Kat and Copy-Cat/Chapter 1
IT WAS about a week after Dick Harris moved into his new quarters on Tantalus, that the first kona arrived. That is, his first kona. He had never heard of one before because the kona, or south wind, is as much a taboo topic in Hawaii as earthquakes are in California. Naturally the real estate man wasn't mentioning it when he was showing Dick around. Tantalus is the big green mountain which rises some two thousand feet, upon the very outskirts of Honolulu; and when the agent's car stopped before the break in the hedge in front of one of the only two houses upon a certain narrow ridge of the mountain, Dick was immediately positive that he had found exactly the right spot in which to settle down, "far from the madding crowd," and finish some articles which were overdue and concerning which he was being periodically jacked up by various editors. He gave the place a hasty once-over, closed the deal on the spot and moved in the next day. Dick usually did things that way.
The first week was ideal. Big winds came down from the higher peaks, swept across his lanai and swished away through the row of ironwoods which stood sentinel between his house and the one next door. Out upon this lanai, or veranda, he had his typewriter, and under the inspiration of the winds and the dark blue-green coloring of the mountains and the silence, broken only by the birds and the swishing of the trees and the gentle sounds of the Japanese boy in the kitchen, concocting delectable dishes to be spread before him shortly here on this same lanai—his work slid out from under his typewriter with a swiftness and lucidity which made him "rejoice as a strong man to run a race."
And then suddenly everything stopped. The trade wind dropped, his grey matter refused to function—the only papers which came from the typewriter were wadded into unseemly balls and cast in the direction of the waste-basket with varying degrees of accuracy but much vehemence. A kona never lasts more than a few days, and comes only two or three times a year; but while it is on, the thermometer goes up, the barometer goes down, and profanity is the general order of conversation.
About four o'clock in the afternoon of the second day, Dick appeared in the kitchen doorway, mopping a very red face and nursing two vertical lines between his brows. "Moto," he said tersely, "go and get the hammer."
The Japanese turned inquiringly from the careful dissecting of an alligator pear.
"The hammer!" repeated Dick impatiently; "Where is it? In the garage? Well, go and get it."
The Japanese laid down his knife and turned dutifully toward the exit, and Dick walked back across the lanai to the rail and glared savagely down at the Manoa Valley spread out something like a thousand feet below him. The outer edge of the lanai overhung the precipitous mountain side so that the drop was almost sheer, although the steep descent was clothed with a softly swaying garment of vines, ti plants and clambering grasses which masked its harsh and rocky lines. Far down on the lower slopes were guava and lantana thickets, and then houses and winding black roads and the square green panels of rice and taro fields. Opposite, a mile or two away as the crow flies, was another mountain side exactly like the one upon which he stood; and to the left, as an extension of his own mountain and imperiously close at hand towered the high, sharply serrated peaks of the Koolau Range, covered with dark blue-green jungle and mottled in all of the draws with the whitey-green of kukui trees. Leaning over the rail of the lanai he could see some scraggly koa trees beneath him swaying in the breath of the south wind passing just below, but not a whiff of it came to him. An ironwood tree, which had been the last one of the row between his house and that of his neighbor, had washed down some six feet below the level and was growing bravely there, out of a handful of soil and some cracks in the rocks. This moved gently and swayed its long locks, but such breeze as reached it, failed to pass through so effectual a wind-break, though Dick leaned forward hoping to intercept a breath of it.
Moto returned at last with the hammer and stood looking doubtfully about to divine its purpose. "Pull out those nails," ordered Dick, indicating the canvas curtain which hung at the south end of the lanai, its bottom weighted with a heavy wooden pole.
"I think no good,—" began Moto uneasily.
"Pull them out! Pull them out!" commanded Dick. "I'm going to have that curtain up if it costs a leg. What the deuce have they got it nailed down for, anyhow?"
Moto examined the row of nails which had been driven through the canvas and into the wood of the lanai, just above the pole. "I think they like keep it down, maybe," he said.
"I don't care a hang what they like!" fumed Dick. "I'm going to have some air here. They've shut off the whole seaward side of this place; not a window in my room on that side, this canvas nailed down and that ironwood tree out there shutting off all of the wind and all of the view, right up to the mountain side opposite. I won't stand for anything like this."
Moto fingered the hammer. "I think no good—" he began again.
"Go ahead and pull out the nails, I told you. Never mind what you think, you do what I say!" And Moto went to work upon the nails.
Dick returned to a contemplation of the offending ironwood tree. "I'll have that thing cut down," he chafed; "There's no sense to it. What's the idea of a whole row of trees in between two houses that are only three or four feet apart? It's idiotic."
"I think," said Moto, turning from his nails, "ironwood make windbreak before she make this house. Just one house here before; then she make this house and she leave trees all same."
