They returned as they had come, the motor launch towing the whaleboats, and were sped homewards by the welling flood tide. Madame, though she knew it not, was nearing the end of her brief spell of irresponsible happiness. While they had been disporting themselves off the Barrier, Fate had rung up the curtain for the Final Act in the drama of Willatopy. It was an Act which was long in the playing, but the end loomed inevitable almost from the opening bars of the overture. As the string of boats merrily buzzed into the narrow bay, they all saw that the Humming Top no longer lay there alone. Within the entrance moored to the opposite bank was a small schooner which had just come in, for the crew were even at that moment stowing her lowered sails upon the deck.
"What is that ship?" asked Madame, her brows gathering into an uneasy frown. The Island had seemed so much the private property of the Topys and of the Humming Top that the presence of a stranger schooner became an unmannerly intrusion. Especially so weather-beaten and dirty a schooner as that one over there.
"Trading schooners often shelter here for the night while on a round of the islands," explained Willatopy. "My yawl does all the Baru trade that there is."
But Madame Gilbert, in spite of this satisfying explanation of the schooner's presence in the bay, continued to look upon the vessel with disfavour. If one schooner dropped in thus unceremoniously, another might come, and another. Some day strangers might land, strangers from Thursday Island or from the big world beyond Thursday Island. The splendid steam yacht at its moorings and Madame's luxurious camp outfit in the woods were not common objects of the shore to be accepted in the Straits without explanation. And they would use up a lot of explanation, and still leave the curious unsatisfied. There was too much of Toppys about the Island and the yacht for their conjunction to be wholly a matter of chance. Grant, Willatopy's banker, already knew much, and had guessed the rest. He was safe, for his own reasons. But others coming might carry away to Thursday Island, and thence to the big world beyond Thursday Island, a story of the Toppys yacht afloat, and of the Topy family ashore; and some might—some certainly would—connect the one with the other. From that discovery to a peering into local registers would be, for our inquisitive white race, a brief step. Too many people knew the Toppys secret already, and too many more must presently get some hint of it. It was not much of a secret after all. Madame frowned at the dirty schooner and shrugged her shoulders. It was not her secret anyway, though she had done her best to keep it.
CHAPTER X THE COMING OF THE HEDGE LAWYER
The island schooner sailed at dawn. But three days later another came and went, and three days later yet another. It never rains but it pours. The Hedge Lawyer, spurred by a greater master of Fate than his employers in London City, came as a sick and draggled passenger in Schooner number Three. He did not land upon the evening of his arrival, so that Madame did not see him, or hear of him, until the early forenoon after his ship had gone and left him stranded as a trespasser on Tops Island. From this marooning of the Hedge Lawyer sprang many things which shall be told in their place. The first consequence was that the man, a Cockney of Cockneys, was without a home in an island which possessed few huts and no houses of rest for travellers. The feckless intruder had not even bethought him to bring along a tent. With his luggage, a small suit case, he was put ashore in the schooner's dinghy, and left, a black-footed, frock-coated figure of fun, upon the fair white sandy beach.
Madame Gilbert, returning from her morning dip in the shark-proof creek, heard shrieks of pain interspersed with the savage howls of Willatopy. She scurried towards the sounds as fast as her bare feet would carry her. A black-booted, frock-coated stranger was flying shrieking towards the sea; behind him, keeping foot to foot with him so that the sharp fish spear which he carried might maintain its painful pressure upon the small of the man's back followed Willatopy, naked and extremely angry.
"Huh!" roared Willatopy, thrusting with the spear. The stranger, brought up short by the sea margin, rolled over screaming. He buried his miserable face in the sand so that he might not see the stroke of death which his terrors anticipated. Madame, rushing forward, stepped across the man's body, and held up a restraining hand.