Ingerson backed out of the palmetto-thatched store shelter and whirled upon Van Dyck with a face which, as the firelight showed it to me, was that of a devil denied.
"Where have you hid it?" he demanded hoarsely. "Tell me, or I'll wring your damned neck!"
Van Dyck's smile was almost as devilish as Ingerson's teeth-baring snarl.
"You needn't make a racket and wake the camp," he said in the evenest of tones. "I did hide it, and it was partly to give you a decently fair chance. Come with me." And he got up and the pair of them disappeared among the palms.
Not trusting Ingerson any more than I would have trusted a snake, I rose silently and followed them into the shadows, coming in sight of them again as they entered a little open glade on the opposite side of the island. Ingerson had halted and was gesticulating angrily.
"I want to know here and now what you meant by that 'decent chance' break you made at me!" he was saying. "If you mean Madge Barclay, I can tell you right off the bat that you're a dead one!"
"We will leave Miss Barclay quite out of it, if you please," said Bonteck, still apparently as cool as Ingerson was hot. "You want liquor, and I've brought you here to give it to you."
"We'll settle that other little thing first," Ingerson broke in truculently. "You put up this winter cruise, that you've bungled and turned into a starvation picnic, with the notion that you were going to corner the market for yourself, I suppose. I'm here to tell you that you lose out. Barclay makes this deal without any brokers, and I hold an option on him."
"You will have to make that part of it a little plainer, I'm afraid," said Van Dyck; and now there was a dangerous softness in his voice.
"You can have it straight, if you want it that way. Barclay's in a hole for money; he's always in a hole. I've agreed to pay him out, once for all, and he's accepted the bid."