"But what's the sense of having the houses so close together?" fussed Dick. "Not another building on this ridge, and these two jammed up against each other like a city street."
"I think," said Moto, patiently; "she make this house for old Mamma, when she marry with that man; then when Malua he die, old Mamma she go back and take care of baby."
"I don't care anything about their family history!" sputtered Dick. "Go ahead with those nails, can't you!"
Moto went back to the nails and at last they were all drawn and Dick came forward to help raise the curtain. Curtains of the same sort were rolled above the openings of the lanai on the side toward the valley and the end toward the mountain, and could be manipulated with heavy cords and pulleys; but when it came to lifting the one just released, he found that the cords and pulleys had been removed. "That's a darned nice note!" he grumbled. "Well, roll it up anyway. When we get it up we'll nail it. It won't be our fault if it tears out the canvas. Go ahead and roll it up. I'll help you if it gets too heavy."
Resignedly Moto began to roll the big pole and Dick stood back and watched as gradually the space widened between the pole and the floor. Up and up went the pole, to the level of the top of the rail, then higher and higher; and then came an exclamation from Dick. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said. For as the pole rolled higher, instead of an opening above the rail appearing, there was only a tight wall of tongue and groove boards, freshly painted and beautifully clean.
Moto stopped with the pole on his shoulder. "Thas what I say before," he remarked; "I say no good."
"My Lord!" ejaculated Dick; "Did you know that was a solid wall?"
"Ye-es," said Moto; "I say before—"
"You idiot! Drop that thing and go back to the kitchen!" and Dick flung across the lanai and out through the garden and into the road which wound its way past the house and on up the mountain.
There was some slight breeze here, although it was a warm one, and Dick loitered along the road for some distance, still fuming. However, presently he found himself halting now and then to examine some of the interesting wild growths, and his naturally good nature began to reassert itself until he had actually reached the point of laughing over the curtain episode, when he had occasion to step out of the way of a passing automobile, and immediately was hailed from within the vehicle. "Have a lift?" called a genial voice.
Dick turned to the car and found that the voice belonged to a man whom he had met a few days before at the Country Club, but whose name he was absolutely unable to recall. Feeling in a mood for companionship, however, he jumped in and they drove along, the man indicating various points of interest from their high vantage ground, as they went. However, after a short distance, the man backed and turned the car. "Just taking a run up the hill," he said, "while my wife finishes some bridge at one of the houses below. I came up after her, but couldn't stand for the crowd, so I'm marking time. Are you out for a hike? Where are you stopping?"
"Up here on Tantalus," said Dick. "I wanted to be quiet while I turn out a certain line of work, and the real estate people brought me up here and showed me a place that looked so good that I took it on the spot. It's all right, only it is a bit hot when the wind is in this direction."
"It's hot everywhere when there's a kona," observed the man. "That is, it feels hot because the air is humid; but the mercury doesn't go so very high, at that. But it is so rare that we forget that there is such a thing, until one of them strikes us. Show me where you belong, when we get there, and I'll let you out."
Very shortly they came to the bungalow, which was well set back in a tropical garden full of tree-ferns, gay hibiscus bushes and blossoming vines, and divided from its neighbor by the swaying line of tall ironwood trees. "Here are my quarters," said Dick.
"Where?" asked the man, looking about.
"Here," said Dick, indicating the house.
"There?" exclaimed the man, incredulously. "You are living there? Well, I'll be darned!" And then he laughed.
Dick was climbing out of the car. Once on the ground, he turned rather sharply. "Why not?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing!" said the man, and laughed again. "How did you happen to land on this?"
"Through the real estate office. Why? What's the matter with it?"
"Oh, nothing!" repeated the man. "Nothing's the matter with it. Don't see much of your neighbors, do you?"
"No," said Dick, puzzled; "I don't want to. The reason that I came up here was because I wanted to get away from all social life while I put through this work. The agent said that the people were Hawaiians but that they wouldn't bother me."
"I'll wager they won't bother you," said the other, still with a broad grin on his face. "The only social life that you'll get out of them will be by absent treatment, you can bet on that."
"But who lives in the other house?" asked Dick, his curiosity piqued by the other's manner; "Who are they?"
"Do you mean to say that the agent didn't tell you anything about them? Oh, well, all right; as long as you came up here to be quiet, it doesn't matter. You won't see anything of them, so you should worry!" And the man started up his engine.
"But wait!" protested Dick, "Who are they? Who lives there?"
"Who lives there?" the man laughed back at him as he got under way; "Well, I believe they call them Pupu-le and Lolo;" and Dick heard him laughing still as the car rolled away.
He went into the house in a rather bad humor again, and stalked out onto the lanai. "Funny sort of names!" he thought. "Wonder what's the matter with them."
