There was an earnest depth of contrition in his voice that checked the icy retort she had been about to make. And, emboldened by her silence, he went on:
"Hade needed your brother and the use of your brother"s house and land. He needed them, imperatively, for the scheme he was trying to swing .... That was why he got Standish into his power, in the first place. That was why he forced or wheedled him into this partnership. The Standish house was built, in its original form, more than a hundred years ago. In the days when Dade County and all this end of Florida were in hourly dread of Seminole raids from the Everglade country, and where every settler"s house must be not only his castle, but--"
"I"m sorry to have to remind you," she broke in, freezingly, "that I asked you not to speak to me. Surely you can have at least that much chivalry,--when I am helpless to get out of hearing from you. You say you are willing to confront my brother with, this--this--ridiculous charge. Very well. Till then, I hope you won"t--"
"All right," he said, gloomily. "And I don"t blame you. I"m a bungler, when it comes to saying things to women. I don"t know so very much about them. I"ve read that no man really understands women. And certainly I don"t. By the way, the boat"s run opposite that spit of beach at the bottom of your mangrove swamp. If you"re in a hurry, you can land there, and we can go to the house by way of the hidden path. It will cut off a mile or so. You have a flashlight. So--"
He let his voice trail away, frozen to silence by the rigidly hostile little figure outlined at the other end of the boat by the tumble of phosphorus in their wake.
Claire roused herself, from a gloomy reverie, enough to shift the course of the craft and to head it for the dim-seen sandspit that was backed by the ebony darkness of the mangrove swamp.
Neither of them spoke again, until, with a swishing sound and a soft grate of the light-draught boat, the keel clove its way into the offsh.o.r.e sand and the craft came to coughing halt twenty feet from land.
Claire roused herself, from a gloomy reverie in which she had fallen. Subconsciously, she had accepted the man"s suggestion that they take the short cut. And she had steered thither, forgetful that there was no dock and no suitable landing place for even so light a boat anywhere along the patch of sandy foresh.o.r.e.
Now, fast aground, she saw her absent-minded error. And she jumped to her feet, vainly reversing the engine in an effort to back free of the sand wherein the prow had wedged itself so tightly. But Gavin Brice had already taken charge of the situation.
Stepping overside into the shallow water, he picked up the astounded and vainly protesting girl, bodily, holding her close to him with one arm, while, with his free hand he caught the painter and dragged the boat behind him into water too low for it to float off until the change of tide.
It was the work of a bare ten seconds, from the time he stepped into the shallows until he had brought Claire to the dry sand of the beach.
"Set me down!" she was demanding sternly, for the third time, as she struggled with futile repugnance to slip from his gently firm grip. "I--"
"Certainly," acquiesced Gavin, lowering her to the sand, and steadying her for an instant, until her feet could find their balance. "Only please don"t glare at me as though I had struck you. I didn"t think you"d want to get those little white shoes of yours all wet. So I took the liberty of carrying you. My own shoes, and all the rest of me, are drenched beyond cure anyhow. So another bit of immersion didn"t do me any harm."
He spoke in a careless, matter-of-fact manner, and as he talked he was leading the way up the short beach, toward the northernmost edge of the mangrove swamp. Claire could not well take further offence at a service which apparently had been rendered to her out of the merest common politeness. So, after another icy look at his unconscious back, she followed wordlessly in Brice"s wake.
Now that he was on dry land again and on his way to the house where, at the very least, a stormy scene might be expected, the man"s spirits seemed to rise, almost boyishly. The blood was running again through his veins. The cool night air was drying his soaked clothes. The prospect of possible adventure stirred him.
Blithely he sought the sh.o.r.eward entrance to the hidden path, by the mental notes he had made of its exact whereabouts when Bobby Burns had happened upon its secret. And, in another half-minute he had drawn aside the screen of growing boughs and was standing aside for Claire to enter the path.
