The Bluffton News

Dick retorted. "The Pacific is a big place and there are more than twenty-five thousand islands in it; but only a few of them have any white inhabitants, and I suppose Garrett Waterson knew half the people in the Pacific. He couldn't imagine leaving the Pacific any more than he could imagine living inland, so of course it was pretty hard for him to evade the people that he knew. When a man is trying to drop out of sight, and fails at it for a while, it's apt to become an obsession with him. He gets to thinking that everybody he sees is talking about him, secretly. So he draws apart more and more, until at last—"

"It's completely unreasonable," Ernest Wayne said again.

"Human nature always seems unreasonable to people who don't know anything about it. Unreasonable is what it is; you just have to get used to it."

"Granting that an ordinary man might drop out of sight that way," Willard said, "it still would have been impossible for Garrett Waterson. He was too big, too important—"

Dick was getting disgusted again. "No, he wasn't—he only imagined he was. Once he was broke, he wasn't of any importance or interest to anybody—except to you, and to you only because you thought he was a skeleton in the closet. Doubtless this will surprise you, but the fact is that Alakoa is a small, obscure, and unimportant speck on the map, suitable for supporting a few hundred people, and of no other significance whatever. The fact that Garrett Waterson once had hold of it for a while would not distinguish him in the eyes of anybody, except yourselves."

Both brothers looked scandalized.

"If all this can be proved," Ernest began, "I mean, if his actual identity can be proved—"

"Of course it can be proved! It's a plain, demonstrable fact—can't you understand that?"

"If Dick is to be believed," Willard said, "our worries are over, Ernest. They can go ahead and investigate their heads off and it won't get 'em a thing. And Karen Waterson's case against us falls flat as—as—"

"As a bird in the hand," Dick suggested.

"Their whole case is based on proving Garrett Waterson's incompetence," Willard amplified, "and if we can produce the old man himself their claim is utterly exploded!"

"Don't be so sure," Dick said.

That stopped them again. "You mean," Ernest said, "that the old man is not in his right mind?"

"Of course he's in his right mind. He's eccentric, just as he always was; but he's sound, all right."

"Well, that's all we need to prove."

"How are you going to prove it if he decides he doesn't want you to?"

"You mean," Willard demanded after a moment, "you think he'd throw in with this little crook, and actually help her steal Alakoa?"

"How should I know? This 'little crook' is his granddaughter."

"It's unbelievable," Ernest Wayne wished to think, "that he should deliberately let them prove him to be of unsound mind!"

"For three and a half million dollars, I can find you plenty of people only too glad to furnish proof that they are dangerously nuts. Think that over."

Suddenly a new angle occurred to Willard Wayne. "I suppose," he said, "since you are working for Waterson, as you say, this boat of yours isn't yours at all, but his—is that right?"

"Certainly."

"Then," said Willard, "whatever business he's in now, he must be enjoying a considerable success. That alone ought to furnish proof that he's competent."

"Unfortunately, there's a catch in that, too," said Dick, "and it's a big one."

"Just what business is he in?" Ernest demanded. "Where does his money come from? Or is that something else that isn't supposed to concern us?"

"It concerns you very much," Dick said.

"Well?"

Dick Wayne grinned sardonically, even maliciously, and stood up, preparatory to walking out. "Ask Garrett Waterson," he suggested. "If he doesn't feel like telling you, it won't do you any good to know."

_John Colt, aboard a Diesel boat hardly better than the sampans the Japanese fishermen used, arrived at Alakoa at sunset._

Dick Wayne, watching the little vessel blunder and grope its way through the reefs—she was sounding frantically with no less than three lead lines—knew at once that the one-eyed Captain Ramey had managed to sell John Colt a charter at last, if only for an excursion. Now that Garrett Waterson had dealt himself a hand, nobody could any longer guess what was ahead. But in spite of his own entirely uncertain situation, Dick grinned, genuinely tickled. Whatever the outcome, for the moment he had John Colt well up in the air, and his brothers too.

Ramey's boat dropped anchor five hundred yards from the Holokai. Evidently Dick's brothers had sent orders to the dock that John Colt should be brought to the house immediately, for Alakoa's shore launch put out immediately. Hokano steering, and took off John Colt. Tonga Dick watched this maneuver impassively. There was no longer any danger that his brothers would be bluffed into something by Colt. The decision would rest with Waterson himself, and no one else.

