Brice had not gauged his insults in vain. Instantly, the captive"s head twisted, like that of a pinioned pit terrier, in a frenzied effort to drive his teeth into the hand or arm of his captor. Failing this, he spluttered into rapid-fire speech.
"Ah"m not a conch!" he rasped, his voice sounding as rusty as an unused hinge. "Ah"m a Caesar, yo" dirty Yank! Tuhn me loose, yo"! Ah ain"t hurt nuthin"."
"How did you get in here?" bellowed Milo, advancing threateningly on the youth, and swinging aloft one of his hamlike fists.
The intruder stiffened into silence and stolid rigidity.
Unflinchingly, he eyed the oncoming giant. Brice motioned Standish back.
"No use," said he. "I know the breed. They"ve been kicked and beaten and hammered about, till a licking has no terrors for them. This sweet soul will stay in the silences, till--"
Again, he broke off speaking. And again on account of Simon Cameron. The cat, recovering from the indignity of being brushed from in front of the opening door, had returned to his former post of watching, and now stood, tail erect and back arched, staring up at the prisoner out of huge round green eyes. The sight of a stranger had its wonted lure for the Persian.
The lad"s impotently roving glance fell upon Simon Cameron.
And into his sullen face leaped stark terror. At sight of it, Gavin Brice hit on a new idea for wringing speech from the captive.
He knew that the grossly ignorant wreckers and fisherfolk of the keys had never set eyes on such an object as this, nor had so much as heard of Persian cats" existence. The few cats they had seen were of course of the alley-variety, lean and of short and mangy coat. Simon Cameron"s halo of wide-fluffing silver-gray fur gave him the appearance of being double his real size. His plumed cheeks and ta.s.seled ears and dished profile and, above all, the weirdly staring green eyes--all combined to present a truly frightful appearance to a youth so unsophisticated as this and to any one as superst.i.tious and as fearful of all unknown things as were the conchs in general.
"Standish," said Brice, "just take my place for a minute as holder of this conch"s very ragged shirt collar. So! Now then:"
He stepped back, and picked up Simon Cameron in his arms. The cat did not resent the familiarity, Gavin still being enough of a stranger in the house to be of interest to the Persian.
But the round green eyes still remained fixed with unwinking intensity upon the newer and thus more interesting arrival.
Which is the way of a Persian cat.
Brice held Simon Cameron gingerly, almost respectfully, standing so the huge eyes were able to gaze unimpeded at the gaping and shaking boy. Then, speaking very slowly, in a deep and reverent voice, he intoned:
"Devil, look mighty close at that conch, yonder. Watch him, so"s you"ll always remember him! Put the voodoo on him, Devil. Haunt him waking, haunt him sleeping. Haunt him eating, haunt him drinking. Haunt him standing and sitting, haunt him lying and kneeling. Rot his bones and his flesh and--"
A howl of panic terror from the youth interrupted the solemn incantation. The prisoner slumped to his knees in Standish"s grasp, weeping and jabbering for mercy. Brice saw the time was ripe for speech and that the captive"s stolid nerve was gone. Turning on him, he said, sternly:
"If you"ll speak up and answer us, truthfully, I"ll make this ha"nt take off the curse. But if you lie, in one word, he"ll know it and he"ll tell me, and--and then I"ll turn him loose on you. It"s your one chance. Want it?"
The youth fairly gabbled his eagerness to a.s.sent.
"Good!" said Brice, still holding Simon Cameron, lest the supposed devil spoil everything by rubbing against the prisoner"s legs and purring. "First of all:--how did you get in here?"
The boy gulped. Gavin bent his own head toward the cat and seemed about to resume his incantation. With a galvanic jump, the youth made answer:
"Came by the path. Watched till the dawg run out in the road to bark at suthin". This man," with a jerk of his head toward his captor, "this man went to the road after him. I cut across the gra.s.s, yonder, and got in. They come back. I hid me in there."
"H"m! Why didn"t you come by way of the tunnel, like the other Caesars?"
"Pop tol me not to. Sent me ahead. Said mebbe they moughtn"t git in here if the doors was locked early. Tol" me to hide me in the house an" let "em in, late, ef they-all couldn"t git in no earlier, or ef they couldn"t cotch one of the two cusses outside the house."
