Black Caesar's Clan. Albert Payson Terhune
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job? Please do! Of course, you can pay me, as soon as—"
"'I have not found such faith,—no, not in Israel!'" quoted Brice, a new note in his voice which somehow stirred the embarrassed girl's heart. "You have only my bare word that I'm not a panhandler or a crook. And yet you believe in me enough to—"
"You will let me?" she urged, eagerly. "Say you will! Say it."
"I'll make cleaner use of your faith," he returned, "by asking you to say a good word for me to your brother, if ever I come back here looking for a job. No, no!" he broke off, fiercely, before she could answer. "I don't mean that. You must do nothing of the kind. Forget I asked it."
With which amazing outburst, he turned on his heel, ran across the lawn, leaped the low privet hedge which divided it from the coral road, and made off at a swinging pace in the direction of Coconut Grove and Miami.
"What a fool—and what a cur—a man can make of himself," he muttered disgustedly as he strode along, without daring to look back at the wondering little white-clad figure, watching him out of sight around the bend, "when he gets to talking with a woman—a woman with—with eyes like hers! They—why, they make me feel as if I was in church! What sort of bungling novice am I, anyhow, for work like this?"
With a grunt of self-contempt, he drove his hands deep into the pockets of his shabby trousers and quickened his pace. His fingers closed mechanically around a roll of bills, of very respectable size, in the depths of his right-hand pocket. The gesture caused a litter of small change to give forth a muffled jingle. A sense of shame crept over the man, at the contact.
"She wanted to lend me money!" he muttered, half-aloud. "Money! Not give it to me, as a beggar, but to lend it to me…. Her nose has the funniest little tilt to it! And she can't be an inch over five feet tall! … I'm a wall-eyed idiot!"
He stood aside to let two cars pass him, one going in either direction. The lamps of the car from the west, traveling east, showed him for a moment the occupant of the car that was moving westward. The brief ray shone upon a pair of shoulders as wide as a steam radiator. They were clad in loose-fitting white silk. Above them a thick golden beard caught the ray of shifting light. Then, both cars had passed on, and Brice was resuming his trudge.
"Milo Standish!" he mused, looking back at the car as it vanished in a cloudlet of white coral-dust. "Milo Standish! … As big as two elephants …. 'The bigger they are, the harder they fall.'"
The road curved, from the Standish estate, in almost a "C" formation, before straightening out, a mile to the north, into the main highway. Gavin Brice had just reached the end of the "C" when there was a scurrying sound behind him, in a grapefruit grove to his right. Something light and agile scrambled over the low coral-block wall, and flung itself rapturously on him.
It was Bobby Burns.
The collie had suffered himself to be led indoors by the girl whom he had never seen until that morning, and for whom, thus far, he had formed no affection. But his wistful, deepset dark eyes had followed Gavin Brice's receding form. He could not believe this dear new friend meant to desert him. As Brice did not stop, nor even look back, the collie waxed doubtful. And he tugged to be free. Claire spoke gently to him, a slight quiver in her own voice, her dark eyes, like his, fixed upon the dwindling dark speck on the dusky white road.
"No, Bobby!" she said, under her breath, as she petted the restless head. "He won't come back. Let's forget all about it. We both behaved foolishly, you and I, Bobby. And he—well, let's just call him eccentric, and not think about him any more."
She drew the reluctant collie into the house, and closed the door. But, a few minutes later, when her back chanced to be turned, and when a maid came into the room leaving the door ajar, Bobby slipped out.
In another five seconds he was in the road, casting about for Brice's trail. Finding it, he set off, at a hard gallop, nostrils close to the ground. Having once been hit and bruised, in puppyhood, by a motor car, the dog had a wholesome respect for such rapid and ill-smelling vehicles. Thus, as he saw the lights and heard the engine-purr of one of them, coming toward him, down the road, he dodged back into the wayside hedge until it passed. Which is the reason Milo Standish failed to see the dog he had been hunting for.
A little later, Brice's scent became so distinct that the collie could abandon his nose-to-the-ground tactics and strike across country, by dead-reckoning, guided not only by his nose but by the sound of Gavin's steps. Then, in an access of delight, he burst upon the plodding man.
"Why, Bobby!" exclaimed Brice, touched by the dog's rapture in having found him again. "Why, Bobby Burns! What on earth made you follow me? Don't you know I'm not your master? Don't you, Bobby?"
He was petting the frisking collie as he talked. But now he faced about.
"I've got to take you back to her, old man!" he informed the highly interested dog. "You belong to her. And she'll worry about you. I'll just take you into the dooryard or to the front lawn or whatever it is, and tie you there, so some one will find you. I don't want to get my plans all messed up by another talk with her, to-night. It's a mean trick to play on you, after you've taken all the trouble to follow me. But you're hers. After this rotten business is all over, maybe I'll try to buy you. It's worth ninety per cent of your value to have had you pick me out for your master. Any man with cash enough can be a dog's owner, Bobby. But all the cash in the world won't make him the dog's master without the dog's own consent. Ever stop to think of that, Bobby?"
As he talked, half incoherently, to the delighted collie, Gavin was retracing his way over the mile or so he had just traversed. He grudged the extra steps. For the day had been long and full of exercise. And he was more than comfortably tired. But he kept on, wondering vexedly at the little throb of eagerness in his heart as Claire Standish's home at last bulked dimly into view around the last curve of the byroad.
Bobby Burns trotted happily beside him, reveling in the man's occasional rambling words, as is the flattering way collies have when they are talked to, familiarly, by the human they love. And so the two neared the house, their padding footsteps noiseless in the soft white dust of the road.
There were lights in several windows. One strong ray was cast full across the side lawn, penetrating almost as far as the beginning of the forest at the rear. Toward this vivid beam, Gavin bent his steps, fumbling in his pocket as he went, for something with which to tie Bobby to the nearest tree.
As he moved forward and left the road for the closecropped grass of the lawn, he saw a dim white shadow advancing obliquely in his direction. And, for an instant, his heartbeats quickened, ever so slightly. Then, he was disgusted with his own fatuousness. For the white form was double the size of Claire Standish. And he knew this was her brother, crossing from the garage to a door of the house.
The big man swung along with the easy gait of perfect physical strength. And as the window, whence flowed the light-ray, was alongside the door he intended to enter, his journey toward the house lay in the direct path of the ray.
Brice, in the darkness, just inside the gateway, stood moveless and waited for him to traverse the hundred feet or so that remained between him and the veranda. The collie fidgeted, at sight of the man in white, and began to growl, inquiringly, far down in his throat.
Gavin patted Bobby Burns reassuringly on the head, to quiet him. He was of no mind to introduce himself at the Standish home, a second time, as the returner of a runaway dog. Wherefore, he sought to remain unseen, and to wait with what patience he could until the householder should have gone indoors.
Apparently, on reaching home, Standish had driven the car to the garage and had pottered around there for some minutes before starting for the house. He was carrying something loosely in one hand, and he did not seem in any hurry.
"My friend," said Gavin, soundlessly, "if a girl like Claire Standish was waiting for me, beyond, that shaft of light, I'd make the trip in something better than no time at all. But then—she's not my sister, thank the good Lord!"
He grinned at his own silly thoughts concerning the girl he had talked to for so brief a time. Yet he found