_ CHAPTER V. TRAPS AND TRAPPER
To south and to southeast, the green-blue transparent sea. Within sight of the land, the purple-blue Gulf Stream,--a mystic warm river a half mile deep, thousands of miles long, traveling ever at a speed of eighty miles a day through the depth of the ocean, as distinct and as unswerving from its chosen course as though it flowed through land instead of through shifting water.
Studded in the milk-tepid nearer waters, innumerable coral islets and keys and ridges. Then the coral-built tongue of land running north without so much as a respectably large hillock to break its flatness. 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. Strewn here and there through this sandy expanse lovely oases, locally known as "hammocks", usually in hollows, and consisting of several acres of rich soil where tropic and sub-tropic trees grow as luxuriantly as in a jungle, where undergrowth and vine run riot, where orchid and airplant and wondrous-hued flowers blaze through the green gloom of interlaced foliage.
This, roughly, is a bird's-eye glimpse of the southeastern stretch of Florida, a region of glory and glow and fortunes and mystery. (Which is perhaps a momentary digression from our story, but will serve. for all that to fix its setting more vividly in the eyes of the mind.)
When Milo Standish came back from Miami that noon he professed much loud-voiced joy at seeing his guest so well recovered from the night's mishaps. At lunch. he suggested:
"I am running across to Roustabout Key this afternoon. in the launch. It's an island I bought a few years ago. I keep a handful of men there to work a grapefruit grove and a mango orchard and some other stuff I've planted. I go over to it every week or so. Would you care to come along?"
He spoke with elaborate carelessness, and looked anywhere except at his guest. Gavin, not appearing to note the concealed nervousness of his host's voice and manner, gave eager consent. And at two o'clock they set forth.
They drove in Milo's car a half-mile or more to southwestward along the road which fronted the house. Then turning into a sand byway which ran crookedly at right angles to it and which skirted the southern end of the mangrove-swamp, they headed for the sea. Another half-mile brought them to a handkerchief-sized beach, much like that on the other side of the swamp. where Gavin had found the hidden path. Here, on mangrove-wood piles, was a short pier with a boathouse at its far end.
"I keep my launch and my fishing-boats in there," explained Milo. as he climbed out of the car. "If it wasn't for that pesky swamp. I could have had this pier directly back of my house, and saved a lot of distance."
"Why not cut a road through the swamp?" suggested Brice, following him along the pier.
Again Standish gave vent to that great laugh of his--a laugh outwardly jovial, but as hollow as a shell.
"Young man," said he. "if ever you try to cut your way through an East Coast mangrove-swamp you'll find out just how silly that question is. A swamp like that might as well be a quick-sand, for all the chance a mortal has of traveling through it."
Gavin made no reply. Again, he was visualizing the cleverly engineered path from the beach-edge to Milo's lawn. And he recalled Claire's unspoken plea that he say nothing to Standish about his chance discovery of it. He remembered, too, the night-song of the mocking bird from the direction of that path, and the advent of Rodney Hade from it.
Milo had unlocked the boat-house, and was at work over a fifteen-foot steel motorboat which was slung on chains above the water. A winch and well-constructed pulleys-and-chains made simple the labor of launching it in so quiet a sea.
Out they fared into the gleaming sunlit waters of the bay. Far to eastward gleamed the white city of Miami, and nearer, across the bay from it the emerald stretch of key with Cape Florida and the old Spanish Light on its southern point and the exquisite "golden house" of Mashta shining midway down its shoreline. Miles to eastward gleamed the gray viaduct, the grain elevator outlines of the Flamingo rising yellow above a fire-blue sea.
"I used to hear great stories about this region years ago," volunteered Brice as the launch danced over the transparent water past Ragged Keys and bore southward. "I heard them from a chap who used to winter hereabouts. It was he who first interested me in Florida. He says these keys and inlets and changing channels used to be the haunts of Spanish Main pirates."
