Police!!! | Page 4

Evelyn Grey, and had been a country
school-teacher in Massachusetts until her health broke.
Florida was what she required; but that healing climate was possible to
her only if she could find there a self-supporting position.
Also she had nourished an ambition for a postgraduate education, with
further aspirations to a Government appointment in the Smithsonian
Institute.
All very worthy, no doubt--in fact, particularly commendable because

the wages she saved as waitress in a Florida hotel during the winter
were her only means of support while studying for college
examinations during the summer in Boston, where she lived.
Yet, although she was an inmate of Massachusetts, her face and figure
would have ornamented any light-opera stage. I never looked at her but
I thought so; and her cuffs and apron merely accentuated the delusion.
Such ankles are seldom seen when the curtain rises after the overture.
Odd that frivolous thoughts could flit through an intellect dedicated
only to science!
The man, Grue, had not stirred from his survey of the Atlantic Ocean.
He had a somewhat disturbing capacity for remaining motionless--like
a stealthy and predatory bird which depends on immobility for
aggressive and defensive existence.
The sea-wind fluttered his cotton shirt and trousers and the tattered
brim of his straw hat. And always I felt as though he were watching me
out of the back of his ratty head, through the ravelled straw brim that
sagged over his neck.
The pretty waitress had now chewed the end of her pencil to a
satisfactory pulp, and she was writing again in her diary, very intently,
so that my cautious touch on her arm seemed to startle her.
Meeting her inquiring eyes I said in a low voice:
"I am not sure why, but I don't seem to care very much for that man,
Grue. Do you?"
She glanced at the water's edge, where Grue stood, immovable, his
back still turned to us.
"I never liked him," she said under her breath.
"Why?" I asked cautiously.
She merely shrugged her shoulders. She did it gracefully.

I said:
"Have you any particular reason for disliking him?"
"He's dirty."
"He looks dirty, yet every day he goes into the sea and swims about. He
ought to be clean enough."
She thought for a moment, then:
"He seems, somehow, to be fundamentally unclean--I don't mean that
he doesn't wash himself. But there are certain sorts of animals and birds
and other creatures from which one instinctively shrinks--not, perhaps,
because they are materially unclean--"
"I understand," I said. After a silence I added: "Well, there's no chance
now of sending him back, even if I were inclined to do so. He appears
to be familiar with these latitudes. I don't suppose we could find a
better man for our purpose. Do you?"
"No. He was a sponge fisher once, I believe."
"Did he tell you so?"
"No. But yesterday, when you took the boat and cruised to the south, I
sat writing here and keeping up the fire. And I saw Grue climbing
about among the mangroves over the water in a most uncanny way; and
two snake-birds sat watching him, and they never moved.
"He didn't seem to see them; his back was toward them. And then, all at
once, he leaped backward at them where they sat on a mangrove, and
he got one of them by the neck--"
[Illustration: "Climbing about among the mangroves above the water."]
"What!"
The girl nodded.

"By the neck," she repeated, "and down they went into the water. And
what do you suppose happened?"
"I can't imagine," said I with a grimace.
"Well, Grue went under, still clutching the squirming, flapping bird;
and he stayed under."
"Stayed under the water?"
"Yes, longer than any sponge diver I ever heard of. And I was
becoming frightened when the bloody bubbles and feathers began to
come up--"
"What was he doing under water?"
"He must have been tearing the bird to pieces. Oh, it was quite
unpleasant, I assure you, Mr. Smith. And when he came up and looked
at me out of those very vitreous eyes he resembled something horridly
amphibious.... And I felt rather sick and dizzy."
"He's got to stop that sort of thing!" I said angrily. "Snake-birds are
harmless and I won't have him killing them in that barbarous fashion.
I've warned him already to let birds alone. I don't know how he catches
them or why he kills them. But he seems to have a mania for doing it--"
I was interrupted by Grue's soft and rather pleasant voice from the
water's edge, announcing a sail on the horizon. He did not turn when
speaking.
The next moment I made out the sail and focussed my glasses on it.
"It's Professor Kemper," I announced presently.
"I'm so glad,"