For a moment the two women, so different in type, faced each other, Dolores fiery with the ardent beauty of her race, Norma pulsating with life and vigor, yet always mistress of herself.

“I warn you!” cried Dolores, unable to restrain herself.  “You thought the other was yours—­and he was not.  Do not seek revenge.  He is mine—­mine, I tell you.  Win your own back again.  I was only making sport of him.  But mine—­beware!”

For a moment Norma gazed at her, then, without a word, turned aside and walked on.  Another instant and Dolores was gone as suddenly as she had appeared.  Asta looked inquiringly, but Norma made no attempt at explanation.  What did it mean?  Had it anything to do with the dispute in the hotel which Kenmore had witnessed?

At the landing we parted for a time with Everson, to return to our hotel and get what little we needed, including Kennedy’s traveling laboratory, while Everson prepared quarters for our reception on the yacht.

“What do you make of that Dolores incident?” I hastened to ask the moment we were alone.

“I don’t know,” he replied, “except that I feel it has an important bearing on the case.  There is something that Norma hasn’t told us, I fear.”

While we waited for a wagon to transfer our goods to the dock, Kennedy took a moment to call up Kenmore on the News.  As he turned to me from the telephone, I saw that what he had learned had not helped him much in his idea of the case.

“It was the Interocean Company which had insured the Antilles,” was all he said.

Instantly I thought of Kinsale and his former connection.  Was he secretly working with them still?  Was there a plot to frustrate Everson’s plans?  At least the best thing to do was to get out to the wreck and answer our many questions at first hand.

The Belle Aventure was a trim yacht of perhaps seventy feet, low, slim, and graceful, driven by a powerful gas-engine and capable of going almost anywhere.  An hour later we were aboard and settled in a handsomely appointed room, where Craig lost no time in establishing his temporary traveling crime clinic.

It was quite late before we were able to start, for Everson had a number of commissions to attend to on this his first visit to port since he had set out so blithely.  Finally, however, we had taken aboard all that he needed and we slipped out quietly past the castle on the point guarding the entrance to the harbor.  All night we plowed ahead over the brilliant, starry, tropical sea, making splendid time, for the yacht was one of the fastest that had ever been turned out by the builders.

Now and then I could see that Kennedy was furtively watching Norma, in the hope that she might betray whatever secret it was she was guarding so jealously.  Though she betrayed nothing, I felt sure that it had to do with some member of the expedition and that it was a more than ordinarily complicated affair of the heart.  The ladies had retired, leaving us with Everson in the easy wicker chairs on the after-deck.