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Show ' WNU-RELEASE Charles Wong went straight to the desk ... "Yes," Dick answered the unspoken question. INSTALLMENT SIX THE STORY SO FAR: Karen Water-son, Water-son, convinced by ber lawyer, John Colt, tbat she has a claim to the Island estate of grandfather Garrett Waterson, has come to Honolulu to attempt to gain control of the property. Then through a strange circumstance and somewhat against her will she finds herself on the very island, Alakoa, with Richard Wayne or Tonga Dick, as he is known. He is a member of the Wayne family which has been in control of the island since the disappearance of her grandfather. They have found that Dick's uncle, James Wayne, who has been managing the property, is very sick. Dick tries to get Karen to work out a compromise settlement to her claims but she refuses. Late during the night Lilua, a native house girl, comes to Dick's room and tells him she has strange foreboding of evil. As they talk a rap is heard at the door. Now continue with the story. At the door when Dick opened it was the tiny figure of a kimonoed Japanese girl. Her hair, usually as neat as polished ebony, was down all about her face, and through it her eyes stared so widely that they showed the whites. "Mister Dick you come!" "What is it? What is it now?" "I tap on Mister Wayne door I take Mister Wayne him milk. Mister Mis-ter Wayne, he not answer. "Well, did you go in?" "No, no, no!" "Where is he? In his office?" "Yes office. Plenty light but no speak. Something moves in there I hear something move! But nothing in there will speak." " ' Dick Wayne drew a deep breath, and the air of the hall was so clammy clam-my upon his lungs it was as if he had breathed in the outer rain. "All right." Once more he went striding through the house, the broad old floorboards i speaking under his tread, and the tabes of the Japanese girl pattering behind him. There was a line of light under the door of James Wayne's office; but as he reached for the latch the Japanese Jap-anese girl flattened herself against the wall, fearful lest she accidentally accidental-ly see into the room, and Tonga Dick Wayne himself hesitated. He knew what was within. James Wayne still sat in the chair behind his vast desk, in the same place he had sat during so much of twenty hard driving years. But now his head was forward upon- the desk, and by the slack emptiness of his uncle's hands Dick knew that this was the end. All over the floor were scattered the ginger blossoms of a broken lei. When Dick Wayne had made certain cer-tain that his uncle was dead, he picked up the scattered ginger blossoms, blos-soms, and, opening a casement, threw them out into the night. He went to the door. The Japanese Japa-nese girl looked smaller than ever, standing there with her back pressed tight against the koa-wood wall, as if trying to hide herself from things unseen. "Send the Missey here," he said. "Missey Lilua?" "No, no! The haole Missey." "Yes, Mister Dick." "As soon as you have sent the haole Missey to me, bring me Charles Wong." As Dick turned back into the room he spotted one more of those inescapable in-escapable ginger flowers under the corner of the desk. He picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he went and stood at the window, looking out into blackness, unmindful unmind-ful of the cold spit of the rain. It seemed to him a long time before Karen came. "Is is something wrong?" Her words were faltering. "Has anything any-thing happened?" Dick Wayne stared, astonished. Deep in his pocket his fingers were still rolling between them the petals of that last ginger flower; but Karen's Kar-en's eyes were uncommunicative and he saw that she did not so much as glance at the floor to make sure that the flowers were gone. Suddenly Sud-denly a terrible pity for this girl got the better of him and he shut his jaws. "Dick," Karen cried out, "what e if" She waited, relaxed and impassive impas-sive except for that sense of strain behind her pale composure. "I'm sorry I shanghaied you. I didn't realize what I was letting you in for." ' 1 "I'm not exactly used to being pushed about," Karen said. "After all," he reminded her, "when you came aboard you believed be-lieved me to be deceived even as to your name. And though your visit to Alakoa was against your will, you yourself, and your friend, John Colt, were partly responsible, I think." Karen was silent. "But I'm not all sorry," Dick said. "In spite of everything, I know you better now; and that has been worth while." "I shouldn't have tried to fool you about who I was," Karen said. In spite of her concealed nervous tension, ten-sion, she seemed very tired, so that he could hardly hear her words. "That was a very silly mistake." "There have been other mistakes," mis-takes," Dick said. She met his eyes for a moment, and he wondered if she was thinking think-ing about a silent room, and a broken bro-ken lei. He wanted to tell her that there was no reason for her to think about that; and that he believed in her completely. Dick said morosely, "You and I ought to be able to talk to each other more easily than we do." "Do we have to go into all that?" "We can work these things out," Dick Wayne said. "You and I are the only ones who can." Karen Waterson stiffened and sat back. "I can only say this if there are to be any negotiations at all, they will have to be carried on with John Colt, not wittme." "If the case came to trial as it now stands," Dick Wayne said, "I have no doubt that you could win. After that would follow appeal after appeal, delay after delay; and even if you won in the end you'd be a white-haired old lady before your victory ever paid out. The Waynes won't give in because they can't give in." "Neither," said Karen, looking at-him at-him directly, "do we intend to give in." "What you mean is that John Colt won't give in." "It's the same thing." Dick Wayne looked at her queer-ly. queer-ly. "Is it, Karen? Are you in love with Colt? Are you going to marry him?" will be here by then or not. Then get me John Colt; I think you already al-ready know where in Honolulu he is." "And what shall I tell him?" "I'll talk to him myself." The Holokai did not weigh her hook until after dusk of the next day; but as she beat her way slowly out through the reefs, half an hour