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Show WNtJ-RELEASE I INSTALLMENT THREE 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 fining 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. Karen meets him, and believing that he is unaware un-aware of her identity she accepts an offer to go sailing with him the next day, hoping she can get some information infor-mation from him. Later that night Dick goes to the home of his half-brothers, Willard and Ernest, and a conference is being held regarding the validity of Karen's Kar-en's claim. Now continue with the story. On an impulse Karen said,. "I'll tell yon why I have to go. I have to go because I'm afraid of those Waynes." "I always heard," Tonga Dick said, "that Garrett Waterson was a great old boy quite a character." "Character be damned," Willard fumed. "He had no character at all. He was an outrageous old brawler, brawl-er, always at the center of every disturbance of any .kind. He was always doing incredible, outlandish things." . "And he sold Alakoa for fifteen thousand dollars," Tonga Dick commented. com-mented. "What's it worth today? Three million?" "Ridiculous," Ernest snapped. "The assets, as we carry them on the book " "Maybe," Dick said, "after all, Garrett Waterson was a little fuzzy at the edges, when he did that!" "Right there," Willard said morosely, mo-rosely, "is the whole point. If they can show that Garrett Waterson was incompetent, it follows that his granddaughter was left destitute by this single incompetent act," Tonga Dick considered; and presently pres-ently allowed himself a slow grin. "You know, it's just possible that the girl really has you!" Ernest flared up. "You have just as much interest in Alakoa as we have or ought to have!" "I guess,',', Dick said speculatively, speculative-ly, "I'd better have a talk with this Waterson .girl." "Ridiculous!" "Can't see how it can hurt anything." any-thing." "She won't talk to you," Willard said shortly. "She won't do anything any-thing at all without consulting John Colt." . "Oh, yes, she will. Tomorrow, I'm going to take her on a cruise up the coast sight-seeing, you know." "She won't even see you," Willard said again. "She already has. I talked with her nearly an hour tonight." "You what?" "I said, I've been talking to her all night. Can't you .understand plain " "Did she know who you were?" "Naturally. Do you think she's a dumnsy?" , His two brothers stared at him for a little while in inarticulate outrage, "I absolutely forbid this sailing trip," Willard got out at last. "And so do I," Ernest echoed. "Any parley that is made with that adventuress will be in full consultation consulta-tion with us and our attorneys. I absolutely forbid you to see this girl she now knew, she could hope for nothing in the world here, except a means of return. "We'll be very late into Honolulu." , 'A little," Dick said. "But if you'll turn now" "The funny thing about It," he said oddly, "is that we can't turn back. At least not yet." "You mean you mean " "Don't worry," Dick said: "there isn't anything to worry about. Meanwhile Mean-while if you'll look across the starboard star-board bow, you'll see Alakoa Karen." Kar-en." Alakoa, as seen from this approach, ap-proach, rose steeply from the water; wa-ter; the folds of her hills were of a shadowy and unearthly blue, but the rays of the sun, slanting low now, struck her tall up-thrusting ridges with traceries of red gold. There was something terribly appealing about Alakoa as Karen saw it then. In one way it seemed so little in that vast expanse of salt water, the very intensity of whose deep blue seemed to speak of a vital strength, a vast living will which nothing could withstand with-stand nor deny. Yet Alakoa rose bravely from the heart of the sea, so tall that it seemed slenderly tall. Tonga Dick stood up, rising lightly on one heel instead of two, and reached for her hand. When she did not give it he took her wrist, and pulled her to the forward rail, beside the reaching bowsprit. . "Of course," he said, "you don't see much of it from here. There's four thousand feet of rise in those highest hills. The cane fields, the rice paddies, . and . the little fishing villages are all on the other side." "And now what?" she asked. "We'll land in another hour," he Alakoa from your grandfather after he had become incompetent as we shall prove. Thus everything they have is literally stolen from you." Something of John Colt's own spirit of conquest came back into Karen Waterson. "Yes," she said; "and I'm' not wavering, John. You can be perfectly sure of this I'll never turn back now." CHAPTER HI Lying full length on" a deck chair, Karen drank a pre-lunch Martini, and watched the stunning blue and white of the sea stream past the low foredeck of Richard Wayne's schooner. Here, out upon the slowly breathing Pacific, John Colt himself him-self seemed as far away as San Francisco had seemed from the la-nai la-nai of the, Royal Hawaiian. At first, sheering away from Barber's Bar-ber's Point, Karen' had experienced a sharp sinking of spirits. But during the morning hoursxon the sea a new vitality had cofne into her, as if from the long swells bf the open sea itself; and after lunch she sought a way to push ahead with her self-elected task of studying Tonga Dick. The Holokai was a two-masted schooner of 110 feet; Dick Wayne called her a trading trad-ing schooner, with auxiliary power, but very definitely she was something some-thing else. Her racing-schooner hull, astonishingly loaded by her great Diesel, had hardly any cargo space at all, other than that needed for her, own stores. Karen put out a tentative feeler. '.'I was wondering how your schooner came by her name." "Holokai means 'sea-rider,' " he told her. "That's peculiarly poetic. "Oh, I didn't name her myself. She was named by the man from, whom she came to me." "Who?" Karen asked innocently. Tonga Dick shrugged. "There are all manner of boats knocking about the , Pacific. You can always get hold of a boat.',' . , She studied Tonga Dick Wayne, covertly. In the bright reflected light