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Show INSTALLMENT TWO THE STORY SO FAR: Karen Water-son, Water-son, San Francisco girl, convinced by her lawyer, John Colt, that she has a ; claim to the island estate of her grandfather, grand-father, Garrett Waterson, arrives in Honolulu Hon-olulu to attempt to gain control of the property. One evening while she and Colt are dining and discussing plans for pressing her claims, Richard Wayne, or Tonga Dick, as he is known, enters their dining place. He is a member of the Wayne family that has been in control of her grandfather's island, Alakoa, since the old man's disappearance. Inasmuch I as Karen believes that Tonga Dick does not know her identity she suggests to Colt that she talk to him and learn what she can. Colt at first opposes the idea but begins to change his mind. Now continue with the story. "I suppose there isn't any really practical objection," he said; "but isn't this notion just slightly on the silly side? You can hardly expect " He started to say something more, but let it pass; then bowed with exasperating courtesy, and walked away. - When he was gone she sat quietly a little while, trying to relax. Presently Pres-ently she turned her chair a little so that she could look into the shadows where Tonga Dick sat, three tables away, alone in the obscurity of palm shadows. She still could not clearly see his face, but she focussed upon the coal of his cigarette, and waited. She let her eyes rest there almost to the limit of endurance; then smiled faintly, and returned her attention at-tention to the dance floor. Tonga Dick stood up, wound his way to her table. He laid a hand on the back of the chair where John Colt had sat. He laid a hand on the back of the chair where John Colt had sat. "May I?" "Perhaps, If you wish." "How many Waynes are there?" Richard Wayne said to himself, "You know cockeyed well, young lady, how many Waynes there are." But aloud he said, "Four. My uncle, un-cle, who is really the owner, my two brothers, and myself." "It's like owning a little empire of your own, isn't it? I can't think of anything nicer than that." "A good many people seem to feel that way," Dick said. "That's what makes an island so hard to hold on to." "You have trouble holding onto it?" "Oh, yes, indeed. Just now, for example, there is an insufferable little lit-tle snip of a girl trying to get her claws into Alakoa by due legal process." proc-ess." "Interesting," Karen encouraged him. "And just how does she expect to do that?" "The Waynes bought Alakoa from her grandfather. Now the girl wishes to prove that the sale was illegal, because, she says, her grandfather grand-father was a congenital idiot. She says it runs in the family, and she can prove it." Karen studied him for a moment with veiled suspicion, but Tonga Dick's face was innocent. "What a remarkable person," Karen said. "What's she like?" "Well as 1 told you, I have had no chance to get acquainted with her." "Maybe you'll have a chance later." lat-er." "I'd rather like to, you know," Dick admitted. "I'd like to find out what makes her tick. But I would hardly know how to go about it." "Just a simple Island boy," Karen smiled. "Well, the circumstances are a little lit-tle awkward. I can't just go up to her and say, 'I understand you are the little twerp who is trying to get my island away from me, and what are you doing this evening after the store closes?' Or can I?" "Well, invite her for a sail on your boat. Show her selected views of the coast line. Show her this island she's after what did you say the name of it was? Alakoa? Probably she hasn't even seen it. I'll bet she'd be interested." "And just what," said Dick, "would be my idea?" "Get to know her. You said you wanted to find out what the little fright was like. Maybe you'd like her." "And then what?" "And then what?" Karen repeated. repeat-ed. "Say. wait a minute. Do I have to map out your entire life?" They grinned at each other; and either one of them would have given a good deal to know what the other was thinking then. "It's a rotten plan." Dick criticized. criti-cized. "Now you've hurt my feelings," Karen said.. "Here I practically work up a headache planning a beautiful day for you, and what credit do I get? You tell me it's rotten. All that effort wasted!" Richard Wayne appeared to brighten. "No. it isn't. It gives me a much better idea. What's the use of wasting the whole program on a chiseling little frump? No! I'll take you sailing, instead." "Me? Oh, I'm afraid 1 couldn't " "Tomorrow morning," Richard Wayne prompted her, "at something like nine?" "Something more like ten," she answered. CHAPTER II It was nearly midnight when Richard Rich-ard Wayne called upon his brothers. They had been expecting him earlier ear-lier in the evening, and only an objectionable ob-jectionable message he had sent them by phone had kept them waiting wait-ing for him at an hour strictly outside out-side of their habits. Richard's two brothers, Ernest Wayne and Willard Wayne, sat in a large room which, in spite of its prim order, showed the wear of the humid years. The whole thing managed man-aged a transplanted New England look; obviously nothing had been changed here for a long time. The two brothers who here awaited await-ed Richard Wayne seemed to have been bred and raised by the New England furniture. Both were older than Richard, and when he looked at them he was sometimes happy to remember that they were only his half-brothers, after all. "It does seem to me, Dick," Ernest Er-nest Wayne said fretfully, "that you would show a little interest in what is happening here." Ernest, tall and thin, did not look entirely well; he wore gold-rimmed glasses, which did not seem to be strong enough for his purpose, and when kept up late he developed a peaked look. Dick sighed and sat down. "If I weren't interested I wouldn't be in Honolulu at all," he said. "Now, please try not to get all excited, will you?" "You don't realize the seriousness of the situation, Dick," Willard said heavily, without heat. "This thing is critical in the extreme perhaps even desperate. Uncle Jim can't seem to understand that he is not invulnerable. He has delayed, and delayed " "As I understand it from your letters," let-ters," Dick isaid,. "the complaint is that when our mutual father bought the island of Alakoa from Garrett Waterson he practically