Vicki Barr #5 The Clue of Broken Blossom

THE CLUE OF THE
BROKEN BLOSSOM

THE VICKI BARR AIR STEWARDESS SERIES
Silver Wings for Vicki
Vicki Finds the Answer
The Hidden Valley Mystery
The Secret of Magnolia Manor
The Clue of the Broken Blossom
Behind the White Veil
The Mystery at Hartwood House
Peril Over the Airport
The Mystery of the Vanishing Lady
The Search for the Missing Twin
The Ghost at the Waterfall
The Clue of the Gold Coin
The Silver Ring Mystery
The Clue of the Carved Ruby
The Mystery of Flight 908
The Brass Idol Mystery

THE VICKI BARR AIR STEWARDESS SERIES
________________________________________________________

THE CLUE OF THE
BROKEN BLOSSOM
BY JULIE TATHAM
________________________________________________________

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
New York

© BY GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC., 1950
All Rights Reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS
________________________________________________________

CHAPTER

PAGE

I

FLIGHT TO HAWAII

1

II

THE MISSING HEIRESS

18

III

BOB’S STORY

31

IV

A STRAND OF WHITE FLOWERS

50

V

LOST: A JADE RING

65

VI

THE TAXI DRIVER’S STORY

80

VII

HAWAIIAN FEAST

96

VIII

THE FOUNTAIN LILY LEGEND

115

IX

VICKI MEETS THE WALRUS

130

X

A FUGITIVE

149

XI

VICKI’S PLAN

166

XII

IN THE LION’S DEN

186

XIII

THE HEEL OF ACHILLES

202

XIV

“TILL WE MEET AGAIN”

213

CHAPTER I

Flight to Hawaii

A chilly November wind swept the observation deck
at LaGuardia Field. Even the pale moon in the
cloudless sky looked cold to Vicki.
She shivered and tugged the flapping skirt of her
flannel coat around her slim body. “Let’s go inside,
Jean,” she said, deliberately making her teeth
chatter.
With one hand Jean Cox tugged her beret down
over her short bob. With the other, she kept Vicki
firmly pinned to her side. “I told the girls we’d meet
them here,” she said grimly, but her eyes twinkled
merrily. “And here’s where we’ll meet them.”
“But why?” Vicki wailed. “There’s a lovely
warm waiting room inside and a restaurant where
we could have a nice cup of hot coffee while we
wait for them to show up.”
For answer Jean merely shrugged, edging Vicki
closer to the rail.
Vicki groaned. “One would think you’d never
1

seen an airport at night before. We’re flight
stewardesses, remember? Besides, I’m dressed for
the tropics.”
“That’s the point,” Jean told her cheerfully. “Now
me, I’m quite comfortable in this tweed topcoat.”
“Then stay out here and watch the beacon lights,”
Vicki said bitterly. “Me, I’ve had enough!” She
struggled valiantly to free herself from Jean’s grasp.
In spite of her fragile appearance, Vicki was
strong and wiry, but athletic Jean Cox was too much
for her. Then, suddenly, the five stewardesses Vicki
shared an apartment with in New York were all
around her, laughing and joking. Her new straw hat,
with its pert red bow, slid down over her forehead.
Red-haired Dot Crowley impishly tweaked her
nose. “Cold,” she reported to the others with evident
glee. “Icy cold.”
Celia Trimble’s china-doll face dimpled with
delight. “And so are her hands. Lumps of ice.”
“That goes for my poor feet too,” Vicki retorted,
wishing she had worn woolen socks instead of
gossamer nylons. “And in case you’re interested, my
erstwhile friends, ear muffs would come in handy.
How long do I have to stand out here in this gale
while you push and shove me around?”
“Not ved-dy much longer,” brunette Tessa said in
her most dramatic prima donna voice. She popped a
toy thermometer into Vicki’s pretty mouth and drew
2

it right out again. “Um-m.” She examined it
carefully in the moonlight. “Sub. Ter-rib-bly sub. I
guess that does it, girls.”
“And about time too,” sweet-faced Charmion
Wilson said sympathetically. “Poor Vic! They’re
determined to freeze you into an ice cube before the
takeoff. The idea is that when you’re basking on the
beach at Waikiki tomorrow evening you’ll
remember that the rest of us are shivering our heads
off back here.”
Vicki giggled. “Well, they certainly succeeded.
It’ll take a day in the tropics at least to thaw me
out.”
“Are you numb?” Tessa demanded, arching her
dark, carefully plucked eyebrows. “Quite numb?”
For answer, Vicki displayed her white chattering
teeth. “Completely,” she said. “Frozen solid.
Congealed. If I’d known about your evil plot I’d
have worn my ski suit.”
Jean patted her reassuringly. “I wouldn’t have let
you, darling. You’d have looked awfully foolish in it
riding out here in a heated limousine to board a
heated plane en route to a volcano.”
Vicki drew herself up, and, walking as tall as
possible, led the way into the restaurant. “I’m not
going to live on a volcano,” she told Jean tartly.
“I’ve told you all a dozen times I’m spending my
week’s vacation with a very attractive young
3

married couple in their beach bungalow.”
As the waitress set steaming mugs on the counter,
Celia began to chant:
“There was a young stewardess named Vic,
Who is leaving the continent right quick,
To bask on an isle
Under the sun’s warm smile
While the rest of us sneeze ourselves sick.”
“It doesn’t scan,” Vicki told her, wrinkling her
nose in pretended distaste. She warmed her fingers
on her cup of hot coffee. “I still can’t believe I’m
going. I wasn’t sure until the last minute that Miss
Benson could arrange for my round-trip flight by air.
Irrepressible Jean interrupted. “We were sitting
on the phone, breathlessly waiting to hear from our
angelic assistant superintendent. I was optimistically
packing—”
“You couldn’t have been packing,” Dot Crowley
said with a giggle. “Not if you were sitting on the
phone.”
“Well, Mrs. Duff and Vicki were then,” Jean
admitted, grinning. “At least our plump housekeeper
was hovering around, talking a blue streak, and I
was afraid I wouldn’t hear the phone. Then it rang
and the caller was Ruth Benson saying that one of
Federal Airlines’ top officials had just canceled his
4

reservation. It was the answer to my constant
prayer,” she finished, dramatically rolling her eyes.
“Vicki owes it all to me.”
Vicki gulped down her coffee and stood up. “I’ll
owe missing my plane to you if we don’t hurry,
Jean. Then I’ll be stranded with the rest of you
unfortunates on this frigid isle.”
“Don’t rub it in,” Tessa moaned as they all
hurried into their coats.
Out in the bracing cold again, breathing in the
smell of gasoline salted with a tang of the sea, Vicki
began to tingle all over with excitement. In ten
minutes, at midnight, the big plane would take off.
Tomorrow evening she would step down from a
trans-Pacific clipper at the John Rodgers airport in
Honolulu.
“It’ll be like flying on a magic carpet,” she
confided to Jean as they waited for the luggage to be
loaded into the baggage compartment of the
gleaming ship.
Jean nodded, serious for once. “No matter how
many times I fly, as a pilot, passenger, or
stewardess, it always seems like magic to me.” She
squeezed Vicki’s arm affectionately. “Remember
the first day we met, Vic?”
“I certainly do,” Vicki said. “It was my first
flight—my flight to a career!”
On that day, not so very long ago, her father had
5

driven her from their home in Fairview, Illinois, to
board the New York plane at Chicago. Vicki
remembered how her twelve-year-old sister, Ginny,
had cried when they kissed each other good-bye, and
how near to tears she herself had been. She had
clutched her curly-haired mother, seeking lastminute encouragement, for Vicki had not been at all
sure then that she would graduate from the
Stewardess School of Federal Airlines.
On the same plane she had met another young
aspirant, Jean Cox, who was as excited as Vicki,
although she owned and piloted a little Piper Cub.
She and Vicki had been the nucleus which soon
grew into “the gang.” It was Jean who had found the
apartment, and Charmion who had hired the
motherly housekeeper, Mrs. Duff.
Charmion, a young widow, was kissing Vicki
good-bye now. “I’ve got to dash and phone in,” she
said. “My free day ends at midnight.”
There were hugs and kisses all around before
Vicki followed the other passengers through the
gate.
“Give Mrs. Duff my love,” she called over her
shoulder, trying to remember all of the last-minute
instructions their excited housekeeper had given her.
“Now don’t you come back here in a grass skirt,”
she had puffed while Vicki was frantically packing.
“And if you expect me to fix you any of those
6

Hawaiian dishes and let you eat with your fingers,
you’ll find you have another think comin’.”
Someone, probably Dot, was shouting, “Bring me
back a real live lei, preferably of orchids.”
“Your name, please,” the stewardess said.
“Barr. Victoria.” Then she was inside the plane,
feeling a little odd in the reverse role of passenger
instead of a stewardess in uniform.
When the last passenger was aboard, the steward
closed the door. The sign up front flashed on: NO
SMOKING—FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT. In a
few minutes they were up, and the glimmering lights
of New York were fading away in the distance.
Someone tapped Vicki’s shoulder. It was the
stewardess bringing her a pillow and blanket. Vicki
pressed the levers under the arms of her seat and
leaned back. Although she was almost as
comfortable as though she were home in her own
bed, she couldn’t sleep. She had always dreamed of
visiting Hawaii and now here she was on her way.
Two weeks ago Vicki had received a letter from
Helen Kane in Honolulu.
“Dear Vicki,” Helen had written, “Bob and I have
thought about you so much since we met in
September. We often meet interesting people on our
trips, but you’re one of the very few we really and
truly want to see again. Couldn’t you come and
7

spend Aloha Week, the Hawaiian Thanksgiving with
us?
“We’d love to have you and the airline will pay
for your flight out here and back, won’t it? I’m
enclosing a note to your mother, so she’ll know I’m
a properly brought-up chaperone, and Bob is adding
a P.S. to Professor Barr.”
She was thrilled at the prospect of spending her
coming vacation in Hawaii and had excitedly shown
the letter to Ruth Benson, Assistant Superintendent
of Flight Stewardesses, who had promised to do
everything
possible
to
secure
flight
accommodations. Then she had sent the letter air
mail to her parents.
Vicki’s parents had approved of her accepting the
invitation, so she had written to the Kanes saying
that she wouldn’t know the exact time of her arrival
until the last minute. Finally word had come from
Ruth Benson that the round-trip flight had been
arranged, and Vicki had promptly sent a cable to the
Kanes.
She had met them last Labor Day on the New
York-to-Chicago run, and when she checked their
names with her passenger list, she saw on the
manifest that they were returning to their home in
Honolulu. That had aroused her interest in the first
place, and they looked so young and gay she
guessed they were on their honeymoon.
8

As she passed up and down the plane’s aisle with
trays she had caught snatches of the Kanes’
conversation without meaning to listen. To her
surprise, the word “Vicki” kept popping up.
By the time it was the young couple’s turn for
luncheon, Vicki’s curiosity had been thoroughly
aroused. As she handed them their trays she asked
with a smile:
“How on earth did you guess my nickname? On
the name plate I’m just Miss V. Barr, Stewardess.”
They had both stared up at her in astonishment.
“B-but,” dark-haired Helen Kane had stammered,
“we didn’t. We haven’t any idea what it is.”
“It’s Vicki, short for Victoria,” she told them,
bewildered. “And I was sure I heard you—”
At that Bob Kane had interrupted, his thin
shoulders shaking with laughter. “We weren’t
talking about you, Miss Barr. We were simply using
the Hawaiian phrase for hurry up, which is,
wikiwiki. My impatient and always hungry young
wife generally punctuates her conversation with it.”
Helen, who was as plump as her husband was
slender, joined in his merriment then. Soon Vicki
had overcome her momentary embarrassment and
was laughing with them.
“I guess that makes me an egotist or at best an
eavesdropper,” she had said with a rueful grin.
“Not at all,” Bob assured her. “It simply proves
9

that you have sharp ears. As a matter of fact, when
‘w’ is the penultimate letter in a Hawaiian word, it is
pronounced ‘v.’ So I’ll give you a mark of ninetyfive per cent.”
“That’s the professor in him,” Helen told Vicki
with a chuckle. “Because he knows both languages
Bob is a math instructor in a Hawaiian standard
school.”
“Why, my father’s a professor,” Vicki said. “He
teaches economics at the University of Illinois.”
“No kidding?” Bob ran his hands through his
sandy hair. “Then you must be Lewis Barr’s
daughter. I studied under him when I was working
for my M.A. A swell person, and can he lecture!”
“He is a swell person,” Vicki agreed, thinking
fondly of her handsome, blond father. “But he’s not
very economical in the kitchen. He drives my
mother almost insane when he dons his chef’s cap
and invades her domain. Sometimes his concoctions
are wonderful, but—oh,” she interrupted herself,
“you must be starving. I’m keeping you from your
lunch.”
Later, when she had gathered all the empty trays
and tidied her little galley in the back of the plane,
Vicki had stopped again by the Kanes’ seats.
“Tell me more about Honolulu,” she begged.
“Except for the naval base at Pearl Harbor, which I
guess is one of the largest in the world, all I know
10

about Hawaii is that natives in grass skirts dance the
hula and wear garlands of flowers around their
necks which are called leis.”
Bob Kane had indulged in his quiet laughter
again. “If that’s all you know about our ‘Forty-ninth
State,’ your professor father must be like the
shoemaker whose children went barefoot. Honolulu
is just like any other big American city.”
“Well, not quite, Bob,” Helen corrected him
thoughtfully, and added to Vicki, “Most of the
streets, even in the business section, are lined with
palm trees, and flowering shrubs and vines cover all
the homes. Then there are the rainbows, double and
single ones, arching across the sunny blue skies.
They’re as common as beacon lights at an airfield.
And the liquid sunshine—”
“Liquid sunshine?” Vicki repeated with a laugh.
“Does it get so hot the sun melts?”
Helen shook her dark curls. “Oh, no, but if you
ever visit there you’ll be glad you have naturally
wavy hair like mine. Straight-haired girls have an
awful time with their permanents, because it rains a
lot, but nobody pays any attention to it, because the
sun shines at the same time, and that’s what we call
liquid sunshine.”
“Time to stop for breath,” her husband advised
her.
Helen ignored him. “Very often our patio is
11

soaked with rain while our next-door neighbor’s is
dry as a bone. We have a bungalow with a tiny
beach just beyond the fashionable section at
Waikiki. We love it there, although Bob has to drive
clear across the island to his school on the other side
of the Pali.”
“It sounds like heaven,” Vicki said, completely
captivated by Helen’s loquacious description. “A
real fairyland.”
“That’s what it is,” Bob agreed. “There’s an old
saying that ‘You haven’t lived until you’ve seen
Hawaii.’ ” He grinned at Vicki. “But if you want to
see a grass hut outside of a museum, you’d better
come during a carnival week. That’s when you’ll see
the hula dancers, too, in their hala-leaf skirts.”
“In ancient times they were made from ti leaves
too,” Helen added. “And mine’s very modern.
Stripped cellophane,” she said, smiling at Vicki.
“Oh, I do wish you weren’t going to leave us at
Chicago. If only you could keep right on going with
us straight across the Pacific!”
“If only I could,” Vicki had sighed.
And now the wish was coming true! It all seemed
too good to be true.
Suddenly Vicki began to feel nervous. Suppose
the cablegram she had sent the Kanes at the last
minute got lost in transit? They would have no way
of knowing that she was en route to Oahu now. Then
12

nobody would be there to meet her at the Honolulu
airport.
She shrugged away her worries. “That just can’t
happen to me!” Gazing down out of her window she
watched the lights of toy villages whisk by, so fast
that they seemed to be sucked into a giant vacuum
created by the plane’s wings. Even the big city of
Cleveland seemed tiny.
When all of the passengers were comfortably
settled for the night, the steward and stewardess
turned off the lights, leaving one pale-blue bulb
glowing. A hush descended on the plane as it
winged across the continent. It was the kind of hush,
Vicki decided, that reminded her of a hospital at
night. It was a whispery hush, broken only by the
swish of the stewardess’s skirt as she softly walked
down the aisle to invite Vicki back to the lounge for
a snack.
“You looked as though you were too excited to
sleep,” she said, after introducing Vicki to the
copilot who was there, drinking coffee.
At Chicago, a new shift took over, and being so
near Fairview filled Vicki with nostalgia for her
family and their home which the Barrs called The
Castle. As they flew high above Fairview, Vicki
wished it were daylight so she might catch a glimpse
of the house on the crest of the hill with its tower
and high Norman casement windows. Every inch of
13

the sloping grounds had been at one time or another
a favorite retreat where Vicki used to go to think
things out in peace. Sometimes her sanctuary was in
the shade of an apple tree, sometimes in the rock
garden, and as often as not, at the bottom of the
woody hill that led to the lake. But she was never
safe for long from inquisitive Ginny with her
pigtails, temporary orthopedic shoes, glasses and
braces. For plump, sturdy Ginny was still in the
chrysalis stage of her development and yearned to
be as glamorously grown up as her big sister.
“I’ll certainly miss her, the sweetie pie,” Vicki
thought, and fell asleep. When she awoke it was
dawn.
Flying at an altitude of eighteen thousand feet, the
whole west seemed to be unfolding beneath her
eyes. There were big, sprawling cities, endless
forests, lakes and mountains.
She had a bird’s-eye view of San Francisco with
its twenty-nine hills before they landed there. Later
she boarded the big trans-Pacific clipper, thrilled at
the prospect of a flight over the Pacific, but
regretting she had so little time for sight-seeing in
the Golden Gate City.
Now they were flying above clouds that were like
beautiful pink cushions, and through an occasional
break in them, Vicki could see the ocean, a rippled
sheet of glass, sometimes green, sometimes dark
14

blue.
After nine hours of nothing but clouds and ocean,
everyone was straining for the first glimpse of land.
Then Vicki saw it, a brown blob on the horizon. The
plane circled in to the windward side of Oahu, and
she caught her breath at the sight of the brilliantly
colored, rugged terrain below her. The bright blue of
the water ended in the white foam of waves breaking
on yellow sand. The brown and red cultivated
ground in the valleys formed a startling contrast to
the lush green of the mountains.
On the leeward side they began to lose altitude
rapidly. “That’s Molokai, the Friendly Isle on your
left,” the stewardess was telling her excited
passengers. “And the extinct crater, with the gun
emplacements on your right, is Diamond Head. Now
we’re above Waikiki Beach.”
Vicki stared down at the famous vacationing spot,
surprised to discover that it was such a narrow strip
of sand, fringed on one side by modern shops,
apartment houses, and hotels.
An incredibly beautiful sunset was splashing the
sky with almost unbelievable colors when the plane
circled above the airport. Coral, the stewardess had
told Vicki earlier, had been pumped out of the sea
for its base.
Planes of all sizes and descriptions were taking
off or landing, bound for, or returning from, far
15

places. “No wonder it’s called the hub of the
Pacific,” Vicki thought. The huge concrete field,
interlaced with runways, looked to her like a giant
black-and-white checkerboard.
Then she was swarming down the steps with the
other passengers. Each one was met on the last step
by a native girl in Aloha Week costume, and was
presented with a lei and a kiss on the cheek.
It couldn’t have been a more friendly welcome,
but suddenly Vicki felt alone and lost. In the safety
zone, on the other side of the big wire fence, a
crowd laden with more gorgeous leis, waited,
shouting and waving to her fellow passengers. There
was no sign of the Kanes.
Forlornly Vicki let the milling throng carry her
into the terminal building where lovely Hawaiian
maidens were dancing the hula, accompanied by
men in native costume, strumming their ukuleles.
Straining her eyes for a glimpse of her hosts in the
waiting room, Vicki threaded her way through
potted palms and flowering shrubs.
As she wrote Ginny later, “Every other new
arrival was literally up to his or her ears in leis.” The
air was overpoweringly heavy with the fragrance of
tropical blossoms. For a moment Vicki felt as
though she couldn’t breathe. Weakly she leaned
against one of the tall pillars, wondering what could
have happened to the Kanes.
16

Had the cablegram gone astray after all? Or had
they been away from home when it arrived? How
did one go about finding their bungalow on this
strange island? The faces of the people in the
crowded room whirled dizzily in front of her tired
eyes. She looked away from them, down at the toes
of her gay sandals. Then she saw that she was
standing in a semicircle of lovely white flowers, a
broken lei.
The tiny buds looked wilted but the blossoms
were still fresh, and it was such a beautiful thing
Vicki quickly snatched it up to keep it from being
trampled underfoot.
“This must be a ginger lei,” she decided. “Helen
said they smell rather like nutmeg.”
She was bending her head to sniff the perfume of
the flowers when someone grabbed her arm and a
deep masculine voice said:
“I wouldn’t if I were you. Those pretty little buds
are toxic!”

