eith," cried Miss Barbara, "we have just been investigating a
mystery. Mr. Verslun discovered it this afternoon in Levuka. But you
haven't met Mr. Verslun yet, have you?"

"I haven't," growled the owner of the voice.

"Mr. Verslun, this is Mr. Leith, who is father's partner," said Miss
Barbara. "He knows a lot about the Islands, but he refuses to tell any
of his experiences."

I looked at the man who stood in front of me, and a curious thing
flashed through my mind. I was reminded at that moment of a story I had
read of a man charged with an attempt upon the life of a prince. The
would-be murderer informed the judge that a terrible hate of the
princeling had gripped him the moment he put eyes on him, and he had
made the attempt upon his life before he had managed to control the
unexplainable surge of hate. I understood the emotion that had gripped
that unfortunate as I stood face to face with Leith. A feeling of
revulsion gripped me, and I experienced a peculiar squalmy sensation as
I took his hand. It was unexplainable. Perhaps some ancestor of mine had
unsatisfactory dealings with a man of the same unusual type in a faraway
past, and the transmitted hate had suddenly sprung into the conscious
area. I do know that you can keep a secretary-bird away from snakes till
it grows old, but the first reptile it sees it immediately starts out to
beat him up. I had the inherited hate that makes the secretary-bird rush
madly at a snake that may be the first of its species that it has ever
seen, and I guess that Leith had no love to spare for me from the moment
he took my hand.

He was a huge brute, fully six feet tall, and he was the possessor of
two of the strongest-looking hands I had ever seen. They were claws,
that's what they were. The great fingers were slightly crooked, as if
waiting, like the tentacles of an octopus, for something to get in their
grip. The body was heavy, and, in a manner that I cannot explain, it
made me think of animals that lived and died in long past ages. The big
brute looked so capable of making an inexcusable attack that one's
primitive instincts warned one to keep in a state of readiness for the
onslaught that seemed imminent.

But it was the face that was specially unattractive. It was a sallow,
flat face, and the strange eyes did nothing to lighten it. They were
dead, lustreless eyes. They had a coldness in them that reminded me of
the icicle eyes of the crocodile, and, curiously, I associa