Albert Payson Terhune

“ The bay stretched glimmering and phosphorescent 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Simon Cameron forgot his fear and purred loudly, rubbing his snub-nose face against his captor's sleeve.
"Don't feel too much flattered," adjured the girl. "He's like that, with all strangers. As soon as he has known most people a day or two, he'll have nothing to do with them."
"I know," assented Gavin. "That's a trick of Persian cats. They have an inordinate interest in every one except the people they know. Their idea of heaven is to be admired by a million strangers at a time. If I'd had any tobacco-reek on me, Simon Cameron wouldn't have let me hold him as long as this. ”

“ Gavin sat down on the long hall couch, a yard outside the music-room door, beside Claire and the still stupefied Milo. The Jap took up his position back of them, alert and tense as a fox terrier. The three Secret Service men in the front doorway stood at attention, yet evidently wondering at the prisoner's queer freak.
From under the deftly wielded bow, the violin wailed forth into stray chords and phrases, wild, unearthly, discordant. Hade, his face bent over the instrument, swayed in time with its undisciplined rhythm. ”

“ When people get to slinging knives, there's no more sense in handling them with gloves!"
The debonaire laziness was gone from Brice's voice and manner. His face was dead-white. His eyes were blazing. His mouth was a mere gash in the grim face. Even as he spoke, he had thrust the snarling collie away, and was at the beach-comber.
No longer was it a question of boxing or of half-jesting horseplay. The use of the knife had put this fight on a new plane. And, like a wild beast, Gavin Brice was attacking his big foe. But, unlike a wild beast, he kept his head, as he charged. ”

“ The sub-tropic beach comber and the picaroon acquire nasty tricks with knives, and have an uncanny skill at their use.
Brice twisted to one side, with a sharp suddenness that all but threw his back out of joint. The knife whizzed through the still air like a great hornet. The breath of its passage fanned Gavin's averted face, as he wrenched his head out of its path.
The collie had watched the supposed gambols of the two men with keen, but impersonal, interest. But here at last was something he could understand. Instinct teaches practically every dog the sinister nature of a thrown object. ”

“ And at another turn, twilight brightened into clearness. A hundred feet ahead was a thin interlacing of moonflower vines, compact enough, no doubt, to prevent a view of the path to any one standing in the stronger light beyond the grove, but making distinct to Brice a grassy clearing beyond.
Upon this clearing, the brief bright afterglow was shining, for the trim grass and shrubs of an upwardsloping lawn were clearly visible. For some minutes the water and the swamp underfoot had given place to firmer ground, and the character of the trees themselves had changed. ”

“ Along the coast the tawny beaches, the mangrove-swamps, the rich farms, the groves, the towns, the villages, the estates, snow-white Miami, the nation's southernmost big city.
Back of this foreshore, countless miles of waving grass, rooted in water, and with a stray clump of low trees, dotted here and there, the Everglades, a vast marsh that runs north to the inland sea known as Lake Okeechobee. Then the solid sandy ground of the main State.
Along the foreshore, and running inland, miles of sand-barren scattered with gaunt pines and floored with harsh palmetto-scrub. ”

“ Then—in one of the odd revulsions which flash across men at unnaturally high tension—his daze and his terror merged all at once into a blaze of wholesome rage. Nor was his rage directed against Rodney Hade, but against Milo Standish, the man whose life he had saved not twenty hours earlier, and who had repaid that mighty service now by helping to arrange his murder.
At the thought Brice grew hot with fury. He longed to stand face to face with the blackguard who had rewarded a life-gift in such vile fashion. ”

“ The sight of the open door leading to freedom was too much for the youth's stolidity. Twisting suddenly, he drove his yellow teeth deep into the fleshy part of Standish's hand. And, profiting by the momentary slackening of Milo's grasp, he made one wildly scrambling dive across the hall, vaulting over the excited Bobby Burns (and losing a handful of his disreputable trousers to the dog's jaws in the process) and volleying over the threshold with the speed of an express train.
While Standish nursed his sorely-bitten hand, Brice watched the lad's lightning progress across the lawn. ”

“ The three in the hallway crowded into the window-opening, tense, wordless, mesmerized, peering aghast toward the screen of vines which veiled the end of the path.
The full moon, which Brice had glimpsed as it was rising, a minute or so before, now breasted the low tops of the orange trees across the highroad and sent a level shaft of light athwart the lawn. Its clear beams played vividly on the dark forest, revealing the screen of vines at the head of the path, and revealing also three crouching dark figures, close to the ground, at the very edge of the lawn, not six feet from the path head. ”

“ With which amazing outburst, he turned on his heel, ran across the lawn, leaped the low privet hedge which divided it from the coral road, and made off at a swinging pace in the direction of Coconut Grove and Miami.
"What a fool—and what a cur—a man can make of himself," he muttered disgustedly as he strode along, without daring to look back at the wondering little white-clad figure, watching him out of sight around the bend, "when he gets to talking with a woman—a woman with—with eyes like hers! ”

“ Eel-like, Gavin had slithered out of the imprisoning arms. And, as these arms came together once more, in the bear-hug, Brice shot over a burning left-hander to the beach-comber's unguarded jaw. Up flew the big arms in belated parry, but not soon enough to block a deliberately-aimed right swing, which Brice drove whizzing into the jaw's point.
The brace of blows rocked the giant, so that he reeled drunkenly under their dynamic force. The average man must have been floored and even knocked senseless by such well-directed smashes to so vital a spot. ”