17

CHAPTER II

The Missing Heiress

“Toxic?” Vicki dropped the lei as though it were a
poisonous snake and looked up into the laughing
green eyes of a tall, redheaded young man.
He was wearing an expensive-looking white linen
suit, and she noticed that his hands, as he caught the
garland of flowers in mid-air, were quick and deft.
“Well, yes and no,” he said. “The blossoms are
ginger flowers and are, of course, quite harmless.
But these little buds, which by the way, are
extremely rare, contain a fluid which when inhaled
deeply has pretty much the effect of a whiff of
chloroform.” He nipped off the tip of the one that
had not yet wilted, and squirted a colorless, odorless
liquid on to the tiled floor.
Vicki wasn’t sure whether he was teasing her or
not. She had so obviously just landed on this
fabulous Pacific island and had, for several minutes,
been standing forlornly alone. Was the nice-looking
young man using the broken lei as an excuse for
18

introducing himself to her?
She stared at him speculatively. He did not look
like that type of person. He met her steady gaze
without blinking, and then he grinned. “I can read
your mind like a book, Vicki Barr,” he said. “And
you’re wrong. I’m not trying to pick you up. I’m
quite a respectable doctor and a friend of the Kanes.
They got tied up in some of the opening-day Aloha
festivities at Bob’s school, and sent me to meet
you.” He looped the lei around his neck as though it
were a stethoscope and shook her hand. “I’m Hank
Hoyt, and you’ve just got to be Victoria Barr or I’ll
die of disappointment.”
Vicki blushed at the implied compliment. “I am,
and I guess I was pretty easy to find, being the only
person here who isn’t smothered in leis.”
“You’re pretty, all right,” he said, tucking her
hand through his arm. “But you’re so little you
weren’t at all easy to find in this mad crowd. And as
for smothering you, we’ll take care of that right
away.” He hailed a lei vender and in another minute
Vicki was giggling:
“Help! One more and I won’t be able to see
where I’m going.”
He frowned down at her. “Do you give up after a
mere eight? I’d counted on ten kisses at least. It is
our custom, madam, that if you accept a lei of
welcome, you must accept the kiss that goes with
19

it.”
Vicki elevated her chin above the mound of
flowers. “Speaking of leis,” she said sternly, “how
come you’re wearing that toxic one with no ill
effects?”
“Because,” he explained seriously, “the fountain
lily buds have lost their potency now. Once the juice
has been squeezed out, they’re as harmless as our
African tulips. The kids out here squirt each other
with the fluid contained in the tulip buds.
Fortunately, the fountain lily is practically extinct,
otherwise the little urchins would probably make
themselves sick until they learned better.”
“I still think you’re taking me for a ride,” Vicki
said suspiciously. “Why would anyone make a lei
out of toxic flowers?”
He shrugged and picked up her suitcases, the only
ones left beside the luggage cart. “The fountain lily
buds must have been woven in by mistake,” he said.
“Everyone has been picking flowers like mad for the
Aloha Week celebrations. Some lei-maker’s child
must have swiped these without realizing what he
was doing.”
They were outside now, walking toward the
parking lot where Hank had left his car. “Why do
you say swiped?” Vicki demanded. “I gathered that
flowers grow here in profusion. Why would anyone
have to steal them?”
20

He helped her into his chrome-trimmed maroon
roadster and climbed behind the wheel before
replying. “These buds must have been stolen,” he
said thoughtfully. “I’m quite sure that on the whole
Island of Oahu there is only one fountain lily shrub,
and that belongs to my friends the Walus. You see,”
he went on as they drove away from the airport,
“back in the eighteenth century the plant was
brought from China to the tiny Island of Walu by the
Scottish botanist, Archibald Menzies. It was
carefully cultivated by the natives for its fluid was
highly prized as a painkiller. But now Walu is a
prosperous pineapple plantation, so I doubt if there
are any of the shrubs left on the island.”
Suddenly they were driving through liquid
sunshine with mountains looming up on one side of
the boulevard and the blue ocean on the other. When
they arrived in the busy downtown section of
Honolulu, Vicki realized that it was indeed one of
the most modern cities in the world. Policemen in
trim khaki uniforms directed the heavy traffic on the
palm-lined streets which lead in all directions to the
mountains and the beaches. In between the big
buildings were small Chinese and Japanese stores.
The houses were of all sizes ranging from huge
estates to small bungalows, but every home was
decked with flowering vines and shaded by brillianthued trees. Hedges were bright with the blooms of
21

the many-colored hibiscus. Lush green ferns and
orange, red, and purple shrubs grew in profusion
around the verandas.
“We don’t call them porches out here,” Hank
explained. “Lanai is the word,” he said, pronouncing
it lah-ny. “And when Hawaiians have a feast they
invite you to a luau. The language is like the music,
liquid, soft, and fluent.”
“Which means,” Vicki said ruefully, “that nobody
with an Illinois twang like mine had better try to
speak it.”
“Oh, but you will,” he assured her. “There are
certain words we all use, like pau, which means
finished, or the end, and kapu, keep off. All this
week the men and boys will wear Aloha shirts which
are so bright you can see them half a mile away, and
the women will wear their brightest holokus.
There’s a particularly lovely holoku now in that
shopwindow.”
Vicki stared at the colorful print, princess-type
gown that was draped on the model. “I hope I won’t
have to wear one of those,” she moaned. “I’d be sure
to trip over that long train.”
He laughed. “The holoku is the result of the
evolution from the missionaries’ Mother Hubbard.
The story goes that the old-time Hawaiian ladies
were so pleasingly plump that their dresses hiked up
in the front. Hence the train. Then gradually, with a
22

stitch here and a ruffle there, they changed their
sacklike garments into that thing of beauty.”
“It is lovely,” Vicki admitted, “but I expected to
see lots and lots of grass skirts.”
“Then you’ll be disappointed,” he told her,
“because they’ll only be worn by the hula dancers.
The grass skirt is not ancient Hawaiian at all. King
Kalakaua, for whom this avenue was named,
imported the idea from the Gilbert Islands in the
latter part of the nineteenth century. He also revived
the hula which the missionaries had suppressed, not
realizing that it was both grand opera and the ballet
to the Hawaiians.” He switched on the radio in his
car. “Can’t remember what evening the hula festival
will be staged, but I’d like to take you to see it.”
“I’d love it,” Vicki cried enthusiastically.
The avenue was running parallel with Waikiki
Beach now. Silhouetted against the flaming sunset
were men and women in gay bathing suits riding to
shore on surfboards or in canoes. About half a mile
out, the waves breaking on the reef created a
perpetual line of white foam. Cool, fragrant breezes
were flowing down from the mountains as Hank
parked his car near the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, a
huge, rose stucco building.
“The Kanes won’t be home yet,” he said. “Let’s
wait here and try and find out from the radio what’s
on the Aloha Week program that might interest
23

you.”
The announcer was describing the Makahiki
Festival scheduled for the next day. “This is the
Hawaiian Thanksgiving,” he said, “the time when
visitors will see a revival of ancient sports. Fencing;
the art of vaulting with a spear and then using it as a
weapon; foot racing . . . “And then another, excited,
voice cut in:
“We are interrupting this broadcast to announce
the kidnaping of Miss Frances Millet, daughter of
the pineapple king, Gregory Millet.”
Hank jumped, stuttering, “Fran Millet kidnaped!
Why, I can’t believe it.”
“The kidnaping,” the broadcaster continued,
“occurred at the John Rodgers Airport less than an
hour ago, virtually under the nose of the victim’s
father. Mr. Millet told police he had flown from
Walu this afternoon to put his daughter on a plane
bound for the States. While waiting at the terminal
for the flight to be announced, Mr. Millet was called
to the telephone. When he returned, there was no
sign of his daughter. Airline officials promptly
instituted a thorough search of the entire area.
Finding no clue to the missing heiress, police were
then notified. A description of Miss Millet follows,
and a reward has been offered for information
leading to her whereabouts or to the identity of her
abductors. Miss Millet is seventeen years old, a tall,
24

slender brunette, with unusually large dark eyes, and
long hair which she wears in a low figure eight. She
is very suntanned, and when last seen was wearing a
lemon-colored linen suit, white sandals, and a
yellow kerchief. On the third finger of her right hand
she wore a large jade stone in a green-gold setting.
Keep tuned to this station for further developments.”
The voice of the Aloha Week announcer came
through then, and Hank turned off the radio, staring
openmouthed at Vicki.
“Well, that’s the most amazing thing that ever
happened in Honolulu,” he said at last. “How could
anyone kidnap anybody at the airport? It’s literally
teeming with people night and day!”
“It sounds incredible,” Vicki said thoughtfully,
remembering the crowded waiting room where she
had stood so forlornly. And then she remembered
something else—the broken lei at her feet—the toxic
lei which Hank was now wearing around his neck.
She pointed to one of the crushed fountain lily buds,
and said, more to herself than to Hank:
“Didn’t you say that those flowers were originally
grown on the Island of Walu? And didn’t the radio
just say that Mr. Millet and his daughter flew from
Walu today?”
“That’s right,” Hank said. “But what about it?”
“I was just thinking,” Vicki said slowly. “Maybe
those toxic buds weren’t woven into that lei
25

accidentally. Maybe somebody who lives on Walu
made that lei and gave it to Miss Millet on purpose.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Hank exploded. “Nobody
who lives on Walu would want to harm Fran, and
even if he did anesthetize her with the fountain lily
fluid, how could he spirit her away from the
airport?”
“I don’t know about that,” Vicki admitted, “but
why are you sure no one who lives on Walu would
kidnap the Millet heiress?”
Hank sighed. “I guess I’ll have to give you a brief
history of the island to make you understand. The
word, Walu, you see, means the eighth of his clan.
The eighth chief of the island joined forces with
King Kamehameha I when that great chief began the
unification of these islands around 1790. One by one
the warrior chief subdued the other islands, and
finally with his huge fleet of war canoes
Kamehameha attacked Oahu. The final battle took
place on the crest of the Nuuanu Pali, the mountains
which divide Honolulu from the windward side of
Oahu. There thousands of Kamehameha’s enemies
were literally pushed over the precipice. After this
defeat the Island of Kauai surrendered without
fighting and Kamehameha became the first king of
the Hawaiian Archipelago. As a reward for the part
Chief Walu played in the victory, Kamehameha
deeded his island to him and named it Walu. It’s
26

about three hundred miles southwest of Oahu and is
a little paradise. I spent several vacations there with
my friends, the last of the Walus, and I’d venture to
say that the Waluians are the happiest group of
Hawaiians in the whole archipelago.”
“But I don’t understand,” Vicki interrupted.
“Didn’t you say the Walus lived here on Oahu?”
He nodded. “That’s right. About five years ago
they sold Walu to Gregory Millet, because, I
suspect, they had no children to inherit the island
after their death. Mr. Millet converted it to a
pineapple plantation and has become the patriarch of
the people. He has improved living conditions in
every way, and it is now a modern community with
up-to-date homes, churches, hospitals, schools, and
recreational centers. Whereas before the Waluians
were the happiest of people, living in their crude
shacks, hunting and fishing, they now have all that
and heaven too. Their health record is excellent, and
the best teachers available were hired for the
kindergarten and the elementary school.” He smiled.
“So now you can see, Vicki Barr, why I can’t
believe anybody who lives on Walu would want to
harm Fran Millet.”
The sun had disappeared now and there was a
threat of sudden darkness in the brief tropical
twilight. It was not cold, but Vicki shivered
involuntarily. “Somebody kidnaped her, Hank,” she
27

argued. “And I can’t help suspecting that whoever it
was made that lei for the very purpose. After all, I
found it in the waiting room where her father left her
to go to the phone.”
Hank laughed and turned on the ignition. “I guess
I exaggerated the power of the fountain lily fluid.
Inhaling it doesn’t render you unconscious; it merely
makes you feel a little woozy or faint for a very few
minutes. The old-time surgeons who used it had to
work fast, but in those days anything that gave the
patient some relief was highly prized.” He pointed to
the coconut trees that lined the path leading to the
Royal Hawaiian Hotel. “Now a bop on the head
from one of those coconuts would be much more
effective. As a matter of fact, the Royal carries
coconut insurance. If one should fall on you, you’d
collect ten dollars.”
Vicki laughed. “I can’t tell when you’re teasing
me or telling the truth. But I guess you’re right about
that lei. Even if we knew the Millet heiress had been
chloroformed, we still wouldn’t have solved the
mystery of how her abductor got her out of the
terminal without attracting someone’s attention.”
“And that is a mystery,” Hank agreed. “I’ve
danced with Fran several times at the Outrigger
Club when she was here on vacations. And she
struck me as a high-spirited, wiry young lady. I
gathered that her ambition is to be a social-service
28

worker, and I think she’s got the intelligence and the
determination to make a success of such a career. It
would take a kidnaper who was both smart and
tough to lure her into a trap.”
“Whoever it was took an awful risk,” Vicki
added. “Her father must be terribly rich.”
“He is,” Hank said. “Fabulously rich. He
imported breeding stock for his pineapple crosses
from all over the world, and I understand that his
plants have the record for disease resistance. I guess
he must have trebled his investment in the last few
years.”
Suddenly it was night and Vicki glanced at the
clock on the dashboard in surprise. Ten minutes ago
it had been broad daylight! The sky was crisscrossed
with the red and green lights of planes humming
overhead, and the soft mountain breeze was
changing into a strong wind. Vicki clutched at her
hat with both hands.
“This is nothing,” Hank told her with a grin. “On
top of the Pali the wind is so strong at night that it
has been known to blow off the top of a
convertible.”
Vicki giggled. “There you go again.
Exaggerating;’]
“I’m not,” he assured her. “I suppose you won’t
believe me when I tell you that the Kanes have for
pets a mongoose, a popoki, and a talking myna.”
29

“I not only don’t believe you,” Vicki retorted,
“but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, here we are,” he said, slowing to a stop in
front of an attractive beach bungalow. “Now you
can see for yourself. The ferret-looking animal
curled upon the patio is Helen’s darling little Ricki.
Guarding the front door is a popoki—cat to you.
And the crow that’s screaming insults at us from the
branches of the pink shower tree is a myna that’s
had its tongue split.”
The low, rambling house, with its sloping whiteshingled roof, seemed to be blanketed in the flowers
of its vines and shade trees. Through the wide
windows facing the patio Vicki caught glimpses of
gay rooms with low couches, tropical furniture and
bright flowered chintz. And then the double door
opened and Helen Kane came running out.
“Komo mai,” she greeted Vicki in her sweet, low
voice. “Nou ka hale!”
“She’s saying ‘Come in. My house is yours,’ ”
Hank translated in a whisper.
“Don’t prompt me,” Vicki interrupted, laughing.
“I know my cue.” And she jumped out of the car,
calling:
“Aloha! Aloha! Aloha oe!”

30

CHAPTER III

Bob’s Story

From the lanai on the beach side of the bungalow, a
masculine voice took up the famous Hawaiian
melody “Aloha oe.”
Then Bob Kane came strolling through the
archway of the outside living room to greet Vicki
and Hank.
“Sorry we couldn’t meet you at the airport,” he
said, taking one of Vicki’s bags. “Helen and I had to
help with a dress rehearsal at school. But come on
in. Dinner awaits you, complete with poi.”
“Oh, dear,” Vicki cried. “Will I have to eat it with
my hands?”
“Certainly,” Bob said with mock severity. “But
it’s a very simple art. You simply dip in your
forefinger, give it a rapid whirl until it’s coated with
poi, then pop it into your mouth.”
Helen laughed as she led Vicki into the charming
guest room that opened onto the lanai.
“Don’t let him tease you, honey,” she said. “We
31

both detest poi. We’re having chicken served with
broiled taro leaves and coconut milk.”
“Sounds yummy.” Vicki showered and changed
into a sleeveless, flowered frock with a long, full
skirt.
Helen was wearing a bright holoku and seemed to
have no difficulty at all managing her train. She
chattered merrily all the time Vicki was dressing,
perched on the wide day bed which she called a
hikie.
“Bob and I were so thrilled when we got your
cable saying you were actually on your way,” she
said.
“You couldn’t have been half as thrilled as I was
when I sent it,” Vicki told her. “You were darling to
invite me and I still can’t believe I’m here. Better
pinch me so I’ll know I’m not dreaming.”
Helen laughed. “Don’t worry, you’re not
dreaming. Back in the States now you’d be shivering
standing in front of an open window in that thin
organdy frock. But I guess you won’t feel really
oriented until after you’ve had your first surfboard
riding lesson.”
Vicki threw up her hands in mock horror. “Not
me! I’d be sure to drown.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” Helen assured her. “Hank’ll
teach you. He’s quite an expert.”
Vicki chuckled. “He’d have to be expert to teach
32

me. I’m more at home in the air than in the sea.”
“He’s pretty air-minded himself,” Helen told her.
“When he heard we’d lured a Stateside stewardess
for a visit he could hardly wait to meet you.” Her
brown eyes twinkled. “Especially when Bob and I
told him how very attractive you are.”
Vicki blushed. “You shouldn’t have told him that.
He must have been awfully disappointed when—”
“Don’t be silly,” Helen interrupted firmly. “You
are very attractive. You look like a Dresden doll, but
you’re as efficient as a calculating machine.” She
tucked her slim brown legs under her. “How did you
happen to take up a career, Vic?”
Vicki told her then about the day she had read the
full-page advertisement in the Fairview Sunday
paper with the alluring headline:
TO GIRLS WHO WOULD LIKE TO TRAVEL
TO MEET PEOPLE—TO ADVENTURE
“I wasn’t old enough and I’d had only the
minimum two years of college with no real business
experience,” she finished. “So I had to get a letter of
permission signed by both my parents.” She sighed
reminiscently. “I was a nervous wreck for fear Dad
would insist upon my continuing with college, but
he didn’t. I really have the most understanding
parents in the world.”
33

“They sound like angels,” Helen said, nodding.
“And so are mine. I feel awfully sorry for girls
whose mothers and fathers try to keep them under
glass, don’t you?”
“I certainly do,” Vicki agreed. “In fact I’ve
always thought I was lucky to be poor. Not that we
starve in our Castle.”
“Not,” Helen added with a grin, “that such a
thing could be possible with an amateur chef for a
father. But I know what you mean. Rich girls don’t
usually have a yen for a career and I think they miss
a lot. Isn’t Hank divine?” she demanded suddenly.
“So handsome and so rich, and yet completely
unspoiled. He inherited a small fortune from his
grandfather, but my guess is that he’s slowly giving
it away to his poverty-stricken patients. He’s terribly
interested in the native children and works overtime
in the clinic and also at Bob’s school. That’s where
they met, you know. Hank gives the kids their
regular checkups, and whenever one of them gets
sick, he’s sent to Hank’s clinic. Oh, what a lovely
orchid lei,” she rambled on, abruptly changing the
subject. “You must wear it tonight. It makes your
hair look definitely platinum and your eyes as blue
as the sea.”
“Then you must wear this double carnation one,”
Vicki said, tossing it across the room to her hostess.
“It’ll make you look exactly like a Hawaiian
34

princess with your dark hair and smooth tan. And
what shall I do with the others? Hank practically
smothered me with leis.”
Smothered! Vicki suddenly remembered how
earlier she had felt she couldn’t breathe in the
crowded terminal, almost overpowered by the heavy
scent of the tropical flowers. Had someone literally
smothered the Millet heiress in leis, and then forced
the faint and dizzy girl to walk through that laughing
throng to where a car was waiting to spirit her
away?
“Oh, dear,” Vicki said with a laugh, “the tropical
air is making me imagine all sorts of impossible
things.” And she explained to Helen, telling her
about the broken toxic lei she had found at the
airport.
“Fountain lily buds?” Helen’s neat black
eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Never heard of ’em,
and I’ve been doing exhaustive research on the
islands for years.” She led the way to the lanai
where the men were waiting. “Hank,” she said
severely, “what kind of fairy tales have you been
telling my guest?” She snatched the white lei from
around his neck and examined the buds carefully.
After a moment she said, “Well, as a matter of fact,
this flower is new to me, and so is the design. I’ve
never seen one quite like it.”
“I didn’t notice anything distinctive about it,”
35

