Yet—because man cannot live up always to the measure of his own vision, there came often between Randy and the written page the image of George Dalton, smiling and insolent. And he would lay down his pen, and lean his head on his hand, and
gaze into space, and sometimes he would speak out in the silence. "I will make him suffer."
It was in one of these moments that he saw how it might be done. "He would let fruit drop to the ground and rot if no other man wanted it," he analyzed keenly, "but if another man tried to pick it up, he would fight for it."
Dalton was still at King's Crest. Mrs. Waterman had not responded satisfactorily to the operation. The doctors had grave doubts as to her recovery. Madge was convalescing at the Flippins'.
Randy had been content, hitherto, to receive bulletins indirectly from both of the invalids. But on the morning following the birth of his great idea he rode on horseback to King's Crest. He looked well on horseback, and in his corduroys, with a soft shirt and flowing tie, a soft felt hat, he was at his best.
He found George and Oscar on the west terrace, shaded by blue and white-striped awnings, with a macaw, red and blue on a perch—a peacock glimmering at the foot of the steps—and the garden blazing beyond.
There were iced drinks in tall glasses—a litter of cigarettes on smoking-stands, magazines and newspapers on the stone floors, packs of cards on a small table. Oscar, hunched up in a high-backed Chinese
chair, was white and miserable. George looked bored to extinction.
Randy, coming in, gave a clear-cut impression of strength and youth.
"Mother sent some wine jelly for Mrs. Waterman," he said to Oscar. "It was made from an old recipe, and she thought it might be different. And there were some hundred-leaved roses from our bush. I gave them to your man."