“One would begin to think,” Crewe Leverett glanced about the table, his eyes catching each who sat there for an instant of meeting, “that this was indeed a festive occasion. May we be allowed to share the secret also?”
Persis’ momentary bedazzlement was gone, she could identify some of those gathered here. Others were strangers. And in that company Lydia was the only woman—sitting on the right of the man who had arisen so suddenly.
The girl had seen Ralph Grillon in his working clothes, as master of a ship of which he was manifestly proud. Now he wore a super-fine cloth jacket of dark blue, a ruffled shirt and complicated cravat, trousers of black strapped under shoes never meant to tread the deck of a working wrecker.
His handsome face was not flushed, and if he had paled under his tan, it was not visible in the softer light of the many candles. But his eyes—Persis might have shuddered at the look of them earlier—now she seemed armored against any threat from the Bahamian captain.
There was Dr. Veering, twirling the stem of a half-filled wine glass between his fingers, his glance turning from Crewe to those at the table, back again—although he showed no expression. But was rather as one who watched a play.
Three other men sat along the board—one wearing a captain’s jacket, its insignia dimmed from the breath of the sea.
“Yes,” Crewe continued, “a festive occasion. Captain Van Home,” he nodded to the stranger who arose and made a rather awkward bow, “and naturally Julio Valdez-”
The man on the other side of Grillon showed his teeth in what might have been meant to be a smile, but his eyes were very cold and calculating.
“It’s been a long time, Valdez,” Crewe continued, “though, of course, I knew that our account was not yet completed.”
“Account?” The man’s dark eyebrows lifted. “If one deals with thieves, Captain Leverett, one can only expect trouble to come of it.”
“How correct you are in that prediction, Valdez. ‘Deal with thieves.’ But why do you not follow your own wisdom?”
“Halden had no right to Lost Lady!” Valdez put palms down on the table, leaned forward, angry animation in his narrow face. “Mariana Valdez had no right to sell what was ours since we cleaned this isle of the rabble of Indians who infested it. I am Julio Valdez; there was a Valdez ruling here before your country even had a name to call itself by.”
“Granted,” Crewe commented. “But Martin Valdez was, there is no doubting, the heir-in-law. When he died his property passed to his wife and she sold it to Halden. I believe your offer, complete with threats if I am not mistaken, was thrown out of court and you were warned off. If Halden then chose to sell to me it was a perfectly correct transaction with not a hint of illegality about it—no matter how hard you have since tried to prove that true. Times have changed since the days of Satin-shirt Jack—”
The dark-faced man drew in his breath with a hiss which made Persis think of a threatening snake. Dr. Veering still kept his expression of lazy watchfulness, and the Dutch captain looked merely as if he were at a complete loss. Persis expected Crewe next to carry battle to Ralph Grillon himself, but instead he looked to Lydia.
“Is this occasion of your devising, my dear?”
Persis hoped that never would anyone use such a tone of voice to her. But Lydia had recovered quickly from any surprise she might have felt at her brother’s sudden appearance.
“It is an occasion, yes,” she returned in a voice as cool as his, but edged with defiance. “I am the betrothed wife of Captain Grillon.”
“How very interesting,” was Crewe’s comment. “Has he yet explained how he intends to rid himself of the present Madam Grillon? Though I cannot but believe that he has already planned some highly ingenious method—not that such are always successful. My own appearance here is proof of that.”
Lydia rose from her seat, her face contorted into an ugliness which was near that of the strange mask Askra had worn.
“Liar! Liar!” She beat both small fists upon the table. Her wine glass trembled and went over, discharging its contents, like newly shed blood, across the white linen. “Ralph will marry me—”
“Since bigamy is a crime, both here and in the islands, that presents a problem,” Crewe continued his even, considered speech. “He does have a wife—oh, it is true enough,” now he had a faintly contemptuous tone. “Do you think I am too dim-witted to check on any young buck who comes paying his addresses to my sister? But the present situation must task even his abilities. How do you balance the situation, Grillon? Is it Lost Lady and what you can gain here, against that which might or might not fall to your hands through Caroline Rooke?”
Persis started. Who was Caroline Rooke? In a second or two her mind leaped forward in a guess. Ralph Grillon had talked of a missing heir. She had always accepted that the child of James was a man—but what if the opposite were true and her rival for the Rooke fortune was a woman? Was that why Grillon knew so much and in such detail as to taunt her?
“If you were a whole man—” for the first time Ralph Grillon spoke, “I’d call you out—”
Crewe shook his head, an odd half smile on his face.
“Do not try to play the gentleman here, Grillon.”
“No!” Both Lydia’s hands were at her lips now, half-muffling what she had to say. “You can’t keep me here with your lies! Ralph loves me—we’re to be married—”
“Where?” asked her brother. “In the islands—or in Key West?”
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll take me away—he—” Suddenly her voice was gone. Persis saw that the younger girl’s eyes were fixed not on her brother but on that seemingly closed fan she herself had brought with her.
“No!” Lydia backed away and her long skirts pushed against the chair behind her, sending it crashing to the floor, the noise so startling that Persis herself shook for a moment. But her brother seemingly had no interest in the fan.
“You little fool,” he said with a kind of weariness which made Persis uneasy. So far he had held them all, and more than half of these gathered here must be his enemies. “He wants Lost Lady—thanks to providence and the courage of this lady he did not succeed in his first attempt. It was a mistake, Grillon, to leave the sea to do your ill work for you; it is always capricious as you should know by now.”
“You were in no harm!” Lydia cried out. “Just left for a space so Ralph could—could—”
“Make sure of me.” Crewe was brutally direct now, as if his weariness was increasing so he felt he must make a swift end to this confrontation. Persis saw Dr. Veering move unobtrusively up the table, come to stand at Crewe’s other side, and that action added to her worry. “Yes, Lydia. I was left well bound, in a dug-out which had been holed—death was already lapping at me when you left.”
She shrank even farther away and now her eyes went to Grillon.
“That is a lie—you would say anything to—”
But some slight change on the Bahamian’s face must have broken her last defense against the truth. “But why, Ralph, why?”
“I have already said it—Lost Lady—” Crewe returned. “Once he no longer needed your help—another accident—” He tried to shrug and winced. Dr. Veering put a hand gently on the well-swathed shoulder.
Persis saw a deathly pallor spread across Lydia’s face.
“To—to—kill—” the younger girl said as if it required all the possible effort left in her to bring out the words.
“Just so,” Ralph Grillon spoke for the second time. He, too, had taken several steps away from the table and with him moved the man who called himself Julio Valdez and three of the others who had remained silent during this exchange. “And since I am now master of the Key—” There was a pistol in his hand now, deadly, and steady. And the others held them also.
Lydia had hidden her face in her hands and was crying —fast becoming hysterical.
“Since I do hold the Key,” Grillon continued, “it would seem that the game is not yet played out.”
There was a queer dizzy feeling in Persis’ head for a moment or two. It was as if she had seen, or been a part of this same scene before. Only for a second rift out of time other faces, hard, brutal, fitted like masks of smoke across the faces of those in this room. She dropped her hand from Crewe’s arm, fumbled with the false fan until its inner deadly steel core appeared. They would be killed—these monsters from the sea-she was—