Down the stairs—­slowly, nonchalantly,—­lounged Rodney Hade.

His classic mask of a face was marred by one or two scratches and by a smudge of dirt.  But it was as calm and as eternally smiling as ever.  In place of his wontedly correct, if garish, form of dress, he was clad in ragged calico shirt and soiled drill trousers whose lower portions were in ribbons.  All of which formed a ludicrous contrast to his white buckskin yachting shoes and his corded white silk socks.

Claire and the two men stood staring up at him in utter incredulity.  Bobby Burns broke the spell by bounding snarlingly toward the unkempt intruder.

Brice absentmindedly caught the dog’s collar as Bobby streaked past him on his punitive errand.

“Hade!” croaked Standish, his throat sanded with horror. ’"’Hade!  I—­we—­we saw you—­murdered!”

Hade laughed pleasantly.

“Perhaps the wish was father to the thought?” he hinted, with an indulgent twinkle in his perpetual smile.  “I hate mysteries.  Here’s an end to this one I was on my way along the path, when a young fellow came whirling around a bend and collided with me.  The impact knocked him off his feet.  I collared him.  He didn’t want to talk.  But,” the smile twisting upward at one corner of the mouth in a look which did not add to the beauty of the ascetic face, “I used persuasion.  And I found what was going on here.  I stripped off my outer clothes, and made him put them on.  Then I put my yachting cap on him and pulled it low over his eyes.  And I bandaged his mouth with my handkerchief, to gag him.  Then I walked him along, ahead of me.  I gave the signal.  And I stuck my cigarette in his hand and shoved him through the screen of vines.  They finished him, poor fool!  I had no outer clothes of my own.  So I went back and put on his.  Then I slipped through that chuckle-headed aggregation out there and—­here I am.”

As he finished speaking, he turned his icy smile upon Gavin Brice.

“Roke signaled a fruit boat, Mr. Brice,” said he, “and came over to where my yacht was lying, to tell me you had gotten loose.  That was why I came here, tonight.  He seems to think you know more than a man should know and yet stay alive.  And, as a rule, he is apt to be right.  He—­”

“Miss Standish,” interposed Gavin, “would you mind very much, going into some other room?  This isn’t a pleasant scene for you.”

“Stay where you are, for a minute, Claire!” commanded Milo, shaking off a lethargy of wonder which had settled upon him, at sight of his supposedly dead tyrant.  “I want you to hear what I’ve got to say.  And I want you to endorse it.  I’ve had a half hour of freedom.  And it’s meant too much to me, to let me go back into the hell I’ve lived through, this past few months.”

He wheeled about on the newcomer and addressed him, speaking loudly and rapidly in a voice hoarse with rage: