurked on every hand.

Stanton made his purchases unostentatiously. He held the notion that he was shadowed. He saw nothing of Loo Fong, but that crafty individual had his following, who might be trailing Stanton for him. Stanton was barbered, reclothed, reshod, his own man again. His account with Cheung’s restaurant was wiped out. He paid Panakaloa, together with a present of a vivid scarf which she draped proudly across her ample bosom, tears in her eyes as she thanked him and applauded his turn of fortune. :

He had native tobacco and a new pipe for Tiki, with cloth for a sulu kilt with which to replace his inadequate G-string. The old pipe had been smashed on the wharf, he had not tasted the flavor of tobacco or its smoke for weeks, and his gratitude was inordinate. It was dark by then, and Stanton left him curled up on his mats, smoking blissfully.

Stanton stayed close that night, sitting in Panakaloa’s little garden, smoking and thinking over the swift changes of chance. He had turned a sudden corner and he did not know what lay ahead, save that it was a man’s work, savored with excitement and peril, heightened by the entrance of the girl.

He slept with the automatic on his chest, over his pyjama top. It was heavy but handy, and he did not take Cheung’s warnings lightly. Loo Fong might well believe, as Cheung had suggested, that Stanton was going to Motutabu and knew where to find the pearls Cheung was sure Haines had gathered. In such a case they might decide to try to force that information out of him, kidnap and torture him, rather than risk losing a race to the island.

So Loo Fong had a share in the Lehua. The mate was in actual charge of the schooner, to all intents and purposes its skipper. Loo Fong and the mate would almost certainly get together. Johnson had his own grudge against Stanton, which might materialize on its own account or join forces with Loo Fong in his plans.

It seemed very likely indeed to Stanton that the Lehua might have been to Motutabu on the trip from which she had just returned, with Loo Fong in her. The cargo was more or less of a blind, picked up after the trail for the pearls had failed.

If Tiki had been able to talk anything but his uncouth dialect Stanton might have been able to find out from him. The cook would know; he was probably leaving for some more definite reason than Johnson’s slurs on his cooking. If anything serious had happened on Motutabu the cook might have decided to draw the line at piracy and quit while his neck was still un-stretched, in which case it was not likely that he would talk. He had not been very prepossessing, as Stanton recollected. It was a rough outfit.

CHEUNG would undoubtedly find out all that it was possible to gather. Stanton felt that. Cheung had not fully divulged himself in their talk, that he knew or suspected far more than he had mentioned. And Stanton was convinced that there had been grim doings on Motutabu and would be more. It seemed doubtful if the girl’s father was. still alive. If he were not, it would be no easy task to find the pearls. There would be the girl to comfort and protect. If Loo Fong followed and was again frustrated of the gems, he might consider the girl a secondary prize, so much loot for his personal gratification and disposal.

Small doubt of that, Stanton fancied, remembering the way in which the half-caste had trailed her. This mission was not the sort in which a girl should be involved, but he knew that she was fully committed to it, that Cheung was either willing she should go, or had tried to dissuade her and failed. Tonight she was safe enough at Cheung’s. Cheung’s measure of precaution would baffle even Loo Fong, Stanton felt certain, and took comfort from it.

Panakaloa’s house was far from a fortress, built in flimsy, tropic fashion. It held no treasures, the window fastenings were light, the doors had no bolts. The one to the back garden did not even have a key, and the garden fence was easily scaled.

Stanton was a light sleeper. He held a hunch that the night was breeding some sort of attempt, and he hoped to be ready for it when it appeared. He dozed in cat-naps, waking intermittently, dropping off again. Then, a little after midnight, he was roused by some unusual sound that brought him standing to the floor, gun in hand, listening, watching. Whatever had wakened him was veiled by sleep, but his consciousness insisted there had been something.

There was no moon. The garden lay in mellow, tropic starlight, filled with deep, soft shadows that shifted shape as the land wind moved fronds and leafage. He saw nothing else; he stole to the door and listened, opening it suddenly, finger on trigger.

It looked as if a great dog were lying down on the threshold. In the vague light from the window he saw the faint glint of uprolled eyes. It was Tiki. From gratitude or fidelity, prompted perhaps by some sense developed in his savage subconsciousness of impending peril, he had come in from his shed to get as close to his protector as he could.

“All right, Tiki,’ Stanton said quietly. “Good boy.” It was like talking to a dog, using tone to convey meaning. Tiki clucked something in his throat as Stanton closed the door.

It was not easy to doze again after the thorough rousing. The actions of the day, filmed in his brain, were automatically projected on the mental screen.

He was no longer a derelict. No one would venture to call him or describe him as a beach bum now. He had decent clothes, money in his pocket, had fought and won, acquired a cannibal Man Friday, met a girl who stirred feelings within him that he had never before experienced, and he was embarked upon a wild enterprise in a savage setting. At last the flickering flash-backs died out, and his mind became a blank.

The next thing he knew was a faint draft of air. The door was open, a dark space where its paint had shown gray. The windows, opening lengthwise, were apart. He could smell the night blossoms, ylang-ylang, frangipani. As he swung off the bed something touched his arm. It was Tiki, crouching low, hardly visible, pointing an arm, vaguely silhouetted, at the window. Then he darted off, merging into the gloom, back toward the open door.

THE tops of croton bushes came above the sill. The wind moved them, or was it something else?

Stanton sat on the edge of the bed, his gun ready to cover any intruder, remembering Cheung’s caution that shooting would bring trouble, wondering if he could be plainly seen. He felt eyes watching him from the shrubbery, thought he could make out some solid bulk amid the leaves. It was so still, so charged with suspense, that he could hear the ticking of his watch,

Then there came a scuffle in the passage. Tiki had attacked, or been attacked. At any rate, fed, and fortified by having a friendly master, Tiki was fighting fiercely. Two struggling figures, locked in desperate battle, rolled into the room.

Stanton caught the gleam of steel. Tiki had no weapon. He launched himself from the edge of the bed, smashing at the hand that held the blade with the muzzle of his gun, trying to locate the intruder’s head. It was an impossible task in the darkness and the fury of the combat. He could tell only that the man was far bigger than Tiki, and at that, like Tiki, he was practically naked. He could smell the rank sweat of him.

For the moment he had forgotten the window, been forced to leave it unguarded, suddenly aware of forms rising, writhing over the sill as he whirled. One of them was clothed and burly, the other a stinking savage, rancid with palm oil, slippery as an eel. A sleeved arm was flung in front of Stanton, thrust hard against his throat to cut off his wind. He broke into tumultuous action, grasping the thick wrist with both hands, turning, stooping, putting all he had into a heaving pull of his back and shoulders, The weight of his adversary bore him down to one knee, but Stanton flung him heels over head, crashing into the flimsy bureau; then Stanton dived for the legs of the third man, and brought him down across the bed, close to the foot of it, bounding on the springs beneath the mattress.

Stanton leaped on him before he could get up or free the knife he surely carried in his loin-cloth, The native’s hands clawed for Stanton’s throat, lacerating the flesh. Stanton gripped one arm, bent it backward on the iron railing of the bed, bent it until it cracked. The savage yelled, leaping convulsively in his pain, and rolled to the floor.

Tiki and his man were in the doorway again. Stanton heard their panting grunts, and marveled at Tiki’s resistance. The big man he had thrown was getting up. There was electricity in Suva, and Panakaloa had bulbs in her house. Stanton had no chance to get at his switch, but suddenly the passage was illumined and an Amazonian voice angrily demanded what was going on.

Panakaloa appeared, a shawl over her voluminous nightgown. She was brandishing a club that had been part of her skipper husband’s collection of island weapons. The man had Tiki by the throat, squeezing him until his eyes bulged from their sockets, his tongue protruding. Panakaloa’s club thudded down, and the seeming victor collapsed. Stanton saw the other native scramble over the sill dangling his broken arm. The clothed man rose from the ruins of the bureau and flung a chair at Stanton before he followed. It came legs first, hard enough to check Stanton’s leap.

The two were gone, smashing through the shrubbery, up to the roof of Tiki’s shed by means of the rainbarrel Panakaloa used for watering her garden, and over the fence.

PANAKALOA and the light had routed them, aside from her by no means to be despised club. They had no desire for the publicity her indignant voice and arm might evoke. Stanton did not get a clear look at the face of the man who had thrown the chair, the room was still in partial shadow, but he was almost certain it had been Johnson, mate of the Lehua, and the other two were Solomon Islanders, members of the crew.

The one still lay senseless from the blow of the hardwood club. He was as black as Tiki, but bigger; his sharp filed teeth showing in the relaxed jaw. For a moment Stanton thought Panakaloa had killed him, and said so. She shook her head.

“Too much thick, that skull,” she answered. “ Maybe I crack it lil. Serve him right. You want I call police, Sanatoni?” she asked shrewdly.

“Td rather not,” he answered; and she nodded.

“ We take that trash outside, then,” she said. “A fine cheek they got to come along my house.” '

“It’s my fault,” he told her. “ They were after me.”

Whether the mate had been bent on private reprisal or was in league with Loo Fong to knock him senseless and take him prisoner was uncertain, and not pertinent now they were foiled. Tiki had balked their attempt in the beginning; Panakaloa, with her unexpected sortie, had completed the rout.

Tiki was massaging his throat, but he grinned. The fights had not exhausted him. Now that he had become attached to some one, he had shed much of his misery like an old garment. He helped the two of them bear the sagging body of the still unconscious man out into the deserted street and set it down in the lee of a cereus hedge that topped a stone wall. There was no one in sight, no sound of the other two, and they left him there.

“I owe you a bureau, Panakaloa,” said Stanton. “I owe you more than that. You came just in time.”

“Ugh!” grunted Panakaloa contemptuously. "That bureau not much good. I pay four dollar for that along of junkman.” She sat down and began to laugh, her stout body shaking like a jelly, her eyes rolling upward while Tiki surveyed her in awe and amazement. “Too much I fool that kaikanaka. My old man, the kapitani, one time he hit me with that club. This time I get even. When that black trash wake up he think the house fall in on him.”

Tiki did not understand what she said, but he grinned widely at her tone. She insisted upon opening beer for herself and Stanton, and she gave Tiki a glass, which he tasted suspiciously and then swallowed it with a comical grimace of surprised delight as he rubbed his stomach. Native fashion, Panakaloa had strengthened the brew with a slug of Hollands gin.

It was beginning to get light when she left them, still chuckling over her prowess, vastly pleased with herself. Tiki was too proud at what Stanton said to him, patting his shoulder the while. It was Greek to the islander, but he knew it for praise.

3. The Race To Motutabu.

CHEUNG’S schooner arrived from Levuka early the next morning, mooring in the stream at first,

Then, as the tide served, going to a wharf remote from the main one where the Lehua still lay. Stanton did not go near her, but stayed at Cheung’s house after breakfast, at the latter’s suggestion, talking with Lucy Haines. From behind the tatties of split bamboo they saw Loo Fong pass by and glance up, later to return again.

Stanton said nothing of what had happened the night before. It did not seem necessary. Cheung had gone to see about getting the schooner ready. Tiki was in his shed, waiting to be called for, smoking his new pipe, a stray no longer.

Stanton and the girl told each other something of their early life. Mention of the impending trip made her grave, brought worry to her eyes. He could tell that she was fighting off doubts of finding her father. Several times they sat silent, but not out of accord.

Cheung came back at noon and said they would leave on the ebb after nightfall. He too had seen Loo Fong. A scout he had sent out reported that they were taking stores aboard the Lehua. The skipper had gone to the hospital, Johnson was -in command, and the cook had left.

“ They savvy Fahine, my ship,” said Cheung. “They savvy she come in. They watch all same we watch along of them. Maybe we get staht. Long way to Motutabu; Fahine mo’ fast than Lehua. My captain good man. Suppose wind blow light, you leach island befo’ them.”

It was dark when they went on board. The Chinese skipper talked “ pidgin” that was comprehensible. He found a few words of dialect that Tiki understood, to the black’s delight, and sent him forward. The Chinese sailors, naked above the waist, their feet bare, their heads bound with bright bandannas, were a piratical-looking lot though their ordinary occupation was peaceful trading. But they were efficient, getting the schooner under way to singsong orders from mate and boatswain, with his whistle, as the captain showed the girl and Stanton to their quarters.

The schooner was plainly fitted up, and it smelled of ancient cargoes of copra, of béche-de-mer, sharks’ fins, turtle shell and pearl shell, but Cheung had evidently been at some pains to make them comfortable. There were two cabins aft for them, and the girl’s, especially, had been brightened with rugs and cushions.

In the main cabin there was a rack for rifles, filled with well oiled weapons. Stanton had noted appreciatively the tall masts, the narrow beam, the clean entry and fine lines of the ship. Speed evidently counted in Cheung’s business. In a rush for competitive trade or to be the first at a new pearling ground, the Fahine would not be a laggard.

She was well-found, decks clear and clean of litter, ropes coiled, the ends seized and the rigging well set up. He could hear the quick tread of the yellow-skinned sailors as they went about the familiar tasks. Soon she was under way, the wharf sliding past, the lights of Suva gleaming through the ports.

The captain came below, deferential.

“Suppose you likee go topside?” he said. "Can do.”

He was in Chinese clothes, his feet shod; a muscular man with a typically Mongolian face, sure of himself and authoritative, but plainly considering them as allies, friends of Cheung Li.

The wind was fresh from the land, striking them a little abaft the beam, and they slipped fast through the water, with sheets well started. Stanton, watching the way she answered helm, surmised that her bottom was clean. She showed no lights anywhere. The captain took night-glasses from a hook in the companionway and surveyed the reach behind them. They were well out of the shipping.

“No one come,” he said laconically. "You like look-see?”

Stanton took the binoculars, focused them, swept the water between them and the land. There was nothing moving there. They had got a start, at least.

He wondered if the Chinese skipper had been to Motutabu before. Probably not. But he would have its position, and the Lehua’s previous trip would not advantage them much.

Their direct course was southeast, the distance something over six hundred miles. It might take them anywhere from a week to a fortnight to cover it, for the winds were variable, there were tantalizing calms and strong currents set up by the action of the tides over the varying depths and con- . tour of the bottom, where vast expanses of shallows suddenly changed to vast abysses cleft by submarine peaks and ranges. Neither schooner had an engine. Luck or fate was going to enter largely into the affair.

They lost the land wind and ran into a calm inside of two hours, working through it at last to strike the southeast trade. The Fahine was close-hauled and clawed into it, making eight knots, slogging along at a lively clip with the sheer bows buried at every plunge. It stiffened to a squall, and the schooner leaned against it, the mainsail reefed two points, and only a small staysail forward.

Stanton was a good sailor, and the next morning proved Lucy Haines was another. All that day they sailed fast under a bright sky, the crested seas dark sapphires, save where the foam creamed or was blown in spindrift, and the sun flashed back golden from the facets of the waves. All day the horizon stayed clear of smoke or sail. The girl’s spirits rose. It began to look as if the Lehua had not got away. Flying fish rose from the brine, pursued by rushing dolphins; frigate birds soared free,

THE trade set them down, and they regained their easting with short legs. They had crossed the Kudavu Passage north of the Astrolabe Reefs, passing between Totoya and Matuku. Now there was no land in sight, would not be if they kept anywhere near their true course until they sighted the island of their quest. The Tongas were far to the north as they headed to cross the Tropic of Capricorn. The wide expanse of ocean, the run of sparkling water, the clean wind blowing between sea and sky—it was all physically exhilarating, mentally stimulating, a tonic for doubt, strengthened by the lonely horizon.

The two of them had their own mess. The rest ate Chinese food, but they were served a menu to suit their occidental tastes. Cheung’s orders, no doubt. It was excellently cooked and served. Things aboard the Fahine ran like clockwork. There was never any confusion. The yellow men went about their tasks with a will the moment an order was given, without fumbling, knowing what was wanted.

It blew harder, the seas mounted, still under the blue sky and bright sun. They had to lower the mainsail at last and mount a storm staysail between the two masts, balanced by a rag of a jib. They made more leeway now. The wind remained southeast, blowing from the quarter they sought to penetrate as if it was determined to hold them off. It might have been the breath of the great gray god defending his tabu. But any wind was better than no wind, unless they had to run before it, and it did not come to that. The weather modified swiftly with a blazing sunset. Stanton came on deck at midnight to find a heavy swell running, the schooner under full sail but with only a few flaws of wind that sent her forward spasmodically. The captain was aft by the starboard rail, motionless. Stanton offered him one of the cheroots with which Cheung had supplied him, and the other took it silently.

He lit it before he spoke.

“Lil time ago we see ship,” he said. “ All same this. Gone now. Long way off.”

“You think it was the Lehua?”

“No can tell. Maybe. Maskee.”

It was not indifference. Only the tacit acceptance of conditions, the Oriental touch of fatalism. He pointed to where a new moon hung like a nail paring.

“Wind go soon. Maybe they get, maybe we catch. Maskee.”

The word summed up Chinese philosophy. The equivalent of the Russian nitchevo. It was not the time for direct action, save for the handling of the ship, which was the plaything of the weather. But later in the night Stanton, restless, unable to share the maskee-ism of the skipper, smelled incense. The captain was burning punk sticks before the joss in the gilded shrine in the cabin. He had his superstitions, or his faiths.

The next three days saw them almost motionless. The sea had gone down and was like glass, reflecting the fiery glare of the sun. Now and then they saw distant squalls, bursts of rain, ruffled patches of sea, but they got no breath of wind.

The horizon was clear again. The Lehua—Stanton held no doubt that the vessel they had sighted was that schooner, with Loo Fong aboard— might be experiencing the same conditions, or she might be bowling along out of the baffling strip.

A current was steadily setting them east. He envied the imperturbability of the Chinese; they were used to the vagaries of the sea, and accepted what they could not alter; but he chafed with impatience. Lucy Haines kept to her cabin, her meals served there. Stanton did not disturb her. She was sick, not of body, but of heart. The punk sticks burned constantly.

On the fourth morning trade clouds appeared aft, in the northwest. It was the time of the monsoon changes of wind caused by the difference in temperature between air and water. There was wind in those vaporous heights. It revealed itself in a dark line on the  water that came fast toward them as the skipper gave an order and they swung out the booms in readiness. The breeze caught them, urged them on, sailing wing and wing, the canvas bellying taut as drums, the lively sea seething all about them, a broad wake behind, on their course once more, headed straight for Motutabu.

STANTON noticed Tiki at his usual post, far forward, his eyes always turned south. He was a different looking savage from the sick creature curled up on the bale. His skin was glossy and his eyes were bright. His broad nostrils dilated as if he smelled familiar odors. Stanton wondered what he was thinking about. If the cook of the Lehua had spoken truly, his own island held peril for him, but there was no fear in his eyes. Whenever they looked at Stanton they held gratitude, but there was a difference, a measure of pride.

That afternoon the captain cast a light on Tiki.

“I speak with Tiki,” he said. “No savvy too much, but he say one time he live along Motutabu. His father tahunga, all same wiza’d. Tiki all same tahunga himself, He speak Motutabu velly bad place stop along. All time too much bad magic along of big god live that place.”

There was more than that that the skipper had found out by signs and certain words they both understood. Stanton retailed it later to the girl, who was again on deck.

Apparently Tiki’s father had run the tribe. Tiki seemed to have been trained to take his place. Then the god had turned malignant. It was one of the deities of the South Sea pantheon that had to be placated, and the sacrifices had failed. There had been an earthquake— “Velly much shake that island,” was the way the captain interpreted it. The top of a mountain had fallen off and a cape had slid into the sea. The wizard was blamed. The population escaped in canoes, after killing the man whose magic had gone wrong, Tiki had been spared for some reason which was obscure, perhaps because of his youth or because the women hid him,

On the tribe’s new home he had been suffered to live. A new wizard manifested himself. There was no god on this island. All went well save that Tiki was in bad odor. He was an hereditary tahunga, of an ancient line of wizards, and the new one feared him. Tiki had lived by himself in the bush, periodically hunted and sought for a sacrifice, blamed by the new tahunga for every sickness and death. So Tiki had stolen aboard the Lehua, hoping to escape to some friendlier place at which they might touch, not knowing what sort of man was in command or what kind of men were on the ship.

The curious thing was that he did not seem alarmed because they were going to Motutabu. The god was an evil god, but he believed fully in the magic of his dead father. It was the plotting of the man who later set himself up as tahunga that had annoyed the deity. His father had understood the god, had taught Tiki secrets concerning it. None but the ancient line of wizards dared approach it. Its shadow was death to all others.

Stanton could see no particular bearing in all this concerning the finding of Haines and the pearls. But he remembered the warnings of Cheung not to meddle with the god, and it was evident that the skipper had gone to much pains to talk with Tiki. Tiki seemed to be acquiring importance, a card whose value Stanton could not judge, though he sensed that he might have done something far more significant than he guessed when he rescued him from the cruelty of the mate. He had much to learn about Motutabu, much to learn about the god. Even now he could not quite shake off the feeling that Cheung had not spoken idly.

Strange things happened in the South Seas.

He understood it a little better with his first close glimpse of Motutabu.

4: The Jungle Trail.

THEY sighted it at dawn. It revealed itself in the growing light, before the sun rose above the sea-line, like an image developing on a negative in the dark room, somber, gradually acquiring definite shape, a blot against the purple-black of the sky where the stars were winking out.

The skipper had found it unerringly ; he told them he expected to pick it up at daylight, and here it was, darkly sinister, spray booming along ironbound cliffs, heights veiled in mist. The sound of the surf rolled back to them as they skirted the coast to the east, seeking for some place to land. It was not going to be easy, and they held off until the light strengthened.

It came with a rush as the disk of the sun rolled up from the tumbling sea rim, day instantly proclaimed. The island woke to life. Myriads of birds rose from the cliffs and from tiny, outlying islets; gulls and gannets, skuas and boobies, whirling and screeching, then winging out to sea to some shoal where they would find good fishing.

There were other birds, of the land, squawking parrots above the thick forest that verged the iron walls rising sheer from the spouting sea. Above the bush lofted three torn pinnacles, fangs that tore the vapors writhing about them. There were deep canyons here and there, dark in shadow; small coves; waterfalls, leaping to the beach over sheer precipices.

Then they saw the god. A cliff was sharply set back, and they only saw the upper part of the image, flaring livid red in the sunrise, carved, it seemed, from the living rock. It was of gigantic proportions, the art primitive, so primitive it might have been the work of some futurist, striving to simplify curves and lines, to crystallize expressions,

The face was long, a long nose, flattened, bridgeless, but with flaring nostrils. A wide mouth, thin-lipped, austere, yet subtly sensual, with the hint of a cruel sneer at the corners. The eyes were carved so that they suggested a malignant glance as the crimson light blazed full upon them. The ears touched the narrow shoulders.

The body, what they saw of it, was misshapen, out of all proportion, small arms, with the hands resting on knees far apart, deep shadow between them. It stood out of the cliff in full and startling relief, infinitely evil, leering. It had a sort of crown, hewn from the summit of the cliff and the foliage back of this looked like plumes, The whole aspect was baleful, brooding, gazing out to sea like the old gods at Easter Island, whose origin and purpose no man has yet discovered.

The Chinese gazed at it stolidly. The man at the helm paid no attention and the captain was occupied with the shore line, looking for some spot where he could send a boat ashore. There was no indication of a lagoon. The island rose straight from the waves that ravened all about it.

Tiki’s attitude was curious. He squatted on deck and bowed his head to the planks, in deference rather than fealty. This was his fetish, but he did not seem to be afraid. The priests of Moloch may have felt no terror at their horrible, blood-demanding image.

The girl shuddered, and Stanton had to tell himself sharply that here was only a thing hewn from lifeless stone. It glared at them and, as the morning clouds dissolved under the sun, its lips seem to quiver scornfully.

“Lifeless, I am,” it seemed to say, “yet man-made from things he sensed, the brooding influences of this solitary isle, born of fire and smoke, delivered in water. Influences that may still be conjured from the sea, the sky, the core of the earth. I represent them and I bid you beware.”

Bizarre and fantastic thoughts these; but the image itself was only concrete thought. It seemed to proclaim the place dangerous, cynically warning the intruder. It appeared to hold many tragic secrets, reaching back through the centuries,

A SPUR of land, a cape like a high fin, reached out far into the sea. As they passed it a putrid smell enveloped them. It was like the odor of a glue factory and it pursued them on the breeze until distance made it bearable. This was the stench from piles of shell set out long since to rot so that the shells might be more readily searched for pearls. The shell itself was valuable.

Here there was a deep indentation in the island, and placid water showed behind a foaming barrier of lava reef, not coral, that paralleled the shore. This must have been the diving ground for the precious bivalves. ‘The skipper surveyed it narrowly, seeking an entrance. The reef ended presently, and he came about, hugging the land, one -man casting the lead from the bobstay and chanting out the depth. It was satisfactory and the tide was with them as they glided along between the barrier and the shore, once more encountering the foul odor of decay until they tacked into the cleft and made slowly up it, foresail down and mainsail peaked, with the current.

THEY were in a somber water canyon, still in shadow, though, higher up the fanged peaks glowed in the sunrise and the timber on the loftier slopes took on vivid coloring. ‘The ravine turned sharply and they saw a narrow beach lined with dark-green mangroves from which a stream issued. There were signs of habitation here, a long shed of thatched roof and wattled walls, two houses of the same type. But there was no indication of life, no hail. The place lay wrapped in silence as the Fahine glided slowly on.

The masts of a vessel showed their tops above water a hundred yards out— a sunken schooner. It was a depressing sight, but Stanton twisted a measure of hope from it which he handed to the girl.

“Loo Fong didn’t find the pearls,” he said. “I think this means that your father is still on the island. They sank his ship to prevent his leaving.”

He tried to make it convincing, and Lucy Haines essayed a pitiful smile.

“I hope so,” she replied, “ but why doesn’t he show himself? Why doesn’t some one answer?”

“They may be asleep,” he said, and shouted. The echo came back from the cliff, rebounded from the opposing one, The Chinese captain found bottom to his liking, the cable slipped out to twelve fathoms, and a boat was lowered. It was impossible to tell from those yellow faces what they thought of the situation, but the rowers took rifles with them, pistols holstered at their belts. Stanton took his automatic and another revolver. He had shortened a belt for the girl and she also carried a gun at her hip.

She had dressed for the landing in breeches and high-laced boots, and she looked like a tight-lipped boy, her expression much as Stanton had seen it on the street in Suva. Tiki slid down the fall rope and squatted in the bows. The captain had given him a knife and a leather belt in which he thrust it above his sulu kilt.

The silence was profound. The sea birds had gone, the land birds settled down. The only sound was the melancholy cooing of doves. In the water appeared the scything fins of sharks on some mysterious patrol.

The boat grounded and the rowers hauled it beyond the rise of the flooding tide. Crabs scuttled along the shingle. Blocks of lava protruded here and there. Beach vines straggled over black sand.

Stanton tried to save the girl the sight of the skeletons. There were six of them, the bones scattered, picked clean by crabs, in front of the long shed. They lay in plain view, and she uttered a low cry and halted, then started to hurry forward, checked by Stanton’s hand on her arm.

“There’s no clothing,” he said. “Your father’s not there.” It was scant comfort. There were a few lengths of cloth, but he thought these the loin coverings of the men Haines had with him. ‘The grisly objects were separated as if they had fallen making a stand against invaders. The yellow men investigated as Stanton led the girl aside. Tiki looked at the skeletons incuriously.

The captain reported briefly :

“They all Kanaka. Some got hole in head. Bullet make. No white man there.”

Nor anywhere else, it seemed, as they searched the shed, half full of lustrous shells; the two houses, one of which held some of Haines’s belongings that brought tears to the girl’s eyes, though she strove to check them. Both huts showed signs of search. The winds had erased all footprints. The shell was valuable, but it had been disdained. It looked as if the dead men had been wantonly shot down at the first encounter.

“He got away,” said Stanton. “We'll find him somewhere.” But he held faint hope of finding Haines alive. The atmosphere of murder and sudden death possessed the place.

“We'll stay here until we've searched the island,” he said to the captain.

“Can do,” the skipper answered. It seemed a stupendous, futile task. Towering cliffs, dense jungle and barren, precipitous crags, deep clefts, hidden valleys, caverns: a myriad places where a man might stow himself away, or lie dead.

They spread out, hallooing, looking in all likely spots. The captain made Tiki understand what they were seeking and he nodded, came to Stanton, took his hand and set it on his breast, starting off on a quest of his own, trotting along the beach, disappearing up a ravine choked with guava scrub. They saw no more of him that day as they searched without finding any trace of Haines, living or dead. Night fell with tropic swiftness on their utter lack of success.

THE skipper, at least, looked also for the pearls. He had his own instructions. To Stanton, the discovery of Haines was more important, even aside from thought of the girl, who had stayed beside him all day as they tried in vain to solve the riddle of what had happened to her father. Let them find Haines and, if he was alive, the pearls would be forthcoming.

The fear grew on him—he knew it grew on the girl also—that Haines had been killed by the raiders because he refused to give them up or tell where he kept them. Only the lack of a body offset this dread and a body was easily disposed of. He did not try to comfort Lucy Haines; to do that would be practically an acknowledgment there was no hope. He got her to eat on the plea that she must keep her strength for renewal of search the next day.

They slept aboard. No sail had been in sight up to nightfall. A lookout had been maintained on a cliff and, since the search had extended to the crags, they had seen the whole circle of the horizon. They had won the race down, but their advantage was checked by the search. When Loo Fong arrived, with Johnson, there was going to be trouble.

Stanton was up at dawn. He dressed swiftly, going on deck. The girl was already there, pale from a sleepless night. She was gazing at the island with an expression of hopelessness that she tried to banish as she saw Stanton.

“I’m not going to leave here until I know what has happened to him,” she said, her voice firm, her mouth and chin resolute as she finished the determined sentence. He did not answer her. There was nothing to say. He was not going to let her stay alone. The question of conventions did not enter into the matter. Conventions vanished in these latitudes,

“He’s all I have,” she said. It was in his mind, his heart, to deny this, but it was not the time for it. Complications were likely to settle matters, not as they would have them, but as the fates willed. Motutabu lay in sunshine, but it was emphatically a savage place. The Chinese had buried the skeletons, but they were not to be forgotten, Tragedy brooded over the island.

“We'll have to arrange some sort of systematic search,” he said, foreseeing how impossible was the task. An army, seeking for weeks, might not hope to unearth the secrets of the wild jungle, impenetrable in most places. ‘The seabirds were winging out, others shrilling their morning ecstasy; fish leaped in the water while, up and down, two sharks roved as if they had tasted blood and scented more.

“We've got to eat,” he said. "It’s just a question of fuel.”

“I suppose so,” she answered wearily.

They went below and breakfast was served. Overhead the crew padded about their tasks, washing down the decks, ordinary duties that they carried on. Stanton saw two tears on her cheeks as she tried to drink the strong coffee. She wiped them away, but the drink choked her.

There was a singsong cry on deck that had a stirring note in it. Stanton thought that the Lehua must have been sighted.

“Something’s happened,” he said. “I’ll see what it is." The girl looked at him, startled. For a moment hope flashed in her eyes and died out at the sight of his grim face. The captain came hurrying down the companionway.

“Tiki!” he said. “ He come along beach. I think he find something.”

They raced on deck. The shore boat was ready, the armed rowers in it. Tiki was at the water’s edge, gesticulating, pointing to the heights. The girl was trembling as the oars bent to the short, sturdy strokes. She set her hand on Stanton’s arm, and he laid his own over it. Her lips moved silently. He knew that she was praying that her father was still alive, fighting off the thought of other news.

“Call to him, please,” she asked the skipper. “ Ask him if—if—”

The captain stood up in the stern, handling the steering sweep, and shouted a few syllables. Tiki shouted back.

“He alive,” said the skipper, and the girl broke down as Stanton put his arm about her and she set her head against his shoulder and wept in the revulsion of relief.

Tiki had found him, with his knowledge of jungle craft, looking for sign by instinct, finding it where others would have sought in vain. He pointed out certain places as they trailed him up the ravine in which he had vanished the night before. Stanton could see little. A fragment of broken lava, a snapped stem, but the savage had read all unerringly.

THEY climbed high, following an ancient path hacked through the bush, the ground hard-beaten, a relic of the time when Tiki lived on Motutabu. The trees, matted and bound together with undergrowth and vines, rose on either side like walls. Great orchids swung, brilliant butterflies hovered about them like living flowers. They came to where the trail forked and here was a pyramid of crumbling skulls. Tiki took the right-hand path. It led to a deserted, half-ruined village back of walls of coral, in which bamboos grew along the top. There was a heavy gateway, sagging now, stilted  houses, whose roofs had decayed, the wattled walls torn by the weather, rotting from the rains.

There was a sing-sing ground with a great banyan tree, whose boughs were decked with strings of skulls. One great building had collapsed. Two stone images had fallen on their faces, tall drumlogs, carven like totem poles, lay prone. The earthquake had flung them down. ‘The place was littered with signs of hasty, frenzied flight.

Tiki led them through this abandoned capital of Motutabu, pressing on ever upward by paths that the jungle was already reclaiming. They climbed above the forest and crossed a plateau of high yellow grass that terminated at a great rift, at the bottom of which was a lake of dark water, divided into unequal parts by a sharp ridge that led to the other side. There the crags began.

It was a narrow and perilous crossing. The volcanic rock was badly decomposed and it scaled and broke as they passed, the fragments bounding down to the still water, far below.

On the other side they came to a ledge and Tiki turned and made gestures, nodding at them, talking in excited gutturals.

“He speak we soon find,” the captain interpreted.

They had to go in single file along that narrow way. Once Tiki pointed to some dark marks on the rock.

“That blood,” said the captain. The girl shuddered and Stanton steadied her. It was the dry season. Such stains would linger. Haines had been wounded. Suddenly Tiki stopped where a tangle of vines cascaded down the cliff that backed the ledge. He drew them aside and disclosed a narrow cleft, a fissure made ages past in some upheaval.

It led to a little glen that was merely an oval enlargement of the fissure. Its sides were thick with moss. Water trickled down and formed a pool. There was shrubbery, a few trees, guava scrub, The sun never reached this hidden place in which Haines had found sanctuary. They saw a little shelter of boughs by the pool and saw him lying there, gaunt, haggard, his face covered with a beard, his eyes deep sunken, but with light in them, as the girl gave a cry and ran forward to kneel beside him.

He was reduced almost to skin and bone. One shoulder and a foot were crudely bandaged. His voice was barely audible.

Stanton had brought along a first aid kit and a flask of brandy. Lucy gave some to her father and a faint flush came into his hollow cheeks.

“I thought you were a ghost,” he said faintly. “How did you come here? It was just in time. I wouldn’t have lasted—much longer—my dear.”

He closed his eyes and Stanton thought he was gone, but the pulse still fluttered feebly. The girl gave him more brandy.

“He’s starved,” she said, “We must get him down to the boat. Thank God he’s still alive!” The pearls were forgotten. The Chinese captain had got a fire started. One of the crew put on some water to heat.

“We'll-have to be careful how we feed him,” said Stanton. “I’ve got some beef cubes. We'll have to make a litter, and those wounds should be looked to. He doesn’t seem to have any fever.”

In the hope of Tiki’s discovery they had brought up certain equipment, including the utensil in which the water ‘was warming. The girl dissolved the cubes and added a little brandy, while Stanton unbound the foot. A bullet had gone through the small bones. The wound showed in a purple pucker. There had been inflammation, but, with the fever, it had been starved out of him. The lead had passed through and there was no infection. It was the same with the shoulder. Haines was terribly weak, but he had been a strong man and he had survived.

He managed to swallow the beef tea. It was all they dared allow him. Stanton cleansed the wounds and temporarily dressed and bandaged them. The litter was being made by the sailors. Haines insisted upon talking. Stanton thought it might be better for him than repression.

“THEY nearly got me,” he said. “They got my men. They'd have had me but for chance. They came early in the morning expecting to catch us all asleep, and they butchered my boys, without giving them a chance. I saw it and could do nothing. They were after the pearls. They couldn’t have found them. They tortured two of my men to find out, but they didn’t know. It was the Lehua. They were all in it, but it was Loo Fong who brought them. I nearly got him. It was this way—let me talk, Lucy, I haven’t talked for days, not since I went out of my head.

“I wanted meat. There are goats up here in the crags and I came up overnight to get a kid or two. We were running short of grub, you see, and were pretty well fed up on fish. We were going back in a few days. We cleaned the patches and were rotting out the last of the shell. A lot of pearls. We're rich, Lucy. Luck’s turned, after all.

“I saw the schooner coming in. I didn’t recognize it. Thought at first Cheung had sent it. I didn’t suspect anything, but started down the mountain. There’s a place across the grass where you can see the beach. Time I got there, they had anchored and were sending a boat ashore. They were all like ants from the height. I saw my men come out of their hut and run back again. ‘Those devils were armed, of course, and they didn’t even wait to parley. Some of them went to my house. Then the butchery started. My boys were not armed. I had my rifle with me. I had one extra clip along. It was all over in a few minutes and I couldn’t help them. They’d have got me if I had been there. I ran down the trail when I saw what was happening and then they started up after me. I suppose they got out of one of my men that I was up here after goats. They burned the men’s feet in the fire, damn them.

“One has to keep to the trails. I started back for the crags. ‘They beat all through the grass and then they started to cross the big gap. I fired at them, hit ‘one of them. He fell into the lake. That was a mistake, I suppose; it gave me away; but I was seeing red. On the next shot my rifle jammed. ‘They came over and they hunted me all day, spreading out. The crew were black men and it was easy work for them. They sighted me three times. Once they hit me, in the shoulder.

“I saw they’d get me sooner or later. I couldn’t stay in the crags. They had me nearly surrounded, but I got past them, down to the ledge just below here. My only chance was to bolt across the ridge. But they spotted me. They had me on the ledge. I knew who they were then. It was Loo Fong who hit me in the foot as I bolted for cover. I didn’t feel it for the moment, though I had a shoeful of blood. I was bleeding from the shoulder, weak. I dodged out of sight and then I saw my last chance. I knew the cleft, though I had never been up it. A wounded dove flew into it one day and I had gone after it. I thought the vines might hide me. There was a loose boulder on the ledge and I shoved it over and dodged into the crevice. The rock went crashing down to the lake and they thought it was my body.

“ They came down to the ledge and looked at the place. I heard Loo Fong cursing. They stayed there for a little while and then went away, swearing. I suppose they tried to find the pearls, but they couldn’t get down to the lake. I crawled up to this place presently, bandaged my foot at the pool, and my shoulder. They both got pretty bad after awhile. I made this shelter, I got some guavas, and lived off them and the olehau berries. I couldn’t walk, and fever set in. I don’t know how long I’ve been here; I was delirious.”

The litter was ready. They set Haines in it, a light weight for all his big frame, and he lay there exhausted as two of the crew swung him up and they started down, Lucy as close to her father as the trail permitted.”

They crossed the ridge and the grassy plain, coming to the place he had spoken of where they could see the beach and their schooner. There was another ship coming round the bend—the Lehua! They saw the two men left on board the Fahine jump into a small boat and row ashore. They were fired at from the Lehua. The reports came up in tiny cracks of sound, but the two reached the beach and bolted for the jungle.

A boat crammed with men put off from the raiding vessel.

They were hampered with the wounded Haines, They had to get him into safety. Stanton’s blood boiled at sight of the invaders.

“We fight them,” said the skipper. “Can do. If not, they sink ship, all same his.” Tiki was jabbering.

“ He say take him along god,” said the captain. ‘ He speak it safe place. He speak God fixee. Cave along that place.”

Tiki nodded emphatically. Stanton thought of Cheung’s warning, spoke of it to the captain.

“I savvy. All same I think Tiki talk plopeh.”

5. The Shadow of the God.

HERE was no time for delay. They had to do something. To take the offensive was the best plan. Tiki pointed out the opening of an almost closed jungle trail. They went into it, going as fast as they dared, working toward the far side of the promontory, making for the image.

They came out beneath it at last, at the foot of the towering sculpture. It stood facing a paved terrace, set with flat stones. Great stones had been piled in two walls that left a passageway to the feet of the god. There was a space between his knees. Tiki led the way in.

It was a high chamber into which light filtered down from some opening above where growth masked it. The sides were roughly hewn here and there — into dim shapes. There was a flat rock near the entrance on which was set another one from which protruded long timbers, capstan fashion. ‘Tiki pointed to these.

"He say can fixee tlap so no one come in,” said the skipper.

Tiki nodded, gesturing. Stanton thought he grasped his meaning.

“ All right,” he said. “ Better send out your men to try and flank that outfit. I’ll stay here with Miss Haines and her father. We'll keep Tiki.”

They went out, going along the terrace, disappearing in the trees, yellow men intent on battle. The litter was set down on the cavern floor.

Tiki caught hold of one of the timbers set in the stone, motioning to Stanton who set his chest against one opposite. The girl did the same thing with a third. They heaved, without result, put out all their strength in straining effort. The stone began to turn, more readily after the first movement. There was a grating sound beneath their feet.

Tiki stepped back, grinning. Sweat covered him. Stanton and the girl were panting with their efforts, their clothing wet with perspiration. Tiki beckoned Stanton to come to the mouth of the cave and he followed him. There was nothing to see but the empty terrace, the waving woods. But Tiki was satisfied. He pointed at the great slabs before them, gesturing.

Doves cooed. ‘The girl was ministering to her father who was saying something. Then there came the sound of shots, close at hand. Report after report, singly and scattering volleys. They were quite a distance off, but they came nearer. Then died away. Again they broke out, down by the beach, it seemed.

Then the two Chinese who had come ashore bolted out of the bush, carrying their rifles, glancing back. They looked toward the image and sped on without seeing Stanton or Tiki. Tiki grasped him by the arm and drew him in the shadows. He did not want the Chinese to enter the cavern. The girl came and stood beside Stanton.

“Father is sleeping,” she said. "I heard the shots.”

“ We're safe, so far,” he said. “ Tiki and the god have set some sort of a trap. The trouble is, it may work both ways.” Whatever the device was he could see that they might be besieged, held there, without provisions, without water, unless the yellow men conquered.

The Chinese were willing enough, capable enough, he fancied, though he had never seen them shoot. On the other hand, the crew of the Lehua were Solomon Islanders, used to brush warfare, trained fighters, a savage and blood-thirsty outfit, though the Chinese might match them there. When they took to piracy or banditry they were ruthless enough. He imagined the forces might be about evenly matched, but the nature of the ground would break the fighting up more or less into individual skirmishes.

There was silence again. Haines was resting. With care there would be no question of his recovery, but if Loo Fong got the best of it their fates would all be sealed. What would happen to Lucy he dared not consider. They could put up a desperate fight at the last, if they got a chance. There was no exit to the cave, no possible way to climb to the rift.

Doves cooed. The shadows shifted. Once in awhile they heard a distant shot. The forces were split up now, it seemed. Stanton thought of the captain’s fear their schooner might be sunk, as Haines’s had been. It was a very real peril. He wanted to be out in the vessel, but he could not leave the girl or Haines alone.

Tiki was complacent. He seemed assured that the god in whose belly they. were hidden, would properly protect them. He had gone inside, to squat in front of one of the carved figures, passing from that to another. They could hear him chanting monotonously. He had come back to his old home again and he was renewing fealty. This had been the fetish of his father, the wizard, and Tiki was a born tahunga, in his veins the blood of generations of sorcerers who had served a weird priesthood to this ancient statue which far ante-dated their own original migration to this island.

IT was cool inside. Without, the sun blazed down fiercely. The shadows retreated as the fiery orb mounted toward the zenith. It wheeled out of their sight and the shadow of the cliff, the shadow of the image, began to stretch out over the paving between the walls of stone that shut out much of their view.

Tiki came back to the entrance, hunkering down. From some place known to him he had taken weird paraphernalia. He had daubed himself with white and yellow and black, there was an apron about his middle that was made of human hair. He wore a necklace of knuckle-bones, a skullpan hung upon his chest and his arms and legs were decked with circlets of shell and bone and fiber. He had been in his father’s make-up repository, Stanton thought.

With him he had brought something that looked like a queer-shaped basket of plaited strips of pliable cane, like matting. He took no notice of them apart, remote, droning out some incantations, watching the creeping shadow.

Stanton remembered something Cheung had said about the shadow of the god. The shadows of all sacred things, even of chiefs, were tabu. To walk in them was death. Yet the shadow of the god fell only at certain hours. Tiki could not have timed any attack that might take place. The combatants seemed to have lost sight of each other, hunting along the trails, hiding in the bush. But Tiki seemed waiting for something with a curious certainty. To him the god was infallible.

Stanton told himself that it was only a barbaric, colossal carving, but even as he held the thought, another came, suggesting that he should have faith. Civilization seemed now to be an unreal thing. They were back in the stone age, to which the island and its departed inhabitants belonged. A superstitious feeling possessed him, not one of fear. ‘The shadow lengthened and still the island was wrapped in silence.

Suddenly he thought he saw the solid forest waver to and fro. The legs of the god, portals to the cave, appeared to move. A tremor ran through the ground and there was a low muttering as of thunder, a hollow rumbling from inside the cave. The girl started up and would have gone inside to her father, but he restrained her. The place might fall in.

Montabu had once flamed, been thrust up with its riven crags in smoke and steam. Lava had flowed. Now those fires were clogged, the craters choked, but, far below, the interior wrath still raged. This was a temblor, one of the earthquakes that intermittently shook the peaks that had been lifted from the sea. This was a slight shock. No other followed and he let her enter. Haines was still sleeping.

Tiki had risen. To him it was a manifestation that the god was pleased that a faithful believer had returned. He stood erect with the dignity of an oracle. As Stanton watched him he took the strange basketry and placed it over his head. It was a hood that fell below his shoulders. It had trunklike appendages, two holes for eyes that were glazed by fish bladders. It turned him to a grotesque and terrible figure, like a great squid. As he moved, the wicker tentacles writhed.

Something was going to happen. Stanton felt it in his bones, Not another quake. He saw the shadow vanish, melt away, as if the sun had been veiled. Then it appeared again, sharp and distinct. Tiki’s chant grew louder, ceased as there came the sound of a brisk fusillade.

Men were coming from the woods, firing back at enemies still hidden. They came into view between the walls. The Chinese captain and his men— fewer now—retreating, kneeling to take aim, then running to kneel again. They passed and, with savage yells, the black men from the Lehua burst into view, charging, Johnson and Loo Fong at their head.

Tiki sent out a yell of defiance, ululating, weird and shrill as it issued from a reeded mouthpiece in the mask. Loo Fong halted and turned, Johnson with him. They stared for a moment and then they saw the girl, who had come, unnoticed by Stanton, to the entrance. Stanton swept her aside, flattening her against the curve of the image’s colossal leg, taking place himself on the opposite side as bullets came whining toward them. Tiki had seemingly betrayed them.

He had not moved. He was untouched and again he sent out that piercing challenge as Loo Fong cried out an order and the savage outfit came racing up between the walls, firing their pistols. Now Tiki stepped inside, un-hit.

STANTON fired back to stem the stampede. They came leaping on. Lucy Haines fired with him and a black staggered and fell. Johnson was struck, but it did not check him. Their bullets were entering the cave, splaying gray streaks on the rock. Stanton pulled trigger on his last cartridge, missing Loo Fong whose evil face was lit with triumph. They were on the last great slab when Tiki reappeared, sounding his whistling howl.

Stanton saw the rear half of the big slab tilt upward. The whole stone was balanced and it rose smoothly, inexorably. A gulf opened and out of it came a moaning sound like the wash of the sea, far below.

Johnson and Loo Fong were pitched forward, their faces. twisted with sudden terror. The angle became acute, and they slid down, dropping their weapons, crouching, clawing uselessly. The mate pitched forward, plunged into the gap. Loo Fong made a desperate spring as he squatted there like a toad. His fingers clutched the nigh edge, the sill of the cave entrance, clung there.

The stone swung on, up and over in a complete revolution. Its edge smashed the fingers of the half-caste and the slab closed him in, leaving bloody smears and remnants on the threshold. There were only the black men left and they stood in a huddled mob before they broke and ran, some trying to climb the walls, appalled at this manifestation of the god.

It was the slab of sacrifice, used on ceremonial occasions where victims were demanded; set as a trap for the unwary, for meddlers.

Tiki had lured them on. He had provided sacrifice. He had appeased the long, unsated appetite of his god, and thus established his priesthood. He had saved Haines, his daughter and Stanton, but they had been bait for the victims.

He had won the day.

The yellow men were coming back, firing at the terrified blacks. The fight had gone out of the islanders. They could not battle with gods. Man after man went down, and then the slaughter swept past and out of view.

Tiki touched Stanton on the shoulder. He had taken off the mask and he went back to the moving capstan stone that had triggered the trap. They took hold of the pole and revolved it.

The grating sound died away and Tiki walked through the entrance, out on the slab, now firm again, turning to crouch and lower his head to the rock in salutation and obeisance.

A hail came from the end of the causeway. It was the Chinese skipper with two of his men. Stanton advanced to meet them.

“They all dead!” he said complacently. There was blood on his clothes and his hands, but his face was clear of all emotion. “Tiki, he fixee. All samee stone give way, I think.”

It was over. Two of the Chinese were wounded, one seriously. A third was dead. The captain mentioned it casually. It was all in the day’s work.

“Now we catch pearl and go,” he said. “Mo’ good we sink Lehua. No can take. Too muchee talk, too muchee bobbely that make.”

Stanton had forgotten all about the pearls. It had probably been the prime issue in the mind of the skipper. Haines was an incident. He possessed a share if he lived, but that was Cheung’s private business. Bringing back the pearls was the captain’s affair, whether he found Haines or not. Stanton and the girl, Haines and Tiki, were pawns to the captain.

Cheung, Stanton fancied, was not so cold-blooded, but Cheung was an exceptional Chinaman.

They took up the litter as the rest arrived and marched back, past the outsprawled corpses of the black men, more sacrifices to the great, gray god. Haines awakened from his semi-stupor, seemingly refreshed. He would re- . cover, though he would probably be lame. Stanton ordered him sent off immediately to the ship with Lucy, to occupy Stanton’s own cabin.

“Catch pearl first,” said the captain.

Haines smiled for the first time.

“I think they’re safe,” he said. “There in that pool over there. It is only half-filled at high tide. Moisture wouldn’t hurt them, anyway. But there’s a crevice near the top, on this side. They’re in there, in an oilskin sack. The hole is plugged with seaweed.”

They were safe, a bag half-filled with softly shimmering gems of the sea, slightly iridescent, oval, round, pearshaped, symmetrical, a few of them pink in luster. Stanton could not estimate them, but he knew they represented a fortune. Haines fingered them.

“You can keep some of them, my dear,” he said to Lucy. “A third of them are mine.’ We'll sell what you don’t want.”

“Sell all of them,” she said. “They have cost too much. I couldn’t wear them.”

The skipper talked with Tiki, who stood apart. Then he came to Stanton. “Tiki speak he stay along this place,” he said. “He like we set up those dlum and those image topside along sing-sing glound.”

Stanton looked at Tiki who walked toward him and once more took Stanton’s hand and placed it over his heart. Then he pointed to the mountain, toward the god, now hidden by the cape.

The gesture, the desire, were unmistakable. He had come home. Solitude did not bother him. Later he might adventure, bring back a woman, or a dusky harem, but this was his land, his god.

He did not belong in Suva, nor on the other island from which he had fled. Motutabu was his abiding-place, as priest to the graven image.

They left him later, his wishes carried out, standing on the beach, motionless. Stanton felt that they owed him much, but he had owed a debt to Stanton for his rescue. He would have died in Suva. And he had paid his debt. He and the god.

The sunset was flaming back of the island when they made out to sea, two sunken schooners in the bay. Tiki had been presented with the stores of the Lehua, all that he selected.

The face of the image was no longer flaming as they had first seen it. It was gray now, somber but serene. From the mountain came the deep sound of a reverberating drum.

"WHAT you going to do now?” Cheung asked Stanton as they sat in the chamber over the restaurant. Haines was under medical care, a rich man, content to limp, since he could well afford to ride.

“I don’t know,” Stanton answered. “I’m at a loose end.” Cheung smiled, nodded toward the inside rooms where Lucy Haines was talking with Cheung’s wife.

“Suppose you ask missy?” he said, “These belong along you. If you like I buy them flom you. Give good plice.”

He took a leather sack from his capacious sleeve and poured out pearls into a lacquered bowl. They filled a third of it with milky radiance.

“You, me, Haines, all same divide,” said Cheung. “These velly fine pearl. Fifty-sixty thousan’ dollah. Why you not ask missy?”

“I think I'll take your advice,” said Stanton. The trip back had been a happy one. He was not without foundation for the hope that Lucy might be interested in what he did and where he went.

He was no longer a derelict, no longer in danger of being a beach bum. He was a man of substance.

“You ask now,” said Cheung. “I call my wife. I wish you plenty luckee.”

_______________

3: Skull Manor

Argosy  3 June 1933

CLEMENT FORD did not believe in note books. Once, at the beginning of his career as a criminal investigator, he had lost a big case because he carried one. He had promptly forsworn that habit. His brain held the same quality that enables a chess expert to play a number of games simultaneously, to see scores of moves ahead and intuitively to recognize problems and divine solutions.

Now, as he sat in the uncomfortable accommodation train, rocking and jerking through the night, he mentally conned the features of this commission to which he had reluctantly pledged himself. Under stress from Arlington, lawyer for Lindley Ferguson, who was Ford's impending client, and also a man to whom Ford was indebted for several good connections, he had agreed to undertake the job. Even then, if it had not been for the other case which he had in hand, and the possibilities of finding some clues concerning it, Ford would have managed to excuse himself.

It happened that Tallapee, to which obscure and halt-forgotten Southern hamlet he was bound, was not very distant from either Savannah or Charleston. Clement Ford believed that in those cities he would get the evidence which he wanted and would thus clean up certain matters which were bothering both Federal and private finance. It would be a feather in Ford's cap and money in his pocket if he could land those criminals; and he figured that after he was through with Lindley Ferguson at Tallapee he could take up this matter. At least he would be ahead on both time and transportation.

The case at Tallapee was not one to his liking. It seemed that he had been hired to act as a ghost catcher. Lindley Ferguson, retired merchant, had bought the old place known as Cypress Manor, some nine miles out of Tallapee. It had been once the residence of a wealthy rice planter who had lost his slaves, and with them the source of his riches, after the close of the Civil War.

The place was said to be haunted, but Ferguson considered it all trickery on the part of the natives to scare him out. He felt that doubtless they resented a 'No'therner'' owning and living in the manor, but he was not the sort to submit tamely.

"He got the place cheaply enough," Arlington said to Ford. "I don't quite understand, however, why a man like Ferguson should purchase a place down there in a lonely locality. He cannot possibly have any friendly intercourse with neighbors there. His son and daughter are with him, but the son is inclined to be a bit wild. Ferguson may think to tame him down. The girl, on the other hand, is much too charming to be buried in such a locality. She will not have friends and certainly not suitors.

"I negotiated the purchase through a bank in Charleston which held the mortgage. He has lost a good deal of money lately, and so it may be economy. It can hardly be health.

"He is not the sort to take you much into his confidence, but he is willing to pay any reasonable fee to get at the bottom of the strange things that are happening at Cypress Manor. He bought it without telling either of the children about it. I know that. And he is a stubborn man— not apt to be superstitious."

"Scotch ancestry,'' said Clement Ford. "The Scotch all have a strain of superstition in their makeup. Well, I've said I would and I will. It shouldn't take long."

"I hope not," said the lawyer. ''Of course, one does not place much reliance in local gossip or in legends. The part of the community which is not black is made up largely of what are called ‘poor whites.’ Tallapee is a poverty-stricken sort of place. These people have all sorts of stories about the house and what happens at the old place.

"There have been killings in it and in its vicinity— many of them, and some recently, though none since Ferguson moved in. Naturally, we heard nothing of such matters while negotiations for the purchase were pending. One never does. But nobody will come close to it, not even the tradesmen from whom he buys supplies. They mutter about 'hants' and murder."

“Murder?" said Clement Ford. ''That makes it sound a bit more interesting."

That about completed the data he had mentally checked over.

The next stop was Tallapee. Ford roused himself and looked out the window at the almost invisible landscape. He could make out clumps of trees, and then it all seemed marshland, with stars now and then reflected in slough or pool.

Suddenly Ford straightened in his seat. There was something flying over the swamp; flying fast and low, a vague mass blocked against the stars. There were wide, outspread, motionless wings on which the thing soared; there was an outstretched neck, flexible and swaying from side to side as if the creature was in search of something; there were two green eyes that flamed in a head that looked like the head of a great turtle. The thing rose and fled north, vanishing into the night almost immediately.

Clement Ford had no nerves, he did not suffer from hallucinations, yet could only think that he had witnessed the flight of some primordial monster— a pterodactyl or flying lizard, perhaps.

Was it possible that such a creature had been preserved in this wild morass? No one knew the life of such cold-blooded creatures. A chance survivor could have but few enemies.— Or did such beasts breed here? There were alligators and crocodiles in the swamps, and those saurians were of ancient, unchanged types older than man.

Ford dismissed the absurd idea with an effort, telling himself there must be some flaw in the glass of the window, or that some atmospheric condition of the night had deceived him. Certainly this could hardly be a show put on for his benefit, for nobody knew that he was coming to Cypress Manor.

Nobody else in the coach seemed to have noticed anything strange. The conductor came in, lantern over his arm, announcing "Tallapee". Ford got out, and saw that the little depot was dark. He looked about for some sort of conveyance, and at last saw a ramshackle flivver from which a voice hailed him.

"Taxi, suh?"

Ford could not see much of his driver, save that he had a sad voice, wore a goatee and mustachios, that his Adam's apple was almost as prominent as his nose. ''I want to go to Cypress Manor,'' Ford told him.

The man made no attempt to let in his clutch. ''You-all don't want to go theah. Not if you're in your right mind," he said. "An' I shuah don't want to take you theah. No, suh! I kin use money, but I wouldn't take you 'cross Bloody Crick fo' a hundred dollahs."'

“Well, take me as far as this side of Bloody Creek, then," said Ford. "It's not an inviting name, but so long as it's not my blood running in it, I'm not worried. I suppose I can manage to walk the rest of the way. Five dollars to take me to Bloody Creek. How's that?"

“The crick's well named, I reckon," said his driver. ''Yes, suh. You know, theah's bin three dead men found round heah in the last six months. Found and lost agen! All of 'em strangled. They was blacks, but they was all powerful men. Folks who saw them gave the alarm, but when they went back, the corpses was gone every time. An’ theah's a Something lives in the marsh an’ flies by night. It'll take ten dollahs, suh— not five—to take you within ha'f a mile of Skull Manor."

“It's Cypress Manor I want,'' said Ford.

"Cypress Manor it used to be. After the massacree, the Shadleighs took the two stone balls that used to set on top the gate posts and had them kyarved oveh into skulls. I hear the new owner's had 'em took off, but we-all know why there were put theah."

"I'll make it ten dollars if you'll tell me what you know of the place as we go out," said Ford.

"I'll risk it,'' said the man, and it was clear that he actually felt he ran a risk.

Remembering his mention of the "something" that flew by night and lived in the marsh, Ford did not altogether blame him. Ford realized that he himself had seen that Something, and the sight had been disconcerting to him.

The road to Skull Manor was not bad. It had been treated with tar, and the surface was in good condition.

"It ain't much traveled," the driver explained. ‘You'll see why, when I'm through. I reckon you-all are a No'the'neh. You don't want to git huht at anything I say."

"I'm a Westerner,'' said Ford. "Born in Idaho. Go ahead."

It was a weird tale, set back almost seventy years. A party of young Carolinan bloods had gathered at the Shadleigh house, Cypress Manor— boys, most of the guests were. A farewell dinner, stag, and all in uniform.

Tomorrow they would give the Yanks a riding lesson and score it with lead and steel, for Sherman was on the coast then.

At a few minutes after midnight, with the youngsters flushed with wine and hope of victory, there came a galloping horseman, shouting a warning that was too late. Then twenty gallants of Shadleigh's Troop, named but never to see action, were butchered— so the Southerner bluntly described it— in the ballroom of Cypress Manor where the banquet had been served. Even the horseman who had tried to warn them was caught and hanged. Servants were questioned. The last flames of a dying cause went out.

Ford asked if there were any Shadleighs still living.

"Just the one, I reckon. Judah Shadleigh. Lives right heah in Tallapee. He was suah hopping mad when he found that the place was sold. You see, the bank fo'closed on it long ago, but no one figured it 'ud ever be sold, speshully to a No'the'neh. Too many strange things goin’ on there. Dead blacks. Ghost lights by the tree where they had hung the man who tried to warn the officers— Spy Tree, they call it.— You-all betteh not go theah, suh. They ain't got any servants; can't git none. They won't stay themselves long— not unless they got buried theah. That's a Death House, Skull Manor, suh."'

Ford had an inspiration. It was possible, of course, that this driver was pulling his leg; enjoying himself at the stranger's expense.

"I'm not easily frightened,'' he said. I'm getting good pay. I'm the new butler. I'll head the new staff of servants."

The other grunted.

They drew up at the near end of a bridge beneath which black water flowed silently.

"This-all is Bloody Creek,'' said the driver. "The house ain't mo' than a quarteh-mile. I see theah's a light. Theah ain't no telephone, an' the folks ain't got a car. When you git ready to leave you'll have to walk, unless you run," he ended.

He backed, turning with almost incredible dispatch. With Ford's ten dollar bill thrust into the pocket of his vest, he drove back to Tallapee faster than he had come, as if he feared that that Something in the marsh would swoop down upon him.

Ford touched the automatic in his shoulder holster before he picked up his two grips and started to walk to the house. There were huge oaks that made an avenue, Spanish moss draping them. There was the scent of wild jessamine in the air and the plaintive song of a night bird. The affair of Cypress Manor— Skull Manor— promised to be interesting after all.

ii

THE TALL CLOCK IN THE CASE of polished mahogany which looked like a coffin set on end whirred and struck the witching hour, when churchyards yawn and graves give up their dead!

Margaret Ferguson looked at her stepfather with the quotation in her mind, and saw that it was in his as well. Lindley Ferguson was lean and old— gray where he was not bald— an austere and selfish man, bound with prejudice. He could be cruel, unjust and inflexible.

The girl was more than merely bonny, with her red-gold hair, her straight, short nose, her sweet lips and her supple, rounded figure. Her eyes were the color of cornflowers, but they were dull with a fear now as she fought valiantly to shake off a terror that, as yet, had nothing tangible about it, but that was affecting her with a moral chill as depressing, as real, as if the temperature of the room was physically numbing her.

It was a fear hard to combat. Ferguson felt it and thrust it from him, refusing to recognize it, sustained by the heat of his temper. He paced up and down the great, panelled chamber, once a ballroom. On one fatal night it had been a banquet hall, a banquet hall that was turned into a shambles.

Even yet there were bullet marks in the portraits of men and women who looked with hard, painted eyes at the invader. The bank had held a mortgage on all the furnishings; and so the house had been furnished up by decorators from Charleston, since no native, white or black, could be hired to enter it.

It was spring. Flowers bloomed outside in the garden that had run riot from neglect, but it was cold enough for a fire after dark. There was no heating system in the ancient manor.

The moonlight was full now, with a sky driven clear of vapors by a steady wind that moaned in the throat of the chimney, and reached down to fluff the embers, fan the logs, send white ash swirling against the firescreen.

In his pacing, Ferguson always stood for a moment before the fire, looking out of the tall windows. The room was on the second floor, and it had an outside "gallery." Beyond that the tree tops swayed. The wind lifted the enormous boughs of gigantic live oaks that were draped with long banners of moss. Ivy pattered with ghostly fingers against the panes. The jittering hoot of a screech-owl penetrated to the room.

"Confound your brother!" exclaimed Ferguson. "He has no right to be out at this hour. I shouldn't have let him get that horse. I thought it would amuse him and keep him in shape, but now he uses it to go gallivanting about with this white-trash Tulliver girl."

"She's hardly that," answered Margaret. ''I've talked with her, and she's really very nice. I could be very friendly with her."

Ferguson glared at the girl, but she was not in the least afraid of him, though she usually avoided anything that led up to an outburst. As she talked, she forgot for a moment— at least it did not possess her so utterly— her dread of what might happen within the next few minutes.

"It was the Tulliver chit that told you of this ridiculous story of the phantom rider and set you to dreaming of it."

"I was not dreaming," she said. "Gerald had heard it before, and he had mentioned it to me. Mildred Tulliver repeated it, more fully; that was all. Gerald had not come home last night, and I was reading. I wanted to say good night to him.— When I heard the hoofs, I did not think even of the story. I thought it was Gerald. I went to my window to look out. It was moonlight, like it is now, and the road was empty. But the hoofs came on, went past, and then they stopped and I saw a strange blue ball of fire rising by the tree."

"Bah!" snapped Ferguson. "A hoax, I tell you."

"I looked at my watch," said the girl steadily. "I set this clock by it when I wound it. It was eleven minutes after twelve... "

"It's that now,'' said Ferguson. ''Let's see if they..."

The words faltered on his suddenly dry lips. In the silence, save for the ticking of the clock, they heard the sound of a galloping steed; a horse stretched to its limit, striving, faltering.

"Gerald!" muttered Ferguson.

He opened the window and strode out on the gallery. The girl caught up a wrap and followed him. The chill of the middle night clutched at them, though the air was fragrant with magnolia, with the lilies growing rank in the garden, with wild jessamine. The moon rode high and there were few shadows.

The frenzied clatter of hoofs passed, died away. Then, beyond the house, a bluish-lavender light appeared close to the ground, rising in a ball of spectral flame beside a tall, gaunt sycamore. It was from this tree, so the story ran, that the man who had tried to warn the Southern officers of the approach of northern cavalry had been hanged as a spy because he was not in uniform. And it was to this tree that a Negro had been found a-swing only six weeks ago.

The light vanished and the night was silent again, save for the swish of bending boughs. The girl shivered. She had told herself a hundred times that she did not believe in ghosts, neither would she believe in this one, nor in the tale which Mildred Tulliver swore was true— that whenever the phantom rider was heard, Death came to Cypress Manor— Skull Manor.

Margaret thought now of the hideous emblems which Ferguson had removed from the gateposts. At first the newcomers had not realized what these objects were, for vines and overgrown the granite craniums. Then they had realized, and the girl's interest in the old garden and the picturesque, stately house, had faded.

"Some damn fool with a Roman candle," said Ferguson. "Fireworks, that's all. Stage effects. Hello! What's that?— Parkin's flivver horn. He'll be bringing Clement Ford. I wasn't sure what day he would come. This is the time he'd get here on that narrow-gauge connection at the junction. Parkin won't come over the bridge. Your brother should be here to help the man with his grips."

The horn sounded again. "Who is Clement Ford? You didn't tell me you were expecting anybody," the girl remarked.

Her stepfather's lack of consideration nettled her. After all, she was the housekeeper. She did everything about the place, except the rougher chores that Gerald handled. They were practically camping in the big house; and they had no servants, for none would stop there.

"He's a detective, a ghost-catcher,'’ Ferguson replied. "A man I've sent for to find out who's at the bottom of all this deviltry. We'll punish them— jail them. I wired Arlington to get me the best man available. If there are others who—"

He stopped abruptly and went back inside.

"I  wish you'd go down and meet him when he arrives, my dear," he said in more kindly fashion. "I'll change out of this dressing-gown."

She knew her stepfather's dignity, his dislike of ridicule, of anything hat might belittle him. She did not mind meeting the detective. She had vague ideas of the ways of such operatives, and she hoped he would not be uncouth. A big man with heavy boots and a gun, she supposed— a sort of superior watchman.

When the knock came and she opened the door the two stood staring at each other in wonderment. The situation was not unlike a momentary spell. Clement Ford saw her in the blue gown that matched her eyes— eyes which did not hold fear for the moment. The wide stairway was behind her, leading, double-winged, to a Palladian window with vines draped across it against the moonlight. A mocking bird throbbed out melody, and he told himself he was glad that he had come. So was Margaret, for this man emanated a vigor that was already dispelling her own apprehensions. The top of her head would come to just about the level of his broad shoulders, she told herself. He was neither young nor old, and did not in any way suggest middle-age.  A man in a very excellent prime, he was slim and muscular, and he appeared very resourceful and dependable.

She liked his smile, the grip of his hand as she put out her own small one with an involuntary warmth of greeting. She had not expected to greet a detective like that. He was not exactly handsome. Aquiline features and dark complexion, not unlike an Indian or a frontiersman. There was a scar high on one cheekbone. He looked like a warrior. His dark eyes were understanding.

She felt herself blushing as she realized what a close inventory she had made of him. It had taken but a moment— just time enough to photograph his appearance through the lenses of her eyes, but she knew that image would never fade. She saw something in his look that called to something deep within her, and returned it.

He picked up the grips he had set down and closed the door behind him as Ferguson, wearing a dinner-jacket, appeared at the head of the stairs.

"I'll talk with Mr. Ford upstairs," he said, "if you'll see that his room is ready, Margaret."

She stepped aside for Ford to pass, but instead he stooped and took up the grips. "Do these go up or down?" he asked.

Ferguson would have let her struggled with them, but Ford carried them to the third floor and left them outside the door which she indicated.

"I'll take them in when I've talked with your father," he said with a smile.

Something brought a correction out of her. "My stepfather," For she did not want this man to think of Ferguson as her father. There was none of his blood in her. And Clement Ford was glad to hear it.

iii

"SOMEONE," FERGUSON WAS SAYING, "out of malicious mischief or tor some unknown motive, is destroying the value of this property; frightening servants and otherwise trying to render it uninhabitable by playing a lot of Hallowe'en pranks. I can get no local protection; there is only a doddering fool for constable at Tallapee, and he, like the rest, pretends to believe that the place is haunted. Perhaps they all resent the fact that I— a Northerner— have bought it. But they'll not drive me away! I came down here for a purpose, and I mean to accomplish it."

"Might I know the nature of that purpose? It may help to establish a motive and lead to the perpetrators," asked Ford.

"It is a personal matter; it could have no bearing. It is something entirely unknown to anyone around here."

Ferguson spoke decisively and a little angrily, Ford fancied, as if he had not meant to mention that detail. Ford made no further comment. He did not like this man, but he had accepted the case, and it had challenged him. He remembered and endorsed what Arlington had said to him, that ''this was no place for such a girl as Ferguson's stepdaughter."

Ford referred to the lawyer now, stating that already he had learned something of the affair from him, and that some local color had been supplied by the garrulous jitney driver on the way from the station.

“The situation is damnable!" Ferguson was explosive. "Do you realize that they will make no deliveries from Tallapee stores? That I am forced to order from Charleston or Savannah, and to pay for motor-van delivery? My daughter is obliged to cook, to attend to the domestic offices, while I must wait upon myself..."

Clement Ford surveyed the room as Ferguson went on with his tirade. It was here that the officers had been surprised and slain.

Shaded oil lamps threw curious shadows mingling with those from the firelight, shifting, changing. It would not be hard for a sensitive person, Ford told himself, to imagine that the unquiet ghosts of the young officers, killed out of battle and before their prime, cheated of life— cheated even in death of any glory— might gather here.

He noticed that the brass and Georgian mahogany picked up the lights, but nothing could make the place cosy. It was too vast. Tall screens had been set up here and there to make the room more intimate, but they only seemed to suggest that phantoms stood behind them, listening, brooding, plotting.

"It does not seem reasonable,'' he said, ''that the ghost of a Southerner should warn a Yankee interloper, especially since Yankees were responsible for the fact that he and his friends had become ghosts."'

"It's not reasonable," Ferguson replied. "It's humbug. There are material means back of all this mummery. I am sure of it."

Ford nodded. That was his own belief, but he was here to make beliefs into certainties.

He looked closely at Ferguson, wondering why he had been secretive about his purpose for coming here, wondering if Ferguson was unable to name the motive that was at the bottom of the sounds, the mysterious lights or if he really knew more than he told. Was there some reason stronger than the ones he advanced concerning inconvenience and annoyance.

"You say you saw the light, as your daughter did?— Only she saw it twice— Can you show me the tree where the phenomenon occurred?"

"Certainly. A sycamore. I'll warrant you'll find some trace of fireworks about it, unless they've been smart enough to be very thorough in keeping their tracks hidden."

They went out on the gallery. Ford was considering the idea of a local charivari, performed by reviving old legends; a form of annoyance growing out of local spite, and often exhibited in the North as well as in the South. But that idea did not cover the dead men which the taximan had talked about. Suppose, however, that that fellow, Parkin, being a native, enjoyed spoofing a "foreigner" like himself...

Suddenly Ferguson's left hand vised down on Ford's elbow. Ford shook it off. He had seen the same thing, and he did not like to be hampered at such moments. A vague blotch had glided over the wall from the garden and into the road.

The wall was of brick, perhaps four feet high, with a stone coping. Creepers mantled it. The Thing had emerged from shrubbery, slithered across, was gone. Instinctively, Ford had drawn the gun from his shoulder holster; but he had no chance to even aim it. Ferguson had spoiled that.

There was a light in the road now— bluish, rising swiftly to a height of ten, twenty, thirty feet above their heads. Vanished!

Then they saw what seemed to be a cloaked human figure, head bent. It wore a wide-brimmed, steeple-crowned hat; hurrying fast, the wind fluttering its ample garment. It was not a phantom, though the road had been empty the moment before.

Ford saw the foreshortened shadow flung by the figure in the light of the brilliant moon, a shadow that trailed along behind the figure of a dog. The ascending blue light might have been a conjuror's trick of distraction, of course, and the cloaked man could have remained bent, behind the wall until the moment for it to appear, miraculously in the open.

"Stop him!" rasped Ferguson. "Shoot, man!"

"No," Ford answered sternly. He was not there to shoot merely because things were mysterious.

He ran out of the room, Ferguson close behind him. ‘The girl appeared, looking wide-eyed at Ford's gun. He ordered her to stay indoors. He was taking charge, she understood, which was a relief.

The two men hurried to the roadway. Here was something visible, tangible; something that could be overtaken and questioned. But when they rushed through the gates, the road was empty. The man had been going away from Tallapee.

The oaks ended in front of the house and the highway, then ran along what was practically a levee between swamps and desolate, treacherous, trackless fens, with occasional low islands that sheltered deer, quail, wildcats, and alligators. Only a few of the wisest and bravest of the blacks knew the narrow channels of the wilderness maze, lined with reeds, choked with lotus and water hyacinth.

There was a slight rise in the road, over which the cloaked figure must have disappeared. When Ford reached it, with Ferguson panting at his heels, there was no such person. Nor was there any place for a man to hide, unless he had deliberately leaped into the swamp.

Instead, another man came plodding along toward them. He wore a canvas jacket and tightly buttoned trousers tucked into knee-high boots that left wet imprints on the road. His hat was nondescript. He carried a long fish-spear and some coils of netting. His face was bearded, and both sly and surly. His nose was like a beak: he had heavy eyebrows and glittering eyes.

"Anybody pass you?" hailed Ferguson. "A man in a cloak, with a high hat?"

The other looked at him, spat on the ground. ''No. Folks don't travel this road unless they have to, Yank!"

He spat again. The insult was obvious. Then he plodded on toward Tallapee, over Bloody Creek.

"That's the way they treat me!" cried Ferguson hotly. "No respect— no decency!"

Ford had gone on toward the swamp. Fifty or sixty feet away, there was a spot that gleamed strangely under the moon. He took out a flashlight, and the dark wetness took on vivid and sinister color beneath the ray of the torch. It was a puddle of viscous liquid that steamed in the cool night air; a pool of clotting blood that not long ago had coursed through living veins.

Ford kneeled beside it, Ferguson gasping by him. ''For God's sake! Is that blood, man?" he asked. here was a change in his voice. It had lost all its former confidence. Ferguson was suddenly and intensely afraid. ''How did it get there?" he panted. "Where is the body?"

"It might be in the swamp," said Ford. "It might be in the belly of an alligator. This blood is well clotted. Several hours spilled, perhaps.— And there's enough of it to have come from a horse, rather than a man."

His face was grim as he soaked a corner of his handkerchief in the ghastly stuff and wrapped the rest of the cloth about the saturation.

He sprayed the light of the torch about, but found nothing else of importance save the place, some distance off, where the man with the nets had emerged from the swamp. He must have seen that blood, then!— But now he was out of sight. Ford did not expect to see him, even though he ran to the bridge. Nor did he.

Bloody Creek margined the swamp. Beyond it, the land was thick with brush and overgrown with pine and chinquapin.

Ferguson was waiting for him at the gates, his face white and drawn, when Ford at last turned back. ''What now?" he asked hoarsely. "Ghosts don't bleed, Ford."

Ford shook his head, and again he wondered whether Ferguson did not have a very definite idea of why these things were happening, an idea that went deeper than the mere malice of natives.

"I'm staying!'' Ferguson muttered, his lower jaw thrust out in the moonlight. '"They shan't drive me out!— You'll stay with me, Ford, until—" He stopped jerkily.

Ford could not state definitely that Ferguson was cowardly, but he believed that Ferguson was afraid that something was going to happen to him, that something might interfere with certain plans which he had made.

"There is no use in mentioning the blood to your daughter." Ford said. "I want to analyze it."

“Of course I won't mention it!'' snapped Ferguson. His brittle politeness was giving way to irritation. ''But I wish my boy was back. I don't like the company he keeps.— "Trash! Poor in blood and pocket. They are trying to find out from him why I—"

Again he broke off abruptly, looking slyly at Ford. ''I need a drink." he finished. "Thank God I've got some decent liquor! ‘They don't sell any down here.— Mule whiskey.— And they jail you in this damned State for having alcohol in your possession."

Ford felt that he could stand a drink himself. He was not ghost hunting now; not laying unquiet phantoms by finding out the trickery used to produce them. This looked like murder; and more and more he began to believe in the taxi driver's story of the three strangled bodies, each a corpus delicti that had disappeared.

“I'll follow you in," Ford said, for he wanted to look at the place where they had seen the dark object scuttle over the wall.

It was not at all impossible that this whole business had been staged by one man, he felt— an effect not unlike the mysterious disappearances and reappearances of a stage magician. A clever series of illusions.

The mysterious rising light provided excellent distraction. That could have been accomplished by means of a cord suspended from a tree. Some chemical that burned with a ghastly glow, that would burn and leave practically no trace. Ferguson's idea about the Roman candle was not at all ridiculous.— The cloaked man who disappeared might have been the man in the canvas jacket, of course, perhaps with a false beard. And the spilled blood, already half congealed, might have been carried under the cloak in some container like a rubber bag and kept at animal heat so that it would steam when it came into contact with the colder air. The cloak might easily have been sunk in the marsh, together with the steeple-shaped hat. All done swiftly and surely.

That theory did not do away with the blood, however— with the fact that some human's or animal's life had been taken.

Ford used his flash torch again, and found broken twigs and vines. Close to the wall, too, he discovered imprints in the soft soil; and as he gazed at them he felt his scalp tingling. His hair seemed to rise. They were not human foot marks; they were the spoor of something far more startling and horrible—  huge, webbed dragon-like impressions showing great claws.

Involuntarily, he looked up, half expecting to see the strange monster that he had viewed from the train window; the Something that lived in the marsh and flew by night. But there was no shape against the stars— no green eyes glaring, searching.

Far out in the marsh a bull alligator bellowed. There was no other sound.

Ford went inside and closed the door, which Ferguson had evidently left ajar. The girl was not in sight. Thoughtfully, he set bolts and chains, for he felt sure that there was very real, if mysterious, peril close at hand. The phantom hoofbeats might not bring about any supernatural death with their warning, but there was death in the wind. Of that he was certain. It hovered over Skull Manor, even as the Something had hovered over the swamp.

He went upstairs, glancing in at the ballroom as he passed. It was empty. Ferguson was taking his drink elsewhere. He was the sort who tippled by himself, Ford fancied; one of those men who have secret vices behind the severe exteriors which they show to the world. Not a very humane man, Lindley Ferguson. Gerald, his son, was his own flesh and blood, but the father did not seem to be greatly worried about his safety. Not so much, in fact, as Ford was beginning to be.

Ford changed into pajamas and lit a pipe. The girl had prepared his bed, turning down the sheet; and it must be she who had placed the wisteria in a tall vase. But Ford was not ready to go to bed just yet. First he set up certain apparatus. He meant to make a blood test, and later to take a cast of the webbed imprints.

iv

FORD AWAKENED TO THE SHARP clatter of horse's hoofs. The drumming was very distinct. The sun shone redly into his room as he leaped out of bed and ran to the open window. This was no phantom steed, though it was a riderless one, distressed, lathered, slackening at the gate.

Ford stepped into slippers, flung on a dressing gown, slid his gun into a side pocket. Ferguson met him on the landing, his face twisted, lined. He smelled of whiskey, and there was more of a hint of it in his speech. Fear had prevented him from becoming maudlin, but he had plainly been drinking heavily. Perhaps to bolster a courage he now needed.

"It's Gerald's horse!" he said. "It's my boy's. I know it."

The animal proved to be a bay mare with three white stockings. Ford soothed it, led it to a stable in the rear of the house, Ferguson following.

Now, for the first time, Ford saw the tumbledown buildings which had once been part of the old plantation. He saw that there was a separate two-storied erection connected with the main dwelling at the rear by a short covered bridge. That would be the kitchen, a common enough arrangement in the South, and a sensible one, to keep out heat and smells of cooking.

He put the horse in a stall, saw that it had a little water and fresh hay. It could drink more water, and could be given some grain when it cooled off. There was no sense in foundering the brute.

"Gerald was a good rider," said Ferguson, who staggered slightly. "He would not have been thrown— unless he was—"

"Drunk" was the word held back, Ford thought. There was a look of guilt, of remorse, in Ferguson's face. The boy was said to be wild. Did Ferguson, conscious of being not entirely sober, and seeking to cover it, blame himself for what might have happened?

Ford did not tell him of the red streak that had come off the horse's mane to his hand, the blood which he had wiped off on a wisp of hay. Ferguson's face was seamed with grief. "'They got him!" he said. "They got my boy!"

"Who got him? Why did they get him?" Ford demanded. "Look here, Ferguson, you're holding back on me. There's some devilish secret here, and you've got an inkling of it.— Out with it! Or I throw up this case."

Ferguson clutched at him. Even as he spoke, Ford knew that he had no intention of leaving Margaret Ferguson in this danger, but he wanted to bluff her stepfather into an admission he believed the other could make.

Ferguson shook his head. His eyes were slightly vacuous, but he was striving to clear his head. His stiffness had now departed. "Ford," he said, ''do you believe that men who have been slain violently can protect themselves, that they can take vengeance?"

Perhaps by material means. Not otherwise. What are you driving at?”

"Ford, would you, think me mad if I told you I had seen a fearful sight over the marsh— a flying monster? Aye— wi' a long neck!"

In his excitement, the stimulation of liquor, Ferguson was speaking with a burr which he must have sloughed off in his youth. It had now recurred. ''I didna speak of it, mind ye," he went on, ''to Gerald or to Maggie. But I saw it, Ford. I'll sweer I saw it— hovering o'er the marsh."

It was not hard to guess why he had not spoken of it. Ferguson had not been sure whether or not the flying beast was part of a delirium.

"Then there's the bluid, the pool we found in the road, my boy!"

"That wasn't your boy's blood," said Ford. "It wasn't even human blood. I'm not quite sure whether it belonged to sheep, horse or cow. I'm going to get to the bottom of this, though. As for the thing you saw flying, I saw it myself. I don't know what it is, but I intend to find that out, also. Now..."

A cry sounded from the house, a shrill call of horror and distress. Ford left Ferguson far behind as, three steps at a time he took the treads to the second floor.

Margaret Ford stood in her doorway, silk negligee over silken pajamas. She shrank against the woodwork, hands clutching as it they would sink into the wood, her lips colorless and parted. She stared at the stairway to the third floor.

She saw Ford, gun in hand, and tried to smile. Then she seemed to relax, and was obviously struggling to control herself. "What was it?" he asked. ''What did you see ?"

"Nothing. Nothing. That was what made it so terrible. I was going up to Gerald's room to see if he was back, when I heard the footsteps— coming down the stairs towards me. Closer— and nobody there to make them. They came on down to the bottom and stopped. I thought I was going to faint, but I screamed— and you came."

Ferguson was mounting the stairs now, frowning, intent upon maintaining his own prestige.

The girl called to him. ''Did Gerald come home ?"' she asked. "Did he? We heard the warning twice. The hoofbeats— and now, on the stairs—"

Ferguson pulled himself together. "Nonsense!" he said. "Nerves, my dear. No one in the house but us. Gerald isn't home yet. When he comes I'll give him a piece of my mind. You get dressed and we'll have breakfast."

Ford gave him credit for that. The man was shaken. His step-daughter tiptoed over to him to kiss him, and drew back. ''You've been drinking!"

Ford knew that his guess about Ferguson's hidden vice was correct.

"Something is wrong," she went on. "It's Gerald! He wouldn't stay away like this and leave me in this horrible, haunted house."

"Now, now! We'll look him up after breakfast, my dear. You're overstrung. Gerald has probably been playing cards."

"I'll look for him myself!" she said. ''Will you help me, Mr. Ford?"

"I surely will," he assured her.

She checked a sob, caught in her underlip. ''Then I'll get dressed— and get breakfast," she said. She managed a smile.

Ford dressed also. Ferguson, he imagined, was going to have another drink. Something in the moral fiber of the man seemed to have dissolved. Normally, he was the sort who would never ask another man if he believed in the vengeance of the dead. But he was waiting in the garden when Ford went down, and they went up the road together.

There was a light mist that still held the sun, reddened its rays but was fast disappearing.

FERGUSON said nothing as they went beyond the rise and on to where they had found the pool of blood that was not a man's blood. Obviously, it had been placed there as a warning.

There was no trace of it now on the hard surface of the road. Not the slightest evidence. Ford had meant to collect more of it for a certain analysis he wanted to make. If he could be certain that it was that of any definite animal, mule or horse or cow, it might later link up. Now, like the bodies which Parkin, the taxi driver, had spoken of, it had vanished.

Nor could he see anything at the sycamore. He might be able to with a ladder, but it would have to be a tall one, for the first boughs were high up. For a moment Ford doubted that he would make any discovery even if he climbed. A prepared string, treated with inflammable chemicals, could have been pitched over the branch...

The sun had caught the web of the fog and cleared it away. The morning was suddenly bright and clear. Plover wheeled and dipped over the reedy pools, the air held the faint scent of lotus blended with the reef of fenland. Ford heard fish crows squawking. Far out, buzzards were circling, settling down.

"Let's go back to the house,'' said Ferguson heavily. He seemed to have aged overnight. His footsteps dragged and he muttered to himself.

" 'Les revenants,' " he said in a harsh whisper. ''Those ghostly ones who return. They are dead— dead— This is my house. I have bought it; all that is in it. It is mine!"

The girl was in the garden gathering flowers for the house. She called gaily to them, all trouble gone from face and voice.

"Gerald is back,'' she said. ''I went to the barn, and his mare is there. It's been attended to. He's come and gone again. Yesterday he said he was going after bass this morning.— Breakfast is ready; the waffles are mixed and ready for the iron. I hope you are as hungry as I am."

"It would be just like the thoughtless loon to do that," said Ferguson, pressing Ford's arm.

Ford agreed with him. There was no use in telling the girl about the way the horse had come home. Even Ferguson did not know about the bloody mane. Ford managed to make a good breakfast and so did the girl, but Ferguson touched nothing but a scrap of toast and some black coffee.

He got up before they had finished and went upstairs to the second floor. Ford insisted upon helping with the dishes, and they took them to the outside kitchen, where Margaret invested him with a long bib-apron of striped canvas, such as butlers use when cleaning silver.

She chatted, carefree now; Ford learned that Gerald was the son of Ferguson by an earlier marriage. He had been seven years old when Ferguson married her own mother, a widow, when Margaret herself had been a child of four. The girl praised Gerald as generous and merry; a good sportsman with a love of life.

"He had nothing mean about him," she declared. "But I think his father rides him with too heavy a curb."

They carried the things back to the house, and Ford began to set them away while she arranged the flowers. For a brief while there was no taint about the place. Ford was a man and she a girl, and they liked each other.

A bell jangled in the room, rung by a wire from the front door. The girl's face blanched as she looked at Ford, one hand to her heart.

"No one has ever done that,'' she said. "No one has come here since we arrived."

"It's good to know there's somebody who isn't afraid of the place,"' Ford said lightly. ''I'll go."

"No, I'll go," she said. "I mustn't be silly. I'm letting the spooks stampede me."

"No," Ford insisted.

His stern regard checked her. She saw purpose on his face that banished her late lightness. His grim features and his eyes recalled to her the reason that had brought him there. "Stay here, right where you are," he ordered her, and she nodded.

Ford went swiftly, and just as he was, in the long apron. First however, he slid his gun into his hip pocket so that the apron covered the holster. He had not used the gun yet, but he had a strong premonition, as he went to answer that harsh summons, that it would not be long before he did. That jangling bell seemed a signal, a call to arms.

Ferguson called down from the landing. He had put on his brocaded dressing gown, and Ford saw that he held a gun in one hand, close to his side. In the other was a half-emptied glass.

Ford saw that someone was trying to peer through the leaded lozenges of glass in the side-windows of the door. The light was not good for such spying, but the furtiveness of the act had an unpleasant note. He raised his voice to Ferguson.

“I'll go, sir,"' he called up, and motioned the master of the house away. Ferguson disappeared, and Ford opened the door. He realized that in that apron he looked very much like one of the upper servants. Then he remembered the happy chance that had prompted him to tell Parkin— gossiping Parkin, the taxi driver— that he was the new butler.

THE MAN before the door looked like an ancient, unpreened crow. His nose thrust out from his face like a great beak— the heavy, killing beak of a bird of prey. It was veined with blue. His eyes had unnaturally large pupils, their jetty, glittering black ringed with yellow irises. His mouth was a streak of avidity, of cruelty; his shiny, rusty black clothes fitted loosely, and resembled nothing so much as ruffled plumage. His very voice was a croak as he stood there, huddled yet not cringing.

He had been riding, it seemed, and his gray horse stood three-legged at the gate, a rack of bones. The man was fantastic, unreal. His eyes held a latent madness.

"My name is Shadleigh," he said. ''Judah Shadleigh. The only Shadleigh— living."

He paused with a chuckle. "'I am here to see Lindley Ferguson. — Who the devil are you?"

His last words were suddenly and fiercely aggressive. They came as if a great snapping turtle had suddenly attacked. "I'm the butler, sir," said Ford. "I will ask Mr. Ferguson if he wishes to see you."

He ushered the only living Shadleigh into the front parlor, which he himself saw for the first time— panelled, hung with pictures, on one wall a carved Georgian fireplace, and some formal furniture. He saw that Judah Shadleigh seemed somehow deformed, slightly lame; a spine not quite straight, and shoulders over high. Yet he was active enough. Ford left him cocking a sardonic eye at a portrait.

“I saw him ride up,'' said Ferguson. ''Yes, I'll see him— Shadleigh is he? Well, he's not master here. None of the Shadleighs or their kin. You said you were the butler? Good! Good! One never knows.— You've got your gun. Stay back of that screen while he's here, will you? Behind it there's a door you can pretend to open and close. You can seem to go through it. It leads to a service landing and stairs. He'll know that, and he'll think you're gone. You can watch between the leaves of the screen."

Ferguson took another drink, this time neat, as Ford went to usher Shadleigh upstairs. Ford could hear the clink of bottle and glass. Ford passed on behind the screen, opened and closed the door. Looking out from a crack in the screen, he noticed that the pistol was in Ferguson's pocket.

Ferguson received his visitor standing, nor did he invite him to sit down. That did not disconcert the other.

"I, suh," said Shadleigh, "am the only surviving membeh of the family that built this house. Not of the direct branch, fo' most of that was slaughtered, so far as the men were concerned— either on the fields of battle or in this very chamber...

“To me this place is hallowed ground. Right heah, the men of my blood fought valiantly against those they deemed marauders, suh. The spirits of the dead dwell heah. You were ill-advised to purchase it. I am not a rich man, suh; but I have lately come into some means, and I offer you the exact sum you paid."

Ferguson laughed. ''Not for twice the sum!" he said.

"Ah!— You also would seem to set some special value on the place. Perhaps you like the climate? Believe me, suh, you may not find it so healthy as you imagine."

"You can go to the devil with your legends and your traditions!" jeered Ferguson derisively. ''It was a fair fight— North against South— and to the victors belong the spoils. I have bought this place, and no trickery shall set me out of it."

Shadleigh eyed him. For a moment there was stark madness, sheer murder, in his strange eyes. Ford saw that Ferguson's hand was thrust into his pocket, clutching the gun. Wrath swelled in the room, fermenting into a devil's brew.

Then Shadleigh shrugged his high shoulders and broke into a hideous, cackling mirth. "So be it!" he said. "But it was not a fair fight when the Shadleighs were butchered heah, suh. I have learned that the captain of the troop of irregulars who shot them down, so that their blood mingled with the wine from spilled glasses on the table, was a certain Captain Ferguson. Perhaps only a coincidence, suh?"

For saw Ferguson stagger as if he had been struck.

"So I shall not go to the devil after all,'' Shadleigh ended, "because I leave him heah, upon these very premises. May you enjoy the spoils you mention—  when you find them. They may cost you deah."

He swung about with a certain dignity and left the room. Ferguson swung after him, his face black with wrath, but Ford rushed out and grasped his wrist. Ferguson turned upon him, and then reeled and subsided in a chair, breathing heavily. Ford did not believe his condition to be serious, and trailed Shadleigh down the stairs.

The girl was passing through the hall at that moment, and Shadleigh halted on the third tread from the bottom. She looked at him like a fascinated bird, seemed visibly to force herself to move away towards the back of the house. Shadleigh let out a fiendish cackle, and limped with amazing agility to the door which Ford held open for him. He seemed to be enjoying himself hugely, but it was a devilish amusement.

He looked at Ford with his great nose thrust forward, his yellow eyes malignant. "You wear an amazing tie— for a butler," he said with a chuckle. "They'll change it to a black one— when they lay you out!"

With that shot he was gone, leaving Ford slightly nonplussed, conscious of his neckwear, which was striped in the colors of his old college. Had he had time to plan his disguise, it would not have failed him so miserably, but he was chagrined as Shadleigh unhitched his horse, stepped to the back of the gray horse. The old beast galloped off in a clumsy jolt.

Margaret Ferguson met him in the hall, her face looking small, and white as a magnolia bloom set in the dusk. "Who was that horrible man?" she asked. "He looked at me as I can imagine Satan would. I felt hate coming out of him with his breath."

Don't worry about him," said Ford. ''He is a relative of the family that once owned the house. He resents your stepfather having it. He wanted to buy it back from him."

"It's more than that,'' she answered. "There's a mystery— a terrible, hidden enmity in this place. Perhaps we've blundered into it— but I'm not sure. My stepfather doesn't invest lightly; especially since his financial reverses. —I wish Gerald would come back from his fishing— But I'm not a coward!" she added as she left him.

v

CLEMENT FORD WENT SLOWLY up the stairs. He meant to have it out with Lindley Ferguson. The man was not only exposing himself to a peril that was slowly closing in—that might already have overtaken his son— but there was Margaret to think of. Ford knew that he himself was involved, too. Shadleigh's reference to the black tie which might be placed upon him by the undertaker showed that Shadleigh regarded him as one more victim.

That did not matter. He could take care of himself, win or lose— and he meant to win. But the statement that had staggered Ferguson, already losing morale and revealing his weakness, was that a Captain Ferguson had been implicated in the slaughter of the Southern officers. It should also tie up, somehow, with Ferguson's reason for buying this place and his staying here in the face of mystery and danger.

As a client, Ferguson should be fair with him, Ford felt. He was sure that Ferguson was withholding vital matters that, once revealed, would help to solve the riddle. There must be a showdown.

He was almost up the stairway when he heard the shot. It was not loud; it was muffled by the stout doors and walls of the solid old house. But Ford knew where it was, and he knew its target.

He burst into the old ballroom. Lindley Ferguson lay in a sprawling heap before the great fireplace, face down, arms and legs flung wide. He seemed to have been shot from behind, though Ford knew how men spin about when shot as Ferguson had been. Blood welled thickly from the back of his skull, where the bullet had entered. It matted his hair, some of which was singed, and there were powder burns on the neck, showing that he had been shot at close range. The muzzle of the weapon must have almost touched him.

As he turned Ferguson over, Ford glanced at the gun on the floor. Then he felt tor the pulse, which did not even flutter. It did not look like suicide, though the gun might be Ferguson's own, for there was no pistol in the pocket of the dressing-gown. There would be fingerprints, of course, but this was a case where prints might not count.

Again Ford felt the evil influence in this old house. For a split second— for the first time in his life— Ford felt a real sense of fear. He recalled Shadleigh's remark that he "left the devil behind him." And a chill invested Ford. His blood seemed suddenly cold and stagnant, and his heart hung between beats.

He fought off the feeling, but it had been there, foul as the touch of a vampire bat at midnight— a momentary arrest of his own power to fight off this stark and terrible something which occupied the tragic chamber. For a few moments it seemed as if phantoms were crowding in, gathering about him with faces like skulls, and uniformed in gray that was bloodstained but frightfully transparent.

The bullet had smashed out between Ferguson's eyes, leaving the splintered frontal-bone like a cracked nut. He had died instantly; but even so there was horror in his staring, glazing eyes. Ford closed them, held them closed. But weights were needed to keep the lids down. They strove to proclaim murder. There were red smears on the parquetry flooring— to which such stains were nothing new.

Ford found that the door back of the screen, behind which he had stood so recently, was now bolted. The windows, too, were fastened.

Ford opened the door to find a landing with built-in closets, and stairs leading down. The killer was well away by now. The gun on the floor had not been fired, he saw. Plainly, it was murder, grim and stark. Those invisible hoofprints had been prophetic. Here was the death they were said to foretell.

For a moment he deliberated. The authorities must come in on this now. They could not ignore it. True, it was miles to Tallapee, and there an unfriendly population. But there was Gerald's horse in the barn. The girl must ride it. He would tell her there had been an accident. She would not know the grief of an actual daughter, of course, though the shock would be great.

He thought she could stand up under it. She might not have heard the shot, with the noise of the carpet-sweeper she had taken in there beyond the heavy door. Then the scream came to him— a woman's scream of mortal terror. And there was no other woman in the house but Margaret.

FORD flung himself down the wide treads, leaping the last half dozen, flinging himself against the door, back of which there was now only silence. It was locked on the inside, so he shot heavy slugs from his gun into the lock, smashing it sufficiently for him to clear the tumbler and spring into the room with one cartridge still unfired, his smoking gun ready...

The carpet-sweeper was in the center of the floor, the big rug was rumpled, but the place was empty. Margaret Ferguson was gone.

There was no other door. The windows were tight. He searched the lower floor, which was only a basement, for the house proper commenced on the first floor. Underneath were arches of tabby cement, filled in with lattice work— storage for firewood and for the usual overflow of a house. This space had a dirt floor.

Frenziedly he opened the front door and called out into the garden where bees droned and butterflies flitted and birds sang. He raced up the back stairs from the serving pantry and barged into the library through the door he had left unbolted. She might have fled there from the back of the house. She might have gone there on some errand, found Ferguson's, body, screamed and swooned.

He cancelled that idea as soon as it was born. The scream had come from below.

The library was vacant. Nothing there but the unfired gun, and the smears on the floor, down upon which the scarred portraits gazed unwinkingly. Ferguson had vanished— his body, rather, like the corpses of the black victims Parkin had spoken about.

And Margaret was gone, too. Ford felt as if paralyzed by a blow over the heart, for he suddenly realized to the full what she meant to him — what she had meant from the first moment he had seen her.

He tried the garden again, looking for clues that might guide him, but he found none that seemed recent enough. He was alone now and he felt comparatively powerless. He had certain threads, and he suspected others that might make up at least the strand of a rope that might lead him to the center of the labyrinth— a rope that would eventually hang somebody. But this was an imperative crisis, and it called for immediate action.

He would find little help at Tallapee save an antagonistic and stupid constable, who would likely want to arrest Ford himself, and certainly would take color from Shadleigh. And Shadleigh was in it.

Ford would find more prejudice at the county seat, to which he must telephone. He could send urgent wires to his own connections up north, of course, but that would take time, and meanwhile Margaret, who could not be far away, might be subjected to indignity, torture —even death.

The grim present pressed upon him. To leave here might seal the fate of the girl whom he realized he loved, and who— though he did not flatter himself at any time— Ford believed was not far from loving him. Yet he had to go; ride to where he could get to a wire. He was not much of a horseman, but he could have mounted and controlled a wild mustang, in the mood that surged up within him against this mystery— the odds— the horror of it all.

The stall, the barn, held nothing. There was still the barest chance that Margaret might have seen, heard or guessed something of what had happened to her stepfather; that her scream had not been one of fright and surrender; but that she had galloped off for assistance.

That proved to be but a slender reed; one that had never even grown. For saddle, blanket, halter, bridle, and martingale were all there, as Ford himself had taken them off. The horse had been either turned loose or led out bare of all rigging. The back doors to the stable were unfastened, and outside there were hoofmarks fresh in the dirt, beside them other prints the same as the webbed spoor which he had found by the wall. These led on for a short distance beside the hoofprints, and then ended suddenly where the hoofs showed signs of a mad plunging that broke to a racing gallop as if the fiend had vaulted to the back of the frenzied brute.

Ford swung about. To walk to the village would mean more than two hours, and he could not bear to leave the place without a thorough search. The girl must be close at hand. The body of Ferguson, too, was surely nearby. The manor held more than one secret.

This was his most baffling case, and in it not merely his reputation, but his own safety were concerned. His heart, moreover, was so wrung by it that it was no easy matter to bring to bear his trained brain and brilliant imagination, to sift wheat from chaff.

He had begun to see things dimly, as a scientist glimpses the shadowy forms of certain deadly germs in the plasma he studies, germs that may not be filtered or defined. The footsteps which the girl had heard upon the stairs— there was a start there. But the spoils that Shadleigh had mentioned as likely to cost Ferguson dear, what were they?

Had Gerald been captured and forced into telling what he knew of Ferguson's reason for buying the place? Ferguson, a descendant of the commander of the men who had, from the viewpoint of Shadleigh and the other citizens of Tallapee, butchered the young southrons. Ford's brain raced like an overcharged dynamo that needs a transformer before it gives controlled light or power. He strove to pierce the veil, to assemble what little he had into something tangible.

He had a belief— more hunch than conviction— that Shadleigh and the man in the canvas jacket were one and the same. The beard had been disguise; he had not noted the eyes in that dim light, but the beaked nose stood out in memory as it had in reality.

Shadleigh might be the man who had worn the cloak, carried the blood, engineered the death of Ferguson, brought about Margaret's disappearance. Ford refused to think her dead. Shadleigh could not have done this thing alone. He had accomplices. But Ford could see him as a homicidal maniac, actuated by a sadism that might be inbred, nurtured by sense of injury, and watered by an ancient grudge...

It was a brief reverie, but slowly something began to crystallize, a vague pattern announced itself in the fabric woven by his swiftly shuttling thoughts. .

Then thought tell from him like a loose garment. Hoofbeats, galloping fast on the haunted highway!

Gun in hand, he raced to the front. He saw a slim girl astride a horse that was blown, but still spirited. She was hatless, and her bobbed hair stood out in elfin locks of black. Her eyes were black pools of ink in a face that was pale, but touched with color by fast riding. Her lips were vivid. She was in riding breeks, and wore black boots. Ford sensed a scarlet bow at her throat.

She was a little beauty, and Ford knew that she must be the girl Margaret had praised, Ferguson decried Gerald's girl friend, Mildred Tulliver.

“Are you the man Parkin brought out here?" she asked as, with small but resolute hands, she brought down the sweating chestnut. "He said you were a butler."

Ford resolved to trust her. The girl was not merely pretty. She was certainly not "white trash," as Ferguson had summarily classed her. She had breeding, she was attractive, and she was desperately troubled. He liked her.

"I'm Clement Ford," he said. "I'm not a butler. I think I might be called a friend of Margaret Ferguson. I haven't met Gerald. You are Miss Tulliver...?"

“Where is Gerald?" she asked. ''I must see him. He was to see me this morning. He promised. I— I'm afraid something has happened to him."

“Why do you think that ?" asked Ford.

She lid from her horse, lithe and passionate. "I feel it— here," she answered, and tapped her breast. "Gerald and I love each other. Perhaps you can't understand."

"I can understand," said Ford.

The girl looked at him and nodded, believing him. "I am an investigator, a detective," he went on . ''Gerald is not here. His step-sister has disappeared. So has his father. Gerald's horse came home without him early this morning...."

"And you are standing here doing nothing?" she demanded passionately, "while they may all be dead."

“I was waiting for someone to help me, someone who was a friend and who could be trusted. Someone who would send messages for help. It is needed, and I dare not leave here. If you told me what you know, it might mean everything.— You know Shadleigh?"

"That devil? He wanted me to find out from Gerald why they had come here.— He is not human. He is not a true Shadleigh; for there is colored blood in him.

"He used to be poor, but lately he has had money. He gave me this to tell him about Gerald. He thought I could be bought.— Look !"'

She fumbled in a pocket and showed Ford a fifty-dollar bill. He glanced at it, returned it to her. ''Hang on to that," he said. "'We may be able to use that..."

"I'd like to choke Shadleigh with it!"' she flamed.

"Perhaps you can," he said. ''You did not tell him anything?"

She looked at Ford indignantly. "I told him I loved Gerald, and he grinned at me and said there were other ways; for me not to be a little fool, but to think it over, and that there might be more money. He said to put it under my pillow and dream on it; and to find out what I could from Gerald the next time I saw him. I didn't see him again."

Ford gave her a nod. She clung to his steady glance as a drowning person might clutch at an overhanging branch. It looked as if Shadleigh, impatient to find out what he wanted to know, and spurred perhaps by blood lust, had tried one of the ''the other ways.'' He seemed to be free with his money.

The darkness was beginning to disappear. Like steam on a mirror, it began to clear slowly. "You came straight from Tallapee?" he asked her.

She nodded mutely, still hanging to his glance. She could see his features turn as if to stone, his eyes become menacing in a deep, just and implacable wrath. He was not merely the law, then; he was eminently a man who meant to right a wrong, a lover who intended to avenge.

“I didn't gallop until I was out of town," she said. ''Of course, some one may have seen me; but no one could have passed me. It is the only road."

"You didn't see anything of Shadleigh?"

"No."

Either Shadleigh had turned aside through the stiff brush, which was not very likely, or he had made a detour along some ridden trail, and come circling back. Ford felt as if the man was even then within a few yards of both of them.

He lowered his voice. You can help, if you want to,'' he said to the girl. "I can't leave here. Where else, not far away, can you send telegrams? I don't want to run a chance of a leak at Tallapee."

He did not tell her that he doubted if she would be allowed to get that far. Even if she did, the messages would soon become common talk. He knew that they would not believe rules to apply to a stranger's affairs.

“I can ride to Medisto,"' she said. "It isn't very far. Of course I'll do it!"

He wrote on pages torn from his notebook. One to his own office, in code; another to Arlington, Ferguson's attorney; a third to his own lawyer; a fourth to a Federal agent, and the fifth to his friend Jim Clayborn, war ace and round-the-world flier. He took some money from his wallet.

"I'll pay to’ them," she said. ''I'll pay fo' them out of Shadleigh's dirty money."

“Wisest not," he said. ''We'll keep that intact. Look here; I'll give you other bills for it, and I'll keep it."

She gave him a look but did not question him. Even as hate seemed to flow out of Shadleigh, Ford emanated confidence. She took the ten-dollar bills he gave her in exchange for the fifty, with one other to pay for the wires. ''Get back to Tallapee by a back road," he told her. "Go home, and stay there until you hear from me or Gerald."

"You're going to find him?" she asked breathlessly.

"I'm going to find him," said Ford. It was senseless to word to her his thought— that he might find him dead. "You do your best. I'll do mine,'' he wound up.

"Give me a lift up,'' she answered. "My horse is breathed."

She seemed welded to her steed as she left, and Ford watched her with admiration. Margaret had been right; the girl was thoroughbred.

He looked up at the house. He had a strong feeling that they had been watched, and he waited until she was out of sight over the rise, galloping along the highway between the marshes, before he moved.

If she failed to get through to Medisto...! Ford threw that thought aside. Such things were on the knees of the gods, and he tossed them a grim little pagan prayer. There was upon him the determination of a vowed knight, donning armor, as he fully loaded his gun. Alone he now had to fight against unknown and mysterious forces which had already ambushed the Fergusons and would be waiting for his first act of aggression.

The steps on the stairs that Margaret had heard. That was the first lead to follow. Whatever slight credence he might give to ghosts, Ford was certain that disembodied spirits could not walk like material beings. The steps meant only one thing; that the stairs were double. There was space in the walls, and someone had walked on the far side of what seemed to be merely the outer wall. The house which went back to the days when Carolina planters were allied with pirates and smugglers, openly arraigned as such by the King's Collector, was built for jugglery.

Ford carefully considered the house from every angle, noting the chimneys and their dimensions, the placement of windows. He investigated the room below the outside kitchen. It was a cellar, pure and simple. The walls were solid, the ground was packed dirt. There was no trickery there.

Then he went through the house, room by room. He sounded for secret panels, and found nothing. If there were any, they were well concealed, deadened against revealing sounds of hollowness when the walls were pounded upon. It would take many men and many hours to make certain, and that not without tearing much down.

He searched the girl's own room, where the dainty garments in the closet, the flowers in bowls and vases, proclaimed her recent presence. These things served to set the lines deeper in his face.

He investigated Ferguson's own quarters more thoroughly, and reached the conclusion that the room had been gone through recently by someone else; someone who was seeking something. It might have been while he was outside in the barn, talking to the girl. The whole house had that air of sheltering eyes unseen, ears invisible.

The day was closing when he came to the front porch to get some fresh air and to gaze up and down the road, at the sky, for some sign of aid.

The hours had passed, with Margaret missing, her father dead, and he had accomplished nothing.

A low, sing-song droning came to him. Over the main morass above the slowly rising mist he saw that same shape that he had seen before, like a gliding dragon, with pendulous neck, turtle head, and eyes glowing faintly green. The sound varied in pitch, moaning.

It was possible, he told himself, that the something was only a plane; very likely a pusher rather than puller type, with the propeller back of the pilot, the fuselage camouflaged, the engines muffled. Then it dipped, and the green lights vanished in the fog.

Ford went back into the house, turning into the room where he had last heard Margaret singing before she screamed. His flashlight stabbed the gloom with its white beam.

It was at that moment that he heard the mysterious footsteps, overhead. He listened, tense; and suddenly he knew that there was swift and stealthy movement in the room, behind him. He felt a faint current of air.

Even as he whirled, a naked, giant arm, slippery with grease, was flung over his shoulder. Vising fingers grasped his throat. The fingers were not oiled; they choked off his wind, dug back of his windpipe, clenching off the bloodstream in his arteries.

Ford dropped his flashlight to grab his assailant's wrist. The ray was not cut off, but from the floor it showed a gaping section of the panelled wall beside the fireplace.

So swift and fierce was the attack that Ford, half strangled, could hardly cope with the big, almost naked black. Before he could use his gun, another hand caught his own wrist, grinding the carpal bones in agony hard to sustain. Except for his hands, the man was smeared all over with some rancid smelling, viscous stuff that gave an adversary no chance to maintain a hold.

Ford was a good fighter, and he was in good condition; but seized from behind he was no match for this man whose flesh was like solid rubber, and whose sinews were like steel. He was outweighed and outmaneuvered. The other, coming forward on bare, almost noiseless feet, had sprung at him, throwing Ford off balance as the giant achieved his two holds.

But Ford, though his brain was becoming congested, flashes of fire searing across it, was not done. He was dying for lack of oxygen, and his most seemed far from enough, was waning with every second he could not breathe. He leaped, twined his legs in a desperate grip about those of his assailant. In one spasmodic and prodigious effort, he tore loose the grasp on his throat, though the man's nails rent his flesh and brought the hot blood.

Together, they fell to the floor, struggling and writhing, sending the burning flashlight aside. By its light, Ford sent home a smash into which he put everything he had left, and rejoiced to see it crack against the other's jaw. Ford's knuckles were smashed in with the impact, for seemingly he had struck granite. The man grunted when Ford's fist hit his chin, and the back of his head hit the floor.

Then he rolled on top of Ford, and a knee ground into the investigator's belly; he sought a fresh grip on Ford's throat.

During the struggle, Ford's gun went off, but the shot went wild. The flame seared the other's arm, and he gave out a bellow of wrath; and while Ford battled for supremacy, a second man came gliding out from the opening in the wall.

It could not last, now, of course. One of the pair took his legs; the other his arms, and his throat was clamped again.

"Don't fight so hahd, buccra,"' said the newcomer with a throaty chuckle. ''We ain’ gwine kill you— yit!"'

vi

THEY HAD HIS GUN, his body was wrenched and bleeding as the two carried him down steep stairs. His arms bound, he was but a feebly squirming bundle when they set him down in a crypt-like place lit dimly by a lantern. There they investigated the rope that pinioned his arms, and then one of them took the lantern and marched ahead while the other prodded him along a passage to an open space where other lanterns hung.

Both his captors were good-humored with him, but it was the good nature of the slaughterhouse. Ford was still upset by the savage onset. The two of them had mauled him hard, in the final bout. He had striven to retain his sense of direction. He believed he must now be under the garden, toward the road. The passage had been a long one. There was a long rough table at the far end of the chamber, and on it, bound and motionless and seemingly insensible, lay Margaret Ferguson. At either end of the table, two big candles guttered in the vagrant draughts. Be hind it there sat a hooded figure, obscure and for the moment remote as a Grand Inquisitor. The figure appeared to be wearing a long robe or cloak, with a capote that was drawn over the head, so shadowing the features.

To either side there appeared crude vaulted arches, some of which were closed by doors and others of which led to dark corridors. Some were blank. One of these openings was directly behind the seated figure, and stairs led up from it. Those stairs, Ford surmised, should lead to some masked opening close to the wall. This figure, silent and sinister, might well be the one that had slithered over the wall while Ferguson and Ford watched the previous night.

There was no sight of Ferguson's body, or pathic younger man who should be Gerald. Ford's eyes searched the gloom as he stood between the two giants who guarded him, one on either side, their arms folded.

The skins of his guards gave off high lights from the oiled surfaces. The lanterns and candles revealed their muscles, the superb anatomy of their torsos, their swelling thighs and calves. They wore only short trunks of dark red cloth. Ford had an idea that they were stimulated by some sort of drug. It might not be heroin— more likely a form of cannabis indica, distilled from local herbs or plants. These were Gullah men. They lived largely as had their sires, only three generations from the jungles of Benin.

Those recent ancestors had been the last shipment of ''black ivory" to be landed in the States. The Emancipation Act had been signed, and they had been turned loose on these Southern sea-islands to fend for themselves. They had their own dialect, their funeral customs, their old beliefs, their sorcerers and witch-women. A man like Shadleigh, if he had some of their savage blood in him, as Mildred Tulliver averred, would know how to handle them. He would be able to mold them to his own purpose.

That this was Shadleigh, seated behind Margaret's limp body, Ford had no doubt. His silence was partly mockery, Ford thought, and partly with a desire to be impressive. He wanted the setting to be etched on the mind and soul of his latest captive, to daunt him. Ford was thankful for the respite. His brain was clearing, and there was still a chance.

The cellar was rudely furnished. On a stand he saw the glint of metal, also a lamp. The glints came from knives or tools, and from Ford's gun, which one of his guards had set down. These men were proud of their brawn, contemptuous of the man whom they had subdued. Again their mien suggested to Ford some special stimulation.

Ford measured the distances. Behind him, in dense shadow, his fingers began to writhe, his hands to move, a fraction of an inch at a time, so as not to betray him by the action of any muscles in the light. The two stood watching the hooded figure with fixed intensity, with the eagerness of leashed hounds waiting to be set free, so they may bay and slay.

Abruptly the figure rose, thrust back the hood, revealing glittering eyes, a nose like a great beak, like the striking, killing mandibles of a carnivorous bird. It was Judah Shadleigh, and his lips writhed as he spoke gloatingly.

"The butler with the gaudy tie!'' he jeered. "Clement Ford, detective extraordinary, summoned by Lindley Ferguson, who is now nothing.— Hired as his protector. Ha!"

Shadleigh had doubtless found something on Ferguson's body, or in his room, that led to this information, Ford decided. The prisoner made no reply. Not to answer might enrage Shadleigh, who was surely a little mad. That might help to divert him from Ford's final move, if he got a chance to make it. It would be a last attempt, and either it would succeed or he would perish.

As he gazed at Margaret's form he did not mean to fail.

“I have been curious as to why this Northerner came here," Shadleigh went on. ''I was still more curious after I considered him as the descendant of the Captain Ferguson, who helped to murder my own illustrious ancestors in this very house."

“If they were still living,'' said Ford, "would you be one of them ? Would you live in the house— or in the quarters?"

That was a shrewd stroke. It lashed Shadleigh into a frenzy which he could hardly control. Foam showed on his lips. He was not far from an epileptic fit. And it weakened his command over his two followers. Not much, perhaps; but it somehow stirred emotions in their wizened minds, so disturbing the situation.

Shadleigh mastered himself at last and went on. ''You fool! You think yourself a wise one. But we have puzzled you, and when you got too meddlesome we brought you here.— As we have brought others— interferers who were not of the brotherhood. They were strangled either by Leo there, or by Lupus— strangled slowly until their eyes hung out upon their cheeks and their prayers were but wheezing gasps. Then they were laid upon the highway for clowns to find and gaze at. Those clowns proclaimed them slain by the ‘haunts’ of Skull Manor. But while they fled to spread the news, we took the bodies and flung them to the great lizards in the marsh. We sacrificed them to the great winged creature that dwells there."'

It was plain that this half-crazed, man had organized some sort of cult that hid deeper devices. The dead blacks of Parkin's story, then, were not a myth. They had been killed here in this cellar, and after exhibition they had been fed to the swamp alligators. Doubtless Leo and Lupus believed in the monster of the marsh.

Ford also was not dead now only because Shadleigh thought to wrest information from him which he had failed to get from either Ferguson, his son, or his stepdaughter. But there would be no clemency for Ford, in any event. Gerald, he feared, was dead. As for Margaret, this fiend might have the designs of a satyr!

Again Ford's fingers busied themselves, stealthily, his wrists straining against the cords.

''Ford," said Shadleigh, "when those Northern butchers killed the flower of Southern chivalry, they overlooked one thing. That gathering in the house here planned a final thrust that would have swept Sherman into the sea. Families had melted down their plate and sold it; they had impoverished themselves to their last cent in order to equip them. They had with them the very sinews of war; pay for soldiers, money for supplies, for bribes, for runners of contraband, for arms.

“When the man who was hanged as a spy warned them with his last breath, they hid that treasure— hid it cleverly and well. Not even I knew of its existence."

"Why should you?" jeered Ford. Now he knew why Ferguson had bought the house, and why he had so stubbornly hung on to it. The Scot and Shadleigh had one impulse in common; one source they sought for power: money.

"I guessed that Ferguson had some hidden motive in coming here," Shadleigh went on, his words stumbling a bit but gaining control. "I desired to keep this house inviolate, a shrine. So I practiced certain weird effects that you have suspected. These hoofs"— he displayed two wooden blocks with horseshoes nailed upon them— "worked at the right hour, and just at the head of those stairs, produced the phantom horseman. Heavy solutions of chlorates and nitrates crystallizedinto suspended cords were the mystic lights. The footprints, the prints of the claws, were alligator feet fastened upon shoes."

Dressed as he was, Ford acknowledged the clever fantasy that he had not guessed.

And the dragon with the green eyes and the long neck which we saw over the marsh?" he asked, his fingers busy back of him the while. "I might have solved that also."

Shadleigh laughed derisively.

Ford did not push the matter. It might not pay to confound Leo or Lupus too suddenly.

The young fool, Gerald," Shadleigh continued, "tried to escape. He got hurt for his pains, and his skull, I fear, is fractured. If he recovers, he may be useful in case you prove otherwise. As for Ferguson, a fumbling fool let him get out a weapon and then shot him, clumsily. But we found the old diary upon him, the diary of Captain Ferguson which told of how the Northern soldiers had learned, long after, that there had been a pay chest that they left behind. It was too late then to seek— rightfully. Peace had been declared— though never accepted by us of the South.

"So this Northern hound comes sneaking on the trail of gold. Now, what did he tell you, Ford? You were his trusted detective, his spy. He must have told you.— Tell me! If not— there is a pan of charcoal, and there are blades and pincers and tongs— a lamp. Gerald was to have known them— that oaf who made love to Mildred Tulliver. You shall know them, if you are not wise.— Or perhaps we shall practise them upon the girl here; this fair, frail maiden. And in your sight. There may be other matters..."

Ford got his hand up another inch. Thecords had cut into him so that the blood trickled over his fingers, but he felt no pain, only a superhuman ability to endure and to make an intense effort under the spur of Shadleigh's diabolical threats and hinted abominations.

He saw Margaret's figure twitch. He thought he heard her moan.

"You are making plenty of money, Shadleigh,"' he said. ''Why should you need this pay-chest?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said," Ford told him. "You wanted this house left alone so your confederates should have a place to print from their plates. I know that you have passed counterfeit bills. I have proof of it. Shall I tell you the series, describe the portrait— the one slip that Paul the Penman made?"

Shadleigh lifted and spread his arms, his hands. He was the incarnation of a foul bird, enraged, about to swoop down upon its prey.

Ford had reached the haft of the thin blade which he carried in a sheath sewn into the back of his trousers, close by the strap and buckle, much as a carpenter carries a rule. This weapon was of steel so finely tempered, so thin, that it curved with his body, fitting snubly. The handle was not much thicker, but the weapon would bite like the tooth of an adder, though far deeper and quite as deadly. The trick was one which he had learned trom a Levantine smuggler. He had been searched before when his investigations had led him into trouble, but never had it been found upon him.

He had to get it clear, to twist it so that it would sever the rope which now gnawed against the living cords of his wrist. He wanted to get Shadleigh away from the table, from the girl; to throw him out of control and get his big blacks confused. Everything had to be pertectly timed.

"I've got one of those bills in my pocket now, Shadleigh. The testimony of the person you gave it to will be forthcoming. As for your tricks, they were the gestures of a mountebank— the claws, the lights, the hoof beats. Any property man in a traveling show could duplicate them. That pig's blood, spilled on the road, too! All tricks, except the men you had strangled.— You'll burn for those, Shadleigh!"'

Now the blade was in his fingers, slicingthrough the rope and through his own flesh, but freeing him. He watched Shadleigh narrowly.

"As for the monster in the marsh, I fancy that is an idea of the pals of Paul the Penman. But they'll not burn just as you do, for you have blood that is not mere pig's blood on your hands, Shadleigh."

The man went mad at that. He rushed from behind the table— and Ford struck. He darted sidewise, drove his steel between the lower ribs of the man on his right. who had stood half stupefied, listening to these bared secrets,  wondering, muddled.

Ford changed his weapon to his left hand and dodged the big Gullah as he sank down. The next instant he had caught up the gun from the table, and the teel of the hard rubber butt was like a lungful of fresh, sweet air to a soul in Hades.

He sliced the arm of the other Gullah to the bone, from biceps to wrist. The man stared at the bright blood spurting in little fountains.

Ford bent his own elbow, steadying to a nice aim.

Shadleigh had retreated, however, and now he stood over Margaret, a knife gleaming in his hand. The girl was conscious now, but hardly able to move, tied as she was.

"Her life for mine,'' Shadleigh bargained. "Let me up those stairs.— I have no gun, or I would shoot it out with you now. But let me up those steps and I will not harm her..."

Ford's grim lips twitched into a half smile. He squeezed the trigger— once— twice— and the knife fell from Shadleigh's palsied hand as he toppled.

Quickly then, Ford cut the bonds of the girl he loved, speaking to her, reassuring her. The Gullah whose arm he had slashed was against the wall, very much tamed now.

"Fo' Gawd's sake,'' he begged. ''Don't let me bleed to death." His fellow lay with two great hands clasped over his wound.

A third man came charging down the passage his skin shining. Ile wore a sleeveless shirt and short white pants. He had a gun holstered.

"Too many men come!" he shouted, then he stopped short and clutched at his weapon.

Ford mercifully hit him in the shoulder, sent him staggering back. He knew that everything was over now, that Mildred Tulliver had sent the telegrams and that this was the answer. But it had been touch and go. Blood had clogged on his throat, still dripped from his wrists. He had won, but he was very weary.

Margaret Ferguson was like a wilting lily, though she strove to hold herself erect. Clayborn in his flying helmet, entering the next moment, looked like the Archangel Michael to Ford.

"Take over, Clay, will you?" he said. ''Clean out this place. Look for Lindley Ferguson's body, and look for his son, Gerald.—I put that in the wires."

"You did," said the flier. ''We've hada fine time. You look as if you'd been busy yourself. More power to you!" he added with a glance of approval at Margaret. ''Boy, you fixed things. They gave me a nice ship with a persuader in front, and a few eggs. That army flier is one swell guy. We found that faked-up pusher, and we laid a couple of hot eggs close to them in the pond in the marsh. The federal agent has them in tow. They came clean. There should be a stack of phony dough right here. We'll find it.— You go on upstairs."

He grinned as Ford moved off, tired but triumphant. The cellar filled with the searchers of the government, some giving treatment to Leo and Lupus and to the sentry, whom they had surprised and whom Ford had winged.

It was not long before Clayborn came upstairs.

"We found the young chap alive,"' he announced. "He ought to pull through. But—"

"She knows," said Ford. ''I told her that her stepfather had been killed."

Margaret Ferguson smiled at Ford. ''You saved me,'' she said.

Clayborn, at the door, looked at the wall. ''That isn't all they found," he said. "They've got the outfit— the plates, press and paper. But they also dug into the base of the big chimney, thinking that it was strange that the brickwork should have been carried down so far. There was a loose stone. The G. M. pulled it out, and he found a hollow in the wall. It was stufied full of old bills!"

The pay-chest of the young Southerners, the forlorn hope of the South for a last thrust! Many men besides Ferguson had died for it— Shadleigh the aristocrat as well as Judah Shadleigh.

"Quite a chunk of jack,'' said Clayborn. ''But— here's the kick in it. You've got to hear this before I duck. It was just loose in the walls— must have been stufied in there in a hurry by someone who expected to get it out soon— because it was all chewed to bits by rats! I could tell from a few fragments that part of it was Union money and part was Confederate bills. But they're both equally valueless now."

Faded glory! Fairy gold turned to dust. Ford did not even consider it any further. Neither did Margaret. He held his fortune— and hers— within the hollow of his arm. Herheadwas on his shoulder, their troubles were largely forgotten; and the past was blotted out as their lips met in their first kiss.

___________________

4: The Crowing Hens of Totulu

Adventure, April 1916

"NEVER speak to a woman before twelve o'clock, noon. Follow that rule, Jimmy, my lad," said Riley Hardin, "and you'll avoid trouble with the sex. By twelve their blood gets to circulatin' properly and they forget to be peevish."

"Ho, yus," replied Jimmy. "That's a fine hold bit hof a rule, that his. You 'as your dooties on deck, an' w'en you ain't got none you can pretend you 'as, an' she none the wiser. But w'ot price me? My job's below an' she knows hit, an' fair chivvies me hall hover the place till Hi'm barmy. Hi'm sick of hit, Hi tell yer. W'ot did she come haboard for hanyway, that's w'ot Hi'd like to know? W'ot hif she his the skipper's missis. Hi've got shares hin the ship myself."

"She came aboard, Jimmy, my son," replied the first mate," because she preferred the Margaret Ann to jail."

"She'll turn the ship hinter a bloomin' loonatic asylum hif she keeps hit hup this w'y, wiv me has chief patient. W'ot was she goin' to get hin jail for? Wimmen's wrongs what they wants made wimmens' rights, I suppose?"

"Well, Jimmy, you know she's had the sufferaging bug bad for a year. She's what we call back in the States a limelighter. Wants to stand in the spot all the time and thinks she's a natural-born leader."

"Hi know hall that. W'ot appened to get the coppers hafter 'er."

"You were out of town, Jimmy. It was a week before we sailed—"

"W'ot did she do? 'Eave 'arf a brick hat a bobby?"

"First," said Hardin, "her limelightin' got her to start a subscription to place a marble monument above the grave of an English sufferagette that had tried to blow up all the poets' and dooks' and warriors' tombs in Westminster Abbey, but had miscalculated the length of the fuse. That fell flat, owin' to the lady who was fightin' her for the leadership of the Sydney Sufferagettes being a sixteenth cousin of the nephew of Nelson, or Byron or some one.

"So then some of 'em got into the gallery at the mayor's banquet and threw a lot of cheap eggs while the soup was being served. One egg was a chiny one and hit the mayor on the bean, so that his bald head looked as if it was tryin' to raise eggs on it's own account. The skipper got the tip that the police knew who chucked it, so we smuggled Mrs. B. aboard and telegraphed you, and the next day we sailed,

"I told the skipper they couldn't prove it on her, because she couldn't possible have aimed it at the mayor and hit him too, but he didn't see the joke."

"Well, Hi'm goin' to tell 'im something hon my hown 'ook. Blowed hif she don't think Hi'm some sort of stooard. Started harrangin' my trade-room shelves. Told me Hi 'adn't got no tyste in dress goods, Me! W'ot 'ave hintrodooced more 'its hin percales hand muslins than hany supercargo hin the South Seas! Said Hi hought to 'ave stocked hup wiv calico wiv lilock sprigs hon hit. Lilock sprigs, for Tamatau's fahines!"

"Make allowances, Jimmy. She can't help it. She's a bit of a freak, you know. Most of these sufferagettes are, I reckon. Crowin' hens, I call 'em."

"Crowin' 'ens? She's a bloomin' cuckoo, that's w'ot she his. Crowdin' 'erself hin w'ere she don't belong hand hain't wanted, hand tryin' to shove me hout hof my hown trade-room. Came hin this hafternoon w'en Hi was workin', hand flounced hout becoz Hi was peeled to my hundershirt hand pants. Told the skipper Hi was hindecent, she did. Honly peace Hi 'ave, his w'en she's seasick and, thank Gawd, she turns yeller hevery time the cabin lamp swings hin the gimbals."

"Maybe she'll work it out of her system that way," opined Hardin. "It's largely a matter of bile, to my way of thinkin'."

"Hif hit honly was," said Jimmy, "you could cure h'em heasy. Put h'em hall haboard a rollin' little steamer and send h'em hout hin the Channel somew'eres w'ere hit's nice and choppy. That 'ud beat hall the 'unger strikes. Wouldn't 'ave to feed h'em hat hall."

"What about the ones who wasn't seasick?"

"Make h'em wait hon the rest. They'd 'ave to, hout hof 'umanity. 'Old their 'eads and rush the bowls. Ho! Hi'd cure h'em."

"Well, if it gives you any comfort," said the mate, "the glass is down to thirty, and pumpin' at that. There's somethin' comin' our way, and soon. That's why it'e so hot."

"Hit his warm," agreed Jimmy, mopping his brow. "H'ill tell Talua to put hon the racks hat supper. She starts feelin' sick the minnit she sees h'em hon the table. 'Ullo, 'ere's the skipper."

"Jimmy," said Captain Boyle, coming aft and speaking a little wearily, "Mrs. Boyle isn't feeling very well. I wish you'd fix her up a little toddy. She thinks it'll make her feel better."

Jimmy glanced at the mate, who averted his eyes. Then he went to the companionway, looking as if he'd like to fiz a draught for the wife of his esteemed skipper that would prove far from being a nepenthe.

"Mrs. Boyle under the weather, captain?" asked Hardin solicitously.

"Yes, Hardin, she's a bit nervous yet. And the heat. Glass is still falling—down to twenty-nine-ninety. You'd better shorten sail. We'll be needin' storm canvas before midnight. Monsoon weather.

"I'll handle it," he added as four bells struck; "if you want to go below? It's my watch."

"Never mind, skipper," answered his mate hastily. "I'll stay on deck and 'tend to it. I want to smoke a bit anyway."

The orders given, the two paced the deck together.

"Women," said the captain after a while, "are peculiar, Hardin. Especially these days. They seem to want something out of the ordinary to occupy themselves with."

"What most of 'em need," replied Hardin, "if you don't mind my sayin' so—is kids."

Captain Boyle sighed.

"I guess you're right Hardin," he said. "I guess you're pretty nearly right.

THE next day found the barometer and the thermometer still moving in opposite directions. The sky was filmed with a dull haze through which the sun shone like a tarnished copper wafer. The ocean seemed covered with gray scum. As the bows of the barkentine lunged sullenly through the water, they turned up long swathes of dull, slimy green, like crude oil. The life had gone out of the sea, no foam showed at stem or stem, only a few thick-rinded bubbles that floated out of sight without breaking. The wind slapped suddenly at the scant canvas from every quarter and the barkentine rolled heavily from side to side as if it's timbers had lost their buoyancy.

Mrs. Boyle, fat to the creasing point, her ample form swathed in a Paisley shawl, yet looking somehow shrunken for all her stoutness, with a face the color of fresh putty, appeared on deck, and made her.way care fully to the mainmast where she clung feebly.

"I can't stand it below," she said to her spouse. "The heat's awful and there's that Brownbill whistling in his trade-room till my head fair splits with it."

"I wouldn't stay on deck if I were you, my dear," said the captain. "There's goin' to be dirty weather in short order."

"I'll stay here if it kills me," retorted the lady with what in healthier hours would have been temper. "If you had any consideration for me, you'd get me my deck-chair."

"Billy-Boy," called the captain.

"Why can't that Brownbill fetch it?"

"That is hardly his duty, my dear. And he has others."

"Duties?" sniffed the lady sinking into the chair. "He's messin' with a lot of paints down below. Thinks he's an artist. 'Mfff!

"Oh!" as the barkentine lurched suddenly. "Can't you fix the wheel or something and keep the ship even?"

"No, my dear, I can't," said the captain with some acerbity, leaving her to meet his first mate.

"Well," retorted the lady, "as soon as I get my feet on solid ground you'll not get me to sea again in a hurry."

"And that," thought the mate, though he did not speak it, "is the best news this trip."

"Glass twenty-nine-seventy," he said aloud. "Gettin' mighty dark, ain't it?"

The muggy heat seemed to increase as the sky film thickened, shutting off the sun till the day dulled to premature twilight.

Captain Boyle strode back to the chair.

"Get below, Maggie," he said.

"I'll not," said the lady, waxen in the dusk.

"You will!" replied her husband, master on his own quarterdeck. "Billy-Boy, help Mrs. Boyle below!"

She went, her handkerchief to her mouth, seemingly corroborating Jimmy's theory of a cure for ultra-suffragitis.

"Can't tell red from bloo below," said the little supercargo, coming on deck.

"Here she comes," announced Boyle suddenly, as the line of the onrushing wind ruled the water with a line of black, throwing forward a skirmish-line of whitecaps.

The storm canvas filled as the breeze strengthened and the barkentine amended her sluggish speed.

"Everything snug, Mr. Hardin?"

"All snug, sir!"

The breeze suddenly turned to a gale that blew momentarily more fiercely till a shout died to a whisper on the lips. Streaks of oily spume sped horizontally across the deck.

"Center's to the east'ard, I think," yelled Boyle into the mate's ear, cupped by his hand. "Stand by to wear ship!"

A minute later the Margaret Ann was thrashing toward the horizon where no sunset was to grace the close of that day.

Mrs. Boyle, below in her cabin, recked not of casting votes or addressing applauding sisters. She was not silent, but her eloquence was not that of speech.

IT WAS a sunny afternoon when the lady ventured on deck once more and evinced a languid but growing interest in the lifting of the coco-palms of Totulu above the horizon.

In her lap, as she reclined in her chair, were two pieces of coarse canvas which she was adorning with colored wools disposed in the patterns of bright red animal-heads with shoe-button eyes, supposed to represent foxes, on a background of sickly green.

"What size shoes did you say King Tamatau wears?" she asked her husband.

"I don't think he ever wore any, my dear."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"I didn't know what you were making."

"Well, he'll wear these," said the original Margaret Ann of the barkentine's christening, regarding her work with pride. "I got the biggest soles there were in Sydney— fourteens. If they're too small, we can take off the heels and turn back the canvas. Don't you think he'll like them?"

"He ought to," said Boyle diplomatically.

"Hold Tomato hin carpet slippers!" whispered Jimmy to Hardin. "Ho, my heye!

THE Margaret Ann swung at her moorings in the lagoon of Totulu off the long copra wharf, dipped ensign and fired a royal salute for the monarch of the little atoll-kingdom of which Totulu was the capital.

"When are we going ashore?" demanded Mrs. Boyle, decked for the occasion in white duck skirt, peekaboo-waist, long, white gloves and a wide-brimmed magenta hat with yellow ostrich plumes.

"Not until the king comes off," said Boyle.

"Then get me a fan," said the lady. "I should have brought a sunshade."

"Some by-by doll," murmured Jimmy as he sped Billy-Boy on the errand. "She'll make a 'it wiv Hold Tomato, Hi don't fink."

"Are those women rowing?" asked Mrs. Boyle excitedly, as Tamatau's whaleboat, propelled by six lusty queens, shot out from the private wharf.

"Yes'm," replied Hardin. "They do it for exercise. Keeps 'em reduced."

Mrs. Boyle looked sharply at the mate. "Ha!" she said. "Well, it ain't ladylike. I thought they wore clothes?"

Jimmy, addressed thus abruptly, sputtered something about "the 'eat," and retired to the cabin to dispense the inevitable "ginnybeer" for Tamatau.

"She's a startin' of somefing already," he confided to second mate Wilkins as they hastily shared an extra bottle of beer. "She'll be a cuckooin' on Totulu before you can s'y Jack Robinson. You watch."

Tamatau, to whom every year brought more of girth and less of breath, grunted heavily up the sideladder, resplendent in pajamas the design of which seemed to be an impressionistic attempt to portray orange starfish in a purple sea. Puffing, he stood at the rail, gazing fixedly at the vision of Mrs. Boyle. Great drops of perspiration ran down his fat jowls and splashed on the deck, while his enormous head smoked from the exertion of his climb.

"Looks like a meltin' chocklate drop in a tuck-shop winder," said Jimmy, sotto voce, to Hardin, as he waited with a huge tankard of beer reinforced with gin. "Look hat 'is lamps buggin' hout at the missis. Like 'ard boiled heggs hin a myonnaze salad."

Still enthralled, the heated monarch stretched an automatic arm for the tankard.

"My wife, King," said Boyle.

Mrs. Boyle curtseyed low.

"After all," she thought, "a king is a king." And made up her mind to be kodaked with him at the earliest moment.

"Humph!" said Tamatu from the depths of the goblet.

Then, relinquishing it to Jimmy for a fresh supply—

"Momona kela fahine papalangi."

"What does he say?" asked Mrs. Boyle smilingly of the captain.

The skipper's embarassment was saved by Hardin.

"He says'm," said the mate, "that you're 'some lady.'" Which was an approximate, if not a literal translation.

The "momona fahine" (fat woman) held out a white-gloved hand, none too small, which was engulfed in the sweaty paw of Tamatau. She made another mental note— "To preserve the glove, as trophy Number Two."

"Aren't the ladies coming aboard?" she asked.

"Them?" answered Tamatau. "Ugh! No."

"Mrs. Boyle looked as if she was about to say something which etiquette forbade, and followed the group to the cabin.

There was one question certain to be propounded by Tamatau within five minutes of his boarding either of the two vessels with the captains of which he traded— the barkentine Margaret Ann, Captain Boyle, and the schooner Shamrock, Captain McShane— both of Sydney. It came after the draining of the monarch's fourth mug.

"What you bring me, kapitani?"

"Ah," said Boyle. "Present this time very fine, King. You remember light-stick Captain McShane give you last year?"

"Umph!" replied Tamatau, who had forborne to slip the switch of the electric torch in question, imagining it a perpetual flame inspired by papalangi magic. "That no dam good"— Mrs. Boyle coughed— "two day, light all gone!"

"Well, this is different, King. This is big, oh plenty big light. Can see all around lagoon. I show you tonight. Can burn all time. I show Kokua how to fix."

"Kokua, he dam fool, too. Two, maybe three month now, he break noise-box you bring me last time. Kokua plenty too much dam fool."

This was a real grievance with Tamatau, for the circus orchestrion presented him by Captain Boyle had been a source of delight to all Totulu, until it broke down, to the disgrace of Kokua, general factotum of Tamatau's little atoll-kingdom of Totulu.

"Jimmy can fix that, King," assured Boyle. "I bring you new tunes for that too."

"Maiti," said the mollified monarch, as Jimmy handed him his fifth flagon.

"Mrs. Boyle, she bring you something too, King."

Tamatau, whose glance had seldom wandered from the buxom countenance of the skipper's lady, which seemed to hold for him some strange fascination— somewhat to her embarassment, though she set it down as homage due— gazed at her with renewed interest. On her part, she had carefully rehearsed her presentation speech.

"I trust, sire, that they will fit," she said. "If they don't, I can fix 'em."

The king viewed the gift with admiration and thrust one paw in either slipper. But he made no effort to try them on, though the donor was itching to see the working effect of her industry.

"Maiti," he said. "Maiti!"

The talk drifted to copra and shell and hawkbill turtle, and presently the monarch rose ponderously from the settee which creaked it's relief.

"I go now," he said. "You come ashore soon, I show fahine all my present."

He puffed himself laboriously up the companionway, attended by Boyle, and puffed himself down the sideladder to his waiting whaleboat.

"A most agreeable person," said Mrs. Boyle as the skipper returned to the cabin. "But I wish he wouldn't stare so."

"You have made an impression, my dear. He seldom sees a woman of your style."

As a general rule, compliments from her husband were regarded as a suspicious commodity by Mrs. Boyle, but she accepted this one as currency.

"I shall love to see the things in his storehouse," she said.

The skipper, remembering pictures that had been cajoled from waterfront saloons to catch the robust fancy of Tamatau, hesitated.

"Don't think you'll care for it much," he said.

"The man's respectable, isn't he?"

The use of this adjective in connection with the South Sea ruler was so strange to Boyle that he gasped.

"Oh, Lord, yes. In that way," he answered.

"Then I shall go there first and visit with the ladies afterward."

It was a busy afternoon for the skipper, spent in making arrangements for loading a cargo, and it was close to twilight before he returned to his whaleboat.

"Where's Mrs. Boyle?" he asked of the waiting Jimmy, whose vigil had been beguiled by the company of a slim, golden skinned, midnight hair-and-eyed young lady of Totulu.

Jimmy had a na-u (gardenia) wreath about his neck and the friendship seemed to have passed the first stages. The skipper eyed them sharply, and the girl with a poorly staged attempt at unconsciousness walked off to the village, swinging her lissome hips.

"No philanderin', Jimmy," said Boyle.

"'Er name's Fuatina," answered Jimmy, dodging the issue.

"I don't care what her name is. I said no philanderin', my son, and I meant it. A friendly interest for the good of trade, but no mix-ups. Where's Mrs. Boyle?"

"She's hover wiv the wimmin in the queenery. Bin there two 'ours hor more. 'Ere she is, now!"

Escorted by a score of queens and lesser ladies, Mrs. Boyle came to the boat request ing to be rowed aboard promptly, as "she was hungry."

"The ladies," she announced later in the privacy of the cabin, "are interesting, but the king is a beast."

"What's wrong?" asked Boyle quickly.

"He took me to that stuffy storehouse of his, filled up with junk like a second-hand shop. There were pictures on the walls that were worse than indecent. I couldn't look anywhere but what I saw one. I think, seeing I am your wife, you might have warned me."

"My dear—"

"But that was nothing! The creature didn't want to show me anything. He wanted to look at my teeth."

"Your teeth?"

"I said my teeth, Captain Boyle."

"You must have been mistaken."

"I can read signs as well as the next person, I believe. I tell you he wanted me to open my mouth and let him see my teeth, as if he had been a dentist. But I told him exactly what I thought of him, and though he didn't appear to understand all of it, I don't think he'll care to renew the acquaintance in a hurry. Is supper ready?"

It was. And the lady's teeth were relegated to more pleasant purposes than the amusement of a monarch.

Captain Boyle wisely set aside the subject, resolving to open it later with Tamatau. But the explanation came naturally in the evening.

JIMMY had repaired the worn valves of the orchestrion and the entire population, fixed and visiting, of Totulu and it's lagoon, assembled on the beach to hear the strains— using the word advisedly— of the new records. Mrs. Boyle was the only absentee, having retired early after the excitements of the day. The concert was a grand success, "Come, oh, my hero" being first favorite, with "My Hoolah Boolah Maid" a close second.

But the searchlight made the supreme hit. With a full supply of carbide in the cylinder, Tamatau delighted in thrusting into unexpected publicity couples who had sought the security of shadows in which to make love. His guffaws of joy came to a sudden end, however, as the beam disclosed his reigning favorite, Fatua, palpably flirting with a stalwart Totuluan in the comparative obscurity of the side of a canoe.

Jimmy created a diversion by starting a new record and the blare and clang of one of Sousa's marches— butchered to make a South Sea holiday— restored the monarch's equanimity. He turned the searchlight on the orchestrion and shouted approval at Jimmy, who grinned in reply.

"Hi," said Tamatau. "Jimmy, you come along here."

The little supercargo came over to where the king and the skipper sat side by side on the sand.

"What you want, King?" he asked.

"I like look um teeth," said Tamatau, pointing to his own substantial masticators.

"My teef?" said Jimmy, wonderingly.

"Sure," said the king, indicating the molars of his massive jowl.

"H'im hon," said Jimmy. "You want um see gold teef."

He opened his mouth in the full ray of the searchlight, while Tamatau ponderously rose, and gazed at the crown-teeth of the supercargo's bridge work.

"Maiti no," he said. Then, to Captain Boyle:

"Your fahine, she plenty fine gold tooth."

A light dawned on the skipper.

"Sure, King! Many gold teeth, very fine, cost plenty much money. You like um?"

"I like," said Tamatau. "Where she get?"

"Sydney, King. Where did you get yours Jimmy?"

"Sydney, one side. This side was fixed in Tahiti, three years ago. Old Boileau, the French dentist."

"Tahiti!" said the king. "Suppose I go Tahiti, you think I can get?"

"Lord, King, you don't need any new teeth," said Boyle.

"I like," persisted Tamatau, evidently enraptured with his new idea of personal decoration. "Suppose you take me along in ship?"

"When?"

"Tomorrow. I pay. I give you pearl— maybe two."

Now Tamatau had many pearls which even at his reserve prices were bargains. Tahiti was a scant three hundred miles away. Boileau the dentist could probably be persuaded to rush his job as crownmaker to Totulu."

So reflected Boyle, but, wise in the responsibilities of South Sea trade, he warned the king—

"I think, maybe he hurt plenty much, King."

"All same I no give a dam," said Tamatau.

Jack Johnson must have had the same indifference to pain when he ordered his golden smile.

"All right, I look at pearls tomorrow," assented Boyle.

But the bargain did not end with the king. There was Mrs. Boyle to be considered, and that lady, though mollified at the explanation of Tamatau's interest in her teeth— she had thought it connected with a desire to learn her age— was not to be won over to the plan of the trip until she had secured one of the pearls of passage.

"It'll be a nice run," said Boyle. "You'll like Tahiti."

"I am not going!" returned his wife firmly.

"Not going?"

"For three reasons," replied the lady. "After all I suffered on the trip, I intend to stay ashore till my stomach is settled. And I'm not going to be cooped up with that king. Do you know what he did with my slippers? He was wearing them like a Scotch thingumajig."

"Sporran, my dear," said Boyle, remembering Tamatau's display of his latest gift, hung from the girdle of his pajamas.

"Besides," went on the lady, "the queens are very interesting. We have already discovered interests in common."

"I don't see how you get along with them. You don't know the language and few of them can even talk beach-English."

Mrs. Boyle regarded her husband with scorn.

"Women have no trouble understanding each other," she answered. "We got along very well yesterday," she concluded complacently, remembering the pleasant afternoon on which she had been the star of the reception.

Certain subjects of burning feminine interest had been inevitably left out. The questions of servants, of dressmaking and favorite salads, were naturally terra incognita to the Totuluans; but there had been the important matters of sickness to discuss, of patent medicines and the proper handling of husbands, that had all gone swimmingly, despite the lack of mutual vocabulary. Also, Mrs. Boyle had discovered a sad state of affairs concerning Women's Rights in the despotic little monarchy which she had already determined to alleviate. But of this she said nothing.

"Well," said the skipper, "if you've set your mind on staying, it can be arranged. I'll leave Jimmy with you."

"That sparrow! I can take care of myself."

"There's no question of that, my dear. They are perfectly friendly natives. It's a matter of your own dignity. Besides, Jimmy has work to do, getting the cargo ready."

"As long as he attends to his own business?"

"We'll fix him up a tent. As for your quarters—"

"I shall sleep in the Queen-House."

Visions of Mrs. Boyle— who was fond of her comfort— trying to sleep in a grass house open to the four winds and wandering insects, on a mat bed with a wooden pillow, surrounded by a score of queens, half of whom were obese and given to snoring; flashed across the skipper's mind.

"You wouldn't like that, my dear. Those grass houses are full of spiders— and centipedes."

"Ugh!"

"I'll have a proper bed fixed for you in the king's storehouse— we'll take out the pictures. There's a high fence on three sides and the lagoon in front. Besides, it's practically tapu. You'll need privacy."

"We-e-ell," said Mrs. Boyle, her flesh still crawling at thoughts of marauding spiders. "Perhaps that's the best thing to do."

"That's settled then. I'll go talk with Jimmy.

THE Margaret Ann left on the afternoon tide, with Tamatau, accompanied by the repentant Fatua— under discipline— ensconced in state upon the after deck. The orchestrion sobbed out "The Wearing of the Green" as a farewell lament, and the village, in canoes and afoot along the curving beaches of the lagoon, accompanied the barkentine to the reef-passage. Mrs. Boyle was in the king's whaleboat, manned, at her insistence, by men instead of it's regular crew of queens.

Jimmy had proved less difficult over the matter of staying behind than Boyle had feared. The work the skipper had mentioned was largely hypothetical until the barkentine returned; and the supercargo had six unused canvases and a new outfit of oils and brushes. Besides, there was Fuatina. Mrs. Boyle's quarters had been established to her satisfaction and Jimmy had a tent, improvised from a spare awning by Billy-Boy, set up on the beach away from the village.

The first two days passed quietly. Mrs. Boyle was in constant companionship with the select female society of the atoll, save when she was taking lessons in Totuluan from Kokua, who had acquired a fair knowledge of English on whaling voyages.

Jimmy was working hard on a canvas at a general picture of the head of the muleshoe shaped lagoon. Fuatina, adoring at his feet, held the spare brushes.

"Hits 'ell, getting this sand right," complained the artist, squeezing prodigally from fat tubes. "Hit looks w'ite, but hit hain't, w'en you see the foam. Hit's pink, hand yeller, hand the shadders his bloo."

A long cobalt shadow fell across the canvas from behind. Atupa, honorary paymaster of Totulu, spoke his approbation.

"Maiti, no," he said.

"You like?" asked the flattered artist.

"Maiti. Coco-palm plenty much good. All same walk about in wind. I like you make um pikitura my house."

"This paint, this canvas, cost plenty much money," said the astute little super cargo— Atupa had pearls. "This picture I sell um Sydney stop along."

"How much?"

"Maybe one hundred dollars."

Atupa mused.

"You take um pearl?"

"Hi'll look hem hover. W'ere's the 'ouse?"

The home of Atupa was on the windward side of the atoll in a clump of glossy bread fruits with the tumbling Pacific beyond. Both the view and a fine pearl stimulated Jimmy's ambition, and with the spell bound Fuatina as official assistant, he started work the next day. In the afternoon Atupa came to overlook the satisfactory progress. Jimmy's palette stopped mostly at secondary hues, but the result was academic to Atupa and he said so.

"That fool fahine papalangi," he said presently, as Jimmy shared with him beer from his private stock," plenty soon she make heap pirikia."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Oh too much pirikia. She speak men no good, women too much plenty good. She speak she think pretty soon men do all work. Women no work. Fahines they just sit along all time. Dam fool."

"Startin' the bloomin' cuckoo racket," said Jimmy.

But it was not his rôle to condemn the skipper's lady.

"Hit's just 'er talk," he commented.

Atupa's anticipation of trouble was shortly confirmed. First came Kokua that evening, complaining bitterly.

"That kapitani fahine," said the concertmaster and handyman of Totulu, "she all same crazy. She speak fahines no cook um, no work in taro patch, no fix um copra, no pick um pearl, no work um turtle-shell."

Jimmy turned to the lustrus-eyed Fuatina, never far away.

"Sure Kimo (Jimmy)," she corroborated. "Tonight plenty fahine no cook. Tomorrow they no work in copra shed. That fahine papalangi tongue plenty too much walk about."

"Well Hi'm not goin' to butt hin," announced Jimmy. "Hit's hup to the skipper hand Hold Tomato."

Next morning the men of the village gathered in groups instead of going fishing or working at their nets, volubly discussing the matter. They had had to cook their own breakfasts, Atupa said, and the women had refused to pound poi.

Jimmy was putting the finishing touches to the sketch of Atupa's house when Mrs. Boyle, tagged by a bodyguard of Amazons, obviously excited, appeared with a request that was a demand.

"I want you to paint a sign," she said.

"Who? Me? Hi'm no 'and hat letterin'," lied Jimmy.

"Then let me have some paint and a brush and I'll do it myself," said the lady, picking up a big tube of ebony black and taking the largest brush from Fuatina's helpless hands.

"'Ere, Hi s'y, Hi need that," demurred Jimmy.

"You can settle with the captain," returned the triumphant Mrs. Boyle, conscious of scoring, amid the giggles of the women. "Do you know where there's a hammer and nails?"

"Hi do not," he replied sulkily.

"Plenty hamma, plenty naili in storehouse," announced one of the older women, whose sleeveless garment of black and orange stripes projected in front like an awning, by reason of high living.

Jimmy went on painting, but his heart was not in it and he mussed viciously at the shadows.

WORK for women, in the apparent opinion of Mrs. Boyle, was only harmful when applied to the needs of the other sex, for in the next two days ample evidences of hard labor on the part of Totuluan femininity were plainly to be seen.

A scrambling fence of barbed wire— bought by Tamatau to keep the pigs out of his plantations— was stapled from tree to tree, zigzag across the widest point of the atoll. Bruised thumbs and scratched hands were much in evidence amongst the women, and glowering astonishment showed on the faces of the men who had been firmly advised to keep on one side of the crude, but effective trocha.

Jimmy, intent upon keeping out of trouble, stayed close to his own strip of beach, watching things develop. He watched with amusement the attempts of the island fahines, under the superintendence of the Woman's Champion—late of Sydney—to stretch a banner of white cloth between the two flagpoles in front of the storehouse. Presently it was fixed and the group of militants stepped back to admire.

Jimmy and Fuatina got into their canoe and paddled into the neutral waters of the lagoon for a closer inspection.

VOTES FOR WOMEN

So read the challenge, somewhat marred in effect by the crowding of the last letter against the edge of the cloth.

"And what have you got to say about it?" asked Mrs. Boyle aggressively, advancing to the edge of the lagoon.

Jimmy grinned.

"Hit's a fine job," he said— adding, "Hi don't fink," under his breath—  "Honly w'ots the huse? They hain't no votin' hon Totulu. Tamatau's the boss."

"Was the boss," corrected the flushed suffragette. And there will be votes. If the men have never voted, the way is clearer. For once the better sex shall come into their rights, without having to wrest them from the men. These long wronged sisters"— she indicated the huddle of complacent women— "shall see the dawn of a new day. Here in the South Seas the banner of militancy shall be flung abroad for all the world to see!"

"Here, where the spirit of rebellion is rampant, these vigorous Amazons shall establish the true kingdom of feminity. Here—"

"Ho, 'ave hit your hown w'y," said Jimmy as he backpaddled from the shallows. "Just you bloomin' well wait huntil the king and the skipper come 'ome. That's hall."

"What do you fink hof hit?" he asked Fuatina when Mrs. Boyle's harangue had become an echo. "You no want work hany more?"

"Fahine —— fool," said Fuatina conclusively. "Suppose we go along now, I cook you fine supper."

THE Margaret Ann came in next day to a divided reception. The men, who had pre-empted the canoes, met the barkentine at the reef-passage and clambered aboard before the anchor was down. The women were ranged in a phalanx beneath the banner of their slogan.

"What's all this fool business?" demanded Boyle of his supercargo, who was first to gain the deck.

"You can read hit, carn't yer?" said Jimmy. "Votes fer Wimmin. The missis 'as broke hout hagain, that's hall."

"And what kind of muck have you got inside your head, not to stop it?" asked his exasperated skipper.

"Hi didn't get no lessons hon 'ow to 'andle hit hin Sydney," retorted Jimmy.

His skipper subsided and turned to meet Tamatau, already apprised of the state of affairs, and raging. His face was muddy purple, his eyes congested, the veins of his neck ready to burst. The golden teeth, acquired at much sacrifice of pain and pearls, showed in a threatening grin.

"I fix it —— plenty quick," he announced. "You come along, kapitani!"

The ladder was rigged and the furious monarch descended with Captain Boyle into a hastily lowered whaleboat, urged swiftly toward the shore under the stroking of Billy-Boy.

The rank and file of the South Sea suffragettes faltered as the boat approached the storehouse, wavered again and shrank into the shelter of the trees as Tamatau bellowed a torrent of fluent Totuluan invective. Only their leader stood her ground, pale and trembly, but determined.

Tamatu strode ashore, grinding his golden crowns together as he passed her with a glare of apoplectic wrath.

The leader of the vanished legion turned to her husband but found in his stern countenance neither comfort nor opportunity for argument. She sniffed indignantly in the grinning faces of the whale boat's crew, now backed by the canoes of the Totuluan men, and followed her recreant recruits in their retreat.

In the late afternoon Fuatina brought a note to Jimmy, addressed to Captain Boyle, which the supercargo delivered to his skipper, still closeted with Tamatau inside the storehouse.

The skipper read it hurriedly and crammed it into his pocket.

"Get that truck out of here, Jimmy," he ordered, pointing out the bed that had been arranged for his wife. "Have Billy-Boy take it to the Queen-House. Mrs. Boyle is not going aboard tonight. That makes everything all right, King," he added.

"Sure," said Tamatau.

His complexion had resumed it's natural chocolate and the expensive golden smile was now expansively amiable. A group of empty bottles explained the nature of the emollient.

"I'm going to try the king's idea, Jimmy," said Boyle. "It's a good one. Can't kill, and it may cure."

"Jimmy, you take um drink?" invited Tamatau.

"Here's the scheme," went on the skipper, while Jimmy swigged at his glass. "The announcement is that men are unnecessary. We are goin' to put it up to them to prove it. Ebb runs till midnight or a little later. Every man-jack on Totulu will be aboard, quietly, and we'll take a little trip and let the ladies try it out."

"Fine," said Jimmy. "W'ere do we go?"

"You don't go at all. You stay here."

"W'y?"

"Because I'm not goin' to leave Mrs. Boyle alone on the island. This isn't a pleasant remedy and you've got to help me apply it. Besides, when things shape as I think they will, I'll want you to send word. We're going to Uafotu atoll. It's scant seven miles due southwest. But you're not to know where we've gone."

"Hi'm hon," replied Jimmy. "But Hi don't see w'y Hi should be picked hout."

"I'll make it right with you."

"Hany hanswer to the note?"

Captain Boyle considered.

"No. I guess not. Let it work itself out. Send Hardin to me and help round up the men."

A little after midnight, the moon sunk, the starset lagoon ruffled by the last of the ebb, the Margaret Ann, lightless, slipped her cable, and, under headsails and mizzen, two whaleboats ahead to help steerage in the scant breeze; sneaked away from the unsuspecting village where the women, braced anew by the arguments of Mrs. Boyle against desertion at the first issue, slept after the turmoil of the day.

Clear of the reef, the boats were called in, sail made and yards braced, and the barkentine was wafted silently on the light wind toward Uafotu, leaving the atoll manless, save for Jimmy— whose martyrdom held it's ministering angel in Fuatina, the only unconverted fahine on Totulu.

IT WAS the third day of the reign of women on Totulu. The banner still flaunted it's solgan between the flagpoles, the ensign of Margaret Ann, regnant; and that lady still maintained a dominance that was, however, beginning to show signs of internal dissension.

Fuatina supplied Jimmy with a service of verbal bulletins.

"Pirikia plenty soon I think," she reported. "Coconuts all gone and only young fahine can climb um tree. Young fahine mad along huapala (sweetheart) all gone. Fahine not very good catch um fish. No musika, no hula. Plenty pirikia."

It was even so. Mrs. Boyle was up against it. She was fighting primeval instinct that her own veneer of civilization prevented her from understanding. In the South Seas— and elsewhere— such instinct is divided into two parts, Sex and Stomach. Stomach had already set up it's complaint and Sex was realizing it's lack.

The twenty odd queens, having but one man between them, remained fairly loyal to the new principles. But there were babies in Totulu who wanted their daddies, wives who craved their husbands and providers. There were disconsolate sweethearts. There were younger maidens who were still angling in the delightful waters of flirtation where many fish swam and there were grand prizes for the lucky and skilful.

Kokua no longer played ravishing tunes on the noise-box and Kimo wouldn't, or couldn't— being as a man, anathema in the eyes of their leader. There was therefore no more singing, or dancing, or swimming in the lagoon with lusty male partners while the noise-box gurgled and clanged and hooted more or less melodiously. There were no more laughing exploits on the reef— with the same male comrades— with torches to spear for pool-fish when the nights were too warm and far too fair for sleeping.

The first row started over the lack of coconuts. Water was comparatively scarce on the atoll and seldom used for drinking— not to be compared with the milky, bubbling juice of young nuts, gathered at dawn and kept cool beneath banana leaves. The younger women, peeved at the lack of lovemaking facilities, balked at furnishing the supply for the whole crowd and climbed only for themselves. The maturer women with children, began to draw apart in groups. This fahine papalangi, they learned, had no children. "What was she to advise the mothers of men-babes?" The elders, who preferred gin and beer to coconuts, and sometimes got them when a ship was in the lagoon and their men were kind, grumbled among themselves.

Mrs. Boyle noted the symptoms of defection, but she could not prescribe for them. She was conscious of growing a little tired herself of her most faithful satellites, the queens. Curiosity, she realized had been the chief link between them, and that was getting rusty. She wondered where the barkentine was, and fought a constant temptation to question Jimmy, whom she had herself placed beyond the pale.

Sex and Stomach began to assert themselves in her, also. The captain was far oftener in her thoughts than he had been for many a month, and she remembered all sorts of good qualities he possessed that long custom had dusted with non-appreciation. She craved the delicacies set on the shelves of the Margaret Ann's pantry for her especial benefit. Poi and dried fish appealed less at every meal.

The storm burst on the fifth day. Jimmy was struggling with his third canvas in which the ever-troublesome sand persisted on looking more like snow, or powdered sugar. Fuatina was broiling some mullet they had speared together, and two bottles of beer were safely moored in the lagoon close by.

The skipper's lady, ploughing through the sand far faster than the lines of her build intended she should, received the whiffs of the savory fish in her nostrils as the kneeling camel does the last straw. Two tears started from her eyes and rolled slowly down her flushed cheeks.

"Oh Jimmy," she gasped. "They're drunk."

"Who's drunk?" asked Jimmy, glancing involuntarily toward the beer.

"The queens. All of the women, for all I know. They've been brewing some of that awful stuff all morning— lava, I think."

"Kawa," amended Jimmy.

"Whatever it is," said the lady, more tears following the first. "And— and they said I was only a hapa-fahine (half-woman) because— because I had no babies!"

Jimmy was standing by this time and Mrs. Boyle literally fell into his arms, a proceeding that— as she outweighed the little Cockney by some seventy pounds— was trying to the latter's balance and dignity.

"'Ere now," he said, bracing himself with wide planted legs. "'Ere now, you sit down hand 'ave a bit hof mullet wiv me. Hand a bottle hof beer," he added generous ly. "Fuatina, you cut halong hand find hout what's hup. Then come back to the storehouse. Hi'll paddle the lydy hover."

The astonished Fuatina, hungry despite her lovesickness, cast a reluctant glance at the mullet and sped on the errand of her heart's lord.

It was dusk, and an hour later before she came back, her eyes circling with news.

"I tell you, Kimo," she announced breathlessly. "My word, plenty pirikia walkabout quick along her. Pretty soon they too drunk, get plenty mad. They speak fahine papalangi no good. They speak she tahunga (witch). I think, soon they come along find her."

"Hi s'y, you know, this his a bit hof a muck," said Jimmy. "You go back, Fuatina, and all same watch out. Suppose trouble he start walk along you come back here plenty quick.

"You're safe 'ere'm'", he assured the frightened woman. "There's a 'igh fence hon three sides hand we can put some barbed wire halong the front to keep h'em hout, hif they start to get fresh. Hi wish Hi 'ad a gun!"

"You don't think they really mean any harm, do you?" asked the now alarmed lady.

Jimmy was humane— as his sharing of his fish and beer testified—but he was also human, and the recollection of his treatment by his skipper's wife during the voyage still held it's smart. He had no idea that there was any real danger and he decided that he might help, as his skipper had suggested, apply the remedy.

"Carn't s'y," he said. "No tellin' w'ot they'll do w'en they get properly tight."

"They aren't"— the voice of the militant faltered— "they aren't cannibals, are they?"

"Not lytely, not has Hi've 'eard hof. Hof course they was hall kai-kanaks once."

"Jimmy, do you know where Captain Boyle is?"

"W'y—"

The conversation was broken abruptly by howls from the direction of the Queen-House. Mrs. Boyle shuddered and shrank back as Fuatina darted around the fence.

"They walk along plenty quick," she panted. "Pretty soon all kawa gone, they come."

"What you think they do?" asked Jimmy.

"I think they try kill um fahine papalangi," said the girl, in evident earnest.

Another burst of yells added sincerity to her statement and spurred the little super cargo to instant action.

"'Ere," he said. "Fuatina, you catch wire back there on lanai. Mrs. Boyle you scare hup the 'ammer hand staples. You know where to find h'em?"

"Yes, thank God!" tremulously replied the disavowed leader. "I'll get them."

Swiftly a barrier was thrown across from fence to fence and stapled to the flag-poles beneath the discredited banner. They ran strand after strand across, the women feverishly helping with bleeding hands while the supercargo plied the hammer.

"They'll 'ave one 'ell hof a time gettin' through that," he announced at last. "Did they s'y w'ot they laid hout to do, Fuatina?"

"They speak they fix um fahine along post by reef. Suppose ship he come along next time, she all right. Ship no come, she mate— die.

Jimmy glanced at Mrs. Boyle, but she had retreated to the veranda.

"'Ell," he said. "You think they mean hit. Sure will do?"

"Sure, Kimo! They plenty drunk, plenty mad."

"Lokke 'ere Fuatina," said Jimmy prying out some staples. "You climb um through here, you run along canoe and go fast to Uafotu, plenty quick you paddle. You speak Kapitani Boyle, you speak Tamatau, they come quick!"

The girl slipped between the strands and was gone in the shadows. Jimmy could hear her swift feet lightly padding on the sand as he started to refasten the staples.

"My Gawd!" he said, half to himself. "Hif Hi honly 'ad a gun!"

"There's one in the storehouse," said Mrs. Boyle. "Where's the girl gone?"

"Gone to get 'elp," said Jimmy tersely. "Where's the gun?"

"It's a shotgun," said Mrs. Boyle, shivering as the drunken yells sounded from beyond the fence. "But I don't think it's loaded. It's on the wall."

"To 'ell wiv the load," said Jimmy. "Git hit. Hi'll bluff h'em. H'im goin' to start the searchlight."

He found fresh carbide and charged the lamp.

"Not a drop hof water in the bloody shop," he announced presently. "'And me that bottle hof gin. Hit may work."

As the spluttering burner broke into a spasmodic flame, it seemed to wrench forcibly from the darkness the leaders of a rabble of women with wildly rolling blood shot eyes and dishevelled hair, streaming round the corner of the fence.

"You keep back hout hof sight," commanded Jimmy to Mrs. Boyle. "'And me the gun!"

"Now then," he cried, as the frenzied savages shrank back from the barbs of the wire, "W'ot do yer want?"

"Eyah!" shrilled the dusky harridans, "Eyah! kela fahine papalangi!"

The front rank, thrust against the torturing strands, extricated themselves with bleeding hands and tom garments, only to be jammed against the wires once more by the rest.

"Eyah!"

Jimmy held the barrels of the empty shotgun where the searchlight shone on the barrels.

"You cut your luckies hout hof this," he shouted, "Helse Hi shoot. Fuatina she go fetch Tamatau —come along plenty quick. Chuck hit now, I tell yer. Hall of yer!"