Hank said.
Helen explained. “The ginger blossom stems as
you can see have been woven firmly into the strong
main cord, one facing inward, one outward. But the
long, tough stems of the buds look as though they
had been so casually stuck in between that they
might fall out any minute.” She looped the broken
garland around her neck. “Now you can see why.”
The buds of their own weight fell gracefully back
against her body, and even Vicki could see this was
a distinctive pattern.
“A master lei maker,” Helen said to Hank,
“thought up this design. What are these buds,
anyway?”
Hank told her the history of the rare fountain lily
shrub then, and the conversation switched to the
kidnaping of the Walu heiress.
“It’s a funny thing,” Bob Kane said thoughtfully,
“we almost never think or talk about that tiny island
out in the Pacific, and now we’re full of it. A
kidnaped heiress, a rare shrub, and believe it or not,
I’ve been trying to get in touch with one of the Walu
natives for the past week.” He turned to Hank. “Do
you remember an eleven-year-old boy, Loi, one of
my favorite pupils? I sent him to you for a chest X
ray last year.”
Hank nodded. “A swell kid and in good shape,
too, although a bit too thin for his age. What about
36

him?”
“He’s disappeared,” Bob said worriedly. “Last
week his uncle was brought to your hospital with an
edema of the brain, and he never regained
consciousness. Do you remember the case?”
Again Hank nodded. “He wasn’t my patient, and
I had no idea he was Loi’s uncle.”
“He was more than that,” Bob told him. “He was
Loi’s only living relative on Oahu. His father, Kali,
is a Waluian. His wife died when the boy was about
six, so Kali sent Loi to live here with his uncle and
aunt, feeling he needed a woman’s care. That
happened,” he said to Vicki, “around the time that
Greg Millet bought Walu, and the community was
not organized the way it is now, so that motherless
children receive the best of supervision while their
fathers work on the plantation.”
“But why didn’t his father send for him when
conditions were improved?” Vicki demanded. “It
seems a shame that Kali was separated from his son
during his formative years.”
“The answer to that, I imagine,” Helen put in, “is
that Loi grew so fond of his uncle and aunt that he
didn’t want to leave. Added to that was the fact that
they needed the money Kali sent regularly for Loi’s
support. Kali probably sent almost his entire salary,
because, of course, the Waluians have virtually no
need for money. Everything is provided for them by
37

the Millet company, and even before the island
became a pineapple plantation, the natives were selfsufficient,” She smiled. “As a matter of fact, the
Hawaiians have always been an extremely selfsufficient race. Give a man a plot of land in a valley
where he can grow his vegetables and a shack on a
beach where he can fish, and he is perfectly
content.”
“But,” Vicki objected, “you just said Lois uncle
needed the money Kali sent.”
“That,” she said, frowning a little, “is because
Oahu has been civilized by the white man. Under
the rule of the kings no one paid rent or taxes.” She
twirled the broken lei around her bare, brown arm.
“I’m one of those who think Captain Cook had no
business discovering the Sandwich Islands.”
Bob Kane grinned fondly at his pretty young
wife. “At any rate, honey, you approve of what Greg
Millet has done with Walu, and, if you don’t mind,
let’s stick to that subject for a while.” He turned
back to Hank.
“When my studious young Loi didn’t show up at
school for a couple of days, I investigated, thinking
he might be ill. As you probably know, Hank, his
home is one of a few beach shacks in a cove near the
big sugar plantation town where the school and the
hospital are located.”
“I didn’t know,” Hank said. “And I’m surprised
38

the Walus never mentioned that there was a little
Waluian living on Oahu. Those natives almost never
leave their own island,” he told Vicki.
“You were in the States interning when Greg
Millet bought it,” Bob reminded him. “Otherwise,
your Hawaiian friends might have told you that Loi
was sent then to live with his relatives in that tiny
village on the other side of the little forest that forms
the northeast boundary of the main town. When I
went there on Thursday to find out why he was
absent, I learned that not only had his uncle died
recently but his aunt passed away several weeks
ago.”
“I wish I’d known more about the boy,” Hank
said, frowning. “I had no idea his father lives on
Walu.”
Bob nodded. “Nobody else did, not even his
neighbors. When I questioned them, all I could find
out was that Loi had come home from school the
day his uncle was taken to the hospital, and has
never been seen since.”
Helen took up the story. “Bob was very upset,”
she told Vicki and Hank. “He immediately wrote
Kali asking him to let him know at once if he had
taken the boy back to Walu. He sent that letter by
messenger to the daily mail plane of the Millet
Company, so he should have received a reply on
Friday. But he didn’t, so he wrote again.”
39

She lifted a huge conch shell from a low rattan
table and picked up an envelope. She handed it to
Vicki. “This is Bob’s second letter, which came
back today. As you can see for yourself, scribbled
across the envelope are the words:
“No longer employed by the Millet Company.
Present whereabouts unknown.”
Vicki passed the letter on to Hank who glanced at
it and said wonderingly, “How odd! I never heard of
a Waluian quitting or getting fired, did you, Bob?”
“Never,” Bob said emphatically. “No one would
leave that island paradise of his own free will. If
Kali had become incapacitated so he could no longer
work, he would be receiving the best medical care
and a generous pension. The only conceivable
reason why the Millet Company should discharge an
employee would be because he was dishonest.”
“And that,” Helen added hotly, “is absolutely
inconceivable. An unspoiled group of Hawaiians
like the Waluians do not know the meaning of the
word crime. They are a proud but simple, peaceloving race, bound by taboos much stricter than the
white man’s code of ethics.”
“You’re absolutely right, Helen,” Hank agreed.
“There must be some mistake,” Vicki said,
reading the scribbled handwriting on the returned
envelope again. But there it was, sprawling as
though written in haste, and yet somehow purposely
40

definite:
“No longer employed by the Millet Company.”
A dainty little Filipina came in then to announce
that dinner was ready and they all trooped into the
spacious dining room. Iced banana and pineapple
chunks in scooped-out golden pineapple shells
awaited them. Then came the main dish which Vicki
thought was rather like a fricassee of chicken. When
she learned that fresh spinach could be substituted
for the boiled taro leaves and cow’s milk for coconut
milk, she decided to send the recipe to her father.
“Poi,” Helen said, “is made from the root of the
taro plant. It’s boiled and skinned and mashed into a
pulp. Then it’s put into a sack and fermented
overnight. It is to Hawaiians what bread is to us, but
Bob and I never could learn to like the pale lavender
goo—”
“I acquired the taste as a child,” Hank said, “but
my favorite Hawaiian dish is pig baked in ti leaves.
No luau is a real feast without it.”
“I know,” Helen admitted with a rueful chuckle,
“but it takes days and days to do one in style. You
see, Vicki, the pig is roasted in an imu, or
underground oven, and you have to keep adding hot
stones and earth until it’s done.”
Vicki giggled. “Even Dad wouldn’t attempt such
a chore,” she said, and added to Hank, “that reminds
me. Don’t make off with that toxic lei. I want to
41

press some of those rare buds and send them to
Ginny as a souvenir.”
“That’s right,” Helen approved. “And I’m sure
she’d love a candy lei. You can send her a long
chain of bright, cellophane-wrapped tidbits and tell
her that it’s much more Polynesian than an imitation
flower lei. When the original settlers came to Hawaii
centuries ago they wore necklaces of coral, shells or
sharks’ teeth, not ruffs of flowers. And you must
send your mother a holoku pattern,” she rambled on
happily. “If she’s as young-looking and pretty as
you say she is, she’ll look divine in one. You know,
don’t you, that holoku means ‘run-stop’? That’s
what the Hawaiians called the sewing machines the
missionaries’ wives whipped up their hideous
Mother Hubbards on.”
“Let me get a word in edgewise, puh-leeze,” Bob
interrupted with a grin. “Vicki says her mother’s
hobby is horseback riding, so maybe she’d rather
have a pa-u pattern. The pa-u,” he explained, “is the
Hawaiian evolution of the riding habit the
missionaries concocted to force them to ride
sidesaddle. But the women stubbornly changed it
into a lovely flowing garment that enabled them to
ride astride as usual.”
“They’re really considered court gowns now,”
Hank went on, “and you’ll see several of them
tomorrow at the opening parade of Aloha Week. On
42

horseback, too, will be the paniolas, the Hawaiian
cowboys, with leis on their hats and around their
horses’ necks. Do you suppose,” he asked Helen,
“you could talk Vicki into giving me a lei to wear on
my hat?”
Helen shrugged and said mischievously, “I doubt
it. Especially if I tell her that doing so means she’s
your sweetheart.”
Vicki was glad that the diminutive Filipina came
in then with a delicious dessert called haupia, a
cornstarch and coconut milk pudding. After that, she
passed a bowl carved from the satiny red-brown
wood of the koa tree. It was heaped high with
tropical fruit, and Vicki tasted for the first time the
mango and the papaya.
“Back to our outdoor living room for coffee,”
Helen said, leading them through the arched
doorway to the lanai. “And after that we’ll give you
a taste of what night life on Oahu is like.”
Vicki knew she would never forget her first
twenty-four hours in Hawaii. She and Helen tied gay
scarves around their hair and they all piled into
Hank’s roadster. The moon, rising above Diamond
Head, turned the water to silver, and the stars
seemed so close she felt as though she could reach
up and touch them.
They drove around Kapiolani Park and then to the
top of Punchbowl for an excellent view of the city at
43

night. Continuing westward, Vicki got a brief
glimpse of the gigantic naval base at Pearl Harbor,
and nearby, the air force’s Hickam Field.
Then they stopped for more coffee in the Sky
Room atop the airport terminal building. After that,
they went dancing at the Moana and the Royal
Hawaiian Hotels, and at various night clubs—the
Blue Lei, the South Seas, and Lau Yee Chai’s with
its lovely Chinese garden.
“I can’t dance another step,” Helen moaned at
last, and Vicki agreed that she was weary too. So
they left Waikiki, stopping only long enough to
consume foot-long frankfurters at a drive-in called
Kau-Kau Korner.
Back in the Kanes’ comfortable indoor living
room, Hank said to Bob, “I can’t help wondering
about that boy, Loi, and his father. I’ve taken the
day off tomorrow and Vicki promised to spend it
with me. Suppose we combine business with
pleasure and drive across the Pali to the cove where
Loi lived with his uncle. She ought to see Nuuanu
Valley and the windward side of the island, anyway,
and we just might pick up a clue to what became of
Loi after his uncle died.”
“Oh, I’d love to try and find him,” Vicki cried
enthusiastically. “Not that I’d be much help. But
I’ve had him and his father and the Millet heiress on
my mind all evening. I can’t help thinking that
44

perhaps all three of the disappearances are somehow
tied in together.”
Helen stared at her, suddenly wide awake. “What
on earth makes you think that? You’re pupule—
crazy, Vicki.”
“Well,” Vicki said defensively, “They’re all
Waluians, aren’t they?”
“Not really,” Helen came back. “Frances Millet
has spent most of her life in boarding schools in the
States. She only visits her father during summers
and vacations. And as for Loi, he left Walu when he
was so young he probably doesn’t remember much
about it. I can’t imagine what’s happened to him and
his father, but the girl was obviously kidnaped by a
white man—or men, who’ll get caught before long
because the Hawaiian police force is one of the most
efficient in the world.”
“Maybe they’ve been caught already,” Bob said,
and turned on the radio. Almost the first words that
blared forth were “the Millet heiress.” And after
that:
“Again we repeat. Police have just been informed
by Mr. Gregory Millet, the pineapple king, that his
daughter Frances, who was reported missing earlier
this evening, was discovered safe and sound at The
Citadel, the Millet mansion on Walu. Suffering from
temporary amnesia, Miss Millet wandered out of the
airport terminal, and, forgetting that she was there
45

en route back to the States, hired a private plane to
fly her to Walu. She is now in the care of a doctor
who has prescribed rest as a cure for her nervous
condition which was brought about by overconscientiousness in her school studies. Reporters
and photographers are warned against attempting to
land on the island. Miss Millet is still too ill to be
interviewed. Again we repeat . . .”
“Well, that’s that,” Hank said with a yawn. “And
I, a doctor, should have been able to solve the
mystery right off. The only answer was a touch of
amnesia, because it was obvious Fran must have left
the airport of her own free will.”
Vicki, who had listened carefully to every word
of the broadcast, said thoughtfully, “I don’t believe
it.”
“You don’t believe what?” Hank demanded.
Vicki rubbed her forehead with her finger tips.
She was very tired, for it had been a hectic evening
and she had only dozed the night before. It was hard
to think clearly. “I don’t know exactly why,” she
said slowly, “but that announcement seemed a little
too pat to me. It reminded me of the quotation from
Hamlet, ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’“
Hank roared with laughter and said to Helen,
“This lady doth imagine too much, methinks.”
Vicki flushed but joined in the laughter. “At any
46

rate, we’re still going to keep on looking for Loi,
aren’t we?”
“We-ell,” Bob said thoughtfully, “I’ve just about
made up my mind to notify the police. I doubt if you
and Hank will pick up any clues when you visit his
village tomorrow. I’m sure his neighbors have no
idea what became of him after his uncle died.”
“I doubt if the police will have any better luck
than we might have,” Hank argued. “The very sight
of a uniform will make them shut up like clams.”
“That’s true,” Bob agreed.
“Oh, don’t notify the police yet,” Vicki begged.
“If all three of the disappearances are tied in
together, notifying the police would be the worst
thing that could happen.”
“Why do you say that?” Helen demanded.
“I don’t know exactly,” Vicki admitted tiredly. “I
just have a feeling—”
Hank interrupted, chanting:
“ ‘A woman convinced against her will
Is of the same opinion still.’ ”
Vicki chuckled. “I don’t mean to be stubborn,
Hank, but I would like to help you find Loi. That is,
if you think I’d be of any help.”
“You’ll be more than a help,” Hank assured her,
47

grinning. “You’ll be fun to be with and the very
sight of you will have exactly the opposite effect on
the natives that the police will have. My guess is that
you’ll disarm them so completely that they’ll tell us
more than they did Bob.”
He unfolded his long legs and stood up. “What do
you say, Bob? Let Vicki and me have a crack at
finding Loi and if we don’t get anywhere, then you
notify the police tomorrow evening?”
“Suits me,” Bob agreed. “A few more hours
won’t make any difference. He was a rather
independent kid, remember? The type who could get
along fine on a desert island.”
“That’s right,” Hank said soberly. “The real
mystery is what became of his father. Kali would
have a hard time finding his way around on Oahu. I
doubt if he ever left Walu before he quit the Millet
Company, don’t you, Bob?”
Bob nodded. “But he’d get along all right, Hank.
He could ask directions from the police and the
Visitors Bureau, you know.”
“Not if he—” Vicki began and then stopped.
Later when she was tucked in bed, listening to the
pounding of the surf, she scolded herself.
“Stop it, Victoria Barr. Just because you’ve run
across several mysteries in your brief career doesn’t
mean you’re going to find one around every corner.”
But a shaft of moonlight, shining through the
48

wide window, pointed a silver finger to the broken
lei she had draped around the mirror on her bureau.
Vicki got out of bed to press some of the fountain
lily buds between the pages of a book Helen had
loaned her.
“I wonder,” she mumbled sleepily. “I wonder.
After all, perhaps these little flowers may have
caused what the radio called Frances Millet’s
‘temporary amnesia.’ ”

49

CHAPTER IV

A Strand of White Flowers

The screaming of the Kanes’ pet Myna from the
branches of the coconut tree outside her window
awoke Vicki at dawn the next morning. It sounded
as though he were scolding, “I’m up. Get up. I’m
up.” So Vicki obeyed, surprised to find that the air
was cold enough for her to be glad she had packed a
sweater and skirt.
It was almost dark when she started dressing, but
by the time she had finished, it was broad daylight.
Fleecy cumulus clouds dotted the blue sky as though
reflecting the foam-flecked water below. Vicki had
planned to take an early-morning dip, but now she
shivered at the very idea.
As she brushed her silvery-gold hair in front of
the mirror her eye fell on the strand of wilted
flowers nestling forlornly on the bureau top. And
suddenly she knew why she had said to Hank the
night before, “I don’t believe it.”
“I still don’t believe Fran Millet is safe and sound
50

in her Citadel on Walu,” she told her reflection,
narrowing her blue eyes thoughtfully. “If someone
kidnaped you, Miss Barr, what would he do? He
would promptly send word to your father to call off
the police—or else. And what would Professor Barr
do, not wishing to have you returned to him
piecemeal? He would immediately tell the police
that your kidnaping had been grossly exaggerated,
and would insist that you were safe and sound in the
Barr Castle at Fairview, Illinois. To make the story
of your temporary absence more convincing, he
would probably explain that you had accidentally
got yourself locked in the Castle’s tower and had
only just been set free by your kid sister, Ginny.”
She smiled at her reflection and said aloud, “If I
were a famous Chinese detective on the Hawaiian
police force, I’d keep right on looking for Fran
Millet. But since I’m not, I may as well try to find
Kali and Loi.”
Thrilled at the thought of a pleasant day with
Hank, whom she admitted frankly to her reflection
she liked a lot, Vicki hurried out to the lanai. She
was so hungry she would have bolted even a KauKau frankfurter, and was glad when she heard Helen
calling:
“Wikiwiki, Vicki. Breakfast’s on the table.”
Bob and Helen were in the kitchen, cheerfully
getting in each other’s way as they cooked coffee,
51

eggs, and toast. Vicki helped them bring the food
out to the lanai where they ate informally, gathered
around a low Chinese chow bench.
“I only have help on special occasions,” Helen
told Vicki. “Mostly a Japanese-American girl who
comes in for an hour or two after high school. Sue
couldn’t come last night on account of a dress
rehearsal, but she promised to this afternoon, so
we’ll just leave the dishes and the dusting. Bob and I
have to dash now to his school. I’m to help decorate
the classrooms with flowers—carnations, plumiera,
and ginger, I guess. And we’re going to hang one
huge orchid lei in front of the building. I guess that
sounds extravagant to you, but they grow wild out
here.”
“Stop talking and eat,” Bob commanded with an
affectionate grin. “Otherwise, plenty pilikia.”
“What does pee-lee-kee-yah mean?” Vicki asked.
“Trouble,” he said. “Pilikia and pau, which you
already know means finished, are almost as
overworked words as aloha. So you’d better add
them to your vocabulary right now.”
“Okay,” Vicki said with a giggle. “Before you’re
pau, tell me the correct word for doctor so I can
greet Hank properly.”
“Kahuna,” Bob told her as she followed them out
to the garage. “But it also means witch doctor, so
maybe you’d better not use it or there’ll be plenty
52

pilikia.”
Hank’s car turned into the driveway then, and
Vicki waved good-bye to the Kanes with one hand
and hello to Hank with the other.
“Aloha,” Hank greeted her. “Would you like to
go sight-seeing by plane this morning? There’s
much excitement over on Hawaii today. The great
fire goddess, Pele, in the form of a gas explosion,
has set off the volcano Mauna Loa. Lava is pouring
down from the snow-capped summit of the crater.
It’s something you shouldn’t miss from the air.”
“I can’t imagine anything more exciting,” Vicki
said. “But isn’t it dangerous?”
“Not unless we fly right into the molten lava
stream,” he said. “And volcanologists over the radio
a while ago said this was only a mild eruption, so
even if we got lost in the clouds and flew too close I
don’t think we’d get burned alive.” He grinned.
“Shall we go?”
“Let’s,” Vicki cried enthusiastically. “But how?
In what plane?”
“Mine,” he said. “I’ve got a fast little four-placer
of my own, all warmed up and ready to go at the
airport now. I was so sure you’d accept, I telephoned
ahead.”
An hour later they were flying east to Hawaii,
which boasted the name Big Island.
“Each one,” Hank told Vicki, “has its own
53

descriptive name. Oahu is the Meeting Place;
Molakai, the Friendly Isle; Maui, which as you can
see from here looks rather like a bow tie, is the
Valley Isle. That crater we’re flying over now is
Haleakala, the House of the Sun, the largest dormant
volcano in the world. There are several fascinating
legends about the demigod Maui. One of them is
that he lassoed the sun from the peak of Haleakala
and made it promise to slow down six months of the
year so that his mother’s tapa cloth could dry
properly.”
“I never heard that one,” Vicki said, “but last
night after you’d gone Helen told me that it was
Maui with his fishing line who pulled Hawaii up
from the bottom of the sea.”
“That’s right,” Hank said. “He and his brothers
pulled so hard that the line broke and the land was
thus separated into the various islands of the
archipelago.” He interrupted himself to point ahead.
“Well, there’s your fiery volcano.”
Vicki looked and gasped. Towering above the
clouds were two gigantic, snow-capped mountains.
From one of them, smoke and flames were spouting,
and a river of lava spurted from a crack in its side.
Observation planes were flying all around this
magnificent, terrifying spectacle, and they reminded
Vicki of silly moths fluttering dangerously close to
something that had powers far beyond the control of
54

man. As they came nearer, she could feel the intense
heat, and then at a height of fifteen thousand feet,
she was looking down at a mammoth cracked cup,
bubbling over with an angry, red-hot fluid.
Vicki was so awed she held her breath until they
were winging back across the azure sea. Then she let
it out in a long sigh.
“I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen
it,” she said in a subdued voice. “No wonder the
ancient Hawaiians have so much respect for Pele
and her magic.”
“I know how you feel,” Hank said. “A thing like
that is both beautiful and mystifying, and believe
me, it’s indelibly painted on your memory. I
climbed to the summit of Mauna Loa once, and I’ll
never forget it. It’s sixty miles round trip from the
Volcano House and it took three days. Was I
exhausted!”
“I’ll bet you were,” Vicki said with a laugh. “And
many thanks for letting me see it from the air
instead.”
“Now, what’s on the program?” Hank wanted to
know. “All of the morning opening-day festivities
are taking place in the schools, so shall we wait until
afternoon when the real carnival begins in Ala
Moana Park?”
“Fine,” Vicki agreed. “Frankly, I’d like to start
trying to find that little Hawaiian boy.”
55

