"One of the Caesars," suggested Brice. "They found the lower windows barred and they sent some one up, to see if there was any ingress by an upper window. The porch is easy to climb, with all those vines. So is the whole house, for that matter.
He--"
"It was Rodney Hade!" she insisted, shuddering. "I saw his face with the moonlight on it--"
"And with a few unbecoming scratches on it, too, from the underbrush and from those porch vines," chimed in a suave voice from the top of the stairs. "Milo, next time you bar your house, I suggest you don"t forget and leave the cupola window open. If it was easy for me to climb up there from the veranda roof, it would be just as easy for any of our friends out yonder."
Down the stairs--slowly, nonchalantly,--lounged Rodney Hade.
His cla.s.sic mask of a face was marred by one or two scratches and by a smudge of dirt. But it was as calm and as eternally smiling as ever. In place of his wontedly correct, if garish, form of dress, he was clad in ragged calico shirt and soiled drill trousers whose lower portions were in ribbons. All of which formed a ludicrous contrast to his white buckskin yachting shoes and his corded white silk socks.
Claire and the two men stood staring up at him in utter incredulity. Bobby Burns broke the spell by bounding snarlingly toward the unkempt intruder.
Brice absentmindedly caught the dog"s collar as Bobby streaked past him on his punitive errand.
"Hade!" croaked Standish, his throat sanded with horror.
"""Hade! I--we--we saw you--murdered!"
Hade laughed pleasantly.
"Perhaps the wish was father to the thought?" he hinted, with an indulgent twinkle in his perpetual smile. "I hate mysteries. Here"s an end to this one I was on my way along the path, when a young fellow came whirling around a bend and collided with me. The impact knocked him off his feet. I collared him.
He didn"t want to talk. But," the smile twisting upward at one corner of the mouth in a look which did not add to the beauty of the ascetic face, "I used persuasion. And I found what was going on here. I stripped off my outer clothes, and made him put them on. Then I put my yachting cap on him and pulled it low over his eyes. And I bandaged his mouth with my handkerchief, to gag him. Then I walked him along, ahead of me. I gave the signal. And I stuck my cigarette in his hand and shoved him through the screen of vines. They finished him, poor fool! I had no outer clothes of my own. So I went back and put on his. Then I slipped through that chuckle-headed aggregation out there and--here I am."
As he finished speaking, he turned his icy smile upon Gavin Brice.
"Roke signaled a fruit boat, Mr. Brice," said he, "and came over to where my yacht was lying, to tell me you had gotten loose. That was why I came here, tonight. He seems to think you know more than a man should know and yet stay alive. And, as a rule, he is apt to be right. He--"
"Miss Standish," interposed Gavin, "would you mind very much, going into some other room? This isn"t a pleasant scene for you."
"Stay where you are, for a minute, Claire!" commanded Milo, shaking off a lethargy of wonder which had settled upon him, at sight of his supposedly dead tyrant. "I want you to hear what I"ve got to say. And I want you to endorse it. I"ve had a half hour of freedom. And it"s meant too much to me, to let me go back into the h.e.l.l I"ve lived through, this past few months."
He wheeled about on the newcomer and addressed him, speaking loudly and rapidly in a voice hoa.r.s.e with rage:
"Hade, I"m through! Get that? I"m through! You can foreclose on my home here, and you can get me sent to prison for that check I was insane enough to raise when I had no way out of the hole. But I"m through. It isn"t worth it. Nothing is worth having to cringe and cheat for. I"m through cringing to you.
And I"m through cheating the United States Government. You weren"t content with making me do that. You tried, to-day, to make me a murderer--to make me your partner in the death of the man who had saved my life. When I found that out--when I learned what you could stoop to and could drag me to,--I swore to myself to cut free from you, for all time. Now, go ahead and do your dirtiest to me and to mine. What I said, goes. And it goes for my sister, too. Doesn"t it, dear girl?"
For answer, Claire caught her brother"s big hand in both of hers, and raised it to her lips. A light of happiness transfigured her face. Milo pulled away his hand, bashfully, his eyes misting at her wordless praise for his belatedly manly action.
"Good!" he approved, pa.s.sing his arm about her and drawing her close to him. "I played the cur once, this evening. It"s good to know I"ve had enough pluck to do this one white thing, to help make up for it."
He faced Gavin, head thrown back, giant shoulders squared, eyes alight.
"Mr. Brice," he said, clearly. "Through you, I surrender to the United States Government. I"ll make a signed confession, any time you want it. I"m your prisoner."
Gavin shook his head.
"The confession will be of great service, later," said he, "and, as state"s evidence, it will clear you from any danger of punishment. But you"re not my prisoner. Thanks to your promise of a confession. I have a prisoner, here. But it is not you."
"No?" suavely queried Hade, whose everlasting smile had not changed and whose black eyes remained as serene as ever, through the declaration of rebellion on the part of his satellite. "If Standish is not your prisoner, he"ll be the State of Florida"s prisoner, by this time to-morrow, when I have lodged his raised check with the District Attorney.
Think that over, Standish, my dear friend. Seven years for forgery is not a joyous thing, even in a Florida prison.