MRS. BOYLE, cowering on the veranda, looked fearfully at the howling mob, their mouths slavering, hands clutching between the wires, vivid in the strong but uncertain ray of the sputtering lamp that threatened instant darkness as it choked on the mixture of carbide and squareface.

"You git back w'ere you belong now, Hi tell yer," repeated Jimmy. "Hi, you Tiarau!" He singled out a gaunt old hag with a frizzly mop of gray hair above her leathery face, wrinkled by time and her own passions till it looked like the leather of an imitation alligator-skin bag.

Her mouth, horny-lipped, held two yellow tusks in the thrust-forward lower jaw. Her face was like that of a giant lizard. She was an ancient of ancients, the oldest living being on Totulu, an aunt of Tamatau's, accredited with powers of witchcraft and puri a'naana— praying to death.

"You, Tiarau," said Jimmy, speaking in Totuluan with a Hoxton, London, England, accent, "Tamatau will be here with the captain right away. You make these foolish women go home."

"E-yah," snarled the crone in her own language. "This white woman is a witch and she has set her spells upon our men as she did upon us. Only with us, being women, her magic could not last. You say the men will come back. I have known white people to lie. How do we know they will come back? I tell you if they do not come on the intide, the white witch shall die! For, at the out-tide, we women of Totulu, whom she bewitched, will set her out by the reef to work her spells and bring back the men, or she shall surely die."

In the vindictive attack of the hag's speech, Jimmy could glimpse a picture of sharks coming in with the rising tide at dawn, swirling through the gray sea and tearing at something tied to a stake. The affair was grim. The little civilization these Totuluan women had acquired, had been stripped from them as they might have tossed aside a garment. They were jungle folk now, clamoring for their mates.

"Some of you will die first," he answered, menacing with the useless barrels.

"Let it be so! Yet shall the white witch die, unelss the men come with the intide. We will go now until the outtide flows. Then we will come with fire and burn down the fence."

Tiarau turned to the mob and spoke rapidly to them. There were yells of assenting "Ais" in reply and they withdrew, savage face after savage face appearing in the dying ray of the searchlight and vanishing into the blackness.

Jimmy drew a long breath. It was up to Fuatina now.

"Hif Hi could honly find some cartridges," he muttered, as he entered the storehouse.

Mrs. Boyle spoke from the darkness.

"What did they say?" she whimpered.

"Nothing much," answered Jimmy. "They've gone now." He scratched a match and lit a cabin-lamp that hung from a rafter.

"Are they coming back? Are they going to kill us, Jimmy?"

"Not hif Hi can find some cartridges," he said, pawing over the junk in the big room. "Hi suppose Hold Tomato's fired h'em hall hoff long hago."

"Don't you worry," he told the frightened woman. "They hain't goin' to do nuffin' till the hebb. That don't start huntil habout heleven, hand I think they'll wait till the tide's nearly hout."

"What time is it now?"

"Close hon to nine." He consulted his wrist-watch. "Hit'll be hall right. Don't you worry. Fuatina can make hit hin a little hover a hour. Thye'll come back a kitin' hin the whaleboats. Hought to be 'ere by ten."

"May I have your watch, Jimmy?"

Jimmy looked round the room. He needed the watch himself to check the anxious minutes.

"Hi!" he said, his eyes catching what they looked for. "'Ere's a clock. Hi'll wind hit hup."

He turned the clicking key and set the hands. As he stepped down a little door flipped open above the dial and a wooden bird jerked forward while a throaty cry sounded nine times.

"What's that?" nervously exclaimed Mrs. Boyle.

"Hit's a cuckoo-clock," explained Jimmy. "A cuckoo," he went on, "his a Hinglish bird w'ot's halways buttin' hin w'ere hit hain't wanted. Mostly the 'ens, I reckon."

If Mrs. Boyle caught any personal allusion she was too far gone to resent it. She shrank, as far as her figure would allow her, into one of Tamatau's roomy upholstered chairs, and moaned feebly.

"Not a bloody cartridge," announced Jimmy. "Hand that —— light's gone hout."

He went outside to tinker hopelessly with the caked carbide.

The ridiculous wooden bird clucked at it's appointed intervals until the hands pointed to half-past ten.

Jimmy, on nervous watch outside, heard a growing murmur from the village and saw a glow from behind the rear fence that spoke of advancing torches.

"Gawd!" he exclaimed under his breath. "This his too bloody close to be hamusin'. Ho, for just one load hof number twelve! Gawd!"

The murmurs died away and he could hear the woman moaning in the storehouse.

A flaring palm branch was tossed over the fence, followed by another. A little flame licked through the angle of the stockade and the dry posts began to crackle, while triumphant howls sounded from the frenzied Totuluans.

The cries suddenly merged with, then were drowned by deeper tones, among which the exultant Jimmy recognized the voices of his captain and of young Wilkins, the second mate.

"'Ooray! Won hin the larst lap! Come hon hout, Mrs. Boyle, hit's hall right." And he pried at the staples of the improvised fence.

"Take me away, Jerry lad, take me away," pleaded Mrs. Boyle, sobbing in her husband's arms.

"Sure, my dear," he comforted. "Sure! The ship can't get in against the ebb. Tide'll run for six hours. But we'll go in the mornin' to Tahiti and rest up a bit at the hôtel Êgalite. We came in the boats. There's another comin'. Tamatau's in it. There, there, acushla, it's all right, it's all right!"

Kokua, who had been working over the searchlight, succeeded, and the ray swept the lagoon. Jimmy and Fuatina had disappeared. All about stood the once more friendly women with those of their men who had come in the first boat. The disappointed ones grouped together like human candelabra, holding aloft the torches they had intended to use in burning the stockade. The fire had been smothered with sand.

A shout went up as the searchlight picked up the second whaleboat, working along close to shore in the slack of the tide. In the stem, Tamatau urged on the rowers. The queens, fearing wrath to come, sneaked away to their quarters.

Then, from where Jimmy and Fuatina had disappeared, came the sobbing toots of the orchestrion, with bang and clash of it's drum and triangle attachments. Jimmy had selected unerringly the proper record.

"Come! COME! CO-O-Ome, oh, my He-e-ro, Come! COME! CO-OME!" sounded through the night.

"JIMMY," said his skipper, as they strolled along the waterfront at Tahiti, two days later, "Mrs. Boyle and myself will stay here at the hotel, while Mr. Manners takes back the Margaret Ann for cargo. You'll go with him, of course.

"I want to get a present of some sort for the missis," he continued. "She's still pretty badly upset and I want to make it up to her someway. What do you suggest?"

The present was really an exchange for a promise given by the thoroughly subdued lady to leave the question of Women's Rights in other hands.

"Lesable's got some noo joolry," said Jimmy. "Nuffin like a bit hof bright stuff to please the lydies. H'ill look haround. Hi want to pick hout somefing myself."

"Fuatina?" quizzed his skipper. "That's a good idea, Jimmy. She deserves it. She saved the situation. And I take back what I said about philanderin'. I'll get her something myself."

"Hand Hi'll make Mrs. Boyle a present," said Jimmy. "Lesable's got some fine cuckoo-clocks. Hi'll buy 'er one hof them."

"A cuckoo-clock? What on earth for? She's got plenty of clocks at home."

"Ho, just for a sooveneer," said Jimmy. "Hit'll remind 'er of kings. There was a cuckoo-clock in Hold Tomato's storehouse. Hit'll remind me, too, w'en Hi come hup to the 'ouse for dinner."

________________

5: Wild Justice

Adventure. 10 Feb 1923

DIVING was over for the day. Smoke curled from the galley pipe of the pearling-lugger Halcyon, lying off Thursday Island. The ever chafing currents of Torres Straits swirled in the change from ebb to flood, flashing under the gathering brilliance of the sunset.

Two whale-boats were overside, fended off by a native in the stern, sulky at the job. The skin divers and pearl-workers were gathered together in two groups by the rail. They looked with uneasy eyes toward the cabin or at the second mate, who stood lounging by the mainmast, his gaze upon them, a gun ostentatiously prominent in a belt holster. Their usual cheeriness at the day's end, work over, food and leisure in prospect, was absent. There was court martial in the cabin, summary justice to be served. The Kanakas, quartered ashore, were detained to see sentence passed and carried out.

In handcuffs and leg-irons Oku, best diver of the outfit, squatted on an empty box in the trade room, stolidly awaiting his fate. Oku was from Tahiti, one of the five Polynesians of the pearling-crew. Tiri, his brother, was in the bows with three com patriots. The fifth, Vaiki, cousin to Oku, was in the cabin with the skipper and the first mate, giving testimony against Oku.

The rest of the native workers were in the waist of the lugger, Melanesians all, plum colored, breech-clouted, with frizzy, fuzzy mops of hair ranging in color from dirty orange to black. Strips of bone and shell were thrust through their noses With their ragged ear-lobes trailing al most to their shoulders, short clay pipes, safety pins and ornaments of brass and shell fitted to holes in the leathery flaps; their flat nostrils dilating nervously, their blubbery lips parting with a glimpse of betel stained teeth, muttering to each other in low gutturals, they were a wild-looking lot. Their splayed toes picked at the crumbling deck putty with the deftness of baboons. Their shallow eyes shifted constantly, like those of monkeys. Some were red-eyed with years of reef-diving in ten, twelve, even sixteen fathoms. They seemed more like half-trained animals than men, avoiding the cool and masterful look of the mate. Most of them were scarred with tribal wales. All of them carried their pearl knives, suspended about their necks on sennit cords.

The Tahitians were different— lighter of skin, better featured, better in form and muscle, less furtive of manner. They too talked in low tones, and the fine eyes of Tiri flashed now and then as he glanced aft or at the second mate, who regarded them all with a placid scorn, born of experience. He was one of their masters, a dominant white, together with the skipper and the first mate in Supreme authority over in fractions of all rules.

Behind the skipper was the Pearling Commission; but Captain Meeker of the Halcyon, like other masters of the pearling fleet, exercised the right of dealing with offenders, and the commission seldom interfered with such prerogatives, save in extreme cases. The crime of Oku was a serious one. He had stolen a pearl of great value, according to Vaiki.

There was a stir among the Melanesians, and the Tahitians turned and watched where they pointed. Nosing about in search of garbage, a shark displayed its unusual length by the position of back fin and the top lobe of his tail. The tossing overboard of galley scraps and “burley,” or oyster offal, from the luggers of the fleet, invariably attracted the sea tigers; and some of them, attaching themselves to certain vessels, became known to the divers through various characteristics.

Rightly or not, the cruising shark that was prowling about the Halcyon, marked by the white scar of an ancient wound from spear, knife or harpoon, was considered a man-eater. Its presence excited the Kanakas, speculating upon the punishment to be given Oku, guessing that the shark would be used in its carrying out.

Captain Meeker was hard of feature, hard of hand and hard of heart. His one object was to get all the work possible out of his divers and all the shell and pearls possible from the reefs at the least expense. The Melanesians were signed on for the season, the Tahitians paid by the tonnage of the shell they collected.

Many skippers gave a premium on pearls. Meeker did not. He was handier with fist, rope's end, foot and belaying-pin than he was with rewards; and his two mates were of the same hard-boiled, hard-shelled school. His only largess was in curses and blows, and his system of fines for any lack in the scale he had established as a fair day's work saved him the payment of many a fairly earned dollar. He was a cheat and a bully.

Oku, best diver, was worst treated. He was sent to fourteen, fifteen, sixteen-fathom reefs that proved most prolific in pearls; but he was paid by shell rating. The more frequent the gems, the better their quality, the sicker were the oysters, with shells deep-wrinkled and distorted, with nacre of scant surface and dull luster. The deeper the water, the more exhausting the work and the smaller the contents of the diver's bag.

The Melanesians were contract laborers. The Tahitians had been wooed to service with many promises, none of which Meeker intended to carry out, many of which he had already welshed on. The complaints of Oku, backed by Tiri as spokesmen for their crowd, had been met by the threat that they would not be carried back to Papeete but left on Thursday Island. They had been shipped on at Sydney with this understanding, for they had been three years from Tahiti, and their hearts were sick for its pleasant groves of palm and breadfruit and banana, for its crystal streams and bright lagoons, the cozy village, the palatable food, the flowers, the songs, the laughter of their own people.

Meeker had never entertained the slightest idea of sailing four thousand miles to Papeete unless an exceptional find of pearls and the prospect of a paying market in that South Sea clearing-house for those gems offered him a distinct advantage. Neither did he propose to pay out passage money for his divers.

This Oku and his fellows first suspected, then believed; and it had soured their natures. Their spirits were heavy, and they pined for home. Their pay had been docked and delayed; they had been swindled on the weighing of the shell, shortened in tobacco and other rations. If Oku had taken a pearl, it would, to his reasoning and sense of justice, have merely helped to adjust the balance between him and the skipper.

To Meeker, the brown man and the black was merely a machine of bone and muscle and certain capacities for earning him money. His rule was the rule of iron, of the steel hand ungloved by velvet, the steel automatic and the leaden bullet, with the mysterious mana— the spirit power— of the white man backing it all.

VAIKI fawned in the cabin, making a bargain.

“If I speak what I know, you send me back along Papeete, you give me all my tala (money) come along of me?”

“All that I give,” Meeker lied glibly.

“Suppose you no tell I give you nothing. Maybe you try get piece of that pearl. Oku no give, you get mad along Oku.”

“No. I no want. I no steal along of you. Every one speak Vaiki good boy.”

Meeker winked at his mate.

“Hanged if I see just why he peached,” he said. “They usually stick with their own.”

“Oku's got a girl back at Papeete,” said the mate. “He figgers on havin’ her when he gits back with his wages. Vaiki wants the same girl.”

“Oh! That's what sp’iled the soup! How d'you know?”

“Heard 'em talkin'. That's my business.”

“Sounds reasonable. Go on, Vaiki.”

“Three time he come up, Oku no open shell.”

This was the rule of the lugger.

“Oku he heap smart along shell. Plenty he sabe pearl oyster. Four time he empty bag, he put foot quick on one shell. Think I no see. Bimeby he put shell in pareu (loincloth). Bimeby he rest. I make believe I sleep. Bimeby Oku open shell, take out fine pearl. I see. He look quick. I close eye. I no see where he put pearl but I hear shell go along water.

“Oku no good,” he went on passionately, emphasizing all his words with telling pantomime. “Vaiki good boy. I speak. Kapitani fix me up along tala, tabaki, maybe kini-kini,” he added, with a look at the bottle of Hollands.

“Give him a drink, Jim,” said Meeker. “Then go an’ git Oku.”

“You bring Oku along of me in here?” demanded Vaiki.

“We sure do. Take a drink, you white livered skunk, an’ see you speak the same talk.”

Vaiki gulped down the gin and folded his arms. It was plain that he did not fancy facing Oku, bound though the latter was. The shark was still cruising near the lugger, the Kanakas regarding him fascinatedly.

“Chuck him some burley to keep him up, Mr. Simmons,” said the first mate. “I’ve a notion we’ll be needin’ him.”

“It’s the kai-kanak,” (man-eater).

“What of it? So much the better. Keep those beggars in hand.”

Below deck, Oku had seen the shark through the port-hole and guessed what might be coming to him. They had taken his knife from him. If only they would let him have it! That, and a word with his brother. He knew that suspicion was equivalent to guilt with the skipper; the mere thought of having lost a valuable pearl would bring out all his brutality.

They had searched Oku as thoroughly as a Kimberley foreman searches a Kaffir suspected of concealing a diamond— and they had found nothing. It made small difference. He was to be used as an example for the maintenance of what Meeker called discipline.

Across the glowing water he looked at Thursday Island, mean and small and comparatively barren; but he saw only the glowing crags of Orohena with its twinned battlements, the heights of Aorai and all the lovely shoreland of Tahiti-uni, the verdant stream-fed vales, the emerald groves where the smoke of the fires curled up from the villages.

He saw Tatua, deep-eyed, firm-breasted, with a flower in her black and shining tresses standing on the white sand, watching for the return of Oku, the traveler, bearing gifts and riches.

And then— that vision faded as the burley flung by the mate's orders spattered into the water and the kai-kanaka came gliding up, leisurely but swift, turning over so that his whitish belly showed and his maw opened in a serrated crescent; jaws wide enough to swallow a man, rows of teeth sharp enough to shear off a limb as an ax lops off a bough.

Oku showed no sign of fear when the first mate entered and roughly ordered him to follow. He went with his irons clinking. At the head of the companionway he looked for Tiri and gave him a meaning glance. The three Tahitians started to move aft, and the jabbering Melanesians shifted uneasily, checked by a barked, imperative command from the second mate, whose hand rested on the butt of his gun.

The Chinese cook stood in the galley door, his yellow, shining face craned out. Behind the second mate the burly negro quartermaster grinned at Oku disdainfully. Oku drew himself up to his full height and gazed scornfully at Vaiki, who tried to return the look defiantly but failed and winced at the few words of low, hot anger that Oku flung at him.

“If I live, you shall die. Your blood is not of my blood. You are a bastard and a coward.”

The approaching triumph of Vaiki, in which Oku was to be left maimed on Thursday Island— dead perhaps, swallowed by the shark— while he, Vaiki, alone of all the Tahitians returned to Papeete and so to Tatua, a wealthy wooer, suddenly lessened and crumpled like a stuck balloon. For a moment he saw himself as Oku saw him, traitor to his blood, informer, a thing whose name would be forgotten among the villages if the truth was ever learned!

The lingering spur of the alcohol revived his courage. His victory reinflated, and he beheld himself talking dowry with the father of Tatua.

She was a stake well worth playing for. She had been only fourteen when they left. Now she was seventeen, an opened bud, a ripened fruit. And she had sworn to wait for Oku, not knowing she was thus keeping herself for Vaiki, whom she had affected to despise. It would be good to possess her.

Some day he might whisper in her ear why it was that Oku did not return. He could say she lied if she repeated it. It would only be a whip in reserve for a wife who was not sufficiently loving— or dutiful. He stole a sidelong glance at Oku, standing upright, his face disdainful, listening to the captain.

Again a doubt assailed him. Suppose the kapitani did not keep faith with him for his information? He felt the tremor of the player whose last stake is on the table and who fears the fairness of the man who holds the cards.

“You give up that pearl, Oku,” said Meeker, “and I'll let you off this time with a fine. If you don't—” He paused significantly. Oku's great chest, the cage of the tremendous bellows that furnished him with resistance to stay down deep nearly four minutes while he robbed the coral of gem bearing shells, rose and fell slightly. His nostrils lifted, but he said nothing.

“I’ve got it all down in the log-book,” went on Meeker, striving for special entertainment in making the diver show some fear. “Witness all sworn reg’lar. Jest what you did. Hid the shell under yore foot, then opened it an’ took out the pearl when you thought Vaiki was sleepin’.”

Oku's eyes turned toward Vaiki, showing the white, the glance eloquent of contempt.

“You chucked the shell overboard an' hid the pearl. I want it.”  Meeker leaned forward across the table, “I want it, you —— Kanaka, or I'll take it out of yore hide an’ body. You come across along of that pearl. You speak where you hide or overside you go. We've burleyed up the kai-kanaka with the white scar an’ there'll be more along in a minute. If they leave you alone I'll say you're innercent. If not, by ——, you’re guilty, an’ you deserve what you git.”

In all South Sea tribes there were, as Meeker knew, various ordeals by poison, boiling water and such a test as he was going to use, to determine guilt in witchcraft or adultery. He was not the first skipper to apply it, and the fact that there was such an elemental custom made it more impressive, less likely to be challenged by the natives.

“I think maybe that all same murder, kapitani,” said Oku. “I think maybe the commission no like that.”

“Commission!” Meeker rose Snarling. “You’ll talk commission to me, you thieving dog! I'll swing you up or I'll flay you alive if you rob me, and no blighted commission will tell me where to tack an’ veer.”

He came from behind the table and shook his fist in Oku's face, then struck him open handed. The marks of his fingers showed dull purple on the Tahitian's golden-brown cheek. Every muscle of the native's magnificent body seemed to tense at once, as if he would break his irons and brain or strangle the skipper.

Meeker recoiled a little before the fury he had evoked. His hand reached back of him for his gun, and the first mate grasped Oku's arms from behind. The diver freed himself with a twist and then stood still, facing the muzzle of the captain's weapon.

Meeker himself was making a struggle for restraint. He could not go too far. Oku’s mention of the commission was a lash that at once irritated him and reminded him of authority that had already warned him for alleged unnecessary cruelty. He had his mates to stand back of him, the Halcyon's own crew to swear as he bade them; but he was not on the high seas; Thursday Island was now a fortified coaling station where the tale of murder might find a hearing and an awkward sequel. But he was determined to go through with what custom permitted.

“I’ll put a rope round you an' give you yore knife,” he said. “Then you can talk it out with the sharks.”

A faint gleam came into Oku's eyes as he heard that he would not be denied his knife. He was conscious of it and lowered his lids. He knew that if he won through the ordeal that would be the end of the matter, if his wounds healed.

“You let me speak along Tiri” he asked. “Maybe I die.”

He spoke with no semblance of begging a favor. Though his attitude won none from Meeker, the skipper fancied that he might be weakening, that his brother might counsel him to give up the pearl.

“Take him on deck and let his brother chin with him,” he said to the mate. “Then give him his knife and rig the line. I'll be out in a minute.”

He motioned Vaiki from the cabin with a jerk of his head and swallowed half a glass of neat Hollands. The informer went to the rail to watch the tragedy he had invoked. The Melanesians regarded him apathetically; the three Tahitians glowered at him.

Tiri, summoned by the mate, passed him with two words hissed in a fierce whisper. Vaiki's enjoyment was by way of being spoiled. The salt of hatred, jealousy and revenge had lost much of its savor in his mouth, which was suddenly dry when he tried to moisten it. Tiri's words were those of South Sea vendetta. It was fortunate that the season was nearly over. He would have to be wary of Tiri, night and day. But in the end he would triumph when he sailed away and left them on Thursday Island, doomed to live as best they could for another season, to enter that in debt and so work on in exile while he, Vaiki, would be back in the village near Papeete, with Tatua preparing fish, pounding taro, weaving mats, fawning upon the favor of her lord.

THE talk between the brothers was brief. The sun was nearing the horizon. Meeker was impatient to get through with the thing. He had lost his pearl; but he did not mean to lose his supper, which was nearly ready, nor to forego the appetizer in the example he was going to make of Oku.

A rope was tied about the diver's waist, held by the negro quarter-master and the mate. His irons were taken off, his knife restored to him.

Oku took the blade and stood poised on the rail like a bronze statue against the sun. The shark had finished the offal and now swam up and down with an expectant eye. He knew that sundown would bring him more garbage. This was his lay. Everything that came overboard from the Halcyon was his perquisite. The other luggers had their scavengers. As yet no other sharks were ranging near.

Oku breathed deep, filling his lungs, stretching his limbs, cramped by the iron and his confinement. Once he looked at the land, then at his brother. Vaiki he did not deign to notice.

All seemed to hold their breath. The lapping of the turning tide-sounded like a series of chuckles.

There came a swift tapping. Meeker was knocking out the ashes from the bowl of his pipe on the head of a belaying-pin. He filled and lighted it carefully and mounted the rail for a better view, steadying himself to the roll by the mainstays.

Oku jumped feet first, sinking down in a swirl of bubbles. The sun was too low for much transparency; but they could see him sinking far down as the shark, attracted by the splash, glided toward the disturbance, then with a tail stroke headed downward.

The ordeal was not a fair one, even to natives. In their minds sharks were allied with the gods, imbued with intelligence. Not all of them were man-eaters. Ordinarily there would have been a good chance of Oku not being attacked, even by a brute that hung around a ship for scraps. There in lay the test of guilt. But this one was a notorious kai-kanaka. Man-meat to him was a dainty.

Tiri, his hands clasping the rail until the knuckles showed white, strained out to watch the combat. Meeker, puffing his pipe, waited to give the word to the mate to haul in. He did not want Oku killed. He was not sure if he wanted him maimed. That would lose him a diver.

But whenever he thought of the pearl his resentment flamed. As described by Vaiki, even allowing for exaggerations, it was the best of the season, worth a good many hundred dollars. Oku would have selected his shell unerringly.

Oku, poised in the water, legs and arms apart, like a great frog, awaited the rush of the shark. His knife had been in his left hand when he went over. He shifted it to the right, the sennit loop about his wrist. He stripped off his loin-cloth and wound it round his left hand and wrist. He was almost as much at home in water as he was on land.

For three, perhaps four, minutes, though he had not had time properly to “take his breath,” he did not fear the odds against him of the monster in its own element.

After that, if he had to come to the surface the odds became heavier. That he could continue to elude the beast for some time was certain.

Left to himself, he held no doubt that he could dodge and climb aboard unscathed. That would not be allowed. And to play tag with the grisly, cold-blooded brute was not his intention. The rope that might prove his salvation was also a handicap.

The light was rapidly failing. The surface of the sea was still bright, though marred by the rip of the tide. He could see the shark coming down toward him in a gray bulk with just a hint of phosphorescence in its trail.

He was out of position; and, as the kai kanaka rolled with open mouth, Oku clipped his lower legs together and stroked with one hand, passing beneath the baffled fish. He made no wasted motion. His skin scraped against the pebbly hide; and once more he spread-eagled, almost motionless, watching the monster turn with a great surge and drive for him again, its long snout pointed a little downward, its cunning prompting it to keep the man uppermost.

Oku waited, dribbling air from his lungs. The great hazard, the rope, had traded clear. His attitude was that of a duelist, his swathed left arm a little extended, the right curved, ready for a stroke. Along the rail black men and white strained outward, seeing little but whorls of yeasty water, tiny bubbles of Oku's precious air breaking on the tide.

The shark turned, lunging upward. Oku, with automatic adjustment of his balance almost as perfect as that of the fish, up ended. A mighty scissors-clip sent him straight toward the widening jaw with its rows on rows of back-set, fast-embedded teeth.

He thrust his bound left arm fairly into the open maw, deep into the gullet of the shark. And, before the jaws could close, he lunged his knife to the hilt in its belly, ripping viciously. His hand and wrist slid into the wound and he turned the knife before he withdrew it and slashed again.

The jaws clamped on his arm, tearing the flesh, but he felt no pain. Neither did the sea tiger, yet it felt the knife in its belly, severing its entrails, plunging through its hide in fierce stroke after stroke.

It thrashed the water, dragging Oku with it through the turmoil that was streaked with blood. The crimson, oily fluid floated to the surface, hardly distinguishable in the gold and purple of the sunset painting the sea.

But the watching natives saw it, and a guttural, “Eyah!” came from the Melanesians. The Tahitians closed their lips. The mouths of the rest were open as they thrilled with the excitement of the fight.

The skipper's pipe went out, and he swore in his eagerness, the lust of cruelty in his eyes, stamped on his weather-burned features.

“Keep that rope slack, blast your black soul!” roared the mate at the negro quarter master. “Give him a chance!”

The man obeyed. In his mental ferment he had unconsciously started to tauten the rope. Suddenly Tiri sprang to the rail, knife in hand. The skipper's pistol was out in a flash while he bellowed at him.

Tiri hesitated; and then out of the seething waters there popped a black-sleek head, and a wild shout went up. It was Oku, his eyes flashing as he stroked with one arm, gulping down the welcome air. His knife still swung from the sennit loop on his wrist.

Rising more slowly be side him came the great bulk of the kai kanaka, belly up, the whitish skin pink in the sunset, rent in half a score of places, from which the blood ran as the monster feebly struggled. It intestines protruded; it had lost control, partly paralyzed by Oku's vicious stabs which had reached some vital spot, swiftly dying from that and the loss of blood.

The divers were beside themselves with excitement. Meeker swore and spat into the sea, then turned away.

“Haul in,” called the first mate. now, you lubber! Easy!”

Oku's face was drawn and gray, but he smiled up at his brother as the line drew him alongside and a dozen hands gripped him and drew him over the low freeboard. The cloth was gone from his left arm, which was terribly lacerated from elbow to wrist. Blood spouted from flesh rips and severed veins. It dripped on the deck as he stood weakly against the foremast, Tiri helping to support him.

The shark was beginning to drift slowly shoreward with the tide. The same current carried the blood away from the rest of the fleet and the scent of it from the other sharks that were patrolling the luggers for galley refuse.

“Take him below,” said the first mate to Tiri.

Oku's brother and the two other Tahitians “Easy picked up the wounded victor and carried him to the forward companion.

“I’ll be down,” added the mate. “I’ll fix him up. By all that's holy, he's a man!”

The mate's own manhood, roused by the plucky fight, had reversed his sympathies. The second mate ordered the divers into the shore boats.

“Goin' to keep him aboard?” he asked the first. “Yep— for tonight anyway. Wait for his brother and the others.”

The first mate hurried aft and en countered the skipper.

“What's the idea?” asked the skipper.

“I want the permanganate,” said the mate. “And a shot of squareface. You ain’t goin' to let him bleed to death. If he dies you ain't goin' to keep this thing quiet, Meeker.”

“That don’t git me my pearl.”

“To —— with the pearl! If he's got it I'm here to say he earned it.”

Meeker gave the mate a sullen look but said nothing. The mate had shares in the Halcyon, and his words had weight besides reason. As he disappeared into the cabin for disinfectant and stimulant the skipper slowly followed. He met Vaiki, skulking on the starboard side, away from the boats.

Meeker cursed at him and accompanied every oath with a kick. “You git along where you belong. For’ard!” he yelled, venting his spleen. “Git ashore, you sneak! And stay there!”

But Vaiki was not in the boats when they left. He kept out of the way in the growing dusk, disconsolate and afraid. He knew that the skipper had repudiated him and that Oku was still alive. More, there was Tiri; and the words of Tiri were still plain in their meaning.

Tiri was in the second boat with his fellow Tahitians. He had the steering-oar and guided the boat alongside the dead shark, slipped a bight about the root of its tail, and they towed it to the beach. When the boats had been hauled up and the divers started for their quarters Tiri remained be hind with the shark, motioning his comrades ahead.

The Melanesians gazed at him with dull curiosity. They fancied that he wanted to perform some ritual over the kai-kanaka, perhaps to cut out its teeth or to take some of its hide for a knife-haft or the head of a conjure drum. The swift twilight had vanished. Lights had broken out on the pearling fleet and ashore.

Tiri was alone with the dead shark.

ON THE Halcyon Oku lay in a bunk, his wounds cleaned and dressed. His arm might not recover full strength, never its symmetry; but the mate was sure he would not lose it. The blood of Oku was healthy; his injuries would heal quickly. The salt water had started to cleanse them; the loin-cloth had helped; the permanganate had completed the asepsis. He had pleasant thoughts, and he was well content.

Vaiki ventured to the galley to beg for supper. The Chinese cook showed him a knife longer and sharper than his own, an Oriental fury that completely routed Vaiki's despondent soul. He coiled up on a cable in the bows, where Meeker presently found him.

The skipper had supped, and he had washed down his meal with plenty of liquor. He was in better mood; but the sight of Vaiki roused him again to fury.

“I told you go along shore,” he said.

Vaiki whined— “I plenty 'fraid go along that place.”

Meeker laughed. “The —— you are! Wal, you're goin'. Git up! Now then, over you go, an’ swim for it.”

Vaiki shivered. He was not very much afraid of the swim. It was not far, the tide was with him and the kai-kanaka was dead; but the land looked very inhospitable to him beside the comparative safety of the lugger. He cowered close to the cable.

Meeker, with a burst of anger, seized him by the loin-cloth and the scruff of his neck. Vaiki clawed at the cable. The skipper shifted his grip from neck to bushy hair, and Vaiki yelled with pain and let go of the rope. The captain hauled him to the side and bundled him overboard.

Vaiki hit with a resounding splash amid a burst of the seafire that was rising and breaking in luminous stars all over the anchorage. He struck out reluctantly for the shore, trailing flame, with Meeker's lurid prophecies of what would happen to him if he tried to board the Halcyon again stringing after him. He was hungry and dispirited, and he let the flood direct his Course.

Ashore, under the stars, Tiri worked with his knife, expertly dissecting the head and gills of the shark. In the gullet he found a pulpy string of loin-cloth and then some thing that gently shimmered in the palm of his hand, rounded, perfect, silvery-white, with a faint suggestion of iridescence that would glow radiant under the sun or, beneath artificial lights, against the white skin of a beautiful woman.

Tiri's teeth gleamed almost as brightly as he turned it with a forefinger, admiring its symmetry, then swiftly tucked it in his own pareu.

Something was coming up from the sea, rising on all fours from a receding wave. The shark had been hauled well up; but the flooding tide had brought the margin of the water within a few feet of it. Tiri dropped like a dispelled shadow behind the body of the shark. He had been kneeling, and he did not believe that this man with the water in his eyes had noticed him. Now he crouched, his bent legs gathered under him, tense for a spring if the man was the one he wanted, the one he hoped for.

Back of the man, straightening himself while the withdrawing water swirled about his ankles, mounted the next incoming wave. Its crest was charged with the same flaming sea-stars, so that a greenish flame was reflected in the stream of the backwash.

The wave broke and thundered, and the man hurried to escape the undertow. He came over the hard sand to the body of the shark and peered over it, straight into the eyes of Tiri, before the latter leaped with a bloody knife that showed only a vague gleam.

Vaiki sprang back, then sidewise with the automatic agility of a cat, slipping free his own weapon. But he was in greater mood to run than fight. His heart was pounding; he felt himself predestined to defeat—to death.

“So,” said Tiri. “You have come, you bastard. Now the name of Vaiki will go out with the soul of Vaiki, forgotten in the uttermost darkness.”

He jumped over the shark, his left arm out on guard, expecting a thrust, expecting that Vaiki would squat as the other leaped and slash upward. But Vaiki veered and ran, refusing combat, his coward's soul in dismay. This landing by the shark, by the ambush of Tiri, was not to him a trick of the tide but magic, the magic of Tiri, who had conjured him ashore by superior mana.

Vaiki raced swiftly over the hard, wet sand, faster than he had ever run, because he believed Death joined in the pursuit with Tiri. And Tiri, next to Oku, was the swiftest runner of Tahiti-Uni.

Fast as Vaiki flew he heard the pad of feet behind him, gaining, gaining. Once he set his head on his shoulder and looked back. Tiri was running easily, too easily, with long strides from the hip; and Tiri laughed at him as he lengthened the stride.

The shaken will of Vaiki interfered with the best coordination of his body. He tripped, staggered, recovered himself and went on with his recreant heart pounding at his ribs and his lungs laboring. There was a pain in his side. He could have run better if he had supped; but Tiri had not eaten, and Tiri ran lightly as a Molokai deer.

A low promontory loomed up ahead, a dyke of lava rock. Vaiki shrank from attempting it. He would have to slow up; and the knife of Tiri, the avenger, would be plunged between his shoulder-blades. He slowed up and heard that Tiri had spare breath enough to laugh again tauntingly.

When Tiri was almost upon him Vaiki doubled like a hare and passed Tiri on the latter's left, shifting his knife, slashing out. Tiri laughed and parried, catching Vaiki's wrist with his left hand, flinging him down with aside trip.

“Get up, bastard,” said Tiri. “Get up and fight.”

Vaiki lay there on one arm, breathing, taking grace. The courage of a cornered rat came back to him. He made a sudden swipe at Tiri's ankles to sever a tendon, and Tiri jumped backward over the stroke.

“Get up,” he said. “This is the knife of Oku. It has tasted blood, but it is still thirsty. It has spoken to my aitu (familiar spirit) and it has said that it must drink the blood of Vaiki, the bastard.”

He gave Vaiki clear space, standing with arms hanging. Vaiki read his thoughts. Tiri did not want to strike a murderer's blow. His lust for blood would be satisfied only with the killing of Vaiki man to man. And his supreme confidence leached away all remnants of Vaiki's.

Tiri would boast of this avenging, he would make a song of it, to chant on the beaches of Tahiti-Uni, with Oku listening, Tatua by his side. For he was sure that Oku, or Tiri, had the pearl.

The strength had gone out of his legs; his knees would not support him; but at the thought of Oku triumphant a desperate sort of bravery came to him and he sprang up, circling about Tiri, crouching; waiting for an opening.

Tiri gave it to him, and he leaped in. Tiri's left fist struck his right elbow in paralyzing counter, his knife hand went high over Tiri's shoulder and the avenger stepped inside his guard. The knife of Oku went home. It hit Vaiki's breast-bone with a skreek and then sank deep, assuaging its thirst.

The two Tahitians, coming down to the beach after they had eaten, found Tiri by the shark. He showed them the loin-cloth of Oku, and he showed them the pearl that Oku had thrust deep in the gullet of the shark.

“It belongs to Oku,” he said. “It is the property of Oku,” they agreed.

“We will send him back to Papeete with our wages,” said Tiri. “Back to Tatua. We can get no price for the pearl in this place.”

“It is agreed,” they answered.

“What of Vaiki?”

“The name of Vaiki is to be forgotten. It is better that we bury him. The tide may refuse him— and the sharks.”

He took them to where the body of Vaiki lays, face down, with the surf lapping at his feet.

“I slew him with the knife of Oku,” he said. “It is a good knife. Behold.” He gave a sharp twist to the carved handle, and it came apart, showing the cleverly concealed cavity where Oku had hidden the pearl, whence he had taken it when he dived.

Presently the three walked up the beach. The tide came in, with sea stars radiating in the shallows. It packed hard the grave of Vaiki and tugged at the butchered body of the kai-kanaka. Presently the ebb tugged at it and took it out to sea, where its roving fellows found an early breakfast.

_______________

6: The Screaming Skull

The Frontier, October, 1924

Buried treasure and buccaneers in the early 1700s

OUTRANGING the lighter guns of the Gauntlet, from the start of the fight the skillfully manoeuvered King’s ship had been raking the pirate brigantine with a steady fire from a Long Tom mounted in her bows. For three hours they fought, manoeuvering in the smart breeze in the early evening of a glorious day, the crisp seas blue as indigo, yeasty with spin-drift, the smoke of the guns soaring up in puffs like balloons as they were swiftly served by men naked to the waist, wet with sweat, grimed with powder and splashed with blood.

King’s man and pirate alike wore bright kerchiefs bound about their brows, but the buccaneers aboard the Gauntlet displayed gaudy silken sashes, velvet breeches and high buckettopped seaboots of leather, whereas the tars trod the sanded decks bare-footed.

Now less than a cable’s length away, now nearer half a mile, tacking and veering, striving for the better position, for a rake of the other’s deck, the bright red flashes of fire showed belching from the barking dogs of war as pirate’s brigantine or the King’s corvette rose to the crest of a rolling wave and swift gunners set tow to touch-hole. White splinters flew from the black sides that rose gleaming, varnished with the brine.

The flush-decked corvette, frigate-rigged, was handled with as much precision as the overmanned brigantine, and Swayne cursed as he saw that her captain meant to take full advantage of his heavier metals and repeatedly managed a range where the buccaneer’s shot plumped short into the sea. But at sunset the corvette came down, leaping before a quartering breeze, flinging the seas away magnificently to leeward, buoyant as a cork, her canvas snowy white, the red flag flaming in challenge to Swayne’s sable banner, keen to make a finish. The sun hung in the west in a growing confusion of purple cloud and wheeling rays of crimson vapor, wheeling over a background of troubled gold. The clouds overhead were silverwhite as pearl on their eastern sides, amber and amethyst toward the west. The two ships, filled with men who longed to be at the death-grapple, to decide the supremacy of law or piracy, seemed inconsequential as they fled on the lifting surface of a sea purple as the skin of grapes.

Swayne strutted in confidence on his quarterdeck, togged out in all the glory that delighted his heart: vermilion, gold-laced coat with a blue sash of silk across it, a wide belt, velvet breeches thrust into boots of Spanish leather, plumes in his hat above his hair that hung below the wide collar, long mustachios fiercely curled, a scar across a nose that bridged out like a prow to his strong face. Hardly less brave of attire and demeanor was Hoyle, his lieutenant, though his face scowled the more from its pockpittedness than Swayne’s from its scar. Hoyle worked the ship, following Swayne’s orders. Skinner, the quartermaster, chosen representative of the crew, a check on the captain to a certain extent, stood beside Swayne, his green eyes, flecked with brown spots, watching the corvette, unblinking to the increasing glory of the sunset behind her.

Long of arm and bowed of leg was Skinner, strong and active as a cat. He wore short breeches of striped canvas and a shirt of black silk that fluttered open at his hairy chest. His legs below the knees were bare to the horny soles of the splay feet. A fo’c’stle man was Skinner, though rating counted little in this sea brotherhood. He had pistols and a cutlass that swung unsheathed against the hard muscles of his calf, its edge keen as a razor, keen as the two long dirks in his belt.

Swayne roared an order and Skinner looked at him in a surprise that blended with delight.

“You’ll let ‘em board?” he shouted above the rush of the wind in the rigging, the seethe of the sea and the reports of the stern-chaser that ceased as the helm was put up and the men rushed to the braces.

“We’ll meet ‘em half way and let the losers go to hell! But we’ll set a hurdle or two for ‘em to jump. Nettings there. Pikes and cutlasses!”

By the prevailing laws of the Brethren of the Sea, Swayne had the absolute right of determination in all questions concerning fighting, chasing or being chased. In all other matters whatsoever the captain was governed by a majority. His decisions were subject to a later vote if the majority seemed to consider him in the wrong, but here there was no dissenting voice; the pirates believed themselves unmatched at close quarters. The battering from the corvette had enraged them, the pannikins of rum from the broached cask amidships had inflamed their natural deviltry, and they yelled in unison when they saw Swayne meant to come to grips.

AXES and pikes and cutlasses were set handy while they worked frantically to stretch the bulwark nettings. On came the King’s ship, her men bunched in three groups, some on the yardarms, some with grappling irons ready to fling aboard. The dazzle of the sunset was in the eyes of the buccaneers but they were used to such matters and they bellowed a brazen defiance as the two ships closed.

Pikes thrust at men, impaling them; axes swung through soft flesh and splintering bone; pistols were fired point-blank, searing and singeing where the bullets entered. Men poured into the brigantine, swarming the nettings actively as baboons, their sharp steel between their teeth, silent but grim as the outlaws of the sea jabbed and struck at them. Men dropped from the yards; there came clash and grate of steel against steel. The grunt of men hard pressed, the groans of the wounded, oaths, yells sounded while the sunset filled the hollows of the waves with blood that mocked the gore that ran on the slippery decks of the Gauntlet as men rolled into the scuppers, clutching at each other’s wrists and throats, stabbing, slashing.

In the south a squall gathered, hovering while the fight gained fury. Swayne marked it from the corners of his eyes, his lips set, his nostrils wide for better breath as he lunged and parried with his Spanish blade against the onslaught of the corvette’s first lieutenant, an old sea-dog with a wrist of steel and the cunning of a master of fence.

Swayne swiftly calculated the chances of victory or defeat, fearing the latter, even for himself in his present issue. He was wounded in the leg by a bullet from the corvette’s foretop and at his best he was no match for this man who changed his style of fence at will, who had learned in the schools of France and Italy and Spain and practised them all in bloody battle.

There was no quarter. Every man pirate of them would be hanged at Gallows’ Point, Port Royal, if they were taken alive. It had been a mistake to let the King’s men board. Slowly but surely they were driving the buccaneers back. Hoyle was down, cleft from shoulder to the middle of his chest by a gigantic seaman whom Swayne himself had spitted the next instant. Skinner was back to the rail, with three or four comrades, fighting like maddened cats against odds.

Swayne shouted for a rally, tried to lead it, and left an opening that was instantly entered by the point of the imperturbable Englishman. The blade ran through his chest and lungs. Swayne stood for a moment with disbelieving amazement in his eyes as the other withdrew his sword and gave him a little nod. His own hilt was suddenly too heavy for his nerveless grasp; his voice failed him; he coughed and fell with a gush of blood from his lips.

The loss of a commander may make for despair of two kinds, the one generated by loss of hope that scatters courage and stays all effort, the other that produces a furious struggle against impending doom. Skinner broke through the cordon that had hemmed him in, hewing a way for himself with his reeking cutlass, his fierce face aflame, filled with the valor of desperation.

“It’s over with ‘em, lads, or Port Royal for us all!” his great voice roared.

The rally sent the corvette’s boarders back to their own deck, cursed at by their officers for cowards, smarting and stiff with wounds, almost spent with the fury of the onslaught, the pirates in little better shape. In the lull the gunner of the Gauntlet appeared with case-boxes he had swiftly manufactured during the boarding flurry. They were filled with powder, small shot, slugs and scraps of lead and iron, a sputtering quickmatch in the mouth of each of them as they were flung by lusty arms wherever men grouped aboard the King’s ship.

The grenades exploded with frightful execution, scattering their rending contents far and wide. The officers of the corvette jumped to bring order out of the confusion, and lead another charge with fresh men who had not yet been in hand-to-hand conflict. The pirates seized the brief respite to catch their laboring breaths. Swayne was borne down to his cabin; Hoyle left in his own blood— dead.

Then the squall swept down, ravening, fierce and fast, veiling the sunset, darkening sea and sky with its pall. The ships had lain bow-and-stern; now the Gauntlet flung into the wind to meet the corvette as she came down it. But the gale came from another quarter. It flung itself upon both vessels, setting the corvette aback as it stormed over its bows, driving the Gauntlet ahead as the pirates cut the grappling ropes, glad to see the chance to avoid the mustering boarders, maddened by the bursting of the grenades.

One last battery from the corvette’s guns roared out before they were clear, splintering and shattering their quarter. As they rolled to the great waves that enveloped them, leaping and ravening at them out of the roaring blackness, wallowing and plunging before the squall that at once saved them and threatened momentarily to set them on their beam-ends, the carpenter set up a cry for men to start the pumps. The muzzles of the King’s ship had been depressed for that farewell broad-side, the cold shot had gone lunging through between wind and water and, with every plunge into the streaking gulfs, water gushed in.

SKINNER was a seaman, every ugly, efficient inch of him, in all but navigation. And now they had an open sea ahead, to the best of his belief. He had to save ship, to get in sail, to repair rigging shot sway, to hastily fish the foremast, quarter-chewed by a lucky shot, creaking and threatening to go by the board.

At it he went, shouting his orders in that almost Stygian darkness with night following hard on the heels of the squall, overtaking it, mingling with it. Lanterns swung and flitted here and there. The decks were cleared of raffle. In the lee scuppers lay the dead and dying of their own crew and from the corvette. The latter Skinner ordered thrown overboard without shrift or mercy. Their own dead went into the gulping maw of the sea, the wounded taken below.

Within an hour he had done what could be done, save for the needed continuance of the clanking pumps, the mauling and plugging of the carpenter and his mates. The gale shrieked and the sea rose, the tempest leveling the crests and sending it in vast sheets fore and aft; rain fell in torrents and salt and fresh water mingled in a constant flood upon her decks where the scuppers and torn bulwarks eddied as they strove to discharge the waste.

The bellow of the wind outvoiced all thunder, but jagged blades of lightning showed the sable and mountainous clouds from which they came. Still the brigantine held buoyancy; the rags of canvas still set held her from too violent lurching as she rushed down the watery valleys and climbed the seething hills. The pumps gained on the leak and at last the carpenter sealed the shot holes in the stout skin.

Skinner entered the cuddy cabin, below the quarterdeck. A swinging lamp illumined it, filled with the prodigality of loot, silken hangings, rich carpets, cushions on the transoms, a silver crucifix on one wall next to a canvas in a rich frame, both ravished from a Spanish merchantman. Carven furniture, gold plate on the table held by racks. Outside, through the great stern window, the sea slavered at the glass. On the starboard lounge lay the form of the captain, covered with a rug.

Skinner, bare-legged, the rest of him soaking wet, spilling puddles on the floor, blood on his arms to the elbows, on his face that was framed in hair almost as red, was a repulsive sight. He caught at a flagon of wine that was tucked between cushions, knocked off its neck and drank, regardless of the jagged glass that cut his mouth. He kept at it until he had finished the bottle and, flushed with the heady stuff, flung it crashing against the side of the cabin.

Two men followed him in, Tremaine, the gunner, wide-faced, like an owl, and Raxon, a member of the crew who was looked up to by many of them because of his facility of tongue and flow of language. Raxon was a hatchet-faced sea lawyer, making up in wits what he lacked in bodily strength and favor. Both of them were sopping, smeared with blood and begrimed with powder. Tremaine’s gore was partly his own and partly from the men he had fought. That on Raxon came from the dead he had helped to fling overboard. He grinned at Skinner with yellow teeth and a side jerk of his head toward Swayne.

“Dead?” he asked.

Skinner shrugged his shoulders.

Tremaine went over to the lounge. “Did you get it out of him?” asked Raxon.

Skinner stared at him blankly. Something like contempt for the dullness of the other came into the eyes of Raxon. One-time scrivener’s clerk was he, shipped from the Port of London in a pressgang that he almost forced himself upon, fearing hue and cry for a murder he had committed; deserter, renegade, rat of the seas, with all a rat’s cunning and, perhaps, a rat’s courage when driven into a corner. So far he had kept out of corners.

He looked at both his companions, both indispensable to the plan he had in mind, if it was still feasible. If Swayne still lived. For wealth was now being weighed in the uncertain balance of the life of a desperately wounded man. Skinner should be captain. That he lacked navigation was to be lamented but Raxon did not consider that insurmountable. Tremaine, a giant, master gunner, was a necessary factor—not so much so as Skinner perhaps, but Raxon knew that Tremaine admired him and he meant to use the gunner to help him against the other.

Skinner was dull but Tremaine was stupid, away from his calling of gunner-seaman. It would go hard, thought Raxon, if he couldn’t use them both to his own ultimate and sole advantage.

But— if Swayne was dead?

“He’s nigh gone,” announced Tremaine, “but there’s still breath in him to this mirror.”

The gunner held up a looking-glass in a frame of rococo silver-gilt and rubbed his great digit through the mist upon it. “Give him some wine,” said Raxon.

“Quick! He’s got to talk. Look you, Skinner, of all the six men that landed to bury the loot, Swayne alone breathes. The devil himself was against us to-night. First Hoyle killed, then Swayne mortally wounded. Payson, Davis, Poole and Gibbs, every one of them dead— and thrown overboard.”

Skinner’s eyes, green as sea water, blazed.

“By God!” he cursed as his intelligence reacted to the meaning of the other. “Then Swayne alone knows the place where the treasure’s buried,”

“Hoyle and Swayne were the only ones who ever really knew. The other four could have led us close to it. They’ve gone. Does he take the wine, Tremaine?”

“Aye. He sighed. His eyes are open, but they see nothing.”

“They will. Give him more wine. Smile at him, you fool. Make him think you, we are his friends. Skinner, you must do the talking, since you represent the crew. Easy at first, you see? Easy, or he’ll die on us. Look.”

He had come to the lounge with Skinner and the three of them hung solicitously over the dying man. Raxon drew aside the laced coat, unfastened the cambric shirt with its tucks and frills all wet and red, and showed the slightly puckered wound where the sword had pierced him. Through it oozed crimson froth at every labored breath that barely lifted the captain’s chest. Raxon cursed softly.

“We need a chirurgeon aboard,” he said. “He’s got to talk. Skinner, you said there was brandy aft. Get it. The wine’s not strong enough.”

The effect of the cordial opened the captain’s eyes again. This time there was recognition in them, but no especial friendliness. He seemed to recognize the errand upon which they had come, catching him on the edge of the gulf of death, bringing him back for their own purposes. The loot that he and Hoyle had buried had been their own accumulated shares of long looting. The crew had long since spent their shares with gaming and women.

THE Gauntlet had been careened for cleaning in an inlet of the Carolina sea Islands when Governor Rodgers arrived at the Isle of Providence with the king’s pardon for all buccaneers surrendering in person before the date set as the limit of grace. Swayne, not arriving, had been proscribed but, following the example of Captain Charles Vane, he made no attempt to surrender.

Vane was now delivered over to the law at Jamaica by the men who took him from the island in the Bay of Honduras where he had been wrecked. There were cruisers out rounding up notorious commanders, and Swayne deemed it prudent, lest he be over-hauled, killed, captured or sunk, to bury his treasure for the benefit of his wife and children. Much of it had been taken under privateering rules, most of it from the Spaniards, and he considered it lawful and hard-earned proceeds. Hoyle, a Carolina man like Swayne, and married to the captain’s cousin, followed his example.

A boat’s crew of four had rowed them ashore to one of the islands lying between Savannah and Charleston, and between Port Royal and Saint Helena Sound. The chest was carried ashore and set down while Swayne selected a place for the men to dig. Before they had finished, according to the measure he had given them, he and Hoyle, who had stepped away, reappeared and told them that they need dig no more, that the chest was already disposed of. Certain other precautions were taken and the boat returned with the crew somewhat chagrined, dimly perceiving that they had been cleverly prevented from ever divulging the place where the loot was buried. It was a shrewd move and Raxon, for one, appreciated it. It was as effective as if Swayne had followed the procedure of other commanders and killed the diggers on the spot lest they talk too much.

“Cap’en,” said Skinner, trying to make his hoarse voice pleasant, to cajole his villainous features into a look of sympathy. “You’re goin’ fast. We’ve shook off the bloody corvette an’ give ‘em a taste of hell when Tremaine, here, fixes the case-boxes. So, Skipper, we’ve saved the ship.”

Swayne looked at him with eyes that fixed themselves on the quartermaster’s face questioningly.

Raxon jabbed the questioner in the ribs.

“Out with it,” he prompted. “He’ll not last long. Out with it. Fair means or foul. ‘Tis a fortune.”

“For all hands,” backed up Tremaine.

Raxon darted him a look of scorn. “For three of us, anyway,” he corrected. “Let me at him, Skinner.”

Skinner gave way, acknowledging the better brain.

“Skipper,” said Raxon, his weasel face close down, “you’re bound for heaven or hell. In the first place they say there’s gold an’ jewels like sand and pebbles of the sea. You can’t take yours with ye to either one. Left behind in the sand, ‘tis only a mockery of what we all fought for. Look you, tell us where ‘tis hid, give us a fair share of it for our trouble, and we’ll see the rest conveyed to your wife.”

Pleased with his own craft, his face half in shadow, Raxon winked at his comrades, who grinned back. “We’ll swear to that, Skipper, on anything ye like. Hoyle’s gone but we’ll do the like with him.”

Swayne’s eyes held a light in them that made Raxon’s voice grow suddenly hard. It was an uncertain light, like the leaping flame of a candle that is guttering down, but it showed mockery and decision for all its fitfulness.

“You can lie to your mates with your glib tongue, Raxon,” he said faintly, “but you can’t lie to me. Think you I swallow your cant?”

“You wrong us, Skipper. Believe me, ‘twill go better with you if you tell us.”

‘‘Only fools threaten dying men. The loot will not be lost. The corvette will report the fight and my mortal wound. When that news gets out, Raxon, you fox, I have friends who know its location and will unearth it for those to whom it belongs.”

“They’ll never get it,” said Raxon fiercely. Then, as Swayne smiled at him, he broke into sudden fury. “Give me your dirk, Skinner,” he cried. “Tremaine, draw off his boots an’ set the lamp to his feet. I’ll give you a foretaste of hell, Swayne, if you don’t tell.”

“So brave? And jumping to my word when I was whole. You dogs! Think you I would trust you? I’m going, Raxon, where you and these two scoundrels cannot follow—as yet. It is in my mind that you will not be long in coming. I’ll see to ‘t— I’ll see to ‘t——” he wheezed, the red froth bubbling about the slit in his chest—”that ye are well received.”

And he grinned at them out of a face almost as white as his teeth.

“We know the island,” muttered Raxon. “We’ll dig it over foot by foot but what we’ll find it.”

“ ‘Twill be a pleasant task. So, you’re willing to work for it? I’ll give you a cue to follow, lads, as my last words.”

The syllables grew fainter, farther and farther apart. It might be that Swayne spoke against time to avoid torture, knowing how close he was to the end. His eyes still mocked them; his teeth gleamed, for he seemed unable to part them and his words hissed.

“Here’s a lead for you, my bullies— and, on the word of a dying man, ‘tis a good one— go, find your island, if Skinner there doesn’t cast you ashore, then ask the secret of the screaming skull!”

He started to laugh; the mirth grew hideous as it changed into a rattle, then a gurgle, as blood broke through his relaxed jaw. The three looked at each other with eyes that rolled back to the corpse.

“There was a skull,” said Skinner slowly. “The nigger said so— and he said it screamed. Give me that brandy. A murrain on him!”

They drank deeply but hurriedly and they left the cabin. As the ship tossed, the shadows were flung wildly by the gimballed lamp. They flickered on the still features of the dead man, and Raxon, turning as they went out of the cuddy, could have sworn that Swayne, from the far side of the grave, was laughing at them, silently and mockingly.

SKINNER was voted captain, taking up his quarters in the great stern cabin, wearing boots and velvets, gold lace and a hat with a red plume in it as visible signs of his advancement. There were few of the rough crew who considered the matter of navigation or doubted that Skinner could take them anywhere. He himself believed that he would have slight difficulty in reaching the coast of the Carolinas and entering on the sea islands. As to finding the island of the treasure, he convinced himself that that was equally easy.

Gibbs, the negro who had been in the boat that took the chest ashore, was not dead. Another black had been mistaken for him in the confusion after the fight. Gibbs was wounded badly and was astounded at the care he received until the three considered him able to get out of his fo’c’sle bunk and come aft for a talk, filled with gratitude.

He was not overly bright, which suited their purpose, since they planned— or rather Raxon planned, and was clever enough to let Skinner think he advanced much of the scheme— to keep the loot for themselves.

To that end Skinner used his influence to get Raxon appointed quartermaster. Tremaine remained gunner with his semi-official rating and his extra share. All of the crew had entry right to the cabin, but it was necessary for the three plotters to meet often and these ranks made their conferences seem a part of the barkentine’s routine.

To the crafty scrivener’s clerk his quartermastership seemed a rare joke. He was supposed to look after the interest of the crew he was determined upon keeping out of all knowledge and share of the rich booty. There was one weak spot. Some of them might remember the treasure, especially when the barkentine again entered the sea island estuaries.

But Skinner had not thought of it, or Tremaine; it had been Raxon’s wits that took him to the cabin in time to try to get some clue from the dying skipper. For that, he knew that Tremaine and Skinner both respected him, though Skinner’s recognition was underlaid with a temper that Raxon handled carefully. Skinner wanted to be the master and Raxon wanted the precious metals, the gems and jewelry that had gone aboard in the chest. So he pandered to the new skipper, flattered him, moulded him like putty.

The condition of the barkentine gave them excuse for putting in somewhere to refit, and to lay low until the cruisers left those waters. Rum was served freely and the men went to bed drunk and arose “half seas over,” swearing that the cruise was the right sort and Skinner a proper commander. Thus Raxon calculated to keep any of them from thinking.

He suggested that, since the Gauntlet had entered the maze of sea islands by Saint Helena Sound, it would be a good plan for them to go in this time by Port Royal, lest some memory be jogged and, with it the question of the loot brought up. To this Skinner assented. The liquor he swigged kept his confidence in his own powers well cocked, though he remembered the general similarity of the islands, with occasional broad reaches, with rivers flowing into them at one end and tortuous passages amongst them. There was a rude chart aboard, and they could impress a native Indian pilot and work their way to the island of the skull.

For there was a skull, fastened high to a dead pine, and Gibbs told in the cabin one night how it was placed there.

“Cap’en an’ Hoyle go asho’ first,” he said. “Tell us to bring erlong dat ches’. Mighty heavy dat ches’. We couldn’ tote it wiv our hands so we put rope about it an’ sling two pole. Den we hoist it to shoulder. We row boat in I'll crick an’ bye-by we come to bayou. Big ‘gator in dat bayou. Time we go out, gittin’ dahk, an’ dose bull ‘gator dey beller like thundeh.

“Big ridge on dat islan’. Pine on ridge. Liveoak an’ moss all erlong dat bayou. Magnolia tree. Cactus an’ spike-plant plenty. Plenty brush. Plenty deer erlong dat way. An’ snake. Whitemouf wateh-snake. Ef he bite you, you finish. Wil’ pig erlong dat place. Rabbit an’ pa’tridge. Win’ blow low an’ sad throo dem tree. Hants erlong dat place.”

Tremaine started to curse at the negro’s tediousness, but Raxon checked him with a look and passed more rum to Gibbs. He wanted to get all the negro knew.

“Pow’ful hahd time totin’ dat trunk. Cap’en he lead to top of hill. Look oveh otheh islan, an’ den one mo’ island out to sea. Den we neahly fall oveh something in bresh. Golly! Dat bad voodoo conjuh fo’ dose t’ree men erlong wid me. Dead man in de bresh. Ant take all flesh, long time. Davis an’ Poole in front. Dey step in rib, mighty nigh trip dem. Payson back wid me. He stumble too. I see white bone. No touch me.

“Cap’en look an’ laugh. He pick up dat skull. He hand to Hoyle. I tell him it mighty bad voodoo. I tell him every one touch dose bone die mighty soon. Why fo’ I know? Becuse my mudder conjuhwoman. I see li’l snake glide out erlong dat skull befo’ cap’en take it up. Dat spirit of dat man.

“Cap’en tuhn oveh dat skull plenty time an’ say something to Hoyle erbout makin’ dat hant watch oveh dat chest. ‘Nail it to tree,’ he say. Den I know they gwine to die. I mighty scared niggeh myse’lf. But I not tech any dat bone. Mighty careful how I walk.”

Tremaine was listening now with dropped jaw. The negro told his tale so well with intonation and gesture that they could see the thing happening under their eyes and Raxon alone was untouched with superstition. Gibbs’s skin had grayed with the renewed terror of the affair; his eyes projected from their sockets and rolled with flashing whites under the cuddy lamp.

“Ev’ry one tech dose bones die, ‘cept me,” he said solemnly. “An’ me— I come mighty close.”

Even Raxon got a touch of something weird and looked toward the stern window, fancying a cold draught had crossed and slightly lifted the hair on his scalp. He shoved the goblet at Gibbs and told him to go on. The negro drained it and his skin regained its glossy plum-blackness.

“We git top of dat ridge,” he said. “Mighty glad to set down dat ches! Cap’en he tell us where to dig. We bring mattock an’ pick erlong, stuck in ropes. Ax too. Cap’en he take axe an’ cut sapling— so long. Tell us to dig dat deep. Den he an’ Hoyle go off in woods fo’ li’l while.”

“Did he take a shovel?” Tremaine leaned forward, shooting out the question eagerly, screwing up his eyes at the others.

“No, suh. Dey take ax erlong. Take fowling piece. Dey ‘low to shoot pa’tridge. Take skull. We dig, easy at first through sand. Den come rock. Mighty ha’d work, but we know cap’en he ‘sist on dat hole bein’ deep erlong dat sapling he cut. We sweat; sun staht to go down. All of us in hole so deep no one can see out. Throw up rocks. Bimeby wateh come in fas’ but now de sapling reach to bottom an’ we climb out.

“Den cap’en shoot, two time. Bimeby shoot two mo’. Bull ‘gator beller back in bayou. Bird fly. Buzzut fly erlong. Dat voodoo bird. Den I heah something go tap-tap— loud, like woodpeckeh on holler tree. I look up an’ I see cap’en climb way up dead pine, nail white t’ing to tree. Sun low an’ shine red. Shine on dat t’ing. By golly, dat de skull!

“Win’ staht to blow. ‘Gator beller. Buzzut wheel. Cap’en he come down. Come back wid Hoyle. We ‘speck he tell us go git ches’ an’ put in hole, an’ I mighty glad to git troo, git off dat islan’. But he only laugh an’ say, ‘Nem’mine, boys. Job’s all oveh. We fix ches’.’ Golly, we dig fo’ not’ing at all.” The three exchanged glances.

“How far away was the hole from where you put down the chest,” Raxon asked.

“I dunno. Mebbe ten rod, mebbe twenty. Mighty hahd to jedge in all dat bresh.”

“You think you can find the place?”

Gibbs did not know, but his life hung on the answer. The same thought was in all their minds; it needed but a look between them to leap and kill the man and silence his tongue for ever, to toss him through the stern window into the wake— once they had pumped him dry.

“I don’ want to go on dat place agen,” he said.

“Could you find it?”

“I reckon so.”

They relaxed. Now they would swear him to secrecy, make him a steward, keep him aft, watch him day and night until they got him ashore— drunk, if needs be. They would sober him up at the point of pistol and dirk and force him to bring them to where they would see the skull— or, if the winds had blown it down, at least point out the tree.

“Win’ blow hahd when we tuhn back,” Gibbs continued. “Howl an’ cry. An’ den I hear terrible scream. I look back. It come from dat skull!

“Two buzzut circle low oveh dat tree. An’ I say, ‘Laig, save de body,’ an’ I run, wid de cap’en laughin’ behin’ me. ‘Gator beller, snake rustle troo de bresh, but I come to de boat. Bimeby dey all come. We go back to ship. What happen? Hoyle die. Cap’en die. Payson, Poole, Davis, all die. How come, suppose dat not voodoo?”

“The voodoo’s worked out now, Gibbs,” said Raxon. “Have some more rum. Captain Skinner’s goin’ to make you steward. You’ll sleep in the cuddy. You’ll have it soft, Gibbs, with good things to eat an’ drink. But, understand, don’t you tell that yarn any more. No sense in getting the crew scared. You keep your tongue quiet an’ we’ll see you get paid for it.”

Gibbs showed his ivory teeth in a broad grin.

“Cap’en,” he said. “I’m mighty ‘bliged. Yes, suh. An’ I keep quiet as a winteh terrapin. Me, I don’t like talk ‘bout dat t’ing.”

They sent him forward for his dunnage and Raxon talked fast.

“The skull’s a guide of some sort. They took no mattock. They must have found some sort of cave to hide the chest. We’ll find it. We’ve got to find it!”

He saw Skinner’s green eyes watching him covertly and he read them, though he affected not to, translating Skinner’s thoughts by his own.

“He thinks what’s big for three will be bigger for one, he told himself. He’s right. I’ll make trouble between him and Tremaine. Let one kill the other. Kill each other, if I’ve luck.”

“What made the skull scream?” asked Tremaine.

“It didn’t. It was a bird—owl likely. The nigger was scared stiff.”

“Swayne said it screamed. He expected it to scream.”

“Maybe he thinks he’ll haunt it. It’ll take more than a talking skull to keep me from that loot. Eh, Skinner?”

Skinner grunted and knocked the neck off a fresh bottle of brandy.

THE Gauntlet arrived off the low land of Port Royal Sound in the afternoon, doing little more than drifting over a sea that showed hardly a ripple, rising and falling in deep heaves of round swell, the wind, in cats’ paws, ruffling the surface and sending the brigantine ahead with little more than steerageway. Her bottom was fouled with long tropical cruising; only the most imperative repairs had been made since the fight. Her water supply was low and foul, and she was in sore need of refitting, careening and the sailmaker’s art.

It was fact that none of the crew had drawn a sober breath for days, and this afternoon they were roaring, singing drunk, the intoxication doubled by the Carolina heat that made the pitch show in little beads along the deck planking.

They were all agreeable to entrance into Broad River, where Skinner promised them carousal with plenty of fish and fruit and game while they repaired ship. But Skinner’s low brow was creased with care, and Raxon’s weasel features looked pinched and anxious.

The same corvette that they had fought had sighted them that morning and had chased them all that day. Luck had been with them in the favor of the variable winds or the corvette, always the faster and the cleaner-bottomed of the two, would surely have overhauled them, at least have got within range of her superior cannon and pounded them to surrender. Thrice they reopened distance that had been gained and sailed on with a slant of favoring breeze while the corvette hung with slack canvas, gripped by the Gulf Current that set them to the north and leeward of what wind did blow.

To the men, drinking mock healths to the King’s ship, yelling bawdy songs, the Gauntlet had outsailed the other, showed a fair pair of heels. Now, with the corvette hull down, her canvas, hung wide and high for every puff of the fickle wind, gleaming like a fragment of pearl against the misty horizon, they considered the chase fairly over and jeered at the enemy.

“They’ll see us in through their glass,” said Skinner moodily. “They’ll either follow us or they’ll cruise on and off outside between here and Saint Helena Sound like a cat before two mouseholes, knowing we’ve got to come out of one or the other.”

“Why?” asked Tremaine. “Couldn’t we make our way inland, once we’ve got the loot?”

“Yemassee Injuns revolted three years back,” said Skinner. “They got beaten but they ain’t forgotten it. Then there’s the Cherokees. It’s all salt marsh for God knows how many miles back. Swamps on swamps. The ‘skeeters ‘ud kill us if the Injuns didn’t.”

“Or the fevers,” put in Raxon. “Carolina ague’s worse than the rack. Look you, this ship’s consort is like to be at Charles’ Town. She may send word. Leave one outside while the other follows us in. Or one come one way, t’other another. ‘Tis what I’d do. The odds are too strong to risk against such treasure, to my mind. But—” his gaze traveled craftily from Skinner to Tremaine and back again—”if those drunken fools are of a mind to fight, let’s give them their belly’s full. Fight they must, for that cruiser is rather bull-dog than cat, to my mind. They’ll never quit and, by that token, we must be about the last buccaneer of the old fleet. The game’s dead and now is the time to quit.

“What think you of this plan? If yon cruiser does not follow us in too closely—”

“She’ll not do that,” said Skinner. “We’ll creep in on the last of the flood, if this wind holds. They’ll have the ebb to stem, and the tides run fast and strong. Let us get in and I’ll warrant us being let alone till morning.”

“Good.”

“We’ve had luck, so far.” Skinner went on. “It may hold. The glass is uncertain. This is the hurricane season. ‘Twould not surprise me to see it blow before morning, and we’ll find a good lee anchorage in case of it. But your plan, Raxon; what of it?”

“ ‘Twas suggested by a word of yours, Captain,” said Raxon with a sly wink at Tremaine, whereby he established with the latter the fact that he flattered Skinner for policy and for peace. “There is a pinnace hangs above the stern window on its davits. A small boat, but large enough for four, together with provisions, and yet leaving room for— let us say— a chest. It has seemed to me not altogether fair that we should glean the booty and leave the crew no share— though they have indeed had and spent their share of it and what we take is but for our pains and trouble to see that the wives and children of Swayne and Hoyle are not left to penury.

“Yet, I say, I have a tender conscience, like the both of you. It irks me to feel that each is not left well treated at the last and I think we have agreed that this is like to be the last of the Brethren of the Coast for a whiles.

“So, why not let us provision this boat? Let us leave with the crew our blessing and the ship for their own uses and devices while we go see the loot. For this a small boat will serve as well, perhaps better. Gibbs can row when the wind is not favorable. And, since these foolish fellows might not appreciate the fairness with which we mean to treat them, it might be as well to depart sometimes in the night, this or the next or when it seems most suitable. Or we might go ashore to seek for fresh water and not be able to find our way back. The point is, we make the crew a gift of the good ship Gauntlet and all she holds.”

“Sink me!” cried Tremaine, clapping his great hand on his thigh with a report like a pistol. “Sink me, Raxon, if you ain’t a fox!”

“Nay, give credit where credit is due. I but work out the details from the ideas that the captain, here, sets in my brain.”

Skinner chuckled in high good humor. It struck his fancy to leave the crew to wait the inevitable attack by the King’s men, holding the empty sack. That was a rare joke and, since he had been given the credit of it, he laughed the more. The touch about the wives and children also amused him.

“We’ll see how all works out,” he said. “Here is the chart with the sea islands lying close as eggs in a basket, yet with waterways between that are fairly navigable. We’ll work up inside close to Saint Helena Sound, yet carefully, lest the corvette’s consort meet us there. Then we’ll take boat at midnight. I would give much to see their faces next morning when they find us gone. As for finding us, had they the spirit, as soon discover a pin in a haystack.”

“Where’ll we go,” asked Tremaine, practically, “after we get the loot?”

“Make up the coast for Charles’ Town itself. There will be none to positively identify us with the Gauntlet. We need show no more of value than will pay our way, or, should there come necessity, ‘tis said the governor doth greatly admire the palm of his hand when ‘tis gilded. He gets nothing from the cruisers and he has seen more than one buccaneer. Or we can go on to the settlement at Georgetown, or further still, by inland waters, to Albemarle on the Chowan River, where men from Virginia have established themselves. We can trade the small boat for a larger to some logwood trader, perchance, either by purchase—or otherwise.”

AS THE day waned the breeze grew more and more fitful and at. last failed altogether. Now the corvette had the advantage of a breeze further out and came bowling along until her hull lifted.

Skinner ordered the boats out for towing so that they might cross the bar and get fairly into the river before the tide turned. The men refused. He argued with them for a few minutes, pointing out the necessity of taking advantage of the turn of the tide against their pursuers, of the probability that, if they did not take out their boats, the seaward breeze would bring the corvette close enough to send shot plumping aboard.

“It’s fight or pull, you dogs!” he told them at last. “Take your choice. You can sit and handle oars, but I’m damned if there’s one of ye sober enough, to stand upright or see straight, let alone fight. Row, and to-night we’ll rest easy, to-morrow we’ll feast. Stay here and the most of ye’ll be stewing in hell by midnight—and I’ll be the first to send some of ye there to tell the devil the rest are coming.

“Cross me, will you? “ he suddenly shouted in a fury. “Into those boats, you scum! Into them and pull yourselves sober.”

In an instant he was down among them, his sword, once Swayne’s, pricking and fleshing them, with Tremaine at his back swinging a cutlass and Raxon looking down from the rail of the poop. One man protested and Skinner shot him through the mouth.

“I’ll brook no mutiny,” he thundered. “You make me skipper and I’ll make ye skip. Look at the corvette coming up hand over hand, you mongrel fools.”

The breeze still with her, the cruiser was coming up fast. As they gazed they saw a small ball of white detach itself from her gleaming side and the boom of a gun came faintly over the water.

“That’s not for us,” said Skinner. “‘Tis a signal to her consort. Now, you swabs, will you row and go clear, or stay and be bilboed and hung?”

The boats were outswung, manned and soon the Gauntlet began to move slowly but surely toward the shore. Another gun sounded from the cruiser. It was not likely that they were wasting ammunition on the chase at such a distance. The consort would inevitably heave in sight before long. Doubtless they could see her already from the corvette’s masthead.

“We’ll beat ‘em yet,” said Skinner. He snuffed the air, looked high and low, scanned the horizon and then went into the cuddy for a look at his glass. “There’ll be no hurricane to-night,” he told Raxon and Tremaine. “But we’ll make the bar half an hour before the turn. And then our dogs can tow us up the river and out of sight. To hell with the corvette and her consort, too. We’ll spend that money yet, fling it to the lasses an’ put a jewel on their fingers for a kiss. Eh, lads? We’ll ruffle it yet with the best in New York City or belike in London Town itself. We’ll pass for rich merchants and choose us each some wealthy wench to wed when we are tired of light-o’-loves!”

Raxon turned to hide the sneer he could not control at the idea of Skinner posing as a merchant, or wooing a rich man’s daughter. He had his own ambitions and on their horizon neither Tremaine nor Skinner showed.

The three had the deck to themselves with all the crew still slaving at the sweeps. Skinner put Gibbs at the wheel and the three took the chance to fully provision the stern pinnace, too small for use in towing. Now it was ready for their use at any time, the stowage covered with canvas long before the sweating and sobered men came aboard. The river had curved; the entrance was out of sight, the corvette lost in purple haze as the sun went down.

Still the wind proved freaky. With twilight, a breeze began to blow from the southwest, the prevailing wind of that latitude, coming down the valleys of the rivers that emptied into the isleted estuary. Skinner sought to take advantage of it and follow up the wide and seemingly deep channel. They could see banks of reeds backed by palmettos. Back of them, chinquapin oak, live oak draped with long streamers of moss and thicket plantations of pines. All was on low ground, much of it tidal.

Through the evening sky moved lines of cranes, great flocks of belated ducks coming in from the night. They saw buzzards wheeling and once, when the barkentine tacked, in the momentary silence before she came about, they heard the Carolina nightingale, the mocking bird, that knows no special hours of song. Fish leaped all about them; porpoises and dolphins rolled and the great rays leaped to fall with a resounding crash. Shut in from the sea, here seemed an inter-island paradise—save for the mosquitoes, hovering in clouds.

It was partly the mosquitoes, partly the terrific force of the ebb, increasing momentarily in power and violence as they advanced that proved their undoing. Skinner sought to find anchorage where the breeze would be the strongest and blow the pests from the ship. They passed two islands between which the tide came eddying and swirling to join the main stream.

There was a leadsman in the chains but the men had started drinking again with their supper when they came abroad from towing, and doubtless the man was incapable.

The thing came about suddenly enough yet gently, as the Gauntlet, clutched by the tide, nosed on a bar of soft but clinging mud and sand, glided on until suddenly she came up with sails shivering, held fast.

Skinner swore volubly but, beneath his cursing, made up his mind that this was the night for their desertion of the barkentine and the crew. On the falling tide they could not hope to get the Gauntlet off, nor was there much chance of getting off by kedging and warping, even on the top of the flood, so deep had she keeled into the stuff that would hold her faster yet before the tide changed.

But he did not announce this.

After his first outburst, mainly directed at the man with the lead, he made light of the situation.

“It’s only soft bottom. No damage. This is a good place to stay till she floods again. Right in the breeze.”

He got two fiddles going, had rum brought up and before two hours the deck was a pandemonium that might almost have been heard outside at sea.

If the corvette had sent in boats then the barkentine would have been an easy conquest. To the tunes of the fiddles men howled ribald ditties and danced clumsily, locked with each other like bears broken into a distillery. Raxon watched all from the poop rail, Tremaine beside him, while Skinner mingled at first with the men, edging them on to the intoxication that would presently turn to maudlin daze and then oblivion.

The eyes of the ex-scrivener’s clerk glittered, his nostrils dilated. He seemed almost to quiver with repressed activity, like the weasel he was. His brain was busy with many things. Tremaine, big, stolid, leaned his great forearms on the broad rail. Gibbs hovered in the background, waiting orders to bring fresh mugs of wine for the quarterdeck gentry. Tremaine swigged down some rare Xeres as indifferently as if it had been small beer. Raxon drank more appreciatively, more sparingly. He liked the warmth of the wine, the flavor, the effect that charged his courage. But he wanted to keep his head clear.

“Have you had any words with Skinner?” he asked Tremaine. “Me? None. What of it?”

“Nothing. Tremaine—” he hesitated a moment— "mark you, you are my friend and with them I play fair to the last drop, the last coin. I may be wrong but Skinner seems to grudge you your share in this loot. He seems to fear that you will give us away by your behaviour after we get clear. Nothing outright, mind you, but little doubts that are close to slurs and put, so I think, to sound me as to whether I agree with him. Skinner will bear watching, Tremaine.”

“‘Stap me, but if I catch him in treachery I’ll wring his neck. I’ll tear the windpipe out of him and make him chew on’t,” growled the giant. “Go easy, man. I’m not sure. If I am, at any time, I’ll tell you. Meantime you and I are with each other. We’ll pledge to that. Gibbs!”

His face hidden in his cup Raxon grinned, knowing he had sown the swiftly developing seeds of unrest and mistrust in Tremaine’s simple mind.

TWO hours after midnight they were away. The crew lay about the decks in stupor as Raxon and Skinner came up to the poop and lowered the pinnace without a splash.

Then, from the stern window, all four swarmed down the ropes and cast off. Gibbs took the sculls and, pulling athwart the current, rowed them up a creek, though he protested against landing there.

“Too dahk fo’ to see,” he said, “but plenty ‘gator lie on dem bank. Swish you wid tail an’ you go into wateh— dat end of you. Bimeby, flood come, dey all go into hole undeh wateh. Betteh wait till flood come erlong, wait till sun come up.”

“It’s a good idea—curse the mosquitoes!” said Raxon. “Think you. the corvette will be in on the flood, Skinner? If so we might lay low and watch what happens.”

He chuckled in the darkness as if he were looking forward to witnessing a play. Skinner could match that mood and did so.

Tremaine said nothing. Whatever he might have thought concerning the treachery of their desertion was overbalanced by the glitter of gold and jewels that was ever before his eyes.

They all smoked constantly to protect themselves from insect bites, swigging occasionally at the liquor they had brought along, dozing off until the negro wakened them.

Dawn was in the sky; Vs of ducks were aflight with the strings of cranes and herons. The tide was high up in the reeds and still rising fast. Gibbs’s eyes showed bursting; his ears seemed to be pricked forward.

“I hear plenty rowing,” he said in an awed whisper. They all listened. Plain to their accustomed hearing came the click-clack of oars in the pins, sounding across the water, far off. They knew it did not come from the Gauntlet, did not threaten themselves.

Down along the reeds to the exit of the creek they hauled with their hands. Before they quite reached it the sound had ceased but they saw a little flotilla of four cutters, oars shipped now and lugs set to the light wind. Swiftly the cutters came on the incoming tide, making for the barkentine where the buccaneers snored on in drunken sleep. They could see the level sunlight catch and twinkle on weapons, on accoutrements of the officers.

“There’ll be rare fun soon,” said Skinner. “We’re well out of it.” But there was little spectacular about the thing that happened, save for its ending. The cutters were close to the Gauntlet before some buccaneer with a splitting head and swollen tongue sought the water tub and sighted them, striving to arouse his stupefied comrades in time for a futile resistance.

Hardly a shot was fired. From the creek mouth they could see the flash of blades and hear a few shouts promptly followed by hurrahs that were undoubtedly the cheers of British seamen. It was all over in a few minutes.

Then the corvette appeared, following up her boats on the lifting tide, a signal weft flying. A cutter stroked back to her, received orders and returned. The pirates were bundled overside into the sterns of the boats, huddled under the pistols of their conquerors, bound for judgment and the penalty of their acts as proscribed men. Had the Gauntlet been surrendered at Providence, any irregularities would have been winked at and, though probably any present loot would have been appropriated, past offences would have been assumed to have been committed under privateering custom against the King’s enemies. Letters of marque were readily enough obtained from venal commissioners and the surrendering buccaneers were given the benefit of a doubt as to their sincerity in adhering strictly to the articles of their commissions.

But these poor wretches were bound for Execution Point, there to swing as examples of those who had defied the King’s leniency. Skinner jeered at them and Raxon grinned silently, his tongue showing between his teeth. Tremaine, goldblinded, looked on without comment. Only Gibbs muttered something in commiseration of his late comrades till Skinner turned fiercely on him.

“Quiet, you black dog! But for us you’d be with them.”

“They got ‘em asleep,” said Raxon. “They’ve never missed us. They’d not ask for us by rank, knowing they killed Swayne. It may never come out till the trial that we got away. Look, they’ve set the ship afire!”

“Too much trouble to get her off for a prize,” said Skinner with a shrug, as smoke curled up from both hatches and swiftly increased. “That’s the end of her. Let’s be getting back into cover.”

Raxon began to laugh, silently. “It is rare,” he said when his fit was over. “Yon corvette’s captain goes bragging that he has killed Swayne. The news goes to Swayne’s relatives— if he told the truth in that matter— and they will presently come down to find the treasure— and find it gone.”

“Art so sure of finding it?” asked Tremaine.

“Aye,” answered Skinner with a snarl. “If we dig the island over.”

They did not dare show themselves in the open for fear their absence might be marked, the question of the loot brought up. For two days they did not dare to light a fire and, at the end of that time, they were lost in the labyrinth of the islands where blind channels led into marshes and baffled them fifty times. Reeds grew high above them in the passages and the rough chart was worse than useless. They saw no Indian pirogues nor sign of natives.

On the third day, their best edibles gone, they caught fish and found oysters, not daring to fire a shot at the game they saw. This time they landed and waded to high land to find wood and broil their catch. The mosquitoes plagued them by day and tormented them by night, despite smudges. The bites festered; fevers came on them with chills that held them gripped with ague and left them weak as children.

Gibbs climbed a tree and announced that he saw the main channel and no signs of the cruiser. So they worked their tedious way to open water and crossed it, veering north and seaward, bearing in mind the negro’s description of the two islands he had seen between him and the sea from the island of the screaming skull. Now they began to calculate how soon the dead captain’s relatives might come with explicit directions.

They were prepared to fight, to murder for the loot; but suppose they arrived too late? They had been ten days in the maze of marshes and islands that were separated and made true islands only at high tide. In the channels, masked by reeds and palmettos, the currents raced, as often against them as in the direction they wished to go, wasting their time. They grew morose in speculation of it. No longer were they three joined in one enterprise. Skinner seldom talked to them and Raxon ever stirred the poison he had brewed in the mind of Tremiane, with Skinner’s attitude to color his suggestion.

The big man glowered at Skinner, becoming obsessed with the idea that the other was plotting how to obtain the loot for himself, though Skinner’s main worry was that they had lost too much time. Once he set the blame on Raxon for suggesting the small-boat cruise, but Raxon, fairly sure by now of Tremaine’s support, snarled back and reminded him that he, as captain, was responsible for the Gauntlet having run aground.

