Black Caesar's Clan Part 6

Through the universe of varicolored lights and explosions, he was aware of a woman's cry. And, somehow, this pierced the mist of his senses, and found its way to his heart. But only for an instant.

Then, instead of tumbling to earth, he felt himself sinking down, uncountable miles, through a cool darkness. The dark was comforting, after all that bothersome display of lights.

And, while he was still falling, he drifted into a dead sleep.

CHAPTER III

THE MOCKING BIRD

After centuries of unconsciousness, Gavin Brice began to return, bit by bit, to his senses.

The first thing he knew was that the myriad shooting stars in his head had changed somehow into a myriad shooting pains. He was in torment. And he was deathly sick.

His trained brain forced itself to a semblance of sanity, and he found himself piecing together vaguely the things that had happened to him. He could remember seeing Milo Standish strolling toward the veranda in the shaft of light from the window, then the black figure which detached itself from the shrubbery and sprang on the unheeding man, and his own attempt to turn aside the arm that wielded the knife.

But everything else was a blank.

Meanwhile, the countless shooting pains were merging into one intolerable ache. Brice had no desire to stir or even to open his eyes. The very thought of motion was abhorrent. The mere effort at thinking was painful. So he lay still.

Presently, he was aware of something that touched his head.

And he wondered why the touch did not add to his hurt, but was soothing. Even a finger's weight might have been expected to jar his battered skull.

But there was no jar to this touch. Rather was it cooling and of infinite comfort. And now he realized that it had been continuing for some time.

Again he roused his rebellious brain to action, and knew at last what the soothing touch must be. Some one was bathing his forehead with cool water. Some one with a lightly magnetic touch. Some one whose fingers held healing in their soft tips.

And, just above him, he could hear quick, light breathing, breathing that was almost a sob. His unseen nurse was taking her job not only seriously but compa.s.sionately. That was evident. It did not jibe with Gavin's slight experience with trained nurses. Wherefore, it puzzled him.

But, perplexity seemed to hurt his brain as much as did the effort to piece together the shattered fragments of memory.

So he forbore to follow that train of thought. And, again, he strove to banish mentality and to sink back into the merciful senselessness from which youth and an iron-and-whalebone const.i.tution were fighting to rouse him.

But, do what he would to prevent it, consciousness was creeping more and more in upon him. For, now, he could not only follow the motions of the wondrously gentle hand on his forehead, but he could tell that his head was not on the ground. Instead, it was resting on something warm, and it was elevated some inches above the gra.s.s. He recalled a war-chromo of a wounded soldier whose head rested on the knee of a Red Cross nurse,--a nurse who sat on the furrowed earth of a five-color battlefield, where all real life army regulations forbade her to set foot.

Was he that soldier? Was he still in the h.e.l.l of the Flanders trenches? He had thought the war was over, and that he was back in America,--in America and on his way South on some odd and perilous business whose nature he could not now recall.

Another few seconds of mental wandering, and he was himself again, his mind functioning more and more clearly. With returning strength of brain came curiosity. Where was he?

How did he chance to be lying here, his head in some sobbing woman's lap? It didn't make sense!

With instinctive caution, he parted his eyelids, ever so slightly, and sought to peer upward through his thick lashes.

The effort was painful, but less so than he had feared.

Already, through natural buoyancy or else by reason of the unseen nurse's ministrations, the throbbing ache was becoming almost bearable.

At first, his dazed eyes could make out nothing. Then he could see, through his lashes, the velvety dark blue of the night sky and the big white Southern stars s.h.i.+ning through a soft cloud. Inconsequentially, his vagrant mind recalled that, below Miami, the Southern Cross is smudgily visible on the horizon, somewhere around two in the morning. And he wondered if he could descry it, if that luminous cloud were not in the way.

Then, he knew it was not a cloud which s.h.i.+mmered between his eyes and the stars. It was a woman's filmy hair.

And the woman was bending down above him, as he lay with his head on her knee. She was bending down, sobbing softly to herself, and bathing his aching head with water from a bowl at her side.

He was minded to rouse himself and speak, or at least to get a less elusive look at her shadowed face, when running footsteps sounded from somewhere. And again by instinct, Brice shut his eyes and lay moveless.

The footsteps were coming nearer. They were springy and rhythmic, the footsteps of a powerful man.

Then came a panting voice out of the darkness

"Oh, there you are!" it exclaimed. "He got away. Got away, clean. I reached the head of the path, not ten feet behind him. But, in there, it's so black I couldn't see anything ahead of me. And I had no light, worse luck! So he--"

A deep-throated growl interrupted him,--a growl so fierce and menacing that Gavin once more halfparted his eyes, in sudden curiosity.

From beside his feet, Bobby Burns was rising. The collie had crouched there, evidently, with some idea of guarding Brice from further harm. He did not seem to have resented the woman's ministrations. But he was of no mind to let this man come any closer to his stricken idol.

Brice was sore tempted to reach out his hand and give the collie a rea.s.suring pat and to thank him for the loyal guard he had been keeping. Now, through the mists of memory, he recalled snarls and the bruising contact of a furry body, during the battle he so, dimly remembered, and that once his foe had cried, out, as though at the impact of rending teeth.

Yes, Bobby Burns, presumably, had learned a lesson since his interested but impersonal surveillance of Gavin's bout with the beach comber, earlier in the afternoon. He had begun to learn that when grown men come to a clinch, it is not mere play.

And Brice wanted to praise the gallant young dog for coming to his help. But, as before, instinct and professional experience bade him continue to "play dead."

"What's that?" he heard the man demand, in surprise, as Bobby snarled again and stood threateningly between him and the prostrate Brice.

The woman answered. And at the first sound of her voice, full memory rushed back on Gavin in a flood. He knew where he was, and who was holding, his head on her knee. The knowledge thrilled him, unaccountably. With mighty effort he held to his, pose of inert senselessness.

"That's Bobby Burns," he heard Claire saying in reply to her brother's first question. "He's guarding Mr. Brice. When I ran out here with the water and the cloths, I found him standing above him. But--oh, Milo--"

"Brice?" snapped Milo Standish, glowering on the fallen man his sister was brooding over. "Brice? Who's Brice? D'you mean that chap? Lucky I got him, even if the other one did give me the slip! Let me take a look at him. If I hadn't happened to be bringing the monkey-wrench from the garage to fix that shelf-bolt in the study, I'd never have been able to get even one of them. I yanked free of them, while they were trying to down me, and I let this one have it with the wrench.

Before I could land on the other--"

"Milo!" she broke in, after several vain attempts to still his vainglorious recital. "Milo! You've injured--maybe you've killed--the man who saved you from being stabbed to death!

Yet you--"

"What are you talking about?" he demanded, bewildered. "These two men set on me in the dark, as I was coming from--"

"This man, here--Mr. Brice--" she flamed, "has saved you from being killed. Oh, go and telephone for a doctor! Quickly!

And send one of the maids out here with my smelling salts.

He--"

"Thanks!" returned her brother, making no move to obey. "But when I phone, it'll be to the police. Not to a doctor. I don't know what notion you may have gotten of this fracas.

But--"

"Oh, we're wasting such precious time!" she cried. "Listen!

I heard a shout. I was on my way to the veranda to see what was detaining you. For I had heard your car come in, quite a while before that. I opened the door. And I was just in time to see some man spring on you, with a knife in his hand. Then Mr. Brice came running from the gateway, just as the man threw you down and lifted his knife to stab you. Mr. Brice dragged him away from you and throttled him, and knocked the knife out of his hand. I could see it ever so plainly. For it was all in that big patch of light. Just like a scene on a stage.

Then, Mr. Brice got to his feet, and swung the man to one side, by the throat. And as he did, you jumped up, too, and hit him on the head with that miserable wrench. As he fell, I could see the other man stagger off toward the path. He was so weak, at first, he could hardly move. I cried out to you, but you were so busy glaring down at the man who had saved your life that you didn't think to start after the other one till he had gotten strength enough to escape from you. Then I went for water to--"

"Good Lord!" groaned Standish, agape. "You're--you're sure--dead sure you're right?"

"Sure?" she echoed, indignantly. "Of course I'm sure. I--"