"They were," said Milo. "The pirates knew these waters. The average merchant skipper didn't. They'd build signal flares on the keys to lure ships onto the rocks, and then loot them. At least that was the everyday (or everynight) amusement of their less venturesome members and their women and children. The more adventurous used to overhaul vessels skirting the coast to and from Cuba and Central America. They'd sally out from their hiding-places among the keys and lie in wait for the merchant-ships. If the prey was weak enough they'd board and ransack her and make her crew walk the plank,--(that's how Aaron Burr's beautiful daughter is supposed to have died on her way North, you know,)--and if the ship showed fight or seemed too tough a handful the pirates hit on a surer way of capture. They'd turn tail and run. The merchant ship would give chase, for there were fat rewards out for the capture of the sea rovers, you know. The pirates would head for some strip of water that seemed perfectly navigable. The ship would follow, and would pile up on a sunken reef that the pirates had just steered around."
"Clever work!"
"They were a thrifty and shrewd crowd those old-time black-flaggers. After they were wiped out the wreckers still reaped their fine harvest by signaling ships onto reefs at night. Their descendants live down among some of the keys still. We call them 'conchs,' around here. They're an illiterate, uncivilized, furtive, eccentric lot. And they pick up some sort of living off wrecked ships and off what cargo washes ashore from the wrecks. A missionary went down there and tried to convert them. He found the 'conch' children already had religion enough to pray every night. 'Lord, send a wreck!' The conchs gather a lot of plunder every year. They--"
"Do they sell it or claim salvage on it. or--?"
"Not they. That would call for too much brain and education and for mixing with civilization. They wear it, or put it to any crazy use they can think of. For instance fifty sewing-machines were in the cargo of a tramp steamer bound from Charleston to Brazil one winter. She ran ashore a few miles south of here. The conchs got busy with the plunder. The cargo was a veritable godsend to them. They used the sewing machines as anchors for their boats. Another time a box of shoes washed ashore. They were left-hand shoes. all of them. The right-hand box must have landed somewhere else. And a hundred conchs blossomed forth with brand new shoes. They could wear the left shoe. of course, with no special bother. And they slit down the vamp of the shoe they put on the right foot, so their toes could stick out and not be cramped. A good many people think they still lure ships ashore by flares. But the lighthouse service has pretty well put a stop to that."
"This chap I was speaking about,--the fellow who told me so much about this region," said Gavin. "told me there is supposed to be pirate gold buried in more than one of these keys."
"Rot!" snorted Milo with needless vehemence. "All poppycock! Look at it sanely for a minute, and you'll see that all the yarns of pirate gold-including Captain Kidd's--are rank idiocy. In the first place. the pirates never seized any such fabulous sums of money as they were credited with. The bullion ships always went under heavy man-o'-war escort. When pirates looted some fairly rich merchant ship there were dozens of men to divide the plunder among. And they sailed to the nearest safe port to blow it all on an orgy. Of course, once in a blue moon they buried or hid the valuables they got from one ship while they went after another. And if they chanced to sink or be captured and hanged during such a raid the treasure remained hidden. If they survived, they blew it. That's the one off-chance of there ever being any buried pirate treasure. And there would be precious little of it. at that. A few hundred dollars worth at most. No, Brice. this everlasting legend of buried treasure is fine in a sea-yarn. But in real life it's buncombe."
"But this same man told me there were stories of bullion ships and even more modern vessels carrying a money cargo that sank in these waters, during storms or from running into reefs," pursued Brice, with no great show of interest, as he leaned far overside for a second glimpse at a school of five-foot baracuda which-lay basking on the snowy surface of the sand. two fathoms below the boat. "That, at least, sounds probable. doesn't it?"
"No," snapped Milo flushing angrily and his brow creasing, "it doesn't. These water are traversed every year by thousands of craft of all sizes. The water is crystal clear. Any wrecked ship could be seen at the bottom. Why, everybody has seen the hull of that old tramp steamer a few miles above here. It's in deep water, at that. What chance--?"
"Yet there are hundreds of such stories afloat," persisted Brice. "And there are more yarns of buried treasure among the keys than there are keys. For instance didn't old Caesar, the negro pirate, hang out here. somewhere?"
Milo laughed again, this time with a maddening tolerance.