Gibbs watched the three white men with rolling eyes, his blubber lips seldom opened in speech. He was the slave of them all, rowing hour after hour while they lolled in the stern sheets, catching their provender, cooking it, and dreading more and more, as they worked up to where they thought the island lay, that the voodoo of the dead man and the skull would surely be worked upon him for coming back into its province.

TWO more days passed, spent in coasting islands and looking through Gibbs’s eyes for familiar signs, searching the trees for one that bore a white object. Their cocksureness faded; they accused Gibbs of misleading them, of deliberately passing signs he knew, threatening him, shaking with malaria, burning with fever, their bones aching with the back breaking dengue.

It was Raxon who, at dawn one morning, shook the rest— save Gibbs— and pointed out, across a wide stretch of golden water, an island with a ridge running lengthwise. The ridge was set with pines and on one of these, near the center, something caught the early light and flared like a ball of fire, then faded to white as the sun rose and the light slid down from the tree-tops. They gazed at it with jaws agape and straining eyes.

It was the island of the skull!

“Say nothing to the nigger till we get him ashore,” whispered Raxon. “He’ll not notice it if we set our course right. If he knew it he might balk.”

“Let him,” said Skinner. “Let him try to thwart us.”

But they took Raxon’s advice, distracting Gibbs’s attention till they had started when he, with his back to the bows of the pinnace, could see nothing. Yet he sensed something. As they neared the shores and looked for a landing, he suddenly stopped rowing.

“Go on,” ordered Skinner, but the negro’s face seemed to have fallen in, the broad nostrils seemed pinched, the cheeks hollowed, and the flesh was gray and beaded with sweat.

“It de place,” he muttered. “Voodoo brought us here.”

“Is that the creek you rowed up with Swayne and Hoyle?” demanded Skinner. Gibbs nodded mutely. “Then go up it.”

“No, suh. If I go ashore dat place I die fo’ suah. No, suh! I don’ go.”

Skinner whipped out the pistol he had primed and kept beside him on the stern seat. “You’ll die now, if you don’t go on,” he said grimly. “Row.”

“Buccra,” pleaded Gibbs, while the tide set them down, past the creek entrance. “Voodoo on dat place. You all die suppose you go. I not go.”

His oars trailed. Skinner raised the pistol. The flint lifted.

“Take up those oars, you dog!” Gibbs looked pleadingly at Raxon and Tremaine, but got no sign of pity. The same thing was in the mind of all of them. They had sighted the skull. They could find the excavation that had never been filled in. He could do little more for them. They had never meant him to share the loot and become a danger to them. He was doomed.

Suddenly the negro sprang up and leaped overside, swimming out into the channel.

Skinner sighted deliberately and fired. The bullet struck Gibbs at the base of the skull and he sank instantly.

“Let the ‘gators eat him,” said Skinner. “Tremaine, will you row.”

The giant pulled vigorously and they passed in, landing at what seemed a convenient place. Through cactus and agave, through thickets of palmetto and thorny briars, they fought their panting way each intent, in that mad race, on reaching the ridge and finding the pine, heedless of the others. Once they passed a pool where alligators floated like great logs and, skirting it, Skinner narrowly missed being bitten by a water moccasin. He slashed off its head with the cutlass he carried as a brush cutter.

The fever caught Tremaine and he pulled up, shaking and spent. The others did not heed him until they heard his exultant shout. He had found the hole dug by the four men who had died. It was half full of water.

Now they hunted under the hot sun like dogs on a rich scent, thrashing through the brush, seeking caves in a likely looking ledge of sandstone. Noon came and exhausted, torn, bloody, grimed and soaking wet with their own hot sweat, their tongues hanging out of swollen lips, they still pursued the quest, crawling into smothering holes, prodding others with boughs.

There was no sound from the skull that now and then attracted their glance. Once Skinner shook his fist at it, swearing the thing was set there to mock them. They had brought nothing to eat or drink from the boat and none would go back for it, slaking thirst in a hole dug beside a pool too foul for them to risk without some filtration. By midafternoon they were done and they flung themselves down exhausted.

The sun began to sink and a wind rose, moaning through the pines. Alligators began to bellow in the lagoons, mudhens called weirdly and once again the long flights of cranes commenced, with the ducks coming in for the night feeding. The buzzards they had seen all day, whenever they happened to look skyward, were still circling, soaring on extended pinions, effortless, afloat rather than flying, watching for carrion.

Tremaine was close to Raxon, who was sick with disappointment and fatigue, sick with the fever, despondent, realizing that they were practically castaways in these fever-ridden, mosquito infested swamps.

“The nigger was right,” said Tremaine huskily. “This place has a conjure, or a curse, or both, upon it. We’re fooled. Skinner made hint to me, if we should find the loot, that there would be more for two than for three. But I checked him and he saw I was not with him. You were right, Raxon, he is a scoundrel.”

“Aye— did he not want me to join with him against you? Now he turns to you to help him against me. If either one of us fell for his plans he would murder the survivor in his sleep. ‘All for one and that one, Skinner,’ is his motto. Much good it will do him. There’s nothing to divide.”

“It must be hereabouts,” said Tremaine doggedly, “but we can’t find it after dark and ‘twill be that in an hour. Better get back to the boat. I’m famished and my throat aches for a swig of liquor. Come on.”

They both spoke to Skinner who grunted and slowly followed them down. Tremaine led, traversing the ridge to avoid much of the worst of the thorny, prickly undergrowth and to strike down some gully to the creek.

THE twilight purpled, the sun swimming in a mist that turned it to a scarlet disc, then to a crimson, lighting luridly bank after bank of clouds that reached half-way to the zenith. The wind soughed mournfully, coming from the southwest with sudden piping gusts. The air seemed cold.

Tremaine turned into a sandy draw and abruptly halted with an exclamation. Fairly in their path was a chest, metal bound, substantial, big enough to hold the ransom of three kings. With hoarse shouts they all raced toward it, trying the lid, flinging back the hasp before they noticed there was no padlock.

The chest was empty—empty as a broken gourd!

A gust of wind came whistling down the draw, driving grains of sand before it.

Suddenly a high-pitched scream sounded, exultant, mocking, devilish. Instinctively they looked around and up. Plainly from the head of the gully where they stood they could see the dead pine. The skull seemed to gaze in their direction, the sunset dying it bloodred from dome to gaping jaws, the eye sockets purple.

Again the scream came and Tremaine wheeled and started to bolt down the draw, plunging through the soft sand like a startled bullock. Skinner stood with his face turned up, snarling half in defiance, half in fear, while Raxon’s little eyes glittered in his weasel face like those of a trapped animal.

With that fearful cry the buzzards seemed to wheel lower, the sky to darken. Slowly Tremaine came back as the screams ceased, half ashamed of his panic. The wind was still blustery and all about them the palmettos thrashed as the three stared at the empty chest, the end of their hopes.

“ ‘Tis Swayne’s folks! They’ve beaten us to it,” croaked Skinner. “And you to blame for ‘t, Raxon!”

“You lie!” It needed but small spark to set the tinder of their tempers aglow. Skinner caught up his cutlass and leaped at Raxon, the blade gleaming red in the rays that streamed into the mouth of the gully, his shadow springing grotesque in front of him.

Raxon drew his pistol from his belt and fired it pointblank, but the priming was poor, dampened, perhaps by the sweat that had poured out of him all day. There was only a fizz and a flash in the pan. With a squeak of terror he flung the useless weapon at Skinner, turned and ran, dodging behind Tremaine.  Raxon was no fighter.

Furious, frenzied with disappointment, Skinner cursed at Tremaine for being in his way, and cut at him as he seemed disposed to shield Raxon. The blow sank deep in the giant’s defending forearm and the hot blood spurted. With a roar of rage, the gunner caught the cutlass blade, regardless of its edge against his palms, and wrested it away. Then his bleeding hands clutched at Skinner’s throat, choking him.

Skinner’s own hands sought to tear away the frightful grip that shut off blood and breath. He wheezed as his eyes seemed popping out, his body writhing while he strove to reach Tremaine with kicks that the other did not feel.

The strangling appeared for the moment to deprive Skinner of reason; he fought without thought of weapons, striving only to loose the vise about his neck. Raxon stood apart, watching the struggle. There was barren gain for him now in what he had meant to bring about, but he exulted in Skinner’s plight. Tremaine’s strength could be used to good advantage in getting away from the place.

Suddenly Skinner fell, limp to all seeming, and Tremaine fell over him to his knees, shaking him as a bulldog might shake its victim. Blood was pouring out of Skinner’s mouth and nose; his face was almost black. Yet he had one blow left in him, a last convulsive attempt to best the other.

Tremaine’s grip may have slackened in the fall. Skinner’s groping hands found the hilt of Tremaine’s two-edged dirk that slid easily from its sheath. Deep into Tremaine’s belly Skinner thrust the keen steel.

The gunner toppled forward, fairly on top of his victim. His grasp on Skinner’s throat relaxed as the blood gushed from him, but those steel-strong fingers had done their work. The last of Skinner’s strength went in that stab.

Raxon watched Tremaine writhing on top of the other until he stretched out, shuddered and lay still. He had retrieved and reprimed his pistol and now he carefully sent a bullet crashing through Skinner’s forehead.

His face was that of a balked devil as he turned to go down to the boat, leaving the two behind him on the blood-soaked sand.

The last of the sun had left the gully. It was swiftly dark. All about him the palmettos rustled and clashed as the wind whooped. Out of the darkness the two buzzards had dropped and lit at the head of the draw.

Raxon struggled on as best he could toward the creek, sure that Tremaine had chosen wisely when he picked the gully and that he had only to follow it down to find the water and then the boat. He looked forward to a great draught of brandy. He was in bad shape and felt the fever coming on as he staggered and stumbled through the brush, tripping, held back by thorns, stumbling into bayoneted agaves.

On the brink of the creek, now at low tide, something rustled and struck at him through the soft leather of his Spanish boots. He felt the blow and then the fangs and, though he saw nothing, he visioned a stumpy serpent gliding away. He knew what it was— a moccasin— perhaps the very snake that had slipped out of the skull.

Swiftly the virus ran through his tired body. He felt sick and weak and sat down on a log.

Instantly it moved and, with frightful swiftness, flailed with an armored tail that smote Raxon from his feet, his legs broken. Then the bull alligator clamped his jaws upon his prey and waddled toward the creek, dragging the clawing thing that gibbered until first mud, then water, filled its mouth.

High up on the ridge, as the ripples spread out, the palmettos clashed together, the wind whooped, and, high above it, a scream came from the top of the pine where the skull dimly showed.

It startled the gluttonous buzzards for a moment; then they went on tearing, gobbling in the dark.

A WEEK later a turtling sloop from Georgetown came to the island and the brother of Swayne’s widow, with a cousin and the younger brother of Hoyle landed. They did not go near the gully, where the buzzards had gathered and glutted themselves on rare food, but passed the excavation and, without looking for the chest, went on to the tree of the skull.

There was a fair breeze in the pinetops. The three men rolled up the sleeves of their shirts, two took up axes, while the third glanced aloft.

“I thought you said it screamed when the wind blew?” he asked Swayne’s brother-in-law.

“It does, but the wind has to be from the southwest and this has quartered from the usual. Moreover it has to be almost a gale to make the device work. It’s simple enough. Swayne wrote that he had borrowed it from the Indians of the Isthmus, who use it on the tree-graves of their chiefs. The skull sets in a fork and they made the whistle of a tube, a funnel and a tongue of thin metal, to rest in the crotch below it.

“Swayne wrote he never meant to bury the chest in the hole he made them dig, lest they blab about it, but he did not think of the tree until he had climbed it with the skull he meant to set there as both guide and warning. You have to mount half-way before you note the opening that tells you it is hollow. They could not see him from the hole where they were busy digging and he had Hoyle send up the contents with rope and a sack he made of his shirt. Swayne hauling and pouring the stuff into the hollow of the tree. Well, let’s get at it. It should be but a light task.”

The keen blades bit into the dead wood fast and, presently, the pine toppled and fell crashing to the ground, hollow for half its length. The stump was a heaped casket of objects that gleamed and shone and sent off dancing rays of colored light. From the trunk there rolled other precious things, while more remained within. Gold and jewels winked more brightly as the dust settled. Through it one of the three saw the skull bound from the ground and, after its leap, go rolling down into a nearby gully. Then he started to help gathering up the loot.

_______________

7: Black Cat

Short Stories 25 Feb 1936

FLASHLIGHT put her head over the half-door of her stall and nuzzled at me. The filly was fit. Her hide was like satin, the color of a polished chestnut. Her lustrous eyes, as she nibbled at my sleeve, seemed to say, "I'm winning today."

The black cat that had adopted us, and which had palled up with Flashlight, drifted out of nowhere, mysteriously, as it always did; spookily seeming to materialize in the shadows. It arched its back, purring, with tail erect, weaving airy pretzels about my legs.

Zeke claimed it was a mascot. I hoped so. I needed one. But I was not so sure about black cats. It depends upon how you approach them, or they approach you; if they cross your path, or run away from you. And it's all mixed up. No two countries agree upon it. It had an uncle who stepped on a black cat in the dark, when he was sneaking out from a forbidden rendezvous with his sweetie. The cat turned into a clawing centipede. Uncle was forbidden the house, and he lost the girl. He thought he was very unlucky for a while, and then he changed his mind. So— there you are.

Our cat arrived sight-unseen. She was in the stall one morning, quite at home. Mascot or jinx, she had moved in.

"I'm tellin' you, Mistuh Selwyn, that filly can't lose," Zeke asserted. " 'Cause why? The hawss's ready to run. The distance and the track am right. You the owner, you want her to win. Me, I'm ridin' her to win. That cat she know she gwine win. Nevuh switch her tail like that, unless. We know she gwine behave at the barrier today."

"I hope so," I told him. Flashlight had been a poor starter, nervous, excited, inclined to be vicious. That was one reason why she had been overlooked in the betting this afternoon. The odds-board gave us twenty-five to one. But we had found out the trouble.

Once we removed the wolf teeth, vestigial remnants of primordial steeds, from each side of her grinders, she behaved like a lamb, instead of a teething, petulant babe.

The filly had not been in a race since. And Zeke was right. The distance, six- furlongs in the Sandown Handicap for two- year-olds, was right. The condition of the track was right. But I was worried. I had to win this race. I owed over three hundred dollars for feed to "Judge" Lyman, and he had been nasty about it.

FLASHLIGHT was the last of my string, frayed by the fingers of Fate. By breeding, she should be the best of them. She was sound as a mountain trout, without fault or flaw; and she had the speed.

"Look what she clocked this mawnin'," said Zeke. "One-ten! What it take Man o War to win when he was two-yeah old? One-eleven-three-fif'; Futurity Stakes, Belmont Park, Yessuh."

"When he did that in nineteen-nineteen," I said, "he was packing a hundred and twenty-seven pounds, You rode Flashlight this morning at about a hundred and twelve. She carries one-twenty-five in the race."

"Anyone 'ud think you-all didn' want this hawss to win. Look at Ekkypoise. In nineteen-thirty he toted hundred an' twenty-six pounds in the Eastern Shore Handicap. What he do then, huh; when e was two-yeah old? Bes' he could do, to win, was one- twelve-an'-two-fiffs, We's gwine make record today, Mistuh Selwyn."

"Stuffy" Dalon came nosing into the stable. Dolan was once a jockey, and a good one, But he was tricky, and got ruled off. He put on fat. Now he was a tipster, a tout who could pick a winner pretty often, but usually named three or four nags in one race to the suckers. A pretty shady customer, Dolan, but he had a name of playing fair with his pals.

"I hear the filly looks good," he said.

"Who told you— and what?"

"My stop-watch told me, if it was tickin' right this morning. I might have stopped her down wrong, seein' I was a bit jittery. I don't often go pickin' mornin'-glories that early." Zeke and I had had the filly out before sun-up. We had made the trial in the morning twilight. There had been one or two fence-riders, but they had been on the far side from the finish. We had taken care of that. But if Dolan had been one of them, the word might have passed. The odds were holding up. Yet I didn't like it. I had a hunch things were going too smoothly. Luck was due to shake me by the hand, but it might be waiting to give me another kick in the breeches.

"You clocking me, Dolan?"

"Aw, not to give you away, Mr, Selwyn. Not for outsiders. But I'm toutin' Flashlight to win. What I tout don't affect the odds none, I'm lucky today. I pick four guys an' a couple dames, who'll bet on the filly. I stand to get a nice cut. Gord knows I need it."

He was genuinely injured. "I got my own dough up," he said, "My eatin' money. On the nose."

That was the way I had bet all I could rake and scrape, borrow and pawn. Eight hundred and forty dollars in all. Not much, to spread across the board; enough to set me on my feet properly, at twenty-five to one, after paying off. And, if the filly proved that good—

A BUGLE sounded. Zeke, jockey and swipe in one, blanketed and hooded the filly. Dolan went into the stall to help him. I didn't figure him as up to any chicanery. I had helped him out once; when he was in bad shape, and his wife ill. He might be a bit of a crook, but he was straight with me. I didn't notice whether he came out, or what happened to him, as I watched Zeke leading Flashlight to the paddock.

She stepped like a young doe, on long, springy pasterns, Her ears were prices her head up, her eyes luminous as living jewels, like great magical opals, brown melting into blue.

She was bred for this. She went daintily, but she was keen for it all. Racing was in her blood and spirit. The packed stands, the bugles, the quivering, contagious excitement of man and beast, the glory of her own speed.

I turned back into the stable. Perhaps my luck had turned, maybe the black cat—

There it was, gliding by me. It made a sudden scoot across the path of a man just coming in. And I hoped her crossing meant bad luck for him.

My hunch of trouble had materialized. I knew the man, a deputy-sheriff, one of the lean, crafty crackers who get their badges through murky politics, who act as tax collectors, serve summonses, carry out evictions, enjoying the authority and the dirty work.

He gave me a false, brown-toothed grin. I knew his errand, not the first of its kind at the track. Nemesis arriving at the crucial moment. It was that damned feed-bill.

"I got some papehs to serve on you-all, Mr. Selwyn," he said with mock deprecation. He was gloating inwardly, especially since I was not of his state, but from Kentucky. "Reckon I'll have to attach yo' filly to satisfy Jedge Lyman's claim."

Lyman's title of "judge" attained from his appreciation of liquor. But he was also a judge of horseflesh. He wanted my filly. She rated more than his bill, whatever her past performances.

"You can't do that— until after the race," I said. "If she wins, I can clear the attachment a hundred times over."

"If she wins." He grinned his sly grin. "Looks like the experts don't think she's so hot, by the odds, The jedge, he 'lows he most owns her, anyway, 'count of the feed he's put into her. Of course, if you kin pay—"

A bugle blew again. The saddling-call. Flashlight was due at the start in a few minutes.

I went hot and cold. It was like taps blown over the grave of my last chance. This was my last show.

"Why not wait until after the race?" I asked, sick at having to plead with him; with his half-baked, biscuity face, his pale blue eyes and foxy smile.

"She wouldn't know she was ever in it."

I knew he was lying. The pupils of his eyes were quivering. Lyman had been tipped-off. I thought of Dolan, looked for him. Flashlight was entered in my name. If she was attached she could not run in his. Not now. But he would clean-up with her. He had nothing to lose.

The deputy's face was greasy with a malicious triumph as I stood in the door, facing him. His back was to the stall. He started to fumble in his breast pocket for his papers.

And then his eyes were set and goofy. A silly smile melted his indeterminate features, as if they were a waxen mask in the sun. His knees buckled, and he went down to them, down to the floor.

It was no act of mine. No intention. But it was too providential to be overlooked. He had passed out with some sort of stroke. He had not served his papers, The filly was free to run.

I took a good look at him, at his eyes, felt his pulse, It was sturdy enough. I hauled him into the stall, laid him on the clear straw, Something seemed to stir in a dark corner, Likely enough the cat. I went out, locking the door after me. He would not come around for a while, but he was all right. I have seen plenty of men in his case.

The bugle shrilled again. They were saddled, being called-out for the race, In two or three minutes it would all be over but the shouting. And if he was up and shouting, nobody would notice it.

The black cat bolted out between my legs, went prancing off like a sprite, yellow eyes gleaming.

SIX furlongs is three-quarters of a mile. It takes from seventy to seventy-five seconds for a top-horse to cover, The average pulse beats seventy to the minute, It accelerates, marks time to the tattoo of hoofs, the springing leaps.

They were off! Flashlight was well away. There had been no need to give Zeke any last instructions. He knew the filly, and she knew him; I could see him through my binoculars, clinging like a monkey on her withers, She had been given Number Five in the barrier stalls. Now she was running third, easy and true.

Blackcock had the rail, making pace for his stable-mate, Gamester, the odds-on favorite. It was a race.

They were carrying her wide at the turn— Blackcock and Gamester, But Blackcock was tiring, and Flashlight coming strong. The field tailed them, though the bay gelding, Jabberwock, was hitting his stride, moving up fast, on the inside. He passed the failing Blackcock, his nose was up to Gamester's girth.

Zeke made his bid. There was an opening between them and he tried for it. Gamester had the rail. Gamester would win, if Zeke had to keep wide on the last of the curve,

They were in the straight, the beginning of the stretch, Flashlight's muzzle was between the flanks of the others. She was gaining at every jump.

I let out a groan, They had her pocketed. They would not let her through. Two white boys, one Irish, and one Italian; combined against the Negro,

No chance now. They were too closely woven, If Flashlight had been behind, and clear, I thought she could have made it, even if Jabberwock's rider bored out. Those two were clever lads, They did not mean to be disqualified for fouling, Flashlight had nosed-in, They did not have to give way,

There was a sorrowful gladness in seeing how she ran, how she challenged, going free, but shut-off from the sprint I could feel burning within her.

Twenty yards to go— and the crowd shouting at the driving finish!

Some wag called it the Ripley finish— "Believe it or not!" On sheer performance, on reserve, Flashlight had the race won. Gamester was dropping back, but not enough, not at that stage of the game. It was a question of seconds.

And then— and then— something streaked across the track, hell-bent. A black blur of speed. A cat. Our cat,

There may have been a dog around under the grandstand. It might have been sheer caprice. It might have been a reincarnation of Bubastis, the cat-goddess of Egypt, impersonating Fate.

Jabberwock swerved— Flashlight went by Gamester, headed Jabberwock, crossed the wire, winner by a head. Time— one-eleven and a fifth.

I don't know where Bubastis— if it were Bubastis— went. I never saw that cat again. But all black cats are welcome to my stable.

IT WAS not a popular victory. It was not an outstanding race— even though a track record was broken. There was no floral horseshoe. Zeke, his black face slashed with pearl, took the filly away, to cool her off. I went to the pari-mutuel window to realize. I saw Dolan hanging round, waiting to see if those, to whom he had tipped the filly, were cashing in.

He gave me a joyous wink, and I knew he had got at least part of his cut.

It was only then, with my pockets lined with bills, that I remembered the deputy. I could satisfy Lyman's claim within the limit.

I was walking on air when I got back to the stable and opened the door. The deputy was still in the straw, but he was coming to, I helped him to his feet.

"You slugged me, dern ye, you slugged me from behind! But you got to take the papers."

"Hand them over," I said. "So I slugged you from behind, when I was standing in front of you. There are just two in my outfit, as she stands, Zeke and myself. Zeke was in the paddock. Did you have a fit, or were you drinking?"

He thrust the papers at me, and I accepted them.

"The filly won," I said. "The race is over. I got twenty-five to one." I showed him my winnings.

"Lyman'll give me hell fer this. Reckon I 'll lose my job. I tell you, somethin' hit me."

He felt his head gingerly, back of one ear.

"I got a lump, big as a pigeon's egg," he said. "Must have been someone back in the stall."

"I didn't plant him there," I said honestly, "You tell Judge Lyman you couldn't find me, And put a plaster on that lump."

I peeled off a century note and gave it to him, His shallow eyes bulged. He slipped away, as if he were afraid I'd take it away from him,

Dolan arrived, with Zeke, and the filly.

"How did you make out?" I asked.

"Three outa the bunch played," he said.

"Only one on the nose. The rest smeared it. But I did pretty good."

He started to help Zeke unblanket. The filly was puffing for a drink, looking for her mash.

I stripped another century off that nice roll of mine, slipped it to Dolan. Zeke would get his later.

"What's this for?" asked Dolan.

"You can call it an advance, if you want to come to work for me. I'm buying horses. I can use you, Stuffy."

He was a hard lad; but he was soft, in spots. He began to cry, quietly but earnestly.

"Gee, Mr, Selwyn, you mean it? I don't see now why I rate this century note."

"What made you slug the deputy? It was either you, or the cat."

"Why wouldn't I slug that louse? The filly was tight, an' him an' Lyman knew it. They had it rigged agin' you. I was back in the stall, see; and I had a sap with me, see; so when he tries to pull his play, I let him have it, back of the ear."

He took a blackjack from his pocket, a weapon of soft leather with a bulbous head filled with buckshot.

"I know you won't stand for this sort of stuff," he said. "Take it, Mr. Selwyn."

"Throw it in the river, Dolan,"

Zeke came out grinning from the stall.

"Ah won me nine bucks last night at craps," he said, "an' put it on the nose. Baby, I got me a ticket at twenty-five to one.

"Go and cash it," I told him, "Lose it tonight, if you want to. You've got plenty more coming."

"No suh. I ain' shootin' no mo' craps. Ise gwine entertain mah honey,"

"How about you, Dolan?"

He was still sniffling. "I'm going to show this to the wife and tell her I've got a job— with you."

When they were gone I counted over the roll, figured up my debts, and what I might have to pay for the start of my new string.

I could see the blue grass waving in Kentucky.

Dolan had his wife, Zeke his money.

And there was someone in Old Kentucky— for me.

______________

8: The High Rigger

Short Stories,  25 Dec 1926

JOHN FLEMING, lumberman, was the victim of a form of fear that had been part of him since he could remember, against which he struggled in vain, a fear that oppressed and depressed him with the dread of being known as "yellow."

This was the fear of high places. It came upon him with a swift rush of vertigo, a paralysis of nerves, a flood of nausea that left him a clammy, trembling wretch, clinging for safety or crawling to it, his manhood broken down, shame driving him to solitude.

None doubted his courage in the crew with which he worked after he came back from the war. He had won citations there, risen to a sergeantcy. In the trenches he had known fear of another kind, born of an active imagination— the instinct to run and hide, the terror of sudden death. This he had conquered, banished it utterly, as thousands of high-strung comrades had done.

It was only when he was on a height, suddenly conscious of it, that the Thing attacked him, vanquished him before he could rally his will against it. He could birl a log, ride it through white water, leap from one to another with absolute coordination, without a suggestion of giddiness. His fear did not interfere with his work, he was acknowledged one of the best of the crew; yet he knew that it lurked within him, biding its time, a demon that could turn him in a moment from a man of splendid body, of superb efficiency, into an abject, trembling coward, an object to be laughed at, pitied, scorned.

It came to him in dreams sometimes, the fear of falling— falling to some frightful doom. He would wake sweating and shivering, hoping that he had not called out and betrayed himself. After he came back from the war he hoped that he had acquired strength to overcome it, but the dreams recurred and he felt that the weakness was still there.

He talked about it with the Company doctor one day, a kindly, elderly man. After his confession he sat in the chair across from the other, miserably awaiting a verdict.

The doctor relit his pipe, puffed gravely, manner and voice sympathetic.

"You're the victim of a phobia, son," he said. "There's a long name for it I'll not inflict upon you. The scientific names of ailments always make them sound worse than they are.

"It's a common and sound theory that all things come to us through our senses, rousing emotions to which man, as opposed to the beast, applies reason. The brain cells summon memory. In a coward these recollections may stimulate the emotion of fear, in a bully, those of hatred, You are neither.

"In the trenches you won out with the tally of pride and patriotism, the desire to prove yourself brave. A man may hear or see something that causes him to fly into a rage, but he tells himself that it is not wise to do so. He uses discretion. His conscious self controls the automatic functions of his subconscious.

"But there ate certain phenomena, such -as this fear of yours, that are inherent, protoplasmic, handed on through the generative cells; persistent, though they may not manifest themselves in every generation. Terror of darkness, horror of snakes, your own fear of high places. It may come down from ancestors who lived in trees, or perched in them after sundown for fear of prowling monsters, waking night after night in the fancied danger, or the actual danger; of falling. Our cousins, the apes, still have it. It attacks simultaneously, paralysing your ganglia, short-circuiting your nerves, eliminating brain processes. It isn't anything to be ashamed of, any more than near-sightedness."

"That's an explanation of it," said Fleming. "What I want to know is can I get the best of it?"

The doctor's pipe had gone out while he was talking. He lit a match, regarded the flame contemplatively before he applied it.

"If," he said between puffs, "you were stimulated by some complex emotion or ambition strong enough to control your subconscious and this was threatened by your phobia, I should say that you had a good chance of mastering it, of rallying your will to assume leadership while the other forces offset each other. And, once having won out, the chances are good that the thing might vanish, at least diminish.

"In the meantime," he rose and came over to Fleming, giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder, "why worry about it? You don't have to climb trees or. walk along cliffs in your present job. If you know a lion is certain to attack you, you keep from jungles and menageries. My advice to you is to stop bothering about it, don't herd the thought or memory of it— and stay on the ground. Outside of this, you're a hundred per cent normal. I wish I had your physique. Good luck to you."

The interview had not done him much good. It confirmed the conviction that he was haunted.. If anything it made him moodier, though there were plenty of times when he forgot all about it, in the sheer joy of work, of boon companionship, laboring through the long day, sleeping quietly through the nights.

Through the winter, as trees were felled, swampers prepared the skid-roads, scalers gauged the cut, teamsters sledded the logs down. to the river over the iced ways, while the snubrope men eased them down the declines; the fear was dormant. Spring was heralded. The rains came, the river broke its frozen bonds and the crew went gaily to its banks and prepared to spill the great rollways where the logs had been piled high, sidewise to the stream; making ready for high water to commence the drive.

Fleming had hard work to keep up the study on his course in engineering mechanics. He turned in with the rest, too tired, too exhausted for anything but replenishing sleep. One thing he saw clearly, that lumbering in the Eastern states was played out. The sleds now carried as much as a hundred sticks to the load where once five logs was the limit.

So far, this was his trade, the extent of his experience. He talked with others of the vast stands of timber still on the Pacific Coast, of the methods employed there, vastly different from these in their mechanical development. There he might put in practice what he had learned from his course, advance in engineering, become a boss. He thought of it in the scant intervals between active labor, sometimes for a few moments before slumber and digestion drugged him.

Then the Thing leaped out of covert.

The winter had been a severe one. It was approved practice to break down the rollways by teasing and prying out the lowermost and outer log on a rollway, when the upper tiers were apt to come crashing, roaring down to the river bed, there to lie on the ice until the flood waters bore them off, or be carried away by the already running current. Now ice had welded the logs together and nothing short of destructive dynamiting would stampede the ways. They had to break them out from the top, tier by tier, timber by timber.

Fleming was assigned to the work, heaving with his heavy, steel-shod peavey, putting the strength of his shoulder and back muscles into it, loosening the grip of the ice, sending the big trunk rolling down to the bouldered beach. He worked forward from the rear of the huge stack to the rivermost log and paused for a moment to wipe the sweat from his eyes. The river was breaking up. Brown water showed in widening channels amid the gray ice which the great balks helped to crush. He looked down from the combined height of rollway and steep bank and instantly the fear possessed him from head to foot, with paralysis of nerves, with overwhelming nausea and giddiness. Instinctively he thrust the shoe of his peavey deep into the bark and clung to the pole, his head bowed, shivering, bathed in clammy sweat, the strength out of him.

The man beside him saw him sway, sprang forward, boot-calks sinking in the logs, giving him secure footing, catching Fleming's shoulder in the grip of his strong fingers, holding him, easing him down till he lay on the top of the stack, writhing, groaning in agony of spirit. The Thing, its dastardly end accomplished, was retreating, skulking off.

"You sick, buddy?" asked the man with rough but ready sympathy.

"I guess I am," muttered Fleming. "I'll have to get off of here."

He refused assistance, clambering down hazardously, his face haggard, gray with his experience. The busy, alert foreman was close by.

"Hurt?" he asked crisply. He needed all his men. The river was going out, the logs had to be got into the water.

"I got a spell of dizziness up there," said Fleming dully. "I'll be all right in a minute. It happens to me sometimes."

The boss looked at him sharply, but without suspicion of the real cause.

"Bilious, I reckon," was his verdict. "I git that way myself at times. It'll work off. Soon's you can, roll them loose logs inter the stream. She's breakin' up fast. We'll lose high water, first thing you know. Better not go on the ways again."

Fleming nodded, went to work. The fear had passed, but the memory, the shame of it, were still vivid. The incident did not pass undiscussed. He was known as a good man. Little things make up the riverman's talk. He overheard one verdict that seemed to be generally accepted.

"Touch of that damn gas, I reckon. He got it good, they say. Got a "Craw dee Gare" on top of it. Much good thet does a man."

That shamed him too. But he did not contradict it. The rollways were broken out, the drive started. The logs reached the sawmill boom down river and he was paid off. He did not join in the general celebration. His turkey was packed and he took the first train out for Boston, then New York.

Two weeks later he was on the Pacific Coast. A week more and he was in Washington, the last stand of Big Timber. He was through with the pineries. Now it was Douglas fir, giants of first growth, with some cedar and hemlock.

He applied at an agency. The agent asked him swift questions, surveying his strong, supple figure, his hands, with quick appreciative appraisal; using terms unfamiliar, though he guessed their meaning.

"You ain't a high-rigger? I could land you pretty. What are you? Hook-tender, chaser, choker setter? You don't look like a fireman, or a donkey puncher. I can use any of 'em. Fallers, buckers and swampers."

"I'm a good axman or sawyer. I'll take a swamper's job if I can't get anything else."

"Axman! Fallers we call 'em out here. You come from Maine? You'll find things run different here. All right. Six a day and found. Good chow. First class camp. Radio in the bunkhouse. Ten dollars fee in advance. There's your receipt. Show it to me in the morning. Meet me at the depot. You go out tomorrow morning with a crew to Olympia. Ship in from there. Now then, next man."

ii

LOUISE WOOD— her real name was Alice Louise, she told Fleming— was the daughter of the manager of the Company's store. She was an out-of-doors girl, a woodswoman, slender but athletic, bronze-haired and gray-eyed, intensely interested in the life and activities of the Camp, knowing so much about its workings that Fleming was amazed at her. Aside from the girls he had met during the preparations for his going overseas, the ones he had met in France, most of those that Fleming had known had been backwoods types, or the hybrid women of the rivertowns.

Alouise was different, mentally alert, up-to-date. At first he hardly knew what she looked like. He was normal enough, not shy, but the Thing had created within him an inhibition that kept him away from intimacy with the opposite sex. Suppose a girl he cared for should discover him a coward?

Probably he would hardly have spoken to her, since she did not wait upon the men, had not her father been an old white water wanigan man of Maine and Northern Pennsylvania. He recognized Fleming as akin in race and spirit and made him welcome, spinning old yarns to which Fleming listened patiently enough, gradually coming out of his shell at the girl's frank friendship.

The first thing he knew he realized that he was in love with her— and that she liked him. He took her to the dances at the cross-roads and their acquaintanceship ripened.

He was not without rivals, plenty of them. None serious until "Spider" Reeves appeared upon the scene.

There was nothing derogatory about the nickname. It was chosen not because of his personal appearance but because of his occupation. Spider was a high-rigger, a hero in his way, handsome and debonair, as became his calling. He had an infectious gaiety, a devil-may-care swagger, a ready twinkle in his brown eyes, a way of wearing his well-cut clothes that caught the feminine eye—and held it. Beside him Fleming felt a serious, almost clumsy clown at times, when Reeves sang the latest songs or showed Alouise the newest steps.

It was a new world Fleming was in, lumberman born and bred though he was, and its unfamiliarity at first estranged him.

Here were no rushing streams with white-water rapids, no jams, no wanigan crew or shanty men, no ice, snow only in January and that not enough to stop operations. There was no birling of logs, no riding of them, no clearing up the banks after the first rush of the drive with the picked 'rear' outfit, laughing at mishaps, racing each other while the bateaux darted here and there to keep the logs moving.

All was mechanical, or nearly so. Once they built skidroads on the Pacific Coast, corduroyed them with small logs and the bull teams— twenty-yoke of patient oxen— tolled the timber down them. Then came donkey engines and cables to supplant the oxen and the bullwhacker vanished from the skidways. Now they built a standard gauge railroad into the new area, taking in six-drummed donkey engines especially designed by mechanical engineers to move the big timbers over the rough lands of the Douglas fir forests. The old ground-lead system was done away with, where, no matter how swampers cleared roads or snipers shaped the butts like sled-runners, the logs would hang up and cables snap, with loss of life and time. High-lead logging was the order of the new day and the lumberjacks became timber mechanics.

There were still fallers and sawyers but drag and link-saws run by machinery, working vertically and horizontally, threatened to oust these.

The men had to have a knowledge of rigging, of mechanics. There were rail-road crews, graders, bridge-builders track-layers and operating crews. Blacksmiths and donkey and doctors and punchers. Specialists everywhere, hookmen, high-riggers, choker setters and firemen. Of the old-timers there remained the swampers and snipers, woodbucks and loaders, whistle punks to signal the action of the cable, filers, the bull cook and his flunkeys,

Efficiency and speed, aided by machinery. Electricity and gasoline for motive power. A radio in the bunkhouse, a garage for the men's own cars that carried them to the cross-roads dances. Bath-houses, a laundry, a drying room. Five hundred men in camp, married many of them, family cottages, a school and the store. The men worked only eight hours a day. The old rallies, the fight from early dawn until after dark to get the drive going, to use the ice while it lasted for the sledding, and beat the thaws; all were gone. The timberjacks shaved, bathed and dressed in store clothes after hours. There was no mote singing of chanteys while steaming clothes hung on poles about the blazing fire, clothes wet from a dozen immersions where life was risked in the icy torrent among charging timbers; no legends told of Timber Spooks and Wood Demons, of great achievements in dam breaking or riding rapids. Those who stayed in the bunkhouse played rummy while the phonograph ground out Broadway ballads and foxtrots. The latest films were shown twice a week. There was a surgery and an emergency hospital.

The glamor of the pine woods logging was missing, the burly rivermen, red- shirted or mackinawed, poling and peaveying, breaking out the rollways or the key-log of a jam, the fights and feasts; all that was like a dream. Salt pork and beans, sourdough bread and molasses were replaced by a menu that included fresh salmon and green peas.

No more reunions at the sawmill towns, sorting of logs, the revelry that followed the pay-off, the wrestling, the often brutal settlements of physical supremacy. No more calked boots and stagged pants. The timberjacks wore one piece overalls, like garagemen.

There was one mill in the state, Alouise told him, that produced half a million feet of fir lumber for every eight hours its headsaws ran. The mammoth bull donkey engines— wood yarders— weighed thirty tons, handling steel cables nineteen hundred feet in length, one eighth of an inch short of two in thickness, hauling in logs at a speed of four hundred and forty feet a minute. The handlers had to know how to splice wire rope.

It was Alouise who helped Fleming to adapt himself. While her father lamented the old days of Bangor, of Saginaw, of runs on the Kennebec, the girl, with all the details of modern Jogging clear in her mind, talked of new methods with his new assistant. He did not know that she admired his gravity, his determination to go ahead, to master all the branches of the business. She was human enough, she liked to dance, to ride, to swim, to talk nonsense, but she was modern, energetic, womanly, but eager to accomplish something worth while. If she married a man it would be as partner-mate rather than housewife, though she kept house for her father.

As Fleming became adjusted some measure of glamor returned. The big up-to-date way of handling the lumber got into his spirit. He admired its efficiency and began to see his way to become a more important part of it than the mere swinger of an ax. He commenced to use brain as well as brawn, applying what he had book- learned, watching, questioning, taking up
courses more directly connected with the business. There -were many things to learn and he wanted a general mastery, but he had to take what practical opportunities came along.

From one man, born. on the eastern slope, who took a notion to him, he learned the mechanics of block and tackle, lifts and leverages. He studied knots and splices as eagerly as an advanced boy-scout and became acquainted with the principles of rigging the lead cables and overheads that upheld the heavy butts and sent them along without drag.

There were the trees. The love of them was ingrained in him. It had made a lumberman of him in the first place. Sometimes, he fancied, the affinity might go back to the time of the Younger World, when he had acquired the fear that now never came to him, even in dreams. Those were held by Alouise.

They rode together through the forests, amid the enormous firs that towered on the slopes. There was inspiration among these giants though they were set to slay them, to bring them toppling down. But this was for the housing of men and his employments, the advancement of the age. They were no longer in the Younger World. Government reserving, wise timber men replanting. The ultimate mission of these trees must have been designed for their present purposes. Among the enormous trunks man's most powerful and ingenious machinery labored to an appointed end.

There were firs that towered three hundred feet, twelve feet in diameter at the stately pillar's base. Once chosen firs had furnished masts where the wind filled sails to waft the commerce of the world, to speed discoverers. The song of the sea was in their crowns. There was timber centuries old before Columbus sighted Watling Island. Now sail had gone and steam was passing, electricity was being harnessed from the waters that once ran to waste. All was advancement. And they, as they talked about it, idling their mounts through the aisles where the sun slanted, were part of it, one with it.

From the standpoint of romance the high-rigger was easily the outstanding figure. Reeves, with his likable swagger, his steady head and brave heart, spurred and belted, climbing with saw and ax up a straight shaft a hundred and fifty feet to rig a "high-lead spar," was a picturesque sight.

The high-rigger came to the area as soon as the logging railroad was completed and the great donkey engines sledded under their own power to their settings. At each of these big trees were selected by the foremen, left by the fellers. Gallant sights were Reeves and his fellows, carefree as steeple-jacks, spurred like game-cocks, with a climbing rope attached to a linesman's belt, circling the tree, hitched up as the climb progressed, trimming the tapering column as they went.

High up, seemingly no larger than a woodpecker, Spider worked to forty feet or so of the top, chopped an undercut, sawed through, and then braced himself as the crown of timber and limbs and foliage swung out and went crashing down while the lopped tree swung in vast circles as he clung, riding it as a puncher forks a bucking bronco, swinging to its gyrations; nothing to hold him but spurs, a taut rope and leather belt, his muscle and his nerve. If he should be shaken loose, even if the rope caught, he might hang head-down, with a snapped spine. It happened. Insurance companies did not hunt for premiums from high-riggers.

Fleming, leaning for a breathing space upon his ax, watched Spider in fascinated admiration. But the sweat turned cold on his body as he watched, knowing what would happen to him if he dared such an ascent.

Or would it? It sometimes seemed to him as if his love for Alouise had exorcised the Thing. He remembered his talk with the doctor. If some all powerful emotion or ambition could stimulate him sufficiently to offset the immediate attack, allow him to summon his will, rally his reasoning faculties, it might vanish. He had both these things now.

When the term commenced and Alouise began to teach in the little school, he had idle hours in which he used to test himself. If he could climb, gaze down— but he must not do that at first. He got a belt and rope and spurs and, in some place where he would not be overlooked, he made his first timorous essays.

The trunk soared skyward above him to what seemed an unbiddable height. Fleming tested his rope and belt, clasped the trunk, set in his spurs and lifted himself, hitching up the circling cord and leaning back a little. It was much the way a South Sea Islander goes after coconuts. He made steady progress for twenty feet, then stopped, as he would to lop off a limb. There were none this low down, Presently he went on. Ten feet more. Then, for the first time in his attempts, he looked down.

Instantly the ground seemed to heave like the sea in a groundswell, the solid trunk to rock. He went faint at the pit of his stomach and vertigo attacked him. He fought it off, with a vision of Alouise. He dug in his spurs and held on, until the dizziness passed, reluctantly, sullenly, and the thwarted Thing within him sulked in temporary defeat.

Fleming gritted his teeth, set his jaw and went on to where a limb impeded progress. He did not look down again. Next time for that. Descent was not easy. He had not the trained agility of Reeves, clear as a gymnast. But he touched ground and stood against the trunk, still in his harness, his head against the bark, moist with effort and the clammy ooze of glandular excretion from sheer terror. He put up a little prayer in that moment, of thankfulness, of humility, of hope and petition.

Little by little he fought it out. It was his battleground, a tree trunk; the Armageddon of his spirit, and the trials were very real. He was gaining ground. The tests were not decisive. He made the offensive, expecting encounter, it did not come unexpectedly upon him. But he was winning. He had not spoken to Alouise about it. He feared her shrinking from him, knowing her own resolute way of facing things, her abhorrence of cowardice. She had wormed out of him something of his record in the war and shown herself proud of it. If he conquered, then he could tell her. The defeated fear would be a trophy. She would understand. She wanted a man to be strong in every way. She frankly admired the daring of Reeves. Reeves, inclined to be a will o' the wisp in love, sought out by other girls, attached himself to Alouise.

There were occasions when Fleming might have spoken, if he had not been obsessed by his weakness, times when he fancied Alouise gave him the opportunity, even made it, and wondered why he did not respond. After these she openly favored Reeves, only to check him if he showed signs of appropriation.

The trees nearest the railroad were logged off, the yarders moved back into the woods, a loading engine taking the trunks to the loader. Its track ran close to the spar tree, two great blocks on loadlines directly over the center of the car in use. Two lines were used, each with huge tongs. A pair of these gripped the front end of a log and yanked it free of the pile. The tongs of the other set lifted the other end and the balk swung parallel to the car, the top loader signalling and the loading engineer lowering the log into place.

Back farther the last wedge was sledged home in a fir that was all of seven centuries old, a towering column of three hundred feet. It came down thundering, shaking the ground as it leaped as if in a final agony, the buckers swarmed upon it and sawed it into lengths of twenty-four to eight feet, bridge timbers and plank material, marked off for them by a scaler. The butt logs measured full twelve feet about the bark.

The hook tender swung his choker setters to a big log, the rigging was pulled down from the haulback line, the choker cable girdled the timber. A whistle punk pulled on his wire, a distant electric whistle tooted shrilly and the log moved in a slow roll, its nose lifting as it crashed down the line while the choker setters swabbed their foreheads and thrust a fresh "chew" into their lean jaws, waiting for the next set of rigging to come along. The monarch was down, its forest life ended, its real usefulness begun.

Spider was to rig a spar. There was more to it than the topping. After that he must reclimb with a light line and small block and, with helpers and the aid of a donkey engine— not a yarder— rig the guy-line and blocks. First the high lead block through which the main hauling line must pass, a shapen mass of wood and metal weighing fifteen hundred pounds, to be suspended a hundred and fifty feet from the ground, as high as possible for the maximum effect of the drag. Then a second block for the lead of the haulback cable. Sometimes smaller blocks for the rigging of loading lines.

The spar tree itself was stoutly guyed with heavy steel cables before the heavy blocks were hung, before the yarding, roading and loading engines came to their carefully appointed places. The last were mounted on sled runners of hewn logs and hauled into position. All in all it was an important operation.

"But Spider was the central figure, watched as he climbed, watched as he yelled warning and the lookers on scattered before the top came rushing down, watched as he swung in dizzy circles, as he took up the light line, helped rig the big blocks and at the last came to earth, usually sliding down a cable as a sailor descends halyards, a smile on his face and a light in his eyes, running his fingers through his curly hair and singing.

iii

IT WAS Sunday afternoon. Fleming called at the store, which had dwelling rooms attached, and found Reeves ahead of him. Spider made a face at him, sufficiently friendly, but the look of a rival. The two men got along well enough though their temperaments differed.

"Alouise tells me she promised to go with you for a walk," he said. "You've got to take me along. Starting a new setting tomorrow and I've got to rig a spar. Never can tell what might happen. So you can't shake me. You can choose your own way but I'm tagging. You haven't got the heart to say no, neither of you. Suppose poor Spider gets a ride?"

"Don't," said Alouise. "Do you want to spoil our afternoon? You've never had an accident."

"Tm clever, that's why. But I've had a sort of hunch that I'm overdue, just the same," he added soberly. "Do I get a bid, or do I just naturally crash the gate?"

The girl looked demurely at Fleming.

"Its John's party," she said.

For a moment Fleming rebelled. He wanted Alouise to himself, he believed she would prefer it. He knew what Reeves would do in his place. Make some quick excuse, say something witty but eminently to the point that would make Fleming feel out of it, force his hand for withdrawal. He had the right of way. He glanced at Reeves and Spider grinned at him.

"Not afraid of me, are you?"

The girl flushed. Fleming tried to speak off-handedly.

"Not yet. Glad to have you along, of course."

"Of course. Come on, we'll chirrup to the birdies, pick the pretty flowers. Take along some ice-cream and candy and guzzle it. Make a peaceful picnic of it. How about Rocky Glen?'

The girl had once said she wanted to go there and Fleming knew that Reeves remembered it. He was always scoring small points. Fleming had meant to suggest it himself. He saw her face light up and acquiesced,

It was not far, a- gorge between the steeper slopes where the trees did not find congenial soil, save for dwarf growth. There were bushes there with scrub oaks, birch ash and aspen and sumach. Berries. Flowers. A small cascade at the head, falling to a streamlet, Reeves insisted upon walking.

"I've got to climb all day tomorrow," he said, "Let me tread the good old earth while I can. Listen, Alouise, tomorrow's Armistice Day. You get a holiday. We poor timber mechanics have got to labor. Contracts are contracts. What is the mere memory of past glory? Fleming won't get a chance to wear his croix de guerre and I, a 'umble ranker, as the Tommies say, can't sit around and swap yarns of how we licked the Boches."

"You didn't tell me you had a decoration," said Alouise to Fleming.

"More chump he. Ee's a bloomin' 'ero. I saw the cross in his turkey bag. Made him tell the gang all about it. It wasn't much. I can climb trees but Fleming there climbed into cosy little machine-gun nests and chased out the Heines. Wouldn't think it to look at him, would you?"

Fleming laughed it off. Reeves was generous enough, but somehow gave the effect, to Fleming, of having deliberately underrated his own prowess. He thought the girl fancied so, too.

They picnicked in the shadow of big rocks at the foot of the cascade, Reeves keeping them in merry mood, telling of his escapades during the war that he seemed to have treated only as a medium for escaping onerous duty. Once in a while he told a story with a thrill to it, always related in the third person, with a laughing denial that he had anything to do with it that enhanced the suggestion of concealment. He made Fleming tell how he won the Cross, and the story came lamely enough.

"I'm not a hero," Fleming said.

"Tosh! Likewise spoofing. We'll prove it. We are in the trenches. Zero hour approaches. See that bush up there, covered with flowers? Those are plumes in the helmet of a Prussian officer, make him a general. Trophies for the applauding fair. I'll race you for 'em."

Fleming looked hard at him. Reeves laughed back.

"No wager on it, old scout. We're not breaking lances. Come on."

The bush was two thirds of the way up the steep side of the glen. Not so hard a climb. It was not like going to the top of a cliff, looking down.

Alouise was looking on. She wanted the flowers, had said mere so. But he had a sense of being trapped, of imminent disaster. The Thing seemed to stir within him. He willed it down.

"Come on," he said. "Alouise, you start us."

They were off, clambering in short rushes, catching at bushes, scrambling over rocks, evenly matched, both in top condition, making for the goal. Slowly Fleming began to forge ahead. He was winning. Reeves had held the spotlight all the afternoon. This time—

He was within fifty feet of the flowers when the dirt gave way under his feet. He clutched at a bush and it came out by the roots. He dug the toes of his shoes, his knees and fingers into the shallow soil, slid to rock, weathered and treacherous. His legs shot into space. He was falling— falling!

One hand caught in a crevice and he was braked, drawing up his feet, twisting over on his back. He lost his grip and went slithering down, sidewise. The rock sheered off abruptly and he looked into space, far down to the brawling little torrent.

The Thing had him! He flung out arms and legs, but there was no strength in him. Waves of vertigo and faintness assailed him. He sprawled, slipping, slipping. In a moment he was going to fall. Black horror enveloped him—

He came really to himself at the foot of the falls again, vaguely conscious that Reeves had rescued him. He was lying on some turf, the girl wetting his forehead with her handkerchief. He would not open his eyes. Shame seared him. He heard Reeves talking.

"He isn't hurt. No bones broken. Hardly scratched. I got him just as he was going over. Might have rolled clean to the bottom. He'd fainted. Hanged if I don't believe he funked it. By Jimminy, we didn't get the flowers, at that! Back in a jiffy."

Reeves was going up the cliff again. It was no use shamming. He looked up.

He might have misread the look in her eyes, but he was miserable.

"I heard what Spider said. He's right. I funked it. I told you I wasn't a hero, Alouise. I'm a coward."

She was puzzled, grieved. He did not look at her again.

"He'll get your flowers for you," he said. "I'll be getting along."

She said nothing as he went, looking after him with the same perplexed, hurt gaze,

He had failed— failed! The Thing was his master. Failed before her and before Reeves, who had known that he had been frightened. He remembered now scraps of Reeves' talk in the descent, soothing, reassuring, condescending, as if to a terrified child.

This was the end of it all. Love and ambition. They had not aided him. He went back in utter humiliation, did not appear at supper, crawled into his bunk and lay there. Reeves came in late, chaffing the crowd.

"Anyone seen Fleming?" he asked. But he did not come over to the bunk. They had talked him over, Alouise and Reeves. They despised him.

He tried to get his time next morning. His foreman referred him to the superintendent, busy, harassed.

"Nothing doing, Fleming. Were behind time on contracts. You're not sick?"

"No, sir."

"When you signed on you agreed to give ten days notice or forfeit two weeks pay, outside of illness or accident. We have to make our agreements that way. We have our own to fulfil, under penalty. Your pay check is due in eight days, anyway. You can give notice if you want to— quit."

He put a sting in the last word that pricked Fleming's pride, numb as it was. He had forgotten the clause in the agreement. It was fair enough.

"You're a good man, Fleming. Got good reports about you. You ought to go up in this business. Studying I hear, asking questions. Don't be a fool. Think it over. I'll admit we need you."

That was some salve. Reeves would not gossip, he was sure. The girl was out of his life but— He hesitated for a minute and, as the superintendent turned to the field phone, walked out and got his ax.

The irony of fate detailed him to help with the spar crew. They needed expert axmen to trim stumps, undercut them so the steel cable guys could be anchored to them. The work was not arduous. For a while he stood idle. Spider was getting ready to climb the tree, laughing and exchanging badinage. If his hunch of being "overdue" persisted, he failed to show it.

Standing apart, Fleming saw Alouise come to the setting with her father. There had been some brief exercises at the school and then it was dismissed. The rigging of the spar was something worth watching, Reeves the principal actor. He did not look toward her. Reeves chatted with her, warned her back, showed her where the top would fall.

"It'll bounce and shiver its timbers," he said. "Get in the clear. Here's where the Spider gets busy."

He waved his hand, ran to the tree, jumped at it and clung, four feet up, be- fore he began to climb with extraordinary speed, wielding ax and saw as he disposed of the lower limbs.

"Looks like Spider was out fer a record," said a swamper. "Made a bet likely."

"Bet a kiss with Wood's gal. He's sparkin' her. He's showin' off."

"Best high-rigger in camp."

"Watch him climb."

Reeves' actions were so smooth and coordinate, his muscles flowed with such lack of apparent effort that the usual jerky, inchworm manner of the high-rigger was missing. He went up the tree with the suppleness of a panther. As he lopped or sawed off the lower limbs he leaned back to the limit of his circle cord and the slack of his belt, spurs deep; seeming to stand braced backwards while he plied his tools, leaving the spar trim. This exercise rested his climbing muscles and, the moment the trimming was ended, he swung ax or saw to his belt again, the sun shining on their gleaming metal, and started up once more.-

At a hundred feet he waved his hand again, taking his scarlet neckerchief to use as a banner, This was not bravado but a special salute for the benefit of Alouise, who stood watching him. She had looked, too, for Fleming, but he took care she should not see him. The night had brought counsel to Alouise. Fleming could not be the self-styled coward he proclaimed him- self unless he had never earned that croix de guerre. Reeves had suggested that, but the girl's good sense could not reconcile that idea with the fact that he had never mentioned it.

"Might have been caught off base with it some time," said Reeves. "Or— I'll bet you this is the solution. He got shell-shocked, that's why he funks in a pinch. Lost his nerve. It's a rotten shame."

His sympathy was word-shallow. The girl's went deeper. She had come close to loving Fleming, she was not sure that she did not love him for all the frailty that she had claimed to despise in any man. A tenderness leavened her thoughts of him. His other qualities took on their normal rating.

She resolved before the day was over to seek him out, to try and get his confidence. Why couldn't he have been more like Reeves, death-daring, reckless, climbing until he was only a miniature figure on a long pole, the strokes of his ax coming down to them faintly?

She wasn't in love with Spider, her woman's instinct told her that he was unstable as water, uncertain as the wind. But the sight of that gallant figure appealed to other feminine instincts in her, awakening to the sight of a man excelling in strength, taking grave risks with a light in his eyes and a smile on his lips.

Reeves' bandanna caught on the snag of an untrimmed limb, that jerked it from the light grasp he had upon it. It came fluttering down, scarlet in the sun.

"Thet's sure bad luck," said the swamper near Fleming. "Fer a high- rigger to lose anything while he's climbin', thet's the worst kind of a hoodoo. Allus works,"

"Aw, what's a handkerchief? If it was his ax or his saw, now."

"You wait an' see. It allus works, I tell ye. Means his mind ain't on the job. Thinking of the gel instead of the tree."

"You talk like an old woman. He's up to his mark now, starting to undercut." The tiny figure had lost individuality.

As it swung the ax it looked like a marionette.

They could see the blows fall, the dull sound of the chop coming afterward, then the bright chips sailing down, clean cut as a knife whittling. Reeves had to score deep to ensure the proper fall of the top when he sawed-in opposite his cut. He had to judge every blow to a nicety; to gauge the wind, the symmetry of the twisted the crown, things instinctive enough to any experienced feller but assuming an acuter problem when tackled a hundred and fifty feet from the ground. The top would fall before he had sawed clean through, it would leave more or less of a nub that Spider, with due pride in turning out a perfect job, would clear away before he went down for his light block and tackle.

The little crowd of spectators and workers stepped back out of danger. Wood drew his daughter into standing timber. A falling top had vagaries, it was apt to spin; breaking boughs, sharp as javelins, might be flung in any direction, in a dozen.

Reeves finished with his ax, poured kerosene on his saw from the phial he carried and set to work; rhythmical, expert, swinging from side to side with his stroke, as easily as a sailor hauled to a masthead in a bosun's chair for scraping and slushing. His body strained back to the limit to permit of the free play of the saw, his knees rode the trunk, his spurs were sunk in the bark. His head was on one side, watching, listening for the first creak that would tell him the top was going. The wind was a bit gusty and that was a handicap. And he was bothered too with the loss of his kerchief. Someone had picked it up, but the idle jingle of the woods repeated itself to him:

Look out when you climb the highlead rig

If you lose the little you lose the big.

Silly stuff, all of it, the effort of a would-be woods poet who thought more of his rhymes than actual meaning. There were a lot of couplets to fit every job, ax rhyming with backs and hope with rope; just nonsense, but he couldn't get it out of his head. His sawing timed itself to it.

He wished he hadn't lost that silk bandanna. Marred his performance—a clumsy trick like that.

Ah! The almost severed top groaned, rocked a little. A puff of wind backed it from its intended lurch toward the under-cut, then released it. It was going. Now he had to ride, to spin, hanging on with all his skill and strength. There she went!

Below, they saw the top teeter, start to fall, hang for a split pulse-beat and then seem to twist, to wrench itself free and come hurtling down. They saw, too, as the beheaded trunk started its wild circlings that something had gone wrong; some flaw of the fir, some trick of the wind had

The trunk had split with swift and irresistible, unreckoned force. It flung Reeves off, breaking hand grip and spurhold, flung him backward with vicious suddenness. It had loosened the taut girdle of his rope and, as some men shouted and began to run toward the tree, as a girl screamed, his limp body, head down, began to slip. The rope circle had been big enough to clasp the fir at the base; now, unless the bark held it, or some projection of a lopped branch caught it, he might fall, to bring up with a jerk that would break his back— or might snap the cord.

Some shouted, more held their breath, gasping with relief when the cord braked, held, leaving the helpless figure hanging.

"Must hev cracked his skull agen the trunk when she split," said the swamper as the superintendent hurried forward.

"He's out," the super cried. "Who'll go up and get him down? Take up a line and block and put a bight round him, we'll lower him. Come on now."

No one came forward, An assistant rigger muttered something about a "hoodooed tree." Someone suggested sending for Hansen, another high-rigger, but he was at a distant setting.

"He's liable to die before we get him," said the super. "Hanging the way he is, with a cracked skull, maybe. Hasn't anyone here got the guts to tackle it?"

Alouise stood by with clasped hands, looking up at the limp figure. The tree still quivered. It had avenged indignity.

The men looked at each other. Few of them were climbers, most of them touched with superstition at the catastrophe.

"I'll go up."

The super wheeled to face Fleming, standing with set face, his jaws clamped until the muscles stood out upon it, his eyes luminous with purpose.

"Can you climb?"

The girl ran forward.

"You?" she gasped. "No—"

"He saved my life yesterday," answered Fleming. "I can climb. I've got an outfit at the bunkhouse."

"Where's your belt and spurs?" the super demanded of the assistant-rigger.

"I don't tote em when Reeves is on the job," said the man sullenly. "What's more, I'm married. I've got a wife and kids to think of."

The super turned from him impatiently. The bunkhouse was half a mile from this setting. He looked for a messenger, holding Fleming back.

"You'll need your wind," he said.

"I'll go." The girl was off at racing speed, running like a doe, light and swift of foot. She reached the bunkhouse, breathing fast but unspent, demanding of the flunkey leisurely sweeping out the place where Fleming kept his things. The man pointed to a wide shelf where the turkey bags were piled, marked with names or initials.

She found Fleming's while he fumbled, and ransacked it, gathering up belt and spurs, the stout length of cord with its spliced in snaphooks.

A leather case fell to the floor, opening as it fell. The flunkey picked it up.

"Fleming's craw-de-gare," he said. "Got his name on it. What's up, Miss?"

She did not answer him, but snatched the case from him and thrust it inside her blouse, leaving him stupidly scratching his head. Back she sped, sprinting at the last while Fleming ran to meet her and buckled on the outfit, the superintendent helping with the spurs.

"Are you sure?" she asked him. "I found your cross, John. Your name's on it. For bravery. You are brave, but—"

Her father caught her away.

"You're hinderin' things, Al," he said. "You've done your bit. Let him be."

Fleming read the message in her eyes. She loved him. She would have told him so, even then, let him know that she loved him whether he went or not, beseeching him not to attempt a fatal risk. Light flamed in his own eyes. Once more he was taking the offensive. He was going to win. Forces were rallying within him, Love, and the ambitions it had strengthened.

They gave him the line for attaching the block, the light pulley and the rope, attaching them carefully, escorting him to the tree. It was still now, quiescent.

It was a straight climb. He told himself he would not look down, not that he must not. His spirit was flaming high. He felt the play of his muscles as he climbed, thankful for his tests and the experience they had given him in hitching the rope, for the lessons he had taken in rope-work. He was no high-rigger, probably never would be. That job was only a specialists in the big business he meant to master— was going to master— an accessory and aid, like the pilot to a ship. But he could climb, he could fasten the block securely, using the split to help wedge the hitches, and he could reeve through the long rope. Some one had given him a hand ax that he thrust into his belt.

Up he went, stopping to rest a moment now and then, leaning back. He knew that Alouise, with a prayer on her lips, was watching him, his cross over her heart that throbbed for his peril.

Up until he could see the face of Reeves, blotched from the blood that had run into it, smeared with wet crimson on the forehead, the body limp as a partly filled sack, the limbs loose. He would have to go carefully, when he reached it, to fasten his pulley in place.

The Thing that had seemed to be cowed, made its sortie when he was within a dozen feet of Reeves. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead, trickling into his eyes. He wanted to vomit, the tree seemed to spin. But he fought it off. He had expected it, he was ready for it. It was only material fear, a weakness of the body. His will was master.

There came a cheer from below, faint but heartening, as he started on again. It flushed his blood into fresh circulation, recharged his nerves. Again the sound rose up.

He was up to Reeves now and then the supreme test came. His own body cord was unable to pass the other until he undid its snaps, putting it about the tree above Reeves'. Fleming clamped hard with his knees, drove his spurs deep, caught with one hand at the taut rope that supported Spider, got it clear— and then he was past. The block and long rope were free, its ground end carefully tended by the superintendent. He kept his eyes on the split, creeping up by inches.

He wrapped the loose rope in figure eights about the forking break, made fast, attached the pulley, reeved through the rope end, attached his ax to it for a weight and sent it gliding down, as the hurrahs came up to him. `

His head was clear, the nausea was past. Exaltation flooded him. The Thing was downed. It had vanished, fled in ignominious defeat, the unfair heritage exorcised by his spirit. Never to come back. He knew that, even as he had known fear behind him when he charged the machine-gun nests at the head of his little squad.

He looked down. He saw the group of men, bodies dwarfed, squatty from the perspective, their faces turned upward, tiny spots of white. He saw Alouise, and he waved his hand.

He was not through yet. It was no easy task properly to fasten the bight about Reeves, securing it to his belt, to hold the senseless body while he unsnapped the body cord. But it was done at last and he gave the signal. Men tailed on the rope, easing down their burden.

Fleming leaned back. He was tired with his supreme efforts but he was jubilant. There was new strength and purpose in him. Again he looked down to see Alouise waving her scarf at him. The rope came up to him with a loop in it, into which he stepped.

The solid earth felt good to him. A litter had been fetched and Reeves was already being borne to the hospital. The doctor had pronounced him stunned. He would recover, rig spars again perhaps.

Men surrounded Fleming, shaking his hand, clapping him on the back. Then they stood back, for Alouise. Her eyes were glowing softly through happy tears. Her hands sought his breast, pinned something there.

"Its Armistice Day," she said with a break in her voice. "You ought to wear this. There is no cross for what you've done, but you "

Fleming claimed his reward, given freely, for all the lookers on.

The super had sent for Hansen. Another tree had been chosen. Hansen stood ready, phlegmatic, unexcited by the accident. The work had to go on.

"I don't suppose you want to go up again, Fleming?" asked the super, with a smile.

"I don't think I'd want it as a regular job," said Fleming.

"I've got a better one for you. You're all of a man. Come to my office in the morning. You'd better take the rest of the day off. Come on, boys, let's get busy."

______________

9: The Man With the Mole

Detective Story, 10 Dec 1918

In the world of American pulp magazines, this is a "complete novel", although it is just 24,000 words. In the rest of the publishing world it is a novelette; anything less than around 45-50,000 words is too short to be a novel.

1: Forgery

DAZEDLY JACK SPERRY stared at the pink slip in his hand. He turned it from the front, where his stepfather's clear signature— Simeon Cairns— appeared as drafter of a check for ten thousand dollars, to the back, where showed the endorsement of John J. Sperry in handwriting so like his own that it staggered him. The check was payable to the same John J. Sperry.

The three men grouped on the side of the desk opposite to him gazed at him uncompromisingly. The one in the central chair, Simeon Cairns himself, spoke.

"That is your signature on the back of the check, is it not?"

The aggressiveness of the tone brought Sperry a little to his senses.

"It looks very much like my writing, sir. But it cannot be. I have not endorsed any check of yours for any such amount ; none at all since the last payment of my allowance."

"Indeed? This is a check bearing my name, bearing a number considerably in advance of the last issued by me. I find it has been torn from the back pages of my check book, kept by me in the drawer of this desk, as you are well aware. You know this gentleman, Mr. Hilliard, president of the Agricultural National, of Longfield, and Mr. Burnside, cashier of the same institution." The speaker looked expectantly at the bank president.

"This check," said Hilliard in a dry, commercial voice," was presented to our junior paying teller, Mr. Remington, yesterday morning by this young man. He is well known to Remington and to the rest of us, as your stepson. No question was raised of identity, or of the authenticity of your signature, or of the amount of the check. Your stepson intimated to Remington that he was going into business on his own account, and that this sum had been advanced, or presented to him, as his working capital. A majority portion of it was to go toward a partnership, I understand."

Sperry gasped and then broke into expostulation. Cairns interrupted him.

"You shall have your say in a moment. Go on, Mr. Hillard."

"There is little more to say. The cash was paid out, as desired. Ordinarily the irregularity would not have been noticed for another twenty-four hours had you not requested the exact amount of your balance early this afternoon, Mr. Cairns. Upon your declaration that this check must be a forgery, we came up to see you immediately after closing hours. I understand you do repudiate this signature?"

"It is cleverly done, but it is not mine," said Cairns.

"Naturally the bank does not feel inclined to sustain this loss. We are compelled to protect ourselves, to guard ourselves against such attacks. We are, however, inclined to view the matter with an leniency equal to your own, Mr. Cairns, providing, of course, the money is restored."

"Do you hear that, Jack?" demanded his stepfather. "Restore this money, and, for your mother's sake, as well as for your own "

"But I did not cash that check," said Sperry. "I—"

The cashier's voice struck in, coldly metallic.

"You did cash a check in the bank yesterday?"

"I did. But it was one of my own. I have a balance of two hundred and fifty odd. Wait." He produced his own pocket check book while the others looked on cynically. "My balance is two hundred and sixty-three dollars. I drew a check for twenty-five dollars. There is the stub. Remington gave me two tens and a five. Look for yourselves." He flung the check book on the big library desk. No attempt was made to pick it up.

Burnside went on:

"Your balance is exactly two hundred and eighty-eight dollars. Remington states that you presented only the one check, this signed by Mr. Cairns, and took the money in five one-thousand dollar bills and ten five-hundred dollar bills. I am sorry for you, Sperry, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against you."

Sperry's eyes flashed and he pounded the desk with his fist.

"Do you mean to insinuate that I forged the name of Simeon Cairns and tried to appropriate ten- thousand dollars? Why, there is a hundred thousand dollars held for me in trust by my mother under my father's will."

"And not available until you are thirty, five years from now. Unless, in the meantime, your mother and her advisers become convinced that you are capable of successfully applying the sum to business methods," spoke up Cairns. "And, unfortunately, she is not so convinced. You have been sowing wild oats. Jack, and this is the harvest, my lad. Why didn't you come to me frankly and own up to your entanglement?"

"All that is a lie," cried Sperry. "I am in no entanglement. You have attempted to prejudice my mother against me. You have magnified little things into wild escapades. And you would have been the last person for me to apply to for aid."

"There is no use talking that way, Jack," said Cairns with a shrug of his shoulders. "I am glad your mother is away for the present. The issue is, are you going to restore that money? If so, I will say nothing more of it. Mr. Hilliard has expressed his will toward leniency. If you will not do the honest, repentant thing " He shrugged his shoulders once again.

"I haven't got it!" exclaimed Jack. "I never had it!"

Hilliard got up, Burnside with him.

"We cannot waste time in this matter," said the president. "We are still willing to give twenty-four hours for the return of the ten thousand dollars. If not, we shall be compelled to adopt the usual course. One way or another, the penalty must be paid. Aside from the financial loss we have no real right to countenance crime."

Jack Sperry, feeling like an aniipal that has suddenly found itself in a trap, looked at the three men. They were utterly aloof from him, unsympathetic. It was evident they believed him guilty, that he was in peril of arrest.

"For the sake of Mrs. Cairns, the unhappy boy's mother," Cairns said, "I will make good the loss to the bank. I do not wish a prosecution. If other means fail, I shall send you my check the first thing in the morning."

"Very well," said Hilliard coldly. "That closes the incident. Remington, of course, has been discharged. He should have detected the forgery."

"That hardly seems fair," said Cairns. "It is excellently done. But I suppose discipline must be maintained. I shall see what I can do for the young man. He should not suffer from another's crime."

Hillard and Burnside took their leave formally, Cairns seeing them to the door of his library, while Sperry, boiling with resentment, awaited his return to the desk.

The Cairn's household was a divided one. Jack Sperry's mother had remarried, and Jack had not approved the match, though he did not voice his opinion openly, understanding somewhat -of his mother's nature, essentially feminine, demanding some one upon whqm to lean. He had tried his best to get along with his new relation, but he resented the dominant aggressiveness of Simeon Cairns, disbelieved in his easily assumed suavity, and objected to his assumption of parental authority, his complete reorganization of the household.

Jack Sperry was twenty-five, and his own master; or he would be when fairly launched on his own career. After college he had taken up civil engineering in earnest, serving an apprenticeship with such success that he had been offered a partnership. The capital for this he had looked to, under the terms of his father's will, as mentioned by Hilliard, from his mother. The hundred thousand dollars was his rightful heritage, leaving ample for his mother during her lifetime; an equal sum, in fact, that would supposedly revert to Sperry on her death, being meanwhile excellently invested.

Since Mrs. Sperry had married Cairns, the latter's masterful ways had, by devious methods, blocked Jack's ambitions, or so the latter fully believed. Cairns affected to treat him as a headstrong boy, using a bonhomie that Jack merely believed a cover to his true personality. And his mother, somewhat an invalid of late, seemed more and more inclined to accept as infallible her second husband's wisdom.

More, Cairns had made the most of certain affairs, particularly one in which Jack had aided a fraternity brother to get out of a serious scrape. He had managed to imbue Mrs. Cairns with the idea that her son was still unsuited for the responsibilities of business and the handling of capital. All in all, the two rubbed together no more smoothly than do a coarse file and a rough casting. Jack's mother was wintering in Florida, and the friction between the two had been more open of late. Now had come this astounding accusation, leaving Jack gasping, like a fish in a net, at the meshes of evidence surrounding him.

Cairns came back to the desk with a frown on his face.

"Don't be obstinate, Jack," he said. "If you can't get the money, if you've applied it elsewhere, confess it to me and I'll advance it temporarily."

"You've always hated me," said Sperry. "You have tried to estrange me from my mother ; you have tried to run my affairs as well as hers. This thing is a lie, a trick, and you know it. Somewhere or other you are back of this infernal business!"

"Are you accusing the president and cashier of the Agricultural Bank, together with the paying teller, who has been forced to give up his position ; together with myself, of trying to fasten a crime upon you that will, I sadly fear, break your mother's heart if not jeopardize her health?"

"You leave her name out of it," said Sperry fiercely.

"You forget that she is my wife, the woman I love," said Cairns with a certain dignity. "She cannot be left out of it. If you persist in your denial of this thing I shall restore the money but, after that, I shall wash my hands of it. It is not to be expected that this young— er— Remington will accept his forced loss of a job quietly. There will undoubtedly be publicity. I shall see your mother immediately in order to break the news to her as softly as possible."

"I shall see her first," broke in Sperry.

"I think not," said Cairns softly. "I had a letter from her this morning. She has left the Royal Poinciana and gone— elsewhere. Under the circumstances I do not feel justified in letting you know where that is. I shall wire her tonight of my departure, and I shall see," he went on blandly, "that whatever mail comes for you from her is, temporarily at least, withheld. Since you are resolved to stay hardened, I also remind you that your presence in this house, from this moment, is not to be tolerated."

Sperry glared at him. He believed that his stepfather's eyes were full of mockery and malice.

"You have no right," he cried hotly, "no right to hold my mail! You have no right to throw me out of my mother's house !"

"I think I should not be considered an usurper," answered Cairns. "As for yourself, you have no rights. A felon forfeits such things. Your appeal to the law might prove unfortunate. This is my house. Your mother has made it over to me in exchange for other matters."

A glaring light seemed to break through Sperry's brain, still confused from the charges, the crushing evidence against him.

"And you seek to have me disinherited," he said. "I am on to your crafty game now. It is you who are a criminal, a sneaking—"

Simeon Cairn's usually pallid face flamed crimson. He struck Sperry with his open hand, a resounding blow that left the mark of livid fingers on the latter's cheek.

Beside himself, reeling back, Sperry clutched a heavy inkstand of glass and hurled it at his stepfather. He saw it strike, saw the ink cover Cairn's face and, as the latter fell to the rug, saw crimson well out and mingle with the black of the ink. Cairns lay prone, his eyes staring. Sperry heard footsteps in the hall and realized that their voices had mounted in the rapidly culminating quarrel. "Felon!" The word surged in his brain. Now he was fairly in the mesh of circumstances.

He sprang to the door and encountered Peters, the butler with whom Cairns had supplanted the former functionary, as he had all the original servants. Peters, heavy, inclined to stoutness, grasped for Sperry and the latter drove home a blow with all his weight to the butler's stomach and floored him, breathless, agonized. Snatching his hat and coat from the rack,' Sperry raced out into the gloom of the early evening.

2: Flight

THE Sperry house was in the Berkshires. They had an apartment in New York also, but the Berkshire place, at Swiftbrook Bowl, was kept open usually until Christmas, though Mrs. Cairns had gone South with the first approach of fall. A street railway connected with the manufacturing town of Longfield, which was four hours from New York by the express trains.

As Sperry sped through the dusk, out of the grounds and down the road toward the car line, he saw, dear through the almost naked trees, the headlight of an approaching trolley, and raced to make connection with it, barely accomplishing his end.

In his pocket was the slim remnant of the twenty-five dollars he had drawn from the bank, some six dollars in all. His first intention of seeking his mother and attempting to establish with her his innocence, died away in hopelessness. He could raise a little money on the jewelry he wore, but not nearly enough, even if he knew where she was. His balance in the bank would undoubtedly be appropriated ; at any rate checks would not be honored, and, if he dared to go where he could cash a check, he was in no mind to have them returned "No Funds." It would only add to his apparent dishonesty. Also, it would help them to trace him. By now the butler would have roused the police at Longfield; they would be on the alert, stations would be watched, the very trolley he was on would be searched as soon as the telephones got working!

To-morrow the threatened publicity would contain the additional news that he had murdered his stepfather. He was an outcast, a fugitive. There would be a reward on his head. One faint hope lingered, that he had not killed Cairns. He would know that by the papers. And, if that crime was spared him, he was not going to be caught, already condemned, and be put away without an attempt to establish his innocence.

Remington, the paying teller, had lied. To what end? He had been discharged. And how could he prove the man a liar, how discredit the rest of the damning evidence? Sperry burned to find Remington, to choke the truth out of him. That would mean his own immediate arrest. But there were others back of Remington. Hilliard and Burnside had been takefi in by the evidence. It was Cairns who was at the bottom of all this! Yet Cairns had, undeniably, plenty of money. His balance at the bank was large. Sperry was helpless— practically penniless. And he was an outlaw.

Sperry groaned. Some one, a man he knew, leaned over from the seat back of him and asked him if he was ill.

This would not do. He forced a smile. "Ulcerated tooth," he said. "Got to have it fixed to-morrow."

The man said something commiserating and sat back again.

Sperry forced his wits to work coherently, dispassionately. The attack on Cairns, the forgery, his mother's attitude— he could not help those for the time. He had to get away or he would be irretrievably condemned, branded. If he had only taken his own roadster! But there would not have been time for that. They could have cut him off or traced him.

Swiftbrook Bowl, that fashionable resort, lay closer to New York than Longfield. And there was another station between the Bowl and Longfield.

A plan formed itself.

He swung off at a corner, about a quarter of a mile from this station, Langley Dale, and struck up an unlit side road as the trolley sped away. In half a mile he hit the railroad near a siding and dodged into a thicket. Night had practically fallen and he was safe for the present. Twenty minutes later the express for New York, ignoring Langley Dale, roared past him. Thirty minutes after that a local chugged through, bound in the opposite direction. It reached the station and stayed there for what seemed to Sperry a long time as he watched from his concealment the red tail light.

Perhaps they were searching it for him? Then the red light began to back toward him with much snorting of the engine. He crouched low, shivering. The train came to a standstill opposite him and he could see the people through the lighted windows, carefree, save for their delay, eager to get home. And he was homeless! A sense of despair seemed to numb him and he shook it off.

There was the sound of a train panting up the grade the other side of the Dale. No other passenger was due for two hours. This must be the freight he had hoped for. Probably a long line of empties going back to New York, great coal trucks, a car or two. Hope revived. It would come in between him and the local that had been backed on to the siding to let it pass.

He lay low till the searching headlight lifted over the crest of the grade, flared down the right of way, and passed him. The freight was gathering speed now but Sperry would have tried for it had it been going twice as fast.

Better to trip, to fall and be mangled, than caught, arrested, prosecuted, and condemned— a swift sequence that would inevitably follow.

Steel coal trucks were passing him, punt-shaped. The train seemed slowing down a little. He jumped and found a footing and a grip for his hands on the cold rim of a truck as he flung himself upward. In a moment he had scuttled over the edge and slid down the sloping end into a rubble of coal dust.

For the present he was safe. Hobos at this time were rarities. There would be no search of the train as it lumbered on through the darkness. Somewhere in the yards of upper Manhattan he could get off, round about midnight. He would find a subway and get far downtown in New York. There his plans ceased, save that vaguely he resolved on smothering his identity, and— if Cairns was only still alive— somehow hanging on until, by hook or crook— for surely fortune must turn some time— he could reinstate himself. If Cairns were dead? He would wait till morning for that, he tried to tell himself, huddled in the empty truck, jolted unmercifully, bruised, flung headlong with the changing motions of the train, grimed, cold, and, as the night wore on, hungry.

The vision of Cairns lying in the rug with the crimson and the ink streaking the pale face in fantastic patterns, would not leave him.

At two in the morning he found himself far downtown in Manhattan. He had bought himself two drinks of whisky and two sandwiches in a saloon on the East Side, near the river, and stopped the numbness that had begun to turn to a poignant ache between his shoulders. He could not afford to risk pneumonia from exposure. That meant a hospital and recognition, when the dirt had been cleansed from him. As soon as he could find a cheap lodging house and get some sleep, he realized that he must change his clothes. Filthy as they were from his trip, their cut and the quality of their cloth had already made him an object of suspicion. In this neighborhood they were shrewd of eye, and Sperry already felt that he had been sized up for what he was, a defaulter from his caste, a gentleman gone wrong; not a master crook, but an amateur, one to whom a reward might be attached. He managed to get some of the muck from his face and hands in the lavatory of the saloon, thankful for the sanitary paper towel. Then he went out into the streets to look for a bed.

It was bitterly cold. The searching wind blew off the river, and Sperry was glad now of the good texture of his clothes. But he ached intolerably- and he longed for some shelter where he could rest and think'. His thoughts would not co-ordinate. They were a jumble of what had happened, and wild conjectures as to what had led up to his entanglement. Silent, furtive figures slunk by him, slid into nauseous alleys or into such side-doors of protected saloons as he had found his own way. Some of them staggered into the uninviting doorway of rooming houses advertising "Beds for Men Only. 25c and up."

Fastidious, more from habit than present consciousness, Sperry hesitated to enter these caravanseries of the poor. His imagination, far too vivid to ease his present plight, conjured up horrors abovestairs. Further, he could not shake off the idea that he was being trailed.

"It's absurd," he told himself again and again. "If they had managed in some manner to spread the net so far already, they would not hesitate to draw in the folds." But he was out of place here, a palpable misfit, and therefore to be suspected, to be watched, to be exploited for what there might be in it. To hide successfully in such a neighborhood he must be one of those who dwelt here and dodged the law and defied it, knowing the manners and the codes of the underworld. Yet he must have some place to hide away, to sleep, to wait the coming of the morning and the announcement of the newspapers.

A vicious gust of wind, flung down a side street, pierced him as a spear might have stabbed him to the vitals. He suddenly felt sick in mind and body. "What's the use?" he asked himself bitterly, his overstrung nerves reacting. Then came the rebound. He must brace up, put on a bold front, and accept the conditions of his surroundings ; he must assume a toughness and demand a bed with a swagger and a tone that would deceive any one who might want to pry into his identity. He still had most of his six dollars, and he could pay for a room to himself. Another drink would bolster his courage. The reek of it on his breath would give him, as it were, a local color.

Down an alley he saw a figure come out from a door near a distant corner, a door above which a light burned dimly. Another entered. Here was traffic, a saloon. He hurried down the alley. Close to the door was piled a clutter of empty boxes, an array of refuse and ash cans. Some one was groping among these as Sperry passed, but that person did not look at him.

"Some penniless devil looking for cast-off food," thought Sperry, and the impulse came to ask the man in for a drink and some food. But he could not do that, he told himself. He must look out for his own safety first. The man might be inquisitive. As he reached the door a burly figure came out, lurching a little as if intoxicated. Sperry saw the face under the lamp.

The upper part was shaded with the brim of a derby hat. The lower showed a firm chin and a thin-lipped mouth under a prominent nose. To the right of the lips was a prominent mole, almost black in that light, curiously, distinctively shaped. Sperry stood aside as the man passed in the direction he himself had come. Casually he watched him as he went, wondering idly if he would safely avoid the cans and boxes. The man with the mole almost brushed Sperry, and Jack was aware of a shaded glitter of searching eyes upon him, that, somehow, did not accord with the drunken gait.

