not gray, but rather ominously dark, on the torn, white front of the
man's evening shirt. Nealman peered closely.

"It's my butler, Florey," he said.

CHAPTER VIII

There was nothing in particular to say or do. We simply stood looking
down, that huddled body from which life had been struck as if by a
meteor, in the center. From time to time we looked up from it to stare
out over the ensilvered waters of the lagoon.

We all shared this same inclination--to look away into the misty
distance, past the lagoon, past the gray shore, into the sea so
mysterious and still. The tide was running out now, so there was no
tumult of breaking waves on the Bridge. At intervals, and at a great
distance, we could hear the high-pitched shriek of plover.

Of course the mood lasted just an instant. It was as if we had all been
stricken silent and lifeless, unable to speak, unable to act, with only
the power left to look and to wonder and to dream. I suppose the finding
of that huddled body, under those conditions, was a severe nervous shock
to us all. Joe Nopp, he of the true eye and the steady nerve, was the
first to get back on an every-day footing with life.

"It's a fiendish crime," he said in the stillness. He spoke rather
slowly, without particular emphasis. "Of all the people to murder--that
gray, inoffensive little butler of yours! Nealman, let's get busy. Maybe
we can catch the devil yet."

Nealman came to himself with a start. "Sure, Joe. Tell us what to do. We
need a directing head at a time like this."

Nealman had dropped his accent. He spoke tersely, more like a man in the
street than the aristocrat he had come to believe himself to be.

"The first thing is to get word into town--Ochakee, you call it. Get
hold of the constable, or any other authority, and tell him to notify
the sheriff."

"Ochakee's the county seat--we can reach the sheriff himself."

"Good. Tell him to take steps to guard all roads for suspicious
characters. Get out posses, if they would help. Get the coroner and all
the official help we can get out here." He turned to me, with a
whip-like, emphatic movement. "Killdare, you might help us here. You
likely know the roads. Tell us what to do."

"You've said what to do," I told him. "There's not enough white men in
this part of the country to make a posse--and a posse couldn't find any
one that wanted to hide in the cypress swamps. The thing to do--is to
cut off the murderer's escape and sta