Here, in the community where your family"s name has been honored, it will come extra hard. And on Claire, here, too.
Mightn"t it be better to think that over, a minute or so, before announcing your virtuous intent? Mightn"t--"
"Don"t listen to him, Milo!" cried the girl, seizing Standish"s hand again in an agony of appeal, and smiling encouragingly up into his sweating and irresolute face.
"We"ll go through any disgrace, together. You and I. And after it"s all over, I"ll give up my whole life to making you happy, and helping you to get on your feet again."
"There"ll be no need for that, Miss Standish," said Brice.
"Of course, Hade can foreclose his mortgage on your half-brother"s property and call in Standish"s notes,--if he"s in a position to do it, which I don"t think he will be. But, as for the raised check, why, he"s threatening Standish with an empty gun. Hade, if ever you get home again, look in the compartment of your strongbox where you put the red-sealed envelope with Standish"s check in it. The envelope is still there. So are the seals. The check is not. You can verify that, for yourself, later, perhaps. In the meantime, take my word for it."
A cry of delight from Claire--a groan from Standish that carried with it a world of supreme relief--broke in upon Gavin"s recital. Paying no heed to either of his hosts, Brice walked across to the unmovedly smiling Hade, and placed one hand on the latter"s shoulder.
"Mr. Hade," said he, quietly, "I am an officer of the Federal Secret Service. I place you under arrest, on charges of--"
With a hissing sound, like a striking snake"s, Rodney Hade shook off the detaining hand. In the same motion, he leaped backward, drawing from his torn pocket an automatic pistol.
Brice, unarmed, stood for an instant looking into the squat little weapon"s black muzzle, and at the gleaming black eyes in the ever-smiling white face behind it.
He was not afraid. Many times, before, had he faced leveled guns, and, like many another war-veteran, he had outgrown the normal man"s dread of such weapons.
But as he was gathering his strength for a spring at his opponent, trusting that the suddenness and unexpectedness of his onset might shake the other"s aim, Rodney Hade took the situation into his own hands.
Not at random had he made that backward leap. Still covering Gavin with his pistol, he flashed one hand behind him and pressed the switch-b.u.t.ton which controlled the electric lights in the hallway and the adjoining rooms.
Black darkness filled the place. Brice sprang forward through the dark, to grapple with the man. But Hade was nowhere within reach of Brice"s outflung arms. Rodney had slipped, snakelike, to one side, foreseeing just such a move on the part of his foe.
Gavin strained his ears, to note the man"s direction. But Milo Standish was thrashing noisily about in an effort to locate and seize the fugitive. And the racket his huge body made in hitting against furniture and in caroming off the walls and doors, filled the hall with din.
Remembering at last the collie"s presence in that ma.s.s of darkness, Gavin shouted:
"Bobby! Bobby Burns! Take him!"
From somewhere in the gloom, there was a beast-snarl and a scurry of clawed feet on the polished floor. At the same time the front door flew wide.
Silhouetted against the bright moonlight, Brice had a momentary glimpse of Hade, darting out through the doorway, and of a tawny-and-white canine whirlwind flying at the man"s throat.
But Brice"s shout of command had been a fraction of a second too late. Swiftly as had the collie obeyed, Rodney Hade had already reached and silently unbarred the door, by the time the dog got under way. And, as Bobby Burns sprang, the door slammed shut in his face, leaving the collie growling and tearing at the unyielding panels.
Then it was that Claire found the electric switch, with her groping hands, and pressed the b.u.t.ton. The hall and its adjoining rooms were flooded with light, revealing the redoubtable Bobby Burns hurling himself again and again at the closed door.
Gavin shoved the angry dog aside, and opened the portal. He sprang out, the dog beside him. And as they did so, both of them crashed into a veranda couch which Hade, in escaping, had thrust across the closed doorway in antic.i.p.ation of just such a move.
Over went the couch, under the double impetus. By catching at the doorway frame, Gavin barely managed to save himself from a nasty fall. The dog disentangled himself from an avalanche of couch cushions and made furiously for the veranda steps.
But Brice summoned him back. He was not minded to let Bobby risk life from knife-cut or from strong, strangling hands, out there in the perilous shadows beyond the lawn. And he knew the futility of following Hade, himself, among merciless men and through labyrinths with whose" windings Rodney was far more familiar than was he. So, reluctantly, he turned back into the house. A glance over the moonlit lawn revealed no sign of the fugitive.
"I"m sorry," he said to Standish, as he shut the door behind him and patted the fidgetingly excited Bobby Burns on the head. "I may never have such a good chance at him again. And your promise of a confession was the thing that made me arrest him. Your evidence would have been enough to convict him.
And that"s the only thing that could have convicted him or made it worth while to arrest him. He"s worked too skillfully to give us any other hold on him .... I was a thick-witted idiot not to think, sooner, of calling to Bobby. I"d stopped him, once, when he went for Hade, and of course he wouldn"t attack again, right away, without leave. A dog sees in the dark, ten times as well as any man does. Bobby was the solution. And I forgot to use him till it was too late. With a collie raging at his throat, Hade would have had plenty of trouble in getting away, or even in using his gun. Lord, but I"m a dunce!"