Moto had set the dinner table close to the edge of the lanai overhanging the valley, and the tints of sunset were beginning to show on the opposite mountain side. The slight breeze in the ironwoods had died down and the atmosphere seemed more sultry than ever. It lacked half an hour until dinner time, and Dick wandered about trying to find a cool place and at last headed toward his own room for a shower. The arrangement of the house was very simple. A T shaped open lanai with the front entrance at the base of the T. On the left was the kitchen and a small room probably intended for a servant's chamber but now used merely as a trunk room, since Moto slept in the loft over the garage in a front corner of the garden. On the right was Dick's bed room and bath, the latter supplied with water from a tank farther up the mountain. As the master entered the room he looked about protestingly. It was absolutely airless. The wall toward the other house was without a window; there was one window into the garden, but that was so overgrown with vines and so overhung with shrubbery that not a breath of air could enter. The window on the opposite end opened onto the lanai. "There'll be a great chance to sleep tonight!" he grumbled, as he twisted his head to loosen his necktie.
And therewith his upturned eyes rested upon a trap-door in the ceiling. He dropped his hands and gazed at it. "Escape!" he thought. "The roof is flat. I see myself climbing out to fresh air and zephyrs!" And dropping the scarf he instantly posted out in quest of a ladder which he had seen in the garden, evidently used for gathering papaias.
As he came back with the ladder on his shoulder, Moto came out of the kitchen with a plate of bread. He stared dubiously. "What you make now?" he inquired.
"Wait and you'll see," answered Dick, and went on into the bedroom with the ladder. He set it up against the frame of the skylight and went up with all of the enthusiasm of a small boy who has succeeded in circumventing someone and gotten his own way after all. However, as he reached the hatch, there came a pause. The thing was fastened down with a hasp and a padlock, both rusty from long disuse. Dick climbed down with gritted teeth and a set chin. Out he went to the store-room and routed out a number of rusty keys and returned to try them out without success.
Presently he appeared in the kitchen door again. "Moto, have you any flat keys anywhere?" he asked.
Moto shook his head. "No. No more key. House key, garage key, thas all."
"Well," said Dick firmly; "you go over next door and tell them that I want the key to the skylight in my room."
Moto hesitated and looked anxiously at the stove. "Potato mos done," he said; "Lamb chop now sizzle. Pretty soon too much cook."
"Never mind," said Dick impatiently; "I'll take the consequences. Go ahead."
The man wiped his hands but still hesitated. "I think bime-by all right?" he questioned.
"No! Right now!" asseverated Dick. "Go on, do as I say."
The man continued to rub the towel through his hands. "Over there," he said, "they got plenty big police dog."
"Nonsense!" said Dick. "It's chained up. It must be; it always barks from the same place."
"Ye-es," said Moto solemnly; "and hook right here by kitchen door;" and he put his hand on his own door-frame.
"Well, nobody'd let it loose."
"No? You don know that pa-ke Fong. I think he let loose all right."
"Are you afraid?" asked Dick scathingly.
"Also," went on the Japanese, "you hear something now?" and he lifted his finger.
"Just a little pounding. What then?"
"Pa-ke he make chop-chop, this way;" and Moto picked up two knives and beat a tatoo upon the table with them alternately. "But he got more big knife, very big knife. I know."
Dick flung away from the door and out into the garden, down the walk and through the break in the hedge and approached the next house. The garden was larger than his own and even more tropical, being a very wilderness of shrubs, vines, ferns and overhanging mango and pear trees, interspersed, after the Hawaiian fashion, with curious blocks of stone of strange and weird shapes. Upon turning in through the hedge, Dick was greeted by a volley of barks from the great police dog which strained and wrenched at his chain in a manner which was somewhat disconcerting, even though the chain was probably dependable. Dick stopped at a safe distance, just as the kitchen door opened and a gaunt Chinaman emerged upon the steps and laid one hand upon the hook of the dog's chain. In the other hand he still held one of the knives with which he had been making his chop-chop, and it certainly was a big one. "What you want?" he called shrilly.
Dick kept his distance, but the greeting had not served to soothe his irate mood. "I want the key to the skylight in the bedroom next door," he demanded brusquely.
"No key," said the Chinaman sullenly. "No go top-side."
"I'll go top-side if I want to," said Dick, belligerently; "Get me the key!"
"No key." repeated the Chinaman stubbornly.
"All right, then I'll come into the house and talk to somebody else. I want that key."
The Chinaman's hand moved upon the hook of the dog's chain, and the dog strained and tugged more violently than ever. "I say no have got key," snarled the man. "Key lost somehow. You go 'way!" and the hook slipped from the staple, leaving the dog's chain in his hand, while the strength of the enraged animal jerked the thin old body most disturbingly.
