Quick Action Part 26

"That's very odd," he said uneasily. "Where _is_ this bungalow of yours?"

She started to speak, checked herself as at a sudden and unpleasant thought, looked up at him searchingly; and found his steel-grey eyes as searchingly fixed on her.

"Where is _your_ bungalow?" she asked, watching him intently.

"Mine is situated at the west end of a coquina quarry. Where is yours?"

"Mine," she answered unsteadily but defiantly, "is situated on the eastern edge of a coquina quarry."

"Why did _you_ choose a quarry bungalow?"

"Why did _you_ choose one?"

"Because the coquina quarry happens to belong to me."

"The quarry," she retorted, "belongs to _me_."

He was almost too disgusted to speak, but he contrived to say, quietly and civilly:

"You are Constance Leslie, are you not?"

"Yes.... You are Johnson Gray?"

"Yes, I am," he answered, checking his exasperation and forcing a smile.

"It's rather odd, isn't it--rather unfortunate, I'm afraid."

"It _is_ unfortunate for you, Mr. Gray," she returned firmly. "I'm sorry--really sorry that this long journey is in vain."

"So am I," he said, with lips compressed.

For a few moments they sat very still, not looking at each other.

Presently he said: "It was a fool of a will. He was a most disagreeable old man."

"_I_ never saw him."

"Nor I. They say he was a terror. But he had a sense of humour--a grim and acrid one--the cynic's idea of wit. No doubt he enjoyed it. No doubt he is enjoying this very scene between you and me--if he's anywhere within sight or hearing----"

"Don't say that!" she exclaimed, almost violently. "It is horrible enough on this island without hinting of ghosts."

"Ghosts? Of course there are ghosts. But I'd rather have my bungalow full of 'em than full of scorpions."

"We differ," she said coldly.

Silence fell again, and again was broken by Gray.

"Certainly the old fellow had a sense of humour," he insisted; "the will he left was one huge joke on every relative who had expectations.

Imagine all that buzzard family of his who got nothing to amount to anything; and all those distant relatives who expected nothing and got almost everything!"

"Do you think that was humourous?"

"Yes; don't you? And I think what he did about you and me was really very funny. Don't you?"

"Why is it funny for a very horrid old man to make a will full of grim jokes and jests, and take that occasion to tell everybody exactly what he thinks of everybody?"

"He said nothing disagreeable about _us_ that I recollect," remarked Gray, laughing.

Pouring sand between her fingers, she said:

"I remember very well how he mentioned us. He said that he had never seen either one of us, and was glad of it. He said that as I was an orphan with no money, and that as you were similarly situated, and that as neither you nor I had brains enough to ever make any, he would leave his coquina quarry to that one of us who had brains enough to get here first and stake the claim. Do you call that an agreeable manner of making a bequest?"

Gray laughed easily: "_I_ don't care what he thought about my intellectual capacity."

"I suppose that I don't either. And anyway the bequest may be valuable."

"There is no doubt about that," said Gray.

She let her brown eyes rest thoughtfully on the ocean.

"I think," she said, "that I shall dispose of it at once."

"The dog?" he asked politely.

Her pretty, hostile eyes met his:

"The quarry," she replied calmly.

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed. "Do you think also that _you_ arrived at the quarry before I arrived?"

"You will find my stake with its written notice sticking in the sand on the eastern edge of the quarry, about a hundred yards south of my bungalow!"

"_My_ notice is very carefully staked on the western edge of the quarry about the same distance from my bungalow," he said. "I placed it there yesterday evening."

"I also placed my notice there yesterday evening!"

"By what train did you come?"

"By the Verbena Special. It arrived at St. Augustine yesterday at four o'clock in the afternoon."

"_I_ also came on that train."

"I," she said, "waited in St. Augustine only long enough to telephone for servants, and then I jumped into a victoria and drove over the causeway to the eastern end of the quarry."

"I did exactly the same," he insisted, "only I drove to the western end of the quarry. What time did you set your notice?"

"I don't know exactly. It was just about dusk."

"It was just about dusk when I drove in _my_ stake!"