The Obeah Murders E-Book

Hulbert Footner

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The novel begins with the fact that Phil Nevitt, an employee of an American alcoholic beverage company, goes to Annunziata, the mythical island of Futner’s creation in the West Indies, to learn everything he can about the Randall Trantora rum. „The Obeah Murders” show their fantastic roots with so many genre influences (spy, western, adventure, supernatural and detective). In the end, however, the race issue was the most surprising and, ultimately, the most important aspect of the book. More Footner reviews will appear later this summer.

Leseprobe

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 1

Phil Nevitt was one of half a dozen assistant secretaries of Columbia Distillers, an Organization that within two or three years after repeal had quietly become one of the great corporations of the country. It was a good job for his years, which were twenty-five; he could fairly term himself an “executive.” He had worked hard, which nowadays implies something harder than work–i.e., self-discipline; keeping a firm hand on his vices–but not too firm, and directing every thought and action to the end of making good; consequently he was looked upon as a rising man.

It could not be said that he was on intimate terms with the big boss, Julius Chapman; they had met a few times at some of the larger conferences of officials, that was all. Phil did not suspect that Mr. Chapman had ever singled him out as an individual; consequently, one morning at the beginning of winter it was with some apprehension that he received a summons to the president’s office.

He entered the palatial chamber smiling, to be on the safe side. Mr. Chapman, a small man, grim and white, with an odd rectangular head taller than it was long, looked him up and down before he spoke. There was a good deal of Phil to take in, six feet two of him, and broad in proportion. Mr. Chapman grunted encouragingly, and waved him toward a chair.

“Sit down,” he said. “Smoke?”

Phil’s smile broadened in relief as he helped himself to a presidential cigar.

“Are you married?” asked Mr. Chapman.

Phil laughed at the unexpectedness of the question. “No, sir.”

“I’m not trying to probe into your personal affairs. I merely want to know if your circumstances are such that you can make a voyage on confidential business of the company.”

Phil’s heart lifted up at the thought of a voyage. “I can, sir.”

“Good. Do you know anything about rum?”

“Only the taste of it, sir.”

“Well, don’t pursue that too far. I have chosen you for this job because I have a good report of you and because you’re too new to be generally known as an official of the company. This business must be carried out in secrecy.”

“I get you, sir.”

“Well, it has to do with rum. There are two sources of rum within our country, and both of them have started to produce again since repeal. One is New England rum, which, as you know, we already control. The other is the rum made on our island of Annunziata in the West Indies. Do you know anything about Annunziata?”

“Nothing but its name, sir.”

“A smallish island, off the main routes of travel. Rarely visited by tourists. Very beautiful, I am told, and enjoys a superb climate. Only a handful of white men live there. Years ago Annunziata rum was considered the best of all rums and commanded the highest price. Manufacture had to be abandoned when prohibition went into effect, and incidentally the island was ruined because it was their only industry. Now they’re starting up again. On the face of it, it is a private enterprise promoted by a man called Randal Trantor, who is the government representative on the island. This seems a little irregular, but we need not go into that.

“This Trantor must have strong backing, because he ordered a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of machinery two years ago, and has just lately duplicated his order. It constitutes a serious threat of competition to us and we must look into it. So far Trantor has made no attempt to market his rum. I want you to go to Annunziata in the guise of an idle tourist...”

“But if tourists never visit the island, sir?”

“You must be an original kind of tourist, one of those fellows that like to poke about in out-of-the-way places.”

“I get you.”

“Find out all you can about this Trantor; what sort of man he is; what kind of a plant he is putting up; how far he has got with it; what his connections are in this country; and especially who are his backers. Send me a detailed report of all this–you had better mail it under cover to our lawyers, and remain on the island until you hear from me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s only one ship from New York that calls at Annunziata. It’s the Cassandra of the Bowness Line, sailing on Thursday. I’m sorry to give you only three days’ notice, but I would like you to take that ship; otherwise you will have to wait a month.”