“ 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!"
"You're—you're,—splendid!" denied Claire, her eyes soft and shining and her cheeks aglow. "You faced that pistol without one atom of fear. And I could see your muscles tensing for a spring, right at him, before the light went out."
Gavin Brice's heart hammered mightily against his ribs, at her eager praise. ”

“ Other men, at the direction of the same leader who had commanded the advance, trooped toward the house. And, as this leader passed near the magnolia, Roke knew him for Gavin Brice.
From the edge of the veranda, Claire and Standish had witnessed the odd drama. Wordless, stricken dumb with amazement, they gazed upon the fire-illumined scene. Then, toiling across the grass toward them came the little man who had overcome Rodney Hade. On his shoulders, as unconcernedly as if he were bearing a light sack, he carried the inert body of his victim. ”

“ As far as the beach comber was concerned: it was a murder-battle now, with no question of mercy asked or given.
The collie had been viewing this astounding scene in eager interest. Never before, in his short life, had he seen two humans fight. And, even now, he was not at all certain that it was a fight and not some intensely thrilling game. Thus had he watched two boys wrestle and box, in his own puppyhood. And, for venturing to jump into that jolly fracas, he had been scolded and sent back to his kennel. ”

“ Brice thrust his arm in, between this coat and a gardening apron, and jerked forth a silently squirming youth, perhaps eighteen years old, swarthy and undersized.
"Well!" exclaimed Gavin, holding his writhing prize at arm's length, "Simon Cameron must have a depraved taste in playmates, if he tries to choose this one! A regular beach combing conch! Probably a clay-eater, at that."
He spoke the words with seeming carelessness, but really with deliberate intent. For the glum silence of a conch is a hard thing for any outsider to break down. ”

“ As he reached the box its corners had already caught fire from the licking flames below. Heaving up the burning receptacle. Brice looked under it. There lay the rusty key, just visible through the lurid smoke glare. But not ten inches away from the far side of it coiled a moccasin, head poised threateningly as the box grazed it under Gavin's sharp heave.
Stooping, Brice snatched up a great bunch of the flaming paper and flung it on the serpent's shining coils. In practically the same gesture he reached with lightning quickness for the key. ”

“ That was evident. It did not jibe with Gavin's slight experience with trained nurses. Wherefore, it puzzled him.
But, perplexity seemed to hurt his brain as much as did the effort to piece together the shattered fragments of memory. So he forbore to follow that train of thought. And, again, he strove to banish mentality and to sink back into the merciful senselessness from which youth and an iron-and-whalebone constitution were fighting to rouse him.
But, do what he would to prevent it, consciousness was creeping more and more in upon him. ”

“ The cars' occupants listened as best they could—through the whirr of sea-planes and the soft hum of Sabbath traffic and the dry slither of a myriad grating palm-fronds in the trade-wind's wake—to the preacher's words.
The space of shaded grass, between lane and hotel-grounds and bandstand, was starred by white-clad children, and by men who sprawled drowsily upon the springy turf, their straw hats tilted above their eyes. The time was mid-February. The thermometers on the Royal Palm veranda registered seventy-three. No rain had fallen in weeks to mar the weather's perfection. ”

“ And Gavin Brice was carrying it to the conclusion, with all the sinew and science of his trained arms.
The knifer's strength was gorilla-like. But that strength, at every second, was rendered more and more futile. The man must have realized it. For, all at once, he ceased his battery of kicks and blows, and struggled frantically to tear free.
Each plunging motion merely intensified the pain and power of the relentless throat-grip that pinioned him. And, strangling and panic-struck, he became wilder in his fruitless efforts to wrench loose. ”

“ Unless the grip could be broken, there was no earthly help for its victim.
The beach comber, in agony of straining spine and throat, thrashed wildly to free himself. He strove to batter the tenacious little man to senselessness. But he could hit nothing but the sloping back, or aim clumsily cramped hooks for the top and sides of Gavin's protected head.
Meantime, the pressure was increasing, with a coldly scientific precision. Human nature could not endure it. In his extremity, the beach comber attempted the same ruse that had been so successful for Brice. ”

“ For it is no easy or cheap task to build a sure path through such a swamp. From a distance, forests of mangrove seemed to be massed on rising ground, and to group themselves about the sides and the crests of knolls. As a matter of fact, the presence of a mangrove forest is a sign of the very lowest ground, ground covered for the most part by salt tidewater. The lowest pine barren is higher than the loftiest mangrove wilderness.
Gavin Brice's aspect of lassitude dropped from him like an outworn garment. ”

“ Now, through the mists of memory, he recalled snarls and the bruising contact of a furry body, during the battle he so, dimly remembered, and that once his foe had cried, out, as though at the impact of rending teeth.
Yes, Bobby Burns, presumably, had learned a lesson since his interested but impersonal surveillance of Gavin's bout with the beach comber, earlier in the afternoon. He had begun to learn that when grown men come to a clinch, it is not mere play. ”

“ Any more than that chap, to-night, was a panhandler. My idea of acting as a bodyguard for you isn't bad. Think it over. You seem to need one."
"Why do you say that?" demanded Milo, in one of his recurrent flashes of suspicion.
"Because," said Gavin, "we're living in the twentieth century and in real life, not in the dark ages and in a dime novel. Nowadays, a man doesn't risk capital punishment, lightly, for the fun of springing on a total stranger, in the dark, with a razor-edge knife. Mr. Standish, no man does a thing like that to a stranger, or without some mighty motive. ”