A Hero for Leanda

comfortable, you know...” The colonel broke off as another couple came to the bar—a red-faced, hearty-looking man in riding breeches, and a very tall, handsome woman. “Ah, hullo, Tom! Morning, Wendy! You two haven’t met Mr. and Mrs. Cornford, have you... ? Tom and Wendy Franklin.”
    There were more handshakes. Conway was trying to remember where he had heard the name Franklin . Suddenly he placed it. “You’re not the Franklin whose ‘boy’ sings, are you?” he asked with a smile.
    Franklin looked puzzled. “Whose boy sings... ?”
    “We were hearing about a complaint that had been made—by Alexander Kastella....”
    Franklin gave a loud guffaw. “Oh, that! Yes, by jove-yes, I’m the chap. Confounded impudence!”
    Baker said, “What are you having, Wendy—gin and French? Pink for you, Tom?”
    “Thanks, old boy.”
    Conway said, “He’s a neighbor of yours, then, is he ?“
    “Kastella? Yes, I can almost spit through his window— sometimes feel like it, too. Why they had to shove the blighter next to us I don’t know.”
    “You know very well,” Baker said. “We had to put him somewhere, and your end of the island’s the emptiest... He explained to Conway . “Tom Franklin owns about half the coconuts in the colony—and, believe me, that’s a lot of coconuts!”
    “I’d trade them all for a nice yacht and a bit of free time to sail her,” Franklin said. “I really envy you two... ! Where are you staying, by the way?”
    “We’re living in Thalia," Leanda said.
    “What, down in the harbor?—that’s a bit squalid, isn’t it ... ? I say, why don’t you come and spend the weekend with us at La Pleasaunce—we’d love that, wouldn’t we, Wendy? It’s not- a bad spot—quiet, you know, but jolly good swimming. I’ve got to come into town again on Saturday morning—I could pick you up. What do you say?”
    Leanda looked at Conway , her eyes shining. “It sounds absolutely marvelous,” she said. “We’d love to, wouldn’t we, Mike?”
    “We would indeed, darling,” Conway said.

    There were three days to go before the weekend—days which Conway and Leanda spent in an unproductive round of hard-drinking parties and active but irrelevant expeditions about the colony. It seemed wise to keep away from the Franklins ’ end of the island until the official visit, and no new facts emerged about Kastella. The weather was trying. The trade winds had finally died away, leaving Port Edward sweltering in a pool of calm. On the second day there was a shattering thunderstorm, with a deluge of rain from writhing pinnacles of cloud. The nights aboard Thalia were a stifling ordeal. A net that Conway had rigged over the door kept out mosquitoes and moths after dark, but other things managed to get in by day—Fletcher’s cockroaches, and flying ants, and spiders of quite astonishing size, shape and celerity. Around the harbor, pariah dogs made such an uproar that it was difficult to sleep. Leanda chafed at the delay, and Conway grew liverish from his unaccustomed intake of alcohol. But at last, Saturday came, and shortly before noon they left in Franklin ’s Humber for La Pleasaunce, having first arranged for their trusty boatwatcher to sleep on Thalia’s deck in their absence.
    The Franklin estate was ten miles from Port Edward, on the southern side of the island. Apart from a shacky village or two which provided the estate labor, they encountered almost nothing on the way. As they approached their destination, the fierce, rocky contours they had become accustomed to on Heureuse gave place to a gently sloping coastal belt. The estate itself consisted almost entirely of coconut palms, stretching far inland from a broad scimitar of white beach. But round the house there was a magnificent garden, with trailing bougainvillaea and flame trees and hibiscus, and the largest gladioli Leanda had ever seen.
    The bungalow, built of some attractive red wood, was set back in a clearing a hundred yards or so from the sea. It was large and square, with an unusual layout. There was one very big central dining-room-cum-sitting-room with double French doors at each end, which ran the whole length of the house. Opening out of this central room, on both sides were the bedrooms, offices and kitchen. They, in turn, opened onto a wooden veranda, screened against mosquitoes, which ran right round the house like the promenade deck of a ship.
    The guests were given a pleasantly furnished, twin-bedded room