_ CHAPTER IV. THE STRANGER FROM NOWHERE
For a moment, Brice stared agape and helplessly flustered, as Standish proceeded to thrust his meerschaum's rich-hued bowl into the tobacco jar. Then, apparently galvanized into action by the approach of Claire from the stairway, he stepped rapidly forward to meet her.
As though his shaky powers were not equal to the task he reeled, lurched with all his might against the unprepared Standish and, to regain his balance, took two plunging steps forward.
He had struck Milo at such an angle as to rap the latter's right elbow with a numbing force that sent the pipe flying half way across the hall. The tobacco jar must have gone too, had not one of Gavin's outflung hands caught it in mid-air, as a quarterback might catch a football.
Unable to recover balance and to check his own momentum. Brice scrambled awkwardly forward. One stamping heel landed full on the fallen meerschaum, flattening and crumbling the beautiful pipe into a smear of shapeless clay-fragments.
At the sight. Milo Standish swore loudly and came charging forward in a belated hope of saving his beloved pipe from destruction. The purchase of that meerschaum had been a joy to Milo. Its coloring had been a long and careful process. And now, this bungler had smashed it into nothingness!
Down on hands and knees went the big man, fumbling at the fragments. Claire, knowing how her brother valued the pipe, ran to his side in eager sympathy.
Gavin Brice came to a sliding standstill against a heavy hall-table. On this he leaned heavily for a moment or so above the tobacco jar he had so luckily salvaged from the wreckage. His back to the preoccupied couple he flashed his sensitive fingers into the jar, collecting and thrusting into his pockets the watch and the thick roll of bills and as much of the small change as his fast-groping fingertips could locate.
By the time Milo looked up in impotent wrath from his inspection of the ruined meerschaum. Gavin had turned toward him and was babbling a torrent of apology for his own awkwardness. Milo was glumly silent as the contrite words beat about his ears. But Claire, shamed by her brother's ungraciousness, spoke up courteously to relieve the visitor's dire embarrassment.
"Please don't be unhappy about it. Mr. Brice," she begged. "It was just an accident. It couldn't be helped. I'm sure my brother--"
"But--" stammered Gavin.
"Oh, it's all right!" grumbled Milo. scooping up the handful of crushed meerschaum. "Let it go at that. I--"
Again. the mocking bird notes fluted forth through the early evening silences, the melody coming as before from the direction of the grove's hidden path. Milo stopped short in his sulky speech. Brother and sister exchanged a swift glance. Then Standish got to his feet and approached Gavin.
"Here we've kept you up and around when you're still too weak to move without help!" he said in very badly done geniality. "Take my arm and I'll help you upstairs. Your room's all ready for you. If you'd rather I can carry you. How about it?"
But a perverse imp of mischief entered Gavin Brice's aching head.
"I'm all right now," he protested. "I feel fifty per cent better. I'd much rather stay down here with you and Miss Standish for a while, if you don't mind. My nerves are a bit jumpy from that crack over the skull, and I'd like them to quiet down before I go to bed."
Again. he was aware of that look of covert anxiety. between sister and brother. Claire's big eyes strayed involuntarily toward the front door. And her lips parted for some word of urgence. But before she could speak. Milo laughed loudly and caught Gavin by the arm.
"You've got pluck, Brice!" he cried admiringly. "You're ashamed to give up and go to bed. But you're going just the same. You're going to get a good night's rest. I don't intend to have you fall sick. from that tap I gave you with the wrench. Come on! I'll bring you some fresh dressings for your head by the time you're undressed."
As he talked he passed one huge arm around Gavin and carried, rather than led, him to the stairway.
"Good night, Mr. Brice," called Claire from near the doorway. "I do hope your head will be ever so much better in the morning. If you want anything in the night. there's a call-bell I've put beside your bed."
Once more a dizzy weakness seemed to have overcome Gavin. For after a single attempt at resistance. he swayed and hung heavy on Standish's supporting arm. He made shift to mumble a dazed good night to Claire. Then he suffered Milo to support him up the stairs and along the wide upper hall to the open doorway of a bedroom.