Dick turned away in wrath. The Chinaman held all of the cards. There was no use in forcing his hand, either the one holding the dog's chain or the one holding the knife; and therefore retreat was the only course possible. Also, the visitor was subtly conscious that eyes were watching from behind the screened windows and he was not of a notion to furnish entertainment for unsympathetic onlookers, especially with the game belonging to the other fellow. And so, without a backward glance, he went through the hedge and back to his own domicile.
As he entered, Moto courteously refrained from looking at him, but merely announced that dinner would be ready in five minutes, and Dick went on to cool off in his shower to such extent as he might.
However, Dick was of a type not to be discouraged by opposition, but which, rather, rises even more determinedly upon the meeting of obstacles; and therefore throughout dinner he was intently engaged upon figuring out a means for reaching the forbidden roof. It would be practically impossible to reach it from outside because the front and the only accessible side were surmounted by a frail trellis supporting tangled vines of many years' growth; another side overhung the valley, while the space between the two houses was within the precincts of the next door grounds and presided over by the dog and the Chinaman. Nevertheless, he was resolved that he was going to get out upon that roof before he slept, if only to show the damned Chinaman who was master.
After dinner, while Moto was rattling the dishes in the kitchen and Dick was sitting in the dusk smoking and planning his attack upon the skylight, he heard a slight sound at the entrance of the lanai. He turned his head, but at first could distinguish nothing in the deeper darkness behind. Then, although he heard nothing more, he saw a dark figure gliding softly toward the door of his room. Just as it reached the door, Dick suddenly switched on the reading lamp beside him, revealing the old Chinaman, who had stopped in his tracks at the flaring up of the light.
"What do you want?" demanded Dick, springing up. "What are you doing here?"
The Chinaman cringed and rubbed his hands, in a very different attitude from that which he had assumed a little while before. He bowed sidewise and smiled rather ingratiatingly. "I think maybe I find key for you," he said. "You like go top-side,—maybe I get key all right. I look-see," and he turned toward the bedroom door again.
"No you don't!" said Dick, barring the way. "You turn around and go back home just as fast as you can; and don't you ever step your foot inside of this house again while I'm here. Do you get that? Now light out, and do it quick!"
The Chinaman's lip lifted in a snarl, but he did not speak; only turned on his soft-soled shoes and slid out of the house like a slinking shadow, and Dick returned to his chair, somewhat appeased at having had the opportunity of getting back at the man in a measure, at least. "Fat chance!" he soliloquized. "If he had found the key it would have gone back home with him, that's sure. I wouldn't have gotten it. And that means," he continued, "that they don't know where the key is, and the man thought that probably he could find it over here and cabbage it. Well, if there was a chance that he could find it, then there is the same chance that I can find it. Such being the case, here goes!" And throwing down the remains of his cigar he rose up and turned again toward the bedroom.
Once, there, he mounted the ladder and began feeling around the groove in the frame of the skylight, experiencing various qualms lest he should rout out a centipede or a scorpion in the process. Nothing of the kind happened, however, and nothing was forthcoming; and reaching up he gave the offending skylight a vicious punch by way of relieving his feelings; whereupon a little loop of string dropped down from the crack between the frame and the fitted cover. Tentatively Dick drew it out and with it a rusty, flat little key, and stood grinning at it like a Cheshire cat. "So!" he said, "We've got you, in spite of the Chinaman and the knife and the puppy-dog. Now here is where we solve the mystery of why the roof-garden is so strictly kapu."
The key proving recalcitrant in the rusty lock, he brought his typewriter oil-can and lubricated it well; and then, having coaxed it to its duty, he removed the padlock, undid the hasp and, mindful of the wisdom of discretion, he softly lifted the hatch and climbed out onto the roof.
His first thought was that he had never before seen such marvelous stars, and he stared for a moment at the heavens, and then turned to inspect his newly achieved territory. As he looked it over, he could see no possible reason why it should be forbidden ground. There seemed to be nothing up there but the stars, and he walked softly near to the edge of the roof and looked off and down into the valley. It was much cooler up here. The breeze from the sea came swishing through the thin upper branches of the ironwoods, which still made an effectual screen between the two houses, and rustled the leaves of the vines upon the trellises bringing forth a heavy scent of Stephanotis and jasmine, mingled with the fragrance of the gardenias and the mulang in the garden. The inward corner of the roof, toward the adjoining house, was in the denser shadows of the ironwoods; and after he had surveyed the rest of the space, he turned to this point and stumbling against something which rattled slightly, he put out his hand and discovered that it was a small iron cot which was set back close to the trellis. "Good!" he thought, "No more suffocation down below. Here is where the victorious hero sleeps tonight."
And forthwith he descended and gathered together his blankets, pillows and sheets and then called Moto, who came from the kitchen distrustfully. "What you make now?" he inquired, and then stopped to stare up at the open skylight.
Dick grinned. "I've got a new bedroom up there," he said. "I want you to hand me up my mattress and sheets," and he turned to ascend the ladder.