"Oh, Caesar?" said he. "To be sure. He's as much a legend of these keys as Lafitte is of New Orleans. He was an escaped slave, who scraped together a dozen fellow-ruffians, black and white and yellow--mostly yellow--about a century ago, and stole a long boat or a broken-down sloop, and started in at the trade of pirate. He didn't last long. And there's no proof he ever had any special success. But he's the sea-hero of the conchs. They've named a key and a so-called creek after him, and in my father's time there used to be an old iron ring in a bowlder known as 'Caesar's Rock.' The ring was probably put there by oystermen. But the conchs insisted Caesar used to tie up there. Then there's the 'Pirates' Punchbowl,' off Coconut Grove. Caesar is supposed to have dug that. He--"
An enormous sailfish--dazzlingly metallic blue and silver-- broke from the calm water just ahead, and whirled high in air, smiting the bay again with a splash that sounded like a gunshot.
"That fellow must have been close to seven feet long," commented Milo as the two men watched the churned water where the fish had struck. "He's the kind you see when you aren't trolling. He's after a school of ballyhoos or mossbunkers .... There's Roustabout Key just ahead," he finished as their launch rounded an outcrop of rock and came in view of a mile-long wooded island a bare thousand yards off the weather bow.
A mangrove fringe covered the shoreline, two thirds of the way around the key. At the eastern end was a strip of snowy beach backed by an irregular line of coconut palms, and with a very respectable dock in the foreground. From the pier a wooden path led upward through the scattering double row of palms to a corrugated iron hut, with smaller huts and outbuildings half seen through the foliage-vistas beyond.
"I've some fairly good mango trees back yonder," said Standish as he brought the launch alongside the dock's wabbly float, "and grapefruit that is paying big dividends at last. The mangoes won't be ripe till June, of course. But they're sold already, to the last half-bushel of them."
"'Futures,' eh?" suggested Gavin,
"'Futures,'" assented Milo. "And 'futures' in farming. are just about as certain as in Wall Street. There's a mighty gamble to this farm-game."
"How long have--?" began Gavin, then stopped short and stared.
One or two negro laborers had drifted down toward the dock, as the boat warped in at the float. Now, from the corrugated iron hut appeared a white man, who, at sight of the boat, broke into a limping run and was in time to catch the line which Milo flung at him.
The man was sparsely and sketchily clad. At first. his tanned face seemed to be of several different colors and to have been modeled by some bungling caricaturist. Yet, despite this eccentricity of aspect, something about the obsequiously hurrying man struck Brice as familiar. And, all at once, he recognized him.
This was the big beach comber with whom Gavin had fought barely twenty-four hours earlier. The man bore bruises and swellings a-plenty on his rugged features, where Brice's whalebone blows had crashed. And they had distorted his face almost past recognition. He moved, too, with manifest discomfort, as if all his huge body were as sore as his visage.
"Hello, Roke!!" hailed Milo genially, then in amaze. "what in thunder have you been doing to yourself? Been trying to stop the East Coast Flyer? Or did you just get into an argument with one of the channel dredges?"
"Fell," said Roke. succinctly, jerking his thumb back toward the corrugated iron hut. "Climbed my roof to mend a leak. Fell. My face hit every bump. Then I landed on a pile of coconuts. I'm sore all over. I--"
He gurgled, mouthingly, as his swollen eyes chanced to light on Gavin Brice. who was just following Milo from the launch to the float. And his discolored and unshaven jaw went slack.
"Oh, Brice," said Standish carelessly. "This is my foreman here, Perry Roke. As a rule he looks like other people, except that he's bigger, just now his cravings for falling off corrugated roofs have done things to his face. Shake hands with him. If you like the job I'm going to offer you he and you will be side-partners over here."
Gavin faced his recent adversary, grinning pleasantly up at the battered and scowling face, and noting that the knife sheath at Roke's hip was still empty.
"Hello!" he said civilly, offering his hand.
Roke gulped again, went purple, and, with sudden furious vehemence, grabbed at the proffered hand, enfolding it in his own monstrous grip in an industrious attempt to smash its every bone.
But reading the intent with perfect ease. Brice shifted his own hand ever so little and with nimbly practised fingers eluded the crushing clasp, at the same time slipping his thumb over the heel of Roke's clutching right hand and letting his three middle fingers meet at the exact center of that hand's back. Then, tightening his hold, he gave an almost imperceptible twist. It was one of the first and the simplest of the tricks his jiu-jutsu instructor had taught him. And, as ever with an opponent not prepared for it, the grip served.
