_ CHAPTER VIII. THE SIEGE
"Trouble?" repeated Claire, questioningly. "You mean--?"
"I mean I've pieced it out, partly from reports and partly from my own deductions and from the sight of that man, back there," said Brice. "I may be wrong in all or in part of it. But I don't think I am. I figure that that chap we saw half under ground, is one of a clique or gang that is after something which Standish and Hade have--or that these fellows think Hade and Standish have. I figure they think your brother has wronged them in some way and that they are even more keen after him than after Hade. That, or else they think if they could put him out of the way, they could get the thing they are after. That or both reasons."
"I learned that Standish has hired special police to patrol the main road, after dark, under plea that he's afraid tramps might trespass on his groves. But he didn't dare hire them to patrol his grounds for fear of what they might chance to stumble on. And, naturally, he couldn't have them or any one patrol the hidden path. That's the reason he armed you and told you to look out for any one coming that way. That's why you held me up, when I came through here, yesterday. These must be people you know by sight. For you told me you took me for some one else. This chap, back yonder, knows the hidden path. And now it seems he knows the tunnel, too. If I'm right in thinking that tunnel leads to the secret orchard enclosure, back of your house, then I fancy Standish may be visited during the next half hour. And, unless I'm mistaken, I heard more than one set of bare feet scurrying down that tunnel just now. Our friend with the bashed-in face was apparently the last of several men to slip into the tunnel, and we happened along as he was doing it. If he recognized you and saw you had a man as an escort, he must know we're bound for your house. And he and the rest are likely to hurry to get there ahead of us. That's why I've been walking you off your feet, in spite of the darkness, ever since we left him."
"I--I only saw him for the tiniest part of a second," said Claire, glancing nervously through the darkness behind her. "And yet I'm almost sure he was a Caesar. He--"
"A Caesar?" queried Gavin, in real perplexity.
"That's the name the Floridian fishermen give to the family who live on Caesar's Estuary," she explained, almost impatiently. "The inlet that runs up into the mangroves, south of Caesar's Rock and Caesar's Creek. Caesar was an oldtime pirate, you know. These people claim to be descended from him, and they claim squatter's rights on a tract of marsh-and-mangrove land down there. They call themselves all one family, but it is more like a clan, Black Caesar's clan. They have intermarried and others have joined them. It's a sort of community. They're really little better than conchs, though they fight any one who calls them conchs."
"But what--?"
"Oh, Milo and Rodney Hade leased some land from the government, down there. And that started the trouble."
Brice whistled, softly.
"I see," said he. "I gather there had been rumors of treasure, among the Caesars--there always are, along the coast, here--and the Caesars hadn't the wit to find the stuff. They wouldn't have. But they guarded the place and always hoped to trip over the treasure some day. Regarded it as their own, and all that. 'Proprietary rights' theory, passed on from fathers to sons. Then Standish and Hade leased the land, having gotten a better hint as to where the treasure was. And that got the Caesars riled. Then the Caesars get an inkling that Standish and Hade have actually located the treasure and are sneaking it to Standish's house, bit by bit. And then they go still-hunting for the despoilers and for their ancestral hoard."
"Why!" cried Claire, astounded. "That's the very thing you stopped me from telling you! If you knew, all the time--"
"I didn't," denied Brice. "What you said, just now, about the Caesars, gave me the clew. The rest was simple enough to any one who knew of the treasure's existence. There's one thing, though, that puzzles me--a thing that's none of my business, of course. I can understand how Standish could have told you he and Hade had stumbled onto a hatful of treasure, down there, somewhere, among the bayous and mangrove-choked inlets. And I can understand how the idea of treasure hunting must have stirred you. But what I can't understand is this:--When Standish found the Caesars were gunning for him, why in blue blazes did he content himself with telling you of it? Why didn't he send you away, out of any possible danger? Why didn't he insist on your running into Miami, to the Royal Palm or some lesser hotel, till the rumpus was all over? Even if he didn't think the government knew anything about the deal, he knew the Caesars did. And--"
"He wanted me to go to Miami," she said. "He even wanted me to go North. But I wouldn't. I was tremendously thrilled over it all. It was as exciting as a melodrama. And I insisted on staying in the thick of it. I--I still don't see what concern it is of the United States Government," she went on, rebelliously, "if two men find, on their own leased land, a cache of the plunder stolen more than a hundred years ago by the pirate, Caesar. It is treasure trove. And it seems to me they had a perfect right--"
"Have you seen any of this treasure?" interposed Brice.