“I’ll be ready, sir.”

“Good! You should spend these three days in getting together whatever information you can about Annunziata and about the manufacture of rum. Mr. Winberg will instruct you further about the situation and you can come to me on Thursday morning at nine”–Mr. Chapman made a note on his desk calendar–“to go over the final details.”

“Very well, sir. And thank you.”

“Not at all. Not at all.”

Chapter 2

Phil began to feel the spell of Annunziata while the island was still thirty miles away and no more than a pale violet cloud on the horizon of the Caribbean. Two hours later, when the little Cassandra sailed into the harbor of Port-of-Grace, it had him fast. The shore hills clothed with dazzling greens, and the soaring mountains black by contrast; the little beige town red-roofed alongside the emerald water; he could scarcely believe in it. In order to cover his tracks Phil had engaged passage to Barbadoes. He went to the purser and said:

“I think I’ll be leaving you here.”

“What!” said the purser. “Annunziata? It’s a hole!”

“I like it,” said Phil, grinning.

“You ought to see St. Kitts or Martinique. Plenty of winter visitors in those islands. Port-of-Grace is the most dead-and-alive town in the Indies!”

“I like it!”

The young purser shrugged. “Well, dine on board,” he said, “and I’ll go ashore with you afterwards and introduce you at the club.”

This suited Phil very well.

The swift tropical darkness had fallen when they were rowed ashore, and a wave of some strange perfume was coming off the land. It was Phil’s first sniff of the tropics and it had a powerful emotional effect on him. He didn’t speak of it to the bored purser. The shore of the harbor was hung with sparkling jewels of light that were reflected in the black water.

“This island is a great place for magic,” remarked the purser.

“Magic?” said Phil.

“Nigger magic. Witches and conjure men and all that. Obeah, they call it. I don’t know what the special attraction is, but there’s something here that attracts the nigger Obeahs from all the other islands. Of course, they’re quiet enough aboard ship, but you can always spot them by their crazy eyes. Gives you the creeps.”

Phil glanced up at black mountain masses silhouetted against the starry sky and pictured the hidden gorges. Something in the purser’s light words stirred him. He said, “It looks like a place where you might find black magic.”

Upon landing at the quay the little town presented a strong contrast in styles. The island had been colonized by the Spanish, conquered by the French, picked up by the Danes when France was busy elsewhere, and finally sold to the United States. There was a four-square Danish custom-house on the quay, and up the street a big stucco church, pure Spanish, with the addition of a Danish bell-tower. A crowd of loitering negroes watched the lighters bringing freight ashore from the Cassandra.

As Phil and his bags landed on the quay a dark man in beautifully tailored white linen came up. He had an ugly flat face, but there was power in it. The purser presented him.

“Mr. Alfred Bareda, Deputy-Commissioner for Annunziata.”

“Amongst many other things, I’m the Customs,” said Bareda, with a pleasant smile. “In the case of American citizens it is purely a formality. Have you any firearms, ammunition, or spirituous liquors?” His English was as good as Phil’s own, but he had an indefinably foreign air.

“No,” said Phil. “Go ahead and look.”

“Your word is sufficient. I am also supposed to ask what your business is in Annunziata, Mr. Nevitt?”

“No business,” said Phil carelessly. “Just traveling.”

“Ah! We don’t have many travelers here. Please call on me if I can be of service in any way. I trust that your stay may be a pleasant one.”

“Thanks.”

The bags were picked up by a couple of ragged negroes, and they went on across the street to the hotel.

“That guy has a nerve!” growled the purser.

“Why?” said Phil, surprised. “He was polite, God knows.”

“Too damn polite! Talking up to you as if he was a white man!”

“I thought he was a white man. Of course, his complexion was dark...”

“Creole.”

“What’s a creole?”

“A native who is light enough to claim to be white.”