To the heedlessly watching Standish he seemed merely to be accepting the invitation to shake hands with Roke. But the next instant, under the apparently harmless contact, Roke's big body veered sharply to one side. from the hips upward, and a bellow of raging pain broke from his puffed lips.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Brice in quick contrition: "You must have hurt your hand when you fell off that roof. I'm sorry if I made it worse."
Nursing his wrenched wrist. Roke glowered hideously at the smiling Gavin. Brice could feel no compunction for his own behavior. For he remembered the hurled knife and the brutal kicking of the dog. Yet he repented him of the hand-twisting trick. For if he and Roke were expected to work together as Milo had said, he had certainly made a most unfortunate beginning to their acquaintanceship, and just now he had added new and painful aggravation to his earlier offense.
Milo was surveying the sufferer with no great pity, as Roke bent over his hurt wrist.
"Too bad!" commented Standish. "I suppose that will put a crimp in your violin-playing for a while."
Turning to Gavin who looked in new surprise at the giant on hearing of this unexpected accomplishment. Milo explained:
"I hired Roke to run this key for me and keep the conchs and the coons at work. But I've got a pretty straight tip that, as soon as my back is turned, he cuts indoors and spends most of his day whanging at that disreputable old violin of his. And when Rodney Hade comes over here. I can't get a lick of work out of Roke, for love or money. Hade is one of the best amateur violinists in America, and he's daft on playing. He drops in here. every now and then--he has an interest with me in the groves--and as soon as he catches sight of Roke's violin. he starts playing it. That means no more work out of Roke till Hade chooses to stop. He just stands, with his mouth wide open, hypnotized. Can't drag him away for a second. Hey. Roke?"
Roke had ceased nursing his wrist and had listened with sheepish amusement to his employer's guying. But at this question, he made answer:
"I'm here now."
He jerked the thumb of his uninjured hand toward a spic- and-span launch which lay moored between two sodden scows, and then nodded in the direction of the corrugated iron hut among the trees.
Listening--though the wind set the wrong way for it--Brice could hear faintly the strains of a violin. played ever so softly and with a golden wealth of sweetness. Even at that distance, by listening closely, he could make out a phrase or so of Dvorak's "Hiawatha" music from the "New World Symphony." Milo's loud laugh broke in on his audition and on the suddenly rapt look upon Roke's bruised face.
"Come along!" said Standish, leading the way toward the house. "Music's a fine thing, I'm told. But it doesn't spray a grapefruit orchard or keep the scale off of mango trees. Come up to the house. I want to show you over the island and have a chat with you about the job I have in mind."
As Milo strode on the two others fell in step behind him. Brice lowered his voice and said to the sulking Roke:
"That collie belongs to Mr. Standish. I did you a good turn it seems by keeping you from stealing him. You'd have been in a worse fix than you are now, if Mr. Standish had come over here to-day and found him on the island."
Roke did not deign to reply, but moved a little farther from the speaker.
"At this rate," said Brice pleasantly. "you and I are likely to have a jolly time together, out here. I can' imagine a merrier chum for a desert island visit. I only hope I won't neglect my work chatting with you all day."
Roke eyed him obliquely as he plodded on, and his battered lip-corner lifted a little in what looked like a beast snarl. But he said nothing.
Then they were at the shallow porch of the hut and Milo Standish had thrown open its iron door letting out a gush of golden melody from the violin. At his hail. the music ceased. And Rodney Hade, fiddle in hand, appeared in the doorway.
"You're late," said the violinist, speaking to Milo with that ever-smiling suavity which Gavin recalled from the night before, and ignoring Gavin entirely "You've kept me waiting."
Despite the smooth voice and the eternal smile there was an undernote of rebuke in the words, as of a teacher who reproves a child for tardiness. And, meekly, Standish replied:
"I'm sorry. I was detained at Miami. And lunch was late. I got here as soon as I could. I--"
With an impatient little wave of one white hand. Hade checked his excuses and dismissed the subject. In the same moment his snakelike black eyes fixed themselves on Brice whom he seemed to notice for the first time. The eyes were smiling. But he granted the guest no further form of salutation, as he asked abruptly:
"Where have I seen you before?"
