"I am determined," Julian exclaimed, "to know who and what it is that cowers there!" Wherewith he sprang from off the sofa on which he had previously raised himself to a sitting position, and, with a leap, rushed towards the mosquito curtains hanging by the bedhead. "I will see who and what you are!" he cried, feeling certain that in this spot was still lurking some strange, secret visitant.
Yet to his astonishment the spot was empty when he reached it. Neither human being nor animal, nor anything whatever, was there.
"I am indeed struck with fever and delirious," he muttered to himself, "or if not that, am mad. Yet I could have sworn it was as I thought."
Then again, as he stood there holding in his hand the gauzy curtains which he had brushed aside, the storm burst afresh over the house with renewed violence; again the sheets of rain poured down; once more the purple tropical lightning flashed and the thunder roared. And as the tempest beat down on all beneath its violence, and while a moment of intense darkness was followed by an instant of brilliant light, Julian heard a stronger rattle of the Venetian blinds than the wind had made, and saw, as again there came a flash of lightning, a dark, hooded figure creep out swiftly past them on to the balcony--a figure shrouded to the eyes, yet in the dark eyes of which, as the lightning played on them, there seemed to be a look of awful fear.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
WARNED
Blue as the deepest gleam within the sapphire's depth were the heavens; bright as molten gold were the sun's rays the next morning when the storm was past--leaving, however, in its track some marks of its passage. For the flowers in the gardens round the house were beaten down now with the weight of water that had fallen on them; beneath the oleanders and the flamboyants, the allamandas and ixoras, the blossoms strewed the pampas grass in masses; while many crabs--which wander up from the seacoast in search of succulent plants whereon to feed--lay dead near the roots of the bushes and shrubs.
Yet a day's scorching sun, to be followed perhaps by an entire absence of further rain for a month, would soon cause fresh masses of bloom to take the place of those which were destroyed, especially as now they had received the moisture so necessary to their existence. And Julian, standing on his balcony and wondering who that strange nocturnal visitor was who had fled on to this very balcony a few hours before, thought that during his stay in this mysterious place he had never seen its surroundings look so fair.
Whether it was that he had received considerable benefit from the quinine which he had taken overnight, or whether it was from the total change of clothing which he had now assumed in place of the garments he had worn up to now, or perhaps from his not having lain through the night upon the bed which, particularly of late, had seemed so malodorous, he felt very much better this morning. His brain no longer appeared numbed nor his mind hazy, nor had he any headache.
"Which," he said to himself, "is a mighty good thing. For now I want all my wits about me. This affair has got to be brought to a conclusion somehow, and Julian Ritherdon is the man to do it. Only," he said, with now a smile on his face--"only, no more of the simple trusting individual you have been, my friend--if you ever have been such! Instead of suspecting Master Sebastian of being in the wrong box you have got to prove him so, and instead of suspecting him to be a--well! say a gentleman who hasn't got much regard for you, you have got to get to windward of him. Now go full speed ahead, my son."