Police!!! | Page 9

on the back-bone of the reef.
I walked as far as the tree and looked up into the arching fronds.
Nobody was up there. I could see the moonlit sky through the fronds.
Nor was Grue lying asleep anywhere on the other side of the coral
ridge.
And suddenly I became aware of all my latent distrust and dislike for
the man. And the vigour of my sentiments surprised me because I
really had not understood how deep and thorough my dislike had been.
Also, his utter disappearance struck me as uncanny. Both boats were

there; and there were many leagues of sea to the nearest coast.
Troubled and puzzled I turned and walked back to the dead embers of
the fire. Kemper had merely changed the timbre of his snore to a
whistling aria, which at any other time would have enraged me. Now,
somehow, it almost comforted me.
Seated on the shore I looked out to sea, racking my brains for an
explanation of Grue's disappearance. And while I sat there racking
them, far out on the water a little flock of ducks suddenly scattered and
rose with frightened quackings and furiously beating wings.
For a moment I thought I saw a round, dark object on the waves where
the flock had been.
And while I sat there watching, up out of the sea along the reef to my
right crawled a naked, dripping figure holding a dead duck in his
mouth.
Fascinated, I watched it, recognising Grue with his ratty black hair all
plastered over his face.
Whether he caught sight of me or not, I don't know; but he suddenly
dropped the dead duck from his mouth, turned, and dived under water.
It was a grim and horrid species of sport or pastime, this amphibious
business of his, catching wild birds and dragging them about as though
he were an animal.
Evidently he was ashamed of himself, for he had dropped the duck. I
watched it floating by on the waves, its head under water. Suddenly
something jerked it under, a fish perhaps, for it did not come up and
float again, as far as I could see.
When I went back to camp Grue lay apparently asleep on the north side
of the fire. I glanced at him in disgust and crawled into my tent.
The next day Evelyn Grey awoke with a headache and kept her tent. I

had all I could do to prevent Kemper from prescribing for her. I did that
myself, sitting beside her and testing her pulse for hours at a time,
while Kemper took one of Grue's grains and went off into the
mangroves and speared grunt and eels for a chowder which he said he
knew how to concoct.
Toward afternoon the pretty waitress felt much better, and I warned
Kemper and Grue that we should sail for Black Bayou after dinner.
* * * * *
Dinner was a mess, as usual, consisting of fried mullet and rice, and a
sort of chowder in which the only ingredients I recognised were
sections of crayfish.
After we had finished and had withdrawn from the fire, Grue scraped
every remaining shred of food into a kettle and went for it. To see him
feed made me sick, so I rejoined Miss Grey and Kemper, who had
found a green cocoanut and were alternately deriving nourishment from
the milk inside it.
[Illustration: "To see him feed made me sick."]
Somehow or other there seemed to me a certain levity about that
performance, and it made me uncomfortable; but I managed to smile a
rather sickly smile when they offered me a draught, and I took a pull at
the milk--I don't exactly know why, because I don't like it. But the
moon was up over the sea, now, and the dusk was languorously balmy,
and I didn't care to leave those two drinking milk out of the same
cocoanut under a tropic moon.
Not that my interest in Evelyn Grey was other than scientific. But after
all it was I who had discovered her.
We sailed as soon as Grue, gobbling and snuffling, had cleaned up the
last crumb of food. Kemper blandly offered to take Miss Grey into his
boat, saying that he feared my boat was overcrowded, what with the
paraphernalia, the folding cages, Grue, Miss Grey, and myself.

I sat on that suggestion, but offered to take my own tiller and lend him
Grue. He couldn't wriggle out of it, seeing that his alleged motive had
been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when Grue
went aboard his boat.
As for me, I hoisted sail with something so near a chuckle that it
surprised me; and I looked at Evelyn Grey to see whether she had