Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/153

 "This is Miss Marceau, teacher of the Indian school at Shell Point, who was kind enough to try to help me with Adam John," said Henry in introducing her.

Both men lifted their hats, each threw the girl one grateful glance as for her codperation in a project of theirs, and again centered the fierceness of their gaze on Harrington. "Say!" Harrington interrupted himself. "Didn't you men see anybody skulking around the island in the last hour?"

"Couple of fellows in a skiff fishing," remembered Scanlon; "one was rowing, the other trolling."

"How long ago?"

"About half an hour ago they passed out of our sight, coasting the island. We never picked them up again because we went dead."

"Did you notice if either of them had a Vandyke beard?"

"One did," said Scanlon. "Fellow in a blue shirt."

"Then that's the explanation," said Henry. "The man with the Vandyke is dead out here in the timber a couple of hundred yards. The other fellow got away with the gold."

"Dead?" gasped the hoarse-voiced Scanlon, with a sudden increase of excitement—a very marked increase, Henry remembered long afterwards—his face was livid, spotted, ghastly for a moment. "Go on and tell us what happened. Confound it, Henry, you're mixin' me all up."

Quackenbaugh was more self-contained. White, intense, his keen black eyes boring into Harrington's as if he would pierce to the very marrow of his soul, he put together what he had heard and asked impatiently for more. "Yes, yes. Go on. Just how did it happen?"