The Argosy, April 1916 — page 131: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FOOLS OF Molle, a trusted employee of mine, in your duplicity, for which he might have been put in irons. “You admit you went to see Mother Juliet. You do not need to tell me any- thing further. You and Miss Addison will confine yourselves to your living wing of the house. Rebecca will be notified to serve your meals there. She will communi- cate to me any necessary message you may wish to send me. That is all.” Quivering in every nerve, her lips parted, her eyes dry and burning, Susan gazed longingly at the spare, bent figure before the desk—at the finely carved, wan profile of the face that would not turn toward her. She knew her father’s mettle too well not to realize that there was nothing for her to do but to go away from him—to go dis- graced, unloved. Susan passed out, drawing the door slowly closed after her. In the hall she saw Oscar Molle, trim and comfortable in an armchair by an open window. He was smoking a cigarette and apparently intent'on a magazine. Not until she had gone did he lift his eyes from the printed page. But he had noted the swiftness of her light tread. Oscar smiled as he studied absently the door at the far end of the hall, which had closed between him and Susan Neville for quits. He had his revenge. CHAPTER XIV. COUNTER PLOTS. Att that day the blacks of the Settle- ment toiled blithely. The great up- rising which was to make them masters of Big Twin Island was not abandoned, but only postponed. The magic and counsel of Mother Juliet had prevailed with them to delay action until the coming of the wonder- ful stranger, who was approaching over vast seas to assure them of victory. Perforce Jake Haas and Sailor Pete took the course of the majority. They took it ungraciously, but they took it, as their ap- pearance with the others on the plaza of Half-Moon House amply indicated. They had no jot of credence, neverthe- less, in all these mysterious presages about the coming of a stranger to the island. But they did see the tactical value of putting Captain Neville and his household off guard in order the better to fall upon them. SACRIFICE. 121 The white men worked together in the warehouses, doing a crude kind of clerical work in overseeing the packing of the coco- nuts for shipment and in taking charge of the stores for the Settlement. It was an easy matter for them to confer between themselves, because Overseer Ransom spent most of his time out among the blacks who picked and sorted the fruit. It was the hour of siesta after luncheon. Heat and indolence bound the island in a spell. The men who worked:-in and about the warehouses were lying asleep in the first comfortable corner they could find. Jake and Pete sat on the stringpiece of the wharf that ran from the warehouse to the water’s edge. Here whatever cargoes came to the island or left it were lightered. Pete was smoking his blackened brier pipe and Jake chewing his habitual gross mouthful of tobacco. Both were clad in very much soiled white undershirts, khaki trousers and heavy buckled shoes. Neither wore socks. hats, whose drooping brims almost spanned their shoulders. Lifting his hat, Jake brushed the cool of his palm across his flat, bald head, remark- ing: “The devil’s heat’s in that sun, Pete, and if it ain’t for the breeze it should burn a fellow up all right.” “You like the breeze, Jake?” the sailor said, and grunted a short laugh. “You must wait about ten days or maybe more. Next month you get all the breeze you want, and extra, too, what you don’t want.” “The big winds you’re thinking about already. Ah, shut up about them. They killed me almost last year, Pete, and I swore I’m never here again in October. And here I am yet already.” “We got a week, anyway, before the first,”’ Pete noted. “Ves,” Jake agreed promptly. ‘And Mr. William Ransom has got to do some- thing in that week. I ain’t goin’ to take no chances with them winds and me floating around this island together. I stay in the cellar all the time when they is a wind go- ing. Y’understand?” : “Say, Jake, here’s a joke,” Sailor Pet observed a few minutes later. First, how- ever, he glanced behind him to make sure no one was by. He emitted his queer gut- tural laugh and went on: “TI was thinkin’ would it be a funny deal cConmicloooks Both had on huge Panama. C@