It was not quite eleven o’clock when they left the
airport, and the air was now so warm that Vicki
slipped off her sweater. It began to rain as they
drove through the lush foliage of Nuuanu Valley,
but now that Vicki was accustomed to liquid
sunshine, it was nothing more than a fragrant mist
from the mountains. They passed beautiful homes
and stretches of junglelike growth where the trunks
of beautiful old trees were completely covered with
thick vines.
“Do you hear the voices of the Menehunes, the
little people?” Hank asked with a mischievous grin.
“I hear the patter of raindrops, if that’s what you
mean,” Vicki said flatly.
Hank shook his head. “That’s what you think.
What I hear are soft, insistent voices saying that
Vicki should give me a lei to wear on my hat.”
“I will,” Vicki promised blithely. “Just as soon as
I learn how to make one with my own little hands.”
Hank groaned. “You couldn’t learn the art in one
short week. Why don’t you just stay on forever,
Vicki?”
“Are you recommending,” Vicki demanded
pertly, “that I turn in my uniform and become a
beachcomber?”
He glanced at her sidewise. “You’d look
attractive in any outfit, but seriously, you wouldn’t
have any difficulty getting a stewardess job here.
56

And you must admit that this is paradise. Once you
leave, you’ll be filled with a nostalgia that will stick
with you the rest of your life, an invisible feathered
cape which you’ll never be able to shake off.”
For a moment Vicki felt bewitched. She could
almost feel the weight of the ancient emblem of a
warrior falling about her slim shoulders. She was
hypnotized by the panorama of the Nuuanu Pali
Pass, but once they were through it, the spell was
broken.
She straightened in her seat. “I guess I’ll always
feel a little bit homesick for this lovely place,
Hank,” she said soberly, “but not nearly as homesick
as I always feel for a little town called Fairview,
Illinois.”
Hank shrugged. “Okay, spurn the little grass hut I
offered you in favor of your Norman castle. But
some day you’ll be sor-ree!”
Vicki laughed. “Speaking of huts, will there be
any in Loi’s village?”
Hank shook his head. “Not with straw-thatched
roofs. It’s a tiny place, with just a few frame houses,
which, since Hawaiians care little about show, are
mostly unpainted.” He parked the car. “On our left is
the big plantation town, and down in that cove on
the other side of this wooded section is where Loi
lived with his uncle.” He turned off the ignition.
“We’ll have to walk, but it’s only a few hundred
57

feet. Can you make it on those stilts you’re
wearing?”
“Stilts!” Vicki cried indignantly. “If you’re
referring to the latest thing in high heels, the answer
is yes!
But, Vicki discovered, going through what
amounted to a small forest was rough and she was
glad when they emerged onto a sandy beach, dotted
with small motorboats and an occasional outrigger
canoe. Coconut trees towered over the square little
shacks in front of which brown-skinned children,
clad in brief trunks, were playing. Other children
were wading, and everywhere were dogs and cats.
Farther out from the shore, men were fishing, some
with spears, others with nets.
Each house had its own taro patch and some of
the women were busy with their poi pounders, while
others gathered the edible seaweed from the coral
bed in the shallow water. One of these looked up to
smile at Vicki and Hank.
“Aloha,” she said in a soft, musical voice. “You
are looking for someone maybe?”
“Yes,” Hank said with his friendly grin. “A boy
named Loi. You knew him and his uncle and aunt
who died?”
She wiped her moist brown hands on her dress
and waded out of the water. “I know them all and it
still hurts me in my heart that they have gone.” A
58

plump, black-haired child in a short, printed smock,
reached up to cling shyly to her mother’s hand. “Loi
was to me like one of my own little ones, until he
grew as tall and straight as a spear.”
She turned and moving slowly but gracefully led
them to a nearby shack. “This is their home. We
have left it just as it was. It is waiting for Loi to
return.”
Hank asked her several questions in Hawaiian
then, and after each one she replied briefly, shaking
her head sorrowfully.
“She says,” Hank told Vicki, “that Loi must have
come home from school the day his uncle was taken
to the hospital, for his books are inside on the table,
but she did not notice him. However, her aged
grandfather, who was dozing in the shade here,
woke up long enough to tell the boy what had
happened. He is the only one who saw Loi after he
left for school in the morning.”
Vicki sighed. “Oh, dear. The old man probably
frightened the poor child if he spoke bluntly. I mean,
describing the uncle’s symptoms and how he was
taken away, unconscious, on stretcher.”
“You’re right,” Hank agreed. “The symptoms of
cerebral apoplexy are quite unpleasant, shocking, in
fact, to a layman. What you’re implying is that Loi
may have been so shocked that he ran away and
hid?”
59

“I don’t know what else to think,” Vicki replied.
“He must have been almost out of his mind not to
have gone to this nice neighbor of his for comfort
and advice.”
The woman flashed her teeth in a smile. “What
you say has much wisdom. But you must know that
Loi was proud. He was not one to ask for help, and
he did not spend his free time playing games. He
was like our King Kamehameha, the Lonely One.”
“What did he do instead of playing games?”
Vicki asked, hoping for a clue.
For answer the woman pointed to the trees that
marched out to a point, forming the eastern
boundary of the village cove.
“Beyond,” she said, “there is another beach. It is
kapu, but Loi spent many hours there.”
Vicki glanced at Hank. “Let’s explore.”
He nodded, and after they had thanked the kind
Hawaiian woman, they started back through the
woods. Halfway across the point they stumbled onto
a narrow trail, marked by a large kapu sign.
“We’re trespassing,” Hank said with a grin. “But
let’s keep going,” and he led the way through the
leafy branches of majestic trees.
“This is a koa,” Hank said, patting a trunk. “One
day you must see the beautifully carved koa bed that
was made especially for Princess Ruth of the royal
family. It’s big enough for ten people your size to
60

sleep in comfortably.”
And then they were out of the woods, facing a
kapu sign on the beach. It was another sandy cove,
smaller than the one they had just left, and dotted
with tiny rock pools. Back, out of the reach of the
tide, was a crudely-built bamboo shelter.
“Maybe he’s hiding in there,” Vicki cried
excitedly. Kicking off her pumps, she raced barefoot
across the sand to peer inside. It was empty and she
could have cried with disappointment.
But Hank was not interested in the tiny hut. He
was staring up at the Pali, as though fascinated by its
garland of cottony clouds. “Well, I’ll be darned,” he
muttered. “This beach must belong to the Walus.
That’s their house up on the cliff. I never saw it
from this angle before.”
“I can’t see it now,” Vicki complained. And then,
straining her eyes, she caught a glimpse of
something white nestling among green trees and
flowering shrubs. “What a lovely place to build a
house,” she cried. “The view must be magnificent!”
“It is,” Hank told her. “And the house itself is
fascinating. It was built so that it seems to grow
along the side of the mountain, and I’ll bet it’s the
most isolated spot on Oahu. You see, the Walus
aren’t young and they were so used to the privacy of
their own island that they couldn’t bear the thought
of living in one of the residential sections.”
61

“I’d love to meet your Hawaiian friends
sometime,” Vicki said wistfully.
“No time like the present,” Hank said briskly.
“We could try to find and climb the rocky path that
winds up there from the cove, but’ we’d be pretty
disheveled by the time we arrived. So let’s go back
to the car and approach it from the round-the-island
road.”
As they drove along the twisting highway with its
hairpin turns, Vicki said thoughtfully, “Maybe the
Walus know what became of Loi.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Hank said flatly.
“Why?” Vicki demanded. “His father’s a
Waluian, isn’t he?”
“True,” Hank admitted. “I didn’t know that
myself until Bob told us last night. But it doesn’t
necessarily follow that the Walus know where Kali
and Loi are now.”
“They might have seen Loi playing down on their
beach,” Vicki argued. “I’ll bet he built that little
bamboo shelter.”
“If he spent a lot of time there,” Hank said, “they
undoubtedly saw him from their lanai, but they
wouldn’t object to a kid trespassing on their beach.
They rarely use it themselves.”
“Anyway,” Vicki said stubbornly, “please ask
them about Kali and Loi.”
He nodded and turned off the main road into a
62

steep, winding driveway that led to a lovely hillside
home. The sloping grounds were a riot of color;
there were banks of lilies, roses, orchids, plumiera,
and yellow bird-of-paradise flowers. Shading the
spacious lanai were the purple and red tissue-paper
blossoms of the bougainvillea, and the long fingers
of the fanlike hala. The main part of the house was
almost completely hidden by the arching branches of
other trees with leaves of all shades of green.
“It’s funny they’re not sitting out on the lanai,”
Hank said as he helped Vicki out of the car.
“Maybe they’re having lunch,” Vicki said. “It’s
almost noon. Perhaps we’d better come back later.”
He chuckled. “They’re so hospitable they’d never
forgive me. Anyway, they wouldn’t eat inside on a
lovely day like this.”
“Somebody’s inside,” Vicki said. “At least I
thought I saw something move at that window when
we first caught sight of the house.”
She hesitated beside the car, not wishing to
intrude. Hank ran up the steps to knock on the door.
He knocked several times then turned away.
“The garage is empty,” Vicki pointed out.
“Maybe they’re in the city watching the parade.”
“They haven’t got a car,” he said. “No, they must
have gone to Maui to celebrate Aloha Week with
their cousins. But just to be sure, I’ll go around in
back. If that’s where they are, they’ll have left a
63

note, stopping deliveries.”
Vicki sat down on the steps and shook the sand
out of her pumps. She was disappointed for she had
looked forward to meeting the Walus. She knew that
visitors rarely had the opportunity of being
introduced to descendants of ancient Hawaiian
warriors. And if they were away visiting, where
should she and Hank start again to look for Loi and
his father?
And then she jumped, for hanging from the other
corner of the lanai steps was a short strand of white
flowers. They were crushed and wilted, but there
was no mistaking the fact that woven in between
ginger blossoms were the distinctive bulb-shaped
buds of the fountain lily shrub!

64

CHAPTER V

Lost: A Jade Ring

Vicki scrambled over to pick up the strand of white
flowers, wondering if it could be part of the broken
lei she had found at the airport the evening before.
She examined it and saw that the stems were in
exactly the same relation to each other as they were
in the design Helen had said was so unusual.
The blossoms were tightly woven into the main
cord; the long-stemmed buds in a much looser
formation. She stared at the fragment wondering
how it had got from the airport terminal to this
hillside home.
Hank was coming around the path from the back
of the house now. “No luck,” he called. “There’s a
note on the door saying they won’t be back until
Friday morning. That means they’re on Maui.”
“Are you sure of that?” Vicki demanded. “Maybe
they’ve flown to Walu for a visit this time?”
“Not a chance,” Hank said, sitting down on the
step beside her. “They made up their minds when
65

they sold it that they would never return. They
cherish the memory of the island as it was when it
was theirs.”
“Oh,” Vicki said, “then they don’t approve of the
modernization?”
“Well, yes and no,” Hank said. “The Waluians
are their children and like all fond parents they want
them to have the best that money can buy. But until
they sold it, Walu was still virgin, complete with
grass huts; in other words a capsule of ancient
Hawaii. Every man built his own home and lived on
fish and game and whatever vegetables he wished to
grow. He made his own clothes, furniture, and
utensils from the trees growing in his back yard. He
needed no money, for he never had any desire to buy
anything, and he was beholden to no man. In other
words he lived exactly as he pleased except for the
observance of a few simple laws.”
“But,” Vicki objected, “I gathered from you and
Helen that the Waluians still have all that and
heaven too.”
He shrugged. “That depends upon your point of
view. For one thing, except for a small village on
one end and the mountain on the other, the island is
now one vast pineapple plantation. From the air it
doesn’t look at all as it used to. And the Waluians
have been organized so that one group works on the
plantation, another catches fish or game, and a third
66

raises vegetables. They’re still self-sufficient and are
now wage earners to boot, but they work under
direction, no longer when and how they please. It’s
all for the best, of course,” he finished, “but you can
see how the Walus feel about it.”
Suddenly Vicki felt sorry for the old Hawaiian
couple. She knew how she would feel if The Castle
were sold and the grounds converted into a
commercial orchard. Then she remembered the
strand of flowers in her hand.
“What about the fountain lilies?” she asked.
“Were they plowed up and pineapples planted in
their place?”
“Oh, I imagine so,” Hank said. “They haven’t any
real value any more, except to a botanist. There
might still be a shrub or two growing there, kept
alive for sentimental reasons.” He pointed.
“Between those spikey red haleconias and the
hibiscus is the Walus’ pride and joy. Say,” he
interrupted himself in surprise, “it’s been stripped of
all its buds!”
“I think I have a few of them here,” Vicki said,
spreading her fingers. “I just found this strand on the
steps, and I’ll bet it was torn from the broken lei I
picked up at the airport yesterday.”
He glanced at the fragment. “What makes you
think Exhibit A is part of Exhibit B?”
“Look at it carefully.” She laid the clusters on her
67

shoulder. “They’re exactly the same flowers, woven
in the same distinctive design.”
“You’re right,” he admitted after a moment.
“Besides, there weren’t enough buds on that shrub
for more than one lei like this.”
“And the other shrubs, if any,” Vicki added
triumphantly, “are three hundred miles away.”
He nodded. “What are you driving at?”
“Oh, I know you think I’m stubborn, Hank,” she
cried impulsively. “But I can’t help wondering if
perhaps these little toxic buds had something to do
with the kidnaping of the Walu heiress.”
Hank covered his face with his hands in mock
dismay. “You’re the one who’s suffering from
amnesia now. Don’t you remember hearing over the
radio last night that Fran Millet left the airport of her
own free will?”
“Yes,” Vicki answered calmly. “I didn’t believe it
then, and I still don’t.”
He shook his head sadly. “Your powers of
reasoning, Miss Barr, are excellent, but you
overlook the fact that pineapple heiresses just don’t
get snatched under their fathers’ noses in crowded
terminals.”
Vicki tossed her head. “I do not care to discuss
the matter with you further, but before we drop it,
how do you explain the presence here of this
fragment of the broken lei I found at the airport?”
68

“Elementary,” he said with an airy wave of his
hands. “Mrs. Walu probably made a lei with
fountain lily buds to bring her cousins on Maui as a
present. When she left the house it snagged on
something, but she didn’t realize it was broken until
she got to the airport. A broken lei is worse than no
lei at all, so she threw it away.”
“Oh, for goodness sake,” Vicki interrupted in
exasperation. “You’re overlooking the fact that
people don’t go around giving each other toxic leis.”
“Not to wear, my dear,” he said with a shrug.
“But for decorative purposes, and as a souvenir.
That shrub over there may be the only one in
existence.”
“Well,” Vicki admitted, “you know more about
the customs out here than I do.” She tucked the
fragment into her skirt pocket. “I’m disappointed
I’m not going to meet the Walus. I was looking
forward to it and to seeing what their lovely home is
like inside.”
“Why, then, we’ll just walk in and have a look,”
he said calmly.
Vicki stared at him in surprise. “You mean pick
the lock—break and enter?”
He pulled her to her feet, laughing. “Not at all.
It’s a Waluian law that no man may lock up his
home when he leaves it. Because, you see, his
neighbor may need to borrow something while he is
69

gone. Locking the door amounts to unthinkable
inhospitality.”
What a lovely custom, Vicki thought, but said
hesitantly, “We don’t need to borrow anything,
Hank, so perhaps—”
And then they heard a crash from inside the
house.
It was Hank’s turn to stare at Vicki in surprise.
“What on earth was that?”
Vicki giggled nervously. “A neighbor borrowing
something, I hope. A nice friendly neighbor. I
wouldn’t care to meet a burglar in this isolated
spot.”
“Nonsense,” Hank said with a laugh. “They must
have left a window open and the breeze blew down
a flimsy screen.”
Purposely he turned the knob and walked in
calling, “Anybody there? Hello, anybody there?”
Silence greeted them, and as Vicki peered over
his shoulder she saw that a lovely hand-painted
screen lay collapsed in the middle of the spacious
living room. But after a careful check they found
every window and door tightly closed.
“I was sure they would be,” Hank said
thoughtfully. “A driving rain could cause a lot of
damage. The Walus live simply, without servants,
but most of their possessions are priceless
heirlooms.”
70

