He directed the colonel’s course through an almost imperceptible opening in the hedge along sharp turns and oblique and narrow ways into a small vacant space where the vines covered an adobe hut. Jumping out, Tracy unlocked the door of this tiny building so that the colonel could run the car inside; and after Winter had emerged again, he re-locked the door. As there was no window, the purpose of the hut was effectually concealed.
“Very neat,” the colonel approved; whereat Tracy flashed his smile at him in the moonlight and owned with ingenuous pride that he himself was the contriver of this reticent garage.
From this point he took the lead. Neither spoke. They toiled up the hill, in this part of the grounds less of the nature of a hill than of an arroyo or ravine through which rocks had thrust their rugged sides and over which spiked semi-tropical cacti had sprawled, and purple and white flowered vines had made their own untended tangle. Before they reached the level the colonel was breathing hard, every breath a stab. Tracy, a famous track man who had won his H in a wonderful cross-country run, felt no distress—until he heard his companion gasp.
“Jove! But that hill’s fierce!” he breathed explosively. “Do you mind resting a minute?”
“Hardly,”—the colonel was just able to hold his voice steady—“I have a Filipino bullet in my leg somewhere which the X-ray has never been able to account for; and I’m not exactly a mountain goat!”
“Why, of course, I’m a brute not to let you run up the drive in the machine. Not a rat watching us to-night, either; but I wanted you to see the place; and you seem so fit—”
“You oughtn’t to give away your secrets to me, an outsider—”
“You’re no outsider; I consider you the treasurer of the band,” laughed Tracy. They had somehow come to an unexpressed but perfectly understood footing of sympathy. The colonel even let the younger man help him up the last stiff clamber of the path. He forgot his first chill, as of a witness approaching a tragedy; there was a smile on his lips when the two of them passed into the patio. It lingered there as he stood in the flower-scented gloom. It was there as Tracy stumbled to a half-remembered push-button, wondering aloud what had become of Cary and Kito that they shouldn’t have answered his whistle; it was there, still, when Tracy slipped, and grumbled: “What sticky stuff has Kito spilled on this floor?”—and instantly flooded the court with light. Then—he saw the black, slimy pool and the long slide of Tracy’s nailed sole in it; and just to one side, almost pressing against his own foot, he saw a man in a gray suit huddled into the shape of a crooked U, with his arms limp at his side and his head of iron-gray fallen back askew. The light shone on the broad bald dome of the forehead. He had been stabbed between the shoulders, in the back; and one side of the gray coat was ugly to see.
“Good God!” whispered Tracy, growing white. “It’s Keatcham! they’ve killed him! Oh, why didn’t I come back before!”