Phil thought this over. In Bareda he had the impression of meeting a personality. The man’s ugly composed face and pleasant manner suggested powerful self-control.

“Bareda pretty near runs this island,” the purser added; “but he’s got a flick of mud in his eye. They all have. They claim Spanish or French descent.”

“Runs the island?” said Phil. “How about Randal Trantor, the Commissioner?”

“He’s a sot.”

Phil laughed. “I am certainly getting the lowdown.”

The hotel was an ancient wooden building in the French style, with galleries and jalousies, all unpainted and silvery with age. Inside it smelled like a second-rate hotel anywhere in the world.

“The chow here will be terrible,” said the purser.

“Maybe I’ll find a boarding-house,” said Phil.

“You can’t do that. Nobody keeps boarders but creoles.”

“Well, why not?”

“We don’t run with them.”

The hotel-keeper, Pernisson, was a swarthy creole with a cast in one eye. He gave Phil a hard look and shouted for a servant to show him upstairs. Phil judged from the register that he was the only roomer, but the bar was doing a good business. A barefooted young girl appeared from the back. She had shining black eyes and hair like a raven’s wing, hanging in soft curls to her neck. Her slender bare legs were like two golden poems. To Phil her beauty was of a piece with the delicious perfume on the night air–wicked and alluring.

The purser murmured under his breath, “You better watch your step, young fellow.”

“Why?”

“The climate of this island is said to be bad for white men.”

Phil grinned.

Her name was Nina Obeida. With a shake of her curls, she took a key off a rack in the hall and led them upstairs to one of the rooms off the gallery. Phil looked at her beautiful golden legs.

The room was bleak, but appeared to be fairly clean. Phil merely dropped his bags there and went on out again with the purser.

From the quay the curving main street of the town ran east to the hills. It was lined by shabby stores with fixed iron awnings extending over the sidewalks as a protection from the sun. The store windows were but meagerly furnished with goods, and already at eight o’clock the street was deserted.

“Business doesn’t seem to be very good in Port-of-Grace,” remarked Phil.

“Good!” said the purser. “It’s practically non-existent.”

The club was reached through an alley running off to the left between two stores. It was a wide-spreading wooden pavilion standing amongst tennis-courts and croquet-lawns at the edge of the harbor. They entered a bare assembly-room with a dance floor set about with empty tables and chairs; the balance of the building was divided between bar and smoking-room. What life there was centered in the bar, and Phil headed in that direction. The purser pulled him the other way.

“You’ll find the Americans in the smoking-room,” he said, meaningly.

“How come?” asked Phil.

“There are not enough Americans to support the club, so they have to take in the well-to-do creoles, but they’re not allowed in the smoking-room.”

“If I was a creole, damned if I’d stand for it,” said Phil.

“If you were a creole you’d damned well have to,” retorted the purser. “We’re tops in this part of the world and we’re not going to let them forget it.”

The half-dozen Americans in the smoking-room were listless and anæmic specimens. Obviously they had been too long in the tropics. It occurred to Phil that the vitality of the island was confined to the despised creoles. He was introduced to Dr. Ramseur, to Inspector Fielding of the police, to the Reverend Oran Knowles, rector of St. Mary’s, a couple of bank men, and so on.

“This guy has fallen for your lousy island, God knows why,” said the purser, jocosely. “He’s going to stay awhile.”

They welcomed Phil in friendly enough fashion, but their unconscious glances suggested that they rather resented his physique and conspicuous vigor.

The purser remained for one drink only, and went off to check up his manifests. The others made an attempt to include Phil in the conversation but it languished. They were not interested in the outside world and soon relapsed into the gossip of the island. So Phil drank his highball and listened. It was not long before the name of the man who had brought him to Annunziata cropped up.

“Randy Trantor was drunk again today,” remarked the doctor. Ramseur was a tall, stooped, embittered man who looked as if the tropics had sucked him dry.