Even at the threshold he seemed too uncertain of his footing to cross the soft-lit room alone. And Milo supported him to the bed. Gavin slumped heavily upon the side of it, his aching head in his hands. Then, as if with much effort, he lay down, burying his face in the pillow.
Milo had been watching him with growing impatience to be gone. Now he said cheerily:
"That's all right, old chap! Lie still for a while. I'll be up in a few minutes to help you undress."
Standish was hurrying from the room and closing the door behind him. even as he spoke. With the last word the door shut and Gavin could hear the big man's footsteps hastening along the upper hall toward the stair-head.
Brice gave him a bare thirty seconds' start. Then, rising with strange energy for so dazed and broken an invalid, he left the room and followed him toward the head of the stairs. His light footfall was soundless on the matting as he went.
He reached the top of the stairs just as Milo arrived at the bottom. Claire was standing in the veranda doorway shading her eyes and peering out into the darkness. But at sound of her brother's advancing tread she turned and ran back to him, meeting him as he reached the bottom of the stair and clasping both hands anxiously about his big forearm.
She seemed about to break out in excited. even frightened speech, when chancing to raise her eyes. she saw Gavin Brice calmly descending from the hall above. At sight of him her eyes dilated. Milo had begun to speak. She put one hand warningly across her brother's bearded mouth. At the same moment Gavin, halting midway on the stairs, said with deprecatory meekness:
"You didn't tell me what time to be ready for breakfast. I'd hate to be late and--"
He got no further. Nor did he seek to. His ears had been straining to make certain of the ever approaching sound of footsteps across the lawn. Now an impatient tread echoed on the veranda, and a man's figure blocked the doorway.
The newcomer was slender, graceful, with the form of an athletic boy rather than of a mature man. He was pallid and black eyed. His face had a classic beauty which, on second glance, was marred by an almost snakelike aspect of the small black eyes and a sinister smile which seemed to hover eternally around the thin lips. His whole bearing suggested something serpentine in its grace and a smoothly half-jesting deadliness.
So much the first glimpse told Brice as he stood thereon the stairs and surveyed the doorway. The second look showed him the man was clad in a strikingly ornate yachting costume. Gavin's mind, ever taught to dissect trifles, noted that in spite of his yachtsman-garb the stranger's face was untanned, and that his long slender hands with their supersensitive fingers were as white and well-cared-for as a woman's.
Yachting, in Florida waters at any time of year, means either a thick coat of tan or an exaggerated sunburn. This yachtsman had neither.
Scarce taller than a lad of fifteen, yet his slender figure was sinuous in its every line, and its grace betokened much wiry strength. His face was that of a man in the early thirties,--all but his eyes. They looked as old as the Sphinx's.
He stood for an instant peering into the room, trying to focus his night-accustomed eyes to the light. Evidently the first objects he saw clearly were Milo and Claire standing with their backs to him as they stared upward in blank dismay at the guest they had thought safely disposed of for the night.
"Well?" queried the man at the door, and at sound of his silken. bantering voice. brother and sister spun about in surprise. to face him.
"Well?" he repeated, and now there was a touch of cold rebuke in the silken tones. "Is this the way you keep a lookout for the signals? I might very well have walked in on a convention of half of Dade County, for all the guard that was kept. I compliment--"
And now he broke off short in his sneering reproof, as his eyes chanced upon Gavin half way down the stairs.
For a second or more no one spoke or moved. Claire and her brother had an absurdly shamefaced appearance of two bad children caught in mischief by a stern and much feared teacher. Into the black depths of the stranger's eyes flickered a sudden glint like that of a striking rattlesnake's. But at once his face was a slightly-smiling mask once more. And Gavin was left doubting whether or not he had really seen that momentary gleam of murder behind the smiling eyes. It was Claire who first recovered herself.
"Good evening. Rodney," she said. with a graciousness which all-but hid her evident nerve strain. "You stole in on us so suddenly you startled me. Mr. Brice, this is Mr. Rodney Hade."