“I suppose the furniture on the lanai is rainproof,”
Vicki said. “I notice they took the cover off the
divan out there before they went away, but left the
cushions. I was wondering why.”
Hank shrugged. “Probably sent the couch cover
to the cleaners. The lanai was built so that it is
protected from the weather during all seasons, you
see.”
“But,” Vicki argued, “if they sent the couch cover
to the cleaners they would certainly have sent the
cushion covers at the same time.”
Hank grinned. “You’re a woman, so you should
know. What difference does it make, anyway?”
“None,” Vicki admitted, flushing a little. “I was
just wondering if somebody had been here
borrowing.” She pointed to a cup and saucer in the
kitchen sink. “Or do you think the Walus left in such
a hurry they didn’t have time to finish the breakfast
dishes?”
Hank frowned. “Could be, but it doesn’t sound
like Mrs. Walu. She’s a comfortable but rather
fastidious housekeeper.”
Curiously, Vicki touched her fingers to a burner
on the electric stove. It was warm. “Oh, dear,” she
sighed. “We just missed them. Actually, their taxi
must have passed us on the road.”
Hank shook his head. “They left early yesterday
morning, according to the date of the newspaper
71

under the back door mat. Whoever delivered it
probably did not notice the note stopping deliveries.
And I deduce the Walus left early in the morning,
otherwise they would have brought in the paper and
read it.”
Vicki’s blue eyes twinkled mischievously. “My,
you’re some detective! How do you explain the
warmth of this electric plate?”
He touched it with his finger tips, frowning.
“You’re right, Vicki. Either the Walus just left or
somebody else did.”
“And it must have been somebody else,” Vicki
said. “Your friends wouldn’t have left a paper lying
out there from yesterday morning to noon today,
would they?”
“Certainly not,” he said. “I vote we give the
whole house a thorough search. Whoever knocked
down that screen just before we came in may still be
hiding here.”
But they examined every closet and looked under
all the beds and divans to no avail.
“Well,” Vicki said at last, “the neighbor has been,
borrowed and gone, slipping out the back door as we
came in from the lanai. But why, since he was
committing no crime according to Waluian law, did
he sneak away from us?”
“The answer to that, of course,” Hank told her,
“is that it wasn’t a Waluian.”
72

“I’m not so sure of that,” Vicki said mysteriously.
“I have a hunch that it was Kali, and Loi is probably
with him.”
Hank thought for a minute. “It makes sense,” he
admitted finally, “except for their running away
from us. The way I figure it is that Kali must have
left Walu in order to get a job on Oahu so that Loi
could continue on at the same school where he has
been doing so well. He probably came at once in
answer to Bob’s first letter, but not knowing his way
around, it took him most of the weekend to find his
brother’s village—and Loi, who, being a lonely one,
was living down there in his bamboo shack. After
that, Kali came to the Walus seeking help in getting
another job, but they had already left for Maui. So
since then they’ve been camping out here, just as the
Walus would want them to do under the
circumstances.”
He spread his hands hopelessly. “Fine, fine,
except that Kali should have greeted us when we
turned in the driveway instead of making a hurried
exit. It was extremely inhospitable and un-Waluian
of him, to say the least.”
“There’s another hole in that theory,” Vicki
pointed out tartly. “So big you could fly a B-29
through it. When Kali finally arrived at his brother’s
village to get Loi, wouldn’t he have questioned the
neighbors? According to Bob, who interviewed
73

everyone in the village the other day, no one even
knew the boy had a father living on Walu. And that
kind woman we talked to would certainly have told
us that Loi’s father had been there looking for him,
if Kali had ever visited the village.”
Hank struck his forehead with his knuckles,
groaning. “It’s all too, too mysterious for me. I give
up. I hate to admit defeat, but I honestly don’t know
where to start looking for Loi now. My only hope is
that when his uncle died he went straight to his
father on Walu, and later they left the island
together. Though why Kali should want to leave the
home of his ancestors is beyond me.”
“Maybe,” Vicki said wonderingly, “he feels the
way the Walus do, that civilization has ruined it.”
“Could be,” Hank said with a shrug. “Anyway,
there’s nothing more we can do about it.”
Vicki agreed reluctantly. “I suppose we ought to
telephone Bob to notify the police,” she said.
“That’s right,” he said. As he walked to the door
he grinned and said, “Maybe medical science isn’t
as advanced as we doctors think. Amnesia might be
a contagious disease and perhaps Kali and Loi
caught it from Fran Millet.”
His green eyes twinkled mischievously. “That ties
in with your theory and is no more fantastic.”
Vicki giggled. “I haven’t any real theory, Hank.
But I am starving. Could we go somewhere and
74

have steaks the size of those Kau-Kau frankfurters
we had last night?”
“And smothered with onions,” he said. “With
French fried potatoes and ice-cream cones the size
of the Pali for dessert.”
“Yummy-yum,” Vicki cried, climbing into the
car.
“We’ll call Bob from the Royal Hawaiian,” Hank
said. “I know the number of his favorite restaurant
where we’ll be able to reach him by the time we get
back to Waikiki. Then after our mammoth steaks,
we’ll see the pageant in Ala Moana Park.”
Bob did not sound at all disappointed when Vicki
talked with him over the phone.
“I didn’t think you’d have any luck,” he said. “I’ll
call the Missing Persons Department right away.
Where are you two going to be around five this
afternoon?”
“Watching the pageant,” Vicki said. “Can you
and Helen join us?”
“We should be free by then,” Bob told her. “Let’s
meet some place for tea. Parades always make me
thirsty.”
“Me too,” Vicki agreed. “And I’d like to see the
famous Young Hotel. Could we have tea there?”
“Swell,” Bob said. “I think Helen plans to give us
only a snack for supper before the lantern parade, so
we’d better eat hearty. Helen’s snacks are apt to be
75

scanty, especially when she’s on one of her two-day
diets.”
Hank, who had been standing beside Vicki during
this conversation, interrupted then. “Tell Bob to cut
it short. The steaks we ordered should be on the
table by now.”
For the next ten hours, as Vicki wrote her mother
that night, she felt as though her eyes were clamped
to a kaleidoscope of flowered-laden floats, pa-u
riders, conch shell blowers, hula dancers, and
warriors in feathered capes and helmets. After a
delicious lunch she bought them all presents in the
arcade shops of the beautiful hotel: a humorous
cookbook for her father which was attractively
wrapped with a can of poi, guaranteed to be mixed
to “finger consistency”; for her mother, a set of jars
containing toasted coconut chips, guava jelly, and all
sorts of exotic-tasting jams; and for Ginny, a grass
skirt.
In the evening they watched the lantern parade
from the hills, and later the hula festival by
moonlight.
“I’m completely bewitched, Mother,” Vicki
scribbled sleepily before tumbling into bed. “If only
I could transport all of you and The Castle to the top
of the Pali, I’d never, never leave this wonderful
place. The Kanes, although terribly busy with Aloha
Week school festivities, are the most hospitable
76

people I ever knew. And their friend, young Dr.
Hank Hoyt, is making sure that I see everything that
should be seen. Tomorrow he’ll be tied up at his
clinic all day, and if Helen has no special plans for
me, I’m going exploring alone. I’ll probably get lost,
but not for long, because everyone is so friendly out
here. . . .”
Vicki sealed the envelope, thinking, everyone?
No, if her reasoning was correct some evil person or
persons were putting Gregory Millet through the
worst kind of mental torture.
She asked herself, “If you were the kidnaped
girl’s father, what would you do after her abductors
ordered you to call off the police?”
She finally came to the conclusion that Mr.
Millet, his hands tied, would wait in an agony of
suspense for further negotiations. The kidnapers, in
turn, would wait until they were absolutely sure that
he had obeyed their orders. Contacting him too soon
might mean walking into a trap. But, in the
meantime, in order to hasten matters, wouldn’t Mr.
Millet take some step to assure them that they had
nothing to fear from him or the police?
Suddenly Vicki decided to look in the personal
columns of the evening paper. People often
communicated with each other through that medium
when there was no other way.
The bungalow was silent as she tiptoed out to the
77

moonlit lanai for the newspaper. Back in bed she
quickly turned the pages until she found the
Personals. Then she read each one carefully, hoping
to find a clue:
BE A DETECTIVE! Send for our handcuffs,
fingerprinting outfit, magnifying glass and
decoder, all in one vest-pocket size kit. Only 50¢
Box 634D.
BORED BUT SHY MISS would like a pen pal.
Box 630B.
HOPING FOR A HONEYMOON? Send for our
booklet “How To Be Lovely in Five Easy
Lessons.” Plain wrapper. Box 720A.
STRAYED: Adored puppy, mixture of cocker
spaniel, dachshund and fox terrier. Answers to
names, Pal, Bud, Spot, and Honey. O. W. Jones,
Black Point Road.
Vicki smiled, thinking of Freckles, the Barrs’
lovable little spaniel. And then she sobered as her
eyes traveled on to the next personal:
LOST: A PRICELESS JADE RING in the John
Rogers Airport Terminal, Monday afternoon
between six and six-fifteen. WILL PAY ANY
REWARD stipulated. NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Please
communicate IMMEDIATELY with DESPERATE. Box
78

843D.
Vicki’s hands were shaking with excitement as
she read the notice through again. The very wording
of it indicated that the “ring” had not been lost, but
stolen. And the first radio announcement last night
had said that the Walu heiress was wearing a jade
ring when she disappeared!
Vicki was convinced now that she had been right
in the first place. Frances Millet had been kidnaped.
Her father was desperately trying to assure her
abductors that it was safe for them to contact him
and that he would pay any price for her return.
“No questions asked” meant that he had probably
not even dared to put private detectives on his
daughter’s trail. And that trail began at the airport
terminal. It was there that the heiress had last been
seen. And it was there, shortly after her
disappearance, that Vicki had found the broken lei.
Now she was surer than ever that the little toxic
buds were in some way connected with the
kidnaping.
Wearily she climbed into bed, thinking:
“I’m glad Hank can’t take me sight-seeing
tomorrow, and I hope Helen has nothing planned
Because first thing in the morning I want to go to the
airport and try to find out what happened just before
I found the fountain lily lei.”
79

CHAPTER VI

The Taxi Driver’s Story
Vicki was so tired that when the myna screamed
through her window she buried her face in the
pillow and went right back to sleep. Much later, she
opened her eyes to find Helen shaking her.
“Wake up, time for a swim,” her hostess said
cheerfully. “Bob’s already gone, and it’s high tide
and high time you tried our beach.”
Helen, looking like a modernized hula dancer in
her two-piece flowered swim suit, handed Vicki a
tall glass of chilled pineapple juice. Perched on the
hikie, she crossed her tanned legs and chattered on
until Vicki was fully awake.
“Today is Wednesday, and it’s International Day.
There’ll be big doings in all the schools. But by the
time you’ve had a swim and breakfast, the pageant
of Hawaiian village life will be starting in the park,
and you must see that. There’ll be grass huts galore,
and the kids look adorable in their little copies of
original Hawaiian costumes. After that, we can take
a stroll along Maunakea Street so you can see the lei
80

makers at work. Then lunch at either the Moana or
Alexander Young Hotel, and from then on, you’re
on your own until suppertime. I’ll be helping out
Bob at the school this afternoon.”
Vicki had planned on going to the airport
immediately after breakfast, but she did not want to
upset Helen’s plans. Her visit to the airport would
have to be postponed until after lunch.
She slipped into her bright blue bathing suit and
followed her hostess out to the beach. Helen had
already plunged into the green water and was diving
into the shallow surf. Vicki hesitated long enough to
tug a cap over her pale blond curls, and then she was
in too. They swam and dived and floated for about
half an hour, and then raced back to the bungalow to
change and prepare breakfast.
“I imagine you’ll want to spend the afternoon
wandering through the Waikiki shops,” Helen said,
squeezing lime juice on ripe papaya slices. “You
must visit Gump’s jade room, and see all the
beautiful things they have on display. That’s the
stucco building with the Chinese-style blue tile
roof.”
“I could only afford to do window shopping
there,” Vicki said, spreading mulberry and pineapple
preserves on thick slices of toast. “I do want to buy
some inexpensive souvenirs for the girls who share
the apartment in New York with me. That’ll take
81

most of the afternoon.”
Vicki felt a little guilty when she said this, but
somehow she didn’t want to tell Helen that she
planned a visit to the airport too. The Kanes, she felt
quite sure, were as convinced as Hank was that the
Millet heiress had never been kidnaped.
But Vicki could not dismiss the fountain lily lei
from her mind, especially since she had found a
fragment of it on the Walus’ lanai steps. Vicki knew
that, contrary to what Hank thought, Mrs. Walu had
not dropped the strand at the airport on Monday
morning, for when Vicki found it that evening, the
flowers had been as fresh as though they had just
been removed from a lei-maker’s pan of water.
All morning and all through lunch she kept
asking herself questions. Who had known that the
Walus had a fountain lily shrub? Who had known of
the toxic fluid in the bulb-shaped buds? Who had
fashioned them into a lei? For picking them among
all the riotous blooms in that hillside garden, Vicki
was sure, had not been an accident. Therefore, the
lei had been made for the purpose of temporarily
anesthetizing someone, and that someone might well
be the Millet heiress, who had disappeared from the
terminal a short while before Vicki’s arrival.
“Victoria Barr,” Helen’s sweet voice broke into
Vicki’s thoughts. “You haven’t listened to a word
I’ve been saying.” She added teasingly, “I do
82

believe you’ve fallen in love with Hank Hoyt. And,
oh, I hope so because he’s crazy about you.”
Vicki blushed. “He’s terribly nice, but to be
perfectly honest I wasn’t thinking about him at all.”
Hastily she changed the subject, reading from her
menu, “What on earth is a soursop mousse? It
sounds dreadful.”
“It’s delicious,” Helen assured her. “It’s made
just like any other mousse, except that it’s flavored
with the juice of a large, heart-shaped tropical fruit.
But although it’s on the menu, it’s out of season
now, so you’d better order guava ice cream instead.”
After dessert, Helen left her in front of the hotel
and Vicki spent an hour wandering through the
shops. It was hard to decide between the carved
wooden bowls, the attractive table mats, and the
dainty costume jewelry, but she had no trouble at all
making up her mind that Mrs. Duff should have a
particularly gaudy Aloha shirt.
“She can wear it as a smock,” Vicki thought with
an inward giggle, mentally picturing how their rolypoly housekeeper would look when she opened her
present.
And then she hailed a cab to take her to the
airport. The terminal was as crowded as it had been
the evening of her arrival, but now you could hardly
tell visitors from residents, for everyone was
wearing leis in celebration of Aloha Week. For a
83

moment Vicki was bewildered. It was hard to know
where to begin. Who, in all that milling throng,
might have noticed Frances Millet on Monday
evening—or, for that matter, any young woman who
had suddenly become faint and dizzy? Vicki herself
had been momentarily sickened by the heavy
fragrance of the tropical flowers, and no one had
paid any attention to her, standing alone by that tall
pillar until Hank had come.
Suppose the brunette heiress had been standing in
the same place when her father was called away to
the telephone. Suppose someone had tossed a toxic
lei over her head, and, at the same time, squirted
some of the fountain lily fluid into her face. As she
began to lose consciousness, she would have
instinctively snatched the flowers away from her,
perhaps breaking off a strand. After that, gasping for
a breath of fresh air, she might have allowed her
kidnaper to lead her out of the terminal, not realizing
that she was playing into his hands.
But, Vicki argued with herself, the effect of the
fluid would have worn off in a very few minutes,
and the high-spirited young heiress, although weak
and dizzy, would have grasped the situation and
screamed for help.
Why hadn’t she screamed?
Slowly Vicki walked out of the terminal,
pretending she was Frances Millet. She timed
84

herself and discovered that she was approaching the
space reserved for taxicabs when the drug would be
losing its potency. And people were everywhere,
getting in and out of cabs, hurrying to and from the
terminal and the space reserved for private cars.
But why hadn’t Frances Millet struggled and
screamed for help?
Suddenly Vicki guessed the answer to the riddle.
The young heiress had no reason to scream because
she knew her abductor, thought he—or she, was a
friend!
So, her ears ringing dizzily, nausea flooding over
her as consciousness began to come back, she had
gratefully allowed him to help her into his car. He
probably led her to the car saying that she could rest
there with the windows open while he went for her
father. Once she was inside it would be a simple
matter to gag and bind her and then drive off to
wherever she was now being kept a prisoner.
If her reasoning were correct, the abduction had
been carefully planned by someone who knew
Frances Millet and who also knew that the fountain
lily buds contained a toxic fluid. That narrowed the
list of possibilities considerably, for even Helen and
Bob Kane, who had studied and read so much about
the islands, had never even heard of the rare shrub.
Therefore, it seemed more than likely that whoever
had fashioned the fountain lily lei for the purpose of
85

kidnaping Frances Millet was a native-born
Waluian.
Kali!
Vicki shrugged away the thought. The Waluians
were known to be simple, peace-loving people, so
Kali had no motive.
An incredibly beautiful rainbow arched across the
sky, and Vicki stared up at it thoughtfully. Men will
commit all sorts of rash and criminal acts for a pot
of gold! Perhaps Kali, feeling that civilization in the
form of the Millet Company had ruined his island,
made up his mind to leave. He and his young son
would undoubtedly need money for a new start in
life. Kidnaping the Walu heiress and demanding
ransom for her return might seem to him a fair
bargain, since it was indirectly Mr. Millet who had
changed Walu. And Kali could have rented a car for
the purpose.
If he were the kidnaper, then a lot of other things
made sense. It explained why he had not made
himself known to the people in Loi’s village. It
explained his and Lois mysterious disappearance,
and how the fragment of the broken lei got from the
airport to the Walus’ lanai steps!
For, Vicki realized with growing excitement, that
isolated mountain home was probably the most ideal
hide-out on the whole island. The whole setup was
made to order, complete with the note on the door
86

saying that the Walus would be away until Friday
morning. That gave Kali four days in which to
collect the ransom money.
Suddenly Vicki felt deflated. She and Hank had
searched every nook and cranny of the Walus’ home
the day before, and there had been no sign of a
gagged and bound heiress. They could not have been
seen approaching the home from the round-theisland road, not through the heavy foliage of the
trees that lined the private driveway. Therefore, Kali
would not have had time to drag his prisoner out the
back door to the woods before Hank himself arrived
there and found the note.
Vicki sighed. It was all as disappointing as
though a television set had suddenly broken down at
the most thrilling moment in a play.
“That’s what you get,” she scolded herself, “for
letting your imagination run away with you. Hank
has told you over and over again that money means
nothing to the Waluians. Therefore, none of them,
including Kali, had any motive for kidnaping
Frances Millet.”
Vicki decided that a cup of tea in the lounge of
the Airways Hotel might revive her spirits.
Furthermore she was hungry, for lunch had been
more of an experiment than a meal. Helen had
recommended a series of exotic-tasting snacks, all of
which had been delicious but not really filling. And
87