The mild little clergyman shook his head. “How disgraceful!”

“I went down to the distillery to see him about a field hand who has developed beri-beri. He was plastered and told me to go to hell in his usual style.”

“What did you do?” asked Inspector Fielding, a personable man, still youngish, but discontented-looking.

“I fixed it up with Bareda to pitch a tent in the hospital yard so that we could isolate the patient.”

“Trantor’s been hitting the bottle for twenty years,” said Fielding. “He can’t keep it up forever in this climate. How long do you give him, Doc?”

“He will outlive all of us,” said Ramseur, dryly. “He has a Constitution of iron!”

“I don’t mind his drinking,” said Fielding. “It’s his damned arrogance that gripes me.... You fellows in the bank are lucky,” he went on to Coulson, the manager. “You’re responsible to your head office and not to Trantor.”

“Nothing in it,” said Coulson, with a wry grin. “We have to dance when Trantor calls the tune, just like the rest of you. He’s the source of practically all our business in Annunziata. He could have me recalled any day with a word.”

“Aye, it’s his arrogance,” growled Ramseur. “I was hard put to it not to knock him down today.”

“Why didn’t you?” asked Phil.

They looked at him pityingly. “You don’t know Trantor.”

“Well, what about him?”

“He’s our Governor, so to speak. He’s the biggest landowner on Annunziata. He has all the money there is hereabouts and we live off the crumbs that fall from his table.”

“But surely a man of that sort isn’t fit to govern the island. Why don’t you go over his head?”

“We might get worse,” said Ramseur. “After all, Trantor is drunk most of the time and doesn’t trouble us. Bareda does the work. He’s a good enough administrator.”

“But you don’t associate with him.”

Ramseur shrugged. “He’s a creole.”

“What’s Trantor’s history?” asked Phil.

“He comes of a wealthy family in Massachusetts. He came here twenty years ago when the United States took over the islands. The story is that his family shipped him down here. At that time most of the Danes wanted to go back to Denmark, and Trantor bought them out for a song; cane-lands in the flats, and all the pasture on the uplands. Immediately afterwards the United States entered the war, and Trantor cleaned up. Sugar soared and cattle and horses rose to fantastic prices. After the war when sugar faded Trantor concentrated on cattle and went on making money. He ships cattle all over the Indies. Now he’s built a big distillery to make rum and I suppose he’ll die as rich as Henry Ford.”

“Has he any family?” asked Phil.

“Not officially. He lives with a creole woman. He’s had three children by her, not to speak of others around the island.”

“What a man!” said Phil, dryly.

In the doorway of the smoking-room appeared a battered white man. He was dressed in a clean, ragged white suit with the jacket pinned across at the neck to hide the absence of a shirt, and broken canvas shoes. On the beach obviously. He had been a fine figure of a man and there was still fire in his drunken eyes.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, glancing around with inimitable derision.

“Get out!” said Fielding, turning red. “Or I’ll have you thrown out by the blacks.”

The intruder coolly met his eye. “I didn’t come to see you, Inspector. I heard that we had a white visitor and I wanted to pay him my respects.” His eye fixed on Phil. “Will you drink with me, sir? I can promise you better entertainment than this.”

Phil would have liked to go with him. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’m a guest here at the moment.”

“Some other time, then. Some other time.” The intruder glanced from one to another with his provoking grin. Phil thought he had the look of a molting eagle among neat barnyard fowls.

“Isn’t anybody going to offer me a drink?” he asked.

“I’ll give you just thirty seconds to get out of here,” said the red-faced Fielding.

The other paid no attention. His derisive eye dwelt on the Reverend Mr. Knowles, sitting nearest the door with a freshly filled whisky-and-soda on the arm of his chair. “Padre, you’re a charitable man,” he said, grinning. “I can depend on you.”

Without waiting for the parson to speak, he whipped up his glass and tossed off the contents as it seemed in a single gulp. As Fielding sprang up in a rage, he dropped the glass and slipped out of the room, laughing.