As Gavin bowed civilly and as Hade returned the salutation with his eternal smile. Milo Standish came sufficiently out of his own shock of astonishment to follow his sister's mode of greeting the new visitor. With the same forced joviality he had used in coercing Brice to go to bed, he sauntered over to the smiling Hade, exclaiming:
"Why, hello, old man! Where did you blow in from? You must have come across from your house on foot. I didn't hear the car .... I want you to know Brice here. I was tackled by a holdup man outside yonder a while ago. And he'd have gotten me too, if Brice hadn't sailed into him. In the scrimmage I made a fool of myself as usual, and slugged the wrong man with a monkey wrench. Poor Brice's reward for saving my life. was a broken head. He's staying the night with us. He--"
The big man had spoken glibly, but with a nervousness which, more and more, cropped out through his noisy joviality. Now, under the coldly unwavering smile of Hade's snakelike eyes, he stammered, and his booming voice trailed away to a mumble. Again, Claire sought to mend the rickety situation. But now Gavin Brice forestalled her. Passing one hand over his bandaged forehead, he said:
"If you'll forgive me having butted in. again. I'll go up to my room. I'm pretty shaky, you see. I just wanted to know what time breakfast is to be, and if I can borrow one of your brother's razors in the morning."
"Breakfast is at seven o'clock," answered Claire. "That's a barbarously early hour, I suppose for a New Yorker like you. But down here from six to ten is the glorious part of the day. Besides, we're farmers you know. Don't bother to try to wake so early, please. I'll have your breakfast sent up to you. Good night."
"I'll look in on you before I go to bed," called Milo. after him as he started up the stairs for the second time. "And I'll see that shaving things are left in your bathroom. Good night."
Hade said nothing, but continued to pierce the unbidden guest with those gimlet-like smiling black eyes of his. His face was expressionless. Gavin returned to the upper hall and walked with needless heaviness toward the room assigned to him. Reaching its door he opened and then shut it loudly, himself remaining in the hallway. Scarce had the door slammed when he heard. from below Rodney Hade's voice raised in the sharp question:
"What does this mean? You've dared to--?"
"What the blazes else could I do?" blustered Milo--though under the bluster ran a thread of placating timidity. "He saved my life, didn't he? I was tackled by--"
"For one thing," suggested Hade. "you could have hit a little harder with the wrench. If a blow is worth hitting at all it's worth hitting to kill. You have the strength of an elephant, and the nerve of a sheep."
"Rodney!" protested Claire, indignantly. "He--"
"I've seen his face. somewhere," went on Hade unheeding. "I could swear to that. I can't place it. yet. But I shall. Meantime get rid of him. And now I'll hear about this attack on you .... Come out on the veranda. This hall reeks of iodine and liniment and all such stuff. It smells like a hospital ward Come outside."
Despite the unvarying sweet smoothness of his diction. he spoke as if giving orders to a servant. But apparently neither of the two Standishes resented his dictation. For Brice could hear them follow Hade out of the house. And from the veranda presently came the booming murmur of Standish's voice in a recital of some kind.
Gavin reopened his bedroom door and entered. Shutting the door softly behind him, he made a brief mental inventory of the room, then undressed and got into bed. Ten minutes later Miles Standish came into the room. carrying fresh dressings and a bottle of lotion. Gavin roused himself from a half-doze and was duly grateful for the dexterous applying of the new bandages to his bruised scalp.
"You work like a surgeon," he told Milo.
"Thanks," returned Standish drily, making no other comment on the praise.
His task accomplished Standish bade his guest a curt good night and left the room. A minute later Gavin got up and stole to the door to verify a faint sound he fancied he had heard. And he found he had been correct in his guess. For the door was locked from the outside.
Brice crept to the windows. The room was in darkness, and, unseen, he could look out on the darkness of the night. As he looked a faint reddish spot of fire appeared in the gloom, just at the beginning of the lawn. Some one, cigar in mouth, was evidently keeping a watch on his room's windows. Gavin smiled to himself, and went back to bed.
"Door locked, windows guarded," he reflected, amusedly. "I owe that to Mr. Hade's orders. Seen me before, has he? I'll bet my year's income he'll never remember where or when or how. At that he's clever even to think he's seen me. It looks as if I had let myself in for a wakeful time down here, doesn't it? But I'm getting the tangled ends all in my hands,--as fast as I had any right to hope. That rap on the skull was a godsend. He can't refuse me a job after my fight for him. No one could. I--oh, if it wasn't for the girl this would be great! What can a girl, with eyes like hers, be doing in a crowd like this?
