"I just dropped in to say "Howdy" to Mr. Standish. n.o.body was around. So I made bold to pick up the fiddle and have a little spiel. I ain"t done any harm, and there"s nothing you-all can hold me on."
For ten seconds n.o.body answered. n.o.body spoke or moved.
Then, Gavin Brice"s face went crimson with sudden fury at his own outwitting. He recalled the musical afternoon at Roustabout Key which his presence had interrupted, and Roke"s fanatical devotion to Hade.
"I begin to understand," he said, his voice m.u.f.fled in an attempt to subdue his anger. "You and Hade were fond of the violin, eh? And for some reason or other you long ago worked up a series of signals on it, as the mind-reader with the guitar-accompanist used to do in the vaudeville shows. Those discordant phrases he started off with were your signal to come to the rescue. And you came. But how did you come? And how did he go? Both by the same way, of course. But--there isn"t even a chimney-piece in the room."
Once more, Roke grinned broadly. "I ain"t seen hide nor hair of Mr. Hade, not since this afternoon," said he. "I been spendin" the evenin" over to Landon"s. Landon is a tryin" to sell me his farm. Says the soil on it is so rich that he ships carloads of it up North, to use for fertilizer. Says--"
"Sato!" broke in Brice. "Can you make him talk? Miss Standish, will you please go somewhere else for five minutes?
This is not going to be a pretty sight."
As the girl turned, obediently yet reluctantly, from the room, the j.a.p, with a smile of perfect bliss on his yellow face, advanced toward Roke.
The big man wheeled, contemptuously, upon him. Sato sprang at him. With a hammerlike fist, Roke smote at the oncoming pigmy. The arm struck, to its full length. But it did not reach its mark, nor return to the striker"s side. By a queerly crablike shift of his wiry body, the j.a.p had eluded the blow, and had fastened upon the arm, above the elbow and at the wrist.
A cross-pull wrench of the j.a.p"s body brought a howl of pain from Roke and sent him floundering helplessly to his knees, while the merest leverage pressure from his conqueror held him there. But the j.a.p was doing more. The giant"s arm was bending backward and sideways at an impossible angle. Nor could its owner make a move to avert the growing unbearable torture. It was one of the simplest, yet one of the most effective and agonizing, holds in all jiujutsu.
Thirty seconds of it, and Roke"s bull-like endurance went to pieces under the strain. Raucously and blubberingly he screeched for mercy. The j.a.p continued happily to exert the cross-pull pressure.
"Will you speak up?" queried Brice, sickened at the sight, but steeling himself with the knowledge of the captive"s crimes and of the vast amount at stake.
Roke rolled his eyes horribly, grinding his yellowed teeth together to check his own cries. Then, sobbingly, he blurted:
"Yes! Lemme loose!"
"Not till you tell," refused Gavin. "Quick, now!"
"Second panel from left-hand window," moaned the stricken and anguished Roke. "Push beading up and then to right. He"s--he"s safe away, by now, anyway," he blubbered, in self-justification of the confession which agony had wrung from him. "All you"ll get is the--the--"
And, the pain having eaten into his very brain, he yelled incoherently.
Ten minutes later, Milo Standish sought out his sister, in the upper room whither she had fled, in fear, to escape from the racket of Roke"s outcries.
"Listen!" he jabbered boyishly, in utter excitement. "Brice made him tell how Rodney got out! How d"you s"pose? One of the old panels, in the music room, slides back, and there"s a flight of stone steps down to a cellar that"s right alongside our regular cellar, with only a six inch cement-and-lath wall between. It leads out, to the tunnel. Right at that turn where the old-time shoring is. The shoring hides a little door. And we never dared move the props because we thought it held up the tunnel-roof. It"s all part of the old Indian-shelter stunts that this house"s builders were so daft about, a hundred years ago. Hade must have blundered on it or studied it out, one of those times when he used to go poking around in the tunnel, all by himself. And--"
"Did Mr. Brice find him?" interposed Claire.
"Not he!" said Milo, less buoyantly. "Rodney had a good ten minutes start of us. And with a start like that, they"ll never lay hands on him again. He"s got too much cleverness and he knows too many good hiding places. But Brice found the next best thing. You"d never guess! Rodney"s secret cache for the treasure was that walled-up cellar. It"s half full of canvas bags. Right under our feet, mind you, and we never knew a thing about it. I supposed he was shipping it North in some way. Roke says that Rodney kept it there because, when he got it all, he was going to foreclose and kick us out, and then dispose of it at his leisure.
The swine!"
"Oh!"
"The crypt seems to have been a part of our own cellar till it was walled off. It--"
"But how in the world did Roke?"