after sunset, Dick Wayne was glad that the day was over. Tonga Dick had respected and admired ad-mired his uncle, had understood what his uncle meant to Alakoa. Everything Ev-erything productive that Alakoa possessed pos-sessed had existed first in this one man's mind. They had all depended depend-ed upon him and been guided by him; all of them except Dick himself him-self had been controlled by him. A careful conference had been necessary with James Wayne's physician. phy-sician. Being already familiar with the case, he had no trouble describing, describ-ing, in technical terms, the failure of James Wayne's heart. "Could this have been caused by shock?" Dick demanded. "A shock," Shimazu said with an oddly humorless locution, "would not have been necessary; but it would have helped." Dick Wayne experienced no relief at this declaration. He was certain cer-tain that Karen Waterson had been with James Wayne when he died, and that she had sought to conceal this. And he knew that almost anyone any-one else, knowing these facts, would leap at once to a dark and savage suspicion. He found, however, that for himself he did not need Dr. Shimazu' Shi-mazu' s report; he was already convinced, con-vinced, beyond any shadow of present pres-ent or future doubt, that Karen Waterson Wa-terson had not killed James Wayne. When they had communicated with Dick's brothers and with John Colt, Tonga Dick Wayne threw the radio cut-off switch. , What remained was a full day with Charles Wong, repeatedly interrupted in-terrupted by the visits of cane field bosses, mill superintendents, cattle foremen. It was turning dark before be-fore Dick and Karen Waterson at last drove steeply down the mountain moun-tain toward the anchorage of the Holokai. Later, after the Holokai had put out from shore, Dick and Karen found themselves sitting face to face across a completely set table under the cabin's skylight. The main cabin cab-in of the Holokai was trim and well lighted, but necessarily very small; here not even the hovering of the Chinese mess boy could spare them a sense of being shut in, very close together. CHAPTER VII Karen looked at him steadily a moment. "There isn't any reason why I should answer that," she said at last. "But I will. I have no intention inten-tion of marrying John Colt. What I mean is that I believe I have a sound claim, and I am perfectly willing that the court should decide it. If your uncle had lived " She stopped, and a silence fell between them, so that they noticed again the voice of the ship, and the rush and slap of the sea. Later, Tonga Dick began talking to her again, trying to tell her what his uncle had been, as Dick saw him. He was trying to make her see a man who had lived not for personal conquest, but for a dream. He was trying to make her understand that James Wayne had been a man who did not know how to use anything, for himself, beyond the bare necessities; neces-sities; one who took less from life than .the salary of Charles Wong commanded. He showed her his uncle breakfasting at 3:30 in the morning, so that he could be at work by a quarter of four. He was trying to make her see twenty years of labor, in which James Wayne had given every hour of his time, every resource of his mind, to making Alakoa what it had become. She interrupted him, after a while. "Why do you tell me all this?" "I'm trying to make you see that there is something there that cannot be measured in dollars and cents; and that even though James Wayne is dead, the fight for the things h; stood for will have to go on." (TO BE continued; He was unable then, pitying her as he did, to tell her that he knew she already had the answer to that. "James Wayne is dead," he answered. an-swered. "This this is a terrible thing." "Perhaps not." "What do you mean?" Dick's voice was hard and bitter. "If you are going to take this island, perhaps it is better that you take it from me and from my brothers not from the man who made it what it is." Karen Waterson stood staring at him blankly. Until now it had seemed to Dick Wayne that nothing noth-ing he had ever said to her had reached her completely in its full meaning; but now he knew that he had hurt her as definitely as if he had struck her across the face. The silence that followed had a strange hopeless quality about it, empty, yet singularly acute. Dick was glad that Charles Wong now appeared, moving quickly into the room. Charles Wong went straight to tile desk, but his eyes were questioning on Dick's face. "Yes," Dick answered the unspoken unspo-ken question. A ware of swift emotion crossed the Chinese secretary's face; he raised one hand and his fingers ran through his heavy hair. "Get the doctor on the phone; get him up here at once. That is necessary for the proper reports. When that's done, get my brothers In Honolulu on the wireless phone; tell them what has happened; and that I will be in Honolulu tomorrow night, regardless of whether they Karen's eyes rested unhappily upon her plate. Her fork fiddled with broiled pakii, but she was unable un-able to eat. Her clear-cut poise had returned in the form of a reticent withdrawal; but behind the thin shell of that poise Dick Wayne was able to perceive that the girl was nervously nerv-ously distraught. Tonga Dick Wayne ate, for po other oth-er reason than that he had not eaten in more than eighteen hours, and waited for Karen to speak. Now, surely, he thought, she would have something to say about her presence at the death of James Wayne. Then presently he became aware, with a slow amazement, that Karen was not going to speak. She must have known who had picked up the broken ginger blossoms that would have given her away. But did she? Dick suddenly recognized that Karen Kar-en perhaps did not know. He let his eyes rest with some deliberation de-liberation upon her face, and saw that she was uncommonly pale; it gave her an exceptionally fragile look. "It seems to me," he began, "that you might tell me " He let the question he had begun lose itself in the black race of the sea past the lee porthole. "We're making fast time," he said. "We'll be in Honolulu before very long." Karen murmured, "I'm glad." A little shiver ran across her shoulders, shoul-ders, so that her two words made Honolulu seem a long-sought haven, for her. "There's something I want to tell you. Karen." |