Then a figure leaped from the medley of ash and refuse containers, leaped swiftly, and silently, just as the burly man went by. And, by the lamp, Sperry saw the hand of the bum he had thought of inviting to a drink, shift to a hip pocket, saw a glint of nickel, and, in sheer instinct, he flung himself upon the would-be killer, gripping the wrist of the hand that was freeing the pistol, and cruelly twisting it as he flung his forearm round the man's neck, forcing back his chin.

The gun clattered to the cobbles of the alley. The burly man with the mole had turned with a swift precision that belied intoxication and instantly shot a short, hard punch to the projecting jaw. The killer crumpled in Sperry's grasp and slid to the ground. The other coolly picked up the gun and put it into his pocket, nodding to Sperry.

"Thanks," he said. "I owe you something for that, pal."

3: Baldy Brown.

THE killer had fallen face downward on the slimy stones. The man with the mole turned him over with one foot and a hand and surveyed him keenly. The killer showed faint signs of returning consciousness, and the other picked him up easily, much as if he was a half-stuffed sack of bran, and jammed him into a sitting posture on top of one of the ash cans, propped against the wall of the saloon. To Sperry he said nothing until he had completed this process unaided, and had satisfactorily balanced his late opponent. Then he turned to Sperry, surveying him with a comprehensive glance.

"What were you doing in this dumping ground at this time of night?" he asked. His voice was gruff but friendly, and there was a compelling quality in it that somehow gave Sperry a hazy impression that, even if he had not grasped the killer's wrist, the burly one would have found a means to take care of himself.

"I was going to get a drink," he said. "Then I was going to find a bed somewhere."

"A shot and a flop?" said the other. "We'll fix that. Hello, you!"

The killer was coming sullenly, viciously out of his trance, glaring at the man he would have shot in the back. Then Sperry saw the hate in his eyes change to uncertainty. The man with the mole had taken off his hat, displaying a skull practically bald, and he was grinning at the killer. Front teeth liberally filled with gold shone under the lamp.

"Just why were you tryin' to bump me off, pal?" he was saying. "What's the reason? Who -did you take me for, a dick ? An' who're you ? I'll know you next time, but I'll swear this is the first."

The perplexity in the little rat eyes of the killer deepened. He mumbled uncertainly and tried to get down from the ash can. The man with the mole set him back with a firm hand.

"What's your moniker, pard?" he persisted. "An', if there's any reason why I shouldn't bash your dial in and send you to the slab, you'd better come across with it— now!'' he cried, with a sudden ferocity and a snarl of his goldfilled teeth that made the killer shrink in terror.

"I'm Curly," the latter managed to articulate. "Curly Luke Conklin. I— say, I was in wrong, cull. I just got out of stir, see? The dick who sent me up was Jim Farrell, the low-livered crook. I swore I'd get him w'en I come down the river, an' I see you in at Dumpy's there takin' a drink, an' "

"You thought I was what's-his-name Farrell, a dick, did you? You must be full of hop. I never met the flat-foot. I'm Baldy Brown of Chi', and I struck town three weeks ago. I ain't met with your dick pals— yet. And I don't xonsider it over and above easy bein' taken for one, either. Sit up, you, and take a good look at me. Do you think I look like a dick? Do you?"

His face was so venomous that even Sperry, disinterested in the controversy, drew back, but Baldy Brown suddenly put out an arm and held him with a grip of steel. Curly Conklin stuttered a denial, an absolute disclaimer.

"If I'd seen you wit your dicer off," he said; "or, if I'd piped that beauty mark "

"Never mind the beauty spot," gruffly put in Baldy. "I ain't stuck on it. Some day I'm goin' to get needled. You didn't take a good look, and, but for my young pal here, you'd have bumped me off. I've got a good mind to—" He broke into a hearty laugh and shoved out a hand for Curly to grasp. "It's a good one on me after all," he said. "I'll tell the boys. Took me for a dick ! Oh, Lord! We'll call it off, Curly, if you promise to wear glasses. And I'll buy three drinks of Dumpy's best right now. Come on in, both of you."

Still held by the arm, Sperry followed, willy-nilly, into the unsavory drinking shop. Perhaps a dozen men were there, at tables or at the bar. Baldly advanced to the latter between the two.

"Drinks for the house on me," he said. "No rotgut, Dumpy; open a bottle of case goods. Drinks on me. Here's Curly Conklin, just out of stir, and takes me for a dick! Oh, Lord ! He was goin' to bump me off with a gat when my pal here jumps him."

The little audience, Dumpy included, roared at the jest. Evidently Baldy was popular. Curly wisely said nothing. A blear-eyed individual shuffled up close to Sperry, and the latter recognized him as one of those at the first saloon he had gone into, a man who had openly appraised him.

"This guy your pal, Baldy?" he asked.

"I said so, didn't I?" asked Baldy coldly. "And a good one. Gentleman Manning, known back in Chi as The Duke. That right, Manning?"

Sperry nodded, playing up to the role. He had to change his name. Manning was as good as any. Something told him that Baldy was a good man to tie to, a bad one to cross. The blear-eyed man undoubtedly was of that opinion. He wilted.

"Just in from Chi, pal?" he queried ingratiatingly. "I seen youse over at The Badger's, an' I knew youse was new to the Village. Couldn't size you ?"

"I was looking for Baldy," said Sperry. The man with the mole— it was shaped like a dumb-bell, Sperry noticed in the light, and it had several hairs growing from it— flashed him a look of appreciation. Sperry realized how apt was the moniker that Baldy had given him. As The Duke, his manners, his accent, would all pass unchallenged. Already what had happened that afternoon seemed far off as if in another life. Now he was Gentleman Manning of Chicago, an accepted consort of crooks, hobnobbing with them in a boozing ken. And he had shown himself a good man by defending Baldy, whom they all looked up to.

The round was soon finished and Sperry felt in his pockets to buy another, but Baldy jogged his elbow.

"That's enough," he said. "I want a talk with you, Duke.  Dumpy, is the back room empty?"

"If it ain't, I'll clear it," said Dumpy with alacrity.

When they were seated and the door shut, Baldy looked quizzically at Sperry. Sperry felt the glance summing up mercilessly every line of his drawn face. He knew it was drawn and haggard. He could feel almost the hollows under his eyes. The glance took in his hands, his tie, every detail.

"Well," said Baldy at last, "what was it? Robbery or murder? Or both?" A light from his gray eyes seemed to illumine every secret of Sperry's brain. He tried to speak, to lick his lips. To his relief his inquisitor nodded and smiled.

"Tell me about it to-morrow, pal," he said. "You've had your drink, now I'll give you a bed. Better one than you would have found. And a bath. I said I owed you something."

"But," objected Sperry, "I haven't told you. You don't know— I won't know till morning just what—"

"Then we won't worry about it till morning. I don't care what you've done. You're safe with me. And we'll talk it over after we chew in the morning. Will you come?" He held out his hand and Sperry, lost for words, gripped it and found something emanating from the grip, a magnetic, inspiring something that gave him heart to say "Thank you."

They walked out together, west and north for several blocks. Then Baldy picked up a night-hawk of a taxicab, disreputable enough in paint and cushions, but with a good engine, a roving pirate of those purlieus where speed was often necessary and well paid for.

Uptown they sped until Prince Street and Broadway was reached. Then Baldy paid and tipped his man and once more they went west, to Macdougal Street, north to Washington Square, across it, and so to one of a row of brick houses in a quiet part of Greenwich Village. Baldy let himself in with a latch-key and Sperry followed, obeying his host's gesture for silence. On the next floor Baldy opened the door of a cosy bedroom and motioned to Sperry to enter, leaving him.

Within the minute he was back again with a big towel and a suit of pajamas.

"You can make out with these," he said. "Bath is next room, to your right. Plenty of hot water. Sleep as late as you like. I'll tip you off when to get up. And don't worry, pal. It don't do a bit of good, and half the time you worry over nothing. You get a souse in hot water and turn in."

Sperry obeyed orders willingly, and, his nerves and weary body relaxed by the hot water of the bath, he subsided between the sheets upon a springy, yielding mattress and fell asleep. Nightmares assailed him, but he slept on for half a dozen restful hours. When he awoke, the wintry sun was streaming through the window of his room. For a few moments his brain remained sluggish and he lay inert, conscious of the odors of coffee and of bacon and, somewhere, a girl's fresh voice singing cheerily and sweetly in an undertone, as a girl will when she sings at her work.

Sperry listened and smelled with languid delight— and then in a flash the whole phantasmagoria of what had happened came rushing over him, the forged check; his stepfather lying on the floor; the escape in the freight train; Baldy whom he had saved from the killer. He was in Baldy's house, guest of a notorious crook to whom the underworld looked up. Sperry had heard of honor among thieves. Could it be possible that gratitude was so strong a virtue among criminals? He had seen little sidelights of Baldy's character the night before— earlier that morning, rather— that spoke of a man callous and desperate. Why should Baldy have taken him into his own house, have given him a moniker, have proclaimed him a pal from Chicago?

Wide awake now, he sat up in bed and prepared to dress. His clothes were gone ! Nothing that he had worn the day before remained, not even his socks or his underwear. He was as completely a prisoner as if he had been manacled. Baldy had asked him whether it had been robbery or murder or both ? The master crook had appraised him inside and out and now— now what? Holding him for a reward? Holding him to turn over to the police and so curry favor for himself?

The door opened and Baldy came in, a pile of clothing over his arm that he put down on a chair while he grinned at Sperry with his gold-filled teeth.

"Didn't think you'd be awake so soon," he said. "Your stomach was the alarm clock, I guess. Bess tells me breakfast is close to ready, so you'd better slide into these togs. I've got you a complete outfit; traded off the old stuff after it was brushed up a bit, and I swapped it for this and four dollars to boot. Nearly broke Uncle David's heart, but he came through. Here it is with five-thirty-five you had, and here's your studs and links and the rest of your junk. If I was you I wouldn't wear any of it, 'cept the collar buttons."

Sperry gathered up his links, pin, tie-clip, watch, and chain and the little litter of bills in amazement, not daring to look up at the host he had so misjudged, aware that Baldy's grin held something quizzical. He slipped swiftly into his new clothes— a tweed suit of fair quality and of a fair fit, tan shoes instead of his black ones; and, coming back from the bathroom where he had found a brush and comb, announced himself to Baldy who still sat upon his bed.

"I want to thank you," he began.

"Nix on that stuff," answered Baldy. "If you owe me anything I'll give you a chance to square up later."

"You've been out this morning," said Sperry. "Did you get a paper?"

"Son," said Baldy, "outside of going in swimming, always tackle a job on a full stomach. First we eat."

There was rough kindliness in his words, but nevertheless they constituted a command; Sperry followed Baldy to the dining-room. This communicated with the kitchen whence came the fragrance of the food for which, despite his mental anxiety, Sperry's digestive system clamored.

The door opened between the two rooms and the trim figure of a girl came in, a girl so fresh, so utterly at variance with the pro'ession and occupation of Baldy Brown, that Sperry forgot his manners. This girl, with golden hair and blue eyes, with a rounded figure lithe in fresh calico, with a merry yet tender mouth, this girlwoman of eighteen or nineteen, seemed to have walked straight out of some inspired play or operetta where she was cast for the role of a sublimated shepherdness or dairy maid. Only, the divine freshness of her complexion was all her own.

Sperry did not know why Elizabeth suggested the open country, apple blossoms, hay fields, an old-fashioned garden, and a church spire back of clustering elms. But she did, she invested that little New York room with all the atmosphere of the fields and orchards, all their fragrance, with a touch of sanctity. And it all fitted in with her voice, that Sperry had heard singing and now heard talking. This girl a crook's daughter? As she slipped a slim cool hand into his when he rose to the introduction, he was conscious of Baldy's eyes twinkling genially, proudly.

"Are you hungry?" asked the girl. "I am ravenous," and she showed a row of pearly teeth in a mouth pink as a kitten's. There was surely some magic about her, for Sperry ate and forgot his troubles while the girl passed him food, simple enough, but cooked in a way that he had not tasted for many a day, for all the craft of Cairn's chef. She said little, neither did her father talk much ; and so, with the meal ended at last, they sat silent for a little while, until the girl started to clear the table!

"Can't I help?" Sperry asked, but she shook her head at him merrily and Baldy spoke.

"Bess can handle it," he said. "You and me'll have a little talk."

Instantly the atmosphere changed as if a malicious wizard had dissipated a fairy spell. Sperry's troubles crowded upon him, and the sunshine left the room as Baldy took some newspapers from a drawer in the sideboard.

"It wasn't very hard for me to pick you out, son," he said to Sperry. "John J. Sperry ?" He nodded as his eyes told him he had hit the mark. "All right; it's Manning now. There ain't such a lot about you in the news, you may be a bit disappointed," he added, with a slight grin, tossing the papers across to Sperry.

And, by some quirk, Sperry was conscious of a faint disappointment. It took him a minute to find the item. It was captioned, but far from being headlined. He knew with sudden relief that he was not a murderer. Evidently some correspondent from Longfield had covered the case for nearly all the New York press and the Associated News, for the items were practically identical. The heads included: "Commits Forgery and Attempts Murder. Scion of Well-known Family Presents False Check and Tries to Kill Stepfather." The article read:

Longfield, Massachusetts.

John J. Sperry, of Swiftbrook Bowl, the aristocratic resort of the Berkshire Hills, made a desperate attempt to take the life of hii stepfather, Simeon Cairns, the millionaire who recently married Mrs. Caroline' Sperry, mother of the wayward young man who bears the same name as his late father, a well-known one in exclusive Berkshire circles.

It is alleged by the officers of the Agricultural National Bank of Longfield that young Sperry presented a check for ten thousand dollars, made out to and indorsed by himself, and purporting to be signed by Simeon Cairns. This check was taken from the back pages of Mr. Cairns' private check book, and the signature declared a forgery by Mr. Cairns to President Hilliard and Cashier Burnside, of the bank, in an interview at which young Sperry was present.

A quarrel ensued between Sperry and his stepfather. The Cairns' butler heard high words in the library, and, attempting to enter, was struck down by Sperry. Recovering from the blow, the butler entered the room, to find Mr. Cairns unconscious with a deep cut in his .temple from am inkstand that Sperry had flung; at him before escaping from the house.

Late this evening Mr. Cairns made a brief statement in which he said that he regretted the publicity necessary, as Mrs. Cairns, who was wintering in Florida, was in delicate health. As soon as he is able to travel, he will break the news to her personally of her son's derelictions.

"It is the reaping of the wild oats," said Mr. Cairns. "I agreed to make the money good to the bank, but this deliberate attack upon my life removes from me any false pity. I have placed the matter in the hands of the police. I believe that such viciousness should be corrected by the methods of the law." Up to a late hour no trace of Sperry has been discovered.

As Sperry set down the papers, Baldy produced another from his coat pocket.

"You see, this isn't strictly a New York matter," he said. "They ain't apt to worry about the troubles of another State until they are requested to by that State's police. But they've played you up in Boston, and also, I imagine, in your local paper, though of course I didn't know what that was when I was buying these this morning, and I probably couldn't have got one, anyway. But here's the Boston Nation, with all the publicity any one could hope for even Baldy Brown of Chicago," he ended, with a laugh.

The story was played clear across the front of the Nation, with pictures of Sperry's mother, of Cairns, and two of Sperry himself. He, with all due caution for fear of possible libel, was excoriated unmercifully. A reward was out for him. The Massachusetts State Detectives were scouring the countryside to arrest him. He had last been seen leaving the trolley close to Langley Dale, and it was supposed he had boarded a train, though so far no direct clew had been unearthed. But the police were confident of finding him, said the article. Supposedly he had much of the ten thousand dollars with him, and undoubtedly he would try to leave the State by land or sea. If he did, he would find his journey abruptly checked. Descriptions of him were being sent broadcast. The bank was joining in the prosecution. There was the usual flub-dub about society in general, and the many friends of Mrs. Cairns being shocked, and the fears for the effect the news of her son's crime might have upon the mother.

Interviews with President Hilliard and Cairns and Peters, the butler, were lengthened out, and the general opinion disseminated that the events were not a sudden outbreak, but the result of a constantly growing depravity.

Sperry put down the paper with a hardened face. How rottenly unfair it was, he thought. Not a friend to speak for him ! None to offset the lying insinuations of his criminal intentions, his sowing of wild oats! Well, they hadn't got him, and they shouldn't.

"Papers," broke in Baldy's voice, "slam at you, and you've got no comeback unless it's a libel suit ; and that's hard shooting. Suppose you tell me your end of it?"

"What's the use?" asked Sperry sullenly. Baldy must believe him a criminal; he had helped him out because he thought so. He might have nothing more to do with him if he convinced him differently. And how could he convince anyone?

"A whole lot of use just to get it off your chest to some one," said Baidy. "I'll tell you this much; I savvied last night this was your first job. It's a cinch you plugged this stepfather of yours. It's a cinch they've got a reward out for you. If he's a millionaire and got it in for you, he'll have New York all stirred m inside of twenty-four hours, soon as they know things are really doing. You'll have to stay Manning. And you're new to the game, they may nab you. Tell me the whole mess, and I can give you some expert advice, anyway."

Sperry hesitated and then plunged into the whole yarn. Baldy listened non-committally.

"To a jury that would sound fishy," he caid. "You've got to own up to that."

"I do," said Sperry.

"I know you ain't brought along ten thousand dollars. Whether you pulled that check or not, you've still got ninety thousand in the pot if you can ever get a chance to sit back in the game. Right now you're in wrong, in like a burglar, as they say. You're fairly safe in New York, as you are, for a day or two. I'll make a proposition to you. You can help me, as it happens. If you'll do it, I'll do what I can for you. I ain't promising you much, mind you, but I'll keep you clear of the bulls, reward or no reward. What do you say?"

Sperry hung between thoughts. He did not want to get himself deeper into the clutches of the law by joining forces with Baldy on the shady side. He did want to prove his innocence. But that seemed impossible. He was bound by ties of hospitality and friendship to Baldy. What if the latter did want some repayment? He had promised to keep him free of the police, and that was vital. And Sperry was desperate. The world had turned against him. He was helpless, save for this new friend. The sound of the girl's voice humming as she washed the last of the dishes came to him. She was an enigma. Girls could mean little in his life, yet he wanted to see more of this one, miserable as his plight was. Though he did not realize it, youth, that had been accused but not besmirched, called to youth. And the girl, after all, decided him.

"If I can do anything to help you out," he said to Baldy, "just tell me what it is."

"Good. There's something I want you to do this morning. I can't let you into everything at once. Safer for you not to know it all. By the way, can you drive a car?"

"Almost any kind on the market."

"Know the Berkshires pretty well, I suppose?"

"Yes," answered Sperry wonderingly. "From Longfield south, very well."

Baldy only nodded. Sperry had noticed that Baldy's speech held variations. When he oonversed with Sperry, it was fairly grammatical and well chosen. At times it was exceedingly so. Very different from his talk at Dumpy's. Baldy was evidently no ordinary crook. All things pointed to this. The game he was engaged in would be no minor play. He was a big man, determined, clever, resourceful. There would be thrills in any enterprise he tackled. Sperry wondered what his daughter thought of him. Such a girl could not consider her father a criminal. Yet Baldy had not warned him against any special trend of talk.

"I am going to the corner to do some telephoning," said Baldy. "I'll be back in ten minutes. Then we'll go out together."

Left alone, Sperry reread the papers. Presently the girl came in and he rose. She smiled at him and told him to sit down again.

"You mustn't treat me like a girl in a play," she said. "I'm not used to it, even if I like it. Go on with your papers."

"I'm through with them," said Sperry moodily.

Infinitely milder, there was yet some of her father's penetrating quality in the glance of her blue eyes. She seemed to hesitate a moment, then spoke softly, sympathetically.

"Daddy said something to me about your trouble," she said. "We don't have any secrets between us. I heard something of what you told him just now. I couldn't help it," she added with a rising color, "though I sang. And— and I want to tell you that I believe in you."

Sperry stared at the slender fingers before he took them. She and her father had few secrets, and she believed him innocent ! What sort of contradiction, what kind of paradox was she? Her flush held as he kept possession of her hand, and her eyelids drooped over her eyes. Here surely was virtue and innocence! Sperry read the riddle. Baldy was shrewd enough to let his daughter think she shared his secrets, but, hardened as he might be, the father in him wished to keep the girl in ignorance of the crimes he committed, the risks he ran. With a man of Baldy's caliber, that would not be difficult. And he had trusted to Sperry's breeding not to give him away. Though, after all, Sperry knew nothing, and the girl would not believe hearsay or even proof. She was no weakling.

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you. That helps."

She raised her eyes again.

"I am glad," she said. "And you must believe in my Daddy, too. Sometimes he does things that seem strange, but I believe in him. I know him, you see, and you don't, so I am telling you beforehand."

Sperry's chivalry couched its lance. If he could help to keep the girl's belief in her father, he would do so.

"Why wouldn't I believe in him?" he asked. "He has been very good to me." And the entrance of the man with the mole spared him any more direct statement as to his lurking belief in the latter's irregularities.

They took the subway and went downtown again. But not this time into the crime belt. First they went into a well-known cafe and sat in a leatherpadded recess while Baldy gave his instructions.

"We are going to walk past a big jeweler's," he said. "I'll nudge you when we pass it. Then you are to saunter back, go in to the third counter on the right, and ask the clerk to look at some tie-clips. If the red-headed clerk is not on duty and does not attend to you, do not buy anything. If he is busy, try to gauge it so he can wait on you without making it too obvious. You can say you are expecting some one. If it goes all right, look over six clips, pick up six and handle them, no more no less. Then ask to look again at the third one. Say to him, 'I think I like the one you showed me third the best. How much is it?' He will put it in a box which you will bring back to me here. Here is money for the clip. Now repeat my directions."

All this was said in a way that smacked of big business behind the purchase of the clip. The roll that Baldy peeled a ten from was of considerable magnitude. Sperry went over his instructions.

They strolled along for some time, until they passed a jeweler's. At the corner they parted company, and Sperry sauntered back again. It was a large place with four aisles made up by lengthy display cases of plate glass. At the back was a mezzanine gallery on which some desks showed and glass doors apparently opening back to the offices. Not many people were purchasing. The third counter was vacant in front. Back of it a red-haired clerk was arranging a tray of small jewelry. His heart beating a trifle fast, Sperry walked up the aisle toward the redhaired clerk. And then he felt a premonition. Some one was watching him.

He had believed implicitly in Baldy's assurance that he was safe in New York for a day or so; it was impossible not to have confidence in what the man with the mole did say. But now panic siezed him. He tried to master it, to force himself to look up. At last he did. Standing by the rail of the mezzanine gallery and staring down at him, a little uncertainly, was Remington, the paying teller of the bank at Longfield; the man who had said he paid him ten thousand dollars, the man who had been discharged for doing so.

Fury surged over Sperry. He saw that recognition was not yet mutual on account of his clothes and their style, but soon it would become definite. He longed to rush up to the gallery and confront Remington. But that would mean arrest. What was Remington doing here? He had been discharged, but how had he obtained this position so soon?

Then he became conscious that others were staring at him, that he was standing in a defiant attitude, glaring at Remington. He saw the spark of recognition come into Remington's eyes, a smile of triumph begin to come on his face. The ex-paying teller leaned forward.

Sperry whirled abruptly and made for the entrance. He heard Remington saying something as the doors swung behind him, knew there was a stir in the shop; and then he threaded his way swiftly through the crowd, shuttling hurriedly to a subway entrance down which he raced, just managing to catch an express. It was a close shave. Rem ington held all the cards. In another moment he would have been held, and Remington would have got the reward.

For one moment the thought of treachery mastered him. Could Baldy have deliberately trapped him? But that was impossible. It did not hold water. And he was ashamed of himself for the suspicion. He got out at the next stop and made his way to the cafe, not without some fear of being tapped on the shoulder. He was no longer safe in New York. Whatever was back of Remington's lying about the check and the money was a powerful force, and he had no defence, save a vague feeling that Baldy mght aid him. But he got to the padded recess and told his tale. The man with the mole listened seriously.

"Never mind about the tie-clip," he said. "We'll manage that some other way. It is a good thing this Remington chap spotted you as soon as he did. I wouldn't have wanted them to find that box on you, or on any one. Your stepfather said he was going to get this young chap a job, didn't he? He doesn't seem to have wasted any time about it. But you must change your description if you are going to be useful to me. I am going to send you home in a taxi. Get out at Washington Square and walk over. Stay there till I come."

Sperry waited two hours before Baldy appeared. The face of the man with the mole was serious. He brought in some small packages.

"Where is Bess ?" he asked.

"She went out shopping," said Sperry. "Said she'd be back soon." He had spent a delightful hour with the girl. She was surprisingly well informed, he found, and of a rare intelligence and gracious instinct. Baldy had seen to her education. When she went on her marketing tour, Sperry continued his wonderment of her in such surroundings, and then his thoughts centered on what Baldy had said about the box.

"I shouldn't have wanted them to find that box on you, or on any one." Evidently the red-haired clerk was to have put something in it beside tne tieclip. What? Information of some kind? Perhaps the numbers of a safe combination? Was Baldy planning to rob the jeweler's?

But Baldy evinced no desire to give him information. The incident of the tie-clip was closed. From his packages he produced what looked like dried leaves and some dark crystals that Sperry recognized as permanganate of potash.

"Lucky your eyes are hazel," said Baldy. "I am going to change your hair-cut and then dye it— also your complexion. I am going to make a brunet out of you, young man, as soon as Bess comes in. She'll be the barber."

An hour later, after applications to his face, hands, and forearms of a solution of permanganate, after dippings of his clipped and trimmed hair into a bath of henna, with careful dabbings of the borders, Sperry looked at himself with amazement. His light brown hair was almost black, with a suggestion of dull red. And it formed a pompadour. His face was a weird purplish tint.

The girl laughed at him.

"That'll tone down to a nice even brown," said Baldy. "And it'll stand washing for a while. Now then, remember you are. Gentleman Manning of Chicago, The Duke. A swell-mob worker, specialty, ladies' jewelry. Tonight I am going to introduce you to some of the gang. They'll use you as outside man."

Sperry heard, amazed, looking at the still laughing face of the girl. Yet her eyes held the same appeal as when she had asked him to believe in her father. How could she be innocent? She must be an accomplice to listen to this talk of  the underworld, to help transform him to The Duke, "swell-mob worker."

But one thing was certain, paramount. He was entirely in the power of Baldy Brown.

"Let me look at your hands," said Baldy. Sperry held them out for inspection. Baldy laid his forefinger on the corresponding digit of Sperry's left hand. The first joint was distorted, out of place.

"Baseball finger?" queried Baldy. "You had better wear gloves all you can. When you're driving, for instance. That's a give-away I can't remedy. Got to be covered up. Outside of that you are pretty well camouflaged."

The accent of the French word was excellent. Certain links between the refinement of Elizabeth and her father were apparent. Sperry wondered what the history of Baldy Brown contained, what sordid chapters had led up to his present capacity. That his name was Brown he hardly believed. But, if he had changed it for frequent aliases, the girl must have acquiesced, must have acknowledged them. It was a riddle that Sperry had to put aside. Meanwhile, at Elizabeth's suggestion— she seemed to take an artistic pride in his disguise— he applied himself with materials she provided to cleanse his nails of the telltale stain that had tinged them too darkly for nature.

All three went to a moving-picture show that afternoon. Baldy laughed heartily at the pictured triumph of a detective. Sperry went back with them.

"You'll stay with us for the present," said Baldy, "until the big job is through. It's a good cover, and Bess has taken a fancy to you."

The last sentence Sperry appreciated, but he wondered what the big job was, and what part he would take in it. Perhaps he would find out when he met the gang.

4: The Duke Meets The Gang.

SOME day New York will be purged of the huddled-up buildings, the hidden alleys, the cellars, and the underground ways that make up the warren of the underworld. And many things will be revealed, perhaps, that no one has suspected. As long as drugs are peddled and liquor can be distilled, with or without the sanction of the government, so long will these things last, so long will they be populated by the dregs of humanity, twisted in mind and body alike, dominated by some master minds that defy the law.

It was by devious ways that Baldy and Sperry reached the rendezvous that evening. Sperry knew that he could never retrace the route. As it was, he did not penetrate to the actual meeting. As "outside-man," he remained outside the council. They passed through a fence of boards, a portion of which swung horizontally on a pivot to Baldy's touch; they traversed deep cellars, littered with debris that exuded all kinds of musty odors, lit dimly by some light to which Baldy always found a hidden switch. Once, Sperry felt certain, they passed underneath a street, slanting deep down an earthy tunnel propped by beams, traversing a level section where the smell of sewerage was abominable, then up and through another cellar to brick stairs, at the head of which a stout door showed a peephole of light in response to certain knockings of Baldy, checked by other knocks within.

On the other side squatted a man without legs, the type of cripple that infests the streets and captures from sympathetic workers more in a day than they could hard-earn in ten. He worked the opening of the door with a leather strap. Round his stumped body was a belt holstered with two automatics. He challenged the appearance of Sperry, now Manning.

"I don't know this guy," he said, in guttural tones.

"I'm vouching for him," said Baldy. "He's with me."

The dwarf hesitated, shifting a holster to the front. Baldy boiled over with sudden ferocity.

"You cut that gun bluff out with me, Squatty," he said. "Get me? I gave the signals an' you answered them. That's where you quit."

Squatty visibly cowered, yet dared to touch a button back of him. Three faint rings sounded.

"I'll have a talk with you later," said Baldy. But he stayed where he was until the figure of a man appeared coming down the passage.

"What's up?" said the newcomer, a man with beetle brows, his repellant countenance stained from cheek-bones to jaw on the left side with a port-wine mark.

"I come here with a pal," said Baldy, his voice quietly ominous, "and this remnant holds us up after I've vouched for him. This sort of stuff don't go with me, Blackberry; it don't go!"

The newcomer spread out deprecating hands.

"Chief's orders, Baldy," he said. "Any new guy's got to be passed on reg'lar."

"I'm gettin' tired of this 'Chief' stuff," said Baldy. "If we're good enough to pull stuff for a man, we're good enough to see him. This game is too much under cover to suit me. My dope was straight enough to suit the gang, wasn't it? Then, when I bring in a pal that I vouch for, the very man we're needing, I'm not goin' to have him held up when it's touch and go whether we can hold him at all. What you got to say about it, Duke?" He turned to Sperry.

"I'm not over interested in this business," said Sperry, playing up. "I don't know what there is in it for me, and I don't like working for any mysterious chiefs. I'd just as soon quit right now." In which statement he spoke the truth. But he knew he had served Baldy's purpose.

"And if he quits, I quit with him," said Baldy. "That's where I stand, chief or no chief! And, anyway, I don't go no further in the dark. I want to know where I get off. I'm goin' to have a pow-wow with the chief before I run my neck into trouble any deeper. You heard me, Blackberry."

The man with the stain whirled on the cripple.

"What Baldy says is straight, Squatty!" he exclaimed. "You got to use some discretion. Get me?"

"I will when you tell me what that word means," said Squatty.

"It means common sense, that's what. Don't you touch that push button without good reason, or you'll get the grand razzoo! Come on, gents."

Up the passage and into a room, barren of furniture and walled with rough planks, they went at last; it showed no door, no means of egress. One dingy electric, the bulb spotted with flies, barely showed the dimensions of the place. But Blackberry, at the far end, trod on a plank, and a section of the walling rose, through which they passed on, up a flight of stairs, and so to what was evidently the back room of the basement floor of a tenement house. Sperry glimpsed a cemented furnace room through the opening door by which Blackberry disappeared.

"Let me do the talking," said Baldy, and Sperry was content.

The place was furnished with a pallet bed covered with greasy blankets, a table, and three broken-down chairs. Soon they heard footsteps returning. Blackberry came back again with a black-mustached, stout, prosperouslooking man. The latter went to the point.

"Who's the new guy, Baldy?" he asked; "and what's this kick about the chief?"

"The last can wait," said Baldy. "You know my kick, and I ain't the only one kicking. I'll take that up inside. This is The Duke, Gentleman Manning of Chi. He's a chauffeur, and a good one. I'm vouching for him. Chi ain't healthy for him just now, on account of the wind off the lake front and him having weak lungs."

The other grinned and surveyed Sperry.

"You'll find New York a healthy coop for a lively bird," he said. "Ever live here?"

"He ran a car for a family up in Lenox," said Baldy. "They missed some ice and accused him of hiding it in the gasoline tank. He didn't. Point is, he knows the Berkshires. Savvy? Blake's got pinched, as you told me. Well, this lad can take his place."

"I guess it's all right I'll take your word for it. You'll get a five per cent divvy, Duke, of what stacks up from tonight. Does that go?"

Sperry, borne on the tide of events, nodded.

"Then come on, Baldy," said the man. "We're waiting to hear your spiel. Did you pull it off? You wait here, Duke."

They left him, and Sperry lit a cigarette and then another, wondering to what he was committed. He didn't much care. His own case seemed helpless, and he was conscious of a growing exhilaration in the dark enterprise on hand. And, holding his promise to the girl, he tried to believe in Baldy as she would have him believe. Only, not quite certain of what she did wish him to subscribe to, he made hard work of it.

He had no watch with him, and it seemed hours before Baldy came back, alone. What happened beyond the furnace room remained a mystery to Sperry.

"Come on," said Baldy. They retraced their tortuous way, by the watchful Squatty, who still sulked from his calling-down, and presently they were seated in another padded niche in a cafe, not the same one they had been in before.

"It's for to-morrow night," said Baldy. "The car's Speedwell. Know it?"

"Yes," answered Sperry truthfully.

"We'll see," said Baldy. "Taking no chances. Come along."

This time they took the subway far uptown, and walked to a garage where Baldy seemed to be well known. The Speedwell was in, and, at Baldy's suggestion, they took it out and Sperry drove into the Park. He demonstrated that he knew its mechanism as well as a Swiss watchmaker might understand the interior economy of a dollar pocket timepiece. Baldy stated himself satisfied.

"Put on those two new rear tires, Tom," he said to the attendant. "My friend will be here to take the car out to-morrow night, about nine."

"The tires seem perfectly good," said Sperry as they left the garage.

"Taking no chances," reiterated Baldy. "Come on, we'll get a snack somewhere. Bess will have gone to bed."

Not till they were back in Greenwich Village did Baldy give him further instructions.

"Get the car there at nine to-morrow," he said, "pick me up in Washington Square, where the buses stop, at ten sharp. Be driving slowly along. I'll be there. I'll not be home to-morrow. You take Bess out to Bronx Park. She wants to see the animals. Crazy about them. I've promised to take her, and haven't had time, though I'm fond of poking round there myself."

To-morrow would be a day well spent, decided Sperry— up till nine o'clock in the evening, at all events. After that, he committed himself to the unknown, and to Baldy. He felt pretty confident of Baldy's being able to protect himself and any protege.

"By the way," said Baldy, yawning, "what does this Remington look like?"

Sperry described him as best he could. "Why?" he asked when he concluded.

"Thought I saw him to-day," said Baldy. "I was in the jeweler's."

With that he went to bed and left Sperry to follow his example. Sleep did not come easily. Why did Baldy want to change two perfectly good tires for new ones? What kind of man was he who loved animals, who trusted his daughter to a new acquaintance, who consorted with the worst types of criminals, and who, Sperry was assured, was going to join in some big robbery the next night, in which affair he, Sperry, was bound by many ties of recklessness and obligation? And what about Remington? Baldy, he had found out by this time, asked no questions idly. And who was "the chief?"

He went to sleep to dream that he and Baldy were cracking a giant safe, with Elizabeth holding a hair-clipper that, somehow, served as a brilliant electric torch. And, when the safe was opened, Cairns stepped out of the shadows and arrested all three of them.

5: The Family Vault

SPERRY had a brief chat with Baldy in the morning before the latter went away on his own business, and Sperry and Elizabeth, with a lunch packed for themselves, and ano'ther for certain special friends of the girl's at the zoo, took the subway for Bronx Park. There were not many visitors on this chilly day, but they had a rare time. Elizabeth appeared to know the keepers well, and they were given certain privileges such as standing inside the rail when the big cats were fed, and scratching the warty back of the blind hippopotamus. Sperry seemed to be living in another world of strange happenings, and he pledged himself to the present. His own trouble-time seemed very hazy, and the haze was permeated with a rosy glow born of the happenings of the moment. He and the girl became very chummy, and he told her all about his own thwarted ambitions. He told her of the exploits of his chosen profession ; how they could bridge vast chasms and make trails over great ranges; how they could dam waters that would make deserts blossom like the rose, and advance the cause of progress.

"It's a fine profession," she said enthusiastically. "If I were a man that's what I'd like to be. Pioneers of progress, that's what you are."

"Do you think you'd like the life?" asked Sperry. He knew he was talking nonsense, speaking like this to the daughter of a master crook, himself a fugitive from justice, or at least from the law; disinherited, disgraced, about to plunge further into lawlessness. But all things seemed but the figments of a pleasant dream, and he was in no mind to wake up when he had this girl as dream-mate, this enthusiastic girl that was so wonderful a pal. He had never dreamed a girl could be like this ; never met a girl who could so understand a chap, so enter into his thoughts, have the same ideas, the same hopes.

They had come to the cage of the bears and he halted.

"I wish," he said, and stopped. The bears doubtless had their dreams. And the bars were the limit of their reality. Caged!

"What?" she asked, a little shyly.

"Nothing," answered Sperry. "I was just getting broody over my luck, that's all."

"Don't do that," she said. "You trust to daddy. He— he likes you. I know it."

Sperry flung his bitter mood aside.

"Why?" he challenged her with a direct glance. She did not evade it, though her face changed slowly to the transparent hue of the petals of an American Beauty rose.

"He let you take me out to-day," she said slowly. "He has never let any other man do that." Sperry wanted to take her in his arms. There was no one in sight but the gobbling bears, busy over the buns they had brought them. The girl knew it, and he saw her eyes thank him as he refrained and kept the faith that Baldy Brown of Chi, master crook, had reposed in him. But the want remained.

"Daddy is going to help you," she said. "Perhaps it will come true, after all, your building dams and bridges."

"I hope it will all come true," said Sperry. And he saw her cheeks bloom again.

It was all wild nonsense they were talking. He realized that as they wept homeward. To-night he was to play chauffeur to a band of desperadoes. And she, was she juggling, too? Playing at make-believe, despite her surroundings, her fate, as a crippled child may pretend that it has wings?

The strangeness of the whole affair was emphasized in the preparation of dinner. Baldy himself took a hand, mashing the potatoes while Sperry concocted the salad dressing and Elizabeth broiled the thick steak and handled the rest of the concomitants. It was like a picnic, Sperry felt; the informal meals that attend great happenings. At eight o'clock they were through.

"You know my motto, son," said Baldy. "Nothing like a full meal." And, while Elizabeth was clearing and cleaning up, he gave Sperry final instructions.

"We'll pick up a man on Bleecker Street," he said. "I'll show you where. He's an outside man, like you. But not an active one. Now, when we arrive, I'll show you where to park. You hang on there till some one comes up and says: 'All right Duke.' You come back with, 'Duke Who?' If he says 'Manning,' it's all right. If any one comes up with a broken line of talk, you beat it. If a bull comes by and asks you what you are hanging around for you tell him you are chaffeur for Mr. Gamwell of the Marine Insurance Association, and you point right across the road to the fifth floor of the opposite building. Gamwell won't be there, but the lights will be on in his suite. And there'll be some one there to answer if the bull gets fresh. It'll all go straight enough."

Sperry did not doubt the smoothness of the operations from the care with which the preliminaries had been arranged. And he could, in some measure, understand the joy of the outlaw, the pitting of brain against brain, the risk, the thrill of it all.

"You take your orders from whoever gets on the front seat," said Baldy. "There'll likely be two men, perhaps three; depends on the load. I won't be with you. When you are through with the job, beat it back to the garage and make the trip home by subway and walking. Here's a key to the door."

As the cool steel met his palm, Sperry felt assured of his position with Baldy. He was surely trusted.

"You can depend on me," he said. Elizabeth came in at the moment, through with the dishes, and the talk switched.  Baldy left, and presently Sperry departed for the garage. The new tires were on, he noticed, before he sped downtown.

At Washington Square, on the south side, he picked up Baldy, and on Bleecker, the second man. At tenthirty they parked the car on a street well downtown in the financial district. Sperry recognized the locality, strange as it was at this deserted time. The car had stopped around the corner from the jeweler's shop where he had seen Remington. There both Baldy and the other  outside man got out. The latter walked up the street, but Baldy stayed to point out the lights in the fifth floor of a tall building across from where the Speedwell stood beside the curb. Then he, too, left, melted mysteriously in the shadows.

Sperry had always associated robberies with the small hours, but now he recognized that downtown life practically ceased after six-thirty. The "gang" was now at work, and he had no longer any doubt that their object was the pilfering of the vaults of the jewelry store, or that the red-haired clerk was involved as he was, in a minor capacity. He pondered over what he was to do. Baldy had asked him if he knew the Berkshires. Was he to drive the loot to some treasure-trove in the hills, there to await the disposition of the chief? He filled in the time with cigarettes and conjectures, and finally, warm in his coat and the fur robe with which the Speedwell was provided, leaned back half drowsily. No policeman broke his reverie, though one passed twice. He heard Old Trinity chime the quarters and knew that it was close to midnight before a figure came to the side of the car.

"All right, Duke?"

The voice seemed dimly familiar, though he could not place it. The man's face was muffled both with a beard and the high collar of his coat upturned, and a scarf which circled his neck. A soft-brimmed hat was pulled low down over his brows.

"Duke Who?" parried Sperry.

"Manning," replied the man and clambered to the front seat without further ado. "Round the block," he said, "slowly."

Sperry obeyed orders, conscious that the bearded man kept a sharp lookout. They met no one. Three quarters around he got the word to halt, close to an alley dividing the big block. A shadow drifted along in the obscurity of the other side of the street. The bearded man noted it.

"It's all right," he whispered. "That's our lookout. If he whistles, beat it, and stop at the corner of Broadway and Chambers."

The speaker slipped out and down and disappeared in the murky alley. He was back again in an instant. Following him came a procession of dim shapes, each bearing a heavy package that they stowed quickly in the tonneau of the car. At last two men climbed in after the bundles and pulled a rug over the loot and themselves. The bearded man got in again beside Sperry.

"Slick and quick!" he said, with a chuckle. "North, and go it."

North they went and still north, climbing up where reservoirs- gleamed among the pines, quickening their pace, plunging, lunging on to the urging of the man at Sperry's side, until, above Lake Mahopac, a front tire exploded and nearly threw them into a ditch.

No one helped him. The two men in the tonneau stood about with the third until Sperry ordered one of them to hold an electric torch on his repairing. The bearded man did as requested, throwing the ray where Sperry ordered. Once he delayed to shift it, and Sperry, sweating with his work, despite the crisp night, spoke to him sharply. The man looked at him queerly, but said nothing. At last the job was finished, and Sperry put on his gloves and started the car once more. The going was hard and the roads here and there marked for detours, so that it was after five by the clock in the front of the car before they began to climb hills with which Sperry was familiar, the hills on the other side of the ridge from Swiftbrook Bowl. But it was still dark, still far from sunrise. He had been brusquely asked if he knew the way to Galton, and had answered in the affirmative. Now they were approaching that town.

"Straight through," said the bearded man in his husky voice. "Don't turn off to Ironton. Keep on up the mountain."

Sperry obeyed. They struck a bad road, deep-rutted, slippery with mud, and the car made slow progress? One of the men behind spoke for the first time.

"Open her up, can't you? We got to get through before daylight." They passed by sleepy hamlets and hit the windy ridge at the watershed, then pitched down between wooded ravines. A clearing came, a suggestion of highland meadow strips, the sound of a foaming torrent, the outline of a steeple against a blackish sky.

"Is this Darlington?" asked the bearded man. "Then the first road to the left past the village."

They made it as the first hint of dawn showed. There was a faint difference in the quality of the light. Trees began to separate themselves. On a slope irregular ranks of tombstones developed, gray and ghastly.

The guide put a hand on Sperry's arm.

"Into the graveyard," he said.

There were no gates, only a gravel road, crisp under the tires. To the right rose a high bank in which tombs had been dug like caves, and sealed with iron doors. Their tops were rounded and turfed above the level of the bank. Here they halted. The two men got out and one of them busied himself with a skeleton key, while the second held the electric torch.

Sperry read in its arc the graven lettering in the stonework about the iron doors: "Family Tomb of Alvin Allen. 1843."

The ghouls were going to deposit the loot in the ancient monument. Doubtless all the Allens were dead, their crumbled remnants in the vault.

"Come on," said the bearded man from the ground, "lend a hand here. It's lightening strong. Want us to get nipped?"

The three of them were bearing in their packages with frantic haste. Daylight was coming. There was no time to spare lest some chore-seeking villager might see them and give an alarm. Sperry lent a hand, bearing a heavy parcel into the musty burial plade, and coming out gratefully into the fresh air for another. At last they were through. He started to mount the car.

"Confound it!" said the bearded man. "We've left the keys back there. Duke, you've got the torch. Go get them, will you, while I light up? And hurry."

Sperry went back into the charnelhouse reluctantly, but loath to suggest that he was not willing to do his share. He had held a feeling ever since they left New York that he was on probation with his passengers, that they sensed somehow that he was not an accepted and qualified member of their craft, but was tolerated only on Baldy's say-so. He could not see the keys and threw about the circle of his light. Suddenly he felt quick fanning of the close air, heard a grating sound, then the noise of the outer bar swinging into place with a dull clang, followed by the click of locks.

The ray of his lamp shone on the closed doors of the vault. He flung himself at them, pounding, kicking, without result, with hardly noise enough to reach to the road. He could barely hear the explosion of the engine as it broke into life and left him there, deliberately abandoned among the loot and the coffins of the moldering dead !

6: Skeletons and Jewels.

AFTER the first rage and sense of horror had passed, Sperry forced himself to sum up the situation calmly. He deliberately shut off the light of the electric lamp, knowing he might need it badly later. The place seemed to fill with phantoms, indignant at this outrage of their last rest.' It was cold and damp. Somewhere water percolated through and dropped on the rough cement of the floor, like the tick of a clock counting his last minutes.

For he could not last very long, deliberately abandoned as he had been without hope of rescue. The air was limited, and, if any came through the door cracks or an unseen crevice, it was only enough to prolong life a short time. The place seemed to put a coating on his tongue, to choke his laboring lungs.

In the absolute silence, save for the "tock-tock" of the dripping water, Sperry could hear his heart beating as he strove for control. His burial had been preconceived by the bearded man whose voice was dimly familiar, though he had seen little of the man's face, muffled as it had been by the collar of his coat, a slouch hat, and a woolen scarf. Was it just a general suspicion based on some slip he had made that showed him up plainly as not one of them— as a possible spy?

If the voice of the bearded man had been dimly familiar to him, why, in like degree, in stronger degree, for he had pot attempted any disguise of it, his own might have been familiar to this man. And he had shown his baseball finger while working on the blowout. Had he been recognized? Would they come back for him or send some one to make his arrest and claim the reward?

That was not likely, since they had left all the loot with him. He had been deliberately left to die of hunger, thirst, and lack of air.

Once more he switched on his torch and flashed it about his jail. It was bricked, the roof in the shape of a low arch, above which he had, noticed, outside, that earth, turfed at the top, was piled thick. The ray faltered and he noticed, to his horror, that the battery was fast losing strength. And, to his imagination, perhaps, but none the less real, the air seemed heavier, more vitiated. He swept the place for some tool with which to attack the bricks and dig through the dirt, at least to air, if not to freedom. He wondered whether the packages they had brought might not hold some safe-breakers' tools. While the light rapidly waned in the torch, he opened them. Most were cases made of heavy fiber, such as travelers use, strapped. Two were grips. These he handled first. One of them was full of smaller cases, which presumably contained articles of jewelry. These he did not touch. The second held a mass of gold chains and watches stripped from trays.

The battery gave only a flickering glimmer now as he attacked the sample cases. The first was a jumble of velvetcovered boxes, many of which had been opened and uncertainly closed. Among them strings of jewels, brooches, necklaces, and rings shot out streaks of many-colored light. And then the torch failed utterly. By sense of touch he went through the rest of the loot and found no tools. Mechanically he restrapped the sample cases as his mind sought some way out.

A coffin handle?

Stumbling across the boxes, he groped his way to the stone slabs on which the caskets rested. He reached up and felt along the side of one of the grim receptacles, his fingers clutching a handle that felt as if it were made of iron, though it was pitted with rust. Apparently it had been wrought in the early days when the trappings of the dead were less elaborate in these hillside communities. It might make a good weapon with which to pick a way through the bricks and mortar if he could only get it free from the wood. That he might do with his pocket-knife.

Something moved in the mausoleum, something that sounded like the pat of a naked foot. Sperry's hair bristled, though his reasoning told him it must be made by a material thing. What was it? He listened, holding to the handle of the casket. It came again and halted. He cautiously shifted a foot and touched something, small, yielding, alive. Instantly the truth flashed upon him. It was a toad. He moved again in his relief and set his foot fair upon the creature. He slipped, clinging to the iron handle. The wood, set there almost a century ago, perhaps, exposed to damp from without and within, gave way with a soft, shuddering crash under Sperry's weight. One end of the handle still clung for a moment and then, before he could recover his balance, the whole hideous thing was upon him, rotted wood and shreds of something that once had been quick and human. Dust and crumbling shreds of cerements, blinding, choking, appalling, descended on him with a soft rush as if intent upon a smothering vengeance!

Sperry fell, half paralyzed by the horror of it, and his head struck upon some dull edge. Light flashed before his inner sight, and then— oblivion!

When he came to, his head was aching dully but persistently. There was a great weight upon his chest and he could barely breathe. He could only move his extremities feebly. How long he had been there he knew not, but his returning consciousness told him that the air was nearly exhausted and that lack of it, with the blow, with want of food and a frightful, torturing thirst, had chained him too effectually for him to think of another attempt to break through the chamber that held the long dead and the barely living. How long he had been there he had no way of telling. This was the end, or very close to it.

Tock, tock! The drip on the floor sounded on his sensitive nerves and brain cells, congested by blood sluggish and poisoned for lack of oxygen, like
the blows of a sledge upon some mighty brazen gong, tolling off his last seconds. A swift vision came to him of the figures on Trinity's clock in New York, pounding the hours.

The weight on his chest turned to a pain within, an agony at each laboring breath. He was breathing carbonic gases and he longed for their complete anesthesia. He no longer wished for life nor thought coherently.

The pains ceased and a blessed ease encompassed him. He had passed the Rubicon. Light was in his eyes, a brilliant, dazzling light! Sweet air greeted his lungs. Vaguely he felt himself moving, slowly— slowly! Something was between his lips, something that burned and choked him, but trickled down his throat and started a fire of life within him. He looked up and saw the stars. Then they were obscured by a shape and he heard a voice calling his name— his own name "Jack! Jack!''

He tried to meet the summons, sounding like the hail of some one far down a tunnel, some one he loved. The stars again! More of that life-giving fluid ! And then came the light, not so dazzling. And, above it, radiant, imploring, anxious, was the face of Elizabeth.

Youth and hope and love now brought him swiftly back to life. A strong arm was about him and he sat up. Another voice blended with the girl's in low tones. It was Baldy's.

"Give him some of the coup, Bess. Here's the thermos. We'll get him into the car. I'll close up this place."

He supped the broth and tried to get to his feet. Baldy's strength supporting him on one side, the girl's hand under one elbow, he climbed up into the tonneau of a car and sank on its padded cushions with the girl beside him, rapidly recovering. Baldy was closing the tomb once more. But this time, thank Heaven, he was on the outside.

"How did you find me?" he asked.

"Don't talk until we get out of this," said Baldy. "Bess, you'll have to back out of here. I'm not an expert on these machines. Here, Jack, put away this sandwich and take another drink."

Sperry took the bread and meat and the flask and obeyed orders as the girl left him and took the front seat, her father edging over. The car reversed down the little ascent to the tomb, through the entrance of the cemetery to the main road, sped along it for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and turned into a steep lane up which it plugged through stiff mud to the hill top, turned in between the remnants of a gate, and struggled through what had once been a farmway to a standstill beside a crudely constructed cabin. A broken chimney jagged on the skyline; the windows were boarded, the door still intact.

The man with the mole got out and worked on the closed door. Sperry, almost himself again, got into the front seat with Elizabeth.

"How did you ever find me?" he asked.

"Daddy will tell you. I told you to believe in him, you know."

Seeing that her father was implicated with him in the deliberate robbery of a jewelry establishment, Sperry made no audible answer. But he took the girl's hand and pressed it. They exchanged a glance, a look that ignored all circumstance and set them on a bridge of their own, a mutual platform of appreciation and sincerity. And Sperry found himself glowing with an added resolve to protect this pure-eyed girl from all knowledge of her father's crookedness, a renewal of his desire to prove his own integrity. Something passed between them, as of a current between two wires that touch in a magnetic field, and Sperry felt a tingle that mounted to his heart and stayed there. Just then it was Elizabeth whom he credited with his rescue. Her father did not count.

Baldy came back from the open door of the shack, got a lantern from the car, and a roll of blankets, asking Sperry to bring a box packed full with papered parcels, if he was able. The girl followed them inside the cabin that held some inexpensive furniture, including a rough bed and a rusty stove.

"Sperry," said the man with the mole, "I want you to camp out here for a day or two. Here is enough to make you fairly comfortable. There is wood outside, but I would rather you did not light any fire unless you must have it. This place is just above the cemetery. I want you to watch for the man or men who come to remove the loot, and to follow them. It is barely possible you may recognize one of them. But follow them, somewhere, to where they take the stuff. Then come back to New York and let me know as fast as you can travel. Here is money."

Sperry took it somewhat confusedly. Was Baldy seeking to double cross the others? But in that case he would simply have taken the loot.

"Won't they suspect something when they find I am not there?" he asked.

"There is nothing to suspect. We are not going to interfere with the removal of the stuff. It will not be the crowd that you brought here and who left you inside. In any event, the men who come would not be astonished to find you there dead, or taken away. They do not bother themselves about any details other than those laid out for them to handle. The chief attends to the finer points and all the links. The point is, Jack, the gang is getting a bit tired of working in the dark. They want to get in touch with the chief. I am at the head of that idea. I want to have a straight talk with him myself. Hitherto he issued all orders through Blackberry and one or two others. I am no cat's-paw, and the rest follow; me. I believe this stuff in the tomb will go direct to the chief. I want to trace it. The tomb has been used before for a receiving house for the stuff. It is none of it sold to fences. The chief finances the whole proposition, and bides his time in disposing of the loot through channels known only to himself. He gets more for it that way, but the rest of us don't— not enough of the difference. Now, if they won't let me see the chief, I'm going to find out for myself who he is, and get to him. And you can help me. Will you?"

He spoke in a low voice. The girl was trying to make the shack less comfortless. Sperry gave her a glance and then answered Baldy.

"Considering you have just literally picked me out of the jaws of death, I should be worse than ungrateful not to help you. I owe you a lot."

"We'll come to a just settlement, some day, my son," said Baldy. "You'll have to sleep days and watch nights. They'll come some time after dark. I wouldn't be surprised if they bring a team of horses, as being less noticeable. I've a notion they won't go very far. That will make it all the easier for you. The gang is uneasy. There are hints that the police are closing in and they think, with me, it is time for a final divvy. Of course, I haven't so much coming as some of them, but I am, in a way, the leader in this. As it stands, if anything breaks, the chief has got the goods and we stand for the conviction. He is too well covered.

"He is a bit uneasy, too, I think. Anyway, he has ordered one last haul— I'll tell you about that when you come back to town— and then we may all split up. But there is going to be a personal talk and a regular accounting first, with the chief in person. I don't think you'll have to stick round here long. Sorry for the accommodations, but it wouldn't do for you to be seen. Now we've got to be off."

"Won't you tell me how you found me?" asked Sperry.

Baldy smiled. "I wanted to find out where this cache was. I like to have two strings to my bow. You were one of them. The other? You remember my having those two tires changed at the garage? Well, I supplied the car, and I also supplied two tires that are so marked as to make a very plain trail in the mud for any one used to following them. When the car came back without you— they left it at a downtown garage and let me know in the regular way— when they came back with a yarn about you having got cold feet and given them the slip, I suspected that they had figured you out wrong in some way. They didn't like my bringing you in the way. I did, and I imagined a grudge— and perhaps something else. Anyhow, I knew the destination was somewhere in the Berkshires. On the main road I picked up the tire marks, and I didn't lose them. Now tell me just how it all happened."

He and the girl listened while Sperry summed up the incidents briefly.

"It was the chap with the beard who did it, then?" asked Baldy. "I didn't see much of him. I was inside, and he showed only once. But we'll attend to him later. You had better lay low for a bit with the gang. And now we must be going."

He went outside to the car. Sperry looked at the girl. He seemed fairly launched in criminality, and yet this girl, daughter of Baldy Brown, appeared a thing apart from such affairs, mixed up in them as she undoubtedly was. She held out both her hands and he took them. Again the thrill mounted and took possession of him. She seemed to sway a little toward him, and the next instant her lips had met his.

They stepped apart as Baldy returned. How much he had seen, Sperry could not guess, did not think of until the car had left and he was preparing to go on watch. But he was very fully conscious of a strange, a welcome exhilaration that not al his troubles, all his desperation could modify. Elizabeth and he were living in a world apart, and that world was lit by the unquenchable hope of love.

Baldy had left him an automatic pistol, and he slipped it into his pocket, before, fortified with food and drink, braced still by the touch of the girl's lips, he put out his lantern, closed the door, and crept down the hill through leafless brush and a little grove of spectral white birches in the verge of which he crouched, amid the dried ferns, just above the mound of the vault, keeping his lonely vigil.

7: Temptation

FOR the balance of that night and for the two nights following, Sperry watched in the birch grove above the tomb, eating and sleeping by day, holed up in the deserted farm cabin. They were long vigils with the shortening days, thirteen hours at a stretch in the darkness, with one night continual rain that forced him to light a fire the next morning and dry out his sodden clothes. But he stuck to it and was confident that no one had approached the Cemetery as no one came near his cabin. What he suffered from most was the fact that he dared not smoke while on guard, and found the lonely hours drag interminably. His great consolation was that, long before this, he would have become one of the silent occupants of the tomb, uncoffined and unepitaphed, but most effectually out of the world. And he was very far from wishing to have done with worldly affairs. His love of Elizabeth undoubtedly did much to give him a sane grip on events and furnish him. with hope of ultimate rehabilitation.

Time and time again he went over everything and tried to patch things together into some kind of sequence that he could trace back, in order to discover some clew, some loophole he might use as the commencement of his own vindication. Remington! Everything came back to Remington! He was the one who had deliberately lied about the check's presentation. Cairns had stated that it was torn from the back of his check book, and Sperry suspected Cairns of furnishing this bit of the evidence. This pointed inevitably to collusion between Cairns and Remington. Moreover, Cairns had interested himself in getting Remington a fresh situation. And the bank's funds had been depleted ten thousand dollars, which Cairns had at first promised to restore with altogether too much equanimity, Sperry concluded, reviewing his stepfather's demeanor.

Supposing that Remington had shared that ten thousand. Five thousand would not be much for Cairns to pay as the price of getting Sperry out of grace with his mother, of accomplishing his final disinheritance, and giving Cairns full control of it, if not ultimate possession. But there might be a third man, the one who had so wonderfully imitated the signatures. Who was he?

Out in the blackness he revolved these thoughts, his mind like a squirrel in its turning-cage, and arrived at but one resolution, to seek Baldy's help to run down Remington, and, trapping him, if that were necessary, force the facts from him.

He thought of his mother, none too strong, and of what insidious poison against him Cairns by this time had succeeded in implanting in her confiding nature. There, too, he was powerless; he did not even know her address. So his heart grew bitter and hard against his transgressors. The girl was his only leaven of sweetness, and she was not of his own world, as society apportioned it. She dwelt in the tents of the wicked, and, if crime had not besmirched her, it was because she was of pure gold that may be hidden, but remains intrinsically perfect.

Baldy, too, was a man who had his qualities. Environment might have forced him into his career, as indeed it had forced Sperry. The man was one who would have made good in any surroundings, have stood out head and shoulders above his fellows. His strength was misapplied, but his virtues were still unspoiled. As friend or enemy, he would go on to the end, and Sperry felt that Baldy was his friend.

SO the nights passed, and the days, and the fourth night brought action.

There was a sharp frost, the temperature dropping with the sun, until, at midnight, nested in the blankets he had been forced to bring from the cabin, Sperry was hard put to it to keep warm. He was about to get up and walk about on patrol to restore his congealing circulation, when certain noises arrested him. They were not loud— the clink of a horse's hoofs on frosty road metal, the squeak of an axle. A team was coming on toward the cemetery. This was not the main road; all the farmers of the vicinity were long ago abed.

Excitement gripped him as the sounds grew closer and turned in to the cemetery enclosure. Sperry had wriggled forward until he lay prone on the top of the curving mound that formed the roof of the tomb. The wagon stopped and two dim shapes got down. There was no moon, but the sky was clear with the frost, and the steely stars gave sufficient light to observe movement. The two men, without a word, advanced to the doors and opened them. Then the light from an electric torch sprayed out, and they went into the vault. For fifteen minutes they worked, taking out the cases and grips, and stowing them carefully in the light farm wagon. They worked in silence. If they had expected to find a recently dead body inside, they made no comment at the lack of it.

Sperry wondered why the bearded man and his two helpers had not said something about their attempt to dispose of him, or had not themselves tried to remove the supposed corpse. Was it true, as Baldy had hinted, that the type of men entrusted by the mysterious chief to handle his loot were surprised at nothing, asked no questions beyond the scope of their own directions ?

While these conjectures ran through his mind, he had other things to do; to see if he could recognize these men— as Baldy had suggested he might — and to trail the wagon to its destination.

They wielded their torch skillfully and sparsely. Sperry was unable to get a glimpse of their features. One thing he noticed with satisfaction: they had a big tarpaulin in the wagon-bed which they threw over their load. It wqs plain that one of them, at least, knew the locality, for he led the horses up the cemetery road to where he could swing them around a loop, not wishing to attempt to back them or turn them in the narrow space, for fear of noise or mishap in the gloom. Sperry swiftly tucked away his blankets among the bracken and slipped like a lizard from the top of the tomb, gliding down to the road, and, hidden behind a big elm, waited the coming out of the wagon.

It went cautiously on down the steep pitch, the brakes set. Behind it, at a safe distance, strode Sperry. At the bottom of the hill the wagon turned north across the valley on a fairly level road, the horses put to a jog-trot. Sperry changed his pace and kept fifty yards behind without difficulty. Thus for a mile they went, and then came the long climb up the northern ridge. Sperry knew the country well, and knew that the team would be stopped for necessary breathing half-way up the hill. He slowly closed in, and, when the wagon halted on the midway bench of the ascent, he was less than ten yards away.

He saw the striking of a match, the passing of it from one man to the other, the glow of a cigar and a pipe, and caught the scent of tobacco. He saw more— the face of one of the men, and the ruddy outline caused him to stop with a little gasp. He had not seen enough to be sure of identity, but the suggestion put his brain in a turmoil.

The two men were talking in low tones; the heavy breathing of the winded horses was plain on the cold night air. Foot by foot, bent double, Sperry crept up to the wagon. He meant to climb over its tail board, cover himself with the tarpaulin, and get a ride to wherever it was going. This he must do, he decided, at the moment of starting up, so that whatever he might make of noise or disturbance would be covered by the natural noise of the horses and wagon in getting into action.

The driver released his foot brake, and Sperry, with a little jump, glided over the tail-board and pulled the edge of the tarpaulin over himself without attracting attention. The wagon went on up the hill and down the other side. Once again the horses broke into a trot which they kept up for mile after mile with little slackenings on minor hills. Sperry no longer felt the cold; he was tingling with excitement. He was beginning to see a way out of his troubles—not an easy path, but a possible one.

The team slowed up and turned off the main road to a smoother one. Sperry stuck his head out from the tarpaulin. They were now in the private grounds of a well-kept estate, driving between lawns set with shrubs and groups of trees. A house showed, gray-white, no lights visible, a country place of wealth. The wagon drove on round to the back, and Sperry, his eyes constantly on the driver and his companion, got clear of the tarpaulin and edged over the tail board. Despite his care, his feet scuffed the gravel of the drive, and he instantly darted for the nearest cover, a clump of evergreens, crackly with the frost. The driver, pulling up his horses at the moment, paid no attention, but the other man swung about in his seat.

"What was that?" he demanded.

"What?"

"Something in the bushes back there!" As he spoke the man flung the ray of the torch upon the laurels. Sperry lay perdu like a rabbit, fearful that the shaking boughs would give him away. Just then a door opened, ruddy in the light.

"You've got the jumps," said the driver. "There's the boss, waiting for us. Get down and help out with the stuff."

The other obeyed, though he walked over to the evergreens and deliberately examined them. But Sperry had writhed out on the other side and chosen a fresh hiding place. The distraction of the opening door had given time for the stiff branches to cease their motion, and the man gave up his idea and proceeded to help the driver with the packages.

Sperry dodged around to one side ol the big house. It was dark, save for a narrow strip of orange light where a blind had not been pulled completely down. Shrubbery grew close to the wall. The frost in the ground was hard enough to bear him without telltale footprints, he decided, and he badly wanted to have a look inside that room. He made his trip in safety, and, gripping the stone sill of the telltale window drew himself up until his eyes were on a level with the crack. The window faced a door that was just opening. A man appeared and advanced toward a massive center table. Behind him appeared the driver and his fellow, carrying the packages which they set on the table at the indication of the first man, who started to unstrap the packages as the two others turned toward the doors.

Sperry was forced to lower himself to ease the pull on his muscles. He had seen enough, yet he wanted to see more. There was plenty of time ahead of him before he could get the early train to New York. The cabin door was closed properly; the blankets well hidden, and he did not intend to go back to the cemetery.

Six times, at intervals, he hoisted himself and peered through the inch of vision space at the foot of the blind. He saw the man finally dismiss the others, heard the wagon rattle off to some stable, saw the principal open the packages, and gloat for a while over the contents. These he separated entirely from their velvet covered boxes, and placed them within a big safe that was not at first sight apparent, being covered with sliding panels made to conform with the woodwork of the walls. Then he touched a bell and the driver once again appeared, devoid of his outer clothes, addressing the first man with respect, and starting to take away the now emptied cases, grips, and jeweler's boxes.

Now Sperry was through. He could imagine the bulky stuff being burned in a furnace, but he knew where the jewels were stored, and he knew now the mysterious chief's identity. For the man who had put the loot in his safe was his stepfather, Cairns ; the driver was Peters, and the helper a footman.

Here was cause for elation, yet how was he to make use of it? He himself was still an outlaw, and must act through others. Baldy was his only friend, and he was bound to Baldy by many ties. But for the Chicago crook he would be dead in the vault.

His mind, spurred by what he had seen, worked clearly now. The halffamiliar voice of the bearded man was plainly recognizable in the light of all events. It had been Remington. His -own voice and his injured finger, displayed when he had fixed the tires, had given him away, despite his disguise. Just why Remington had not later removed his body he could not figure, but he did not bother with it. Evidently neither Peters nor Cairns had known of his joining the gang of which Cairns was chief. That, too, he set aside for the time.

Other parts of the pattern were forming swiftly. Cairns was a master crook, greater even than Baldy Brown, controller of a band, few of whom knew his identity. Cairns planned the robberies. His own case had been but a side issue in Cairns' campaign, though the fortune the man hoped to control was worth having. Aside from that had been the mutual dislike between Sperry and his stepfather, and the objection of the latter to having any one close to him who might suspect or clog his operations.

Remington, dismissed from the bank, had been placed in the jeweler's with a view to the robbery. The red-haired clerk was in it, too. Remington may -have furnished the combination which was to have been put by the redhead into the box containing the tie-clip. That was why Remington had been on the balcony that morning— to watch for the man who would buy the tie-clip. Doubtless Remington, for his own reasons, wanted to link up all he could of Cairns' chain of operatives. Naturally he had become suspicious of Sperry's appearance in the store. Once started, he had been on the watch, and had recognized him as the driver of the Speedwell car.

That would link him up with Baldy, who had furnished the car and vouched for Sperry with the gang.

Baldy must know all this. Sperry found himself in a quandary. If he accomplished the arrest of Cairns, if he could find some one who would listen to him and act, it meant the arrest of Baldy, or at least his pursuit, and Baldy would know that Sperry, whom he had befriended, had double crossed him. He had a good excuse, his own vindication, but— he had eaten Baldy's salt ! More, he was himself mixed up with the gang.

Baldy's friendship might have been only the ruse to use him as a tool, to procure the driver they needed, to act as outside man — a mere matter of business. But it would not have been necessary for the man with the mole to have taken him into his own house, to have brought him into close contact with his daughter. He knew what Sperry was charged with ; that was whip enough, had he wanted to use it.

Instead, he had left Sperry alone with Elizabeth, had sent them off on a jaunt.

Walking along the lonely roads, Sperry thrashed it out, and found himself at last between two questions, both concerning a woman. There was his mother to be considered, to be rescued from Cairns, to have her faith in her own son restored. And there was Elizabeth, whom he loved— a crook's daughter, but infinitely sweet. How could the two situations be reconciled?

He did not attain the solution until he boarded the early train to New York, at a station ten miles from his own home, trusting to his disguise, keeping his baseball finger well gloved.

He was going to tell Baldy everything that occurred. Crook though he was, the man was square, and he would see both sides of the case. That Baldy would double cross Cairns, having once entered his gang, he could not imagine. Baldy, sore at not meeting his principal, at being used as a cat's-paw, and Baldy playing traitor, were two very different things. But he felt sure that Baldy would find some way to help him out of his dilemma, and he was very certain that his present duty was to warn Baldy, who might be even now proclaimed as traitor to the gang by Remington. If they had not hesitated to leave him in the tomb, what might they not do to Baldy? And to Baldy's daughter? He remembered that they had merely told Baldy that he, Sperry, had given them the slip with cold feet. Were they giving the man with the mole the benefit of the doubt until the last job was pulled, needing his aid? Remington, recognizing Sperry, knew that Baldy lied when he called him Gentleman Manning, the Duke, from Chi.

There were a lot of tangles in the skein that all his cogitation failed to unravel ; it failed to anything but merge them into a greater snarl. Arrived at New York in midmorning, he hurried to the house in Greenwich Village, taking especial care to break the direct journey, fearful that something had gone wrong.

Elizabeth met him, smiling. Her daddy, she said, would be back at noon.

"You look worried," said the girl, "and you look— have you seen yourself in a mirror lately? You need repairs."

Sperry regarded himself. The nights in the open had made his false complexion patchy ; the dye in his hair was blotched, and a suggestion of blondness showed plainly at the 'toots.

"You also look hungry," said Elizabeth. "When did you eat last?"

It had been many hours since Sperry had tasted warm food, and he had forgotten breakfast in his hurry. The girl soon remedied that, and presently she was sitting across from him while he devoured ham and eggs and wonderful coffee, with still more wonderful biscuits

What a paradox she was, he thought; fresh with that indescribable suggestion of the open country. How could it be possible that Baldy was her father? A happy solution presented itself. Like himself, she might have only a step-father. But he hesitated to talk to her about it.

As he finished his meal she brought him a box of her father's cigars and an envelope addressed to him.

"Daddy said to give you these if you got back while he was away," she said, and left him to open the communication while she went humming off to get rid of the dishes.

Inside the envelope were two clippings from newspapers, one long, one short. Sperry took the latter first. It read :

Mrs. Simeon Cairns is now staying at the Isle of Pines, and is reported much improved in health. In connection with recent unfortunate family events, Mrs. Cairns stated to our correspondent that she had every reason to believe that these would terminate satisfactorily, particularly with regard to the status of her son, John J. Sperry, though she declared that she had no knowledge of his whereabouts, nor had he personally communicated with her.

Mr. Cairns is not expected to join her this winter. The capitalist is at present in the Berkshires at the family residence.

Here was more bewilderment! What miracle had happened to stiffen his mother's mental backbone in behalf of her son? Had nature proven more powerful than Cairns' suggestions, and had the mother risen in defense of her own flesh and blood? It seemed so. And Sperry thought he could read between the lines of the diplomatic correspondent the prophesy of a disagreement between Mr. and Mrs. Cairns, already brewing. It was good news and it heartened him. The other was not so reassuring. It was a semi-editorial from a New York daily. It waS:

It has long been evident that the series of robberies that the police have been so singularly unable to prevent or follow up are being committed by the same operatives. Each crime bears the distinct marks of inside work, coupled to skillful burglary. The police can find no trace of any endeavor to dispose of the valuables acquired, much less any clew as to who may be the criminals.

They hint vaguely at a master mind, at a powerful organization run upon strictly business principles, if crime may be styled business or allowed any principles. There, having established a hypothesis that bears some claim to being logical, they stop.

It is high time that this reign of terror be ended. Our merchants are not to be left thus unprotected. It must be admitted that some one with a fine mind for details has planned these depredations so successfully carried out. The robbery of Marshall & Co., the jewelers, is a case in point. But four days have passed, and the police acknowledge themselves helpless by their inactivity.

The Comet has before this taken a conspicuous hand in the unraveling of mysteries, as its readers will well remember. We have no desire to usurp the duties of the police, but, if they are unable to secure the services of competent detectives, the Comet stands ready, as heretofore, to volunteer the aid of their own representatives, who have already performed notably in the running down of crime.

The police have no information to give out— or will give none— which is tantamount to admitting that they lack even the clews they so often mention. To convince the public, if they need such conviction, that the Comet is zealous only for the common weal, and is not acting on unadvised impulse, we will state information that has already been unearthed by us to this effect. At least a part of this band of criminals has recently been recruited from Chicago, and it should not be supremely difficult for the commissioner to make inquiries along these lines. If the police department breaks into action that gives promise of success or, at least, of progress, the Comet will gladly remain in its preferred position as recorder of events. Otherwise its readers may expect in its columns the news of a vigorous campaign to uncover the identity of this gang of arch criminals, and bring them to justice. What further information the Comet now has, held back for obvious reasons, is at the service of the commissioner, if he wants it. If not, we will act upon it and— there will be speedy developments.

Sperry felt enmeshed in puzzles. What did this leader in the Comet mean? Baldy had seen it, of course, since he had clipped it. It looked like more danger for the man with the mole and for himself. He also was supposed to be from Chicago. Was it a subtle plan of Remington to get rid of Baldy?

That hardly seemed plausible. The Comet, Sperry, knew, had boosted its circulation enormously by previous brilliant detective work. If it gave out such clews that, as Sperry knew, were true ones, how much more did it have up the managerial sleeves?

When Baldy arrived, he did not do much to enlighten him.

"I thought you would like to see that news about your mother," he said. "So did Bess. She found the item. As for the other, don't worry about it. I don't. Now give me your news."

To Sperry's chagrin, his information did not seem to impress Baldy overwhelmingly. He laid stress only upon one part of the discovery, that Sperry had seen the jewels stowed in the safe that Cairns had installed in the library since he had assumed mastership at Swiftbrook Bowl.

"Your affairs and mine seem to run together, son," he said whimsically. "And we'll straighten out the whole mix before we get through with it, take it from me. Meantime, don't worry about Remington. I've looked out for that. You are back just in time. This trip you will be an inside man. The last job is to be pulled to-night. It is the Agricultural Bank at Longfield, and, of course, your esteemed stepfather and Remington worked out the details of this some time ago, in all probability. Also, Chief Cairns announces this as the final wind-up. He has undoubtedly seen the Comet, and read the writing on the wall. He has agreed to see certain of us as a committee after the job is done. We are to go over from Longfield to Swiftbrook Bowl by motor. You will be with the committee, and maybe you'll have a chance to tell your stepfather what you think of him, and come to some agreement."

"But I'm mixed up in this," said Sperry. "Look at this disguise."

"It needs fixing," said Baldy. "Bess will do it. Remember, there are more ways than one of killing a goose and of cooking it. I'm leaving for Longfield on the one-thirty train. You come on the three-thirty. That brings you there well after dark. You know the Olympic Theater?"

"Of course. But it's closed."

"For alterations and repairs. Those repairs are being pushed just now. Night work, decorators and stage carpenters from New York. Get the idea?"

"No," said Sperry; "I'm afraid I don't."

"The Olympic Theater is five doors from the bank. Its opening runs between two stores. These have been closed out under the new lease. I fancy your stepfather is back of that lease, cleverly covered. The repairs give a fine opportunity for what has been going on; a tunnel, starting underneath the stage, runs up and under the main vault of the bank."

"But that vault is at the end of the safety-deposit department," said Sperry. "There is only a heavy rail across, and the bank is lighted at night so that any one passing can see clear down to the end of the vault."

Baldy smiled.

"Wait and see," he said. "Everything is timed for to-night. There is a grip in your room with painters' tools inside of it. Just a precaution. But you take that along and breeze right up to the theater. There's a watchman on there, one of the gang. He'll ask you 'Why didn't you show up at six o'clock?' When you answer, 'I mislaid my card and lost the train,' he'll let you through. Go up back of the stage. The curtain'll be down. There'll be a man or so working on the stage. You stick around ; they won't bother you. If they do, tell 'em you are waiting for Blackberry. When they go under the stage, you go with 'em. That'll be to bring out the stuff. It'll be shipped through the back door. But— here is your job. Don't be the last man out of the vaults or up on the stage. As soon as there is any indication of the truck being outside, and before they open the stage doors at the back— the double scenery doors— you send up that curtain. It's automatic-hydraulic; works on the right-hand side of the stage. There's a labeled button."

He looked at Sperry keenly.

"Don't bother yourself as to why I'm asking you to do this. It's vital to my affairs and yours. I've picked you for the job. I won't put it on the grounds of gratitude for what I've done. I'm asking you to do it because no one else can handle this. It's a favor to me. If you don't believe in me, call it off right now. There may be a chance of danger in it. But if you do it nicely, that's minimized. I'll be there. Will you do it?"

With the eyes of the man with the mole boring into him, Sperry tried to retain some self judgment, and at the same time to be fair to Baldy. He came to the conclusion that Baldy smelled a trap set for him at the last instant after his usefulness was ended in connection with the job. And Elizabeth's request was plain in his ears.

"I believe in you. Won't you believe in my daddy?" Baldy was his only friend, save the girl. And gratitude did enter into it.

"I'll do it," he said. They gripped hands.

8: The End of Baldy

SPERRY swung down the main street of Longfield at nine o'clock, bag in hand, his disguise retouched, and enlarged upon, so that he felt confident of not being recognized. He passed the bank and glanced in. Back of the main floor he could see the wide corridor behind the bronze grating where the safety-deposit boxes and the door of the great vault were clearly visible night and day. All looked as usual. He passed the watchman and went back to the stage'. Two men were pottering about with saw and hammer, making a noise but doing nothing definite. One of them challenged him. ft was Curly Conklin, the killer who had tried to pistol Baldy. He did not recognize Sperry, and was satisfied with his answers.

"They're prit' nigh ready for us," he said. "They was right under the floor last night. Truck's to be here at eleven sharp. And, let me tell you, it'll be some haul. They say this is the last trick for a while, and it'll be a good one."

Sperry wondered how they could expect to get away with the loot inside of two hours, with no present signs of disturbance in the bank's interior.

"Are they going through the vault floor?" he asked Curly.

"Not much. It's a foot of steel and concrete. Couldn't make a hole big enough to work through there without giving the snap away. They're coming up in front of the door and torching that. Didn't you twig the picture? Say, that's some job of painting, I'll say. The guy that did it used to be wit' a high-class opery company. You could stand a foot in front of it an' not git wise. These hicks'll stare when they git on termorrer."

Sperry nodded.

"Good work," he said. He knew now what it was. A canvas screen, painted to represent the perspective of the last few feet of the deposit box corridor and an exact representation of the vault door, was set a few feet in advance of the vault, and gave the safecrackers ample room to work undisturbed while the occasional patrol passed and peered in,, sure that all was well. There was no premises watchman in the bank. The utter publicity was relied on. And there had been inside work again to place the screen in position, he supposed.

He leaned up against the side of the curtain, smoking, till Curly admonished him to make some noise.

"Some guys might be rubberin' an' wonderin' why they couldn't hear nuttin'," said the crook. "I'm tellin' you this gang works down to the fine points. It's a shame to bust it up. But the cops is gettin' hep, they tell me."

Presently a man appeared at the open trap in the stage and beckoned to them. Sperry followed the others down wooden steps, and then a ladder, to an earthen tunnel shored with timber, and so on up into the bank and back of the canvas screen, unpainted on that side, deftly fitted to the space. There was a smell of gas, acrid and choking, and Sperry smothered a cough. There was no sign of Baldy or of Remington, with or without his beard. The vault door was swung back, and he had no time to look for signs of the work of the oxy-acetylene torches that had been used. Some one gave a crisp command in a low whisper, and they began to carry out bags of coin and packages of bills.

Up on the stage two men started to place these in old lime barrels, stuffing the tops with excelsior. These were to be placed in the truck, Sperry gathered, together with odds and ends of scenery. There was a clock on the proscenium wall. The hands marked fifteen minutes of eleven.

Sperry looked at the great curtain, blank, unresponsive. What lay behind it? As he started for his second trip to the bank, a man stopped him.

"You ain't needed," he said. "It's all on the way, Duke. Help with them barrels. The truck'll be here any minute."

Sperry fussed around with excelsior, watching the hands of the clock creep to ten and then to five minutes of the hour. There was a sound of wheels outside.' He slipped over to the proscenium and touched the button.

Up went the big canvas silently.

Some one shouted at him. "Here, what're you doin'?" Then the voice died away.

In the stage boxes were men, covering the gang with revolvers; more in the orchestra, the muzzles of their guns showing in the border lights of the stage. A man was walking down the center aisle, a big man, with authority in his manner and in the two guns he aimed.

"Up with your hands, the lot of you!" he said. "Up with them, boys! No use trying the back door. There's a truck there, but not the kind you were expecting."

More men were behind him. They swarmed over the footlights and herded up the safe-crackers, taking charge of the barrels. The backdoors were opened and more detectives stood revealed, also a patrol wagon.

"Lord!" said the snarling voice of Curly Conkling, as he glared at the big man who was in charge of the raid. "It's Jim Farrell."

Sperry gave a second look at the detective who had once sent Curly up the river, and whom Curly had mistaken Baldy for, on that night in the alley. Farrell nodded at him curtly.

"You come with us," he said.

Sperry found himself set on one side with two others. The rest were packed into the patrol wagon. The money was being taken back into the bank. Where was Baldy? What had gone wrong at the last moment?

One thing was certain. Sperry himself was in custody. To his surprise no one handcuffed him, though they wristmanacled the two others, who, with him, were placed in two motor cars with the big man and his assistants. A third car, filled with plain-clothes men, followed .them as they sped through Longfield out into the country. Sperry recognized the direction, and was soon sure that they were on the way to Swiftbrook Bowl.

They were going to apprehend Cairns! He felt a vicious delight in the thought. Why was he taken along? The others were doubtless members of the committee Baldy had spoken of. They must know his identity, and they wanted to use him in connection with his stepfather's arrest! To that he was willing to subscribe, but he worried about Baldy, principally about Elizabeth.

The third car with the plain-clothes men went ahead of them as they reached the Cairns' house, and the officers jumped from the vehicle and spread themselves about the residence. The big man got out at the front door with two other prisoners and two detectives. Those in Sperry's car joined the group. Farrell spoke.

"I'm going to take off the cuffs, Slim, and off you, Jerry. But don't try any monkey business. When Peters answers the door, you tell him everything's O.K., and that you're the committee, see? Once the door's open, we'll do the rest." He turned to Sperry and caught him by the arm, pressing him out of sight. The detectives stood in the shadows as Slim rang the bell, conscious of automatics covering him, and gave his message to Peters, attired as a butler.

Then there was a swift rush, with Peters knocked down as he tried to pull a gun, a glimpse of Cairns stepping haughtily into the hall and turning ghastly pale under the electrics as Farrell called on him to throw up his hands. Sperry went with the rest into the library.

"The jig's up, Cairns," said Farrell. "We've got the goods on you. If you'll slide back those wall panels so we can get the stuff from Marshall's out of your safe, with a lot of other loot you've got there, you'll save trouble for us all. Don't lower your hands. We want you, not your corpse. Just tell us the combination; that'll do."

Cairns obeyed, trembling, but with rage. He wheeled on Slim and Jerry, his eyes blazing.

"You dirty stool pigeons!" he cried. "I'll get you yet for this."