"No," she admitted. "Once or twice, bags of it have been brought into the house, very late at night. But Milo explained to me it had to be taken away again, right off, for fear of fire or thieves or--"
"And you don't know where it was taken to?"
"No. Except that Rodney has been shipping it North. But they promised me that as soon--"
"I see!" he answered, as a stumble over a root cut short her words and made her cling to him more tightly. "You are an ideal sister. You'd be an ideal wife for a scoundrel. You would be a godsend to any one with phoney stock to sell. Your credulity is perfect. And your feminine curiosity is under lots better control than most women's. I suppose they told you this so-called treasure is in the form of ingots and nuggets and pieces-of-eight and jewels-so-rich-and-rare, and all the rest of the bag of tricks borrowed from Stevenson's 'Treasure Island'? They would!"
She showed her disrelish for his flippant tone, by removing her hand from his arm. But at once the faint hiss of a snake as it glided into the swamp from somewhere just in front of them made her clutch his wet sleeve afresh. His hints as to the nature of the treasure had roused her inquisitiveness to a keen point. Yet, remembering what he had said about her praiseworthy dearth of feminine curiosity, she approached the subject in a roundabout way.
"If it isn't gold bars and jewels and old Spanish coins, and so forth," said she, seeking to copy his bantering tone, "then I suppose it is illicit whiskey? It would be a sickening anticlimax to find they were liquor-smugglers."
"No," Brice reassured her, "neither Standish nor Hade is a bootlegger--nor anything so petty. That's too small game for them. Though, in some parts of southern Florida, bootleggers are so thick that they have to wear red buttons in their lapels, to keep from trying to sell liquor to each other. No, the treasure is considerably bigger than booze or any other form of smuggling. It--Hello!" he broke off. "There's your lawn, right ahead of us. I can see patches of starlight through that elaborate vine-screen draped so cleverly over the head of the path. Now, listen, Miss Standish. I am going to the house. But first I am going to see you to the main road. That road's patroled, and it's safe from the gentle Caesars. I want you to go there and then make your way to the nearest neighbor's. If there is any mixup, we'll want you as far out of it as possible."
As he spoke, he held aside the curtain of vines, for her to step out onto the starlit lawn. A salvo of barking sounded from the veranda, and Bobby Burns, who had been lying disconsolately on the steps, came bounding across the lawn, in rapture, at scent and step of the man he had chosen as his god.
"Good!" muttered Brice, stooping to pat the frantically delighted collie. "If he was drowsing there, it's a sign no intruders have tried to get into the house yet. He's been here a day. And that's long enough for a dog like Bobby to learn the step and the scent of the people who have a right here and to resent any one who doesn't belong. Now, what's the shortest way to the main road?"
"The shortest way to the house," called the girl, over her shoulder, "is the way I'm going now."
"But, Miss Standish!" he protested. "Please--"
She did not answer. As he had bent to pat the collie, she had broken into a run, and now she was half way across the lawn, on her way to the lighted veranda. Vexed at her disobedience is not taking his advice and absenting herself from impending trouble, Gavin Brice followed. Bobby Burns gamboled along at his side, leaping high in the air in an effort to lick Brice's face, setting the night astir with a fanfare of joyous barking, imperiling Gavin's every step with his whisking body, and in short conducting himself as does the average high-strung collie whose master breaks into a run.
The noise brought a man out of the hallway onto the veranda, to see the cause of the racket. He was tall, massive, clad in snowy white, and with a golden beard that shone in the lamplight. Milo Standish, as he stood thus, under the glow of the veranda lights, was splendid target for any skulking marksman. Claire seemed to divine this. For, before her astonished brother could speak, she called to him:
"Go indoors! Quickly, please!"
