Hade laughed pleasantly.
"Perhaps the wish was father to the thought?" he hinted, with an indulgent twinkle in his perpetual smile. "I hate mysteries. Here's an end to this one I was on my way along the path, when a young fellow came whirling around a bend and collided with me. The impact knocked him off his feet. I collared him. He didn't want to talk. But," the smile twisting upward at one corner of the mouth in a look which did not add to the beauty of the ascetic face, "I used persuasion. And I found what was going on here. I stripped off my outer clothes, and made him put them on. Then I put my yachting cap on him and pulled it low over his eyes. And I bandaged his mouth with my handkerchief, to gag him. Then I walked him along, ahead of me. I gave the signal. And I stuck my cigarette in his hand and shoved him through the screen of vines. They finished him, poor fool! I had no outer clothes of my own. So I went back and put on his. Then I slipped through that chuckle-headed aggregation out there and—here I am."
As he finished speaking, he turned his icy smile upon Gavin
Brice.
"Roke signaled a fruit boat, Mr. Brice," said he, "and came over to where my yacht was lying, to tell me you had gotten loose. That was why I came here, tonight. He seems to think you know more than a man should know and yet stay alive. And, as a rule, he is apt to be right. He—"
"Miss Standish," interposed Gavin, "would you mind very much, going into some other room? This isn't a pleasant scene for you."
"Stay where you are, for a minute, Claire!" commanded Milo, shaking off a lethargy of wonder which had settled upon him, at sight of his supposedly dead tyrant. "I want you to hear what I've got to say. And I want you to endorse it. I've had a half hour of freedom. And it's meant too much to me, to let me go back into the hell I've lived through, this past few months."
He wheeled about on the newcomer and addressed him, speaking loudly and rapidly in a voice hoarse with rage:
"Hade, I'm through! Get that? I'm through! You can foreclose on my home here, and you can get me sent to prison for that check I was insane enough to raise when I had no way out of the hole. But I'm through. It isn't worth it. Nothing is worth having to cringe and cheat for. I'm through cringing to you. And I'm through cheating the United States Government. You weren't content with making me do that. You tried, to-day, to make me a murderer—to make me your partner in the death of the man who had saved my life. When I found that out—when I learned what you could stoop to and could drag me to,—I swore to myself to cut free from you, for all time. Now, go ahead and do your dirtiest to me and to mine. What I said, goes. And it goes for my sister, too. Doesn't it, dear girl?"
For answer, Claire caught her brother's big hand in both of hers, and raised it to her lips. A light of happiness transfigured her face. Milo pulled away his hand, bashfully, his eyes misting at her wordless praise for his belatedly manly action.
"Good!" he approved, passing his arm about her and drawing her close to him. "I played the cur once, this evening. It's good to know I've had enough pluck to do this one white thing, to help make up for it."