cheated the old boy out of his eye teeth is that the story?" "Father was an industrious and intelligent man," Ernest Wayne said with annoyance. , "Do you know anything much about the original swindle?" "I object to your tone," Willard Wayne said; and Dick was astonished aston-ished by the vigor of his brother's resentment. "Garrett Waterson was a disreputable old pirate. He was a waster and a speculator of the worst sort absolutely typical of a certain kind of riffraff which troubled trou-bled the Islands in the early days. If father saw values in Alakoa that Waterson did not, that certainly was Waterson's look-out. But now comes this girl, this grasping, piratical little lit-tle adventuress, intent on seizing not only the whole of Alakoa, but all the development which has cost Uncle Jim the best years of his life, and " "Have you checked the identity of this girl?" Dick interrupted. "She's Garrett Waterson's granddaughter, grand-daughter, all right," Willard said. "Well brought up?" "The family has no distinction whatever. The girl has been working work-ing as a stenographer. Her relation ship to the island of Alakoa proba bly would never have occurred to her as offering any possibilities, if it had not been for this John Colt." "And who is this John Colt?" "John Colt is thirty-six years old and was born' in New York. He is one of the predatory speculators who came to light in the boom days of the late twenties. He acquired a considerable fortune through water developments in California. In 1932 his stock-juggling activities were investigated, in-vestigated, but without success." "You seem to have snootled around to very good effect," Tonga Dick complimented them. "And now," Willard concluded, "Karen Waterson, through her attorneys, at-torneys, and undoubtedly acting on the advice and direction of John Colt, is bringing suit, on the complaint that her grandfather's sale of Alakoa Ala-koa was illegal that Garrett Water-son, Water-son, at the time of the sale, was mentally incompetent. That shows you the girl's unscrupulous type she is willing to discredit her own grandfather prove him to have been virtually insane to gain advantage for herself." "Same old story," Tonga Dick murmured. "But not so easy, in the case of Garrett Waterson, I should think." Willard Wayne exploded. "I tell you it is easy! Unless we find a way out, it is most certainly going to be done! This is what comes of dealing with irresponsibles of Garrett Gar-rett Waterson's type. Evidence can be brought in to show that Garrett Waterson was not only totally irresponsible, irre-sponsible, but eccentric in the extreme. ex-treme. I myself am convinced he was more or less deranged. Let me remind you that we've had hundreds hun-dreds of such cases in the Islands mostly successful!" (TO BE CONTINUED) "Perhaps, if you wish." Richard Wayne sat down, crossed his knees comfortably, and took his time about lighting a cigarette. Karen Kar-en waited, determined to make him lead the way; but she watched him curiously, with a sharp interest that was partly caused by his name alone. In the world she knew, you could no more be called Tonga Dick, in seriousness, than you could be called Red-Handed Harry, or Terrible Terri-ble Pete. Had she had no other relationship to this man than that of a casual tourist, she still would have stared, just because of the name he was called. Tonga Dick surveyed her slowly, with grave eyes. "You wanted to see me?" Richard Wayne watched with admiration ad-miration the perfect serenity of Karen's Kar-en's poise as she turned a little, and coolly met his eye. She was much more interesting to look at from across a table, he decided, de-cided, than from across a number of them. Yet he had noticed her in the first moment in which he had stepped upon the lanai. That, of course, .was the reason he knew who she was. He had landed but a few hours before, and had no more than shaken hands with his brothers; there were no means by which he could have Identified Karen Water-son, Water-son, if he had not noticed her and been interested of his own accord. From the shadows of his obscure table at the edge of the lanai he had watched her for some time for no other reason than that it gave him pleasure to look at her. After a little while he had signaled a table captain and asked who the girl was and had obtained a correct cor-rect answer. Knowing who she was, it was odd to be sitting at the same table with her now. This was the girl who had come here from the mainland to lay claim to the island of Alakoa, the little stronghold in the sea which no one but a Wayne had held for more than two decades. It seemed to him that Karen Waterson Wa-terson did not look the part. He couldn't understand how anyone with a face like that, and eyes like that, could get herself hooked up with a shenanigan that differed from a common swindle only in the boldness bold-ness of its scope. I "If I hadn't wanted you here," she said, "you'd hardly be here, would you?" I "And so?' I "So nothing. 1 wanted you to i come and sit here because I think you look romantic. And I think you j might introduce yourself, now." "My name is Richard Wayne," he said. "I belong here in the Islands. More specifically, I am connected with a small privately owned island called Alakoa." He watched for her reaction, and was fooled again; for no reaction came. "That certainly is very interesting," interest-ing," Karen Waterson said. "I wish I were an Islander." "Perhaps," he suggested, "you would like to tell me who you are." "My name," Karen improvised, "is Katie Higgins-something a white girl from about four miles south of Dubuque. I teach school some place, and I think I wou.u like to get in the movies." "I should have said," Dick commented, com-mented, "that you were from San Francisco." She glanced at him sharply, but he added, "Hawaii is a kind of a crossroads; people from every part of the world come through here, sooner or later, so that if you live in the Islands you get to recognize recog-nize inflections of speech." "Oh." "They raise very good looking girls in San Francisco," Dick said. "It must be a wonderful thing to own your own island," Karen said. "Are many islands privately owned?" "Only a few, in this part of the Pacific. Niihau is privately owned, and so is Lanai, which is the sixth largest in the group; and the Waynes have had Alakoa for about twenty years." |