"They are not the stool pigeons, Cairns," said Farrell. "I'm the only original stool pigeon in this case, if you want to call me one— although your pal Remington was pretty nearly ready to squeal last night. We've had him tucked away safe for a few days, with Gallagher and Martin."

He suddenly took off his hat, and with it came a wig of grayish hair, smiling as he did so. Sperry looked at him open-mouthed. Farrell's head was nearly bald. But the teeth were dazzlingly white, and there was no mole. And yet?

Farrell smiled directly at him.

"I'm Baldy Brown, all right," he said. "Cairns, let me introduce you to your stepson, Jack Sperry. He's been on your payroll lately as Gentleman Manning, of Chi, also called The Duke."

9: Jim Farrell

"I HAD to keep you out of the know, Sperry," said Farrell later, now thoroughly identified as the head of a famous agency. "You might have tipped the thing off. As for the disguise— or the camouflage, that was easy, though Curly would have bumped me on general resemblance if you hadn't been Johnny on the spot. I've got a bald head, which, is handy for wigs fitting properly. As Farrell I wear one. My front teeth are bad, and when I had one bridge made, long ago, I had some others finished up in various style. The mole was easy, letting the whiskers sprout to make it more natural.

"You've helped a lot without knowing it. Of course Bess was wise. We have few secrets between us." He grinned knowingly at Sperry.

"Now everything will be straightened out. I don't think your stepfather damaged your mother's property, and as for her, I took occasion to let her know by way of headquarters that her boy was no rascal, if her second husband was. Also I had the Comet tipped off to smooth matters for the climax. I fancy, from the reports, that your mother was rather relieved to have Cairns uncovered. She wants you to go to her, though I'm afraid your appearance will startle her. But I suppose you'll not wait for a little thing like that to stop you."

"I'm glad she knows about things," said Sperry. "I want to see her badly, but there's some one else I'd like to see first, if you don't mind."

"Who's that?" asked Farrell, no longer the Man with the Mole, lighting a cigar.

"You're not such a good detective, after all," said Sperry. "It's Elizabeth."

"Lord bless my soul, you don't say so?" There was a twinkle in Farrell's eyes. "I rather fancy she's expecting both of us to dinner. You can't go to the Isle of Pines by railroad, Sperry, and the next steamer doesn't sail for a couple of days. I've got some details to attend to. Perhaps you had better go ahead. No need to take anything but short cuts this trip, my boy."

But Sperry was gone and Farrell laid down his cigar with a laugh.

"Not such a good detective after, all!" he said softly. "Does he think I'm blind?"

_______________

10: The Gold Ship

Adventure, 30 Nov 1921

A  SCORE of men sprawled on the sand in the spattered shade of overhanging thicket that came down in an almost impenetrable jungle, from the rocky hill summits to the shelving margin of white beach. Most of them were asleep, arms and legs flung wide, bronzed and hairy, with bearded faces exposed recklessly to the sun's shafts that pierced the boughs, or pillowed on corded forearms, noses to the grit.

All wore short wide breeches and shortsleeved wide-collared tunics of dingy white or grimy striped pattern. All had sashes of stained but vivid silk beneath more practical belts of leather with heavy buckles of brass or silver. Few boasted foot covering. Some had gaudy kerchiefs bound about their heads.

Pistols were stuck in some of the belts or laid on the sand beside their owners. Cutlases were thrust in the beach at varying, drunken angles; and empty bottles were scattered where tipsy hands had flung them after draining.

One, lean and tall and angular, without a beard but with a week's growth of red stubble sprouting from cheeks and chin, sat bolt upright, gray eyes set and vacant, singing in a high tenor that was charged with half-maudlin sentiment, oblivious of audience or the lack of it.

The blue waters of the Windward Passage lipped the beach gently. Across the channel, westward, the hills of Cuba showed blue as the sun slanted to its bedding. To the north, Great Inagua Cay loomed low, and back of it the islands of the Bahamas faded in vanishing perspective.

The afternoon was hot and drowsy, the hum of insects mingling with the soft plash of the tide, the harsher dissonance of snoring men, topped by the tipsy tenor. Palm trees soared majestically from the bush, green fronds bowing in the fitful breeze.

A man sat apart from the others on a coral clump close to tide edge. Long, muscular arms were wrapped about his knees, his chin sunken on his chest, his blue eyes alight, charged with a certain desperation that was offset by the humorous quirk of his wellshaped mouth.

The chin was a bold one, decked with a beard trimmed to a point. The mustachios were upcurled, the eyebrows cocked upward of their own volition. Of medium height, he was sparely and powerfully built. Scated, he gave the impression of a coiled spring. Inactive, he disseminaied a well defined suggestion of gaiety coupled with recklessness not unbacked by efficiency.

"For it's hame, dearie, hame,

Oh, it's hame I lang to be;

For my topsails they are hoisted

And I must put oot to sea."

The Scots accent of the red-stubbled tenor were strong. Liquor could not spoil the real quality of the voice nor drown the feeling of the singer. The character of the listener's glance changed to milder aspect and became dreamy.

"Oh, the oak and the ash

An' the bonnie birchen tree;

They all are growin' green

In the north countree.

So it's hame, dearie, hame,

It's hame I lang to be;

'Tis far an' wide I've wandered

Since I parted, sweet, fra' thee.'

A lazing giant, black-visaged and surly, raised on one elbow and cursed the singer. Another man essayed to fling a bottle at him but the missile slid from his flaccid fingers and he fell back on the sand while the Scotchman sang on through his recurring refrain of

"Hame, dearie, hame,

It's hame I lang to be;"

unconscious of criticism.

Before the gaze of the man on the coral clump the limpid sapphire of the channel turned to a crisp sea of steely blue whipped by the wind— the choppy waters of the English Channel, or, as he styled it, in his own beloved Norman-French, The Sleeve.

The headland of Cape Maisi changed to the white cliffs of his native town, Dieppe, where the Arques came rolling down to the pebbly beach. He saw the castle on the western cliff, time-worn and battle scarred; on the eastern, the Church of Our Lady of Good Help. He saw the nestling town, redroofed, the shipping in the harbor, the fishing craft at Le Pollet anchorage, and his eyes grew dim.

SUDDENLY he smacked a fist hard into a horny palm and rose, wheeling on the singer whose song ceased abruptly with a dropping jaw as his senses struggled back to consciousness under the lash of the unexpected tirade.

"Name of a fool, Sanderson, stick to surgery and forget to sing! You lament like a moulting raven. Home, is it, that you want to be?— with your earrings pawned for a jack of liquor and your breeches lacking in use and decency? A fine sight you'd make, Alec Sanderson, beneath your bonny birchen trees, with the village children laughing at you for a waif and a vagabond. A murrain on your song!"

Sanderson surveyed him with a blinking stare that began to hold a ray of intelligence.

"Aye, Pierre, m'lad," he hiccoughed. "Hame. 'Tis where we'd all be, first and last. I'll warrant ye the words got beneath your skin, to say nothing of the voice, for ye ken I've a voice beyon' the ordinar', syne I've tipple to mellow it. I'd not give ane wee bell of purple heather for all the bloom o' the Antilles, nor a sup o' Scots usquebaugh for all the sack brewed in Hispaniola.

"I came to the Main to mak' my fortune, I'm free to admit. I'm a registered apothecary an' chirurgeon, a man o' letters and o' family. An' yet 'm naught but a wastrel, a ne'er-do-weel, dreein' my own weird, brought down to ministering to the hurts of a pack o' buccaneerin', roarin', rantin' ruffans wi' no more prospects than a stranded starfish, out of elbow, out of luck, out o' siller, out o' liquor.

"An' you, Pierre, wi' mair brains i' your feet than the rest possess in their headpans, you reproach me, Alec Sanderson, man 0' learnin' an' family, wi' havin' no seat to my breeks. Mair, you draw me a picture of mysel' chased by the bairns beneath the birches for a gipsy. Man, think shame of it!"

Tears of fuddled self-sympathy stood in his eyes. Pierre laughing at him, clapped him on the shoulder. The sleepers began to awaken, yawning into the lowering eye of the sun that destroyed the last of their shadow and warned them of nightfall and the need of a better lodging. They examined the already empty bottles, tilting them for the last few, aggravating drops, with a few curses at their luck, grouping gradually about the still grumbling Sanderson and Pierre.

"Look you, men," declared the latter. "Alec here declares us out of everything."

"True enough," broke in the swarthy giant who had sworn at the singer. "We've not enough powder to prime our pistols, let alone charge 'em. There's not three doubloons in the whole company. We've lost our ship and our skipper. What's to do? We came out here to discuss the matter."

"And spent the afternoon in guzzling," capped Pierre. "Now, let's talk in sober fashion. Since we have nothing left to lose, it is certain we must better our condition if we are resolved to make the effort. Most of us have come over seas, as Sanderson has confessed, in the hope to make our fortunes and return. We have helped win Hispaniola and Tortuga from the Spaniards. We have seen French governors established, but the isles are overrun with colonists and the cattle are fast disappearing.

"There is no more profit in boucan or in hides. You know how long it took us, and with what hard toil, to gain a shipload, only to lose all in the channel. Misfortune, it seems, has taken pains to buffet us. We are marked for men who are unlucky. We lose at cards and at dice. We are reduced to the condition of beggary if we are not yet beggars.

"What to do then? Why, to force the hand of Fortune. To make a bold bid. Since Opportunity avoids us, let us go out and seek Opportunity. Look you, we French hold Hispaniola and this isle of Tortuga; but the Spanish, our enemies, hold the seas. They have taken toll of us, and heavily. Let us adjust the balance.

"Their flota galleons carry rich freight wrung from the toil of Indian slaves. Treasures of gold and silver and valuable produce—enough, in one hull, to make rich men of all of us and send us home in honor to our own places. The cause is just—to despoil the foes of our countries and enrich ourselves at one stroke, to accomplish that for which we came to the Main. What say you?"

"Tis piracy."

Pierre whirled on the speaker.

"Call it by what name you will. If it is piracy to singe the beard of the king of Spain, to avenge the tortures of the Inquisition, the wrongs of enslaved natives, then enroll me as a pirate! Will any feed us on Tortuga for the love of our company? Has the governor, Le Passeur, any love for those who can not pay his tithes? Something like this we must do—or perish."

THEY caught the infection of his spirit, rallying to the flash of his eyes, the ring of his voice, thronging together, throwing up their arms with a hoarse cheer. All save the giant.

"Brave words," he said. 'Do we swim out into the Caribbean and wait for a galleon to come by and deliver itself to us? Do we catch flying fish as we go and drink the dew from our beards? When do we start? Speech will not slake thirst 'nor fill an empty belly, to my mind."

Pierre was swift to see the dampening of their ardor. :

"We are not quite to the end of our resources," he said. "Simon, the Jew, is in my debt for a buffeting I saved him— perhaps for his very life. He has sworn to repay me. I can get from him some arms; powder and bullets, some provisions and a boat. We do not need much if our hearts are welded to our enterprise. So long as his boat does not leak and has a sail and sweeps, she will serve us. Fortune favors the brave."

Sanderson suddenly chuckled.

"I am minded," he said, "of what a wise man wrote over thirteen hundred years ago. Eumenius, orator and scribe to Cesar Constantine. Listen."

They gathered round the red-headed chirurgeon with the respectful awe in which they held his learning, their jaws slack as he quoted in Latin:

" 'Atque ita eventu temeritatis ostenderant nihil esse clausum piratice desperationi quo navigiis pateret accessus.'

"And so, by the result of their daring exploit, showed that wherever ships can sail, nothing is closed to pirates in desperation'," he translated. "I am for Pierre. Let us go and seek out Simon. If he gives us a black cloth and some white bunting to boot I will make shift to furnish us a fitting flag for the expedition."

"Look you," went on Pierre, pressing the moment. "I was born in a caul. Beneath a fortunate star. So far my happy hour has not come, but it is close. A wise woman foretold at my birth that riches and honor would come to me out of a golden ship. See, it is stamped upon my wrist."

He held out his forearm for their inspection. Distinct through the sunburn there showed a birthmark that, with little imagination, showed like a miniature ship, high-pooped, full-sailed, golden under the patina of tan.

"Twice since then has my fortune been read," he said. "By a breed woman at Port Royal, a voodoo mistress. By a gipsy in Bordeaux. Both spoke alike— of a golden ship sailing on the seas, freighted with my fortune, and of riches and honor and the name of Pierre le Grand! That ship is now upon the seas, my braves. Let us put out to meet it and share its cargo. Within a week, mayhap by this time tomorrow, we may be drinking rich wines and clinking doubloons in other pockets than these rags now hold."

They hung on his words, swept by superstition, inflamed by the hope of betterment, wrapt in the picture his words had conjured up for them, confident in his self-belief, gazing on the birthmark as a magic talisman.

Only the black visaged giant, surly and jealous, still demurred.

"And you, it seems, are to be the selfappointed leader and claim the major share," he grumbled. "It is not the first cock that crows in the village that is always the best bird. If we obtain this boat and turn from buccaneers to pirates, it is the best man among us who should be captain. The best, I say."

He glared truculently around, one hand on the butt of his pistol. They shrank from him a little, except Sanderson who regarded him sardonically, and Pierre.

"It is my mission to heal wounds rather than make them," said the Scotchman. "You need not roll your bull eyes at me, Volin. A chirurgeon is apter needed at the tail of a fight than at the beginning."' Volin turned on Pierre, contemptuously appraising his lesser bulk from head to foot.

"Pierre le Grand!" he sneered. "Pierre le Petit would suit you better, [am thinking."

The eyes of the Norman seemed to dissolve into little pools of blue flame about the black pupils in which shone points of light.

"As you say, Volin, we have yet to get the boat," he said in a voice that was cold and fine as the sweep of a steel blade. "That comes later. First'"—and the blue flame grew fiercer—"there is this matter of height between us which seems to trouble you. My shadow may be less than yours, Volin, but a good sword makes arm lengths equal.

"When a man is dead," he added softly, 'St makes little difference what size his grave is dug. There is still light left and the beach is level. What say you, Volin, between you and me, shall we prove which is the better man?"

He stepped aside and plucked his cutlas out of the sand, tossing it in the air to catch it again by the hilt.

"The better man,'' he repeated, running his thumb along the keen edge of the steel. "Or shall we make it to the death, Volin the Black?"

For just a moment the giant hesitated while the crowd held silence.

"We will make the ring," he said sullenly.

Pierre laughed.

"I thought so," he said. "You have lost the fight already, Volin."

TWO men made a fairly true circle in the sand on a spot that was level, hardened and still damp from the ebb, tracing the circumference with the point of their cutlases. The diameter was about eighteen feet, a radius of three paces from the center.

Volin and Pierre stripped off their tunics and stood naked save for sash and belt and the wide breeches that came to their knees. The sun sank almost clear of clouds. The long shadows of the men ranged sharp over the white coral. Volin's chest and stomach were shaggy with black hair, Pierre's skin practically smooth.

Pierre might have weighed a hundred and sixty pounds, his opponent fifty more. Volin's muscles were bunched on his shoulders and arms. His breadth and depth of chest, as he expanded it, were prodigious, his calves enormous, his slightly bowed legs sturdy as the trunks of young oaks. He swung his cutlas like a cane and it whistled against the air.

Pierre stood aside with point to the grit, waiting for the preparations to be completed.

Sanderson took a red silk cloth that some one stripped from his head and stood within the ring.

"You'll take stations north an' south," he said dryly. 'Cross blades on guard at the word, and watch the kerchief till it drops. Then at it, an' may the Lord ha' mercy on your souls. I'll do the best I can wi' your bodies."

Volin took place as if he were planted in the beach, his visage lowering. Pierre advanced, lithe as a panther, the supple muscles rippling over his torso like snakes under the skin, free but coordinate, a gay smile on his lips, his eyes still holding a light like burning alcohol.

The blades touched with an earnest click of steel. Pierre's feet were far apart, his left arm crooked, the wrist curved. Volin bent his behind his brawny back, the fist clenched.

"The first to step fairly outside the ring loses the fight," said Sanderson. "Are ye ready? On guard!"

The crowd gathered in a crescent between the fighters and the shore, to keep their shadows from interference. Sanderson retreated to the border of the circle, equally between the pair who viewed the red signal held at arm's length at shoulder level, from the corners of their eyes. He bunched the silk cloth and let it fall.

Before its fluttering folds. had fairly touched the sand, Volin sprang back, whirling his cutlas high, bringing it swishing down with a force that seemed irresistible, driving to cleave Pierre's neck where it joined the shoulder. Pierre's weapon flashed up, red in the sunset as if already blooded. The giant's blade glided from its well placed angle and he barely parried a lightning lunge that made him step back so that his heel smudged the ring.

Bellowing, he flailed a dazzling circle to sweep aside Pierre's guard. Pale sparks flew from the grating steel as Pierre nimbly sidestepped, well inside the ring, his cutlas always set to swerve aside cut and thrust, sending in snaky lunge after lunge that were barely avoided by the clumsier Volin.

He saw the giant's stomach begin to heave and the sweat break out upon his face. He laughed as he danced away from a swinging blow.

"Too much rum and beef, Volin," he 'mocked. "Taut belly, slack body. You are over-blooded. I will relieve you presently —Ahb-h!"

A streak of blood showed on Volin's upper arm where Pierre's point had sliced the flesh. The red stream flowed down to his wrist and*dripped on the sand. Pierre pushed the attack and Volin responded with a furious rally. A straight thrust, caught and carried through in tierce, passed between Pierre's side and arm.

Volin grasped at the steel threatening his throat and roared as Pierre slashed it loose, almost severing the giant's thumb. Cursing, he leaped awkwardly forward, beside himself with pain and rage, his left arm with its bloody fist bludgeoning at Pierre's smiling face, his cutlas held edgewise in front of him.

Pierre seemed to shrink before the onslaught. He dropped to his left knee and sent up his blade, swift and true to the mark—Volin's hairy armpit.

There was a skreek of steel on bone, a gush of blood—and Pierre's steaming point coming out back of the giant's shoulder, crimson-tipped.

For a moment Volin seemed to hang suspended on the weapon, his face convulsed. Then he staggered back, clear of the circle, the hot blood pouring from the wound, and sagged to the beach like a dropped chain.

THE boat that Simon provided was little better than a canoe. It barely held the little company of reckless adventurers. There was no chance of comfort other than shifting their cramped positions. Occasionally three or four would lie down on the shifting bottom-boards or curl up in stern or bow. Oftener they swam about the craft to stretch their limbs. That was before the sharks began to keep them persistent company.

First one high fin had appeared and trailed them. Then another showed, until day and night at least a score of the sea tigers formed their escort, the ripples from their fins streaking the blue water from dawn to sunset, showing arrowy lines of phosphorescence after dark.

The food that Simon had provided was neither plentiful nor of high quality. The biscuit was moldy and weevil-bored, the meat badly cured and the wine thin. He had been niggardly with the powder. Equipped thus, they had left Tortuga under a fire of comment that was close to jeering. That, in their desperate pride, precluded any return save a triumphant one.

There was a mast in the pirogue and a lugsail. The last was of as doubtful strength as the rigging. They dared not trust it ina stiff breeze. Nor could they sail within ten points of the wind, while the craft made leeway like a crab. The thole-pins were clumsy and the oars ill-matched. The seams needed calking and an hour's cessation from bailing found the water beginning to slosh about in the bilge.

In such sorry, desperate case Pierre steered his inadequate command as they ran down the Windward Channel and out into the Caribbean Sea, looking for a prize in the shape of a rich merchantman that might be boarded by a tour-de-force. Volin was in hospital at the house of a woman who favored him. But where, through his own fault, he dropped out, nine more hardy spirits who were hard put to it to secure what they deemed the necessaries for living had volunteered.

Besides Pierre and Sanderson, the chirurgeon, there were twenty-seven men, armed only with pistols, cutlases and_ resolution.

The oars were splashing listlessly, the sail filled and flapped as the pirogue laboriously topped each dark-blue hissing roller that reflected from a myriad shifting facets the brassy glare of the mid-afternoon sun. It sagged as they sank into the valleys. The men lolled on the thwarts, their belts tightened against a growing hunger, their tongues swollen in dry mouths.

Some chewed on bullets, since Simon's tobacco had given out on the fifth day and they had been seven at sea. All gazed covertly, almost continually, at Pierre, with bloodshot, sun-scorched eyes. Their faces were sullen. Luck seemed steadily against them. There seemed nothing ahead but starvation for them, a meal to the persistent sharks, or a humiliating return. The rations had been halved again that morning.

The high range of Hispaniola was in plain view with the verdure of the lower slopes and levels about the blue hills like a green veil. It was on their lee and, aiding the wind, a current held them gripped, slowly swinging them in toward shore and the promontory of Cape Beata, that seemed to them far from being "blessed." Pierre doubted whether he could persuade them to put about to sea again, and his soul was sour within him.

So far his will had triumphed, his belief in his "happy hour" and the "gold ship," that was birthmarked on his wrist, unfaltering. While the rations were full, and before the wine and tobacco gave out, he had held his crew closer to his own mark of confidence. The last twenty-four hours. had seen the barometer of hope go down hour by hour until the degree marked danger from open mutiny, holding him responsible for a feather-brained enterprise. He would be the laughing stock of the Spanish Main, he told himself, chewing the bitter cud of failure as he held the tiller and gazed moodily ahead toward the land.

In the west clouds were already marshaling for the sunset review. A cable's length away a covey of flying fish soared from the water, gleaming in blue and silver. Instantly the sharks' fins on that side of the boat disappeared, as the sea-tigers, while waiting for their human feast, chased the dolphins that in turn harried the flying fish. The men's eyes turned longingly toward the shimmering skimmers, then dully back to Pierre with slow resolution gathering to protest.

"Let's make Beata Island, mates. There's water there."

The gruff voice was echoed by others. Pierre glanced down the boat to where Sanderson's gray eyes reassured him of one steady adherent. He marked the man who had spoken. His right hand gripped the tiller, his left crept down to the curving butt of the pistol in his belt.

"So, Michel, you are the first to quit. Yet I think I heard you take oath with the rest of us not to turn back until we had taken our ship."

He laid the pistol on his knees, shifted hands on the tiller and raised the long muzzle until it pointed at the rowers. The bow oarsman shrank aside.

"Show us then your ship," said Michel sullenly. "Show us a ship and I'll fight while there's life in me. Dead men can not capture prizes, nor starving ones neither." As if moved by a master cord, all hands strained their eyes round the mastless horizon, then returned to Pierre, carelessly fingering his weapon.

"You'd go back to be laughed at— jeered out of every tavern in Tortuga, a byword in all Hispaniola?" he asked them.

"I'd rather be laughed at by men than fought over by sharks," retorted Michel. "That's what'll be the end of us. Look at the brutes. They know they'll get us soon. I counted twenty-nine at noon. One for each of us."

THE flying fish had disappeared and the sharks had resumed their patrol. One eighteen-foot monster veered toward the boat, its blunt nose close to the surface, its yellow eyes regarding them viciously. It half turned on its back, the dirty white of its belly glazed blue by the watery film, its rows of teeth showing savagely in the triangular maw. One of the men struck at it with an oar and the brute, with hardly a motion of fins or tail, rushed at it, caught the splintering blade and tore the sweep away as the sailor lost his balance and lunged heavily against the gunwale, hauled back by his comrades.

"Let shark fight shark," said Pierre. "We'll keep our quarrels. We are all in the same boat and I am its commander. There's land in sight for cowards. There's food left for brave men. I thought I had shipped them. You styled yourselves picaroons and pirates while your bellies were full. Must you always cast sixes to keep heart in the game?"

"There are no stakes in sight," grumbled Michel. 'The sap is out of us. I'd as lief be in —— as grilling in this boat."

"Aye!" The murmur rose almost to a shout.

"—is where you'll be in short order, Michel," said Pierre with the muzzle of his pistol slowly lifting, leveling. "You swore to obey me. You gave me the right of life and death over those who refused my orders. I doubt if you have the capacity for prayers," he went on grimly, "I'll say one for you."

Disappointment had curled his brain a little. The sun had turned his blood to fire. His finger twitched on the trigger. So far his will had turned aside despotically all suggestion of failure. Now he gave it rest. He was not keen to kill but he sensed this for the sticking point and a somber despair stiffened his purpose. He judged that the first man to weaken in the enterprise would be weak in other ways. The blue flame glowed in the eyes that mercilessly met Michel's. Michel cowered.

"I but spoke what was in the minds of all of us," he said from behind the back of a fellow. "Put it to the vote."

Pierre reviewed the chances, reading the haggard faces. There would be but one vote with his, he figured; that of Sanderson. The men, unclean, cramped, half-fed, had lost their stiffening. There were two quarter-rations left. The morning would see them at the end of their resources, barely able to make a landing. He had failed— unless he compromised.

He caught a short nod from Sanderson in the bow, as if the chirurgeon read his mind and agreed with his finding. At the same time, he had loosened his brace of pistols behind the men's backs, ready to follow Pierre's lead.

The heart was out of them. To shoot was sheer murder— useless. They were like ashes, all the fire gone, unless he could furnish it with the spark that still burned within him.

"There is no need to vote," he said. "I do not ask the impossible of any man. Only his utmost. We have enough for one fair meal, enough to stay your appetites. We'll make it tonight's supper. We'll stand as we are until the breeze fails, which it likely will by sunset. Then we'll drift and paddle westward until dawn. If the sun finds no sail in sight, we'll land at Port-au-Prince or keep on to Jamaica and Port Royal, if the wind favors.

"We are in the highway of Spanish shipping. We have waited a week without sight of sail. Never, I venture to say, has such a thing happened before nor will again. Fortune has tested us to the snapping point. To those who stand her whimsies she gives golden rewards at the last. Come, we'll finish our food tonight— tomorrow will be another day."'

There was neither assent nor dissent from the men. Then Sanderson spoke.

"We're wi' you, Pierre. Fortune is a hard lass to woo, but her half-sister, Misfortune, canna abide bein' laughed at. Heavy heart never gets over the hill." He started to sing a popular catch, his voice hoarse but putting spirit into the lilt so that one or two began to join the chorus, husky from thirst though they were. Presently the whole crew were singing, in time if not in tune, the lanky red-headed Scotchman with his stubbly fiery beard and greengray eyes perched in the stem beating time.

Pierre, holding tiller in the stern, was the only one who did not sing, though he was grateful enough to Sanderson. His eyes were moody. He was the gamester awaiting the last roll of the dice that either sends him from the board a beggar or gives him a new lease on life.

Pierre was a Norman. What sounded like brag to some was natural foaming of the spirits to him. The wine of his veins was not a still one. It bubbled and effervesced. He had vaunted that he, Pierre le Grand, was about to come into his own— that he would return to Tortuga master of a treasure ship of Spain to fire a salute to the fort before he came ashore, and, after scattering gold and broaching casks of wine, after bestowing gifts and giving a farewell feast, he would sail back to La Belle France, a conquering hero.

These and other things sounded foolish now. To return was unbearable. They would call him by Volin's name— Pierre le Petit. He gritted his teeth and muttered a. good Norman oath. Sooner than that he'd put a bullet through his head as he sat on the gunwale and let the sharks get him for a fool who had listened to fortunetellers and gipsies.

The sun sank and the coast of Hispaniola heightened and deepened in color, blue to purple, purple to indigo. The wind grew fainter but still held. The pirogue rode the dark, glassy surges that were veined with molten gold where the lowering sun shone on their shifting mirrors. The men sang on. But Pierre, looking at the birthmark on his wrist, heard them not.

"Twas at Saint Kitts I met a lass,

Black eyed as any gipsy;

I pledged her in a friendly glass

And then with love grew tipsy—o!

And then with love grew tipsy.

I took the lass away with me,

We landed in Jamaica.

But there we soon failed to agree

And so I had to shake her—o!

And so I had to shake her.

A sailor's love is like the sea,

Inconstant and uncertain;

He holds one lass upon his knee,

With one behind the curtain—o!

With one behind the curtain.

The lasses they do not repine

When Jack turns out a roamer;

They laugh and in a glass of wine,

They pledge the last newcomer—o!

They pledge the last newcomer!"

THE southwestern portion of Hispaniola was shaped like a long-toed boot, the promontory, of which Cape Beata is the southern headland, being in the perfect form of a heel. The sole, with Cape Tiburon in the toecap, spurning the Jamaica Channel, is slightly lifted, and the inside line of the heel cants westward.

As the sun dropped close to the horizon, its beams almost level with the crests of the waves, Pierre bestirred himself to serve the remains of food that he guarded in the stern-sheets.

The faulty breeze blew in his face as he measured the distance they were from land. They had made their westing off Beata and, whenever they lifted to a crest, they could now look into a deep bay beyond some scattering island of no great dimensions.

Suddenly Pierre's figure, moving sluggishly, galvanized into swift action, his face transfigured. He rose half erect, grasping the tiller, the light from the sunset ruddy on his eager, exultant features.

"Look, lads!" he shouted. "Look and then down with you below the gunwales. Let no more than six of ye show in plain sight, so they'll take us for a fisherman when they close in. The light'll fail before they'll make us out clearly. There she is, my braves! Regard her, then, and know my fortunate hour has come. There sails the gold ship of Pierre le Grand— to us, lads! to us!"

They crouched to his order after one quick look and then remained to gaze as they huddled on the bottom boards. Slowly finding her way into the open Caribbean, clearing the cape with the last of the wind, there came a stately ship that the sunset gilded from truck to waterline.

The canvas was dyed saffron in the glow. Golden drops fell from the prow that rose flashing from golden foam. Her gleaming sides threw off radiance that blazed on the protruding muzzles of cannon and winked from the scrolled carvings of her high, decorated poop. The very rigging seemed to be spun from thread of gold as she came lunging majestically along.

At every roll of the roursled hull from the brine the high light of her dripping curves shifted in a swift dazzle of light as brilliant as the flare from an opening furnace. She might have been plated with the precious metal from keel to vane. A ray of light breaking through a gap in the ridge, held her fairly in its widening beam and dusted her with gold, transmuting her with the touch of Midas to a ship of magic, her hull in an aureate sea, her pyramided canvas aswim in ambient, amber-tinted air.

The men gazed with awe and then, kindled by Pierre's triumphant cry of identification, of appropriation, they shouted in chorus—

"The ship of gold! The ship of gold!"

"Ours for the taking, lads. There lie beds for your sore bones tonight, coverlets of silk, velvet raiment. A ruff for your neck, Michel, instead of a round of bloody beef packed from the hunt. Rare wines, rare victuals, gold to clink gd

"There may be gold, my captain," said the man who rowed next to bow, an ancient worthy, bald of pate and gray of sprouting whisker, "but, from the look of things, there's iron a-plenty to protect it. Look at those guns and see the royal standard. Yon's a galleon of the flota, a war-ship, no merchant. There is a dog can bite. Should they have the humor to sink us they could do it ten times before dark with those grinning culverin. And she'll carry from seventy to a hundred men."

"Call it odds of three to one, then," said Pierre. Now, with his gold ship in full sight, he neither sensed nor brooked opposition and swept it aside like so much rubbish. "If you are too old to fight, my friend, if you have lost stomach for close work, you may stay in the boat— aye— and keep it for your share, for, once out of it, we'll not return.

"The men aboard of the galleon have to be paid. The more of them, the more money we'll find aboard. Once master of her, we'll raid the seas with those same culverin until we bite into something that satisfies us. If the dons aboard see us they take us for fishermen, unworthy notice. We'll wait 'till after dark, then row to her and board her. Any one of us is worth six men surprized and that's the way we'll tackle her.

"There's no moon, the sky's thickening enough with clouds to hide most of the stars and there's scant wind to drive them off or give the galleon more than steerage way. Why, 'tis made for us! A dash, a bold face, maybe a thrust or two and a shot and 'tis done with."

They cheered at that, not loudly, for fear of being heard aboard the galleon. The ship of gold was fading to a dark bulk. As she veered, lanterns showed on her poop and lights from the quarter windows.

The sea ran dark, touched with crimson gleams. In the light of the dying embers of the sunset Pierre read the faces of his men, turned toward him, set with present purpose and courage. He had fanned the spark to a flame.

"Once we board, we stay," he told them. "To falter is to fail. The Spanish are not easy on prisoners. Better to die. Are you committed to the venture? Are you gamecocks or partridges?"

The vision of the golden ship was still with them. Superstition helped to crystallize their courage. They believed this was the "happy hour." They gave him a deep-throated assent.

"Good! Then Alec Sanderson shall use his chirurgeon's tools to good purpose. With luck it may be the only use for them. See you, Alec, you shall be the last to leave this apology of a canoe. Simon made me promise to return it when we were through with it. We'll pay him for it instead. You could put your foot through the rotten planks if you trod carelessly. But Alec shall scuttle us a hole or so and we'll sink her. We'll fight with the sea back of us. Name of a dog, we'll make them think we are water devils!"

Sanderson leaned aft from the bow, leading the second cheer.

Before it reached the horizon line the sun plunged into a mass of cloud that completely obscured it. Night fell swiftly. The land vanished, the sky blended with the sea. Pierre ordered the sail taken down and for a time they drifted while he kept the bow to the waves with the tiller and an improvized sea-anchor made of oars lashed together.

THE galleon, showing now only as a cluster of fixed lights, was slowly bearing down upon them. Pierre made his plans and gave his orders while they murched the last crumbs of the food they trusted would prove only an enérée to something more substantial and appetizing.

Committed to the reckless enterprise, Pierre was fully sensible of all its hazards. He was spinning a coin with Destiny. One side meant lingering imprisonment, perhaps torture and the Inquisition, if not death.

That possibility he thrust aside and made what preparations he could to curry favor with Fortune by boldness. If they encountered strong opposition and the fight grew too hot, his men might try to retreat. That he would cut off by sinking his boat beneath him— as another commander once had burned his bridges.

He determined to attack while a part, at least, of the Spanish crew would be at supper. He detailed his men under subleaders, to the best of his judgment of their fighting ability and character. A crosseyed, wild-tempered Irishman named Fallon he told off to capture the powder-room.

"See you, Tom," he said. "You should find it amidships on the gun-deck. Take seven with you—choose your men now, quickly, and get them together beside you. Tremaine, you'll take seven more. Make for the fo'csle, hold 'em up by surprize, disarm them and clap 'em under hatches. De Blois, take you three and carry the wheel. Taque, you, with your brother and two more, clear the deck of the watch.

"I'll attend to the afterguard. They'll be in the cabin over their wine. Remy will come with me; and Michel Otard, ' Renton and Grey. Alec, you'll follow to the cabin when you've finished your scuttling.

"We'll board aft at the break of the poop, to starboard. She's on the port tack and she'll not be shifting. When she's ours we'll put her about and sail up Channel tonight. Tomorrow we'll wake Tortuga with our guns and give them a scare till we break out our flag.

"Draw all your pistol charges and recharge. Try your flints. Fight hard and ' quick. Now, muffle those rowlocks, and out oars. We'll row to meet her. Pull soft, lads; show no seafire in the strokes."

To Pierre the deed was not so much one of piracy as warfare. As long as history ran, the men who dwelt on the southern slopes of the Pyrenees were at bitter enmity with those on the northern. It was the bounden duty of every Frenchman under Louis the Thirteenth to kill any Spaniard under Philip the Fourth, as every Spaniard equally felt himself entitled to hang every Frenchman.

In Tortuga there were not only French—  there were English, Irish, Scotch and Dutch, all equally pariahs in the eyes of Spain.

And in Europe, the Thirty Years war was on. So Pierre meant to capture the galleon as speedily as possible, in one swift rush, aided by hot lead and cold steel.

They met the galleon's course a little ahead of her bluff bows. Gazing upward they caught the glint of the sprit light on the steel cap of a sentinel, took another stroke and caught at the sloping sides, easing themselves sternwards.

Sanderson pulled out the boat's cleaning plug and tossed it away. He made swift work with his saw while the water gushed in and the overladen pirogue began to settle.

The night was hot and the gun ports were open. The muzzles of the culverin projected. Along the run ran bilge molds, there were chain-plates on the outside of the rail, deep carvings on the walls of the after cabin, all good as ladder rungs to desperate men.

They had thrown off their boots, those who had them, and they sat silent, clutching . their cutlases, ground to razor-edges before leaving port, pistols ready in sling and belt, taking great breaths of anticipation.

Between the foundering pirogue and the galleon the wash ran suckingly, charged with pale phosphorescence. From the open cabin windows there came the clink of glass and metal, scraps of short sentences.

Pierre's hand encountered a rope like a boat fall, Above him he saw a crane rigged for taking small boats inboard. He clung to the rope, then passed it down forward, finding the second fall. The water was now almost up to the thwarts of the canoe which was ready to sink beneath them.

"Now!"

They rose to Pierre's whisper as if it had been a bugle call and swarmed up the side of the galleon like so many cats, spurning the scuttled boat that sank in a swirl as Sanderson leaped for the muzzle of a culverin and clawed up after the rest.

A few startled sailors confronted the leaders. Two were struck down. The rest fled with Tague and his men hard after them.

De Blois leaped up the carven ladder to the poop, lit by its three lanterns. The officer of the deck was staring overside when de Blois jumped him. Pierre caught the quick ring of steel. A shot sounded forward where the Britisher Tremaine tackled the forecastle. The cross-eyed Fallon and his seven fighters had rushed below to the powder room.

The Spanish sailors, panic-stricken; had dived below believing themsélves attacked by seafiends as, dripping wet, the ragged, unshaven buccaneers flourished their naked steel or clapped pistols to the heads of willingly surrendering prisoners.

UNDER the rail of the poop, in a gallery formed by the hood projection of the upper deck, a sentinel had been set. So swift had been the rush of Pierre and his four that the man, unsurprized, was still gawping through the glazed windows at his superiors in the cabin. He was armed with sword and arquebus, helmeted with a light morion.

Michel, anxious to- distinguish himself, snatched off the helmet with one hand and struck the sentry a blow with the butt of his pistol upon the base of his skull. The man toppled, pitched forward, trying to spin on his neck as Pierre flung open the door.

Beneath four flaring candles that were set in a ceiling lantern of wrought iron, four richly dressed hidalgo officers in ruff and ruffle, sat about a massive table playing cards. The cabin was handsomely paneled and hung with tapestry. There was a valuable Eastern rug on the floor. There were flagons and goblets on the table. The luck seemed to have been going all the way of the man who sat facing the cabin door. Gold pieces were piled in front of him. He was holding up a card, displaying it with a smile and gay words that suddenly froze to silence.

"You will observe," he was saying, "that once more I hold the winning card. I— in the name of ——, what is—"

Pierre reached the table in a bound, leaning across it with one hand outspread upon the scattered cards and stakes, his pistol leveled at the player's breast.

"You will observe," he cried, in fair Spanish, "that you have overlooked this little ace— this ace of trumps that will assuredly spoil your suit of hearts unless you quietly surrender."

The commander of the galleon dropped his cards and held up his ruffled wrists as he shrank back against the paneling. Four savages, foul and fierce looking, puddling his cabin rug, grinned at him sardonically behind the man who.covered him with a pistol muzzle that had grown as large around as a porthole. At the temple of each of his officers was a similar menace.

A lean, red-stubbled devil with hairy legs and arms stood in the middle of the floor holding a great cutlas by hilt and blade in hands that swung low towards his bare knees.

A cross-eyed, panting pirate appeared in the cabin door.

"All secured below," he reported exultantly. 'Tremaine has 'em herded. The ship is ours."

Don Sebastien de Rueza y Dourado, vice-admiral of Spain, was a proud man but he did not let his pride interfere with expediency.

"Your ace wins, señor," he said. "I take it you are Frenchmen. May I ask the name of your leader?"

"You may call me Pierre le Grand," said the Norman, the battle-flame of his eyes changing to milder complacency. "Since I have won the game, may I ask the exact amount of the stakes? It may save some searching and inconvenience on both sides."

Don Sebastien heaved a sigh of resignation.

"This is the Santa Ysabel, bound for Cadiz, laden with gold bullion," he said. "You have made a rich haul. Now take that pistol away from my head. And tell me what you propose to do with me and— my command."

"Since we are rich, we can afford to be generous," said Pierre. 'We are not murderers. You are prisoners-of-war. Such of your men as suit I shall impress as crew. The rest I will put in a boat and give them a chance to reach Cuba without delay. As for yourself, and these gentlemen, to whom I have not the pleasure of being introduced—"

He paused while more grinning pirates crowded into the cabin. Don Sebastien gave the names of his officers.

"All men of rank— and therefore of ransom, I see," said Pierre le Grand. "We will arrange those matters later. Now, it is dry work fighting, we will pledge you in a glass of wine. Ventre de Saint Gris, but I admire a man who takes things philosophically."

Two hours later the Santa Ysabel had been put about and was making up for Cape Tiburon on a breeze that had gathered as the night advanced. Pierre paced the poop with Sanderson. Both were washed and shaven and were clad in the spare raiment of the galleon's officers. All the men, unwounded every one of them, had been fed and wined and clothed. The treasure room had been inspected.

"I shall renounce piracy," said Pierre. "I am rich enough to be a very honest man They may even ennoble me. We sail for Dieppe, Alec, after we have shown Tortuga the kind of fish we catch in the Caribbean— and thereby encourage others to do likewise. Those who wish may stay there and chuck away their money. I must send Volin a few luck pieces. But I shall save mine. I am a Norman."

"And I— am a Scotchman," said Sanderson, dryly. "I go with ye to Dieppe and then—"

"What then?" asked Pierre le Grand. The chirurgeon did not answer. It was doubtful if he heard. He had gone to the poop rail and he was singing, just above his breath:

"For it's hame, dearie, hame,

It's hame I lang to be;

For my topsails they are hoisted

And I must put oot to sea."

Pierre smiled sympathetically. He gave an order to the helmsman and then he went below to superintend the weighing and reckoning of the bullion cargo of the gold ship.

_____________________

11: The Flying Skull

Popular Detective Sept 1935

GABRIEL GREER sat at his scarred desk and regarded his visitor with eyes that held all the humanity of a squid.

The room was on the ground floor of the house he owned in the middle West Twenties, and used as both office and residence. The brownstone front was scaly, the whole place needed paint and cleaning. The furniture was shabby.

Greer was not. His attire was expensive and carefully chosen. It was the wardrobe of a banker. Clean-shaven, hale, florid and slightly portly, Greer, save for the baleful expression in his eyes, masked by tinted glasses, appeared a man of wealth and good taste. He might have been a philanthropist.

The man across the desk looked what he was— a fairly prosperous and successful accountant of an up-state town. A competent person whose business had become restricted by the depression. To him, at this moment, Greer was still the kindly man of affairs who had offered him a mortgage on a business block that John Clay, the accountant, had bought when times were booming.

Clay had a hobby. He had probably the finest private collection of moths and beetles and butterflies in America. It had considerable scientific value but, as a financial asset, would be represented by Clay himself in red ink. He had spent a good deal of the mortgage money on properly housing his specimens. Now he wanted Greer to renew that mortgage.

Greer listened to Clay's request with hidden amusement and contempt. He was not a handsome man, for all his grooming. But he was intensely vain. He had been born with poor teeth, his metabolism was faulty. He wore top and bottom plates of teeth as false as the smile they effected.

Because he had a parrot jaw, with a soft palate of unusual characteristics; it had been impossible for him to be fitted with an upper plate that retained perfect suction.

Greer had developed a habit of adjusting it with the edge of his thumbnail when it slipped. It was a habit of which he had become almost unconscious, but not quite. His pride was always tender when he was reminded of his imperfect teeth.

To grant Clay the request would be to pass up a rich and calculated profit. Perfunctorily, he glanced over the papers in the case. He meant to make this small-town accountant humiliate himself, beg for the renewal, before he refused him. Greer knew all about Clay's financial affairs, all about the expensive hobby.

Greer made a slight clucking noise with his tongue. The upper plate slipped. Automatically, he set the edge of his thumbnail beneath the teeth.

The process fascinated Clay. He had noticed it several times with sympathy. He himself had false teeth, and because his local dentist had sent none too excellent casts to a dental factory for the finished job, Clay had experienced much the same trouble as Greer.

He had found a remedy for it. He was naturally a man of good nature, and he was desirous of standing in well with Greer.

He fished in his wallet, took out a card and offered it to Greer.

"You might be interested," said Clay.

Greer glanced carelessly at the card. His face flushed crimson. It looked apoplectic as his rage mounted.

Five minutes later, Clay was in the street, slightly dazed, knowing he was not only close to ruin but that he had been tricked by Greer. The foreclosure of the mortgage would be the beginning of the end of Clay's credit.

For Greer, however, Clay's ruin meant gain.

There was a Government project in connection with relief, that would make the property of Clay not merely saleable but send its price soaring many times beyond its value. And, in dismissing Clay, Greer took care that Clay knew what wealth he had lost.

Left alone, Greer chuckled. He set the edge of his thumb beneath his teeth and clicked them into place. Then he picked up the card Clay had left. He read it:

TOOTH-EASE

Speak and eat in perfect comfort
as well as you did with your own teeth.

Forms a comfort cushion that holds
your plate secure without

ROCKING, or CHAFING.

No DROPPING. No FIDGETING.

25c & 50c boxes at all good Drug Stores

GRIPPO COMFORT CORPORATION

Big Falls New York

GABRIEL GREER sat in his drawing room on the Albany Flier. Once again he was prepared to bring off a coup. He had caused to be inserted in a local newspaper of the town in which he was interested, an attractive advertisement offering mortgages on liberal and easy terms to the inhabitants. Let the mortgagee beware! was Greer's motto. He gloated as he looked over the documents. He was beginning to feel hungry. The afternoon was hot, and he had taken off coat and vest, collar and tie. He took out his teeth, and placed them in a cleansing lotion in the little private lavatory.

He began to make his toilet with precision. He took from his pig- skin suitcase a clean shirt, and laid it out. His dressing case was open, with its array of toilet articles.

Greer took from its niche a silver-capped tube an inch and a half in diameter, five inches in length. He had it almost filled with white powder. This was "Tooth-ease." He had become angry at Clay's daring to suggest there was any deficiency about him; but he had tried it; and even felt grateful to Clay— though not to the extent of renewing his mortgage.

Clay— to use the vernacular— had lost his shirt.

Greer changed his shirt, arranged his tie, took out his teeth from the glass- that held the cleansing lotion, rinsed them off. He let them dry, and then powdered the top plate with the Tooth-ease.

Then he put in his lower plate, attached to his few remaining teeth with a gold clip, slid in his now snugly fitting upper plate, and started to smile at his reflection in the mirror.

As he did so, the porter knocked on the drawing-room door, called:

"First call fo' the dinin' cah."

But Greer barely heard him. He was seized with dizziness. The mucous membranes of palate and cheeks burned. His heart seemed clutched by a giant hand. He fell to the floor, and went into violent convulsions.

The Pullman porter, coming in for his brush-up tip, found the body. At Albany, police took charge. The body of Gabriel Greer was taken to the morgue. An autopsy was performed.

"Hydrocyanic acid, administered as cyanide of potassium by the deceased, believing he was using a plate-powder for his artificial teeth. The character- istic post-mortem appearances were present. The fingernails show purple patches. The blood was coagulated, and hemorrhages existed in both the pleura and pericardium. The mucous membranes of the mouth show corro- sion, and the odor of hydrocyanic acid was plain in the cavities of the body."

GAREY, the detective in charge of the Homicide Squad, read the report of the medical examainer.

"Must have been pulled by some- body who was close to him, Tim. We'll get a check-up on this Greer. I've got a line on him. Seems to have been some sort of a realty shark, lined up with a slick bunch right here in Albany. He kept that tube of tooth powder, or whatever you'd call it, in that dressing-case. We'll see what the fingerprinters have to say about it."

That report was not yet ready, but Garrity took the case they had pow- dered and photographed, and looked it over with his magnifying glass.

"I'll be darned," he said softly. "Look here, Tim, and see if you see what I do."

To Garrity's experienced eye, the loops and whorls and islands shown up by the powdering seemed to belong to one individual, undoubtedly the dead man.

But there was something else. On the inside of the leather flap that closed the dressing case.

"The guy who switched the stuff in the tube, or put it back after he had dosed it, used a cloth, or gloves," he said. "But take a look at this!"

There was the imprint of a skull, distinct enough. It was no larger than half the space of Garrity's little fingernail. It was brown. A ghastly thing, the token of sudden death,

"I never saw the beat of it," said Mahoney.

"Rush those prints up here," said Garrity. "Get the Bureau chief to bring them."

"We spotted it, sure," said the fingerprinter. "It's not in our line. The regular prints are all those of the deceased. But it's sure a good picture of a skull, however it came there."

"You're a lot of use," said Garrity. "Just the same, before we hop to New York, I'm goin' to have Doc Lawson take a squint at this."

Lawson was in charge of the new department of Criminal Investiga- tion, with its medern laboratory.

His interest was immediate. There was already a photographic record of the curious emblem. Lawson picked up the dressing case.

"There's a distinct residue here," he said after his profound examination through his own powerful apparatus. "I'll make an immediate analysis, I could make a guess at it, but guessing has nothing to do with scientific findings. I'll give you one thing to chew on, Garrity. That skull once flew."

He left Garrity and Mahoney looking at each other.

"Now, what the devil an' all does he mean, with his talk of flyin' skulls?" Mahoney scratched his head.

"He'll be tellin' us before we leave," Garrity was certain.

Before Lawson came with his discovery, Garrity had found out just how Greer made his money.

But he shook his head dubiously over Lawson's "finding." It left him baffled. Yet he was sure it was a lead, and Lawson had given him a valuable clue as to how that sign of a skull, the emblem used by chemists and druggists on their labels, might tie up with the murder of Gabriel Greer.

IT tied up with vengeance, within the first minute of his arrival with Mahoney at the house of Gabriel Greer. The man who answered the door was the sole occupant. He was, he said, clerk to Mr. Greer.

Garrity, official, efficient and im- perative, towered over the man as he sat, by the detective's orders, at the deal table in the basement room that was part of his living quarters. Ma- honey stood by the door, stolid and vigilant.

"So, your name is Clay? You handle Greer's accounts and do general chores. He gave you the job after he had taken over your property on a mortgage, perhaps? Sorry for you, perhaps?"

"He gave me the job," said Clay, "because he wanted a good man at figures, who would work for next to nothing, over and above his board and room. He wanted a man-of-all-work. He got one."

"All right. And you collect butterflies?"

There could be no denial to that. A shallow box lay on the table, lined with cork strips upon which were displayed various specimens, their wings skilfully outstretched. The table top was cluttered with jars, with a cheap microscope and mounting materials,

"Where is Mr. Greer?" demanded Garrity.

Clay's face revealed nothing under Garrity's scrutiny.

"He should be in Albany. He went there on business."

"He's there all right. Dead! Found murdered on the train! Does that surprise you?"

"You mean— he was shot, killed—"

Clay's face was still impassive. Too much so, Garrity decided. He tried another tack, still rapping out his questions, watching the other's face and eyes intently. The detective had picked up one of the jars. He pulled the tray of specimens toward him.

His eyes narrowed, then widened. He pointed at one of the specimens.

"What kind of a moth is that?" he demanded. Mahoney sauntered over to the table. He betrayed his interest in a low whistle. Clay did not appear in the least perturbed.

The moth was a brown one, of fair size, with shapely, narrow wings, suggestive of swift flight. And on the back of the thorax, against a purplish ground, there showed distinctly in dull orange the design of a skull.

"It is the death's-head hawk moth," said Clay. "Acherentia atropos."

Garrity nodded, his eyes cold.

"Here is Greer's dressing-case," he said. "How did that mark get there? We've had it microphotographed, analyzed. Scales, or feathers, from the back of one of those moths."

Clay was startled now. He glared at the emblem, held his tongue as Garrity persisted.

"You wear false teeth, don't you?"

Clay nodded an assent.

"Use this "Tooth-ease' to keep the plates in place? Recommended it to Greer. And mixed his with cyanide of potassium. That's what killed him, The same stuff you use in these jars, underneath plaster-of-paris, so that, while you keep the jar corked, the hydrocyanic gas will fill the container and kill the butterflies so quickly they won't flutter and spoil their wings."

Clay smiled thinly.

"I had no idea the police knew anything of entomological research," he said. "Your facts are correct. But—"

"You murdered Greer," said Garrity. "You were smart enough not to leave prints on the tube, but you left your trademark just the same, the mark of the flying skull. You might have got away with it, at that, if the cyanide had not made him retch, eject the plate, call attention to it. You murdered Greer."

CLAY smiled his thin smile again. Then the cunning gleam in his eyes burst into a flame. His smile expanded to a laugh.

"You are clever," he said. "But it does not much matter. Only, you are wrong in one thing. I did not murder Greer. I executed him. The mark of Acherentia atropos surprised me. I overlooked it. I was in the yard when Greer called me, as if I were his dog. He was suave to most people; to me, his slave, he was a tyrant. He set me to any menial task. But it was a place where I could have some hours alone, to prepare a few poor specimens—and to find out all about Greer's chicanery, to expose him."

His voice was shrill, almost hysterical.

"He told me he had got a telegram and must go to Albany. He ordered me to pack some things for him while he got together some papers. He had barely time to make the train. When he shouted at me, I had my hand upon a moth, a death's-head hawk moth. I— I am not so well as I have been— a little nervous. I am not used to being bullied. It was dark. I had only a flashlight with a weak battery. No doubt I jabbed my thumb down on the moth, I left it there. I found the next morning that a bird had pecked away the body.

"So, no doubt, I left that print on the inside of the flap. I handled the tube carefully, with a cloth, and I changed the contents for what I had already prepared. I knew why he went to Albany. It was because he was ready to pull off another of his infernal tricks, to ruin others as he had ruined me, to laugh over their downfall. He reveled in the misfor- tunes he brought about, in the de- spair of his victims. And he was bound to arrange for more deviltry. But I had made up my mind there should be no more of it!"

Clay's eyes were bloodshot now. He snatched at a tin, took off its lid, tilted white crystals to the palm of his hand.

"I made sure," he cried. "I put this much into the plate powder—"

Garrity swooped, clutched the man's wrist, and spilled the cyanide in time.

"You don't want to do that," he chided. "You'll never get the chair for this. Maybe they'll send you up-state a while, and if you behave yourself they'll let you chase butterflies to your heart's content."

_______________

12: The Pearls of Paruki

Adventure, mid October 1919

FLEMING STROLLED contentedly along the main street of Levuka between the flamboyant trees that strewed the white road of coral grit with scarlet blossoms and the lace-edge of the lagoon surf. There are two towns in the Fijis: Levuka, on the island of Ovelau, the capital that was, and Suva, on the isle of Viti Levu— Great Fiji— the capital, that is. To these two comes all the commerce of the group, and Fleming, whose tiny leasehold islet was nearer to Levuka, was well satisfied to have placed his vanilla crop at an average of three dollars a pound. They called it twelve shillings and sixpence in Levuka, for the government and coinage are British.

Fleming had worked like a dog with that vanilla plantation since he quit trading in copra, pearl, and turtle-shell and in trepang. The big Australian firms with their capital and steamers had, as Fleming phrased it, "knocked the tar out of the small trader." So Fleming had leased an island, sold his schooner, bought a sloop, and set out vanilla. Now he had a pound of dried beans for every cutting of Mexican vanilla that he had planted three years before. He was twenty-seven thousand dollars to the good, and his plantation was established.

Better than that to Fleming, who was as fond of money and what money would bring as the next man, he had turned the laugh on the scoffers who had predicted failure. He had raised more than a third of the previous year's export of the bean, had put Fiji on the map as a factor in the vanilla market, and had discovered, with a quiet but thorough sense of pride, that John Fleming, successful vanilla planter, was a man of vastly more importance than John Fleming, South Sea trader.

Serene in white linen and white shoes, in white silk shirt, white hose, and white sombrero of bleached hala, he turned up a lane shady with coco-palm and breadfruit, making his way up-hill to the home of the Widow Starkey. When Phil Starkey, a little more drunk, a little more reckless than usual, had gone fishing with dynamite in the tiny bay of his tiny isle of Paruki and, just to show that the devil took care of his own, insisted on crimping the primer cap with his teeth, not many people had lamented his death. Not his native boys, whom he cursed and drove to the limit. They, with all Levuka and its neighborhood, were glad for Helen Starkey, even while they mourned in Fiji style with proper appreciation of the occasion if not of the departed. If the widow shared their feelings she gave no sign but had left the island for Levuka and decorously observed the conventions.

She had been a beauty, with her blond complexion and her slim figure, when she had come out from the States at the summons of handsome Phil Starkey. She was a beauty still, though older and quieter, living on a slender income, too proud, perhaps, to go back home after her matrimonial disaster. That was two years old; and it was time, some said and others thought, that she wiped out the bitterness of failure by a second and happier marriage. Fleming was one of those who thought much along such lines but said little, save as his actions may have spoken.

He was a suitor, though whether he was favored none might say. Whatever the widow thought about a second venture she kept to herself. It looked as if she had determined upon being especially careful, particularly sure of the man. Fleming, feeling that he had proven himself, set up by his reception as a successful planter, had nerved himself to find out where he stood in the lists, for he knew that he was not the only one to aspire to possess the widow's charms.

Nervousness, coupled with a desire to appear unwilted despite the tropical heat, made him walk leisurely. But his pulses quickened as he came in sight of the gaily-variegated crotons that hedged the widow's home. Her dwelling was rather cabin than house, a bungalow of four rooms winged with wide verandas, set in a garden that was a riot of perfume, color, and verdure. The leaves of the crotons and of the climbing vines aped the flowers in their hues; the odor of ihlang-ihlang, plumaria, tuberose, and stephanotis was almost overpowering. But Fleming thought the setting just right for the widow's slender person, sure to be dressed in cool white. He figured her in the shade of the veranda, dainty, feminine, serving him citronade, listening to the tale of his victory. Her place was a little Eden, he fancied. And then he saw the snake.

Harper was a good-looking snake. Fleming did not deny that. But he knew more about Harper than a great many people, a good deal more than Fleming ever mentioned. Harper was tall and dark; and his black hair was waving, close-trimmed to his well-shaped head. He was a good conversationalist and a clever flatterer. He had a blended suggestion of laziness and deviltry that a great many women found fascinating, and at heart he was a cold-blooded blackguard. Fleming knew the sort of things that went on aboard Harper's schooner between port and port, and he had a strong belief that Harper had one woman in Sydney who believed herself to be his wife, and another in Honolulu, not to mention more elastic alliances in Tahiti and elsewhere. To see Harper lounging on the widow's veranda, very much at home, inhaling his cigarette and sipping at citronade, destroyed all of Fleming's hardly acquired equanimity. He wanted to kick the man out of the garden and read the widow a lecture on how to avoid snakes.

"And Harper's the kind that doesn't pack rattles," thought Fleming as he grimly advanced up the steps, Harper lying at ease in the long rattan chair and smiling up at him mockingly.

The widow looked a bit uncertainly from one to the other.

"You men know each other, don't you?" she asked.

"Yes," said Fleming.

"Beyond a doubt," said Harper. "A bit different from the last place we met, eh, Fleming?"

He managed to suggest an innuendo in the statement, and Fleming felt himself flush as the widow looked at him. The last time he had met Harper Fleming had yanked out of a waterside dump a young cub of a planter's son whom Harper had been trimming at poker with the help of some unsavory friends. And now, by some damnable trick of look and tone, Harper had put the shoe on Fleming's foot.

"Doing fine with your vanilla, they tell me, Fleming," drawled Harper condescendingly. "They can't say you don't know beans now, old man."

He grinned as he noticed Fleming's handshake when he took the glass the widow handed him. It was fun to bait Fleming, Harper thought, a bit dangerous but a lot of fun. He reacted beautifully.

Then the widow interfered. The evidently bad blood between her two guests she attributed partly to jealousy, and therefore it was not entirely unacceptable; but she liked Fleming and did not propose to have any of her callers made uncomfortable.

She liked Harper, too. He both attracted and repulsed her. She figured that any man who did attract her must have some good in him and vaguely wondered who was responsible for the bad, and whether the right sort of woman might not have kept it from materializing or could not now eliminate it. And Harper was decidedly good-looking. Fleming was well-featured enough, and physically he was not very far from perfect; but he was, to use the average feminine vocabulary, not so distinguished looking or so graceful or well-mannered as Billy Harper.

She's had one good-looking scamp, thought Fleming bitterly. "Don't she know enough now to sheer off when she sees another?"

Fifteen minutes Fleming endured while Harper discussed pearls and the latest fashions he had seen at Suva when the tourists came off the steamer, describing them well enough to draw compliments from the interested widow. Fleming was entirely out of it, sipping a drink that seemed too sour, though it came out of the same jug as that of the others, and resolving to have a private conversation with Harper and tell him to keep clear of the Starkey bungalow— and then realizing that a man in love can not do many things without giving rise to suspicion, slander, and surveillance.

From time to time Harper glanced at him with deliberate malice; and every time the muscles in Fleming's body tautened and his jaws clamped down, all of which seemed to cause Harper exquisite amusement. At last the latter got up.

"I have got to go," he said in a voice that suggested he was literally tearing himself away. "Got to catch the ebb. I'm sailing this afternoon. I shall hope to see you again soon, Mrs. Starkey. Now I'll leave you and Fleming to talk of less frivolous matters."

"You have been a godsend," said the widow with a light laugh as she got up and went with her visitor as far as the gate, whence he departed with a spray of stephanotis in his buttonhole and the air of an accepted gallant.

THE WIDOW came back to the veranda, and Fleming stood to meet her with a slightly conscious air and a heightened color. The knowledge that Fleming was in love with her gave the lady a proprietary feeling and manner, which she used in anticipating any remarks that he might make.

"Captain Harper has been here on business," she said. "I feel that I have done quite a good stroke."

Fleming, who had been choking down many emotions for many minutes, made an ass of himself.

"Then you'd better tell me what it is," he growled, "for I'll bet it's just as crooked as a dog's hind leg."

"My end of it, or Captain Harper's?" she asked with an acid sweetness that should have warned Fleming.

"His."

"I thought men didn't knock each other," she went on.

Fleming got crimson under his tan.

"I'm warning, not knocking," he blurted.

"Have you any proofs that Captain Harper is crooked?" she asked.

Fleming pondered for a minute or two.

"None that I could offer," he said finally.

"Ah!"

She didn't say "I thought so," but the "Ah!" was more illuminating, scorching indeed. Fleming got up to go. It was getting altogether too hot for him. The scent from the garden choked him; the blossoms were too vivid. He itched all over with a pricking sensation.

"Have you got to catch the ebb too?" she asked.

"I have business to attend to," he said.

"Don't let me detain you."

She saw by his hurt face that she had gone farther than she intended. And she had not yet made her point.

"Captain Harper has taken the lease of the island off my hands," she said. "It is very satisfactory. It was only twenty-five pounds a year, but I am very thankful. That was the business he came about."

Here was Fleming's opportunity, an explanation, almost an apology, certainly an opening. But his eyes narrowed. What game was Harper up to now? The island that the late but not lamented Starkey had leased from the government for ten years, and for seven years un-expired rent of which the widow was responsible under the lease, was not good for anything. Starkey had tried to plant coffee and then started a tea plantation, but the soil and Starkey's methods were both poor. He had got out the pearl shell from the shallower spots of the lagoon and found even that of poor quality without a pint of baroques or seeds in the whole lot.

And now Harper was pledging himself to spend one hundred and seventy-five pounds— that is, eight hundred and seventy-five dollars— on a barren islet. Was it for the widow's favor? That, Fleming was positive, would only be bestowed in a manner too honorable for Harper to understand, desire, or— considering other alliances— be able to respond to.

What was he up to? There was a joker somewhere. Harper wasn't spending nearly a thousand dollars for philanthropy or for the mere pleasure of citronade and cigarettes on Helen Starkey's veranda.

"What's the idea?" asked the widow. "Don't you approve?"

"No, I don't," he answered, flatly and foolishly.

"Why not?"

He was dumb.

"You men are all alike," she flung at him. He guessed what she meant. He was jealous, and his jealousy had tinged his judgment., But he was no pincushion, and he considered he had been pricked sufficiently.

"If it's a check he's given you," he said, "or even bank-notes, I'd advise you to change 'em."

"Thank you. And now you'll have to excuse me. Captain Harper came early, and I haven't even touched my housework. If you'll wait and make yourself comfortable?"

It was the last straw. The housework put aside for Harper, but Fleming could sit around like a house cat waiting to be noticed!

"Thanks," he said. "But I'm busy too; I just dropped in."

She smiled at him as she gave him her cool, slim hand, and he interpreted it as a laugh. He had been idiotic. The widow's house was too far out of the way for any visit not to be purposeful. He strode down the garden, unaccompanied, undecorated with stephanotis. The widow had disappeared inside before he reached the crotons. Fleming went on down the hill with clenched fists, clenched for Harper, aching for a chance to use them. He saw a trim, white whale-boat shoot out from the wharf, the four native boys stroking beautifully, Harper in the stern with the steering-oar, graceful as a gondolier, the boat speeding out to the Manuwai— Sea-bird— Harper's schooner, sweet-lined, seaworthy, and the fastest thing under canvas in the Fijis.

Fleming stood for a minute or two and mopped his forehead, noting the precision of the rowing, the snappy way in which the oars were tossed up at the schooner's side while Harper stepped on deck, the quick attachment to the falls and the up-sway of the tender. When he reached the beach the Manuwai had up-anchored and under jib, stay, and mainsail was sliding out on a reaching tack through the reef-channel, held up against wind and current by Harper at the wheel, using perfect judgment. Once more he watched with a swift envy a sweeping return of his love for the open sea and a slanting deck, regrets for his own sold schooner Tamotu. Outside the reef Harper's boys raced to sheets and halyards. Up went the foresail, the kite topsails slipped up without a hitch, setting precisely. Splintering the crisp blue seas beneath her forefoot, the Manuwai with started sheets seethed westward.

"He's all a sailor, him!" said Fleming, and he mopped his face again and went on to complete preparations for the shipment of his vanilla.

BUT THE JOY of success had died. Its grave lay up in the widow's garden. He hadn't even told her about his victory. Probably she wouldn't care to hear about it. And he wasn't going to take the chance of getting snubbed.

The widow had dismissed all the native help from the island enterprise when her husband died, paying them their back wages out of what little was salvaged from Phil Starkey's handling of affairs. One man had remained as a sort of caretaker without wages, staying on the island at his own request. This was a Fijian named Tumba, an ancient, with eyes reddened by much drinking of yanggona— kava— and memories that led back to times when the week was considered wasted that did not see human flesh served at one meal at least.

Coming out from a merchant's hot and smelly warehouse-office, Fleming saw Tumba, drunk, not with yanggona, which paralyzes the limbs, but with trade gin. His red-rimmed eyes were murderous, shifty. He was dressed only in a red sulu— kilt— and he swaggered down the sand, his old but still efficient muscles bunching as he swung his arms and moved his shoulders, chanting in Fijian:

"Eh, but I am hungry! I want to eat a man!"

He lacked only a club to look the cannibal. But he had no weapon, and nobody took any notice of him. If he left the beach and annoyed any one, he would be arrested by the member of the native constabulary who stood eying him tolerantly. But the sun and the gin would probably put him to sleep in the shade, and Tumba was allowed the uneven tenor of his way. Fleming recognized him and wondered where he had got the money to buy the gin. Harper must have dismissed him and given him a gift. But Harper had only just acquired the lease. Had he presupposed the widow's acquiescence in the deal?

It was like his infernal impudence, thought Fleming, to do a thing like that. And he had turned off Tumba because the man was too old. Fleming called to the drunkard, "Hi, there, you Tumba, you come along here!"

Tumba stood and stared. His rheumy eyes saw nothing but some vision of memory. Perhaps he really believed what he was chanting, his youth mockingly restored by the gin. Who was this white man who called? Tumba was his own master! He had money yet to spend after this drunk had worn off! Tchah!

"Eh, but I am hungry! I want to eat a man!"

Fleming let him go. There was nothing to be got out of him. Tumba might have left the little island of his own accord. There was nothing to keep him there. Fleming forgot him, worrying about some new machinery that seemed missing but which turned up at last and was shipped on his sloop, crowding both cabin and cockpit.

IT WAS the third morning before he sailed out of the harbor and started for his own holding of Tamotu— named after his schooner appropriately, for ta motu can mean "the ship" or "the island." His sloop was called Lelemotu, which means "the little ship." It sailed well enough but had no great speed.

Good enough for a planter, thought Fleming, regretful always of his well-found schooner that had once sailed the western archipelagoes. All he wanted now was a vessel big enough to convey a couple of tons of beans and some provisions back and forth. He had only one man with him, a Tanna man from the New Hebrides, a black and ugly-looking savage, but faithful, courageous, indebted to Fleming for his life when the latter had picked him up off the Tanna beach in the face of the arrow-fire of a hill tribe bent upon making boloko— human meat— out of Ngiki.

Ngiki swam like a fish and sailed by instinct. He was as good a man aboard, save for navigation, as Fleming himself. Strong as an ox and cheerful, he was the prize of all the Tanna men who helped to plant and train and weed Fleming's vanilla. The fertilizing and the scalding and the sweating in the sun, Fleming attended to himself. It was a little too much, with the necessity of constant overseeing of the men.

He had hoped— Fleming sighed a little and frowned a little as he thought of his aspirations— that he could have got a partner to fertilize the flowers. A light-handed partner, with the deftness for the pinch and the touch with the toothpick that was all the work demanded in the early morning hours of coolness. The widow— but that was over, and Fleming steered the Lelemotu between spoke and spoke while Ngiki sprawled out forward in the full blaze of the sun like a lizard, sleek with coconut oil against blistering. He was breaking in a new pipe, his tobacco box of brass stuck into the lobe of his left ear, stretched into a loop by such usage, the right lobe decorated with a small round vanity-mirror of which Ngiki was inordinately proud, using it as much as any haughty beauty of the gentler sex.

East of Ovalau the Fijis break up into scores of islets circling about the Koro Sea. Some are volcanic, most of coral formation. Many are uninhabited, visited only by some wandering schooner, blown out of its course perhaps, looking for fresh water or drinking nuts. Fleming had picked his own leasehold of Tamotu because it had water and a mountain peak that formed its core and mothered two sheltered valleys where the heat was tempered, and that by its trends thwarted the havoc of the occasional hurricanes.

The sloop took it easily, the wind holding steady, sailing on between blue and blue, the cobalt of the sky and the ultramarine of the sea with its indigo shadows. The distant islands and the mainlands showed as humps and juts of deeper blue than the horizon, with here and there a faint gleam of green, opal-wise. There was neither fleck of foam nor cloud. The Lelemotu slapped along nicely, the water chuck-chuckling to the shouldering thrust of her bows and hissing away astern with the delightful suggestion of coolness in the sound of aerated water. Ngiki finished his pipe, knocked out the ashes, cursing softly at the bite of the applewood, and went to sleep like a black cat. Fleming drowsed. He knew every fathom of the way by instinct, every shoaling of the bottom where coral atolls were slowly growing up to the surface, showing as patches of discoloration more or less distinct, according to wind and tide and submersion. The sloop almost knew its own way home. Fleming, knowing the feel of breeze and current and what the sloop could do, could have guessed his position within a quarter of a mile. He was on a long tack. With luck he would fetch Tamotu without shifting, somewhere about midnight.

NGIKI's flattened nostrils twitched in his sleep as a dog's will twitch. The Tanna-man had the full sense of smell that in most of us has atrophied so that it no more answers the purpose for which it is intended than do the eyes of an astigmatic person. When Ngiki's eyes were closed his ears and nose played sentinel, together with his sense of touch. What disturbed him now was only a hint, the suggestion of something unpleasant, not strong enough to set up the correlation between sensatory nerve and memory cell. It wasn't strong enough to mean anything to him yet. Fleming knew nothing of it at all, though he was still awake.

The sloop was sailing close-hauled on the starboard tack, and the odor was wafted over the port bow. They were heading up to it and at the same time falling off in leeway. But it got stronger. Ngiki sat up and snuffed disgustedly, angry at being awakened. Then the white man got it. Both of them knew instantly what it was.

There are several smells in the South Seas that, once inhaled, are never forgotten. The smell of a dead whale to windward, the reek of sugar in the hold, that will permeate even the shell of a hard-boiled egg, the stink of guano and— and this would make a glue factory fragrant by comparison— the stench of rotting-out pearl-shell. It will travel down the wind for miles and salute a vessel leagues away, far out of sight of the offending beach. It gets into the hair, the clothes, tobacco, food, water, everything but an unopened coconut— and that must be swallowed instanter or be tainted. It is thick and it is sticky.

"Wah!"

Ngiki spat over side. Then he looked expectantly along the deck to the cockpit, hoping that Fleming would tack, even if they did get home later. They might crisscross that stinking lane instead of sailing almost straight up it, as they were doing.

"Faugh!"

Fleming's face exhibited disgust fighting with curiosity. He stood up and gazed around him to the blue humps and specks of far and distant land, each of which he knew by name, and approximated their distance.

"No good that smell, saka [sir]," said Ngiki. "Too much big fellow stink. Better we make turn back?"

Fleming shook his head.

"You take wheel, Ngiki," he said and dived into the cabin when the Tanna man came aft.

He came out with a chart that he had compiled himself in his trading days and added to from time to time. He cocked his eyes at the angle of the sun, made a brief calculation and chucked the chart down on to the transom cushions.

"All right, Ngiki," he said. "We come about."

The one jib was self-working, on a club-boom. Ngiki took in the mainsheet smartly and hitched it once about the cleat, looking to his master to see if the sail was too taut or too slack. Fleming nodded and Ngiki completed his hitch. For a moment Ngiki was happy. Then he sensed the reason for the tack. They were to head well to windward to offset leeway when they came back once again to close-hauled sailing. For the time they would be only on the edge of the smell, but they would work back into it, nosing along it as a hound on a trail. When Fleming once more gave him the wheel and again went below Ngiki grumbled aloud and to himself.

"What name (why) Falemingi go along that big-fellow smell? My word; it make my belly too much walk about. Spoil smoke."

He eyed Fleming curiously when the latter emerged on deck with a Colt automatic, carefully cleaned and oiled it, filled the clip after one cartridge had been injected into the breech, filled up two extra clips, and tucked them away in his hip pocket.

Ngiki's eyes held anticipation and lust of battle. Through the reek of the rotting shell his mind smelled blood. It was a long time since Falemingi had been in action, a long time since Ngiki, in the too peaceful plantation life, had smelled powder. He did not know whether he would be in on the fighting or not, but the sight of the automatic, a murderous, heavy .44, was as the sight of a shotgun in the Fall to a setter.

Fleming put the pistol away in a holster attached to his belt and sat through the tack with his eyes half-closed, thinking. Some one was rotting pearl on Paruki. Paruki now belonged, under its lease, to Harper. But the lease was exchanged only three days ago, and this shell had taken time to be brought up by the divers and laid on the drying-beaches. Starkey had tried the lagoon with poor results, but Fleming remembered that Starkey, characteristically, had worked only the shallows.

The deeper stretches might have panned out rich in shell and actual gems. People didn't rot out without some prospects of success. Harper wouldn't. And this must be Harper. If so, he had practically stolen the shell before he saw the widow. If she had refused to let the lease go Harper would have been in the position of a thief. Not that that would have worried Harper overmuch. It was not the first time he had been suspected or accused of crookedness. He would wriggle out of it some way with the pearls if he was given half a chance.

Tumba? Tumba's presence on Ovalau was better explained now. The diving and spreading had started the moment Harper left the island with Tumba aboard. Tumba could not be trusted. He might spill the news at any time. So he was removed before operations began. Fleming did not think there were any natives on Paruki, outside of Harper's crew, who were Malaita boys and not divers. Harper used modern methods for getting his shell, a diving-suit with an oxygen tank, a quick clean-up and away.

That was his style, whether he held a lease and was on the windy side of the law or was pirating a lagoon. It took white men to use a suit. The natives didn't like it. There were probably four or five white men on Paruki, aside from the Solomon Islanders from Malaita.

It was big odds and necessitated careful plans, but Fleming did not hesitate. He was not going to see the widow robbed, and he intended to show up Harper. The memory of that quarter of an hour on the widow's veranda still rankled. He leaned against the weather stays, his big, athletic body pliant to the pitch and toss of the ship. The breeze was freshening a bit, and the sloop was making good time reaching. Fleming's eyes were half closed but Ngiki caught the gray gleam that shone from them, noted the vertical lines between the brows, the bossing jaw muscles, and nodded and winked to himself.

"By and by big fellow trouble he walk along," he murmured happily.

"Tend sheets, Ngiki; we're going about!" said Fleming suddenly.

Ngiki jumped and Fleming spun the wheel. Up came the sloop, catching the wind in flattened main and staysail-jib, tossed her bows, and dug into the seas, plowing on to Paruki, into the heart of the stench. Fleming got his binoculars and kept them focused for the first sight of the island peak.

Paruki boasted one cone, sloping abruptly down on one side, its ridges largely barren, denuded of soil and vegetation. Much of the islet was marsh; and the lagoon bit deeply into it, fringed by mangroves. On the northern side there were steep cliffs, part of the lone mount. The water came up close to them and landing was difficult. The cliffs mounted in sheer palis— precipices— to the serrated summit of the cone, and then the land pitched down toward the lagoon and the leeward beaches, broad stretches of sand where the shell was rotting. Fleming knew that even if there were men on the lookout by purpose or accident, he could sight the loom of the peak before they caught a glimpse of his sail, unless there was some one on the cone, which was most improbable— and had to be chanced. He intended to effect a landing and make at least a reconnaissance before sunset. Much of the pith of his plan depended upon circumstances.

But something had to be done before the shells were stripped and a clean-up of the pearls effected. And done without warning. Pearls were easy things to hide, hard to identify. A little while and no one could prove the rotting had not taken place within the term of the transferred lease. The fact that Harper had troubled to get the lease at all and to pay for it was to Fleming proof positive that the haul was likely to be so rich that Harper, discovering how the shell was running, resolved to cover himself in case of future trouble. If the news ever leaked out that he had pirated a widow's lease the Government would be after him hot foot. But he knew what he was handling before he put up his eight hundred and seventy-five dollars.

THE PEAK of Paruki swam into view on the lenses of the binoculars like a stain on a microscopic slide. It assumed form, the shape of a double-tooth turned roots up for exhibition purposes. It was right in the wind's eye, and from it poured the cloggy smell. To get to windward of it unseen, Fleming had to slant off on a long leg and fetch up to position on another. The latter would probably have to be broken into several tacks. But there was plenty of time, and the wind blew steady and true. So the sloop leaned from the breeze instead of on it and went scooting off, long before any one on the leeside Paruki could have caught sight of the tiniest fleck of canvas.

It was two hours to sunset when Fleming slipped overboard into the trailing tender and gave Ngiki his last instructions. On a lee shore, with the waves beating on the lava buttresses, Fleming dared not anchor. He took risk enough with his dingy, for the water went licking and spouting up the cliffs and roaring among the boulders and caves in a fashion far from inviting. But he could trust Ngiki to handle the sloop, to sail off and on until he came back again. And, if anything went wrong, to wing it back to Levuka and present the letter Fleming had written and left in the cabin to the merchant to whom Fleming had sold his vanilla. But not to leave until noon the next day and to keep his eyes and ears wide open for Fleming's coming.

"I may be in a big fellow hurry when I show up," said Fleming, and Ngiki grinned appreciatively.

At the last moment a treacherous undertow combined with a following wave and slammed the dingy down so hard upon a slab of lava that it smashed its bottom strakes and broke its keel. Fleming leaped as it struck and fought through the yeast of sucking water, clinging to a buttress of the cliff until the sea reluctantly subsided and left him free for another rush, a leap across a split and a swift wading, waist-deep, to the gully he had picked out from the sloop as the best chance of ascent.

To a man whose head never dizzied and whose rubber-soled feet never slipped the climb was a little better than possible. Fleming was all in when he got to the top and flung himself panting but safe upon a ledge just below a gap between two of the fanged roots of the peak. The sun was getting low back of him, and the shadow of the cone spread out over Paruki like a violet veil. In the horseshoe lagoon swam Harper's schooner, the Manuwai, at anchor. Her canvas was furled, and he could see black figures making her shipshape, shining brasses, and whitening decks. Three or four more natives were spreading out a pile of shell, handling it with five-tined forks, standing to windward for what small protection that would give them from the reek.

Fleming stood up, getting his wind. He saw a weird figure emerge from the lagoon, goggle-eyed, humpbacked beneath the oxygen tank— one of Harper's divers. Harper himself, he fancied, though all the figures were miniature, strolled down to meet the man. Behind the lagoon was the marsh through which a stream ran sluggishly. Back of the marsh the bush, and in the bush a clearing with a tiny bungalow: a wooden-walled, corrugated-iron-roofed house of two rooms with a lean-to at the back of the kitchen. Smoke came out of the roof of the lean-to. Fleming heaved a sigh of relief. The smoke meant that Harper and his companions ate ashore, probably slept there, playing cards during the evenings, smoking and drinking.

He started down, keeping to cover as best he could until he reached the bush, where concealment was easy. He had about fifteen minutes of actual daylight left when he came out of the bush to what had once been a garden of yams, taro, cane and corn. With the sinking of the sun darkness would be almost instantaneous, lasting until the stars got their power. There was no moon.

Creeping through the rank growths, Fleming heard a laugh from the house, followed by another and another. There was the clink of glasses, the scent of tobacco stealing out to him as he advanced close to lean-to, the smell of frying meat, and the rattle of pots and pans.

He crouched in the angle between lean-to and house, listening. The outer door opened, and he heard the tread of men on the veranda and their voices greeting those already in the room. There was a window whose sill he could have peered over by straightening, but he was not yet ready. The newcomers were the diver and Harper.

"Termorrer I lays off," said the diver. "I put in too much time today and the ledge is gittin' deeper. All the best-lookin' shell's comin' up from eighteen fathom. I ain't goin' to git the bends stickin' down too long. Termorrer I lays off, pearls or no pearls. We got all the time in the world, now you've fixed up the lease."

"We can finish up washing shell," suggested Harper. "The place stunk to heaven when I was coming up in the schooner. It's lucky the island's out of the way or some nosy fool would have been rubbering before we got the lease. It came easy though. She fell for the parlor stuff. But it's just as well to clean up."

Fleming appreciated the backhand slap at himself with a grin but Harper's depreciation of the widow sent his hand to the butt of his automatic.

"Pretty soft for you," said a fresh voice. "You playin' the beau to a pritty woman an' then kickin' about the stink of the stuff comin' up— your hide, we live in it. I vote for the clean up. And next time I go pearlin' I pick 'em out while they're alive. The shell can go to blazes when we got a line of pearls like we been findin'. Pickin' through the meat today, I even forgot the stink the way they stacked up. One out of every sixth shell, so help me Jimmy. No seeds. They're old stock— few baroques. Tim got one beauty. I'll bet this lagoon is virgin. Want to see what we got?"

"Let's eat first," suggested Harper.

"An' for God's sake pass the bottle," chimed in the diver. "Stayin' down's dry work. Hurry up the chuck, Fredi," he called out to the man in the lean-to.

It grew darker. The cook in the shed took in the meal, and the men scuffed their chairs about the table, and all fell to with an appetite that Fleming shared but could not relish. The cook was on equal terms with the rest, and that helped. He wanted to have them altogether. Not a Malaitan likely to tackle him in the rear. The native boys were evidently down on the beach or aboard. A lamp was lit. The bottom of the window-sash was up and covered with mosquito-netting. The great leaves of a banana, A-shaped in its length, pendent from the central rib, pressed against and across the netting, admirable screens for Fleming if.…

He felt his way through the growth noiselessly, carefully, one hand on the boards of the lean-to, which had a window on the other side, through which he peered. Then he kicked his shin against what he was looking for and picked it up, a wooden packing-box of fairly stout construction. He set this against the wall of the house under the window and stood upon it with his head tucked into the inverted V of the nearest banana banner, waving gently, like its fellows, in the land wind. Its long edges were split here and there and through these tatters, perfectly masked, Fleming looked into the room.

There were four men there besides Harper, and Fleming knew all but one of them. One was Harper's regular mate; another his supercargo. The fourth was a Suva scalawag and the fifth matched him. They were a hard-bitten, reckless lot, hawk-nosed, save for the supercargo, who had had his flattened in a forgotten fight. Harper alone showed any neatness, any attempt at ordinary cleanliness. Two wore beards of ancient growth; two more had not shaved for days. And their faces were inflamed with gross appetites long indulged, as they ate, save for Harper, like a litter of pigs at a trough.

They drank and they boasted and they told rotten stories, and Fleming kept doggo, waiting his time.