"I'd--I'd have been willing to swear she was--was--one of the women whom God made. And now--! Still, if a woman lets herself in for this kind of thing she can't avoid paying the bill. Only--if I can save her without-- Oh, I'm turning into a mushy fool in my old age! ... And she sobbed when she thought I was killed! ... I've got to get a real night's rest if I want to have my wits about me to-morrow."
He stretched himself out luxuriously in the cool bed, and in less than five minutes he was sleeping as sweetly and as deeply as a child. Long experience in the European trenches and elsewhere had taught him the rare gift of slumbering at will, a gift which had done much toward keeping his nerves and his faculties in perfect condition. For sleep is the keynote to more than mankind realizes.
The sun had risen when Gavin Brice awoke. Apart from stiffness and a very sore head his inured system was little the worse for the evening's misadventures. A cold shower and a rubdown and a shave in the adjoining bathroom. cleared away the last mists from his brain.
He dressed quickly, glanced at his watch and saw the hour was not quite seven. Then he faced his bedroom door and hesitated.
"If he's a born idiot," he mused. "it's still locked. If he isn't it's unlocked and the key has been taken away. I've made noise enough while I was dressing."
He turned the knob. The door opened readily. The key was gone. In the hallway outside the room and staring up at him from widely shallow green eyes. sat Simon Cameron, the big Persian cat.
"That's a Persian all over. Simon my friend," said Brice, stooping down to scratch the cat's furry head in greeting. "A Persian will sit for hours in front of any door that's got a stranger behind it. And he'll show more flattering affection for a stranger than for any one he's known all his life. Isn't that true. Simon?"
By way of response. the big cat rubbed himself luxuriously against the man's shins, purring loudly. Then, at a single lithe spring he was on Gavin's shoulder, making queer little whistling noises and rubbing his head lovingly against Brice's cheek. Gavin made his way downstairs the cat still clinging to his shoulder, fanning his face with a swishing gray foxlike tail, digging curved claws back and forth into the cloth of his shabby coat, and purring like a distant railroad train.
Only when they reached the lower hallway did the cat jump from his shoulder and with a flying leap land on the top of a nearby bookcase. There, luxuriously, Simon Cameron stretched himself out in a shaft of sunlight, and prepared for a nap.
Brice went on to the veranda. On the lawn, scarce fifty feet away, Claire was gathering flowers for the breakfast table. Very sweet and dainty was she in the flood of morning sunshine, her white dress and her burnished hair giving back waves of radiance from the sun's strong beams.
At her side walked Bobby Burns. But, on first sound of Brice's step on the porch, the collie looked up and saw him. With a joyous bark of welcome Bobby came dashing across the lawn and up the steps. Leaping and gamboling around Gavin. he set the echoes ringing with a series of trumpet-barks. The man paused to pet his adorer and to say a word of friendliness, then ran down the steps toward Claire who was advancing to meet him. Her arms were full of scarlet and golden blossoms.
"Are you better?" she called, noting the bandage on his head had been replaced by a neat strip of plaster. "I hoped you'd sleep longer. Bobby Burns ran up to your room and scratched at the door as soon as I let him into the house this morning. But I made him come away again. Are--"
"He left a worthy substitute welcoming-committee there, in the shape of Simon Cameron," said Gavin. "Simon was overwhelmingly cordial to me, for a Persian .... I'm all right again, thanks," he added. "I had a grand night's rest. It was fine to sleep in a real bed again. I hope I'm not late for breakfast?"
A shade of embarrassment flitted over her eyes, and she made answer:
"My brother had to go into Miami on--on business. So he had breakfast early. He'll hardly be back before noon he says. So you and I will have to breakfast without him. I hope you don't mind?"
As there seemed no adequate reply to this useless question. the man contented himself with following her wordlessly into the cool house. She seemed to bring light and youth and happiness indoors with her, and the armful of flowers she carried filled the dim hallway with perfume.
Breakfast was a simple meal and soon eaten. Brice brought to it only a moderate appetite, and was annoyed to find his thoughts centering themselves about the slender white-clad girl across the table from him. rather than upon his food or even upon his plan of campaign. He replied in monosyllables to her pleasant table-talk, and when his eye chanced to meet hers he had an odd feeling of guilt.