Vicki knew that supper would be served late that
evening because the Kanes had invited several
friends in for a supper in her honor.
As she sipped the fragrant tea and munched toast
thickly coated with papaya and ginger marmalade,
Vicki began to wonder who had knocked down the
screen in the Walus’ living room as she and Hank
had come in from the lanai. Hank had airily
dismissed the person as a neighbor, but the Walus,
from choice, had no neighbors. And the custom of
borrowing in the absence of a homeowner did not
apply to Oahuans.
Then she remembered that Bob had started a
police investigation of Loi’s and Kali’s
disappearance. Perhaps detectives had already found
out who the Walus’ mysterious visitor was.
“I’ll call Bob right now,” she decided, “and ask
him if he’s heard any news.”
He had told her jokingly the evening before that
he would be working in the school auditorium all
afternoon and that she could easily reach him by
phone if she got lost.
Bob answered the phone himself and in answer to
Vicki’s question said, “You must be psychic. I just
talked to Detective Ryan who said they have
dropped the case. Like you, he followed Loi’s trail
to the note on the Walus’ back door. So far as the
Oahu police are concerned, the boy and his father
88

are somewhere together and it’s none of their
business where.”
“How can they be so sure of that?” Vicki
demanded impatiently.
“Their theory is,” Bob explained, “that Loi
camped out in the Walus’ garage until his father
came for him in answer to a letter the boy wrote. On
the floor of the garage they found a pocket knife
with the word Loi scratched on the name plate. So
the boy was there, and since he isn’t any more,
Detective Ryan feels that he left with his father.”
“Then why didn’t they go right back to Walu?”
Vicki argued.
“The whys of this world don’t concern the
police,” Bob told her. “The fact that Kali did leave
Walu at about the same time that Loi disappeared
convinces Detective Ryan that the two are together.”
He chuckled. “So that’s that, Vic. Forget about the
whole thing, won’t you?”
Vicki said good-bye, but she knew she couldn’t
forget any part of it. She agreed with the police that
Kali and Loi were probably together. And the
discovery of Loi’s pocketknife in the Walus’ garage
gave her good reason to believe that it was one of
them who had knocked down the screen in the living
room the day before.
“They were camping out all right,” she told
herself, “but not entirely in the garage. Someone
89

was cooking in that house on the hill just before
Hank and I arrived. If it was Kali or his son, why did
he sneak out the back door when we came in the
front? According to Waluian custom they were
doing no wrong.”
Vicki sighed. Finding the pocketknife really
proved nothing after all. Loi could have dropped it
months ago without realizing it. He might have lost
it the day he asked the Walus’ permission to play
down on their beach.
Then who had been “borrowing” in the Walus’
absence?
“I’d like to know more about the customs on that
fascinating island,” Vicki thought. “And more about
the fountain lily shrub.”
If only the Walus had not picked her vacation
week for a visit on Maui! Hank would be busy in his
clinic when they returned on Friday, but he had
promised to take her to call on them on his next day
off, Saturday.
“I can’t wait till then,” Vicki moaned impatiently.
“No one will object if I take a cab there now and
search around the grounds for a clue to the identity
of their mysterious visitor.”
After all, it might have been Kali or Loi, avoiding
them for reasons of their own. But then again, it
might have been the person who had woven fountain
lily buds through a ginger lei for the purpose of
90

kidnaping the Millet heiress.
Outside at the taxi stand Vicki hailed a cab.
“I want to go to a home on the other side of the
Nuuanu Pali,” she said. “I don’t know the address,
but it’s on a hill above a sugar plantation village,
and it’s not far from the round-the-island road. It’s
owned by an old Hawaiian couple named Walu.”
The driver, who looked and talked as though he
had been battling the traffic on New York’s
Broadway not too long ago, shook his head.
“Not me,” he said emphatically. “If you don’t
know the address, lady, I can’t help you. Those
dead-end roads are treacherous to back out of, and
you can get lost as easy as falling off a cliff.” He
grinned at his own humor and waved her away.
The next driver Vicki hailed was even more
emphatic in his refusal, but she had better luck with
the third one. He, too, looked as though he belonged
on Manhattan instead of this tropical island. He
stared at her curiously and said:
“You don’t mean that white house that climbs up
the side of a hill with moneypod trees growin’ all
along the driveway?”
Vicki nodded excitedly. “That’s the one,” she
said hastily, getting in before he had a chance to say
he wouldn’t take her there. “You know the way,
don’t you?”
“I ought to,” he said, shifting into gear. “Took a
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young lady and her old man’s chauffeur out there on
Monday evening.”
Vicki jumped. “Was the chauffeur a Hawaiian?”
she asked, grateful that she had been lucky enough
to run across a man who not only looked like a
typical New York taxi driver but was apparently as
garrulous as most of them were.
“Uh-huh,” he said, fully living up to Vicki’s
expectations. “The Hawaiian chauffeur says to me
that the car broke down at the airport, so he left it in
a garage. But when the young lady got off the plane
she didn’t feel so good, touch of airsickness, I guess.
Kept hangin’ on to his arm, moanin’ ‘Take me home
to Daddy. Take me home, please.’ So the chauffeur,
he decided not to wait for the car to get fixed, and
hailed me. It’s a funny thing,” he went on
conversationally, “when I went off duty that night
and heard about the Millet girl gettin’ snatched, I
says to myself, ‘Joe, that dame wasn’t airsick. She
was doped. There wasn’t no luggage, remember?’
So I goes right to the nearest police station and tells
my story.” He stopped for an intersection light and
turned around to face Vicki who was sitting on the
edge of her seat.
“And you know what?” he demanded sourly.
“They laughed in my face and told me to go peddle
my papers. Because, you see, by that time everyone
knew there hadn’t been no kidnapin’.” He turned
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back to the wheel, shrugging. “It just proves to go,
as I always say, mind your own business and you’ll
stay out of trouble. That girl was so plain airsick she
forgot all about her luggage. But the police had no
business laughin’ at me, because I’ll tell you right
now, she answered the description of that Millet
dame all right. And how was I to know for sure she
hadn’t been doped?”
“You couldn’t know,” Vicki said sympathetically,
and let out her pent-up breath in a long sigh.
So the airsick girl answered the description of the
Millet heiress!
She bit her lip to keep from blurting, “Was she
tall and very sun-tanned with long black hair, and
was she wearing a lemon-colored suit and white
sandals? Had she a jade ring on her finger?”
But that would never do. If this talkative man
suspected, as Vicki did, that the airsick girl really
was the Millet heiress, he would never stop talking
about it. One of his passengers might be a
newspaper reporter who had already seen the
Personal notice. Putting two and two together he
would soon realize that he had a front-page story.
And then Frances Millet’s life would be in
danger. At best, her kidnaper would indefinitely
delay further negotiations, thus putting her father
through more mental torture. The wise thing to do
was to encourage the driver to tell the story in his
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own way.
She settled back in her seat and said casually, “I
think you were perfectly right to report your
suspicions to the police. The chauffeur might have
been a kidnaper. Although since she went with him
willingly—”
“He wasn’t wearin’ no uniform,” the driver
interrupted in an aggrieved tone of voice. “But then,
it bein’ the beginnin’ of Aloha Week, it’d be okay
for him to drive around in one of them gosh-awful
shirts and up to his ears in leis.”
“Uh-huh,” Vicki said, thinking hard. A native
disguised as a lei vendor and pretending to be the
Millet chauffeur had taken the heiress from the
airport to the Walus’ in this very cab. And she
obviously knew him well enough to cling to his arm,
moaning, “Take me home to Daddy.”
Therefore, it seemed more than likely that her
kidnaper was a Waluian, the same one who had
woven toxic fountain lily buds through a ginger lei.
This reasoning brought Vicki right back to Kali
who had mysteriously disappeared a few days before
the kidnaping. But now she wasn’t sure of his
motive.
If he had simply wanted enough money for a new
start in life, and felt that the heiress’s father was
indirectly responsible for his leaving Walu, why
hadn’t he snatched her handbag? Or, for that matter,
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stolen something from The Citadel or the Millet
Company offices before he left the island?
But even that reasoning didn’t hold up. The
pineapple king was a kindly patriarch who would
surely have given Kali a letter of recommendation
and sufficient money to keep him going until he got
employment elsewhere.
Suddenly Vicki had another idea. If the
kidnaper’s motive wasn’t greed, it might have been
revenge. Somehow, without realizing it, Greg Millet
must have wronged a simple Waluian and aroused
his hatred. And the clue must lie in the history of
Walu, its legends and lore.
That, she decided, meant a visit to the public
library. She glanced at her wrist watch and saw to
her disappointment that it was too late to do any
research that day. In a couple of hours guests would
be arriving at the Kanes, and she should be dressed
and ready to be introduced to them.
But Vicki didn’t want to dismiss the cab until she
had encouraged the driver to give her a more
complete description of his airsick passenger. There
was a remote possibility that he had driven a slim,
young brunette, who resembled Frances Millet,
across the Pali to another white house on a hill.
So why not continue on to the Walus’, listening
to his chatter en route? With luck she might even
catch a glimpse of their mysterious visitor.
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CHAPTER VII

Hawaiian Feast

The taxi driver decided for her, stopping in the heart
of Honolulu to gaze back at her suspiciously.
“Say, lady,” he said, “this jaunt across the island
is going to run into money. Sure you got enough on
you?”
“Oh, my goodness,” Vicki gasped. “I never
thought about that. Oahu is twenty-six miles wide,
isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said sourly, “and to get where you’re
goin’ means a lot of climbin’ and twistin’ and
turnin’, all of which runs up the meter. I figured you
for a tourist who didn’t know no better, but not a
rich one.”
Vicki smiled at him sweetly. “I’m awfully sorry.
I’ll have to make the trip some other time with the
people I’m visiting. You’d better take me back to
Waikiki now.” She gave him the Kanes’ address and
said in a subtly flattering tone of voice:
“You’re very observant. How did you know I
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wasn’t a rich tourist?”
“Simple.” He turned the cab around and went on
conversationally, “Now, that airsick dame, she was
rich. You can always tell. That is, if you’ve been
hackin’ as long as I have.”
“Well,” Vicki pointed out, “the fact that a
chauffeur met her at the airport indicated that she
wasn’t exactly poor.”
“Sure, sure,” he said, grinning over one shoulder.
“But sick as she was, hangin’ on to the Hawaiian’s
arm to keep from fallin’, you could tell. Now, I’ll
bet that plain little yellow suit she was wearin’ cost
twice as much as the dress you got on.”
“I’ll bet it did,” Vicki thought with a chuckle.
“And you got a different look from her,” he went
on. “Little and pretty as you are, I’d say you could
take care of yourself, that you work for a livin’.”
“I do,” Vicki told him with a laugh. “I’m a flight
stewardess.”
He nodded approvingly. “See what I mean? Now
that other one, she was pretty too, but the hardest
work she ever did was lie in the sun and get a nice,
smooth tan. Say,” he interrupted himself, “what am I
tellin’ you all this for? You must know the dame
better than I do.”
“No, I don’t,” Vicki assured him. “But I hope to
meet her sometime very soon.” She added to herself,
“As soon as possible.”
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“Well, well,” he said, completely friendly now,
“I’m sorry I couldn’t take you to her house today.
And if your friends can’t take you, give me a ring on
Friday. That’s my day off, and I got a little car of
my own. I won’t charge you half as much as I’d
have to when I’m workin’ for the company.”
He stopped in front of the Kanes’ bungalow and
handed her a cheap, printed card. Vicki read his
name before she paid her fare and said, “Thank you,
Mr. Brown. I may call you Friday.”
“Just ask for Joe,” he said, accepting her tip with
a broad grin. “It’ll be a pleasure to accommodate a
nice young lady like you.”
Vicki waved good-bye, thinking that she might
have to call him Friday, unless she could convince
Helen that the Millet heiress really was kidnaped.
Then she hurried across the patio, hoping she would
have time for a long talk with her hostess before the
guests arrived.
Helen, looking flushed and worried, was busy in
the kitchen. “Thank goodness you got home early,”
she wailed. “Sue just telephoned that she has to take
the place of a sick usherette at the school pageant
tonight, so she can’t help with supper.”
“Oh, we can get along without her,” Vicki said
cheerfully. “Want me to make canapés? I’m pretty
good at that, due to my father’s instructions.”
“Wonderful,” Helen cried, pushing a knife and a
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wooden board across the worktable to Vicki.
“Cheese in the refrigerator and tons of canned stuff
on the shelf over your head. I’ll fix the fish in ti
leaves myself. Can you reach the rock salt? And
while you’re in the refrigerator, please hand me the
bacon and some lemons. Oh, dear, thank goodness
Bob will broil steaks on the charcoal burner out on
the lanai while you and I relax. Why did that
usherette have to go and get sick?”
She spread the first section of the morning
newspaper on the drainboard and began cleaning
little silver-scaled fish. Vicki picked up the back
pages and turned quickly to the Personals. There it
was again, this time at the top of the column. Lost:
A Priceless Jade Ring.
“Helen,” Vicki said soberly, “I’m absolutely
positive now that Frances Millet really was
kidnaped.”
“Now, darling,” Helen said soothingly, “I’m too
busy to listen to the ravings of a lunatic.” She smiled
over one shoulder, then suddenly frowned. “Why,
something’s happened. You are sure. Tell me all
about it, Vic.”
For answer, Vicki handed her the Personal Page.
Helen read the notice quickly. “So what?
Everybody on this island who can afford one has a
jade ring.”
Vicki patiently went on slicing cheese. Slowly
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she repeated her conversation with Joe Brown as
nearly as she could remember it. When she had
finished, Helen sat down opposite her, resting her
elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her hands.
After a while she said thoughtfully, “It could have
been Frances Millet, and then again, it could have
been another tanned girl wearing a lemon-colored
suit. Anyway,” she went on, rubbing rock salt into
the fish, “I think you’d better leave the whole
business to the police.”
Vicki sighed. “Don’t you see, Helen, the police
don’t enter the picture at all? Mr. Millet wouldn’t
dare get help from them for fear his daughter’s
kidnaper might do something awful to her in
revenge.” She stopped, the knife in mid-air and
added, “Speaking of revenge, Helen, have you any
idea what Mr. Millet might have innocently done to
make Kali hate him? I mean, could he have violated
some ancient Waluian law without realizing it?”
Helen giggled. “Put down that knife. You frighten
me, you and your talk of revenge. No, from what
I’ve heard about Mr. Millet, he’s the type of man
who would have made it his business to find out all
the ancient taboos and then he would have seen to it
that they were not disobeyed.”
Vicki watched her cover the fish with lemon
slices and bacon strips before wrapping them in ti
leaves. There was no sense, she decided, in trying to
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get information about Walu from the Kanes or from
Hank. They would only laugh at her if she argued
that Frances Millet might have been kidnaped by
Kali. But tomorrow she would read every book in
the library that even mentioned the tiny Pacific isle.
Abruptly she changed the subject. “I didn’t know
ti leaves were edible. I thought old-time Hawaiians
made hula skirts out of them.”
“That’s right,” Helen said, tying the fish together
with the fibrous parts of the leaves. “But they’re also
used for baking, just as you might use cornhusks or
parchment paper. The hula, you know, is the
Polynesian way of expressing thanks for all of
nature’s bounty. Each graceful movement is a line of
poetry and every dance a poem. You’ll see some of
the simpler ones this evening,” she chattered gaily.
“A group of us teachers’ wives have been taking
lessons.”
“Show me some of the steps now and what they
mean,” Vicki begged.
Laughing, Helen began to move her arms and
fingers above the table. “I’m telling you about my
little grass hut,” she told Vicki, “and this means the
men came back with their canoes filled with fish.”
Just then Bob came in and hooted with laughter.
“Never attempt a hula without a hula skirt,” he
scolded his wife. “I saw you from the patio and
thought you were trying to catch a mosquito.”
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Helen pretended to pout. “Just wait until we gals
give you a demonstration tonight. You men had
better dust off your ukuleles. We’ll want expert
renditions of ‘Little Brown Girl’ and ‘Lovely Hula
Hands.’ ”
Bob blew her a kiss and sang, “ ‘To you,
sweetheart, aloha.’ I’m off to buy some records. We
men haven’t had a chance to touch our ukes since
preparations for Aloha Week began.”
“Don’t you dare leave this house,” Helen
shrieked. “Sue didn’t show up and Vicki and I have
a thousand things to do before we can shower and
dress. You’ll have to greet early arrivals.”
Bob threw up his hands in mock dismay. “Okay,
okay, but let me take a dip and change into clean
clothes first.”
“And after that,” Helen said briskly, “you can
open ice cubes for the punch. Thank goodness I had
the presence of mind to squeeze a lot of oranges and
lemons early this morning. But we’ll have to use
canned pineapple slices. I simply haven’t time to
work on the fresh ones.”
“Never,” Bob said dramatically, “never let it be
said that the Kanes served canned fruit to their
guests. Furthermore, have you forgotten that your
husband is an expert? I can decapitate, peel, slice,
and core a dozen pineapples in the time it takes you
and Vicki to make up your faces.”
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“All right, genius,” Helen said, popping a pan of
fish into the oven. “And don’t forget to chop some
mint leaves and make some sugar syrup.”
Vicki decorated her last canapé with a pimento
curl. “Better let me make the syrup,” she offered,
“so it’ll have time to cool.”
“Swell,” Helen agreed. “You do that while I give
the lanai a lick and a promise.”
Somehow, without hurrying too much, they were
all three bathed and dressed by the time the first
guest arrived. It was Hank, laden with exquisite leis
for Vicki and Helen.
“Silly,” Helen scolded him. “There’re enough in
this box for every one of my female guests.”
“But what a lovely idea,” Vicki said quickly,
afraid that Helen might have hurt Hank’s feelings.
“Why not greet each one with a lei and a kiss as she
comes in the door—the way the hula dancers
welcome arrivals at the airport.”
Helen clapped her hands with delight. “How
clever of you, Vicki.”
Hank grinned. “As I keep on saying, she’s
learning our island customs fast, very fast.”
“Soon I won’t be able to keep up with her,” Helen
said with a giggle. She tucked her arm affectionately
through Vicki’s. “You know what, Hank? A while
ago she almost had me convinced that your friends,
the Walus, had kidnaped Frances Millet.”
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Vicki joined in the laughter at her own expense.
She knew that Helen, like most impulsive people
who talk before they think, had not meant to make
her the butt of a joke. But still it was hard to keep on
smiling after Bob and Hank continued the teasing.
“Pupule,” Bob said to Hank. “Completely nuts.
What is your diagnosis, Dr. Hoyt?”
Hank tapped his chin in his most professional
manner. “I agree with you, Dr. Kane. A strait jacket
is the only remedy.” He looped a lei around Vicki’s
wrists and led her through the house to the lanai.
Bob and Helen trooped after them, laughing merrily.
“There’s nothing like the night air,” he told them.
“Or a ducking in the ocean. Name your own
medicine,” he said to Vicki.
For answer she tossed the long end of the lei
around his own neck and twisted it lightly.
“Strangling,” she said grimly, “is too good for a fake
kahuna like you.”
And for a moment, as her temper flared, she
almost meant it. Then Bob and Helen hurried away
as new arrivals shouted from the patio on the other
side of the bungalow. Hank stared down at her in
surprise. “Why, Vicki,” he said unbelievingly,
“you’re mad. Really mad.” He corrected himself
hastily, stumbling over his words. “I don’t mean
insane, I mean angry. I’m terribly sorry. We were
only kidding. Honest, no one pays any attention to
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what Helen says when she babbles. We all know
you don’t suspect people who weren’t here when
someone was kidnaped of kidnaping someone who
wasn’t kidnaped.” He wiped his forehead with his
handkerchief. “What I mean is, what I’m trying to
say is—”
Vicki interrupted with a peal of laughter, her
good humor completely restored. “Stop it, Hank,”
she begged. “I know you know I know the Walus
never kidnaped anybody. Oh, dear,” she gasped.
“Now I’m doing it. Let’s start all over again.”
“Let’s don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “Let’s
try and revive ourselves with some punch.” He
ladled the fruit juice into the scooped-out baby
pineapples Bob had found time to prepare for the
occasion, and said:
“You’ve obviously gone to my head in more
ways than one, Victoria Barr. Would that I had the
same effect on you. Any chance of it with a
generous dose of moonlight thrown in?”
Before Vicki could reply, they were surrounded
by the other guests, most of them young American
men and women who had spent all of their lives in
Honolulu. And each couple brought a contribution
to the luau. When Vicki’s canapés swiftly
disappeared, Ruth Larsone produced a platter of
delicious appetizers made from dried octopus. Sally
Davis passed a bowl of lomilomi, salted salmon and
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fresh tomatoes. When Bob’s sizzling steaks were
ready, Rachel Hayle appeared from the kitchen with
a wooden bowl of avocado salad, followed by her
sister proudly bearing a crystal dish of homemade
mango chutney. After that, Kay Borden dashed off
to her own refrigerator for a delicious dessert of
banana ice cream.
“I know now what a luau is,” Vicki said with a
contented sigh. “A feast to end all feasts. If I lived
out here very long I’d need a bed the size of the one
in the Iolani Palace.”
Plump Kay Borden giggled. “It’s why I love
carnival weeks. Nothing is more flattering to a
figure like mine than a holoku. Wish I could get by
with wearing one all the time.”
“Me too,” Helen agreed. “It’s ghastly having a
guest like Vicki who eats like a horse and stays as
tiny as a Menehune.”
“Just who were the Menehunes?” Vicki asked
curiously. “Gremlins, leprechauns, or just plain
hobgoblins?”
“Sort of a combination of them all,” Ted Hayle
replied. “A race of dwarfs, actually, who were here
even before the Polynesians arrived in their ancient
canoes bringing with them their livestock and
vegetables. According to the legend, the irrigation
ditches over on Kauai were built by the Menehunes.
And I must say, scientist that I am, the stone
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craftsmanship, which the Hawaiians never mastered,
is impressive.”
“Another interesting item about Kauai, the
Garden Isle,” Rachel put in, “is the strange barking
noise the sand makes when you walk on it.”
“That,” her husband told Vicki with a smile, “can
be explained by elementary science. A thin film of
condensed gases—”
“Stop it,” Helen interrupted. “Save it for your
pupils, Ted. Vicki is more interested in the lore of
the islands than hearing your weighty explanation of
the Barking Sands.”
“I’m interested in hearing about everything,”
Vicki said quickly, hoping the conversation might
switch to the tiny island of Walu. “Especially the
ancient taboos. Are any of the islands still governed
by them?”
“I know what you’re thinking about,” Dick Davis
said. “That silly Stateside legend that if a native ever
leaves Niihua he is not allowed to return.”
Vicki pricked up her ears. Did the same rule
perhaps apply to the Waluians? Was that the answer
to the curt, scribbled words from the Millet
Pineapple Company concerning Kali:
“No longer employed by us.”
Dick was pacing up and down, frowning. “There
isn’t a word of truth in it, of course, but every hack
writer who spends a week on Waikiki goes home to
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keep the yarn alive in print. My theory is that it all
started because the family that has owned Niihua
since the time it was deeded to them by the king
doesn’t encourage visitors. And can you blame
them? Would you want tourists picnicking on your
estate all the year round?”
Vicki, thinking of the restful privacy and her pet
sanctuaries on The Castle grounds, shook her head.
“Is there something particularly interesting about
Niihua that makes visitors want to go there?” she
asked.
“Certainly,” Dick said. “It’s been carefully
preserved as a capsule of old Hawaii as it was
shortly after the missionaries came. There are fullblooded natives there, as devout as the missionaries
hoped to make the other Hawaiians, and failed. They
live happily, exactly as they please, caring for the
stock and produce of the island. If they want to leave
and come back, they can, but they rarely do, because
it is to them a little paradise. Naturally” he went on,
“there are a few simple laws which must be obeyed
for the good of all. For instance, smoking is taboo in
certain areas during work hours. The reason for that
is that the water supply is not adequate to control a
fire of any size. If a native wants a cigarette, he
simply goes to a spot where it isn’t taboo.”
Vicki stared out at the moon-silvered water. Did
she dare risk more teasing by suggesting that life on
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Niihua sounded a lot like that on Walu?
As though reading her mind, Hank said, “Frankly,
the Stateside criticism of the family that owns
Niihua burns me up. My friends, who owned Walu
until Greg Millet bought it, would have been just as
unfairly libeled if their island hadn’t been so much
farther from Honolulu.”
“I know,” Dick said soberly. “It’s a shame they
had to sell it. What was behind that deal, anyway
Politics?”
“I don’t really know,” Hank admitted. “Although
we’re very close friends, the Walus won’t discuss it
with me. I can only guess that they, who are as
educated and informed as the royal family of
England, felt that their people should have all the
advantages civilization has to offer. They simply
didn’t have the money to do what Greg Millet has
done.”
Bob, who had been busy in the kitchen brewing
more coffee, joined in the conversation then. “I
understand,” he said as Helen began to pass the
demitasse, “that the Millet Company spent a small
fortune improving sanitary conditions by increasing
the water supply. Didn’t you tell me, Hank, that
besides the artesian wells, they drilled tunnels
through the mountain at enormous expense?”
“That’s right,” Hank said. “And Walu now has its
own power plant, besides an army of trucks, trailers,
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cranes and tractors, plus the most up-to-date farming
equipment.”
Dick sighed ruefully. “The March of Civilization,
and I suppose a good thing too. But the Waluians
still catch fish with spears or in nets and grow their
own taro roots for their poi, don’t they?”
“Sure,” Bob said. “And that’s what puzzles me.
One of them, the father of one of my pupils, quit
recently. I can’t imagine why.”
“Kali might have been fired,” Hank pointed out.
Dick whistled. “A Millet Company employee
fired? I don’t believe it. From what I’ve heard about
that setup, it’s a model community. Like Niihua.
Nobody has any temptation to do anything that
might lead to his being discharged.” He turned to
Bob. “And yet you say a Waluian quit recently?”
Bob nodded. “The boy, who would have entered
your class next year, Dick, disappeared at about the
same time. I notified the police who dropped the
case almost as soon as they took it up. Their theory
is that the father and son are somewhere together.”
“But why isn’t that somewhere the Island of
Walu?” Vicki put in quietly.
“My own theory,” Hank said to Bob, “is that Loi,
when he heard of his uncle’s death, went straight to
Walu. Then they both left the island together to seek
a new home untouched by civilization. There are
such islands, you know. I’ve seen them from the air.
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Too small to land on, but Kali, I imagine, has built
himself an outrigger canoe by this time.”
Bob stared thoughtfully out at the sea which the
moon was touching with silver. “I guess that’s the
real answer, Hank,” he said. Then he laughed.
“Actually, all three of the mysterious disappearances
which intrigued Vicki weren’t mysterious at all.”
Suddenly Vicki realized to her embarrassment
that she was the only woman on the lanai. And then
the others came trooping out in hula costumes.
Barefoot, they danced down on the beach, the
men strumming an accompaniment on their ukes and
guitars. It was a lovely scene, and Vicki watched,
fascinated, while Hank softly interpreted the
meanings of the different steps and graceful
movements.
“The Portuguese,” he told Vicki, “brought the
ukulele to Hawaii, and many of the steps and the
words in the songs were made up spontaneously
during a party like this.”
The dancing ended after plump Kay did a
burlesque solo which she called the “hula-rhumba.”
Vicki stood on the patio with Hank and the Kanes,
calling gay farewells to the departing guests. Then
Hank insisted upon staying to help with the tidying
up.
“I’m the best automatic silent butler you ever
saw,” he said, stacking punch glasses with one hand,
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while he nested demitasse cups with the other.
“Oh, me, oh, my,” Helen yawned, trying
unsuccessfully to tie an apron around her hula skirt.
“This is what I call paying the piper in a big way.”
“Please, honey,” Vicki begged. “Go to bed and let
me cope. You’ve been up since dawn and I slept
late.”
Hank pushed the Kanes out of the kitchen, gently
but firmly. “Scram,” he said. “What Vicki and I
can’t wash we’ll break and throw away.”
Bob and Helen stumbled sleepily away,
murmuring weak and grateful protests. Vicki
washed and Hank dried under the critical
supervision of Ricki, the pet mongoose, and the
supercilious cat.
When everything was as neat as a pin, their little
chaperones followed them suspiciously out to the
moonlit patio.
“Ignore them,” Hank said, dismissing the animals
with an airy wave of his hand, “and concentrate on
me. I want to talk to you seriously, Vicki.”
“Speak,” she said, smiling. “I’m all ears.”
He pursed his lips disapprovingly. “Only when
the topic of conversation is the island of Walu. You
may confide in me, little one. What’s the fatal
fascination?”
For a moment Vicki was tempted to tell him
about the personal and what she had learned from
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Joe Brown, the taxi driver. But just then, the popoki,
mewing boredly, scratched on the door for
admittance. Vicki let her into the house and said to
Hank over one shoulder:
“To tell you the truth, Hank, I can’t wait until
Saturday to meet your Hawaiian friends. Would it be
very bad-mannered of me if I went to call on them
myself on Friday? You see,” she said wistfully, “my
return plane reservations are for Sunday evening.
That doesn’t give me much time.”
“Don’t talk about such sad subjects as your
departure,” he said. “And of course you can call on
the Walus yourself Friday—I mean tomorrow.” He
glanced at his wristwatch. “Then Saturday I’ll have
you all to myself from brunch on.”
“Will I need a letter of introduction from you?”
Vicki asked, suddenly feeling shy at the idea of
meeting descendants of Hawaii’s nobles.
“Don’t be silly,” he hooted. “They’ll fall in love
with you at first sight. But if it’ll make you feel any
better, I can send you there in the limousine. I
inherited a Filipino chauffeur, you know, who’s the
bane of my existence. He still thinks I’m six years
old, but he could drive you to the Walus with his
eyes shut and one arm in a sling. As a matter of fact,
he and the car are at your service whenever you
want them.”
“Oh, no, thanks,” Vicki said hastily. “Arriving
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like a grande dame would be sure to make me
tongue-tied.”
He grinned down at her. “Helen should try that
remedy. My, how that gal can talk! Well, aloha until
tomorrow, I mean tonight, when I’ll be back here
making a party call. My mother brought me up very
well,” he said, his eyes twinkling, “especially when
the hostess has a house guest like you.”
Vicki smiled. “Aloha,” she said softly and slipped
into the silent house.
“What a lovely word aloha is,” she thought,
listening dreamily to the wind rustling the leaves of
the trees outside her window. “It means welcome,
hospitality, love and good-bye, all rolled into one.”

