Black Caesar's Clan Part 9

"To-night," said Brice, drily, "I managed to be of some slight use. Pardon my mentioning it. If I hadn't been there, you'd be carrying eight inches of cold steel, between your shoulders.

And--pardon me, again--if you'd had the sense to stay out of the squabble a second or so longer, the man who tackled you would be either in jail or in the morgue, by this time. I'm not oversized. But neither is a stick of dynamite. An automatic pistol isn't anywhere as big as an old-fashioned blunderbuss. But it can outshoot and outkill the blunderbuss, with very little bother. Think it over. And, while you're thinking, stop to think, also, that a 'panhandler' doesn't do his work with a knife. He doesn't try to stab a man to death, for the sake of the few dollars the victim may happen to have in his pockets. That sort of thing calls for pluck and iron nerves and physical strength. If a panhandler had those, he wouldn't be a panhandler. Any more than that chap, to-night, was a panhandler. My idea of acting as a bodyguard for you isn't bad. Think it over. You seem to need one."

"Why do you say that?" demanded Milo, in one of his recurrent flashes of suspicion.

"Because," said Gavin, "we're living in the twentieth century and in real life, not in the dark ages and in a dime novel.

Nowadays, a man doesn't risk capital punishment, lightly, for the fun of springing on a total stranger, in the dark, with a razor-edge knife. Mr. Standish, no man does a thing like that to a stranger, or without some mighty motive. It is no business of mine to ask that motive or to horn in on your private affairs. And I don't care to. But, from your looks, you're no fool. You know, as well as I do, that that was no panhandler or even a highwayman. It was an enemy whose motive for wanting to murder you, silently and surely, was strong enough to make him willing to risk death or capture. Now, when you say you don't need a bodyguard--Well, it's your own business, of course. Let it go at that, if you like."

Long and silently Milo Standish looked down at the nonchalant invalid. Above, the sounds of women's steps and an occasional s.n.a.t.c.h of a sentence could be heard. At last, Milo spoke.

"You are right," said he, very slowly, and as if measuring his every word. "You are right. There are one or two men who would like to get this land and this house and--and other possessions of mine. There is no reason for going into particulars that wouldn't interest you. Take my word. Those reasons are potent. I have reason to suspect that the a.s.sault on me, this evening, is concerned with their general plan to get rid of me. Perhaps--perhaps you're right, about my need of a bodyguard. Though it's a humiliating thing for a grown man--especially a man of my size and strength--to confess.

We'll talk it over, tomorrow, if you are well enough."

Brice nodded, absently, as if wearied with the exertion of their talk. His eyes had left Milo's, and had concentrated on the man's big and hairy hands. As Milo spoke of the supposit.i.tious criminals who desired his possessions enough to do murder for them, his fists clenched, tightly. And to Brice's memory came a wise old adage:

"When you think a man is lying to you, don't watch his face.

Any poker-player can make his face a mask. Watch his hands.

Ten to one, if he is lying, he'll clench them."

Brice noted the tightening of the heavy fists. And he was convinced. Yet, he told himself, in disgust, that even a child of six would scarce have needed such confirmation that the clumsily blurted tale was a lie.

He nodded again, as Milo looked at him with a shade of anxiety.

The momentary silence was broken by footsteps on the stairs.

Claire was descending. Brice gathered his feet under him and sat upright. It was easier, now, to do this, and his head had recovered its feeling of normality, though it still ached ferociously.

At the same instant, through the open doorway, from across the lawn in the direction of the secret path, came the quaveringly sweet trill of a mocking bird's song. Despite himself, Gavin's glance turned toward the doorway.

"That's just a mocker," Milo explained, loudly, his face reddening as he looked in perturbation at his guest. "Sweet, isn't he? They often sing, off and on, for an hour or two after dark."

"I know they do," said Gavin (though he did not say it aloud).

"But in Florida, the very earliest mocking bird doesn't sing till around the first of March. And this isn't quite the middle of February. There's not a mocking bird on the Peninsula that is singing, yet. The very dulcet whistler, out yonder, ought to make a closer study of ornithology. He--"

Brice's unspoken thought was shattered. For, unnoticed by him, Milo Standish had drawn forth, with tender care, an exquisitely carved and colored meerschaum pipe from a case on the smoking-stand, and was picking up the fat tobacco jar.

CHAPTER IV

THE STRANGER FROM NOWHERE

For a moment, Brice stared agape and helplessly fl.u.s.tered, as Standish proceeded to thrust his meerschaum's rich-hued bowl into the tobacco jar. Then, apparently galvanized into action by the approach of Claire from the stairway, he stepped rapidly forward to meet her.