She was so pretty, so little, so young, so adorably friendly and innocent in her every look and word! Something very like a heartache began to manifest itself in Gavin Brice's supposedly immune breast. And this annoyed him more than ever. He told himself solemnly that this girl was none of the wonderful things she seemed to be, and that he was an idiot for feeling as he did.
To shake free from his unwonted reverie he asked abruptly, as the meal ended:
"Would you mind telling me why you drew a revolver on me last evening? You don't seem the kind of girl to adopt Wild West tactics and to carry a pistol around with you here in peaceful Florida. I don't want to seem inquisitive, of course, but ?"
"And I don't want to seem secretive," she replied. nervously. "All I can tell you is that my brother has--has enemies (as you know from the attack on him) and that he doesn't think it is safe for me to go around the grounds alone, late in the day, unarmed. So he gave me that old pistol of his, and asked me to carry it. That was why he sent North for Bobby Burns-- as a guard for me and for the place here. When I saw you appearing out of the swamp I--I took you for some one else. I'm sorry."
"I'm not," he made answer. "I--"
"You must have a charming idea of our hospitality," she went on with a nervous little laugh. "First I threaten to shoot you. Then my brother stuns you. And both times when you are doing us a service."
"Please!" he laughed. "And if it comes to that. what must you people think of a down-at-heel Yankee who descends on you and cadges for a job after he's been told there's no work here for him?"
"Oh, but there is!" she insisted. "Milo told me so. this morning. And you're to stay here till he comes back and can talk things over with you. Would you care to walk around the farm and the groves with me? Or would the sun be bad for your head?"
"It would be just the thing my head needs most," he declared. "Besides, I've heard so much of these wonderful Florida farms. I'm mighty anxious to inspect one of them. We can start whenever you're ready."
Ten minutes later they had left the lawn behind them, and had passed through the hedge into the first of the chain of citrus groves. In front of them stretched some fifteen acres of grapefruit trees.
"This is the worst soil we have," lectured Claire. evidently keenly interested in the theme of agriculture and glad of an attentive listener. "It is more coral rock than anything else. That is why Milo planted it in grapefruit. Grapefruit will grow where almost nothing else will, you know. Why, last year wasn't by any means a banner season. But he made $16,000 in gross profits off this one grapefruit orchard alone. Of course that was gross and not net. But it--"
"Is there so much difference between the two?" he asked innocently. "Down here, I mean. Up North, we have an idea that all you Floridians need do is to stick a switch into the rich soil, and let it grow. We picture you as loafing around in dreamy idleness till it's time to gather your fruit and to sell it at egregious prices to us poor Northerners."
"It's a lovely picture," she retorted. "And it's exactly upside down, like most Northern ideas of Florida. When it comes to picking the fruit and shipping it North--that's the one time we can loaf. For we don't pick it or ship it. That's done for us on contract. It's our lazy time. But every other step is a fight. For instance, there's the woolly white fly and there's the rust mite and there's the purple scale. and there are a million other pests just as bad. And we have to battle with them. all the time. And when we spray with the pumping engine. the sand is certain to get into the engine and ruin it. And when we--"
"I had no notion that--"
"No Northerners have," she said, warming to her theme. "I wish I could set some of them to scrubbing orange-trunks with soap-and-water and spraying acre after acre, as we do, in a wild race to keep up with the pests, knowing all the time that some careless grove owner next door may let the rust mite or the black fly get the better of his grove and let it drift over into ours. Then there's always the chance that a grove may get so infected that the government will order it destroyed, --wiped out .... I've been talking just about the citrus fruits, the grapefruit and the tangeloes and oranges and all that. Pretty much the same thing applies to all our crops down here. We've as many blights and pests and weather-troubles as you have in the North. And now and then, even in Dade County, we get a frost that does more damage than a forest fire."
As she talked they passed out of the grapefruit grove, and came to a plantation of orange trees.