"You see," he explained, impersonally, "this path is a very nice little mystery. But, like most mysteries, it is quite simple, when once you know your way in and out of it. I knew where it was when I was a kid, but I couldn"t remember the spot where it came out here. Back yonder, a bit to northward, I came upon Roke, yesterday. I gather he had been visiting your house or Hade"s, by way of the hidden path, and was on his way back to his boat, to return to Roustabout Key, when he happened upon Bobby Burns--and then on me. He must have wondered where I vanished to. For he couldn"t have seen me enter the path. Maybe he mentioned that to Hade, too, this afternoon. If Hade thought I knew the path, he"d think I knew a good deal more .... By the way," he added, to the ostentatiously unlistening Claire, "that"s the second time you"ve stumbled. And both times, you were too far ahead for me to catch you. This is the best part of the path, too--the straightest and the least dark part. If we stumble here, we"ll tumble, farther on, unless you use that flashlight of yours. May I trouble you to--?"
"I forgot," she said stiffly, as she drew the torch from her pocket and pressed its b.u.t.ton.
The dense black of the swamp was split by the light"s white sword, and softer beams from its sharp radiance illumined the pitch-dark gloom for a few yards to either side of the tortuous path. The shadows of the man and the woman were cast in monstrous grotesquely floating shapes behind them as they moved forward.
"This is a cheery rambling-place," commented Gavin. "I wonder if you know its history? I mean, of course, before Standish had it recut and jacked up and bridged, and all that? This path dates back to the house"s first owners--in the Seminole days I was telling you about. They made it as a quick getaway, to the water, in case a war-party of Seminoles should drop in on them from the Everglades. I came through here, once--oh, it must be twenty years ago--I was a school-kid, at the time. An old Seminole chief, with the picturesque Indian name of Aleck, showed it to me. His dad once cut off a party of refugees, somewhere along here, on their way to the sea, and deleted them. Several of the modern Seminoles knew the path, he said. But almost no white men .... Get that queer odor, and that flapping sound over to the left? That was a "gator. And he seems to be fairly big and alive, from the racket he made. Lucky we"re on the path and not in the undergrowth or the water!"
He talked on, as though not in the least concerned as to whether or not she might hear or heed. And, awed by the gruesome stillness and gloom of the place, Claire had not the heart to bid him be silent. Any sound was better, she told herself, than the dead noiselessness of the surrounding forest.
"That"s the tenth mosquito I"ve missed," cheerily resumed Brice, slapping futilely at his own cheek. "In the old days, they used to infest Miami. Now they"re driven back into the swamps. But they seem just as industrious as ever, and every bit as hungry. It must be grand to have such an appet.i.te."
As Claire disregarded this flippancy, he fell silent for a s.p.a.ce, and together they moved on, through the thick of the swamp. Then:
"There"s something I"ve been trying to figure out," he recommenced, speaking more to himself than to Claire. "There must be some sort of sense to all the signaling Hade does when he comes out of this swamp, onto your lawn. If it was only that he doesn"t want casual visitors to know he has come that way, he could just as well go around by the road to the south of the swamp, and come openly to the house, by the front.
And, if things are to be moved to or from the house, they could go by road, at night, as well as through here. There must be something more to it all. And, I have an idea I know what it is .... That enclosed s.p.a.ce, with the high palings and the vines all over it, to the north of your house, I think you said that was a little walled orchard where Standish is experimenting on some "ideal" orange, and that he is so jealous of the secret process that he won"t even let you set foot in it. The funny part of it is:--"
He stopped short. Claire had been walking a few yards in advance, and they had come out on the widest part of the trail, about midway through the woods. To one side of the beaten path was a tiny clearing. This clearing was strewn thick with a tangle of fallen undergrowth, scarce two feet high at most.
And they reached it, the girl gave a little cry of fright and stepped back, her hands reaching blindly toward Gavin, as if for support or comfort. The gesture caused her to drop the flashlight. Its b.u.t.ton was "set forward," so it did not go out as it fell. Instead, it rolled in a semi-circle, casting its ray momentarily in a wide irregular arc as it revolved. Then it came to a stop, against an outcrop of coral, with a force that put its sensitive bulb permanently out of business.
But, during that brief circular roll of the light, Gavin Brice caught the most fleeting glimpse of the sight that had caused Claire to cry out and shrink back against him.
He had seen, for the merest fraction of a second, the upper half of a man"s body--thickset and hairy,--upright, on a level with the ground, as though it had been cut in two and the legless trunk set up there.
