He rose, beaming with the news it was his privilege to impart.
"You had best run along now, Captain. You will find three anxious—friends—awaiting you at the Major's house. They expected to arrive to-morrow but caught the transport and docked yesterday. They will be relieved to see you, for I had to tell them something of the uncertainty we felt regarding your—whereabouts. Take my car, and run along!"
And Terry ran along! He flew down the steps and into the automobile and in three minutes was leaping up the stairway into the Major's house.
Ellis, fatter, somehow absurd in tropic whites, met him at the entrance. Meeting halfway around the world from where they had parted, choking with the end of the dread suspense into which the Governor's guarded references to Terry's disappearance had plunged him, Ellis' big heart thumped in glad relief, but true to the traditions of his lifetime environment he strove to repress it, to appear as casual as though they had been in daily association. Pumping Terry's hand spasmodically, he measured the ecstatic lad with extravagant care, studied him from crown to heel.
"Dick, how do you do it?" he asked.
"Do what, Ellis?" Terry's voice was unsteady, too.
"Keep so fit in this oven of a country—you're as hard as nails!"
Terry's unsteady laugh rang through the big bungalow: "Go on, you fakir—you're crying right now!"
Ellis was. He turned away as Susan rushed out of an adjoining room. Laughing, sobbing, she threw herself upon her brother, held him away to study his appearance, hugged him tighter, pouring out a volume of questions she offered him no opportunity to answer.
Five minutes, and she recovered sufficient reason to catch the significance of Ellis' vehement gestures toward the second of the row of four bedrooms that opened off the sala. Understanding, she left Terry and followed Ellis into their room, closing the door with a bang intended as a signal to another who listened.