"You saw me last night," returned Gavin. still wondering at this man's dictatorial attitude toward the aggressive Milo Standish and at Milo's almost cringing acceptance of it. "I was at the Standishes. I was just starting for bed when you dropped in. Miss Standish introduced--"
"I'm not speaking about last night," curtly interrupted Hade, though his voice was as soft as ever and his masklike face was set in its everlasting smile. "I mean, where did I run across you before last night?"
"Well. Mr. Bones," answered Gavin with flippant insolence, "Dat am de question propounded. Where did you-all run acrost me befo' las' night?"
Milo and Roke stirred convulsively, as if scandalized that any one should dare speak with such impudence to Hade. Rodney himself all but lost the eternal smile from his thin lips: and his voice was less suave than usual as he said:
"I don't care for impertinence, especially from employees. You will bear that in mind. Now you will answer my question. Where did I see you?"
"If you can't remember," countered Gavin. "you can hardly expect me to. I live in New York. I have lived there or thereabouts for a number of years. I was overseas--stationed at Bordeaux and then at Brest--for a few months in 1918. As a boy I lived on my father's farm in northern New York State, near Manlius. That's the best answer I can give you. If it will make you recall where you've seen me--all right. If not I'm afraid I can't help you out. In any case what does it matter? I don't claim to be anybody especial. I have no references. Mr. Standish knows that. If he's willing to give me some sort of job in spite of such drawbacks. it seems to be entirely his affair."
"The job I had--have--in mind for you," spoke up Milo. at a glance from Hade, "is on this key, here. I need an extra man in the main storehouse to oversee the roustabouts there. At this season Roke is too busy outdoors to keep the right kind of eye on them. The pay won't be large to start with. But if you make good at it. I may have something better to offer you on the mainland. Or I may not. In any case. I understand this is only a stopgap for you, and that you are down here for your health. If you are interested in the idea, well and good. If not--"
He paused and glanced at Hade as if for prompting. Throughout his harangue Standish had given Brice the impression of a man who recites a lesson taught him by another. Now Hade took up the tale.
"I think," said he smilingly--his momentary impatience gone --"I think, before answering--in fact before coming down to terms and other details--you might perhaps care to stroll around the island a little, and get an idea of it for yourself. It may be you won't care to stay here. It may be you will like it very much. Mr. Standish and I have some routine business to talk over with Roke. Suppose you take a walk over the place? Roke, assign one of the men to go with him and show him around."
With instant obedience. Roke started for the door. Indeed, he had almost reached it before Hade ceased speaking. Gavin raised his brows at this swift anticipation of orders. And into his mind came an odd thought.
"You seemed surprised to see me this afternoon," said he as he followed Roke to the porch and closed the door behind them. "Yet Mr. Hade had told you I was coming here. He had told you, and he had told you to have some one ready to show me over the island."
As he spoke Gavin indicated with a nod a man who was trotting across the sandy clearing toward them.
"Didn't know it was you!" grunted Roke. too surprised by the direct assertion to fence. "Said some feller would come with Mr. Standish. He--. How'd you know he told me?" he demanded in sudden angry bewilderment.
"There!" exclaimed Gavin admiringly. "I knew we'd chat along as lovingly as two turtle-doves when once we'd get really started. You're quite a talker when you want to be, Rokie my lad! If only you didn't speak as if you were trying to save words on a telegram. Here's the chap you'd ordered to be cruising in the offing as my escort, eh?" as the barefoot roustabout reached the porch. "All right. Good-by."
Leaving the grumbling and muttering Roke scowling after him. Brice stepped out onto the sand to meet the newcomer. The roustabout apparently belonged to the conch tribe of which Milo had spoken. Thin. undersized. swarthy. with features that showed a trace of negro and perhaps of Indian blood as well, he had a furtive manner and seemed to cringe away from the Northerner as they set off across the clearing. toward the distant huts and still more distant orchards.
He was bareheaded and stoop-shouldered. Beyond a ragged pair of drill trousers--indescribably dirty--his only garment was a still dirtier and raggeder undershirt. His naked feet flapped awkwardly, like a turtle's. He was not a pretty or prepossessing sight.