By the time Brice"s eyes could focus fairly upon this very impossible sight, the half-body had begun to recede rapidly into the earth, like that of an anglework which a robin pulls halfway out of the lawn and then loses its grip on.
In practically the same instant, the rolling ray of light moved past the amazing spectacle, and less than a second later b.u.mped against the fragment of coral--the b.u.mp which smashed its bulb and left the two wanderers in total darkness for the remainder of their strange pilgrimage.
Claire, momentarily unstrung, caught Gavin by the arm and clung to him. He could feel the shudder of her slender body as it pressed to his side for protection.
"What--what was it?" she whispered, tremblingly. "What was it? Did I really see it? It it couldn"t be! It looked--it looked like a--a body that had been cut in half--and--and--"
"It"s all right," he whispered, rea.s.suringly, pa.s.sing his arm unchidden about her slight waist. "Don"t be frightened, dear!
It wasn"t a man cut in half. It was the upper half of a man who was wiggling down into a tunnel hidden by that smother of underbrush .... And here I was just wondering why people should bother to come all the way through this path, instead of skirting the woods! Answers furnished while you wait!"
Before he spoke, however, he had strained his ears to listen.
And the quick receding and then cessation of the sound of the scrambling body in the tunnel had told him the seen half and the unseen half of the intruder had alike vanished beyond earshot, far under ground.
"But what--?" began the frightened girl.
Then she realized for the first time that she was holding fast to the man whom she had forbidden to speak to her. And she relinquished her tight clasp on his arm.
"Stand where you are, a minute," he directed. "He"s gone.
There"s no danger. He was as afraid of us as you were of him.
He ducked, like a mud-turtle, as soon as he saw we weren"t the people he expected. Stay here, please. And face this way.
That"s the direction we were going in, and we don"t want to get turned around. I"ve got to crawl about on all fours for a while, in the merry quest of the flashlight. I know just about where it stopped."
She could hear him groping amid the looser undergrowth. Then he got to his feet.
"Here it is," he reported. "But it wasn"t worth hunting for.
The bulb"s gone bad. We"ll have to walk the rest of the way by faith. Would you mind, very much, taking my arm? The path"s wide enough for that, from here on. It needn"t imply that you"ve condoned anything I said to you, out yonder in the boat, you know. But it may save you from a stumble. I"m fairly sure-footed. And I"m used to this sort of travel."
Meekly, she obeyed, wondering at her own queer sense of peace under the protection of this man whom she told herself she detested. The wiry strength of the arm, around which her white fingers closed so confidingly, thrilled her. Against her will, she all at once lost her sense of repulsion and the wrath she had been storing against him. Nor, by her very best efforts, could she revive her righteous displeasure.
"Mr. Brice," she said, timidly, as he guided her with swiftly steady step through the dense blackness, "perhaps I had no right to speak as I did. If I did you an injustice--"
"Don"t!" he bade her, cutting short her halting apology. "You mustn"t be sorry for anything. And I"d have bitten out my tongue sooner than tell you the things I had to, if it weren"t that you"d have heard them, soon enough, in an even less palatable form. Only--won"t you please try not to feel quite as much toward me as I felt toward those snakes of Hade"s, this afternoon? You have a right to, of course. But well, it makes me sorry I ever escaped from there."
The sincerity, the boyish contrition in his voice, touched her, unaccountably. And, on impulse, she spoke.
"I asked you to say those things about Milo, to his face," she began, hesitantly. "I did that, because I was angry, because I didn"t believe a word of them, and because I wanted to see you punished for slandering my brother. I--I still don"t believe a single word of them. But I believe you told them to me in good faith, and that you were misinformed by the Federal agents who cooked up the absurd story. And--and I don"t want to see you punished, Mr. Brice," she faltered, unconsciously tightening her clasp on his arm. "Milo is terribly strong.
And his temper is so quick! He might nearly kill you. Take me as far as the end of the path, and then go across the lawn to the road, instead of coming in. Please do!"
"That is sweet of you," said Gavin, after a moment"s pause, wherein his desire to laugh struggled with a far deeper and more potent emotion. "But, if it"s just the same to you, I"d rather--"
"But he is double your size," she protested, "and he is as strong as Samson. Why, Roke, over at the Key, is said to be the only man who ever outwrestled him! And Roke has the strength of a gorilla."