The Brand of Silence | Page 5

dozen times during the voyage. She
made the acquaintance of others aboard and, for the first few days, had
been busy in their company. The last three days had been stormy ones,
and Kate Gilbert had not been much in evidence. Prale judged that she
was a poor sailor.
Now she stopped beside him, the middle-aged maid standing just
behind her.
"Well, we're home, Mr. Prale!" she said.
"I suppose that you are glad to get home?"
"Surely!" she replied. "And I'll be angry if there are not half a dozen to
meet me when I land. I've been trying to spot some friends in that
crowd, but it is a hopeless task."
"I hope you'll not be disappointed," Prale said.
As he spoke, he glanced past her at the middle-aged maid, and
surprised a peculiar expression on the face of the woman. She had been
looking straight at him, and her lips were almost curled into a sneer,
while her eyes were flashing with something akin to anger.

Prale did not understand that. Why should the dragon be incensed with
him? He was making no attempt to lay siege to the heart of Miss Kate
Gilbert. He was no fortune hunter after an heiress. The expression on
the face of the maid amused Prale even while he wondered what it
could mean.
"Picked your hotel?" Kate Gilbert was asking.
"Not yet, but I hope to get in somewhere," Prale told her. "May I be of
assistance to you when we land?"
"Marie will help me, thanks--and there will be others on the wharf," she
answered.
A cold look had come into her face again, and she turned half away
from him and looked down at the crowd on the wharf. Sidney Prale
looked straight at her, despite the glare of the middle-aged maid. Kate
Gilbert was a woman who would appeal to a majority of men, but there
seemed to be something peculiar about her, Prale told himself. He
knew that she had avoided him purposely during the voyage, and that
she had spoken to him purposely now, yet had asked nothing except
whether he had chosen a hotel.
Why should Kate Gilbert wish to know where he was going to stop?
Perhaps it had been only an idle question, he explained to himself. In
her happiness at getting home, she had merely wished to speak to
somebody, and none of her shipboard friends happened to be near.
He turned from her and glanced at the maid again. She was not the sort
to be named Marie, Prale told himself. Marie called up a vision of a
petite, trim woman from sunny France, and this Marie was nothing of
the sort. She appeared more to be a peasant used to hard labor, Prale
decided.
And he could not understand the expression on the woman's face as she
looked at him. It was almost one of loathing.
"Got me mixed up with somebody else, or somebody has been giving

me a bad reputation," Prale mused. "Enough to make a man shiver--that
look of hers."
Kate Gilbert, apparently, did not intend to have anything more to do
with him. Smiling a little at her manner, Prale lifted his hat, picked up
the suit case, and turned away. Once more he tried to force a passage
through the jostling crowd. He had not taken three steps when Kate
Gilbert touched him on the arm.
"Pardon me, Mr. Prale, but there is something sticking on the end of
your suit case," she said.
Prale glanced down. On one end of the suit case was a bit of paper. It
had been stuck there by a drop of mucilage, and the mucilage was still
wet.
He thanked Kate Gilbert and picked the paper off, but he did not throw
it over the rail into the water. He crumpled it in his hand and, when he
was some distance away, he smoothed it out.
There was a single word written on it, in the same handwriting as that
of the note he had found pinned to the pillow in the
stateroom--"Retribution."
Sidney Prale glanced around quickly. Nobody seemed to be paying
particular attention to him. Kate Gilbert and her maid had passed him
and were preparing to land. Prale put the piece of paper into his coat
pocket and picked up his suit case again. That bit of paper, he knew
well, had not been on the suit case when he had left the stateroom. It
had been put there as he had made his way through the crowd of
passengers along the rail. Who could have stuck it there--and why?
Now the passengers were streaming ashore, and Sidney Prale stepped
to one side and watched them. Perhaps he had some business enemy on
board, he told