Black Caesar's Clan Part 27

"You're--you're,--splendid!" denied Claire, her eyes soft and s.h.i.+ning and her cheeks aglow. "You faced that pistol without one atom of fear. And I could see your muscles tensing for a spring, right at him, before the light went out."

Gavin Brice's heart hammered mightily against his ribs, at her eager praise. The look in her eyes went to his brain.

Through his mind throbbed the exultant thought:

"She saw my muscles tense as he aimed at me. That means she was looking at me! Not at him. Not even at the pistol. She couldn't have done that, unless--unless--"

"What's to be done, now?" asked Milo, turning instinctively to Gavin for orders.

The question brought the dazedly joyous man back to his senses. With exaggerated matter-of-factness, he made reply:

"Why, the most sensible thing we can all do just now is to eat dinner. A square meal works wonders in bracing people up.

Miss Standish, do you think you can rouse the maids to an effort to get us some sort of food? If not, we can forage for ourselves, in the icebox. What do you think?"

Two hours later--after a sketchy meal served by trembling-handed servants--the trio were seated in the music-room. Over and over, a dozen times, they had reviewed their position, from all angles.

And they had come to the conclusion that the sanest thing to do was to wait in comfortable safety behind stoutly shuttered windows until the dawn of day should bring the place's laborers back to work. Daylight, and the prospect of others' presence on the grounds, was certain to disperse the Caesars. And it would be ample time then to go to Miami and to safer quarters, while Gavin should start the hunt after Rodney Hade. The two men had agreed to divide the night into watches.

"One of the torpedo-boat destroyers down yonder, off Miami, can ferret out Hade's yacht and lay it by the heels, in no time," explained Brice. "His house is watched, always, lately. And every port and railroad will be watched, too.

The chief reason I want to get hold of him is to find where he has sent the treasure. You have no idea, either of you?"

"No," answered Milo. "He explained to me that he was sending it North, to a place where n.o.body could possibly find it, and that, as soon as it was all there, he'd begin disposing of it.

Then we were to have our settlement, after it was melted down and sold."

"Who works with him? I mean, who helps him bring the stuff here? Who, besides you, I mean?"

"Why, his yacht-crew," said Milo. "They're all picked men of his own. Men he has known for years and has bound to himself in all sorts of ways. He has only eleven of them, for it's a small yacht. But he says he owns the souls of each and every one of the lot. He pays them double wages and gives them a fat bonus on anything he employs them on. They're nearly all of them men who have done time, and--"

"A sweet aggregation for this part of the twentieth century!"

commented Gavin. "I wish I'd known about all that," he added, musingly. "I supposed you and one or two men like Roke were the only--"

"Roke is more devoted to him than any dog could be," said Claire. "He wors.h.i.+ps him. And, speaking of dogs, I left Bobby Burns in the kitchen, getting his supper. I forgot all about him."

She set down Simon Cameron, who was drowsing in her lap, and got to her feet. As she did so, a light step sounded in the hallway, outside. Gavin jumped up and hurried past her.

He was just in time to see Rodney Hade cross the last yard or so of the hallway, and unlock and open the front door.

The man had evidently entered the house from above, though all the shutters were still barred and the door from the cupola had later been locked. Remembering the flimsy lock on that door, Gavin realized how Hade could have made an entrance.

But why Hade was now stealing to the front door and opening it, was more than his puzzled brain could grasp. All this flashed through Brice's mind, as he caught sight of his enemy, and at the same time he was aware that Hade was no longer clad in rags, but wore a natty white yachting suit.

Before these impressions had had full time to register themselves on Gavin's brain, he was in motion. This time, he was resolved, the prey should not slip through his fingers.

As Brice took the first forward-springing step, Hade finished unfastening the door and flung it wide.

In across the threshold poured a cascade of armed men.

Hard-faced and tanned they were, one and all, and dressed as yacht sailors.

Then Gavin Brice knew what had happened, and that his own life was not worth a chipped plate.

CHAPTER X

THE GHOST TREE

Claire Standish had followed Brice to the curtained doorway of the library. She, too, had heard the light step in the hall.

Its sound, and the galvanizing effect it had had on Gavin, aroused her sharp interest.

She reached the hallway just in time to see Hade swing open the door and admit the thronging group of sailors from his yacht.

But not even the sight of Hade, and these ruffians of his, astounded her as did the action of Gavin Brice.

Brice had been close behind Hade as the door swung wide. His incipient rush after his enemy had carried him thus far, when the tables had so suddenly been turned against him and the Standishes.

Now, without pausing in his onward dash, he leaped past Hade and straight among the in-pouring sailors.

Hade had not been aware of Brice's presence in the hall. The sailors' eyes were momentarily dazzled by the brightness of the lights. Thus, they did not take in the fact of the plunging figure, in time to check its flight.

Straight through their unprepared ranks Gavin Brice tore his way. So might a veteran football halfback smash a path through the rushline of a vastly inferior team.

Hade cried out to his men, and drew his pistol. But even as he did so, the momentarily glimpsed Gavin was lost to his view, amid the jostling and jostled sailors.

Past the loosely crowding men, Brice ripped his way, and out onto the veranda which he cleared at a bound. Then, running low, but still at top speed, he sped around the bottom of the porch, past the angle of the house and straight for the far side.

He did not make for the road, but for the enclosure into which he had peeped that morning, and for the thick shade which shut off the moon's light.

Now, he ran with less caution. For, he knew the arrival of so formidable a body of men must have been enough to send the Caesars scattering for cover.

Before he reached the enclosure he veered abruptly to one side, das.h.i.+ng across a patch of moonlit turf, and heading for the giant live oak that stood gauntly in its center.

Under the "Ghost Tree's" enormous shade he came to a stop, glancing back to see if the direction of his headlong flight had been noted. Above him towered the mighty corpse of what had once been an ancestral tree. He remembered how it had stood there, bleakly, under the morning sunlight,--its myriad spreading branches and twigs long since killed by the tons of parasitical gray moss which festooned its every inch of surface with long trailing ma.s.ses of dead fluff.

Not idly had Brice studied that weird tree and its position. Now, standing beneath its black shade, he drew forth a matchbox he had taken from the smoking table after dinner.

Cautiously striking a match and s.h.i.+elding it in his cupped palms, he applied the bit of fire to the lowest hanging spray of the avalanche of dead gray moss.

A month of bone-dry weather had helped to make his action a success. The moss ignited at first touch of the match. Up along the festoon shot a tongue of red flame. The nearest adjoining branch's burden of moss caught the fiery breath and burst into blaze.

With lightning speed, the fire roared upward, the branches to either side blazing as the outsputtering flames kissed them.

In a little more than a breath, the gigantic tree was a roaring sheet of red-and-gold-fire, a ninety-foot torch which sent its flood of lurid light to the skies above and made the earth for a radius of two hundred yards as bright as day.

Far out to sea that swirling tower of scarlet flame hurled its illumination. For miles on every hand it could be seen. The sound of its crackle and hiss and roar was deafening. The twigs, dry and dead, caught fire from the surrounding blaze of moss, and communicated their flame to the thicker branches and to the tree's towering summit.

And thus the fierce vividness of blazing wood was added to the lighter glare of the inflammable moss.