IV

       Table of Contents

      The whaleboat laid alongside the small, coral-stone landing-pier, and David Grief and his mate stepped ashore.

      “You’d think the place deserted,” Grief said, as they walked up a sanded path to the bungalow. “But I smell a smell that I’ve often smelled. Something doing, or my nose is a liar. The lagoon is carpeted with shell. They’re rotting the meat out not a thousand miles away. Get that whiff?”

      Like no bungalow in the tropics was this bungalow of Swithin Hall. Of mission architecture, when they had entered through the unlatched screen door they found decoration and furniture of the same mission style. The floor of the big living-room was covered with the finest Samoan mats. There were couches, window seats, cozy corners, and a billiard table. A sewing table, and a sewing-basket, spilling over with sheer linen in the French embroidery of which stuck a needle, tokened a woman’s presence. By screen and veranda the blinding sunshine was subdued to a cool, dim radiance. The sheen of pearl push-buttons caught Grief’s eye.

      “Storage batteries, by George, run by the windmill!” he exclaimed as he pressed the buttons. “And concealed lighting!”

      Hidden bowls glowed, and the room was filled with diffused golden light. Many shelves of books lined the walls. Grief fell to running over their titles. A fairly well-read man himself, for a sea-adventurer, he glimpsed a wide-ness of range and catholicity of taste that were beyond him. Old friends he met, and others that he had heard of but never read. There were complete sets of Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Gorky; of Cooper and Mark Twain; of Hugo, and Zola, and Sue; and of Flaubert, De Maupassant, and Paul de Koch. He glanced curiously at the pages of Metchnikoff, Weininger, and Schopenhauer, and wonderingly at those of Ellis, Lydston, Krafft-Ebbing, and Forel. Woodruff’s “Expansion of Races” was in his hands when Snow returned from further exploration of the house.

      “Enamelled bath-tub, separate room for a shower, and a sitz-bath!” he exclaimed. “Fitted up for a king! And I reckon some of my money went to pay for it. The place must be occupied. I found fresh-opened butter and milk tins in the pantry, and fresh turtle-meat hanging up. I’m going to see what else I can find.”

      Grief, too, departed, through a door that led out of the opposite end of the living-room. He found himself in a self-evident woman’s bedroom. Across it, he peered through a wire-mesh door into a screened and darkened sleeping porch. On a couch lay a woman asleep. In the soft light she seemed remarkably beautiful in a dark Spanish way. By her side, opened and face downward, a novel lay on a chair. From the colour in her cheeks, Grief concluded that she had not been long in the tropics. After the one glimpse he stole softly back, in time to see Snow entering the living-room through the other door. By the naked arm he was clutching an age-wrinkled black who grinned in fear and made signs of dumbness.

      “I found him snoozing in a little kennel out back,” the mate said. “He’s the cook, I suppose. Can’t get a word out of him. What did you find?”

      “A sleeping princess. S-sh! There’s somebody now.”

      “If it’s Hall,” Snow muttered, clenching his fist.

      Grief shook his head. “No rough-house. There’s a woman here. And if it is Hall, before we go I’ll maneuver a chance for you to get action.”

      The door opened, and a large, heavily built man entered. In his belt was a heavy, long-barrelled Colt’s. One quick, anxious look he gave them, then his face wreathed in a genial smile and his hand was extended.

      “Welcome, strangers. But if you don’t mind my asking, how, by all that’s sacred, did you ever manage to find my island?”

      “Because we were out of our course,” Grief answered, shaking hands.

      “My name’s Hall, Swithin Hall,” the other said, turning to shake Snow’s hand. “And I don’t mind telling you that you’re the first visitors I’ve ever had.”

      “And this is your secret island that’s had all the beaches talking for years?” Grief answered. “Well, I know the formula now for finding it.”

      “How’s that?” Hall asked quickly.

      “Smash your chronometer, get mixed up with a hurricane, and then keep your eyes open for cocoanuts rising out of the sea.”

      “And what is your name?” Hall asked, after he had laughed perfunctorily.

      “Anstey—Phil Anstey,” Grief answered promptly. “Bound on the Uncle Toby from the Gilberts to New Guinea, and trying to find my longitude. This is my mate, Mr. Gray, a better navigator than I, but who has lost his goat just the same to the chronometer.”

      Grief did not know his reason for lying, but he had felt the prompting and succumbed to it. He vaguely divined that something was wrong, but could not place his finger on it. Swithin Hall was a fat, round-faced man, with a laughing lip and laughter-wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. But Grief, in his early youth, had learned how deceptive this type could prove, as well as the deceptiveness of blue eyes that screened the surface with fun and hid what went on behind.

      “What are you doing with my cook?—lost yours and trying to shanghai him?” Hall was saying. “You’d better let him go, if you’re going to have any supper. My wife’s here, and she’ll be glad to meet you—dinner, she calls it, and calls me down for misnaming it, but I’m old fashioned. My folks always ate dinner in the middle of the day. Can’t get over early training. Don’t you want to wash up? I do. Look at me. I’ve been working like a dog—out with the diving crew—shell, you know. But of course you smelt it.”