Bewildered at the odd command, yet impressed with its stark earnestness, Milo took a wondering step backward, toward the open doorway. Then, at sight of the running man, just behind his sister, he paused. Claire's lips were parted, to repeat her strange order, as she came up the porch steps, but Gavin, following her, called reassuringly:
"Don't worry, Miss Standish. They don't use guns. They're knifers. The conchs have a holy horror of firearms. Besides, a shot might bring the road patrol. He's perfectly safe."
As Gavin followed her up the steps and the full light of the lamps fell on his face, Milo Standish stared stupidly at him, in blank dismay. Then, over his bearded face, came a look of sharp annoyance.
"It's all right, Mr. Standish," said Gavin, reading his thoughts as readily as spoken words. "Don't be sore at Roke. He didn't let me get away. He did his best to keep me. And my coming back isn't as unlucky for you as it seems. If the snakes had gotten me, there's a Secret Service chap over there who would have had an interesting report to make. And you'd have joined Hade and Roke in a murder trial. So, you see, things might be worse."
He spoke in his wonted lazily pleasant drawl, and with no trace of excitement. Yet he was studying the big man in front of him, with covert closeness. And the wholly uncomprehending aspect of Milo's face, at mention of the snakes and the possible murder charge, completed Brice's faith in Standish's innocence of the trick's worst features.
Claire had seized her brother's hand and was drawing the dumfounded Milo after her into the hallway. And as she went she burst forth vehemently into the story of Brice's afternoon adventures. Her words fairly fell over one another, in her indignant eagerness. Yet she spoke wellnigh as concisely as had Gavin when he had recounted the tale to her.
Standish's face, as she spoke, was foolishly vacant. Then, a lurid blaze began to flicker behind his ice-blue eyes, and a brickish color surged into his face. Wheeling on Gavin, he cried, his voice choked and hoarse:
"If this crazy yarn is true, Brice, I swear to God I had no knowledge or part in it! And if it's true, the man who did it shall--"
"That can wait," put in Brice, incisively. "I only let her waste time by telling it, to see how it would hit you and if you were the sort who is worth saving. You are. The Caesar crowd has found where the tunnel-opening is,--the masked opening, back in the path. And the last of them is on his way here, underground. The tunnel comes out, I suppose, in that high-fenced enclosure behind the house, the enclosure with the vines all over it and the queer little old coral kiosk in the center, with the rusty iron door. The kiosk that had three bulging canvas bags piled alongside its entrance, this morning,--probably the night's haul from the Caesar's Estuary cache, waiting for Hade to get a chance to run it North. Well, a bunch of the Caesars are either in that enclosure by now, or forcing a way out through the rusty old'rattletrap door of the kiosk. They--"
"The Caesars?" babbled Standish. "What what 'kiosk' are you talking about?--I--That's a plantation for--"
"Shut up!" interrupted Brice, annoyed by the pitiful attempt to cling to a revealed secret. "The time for bluffing is past, man! The whole game is up. You'll be lucky to escape a prison term, even if you get out of to-night's mess. That's what I'm here for. Barricade the house, first of all. I noticed you have iron shutters on the windows, and that they're new. You must have been looking for something like this to happen, some day."
As he spoke, Brice had been moving swiftly from one window to another, of the rooms opening out from the hallway, shutting and barring the metal blinds. Claire, following his example, had run from window to window, aiding him in his self-appointed task of barricading the ground floor. Milo alone stood inert and dazed, gaping dully at the two busy toilers. Then, dazedly, he stumbled to the front door and pushed it shut, fumbling with its bolts. As in a drunken dream he mumbled:
"Three canvas bags, piled--?"
"Yes," answered Brice busily, as he clamped shut a long French window leading out onto the veranda, and at the same time tried to keep Bobby Burns from getting too much in his way. "Three of them. I gather that Hade had taken them up to the path in his yacht's gaudy little motorboat and carried them to the tunnel. I suppose you have some sort of runway or hand car or something in the tunnel to make the transportation easier than lugging the stuff along the whole length of stumbly path, besides being safer from view. I suppose, too, he had taken the stuff there and then came ahead, with his mocking-bird signal, for you to go through the tunnel with him from the kiosk, and bring them to the enclosure. Probably that's why I was locked into my room. So I couldn't spy on the job. The bags are still there, aren't they? He couldn't move them, except under cover of darkness. He'll come for them to-night .... He'll be too late."