As though his shaky powers were not equal to the task he reeled, lurched with all his might against the unprepared Standish and, to regain his balance, took two plunging steps forward.

He had struck Milo at such an angle as to rap the latter's right elbow with a numbing force that sent the pipe flying half way across the hall. The tobacco jar must have gone too, had not one of Gavin's outflung hands caught it in mid-air, as a quarterback might catch a football.

Unable to recover balance and to check his own momentum.

Brice scrambled awkwardly forward. One stamping heel landed full on the fallen meerschaum, flattening and crumbling the beautiful pipe into a smear of shapeless clay-fragments.

At the sight. Milo Standish swore loudly and came charging forward in a belated hope of saving his beloved pipe from destruction. The purchase of that meerschaum had been a joy to Milo. Its coloring had been a long and careful process.

And now, this bungler had smashed it into nothingness!

Down on hands and knees went the big man, fumbling at the fragments. Claire, knowing how her brother valued the pipe, ran to his side in eager sympathy.

Gavin Brice came to a sliding standstill against a heavy hall-table. On this he leaned heavily for a moment or so above the tobacco jar he had so luckily salvaged from the wreckage. His back to the preoccupied couple he flashed his sensitive fingers into the jar, collecting and thrusting into his pockets the watch and the thick roll of bills and as much of the small change as his fast-groping fingertips could locate.

By the time Milo looked up in impotent wrath from his inspection of the ruined meerschaum. Gavin had turned toward him and was babbling a torrent of apology for his own awkwardness. Milo was glumly silent as the contrite words beat about his ears. But Claire, shamed by her brother's ungraciousness, spoke up courteously to relieve the visitor's dire embarra.s.sment.

"Please don't be unhappy about it. Mr. Brice," she begged.

"It was just an accident. It couldn't be helped. I'm sure my brother--"

"But--" stammered Gavin.

"Oh, it's all right!" grumbled Milo, scooping up the handful of crushed meerschaum. "Let it go at that.

I--"

Again, the mocking bird notes fluted forth through the early evening silences, the melody coming as before from the direction of the grove's hidden path. Milo stopped short in his sulky speech. Brother and sister exchanged a swift glance. Then Standish got to his feet and approached Gavin.

"Here we've kept you up and around when you're still too weak to move without help!" he said in very badly done geniality.

"Take my arm and I'll help you upstairs. Your room's all ready for you. If you'd rather I can carry you. How about it?"

But a perverse imp of mischief entered Gavin Brice's aching head.

"I'm all right now," he protested. "I feel fifty per cent better. I'd much rather stay down here with you and Miss Standish for a while, if you don't mind. My nerves are a bit jumpy from that crack over the skull, and I'd like them to quiet down before I go to bed."

Again, he was aware of that look of covert anxiety, between sister and brother. Claire's big eyes strayed involuntarily toward the front door. And her lips parted for some word of urgence. But before she could speak, Milo laughed loudly and caught Gavin by the arm.

"You've got pluck, Brice!" he cried admiringly. "You're ashamed to give up and go to bed. But you're going just the same. You're going to get a good night's rest. I don't intend to have you fall sick from that tap I gave you with the wrench. Come on! I'll bring you some fresh dressings for your head by the time you're undressed."

As he talked he pa.s.sed one huge arm around Gavin and carried, rather than led, him to the stairway.

"Good night, Mr. Brice," called Claire from near the doorway.

"I do hope your head will be ever so much better in the morning. If you want anything in the night, there's a call-bell I've put beside your bed."

Once more a dizzy weakness seemed to have overcome Gavin. For after a single attempt at resistance, he swayed and hung heavy on Standish's supporting arm. He made shift to mumble a dazed good night to Claire. Then he suffered Milo to support him up the stairs and along the wide upper hall to the open doorway of a bedroom.

Even at the threshold he seemed too uncertain of his footing to cross the soft-lit room alone. And Milo supported him to the bed. Gavin slumped heavily upon the side of it, his aching head in his hands. Then, as if with much effort, he lay down, burying his face in the pillow.

Milo had been watching him with growing impatience to be gone.

Now he said cheerily:

"That's all right, old chap! Lie still for a while. I'll be up in a few minutes to help you undress."

Standish was hurrying from the room and closing the door behind him, even as he spoke. With the last word the door shut and Gavin could hear the big man's footsteps hastening along the upper hall toward the stair-head.

Brice gave him a bare thirty seconds' start. Then, rising with strange energy for so dazed and broken an invalid, he left the room and followed him toward the head of the stairs.