7

The hills rose until they blotted out half the stars, and the moonlight on their tree-clad slopes was like a screen of opaque lace against the sky. Utter solitude seemed to surround the little summer boardinghouse. No other house was in view. No lights burned in the houses the Strange People must occupy in the hills. All was silence.

Gray stood up and tossed away his last cigar.

“I’m going to turn in,” he said at last. “It’s too much for me. By the way, I may be gone before you get up in the morning.”

“Leaving?” asked Cunningham.

He and Gray had been talking fruitlessly, trying to piece together what they knew of Vladimir with what they had seen of the Strangers, and attempting to figure out the connection between the two. They had decided that the Strangers’ attack upon them had been due to Gray’s rush at one of the hidden figures. That their hiding was due to the fact that they had killed Vladimir’s brother and were afraid of arrest. But they could concoct no theory as to why Vladimir had sought them out, or where he could have known them, or why he was willing to spend any amount of money to have a free hand with them. Certainly they could not understand what he would gain besides revenge, or even how he could set about taking that in a civilized country.

“No, not leaving,” said Gray. He yawned. “You don’t care to confide in me, Cunningham? About your real reason for being here?”

Cunningham grinned. The route he had followed had not misled him. Adventure and romance were certainly about him. He had seen Maria, and she was perfect. And there was promise of more excitement.

“I’ve told you,” he said cheerfully. “I came here for fun. Why not tell me why you came?”

Gray smiled.

“Dialect, of course.” His tone admitted that he did not expect Cunningham to believe it. “I’ll send some wires and be back by noon. Watch your step while I’m gone. I think Vladimir would feel happier with you in jail.”

“I know he would,” said Cunningham. “But there’s something crooked going on. I shall object pretty strenuously to being arrested.”

Gray laughed.

“I think you will,” he admitted. “But today I thought you were just trying to hold the Strangers in talk until the sheriff could reach them unheard. I think they thought the same.”

“I didn’t hear the son-of-a-gun,” said Cunningham.

Gray yawned again on his way to the door.

“I knew it when you fought to keep that girl from being arrested. Didn’t you notice I told you about the knife at my back right away? So that the Strangers would hear me? I wanted them to know you’d kept her free on your own hook, not to save my life. That ought to make them believe in you somewhat.”

“But why did you want to make me solid with them?” demanded Cunningham.

“Oh, you might help me later,” said Gray dryly, “in studying their dialect.”

He disappeared, and Cunningham frowned out at the darkness for a long time. It was a puzzling mix-up, and it might prove a dangerous one. Gray had been close to death that afternoon and one man had been killed. But Cunningham could not find it in his heart to dwell upon anything, now, but Maria. She was—different. Cunningham dwelt upon her image in his memory with increasing contentment. Sometimes a man sees a woman and without even any feeling of surprize realizes that it is she whom he has been waiting for all his life. It is more of a recognition than a meeting. Cunningham felt that way about Maria.

But he forced his brain to a last effort to understand the mystery into which he had dropped. Vladimir offering bribes to keep other people from the Strangers he hated, and the Strangers with their incredible lack of knowledge of American commonplaces.

“Vladimir’s crazy, or I’m crazy, and maybe all of us are crazy,” he muttered as he tossed his cigarette over the porch railing. “I’m going to bed.”

He went up the stairs by the light of the turned-down lamp in the hall and fumbled with his key in the lock. He opened his door and struck a match. Then he uttered an angry exclamation.

A moment later he had lighted his lamp and was searching among his tumbled-about possessions for a sign of theft.

Someone had entered his room and searched his suit-cases thoroughly. His clothes had been ransacked. A bundle of letters and papers had been read and strewn on the floor. It looked as if every seam of his garments had been searched for hidden clues to his identity or motive in visiting Coulters and the Strange People.

Nothing was missing, but everything had been examined. Cunningham felt his anger mounting. Vladimir, of course. Why didn’t the man want him there? What was he suspected of?

There was a gentle tapping at his window and Cunningham looked up with an increase of savagery. But—two faces were looking in at him. One was Maria, smiling a little. The other was a Stranger of middle age or over.

She put her finger to her lips and motioned for him to lift the window. Cunningham strode over and thrust it up. It was latched from the inside and the necessity of unfastening it dispelled a flash of suspicion that had come to him.

“This is my father, Stephan,” whispered Maria. “We must talk to you.”

The older man slipped into the room and after an instant’s hesitation held out his hand. He looked weary and worn.

“I could not come any other way,” he said slowly, picking his words with a trace of difficulty. “I would have had to kill the sheriff. But I wished to thank you, for Maria.”