"These are the joy of Milo's heart," she said with real pride, waving her little hand toward the well-ranked lines of blossoming and bearing young trees. "Last year he cleared up from this five-acre plot alone more than--"
"Excuse me," put in Gavin. "I don't mean to be rude. But since he's made such a fine grove of it and takes such pride in its looks. why doesn't he send a man or two out here with a hoe, and get rid of that tangle of weeds? It covers the ground of the whole grove, and it grows rankly under every tree. If you'll pardon me for saying so. it gives the place an awfully unkempt look. If--"
Her gay laugh broke in on his somewhat hesitant criticism.
"Say that to any Floridian," she mocked, "and he'll save you the trouble of looking for work by getting you admitted to the nearest asylum. Why Milo fosters those weeds and fertilizes them and even warns the men not to trample them in walking here. If you should begin your work for Milo by hoeing out any of these weeds he'd have to buy weed-seeds and sow them all over again. He--"
"Then there's a market for this sort of stuff?" he asked, stooping to inspect with interest a spray of smelly ragweed. "I didn't know--"
"No," she corrected. "But the market for our oranges would slump without them. Here in the subtropics the big problem is water for moistening the soil. Very few of us irrigate. We have plenty of water as a rule. But we also have more than a plenty of sun. The sun sucks up the water and leaves the soil parched. In a grove like this the roots of the orange trees would suffer from it. These weeds shelter the roots from the sun, and they help keep the moisture in the ground. They are worth everything to us. Of course, in some of the fields we mulch to keep the ground damp. Milo bought a whole carload of Australian pine needles. last month at Miami. They make a splendid mulch. Wild hay is good. too. So is straw. But the pine needles are cheapest and easiest to get. The rain soaks down through them into the ground. And they keep the sun from drawing it back again. Besides, they keep down weeds in fields where we don't want weeds. See!" she ended, pointing to a new grove they were approaching.
Gavin noted that here the orange tree rows were alternated with rows of strawberry plants.
"That was an idea of Milo's, too," she explained. "It's 'intercrop' farming. And he's done splendidly with it so far. He thinks the eel-worm doesn't get at the berry plants as readily here as in the open, but he's not sure of that yet. He's had to plant cowpeas on one plot to get rid of it."
"The experiment of intercropping orange trees with strawberries isn't new," said Brice thoughtlessly. "When the plants are as thick as he's got them here. it's liable to harm the trees in the course of time. Two rows, at most, are all you ought to plant between the tree-ranks. And that mulch over there is a regular Happy Home for crickets. If Standish isn't careful--"
The girl was staring up at him in astonishment. And Gavin was aware for the first time that he had been thinking aloud.
"You see," he expounded. smiling vaingloriously down at her. "I amused myself at the Miami library Saturday by browsing over a sheaf of Government plant reports. And those two solid facts stuck in my memory. Now. won't I be an invaluable aide to your brother if I can remember everything else as easily?"
Still puzzled she continued to look up at him.
"It's queer that a man who has just come down here should remember such a technical thing," said she. "And yesterday you warned me against letting Bobby Burns wander in the palmetto scrub, for fear of rattlesnakes. I--"
"That deep mystery is also easy to solve," he said. "In the smoker on the way South several men were telling how they had lost valuable hunting dogs. hereabouts from rattlesnakes. I like Bobby Burns. So I passed along the warning. What are those queer trees?" he asked shifting the dangerous subject. "I mean the ones that look like a mixture of horse-chestnut and--"
"Avocadoes," she answered, interest in the task of farm guide making her forget her momentary bewilderment at his scraps of local knowledge. "They're one of our best crops. Sometimes a single avocado will sell in open market here for as much as forty cents. There's money in them, nearly always. Good money. And the spoiled ones are great for the pigs. Then the Northern market for them--"
"Avocadoes ?" he repeated curiously. "There! Now you see how much I know about Florida. From this distance. their fruits look to me exactly like alligator pears or--"
Again. her laugh interrupted him.
"If only you'd happened to look in one or two more government reports at the library," she teased. "you'd know that an avocado and an alligator pear are the same thing."
"Anyhow," he boasted. picking up a gold-red fruit at the edge of a smaller grove. they were passing. "anyhow. I know what this is, without being told. I've seen them a hundred times in the New York markets. This is a tangerine."
