"It's an amazing place!" said Howard Locke.  
"Yes; isn't it?" said Polly Wickes. "But, come along; you haven't seen it all yet."
 
"Is there more?" Howard Locke asked with pretended incredulity. "I've seen a private power plant; an aquarium that contains more varieties of fish than I ever imagined swam in the sea; a house as magnificent and spacious as a palace; stables; gardens; flowers; bowers of Eden. More! Really?"
 
"I think guardy was right," observed Polly Wickes na?vely.
 
"Yes?" inquired Howard Locke.
 
Polly Wickes arched her eyebrows.
 
"He said you weren't a ladies' man."
 
"Oh!" said Howard Locke with a grin. "So he's been talking behind my back, has he?"
 
"I'm afraid so," she admitted.
 
"And may I ask why you agree with him—why I am condemned?"
 
"Because," said Polly Wickes, "it would have been ever so much nicer, instead of saying what you did, to have expressed delight that the tour of inspection wasn't over—something about charming company, you know, even if everything you saw bored you to death."
 
"Unfair!" Locke frowned with mock severity. "Most unfair! I was going to say something like that, and now I can't because you'll swear you put the words into my mouth and I simply parroted them."
 
"Sir," she said airily, "will you see the bungalows and the pickaninnies next, or the boathouse?"
 
"I am contrite and humble," he said meekly.
 
Polly Wickes' laughter rippled out on the air.
 
"Come on, then!" she cried, and, turning, began to run along the path through the grove of trees where they had been walking.
 
Locke followed. She ran like a young fawn! He stumbled once awkwardly—and she turned and laughed at him. He felt the colour mount into his cheeks—felt a tinge of chagrin. Was she vamping him; did she know that if his eyes had been occupied with where he was going, and not with her, he would not have stumbled? Or was she just a little sprite of nature, full to overflowing with life, buoyant, and the more glorious for an unconscious expression of the joy of living? Amazing, he had called what he had seen on this island since he had been installed here as a guest that morning, but most amazing of all was Newcombe's ward. Newcombe's ward! It was rather strange! Who was she? How had a girl like this come to be Captain Newcombe's ward? Newcombe had not been communicative save only on the point that since she had gone to America to school Newcombe had not see her. Rather strange, that, too! He was conscious that she piqued him one moment, while the next found him possessed of a mad desire to touch, for instance, those truant wisps of hair that now, as she stood waiting for him on the edge of the shore, a little out of breath, the colour glowing in her cheeks, she retrieved with deft little movements of her fingers.
 
Her colour deepened suddenly.
 
"That's the boathouse over there," she said.
 
"I—I beg your pardon," said Locke in confusion. And then deliberately: "No; I don't!"
 
Polly Wickes stared. Again the colour in her cheeks came and went swiftly.
 
"Oh!" she gasped; then hurriedly: "Well, perhaps, that is better! Don't you think those two little bridges from the rocks up to the boathouse are awfully pretty?"
 
"Awfully!" laughed Locke.
 
"You're not looking at them at all," said Polly Wickes severely.
 
"Yes, I am," asserted Locke. "And just to prove it, I was going to ask why that amazing structure—you see, I said amazing again—that looks more like the home of a yacht club than a private boathouse, is built out into the water like that, and requires those bridges at all? Is it on account of the tide? I see there's no beach here."
 
"I'm sure I don't know," said Polly Wickes. "But they are pretty, aren't they?—and the place does look like a clubhouse. And it looks more like one inside—there's a lovely little lounging room with an open fireplace, and I can't begin to tell you what else. Shall we go in?"
 
"Yes, rather!" said Locke.
 
He was studying the place now with a yachtsman's eye. It was built out from the rocky shore a considerable distance, and rested on an outer series of small concrete piers, placed a few feet apart; while, by stooping down, he could see, beneath the overhang of the verandah, a massive centre pier, wide and long, obviously the main foundation of the building. At the two corners facing the shore were the little bridges, built in shape like a curving ramp and ornamented with rustic railings, that she had referred to. These led from a point well above high water mark on the shore to the verandah of the boathouse itself.
 
"Mr. Marlin must be an enthusiast," he said, as he followed his guide across one of the bridges.
 
Polly Wickes did not answer at once, and they began to make the circuit of the verandah.
 
Howard Locke glanced at her. Her face had become suddenly sobered, the dark eyes somehow deeper, a sensitive quiver now around the corners of her lips. His glance lengthened into an unconscious stare. She could be serious then—and, yes, equally attractive in that mood. It became her. He wondered if she knew it became her? That was cynical on his part. Was he trying to arm himself with cynicism? Well, it was easily pierced then, that armour! It was a very wonderful face; not merely beautiful, but fine in the sense of steadfastness, self-reliance and sincerity. He was a poor cynic! Why not admit that she attracted him as no woman had ever attracted him before?
 
They had reached the seaward side of the verandah. Here a short dock was built out to meet a sort of sea-wall that gave protection to any craft that might be berthed there—but the slip was empty of boats.
 
She looked up at him now, as she answered his observation.
 
"He was," she said slowly; "but all the boats are stowed away inside now. Poor Mr. Marlin!" She turned away abruptly, her eyes suddenly moist. "Let's go inside."
 
They found a cosy corner in the little lounging room of which she had spoken, and seated themselves.
 
