play the part
he did. To me it was a dramatic thing--this heritage of wickedness,
generation after generation: this blood lust and hatred that was the
curse of all his breed. It was Cain and Abel again--the same, old
tragic story.

"They met on the lagoon shore, beside the crags, and perhaps Major Dell
made an attempt to wrest the copy of the cryptogram from his brother.
It's even possible, but it doesn't seem likely, that it was the other
way 'round. At least, they were working at cross purposes, both of them
seemed just about to triumph--and hating each other like two serpents,
they came to grips. And here Dell struck a fatal blow--likely with some
terrible, hooked instrument that he had brought to grapple for the
chest.

"Florey cried out in his death agony and his fear, and Dell was obliged
to flee without getting hold of the cryptogram. While the hunt was going
on through the gardens, he came back to the body, likely searched the
pockets of the victim, and for some reason that can never be exactly
known, dragged the body into the lagoon.

"Perhaps he thought the character of the wound would give him away.
There's little doubt that he threw it there with the idea of destroying
evidence--at least its presence some way interfered with his plans. And
of course before the night was done it had drifted to the sink-hole and
through the channel to the open sea.

"Dell likely saw you pick up the script, and that accounts for his
presence in your room that night. Meanwhile Nealman and I were working
on a copy of it I had found in an old book. The book was the Bible, by
the way, and it gave me the first key to the truth. Nealman offered to
divide the treasure with me, if he was able to find it. That promise is
on paper. It isn't necessary now, however--and you know why."

I knew why--well enough. As his niece, Edith inherited all that Grover
Nealman left, including this Floridan estate. It was true, however, that
his debts just about wiped out all his other possessions.

"As you know, a deal in the stock market practically ruined him," she
went on. "The only way out he could see was the chest that both of us
felt was hidden in the lagoon. He never took the monster legend
seriously, but always before he had been willing to wait until he could
procure some safe appliance to rescue the chest. At that time both of us
knew almost exactly where it was. And when the crash came, the sudden
need for money and his desperation s