Fielding dropped back, cursing. They all glanced covertly at Phil to see how he was taking it. Phil suppressed the desire to laugh. Inwardly he was tickled by the old beach-comber’s impudence.

“This is intolerable!” cried the little parson. “In our own club!”

“What can we do?” growled Ramseur. “A man can’t mix it up with a bum.”

“He ought to be arrested!”

“I’m sick of arresting him,” said Fielding, scowling.

“Then he ought to be deported from the island.”

“Where can I deport him to?”

“Who is he?” asked Phil.

“Buckra Bart.”

Gradually they smoothed down their feathers and returned to their gossiping. Sugar had dropped a fraction of a cent. It was reported that chain stores in the United States were selling it at three cents a pound. “How do they expect the planters to live?” Cacao was still falling and some men were threatening to cut down their trees. Why not try avocadoes? Randy Trantor was urging everybody to put more acreage into sugar. Next year he would be prepared to take the entire crop for his distillery. Yes, but at what price? And so on. And so on.

Phil wearied of it. Outside, the breathing tropic night was beckoning him like a presence. He had only had two drinks, but he was greatly uplifted. As there seemed to be no chance that Trantor would turn up now, he rose and said good-night.

“Consider yourself a member here as long as you’re on the island,” said Ramseur.

Phil thanked him and left.

The main street was entirely uninteresting. Parallel with it ran a street of low-spreading bungalows almost hidden in a wealth of flowering hedges, shrubs, and creepers. Under the electric lights gleamed enormous and incredible flowers. On the air hung that unknown fragrance now strong, now faint. He finally located the source of it in a low tree with stubby twigs naked of leaves and flushed with pinkish blossoms. A negro boy was passing and Phil asked:

“What kind of tree is that?”

“Frangipanni, sah.”

Frangipanni! The word was music to the ears.

There was not a breath of air stirring; the sky was crowded with stars. The people who passed him, girls and boys mostly in couples, were of a race new to Phil, with complexions graduating from magnolia white to golden; a beautiful race with features of classic regularity and velvety dark eyes. From the leaf-screened porches he heard the voices of women with a slow, caressing quality as disturbing as the fragrance of frangipanni.

He sauntered through to the end of the street and came back on the other side. Prom within a larger bungalow at the corner of a side street came the sounds of a woman singing to herself while she touched the strings of a guitar. The song would break off while the singer drew at a cigarette, then resume. Phil paused at the gate to listen.

There was an electric light over his head, and presently a woman, not the singer, spoke startlingly from the dark veranda. “Won’t you come in, Phil Nevitt?”

He grinned and obeyed.

There were lights inside the house–the singer was in there somewhere, but bamboo blinds had been lowered over doors and windows and the veranda was in darkness. Off to the right of the front door he perceived a shadowy figure slowly rocking in a chair.

“Here I am,” she said. “Come and sit beside me.”

He dropped in a chair. He could see that she was neither young nor slender, but her slow voice charmed his spirit. It was the sort of voice that accepts all. It lapped him in peace.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Coralie.... I know who you are. It’s a small place and the word has gone around. How do you like Annunziata?”

“Annunziata? When you say it, how beautiful it sounds! Say it again.”

Very slowly: “Annunziata, caro mio.”

“How do I like it? Don’t ask! It has stood me on my head. It all seems a little unreal. Or perhaps I ought to say I have become unreal here. I have lost myself.”

She laughed again. “It’s the sun. Until you came here you were a stranger to the sun.”

“I can’t get the hang of things at all,” Phil went on. “From the moment I landed I felt something in the air. Elemental. Yet this is supposed to be an American island. Here’s a handful of peevish Americans trying to hold down the lid. They don’t know what it’s all about. Why do you people allow us Americans to run you?”

“Oh, it’s your game,” she said, laughing. “What do we care about such child’s games? We live.”

