It was this seemingly simple action which had so suddenly diverted Gavin from what he had been saying.  He knew the ways of Persian cats, even as he knew the ways of collies.  And both forms of knowledge had more than once been of some slight use to him.

Facing Milo and Claire, he signed to them not to speak.  Then, making sure the house-man had gone upstairs, he walked up to Claire and whispered, pointing over his shoulder at the door which Simon Cameron was guarding: 

“Where does that door lead to?”

The girl almost laughed at the earnestness of his question, following, as it did, upon his urgent signal for silence.

“Why,” she answered, amusedly, “it doesn’t lead anywhere.  It’s the door of a clothes closet.  We keep our gardening suits and our raincoats and such things in there.  Why do you ask?”

By way of reply, Gavin crossed the hall in two silent strides, his muscles tensed and his head lowered.  Seizing the knob, he flung the closet door wide open, wellnigh sweeping the indignant Simon Cameron off his furry feet.

At first glance, the closet’s interior revealed only a more or less orderly array of hanging raincoats and aprons and overalls.  Then, all three of the onlooking humans focused their eyes upon a pair of splayed and grimy bare feet which protruded beneath a somewhat bulging raincoat of Milo’s.

Brice thrust his arm in, between this coat and a gardening apron, and jerked forth a silently squirming youth, perhaps eighteen years old, swarthy and undersized.

“Well!” exclaimed Gavin, holding his writhing prize at arm’s length, “Simon Cameron must have a depraved taste in playmates, if he tries to choose this one!  A regular beach combing conch!  Probably a clay-eater, at that.”

He spoke the words with seeming carelessness, but really with deliberate intent.  For the glum silence of a conch is a hard thing for any outsider to break down.  He recalled what Claire had said of the Caesars’ fierce distaste for the word “conch.”  Also, throughout the South, “clay-eater,” has ever been a fighting word.

Brice had not gauged his insults in vain.  Instantly, the captive’s head twisted, like that of a pinioned pit terrier, in a frenzied effort to drive his teeth into the hand or arm of his captor.  Failing this, he spluttered into rapid-fire speech.

“Ah’m not a conch!” he rasped, his voice sounding as rusty as an unused hinge.  “Ah’m a Caesar, yo’ dirty Yank!  Tuhn me loose, yo’!  Ah ain’t hurt nuthin’.”

“How did you get in here?” bellowed Milo, advancing threateningly on the youth, and swinging aloft one of his hamlike fists.

The intruder stiffened into silence and stolid rigidity.  Unflinchingly, he eyed the oncoming giant.  Brice motioned Standish back.

“No use,” said he.  “I know the breed.  They’ve been kicked and beaten and hammered about, till a licking has no terrors for them.  This sweet soul will stay in the silences, till—­”