"He was with the crew. Rodney and he went together to the yacht for them. The Secret Service men didn"t get him, in the round-up. He crept as close to the house as he dared. And he heard Rodney sounding the signal alphabet they had worked up, on the violin. He got into the tunnel and so to the cellar, and then sneaked up, and took Rodney"s place at fiddling. He seems to have been as willing to sacrifice himself for his master as any dog would have been. Or else he counted on Brice"s not having any evidence to hold him on.
"By the way, do you remember that conch, Davy, over at Roustabout Key? Brice says he"s a Secret Service man. He and Brice used to fish together, off the keys, when they were boys. Davy volunteered for the war. And Brice made good use of him, over there, and got him into the Secret Service when they came back. It"s all so queer--so--!"
"Is Mr. Brice still downstairs?" interrupted Claire, her eyes straying involuntarily toward the door of the room.
"No. He had to go. He left his good-byes for you. His work here is done. And he has to start for Washington on the 2 A.M. train from Miami. By the way, the best part of it all is that he says a fugitive from justice can"t bring legal proceedings in a civil court. So Rodney can never foreclose on us or take up those notes of mine. Lord, but that chap, Brice, is a wonder!"
Vital as was the news about the notes and the mortgage, Claire scarce heard it. In, her ears, and through the brain and heart of her, rang drearily the words:
"He had to go. He left his good-byes for you. His work here is done."
His work was done! Yes. But was that to be all? Had the light in his eyes and the vibrant tremor in his voice as he talked with her--had these been part of his "work," too? Was it all to end, like this,--and before it had begun?
To her own surprise and to her brother"s greater astonishment, the usually self-contained Claire Standish burst into a tempest of weeping.
"Poor, poor little girl!" soothed Milo. "It"s all been too much for you! No one could have stood up under such a strain.
I"ll tell you what we"re going to do: We"re going to Miami, for a week or two, and have a jolly time and make you try to forget all this mystery and excitement. We"ll go to-morrow morning, if you say so."
The Miami season was at its climax. The half-moon driveway outside the front entrance to the Royal Palm Hotel was crowded thick with waiting motor cars, whose occupants were at the hotel"s semi-weekly dance. On the brightlit front veranda men in white and in dinner-clothes and women in every hue of evening dress were pa.s.sing to and fro. Elderly folk, sitting in deep porch chairs, watched through the long windows the gayly-moving dancers in the ballroom. Out through wide-open doors and windows pulsed the rhythmic music.
Above hung the great white stars in the blue-black Southern skies. The bay stretched glimmering and phosph.o.r.escent away from the palm-girt hotel gardens. The trade-winds set the myriad dry palm-fronds to rustling like the downpour of summer rain.
Up the steps from the gardens drifted promenaders and dancers, in groups or in twos and threes. Then, up the stairway moved a slender, white-clad figure, alone.
Claire Standish had sought to do as her brother had wished, and to forget, in the carefree life of the White City, the happenings she had been through. Dutifully she had come to Miami with him. Dutifully, for the past three days, she had joined him in such gayeties as he had suggested. Dutifully, to-night, she had come with him to this dance. And all the time her heart had been as heavy as lead.
Now, getting rid of her partner on some pretext, she had gone out into the softly illumined gardens to be alone with the yearning and heartache she could not shake off. Then, fearing lest Milo, or some other of the men she knew, might come in search of her and wonder at her desire to mope alone under the stars, she had turned back to the hotel.
As she mounted the last stair to the veranda, a man in dinner clothes stepped forward from one of the porch"s great white pillars, and advanced to meet her.
"There"s a corner table at the Cafe de la Paix, in Paris," he greeted her, striving to control his voice and to speak lightly, "that every one on earth must pa.s.s by, sooner or later. The front veranda of the Royal Palm is like that.
Soon or late, everybody crosses it. When I got back this afternoon, I heard you had left home and that you were somewhere in Miami. I couldn"t find you. So I came here--and waited."
Claire had halted, at first sound of Gavin Brice"s pleasantly slow voice, and she stood facing him, wide-eyed and pale, her breath failing.
"I had to go to Washington to make my report," said he, speaking low and fast. "I came back to you by the first train I could catch. Didn"t you know I would?"
"Yes," she breathed, her gaze still lost in his. "Yes. I--I knew."
And now she realized she had known, even while she had told herself she would never see him again.
"Come!" he said, gently, holding out his hand to her.
Unashamed, under the battery of a hundred curious eyes, she clasped the proffered hand. And, together, they turned back toward the sheltering dimness of the gardens.
THE END