Working, as he cast the fragmentary sentences over his shoulder, Gavin nevertheless glanced often enough at Standish's face to make certain from its foolishly dismayed expression that each of his conjectures was correct. Now, finishing his task, he demanded:
"Your servants? Are they all right? Can you trust them? Your house servants, I mean."
"Y--yes," stammered Milo, still battling with the idea of bluffing this calmly authoritative man. "Yes. They're all right. But where you got the idea--"
"How many of them are there? The servants, I mean."
"Four," spoke up Claire, returning from her finished work, and pausing on her way to do like duty for the upstairs windows. "Two men and two women."
"Please go out to the kitchen and see everything is all right, there," said Brice. "Lock and bar everything. Tell your two women servants they can get out, if they want to. They'll be no use here and they may get hysterical, as they did last night when we had that scrimmage outside. The men-servants may be useful. Send them here."
Before she could obey, the dining room curtains were parted, and a black-clad little Jap butler sidled into the hallway, his jaw adroop, his beady eyes astare with terror, his hands washing each other with invisible soap-and-water.
"Sato!" exclaimed Claire.
The Jap paid no heed.
"Prease!" he chattered between castanet teeth. "Prease, I hear. I scare. I no fightman. I go, prease! I s-s-s-s, I--"
Sato's scant knowledge of English seemed to forsake him, under the stress of his terror. And he broke into a monkeylike mouthing in his native Japanese. Milo took a step toward him. Sato screeched like a stuck pig and crouched to the ground.
"Wait!" suggested Brice, going toward the abject creature. "Let me handle him. I know a bit of his language. Miss Standish, please go on with closing the rest of the house. Here, you!" he continued, addressing the Jap. "Here!"
Standing above the quivering Jap, he harangued him in halting yet vehement Japanese, gesticulating and--after the manner of people speaking a tongue unfamiliar to them--talking at the top of his voice. But his oration had no stimulating effect on the poor Sato. Scarce waiting for Brice to finish speaking, the butler broke again into that monkey-like chatter of appeal and fright. Gavin silenced him with a threatening gesture, and renewed his own harangue. But, after perhaps a minute of it, he saw the uselessness of trying to put manhood or pluck into the groveling little Oriental. And he lost his own temper.
"Here!" he growled, to Standish. "Open the front door. Open it good and wide. So!"
Picking up the quaking and chattering Sato by the collar, he half shoved and half flung him across the hallway, and, with a final heave, tossed him bodily down the veranda steps. Then, closing the door, and checking Bobby Burns's eager yearnings to charge out after his beloved deity's victim, Brice exclaimed:
"There! That's one thing well done. We're better off without a coward like that. He'd be getting under our feet all the time, or else opening the doors to the Caesars, with the idea of currying favor with them. Where did you ever pick up such an arrant little poltroon? Most Japs are plucky enough."
"Hade lent him to us," said Milo, evidently impressed by Brice's athletic demonstration against the little Oriental. "Sato worked for him, after Hade's regular butler fell ill. He--"
"H'm!" mused Brice. "A hanger-on of Hade's, eh? That may explain it. Sato's cowardice may have been a bit of rather clever acting. He saw no use in risking his neck for you people when his master wasn't here. It was no part of his spy work to--"
"Spy work?" echoed Standish, in real astonishment. "What?"
"Let it go at that," snapped Brice, adding as Claire reentered the room, followed by the lanky house-man, "All secure in the kitchen quarters, Miss Standish? Good! Please send this man to close the upstairs shutters, too. Not that there's any danger that the Caesars will try to climb, before they find they can't get in on this floor. The sight of the barred shutters will probably scare them off, anyway. They're likely to be more hungry for a surprise rush, than for a siege with resistance thrown in. If--"
He ceased speaking, his attention caught by a sight which, to the others, carried no significance, whatever.
Simon Cameron, the insolently lazy Persian cat, had been awakened from a nap in a rose-basket on the top of one of the hall bookcases. The tramping of feet, the scrambling ejection of the Jap butler, the clanging shut of many metal blinds--all these had interfered with the calm peacefulness of Simon Cameron's slumbers.