The man shook his head protestingly. "I think more better—" he began.
But Dick interrupted; "Moto, you think too much. Don't do it. Some day you'll over-think yourself, and then there'll be the dickens to pay. Come on, hand up that mattress and stop thinking."
And Moto laboriously shouldered the mattress and, ascending the ladder, passed it resignedly through the opening. The sheets and pillows followed, and then the man slid away shaking his head lugubriously, while Dick arranged his bed and went below to prepare for the night, determined to retire early and lie awake and watch the stars and plan out his work for the following day.
However, things did not seem to go along according to schedule; for no sooner had he bestowed himself upon the bed, than the heavy sense of airless oppression descended upon him once more. The corner where his bed was, seemed to be the most shut in portion of the roof, and he arose and attempted to draw the couch forward to a more open part of the space. Perversely, the couch refused to budge, seeming to be anchored to its particular position, and investigation revealed that it was tied to the posts of the trellis by heavy cords. He went below and got his knife and severed the cords; but when he would have moved it, the castors gave forth a protesting screech which sent shivers up his spine and dispatched him below again for the typewriter oil. Then, after due lubrication, the wheels did move and he drew the bed out to a satisfactory point, stretched his length upon it and immediately went off into a deep and dreamless sleep.
That is, for many hours it was dreamless, but eventually it became troubled;—someone was fanning him, and fanning him too hard; he could feel his hair fluttering and his clothing flapping about him; also, the breeze created was too cool. He protested, but to no effect; the person continued to fan with a great fan, and he began vaguely wondering if he were being winnowed, and whether he would turn out to be wheat or chaff, and was quite anxious about it when suddenly his eyes popped open and he made a grab for his sheet which was just in the act of sailing away upon the wings of a great wind tearing down from the top of Konahuanui, up above on the skyline. The back of the kona was broken, the trade wind had come; and Dick reefed in the sheet and greeted the change with joy. However, the sheet refused to stay reefed, but kept flicking loose and flapping up between him and the stars; and so at last he got up and wrapped it about him as if he were a mummy and lay down again, lifting his feet and catching the bottom of the rolled sheet under them as they came down. It couldn't flop loose now, and he lay there in a delightful state of satisfaction, feeling his grey matter coming alive again under the stimulus of the more vital air, and responding to his calls upon it for data for tomorrow's work. Or rather, today's work, for already a faint, a very faint light was beginning to grow over the shoulder of the ridge opposite.
He concentrated upon the prospective article and became deeply interested, at the same time enjoying to the full the splendid great gusts of wind which came sweeping down the mountains, roaring through the trees above, sweeping around his bed and shaking and tearing at it, and thrashing away through the now turbulent locks of the ironwoods. As the light grew, he flopped over so that he could watch the course of the wind as it came tearing down the mountain, with the trees bending before it and swaying writhing arms and flinging vines high in the air from their tossing branches. Then he turned back to find if it were light enough for him to catch a glimpse of the sea beyond the valley. But it was not, and it seemed that he had just closed his eyes for an instant, when he heard the roaring of a particularly heavy blast come booming down the mountain, and he opened them against just as the blast reached him and flapped loose a corner of his sheet. He made a quick jerk to grab it; and then suddenly the ironwoods began to slide past him most bewilderingly, his bed lurched in the teeth of the blast, he attempted to spring from it, but his feet were too well enswathed in the folds of the sheet;—the last ironwood, the one standing below the level of the ridge, pitched itself up toward him, his couch dipped and banked like a biplane on a curve; he flung out both arms, his sheet soared away upon the blast, he gathered to his bosom a great armful of ironwood boughs,—and suddenly glimpsed himself as a small boy on a platform reciting Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight. "Out she swung, far out. The city seemed a tiny speck below!" And then, from that far distance beneath came up the faint, hollow echo of metal upon stone, bouncing and crashing, and then silence. His bed was undoubtedly in the Manoa Valley.
The gust had gone on out to sea; and Dick, in a somewhat hectic suit of vari-colored pajamas, was swinging among the branches of the slumped iron-wood tree, overhanging something like a thousand feet of atmosphere, and with its roots held gingerly in a crack of the crumbling rocks and a bit of shallow soil. For a moment he was not sure but that he was still dreaming, the situation was so sudden and impossible; but his hold was precarious, and self-preservation immediately took up the work of directing his incredulous arms and legs toward a very gentle and reverent approach to the main trunk of the tree. At last his arms clasped it, pitifully thin and inadequate though it seemed, and he clung there and tried to gather together his scattered senses and get them into working order again. At the particular point to which he was so strenuously attached, the branches happened to be exceedingly slim, probably from some dry season or from age, and the ones below seemed for the most part dead and ready to drop off of their own weight; so he managed to hitch himself a little higher and wrap himself about the trunk of the tree somewhat after the manner of a damp blanket. Having thus reached the acme of comfort to be contrived in the existing situation, he turned his thought to the possibilities of escape.