Four slim young men wearing voluminous capes and broad-brimmed, flat-crowned hats mounted the steps of Coralie’s house and disappeared inside. Phil had a glimpse of a dark, tormented face that aroused his curiosity. This was evidently the leader; the others merely his admirers and imitators.

“Who’s the slim guy?” he asked.

“John D’Acosta, a landowner on the south side.”

“He looks wild.”

“Ah, poor fellow! he’s crossed in love!” murmured Coralie.

“And the others?”

“His pals, the sons of landowners–Warner Figueroa, Frank Alvarez, Verne Cardenas.”

“Why the Spanish get-up?”

“That’s to annoy the Americans.” Phil could hear the smile in her voice.

“Well, the heck with them. Teach me how to live in the sun, Coralie.”

“You have to be born in it.”

It was late when Phil got back to the hotel. The street door was not locked. Up in his own room, when he threw back the cover of his largest valise, he saw that somebody had been through it while he was out. There had been an effort to put everything in straight, but the searcher had been in a hurry. On the bottom lay the briefcase which contained his private papers. So far as he could tell, nothing was missing from among his things.

He strode to the door in a rage, to call Pernisson. But with his hand on the knob he thought better of it and came back. After all, nothing had been stolen and to raise a row would only make him look foolish. It was his own fault for not locking his bags. The hotel door had stood unlocked all evening, and the key to his room had been hanging on the rack in the hall. Phil made up his mind to find another lodging. Meanwhile he would carry his private papers on him. He went to bed with an uneasy mind.

Chapter 3

Phil hired a saddle horse next morning intending to spend the day in exploring. Mounting the hill at the head of the harbor, he looked down the other side into the great central valley of the island with its lofty black mountains on either hand. The mountains appeared black because of the mists of water vapor clinging around their summits. It was the end of the rainy season. The lower slopes were everywhere covered with the pale green of sugar cane.

He rode through the valley to the sea, twenty miles away, and lunched on a fried bonito in a fisherman’s shack on the easterly point of the island.

Returning in the late afternoon, his interest was aroused by a romantic-looking dwelling which clung part-way up the side of the mountain on his left, like a swallow’s nest. It was clear that that house must enjoy one of the great views of earth and he wondered what kind of people lived there. He came to a rough track that dipped down to the stream crossed by an ancient stone bridge and started back up the face of the mountain towards the high-perched house. He ought to have kept on for his dinner, but he turned his horse into the track. The climbing road wound in and out of the bays in the mountain-side, marking a division between cultivated land and forest. On his left the cane-fields swept down to the stream, and on his right rose a well of trees.

Halfway up he began to hear the sounds of a commotion in the woods above. It drew nearer–the yelping of dogs and excited human cries, a plunging and tearing through the brush that made his heart beat faster. They burst out into the cart track not a hundred feet in advance of him–a wild pig running for its life, a pair of nondescript dogs almost on the pig’s haunches, a half-grown white boy and three negroes mounted on wiry ponies. The pig headed down the track straight for Phil.

Not a white boy, he soon saw, but a tall, slim girl of astonishing beauty, hair flying, eyes flashing, teeth gleaming in her excitement. She was wearing rough, soiled breeches, boots, and shirt, and carried a lance. There was a pure savagery in her glance that struck delight into Phil.

He drew as far as possible to the side of the track. Pigs have not good sight and the hunted one was almost on top of Phil’s horse before he scented the new danger. The beast whirled around with a squeal of mortal terror, and charged straight back for the other horses. The dogs were carried beyond Phil. The girl jerked her pony back on its haunches and lowered her lance. The pig evaded the point and ran in and out among the legs of the stamping horses like quicksilver. The girl, wheeling her horse, collided violently with another horse. The pig sprang up the bank and was lost in the woods, the dogs tearing after him.

