“I certainly do!” Brade cried. “Why, look here, this thing may drag on indefinitely. I want England again—the Strand, Piccadilly—it’s twenty-five years since I saw London. Wait! Damn it, why should I wait! What’s this murder to me—by gad, sir—” He came close, erect, flaming, the son of Tom Brade, the blackbirder, now. “Do you mean to insinuate that I—”
John Quincy faced him calmly. “I know you can’t prove where you were early last Tuesday morning,” he said evenly. “I don’t say that incriminates you, but I shall certainly advise my cousin to wait. I’d not care to see her in the position of having rewarded the man who killed her father.”
“I’ll fight,” cried Brade. “I’ll take it to the courts—”
“Go ahead,” John Quincy said. “But it will cost you every penny you’ve saved, and you may lose in the end. Good night, sir.”
“Good night!” Brade answered, standing as his father might have stood on the Maid of Shiloh’s deck.
John Quincy had gone halfway down the balcony when he heard quick footsteps behind him. He turned. It was Brade, Brade the civil servant, the man who had labored thirty-six years in the oven of India, a beaten, helpless figure.
“You’ve got me,” he said, laying a hand on John Quincy’s arm. “I can’t fight. I’m too tired, too old—I’ve worked too hard. I’ll take whatever your cousin wants to give me—when she’s ready to give it.”
“That’s a wise decision, sir,” John Quincy answered. A sudden feeling of pity gripped his heart. He felt toward Brade as he had felt toward that other exile, Arlene Compton. “I hope you see London very soon,” he added, and held out his hand.
Brade took it. “Thank you, my boy. You’re a gentleman, even if your name is Winterslip.”
Which, John Quincy reflected as he entered the lobby of the Reef and Palm, was a compliment not without its flaw.
He didn’t worry over that long, however, for Carlota Egan was behind the desk. She looked up and smiled, and it occurred to John Quincy that her eyes were happier than he had seen them since that day on the Oakland ferry.
“Hello,” he said. “Got a job for a good bookkeeper?”
She shook her head. “Not with business the way it is now. I was just figuring my payroll. You know, we’ve no undertow at Waikiki, but all my life I’ve had to worry about the overhead.”
He laughed. “You talk like a brother Kiwanian. By the way, has anything happened? You seem considerably cheered.”
“I am,” she replied. “I went to see poor dad this morning in that horrible place—and when I left someone else was going in to visit him. A stranger.”
“A stranger?”
“Yes—and the handsomest thing you ever saw—tall, gray, capable-looking. He had such a friendly air, too—I felt better the moment I saw him.”
“Who was he?” John Quincy inquired, with sudden interest.
“I’d never seen him before, but one of the men told me he was Captain Cope, of the British Admiralty.”
“Why should Captain Cope want to see your father?”
“I haven’t a notion. Do you know him?”
“Yes—I’ve met him,” John Quincy told her.
“Don’t you think he’s wonderful-looking?” Her dark eyes glowed.
“Oh, he’s all right,” replied John Quincy without enthusiasm. “You know, I can’t help feeling that things are looking up for you.”
“I feel that too,” she said.
“What do you say we celebrate?” he suggested. “Go out among ’em and get a little taste of night life. I’m a bit fed up on the police station. What do people do here in the evening? The movies?”
“Just at present,” the girl told him, “everybody visits Punahou to see the night-blooming cereus. It’s the season now, you know.”
“Sounds like a big evening,” John Quincy laughed. “Go and look at the flowers. Well, I’m for it. Will you come?”
“Of course.” She gave a few directions to the clerk, then joined him by the door. “I can run down and get the roadster,” he offered.
“Oh, no,” she smiled. “I’m sure I’ll never own a motorcar, and it might make me discontented to ride in one. The trolley’s my carriage—and it’s lots of fun. One meets so many interesting people.”
On the stone walls surrounding the campus of Oahu College, the strange flower that blooms only on a summer night was heaped in snowy splendor. John Quincy had been a bit lukewarm regarding the expedition when they set out, but he saw his error now. For here was beauty, breathtaking and rare. Before the walls paraded a throng of sightseers; they joined the procession. The girl was a charming companion, her spirits had revived and she chatted vivaciously. Not about Shaw and the art galleries, true enough, but bright human talk that John Quincy liked to hear.
He persuaded her to go to the city for a maidenly ice-cream soda, and it was ten o’clock when they returned to the beach. They left the trolley at a stop some distance down the avenue from the Reef and Palm, and strolled slowly toward the hotel. The sidewalk was lined at their right by dense foliage, almost impenetrable. The night was calm; the street lamps shone brightly; the paved street gleamed white in the moonlight. John Quincy was talking of Boston.
“I think you’d like it there. It’s old and settled, but—”
From the foliage beside them came the flash of a pistol, and John Quincy heard a bullet sing close to his head. Another flash, another bullet. The girl gave a startled little cry.
John Quincy circled round her and plunged into the bushes. Angry branches stung his cheek. He stopped; he couldn’t leave the girl alone. He returned to her side.
“What did that mean?” he asked, amazed. He stared in wonder at the peaceful scene before him.
“I—I don’t know.” She took his arm. “Come—hurry!”
“Don’t be afraid,” he said reassuringly.
“Not for myself,” she answered.
They went on to the hotel, greatly puzzled. But when they entered the lobby, they had something else to think