"Good strategy!" approved Brice. "That explains why they haven"t rushed us, Standish. They came here in force, and most likely (if they"ve gotten out of the enclosure, yet) they"ve surrounded the house, waiting for you or Hade to come in or go out. If that doesn"t work, they plan to wait till you"re asleep, and then get in, by this gallant youngster"s help, and cut your throat at their leisure and loot the house and take a good leisurely hunt for the treasure. It calls for more sense than I thought they had .... How did they find the tunnel?" he continued, to the prisoner.
"They been a-huntin" fer it, nigh onto one-half of a year,"
sulkily returned the boy. "Pop done found it, yest"dy.
Stepped into it, he did, a walkin" past."
"The rumor of that tunnel has been hereabout for over a century," explained Brice, to the Standishes. "Just as the treasure-rumors have. I heard of it when I was a kid. The Caesars must have heard it, a thousand times. But, till this game started, there was no impetus to look for it, of course.
The tunnel is supposed to have been dug just after that Seminole warparty cut off the refugees in the path. By the way, Miss Standish, I didn"t mention it while we were still there, but the mangrove-swamp is supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of those killed settlers."
Brother and sister glanced at each other, almost in guilt, as it seemed to the observing Brice. And Claire said, shortly:
"I know. Every one around here has heard it. Some of the negroes and even some of the more ignorant crackers declare they have heard screams from the swamp on dark nights and that white figures have been seen flitting--"
"So?" queried Brice. "Back in the boat, you were starting to tell me how you sat on the veranda, one night, and heard a cry in the swamp and then saw a white figure emerge from the path.
Yes? I have a notion that that white figure was responsible for the cry, and that your brother and Rodney Hade were responsible for both. Wasn"t that a trick to scare off any chance onlookers, when some of the treasure was to be brought here?"
"Yes," admitted Claire, shamefacedly, and she added: "Milo hadn"t told me anything about it. And Rodney thought I was at a dance at the Royal Palm Hotel, that evening. I had expected to go, but I had a headache. When the cry and the white form frightened me so, Milo had to tell me what they both meant.
That was how I found out, first, that they--"
"Claire!" cried Standish in alarmed rebuke.
"It"s all right, Standish," said Gavin. "I know all about it.
A good deal more than she does. And none of it from her, either. We"ll come to that, later. Now for the prisoner."
Turning to the glumly scowling youth, he resumed:
"How many of them are there in this merry little midnight murder party?"
"I dunno," grunted the boy.
"Devil, is that true?" gravely asked Gavin, bending again toward Simon Cameron.
"Six!" babbled the lad, eagerly. "Pop and--"
"Never mind giving me a census of them," said Brice. "It wouldn"t do me any good. I"ve left my copies of "Who"s Who"
and Burke"s Peerage at home. And they figured Mr. Standish and Mr. Hade would both be here, to-night?"
"Most nights t"other one comes," said the boy. "I laid out yonder and heern him, one night. Whistles like he"s a mocking-bird, when he gits nigh here. I told Pop an" them about that. They--"
"By the way," asked Gavin, "when your Pop came back from finding the tunnel, last night, was he in pretty bad shape?
Hey? Was he?"
"He were," responded the captive, after another scared look at Simon Cameron. "He done fell into the tunnel, arter he step down it. An" he bust hisself up, suthin" fierce, round the haid an" the th"oat. He--"
"I see," agreed Brice.
Then, to Standish:
"I think we"ve got about all out of the charming child that we can expect to. Suppose we throw him out?"
"Throw him out?" echoed Milo, incredulously. "Do you mean, set him free? Why, man he"d--"
"That"s exactly what I mean," said Gavin. "I agree with Caesar--Julius Caesar, not the pirate. Caesar used to say that it was a mistake to hold prisoners. They must be fed and guarded and they can do incalculable mischief. We"ve turned this prisoner inside out. We"ve learned from him that six men are lurking somewhere outside, on the chance that you or Rodney Hade may come out or come in, so that they can cut you both off, comfortably, out there in the dark, and carry on their treasure-hunt here. Failing that, they plan to get in here, when you"re asleep. All this lad can tell them is that you are on your guard, and that there are enough of us to hold the house against any possible rush. He can also tell them,"
pursued Gavin, dropping back into his slowly solemn diction, "about this devil--this ha"nt--that serves us, and of the curse--the voodoo--he can put on them all if they try to harm us. We"ll let him go. He was sent on by the path because he went some time ahead of the rest, and he didn"t know the secret of the tunnel. In fact, none of them could have known just where it ended here. But they"ll know by now. He can join them, if they"re picketing the house. And he can tell them what he knows."