Instantly the girl was in a white passion. Dropping her lance and snatching a whip from her boot, she furiously lashed the back of the negro who had accidentally blocked her. It was no dainty switch, but a heavy plaited thong with loaded handle. The other two negroes turned ashy with fear.

“You fool! You fool!” she cried. “How many times have I told you to keep out of my way! Now you’ve let him escape!”

The negro, a powerful young fellow, took the lashing all hunched in his saddle. His face was twisted, and low cries of pain were forced from him, but he made no attempt to resist her, nor to get away. Phil could not bear to see a human creature used like that. He spurred his horse forward crying:

“Hey! Cut that out!”

The girl’s whip arm dropped to her side, and she turned a face of pure astonishment. Up to that moment it is doubtful if she had seen Phil. “Who are you?” she cried. Her face flamed red and turned very white again. “How dare you speak to me so! This is my servant. I shall whip him if I choose!”

“Not while I’m here,” said Phil, grimly.

“You!... You!...” she cried, almost speechless with rage. Spurring the horse forward, she raised the whip. Phil leaned forward and, wrenching it from her, sent it spinning over her horse’s head and down into the field of growing cane. She reined her horse back, glaring at him. Phil laughed.

Then there was trouble. The negro she had whipped slipped out of the saddle and advanced towards Phil with his head sunk between his shoulders, showing his teeth. There was a red cast under his dark skin that made him look more animal than human. Phil saw that he was well able to drag him out of the saddle. Moreover, there were two others to back him up. Phil was unarmed, but he would not run from negroes. He waited for them.

The girl spoke sharply, “Let him alone, Simon.”

The negro turned, scowling and protesting. “Aw, Missee, let me... let me...”

“Let him alone, I tell you! He is nothing! Give me my lance. Mount your horse and find that pig!”

Simon obeyed her sullenly. The girl put her horse to the bank. Over her shoulder she cried, “You, Jas, find my whip and come after us.” With two of her men she disappeared in the woods. The third negro leaped his horse down into the cane-field.

It was all over in a minute. But what a minute! Phil felt as confused as if he had received a blow on the skull. He urged his horse forward in the hope that motion might restore some sense to him. All the aimless torment that had filled him since he landed on Annunziata suddenly focussed on the girl. She was scent of frangipanni; she was the starry sky and the music of guitars. She was life in the sun. This tomboy, this savage young huntress. There it was!

Meanwhile the wraiths of mist around the mountain tops had thickened and drawn together in heavy gray clouds that now obscured half the sky. He took no notice of it. In twenty minutes or so he heard horses behind him in the trail and his heart jumped. She was coming back. He pulled up his horse to wait for her.

They appeared trotting their horses around a shoulder of the mountain, all in a high good humor. The dead pig lay across the pommel of Simon’s saddle, still bleeding. The girl was smiling and serene, the negroes grinning from ear to ear. They took their cue from the face of their mistress. Even the dogs with their tongues hanging out appeared to be laughing.

Phil started his horse forward, and she fell in beside him as a matter of course. “What’s your name?” she asked, as one boy of another.

“Phil Nevitt.”

“Mine’s Eve Brinsley.” She blandly ignored the violent scene of half an hour before. “What’s your business? Strangers around here are as scarce as hen’s teeth.”

“I have no business,” said Phil, smiling. He couldn’t get his fill of looking at her.

“Were you on your way to see us? Ours is the only house on this trail.”

Phil bent the truth a little. “No. Just riding blind.”

“Well, you’ll have to stop at our house now,” she said, glancing at the sky, “because it’s going to rain like blazes directly.”

Phil felt most unreasonably delighted.

“You mustn’t mind if my mother is rather highty-tighty.” Eve went on. “She hates strangers. She’ll do her duty by you, though. She’ll feed you.”

“Who else is in your family?” he asked.

“Nobody. Just mother and me. We raise cacao. It grows best on this island at a thousand feet elevation. But the price has dropped and we’re poor as Job’s turkey. We raise coffee, too, but nobody will buy it. It’s too good. So we drink it ourselves!” Her laugh rang out.