Wherefore, the cat had awakened, had stretched all four shapeless paws out to their full length in luxurious flexing, and had then arisen majestically to his feet and had stretched again, arching his fluffy back to an incredible height. After which, the cat had dropped lightly to the floor, five feet below his resting place, and had started across the hall in a mincing progress toward some spot where his cherished nap could be pursued without so much disturbance from noisy humans.
All this, Brice had seen without taking any more note of it than had the two others. But now, his gaze fixed itself on the animal.
Simon Cameron's flowingly mincing progress had brought him to the dining room doorway. As he was about to pass through, under the curtains, he halted, sniffed the air with much daintiness, then turned to the left and halted again beside a door which flanked the dining room end of the wide hall.
For an instant Simon Cameron stood in front of this. Then, winding his plumed tail around his hips, he sat down, directly in front of the door, and viewed the portal interestedly, as though he expected a mouse to emerge from it.
It was this seemingly simple action which had so suddenly diverted Gavin from what he had been saying. He knew the ways of Persian cats, even as he knew the ways of collies. And both forms of knowledge had more than once been of some slight use to him.
Facing Milo and Claire, he signed to them not to speak. Then, making sure the house-man had gone upstairs, he walked up to Claire and whispered, pointing over his shoulder at the door which Simon Cameron was guarding:
"Where does that door lead to?"
The girl almost laughed at the earnestness of his question, following, as it did, upon his urgent signal for silence.
"Why," she answered, amusedly, "it doesn't lead anywhere. It's the door of a clothes closet. We keep our gardening suits and our raincoats and such things in there. Why do you ask?"
By way of reply, Gavin crossed the hall in two silent strides, his muscles tensed and his head lowered. Seizing the knob, he flung the closet door wide open, wellnigh sweeping the indignant Simon Cameron off his furry feet.
At first glance, the closet's interior revealed only a more or less orderly array of hanging raincoats and aprons and overalls. Then, all three of the onlooking humans focused their eyes upon a pair of splayed and grimy bare feet which protruded beneath a somewhat bulging raincoat of Milo's.
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. He recalled what Claire had said of the Caesars' fierce distaste for the word "conch." Also, throughout the South, "clay-eater," has ever been a fighting word.
Brice had not gauged his insults in vain. Instantly, the captive's head twisted, like that of a pinioned pit terrier, in a frenzied effort to drive his teeth into the hand or arm of his captor. Failing this, he spluttered into rapid-fire speech.
"Ah'm not a conch!" he rasped, his voice sounding as rusty as an unused hinge. "Ah'm a Caesar, yo' dirty Yank! Tuhn me loose, yo'! Ah ain't hurt nuthin'."
"How did you get in here?" bellowed Milo, advancing threateningly on the youth, and swinging aloft one of his hamlike fists.
The intruder stiffened into silence and stolid rigidity. Unflinchingly, he eyed the oncoming giant. Brice motioned Standish back.
"No use," said he. "I know the breed. They've been kicked and beaten and hammered about, till a licking has no terrors for them. This sweet soul will stay in the silences, till--"
Again, he broke off speaking. And again on account of Simon Cameron. The cat, recovering from the indignity of being brushed from in front of the opening door, had returned to his former post of watching, and now stood, tail erect and back arched, staring up at the prisoner out of huge round green eyes. The sight of a stranger had its wonted lure for the Persian.
The lad's impotently roving glance fell upon Simon Cameron. And into his sullen face leaped stark terror. At sight of it, Gavin Brice hit on a new idea for wringing speech from the captive.
He knew that the grossly ignorant wreckers and fisherfolk of the keys had never set eyes on such an object as this, nor had so much as heard of Persian cats' existence. The few cats they had seen were of course of the alley-variety, lean and of short and mangy coat. Simon Cameron's halo of wide-fluffing silver-gray fur gave him the appearance of being double his real size. His plumed cheeks and tasseled ears and dished profile and, above all, the weirdly staring green eyes--all combined to present a truly frightful appearance to a youth so unsophisticated as this and to any one as superstitious and as fearful of all unknown things as were the conchs in general.
"Standish," said Brice, "just take my place for a minute as holder of this conch's very ragged shirt collar. So! Now then:"
He stepped back, and picked up Simon Cameron in his arms. The cat did not resent the familiarity, Gavin still being enough of a stranger in the house to be of interest to the Persian. But the round green eyes still remained fixed with unwinking intensity upon the newer and thus more interesting arrival. Which is the way of a Persian cat.