He was not able to see sufficiently through the branches below to determine what the chances were by that route, but as he remembered it, there was a drop-off of some six feet from the ridge to the spot where the tree had found lodgment; so even if he got down there, there would be no way of climbing up to the level of his house without assistance. There was no use in his calling for help, for Moto slept out in the garage, and only his unknown neighbors were available, and among them the Chinaman whom he had flouted the night before. The other members of the household must be women; at least the names, Pupu-le and Lolo, would seem to indicate that; and he was of no mind to appear before ladies in his present predicament and the exotic pajamas. Moreover, Moto was always up betimes and would be on the lanai with his broom at a reasonably early hour. If he could only hold on until then, he could get the man's help and manage someway to reach safety, of course taking the large chances of following the couch down into the valley below. He was too high up for the people in the neighboring house to see him unless they came quite to the rail, even should they also arise early; and so he festooned himself as well as he could over the desperately inadequate branches of his tree and settled himself to hold on as long as nature might give him the strength.
Slowly the time dragged. The tree, being that member of the evergreen family sometimes known as the Australian pine, sported only the slenderest of branches; also, it being of spare habit, each returning gust of wind from up the mountains bent it and its quivering burden far, far over the abyss and, as the light in the valley grew, gave Dick a chance to study minutely the lay of the land below, and also to review his past life and plan upon all sorts of changes of course and character, should Moto arrive upon the scene before either his arms or the roots of the tree let go their sustaining hold.
At last some long streamers of brilliant light came up over the ridge opposite and Dick hailed them with thanksgiving. One of his arms was asleep, both of his ankles were skinned, a lock of ironwood was tickling his ear maddeningly and he couldn't let go anywhere so as to go after it; also, some sort of a crawling object, not very large, but neither very attractive in appearance, was gradually drawing near along the branch upon which he occasionally rested his chin while shifting his weight a little. He shifted it now, before the insect should arrive; and in doing so, he found that he was in a position to command an excellent view of the roof of the house next door; and now that it was fairly light, this proved quite interesting. It appeared that the space was frequently occupied, and as he was within only a few feet of the edge of the roof, all of the appurtenances of its occupation were plainly visible. In the corner opposite him, only a narrow space removed from where he had first had his couch, was a canvas awning, backed upon one side by the front trellis and on the other by the ironwood trees and a row of brilliant crotons in tubs. The crotons also extended out at right angles for some distance, and just beyond them was a low wicker lounging chair with a bright Roman blanket flung across it. A woven lauhala mat was on the floor, and a little farther on was another tall group of crotons, bending and swaying in the wind. Near the center of the roof was a railed opening, evidently a stairway which gave down to the lower regions. It was a very attractive and habitable little out-of-door sitting-room, and Dick came to the conclusion that it was because of the presence of this, that there had been such rooted objection to his taking possession of his own roof for a like purpose.
Behind the first group of crotons, the ones which shut off the invisible corner, something thin and palely tinted occasionally fluttered forth in a gust of wind. Dick shifted his position again and turned his attention to his own lanai below, hoping that Moto would soon arrive; but he could see only the narrow outer edge of it, and the man did not appear. Soon he had to shift again. His muscles were becoming unbearably stiff and the coat of his pajamas had attached itself to a branch behind him, while said branch punctured his spine, and there was no way to reach it. Again his weary eyes took in the details of the roof-garden before him; and then, as he looked, he started in horror, for just beside the flicker of pink which he had before noticed fluttering in the wind, he saw something which made his heart stand still. It was a woman's foot.
It was a rather small brown foot, but Dick had no time to study it, for almost immediately it moved, seemed to stretch itself out and curl its toes most comfortably. Then it was joined by its mate and in another instant a young Hawaiian girl suddenly stood in the middle of the mat, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
Dick flattened himself against the tree like a sand dab, giving thanks that the hectic pajamas were in parts green, and therefore served as more or less protective coloring.
The wind fluttered the girl's short dark hair and the flimsy pink night garment which she wore, as she held out both arms for the wind to bathe them, and then stretched them above her head and yawned luxuriously. She was a remarkably pretty girl of about twenty, with the bronze skin and oval face of the Hawaiians, together with the queenly bearing of the women of that race. In spite of his predicament, Dick could not help thinking that he had never seen anything so perfect as the slender neck and the poise of the small head and the grace of the slender body. At the same time he was inwardly praying that she would quickly go down the stairway or back to her corner, so that he might at least shift his position enough to turn his head in another direction before she saw him. He was sure that she must soon discover him if she remained, for she was so near that the long locks of his tree actually swept the edge of the roof, though the branches were too slender for him to venture away from the trunk itself. Still, those long locks kept up a constant swaying,—perhaps she would not notice.
