He took Beryl by the arm, but she struck back at him wildly, with all the strength of her young arm. For an instant the man staggered; the next he had caught his son’s eye. “Settle it,” he said, with an ugly word. And with hands that were strong as steel he forced the two women apart. It was done so dexterously that neither had time to make a sound, but the girl turned on him viciously, wrenched away from him, and fell backward down the wooden stairs. As she fell she screamed, but another cry covered it. Half an hour afterward Raimond Erle came quietly out of a house that seemed strangely still. There was blood on his hand and he wiped it away with fastidious care. CHAPTER XXVIII. A MURDER IN THE DARK. “Salome, I am going to shut up the house and take all the ladies away! They have gone down to the yacht already. Pack your things, and be as quick as you can, the three of you. I don’t want to waste any time in getting off.” The servants’ quarters were on the other side of the house from Andria’s shaded veranda; the three women had heard nothing as they sat chattering with the doors shut to keep out the noontide heat. Yet Salome leaped to her feet with a sudden foreboding, as she saw her master open the door. There was a look on his face she had reason to know, and as he spoke her own grew ashy. Yet to Chloe and Amelia Jane his matter-of-fact words were joyful tidings indeed, and scarcely uttered before they were gone to gather their belongings. But Salome stood just as she was when she sprang up and saw her master’s face. “Go!” he said sharply. “I’ve no time to wait for you.” “Where’m I going?” she asked sullenly. “Where’ve I got to go?” “Where you like, but out of this and away from me! I’ve no further use for a servant who harbors men in my house in secret.” So he knew! Salome’s face grew a shade more gray. “He’s gone!” she said. “He went last night.” “He’s gone, but you’ll go, too!” he answered, with a meaning not lost on her. “Get your things.” “Master, master!” her voice came strangled as she threw herself at his feet. “I can’t go nowhere, you know dat.” “It’s no concern of mine. I’ve hidden you long enough when you betray me. You can come or stay, or drown or hang, as you like. Thank your stars I don’t send you back to Jamaica! You fool, who’s to know you in England?” But she had seen his eyes as she scrambled to her feet. There would be no England for her. She knew too much to leave, and too much to tell where he was going. A dark night, a high wind and a heavy sea, and--even her miserable life was dear to her! “Dat’s true, dey’s no one’ll know me in England,” she said softly; too softly if the man had been his usual acute self. She turned quietly away and followed the other women.