She was bareheaded, her dark hair hopelessly snarled. Hands and face, too, were smeared with earth. Evidently she had been right down in the dirt after that pig. But she was beautiful; she was beauty itself, which no disguise can cover. And she was no boy, either, but slim and shapely as young Diana.

“Do you hunt?” she asked in her odd, direct manner.

“No,” he confessed.

He could see that he fell in her estimation. “I expect you’re city-bred,” she hazarded.

“Yes.”

“Then you couldn’t be expected to ride well enough to go pig-sticking,” she said, coolly.

“There are other things beside pig-sticking,” he suggested, with a grin.

“Not for me!” she answered, promptly. “Pig-sticking is the best fun in the world!”

By this time they had climbed high above the cane-fields. Out from behind a clump of palmetto in front of them stepped a good-looking young negress with a little girl clinging to her skirt. Mother and child wore freshly washed dresses and had bandannas knotted about their heads. The woman was carrying a dressed fowl wrapped in a clean napkin, and a little basket of eggs. These she mutely offered to Eve with an imploring expression.

“Why, Jem, you mustn’t give me this,” protested Eve. “Eat it yourselves! Eat it yourselves!”

The woman dropped on her knees in the dirt, holding her offerings up, and began to pour out a pitiful plea for help of some sort. The little girl started to cry. Phil’s ears had not yet become accustomed to the jargon spoken by the negroes of Annunziata, and he couldn’t get the hang of it. It had to do with somebody called duppies. They had thrown stones at her and her little girl. They had caused her baby to fall sick.

Eve, like a boy, was impatient with all this, half sympathetic, half afraid of being made to appear ridiculous. With a side glance at Phil to see how he was taking it, she burst out, “This is all nonsense, Jem. I haven’t got any power over the duppies. I don’t believe there are any duppies. It’s just foolishness!”

The woman paid no attention to Eve’s protests; merely waited until Eve had finished, and began her plea all over.

“You should get the doctor to see your sick baby, and pray to God to deliver you from evil spirits, not me!”

“Work for me, Missee! Work for me!” murmured the woman.

Finally Eve spurred her horse on, without taking the gifts. “I’ll ride down to see your baby in the morning,” she said over her shoulder. “But I can’t do it any good.”

The woman, satisfied, took her child by the hand and struck straight down the mountain-side.

“They think I’ve got some sort of magical powers,” Eve said, crossly, to Phil; “and I can’t knock it out of their fool heads.” That was all the explanation she would make. Magical powers! Phil was full of wonder.

The first drops of rain began to fall as they rode into a flat yard shaded by a gigantic mimosa tree. The back of the house was on one side; stables and other outbuildings on the other. The whole outfit had a picturesque and dilapidated air–tangled creepers; broken rails; slack and grinning negroes. Handing their horses to the servants, they raced for the shelter of the encircling veranda.

“Hope you don’t mind going up the back steps,” said Eve. “There used to be front steps, but they foundered.”

The rain came down in earnest then, crashing on the iron roof like musketry, and falling from the eaves in sheets. As they walked around the veranda, Phil glimpsed various rooms through the open French windows, all bare and cheerless.

“Not much like a civilized house, eh?” remarked Eve, reading his thought. “Ants ate up the rugs, curtains, and the stuffing of the chairs long ago.”

As they turned the front corner she whispered, swiftly: “Don’t mention that you met me out pig-sticking. It’s forbidden.”

It created a bond between them. Phil grinned.

The front of the house overhung the mountain-side and the view pulled Phil up short. He saw one of those unique effects of nature that are never reproduced. It was raining only on their mountain. They looked out through a curtain of rain on the opposite mountains, peak after peak, gloriously gilded by the sinking sun. So bright was the reflection that the rain itself seemed to be golden.