However, the girl seemed to be in no haste whatever; but instead came forward to within a few feet of where he was clinging, and stood looking off and up at the higher mountains and watching the thrashing of the trees as the blasts of wind came tearing down, and held forth her arms again in a sort of ecstacy as each blast enwrapped her and fluttered her hair and her one garment. Her eyes were shining and the warm color showed in her cheeks as she stood drinking in the early morning vitality. And then her body began to sway gently and her arms and hands to take on the soft, relaxed, weaving motions of the hula. And there, as the sun came up over the ridge, she greeted it with her dance and the soft, plaintive chant of a Hawaiian mele.
And the unwilling observer so close at hand cursed his evil fortune and dug in his finger and toe nails and wondered if he could continue to hold on until she got through with her tomfoolery!
At last, with a parting salute to the sun, she turned and ran back, not toward the stairway, as Dick had hoped, but in the direction of the corner from which she had appeared; and approaching the row of tall crotons at the left of the canvas awning, flung up her hand, and in an instant there flickered into sight the bright rain of a shower-bath, transformed into a rainbow by the brilliant rays of the sun. Then her hands went up and began to lift the shoulders of the pink night robe.
The sweat stood out upon Dick's brow. The moment was appalling. There was no alternative. He clutched the trunk of the tree to his bosom and called wildly, "Help!"
He had intended the sound to be loud and enlightening; but he was cramped and he was hoarse and he was deeply perturbed, and as a consequence the sound which issued from his throat was decidedly weak and somewhat creaky. However, it reached the girl's ears, and she started and turned incredulously in his general direction, but apparently seeing nothing from which such a strange squawk could have emanated.
Exasperated, he once more essayed the call, this time purposely lower, being of no mind to have it reach the ears of the old Chinaman.
At this, the girl slowly and warily approached nearer, evidently having located the sound in the tree, but still unable to distinguish what manner of being had emitted it and being urged on by something between curiosity and fear. Presently she reached a point very near at hand, where her eyes glimpsed a view of that particular portion of the tree which served as a precarious perch for the man in the pajamas. As she saw him, at first her eyes rounded in astonishment, and then her head went up to a pose of lofty indignation. "What are you doing there?" she demanded.
"Holding on," said Dick meekly, finding no words at hand to explain his equivocal position.
The girl's eyes flashed. "How dare you?" she flamed.
"The alternative," he said solemnly, "is a long way down," and he craned his neck a little in the direction of the valley.
The girl glanced from his position in the tree to the edge of the roof of his house and back again uncomprehendingly. "How did you get there?" she demanded.
"I was shunted, catapulted so to speak, by a runaway bed. It was a case of catch-as-catch-can. This is where I caught."
"Your bed?" repeated the girl, bending forward for another view of the edge of his roof. "Where is it now?"
"Down in a rice field in Manoa Valley."
The girl peered downward as if trying to verify the statement. Then she looked back at the clinging figure in the hectic pajamas and the corners of her mouth began to quiver and she caught her lower lip between her teeth. "How long have you been there?" she asked, less combatively.
"It seems like centuries," he said, "but it is probably only about an hour, I suppose. Also, both of my feet are asleep and I have numerous and sundry abrasions, and more cramps than there are places to put them."
The girl turned away, still biting her lip. "I'll call Fong," she said with dignity.
"I'd much rather you wouldn't," said Dick appealingly. "Fong and I don't seem to harmonize so's you could notice; and if I were to see the gloating enjoyment which would enliven his face, I should probably let go and drop into Manoa and oblivion—and I hate to."
The girl turned back, and now she was laughing openly. "Wait a minute," she said, "Perhaps I can help you." Returning to her corner she slipped into the gay kimono and then came forward dragging a canvas steamer chair. This she folded into stretcher shape, and coming as near to the edge of the roof as she dared, she insinuated the end of it between the swaying branches; and Dick, hugging the trunk with one arm, reached out the other hand and essayed to guide the tip of the wavering life-raft to some more or less stable foundation. It was no easy matter, for the end slipped and slid and refused to come to anchor, and the girl at last was forced to sit down on the roof cross-legged, in order to retain her balance and still keep the swaying stretcher in place when the gusts of wind came down the mountain and threatened to tear it from their grasp and send it after the bed, far down in the valley below.
At last, after much labor and heart-breaking experiment, the end of the chair became wedged among the branches and braced fairly firmly; and Dick, having tried it tentatively, expressed himself as ready to undertake the perilous passage. It was only a few feet horizontally, but a thousand feet perpendicularly, and he was both cramped and dizzy, but it was now or never. Waiting for a moment when a gust had just passed them by, he stood up on the frail raft, grasped a swaying branch of ironwood, and made the fateful dash for safety or destruction.
