“Not he,” denied Standish.  “That fool boy was so scared, he’d plunge into the brush or the water, the second he heard Rodney’s step.  Those conchs can keep as mum as Seminoles.  He’d never let Rodney see him or hear him.  He—­”

Standish did not finish his sentence.  Into his slow-moving brain, an idea dawned.  Leaning far out of the window and shouting at the top of his enormous lungs, he bawled through the night: 

“Hade!  Back, man!  Go back!  They’ll kill you!”

The bull-like bellow might have been heard for half a mile.  And, as it ceased, a muffled snarling, like a dog’s, came from the edge of the forest, where waited the silent men whose knives were drawn for the killing.

And, in the same instant, from the head of the path, drifted the fluting notes of a mocking bird.

Disregarding or failing to catch the meaning of the thickly-bellowed warning, Rodney Hade was advancing nonchalantly upon his fate.  The three in the hallway crowded into the window-opening, tense, wordless, mesmerized, peering aghast toward the screen of vines which veiled the end of the path.

The full moon, which Brice had glimpsed as it was rising, a minute or so before, now breasted the low tops of the orange trees across the highroad and sent a level shaft of light athwart the lawn.  Its clear beams played vividly on the dark forest, revealing the screen of vines at the head of the path, and revealing also three crouching dark figures, close to the ground, at the very edge of the lawn, not six feet from the path head.

And, almost instantly, with a third repetition of the mocking bird call, the vine screen was swept aside.  Out into the moonshine sauntered a slight figure, all in white, yachting cap on head, lighted cigarette in hand.

The man came out from the black vine-screen, and, for a second, stood there, as if glancing carelessly about him.  Milo Standish shouted again, at the top of his lungs.  And this time, Claire’s voice, like a silver bugle, rang out with his in that cry of warning.

But, before the dual shout was fairly launched, three dark bodies had sprung forward and hurled themselves on the unsuspecting victim.  There was a tragically brief struggle.  Then, all four were on the ground, the vainly-battling white body underneath.  And there was a gruesome sound as of angry beasts worrying their meat.

Carried out of his own dread, by the spectacle, Milo Standish vaulted over the sill and out onto the veranda.  But there he came to a halt.  For there was no further need for him to throw away his own life in the belated effort at rescue.

The three black figures had regained their feet.  And, on the trampled lawn-edge in front of them lay a huddle of white, with darker stains splashed here and there on it.  The body lay in an impossible posture—­a posture which Nature neither intends nor permits.  It told its own dreadful story, to the most uninitiated of the three onlookers at the window.