She had slipped in behind him and sat down on a chair. Stephan waited until Cunningham motioned him to another. There he sat quietly, fingering the hilt of his knife and looking at Cunningham with grave and not unfriendly eyes.

Cunningham was hopelessly at sea, but he felt a little tingling feeling of comfort. He looked at Maria, and there was an infinite deal of satisfaction in the glance. It was as if he saw her and knew with perfect certitude that some day she must love him. For himself, with sublime confidence he knew that his dreams were justified. It was insane, perhaps, but such things do happen. One worships very many girls, very earnestly, and then quite suddenly one glimpses another girl and—well, one knows.

Stephan’s voice broke the silence again.

“I came,” he said heavily, “to thank you for keeping Maria from being taken away. And I ask you if you are our friend, as you said. And why you came here.”

Cunningham pondered the reply he should make. He saw Maria looking at him with a curious expression of dawning recognition, of surprized intentness. He glanced up and she flushed slightly. Very abruptly he saw that she had read his expression and that she was discovering the same odd certitude. Their eyes met for the fraction of a second. And then—it was as if there were no more need to speak. She flushed a vivid red, and after that her eyes had difficulty in meeting his.

That, also, was insanity. But such things happen likewise.

“I am your friend,” said Cunningham gruffly, “if Vladimir isn’t. I dislike that man.”

His heart was pounding loudly, though no word had passed between Maria and himself. Stephan eyed him steadily.

“But I’m getting tired,” added Cunningham, “of explaining why I came here and where I came from. Nobody believes me. But you didn’t come to ask me those things only.”

“No,” said Stephan harassedly. “We came to ask you what to do.”

“About what?”

“All things,” said Stephan fiercely. “A man was killed. You know that. There is another man here. You call him Vladimir, and he will have to be killed also. And the sheriff comes and tries to take us away. What shall we do?”

Cunningham had trouble in thinking of an answer. He wanted to talk to Maria. He wanted to take her to one side and say innumerable things.

“About the first man,” he said at random, “you ought to get a lawyer to advise you. And keep out of the way of Vladimir and the sheriff until he can tell you what you ought to do.”

Stephan’s face mirrored a resolute despair.

“No. We will not do that. He would ask who we were and why we killed that other man.”

“He might,” agreed Cunningham lightheartedly. He wanted desperately to talk to Maria. “People do that sort of thing around here.”

Stephan looked at his daughter questioningly. She nodded, with shining eyes that evaded Cunningham’s. Stephan tugged at his belt and placed something on the floor before him. He unknotted a string about a coarse cloth bag and poured out upon the floor a shining heap of gold-pieces. But they were not like any gold-pieces Cunningham had ever seen before. They were hammered from nuggets or bars by hand. They were square, about the size of a double-eagle and twice as thick, and still showed the marks of the hammer that had formed them.

“We will give you these,” he said quietly, “if you will get us gats like the one you showed my people today.”

“Gats? Oh ... guns. Pistols.”

Stephan nodded and swept the gold-pieces into a shining array. The sight of them sobered Cunningham abruptly.

“But what will you do with them?” he asked. “How will you use them? What do you want them for?”

Stephan spread out his hands.

“Then we will not need a lawyer,” he said grimly. Cunningham caught his meaning.

“How many people do you chaps plan to kill with them?”

Stephan smiled sadly.

“Not many. Only until we are left alone.”

“You people do need a guardian,” growled Cunningham. Maria was watching him with soft eyes that always just evaded meeting his. Cunningham felt that a tremendous responsibility was being thrust upon him. “Look here——”

There was a sharp knock at the door.

Cunningham hurled himself at the doorway to bar entrance until Stephan and Maria should have time to get away. All the Strangers were considered outlawed now. Cunningham had only their safety in mind, but Stephan misread his swiftness of movement. With lightninglike quickness he was on his feet with bared knife, darting likewise to the doorway.

Cunningham’s hand came down with a jerk. The knife flew from Stephan’s hand and stuck quivering in the floor. The next second Cunningham’s revolver was out.

“Steady!” he whispered sharply. “Steady!”

Then Maria had flung herself in front of the revolver. All this was done in fractions of seconds and almost without sound.

“You shall not let him be taken!” she whispered fiercely. “You shall not!”

Stephan’s whole frame was alert and his eyes were flaming as if he were sure this was a trap and waited but the ghost of a chance to seize his knife and rush Cunningham as well as whoever might be outside.

To take his eyes from the man was to risk his life. To refuse to answer the knock was to take another risk. The knock came again, sharp and peremptory. A hand tried the door. And there was a tiny sound by the window, as if other Strangers were without, peering in suspiciously and ready to fling their flying knives at a hint of danger.