And it was true, as he had told them, that he did not know what the grim and incommunicative old Waterson would do.

He got his binoculars now and focused them upon Ramey's boat. The swift twilight of the latitude was closing sharply, but the glasses were still able to bring out every detail aboard the Diesel boat. The little tramp vessel sat awkwardly on the water, her snub nose tilted upward inanely. She had a disorderly, faintly disreputable look, but Dick knew she concealed a surprising turn of speed. Her name was The Seal for no reason, unless it was that the Islands had no seals.

Karen Waterson was leaning over the rail, talking to Captain Ramey. Dick could see the stitching in her narrow hat brim, and the shadow of her lashes. The movement of her lips, while he could hear no least sound of her voice, had a strange effect, making her seem immeasurably far away.

As darkness fell, Dick saw Captain Ramey leave Karen's side, and in a moment or two a light showed in the Seal's galley. Tonga Dick smiled a little, without much humor, as he deduced from this that Ramey had been left in the lurch by his cook.

Now the shore boat put out from the dock again, this time pointing directly to the Holokai. Tonga Dick watched it approach with a minimum of interest. By the time it was coughing alongside, he had made up his mind that if his brothers had sent for him he was not going to go ashore until he very well felt like it. But it was Charles Wong, who, with an unexpected, lank agility, pulled himself over the Holokai's rail.

"What do they want up there now?" Dick asked wearily.

"Nothing, Mr. Dick, that I know." Wong was nervous; there was a flutter in his long-boned hands as he produced a twisted slip of paper. "I came to you of my own thought. Up at our receiving station they keep hearing some ship calling the Holokai—they can't tell what ship. Its call letters aren't listed—no one ever heard them before. We think it may be some outlaw station. At any rate, the call comes in very persistently; and we didn't hear you answer, so I came to tell you."

"What were the call letters?"

"I have them written here."

Tonga Dick took the paper Wong offered him and unfolded it. Even before he made out its typewritten characters in the failing light, he knew what ship it would be that was trying to get him now.

"They were still calling when you left the house?"

"Yes, sir."

"Come here, Wong."

Tonga Dick ran back along the deck and dived into the little kennel, abaft the galley, which served as a radio shack, and Charles Wong came pattering after him. He clamped on his earphones and carefully, with micrometer delicacy, began to turn the big dial of the short wave receiver; but for minutes there was no result.

"He must have shut down," Dick said at last. "If you catch it again at the Alakoa station, you'd better answer and take the—"

Just then the hunted signal came in, so powerfully that the effect was blasting. Somewhere, unexpectedly close at hand, Garrett Waterson was calling Dick Wayne from the sea.

Dick quieted the blocked and clattering receiver. "Good Lord! He's right on top of us! Yes, he's calling us, all right."

He pressed a switch, and the generator, bolted to the deck, began to speak in a mounting whine. Behind the grill of the transmitter the great tubes, big as footballs, slowly began to heat, until the radio shack was dimly lighted by their glow. The automatic starting switch clashed, and there was a weird blue flash in the gloom as the relays gave the generator full power.

Dick watched the voltometer high on the panel of the transmitter. When the needle had crawled to 3000 he began to work his key.

Charles Wong started to say, "Is—is it from—"

"Be still!"

Dick's earphones were beginning to zing with the measured letters of a message that was something more than news.

"SAR WIT WATERSON ABOARD QTP ALAKOA 2 HRS."

Dick Wayne could not believe his own ears. Angrily he worked his key, sending out a protest—"RPTALL—RPT"

The message from the sea hesitated and started over again. Abruptly it changed its pace, breaking into a racing chatter.

"WHT IN HELL IS MTR U CANT U UNDERSTAND ENGLISH QTP 10 PM STAND OUTSIDE CORAL TO PILOT THRU SHOALS—G WATERSON QSL?"

Tonga Dick Wayne acknowledged with a curt "QSL," and shut off his generator.

"Garrett Waterson's power yacht Sarah will be in in two hours," he told Wong, "and—Waterson himself is on board."