At last the dishes were shoved to one side and Harper and his mate got up. Harper took down a metal box from a shelf and unlocked it. The mate took a bag of chamois leather from inside his shirt. Harper set the box on the table unopened but the mate poured from the chamois bag on to the wood a pattering rain of pearls, highlighted in iridescent beauty by the lamp, sheeny soft in the shadow.

Fleming puckered his lips in a silent whistle. Surely such pearls had come from a virgin patch. He knew pearls, and there were one or two of the larger of these gems, being handled by grimy, callused fingers, that were worth a cool thousand apiece, traders' prices. Pearls before swine, he thought, as the gleaming globules passed from hand to hand, roughly appraised.

"A good lot," said Harper. "With what there is here in the box, boys, we've got fifty thousand dollars in plain sight. There ought to be twenty thousand more in what's left of the shell on the beach, to say nothing of what we'll bring up. Then there's the shell. Call it a hundred thousand dollars and you're below the mark rather than above it."

"Twenty thou' apiece," said the mate. "And each of us four to give Harper ten percent of our even shares for swingin' the thing, harpoonin' the widder inter shiftin' the lease, an' the use of the schooner. Not so bad!"

Fleming hunched his shoulders, his body tensing for action. But the stage was not quite set to his liking.

"Fair enough," said another, the scalawag from Suva, known to Fleming as "Bush" Dickson. "Fa-a-ir enough. How about that— Kanaka, Banjo, or Tambo, or whatever his name was? S'pose he squeals that we pulled this thing 'fore we had the right. They're kind of techy down Suva way 'bout the protection of their leases."

"You haven't got rid of the Suva jail itch yet, Bush," said Harper, and the rest laughed at the pointed jest while Dickson grinned stupidly. "Don't you worry about Tumba. I've fixed it so that Tumba draws a little money each week— only for a week or two, but he don't know that— from Mike Lamed, who runs the Ambergris Hotel and don't mind selling booze to Kanakas. I told Tumba it was a sort of pension from the widow. The point is that he has to go to Larned's to get the cash— it's seven dollars a week and Mike is to give him a dollar a day. Mike is going to see that Tumba keeps drunk into the bargain. That's an easy job so long as he shows Tumba the bottle. After two weeks, if Tumba says anything, they'll think he dreamed it. They won't believe him on dates; a Kanaka's word don't go far anyhow. So don't worry about Tumba."

"Some fox, our skipper, I'll say," said Dickson. "Let's see the rest of them pearls."

Harper assented without demur. It seemed to be a party agreement that the pearls were to be kept in plain sight and inspected upon request of any member of the gang, like the books of a stock corporation. The supercargo scooped up the loose pearls and put them into a small wooden calabash. Harper took another chamois bag from the box, and a small canvas sack.

"Baroques here," he said, tapping the canvas poke.

Then he added the contents of the chamois bag to the pearls in the bowl. The glistening heap pyramided above the rim. Fleming inched his head along the inverted trough of the banana leaf, drawing his gun from the holster. There was just one other thing.…

"That the agreement with the widder?" asked the diver, reaching for a paper. "I ain't seen that afore. How's it go?"

Harper took the document and unfolded it under the lamp. He parted his lips for speech but none ever left them.

"Hands up, the bunch of you! Ten hands! Fifty fingers! Up! And high! Up!"

Fleming was lolling in the window, his automatic shifting steadily in an arc that covered all the five.

"Get back into that corner!" he said. "Line up! That's the idea. Good evening, Harper. And keep on trying to touch the roof or you'll be scratching dirt. I mean business, you pack of thieving hounds."

Fleming was ready to shoot if need be, and they knew it. Nothing less would have kept them passive as Fleming set a knee across the sill and eased himself into the room, his gun-barrel never wavering. Their eyes glared like those of suddenly thwarted devils as he slid into his pocket the lease transfer and emptied the calabash of its pearls with one hand into his bandanna handkerchief, which he then placed in his pocket. The gums and teeth of the quintet were drawn back in wolf-snarls as Fleming backed up to the window and eased out on to his box. He had ripped away the rotten netting without a sound before he made his appearance. Once more he lolled across the sill.

"Good night, Harper," he said.

"I'll cut your heart out," said Harper, his words bitter with venom, "if I have to trail you from here to Madagascar."

"Try Levuka first, Harper," said Fleming, smiling. "More likely to find me there— or on Tamotu."

He jumped lightly from his stand, turned, and raced through the dark, deserted garden. Behind him, the room broke into an uproar. From the window came a volley of pistol shots, the bullets tearing through the leaves and stalks as Fleming, head down, broke for the bush. He could hear the five swearing among themselves.

"He's making for the mountain, God damn him!"

"Goin' to circle round to the beach!"

"Where's his Goddamned boat?"

The blundering crash of pursuit sounded in Fleming's rear. Then some one— Harper by the voice— yelled for the Malaitan boys. And then there was silence, save for the noise of Fleming's own going.

But he knew that Harper had done the right thing, had set the Malaitan boys, swift and sure as bloodhounds, on his trail. He came to the edge of the bush, where it broke up into clumps before it faded away on the hard lava of the mountain ridges. Between two of these clumps he darted and instantly a red flare stabbed the dark and a bullet went singing high and to the left.

"That is a Malaitan," Fleming decided. "They're bum shots; that's one blessing. Rifle, at that!"

His guess was proven as the man who had fired at him let out a loud "Eyah-a-ah!" giving tongue like a dog. And like a fox Fleming went up the cone in the dark, helped by the starlight, but keeping in the shadows wherever cleft or gully offered.

The gap showed above him, a cluster of stars caught in its deep cup. Then the stars were blotted out by the swift, silent passage of a shadowy, silhouetted figure— a native, naked save for a sulu cloth, bearing a rifle. The Malaitans, guessing his exit or knowing it the only one, had outstripped him on the trail and cut him off, barring him until the white men caught up.

Fleming's breath was short, his heart pounding and his lungs panting from the burst he had maintained all the way up the steep slopes. The figure had passed, merging into some rock crevice before Fleming could aim and fire.

Back of him sounded a tinkle, the fall of a scrap of weathered obsidian dislodged by a naked foot to a ledge of lava. Fleming was sandwiched. He turned to the sidewall of the cleft, feeling for a niche, hooking his fingers into it and muscling himself up until his rubbered toes caught a hold. He remembered having seen the suggestion of a ledge on this side of the pass when he had come through, and now he was forced to take the desperate chance, also to risk a fall of rock like that which had betrayed the man back of him, who even now was stealing along hoping to catch glimpses or sound or smell of Fleming.

Fleming found his ledge and crabbed along it till the sea-wind blew on his face, turned to the rock. He knew he had reached the mouth of the gap. With infinite care he faced about, fingered for and found a clutch and gazed down. Fifteen feet below him, in the saddle of the pass, his black body merged with the cliff, his head thrust forward, peering, listening, sniffing for the first sign of the fugitive white man, was a Malaitan, still as if hewn out of the solid rock. The glint of starlight on his rifle barrel first betrayed him. Inch by inch Fleming stooped and then literally swooped down upon the man, lighting on him in the perilous footing of the pass, landing between the man's shoulders and smiting with the heavy automatic. The end of the muzzle jarred against the savage's tough, thick skull behind the ear and he passed out of any control of sense or muscle.

Below, Fleming saw the sloop coming up on an inshore tack. Apparently Ngiki had heard the sound of firing. The vessel was little more than a shadow, save for the streaks of sea-fire that made up her wake. Down the steep declivity Fleming slid and leaped, expecting every moment to find himself targeted. But he was close to the bottom before a gun was fired, and that at random, for he could not be well seen from above. But presently he would be a shining mark as he swam off to the sloop. To say nothing of the sharks. A bullet thudded and flattened on the rock ledge at his feet as he ran out from the cliff face, shouting to Ngiki, thankful that the tide was at flood because of the depth it would give him for the dive, and took a header into the heart of a high comber streaked with phosphor.

Bullets spattered about him as his head came clear and he struck out hand-over-hand for the sloop. Ngiki called to him:

"Look out for s'ark! Rope at stern."

He saw the line trailing and made for it as the sloop lunged past. The flashes were coming from the cliff fast as he rolled when he caught the rope and began to haul himself in. Ngiki had to watch the wheel in those waters. But the aim from above was poor. Seemingly the white men had not come up or had gone back. He felt pretty certain that the shots that had come so close were white marksmanship.

Suddenly Fleming saw Ngiki appear above the taffrail, the wheel abandoned, reaching for the line and hauling.

"S'ark, saka, s'ark!" he gasped. "Hurry!"

Fleming hoisted himself from the water, thankful for the flat counter that gave him a temporary foothold, as Ngiki leaned far over and caught him in the hollow of one knee. Fleming managed to surmount the rail and the two men went rolling together to the wheel, where Fleming jumped to his feet and controlled the spokes just as a williwaw flurried down through the gap in the cone and almost set the sloop aback.

"Look!" said Ngiki.

A bullet skitted through the mainsail and dug itself into the deck close to Fleming, but he stared where Ngiki pointed while the sloop came up into the wind again. The high dorsal of a shark, trailing bluish-green streamers as it went, passed on its patrol. Fleming shivered a little as he headed out, Ngiki paying out the sheet. To have escaped the rifles on the cliffs only to have dived into the maw of a shark was not a pleasant thing to think of.

But they were not out of it yet. A mile from land Ngiki touched Fleming's elbow and pointed aft. Under the stars stole a shadowy shape that showed two tiny eyes, one green, one crimson. It was Harper's schooner, that could sail three knots where the sloop sailed two, coming up fast. She was plain in the night-glasses, apart from her side-lights, surely lit out of mockery, for there was little need of navigation regulations in these lonely waters of the Koro Sea. With the wind aft, Harper's schooner could make twelve knots easily; Fleming was doing well if he logged eight. The schooner would be alongside in fifteen minutes. Long before that they would commence firing with their rifles and Fleming had nothing aboard of heavier caliber and longer range than his automatic. Ngiki had no weapon save knife or belaying pin. The odds would be four or five to one.

It was impossible to shake them off. On board the schooner they could see the sloop through their glasses under the tropical starlight far too clearly for Fleming to make any attempt at a split tack. The wind was brisk, inclined to blow hard, and the seas were snappy and crisp with foam. Fleming dragged a balloon jib out of the forepeak and set it, sparring it out to port with a boat hook. He swayed out the main boom to starboard and prevented it with a line forward. The Lelemotu squatted like a duck and scudded her fastest. Somehow the schooner did not seem to gain as she ought. Fleming fancied she was foul. But the chase couldn't last long. Little by little, the red and the green lights sneaked up and spits of fire showed at the schooner's bows where they were wasting lead.

Fleming gave the wheel to Ngiki and lit the cabin lamp, digging among his charts. He found what he wanted and then turned the pages of an astronomical almanac. Coming on deck, he found that the schooner was overhauling them slowly but surely. He had brought up a lantern which he bent on to his flag halyards with marlin and hoisted, running it on the halyards to the starboard spreader and down again as if in defiance. The next time they fired from the schooner Fleming shot off his automatic three times, trusting it might be seen, though it could not be heard up-wind. Ngiki stared at him curiously but said nothing. He had learned long ago not to interfere with his white chief in emergencies. If Falemingi wanted to show exactly where they were, that was his business. Besides, he might be signaling. But he ventured a remark when Fleming came aft, leaving the lantern half-mast high:

"They got one-two reef along that schooner."

The schooner was close enough now for Fleming to see, with the night-glasses that Ngiki's savage eyes did not need, that the gaffs of both fore and main were low. Evidently the natives, when they furled, had not taken out the reef last used; and so far Harper did not bother to shake it. He very well knew the wide expanse that Fleming would have to cross before he made a landfall. With something of the cat-and-mouse attitude he deferred his certain victory and regain of the pearls. As for Ngiki and himself, Fleming never doubted what would be their probable ending if they were overhauled. Killed— at long or short distance— and sunk with the sloop! The five white men on the schooner would have committed a dozen murders apiece for the twenty thousand dollars that was their anticipated share, half of which was now in Fleming's possession.

"If he doesn't shake out those reefs in half an hour," said Fleming more to himself than Ngiki, "we've got him. Sea's rising nicely. I'm going to fix up some dynamite with short throwing fuses, Ngiki. They can't sink us by rifle-fire and if we can keep alive until they board us well scratch 'em a bit."

Ngiki nodded. He didn't think much of their chances. He knew nothing of Fleming's mission, only that their pursuers were in deadly earnest. But he puffed away at his pipe complacently, conserving for the final rally.

Twenty minutes went by with waves mounting and the wind beginning to howl through the rigging. The main boom of the sloop began to skim the crests and Fleming took it up with the topping lift, shifting his peak and throat halyards. A mishap would be fatal. The schooner was less than half a mile away and every now and then a missile would go whup through the canvas. Under starlight, in such a sea, at such a distance, close work was not possible. Only a lucky— or unlucky— chance could score a hit. The sound of the shots came down the wind.

Fleming studied his stars as he humored the sloop, head-heavy of canvas, inclined to swerve like a shying horse as she swept down the valley of the seas or struggled up the opposing slopes. Every yard might count, and he got the best out of her.

"They shake out reef," announced Ngiki.

Harper, tired of fooling, had issued the order at last before it was too late to risk it, for all signs and the barometer clearly indicated now that there was going to be a gale. But Fleming only chuckled.

"I think, Ngiki, I'll bet five to one on it, that they're going to be too late. Take the wheel. I'm going for'ard."

Ngiki, uncomprehending, watched him go into the bows with the night-glasses. Imperturbable, the native did not flinch when the bullets began to buzz like bees above his head or land with a chuck in the taffrail and the head of the companionway. Once he turned his head as a shout came from the schooner, a taunting order to come into the wind. A sniping bullet hit the bowl of his pipe and tore it from his teeth. Ngiki snarled and rubbed his aching jaw with one hand. Then Fleming came aft again, a grin on his face.

"Five minutes more, Ngiki, and we shall see what we shall see. They're coming up fast, but—" He staggered back. A bullet had clipped him in the left forearm. He slapped his hand over the wound and the blood came through the sleeve of his coat.

"No bones broken, I fancy," he muttered between set teeth. "Well, it's going to be cheap at that, if—"

The schooner was little more than two hundred yards away and coming on like a cup-winner. Her sails, out wing-and-wing, caught the faint star-shine on the rounded curves of the canvas. She seemed to soar as she lifted over the top of a wave, to come seething down its slope in a smother of spray that was thick with phosphorescence. Shot after shot came from her bows. Fleming shook his sound fist at her.

"I'll pack a rifle aboard after this," he said. "Planter or not, I'll take no chances. Wait till you get a little closer. Wait!"

But the automatic was no good for anything over fifty yards. Each wave saw the distance a little diminished. The schooner appeared bent upon running down the sloop, so true did she keep in its course, now actually entering the tail of its wake.

The color of the water alongside changed. It had been deepest blue, almost black, streaked with sea-fire. Now it became suddenly greener and every pint of it was aflame with phosphor. Also there was twice as much foam. The seas were yeasty with it and they seemed to run more tempestuously.

A megaphoned roar came from the schooner. "Heave to, Fleming, or I'll sink you!"

Fleming jumped for his own megaphone and yelled back against the wind.

"Come on and try it! Come on!"

The sloop suddenly swung off its course, threatening to jibe as Fleming's warning shout and hasty hand to the spokes showed Ngiki the danger of losing the mast. Ngiki was staring aft.

"Look, saka, look. By Goddamighty, she go ashore!"

Right in their course the schooner reared as if mounting on a giant sea. But her bowsprit remained pointing skyward; her sails shivered, and then the foremast snapped and the canvas wrinkled and bellied in a confusion of stays and halyards. She tilted slowly to one side and began to slew round with the waves breaking over her.

"She's fairly on," said Fleming. "Harper hasn't charted these seas as I have. She draws sixteen foot to our ten and she's on fair and fast. He'll be there this time tomorrow unless he tries for land in his whaleboats. We'll stick around a bit and see. Better get a watch-tackle on that mainsheet against the time we tack, Ngiki; I've only got one arm."

It was hard work to get in the balloon jib but Ngiki accomplished it and flattened the mainsail. The sloop shot off on a reaching tack and back again, saved by reason of her lesser draft and Fleming's soundings of the island-to-be, whose coral builders were still well below the surface. Fleming had led the schooner deliberately into the trap and stranded her.

As they came close they saw her hard on the reef, the wreck of her foremast dragging overside and pounding at her hull, spume flying over her. And, rowing hard against head-seas and headwind on a painful progress, two whale-boats made slow laborious work of it, bearing Harper and his discomfited comrades.

"IT IS A GOOD thing," Fleming said later to Helen Starkey, "that I've made a success of the vanilla proposition. Otherwise, now that these pearls have turned up, they might be saying that I wanted to marry you for your money."

The widow gasped a little.

"You're not very complimentary," she said.

"I never am, somehow, when I mean to be," said Fleming.

"You haven't said you did, you know," she said.

"Did what?"

"Wanted to marry me. Why?"

Fleming turned fiery red and fussed with the bandage of his wounded arm, but he got it out at last.

"Because I love you."

"If you had said that a long time ago," she said, "it would have saved a lot of time and trouble."

"But," she added the next time she spoke, which was after a considerable period during which Fleming silently lamented the luck that had deprived him of the use of one arm at a time when he most needed two, "if you had, I wouldn't have got my pearls."

Fleming had lost the connection and looked at her lovingly but blankly.

"If I had what?" he asked.

"Nothing," she answered smilingly.

"Instead of which," declared Fleming, using his one arm to the best advantage, "I have everything."

_________________

13: On the Account

Adventure 15 Sep 1917

1: Old Providence Island

CAPTAIN BANE, gentleman of fortune, commander of the Swift Return, pushed the black bottle across the table to the little wizened man who faced him. The cabin overflowed with swaggering figures, their tarnished sea- togs enlivened with gaudy sashes and head- kerchiefs. Reckless faces peered down through the open skylight, backed by the starred sky of the tropic July night. The swinging lamp shone full on the rapacious, eager face of Bane.

It was weather-tanned to leather, save where the black beard that covered half his chest had protected it. His gaze held the fixed glare of lenses, deep lines showed between his brows, his curving nose twitched at the flanging nostrils, the bone of it pressing gray through the skin, flattened at the bridge; a fitting beak for a preying seabird.

"Come, Sawney, come Governor, down with four fingers of the stuff and out with your news! Rogers is off the bar, you say. Drink, man, and talk quickly!"

The trembling Sawney, derisively dubbed "Governor" by the pirates who had assembled upon the Island of Providence to await the king's proclamation and pardon for all freebooters surrendering their ships and arms by the last day of August, 1718, gulped down the fiery schnapps, choked till the tears ran from his red eye rims and told his news.

"Mr. Woods Rogers, Governor and Vice-Admiral of the Bahamas," he began and, warned by the blaze that shone in the captain's eyes, broke into less ceremonious speech. "The fleet came at sunset," he went on. "Richard Turnley is pilot and on his advice they lie by till morning."

"Ah!" Bane's tense features relaxed. "How know you this?"

"The Lings put off to the fleet from Harbor Island with vegetables. They came aboard the Rose man-of-war and saw the Governor and one Captain Whitney."

"The canting, favor-currying rogues. What said they?"

"They told the governor that Ben Hornygold, with Davis, Burgess, Carter, yourself and others were on shore upon Providence, in all nigh to a thousand pi—" he checked himself with a gulp of fear—"a thousand gentlemen of fortune—"

Bane smashed his fist upon the table and guffawed.

"Nay, out with it, man. Pirates! 'Tis a brave word for those that fit it. So Dick Ling told that a thousand were waiting to cringe before Rogers and kiss the king's foot and beg to be his men again. Told also, doubtless, that they were assembled about Nassau where the fort is tumbling for repair with but one nine-pounder. And the fleet lies off until tomorrow.

"Thanks, Sawney, I will remember this. Another drink and off you go. Not a word ashore that you have visited me. —— you, drink, when I offer it."

The little man swallowed perforce the tumbler that was poured out for him and stumbled up the companionway where rough hands set him into his dingey and saw him sculling drunkenly shorewards.

"A thousand pirates! A thousand lickspittles! A thousand mice-hearted cravens! exclaimed Bane. "Blood and bones! What say you, men? Are you for kissing the king's foot and going softly with sixpence in your pockets and calved in cotton, or are you for silk hose and gold guineas?"

"I was with Kidd."

The man who spoke had a face the color of a ripe mulberry, seamed like a walnut-shell. One eye was sightless, like a bruised grape, the other gleamed between lids scarlet-hawed as those of a dog. On one cheek powder had tattooed the badge of his calhng. The end of his bulbous nose had been sliced and indifferently patched.

"Hanged he was," he went on. "Strung up at Execution Dock seventeen years ago come last month. He swings in chains down the river yet with Churchill, How, Mullins, Parrot and the rest of the brave lads. Yet would I rather hang than go halting all my days at sight of a constable. A murrain on the Governor, say I."

"Kidd was a canting coward," said Bane. "What said he on the gallows? 'For my part I am the most innocent of them all, only I have been sworn against by perjured persons.' We want no Kidds nor his kind of cattle aboard, prating of chains. Silence, you dog!"

The old buccaneer was on his feet, his drink-palsied hand fumbling at his belt.

"Blood and wounds!" he cried. "No man calls me coward!"

But Bane had caught the uneasy shifting of his followers' eyes at the talk of gallows and chains. He flung the black bottle and it smashed upon the other's skull. He collapsed, blood streaming from a strip of scalp, mingling with the reek of the liquor.

"Put him in the peak!" ordered Bane, and watched while his words were obeyed, his fierce eyes challenging his men. "Hurley! Long! Take your watches and guard the boats. No man leaves this ship save on my orders."

"If they cannot cross the bar neither can we," muttered a pirate and his opinion found echoing "ayes" from many of the rest.

"Then we go in the sloop," said Bane. "What, my bullies, because Rogers has come a month too soon, are we to stay like rats in a trap and give up our freedom with our booty? Are you men or mice? Will you be governed like sneaking puppies by those who tamely submit to laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get with their knavery, —— them for a parcel of hen-hearted numskulls!

"They vilify us, the scoundrels, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. I am a free prince and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred ships at sea and an army of a hundred thousand men in the field.

"Shall I submit to be kicked about a deck at the pleasure of one who fancies himself my superior? Shall I, and you, free men all, give up our delights, the clunk of guineas and the clink of glasses, the kisses of women and our fellowhip, because, forsooth, Rogers says so?

"What if we leave the Swift Return behind us? I was a lad when first I ran away from the cursed merchantman to which they had bound me 'prentice. With six brave hearts we borrowed a canoe and stole away to the Grand Camanas, to go on the account. We took a turtling sloop and joined on other bullies until we gained an Irish brigantine. From that we took a Spanish trading stoop of six guns. From that, on the coast of Virginia, a New England brigantine bound for Barbados that yielded us a vessel of ten guns.

"Now there were eighty of us aboard. From the Bahamas to Guinea Coast and back we sailed, to Madagascar and the Arabian Gulf. We traded the brigantine for a galley of twenty-four guns and at the last we took a three-decker of Portugal, outbound from Brazil. Thirty-six guns she mounted but we took her, a hundred and eighty of us hearties, ripping off her upper deck, deep-waisting her by cutting down the gunwale and so made her the Swift Return. Shall we not start again in a sloop?

"I tell you, my bullies, that my star rises. Shall I screen it with the king's parchment? Set me adrift with three logs, a palmetto sail and six good companions and within the year ye shall see me scattering gold in Puerto Rico and treading the deck of a ship that can fight and sail with any on the seas!

"Get out the pannikins and broach a keg of rum, boys. We have work before us."

While the cabin-lads, dusky Bermudian natives, set out the liquor. Bane pressed home his arguments, made more potent by the effects of the strong, raw spirits.

"We will transfer into the sloop and be through the East Passage at daybreak and leaving these whining curs to await the governor's pleasure. Follow me and I will undertake to shape a course that shall lead you to ease and plenty. Let the others lay down, they leave us the greater pickings. What is it, lads? The freedom of the seas— or will ye turn farmers?"

A red-headed rufiSan, lacking one ear, cleft by a cutlass, roared out his answer as he drained his pannikin and passed it for more. The rest joined in his resolution.

"Aye, we'll stand by you. A gold chain or a wooden leg!"

2: Through the East Passage

IT WAS within an hour of daybreak when the crew of the Swift Return sweating with their labor and the liquor freely served to them, had transferred themselves to the little sloop of fifty tons, carrying with them the possessions they most valued, and stores, with all the ammunition they could stow aboard.

The guns of the Swift Return were charged with double, round and partridge and the vessel set afire. The sloop dropped slowly down towards the East Passage, the crooked, shallow channel of which could not be attempted before dawn.

The broader harbor mouth was still blocked by the fleet though there was now sufficient water for the deepest-drafted ship to cross and it was Bane's hope that the vice-admiral would send in some ships or boats to investigate the blaze.

"If luck holds she will burn down to them," he said, "and scatter a few of them to hell. Since we can not use her, we'll sink her."

Faint shouts came from Nassau where the thousand pirates were celebrating the advent of the king's pardon. The low-lying island of Providence was a blur against the skyline. A faint breeze wafted the sloop closer to the tortuous passage that formed the backdoor of the harbor, through which Bane meant to achieve his freedom.

He had ordered lights out and silence, for fear they might be boarded, and the crew sprawled on the over-crowded decks talking in whispers, fired with excitement and Jamaica rum. Bane stood near the tiller, gazing back at the flaming Swift Return.

A cutter put out from the Rose man-of- war and was rowed swiftly toward the land with instructions to investigate the cause of the red glow that pulsed behind the headland fringed with palmetto that hid the Swift Return from the view of the fleet. The fire had reached the gun-deck and the starboard and larboard batteries were scattering shot across an area brilliantly illumined by the blaze.

Bane swore through his beard at the failure of his plan. Then he saw the cutter come into the radiance, pause and swerve widely about the Swift Return in a course that would bring them close to the sloop.

He gave a swift order and two boats bristling with men were soon in the water, making with swift, choppy, noiseless oar- strokes toward the cutter.

"We need a messenger," said Bane, with a chuckle. "We'll take the king's officer and send him back to the fleet after we clear the passage."

The cutter, making for the shore, was intercepted by the two boats that swept up, one on either side, from the darkness. The odds were fifty to ten. The lieutenant, seeing the gunwales gripped by twenty pairs of hands while a voice to right and left hoarsely demanded his surrender, disgustedly gave the word and the freebooters returned aboard trimnphantly as the sky began to gray and showed the sullen rollers slapping on the sand spits and coral bars that guarded the passage.

The breeze strengthened and the sloop, close-hauled, nosed her way through the winding channel. The sun rolled up, leaping clear from the rim of the sea and showing the fleet driving under half-sail across the bar into the harbor, nearly a mile away,

"Up with the Roger and fire a gun," shouted Bane. A black flag slipped up to the masthead and broke out its sable defiance as a twelve pounder roared, scaring the breakfast-hunting birds. The cutter trailed at the stem.

"Into her and back to the fleet with you," said the buccaneer to the sulky lieutenant. "Tell your commander and Rogers, the king's jackal, that Bane and his lads are away. If they want to test the speed of our heels or the gage of our guns, let them come after us. It is a fair wind for a race and clear weather for sighting. Cast off there, or we'll cut you loose!"

The king's men were in their craft, dragged with lifting stem behind the sloop.

"Give us our oars," called the lieutenant.

"Scramble for them and be —— to ye," cried Bane.

A cutlass-stroke severed the line as the oars were tossed into the sea and the pirates swarmed to the rail, mocking the crew of the cutter as they recovered, one at a time, their means of progress and, at last, setting a quick stroke, rowed back for the passage.

"Now lads, it's ho, for Hispaniola!" cried Bane. "It will be an hour before those lubbers get after us. With the wind abeam and the good start we can laugh at them. It will not be long before we'll take a better ship and then we'll carry out what has long been in my mind.

"Now that those curs ashore have surrendered we'll have the trade to ourselves. We'll find some place among the Keys where we'll set up a fort, some spot among the reefs that has a score of exits and but one entrance. That shall be our capital where we'll all live as kings in our own principality and be in debt to no man."

CHEER after cheer went up as the course was changed and the sloop, reaching faster and faster, headed for the Spanish Main. The gage was cast. They were outlaws now beyond redemption. Bane had voiced their prime ambition, to set up a kingdom to which they could go between raids, with loot and women, forced from prizes or picked up in Puerto Rico, hoydens as reckless as themselves.

There were plenty of towns where they would be made welcome when the coast was clear, to go swaggering, hip-booted, clad in silks and velvets, roaring out their songs, stampeding the citizens, boarding the taverns, paying freely for unhcensed privilege with broad pieces of eight, looting a quiet plantation, perhaps, and marchmg away to the crackling of the gutted buildings and the shrieks of women borne off across their shoulders. A gay life, a devil-may-care existence with hellfor the hind-most!

A short life and merry one until they danced the last jig with the hangman's knot behind their ear or went down fighting on slippery decks. There would be an end to it, of course, but, while it lasted, they would crowd it with excitement and Bane was a lucky leader and a brave one. A man of good family, it was whispered, though none dared question him. They bowed to his superior education. It was good to have a captain who could sling the lingo as he did and who was the first across the rail when they laid alongside.

The old ruflaan who had prated of Kidd had come on deck, his head bound in a bloody rag, maudlin with the rum that Bane sent him as a salve for his cracked pate. He was a favorite aboard for his tales of earlier raids and he was greeted with rough jests as he made his way aft to where Bane stood at the taffrail watching for signs of pursuit. The captain greeted him evenly.

"Well, old dog, can your tongue still wag?" The man's one bloodshot eye gleamed without resentment.

"Waste no more good liquor on the outside of my head. Captain," he said.

"I sent you a pannikin. So then, there's no ill-will. You had these fainthearts wavering with your prate of Kidd in chains. Blood and fury, man, must you conjure up a croaking vision to spoil good sport in the making?"

"I am nigher the end than you, maybe, though 'tis likely to be a short shrift for boy and graybeard in this calling. Captain. So we are to sea again, with yon poltroons in Providence on their marrows before Rogers. The sea is ours. There is but one life, look ye, and that's the life of a rover. No ill-will, Captain, that another pannikin will not soak up."

He rolled forward, growling in a husky bass a song that his fellows took up in chorus.

The Roger to the peak and the ocean to our lee.

A-sailing down the coast of the High Barbaree.

And it's ho, for the life of a rover.

The landsman lies a dying with the parson by his side

The freeman goes a sailing at the turning of the tide.

Give me a sheet that's trailing, a breeze that follows fleet.

A cutlass in my good right band, my boots upon my feet.

For that's the way to die, sirs, not with a canting sigh, sirs.

The Roger flaunting at the peak, the ocean to the lee

A-sailing down the coast of the High Barbaree.

Yo-ho for the life of a rover!

The sloop heeled to the strengthening wind with a rush of foam along her sides that seethed in at the scuppers. The low land was but a line behind them. Clouds had come scurrying up with the dawn and the sun seemed to rush through the masses of scud that promised dirty weather ahead.

A shaft shot through a rift and picked out the triangle of sail that was making its way out of the East Passage. The pursuit was on. Bane called for his glass and pulled out the long telescope.

"It's but a sloop," he announced. "She sails fast and she's a gut of men aboard. Fight or run, there's a storm brewing. Break out a keg, bullies all. The sloop's stanch, no need for a reef. Double-shot the guns in case we need 'em. Take the tarpaulin off the stern-chaser!"

A furious blast swooped down and tore the woolen cap from his head as he stood by the rail, clinging to the stays.

"Hell's loose, lads. May the devil serve us!"

3: "From the Seas!"

DULL, SUNLESS noon found the pirates' sloop in a welter of gray sea that matched the leaden scurry of the sky above them. They had long since dropped the chase and had made shift to double-reef the mainsail but they were in sorry case. The cabin accommodations were scanty and sixty of them were forced to make shift for themselves upon the spume-swept deck. The water was fairly warm but they were drenched and endeavored to offset their misery by copious drafts of rum.

As the afternoon wore on darkness came rapidly with an increasing gale and it was all they could do with tackles to the gooseneck of the tiller, two men at the wheel and two in the combination gunroom and cabin, to keep the ship's head to the sea. The waves ran riot, charging in a maelstrom. The sky turned slaty-black, illumined with sheets of lightning that lit up the seething yeast of the tortured ocean and the claps of thvmder kept up an incessant peal. On deck the men answered, the storm with blasphemies that were swept aft in a jumble of imprecation. The sloop staggered imder the blows of wind and water. In the cabin the billows pounded at her stem as if a giant beat upon a mighty drum.

The place was reeking with foul air and the lamp shone dimly through trailing tobacco smoke. At the head of the table Bane held place, having given over the deck to the quartermaster,"Scarry-Dick" Denton. His eyes were set and his beard was soaked with liquor spilled by the tossing of the sloop as he tried to quaff it.

"Sink or swim," he shouted, "we'll go through bravely. Blood and fire, listen to the thunder!"

He rose, swaying, as the cabin glared blue in the lightning that poured in through portholes and skylight, and held to the breech of a gun, securely lashed behind its closed port.

"The gods are drunk with us in their tipple and have gone together by the ears. Death and fury, an' we could, I'd run out the guns and return 'em a salute. The king's men have run for cover but we are bound for the open. Blow, —— ye, blow.

The wind's from all quarters. I'm for the deck."

He made his way over the sodden bodies of some of the crew and reached the deck as one of the short and furious seas broke upon the poop, tore away the taffrail and swept the two men from the wheel, driving them into the boarding netting that had been stretched above the coaming for safetylines. Bane jumped to the tiller and put his strength to it while the men on the watch tackles heaved with him.

A maddened gust of wind roared at the sloop and seemed for the moment to lift her clear of the seething water. Her stem crashed down, the reefed staysail broke clear and whipped out of sight like a storm-herded gull. Scarry-Dick, clinging to the netting, fought his way forward and, with three men, worked at the furl of the thrashing jib. A tiny lull saved them from the trough and the pirates managed to set enough headsail to keep the sloop from broaching to.

The carpenter clawed his way out of the cabin and clung to Bane, shouting in his ear. Water was working in, already above the line of bilge. As the quartermaster came back Bane signaled for him to take the helm and dived below, kicking the drunken men in the cabin into sensibility and buffeting them before him.

It was impossible to open the forehatch but they dragged a spare spar aft and rigged it with a funnel of canvas, striving like demons until they had got it clear of the bowsprit and dropped it into the sea as the mainsail came down on the run and was smothered by twenty men. The sea-anchor filled, the sloop swung head on, bare-poled, backing before the storm, but riding it, while the carpenter and his assistants strove to stanch the leak where the oakum had worked out of a seam.

It was the last flurry of the storm. The wind died away with howls of bafiSed rage, the sullen seas slowly subsided and, in the west, the sky lifted to a pale streak of chrome. Upon the luminous background showed the lifting topmasts of a big ship, apparently a merchantman.

"There's our next craft, lads," cried Bane. "In with the sea-anchor and up sail again. She heads this way. 'Tis two glasses yet to sunset. We'll sleep aboard of her tonight."

The merchantman came slowly on while the clouds still lifted, trailing skirts of the fast disappearing hurricane. The air was sweet, the sea, still rough and covered with catspaws, a brilliant indigo. The sloop sailed on to meet her, the crew crowding the cabin and lying flat upon the decks, covered with spare canvas. Pistols were stuck in sashes, there was a cutlass for every right hand, a keen knife ready for each left.

Bane had hauled down the shreds of his black ensign and now flew a jack at the peak, upside down in signal of distress. With her torn taffrail, the decks apparently cumbered with dismantled canvas, only three or four men visible, the sloop, going sluggishly, streams of water issuing from her pumps, gained the sympathy of the commander of the merchantman.

The pirates could see him on the poop, speaking-trumpet in hand, and Bane caught the bellow of his voice, borne down wind, shouting for the smaller vessel to come-up and stand-by for a boat.

"She's no beauty," said Bane, "but she will serve. She's gulled! She sees the jack! Not a man of ye moves till I give the word. Then aboard! We'll need no guns. Keep them hidden behind the ports."

The two craft drew nearer, the sloop, close-hauled, held too close for her point of best speed by Bane; the ship surging along with yards squared to the following breeze, her forefoot dripping with brine, rising and falling heavily to the swash.

Bane grinned as he spun the wheel, timing his maneuver so that the sloop hung clumsily in the eye of the wind, almost missed stays and came about on the crest of a long roller, forging down under the side of the merchantman, apparently in imminent danger of being crushed like an eggshell. Bane knew that the backwash from the ship would hold him ofi long enough to execute his plan.

"Easy, you lubbers," shouted the merchant-captain. "What sloop is that?"

"The Ranger From the seas!" answered Bane in the slogan of the freebooters.

At the phrase the cabin of the sloop vomited men. The loose canvas was hurled aside and sixty pirates sprang to the rail. A volley of oaths accenting his swift orders sounded through the speaking-trumpet of the ship's captain. A gun-port swung slowly open, then another, and the muzzles of carronades showed in the opening.

"Boarders away!" yelled Bane, leading his men in a spring for the rail of the merchantman as a wave lifted them to its level.

Grappling hooks were thrown and tangled in the standing-rigging, pirates swarmed through the open gun-ports and chased the panic-stricken servers. Bane's pistol fire caught the captain in his shoulder. There were a few scattering shots, a clashing grind of steel on steel, a half-hearted resistance from half-armed men and the ship was a prize. Scarry-Dick took deck-command with a dozen men while the rest of the pirates swarmed through the ship.

THE wounded captain was brought before Bane, lording it in the usurped cabin, gulping port from a decanter. His men had broached some of the cargo and, in freebooting independence, stamped into the cabin, swathed in silks, laced hats upon their headkerchiefs, a bottle in each hand, boastful, anticking like masquerading schoolboys.

Bane glanced over the manifest that a trembling purser handed him.

"The Neptune, from Bristol, England, laden with bale goods and general merchandise," he said. 'Tis a clumsy hooker, but 'twill serve our turn until a better-lined vessel comes along." He scowled at the captain, pale from loss of blood, his hands bound behind him, faint but resolute. The brave look in his eyes provoked Bane's unruly spirit to a gale of unreasoning fury.

"Well, you dog," he demanded. "Why don't you beg for your life?"

The captain smiled.

"You have already tried to take it, you murdering pirate. I ask nothing from your kind of cattle."

Bane's brows closed in a black smear of wrath.

"You swim for that, you rogue," he cried.

"You have long since been damned," said the other evenly. "And, as surely as I swim, so some day you will swing from the mast that knows no deck."

Bane's gaze could not hold the dauntless look of the prisoner. He hurled the decanter at him. It smashed against the wall as the captain swiftly moved his head and the rich perfume of the wine filled the room. Bane drew his pistol from his sash, his face convulsed with rage.

"Damned, am I? Then I will send you first to hell to greet me when I come!"

He fired pointblank in the other's face so that the powder gas scorched it and the grains blackened it about the cruel hole between the eyes. The captain spun about and fell. Bane took a step and spurned the body with his foot.

"Over with that carrion," he ordered. "It grows dark. Strip the sloop. Set those cravens aboard." He nodded toward a group of shaking passengers. "Bring in the crew."

The sailors of the Neptune vfere herded before him.

"Look ye," said Bane. "I want no forced men aboard my craft. Free men and equal are we all. Join, and, as ye prove, ye get a full share. That— or aboard the sloop with ye."

The men interchanged looks and shifted on their feet. Then one stepped forward and another until but a dozen remained, including the officers of the captured vessel.

"Good," declared Bane. "Set these stubborn fools aboard. Send me the quartermaster."

Night found the Neptune heading under the stars for Green Turtle Bay, the sea- scooped crescent of one of the smaller Bahamas, the leaking sloop far astern, the old buccaneer crooning at the wheel.

His ribs shall make a cage for fish,

His flesh a sea-snake's meal,

His eyes a mermaid's dainty dish.

His—

His voice broke off in a croak as he gazed upward. A star had fallen athwart the heavens.

"'Tis a bad omen," he muttered. "A bad omen. To kill in fight, aye, that's one thing. But to murder in cold blood spells evil. 'Twas not so in Kidd's time. A falling star is a summoned soul!"

His superstition-ridden imagination saw in the meteor the spirit of the dead captain speeding for judgment.

"Tend your course, there, you one-eyed crab!" shouted Scarry-Dick as the Neptune swung off and the clews of the topsails shivered.

"Aye, aye, sir! Crab, am I?" he said beneath his breath as the quartermaster followed up his reprimand with a string of oaths. "Yet have I claws that can nip."

He shifted the spokes, peering at the binnacle. He was the best helmsman aboard and he resented the rebuke. The shadowy sails rustled softly above him, he could hear the hiss of the wake above the songs and shouts of the carousing pirates below and presently he took up his own song again.

The broken blade that spilled his life.

Lies rusting in the ooze;

The maid that hoped he'd call her wife.

Another love must choose;

Yo-ho! Another love must choose.

Yet while he lived, his life was full,

A merry wight was he.

With ne'er a moment that was dull, A-sailing on the sea,

Yo-ho! A-sailing on the sea!

4: Todd The Turtler

TOM TODD lived on Green Key. Most of the turtlers only existed but Tom lived, for he was not alone. A maid from the Carolinas loved him well enough to consider that with Todd the lonely islet would be Paradise enow and their honeymoon on their sea-girt Eden was only three weeks old.

Todd dried the turtle flesh and stripped the shell and sometimes took a sloop-load of live tortugas to Puerto Rico or even to Jamaica for trade. The Green Key, rank with wild cabbage and palmetto, with here and there pines Wting graceful crests above the lower growth, was worthy of its name. The bill of fare of the married lovers, besides turtle steaks and fins and eggs, was varied.

There were agoutis, wild-hogs and opossum in plenty, besides the pigeons and seafood. Humming-birds and parrots supplied their aviary. The climate was equable, save in July and the rainy season, when Todd planned to take his bride back to Carolina. She was tiny and tawny-haired, golden of skin from the sun, curvingly lithesome and sweet and Todd was tall and lean, sun-dried almost to the texture and color of his strips of turtle-flesh. And they were very much in love.

The turtles only came with the tides, and, betweenwhiles, they paddled or bathed or lay in grass hammocks beneath a palmetto shelter. They lived out-of-doors night and day and were seldom out of sight of each other. She— her name was Mary— adored Todd and Tom worshiped Mary. He loved to pick her up in his arms and go striding off with her, laughing at her talk of weight.

Todd was thirty-five and Mary twenty- two. Todd knew the Bahamas as a woodsman knows his forest and Mary knew only Todd. He had given up his pilotage to turn turtler again so that he might be always with her and, in the rains, they were going to upbuild a tiny farm in Carolina for— some day. Life was all ahead of them and very pleasant.

The Key was three miles long and about half that width. Close to it were two smaller keys that could be reached by wading at the ebb. The nearer, densely wooded, was as thick with agoutis as a dog's hide with fleas and Mary made wonderful stews out of the rabbit-like flesh.

On the twenty-second day of their honeymoon— they still reckoned it diumally— they had their first quarrel. Mary pouted and Tom sulked and, by the time the quarrel was ripe, neither could remember how it started. Yet Mary held it for the joy of bringing Todd back to her repentant and he left her still pouting when he strode off, gun on shoulder, to get agoutis as a peace offering.

He did not see the kiss she blew him when she was sure he was out of sight among the palmettos and she did not hear the sigh he gave but both sensed in their hearts that the breach was only serious enough to serve for a yet stronger cementing.

Todd's stubborn mood held hard enough for him to brave the current between the two keys, already surging to the swift flood, and he waded it hip-deep between the weeded rocks and plunged into the thick scrub. Mary took their simple duck garments to the tiny spring and beat at them on a coral slab with a wooden paddle, venting her displeasure— mostly for herself— in the blows.

Up from the sea in the early afternoon came a rakish brigantine of thirty guns, outside of fore and stern chasers, and one hundred and forty men. Her hull was painted black with a narrow red streak that accented the sweetness of her lines, her masts that seemed too lofty for her build, slanted aft, her canvas, from studding-sail to main, showed snowy white, yet marred here and there with unpatched holes where round shot had torn through. She sailed fast, low of freeboard but buoyant, and her topsails rose swiftly against the sky.

Bane's luck had held. The Neptune had given place to a better ship and playing the part of merchantman, he had come close enough to a Spanish brigantine to board and take her after a desperate skirmish in which he lost nine men and the Spaniards seventeen. He had rechristened her the Venture and found her the fastest keel of his knowledge.

At fifteen knots he had outrun two sail of the vice-admiral's flotilla, especially commissioned to his capture since his escape from Providence Harbor. They had caught him between them as he had come out of an inlet and he had run their gantlet, broadside for broadside, bringing down the topmast of one and standing off the other in a running fight.

Now he was in a hurry, for the men-of- war had interrupted his taking on wood and water after careening. The wood might go, water he must have, and Scarry-Dick had promised them they would find a spring on Green Key near which the chase had led them.

"A turtler lives there, or did," said Denton. "A splint-bone by the name of Todd. I landed there three years ago and he shot pigs for us. We were lootfull  and we paid him with cloth, so he will hunt for us again with a good will."

"Aye, or a bad one, for that matter," said Bane. A bullet had bitten his forearm and he was in an ugly temper. "We have little time to spare. The king's ship may have guessed our tack. Get the water-breakers ready for a landing. I'll go ashore. For once spring-water sounds better to me than brandy. That cursed crease bums like fire.''

MARY TODD, looking up from her laundrying, gazed with delight at the picture of the brigantine, brilliantly enameled by the sunshine against the blue sky and bluer sea, rising and falling on the long billow with a grace that was all her own. Even when it was evident that the ship was heading directly for the Key she felt no alarm save a vague wish that Tom would come back before they landed.

Other ships had called there for water, Tom had told her. She held no thought of pirates. They had heard from another turtler, passing on the news, that the freebooters had all surrendered, or were about to surrender, at the Island of Old Providence. The brigantine came up into the wind, held there while two boats put off and rowed swiftly toward - shore, and then cruised off-and-on, awaiting their return.

The girl supposed that the men would know where to look for the spring. They could easily find it. Her newly-wedded shyness dominated her curiosity. She did not wish to meet them without Tom beside her. If she stayed they might give something in exchange for the water, a bolt of print-stuff, perhaps, and there might be news. She might send home her half- completed letter.

But she was Tom's wife and a delicacy she could not express held her back. She slipped off into the palmettos, unaware of the mark her lightly going figure made in its white gown against the vivid green. The boats divided, one coming straight for a landing near the spring, the other with quickened stroke, racing toward a little cape. Bane urging on the rowers.

"A partridge and a sweet one," he said to his second in command. "Ye should have seen her through the glass, man, bending over the clothes she was washing. Slender and supple as a bow. A young one and alone. 'Tis not often we see the likes of her. She'll be the turtler's woman."

He spoke the last sentence softly and his companion looked at him curiously. There
was an imspoken rule against women aboard Bane's ships. "They raised the devil among the men," he said. But a commander could break his own rules and there was a gleam in Bane's eyes and a flush in his face that showed passion long repressed by force of circumstance, suddenly aroused.

It was none of his business if the captain sought a plaything. He would break it and cast it aside presently. A discarded woman among seven score conscienceless devils would have a hard time of it but his own soul was cankered with the rest. Decency as a pirate's attribute was a thing to be mocked at.

The first boat, towing a long string of empty water-casks, touched the beach and the men sprang ashore, eager to fill and get back to the ship before the slower but heavier-metaled king's ship should appear and cut them off. The shot-holes in the sails were not the only ones the Venture had suffered. There were a dozen or more cursing, wounded men aboard, swearing at . the rude surgery, and five had "given up the keys to their lockers."

Bane's boat touched sand. He jumped into the shallows, followed by all but two of the men, who paddled the boat back to join the watermen. The pirates ran through the palmettos at an angle, eager to herd the "white doe" of the skipper's fancy. Bane was in the lead when Mary Todd caught sight of the line and sensed the nature of their quest.

Her face paled and her heart began to beat in a wild tattoo of alarm that suddenly gripped and possessed her. She turned to run deeper into the woods, seeking Tom, calling his name as she fled. A grinning ruffian rose from back of a bush, his arms outspread, giving the view-halloa! Others were closing in from right and left. Bane, his teeth showing through his beard, sprang forward to grasp her.

She doubled, frantic with fear. Where was Tom? Again she called his name, though it taxed her scanty breath, and the pirates took up the cry.

"Tom! Tom!" they yelled derisively after her until her fear included his danger. These men were pirates! There was a pistol in their little thatched hut, hidden in the trees. Perhaps she could reach it before those others by the shore noticed it.

The men ran whooping behind her, crashing through the undergrowth. She plunged into the thicket and sped through the flimsy door of their tiny house. There was no effective fastening. In one comer was her trunk that she had brought from home in Tom's sloop. The pistol was in it. She had asked Tom for it— he had a pair of them— and he had shown her how to oil and load it for their target practise at floating bottles in their playtimes.

She tossed back the hd, kneehng at the trunk, found the weapon and turned, desperate, as Bane flung back the door and entered, the leering faces of his fellows close behind him.

"No partridge, but a hawk," said Bane, panting with his run. "Nay, pretty, put up that pistol. Hell and fury—!"

The pistol roared, the tiny room was filled with the acrid gas of the discharge and Bane staggered back, a bullet in his upper arm, while the girl stood at bay against the wall.' The pirate captain lurched forward, his eyes relentless and Mary Todd struck at him wildly as he beat aside her arms with bruising blows and swept her off her feet.

"I'll tame you, my beauty," he cried. "Aye, and trim you to my liking before I'm through with you."

He heard the guffaws of his men as he roughly handled her. Her clutching hand caught his arm where she had wounded it and he swore as the imbedded bullet grated against the bone. The next second he flung her from him. She had found the knife in his belt and struck at him, the blade glancing off a rib.

She crouched in the angle of the wall, her eyes filled with the blaze of madness, her torn dress showing her heaving bosom, the knife still in her hand. As Bane, blind with pain and fury, strode toward her and the rest closed in, she clutched the handle with both hands and drove the steel into her own flesh. A gush of blood stained her gown, she gasped and wilted into a pitiful, crumpled heap.

There was a shout from outside. A man blocked the sunshine in the open doorway.

"The king's ship is in the offing," he cried.

With an oath Bane swung out of the hut. The men were gathering about the boats, rolling the filled and empty breakers. The man-of-war was coming up rapidly under press of sail. Already her topgallants and royals showed. The dull boom of a gun came faintly as she signaled to her consort that the chase was sighted. The oars of the pirate's boats bent as they raced back to the brigantine. In ten minutes they were aboard and the vessel sliding through the water, striving to gain the windward gage of the pursuit.

A few relinquished casks dotted the beach and bobbed in the shallows. An hour passed before Tom Todd came back, unconscious of what awaited him, half a dozen agoutis in one hand, his gun in another.

He stopped for a moment in a clearing, watching a brigantine that slashed through the seas at a long angle, puffs of smoke coming from the Long Tom at her stern and the after guns of her larboard battery, while a ship, smothered in canvas, replied, heading in to intercept the other. The topsails of another vessel showed on the horizon.

"Pirates," commented Tom aloud. "I thought they had all surrendered. She sails like a witch. She'll clear if nothing carries. Mary! Oh, Mary lass. Come up to me and see the fight."

There was no answer. He caught sight of the casks and trouble leaped to his eyes as he rushed down toward the hut.

Midnight found him piling the last coral slab above a mound in the clearing. The cairn was high to thwart the land-crabs and rooting beasts.

Dawn saw the turtler's sloop making across the Bahama Channel toward Cuba, Todd at the tiller with rigid face and eyes that held an introspective gaze. Once he looked back toward Green Key, an Eden no longer. Then he hauled in the sheet and brought the sloop a point closer to the wind.

5: The Inn Of The Golden Galleon

A thirsty throat, a speedy boat,

A skipper that's a-daring;

A parting glass, a loving lass,

And off we go sea-fa-a-ring.

And off we go sea-faring!

A sail in sight, a chase, a fight,

A hold with riches laden;

A speedy tack and we come back

Each to his waiting ma-a-i-den.

Each to his waiting maiden!

THE big room of the Golden Galleon at Santo Domingo, the principal port on the southern coast of the island of the same name, rang with the repeated last line of the piratical ditty. Bane's men were ashore with gold to spend and ardent appetites to be appeased. That morning they had sighted a man-of-war sailing north through the Windward Passage between Santo Domingo and Cuba, scouring the Caribbean on false information, and they were secure in their revels.

Women cajoled the freebooters, returning rough caresses with rude blows of affected coyness, there was a constant call to the uneasy landlord and his staff for more liquor, the place was foul with the reek of rum and tobacco and, as the song ceased, a discordant babble of screams and laughter, rough entreaties and shrill protestations took its place.

A fiddler was dragged forward and set in a chair upon a table. A clear space was made for unwieldy dancers. The fiddler scraped imtil his last string snapped and some one plucked the chair from under him, sending him toppling to the floor amid shrieks and guffaws as he scrambled for the broad pieces that were flung to him.

At a table by the open staircase that led to the upper story sat the one-eyed buccaneer, tankard in hand, spinning his tedious yam to a tall fellow whose dress held none of the splashes of finery distinguishing the buccaneers from the half-fearful, curious natives.

"Aye, 'tis the only life," said the freebooter. "Never have I seen the time when I could not rub one gold piece against another, and that, mark you, means everything. Show me a wench here that I can not cajole, ugly and old and lop-eyed though I be. That for the land. As for the sea, an ye are a seaman and no qualmy- stomached landsman, show me a better sport.

"Ye seem a man of mettle. Look ye, the captain runs the ship, 'tis tme, but the quartermaster, Scarry-Dick Denton, he is our tribune. The captain can imdertake nothing that we, through Denton, do not approve. Thirty shares for Bane, the rest for us, divided man for man with an extra share for Scarry-Dick. Why, lad, 'tis the life!

"I was with Kidd in the Adventure Galley, thirty guns and eighty men, when he sailed out of Plymouth in May, sixteen- ninety-six. Soon we were a hundred and fifty-five. To New York we sailed, then to Madeira and Cape Verd and so to Madagascar, Malabar and Johanna.

"Two hundred pounds apiece we got out of the Queda Merchant alone. I left him at Amboyna and so saved my neck, I grant ye, for they took him at New York and sent him back to England with his lads. But a man must take a chance and I am sixty. Aye, 'tis the life. Easy come and easy go. The lasses love ye and the rest, blast them, toady to ye. Boy! Bring more o' that rum!"

"I pay for this shot," said the other. "Nay, man, I insist. I am half-seas over now with your bounty. I like your talk." His eyes narrowed and he nudged the pirate's elbow. "Ye spoke of women, now. Do ye meet with any that are young— not these painted bawds— but fresh and dainty. Eh, tell me that?"

The one-eyed buccaneer slapped him on the back.

"Aye, 'twill be the girls for you and the gold for me. Yet one is gone as soon as the other. But with Bane 'tis business at sea and lasses left for shore. Fresh and dainty, ask ye? They come not willingly to our net which makes them the greater prizes if ye gill them.

"There was one lass on Green Key who took her own life, mark ye, rather than join and share the captain's cabin. She had a husband, she said. She could have had her choice of a dozen out of all the crew. A plucked one she was, with red-gold curls and a skin as white as foam."

He checked his drunken maundering at the quickly arrested exclamation of the other.

"What ails ye, man? Is the rum not to your liking?"

"Nay, it tastes well enough. Green Key, said ye? I know the place. I have piloted and turtled amid the Bahamas from Little Abaco to Turks Islands. I know them all. I could tell your skipper of a passage through the Jumento Cays, a passage from the northwest to a lagoon with an islet in the center. 'Twas shown to me by a Carib Indian for a turtling ground. I dare swear 'tis known to no white man but me. And, to the south and east, an outlet."

"A passage through the Jumentos from the northwest! Now, you are the lad for us! Bane drinks above with Denton and the mates. They are set in gambling but they will listen to such a tale. Will ye go, cully? Will ye join us. Will ye go on the account?"

The tall man finished his rummer and tossed the reckoning on the table.

" 'On the account', say ye? 'Tis a good phrase. Take me to Bane."

THE pirate captain lifted the leather cylinder from the dice and swept a dozen gleaming coins toward the heap in front of him before he looked up.

"Nine— and the main!" he called triumphantly. "The third nick running."

"The devil's own luck is with you tonight," grumbled Scarry-Dick. "I've thrown out every time I held the box."

He tinned and stared at the intruders. "A recruit, Cap'n," hiccuped the man who had sailed with Kidd. "One who knows the Bank from end to end and can tell of secret havens. He can show ye a passage through the Jumentos and he's keen to join us."

Bane's eyes challenged the stranger, appraising him. The man's face was burned to coffee color and deeply lined. A short, thick growth of beard stretched from his Adam's apple to his high cheek-bones and his untrimmed hair trailed on his shoulders. His eyes were bleak, almost sinister, with cold lights in them.

"What's this talk of a passage through the Jumentos?" asked Bane.

Southeast of Florida, through Florida Strait, sometimes called the New Bahama Channel, down Santaren Channel and the Old Bahama Channel, ran the broad highway between Cuba and Santo Domingo of the Greater Antilles and the Bahama Islands. It was the main road of sea commerce from the Atlantic States to the West Indies. From it, through the Windward Passage, the way led to the Caribbean, to Puerto Rico, the Leeward and Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, to Venezuela, to Central America and the Isthmus.

West of the scattered islands of the long chain of the Bahamas lie the reefs of the Great Bahama Bank, curbing the Santaren and Old Bahama Channels. The currents swirl perilously about the tide-washed reefs. Midway, Jumentos Cays threw a crescent to the northwest. Bane was the lone sea-highwayman of this stretch, cruising amid the smaller islands and darting out upon the merchantmen. Vice-Admiral Rogers had sworn to chase him from the seas and it was rumored that a fast corvette, or sloop-of-war, was to be specially commissioned for this purpose.

A hidden passage through the Jumentos would provide the buccaneer with a powerful reinforcement. The cord of the bow was sixty miles or more. A channel would enable him to play the arrow, flying out on his prey and slipping back to safety, if needs be, under the very nose of any king's ship. Such a game was to the supreme taste of Bane. To harry commerce and laugh at the Government, why, that was the ideal sport.

He watched the newcomer closely as he took up a tankard set aside on a smaller table, poured the dregs on the smooth mahogany and drew a map with wetted forefinger, outlining the Jumentos Crescent, the scattering Bahamas and the mainland of Cuba as he talked.

"Seventy-five-eighty west, twenty-three- ten north," he concluded, giving the approximate position of the channel. "And the bearings by the three palms, as I shall show ye."

Bane nodded approvingly.

"If ye show us aright," he said, "there shall be special reward for ye. Eh, Denton, what think ye? It suits. In the very midrib of the Bank, a rare hideout! And an isle to boot, for fort and magazine. Sixteen feet will see us clear with our shallow draft. The king's ships draw no less than twenty, even if they dared to follow without knowing the bearings. Your name, man?"

"They call me Turtler Tom."

Bane nodded. The lack of surnames was not uncommon with those who did not pretend to worry about the laws.

"So then, Tom the Turtler, you go on the account? Good! We sail at noon tomorrow, when our heads are clear. Report to Denton here. And there's a piece-of-eight to drink to the new venture."

Tom took the coin and pocketed it. His sponsor clapped him on the back once more as they went down to the common room.

"So ye are one of us. Now for a health. I warrant ye that was one of Denton's pieces the skipper tossed ye. Did ye note the glum look he cast after it?"

Above-stairs Bane looked at the evaporating map.

"A good stroke, Denton," he said. "We'll play the fox with them all with this runway. And a good man gained. A bold eye, Dickon, and a strong arm."

"A likely man enough, though I cared not for his eyes. They look too like a shark's for my taste. And I have a fancy that I have seen him before. 'Tis your nick again. Take up the box."

"I call a five," said Bane, rattling the dice. "Shell out. I shall win all your stakes yet. This is my lucky night."

Tom the Turtler glanced up at the lighted window as he left the tavern. The last round had put the old buccaneer to sleep. He walked down to the beach where the boats of the pirate lay. The brigantine was anchored in the bay.

He walked moodily along the edge of the tide, his hands deep in his pockets. Presently his fingers sought and found a coin, the piece-of-eight that Bane had given him as earnest-money. With a swift jerk he sent it skittering across the placid water, sending up tiny splashes of phosphorescence as it skipped.

" 'On the account.' 'Tis an apt phrase," he mused. "And the reckoning is a long one. But it shall be paid, to the full."

He seated himself on a rock and looked at the trim hull of the Venture for a long time, motionless. But his eyes saw no vessel, but the vision of Green Key and the coral slabs above a lonely grave where the jungle -vines had laid pitying fingers.

6: The Kissing Palms

FAR down the wind a ship blazed furiously, the flames, pale in the afternoon sun, fanned by the mounting breeze. Three miles to the south sped the Venture, her decks yet cumbered with the spoils of the prize. And, after her in swift pursuit, with all the sail that her slender spars could bear, raced H. M. Corvette Juno, overhauling the pirate fathom by fathom.

Captain Sawtrell, commander of the king's ship, walked his deck and whistled softly for a continuance of the wind. His first lieutenant saw the puckered lips and guessed their meaning with a smile. It was yet three glasses to darkness. The chart showed that the chase was heading straight for the Jumentos, less than seven sea-leagues distant. If the Juno could get within gunshot before sunset, as seemed inevitable, he had metal enough aboard— new guns out from England— to blow the brigantine out of the water.

The corvette was flush-decked and schooner rigged. She had but one tier of guns but they were handled by a picked crew. The vice-admiral had grown tired of chasing Bane with craft slower than the brigantine and he had requisitioned Sawtrell and the Juno to rid the seas of the Venture. As long as Bane was free to ravage, others were likely to emulate his example.

There were plenty of men among those recently pardoned at Providence who itched for the old life and made a hero out of Bane, laughing in their sleeves at Rogers for letting him escape from Nassau. Sawtrell's orders were explicit, he was not to return until Bane was captured, and already the end of the cruise seemed in sight.

"What's wrong with the fool?" Sawtrell asked his officer. "There's no passage through those cays?"

"None marked. The water shallows to six fathoms a league from the line of breakers. I've sailed along their front and seen naught but spouting reefs. Maybe he plans to beach her, since we have the heels of him."

"We'll pound him to pieces before he can get his men out of her, he does. We can try a shot soon. We must have caught him napping, too busy looting to keep a lookout. Better get the bow-guns ready. Hardy; we'll try for his spars. He keeps his course, the rogue."

Aboard the Venture, Bane measured the decreasing distance with an anxious eye. The brigantine was foul-bottomed and the corvette was entirely too fast to his liking. The merchantman had been richly laden and all hands had worked to transfer the cargo. The lookout had taken the corvette for a trading-schooner until she was close enough to show her white gun-ports and a tack had revealed the red ensign.

The brigantine, according to British nomenclature, was the same type as an hermaphrodite brig, square-rigged forward and schooner-rigged aft. With the wind as it was, slightly forward of the beam, sailing on a broad reach, the corvette with her fore-and-aft rig had the better of the Venture. Before the wind the craft would be on fairly equal terms; close-hauled, the corvette would still hold the advantage.

The wind was westerly. To run would bring the brigantine into the angle where the Jumentos joined Long Island on a course between the reefs and the gims of the corvette. So Bane kept on the steady line for the center of the Jumentos. He was taking a chance on Tom the Turtler, who now stood at the wheel.

They had been out from San Domingo a week. Todd had performed his duty with thoroughness. But he was not popular aboard. Bane welcomed him as a perfect helmsman as well as special pilot, a man who could get the last fraction of a knot of speed and keep his course high-pointed by the trim of the sails and the feel of the wheel. But, with the pirates, Hampton, the man who had sailed with Kidd and sponsored him, was practically his only associate.

Todd had tried to mix with the rest, pending the development of his hazy plans of revenge, but the grim determination that invested him looked out of the eyes that Denton had said were like those of a shark and the reckless pirates seemed to sense him as one even more desperate than themselves but not one of them.

There were whispers of his being a Jonah. The practical jokes that were played upon a newcomer fell flat before perpetration, checked by Todd's steady gaze. Sometimes a pirate crossed himself and muttered about the "evil-eye" when Todd looked at him.

Scarry-Dick Denton watched him with suspicion, he knew that. Any day that danger might break and the quartermaster remember him as the Turtler of Green Key who had shot hogs. Todd's vengeance had not assumed a definite plan. Circumstances perforce guided him. He found it hard to mask the hatred in his eyes when he spoke to Bane and his fingers itched to close about the pirate's throat.

Mary had not been quite dead when he reached her. She had spoken a few words, enough to let him know that Bane had been the chief aggressor but to Todd's fanatic mind, crazed with grief, the whole crew were guilty and were to be brought to the account. He could easily have killed Bane first, and after him, two or three more perhaps before they stopped him, but that was not enough to pay for the murder of his Mary, herded by the butchers to kill herself and save her honor.

He thought of blowing up the magazine at first but Bane knew his business and not only was it guarded, night and day, and during a fight, but, whenever Todd showed a disposition to go an3nvhere about the ship by himself, he found a pirate close beside
him. He shrewdly suspected that, once he had shown the passage through the Jumentos, they would gladly rid themselves of him, by fair means or foul.

The suggestion of Jonah aboard such a ship was one that would not down. And he could not change his eyes. He tried to glaze them with indifference but his hatred showed. He caught sight of himself once in a triangle of looking-glass and almost started at the malignant countenance he saw, grim, relentless.

There was one man aboard who had tried to pick a quarrel with him, a half-breed, part Carib, part Spaniard; known as "Spanish" Jack, noted for his knife-play. Denton had interfered, threatening the man with irons and Spanish Jack had slunk away. Todd guessed that the quartermaster had interfered only to preserve the holder of the reef entrance and that sooner or later he would have to deal with Spanish Jack.

NOW he held them all in the hollow of his hand. He could wreck them and the sea would do the rest. But even then he was not sure of his vengeance and physically he ached to be an active instrument, to come to grips with Bane, at least, and let the life out of him in a red tide.

"One scrape of her keel and I blow off the top of your head!"

Scarry-Dick was beside him, openly suspicious, a pistol in his hand.

Todd smiled and glanced once at the quartermaster. It was the glance of a man without fear, thought the quartermaster. The look of one who did not value his life at a groat, a menacing look that seemed to hold the smoldering flame of a threat against all the world. Something had seared all the humanity out of it. It sneered, it seemed to read his mind, to seek out the dirty corners of his soul and regard its foulness with a scantily veiled contempt. It was the gaze of a man without a soul. The gaze of a devil.

Denton's grip tightened jon his pistol-butt. For perhaps the first time in his blustering life the quartermaster was afraid.

The skipper is a fool, he thought, glancing over his shoulder at the corvette. There was a puff of white smoke from her bows that formed itself into a ring and blew away in rags to leeward. A round shot plumped into the sea, geysering up half a mile astern. The chase was closing.

Bane came up and sent a keen eye to the set of the sails, to the even wake that streamed greenish-white, like marble, behind them. The steering was perfect. The brigantine was at the limit of its speed.

"Once clear of this," he said to Denton, "and we'll careen. If we were not foul we could hold her. As it is—"

"Land ahead," came from the foremast where a man balanced himself in the topmast crosstrees. Another shot came from the corvette.

"Try her with the stem-chaser," ordered Bane. "The water should begin to shallow soon. We'll lead her on since we can not shake her off."

The missile fell short. A third shot from the king's ship, fired at extreme elevation, dropped within two hundred yards, fair in the tail of the wake.

"Zounds!" cried Bane, frowning. "They have good marksmen aboard. It's touch and go. If she can once cripple us she can hold off and hammer us with those cursed guns of hers. Try her again, gunner."

He looked doubtfully at Todd as the cannon roared out defiance.

"How close are we heading for that entrance of yours?" he asked.

"I can not tell yet. The course should bring us fairly close. There are few landmarks on this lowland and we must raise the palms before I dare shift."

"We can not risk a tack," muttered Bane. "Make no mistake, if you set any value on your life. Does the lookout know your bearings?"

"Aye. There are three palms, as I told ye. One each side of the channel with their branches bowed toward each other. The Kissing Palms, I named them. Another on the islet. We take the channel with the two in line at first. Then let them open and, when the islet palm shows even between the two, we make the final fairway."

He stood confident, his lean brown hands deftly handling the wheel, his steering hung between three spokes, easing a little to the gusts that threatened a swiftly coming gale, his feet firm to the deck as the vessel heeled, apparently unconscious of Scarry-Dick's menacing attitude.

Bane strode forward. The corvette was yawing a trifle to use her bow guns. The pyramids of water from her shot came ever closer to the counter of the brigantine. At the pirate's command a man crept bare-footed, out over the jib-boom to the flying jib-boom spar, locked his legs in the stirrup-ropes and cast his lead. Bane watched the colored rags of the marks as the line cut the water and was swept back into the hissing rush from the cutwater, listening to the drone of the leadsman.

"Eight— by the mark— eight! Seven and— a half— a quarter! Seven! She shoals! Seven it is! Seven! By the mark six and a half. It holds!"

The lookout shouted. Bane went aft to where he could catch the back-swept syllables. Palms were in sight. He took his telescope back to the bows. Presently spidery lines, tufted at the top, came into the field above a havoc of white surf-line. The brigantine fell off a little. Tom the Turtler had judged his course to a nicety. They were above the passage. There was no tack necessary.

"Six fathom," called the leadsman.

The seas were choppy. The brigantine, curbed by the exquisite humoring of the rudder by the steersman, fought with wind and wave to gain its head. A shot tore through the fore topsail, barely missing the boom, and dropped ahead. The Venture replied, almost in range. The wind increased and the masts bent like whips.

Bane snapped to his spy-glass. He had seen the bowed fronds of the Kissing Palms. If their pilot was true they would beat the corvette. Her captain could not risk his ship much longer in the shoaling sea.

THERE was a thudding crash. A shot had struck fair, just below the taffrail. The next tore through the planking of the deck within five feet of the wheel. Todd paid no attention to it. Denton's pistol was within an inch of his skull as he set his strength to the stubborn spokes.

Ahead they could catch the roar of the breakers. There seemed no break in the leaping tiunult that hid the low shore, above which the palm tops beirely showed. They were in five fathoms now, only twice the draft of the brigantine.

The corvette had come up into the wind, firing a full broadside as she hung in stays. They had given up the chase. The king's ship was deeper-keeled. Eighteen feet was her limit.

The balls hurtled over the Venture. Ropes were clipped, the topmast on the main faltered and broke, the topsail hanging as it flapped in a tangle of lines. The brigantine wavered but Todd straightened her and they rushed on toward the spouting reef.

It opened ahead, a mere break in a wall of spume and they sped down a lane of wild water, less than a fathom of freeway on either hand, urged on by great billows that mounted behind them in the narrow channel. The two palms came slowly into line and still they glided on, high-tossing seas raging over the rocks to right and left in streaming cataracts, Denton's finger on the last ounce of trigger-pull.

The palms opened again. Todd gave orders to Denton who repeated them with a roar to the expectant men. A dozen leaped for every brace and sheet and the Venture shot up into the wind. The following breakers lost their crests and volume.

Ahead, a green hummock of an island showed, one lone palm crowning it that slowly shifted until it held the center of the frame formed by the Kissing Palms while the brigantine fell slowly off and passed at last between reefs half submerged and hissing with rapids into a central lagoon of which the tiny island was the hub to a rim of strips of land, reef-tops fringed here and there with palms and scrub. Todd brought the Venture to an anchorage off a tiny cove and the chain rattled out to sand in four fathoms.

Bane smote him between the shoulders.

"Well found, lad," he cried. "Now let the king's ship play patrol, an she will. We'll stay inside till we are ready to leave, with two doors to our stable. Come below and prick it on the chart. There's a tot for ye and for all hands besides. Give the order, Denton, and join us."

Scarry-Dick cast a sour look at Todd. The man had saved them but he hked him none the better. He beckoned to Spanish Jack.

"What was your quarrel with him?" he asked, jerking his thumb at Todd.

The half-breed spilled a mouthful of ready oaths.

"A score of reasons. The man has the eyes of voodoo."

"Caught you cogging the dice, eh? Nay, frown not, man, I have no love for hiin. But ye know the rules. All quarrels must be settled on land. We stay here until tomorrow."

A crooked smile distorted the face of

Spanish Jack. He tapped the hilt of the long, thin knife that he wore in his sash.

"There are other games that I can play besides dice," he said.

Denton nodded and went below. They wanted no kill-joys aboard, he told himself. The skipper had promised Todd an extra share for successful pilotage. There was none too much for sharing with the big crew.

I would that I could place the man, he thought. It is no pleasant memory he brings up, of that I'll be sworn. The man hates himself and all the world. He'll have the crew by the ears with that skull-face of his. Beshrew me, but those eyes of his hold the look of a hangman."

7: Knife-Play

THE pirates sat and squatted in a big circle where hummocks and dunes of sand formed the seats of a natural arena on the shore of the islet. The morning meal was over and the sun was well up. A man had hitched up the slender trunk of the palm and reported the topsails of the corvette showing on the horizon in the hope that the pirate would come out of his hide-out. What with the channel and the shallows they were in no fear of his guns.

For safety's sake the sails of the brigantine were close furled and the spars decked cleverly with fronds of palmetto. They could wait until the coast was clear, or, if the king's ship proved too persistent, slip out to southward. This last Bane did not want to do unless he were pressed. He had to careen and the fresh-water creek he preferred for the cleansing of the weeds and barnacles from the bottom of the brigantine was to the north and east on Great Exuma Isle.

To go south would lose him valuable time and this was the best season for his piracies. The merchantman they had just captured and fired, after putting its crew into their own longboat, had carried several butts of wine and a day's debauch was ahead. After the division of the spoils there was rare sport forward. Spanish Jack had given the new man the lie.

To refuse a challenge meant that the flincher would lead the life of the ship's cur and the recruit had taken it up. Wagers were freely offered on Spanish Jack and there were no takers. Knives were the weapons set aside for settling such affairs as providing the best spectacle and the longest fight and all knew the half-breed's especial skill.

Spanish Jack was a cheat and a bully but the other was one who held as little in common with them as oil with water, and the ship, now that he had shown them the passage, would be the happier without him. Only Hampton, the one-eyed, stood beside him.

"Look ye, lad," said Hampton. " 'Ware the sun. He will work you to it. Watch his shadow. Or he will dazzle you with his blade. 'Tis an ojd trick of his. He cheated me out of eleven guineas the other night. I have no love for him. If ye win, belike it will make ye more popular. Ye should spruce up, man. That face of yours is a spoil-sport. 'Tis a gay life we aim to lead.

"Let me see your knife. Take mine. It has a grip of sharkskin and the blade is long. He can shift to either hand or throw straight to an inch of his mark. He'll try to gut ye or slash the tendons of your wrist. Crouch and thrust. Don't slash—it shortens your reach.

"Take'off your shirt, ye are to fight naked in your drawers. 'Tis the rule. The bullies like to watch the red score on the naked flesh. Soak your headkerchief, the sun will else addle your brains— and wrap your forearm in your sash. That yellow mongrel has arms like a squid but yours are full as long. I mind me when I sailed with Kidd-"

Bane, sitting with his officers upon a turf- crowned knoll, gave the word. The two advanced, crossing their blades at arms' length, right foot advanced to right foot.

Todd's lean, brown body sloped from square shoulders to narrow hips, his ribs showing clean above his muscle-ridged stomach. He was confident of the issue. A plan had come into his head. His cause was righteous and he felt that Spanish Jack was not to be the one to defeat it. That the duel was forced upon him he felt sure but he meant to use the enmity that lay back of it to his own ends.

The Spaniard was fat in comparison but he seemed made of gutta percha as he thrust swiftly and boimd^ back, his eyes glittering as he saw the scarlet line break out across Todd's shoulder. He circled, pumafooted, backing toward the sim. Todd saw his shadow swinging longer toward him.

The sunglare caught his eyes and he leaped to one side, drawing his belly inward to avoid the sweeping lunge and clutching for the other's knife-hand with his left. In the second they were locked, swaying. Spanish Jack saw the turtler's eyes glaring at him, malignant, assured. He suddenly dropped to his knees, pulling Todd forward, downward, with all Ms strength while the eager circle yelled.

Taken unawares, Todd lunged over the breed's shoulder, pitching heavily to the sand but whirling like a cat to regain his feet. Spanish Jack spun roimd on his buttocks, slashing as he came, and once more scoring. The point caught Todd on his hip with a squeak and the blood spurted as the blade glanced off. Spanish Jack rose effortless to his feet and flung a handful of - fine sand, rushing in as Todd lowered his head to avoid the grit.

ONCE more they came to handgrips. Todd put forth all his strength, grinding the small bones of the pirate's wrist until the sweat of agony started from Spanish Jack's eyes and he tore free. The firm sand was printed with their foot-marks as they swerved and feinted, the perspiration already streaming down them, their breath coming short and hard while the pirates leaned forward wordless and motionless from their vantage-seats and a gull screamed overhead.

Todd watched the eyes of his man. He caught a telegraphed lunge to the stomach on his own curving blade, thankful for the sickle shape of the blade and the pebbly grip of the shagreen handle. It was not the first time he had fought with knives though never before in deliberate duel, and his co-ordinating eye and wrist time after time successfully parried the blows in mid-air. He was better winded than the sleek pirate whose indulged paunch showed signs of distress. And he was watchful for more tricks.

One came at last. They had grappled and Spanish Jack swung a savage side-kick at his ankle that almost overcame Todd's balance. He stiunbled forward, throwing up the pirate's forearm with a jarring swing of his own crossed right and countered with an overhand buffet that caught the breed a blow on the side of the head and sent him staggering back, the sun full in his eyes for a second as Todd regained his balanced footing and leaped in.

Spanish Jack dropped to one knee, shaded his eyes with his left hand for an all-important heart-beat and, with a sharp snap, threw his blade, beautifully balanced for the purpose, straight to the heart. Todd caught the flash of it and shrunk sideways in mid-spring. The keen steel flayed the scant flesh of his outer ribs as he swerved and a great roar came from the crowd.

Spanish Jack had missed!

The pirate turned, dug fingers and toes in the sand and flung himself forward in a sprint with Todd at his heels. The turtler caught him at the slope and drove his knife to the guard between the shoulders. Spanish Jack plunged coughing to the ground, wrenching his body from the dripping blade to lie twitching at the feet of his comrades.

There was a sullen silence. Todd felt its omen as he turned toward Bane. If he could gain what he wished for, his plan was well forwarded. Bane beckoned to him and led him apart.

"My bullies take the loss of that runaway amiss," he said. "Yet I have but lost a coward and kept a better man. And I have need for ye. Look, ye, 'twill not be pleasant aboard for ye ere this dies down. 'Tis in my mind to build a stockade and magazine on this islet. The Venture is as foul as the beard of Poseidon. Once clean I can lead the corvette or any other keel the king sends out a merry chase. We shall sail tonight at dusk and clear him in the dark. In two weeks we will return, to come in by dawn.

"There is wood enough. If ye can swing an ax I'll leave ye here with tools and the shallop for towing. 'Tis leaky but 'twill serve. By the time we return the matter will have died down. What say ye?"

Todd's eyes held a gleam that Bane mistook for gratitude. He had gained what he had meant to ask.

"Where do ye careen?" he asked.

Bane frowned.

"I set my own courses," he said.

"I but meant to tell ye of a good place."

"I know of a dozen. So then, 'tis settled. Ye can pilot us out as the sun drops and return in the shallop. They will never see us in the shore haze until the dark covers us. There is no moon until long after midnight. And, a word in your ear.

"Cultivate a more cheerful look on that black face of yours. The men will have it ye are a Jonah. Your face would sour the water casks. Learn to smile against we get back. A good jest is the best purge for sorrow. If 'tis the matter of a faithless lass, forget it. Look not so sullen, man."

"I shall be smiling when we meet next time," said Todd.

Bane turned away then wheeled.

"Keep a good fire going tonight and a smudge by day. 'Twill serve to keep thie corvette certain that we are still within. Two days from now let it die down. That should leave the coast clear for us to put back. I have no mind to sail around the whole Jumentos."

Todd nodded. He had got the information he most wanted after all. The Venture was going north, probably to one of the Exuma group.

Just as the sun dipped and spread a sudden curtain between day and night the brigantine cleared the channel and, steering northeast, was swallowed up in the dusk. Todd, still with the gleam in his eyes that Bane had thought gratitude, rowed back to the islet with his tools and provisions and started a fire. He seemed in a hurry to commence his labors, taking up his pick after a hasty meal and commencing to dig.

8: The Account is Closed

BANE had guessed right as to the actions of the corvette. Captain Sawtrell, loath to give up the so nearly captured pirate held his ship off the Jumentos where the red glow of a fire seemed to proclaim Bane and his men reveling in their retreat behind the protecting reefs. Sawtrell thought it probable that there were other openings to the south and roundly cursed the faulty Government charts. The lookout failed to see the brigantine creeping out through the murk at sunset and the corvette held off and on till morning.

At dawn the course was set shoreward where a column of smoke showed faintly brown against the clear sky.

"We'll not round the Jumentos," declared Sawtrell. "If we do he'll come out by this entrance and at least we can keep him off the line of commerce. Hang him for a crafty dog that has a dozen kennels. But we'll take him yet. We have the speed and range of him. Next time—"

A man came aft with the news of a small shallop heading up for the corvette.

"A Carib likely," commented the captain. "We'll have him aboard if he comes near us. Perchance he may know the key to this front-door of Bane's. We'll stand as we are, Hardy, as long as the boat comes to us. No use in showing our topsails unless we have to. We were too close in last night."

An hour later Todd stood before the captain and told his tale.

"How am I to know whether this it not a trap," asked the king's officer sternly. "Ye say ye piloted them in. Ye may be a renegade."

"It is a trap," said Todd, "but it is not set for you. My God, man, do ye not believe me? Ye run no risk more than ye did the last time."

His eyes blazed with fierce exultation, his lean face lit with the prospect of revenge.

"That is true," said Sawtrell. "And ye have good cause for getting even. It is bad that ye know not for certain where he went to careen but we will cruise the line between the Exumas and the eastern horn of the Jumentos. If he sailed northeast he will cross us. Nights, we'll range closer in. Mayhap we'll catch her within range. If not we'll try your advice. And, if we turn the trick ye can name any fair and fit reward."

"Loan me shears and a razor. Give me a cutlas and pistols and appoint me with the boarding party. I have a fancy to be present in person when the account is paid."

ON THE morning of the thirteenth day Bane came on deck at a few minutes before eight bells. A crescent moon held the morning star in its embrace. The sea was motionless save for the hardly perceptible heave of the ground- swell, lifting the unruffled expanse in soundless sighs.

A slight mist, which would vanish with the sun, dimmed the moon and all the stars, gradually lifting from the water, its lower edge even with the rail of the brigantine. The canvas hung limp, the Venture rolled slightly, without steerage way.

Bane cursed the calm that held him adrift ten miles from the entrance to the channel. He was anxious to get back to the islet, finish up his stockade and magazine and be off upon the Bank once more for plunder.

He did not fear the corvette. With a clean bottom the Venture sailed like a witch. The king's men would long since have sickened of waiting and concluded that he had slipped through to the south. Perhaps they had gone in search of him.

Through the mist came the sound of a ship's bell, smartly tapped and answered, eight ringing strokes from the fog. Scarry Dick came up as Bane started at the sound,

"There's something waiting for us, Denton. If only this cursed fog would lift. Some distance off, though it's hard to guess with the mist. Get me my spyglass, will ye?"

Slowly the filmy curtain rose, the space between it and the sea clear as crystal. Bane stooped to the rail and leveled his glass, sweeping the northwestern horizon where the stars were begining to flicker. He turned to the quartermaster with a low exclamation.

"It's that —— corvette. Take the glass man. Look, there where the Big Bear swings to the sea. Now for a breeze. The sun will be up in a few minutes. We are well inshore. If the wind's easterly we'll have the weather of him and we'll play him the same trick over again. I've no fancy to get within range of those guns of his."

A quadrant of the sun suddenly appeared above the Iow line of Long Island. The mist seemed to dissolve and sop up the stars as it disappeared. Suddenly it was day. The corvette Juno stood up sharply less than two miles away. The wind had come from the eye of the sun, the placid sea was ruffled with flaws that picked up the level rays with flashes of orange and crimson.

Bane volleyed his orders and extra canvas rose smartly to the tapering spars. The Venture began to glide smooth and fast through the water. The corvette, topsails mounted, came about and stood on an inshore tack on a parallel course with the brigantine, beyond gun range and to leeward.

"We can almost make the channel on this slant," said Bane. "——her, if we could run the corvette ashore we'd pick her clean of those guns. We'll run in, finish our work and get through to the south. As long as she stays in these waters our sport is spoiled. She sticks like a limpet. 'Tis a good breeze. Watch us walk, the beauty."