of the cloudless sea he still seemed young, even younger than she had believed the night before. She thought now that she detected something faintly ironic in his gaze. It was as if the darkness that was under the blue of the sea had come nearer behind hi eyes Karen turned uneasy She said, "Dick what is it?" "You're very lovely," he said. "It's only fair to tell you this: in every way that I . can imagine, you're the loveliest thing I've ever seen on the earth or the face of the sea." "Well, .really, are you making love' to me now?", I was a flimsy defense; de-fense; in contradiction to his words, she knew that he was not making love. "No man of any sense pretends to know anything about women,'! Tonga Dick was saying. "The old Island people, drew, deadlines past which no woman could come, and those lines were drawn by darkness, and fear. Tbey knew the truth that it, is not. possible for a man to know what things govern a woman. wom-an. Yet I'll tell, you this: it would be easy for anyone to believe in you, even without understanding you at all." He was speaking as if from behind a wall. Suddenly Karen Waterson knew what he had meant, and it accounted ac-counted for the flat sound of words that should have been love-making. A sharp and immediate panic swept her as she understood, all at once and completely, that Richard Wayne knew who she was. She jerked her eyes from his face and stood up, bracing herself against the reel of the little schooner. A glance across the face of the sea told her a startling thing, before unconsidered. un-considered. All that day, since early ear-ly morning, they had been striking straight out from Honolulu into the open Pacific. "I think," she said, "we'd tetter go back, hadn't we?" There was defeat and admission of defeat in that; but, knowing what again witnout me lull concordance of" "Go ahead and forbid," ' Tonga Dick encouraged him. "After all here isn't a thing in the world you can do." John Colt came to take breakfast with Karen Waterson next morning.. Their brightly silvered breakfast table overlooked the beach, where the warm sea was breaking in emerald em-erald combers shot through with the early sun. Looking out at the lazy sea, Karen Waterson knew that she was afraid. The exultant assurance of victory which she had felt the night before was gone, suddenly unable to live in all this sunlight. She could hardly remember what had. persuaded her to make an incognito in-cognito date to sail with the one man who had most reason to be her enemy. ene-my. In spite of the evening, Tonga Dick remained a shadowy and mysterious mys-terious figure an unaccountable stranger whose very name was outlandish out-landish according to any standards she knew. In this mood she found it pleasant to sit across a breakfast table from John Colt. It did not happen very, often, and was the more helpful because be-cause it did not. Some day, she knew, John Colt wouldmake love to her; whether they won or lost, that time would come as inevitably, 'as the falling of Hawaiian rain.. Often she speculated curiously as to whether this would happen before or after their Sght with the Waynes was closed, and amused herself by imagining what she would do about it when it came. "I am very much at a loss to imagine," he said now, "why you have committed yourself to this peculiar pe-culiar arrangement." On an impulse Karen said. "I'll tell you why I have to go. 1 have to go because I'm afraid of those Waynes." "They're people," Karen said, "from whom we are about to take everything they have." "What you're taking is yours," John Colt said. "Sometimes I wonder if it really is." John Colt looked at her curiously. To this man, this watchful and restless rest-less planner, honesty was a rigid thing; rights of property were matters mat-ters decided only in courts, and no other rights existed. "Listen to me," he said. "Everything "Every-thing they have is based upon the fact that they to ,'k the island of ... "In another hour? But Honolulu is " "I mean, on Alakoa." . When Karen was certain of what he had said, angry tears sprang into her eyes. "You mean you're not going go-ing to turn back?" "I'm afraid I can't." ."You can't what?" "1 can;t turn back. You see, I have received an extremely urgent radio from Alakoa. It will be necessary nec-essary for us to land. I think, Karen, Kar-en, you had better plan to spend the night as Alakoa's guest." "This is preposterous," Karen said., "I certainly shall do nothing of the kind." "Now, now," Dick said soothingly, "I was hoping you would enjoy it." "This is kidnap," Karen said. Her voice was steady now; the anger was still there, but leveled now by something some-thing very like a calculating hate. Tonga Dick smiled. "Shanghai," he corrected her. "We call it shanghai, shang-hai, at sea." "I can't imagine," Karen said, "what you can possibly expect to gain by this." , I "I'm very much surprised that you're not more interested," Dick said. "Inasmuch as you have set out to take possession of Alakoa, I should think you'd like to see what1 it looks like." . . I , "I can see it perfectly plainly' from here." j "You see a rock sticking out of the sea," he admitted. "There are a good many thousands of them in the Pacific. But you can't see from' here any of the things that make Alakoa desirable to you and to your friend John Colt. What is really interesting, in-teresting, from a financial standpoint, stand-point, is the development that the Waynes have made the flumes that make the cane fields possible, and the mills. Those things have taken a good many years to build; with-! out them Alakoa would still support' onlj a handful of fishermen, and ' would certainly never have come to the attention of Mr. Colt." Ka ren cried out, with 3 passion I strange to herself, "If you've brought me out- here to preach a me " "Be sure of this," he said crisply. "I preach to no one. I brought you here for the same reason that you came. I wanted to know what you! were like. Isn't that what you wanted want-ed of me?" "Yes," Karen Waterson said. Her voice was suddenly quiet. (TO BE CONTliWEDj |