It proved to be safety, and in a moment he was standing upon the firm roof, while the chair went careening down over the precipice and landed in the branches of a kukui tree far below.
The girl rose to her feet as soon as he had landed upon the roof beside her, and there was no longer laughter in her face. "Now," she said coolly, "you may go home."
Dick stood still, the gay pajamas fluttering about him. "I am sorry to have put you to so much trouble," he said with some dignity; "but you must realize that it was wholly inadvertent upon my part. The roof slopes somewhat and I had oiled the castors of the cot; and the wind did the rest."
"We will not discuss it," said the girl; "We will consider the incident as closed," and she turned toward the stairway. "You may use the wooden grill under the shower, to cross to your own roof, and then slide it back again. I think that will be all."
Dick was anxious to get home, considering his garb, or lack of it; but his natural stubbornness refused to accept such a peremptory dismissal without protest. "You mean," he said indignantly, "that now that you have saved my life, I may go hang!"
"Certainly," said the girl distinctly, putting up her head.
"And suppose that I have other ideas?"
"That does not matter in the least," said the girl, looking at him icily.
Dick decided to try another tack. "I think you must be Pupu-le," he said.
The girl stepped back and stared at him, her head high in the air. "You are impertinent," she said bitingly.
"But all the same, I think that you are Pupu-le," he insisted with determination.
"I might more fittingly call you Pupu-le!" she flashed back at him.
"A silly answer," thought Dick; but ignoring the inapt retort, he went on cheerfully: "Well, if you are not Pupu-le, then you must certainly be Lolo," he said.
The girl pressed her lips tightly together. "Will you kindly go home!" she said definitely.
"Well," said Dick confidently, turning to go; "you are either Pupu-le or Lolo, one or the other, that's sure; but I don't know which." And then he added, "He didn't mention how to tell you apart."
The girl suddenly put up her hand. "Wait! Who said anything like that?" she demanded.
"An acquaintance of mine, I don't know his name, someone I met at the Country Club."
The girl's lips tightened. "Just what did he say?" she asked, her eyes narrowing: "What were his exact words?"
Dick began to feel uncomfortable and to wish that he had gone home when she invited him to.
"Go on! What did he say?" she commanded.
"Why," said Dick, "I merely asked who my neighbors were, and he said that Pupu-le and Lolo lived here."
"And what else?"
"That was all."
"Who was the man?"
"I don't know his name, I told you. He was passing and we drove a little way together. Is it—is it a mistake or anything?"
A crooked little smile twisted the girl's mouth though her lips seemed to tremble. "No," she said, "I guess that it isn't any mistake," and she turned toward the stairway.
"Please wait," he said contritely; "I've said something that has hurt you. Won't you tell me—"
But the girl only shook her head and disappeared down the stairway.
Two hours afterward Moto appeared at the side of Dick's typewriter with eyes as round as a Jap can compass. "Where your bed up top-side?"
"Down in the Manoa Valley," replied Dick casually, without looking up from his work.
"What come?" inquired the man apprehensively.
Dick got up obligingly and pointed at the ironwood tree at the corner of his lanai. "Do you see that tree?" he asked. "Well, I spent the latter part of the night roosting in the branches of that."
The Jap's mouth fell open. "How you get out?" he asked, awestruck.
"The young lady next door ladled me out with a steamer chair."
"She!" exclaimed the Jap incredulously. "You see that lady?"
"Yes, I saw her," said Dick indifferently.
"You talk with her?" asked the man, with unbelieving eyes.
"Yes," said Dick carelessly; "We had some conversation."
"What you say to her?" asked the Jap confidently.
"Why, I asked her if she was Pupu-le."
"You ask her what?"
"I asked her if she was Pupu-le."
"You say that to her?"
"Sure I did."
"And what she say?"
"She sort of indicated that she objected to being called that."
"And what you say then?"
"Well, I said that then she must be Lolo."
"You say she must be Lolo?"
"Yes. Why not?"
The Jap started aghast. "I think you make joke with me," he said deprecatingly.
"No," said Dick, "A man told me that Pupu-le and Lolo lived there; and so I just asked her which she was. What's the matter with that?"
A sudden enlightenment came over the Jap's face. "Oh, my golly!" he exclaimed. "Oh, my golly! And you say that to her!"
Dick stopped in front of him, exasperated. "Why not? Why shouldn't I ask her that? What's the matter with you, anyway?"
The Jap leaned forward and put one finger on Dick's arm. "You no savvy what that mean?" he asked breathlessly.
"What what means?" snapped Dick.
"Pupu-le and Lolo?"
"What it means? What it means? Why, what should it mean?"
"You listen!" breathed the Jap; "Pupu-le mean all same crazy. And lolo—how you say?—idiot, maybe. You ask her is she crazy! You say she must be idiot!"
"Oh, my God!" said Dick, and slumped into a chair.