Locke picked up the thread of their conversation.
 
"You're very fond of him, aren't you, Miss Wickes?" he said gently.
 
"Yes," she said simply.
 
"It's a very strange case," said Howard Locke.
 
"And a very, very sad one," said Polly Wickes. "I don't know how much Dora—Miss Marlin—has said to you, or perhaps even Mr. Marlin himself, for he is sometimes just like—like anybody else, so I don't—"
 
"I hardly think it could be a case of trespassing on confidences in any event," Locke interrupted quietly. "It's rather well known outside; that is, in what might be called the financial world, you know. What I can't understand, though, is that, having lost all his money, a place like this could still be kept up."
 
Polly Wickes shook her head thoughtfully.
 
"Guardy was speaking about the same thing," she said; "but I don't think it costs so very much now. You see, it is almost in a way self-supporting—the vegetables, and fruit, and fuel and all that. And the servants all have their little homes, and have lived on the island for years, and the wages are not very high, and anyway Dora has a fortune in her own name—from her mother, you know; and, besides, thank goodness, dear old Mr. Marlin hasn't lost all his money anyway."
 
"Not lost it?" ejaculated Locke. "Why, that was the cause of his mind breaking!"
 
Polly Wickes looked up in confusion.
 
"Oh, perhaps, I shouldn't have said that," she said nervously. "But—but, after all, I don't see why I shouldn't, for you could not help but know about it before very long. Indeed, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if Mr. Marlin showed it to you himself, just as he did to me, for he seems to have taken a great fancy to you. He hardly let you out of his sight this morning."
 
"He knows of my father in a business way," said Locke. "I suppose that's it. Do you mean that he showed you a sum of money here on this island?"
 
"Yes," said Polly Wickes slowly, "after I had been here a little while; a very large sum—half a million, he said."
 
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Locke. "That's hardly safe, is it? I know the peculiar form his disease has taken is an antipathy to all investments, but can't Miss Marlin persuade him to deposit it somewhere?"
 
"That's exactly what guardy said," nodded Polly Wickes. "But it's quite useless. Dora has tried, but her father won't even tell her where he keeps it."
 
Howard Locke rose from his chair, walked over to the empty fireplace, and, standing with his back to Polly Wickes, opened his cigarette case.
 
"Captain Newcombe, of course, is quite au fait with the conditions?" he observed casually.
 
"Of course," said Polly Wickes ingenuously. "I naturally wrote him all about it."
 
"Naturally!" agreed Howard Locke.
 
He stooped over, and, striking a match on the edge of the fireplace, lighted his cigarette. So Captain Francis Newcombe had known all about it, had he, even before he had left England? And yet Captain Francis Newcombe in the smoking room of the liner on the way across had been densely in ignorance, and even alarmed for his ward's safety at the first intimation that her host was a monomaniac! It was rather peculiar! More than peculiar!
 
Locke turned, and, leaning against the mantel over the fireplace, faced Polly Wickes. His mind was working swiftly, piecing together strange and apparently irrelevant fragments, that, irrelevant as they appeared, seemed to make a most suggestive whole. Captain Newcombe had lied that night on board the liner. Why? Who was it that had invaded his, Locke's stateroom and had searched through his belongings? And why? Why was it that now for the first time in four years Captain Newcombe should have come to visit his ward in America? He had more than Newcombe's word for that—Polly here had said so herself; and Miss Marlin had referred to it in the most natural way when welcoming Newcombe that morning. What had an insane old man, who hid away a half-million dollars on a little island in the Florida Keys, got to do with the letter received in London and containing those facts that Polly Wickes had just admitted she had written? What did it mean? Was a certain, insistent deduction to be carried to a logical conclusion, or was he hunting a mare's nest in his mind? Was it a mere coincidence in life, where far stranger coincidences were daily happenings—or was it a half-million dollars? And Polly Wickes, here? Captain Francis Newcombe—and his ward! Was it a bird of paradise in cahoots with a vulture? No, he wouldn't believe that! It was preposterous! There weren't any grounds for it anyway. He was an irresponsible fool. He became angry with himself. He was worse than a fool—he was a cad! The girl's very ingenuousness in what she had said put to rout any possibility of connivance. But, damn it—Captain Newcombe's ward! How? What was the explanation of that? And if—
 
Polly Wickes' small foot beat the floor in a sharp little tattoo.
 
Locke straightened up with a start. In his fit of abstraction he had been gazing at the girl with abominable rudeness.
 
"I forgot to say," said Polly Wickes severely, "that besides saying you were not a ladies' man, guardy said something else about you."
 
"No! Surely not!" Locke forced a mock dismay into his voice. "What was it?"
 
Polly Wickes took a critical survey of the toe of her spotless white shoe.
 
"He said he didn't know whether I would like you or not."
 
Locke took a step forward from the fireplace.
 
"And do you?" he demanded.
 
"I do not," she said promptly; "at least not when I am utterly ignored for a whole five minutes, except to be stared at as though I were a specimen under a microscope."
 
"I'm awfully sorry," said Locke contritely; "really I am. I was thinking of what we had been saying about Mr. Marlin, and—"
 
She suddenly lifted a warning finger.
 
"There he is now," she said in a low voice.
 
Locke turned around. His back had ............