114

CHAPTER VIII

The Fountain Lily Legend

Vicki awoke the next morning when it was still
dark. She had been dreaming that Mr. Walu was a
giant Hawaiian in a gold feathered cape. Instead of
greeting her with the traditional word, aloha, he had
held his hands stiffly out in front of him, intoning,
“Kapu. Keep Out. He who crosses this threshold
may never return to the outside world.”
Vicki shivered and tried to go back to sleep. But
suddenly it was broad daylight. She listened for a
while to Bob and Helen whispering and tiptoeing so
as not to disturb her. Then the fragrant odor of fresh
coffee mingling with frying bacon permeated the
whole bungalow.
Vicki could stand it no longer. She jumped out of
bed and donned her bathing suit, determined to
spend part of the morning acquiring a tan. “At least
until the library opens,” she told her reflection in the
mirror. “My, you really are a paleface!”
Bob and Helen were already in swimming when
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she ran out to the beach, and breakfast, in covered
hot plates on the chow bench, was waiting on the
lanai.
They ate in their damp bathing suits, for it was a
warm, balmy morning. Vicki, in spite of the luau the
night before, was ravenous.
Helen stretched her rounded arms above her head
luxuriously. “Thank goodness I’m pau so far as
Aloha Week in the schools is concerned. And I’m
sure you’ve had enough of pageants and parades,
Vicki. Would you like to go on one of the tourists’
trips by boat or plane? Or just relax here on the
beach? I’ve got to make some duty calls this
afternoon. Maiden aunts I wouldn’t think of
inflicting on you, but until then I’m yours, if you
want me. For heaven’s sake, be frank. If you feel
like curling up with a good book, say so.”
“Give her a chance to answer one question at a
time,” Bob said as he kissed his wife good-bye.
“And speaking of books, Vicki, if you’re really
interested in the legends and lore, we’ve got several
good ones in the study. For all that Helen talks like a
myna, she’s really quite a student. You’ve heard, of
course, that she’s writing an exhaustive history of
Hawaii? A tome, in fact.”
“I hadn’t heard,” Vicki said when Bob had gone.
“Have you been keeping your talents under a bushel,
Helen?”
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Helen blushed. “I’m not sure I have any talent,
Vicki,” she said in an unusually serious voice. “Oh,
I write a little weekly homemakers’ column for one
of the Honolulu newspapers. I sold some short
stories before Bob and I got married, and last year a
book of mine was published out here. A short
history of the Sandwich Islands, written for kids
from eight to twelve. Recently a mainland publisher
queried me about writing one for teen-agers.”
“How wonderful!” Vicki cried in admiration.
“You can’t possibly have any doubts about having
talent now. And I’ll bet,” she added shrewdly,
“you’re dying to get to your typewriter this very
minute.”
“We-ell,” Helen began, and then finished frankly,
“that is, if you’ll be perfectly happy by yourself.”
“I’ll be more than happy,” Vicki assured her. “I’d
like to read your book and any others you have on
the subject of the islands.”
Half an hour later she was stretched out on the
sand, half in and half out of the shade of a bright
beach umbrella. She read Helen’s brief history
quickly and found it charming, but it did not even
mention the tiny island of Walu. And the only
reference she found to it in the other books was a
definition of the word, “eight, or eighth of his clan.”
“Oh, dear,” she sighed disappointedly. “Maybe I
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won’t have any better luck at the library. Walu is so
little and so far away I don’t suppose historians
thought it worthy of notice.”
When she felt she had had enough sun, Vicki
took one last dip, then went inside to change into a
printed silk frock. Helen, on the other side of the
closed study door, was busily tapping the keys of
her typewriter.
“I won’t disturb her,” Vicki decided. “I’ll leave a
note saying I’ll be back by the time she’s finished
calling on her aunts.”
Then, pinning a flaming hibiscus flower in her
blonde hair, she strolled off toward the crowded
section of Waikiki. A soft breeze blew puffy little
clouds across the blue sky, and the water was dotted
with swimmers, surf riders, and outrigger canoes.
The sun worshippers on the sand seemed to include
people of all races—Filipinos, Caucasians, Japanese
and Chinese, as well as the handsome, dark-skinned
Hawaiians. Smart shops and attractive eating places
lined both sides of the avenue, but Vicki kept
resolutely on.
She felt as though Diamond Head, looming
behind her, were frowning at the audacity of a
newcomer who dared to doubt the wisdom of such
old-timers as Hank and the Kanes. “It’s because they
are such old-timers,” Vicki told herself, “that they
can’t see what’s right under their noses. Or else
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they’ve lived in the tropics so long they’ve become
bewitched.”
Vicki simply could not understand how Bob and
Hank could so casually dismiss the mysterious
disappearance of Kali and his son. She had been
very much surprised last night when Bob had
accepted Hank’s theory that Loi, when he heard of
his uncle’s death, had gone straight to Walu.
For Vicki, although she had not entered the
discussion, was unconvinced that an eleven-year-old
boy would attempt such a trip without first seeking
advice and help; if not from his primitive neighbors,
then certainly from his schoolteacher for whom he
had apparently formed such an attachment.
Why, she argued inwardly, it would be like Ginny
starting off for the North Pole without a cent in her
pocket!
Loi, Vicki felt sure, had gone to his bamboo
shelter to hide his grief, not to his father on Walu.
She had no doubt that he had written Kali, telling
him of his uncle’s death, and then had simply waited
in his lonely cove for his father’s arrival. Kali would
naturally have come as soon as possible, by-passing
the village and going straight to his son’s hiding
place.
But then, if he no longer loved Walu now that it
had been touched by civilization, why hadn’t Kali
gone to his dead brother’s home? The natives in that
119

tiny fishing village were almost as primitive and
carefree as the original Waluians.
But Kali had avoided the village. Why?
Hank and the Kanes didn’t bother to answer that
why in their explanation of Kali and Lois
disappearance. But Vicki felt sure she knew why
Kali had not wished to be seen by his brother’s
neighbors. At that time he must already have
kidnaped the Millet heiress, or was planning to do it,
his motive revenge.
His desire for vengeance might have been based
on the fact that he had been fired for disobeying a
Millet Company law. But what seemed more likely
was that the Millet Company had antagonized him
by violating a Waluian taboo.
At the entrance to Waikiki, Vicki hailed a cab and
asked the driver to take her to the public library.
There she read until pangs of hunger told her it was
well past lunchtime. She gobbled a sandwich and
washed it down with a glass of milk in a drug store
on Punchbowl Street. Then back to the reading room
where she concentrated on the ancient Polynesian
legends.
The goddess Pele had once attended a ti-sledding
contest, disguised as an old woman. The natives,
coasting down the grassy slopes on giant ti leaves,
paid no attention to her and did not invite her to their
luau. Infuriated, the fire goddess poured molten lava
120

over them, and to this day their bodies are said to be
imprisoned beneath the Royal Slide on the Kona
Coast of the Big Island, Hawaii.
Vicki carefully read every story describing the
feats of the great fisherman Maui. But that powerful
god had apparently ignored the existence of the tiny
Island of Walu. Wearily she turned the pages until
she came to the tales describing the time when the
chain of fabulous islands was considered “a sailor’s
yarn.”
Then came fair-haired Captain Cook, whom the
Hawaiians took for their light-skinned god Lono. He
named the chain the Sandwich Islands in honor of
the English Earl of Sandwich. Walu was not shown
on the decorative map.
Vicki suddenly decided to do some research
under the subject of trees and flowers. Walu might
have been known at one time by the Hawaiian name
for the fountain lily shrub. She discovered, to her
surprise, that when the first Polynesians landed in
their canoes around A.D. 500 there were almost no
food plants. A Spaniard, Don Francisco Marin, who
came to Hawaii about the time of the American
Revolution, stayed to plant and develop most of the
flowers, shrubs, and trees for which the islands are
now famous. Captain George Vancouver and the
Scottish botanist Archibald Menzies brought
seedlings too.
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But there was no mention of a shrub with buds
containing a pain-killing fluid.
Vicki, greatly discouraged, finally consulted the
librarian.
“Walu?” the kind-faced woman asked. “Let me
see. Have you tried the Children’s Section?”
Vicki shook her head, and following directions
found herself in a large room filled with boys and
girls. The walls were covered with murals of
warriors in their feathered capes and helmets. And
there on a shelf beside Helen Kane’s book was a
slim volume entitled Tales of Tiny Isles.
In the center of the book was a dog-eared chapter
devoted to Walu!
Vicki was so excited her knees began to shake
and she sank into the nearest chair. She skimmed the
first page which covered facts she already knew:
How the island was deeded by Kamehameha the
Great to the first Chief Walu. It was then that the
name was changed from “The Resting Place of the
Little People” to Walu.
The legend explained the original name. Long,
long ago when Hawaii Loa and his people began to
take over the islands, the Menehunes retired first to
the Garden Isle, Kauai, and finally to a tiny island
far out in the Pacific. There they gradually died of
sorrow.
But when the wind and the sun tried to dry up
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their tears, they found they were powerless. The tiny
droplets clung tenaciously to the sand and rocks,
glistening like diamonds or reflecting in miniature
every rainbow that arched across the sky.
Then many years later came a great kahuna from
Kauai, who had been exiled after a quarrel with his
chief. He plowed the fertile land in the valley
between the mountain and the sea, and planted
saplings he had brought with him from the Garden
Isle. But the wind, angry with the souls of the Little
People who had refused to give her their tears, kept
the rain away from the leeward side of the mountain.
A drought descended on the valley and the tender
green shoots began to wither.
The Menehunes, sorry for the kahuna because he,
too, had been exiled, whispered softly:
“Gather our tears and use them that they may live
forever in the buds of the flowers that will grow
from the stunted stalks of your saplings.”
So every day the old sorcerer watered his plants
with the teardrops, and instead of becoming tall
trees, they grew into flowering shrubs. And in each
bulb-shaped bud was a portion of the Menehunes’
tears.
Then the sun and the wind relented and smiled
upon the island. Again the kahuna heard the voice of
the Little People:
“Tend the shrubs well, O Kahuna, and the land
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will always be fertile. But if a day should come
when there will no longer be one shrub growing on
this island, disaster will descend upon it.”
So that was the legend of the fountain lily. And
now at last Vicki could see that Kali might have a
motive for revenge! Suppose the Millet Company
had recently plowed under the last of the shrubs.
Whether it was done accidentally or on purpose,
such an act might well arouse the wrath of a
superstitious native. And Kali had good reasons for
believing in the Menehunes’ threat of disaster. There
had been two deaths in his family recently!
“I’m surprised,” Vicki thought, “that Helen never
came across this legend when she did research for
her own book. I wonder when it was published.”
She turned to the opening pages and almost
dropped the slim volume when she saw the
inscription on the flyleaf:
“To Frances on her twelfth birthday from her
loving father. Island of Walu, June fifteenth.” And it
was dated five years ago.
“ ‘Frances on her twelfth birthday,’ ” Vicki
murmured wonderingly. “Walu, five years ago. This
book must have once belonged to the seventeenyear-old Millet heiress. Her father probably bought
it in the States since it was published there, and gave
it to her about the time that he was planning to buy
the island. Then it must have been donated with
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several others during a recent collection drive. That
would explain why Helen never came across the
fountain lily legend when she was gathering material
for her own book.”
Suddenly Vicki’s eyes popped open. There was
something familiar about the sprawling handwriting
in the inscription on the flyleaf. Then she knew. It
was strikingly similar to die handwriting on the
envelope the Millet Company had returned to Bob
with the words:
“No longer employed by the Millet Company.
Present whereabouts unknown.”
Those scribbled words were indelibly printed on
her mind, the closed e’s and o’s; the m’s and n’s that
too closely resembled the w’s and u’s. It was the
penmanship of a busy, impatient man, long
accustomed to dictating even his private
correspondence.
Would such a busy man bother to return a letter
addressed to one of his native employees? Of course
not. A clerk would have handled such a trifling
matter. The pineapple king probably didn’t even
know Kali by name, and might have no idea that he
was no longer employed by the company.
And yet Vicki was almost certain that both sets of
sprawling words had been written by the same man.
To satisfy her curiosity she traced the inscription on
the flyleaf, using a single sheet of face tissue she
125

