many seconds did Graham waste. His next start was determined, and Paula, poised for her dive, could not send him scuttling back. He raced upward to gain the thirty-foot platform before she should dive, and she was too wise to linger. Out into space she launched, head back, arms bent, hands close to chest, legs straight and close together, her body balanced horizontally on the air as it fell outward and downward.
«Oh you Annette Kellerman!» Bert Wamwright's admiring cry floated up.
Graham ceased pursuit to watch the completion of the dive, and saw his hostess, a few feet above the water, bend her head forward, straighten out her arms and lock the hands to form the arch before her head, and, so shifting the balance of her body, change it from the horizontal to the perfect, water-cleaving angle.
The moment she entered the water, he swung out on the thirty-foot platform and waited. From this height he could make out her body beneath the surface swimming a full stroke straight for the far end of the tank. Not till then did he dive. He was confident that he could outspeed her, and his dive, far and flat, entered him in the water twenty feet beyond her entrance.
But at the instant he was in, Dick dipped two flat rocks into the water and struck them together. This was the signal for Paula to change her course. Graham heard the concussion and wondered. He broke surface in the full swing of the crawl and went down the tank to the far end at a killing pace. He pulled himself out and watched the surface of the tank. A burst of handclapping from the girls drew his eyes to the Little Lady drawing herself out of the tank at the other end.
Again he ran down the side of the tank, and again she climbed the scaffold. But this time his wind and endurance enabled him to cut down her lead, so that she was driven to the twenty-foot platform. She took no time for posturing or swanning, but tilted immediately off in a stiff dive, angling toward the west side of the tank. Almost they were in the air at the same time. In the water and under it, he could feel against his face and arms the agitation left by her progress; but she led into the deep shadow thrown by the low afternoon sun, where the water was so dark he could see nothing.
When he touched the side of the tank he came up. She was not in sight. He drew himself out, panting, and stood ready to dive in at the first sign of her. But there were no signs.
«Seven minutes!» Rita called. «And a half! … Eight!… And a half!»
And no Paula Forrest broke surface. Graham refused to be alarmed because he could see no alarm on the faces of the others.
«I lose,» he announced at Rita's «Nine minutes!»
«She's been under over two minutes, and you're all too blessed calm about it to get me excited,» he said. «I've still a minute—maybe I don't lose,» he added quickly, as he stepped off feet first into the tank.
As he went down he turned over and explored the cement wall of tank with his hands. Midway, possibly ten feet under the surface he estimated, his hands encountered an opening in the wall. He felt about, learned it Was unscreened, and boldly entered. Almost before he was in, he found he could come up; but he came up slowly, breaking surface in pitchy blackness and feeling about him without splashing.
His fingers touched a cool smooth arm that shrank convulsively at contact while the possessor of it cried sharply with the startle of fright. He held on tightly and began to laugh, and Paula laughed with him. A line from «The First Chanty» flashed into his consciousness— «
«You did frighten me when you touched me,» she said. «You came without a sound, and I was a thousand miles away, dreaming…»
«What?» Graham asked.
«Well, honestly, I had just got an idea for a gown—a dusty, musty, mulberry-wine velvet, with long, close lines, and heavy, tarnished gold borders and cords and things. And the only jewelery a ring—one enormous pigeon- blood ruby that Dick gave me years ago when we sailed the
«Is there anything you don't do?» he laughed.
She joined with him, and their mirth sounded strangely hollow in the pent and echoing dark.
«Who told you?» she next asked.
«No one. After you had been under two minutes I knew it had to be something like this, and I came exploring.»
«It was Dick's idea. He had it built into the tank afterward. You will find him full of whimsies. He delighted in scaring old ladies into fits by stepping off into the tank with their sons or grandsons and hiding away in here. But after one or two nearly died of shock—old ladies, I mean—he put me up, as to-day, to fooling hardier persons like yourself.—Oh, he had another accident. There was a Miss Coghlan, friend of Ernestine, a little seminary girl. They artfully stood her right beside the pipe that leads out, and Dick went off the high dive and swam in here to the inside end of the pipe. After several minutes, by the time she was in collapse over his drowning, he spoke up the pipe to her in most horrible, sepulchral tones. And right there Miss Coghlan fainted dead away.»
«She must have been a weak sister,» Graham commented; while he struggled with a wanton desire for a match so that he could strike it and see how Paula Forrest looked paddling there beside him to keep afloat.
«She had a fair measure of excuse,» Paula answered. «She was a young thing—eighteen; and she had a sort of school-girl infatuation for Dick. They all get it. You see, he's such a boy when he's playing that they can't realize that he's a hard-bitten, hard-working, deep– thinking, mature, elderly benedict. The embarrassing thing was that the little girl, when she was first revived and before she could gather her wits, exposed all her secret heart. Dick's face was a study while she babbled her—»
«Well?—going to stay there all night?» Bert Wainwright's voice came down the pipe, sounding megaphonically close.
«Heavens!» Graham sighed with relief; for he had startled and clutched Paula's arm. «That's the time I got my fright. The little maiden is avenged. Also, at last, I know what a lead-pipe cinch is.»
«And it's time we started for the outer world,» she suggested. «It's not the coziest gossiping place in the world. Shall I go first?»
«By all means—and I'll be right behind; although it's a pity the water isn't phosphorescent. Then I could follow your incandescent heel like that chap Byron wrote about—don't you remember?»
He heard her appreciative gurgle in the dark, and then her: «Well, I'm going now.»
Unable to see the slightest glimmer, nevertheless, from the few sounds she made he knew she had turned over and gone down head first, and he was not beyond visioning with inner sight the graceful way in which she had done it—an anything but graceful feat as the average swimming woman accomplishes it.
«Somebody gave it away to you,» was Bert's prompt accusal, when Graham rose to the surface of the tank and climbed out.
«And you were the scoundrel who rapped stone under water,» Graham challenged. «If I'd lost I'd have protested the bet. It was a crooked game, a conspiracy, and competent counsel, I am confident, would declare it a felony. It's a case for the district attorney.»
«But you won,» Ernestine cried.
«I certainly did, and, therefore, I shall not prosecute you, nor any one of your crooked gang—if the bets are paid promptly. Let me see— you owe me a box of cigars—»
«One cigar, sir!»
«A box! A box!» «Cross tag!» Paula cried. «Let's play cross-tag!—
You're IT!»
Suiting action to word, she tagged Graham on the shoulder and plunged into the tank. Before he could follow, Bert seized him, whirled him in a circle, was himself tagged, and tagged Dick before he could escape. And while Dick pursued his wife through the tank and Bert and Graham sought a chance to cross, the girls fled up the scaffold and stood in an enticing row on the fifteen-foot diving platform.
CHAPTER XIV.
An indifferent swimmer, Donald Ware had avoided the afternoon sport in the tank; but after dinner, somewhat to the irritation of Graham, the violinist monopolized Paula at the piano. New guests, with the casual