Across the clearing he pattered, head down, still cringing away from the visitor. As the two entered the shadows of the nearest grove Gavin Brice glanced quickly around him on all sides. The conch did the same. Then the two moved on with the same distance between them as before.
And as they went Gavin spoke. He spoke in a low tone. not moving his lips or looking directly toward the other man.
"Good boy. Davy!" he said, approvingly. "How did you get the job of taking me around? I was afraid I'd have to look for you."
"Two other men were picked out to do it sir," said the conch without slackening his pace or turning his head. "One after the other. One was a nigger. One was a conch. Both of 'em got sick. I paid 'em to. And I paid the nigger an extra five to tell Roke I'd be the best man to steer you. He said he'd been on jobs with me before. He and the conch are malingering in the sick shed. Ipecac. I gave it to 'em."
"Good!" repeated Gavin. "Mighty good. Now what's the idea?"
"You're to be kept over here, sir," said the conch. "I don't know why. Roke told me you're a chum of Hade's, and that Hade's doing it to have a bit of fun with you. So I'm to lead you around awhile, showing you the plant and such. Then I'm to take you to the second storage hut and tell you we've got a new kind of avocado stored in there, and let you go in ahead of me, and I'm to slam the spring-lock door on you."
"Hm! That all, Davy?"
"Yes, sir. Except of course that it's a lie. Hade don't play jokes or have fun with any one. If he's trying to keep you locked up here a while it's most likely a sign he don't want you on the mainland for some reason. Maybe that sounds foolish. But it's all the head or tail I can make out of it, sir."
"It doesn't 'sound foolish,'" contradicted Brice. "As it happens it's just what he wants to do. I don't know just why. But I mean to find out. He wants me away from a house over there. A house I had a lot of trouble in getting a foothold in. It's taken me the best part of a month. And now I don't mean to spend another month in getting back there."
"No, sir," said Davy, respectfully, still plodding on. in front with head and shoulders bent. "No, sir. Of course. But--if you'll let me ask, sir--does Hade know? Does he suspicion you? If that's why he's framed this then Roustabout Key is no place for you. No more is Dade County. He--"
"No," returned Gavin. smiling at the real terror that had crept into the other's tone. "He doesn't know. And I'm sure he doesn't suspect. But he has a notion he's seen me somewhere. And he's a man who doesn't take chances. Besides he wants me away from the Standish house. He wants every outsider away from it. And I knew this would be the likeliest place for him to maroon me. That's why I sent you word .... I'm a bit wobbly in my beliefs about the Standishes,--one of them anyhow. Now, where's this storehouse prison of mine?"
"Over there, sir, to the right. But--"
"Take me over there. And walk slowly. I've some things to say to you on the way, and I want you to get them straight in your memory."
"Yes, sir," answered the conch, shifting his course. so as to bring his steps in a roundabout way toward the squat storeroom. "And before you begin there's an extra key to the room under the second packing box to the right. I made it from Roke's own key when I made duplicates of all the keys here. I put it there this morning. In case you should want to get out, you can say you found it lying on the floor there. I rusted all the keys I made so they look old. He'll likely think it's an extra key that was lost somewhere in there."
"Thanks," said Gavin. "You're a good boy. And you've got sense. Now listen:--"
Talking swiftly and earnestly. he followed Davy toward the square little iron building, the conch outwardly making no sign that he heard. For, not many yards away, a handful of conchs and negroes were at work on a half-completed shed.
Davy came to the store-room door, and opened it. Then. turning to Brice he said aloud in the wretched dialect of his class:
"Funny avocado fruits all pile up in yon. Mighty funny. Make yo' laugh. Want to go see? Look!"
He swung wide the iron door and pointed to the almost totally dark interior.
"Funny to see in yon," he said invitingly. "Never see any like 'em befo'. I strike light for you. Arter you, my boss."
One or two men working on the nearby shed had stopped their labor and were glancing covertly toward them.