"In that statement," she made judicial reply. "you've made only two mistakes. You're improving. In the first place, that isn't a tangerine, though it looks like one--or would if it were half as large. That's a king orange. In the second place, you've hardly ever seen them in any New York market. They don't transport as well as some other varieties. And very few of them go North. Northerners don't know them. And they miss a lot. For the king is the most delicious orange in the world. And it's the trickiest and hardest for us to raise. See, the skin comes off it as easily as off of a tangerine, and it breaks apart in the same way. The rust mite has gotten at this one. See that russet patch on one side of it? You'll often see it on oranges that go North. Sometimes they're russet all over. That means the rust mite has dried the oil in the skin and made the skin thinner and more brittle. It doesn't seem to injure the taste. But it--"
"There's a grand tree over toward the road," he said. his attention wandering. "It must be nearly a century old. It has the most magnificent sweep of foliage I've seen since I left the North. What is it?"
"That?" she queried. "Oh, that's another of Milo's prides. It's an Egyptian fig. 'Ficus Something or other.' Isn't it beautiful? But it isn't a century old. It isn't more than fifteen years old. It grows tremendously fast. Milo has been trying to interest the authorities in Miami in planting lines of them for shade trees and having them in the city parks. There's nothing more beautiful. And nothing, except the Australian pine, grows faster .... There's another of Milo's delights," she continued, pointing to the left. "It's ever so old. The natives around here call it 'The Ghost Tree.'"
They had been moving in a wide circle through the groves. Now, approaching the house from the other side, they came out on a grassy little space on the far edge of the lawn. In the center of the space stood a giant live-oak towering as high as a royal palm, and with mighty boughs stretching out in vast symmetry on every side. It was a true forest monarch. And like many another monarch. it was only a ghost of its earlier grandeur.
For from every outflung limb and from every tiniest twig hung plumes and festoons and stalactites of gray moss. For perhaps a hundred years the moss had been growing thus on the giant oak, first in little bunches and trailers that were scarce noticeable and which affected the forest monarch's appearance and health not at all.
Then year by year the moss had grown and had taken toll of the bark and sap. At last it had killed the tree on which it fed. And its own source of life being withdrawn itself had died.
So, now the gaunt tree with its symmetrical spread of branches stood lifeless. And its tons of low-hanging festooned moss was as void of life as was the tree they had killed. Tinder-dry it hung there, a beauteous, tragic, spectacle, towering high above the surrounding flatness of landscape, visible for miles by land and by sea.
Fifty yards beyond a high interlaced hedge of vines bordered the clearing. Toward this Gavin bent his idle steps, wondering vaguely how such a lofty and impenetrable wall of vine was supported from the far side.
Claire had stopped to call off Bobby Burns who had discovered a highly dramatic toad-hole on the edge of the lawn and who was digging enthusiastically at it with both flying fore-feet, casting up a cloud of dirt and cutting into the sward's neat border. Thus she was not aware of Brice's diversion.
Gavin approached the twenty-foot high vine-wall, and thrust his hand in through the thick tangle of leaves. His sensitive fingers touched the surface of a paling. Running his hand along. he found that the entire vine palisade was, apparently, backed by a twenty-foot stockade of solid boards. If there were a gate, it was hidden from view. It was then that Claire, looking up from luring Bobby Burns away from the toad-hole, saw whither Gavin had strayed.
"Oh," she called. hurrying toward him. "That's the enclosure Milo made years ago for his experiments in evolving the 'perfect orange' he is so daft about. He's always afraid some other grower may take advantage of his experiments. So he keeps that little grove walled in. He's never even let me go in there. So--"
A deafening salvo of barks from Bobby Burns broke in on her recital. The collie had caught sight of Simon Cameron mincing along the lawn, and he gave rapturous and rackety chase. Claire ran after them crying out to the dog to desist. And Gavin took advantage of the brief instant when her back was turned to him.
His fingers in slipping along the wall had encountered a rotting spot at the juncture of two palings. Pushing sharply against this he forced a fragment of the decayed wood inward. Then, quickly, he shoved aside the tangle of vines and applied one eye to the tiny aperture.
"A secret orange-grove. eh?" he gasped. under his breath. "Good Lord! Was she lying to me or did she actually believe him when he lied to her?" _