Brice held Simon Cameron gingerly, almost respectfully, standing so the huge eyes were able to gaze unimpeded at the gaping and shaking boy. Then, speaking very slowly, in a deep and reverent voice, he intoned:
"Devil, look mighty close at that conch, yonder. Watch him, so's you'll always remember him! Put the voodoo on him, Devil. Haunt him waking, haunt him sleeping. Haunt him eating, haunt him drinking. Haunt him standing and sitting, haunt him lying and kneeling. Rot his bones and his flesh and--"
A howl of panic terror from the youth interrupted the solemn incantation. The prisoner slumped to his knees in Standish's grasp, weeping and jabbering for mercy. Brice saw the time was ripe for speech and that the captive's stolid nerve was gone. Turning on him, he said, sternly:
"If you'll speak up and answer us, truthfully, I'll make this ha'nt take off the curse. But if you lie, in one word, he'll know it and he'll tell me, and--and then I'll turn him loose on you. It's your one chance. Want it?"
The youth fairly gabbled his eagerness to assent.
"Good!" said Brice, still holding Simon Cameron, lest the supposed devil spoil everything by rubbing against the prisoner's legs and purring. "First of all:--how did you get in here?"
The boy gulped. Gavin bent his own head toward the cat and seemed about to resume his incantation. With a galvanic jump, the youth made answer:
"Came by the path. Watched till the dawg run out in the road to bark at suthin'. This man," with a jerk of his head toward his captor, "this man went to the road after him. I cut across the grass, yonder, and got in. They come back. I hid me in there."
"H'm! Why didn't you come by way of the tunnel, like the other Caesars?"
"Pop tol me not to. Sent me ahead. Said mebbe they moughtn't git in here if the doors was locked early. Tol' me to hide me in the house an' let 'em in, late, ef they-all couldn't git in no earlier, or ef they couldn't cotch one of the two cusses outside the house."
"Good strategy!" approved Brice. "That explains why they haven't rushed us, Standish. They came here in force, and most likely (if they've gotten out of the enclosure, yet) they've surrounded the house, waiting for you or Hade to come in or go out. If that doesn't work, they plan to wait till you're asleep, and then get in, by this gallant youngster's help, and cut your throat at their leisure and loot the house and take a good leisurely hunt for the treasure. It calls for more sense than I thought they had .... How did they find the tunnel?" he continued, to the prisoner.
"They been a-huntin' fer it, nigh onto one-half of a year," sulkily returned the boy. "Pop done found it, yest'dy. Stepped into it, he did, a walkin' past."
"The rumor of that tunnel has been hereabout for over a century," explained Brice, to the Standishes. "Just as the treasure-rumors have. I heard of it when I was a kid. The Caesars must have heard it, a thousand times. But, till this game started, there was no impetus to look for it, of course. The tunnel is supposed to have been dug just after that Seminole warparty cut off the refugees in the path. By the way, Miss Standish, I didn't mention it while we were still there, but the mangrove-swamp is supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of those killed settlers."
Brother and sister glanced at each other, almost in guilt, as it seemed to the observing Brice. And Claire said, shortly:
"I know. Every one around here has heard it. Some of the negroes and even some of the more ignorant crackers declare they have heard screams from the swamp on dark nights and that white figures have been seen flitting--"
"So?" queried Brice. "Back in the boat, you were starting to tell me how you sat on the veranda, one night, and heard a cry in the swamp and then saw a white figure emerge from the path. Yes? I have a notion that that white figure was responsible for the cry, and that your brother and Rodney Hade were responsible for both. Wasn't that a trick to scare off any chance onlookers, when some of the treasure was to be brought here?"
"Yes," admitted Claire, shamefacedly, and she added: "Milo hadn't told me anything about it. And Rodney thought I was at a dance at the Royal Palm Hotel, that evening. I had expected to go, but I had a headache. When the cry and the white form frightened me so, Milo had to tell me what they both meant. That was how I found out, first, that they--"
"Claire!" cried Standish in alarmed rebuke.