The two ships were evenly matched. The water creamed from the corvette's forefoot. Through the spyglass Bane could see the men swarming on her decks, working on the sheets to get another foot of speed out of her. Mile after mile they raced toward the shore, the leeway of wind and current gradually setting the king's ship down the cays while the brigantine, with Hampton at the wheel, clawed up into the breeze to make the tack for entrance into the channel as short as possible. Four miles off shore the corvette tacked and came toward them.

"She'll pass two miles astern of us," chuckled Bane. "She's not gained a foot." The king's ship came on, close-hauled, surging through the blue water while the Venture held on for the shore. Then the corvette tacked once more but kept her fore and main sheeted in until she heeled perilously, losing the speed of the full drive of her canvas from the quartering wind.

Bane swore through his beard. It was a smart maneuver, calculated to bring the corvette within gun range and broadside to the brigantine when the latter made its inevitable tack at the channel entrance.

"They got the position down fine," he muttered. "We'll have to run the risk of a raking. Since that's the case we'll play the same game." He gave his orders and the Venture swung to a course parallel with the corvette and the cays, a little less than a mile inshore of the king's ship. They had passed from blue water to the vivid green of the shoals. The corvette could not risk approaching the land much closer. Already the leadsman was in her bows.

On the Venture the guns were loaded and run out from the open ports. The muzzles of the Juno were already peeping from her sides. Once more she smartly came about, slanting up to meet the pirate. Both broadsides roared. Clouds of white powder smoke rolled up between them. Splinters flew from the hull of the brigantine.

A round shot smote old Hampton fairly in the ribs, showering Bane with his blood, shattering the rim of the wheel and plunging through the rail. The pirate who had sailed with Kidd rolled into the scuppers, almost torn in two. Bane sprang to the shattered wheel. The rudder still answered. The helm was broken but not destroyed. The smoke cleared. White flecks on the corvette's side showed where the pirates had scored. She was firing from her stern- chaser and Bane replied.

'Round came the corv'ette again and the duel continued from their fore and aft guns. A lucky shot from the Venture smashed the Juno's bowsprit, carrying away her jibs, the staysail still keeping her steady as she dropped behind. A scattering shower of partridge scoured the length of the brigantine, the bomb of the charge exploding amidships, leaving a half-score of writhing men upon her decks.

They were off the channel. The main-sheet came home, the fore-yards were hauled and the Venture squared off for the entrance, Denton in the bows, picking out the Kissing Palms. More partridge sprayed them as they sped. Bane at the wheel, holding the palms in line as they neared the reef. He scowled as he looked at the corpse of Hampton and the dead and wounded on the smeared planks.

One parting missile jarred the brigantine as the corvette put about from the danger-line of shallows. The shot had struck fair on the waterline. A few more of that kind and the Venture would have been out of commission.

They entered the passage, with the Kissing Palms merged in one. Bane let them slowly open, watching for the islet palm to show. He was furious at the encounter which had plainly proved him no match for the metal or marksmanship of the Juno. He would go south to the Carribbean and leave these waters. They might go to Madagascar, the old cruising ground of Kidd. At all events he would get away, thanks to the secret of Tom the Turtler.

The islet palm seemed slow to appear, the surf was dangerously near his larboard quarter. It showed at last, shifting slowly to the middle of the two trunks and he breathed a sigh of relief as the Venture answered his hands.

There was a slurring, grinding jar. The bows of the brigantine lifted as she slid forward and upward. The deck planks lifted, her timbers creaked and the foremast broke off at the deck, yards and canvas falling with swinging blocks and stays torn loose from their boltings in confusion, smothering part of the startled crew who fought their way free or lay pinned and groaning under the ruin.

Bane, clinging to the wheel, stared in amazement. The islet palm was still fair between the two other stems, as he had watched it when they had passed through under Tom the Turtler's pilotage. They were hard and fast, seas were breaking above the wreck of the foremast. Denton came to him, his head bloody from a falling spar.

" 'Tis some trick," he gasped. "Some trick of that cursed, shark-eyed turtler."

"Hell's furies," cried Bane. "Up the mainmast, one of ye! If they've seen us strike they'll be after us with boarding crews. Up!"

A man sprang into the main rigging and mounted.

"They are putting off from the corvette," he shouted. "Three boats—four!"

Bane jumped into action.

"Up with the boarding-nettings," he yelled. "Clear away some of that mess for'ard. Seive out pikes and cutlases. Train the stern-chaser on the channel. Do they seem to know the passage, aloft there?"

"Making straight for it."

Bane dived below and chose his sidearms and his sword, an Arabian weapon, curved like a scimitar, of matchless steel. On deck again he brought a semblance of order out of confusion. The Venture had swung sideways with the tide, blocking the channel. The stern-chaser had burst its tackles and broken through the taffrail.

A group of pirates worked to get it into position before the king's men appeared. One trunnion had slipped its socket and the gun lay athwart its carriage. A heavy netting of rope was raised above the rail. Muskets were piled with stacks of boarding pikes and the cornered crew prepared to resist.

THE leading cutter appeared, spray flying from the spurting blades. Another followed it, the men huzzaing as they caught sight of the trapped pirate. Haul and heave as they might. Bane's men could not get the stern gun into position. All four of the king's boats, crowded with men, were now racing down the lane that was pitted with musket balls. Here and there a rower slumped but the boarding was a matter of only a hundred yards dash from the turn in the channel.

With a cheer, the cutters swept under the counter and alongside, jumping for the low freeboard, clinging to the netting while they slashed at it with cutlas and knife, tearing it loose with a grappling iron and swarming across the rail, parrying pike and blade, leaping to the decks and breaking up into a series of hand-to-hand combats, little swirls of men that engaged and broke apart leaving here and there one prone, sliced with a keen edge or shot by a pistol that singed the flesh at close quarters.

The hot sun shone down on the mélee. There was the stamp of feet, the sound of oaths, of shots, the smell of blood that stained the decks, lay in sluggish puddles or joined the dark stream in the scuppers; the taste and scent of powder gas, filrns of smoke above the struggling masses as the men from the Juno drove the pirates forward to where the fallen foremast partly blocked the deck; man to man, cursing as bullet or blade went home, gasping tffeir diminishing breath as the others trampled upon them, sliding on the canted deck, soon slippery with gore.

Todd was the second man aboard. Captain Sawtrell beat him by a split-second. A pirate thrust at him with a pike as he stood on the rail but the point wavered and fell as Todd fired full in the man's face and leaped to the deck. He had caught sight of Bane, his sword flashing as it rose and fell, his voice rising abdve the general uproar in defiant curses.'

Sawtrell pressed toward him and Todd followed, eager to reach the buccaneer captain and settle his score. Two men closed in upon them and Sawtrell turned to engage one of them, dexterously parrying the forceful but clumsy swing of the cutlas and nmning his opponent through with his sword as a cook would spit a joint.

Todd broke through the other's guard and sliced the man's upper arm. His strength seemed doubled and he strode over the fallen man in exultant fury, pressing ahead of the Juno's commander to where Bane's sword, red now, whistled above his head as he charged through the knot of sailors who siurrounded him, and led a group of pirates to the rescue of Scarry-Dick, hard-pressed by the rail.

A jumble of men, cutting and thrusting, swept Todd aside for the moment. He dropped a burly giant with the bullet from his second pistol and felled another with the butt. The fighting mob divided and he sprang through the opening. Scarry-Dick seemed to spring up through the deck before him, cutlas aloft. As the blades grated for a second he saw Denton's puzzled eyes staring at him in amazement. The quartermaster had recognized the turtler from Green Key, though, shaven clean and clipped, he did not know him for the pilot they had recruited at San Domingo until Todd shouted as he lunged.

"Ah, Shark-eyes," answered the pirate. "Have at ye, trickster!"

His arm shot up as he avoided the lunge but never descended. A shot from Hardy, first officer of the corvette, pierced his neck and he fell, grasping futilely at Todd's legs as the tmtler passed over him.

The sailor in front of Bane dropped to his knees, his skull gaping, and Todd jumped in, parrying the smashing blow the pirate swung at him. The tempered Arabian blade shore through the coarser steel and Todd found himself with a shattered weapon clutching a hilt that held only a few inches of jagged blade. Bane laughed, swinging his sword in a hissing circle.

"Come on, bullies," he cried. "Drive 'em, the dogs. Drive—"

The word died in his throat as Todd leaped, heedless of the keen edge that bit into his shoulder, sending his broken spike of steel into Bane's face, full into the bush of black beard, smashing the grinning teeth and, as Bane staggered, clutching the throat his fingers had so long itched to reach.

The pirate's eyes rolled upward, projecting from their sockets as his sword clattered to the deck and he strove to tear loose the iron claws that were compressing his windpipe. Back to the rail Todd bore him, back until he bent Bane's spine across the edge and the buccaneer's tongue protruded from his cut and swollen lips.

Todd's strength was rapidly ebbing with the stream of blood that poured from his shoulder but he knew nothing but the glut of his revenge, the sight of Bane's protuding eyes, the purpling of his face, the laxness of the body that sagged, dragging Todd with it, his fingers still sunk into the flesh and muscles about the throttled gullet.

The cheering of the king's men as they drove the pirates below, overboard, or begging quarter in herded groups, sounded to Todd like the roaring of deep seas as he sank beneath them to unconsciousness.

THE Honorable William Dummer, Esq.,Lieutenant-Governor and commander-in-chief of the province of Massachusetts Bay, President of the Special Court of the Admiralty, at the courthouse of Boston, assisted by eighteen gentlemen of the council, found Bane and the survivors of his crew guilty of murder and piracy.

"Before I sentence ye to be executed and hung in chains in Boston Harbor, regretting that such a villain has but one life to make atonement for the barbarity of which you have been found guilty," said the governor, "you are permitted to speak and say why sentence should not be passed upon ye."

"Hang me and be —— to ye all," said Bane. "I will meet many of ye sleek gentlemen in hell where I shall have the advantage of my quicker turning off. Yet I would ask one question of this witness."

He turned his baleful eyes upon Tom Todd, who had testified in secret session to the death of Mary Todd and his own adventures aboard the Venture, for which he had received full remission from the court and the promise of a substantial reward.

"Before I swing," said Bane, as the governor nodded and Todd, his eyes still holding hatred, stepped forward, "tell me the trick ye played on us in the Jumentos passage."

Todd's eyes gleamed.

" 'Twas easy to gull ye," he said. "Ye left me tools and a shallop. Before I put off to the Juno I shifted the palm on the islet five paces to the west."

The bailiffs stopped the curses of the hoodwinked pirate and Todd turned to the presiding officer.

"My lord," he said. "Ye have made mention of some reward. I ask for one favor that shall cancel all the rest."

" 'Tis granted, within reason."

"There is wide reason in the request, my lord. Grant me the hangman's office."

__________________

14: The Pigeons of Wong Foo

Adventure 20 Jun 1923

WONG FOO, hands across his capacious stomach, sat complacently in the shade of his lanai watching the pigeons strut and coo and flirt in the brilliant sunshine while they pecked at the grain he had flung them.

They were a mongrel lot, inbred from a dozen that Wong Foo had brought from Canton when he acquired the little island of Piri, with its lagoon and the pearling rights therein.

But they were beautiful, with their iridescent necks and their coral feet, their well-balanced flight, and Wong Foo loved them for all that and the memories they kept bright of the land to which he hoped soon to return, prosperous in his middle age, able to marry, to raise sons and to live in full content, respected, honored and envied by the less fortunate, the less efficient.

When Wong Foo had first brought them to Piri it was with the intention of varying his fare, but he had changed his mind, there being something of the poet in Wong Foo— something of the philosopher besides a good deal of the merchant. He loved the sight of perfect pearls, symmetrical, prismatic and he had once written a verse about them.

The hues of the sea

And the colors of the sky

At dawn and at twilight,

Are vagrant beauties;

But the pearl,

Born of the sea,

Retains them:

So that a woman may wear them

And be beautiful

In the eyes of her lord.

Now he was meditating over another stanza concerning the pigeons. It was early morning, the palm-thatched lanai was on the west side of the house of Wong Foo, the hard work of the season was over, he had gleaned his harvest and he was very comfortable.

A blue pigeon, with barred wings, flew to the lanai rail and regarded Wong Foo speculatively. They were all fairly tame and fairly friendly, but it was Wong Foo who fed them and sometimes he had extra grains in his hand for the venturesome. The blue pigeon ruffed its gleaming neck feathers, cooed and made a short flight to the rail of Wong Foo’s bamboo lounge-chair, sidling along it to the open palm full of grain that he offered it.

Back of the open space where the rest of the birds paraded was their house, shaped like a pagoda, erected on a pole. Wong Foo’s fancy had hung little bells that tinkled when a pigeon entered one of the numerous doors cut for them. His ingenuity provided a system of closing all the doors simultaneously, after they had gathered in the loft for the night, and of opening them in readiness for their morning egress.

Back of this again coco-palms rustled in the wind, their slim trunks shining silver against the blue of the lagoon and the darker blue of the sea beyond the barrier reef. It was very pleasant on Piri, and Wong Foo fed his pet and amended his poetical phrases and, presently, dozed off to sleep with his hands still crossed on his capacious stomach. The pigeon regarded him curiously, its head cocked to one side, listening to the gentle snoring of the man, then flew back to the flock.

There was quite an establishment on Piri, lying solitary between the Phoenix and the Ellice groups. Buildings and boats and a community of forty natives, Melanesian men, shell-handlers and skin-divers. They were not overpaid, but they were well treated by Wong Foo and they were happy and peaceable enough.

There was Loo Ching, a young and energetic nephew of Wong Foo, who acted as foreman; and there was Ah Chi, a lowly compatriot who kept the house and cooked the simple meals. The natives had their own compound and grass huts, running their own commissary from the stores served out by Loo Ching.

It takes a year or two to produce even a small pearl. It is the custom to allow a lagoon a rest of from two to seven years to recuperate from a thorough harvesting. But Wong Foo held no such intention. It was his plan to clean up the lagoon, first of gems and then of shell, until he had reached the sum he needed for retirement. Then he would sell Piri to the highest bidder for what it was worth as a prospect.

This season’s gathering had been rotted out on the leeward beach of Piri where the trade winds carried the stench far out to sea, and Wong Foo’s calculations on his profits showed him very close to his goal.

It was small wonder that he dozed in peace, his face placid, his plump, well-kept hands rising and falling rhythmically with the swell of his diaphragm. Soon he would allow the nail to grow on his forefinger and guard this token of propserous idleness with a case of shell, inlaid with gold. Then he might be made a magistrate, or a mandarin of the fourth grade, permitted to wear a blue button.

LOO CHING came swiftly, scattering the pigeons, which wheeled in circles. He was lean, with an eager, hawkish face, a quick stride. There are those who, seeing Chinamen only as they face a foreigner, state that the faces of the Chinese show no more trace of sensations than a mask, that their nerves are insensitive, their poise imperturbable. But the face of Loo Ching showed high excitement, a tension of apprehension, and his eyes glittered as he abruptly shook the shoulder of his slumbering uncle and poured a jabber of Cantonese into his drowsy ear.

Wong -Foo shook off sleep as a man flings away a cloak. His almond eyes were bright and filled with quick intelligence as he listened.

“Bring me the glasses,” he said crisply to Loo Ching.

The nephew ran inside and returned with a pair of expensive and excellent binoculars. He also brought with him a-revolver, which he offered to Wong Foo.

“Of what use is force,” asked his uncle, “when it is opposed by a greater?”

He walked the length of the lanai to where there was a clear vista of the sea and focussed his lenses on a shining speck, like a sliver of silver, on the dark rim of the horizon? He gazed for two or three minutes, his plump hands steady. His eyes shone unblinkingly as he handed back the binoculars. His moon-like face seemed to have acquired a firmer mould.

“It is he,” he told Loo Ching. “I have always been a little afraid of this.”

“What are you going to do?” demanded Loo Ching. “They will raid us, kill us, perhaps, if they do not get what they are after. And we have only the one gun and a few knives. The Kanakas will not fight. What are you going to do?”

Wong Foo looked at his nephew reprovingly.

“It is idle to ask a question twice before it is once answered,” he said. “I do not know what I am going to do, Loo Ching, but doubtless I shall know before they make a landing.”

He went into the house, entered his own partitioned chamber and lighted fresh incense sticks before a gilded joss before he knelt down in front of the idol on a flat cushion, bowed his head reverently and closed his eyes. He was not asleep now but very wide awake. As awake as Loo Ching using the binoculars on the silver sliver that grew, little by little, presently dividing into two gleams of argent, the canvas of a topsail schooner, tacking, before it bore up on a long leg for Piri.

Ah Chi, fat as a porpoise, bare-legged, his vellow face shining with sweat from the heat of his stove, came waddling out. He had caught the anxious note to Loo Ching’s query.

“What is it?” he asked. “What is the matter?”

“It is only a fool who doubles his question,” said Loo Ching, passing on his uncle’s chiding precept. “But I will answer you and then you can go and crawl into your oven. That schooner belongs to—”

It sounded like Bhuli Hazi. It was the equivalent of Bully Hayes, poacher, raider, pirate ard unscrupulous blackguard, the bugaboo of unprotected isles and atolls and of defenseless vessels. Looting, murdering, roystering, swashbuckling Bully Hayes, who honored nothing, who carried off women and thought no more of a man’s life than he did that of a pigeon.

Ah Chi shook with terror; his slack jaw dropped.

“What are we going to do?” he stammered.

“Ask Wong Foo,” snapped Loo Ching, picking up the revolver from the chair and regarding it sullenly.

Suddenly his face flamed with balked ferocity, and he flung the weapon away. It hit amid the pigeons, once more on the ground, and they rose with an indignant whirr.

“Go and get that gun, you fat fool!” he said to Ah Chi. “You will not be so fat when the sun goes down.”

Ah Chi looked at him stupidly.

“You wish me to keep it?” he asked.

“You can throw it into the lagoon for all the good it will do us,” Loo Ching said savagely.

“Do not disturb the pigeons,” said the even voice of Wong Foo from the doorway. “Bring me that gun, Ah Chi, and then get some more grain for the birds.”

Ah Chi waddled off, and Loo Ching looked at his uncle amazedly.

“Feeding the pigeons at a time like this!” he muttered. ‘The old man must be going mad.”

Wong Foo regarded him with a glinting glance that suggested humor.

“That which is not understood is not always folly, Loo Ching,” he said mildly. “Pray clean the gun from sand.”

Loo Ching took the retrieved weapon sullenly from Ah Chi.

“Why clean it?” he asked petulantly. “If we use it there will be twenty bullets for one. You said so yourself.”

“Why leave it dirty? Loo Ching, you should talk less and study more. What says Lao Tsze?

That which may not be prevented must be endured with patience. Yet there is a master key for all locks and the name of it is Wisdom.

“Fetch me the unopened bolt of goods on the top shelf in the store. Here is the key. It is at the end of the shelf by the window. Ah Chi, I shall need you. Go and wash your hands.”

Ah Chi gaped and Loo Ching looked his astonishment. Then the latter went sulkily on his errand. Wong Foo leaned on the rail of the lanai and watched his pigeons gobbling the grain that the cook had flung them.

“AIl beauty must be fed,”

he murmured, carefully accenting the rhythm.

“All beauty must be fed

Tis leached by hunger

And, sometimes,

The greediest are the most resplendent.”

The pigeons cooed and strutted, walking jerkily on their coral feet, the shimmer of their irised necks changing like shifted jewelry as they pecked at the grain.

The Melanesian divers massed on the beach, watching the schooner, which had come about once more and was now visible as a single plume of silver, its masts alined, coming fast, a bone under its stem, the wet hull throwing off a dazzle as it caught the light.

“Tell the Kanakas to go into their compound,” Wong Foo ordered the returning Loo Ching. “They are to stay there until I come. Then you will find me in the house. Go quickly.”

BULLY HAYES stood aft of the wheel, balanced to the pitch of the racng schooner. He was driving her, as he drove everything he had a hand in, and his eyes were on the little wind pennant that whipped at his main truck, watching the slant of it, quick to note the least shiver in the weather leech of the mainsail, keen to see that the swift boat was pointing its highest.

His helmsman, a plum-colored boy from Rubiana, magnificently muscled, stark naked save for a strip of red cloth, steered faultlessly, but the nervous twitching of his eyes showed that he knew and feared the result of the close proximity of his skipper.

Hayes was clad in blue denim shirt and blue serge trousers, his feet bare, his legs hairy to the ankles. A scar across his nose gave his rugged face a sneering twist, though his heavy mouth was open in a smile, showing stained irregular teeth through mustache and beard. His skin was tanned deep from the weather and his face seamed with lines of indulgence, besides the sea-wrinkles of the deep-water man. His eyes were green as the crest of a breaking wave, flecked with tiny spots of red.

His first mate stood at the rail, broad, bow-legged and long-armed, scarlet of hair and beard and face. The second was amidships where the crew, all Solomon Islanders, savages, with bleached mops of hair, ragged ear-lobes, scored with tribal weals and scars of war, waited to jump at the word.

It was a roaring morning, bright and full of wind. Trade clouds white as milk were piled in cumulous masses, and the gale blew out of them, vigorous with ozone. The force of the wind snapped the brittle crests from the racing:waves and sent the spindrift scudding in horizontal flurries of spume that looked like driven snow.

The schooner leaped to the surge, crashing down the waves, blue as a druggist’s display solution, till the white brine roared around her and streamed far aft in a yeasty wake. It churned in her lee scuppers and plumed about her bows like white feathers. Many men would have reefed in such a breeze, but Bully Hayes, secure in quality of rigging, hull and canvas, carried on, exulting in the lift and fall and drive of her, eager to gather the prize of his trip.

The islet of Piri lifted fast from the sea. At first it had looked like a cluster of big-headed pins stuck on the horizon line, then the palms seemed wading out to meet them.

The hurl of the waves had weight, but the schooner rather rode than buffeted them. The reef points stood out like spikes of iron, the coiled halyard ends rapped against the timbers as the vessel plunged and reared and bore on close-hauled, seeming to fight for her head like a wild mare while the muscles writhed in the back and calves of the helmsman as he controlled her.

There was a trembling blaze of light where the sun struck the sea, little flashes sparkling out from the facets of the waves.

The helmsman shifted a swift spoke, threw his head on his shoulder, an inquiring eye on his skipper.

“Wind’s shifting!” roared Bully Hayes. “Curse the luck, we’ll have to make another leg to fetch her. Away on the sheets there! Let her pay off easy!”

The first mate jumped to where the second had already re-echoed the order, bawling at the straining crew. The fluttering wind pennant steadied. The schooner heeled and seemed instantly to increase in speed, like a runner lengthening his stride. The course changed to a broader reach with the wind now coming over the rail abaft the beam, singing through the forestays.

Hayes studied the nice balance of wind and sail and cast a glance about the firm sweep of the horizon.

“Hold her as she is,” he ordered. ‘‘We’re well up. We may make it.”

The first mate came aft, soaked to the knees, his face gleaming with spray. The exhilaration of the weather and the lunge of the schooner shone in his eyes.

“By——, she’s a dandy!” he exclaimed.

Hayes nodded.

“She’ll show most of ’em her tail. Come below, Thompson.”

In the cabin he bellowed for his steward, a dish-faced Malay wearing a striped sarong with a kris in a belt, sheathed in bamboo.

“Gin and limes.”

Shields, the supercargo, a foxy-faced and cashiered Scotchman, came into the main cabin from his trade room, treading like a cat.

“Fine weather for pearlin’, Mister Hayes,” he said.

“Aye. Sit down, Shields. We’ll take a drink to the trip. Wong Foo will be pleasantly surprized.”

“He'll have sighted us, no doubt. He’ll be knowin’ the schooner. I wouldna wonder but what he micht have been expectin’ us one time an’ another.”

“Maybe,” said Hayes indifferently, squeezing lime-juice into a tumbler three parts full of raw Hollands. “He’s a bird worth the plucking. I got it straight that he’s going back to China after this clean up. It should be a good haul. The lagoon’s a rich one. I’ve had my eyes on it for a long while, but I thought I’d let Wong Foo do the dirty work. We’ll make for Sydney after this trick and amuse the ladies.”

The others laughed, tossing off their liquor, replenishing as Hayes passed the bottle. He looked occasionally at the compass.

“He'll have hidden the pearls,” he said, “but we’ll make him turn them up. We'll get ’em if we have to sift the beach for ’em. A sharp knife on his slick belly’ll make him talk.

“Thompson, you'll come in with me. You too, Shields. You can sweat the Kanakas. Tide’ll be against us and they say the reefgate’s a tricky one. We’ll not go inside. Haywood can keep her on and off. We’ll take rifles and revolvers. Serve ’em out, Thompson.”

“How about a shotgun?” asked Shields.

“What for?”

“They say Wong’s got a flock of feefty pigeons. They'd make good eating. broiled and in pies.”

“Always thinking of your guts, Shields. It ain’t a bad idea, but there are no more shells. We’ve been too long at sea and the damp has swollen ’em. I tried to get some plover back there on Turua and they were all spoiled. I'll use nothing but brass cases after this and do all my own reloading.”

Shields ceased licking his thin lips.

“Pigeons are good, but pearls are better,” he said. “You can buy a nice little pigeon with a pearl, one without wings. And another, after you get tired of that one. It all depends on the size of a man’s share.”

Hayes surveyed his supercargo with a look inclined to be sinister but said nothing, though Shields’ remark about his share was most distinctly emphasized.

Thompson gazed at his skipper expectantly. He had no especial love for Shields and he knew Hayes’ methods of stamping out any incipient spark of dissatisfaction before it turned to contagious flame.

“Let’s go on deck,” said Hayes. “Come along, Shields. It’s a prime morning and a sea running that’s made for us but would be nasty for an open boat—very nasty. We'll have to be careful landing or we’ll get rolled.”

Again Thompson cocked an eye at, Hayes then at Shields, the suspicion of a grin twitching the corners of his mouth.

The three went to the rail. Piri was in plain view now, line of white surf, light green of bananas arid pandanus, the darker plumes of coconuts, the yellow thatch of Wong Foo’s house and the glaring corrugated sheet-iron roof of the store. A number of specks shot into the air as if bombed and went wheeling far and wide.

“There go your pigeons, Shields. By the way, you don’t seem to be quite satisfied with your berth.”

The supercargo looked at Hayes, sucking in his thin cheeks, his pale blue eyes suspicious. He did not like the tone of his skipper’s question. Mildly as it was put it held a hint as of a rapier grating softly over an opposing blade in preliminary encounter. But he spoke up.

“You mean what I said about my share? It’s never been set, you ken.”

“I ken,” said Hayes and the word was like a thrust.

There was a sudden glare back of his green eyes, and his face darkened.

“Im givin’ you something to chew on, Shields. You robbed the last sucker you worked for. But for me, you’d be in jail at Suva. You don’t know which side your bread is buttered on. But for me, there’d be no butter for you. I’m the provider. What I serve you be thankful for. “If you're not satisfied— quit— now!”

His malignant features were thrust close to the face of Shields as he strode close to him. The harsh fury of his bellow made the supercargo shrink a little.

“Quit now?” he stammered.

“I'll give you a boat,” grinned Hayes. “Then you can row, bail, sink or swim and be ——ed to you! I want no grumblers aboard, d’ye hear me? Take what I give or get out.”

Shields looked at the tumbling seas with their broken crests and his features seemed suddenly pinched.

“I'm no sailor,” he muttered.

Hayes clapped him on the shoulder with a great laugh.

“Now you're showing sense,” he said. “I'll do the sailing and parcel out the shares. You do what I tell you, Shields, and we'll get along together. Balk me—” his voice changed again threateningly—‘“‘and I’ll put you overboard if it’s the middle of a black night with a gale blowing.”

“Bring her up a little, Mr. Thompson,” he added, turning his back on Shields.

The supercargo licked his lips again but not from greediness. He knew he had been given his lesson purposely in front of all hands, and he was a canny man, if he had been careless with other people’s money. Like a cat detected in trying for the cream pitcher, he pussy-footed his way to the companion and disappeared.

As Hayes had predicted, it was no easy landing, for all the skill of the oarsmen and the genius of Hayes at the steering sweep. They got well away from the schooner, flung up into the wind, and clawed their way toward the spouting reef, riding like a cork in a mill-race. But the ebb that had prevented any attempt of the schooner to enter, fought against their strength with a six-knot torrent pouring through the gap in the coral. Hayes might have waited an hour and entered more easily, but that was not his way.

He roared at his men who tugged and threw their weight upon the ash blades until they bent like bows, while the sweat ran down, and the veins showed like snakes beneath their skins. Erect himself, holding the lever of the steering oar in a grip of steel, Hayes watched the swirl of the tide rip, that held them as one may hold a door against intruders.

“Pull!” he bellowed and they pulled until their bones cracked and the smoke of effort rolled off their hot bodies.

They were in a gut with Death and Hayes had put them there deliberately, sharing the risk. He gave the word as he levered the light boat.

“Hai! Hai! Hai!”

An oar broke off, and the man tumbled backward into the bows. There were spare ones and the rest of the rowers labored to hold way until their eyes balled out from their heads with the prodigious effort. The new oar was shipped. Hayes had corrected the swerving lunge.

“Hai, you black-hided dogs. Hai! Pull or drown. Hai!”

THEY were through and racing for the shore, the strain over, their savage faces agrin. Hayes steered them to Wong Foo’s little wharf where they leaped for the planks and moored the boat. Rifles in hand, Hayes and Thompson in the lead, each armed with two guns, Shields bringing up the rear, they ran toward the clearing in front of Wong Foo’s house, the Solomon Islanders giving fierce yell after yell. They were bushmen all and the peaceful beach-blacks of Wong Foo shrank from them, huddling together where Wong Foo had marshaled them in front of his house, where he had watched the pigeons strutting in the sun in the early morning

Wong Foo was there, his kai hidden in his sleeves, his face showing no immediate emotion. Loo Ching scowled, and Ah Chi trembled like a jelly. The boys from the schooner surrounded the divers and shellworkers, covering them with their rifles, jabbering to each other threats of headtaking and oven-baking that made the others turn ashen.

Hayes had put away his guns in their holsters, but Thompson kept his trained on Loo Ching, scenting hatred and the will to resist. Shields had no occasion to menace the trembling Ah Chi.

“What for you come along with gun?” asked Wong Foo. “What for you make so much bobbery?”

There were times when Hayes badgered his victims. This was not one of them.

“Cut out the palaver,” he said harshly. “You know —— well what I’ve come for, Wong Foo. I dont know what your idea of this reception party is, but the round-up suits me. Makes it easier if there’s any trouble. That part of it is up to you. Come across with your pearls!”

Shadows flitted across the two groups as, high up, the pigeons swung in Jong loops and circles, disturbed by the intrusion, by the preemption of their favorite parade and feeding ground. ‘Their crops were full enough, but they did not like these yelling strangers and they wheeled higher, in no mind to perch or alight until the confusion was over.

“No got pearls,” said Wong Foo placidly.

“Don't lie to me, you yellow-faced baboon!” cried Hayes. “I’m in a hurry. Sabe?”

“I tell you I no got. Plently pearl one time. I send away along my fliend ship. I no like keep pearl along island. I think maybe some one come take ’em.”

“You thought right.”

The Chinaman’s voice held a measure of conviction that registered with Hayes, but he was convinced that all Chinese were natural born liars and cheats— as he was himself.

“I come to take ’em. Where are they?”

“Evelly yea’ pearl not so much good. Las’ yea’ velly small, velly few. My fliend ship come, bling chow, take ’em pearl. This yea’ no good, only shell. You like take shell I no can stop.”

“Blast your stinkin’ shell!” cried Hayes, his eyes getting murderous.

He shoved a gun muzzle against Wong Foo’s stomach.

“Masi, Ipoki, take that shivering hog. Shields, make him talk. Slit open his belly bag if he won’t!”

They grabbed Ah Chi, Hayes selecting him as the most likely to talk. Wong Foo, he saw, was of stiffer mettle. The unfortunate cook wriggled in vain as they tore open his blouse and broke the string of his pantaloons, flinging him down on the sand while Shields knelt above him, with bared knife.

“I no sabe. Pearl no catch,” he jabbered. “Pearl all go away. This time no pearl we catch.”

His voice rose to shrieking Cantonese as Shields slowly drew the point of his knife down the yellow skin, across the palpitating stomach, leaving a thin red line where the blood followed it.

Suddenly Wong Foo lost poise.

“Wha’s mally you?” he cried. “I no got. I takee oath along of you. No good you killee. I no got. Suppose I got, I give along. No pearl on this place. I speak

The green eyes bored into the brown and Hayes read there fear of death. There was the absolute ring of truth in Wong Foo’s accents and, for a moment, Hayes credited the statement that the supply ship had taken away the pearls. Thompson had his revolver pressed to Loo Ching’s temple. The latter snarled at him.

“No can do,” he said. “Suppose you shoot, allee same. Pearl all gone.”

“All right, Shields,” said Hayes. “We'll search ’em. They've hidden ’em somewhere, but we’ll find ’em. You can’t tell me,” he said to Wong Foo, “that you got nothing but shell. Your lie’s too good.”

“We catch velly few pearl,” said Wong Foo. ‘Seed pearl, velly few, lele, pearl. No good along of you. Suppose you want, Į give.”

“Is that so?” sneered Hayes. ‘Strip ’em.”

In fifteen minutes the men of Piri were as naked as when they were born, searched as thoroughly as any Kaffir in a diamond kraal, their garments ripped, blouse and loincloth scrutinized inch by inch. Questioning the native divers only elicited the fact that they did not know what Wong did with his pearls. A supply ship did come at regular intervals. It might have taken the gems. It was plausible enough.

“I’ll take the store,” said Hayes. ‘‘Shields, you search that house, thatch and all. Thompson, herd ’em.”’

Two natives went with Hayes, two more with Shields. The three yellow men and the boys of Wong Foo huddled under the blistering sun, not daring to ask for their shreds of clothes, the Kanakas hunkering, Ah Chi prone and moaning, Loo Ching and Wong Foo erect, watching the wrecking of store and house.

Over all the pigeons soared undisturbed until smoke rose from the looted store and flames began to crackle. Then they mounted. Hayes came back in a towering rage, empty handed. Shields ran out from the house with a calabash he had found stowed in the thatch. In it were about a pint of seeds, half that many baroques and nine small pearls, booty hardly worth a landing.

“Those pearl all I catch this season,” said Wong Foo. The fear of death was no longer in his eyes and he had regained his composure; he seemed to have accepted the fate that might come to him with Oriental stoicism.

Loo Ching’s eyes still flashed with anger.

“Sure of your search?” Hayes asked Shields.

“I’ve taken it all apart but the walls, and the boys combed the roof,” he said.

“Burn it.”

More smoke and fire went up in the bright day, driving the pigeons higher yet. Soon the native quarters were in flames. Every likely place was searched, including Loo Ching’s little lugger. Threats brought only the same answers, that the lagoon had been stripped of everything but shell and that all pearls had been shipped for safety against such raiders as Hayes. Slowly and reluctantly Hayes came to that conclusion, still doubtful, hoping against hope.

The search had taken all the afternoon. There was no liquor ashore save one half empty jar of samshu. This the three white men emptied. The pick of the store goods was taken down to the pier and placed in the boat. Hayes glowered at Wong.

He itched to kill, to wipe out all life on Piri, but he hesitated. There were one or two matters of that kind already chalked up against him and they were getting fussy in Sydney. Murder will out, even if he threw their bodies to the sharks. And even his brutality, spurred as if it was by samshu, balked at such wholesale and cold-blooded killing. He had done sufficient damage to take some edge off his spite and chagrin.

He looked to sea for his schooner and saw her, holding off and on with short tacks. In the immediate foreground was the pigeon house on the pole. It was three-tiered, with five entrances to each side and tier. Below them ran the landing-perches, above, the wide eaved roofs that gave it the effect of a pagoda. Green and red and yellow embellished it. It was the pride of Wong Foo’s decorative instinct.

Hayes slapped his thigh. He had already determined to destroy it, but now he had an inspiration. He had overlooked the likeliest cache of all. For an instant his glance rested on Loo Ching’s resentful features then shifted to those of Wong Foo.

The face of the owner of Piri showed only resignation.

“Give Wong Foo an ax,” Hayes said to Thompson. "Wong Foo, chop down that pagoda dovecote of yours. I want to take a look inside.”

Wong Foo made a little protest with his hands. His face was troubled.

“What for you do that?” he asked. “All same you take all I got, you make ’em all bu’n.”

Hayes gloated, sure that his hunch was correct.

“I nearly passed up that bet,” he said. “If we can’t have pigeon pie, we may find some fine eggs. Give him that ax.”

Wong Foo chopped at the pole at the point of a gun. The house swayed, toppled with a crash, the little bells tinkling, the roofs splintering. Hayes, Thompson and Shields reduced the wreck to matchwood, raking off the droppings and sifting them. There were no pearls.

The sun was dropping, the west flaming, shadows lengthening. The smoke had died down and, above the scanty vapors the pigeons wheeled, tired, fearful of the dusk, but more fearful of the happenings on Piri.

“We've drawn blank,” said Hayes at last. “If I ever find out you’ve fooled me, Wong Foo, I’ll hunt you out and skin you alive.”

Wong Foo’s face was inscrutable enough now. He shrugged his shoulders.

“No can fool you,” he said and his voice was that of a broken old man. “You make plenty bobbery. No good.”

“Going to sink his lugger?” asked Shields.

Hayes turned toward his supercargo. His bloodshot eyes seemed to make the Scotchman a little uneasy.

“Want him to starve to death?” he asked. “Glad you spoke though. That reminds me of something. Wong Foo, I’m going. How many pearls did you have in that house along that calabash. Not seeds or baroques. Hold on, Shields, I’m handling this.”

The supercargo had dropped a hand to the butt of his gun with a threatening gesture toward Wong.

“Fo’teen small pearl,” said Wong.

“I thought as much,” said Hayes softly. “You sure of that, Wong?”

“What for I lie?” asked Wong Foo, mournfully surveying the wreck of Piri.

“You dog!” said Hayes to Shields. “Holding out, are you?”

He whipped out his gun and shot Shields through the wrist as the latter tried to draw.

“Go through him, Thompson.”

The mate searched the bleeding supercargo and produced five pearls, all larger than those he had delivered to Hayes.

“All right,” said Hayes. “Get down to the boat, you.”

Shields, holding his wounded wrist, the blood spattering the sand, was hustled down between two of the black boys. The boat put off, reached the schooner.

The booms were swung out as the raiding vessel tacked and soon it gathered speed, sailing into the heart of the sunset, presently a shadow in the failing light.

AH CHI, his split skin tended, scattered grain for the pigeons, which were coming home, hovering uncertainly above where their home had been. Two boys, for the second time that day, held light casting nets ready.

Wong Foo watched the last of the schooner fade out. A pigeon came down and started pecking at the grain. Another followed. Presently the whole fifty of the flock were busy. It was too dark for their irised-breasts to gleam, but Wong Foo regarded them as if they were feathered with gems.

“It is too bad they burned the place,” he said to Loo Ching. “But we have finished with it. Tomorrow we begin to load the pearl and then we sail.”

He contemplated the damage with a certain smug complacency. Then he gave a signal and the nets were deftly cast over the busy flock of birds, enmeshing them.

Yet it was a lucky thing for Wong Foo, with all his guile and gifts of acting, that the damp had spoiled the shotgun shells aboard the schooner. For Hayes, or Shields, might have brought down a pigeon, and that would have disclosed the fact that to the leg of each bird there had been tied a tiny sack of red silk that matched the coral of their feet.

It was at midnight that Wong Foo collected the pearls that had been in the sacks and gazed at them lovingly in the cabin of his pearling lugger, a shimmering mass of perfect gems.

“To him who hath a measure of wisdom and who possesseth patience,”

he quoted to Loo Ching, from the writings of Lao Tsze,

“there is bestowed a fair measure of reward.”

“I wish we had had more guns,” said Loo Ching, bitterly.

IT WAS at midnight that a despairing cry sounded across the sea from a small boat, one taken from Wong Foo’s little fleet for the purpose. The man that uttered the cry gazed with straining eyeballs toward a light that rose and fell as the schooner raced away through the slashing seas. It shone from the after cabin where Hayes sat moodily drinking and fingering fourteen small pearls, some seeds and baroques.

The cock-boat pitched in the trough, shipped water, and rolled in a swirl of phosphorescence. Shields grasped an oar with his one sound hand and strove to head on to the run of the waves. There was a keg of water in the stern, some biscuit and a little bully beef. A short mast and a rag of sail, if he could ride out till morning and ship the one and set the other. But, as he had said, he was no sailor.

__________

15: Dark Laughter

Alert (Maryborough, Qld), 1 Sep 1939

MERVIN BANE shifted his twisted spine against the back of the chair and squinted beneath his shaggy eyebrows at the man he hated.

Bane was clever, and he was crafty; two attributes that had secured him this job as secretary to Gideon Trent. His cleverness at research, his well-feigned flattery gaining the confidence of the man who considered himself the world's foremost philosopher and philanthropist.

Bane was full of venom as a black widow spider. To-day he was malevolant as a shedding snake.

All his abnegations, his fawnings and adulation, the nausea of listenings and pendering to the other, all his expectations, based upon Gideon Trent's own promises, had come to naught.

Bane would willingly, eagerly have murdered him, but there was a lot of caution in his make-up, an inherent fear of consequences. A man, he told himself, was a fool to commit a crime— unless it should be the fabulous perfect one.

Gideon was compiling a work he believed would establish the welfare of mankind. "The Social Plan," by Gideon Trent, Bane saw no difference between its theme and that of Bellamy's "Looking Backward," save that Gideon larded his with cribbed philosophies, sought for examples to support his theory. That was Bane's job— part of it.

Moreover, Gideon was eternally correcting the script, calling for clean copies in triplicate, ever adding more footnotes, intolerant of the slightest error.

He was unmarried, possessed no near relatives.

Five years ago, when Bane took over, Gideon had told him that he wanted to find somebody he could trust. He said it plaintively, a little petulantly.

"Prove to me I can trust you, Bane, and you shall not go unrewarded. I want accuracy, with haste, in case I should be taken suddenly. My life work must be completed, or set in such shape that it may be completed posthumously. Aid me in this, and you will not find yourself forgotten."

GIDEON TRENT had a bad heart, a cardiac murmur, a leaky valve, flaccid muscles. There were other organic changes in his big, pulpy body that left him open to attacks of angina pectoris.

He had to live carefully, to avoid all excitements. He had cardiant pellets prescribed by his specialist always on hand.

Gideon had a violent temper, against which he had been solemnly warned by his specialist.

"He must suffer no shocks to his nervous system," Dr. Meredith advised Bane. "One might prove fatal."

Yesterday Gideon Trent had knocked over Bane's house-of-cards, dissolved his aerial castle.

"It looks as if the work is done at last, Bane. It has been a studendous task, but I may say I am proud of it. There may be some amendment—we shall see. Complete the final script of the preface to-night. I shall appreciate

"I have watched you, Bane,  tested you. I know you understand and appreciate the Plan. The abolishment of money, of luxury; every man doing his share of work in the community that will entitle him to such mode of living as national psychiatrists have decided he deserves. One world-wide nation living in equity and amenity.

"I shall establish the Trent Foundation with my fortune. All will go toward the propagation and extension of my idea throughout the earth, with the exception of some bequests to those who have been faithful. To Whipple, to Mrs. Freeman, and to yourself, Bane, I am leaving the sum of one thousand , pounds, clear of inheritance taxes."

The fatuous fool! The damnable hypocrite! The work was done. Clever, crafty Bane had been used as a tool. One thousand pounds! One thousand devils, to tear at Gideon's, vitals.

"That is generous of you, Mr. Trent. Very generous."

ALL night the canker of hate had worked within him, polluting blood and brain.

Gideon's dream was not yet fulfilled. To hold the printed volumes, to read the prostituted reviews he would believe genuine, to hear the plaudits of sycophants, to walk in a procession with hood and gown, with academic cap barred sleeves, given an honorary degree.

The fool thought he would get the Nobel Prize!

He had cheated Bane with false hopes. He could be cheated also.

Bane started to bring him the preface sheets, stumbled on a rug, pitched forward against Gideon's desk, clutched at the old-fashioned inkstand and upset it, so that the deliberately ruffled pages of the script in his left hand were blotted with red and black.

Gideon gasped in horror, then in rage. His eyes distended, bulging, like the veins in brow and neck as the surge of his anger flushed the great blood-vessels to the bursting point. His heart checked its beat, the rotten walls collapsing. His lower chest contracted, his tace turned purple, he was suffocating.

"P-p-p-p-pep...."

Bane knew what he was trying to say through the bubbles he blew on his lips.

"Pellets."

The cardiants. They were in the medicine cabinet of the bathroom between the library and Gideon's bedroom.

Bane stared at the tortured man with malignant satisfaction. Gideon glared back, horribly. Bane thought he saw suspicion grow in the blood-streaked orbs.

SUPPOSE, after all, the old fool came out of it, accused him?

He nodded, found the pellets, next to a phial of saccharine tablets, exactly the same size, shape and color as the cardiants. If there was any difference in the taste Gideon would never know it in his condition.

Bane poured hot water in the bottom of a glass, dropped the pellet into it in front of Gideon's eyes, let it dissolve, dribbed it into the gullet that spasmodically swallowed it.

Gideon relaxed for a moment. Then he was seized with a frightful spasm of pain. It brought him to his feet, bowed with excruciating agonies. He slid to the floor, making a rigid arc of his corpulent body between his heels and his bald pate. He flattened out, curds of foam replacing the bubbles. His feet and hands twitched, a last convulsion racked him.

Bane brought a hand mirror. It stayed unfilmed.

Gideon Trent was dead!

Bane returned to the bathroom, and this time picked up the cardiant pellets. Then he fished in the pocket of the corpse for keys, unlocked the desk drawer, placed the pellets in it, relocked, replaced the keys.

He took up the house 'phone.

"Whipple? Bane speaking. Mr. Trent has had an attack, a bad one, I fear. Call Dr. Meredith. Better get Mrs. Freeman to do it, to keep on calling. You come here. We must get him to bed."

He was kneeling by Gideon s body when Whipple arrived.

"I COULD not find the pellets, doctor," Bane told Meredith. "I know he was trying to tell me where he had put them. He was always changing them around recently. He had grown erratic. I went to where I expected to find them but they were gone. Then I had you called. I kept trying to locate them, but by the time Whipple came it was too late. I suppose we shall find them eventually. I did my best."

The specialist nodded. "I am sure you did. Have you any idea what brought on the attack?"

Bane showed him the blotted manuscript.

"It is the final draft of the preface to his book, the last thing to complete it. He was excited about it. I worked all last night to get it ready. It was on his desk and he got up from his chair to pick it up himself. His face was flushed. I fancied he seemed a little clumsy, or dizzy. He fumbled the script, knocked over the ink, and he went down."

Bane wiped sweat from his forehead. He was looking at the body on the bed. It seemed to him that Gideon was grinning at him.

"Do dead men often look like that?" he asked hoarsely. "I thought they appeared at peace. "

The specialist glanced professionally at the twisted corners of the lifeless lips.

"It will pass. It is what we term the rictus sardonicus. It will not last. Do not let it bother you."

GIDEON'S solicitor came the next morning.

"A sad blow for you, Bane. A great loss, in more ways than one. You inherit merely a thousand pounds under the present will."

"I know'that. He told me. I am not disappointed."

"He was only testing you, Bane, to see your reaction. I had an appointment here with him this morning that he made himself, over the telephone. I did not expect to be summoned, for this. If he had lived for one more day, Bane, you would have been a very wealthy and important person, in charge of his affairs. You see...."

Bane did not hear him. Only the sense of sight was functioning, and that inwardly. He was seeing the sardonic grin, the rictus sardonicus, on the dead face of Gideon Trent.

_____________

16: The Crime Master

Detective Fiction Weekly, 30 Nov 1929

The sinister Crime Master, "The Griffin", and his relentless pursuer Gordon Manning, appeared in six stories in Detective Fiction Weekly, commencing in November 1929, with the final story in November 1930. They were collected by Altus Press in 2020, as The Complete Crimes of "the Griffin".

THERE were no windows to the curious room, elliptically shaped, the high walls in one continuous curve with no visible sign of a door. Diffused and mellow light flowed in from unseen mysterious sources. There was ample ventilation. From somewhere, diminished, rather than faint from distance, music sounded, music orchestrated in the ultra-modern school that some call decadent. Music that stirred the physical emotions rather than exalted the mind or stimulated the spirit. Not the strident, strenuous phases of jazz, but insinuating melodies, rhythms that seemed to suggest exotic landscapes, the glidings of great, gorgeous snakes, the flight of rainbowplumaged birds, the fall of crystal waters— lovers watched upon by lurking, creeping ape-men.

The walls were tapestried in two shades of gold, dull and burnished, in a pattern that did not obtrude yet made itself manifest. The carpet, ankle deep, was of rare weave, matching the walls. There was a hint of incense, of burning amber. And a strange atmosphere of evil, an influence that abused beauty and harmony, twisted them to its own malignant purposes.

Those walls back of the golden tapestries were of steel. The place was at once a sanctum and a stronghold. The ceiling curved in a shallow dome. On its background of dark blue, certain constellations were accurately inlaid in gold. Two signs of the zodiac, in conjunction, and their attendant stars.

Here and there were divans, deep cushions on the floor. A high chest of black wood with inlays of pearl and ivory, actually a safe of the most modern construction, A chair, carved, like a throne, back of a carved table. On the table a strip of ancient woven silk, once the back of a Manchu princess's robe; a crystal globe, slotted at the top with openings for air, three-quarters filled with water into which streamed constantly a jet of compressed air. Emerald weeds waved. and. contorted goldfish swam solemnly through the subaqueous jungle.

There was a disk of smooth copper-gilt suspended in a frame of ivory. On either side of this smaller replicas. A tablet of white porcelain, illuminated from beneath, on which a man was making notes and calculations with a stylus of agate tipped with lead.

The whole place was bizarre. It might have been the abode of an astrologer, a mystic. The seated figure should have worn a pointed cap, a robe inseribed with cabalistic characters, a long beard.

Instead, there was a clean-shaved man in modern dress. His face was the most arresting thing in the room. At the moment it was calm, cold, rigid, almost, as an ivory mask and nearly as colorless. But the eyes gleamed like jewels; hard, brilliant, the eyes of a fanatic or a madman whose brain, while erratic, still retained control. It was in the eyes that the malignant influence of the room seemed to concentrate, perhaps to emanate.

The features were, in their way, beautiful, but they were stamped with a predatory cast. The lips were thin, cruel, the nose a finely chiseled beak, the whole face dominating. The ears well shaped, but the ears of a faun, pointing up to crisp hair, silver-gray that did not give so much the suggestion of age, but of virility that lacked pigment. The only lines were two scores that ran from nostrils to the ends of the mouth.

This was the man who called himself the Crime Master. He might, as he looked, have been a. fallen archangel, hurled from Heaven, intent upon revenge. He was an arch-enemy of society, of the world of finance, nursing injuries that, in his warped brain, had mounted until he was a foe to all established foundations of modern civilization.

A gong sounded, with a light, sweet note. The music ceased. A voice thin but distinct came from the smaller disks, synchronized. He listened intently, a smile, that lacked all kindness, deepening the brackets about his mouth.

He spoke into the big disk. His voice was smooth, silken-smooth, but forceful, exultant, mocking. He gave swift instructions. Then, as the music once more crept in, he erased, with a moist felt, all that had been on the tablet of porcelain, now transferred to a memory of intense energy annd reception; made another note— a date, and regarded it with the same smile. His long, thin fingers folded themselves about each other. Then, with a swift movement, subtle rather than sudden, he brought heavy paper from a drawer, dipped a quill pen into violet ink, held in a well of onyx whose lid was the head of a griffin, the mythical winged lion, and wrote quickly, still smiling; folding the letter with a chuckle that suggested the soft gurgle of an eddy on the Styx, or of the sacred river of Kublai Khan, running through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea; addressed the envelope, sealed it.

"So," he said softly. "It appears we have a worthy opponent. The real game commences."

He pressed a silver button in the desk-top. From a deeper drawer he drew out a mask that seemed made of gold-leaf, pliant but distinctive, changing his features to the semblance of an Egyptian relief of the Hawk-God. Now he looked not unlike the griffin lid of the inkwell, the device that was on the scarlet seal that closed the letter.

The gong sounded twice. With his foot he pressed on the heavy carpet and a section of the wall slid noiselessly aside. A man appeared, a valet, his sign of service the wasp-striped waistcoat he wore, a human automaton, expressionless.

"See that this is mailed at the Grand Central post office by four this afternoon."

The Crime Master felt in the pocket of his coat, brought forth a tiny box of gold, damascened, enlivened with small, sparkling and exquisitely cut gems. In it was a green paste— hasheesh.

Five minutes later he was at full length on a divan, the phantasies of the hempen extract mingling with the music that now played more and more faintly, lulling him to sleep and dreams. His features relaxed, but they did not lose that stamp of enmity.

ii

THE wise old trainer, owner of Garrity's Gymnasium, looked with professional interest and approval at Gordon Manning, coming out briskly from the needle shower after his daily handball game.

"There you have a man who keeps himself fit," said Garrity to a new and somewhat paunchy patron. "Always has kept fit, if I know anything, and there's not much in the line of athletics he couldn't get away with, if he put his mind to it. As it is, there's worse boxers an' wrestlers swaggerin' round, thinkin' they're champs."

"He doesn't look such a marvel to me," said the other, watching Manning closely, a little enviously, as the latter came striding naked from the shower cabinets, lean and lithe. ' You wouldn't call him much on muscle."

"You wouldn't? Next time you git a chance, you take a look at the limbs of them chimpanzees out to the Bronx Zoo. You won't see much muscle on them. They're skinny, those chimps, they look stringy, but they can take apart a man twice their weight an' size.

"It's quality that counts. Know anything more muscular than a snake? One of them big boas? See any muscles bulgin' on them? Manning is built the same way. His muscles are like first-class rubber bands. They've got resilience. His brain's the same way. Watch him play handball and you'll get what I mean: Coordination."

"What does he do? Anything?"

"He's some sort of a lawyer. I know he's got offices down on Liberty Street. I know he was the youngest major in the A. E. F. where I was top sergeant. An' I'm dead sure he don't loaf. He couldn't, not his sort, any more'n quicksilver'll stay put."

The listener was impressed, almost against his will. There was something out of the ordinary about Manning, his poise, the carriage of his spare person, the lift of head and chin, a certain pride that was not offensive, a suggestion of proved efficiency. Perhaps the trainer had not exaggerated, after all.

"Now you, sir," said Garrity bluntly. "You've got a nice body, but you've abused it. You want to take it easy at first. I'll start you off with the medicine ball. There's a class of gents ready to start in a few minutes."

While the pudgy, somewhat puffy patron turned toward the gym, Manning dressed rapidly, left the place and walked the few blocks to his office, lithe as an Indian, though with a freer tread, swinging his cane. His face was thoughtful.

That was a curious cane he carried, heavier than it appeared. It was made of rings of leather shrunk about a steel core whose end made the ferrule, while the head was capped with a plain gold band bearing the initials G. M. in modest script. A weapon, rather than a cane. The only weapon Manning carried, as a rule, no matter how dangerous his errand, but one that, in the hands of a skillful and powerful man, was formidable, deadly. And even Garrity did not know that Manning was an expert fencer.

He came to his office building, tall though not one of the latest, sandwiched in between others on a strip of land that ran between two streets. There were four elevators, one of them an express, stopping first on the seventh floor, where Manning had his office suite. One car was temporarily out of order, as announced by the card on the grille. The starter gave Manning a military salute. Manning answered it in swift gesture of authority, now discarded yet still recognized by a few.

The car shot up, stopped. The operator opened the door with a friendly grin. They didn't know much about Manning's affairs in the building, but any public servant gets to be a good judge of people he sees every day.

On the outer door of Manning's suite his name appeared above the two words that seemed to designate his profession.

GORDON MANNING

Advisory Attorney

But there was only one man in New York, anywhere, besides himself, who knew Manning's true vocation. So he believed. And hoped.

There was an intelligent-looking redheaded youth in his outer room, two women stenographers in the next, deft, deferential, businesslike. His personal office was well but not luxuriously furnished. In one corner stood a circular safe of ultra-hardened steel, practically impregnable— and empty— though no one knew that but Manning.

It seemed all it was intended to represent, the obvious repository of secrets. It would take experts hours to get into it. And it was only a lure. Manning kept his secrets accurately filed in a trained memory, supplemented by a condensed file in a cypher that he had improved upon from many he had studied. That file was in his desk, ingeniously concealed.

Manning never appeared in court. He had clients, though they were not so numerous as important. He oftener refused advice than gave it. His fees were large, but his cases, turned over to other attorneys for action, did not occupy all his time. Yet, to those who took occasion to comment on him, he was a man of little leisure, of comparatively few friends though many acquaintances. None knew him intimately. He was cordial enough but reserved, although he was not consided an enigma.

He took seat in his desk chair, gazing out to the towers of Manhattan, lining the busy river, with its spidery bridges, its teeming commerce. The window was open, the sounds of the metropolis blended in a symphony of achievement.

His dark eyes were like those of a hawk, or an eagle, made for the fathoming of far perspectives, far-seeing, eager, with a certain fierceness that came into them now. His body lounged, at ease, relaxed, but his mind was centered on a desperate and dangerous quest. He sought a man, a universal enemy of the powers that had built up the city he loved, the greatest city in the world, New York. He sought him in secret and stern resolve, the man who had mocked, was still mocking, at the police— looting, murdering at will, head, without question, of a band that was not only devoted to him, or linked by rites of deviltry, but infinitely resourceful under the direction of their head. The Griffin.

Manning frowned. He admitted himself worried. It was never known where, when or how the Griffin would strike, and he had never failed. Mad perhaps, with a species of insanity that might some day burn out his inflamed brain, but, meanwhile, made it that of an evil genius.

He swung his chair to the desk, always clear of papers not under immediate consideration. He had been set to the trail, but he could find no starting point, no scent toward the following of it, the solution of the mystery that gripped him. The Griffin left no traces, save those of devastation. No clews.

Manning was fresh to the trail, but there was a long count against the offender— the man who had no name that is to say, no name unless it was revealed in a device he used, embossed on— ovals of heavy paper, cartouches he affixed as tokens of his presence— of his absence from the scene of crime— or token that he was the master-mind who originated it.

A device that was the head of the mythical creature known to heraldry as a griffin, stamped in scarlet,

It might, Manning fancied, be a clew to the surname of the man, who seemed more fiend than human. But that was only a fancy and he wanted facts.

It was a waiting game he was forced to play and that harassed him. The hideous certainty that the Griffin would reveal himself, stagger the city with some fresh crime that would come like a bolt from the blue, stagger the very foundations of law and order, without warning, without trace of the offenders.

These acts were like those of the fictional Frankenstein, shaped like a man, minded like a fiend. A fiend of frightfulness and inordinate cunning, of illimitable daring and deviltry, heading an organization growing ever bolder with success.

Manning signed. some letters, summoned one of the stenographers, dictated, ran through typed documents,. digesting their contents, arriving at solutions. But all the time his brow was furrowed.

His subconscious brain busied itself with the main issue for which his business was only a camouflage. It. held a presage of impending trouble that he was powerless to prevent, though he must trace its source. He knew he was up against no ordinary opponent, but one as resourceful and relentless as any he had encountered in his duties in the war opposing the Boche Secret Service.

He finished up the correspondence, gave a word of praise to the girl and got his car from its parking space, easing the powerful but unostentatious machine through the traffic, driving with automatic accuracy, his mind ever prescient of impending calamity, out to Grand Concourse, through the park, on to his home in Pelham Manor, a bachelor establishment catered to by his picked Japanese servants, perfect if remote.

All the way his eyes, that saw the traffic, the lights, were conning with their eagle gaze for an elusive quarry, a fabulous beast, a scarlet griffin.

iii

MANNING picked up the square envelope with its bold superscription in violet ink, he had a premonition, perhaps of the quickened senses, a positive emotion or reaction; that here was something evil. He did not analyse such matters. He believed that all hunches were based upon actualities, that so-called luck was merely the blossom, or the fruit of seed some one had sewed where perhaps he might not pluck.

But he had seen many curious things in his time. In the war, when he was detailed on Secret Service though ostentatiously merely a brass hat. In the Orient and the far-off places he had traveled since the war. He would not have disputed that vibrations for good or wickedness might not persist, did not cling, as some subtle odor, to objects handled by persons of strong vitality and will.

And here was evil. As if the envelope had been defiled by a malignant touch. He opened it without hesitation, abruptly,

My dear Manning:

Allow me to exchange congratulations with you upon your acceptance of the post you have just taken over. I take it that, with myself, it is not entirely the pursuit of— shall we call it crime?— that interests you, whether to achieve or prevent it; but that the adventure of the chase appeals.

It does to me. I trust we shall share many interesting and thrilling episodes. I am complimented, spurred by having such an adversary. It inspires me to further efforts. I fear that we shall never meet. I may, ultimately, have to make sure of that. In the meantime, until you push me too hard, and I grant that possible emergency, I shall thoroughly enjoy playing the game. with you.

It is like playing chess with a skilled opponent. A game in which, however, you labor under a handicap. I always make the first move. Let us pit our resources against each other. We might perhaps both be called Crime Masters. But it will be no stalemate. One of us is going to win. Myself. For, if you seek to master crime, I am its master.

You will hear from me soon. Very soon, I much prefer to dealing with you direct.

There was no signature, only the embossed griffin's head, with its rapacious beak, its rampant attitude, stamped on an oval of bright red, scarlet as blood.

iv

IT was a shock, an unexpected blow from an unseen adversary; rather, not so much a blow as a flick of insult, a challenge.

The man known to the police as the Griffin had, attested the mute evidence of his scarlet seal, committed many crimes. He had robbed, he had at times killed with what seemed mere, diabolical wantonness. His coups were always coupled with great gains, carried out with a precision that bespoke an evil genius in conception and preparation.

He might, Manning reflected, be well termed the Crime Master, juggling the words to make the meaning suit his successes, though, as he had written, they could be twisted to have an opposite interpretation, one that Manning meant to make apposite— to himself— as one who mastered crime.

It would be a hard-fought game, not played in the open, with the quarry always well away. 'The letter told one thing. The Griffin was a man of education, of sardonic humor, with a brilliant, if warped, brain. The use of the seal already indicated that.

The writing, Manning was sure, would lead nowhere. He did not doubt the other's ability to write several distinctive hands, carefully studied. He had shown an infinite capacity for taking pains.

As for the paper and the postmark, if a clever criminal was careful, they were useless as clews. Only the amateur, the person of one, sudden crime, forgot details. The Griffin was a professional.

Every little while, at intervals of weeks or months, a crime tagged by the seal was perpetrated. Every little while, press and public clamored for the police to apprehend him. They suspected Centre Street of concealing the use of the seals in certain cases— and they were not away from the truth.

The chief commissioner, with his newly appointed squad of secret police, could do nothing with the Griffin. He worked alone, he was not a gangster, a racketeer. The commissioner had called in the aid of Manning, enlisted it, a willing volunteer. They had held, so far, no communication, would hold none until Manning had tracked this beast, run it to earth, destroyed it, or been destroyed himself. Yet, the Griffin had discovered his employment. It was something close to magic, which is merely the mystery of the unknown.

Manning accepted it as a fact. There was no use taking time to determine what indiscretion had freed the information. A harassed man might mutter in his sleep. Gossip flies far and often it links are intangible.

It was not himself. He slept soundly. He slept apart. The thing was out. The Griffin had learned of the appointment and, in his bizarre fashion, it had given him greater zest to prove his own powers, to show himself the Crime Master.

"A form of grandiose dementia," Manning diagnosed it. There was nothing to do but wait for the fulfillment of that promised "very soon," to wait for that "opening move" which would be fraught with inevitable tragedy, too late to remedy.

The Griffin might overplay his hand. He might not be playing chess so much as hurling boomerangs. So far, none had swung back to destroy: him. He was like a wolf, captain of a lupine band, swooping down on defenseless, unsuspecting sheep. And Manning was the shepherd.

He ate dinner by himself, waited on by the imperturbable Japanese who had been with him for years, devoted, impeccable retainers who would protect him if he needed them; who maintained the little house Manning had built from his own plans, secure from intrusion.

After the meal Manning read a review, smoking a pipe. His hoped-for encounter with the Griffin might prove only a battle of wits, but, if it ever came to handgrips, with him or any of his followers, the man would need all of a maniac's strength to cope with Manning.

v

IN Manning's private office the next day the telephone rang crisply, imperatively. It was a private line, unlisted, unconnected with the general office instrument. As he lifted the receiver he was conscious, almost as if he had received an electric shock, of the same sensation he had experienced with the letter he had received from the Griffin.

A question, doubtless, of vibrations, himself tuned-in, receptive, expectant, his whole being, body and brain, a coherer.

Manning did not consider the voice disguised. It was resonant, but not harsh, cultured, tinged with maleficent humor, mocking,

"Manning," it said. "It is within a few minutes of eleven o'clock. I trust you have standardized time, so you can check the moments. They are quite important.

"Don't try to trace this phone call. It cannot be done. I told you you would hear from me very soon. This is the first move, now in the making. It will be accomplished by eleven o'clock, precisely.

"Then you can get busy and solve the problem, if you can. To use a vulgar idiom, this is being pulled off under your very nose, Manning. I have chosen the man because of his close proximity to you. In a measure, you are responsible for his selection and his demise, his most untimely and unforeseen demise. Not entirely. He has other qualifications, naturally."

Manning glanced at the clock on his desk. It was accurate to a second. He felt that the Griffin—there was no question of his identity—was talking against time. He knew that he could not trace the wire. Others had tried to do that. The Griffin had some method of using the telephone service without automatic cut-in. He was equally sure that the crime now being predicted would be carried out.

The mocking voice kept on.

"I am afraid, my dear Manning, that you are powerless to prevent my coup, but I shall take precautions. We have another seventy odd seconds. It would be too late for you to take advantage of the occasion by buying certain stocks for a swift fall, as I have done. I have no especial enmity against the man chosen, but his death will be very profitable to me. I have an expensive organization to maintain.

"He dies by a new method I have recently perfected. I shall be interested in your failure to uncover it—and me. It will exercise your ingenuity, And the name of the man—"

The clock on Manning's desk began to chime the hour.

He heard his caller chuckle as the strokes went on to four— to five.

"The name is Richard Ordway. Two floors beneath you, my dear Manning. And quite dead by now, I assure you."

Richard Ordway! Private banker, promoter, financier, manipulator. Manning knew him. They were members of the same club. He often saw him in the building. Stocks might well go into turmoil when Ordway died suddenly, There would be a panic on the Exchange, the Curb. Sales that could not be traced in the mad scramble.

And the Griffin, scattering his orders, using his organization, could not be detected. Yet, because of that quirk in his brain, he had thrown down the challenge to Manning.

Manning's wits worked fast. The supreme impudence, the insolence of the call, sent a surge of hot blood through him. His resolve might hardly be strengthened, but it rose within him, And the Griffin, for all his cleverness, had given out something that might yet betray him.

His voice was distinctive: Manning would not forget its inflections. He had landed more than one spy because of certain shadings and intonations, slight accents. He might never hear it again, but— if he did?

He leaped into action, wasting no time. He knew he could not save Ordway, but, before the last stroke had sounded, he was out of his side door into the corridor, hat on, cane and gloves in hand,

The Griffin had, he fancied, overlooked one other matter, He pressed the button, caught the express descending, stepped into the car. On the third floor they overtook the local. When the latter arrived Manning was lounging at the cigar and news stand. He had bought an impromptu but effective mask that he had used before— a newspaper. Like many other individuals in the district, he buried his face in it, seemingly seeking market news.

He had marked the indicator of the other local— the third still out of order. It was at the top of the building. Four people stepped out of the one that had followed his express car, A young clerk, a girl, a man he knew and another man who carried a brief case, well dressed, self-assured, walking swiftly, but showing no especial signs of hurry.

Manning had certain qualities that make up the born detector. He had studied many things. He did not absolutely believe in physiognomy, but there were certain features he considered evinced undeniable traits. He acted now like a hound that has caught the scent.

He was assured that Ordway, up on the fifth floor, was dead. He could not aid him. He was not anxious to uncover himself in any capacity of investigator until he had to. But he followed the man with the brief case, realizing that, if he was a member of the. Griffin's organization, he might, would, know him by sight.

Manning knew the tricks of shadowing. At Wall Street and Broadway the man dived into a subway entrance, Manning followed,. running to make the express, seeing his quarry enter, two cars ahead. The man kept in the train until Forty-Second Street, and Manning trailed him, up through Grand Central to Madison Avenue.

The man swung aboard a surface car, Manning followed in a taxi, telling the driver what he wanted. A New. York taxi driver is surprised by nothing. He scented a hot tip. Above Fifty-Seventh he stopped and Manning saw his man turn a corner. He left the driver grinning over a two-dollar bill.

The hotel was one that hartioted all sorts and conditions of people, both men and women, who did not obviously work. There was a lobby and a desk, facing two elevators. Between the cars there was a long mirror, used by the lady guests for a- final overlook,

Manning found a pillar, stood back of it, seeing his man in the mirror, marking the pigeonhole from which the clerk gave him his key. He made sure of it as he asked an idle question about an imaginary registration, and then left.

Fifteen minutes later his carefully relayed message got through and was responded to by Rafferty, detective of the old-school, but to be relied upon in ordinary routine. Rafferty had an intimate description óf the man, knew the number of the room. It was sufficient.

Manning's instinct told him he was on the right track, but he had to go warily. He was dealing with no ordinary opponent. There was no reason for him to arrest his suspect, many reasons not to, Manning did not forget the Griffin's boasted "new method" of killing. He acted on inspiration, based on experience. The Griffin would not have expected him to dash down to the lobby of the building to trace the man. At least, he did not think so.

vi

THE death of Ordway was a sensation. When Manning got back down town it had been long discovered by his secretary, who had been immediately hysterical. All had happened as the Griffin must have hoped. On 'Change the news spread like wildfire, Fortunes were made and lost, matters were still in the balance as Manning arrived.

The police were there. Detectives from the homicide squad. There was nothing to show that Ordway had not died from natural causes. He was slumped over his desk, without mark of a wound.

But an alert reporter had been on the spot. He had seen, pasted on the dead man's blotter, conspicuous, flaunting, the scarlet seal of the Griffin. Already the press was reeling off sensational stories. This time Centre Street could not cover up. The Griffin had struck again.

Newsboys proclaimed it. The Street was in disorder. The panic spread through the length of Manhattan.

And Richard Ordway lay on the operating table while experts tried to find out how he died.

Manning read the report of Rafferty, on a flimsy, sent by ordinary messenger service to his office.

Suspect traced to Hermes Hotel, room 637, registered as David Sesnon.Checked out at 1.20. Took Yellow taxi 3748, name Alekko Kalimachos— driver has good record. Two bags. Checked in at Hotel Clarence at 1.30, under name of Daniel Sievers. Same initials. Probably careful of laundry marks. Went to barber shop. Shaved off close-clipped mustache and had hair cut. Looks different, but could identify. Took taxi to Pennsylvania Hotel stockbrokers, watched market. Am continuing shadow. R.

There was some delay at the Morgue. Manning insisted on a special autopsy. He believed he had circumvented the Griffin, but he was not congratulating himself beforehand. Sesnon— Sievers, was still under observation, but they had nothing on him, and the Griffin was not to be caught easily.

The observation of the market, powerfully "bear," suggested that the man he had trailed was more than ordinarily interested, but it did not prove it. The latest editions carried the announcement of the police surgeon that Ordway had died of heart failure, but they hinted at other, more sinister reasons.

The grim operation of autopsy was under way. There were two surgeons present, one distinguished specialist supplementing the regular official, by request of the chief commissioner. Assistants in the laboratory searched the organs,

A third man stood with the surgeons. He was accredited, had proved his identity, shown his knowledge of their craft. He made no suggestions. It was Manning, but he was subtly altered. His skin was darkened, his lean cheeks were plumped, his body was cleverly padded. His voice was altered, his movements slow and deliberate. Glasses veiled his eyes, though their eagerness pierced the lenses.

There was nothing, after long investigation. No sign of a weakened heart, only the body of a man who regularly visited his doctors, who had recently passed a practically perfect test for a vast sum of additional insurance. Dead, he still commanded millions by his demise.

No sign of bullet, of knife. None expected. No trace of known poisons. No unusual traces in any analysis.

Manning had said nothing of his telephone call. This affair was his own, He would conduct it in his own fashion. It could add nothing to their thorough search. The scarlet seal proclaimed that murder had been done, but the men of science stood baffled.

There were no bruises, no discolorations on the body. A blemish or two, a mole, blotches that looked like slight eruptions, lesser pimples, such as might appear on the skin of any man.

A ghastly spectacle, though the proceedings had been conducted with dignity,

Manning moved closer, under the powerful overhead light. He looked at the reddish marks, one in particular.

He knew of poisons in the Far Fast, largely vegetable ones that, even when introduced into the blood, would be absorbed within an hour or so by the tissues, leave no trace by any reactions known to Occidental science, if to Oriental.

"Would you mind examining this mark closely?" he asked the surgeons. "It looks like a half-healed eruption, there seems to be a slight trace of what might be pus. I have a theory it may not be."

His credentials and his manner, his knowledge, made them deferential. They were willing enough to try anything, perplexed, weary.

An incision was made, the pallid and bloodless flesh removed about the spot, the specimen taken off for minute observation,

Manning was examining the dead man's coat when they got back, regarding critically a slight stain, almost invisible, on the sleeve.

"We find no trace of anything toxic," said the specialist. "But there has been a parting of the tissues, not by any sharp instrument, hardly discernible. The curious thing is that stearine, wax of some sort, seems to have been injected. We have not yet determined its exact composition."

"Exactly," said Manning. "And the mark, as you will see, was on the shoulder, beneath this spot on the sleeve. I think you will find your stearine also there, It should show slightly on his shirt. His undervest was sleeveless.

They gazed with animation, energetic to follow his theory, though they did not see what it would prove.

The stain on the fine weave of cloth, on the linen of the shirt, swiftly yielded results. A waxy substance was held in the fibers.

"It passed through," said Manning. "A pellet of wax that has almost dissolved, but not so thoroughly as its contents. You may know that a candle can be fired through a board from a gun. This capsule, loaded with virulent poison, was probably discharged from an air pistol. Probably at close range.

"That, I think, is the cause of death. As for the poison, there are several, not classified, their source in doubt, that I have met with in the Malay peninsula, Borneo, and other places. Unless you can think of some reason why stearine should have been injected through the coat, the shirt and shoulder of such a man as Ordway, immaculate, precise.

There was no such reason and they knew it, all of them, standing about the riven body.

"Damnable!" said one of them. "Damnable! No doubt as to who did it. That fiend must be found."

"I agree with you," said Manning.

"We are much indebted to you," said the specialist. "I wish I knew more of you. Your name."

"I am afraid," said Manning dryly, "that that pleasure, my pleasure, surely. will have to be deferred, doctor. I am known only by my finger whorls. You gentlemen need me no longer. You will bring in your findings without me."

"Those findings are indefinite enough to be losings," said the official surgeon ruefully, "Convincing enough to us. But—"

He shrugged his shoulders. Manning bowed to them and went out with his slow, assumed walk.

"You'd almost think he knew what to look for," an assistant, ventured.

"Thats nonsense, Edwards," snapped the specialist. "We don't know who he is, but his credentials are irreproachable. But, my God, what a devilish device! And advertising his crime with that red seal!"

"The Griffin, if it ever existed," said his colleague, "is extinct, I only trust this one will be soon exterminated. They ought to set this man who was here to-night, whoever he is, on his trail. He might cope with him."

vii

MANNING saw that the key to Sesnon's new room in his new hotel, under the name of Sievers, was in the box and he, presumably, in his room. Manning had already heard Ordway's secretary, in a calmer mood, confirm the arrival of a man with a brief case, giving the name of Sesnon, who had an appointment with Ordway.

That appointment must have been gained through excellent credentials, which may have been manufactured. The main bait had been what he could offer Ordway. Of that, save that it had something to do with an asbestos mine near the Pennsylvania-New Jersey line, the secretary knew little, Ordway kept such profitable matters to himself until he was ready to use them. Long-fibered asbestos in any place easily reached was a thing men had long looked for.

A second appointment had been granted in which, presumably, Ordway would have the tests of the asbestos. Sesnon would give out the exact details, and an expert would be sent secretly to investigate. It was all a blind, and Ordway, trying to make money with himself on the big end, had lost his life.

With his death the pool that he was manipulating was drained dry. His own estate suffered, but many, forewarned, henchmen of the Griffin, made money, Money was the cold-blooded motive for the Griffin's selection of Ordway, coupled with the fact that the "first move" since Manning had taken hold, took place beneath the latter's nose. If anything could have urged Manning on, this semiresponsibility did so.

So far Sesnon was tied up with his arrival in the lobby after the murder. Manning's intuition, his judgment, had been correct. Now the trail led to the Hotel Clarence, and Manning followed it, alone.

The case was far from complete. That trace of stearine in cloth and flesh was not conclusive. The poison had been assimilated. But, if Sesnon— alias Sievers— could be found with poison pellets in his possession, with the air pistol that fired them, they had him. With the vision of the chair facing him he might well talk about the Griffin.

Manning had arrived in a cab, with a kit bag. He registered, looked at Sievers's signature casually, got his own room and followed the boy with his kit bag. He was not on the same floor as Sievers, but that did not matter. He knew the number of the latter's room. It was a sweltering night and the heat suggested a plan, not too novel, but efficient.

He got Sesnon's phone through the hotel exchange. The answer brought a grim smile to Manning's face. He had run the quarry to earth. Sesnon was clever, but Manning did not think he believed himself in any danger, though he had taken precautious of changing appearance, shifting his hotel, taking another name, The rub came in the question as to whether he had got rid of his lethal weapon and ammunition. That would soon be known.

"Did you want a fan?" Manning asked the man at the other end of the wire. "This is the engineer. I can have one sent up right away."

"I didn't order one," the answer came back, "but I could sure use one. You must have got the wrong room."

"Sorry, sir. I'll shoot one up to you."

Two minutes later Manning knocked on the door, As it was opening he spoke his piece.

"Here's your fan, sir." Then he was inside. He had no fan. He had no gun. But he wore his hat, and he carried his cane. He had sprung a surprise, but he had one given to him. There were two men in the room, both with their coats off. There was a whisky bottle on the table, with ice and soda water. Both rose to their feet as Manning strolled in. And both evidently knew him.

The amazing thing was that they might have been twins. Hair cut, general features, coloring, height, weight, and make-up were startlingly similar. Suits and ties were similar.

One was Sesnon, one his "ghost." His appearance was probably brought about for use in drawing off a "tail," if there was any, In all likelihood routine instructions, rather than alarm, for Sesnon regarded Manning coolly enough. It showed the quality of the Crime Master's brain, the action of the expert player, looking moves ahead for all possible plays and contingencies.

Again Manning acknowledged the Griffin's resourcefulness. The man's methods were bold and subtle. He was like a slippery eel that, even when seemingly caught, slides through the hand and leaves only slime behind.

Manning knew which was which.

"What do you want?" asked Sesnon. The presence of his seeming twin did not actually involve him, He might or might not admit that he had called on Ordway. It was not necessarily criminal to shave or shift his hotel. He knew nothing of the results of the autopsy though he might now suspect he had been trailed. He was still confident.

"I want you, Sievers, or Sesnon, for the murder of Ordway. I myself traced you from his office. Also I know how he was killed."

Sievers did not flinch. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Which of us are you talking to?" he asked.

"You. When you made your changes, Sesnon, you forgot to put in different sleeve links. There will be no question about your identity. I'm taking you both, I have two men in the lobby to take you down. Stand still, the pair of you."

He saw their glances meet, shift quickly and obliquely to the window. It gave out to a narrow alley. Not the best room in the hotel, but it had one advantage for their kind. It was a fire exit.

Sesnon's double moved silently and swiftly. His right hand swung up— inside his partly open vest. The wrist halted, his fingers clutching for a gun. There would be a good tale for the Griffin. The latter had impressed them with the cleverness of Manning, and here they had. him. The gun was muffled. There was nothing to it. Let the two dicks stay in the lobby. They would get clear.

Then he grunted— and then he gasped.

The steel ferrule, with a flick of Manning's wrist, had hit and paralyzed his own, as the end of-the snaky, but heavy cane struck a carpal bone where the radius joined it.

The cane circled, shot forward, stabbed him in the belly. It lifted in a sabreur's sweep and tapped him over the ear. He lost all interest in the proceedings. It took but a second.

But, in that second Sesnon had hurled himself upon Manning, striving to throw him, to knock him out. He had no weapon on him, from sheer precaution, a carefulness overdone in this case. He was powerful, trained, and imagined easy conquest, astounded to find himself grasping a body that was sheathed in muscle and hard flesh, that turned his attack to defense.

He had grasped Manning's right wrist and Manning let his cane fall. He held a private satisfaction in tackling this murderer with his bare hands.

He tied Sesnon in the fierce clinch, held him, and flung him loose, bewildered at the expert handling— loose for a moment— then Manning's uppercut traveled from his hip and connected.

It was all over. Sesnon fell like a Jength of chain, his coordination unlinked.

Manning went over him, went over the "ghost " and found little of value, save money, with which both were plentifully supplied. Then -he called the office, spoke crisply to the clerk:

"Two men there in the lounge. They're from headquarters, Send them up here, right away."

He had two of Griffin's men in the toils, but there was not much to hold them on, save suspicion and limited circumstantial evidence for Sesnon, a Sullivan act charge for his "ghost." No jury was going to convict them of murder. There was no positive evidence that Ordway had died of anything administered externally. Only. opinion, and a scanty showing of grease that an expert lawyer would laugh off. They would undoubtedly have the best legal advice. Unless Manning found the stearine pellets and the gun, found them soon, in Sesnon's room they would be out on bail.

Yet he could hardly have arrested Sesnon on his first hunch that he was the murderer, Now he almost took the room apart and found nothing. The pair were taken away. They would get a good sweating, a rousing third degree. Sesnon, nursing a sore jaw, affected to be jaunty. The "ghost" was still feeling too sick from the jabs and strokes of Manning's cane to say anything. .

"We won't be there long," Sesnon boasted.

Manning relayed through to Center Street, asking to have the two held as jong as possible, but he did not doubt that the Griffin would soon get busy. Because of his minute examination he should be cértain the poison pellets and gun were not in the room, but he was not satisfied,

He went over the search again. Then he retained the room for himself. It was midnight when he once more got through to the commissioner. He had found his evidence. Sesnon had hidden the pistol with a cunning worthy of the Griffin himself.

He had wrapped it in black cloth, a small parcel, for the gun could rest in the palm of the hand. He had wired it underneath the grating of the fire escape, close to the building. It was practically invisible and might have stayed there for months, though no doubt some stranger would have visited that room later, another of the Griffin's emissaries, and removed it, It was a marvelous piece of mechanism, loaded with a tiny capsule of wax, ready for deadly action.

If Sesnon had been able to use it on Manning, the duel for crime mastery would have ended then and there. He had evidently found Sesnon almost ready to leave, not wishing to destroy the gun, not caring to chance carrying it with him any longer.

Strenuous efforts had been made to admit them to bail. Big Jake himself, most famous—and infamous—of mouthpieces, had left guests and tried to spring them. Politicians had been busy. Any amount would have been put up. The Griffin had scored heavily in the falling market. Bail money would be negligible compared to his profits.

But they were still held. Sesnon would have to stand trial for murder. Yet they were faithful. What hold the Griffin held on them could not be shaken. Promises, bullying, long hours of "degree" got nothing out of them. They knew nothing of the Griffin. Nothing. Then or afterward.

Manning drove home to Pelham Manor in the small hours, well satisfied though tired. He ran the car into the garage, went, patent key in hand, to his front door. The inlet of the lock was covered with a scarlet cartouche, red as blood, the head of a Griffin stamped upon it.

____________

Table of Contents

- 1: The Ferret and the Bet
- 2: The Gray God
- 3: Skull Manor
- 4: The Crowing Hens of Totulu
- 5: Wild Justice
- 6: The Screaming Skull
- 7: Black Cat
- 8: The High Rigger
- 9: The Man With the Mole
- 10: The Gold Ship
- 11: The Flying Skull
- 12: The Pearls of Paruki
- 13: On the Account
- 14: The Pigeons of Wong Foo
- 15: Dark Laughter
- 16: The Crime Master