"Oh, all right!" agreed Brice. his uninterested voice carrying well though it was not noticeably raised. "It seems a stuffy sort of hole. But I'll take a look at it if you like. Where's that light you're going to strike? It--"
As he spoke he sauntered into the storeroom. His lazy speech was cut short by the clangorous slamming of the iron door behind him. Conscientiously he pounded on the iron and yelled wrathful commands to Davy to open. Then when he thought he had made noise enough to add verity to his role and to free the conch from any onlooker's suspicion he desisted.
Groping his way through the dimness to the nearest box. he sat down, philosophically, to wait.
"Well," he mused sniffing in no approval at all at the musty air of the place and peering up at the single eight-inch barred window that served more for ventilation than for light. "Well, here we are. And here, presumably, we stay till Standish and Hade go back to the mainland. Then I'm to be let out by Roke, with many apologies for Davy's mistake. There'll be no way of getting back. The boats will be hidden or padlocked. And here I'll stay, with Roke for a chum. till whatever is going on at Standish's house is safely finished with. It's a pretty program. If I can get away to-night without Roke's finding it out till morning--"
His eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the room. Its corners and farther reaches and most of its floor were still invisible. But, by straining his gaze, he could just make out the shapes of a crate or two and several packing boxes close to the wall. The central space was clear. In spite of the stuffiness. there was a damp chill to the gloomy place, by contrast to the vivid sunlight and the sweep of the trade-winds. outside.
Gavin stretched himself out at full length on the long box, and prepared to take a nap. First he reached toward the next box--the one under which Davy had told him the key was hidden- -and moved it an inch or so to make certain it was not full enough to cause him any especial effort in case he should not be released until next day and should have need of the key. Then he shut his eyes, and let himself drift toward slumber.
It was perhaps two hours later when he was roused from a light doze by hearing something strike the concrete floor of his prison. not six feet from his head. The thing had fallen with a slithering, uneven sound, such as might be made by the dropping of a short length of rope.
Brice sat up. He noted that the room was no longer light enough to see across. And he glanced in the direction of the window. Its narrow space was blocked by something. And as he looked he heard a second object slither to the floor.
"Some one's dropping things down here through that ventilator," he conjectured.
And at the same moment a third fall sounded, followed almost at once by a fourth. Then, for a second, the window space was clear, only to be blocked again as the person outside returned to his post. And in quick succession three more objects were sent slithering down to the floor. After which the window was cleared once more, and Brice could hear receding steps.
But he gave no heed to the steps. For as the last of the unseen things had been slid through the aperture. another sound had focused all his attention, and had sent queer little quivers up his spine.
The sound had been a long-drawn hiss.
And Gavin Brice understood. Now he knew why the softly falling bodies had slithered so oddly down the short distance between window and floor. And he read aright the slippery crawling little noises that had been assailing his ears.
The unseen man outside had thrust through the ventilator not less than seven or eight snakes, carried thither, presumably, in bags.
Crouching on his long box Gavin peered about him. Faintly against the dense gray of the shadowy floor. he could see thick ropelike forms twisting sinuously to and fro, as if exploring their new quarters or seeking exit. More than once. as these chanced to cross one another's path, that same long-drawn hiss quavered out into the dark silences.
And now Brice's nostrils were assailed by a sickening smell as of crushed cucumbers. And at the odor his fists tightened in new fear. For no serpents give off that peculiar odor. except members of the pit-viper family.
"They're not rattlesnakes," he told himself. "For a scared or angry rattler would have this room vibrating with his whirr. We're too far south for copperheads. The--the only other pit-viper I ever heard of in Florida is the--cotton-mouth moccasin!"
At the realization he was aware of a wave of physical terror that swept him like a breath of ice.
Without restoratives at hand the moccasin's bite is certain death. The plan had been well thought out. At the very first step the frantic prisoner might reasonably be relied on to encounter one or more of the crawling horrors. The box on which he crouched was barely eighteen inches high. The next box--under which rested the key--was several feet away. The door was still farther off.
Truly Standish and Hade appeared to have hit on an excellent plan for getting rid of the man they wanted out of the way! It would be so easy for Roke to explain to possible inquirers that Brice had chanced to tread on a poisonous snake in his wanderings about the key!
The slightest motion might well be enough to stir to active hostility the swarm of serpents already angered by their sudden dumping into this clammy den.
Weaponless, helpless, the trapped man crouched there and waited. _