"It's all right, Standish," said Gavin. "I know all about it. A good deal more than she does. And none of it from her, either. We'll come to that, later. Now for the prisoner."
Turning to the glumly scowling youth, he resumed:
"How many of them are there in this merry little midnight murder party?"
"I dunno," grunted the boy.
"Devil, is that true?" gravely asked Gavin, bending again toward Simon Cameron.
"Six!" babbled the lad, eagerly. "Pop and--"
"Never mind giving me a census of them," said Brice. "It wouldn't do me any good. I've left my copies of 'Who's Who' and Burke's Peerage at home. And they figured Mr. Standish and Mr. Hade would both be here, to-night?"
"Most nights t'other one comes," said the boy. "I laid out yonder and heern him, one night. Whistles like he's a mocking-bird, when he gits nigh here. I told Pop an' them about that. They--"
"By the way," asked Gavin, "when your Pop came back from finding the tunnel, last night, was he in pretty bad shape? Hey? Was he?"
"He were," responded the captive, after another scared look at Simon Cameron. "He done fell into the tunnel, arter he step down it. An' he bust hisself up, suthin' fierce, round the haid an' the th'oat. He--"
"I see," agreed Brice.
Then, to Standish:
"I think we've got about all out of the charming child that we can expect to. Suppose we throw him out?"
"Throw him out?" echoed Milo, incredulously. "Do you mean, set him free? Why, man he'd--"
"That's exactly what I mean," said Gavin. "I agree with Caesar--Julius Caesar, not the pirate. Caesar used to say that it was a mistake to hold prisoners. They must be fed and guarded and they can do incalculable mischief. We've turned this prisoner inside out. We've learned from him that six men are lurking somewhere outside, on the chance that you or Rodney Hade may come out or come in, so that they can cut you both off, comfortably, out there in the dark, and carry on their treasure-hunt here. Failing that, they plan to get in here, when you're asleep. All this lad can tell them is that you are on your guard, and that there are enough of us to hold the house against any possible rush. He can also tell them," pursued Gavin, dropping back into his slowly solemn diction, "about this devil--this ha'nt--that serves us, and of the curse--the voodoo--he can put on them all if they try to harm us. We'll let him go. He was sent on by the path because he went some time ahead of the rest, and he didn't know the secret of the tunnel. In fact, none of them could have known just where it ended here. But they'll know by now. He can join them, if they're picketing the house. And he can tell them what he knows."
Strolling over to the front door, he unbarred it and opened it wide, standing fearlessly in its lighted threshold.
"Pass him along to me," he bade Standish. "Or, you can let him go. He won't miss the way out."
"But," argued Milo, stubbornly retaining his grip on the ragged shirt collar, "I don't agree with you. I'm going to keep him here and lock him up, till--"
He got no further. 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.
Then, still standing in the open doorway, he called back, laughingly to the two others: "Part of my well-built scheme has gone to smash. He didn't stop to look for any of his clansmen. Not even the redoubtable Pop. He just beat it for the hidden path, without hitting the ground more than about once, on the way. And he dived into the path like a rabbit. He'll never stop till he reaches the beach. And then the chances are he'll swim straight out to sea without even waiting to find where the Caesars' boats are cached .... Best get some hot water and iodine and wash out that bite, Standish. Don't look so worried, Miss Standish! I'm in no danger, standing here. In the first place, I doubt if they'll have the nerve to rush the house at all,--certainly not yet, if they didn't recognize our fast-running friend. In the second, they're after Hade and your brother. And in this bright light they can't possibly mistake me for either of them. Hello!" he broke off. "There went one of them, just then, across that patch of light, down yonder. And, unless my eyes are going back on me, there's another of them creeping along toward the head of the path. They must have seen--or thought they saw--some one dash down there, even if it was too dark for them to recognize him. And they are trying to get some line on who he is .... The moon is coming up. That won't help them, to any great extent."
He turned back into the room, partly shutting the door behind him. But he did not finish the process of closing it.
For--sweet, faint, yet distinct to them all--the soaring notes of a mocking-bird's song swelled out on the quiet of the night.
"Rodney Hade!" gasped Standish. "It's his first signal. He gives it when he's a hundred yards from the end. Good Lord! And he's going to walk straight into that ambush! It's--it's sure death for him!" _