found in her handbag. Then she hurriedly left the
library, planning to compare the two sets as soon as
possible.
Helen had not yet returned when Vicki arrived at
the bungalow, so Vicki went straight through to the
lanai. The letter was still there under the huge conch
shell on the rattan table. The next step was to match
up words or similar groups of letters in the two
samples. Carefully she laid the traced “on” over the
same two letters in the word “longer” on the
envelope. And again with the word “her” over the he-r of “whereabouts.”
Now she was sure. Greg Millet had sent that letter
back to Bob! For some reason a clerk or foreman
had brought it to him instead of handling such a
trivial job as a matter of routine.
Before Vicki had time to think, Helen came
running in from the patio. She stared in amazement
at the sight of Vicki crouched over the envelope and
tissue she had spread out on the chow bench.
“What on earth are you doing?” she demanded.
“Come see for yourself,” Vicki replied. “I’ve just
found out that it was Greg Millet himself who sent
Kali’s letter back to Bob.”
Helen glanced swiftly from the traced inscription
to the scribbled words on the envelope. “They were
certainly written by the same person,” she admitted.
“But where did you find the ‘to Frances’ one?”
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“In the public library,” Vicki explained, “on the
flyleaf of a book of Hawaiian legends. It must have
been donated by the Millets during a drive.”
Helen nodded. “I gave a stack to the Boy Scouts
myself last week.” She laughed. “Well, what do you
know! So the patriarch of Walu is the postmaster
too!”
Vicki bit her lip. “That’s ridiculous, Helen.”
“Not any more ridiculous,” Helen returned, “than
the idea that whoever does handle the mail also has
a seventeen-year-old daughter named Frances.”
Vicki sighed. “Stop and think for a minute. Don’t
you realize that this letter was brought to Greg
Millet’s attention for a special reason? Kali must
have left the island under unusual circumstances.
Either he was fired for flagrantly disobeying a law,
or he left after a stormy scene with the pineapple
king because the company is violating a Waluian
taboo.”
Helen collapsed on the mat beside Vicki. “I see
what you’re driving at,” she said soberly. “Either
way, Kali kidnaped Millet’s daughter for revenge?”
“That’s what I think,” Vicki said. “It makes
sense, doesn’t it?”
“It does and it doesn’t.” Helen carefully
compared the two handwriting samples again. “A
peace-loving native and a kindly patriarch,” she
muttered to herself. “An island paradise governed by
127

a few simple laws—” She turned back to Vicki.
“No, I can’t see it. Full-blooded Hawaiians just
don’t go around kidnaping heiresses, nor do they
disobey rules. And Greg Millet would not make the
stupid mistake of violating a taboo.”
“He might,” Vicki argued, “if he didn’t realize
what he was doing.” And then she repeated the
fountain lily legend she had read in Tales of Tiny
Isles.
“Mr. Millet,” she finished, “gave the book to his
daughter, but that doesn’t mean he read it.”
Helen nodded in agreement. “And it must have
been donated very recently. I read every Hawaiian
legend in the library before I wrote my own little
history.”
“And,” Vicki asked, “you agree with me now that
Kali had a motive for kidnaping Frances Millet?”
“He might have done it,” Helen admitted. “But I
doubt it. The Hawaiians are a very philosophical
race. They calmly accept all sorts of disasters like
erupting volcanoes and tidal waves as messages
from the gods. And frankly, I think that legend was
invented by a mainland writer who was equipped
with more imagination than factual data.”
She scrambled to her feet. “But you go right
ahead with your theories. I’m delighted you’re
taking such an interest in our islands. Most visitors
never do anything but sit on the beach at Waikiki.
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Which reminds me, let’s have a swim before we
dress. Bob telephoned for us to meet him at the
Outrigger for dinner. Hank’s giving a returnengagement party in your honor.” She grabbed
Vicki’s hand excitedly. “You had me so bewitched I
almost forgot. Everyone at the club dance tonight
will be wearing holokus, so Hank is lending you the
most beautiful one I’ve ever seen outside of a
museum. It belonged to his grandmother. You’ll
look like a blonde goddess. I’ll make you a crown of
plumiera and tuberoses. Come on!”
Vicki meekly allowed herself to be led inside the
bungalow, but she could not get excited at the
prospect of a gay party in her honor at the exclusive
club. Her thoughts carried her ahead to the next day
when she would call on the Walus. She had a long,
mental list of questions to ask them. The answer to
one of them would be how much truth there was in
the legend she had read that day at the library.
But suppose at the outset they politely but firmly
let her know that they resented her intrusion of their
privacy? If that happened she would have to leave
the islands without ever solving the mystery of the
broken lei.

129

CHAPTER IX

Vicki Meets the Walus

By the time Helen finished arranging her crown of
plumiera and tuberoses, Vicki did indeed look like a
blonde goddess. The exquisite holoku Hank had
loaned her accentuated the graceful lines of her slim
young body, and the bright colors in the pattern
made her eyes look bluer than ever.
Hank’s own green eyes widened when he saw
her.
“Boy, oh, boy,” he said as he came in from the
patio. “Will you wow the crowd at the Outrigger
tonight!”
Vicki giggled. “Especially when I trip over my
train as we make our entrance.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Helen said hastily.
“With a little more practice you’ll be able to do a
square dance, train and all.”
“I wouldn’t even attempt a waltz in this holoku,”
Vicki insisted, practicing little mincing steps in front
of the mirror.
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Hank grinned. “You have nothing to fear, little
one. With my gang cutting in on you every other
step you’d get by even if you had two left feet.
Which you haven’t. You and Helen are both wizards
on the dance floor.”
“Thanks for including me in your lavish
compliments,” Helen said, dimpling. “Come on,
Vic. You manage that train now as well as Hank’s
grandmother did, I’ll bet. It’s getting late and Bob
hates to be kept waiting.”
“Is Bob going straight to the Club from school?”
Hank asked, frowning a little. “When’s he going to
change into dinner clothes?”
“Everything’s been taken care of,” Helen assured
him airily. “I dropped his tuxedo off at the school
when I went to call on my aunts this afternoon. He
had to be present to make the opening
announcement at the marionette show around six.”
She glanced at the clock on the mantel. “It’s seven
now. Bob will be at the Club, champing at the bit.
He’ll feel like celebrating now that the part his kids
had to play in the Aloha Week festivities are over.”
With a gallant bow, Hank crooked his arms and
escorted them both to his car. “After dinner,” he
said, “we ought to listen to the sacred songs of
Hawaii in Ala Moana Park.”
“I’d like that,” Vicki said. “But I don’t like to
keep you working people out too late at night. I’m
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on vacation and can sleep late, but the rest of you
can’t.”
Helen nodded to show her appreciation of Vicki’s
considerateness. “I’ll bet flight stewardesses when
they’re not on vacation have to go to bed early,” she
said.
“They certainly do,” Vicki told her. “We have to
be on our feet for hours at a time, catching sleep in
between flights at odd hours of the day and night.
But I wouldn’t change jobs with anyone in the
world.”
“If only you’d change your headquarters,” Hank
complained. “Hawaii is the place for air-minded
people,” he said, pointing to the planes that were
crisscrossing the sky. “Besides, you should stay on
till next October and let me take you to the Maui
County Fair.”
“Vicki would enjoy that,” Helen agreed, adding,
“It’s fun. Horse racing, a vaudeville show, and just
everything.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Vicki said.
“You haven’t,” Hank argued. “It’s only a little
over eleven months off. Time passes quickly in this
fair land.”
Vicki smiled. She hoped that the night at least
would pass quickly, for she was looking forward to
meeting the Walus. All evening as she danced and
later listened to the haunting melody of the ancient
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hymns she was inwardly thinking of what might
happen the next morning when she called on the old
Hawaiian couple.
Perhaps nothing would come of the visit Perhaps
Frances Millet was really safe in her Citadel on
Walu. Perhaps, as the Kanes and Hank had said all
along, there never had been a kidnaping.
And suppose the Walus did know the answers to
Vicki’s long mental list of questions, but refused to
give her the answers? They might well be cool and
reserved with a stranger. In that case, Vicki knew
she would withdraw into her shell and leave without
getting any nearer to the solution of the mystery of
the broken lei.
The Walus, as it turned out, greeted her so
warmly that Vicki soon felt that she had known
them all her life. She had telephoned Joe Brown that
morning as soon as Helen shut herself in the study.
He picked her up an hour later and, talking all the
while, drove her to the hillside home.
The handsome old Hawaiian couple were sitting
out on their lanai when the car stopped. They rose at
once and came down the steps to greet their caller.
“I’m a friend of Hank Hoyt’s,” Vicki said
timidly. And then assured by their gracious smiles of
welcome she added quickly, “He’s told me so much
about you I couldn’t wait until his day off tomorrow
to meet you.”
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“How charming of you to come see us old
people,” Mrs. Walu said, taking Vicki’s hand.
“Hank telephoned us a while ago saying we might
expect you.” She turned to Joe Brown. “Miss Barr is
staying for lunch. We’ll call you when she’s ready
to leave.”
“Okay,” he said as Vicki paid him. “I don’t live
far from here and I’ll be working around home all
day. Give me a buzz any time.” He drove off with a
cheerful grin.
“I understand you are a flight stewardess,” Mr.
Walu said as they strolled up to the lanai. “The girls
of today are high-spirited in more ways than one,
aren’t they?”
Vicki laughed, completely at her ease now.
“I must apologize for the sad appearance of my
divan,” Mrs. Walu said. “While we were gone,
someone, who undoubtedly needed it more than we
do, borrowed the slip cover.”
Vicki gasped. “Then you didn’t send it to the
cleaners?”
Mrs. Walu’s heavy white eyebrows shot up in
surprise. “No. Should I have? It was laundered only
last week.”
Covered with confusion, Vicki explained. “Hank
and I had an argument about it when we drove up
here on Tuesday. I insisted that if you had sent it to
be cleaned you would have sent the flowered
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cushion covers too.”
“And so I would,” Mrs. Walu said with a broad
smile. “Hank is a fine young doctor, but he knows
less than nothing about housekeeping. His
grandmother and I were very close friends, you
know, and I am afraid she spoiled him. Most young
men of today, like your host, Bob Kane, can at least
make coffee and fry eggs. But I shudder to think of
what Hank would do if he were turned loose in a
kitchen. That reminds me,” she said to her husband.
“We had guests while we were on Maui. I’m glad
now that I decided at the last minute to leave the
refrigerator running. Someone ate the butter and
eggs and drank the milk that might have spoiled
otherwise.”
He nodded calmly. “It is always wise to be
prepared for unexpected guests. Did our visitor
leave a token of thanks that might indicate whom we
had the pleasure of entertaining?”
Vicki could hardly believe her ears. These
beautiful, dark-skinned, white-haired people spoke
the language of modern Americans and yet they
were completely bound by ancient Waluian laws of
hospitality.
“No,” Mrs. Walu was telling her husband, “but I
expect it will arrive by mail one of these days. I do
know, however, that our guest was a woman.” She
flashed a smile at Vicki. “No man, not even Bob
135

Kane, could have left things as immaculate as they
were when we arrived this morning. Why, even the
bed linen was folded neatly in the hamper.”
Vicki, remembering the cup and saucer in the
sink, thought excitedly: Then she came back after
we left. She? So it wasn’t Kali, as she had thought
on Tuesday, who had hurriedly slipped out the back
door.
Before she realized it she was asking Mrs. Walu,
“How can you be absolutely sure your guest was a
woman? A man, grateful for your hospitality, might
have taken extra pains to leave things tidy.” She
chuckled. “Why, even Hank dried a stack of dishes
at the Kanes the other evening without breaking
one.”
Both the Walus laughed at that. “Hank in an
apron!” Mrs. Walu exclaimed. “He looks very
handsome in his white hospital coat, but I cannot
picture him doing anything feminine. He must be
very infatuated with you, Vicki Barr!”
Vicki blushed. “He’s been terribly nice to me,
and I like him a lot.”
Mrs. Walu, sensing her embarrassment, tactfully
brought the subject back to their unknown visitor. “I
am, at any rate, sure that our guest was not Hank,
although he loves our hillside home almost as much
as we do. No, it was a woman, Vicki Barr, for I
found a tiny smudge of lipstick on one of the hand
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towels. Also, men do not gather flowers, and, as you
can see for yourself, that shrub over there that was in
bud when we left, has been stripped bare.”
Mr. Walu frowned. “I am still a little unhappy
about that,” he told Vicki. “It was an accident, of
course, but Mrs. Walu and I had looked forward to
the pleasure of picking the blossoms ourselves. It is
a very rare shrub, you see, and the flowers are
unusually lovely. I cannot blame our guest for
choosing them above all others, and she had no way
of knowing that it is the only fountain lily shrub in
existence.”
Vicki sat up straight in her chair. “Then there
aren’t any more growing on Walu?” He stared at her
in surprise and she hastened to add, “I’m awfully
interested in your island and have been reading
everything I can find that tells about it and its
legends.”
He nodded understandingly. “Then you must
already know that the fluid imprisoned in the
fountain lily bud acts as a mild anesthetic? Any
history of Walu tells how Archibald Menzies gave
my ancestor cuttings of the shrub.”
“Hank told me that the day I arrived,” Vicki said.
“Because, you see, when I landed at the airport
Monday evening I found on the terminal floor a
broken lei made of white ginger flowers and
fountain lily buds.”
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Their imperturbably calm features changed as
suddenly as though she had dropped a bomb in their
midst.
“But this is incredible,” Mrs. Walu gasped. “A lei
of the buds? Why, if the fluid were accidentally
released close to the wearer’s face it would make her
quite ill.”
Mr. Walu got up and filled his pipe with tobacco
from a lovely sandalwood box on a low table. “I am
beginning to think that our guest was a most
inconsiderate one. The stripping of the shrub was
not an accident,” he said to his wife. “A lady would
have been thoughtful enough to leave some of the
buds for her hosts.” He was very close to anger.
“Are you quite sure, my dear?” Mrs. Walu asked
Vicki gravely.
For answer, Vicki opened her bag and brought
out an envelope in which she had put several of the
pressed flowers. “Some of these were in the lei,” she
told Mrs. Walu. “And some were in a fragment of it
that I found on your steps when Hank brought me
here Tuesday morning.”
Wordlessly, Mrs. Walu examined the contents of
the envelope and passed it on to her husband. After a
long silence, he said, “There is no mistaking the
shape of the calyx which prevents the air from
absorbing the fluid in the bud.”
Vicki took the bull by the horns then. “Do you
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remember a Waluian named Kali?” she asked Mr.
Walu.
“Why, of course,” he said. “Kali was one of the
few who begged to come with us when we sold the
island to Mr. Millet. I advised him to stay, naturally,
and take advantage of all the improvements Mr.
Millet outlined in his plan.”
“We are quite poor, you see,” Mrs. Walu told
Vicki. “And having few friends on Oahu, we could
not guarantee Kali employment here. But when he
pleaded with us to bring along his motherless son
and leave him in the care of his brother’s wife, we
could not refuse him.”
“And it has turned out well,” Mr. Walu
continued. “At that time Kali would have been
forced to leave the boy home alone while he worked
on the plantation. Now I understand arrangements
have been made for the care of motherless children
and orphans. But Lois aunt gave him the love and
tenderness he needed during that stage of his
development.”
So they knew both Kali and Loi well! “Then you
know, of course,” she asked, “that the aunt and
uncle died recently?”
“No!” They gazed at her in consternation. “The
last time Loi paid us a visit he said his aunt was ill.
That was several weeks ago. We have not seen him
since.” Mrs. Walu turned to her husband. “It must be
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as you have so often said. Loi is very like his father.
Do you remember how Kali went off to the
mountaintop to be alone with his grief when his wife
died?”
He nodded and said to Vicki. “You seem to know
more about our people than we do. Can you give us
the details of this double tragedy?”
Vicki told them as much as she knew about the
two deaths, adding that Bob had written Kali twice
and that the second letter had been returned.
“No longer employed by the Millet Company?”
Mr. Walu repeated incredulously. “Why, I cannot
understand it. Kali is an excellent worker, a foreman
when last we heard.”
Mrs. Walu laid her pretty brown hand on Vicki’s
knee. “And you have no idea where they are now?”
When Vicki shook her head she went on, “It is all
so unfortunate. Kali must have come to us as soon as
possible after receiving Bob’s first letter, but by that
time we had already left for Maui. Since we sold our
own island we have always celebrated Aloha Week
in the country, but Kali had no way of knowing that.
And as for Loi, the little ‘lonely one,’ he must have
been waiting for his father in the playhouse he built
down on our beach.”
She pointed gracefully and Vicki looked down
through the heavy foliage of the trees, but the shack
was not visible from the lanai. Then she saw
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something on the beach that hadn’t been there when
she and Hank had inspected it on Tuesday. It might
have been a conch shell left there between the rock
pools by the tide, but it looked suspiciously like a
high-heeled sandal, glaringly white in the bright
sunlight.
“Do other people besides Loi use your beach?”
she asked.
“Oh, no,” Mr. Walu said. “He asked our
permission and we gave him the bamboo for his
house, but it is strictly kapu otherwise. Luhi and I do
not swim often, but when we do, we like to be alone.
A child is one thing, a crowd of fishermen, another.”
“Luhi,” Vicki repeated. “What a lovely name.
What does it mean?”
Mrs. Walu smiled up at her tall husband. “An
especially beloved one,” she said softly. “Victoria,”
she went on, “must be the feminine of Victor in your
language. I imagine you have conquered many
hearts, Vicki, if I may call you that.”
“Please do,” Vicki said. “I love your language
and your legends. My favorite story is how the
fountain lily shrubs were watered with the
Menehunes’ tears. Do Waluians still believe in the
prophecy that disaster will come to them if the
plants are not kept alive?”
Mr. Walu hid a smile by relighting his pipe. “That
is one legend even I never heard of. But even if my
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people did believe in such a prophecy, they have
nothing to fear. We brought that shrub with us in a
large pot filled with Walu soil. And we have left it
in our wills to the Foster Botanical Gardens where it
will be carefully preserved.”
Suddenly Vicki felt deflated. So it was just a
Stateside legend after all! “Oh, dear,” she mumbled,
“I was so sure it was Kali who had made the lei I
found and that he did it so he could kidnap Miss
Millet.”
They were too well-bred to laugh, but they
exchanged swift, secret glances which Vicki guessed
meant she had no idea what she was saying.
Hastily she explained why she did not believe the
radio retraction of the kidnaping announcement, and
showed them the notice that had appeared in the
Personal column that morning.
“This same notice,” she said, taking the clipping
from her handbag, “has been appearing in the
morning and evening papers ever since Tuesday
night. I just can’t believe that the Millet heiress is
safe and sound in The Citadel.”
Mrs. Walu shuddered slightly. “What a hideous
word for a home, and according to Hank who saw it
from the air, the name is quite fitting. Like those
ancient British castles. One would think the man
was afraid our people might harm him, they who
would not harm a fly without reason.”
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“Perhaps there is a reason,” Vicki put in. “And
one Waluian has already harmed him indirectly.”
Luhi Walu smiled, but it was more of a frown.
“No, my dear Vicki, your story is a logical
explanation of many things, but it does not take into
consideration Kali’s character. We knew his father
and both his grandfathers, all fine men. He may have
gone to the airport with the Millets to help with the
luggage, and when the girl became ill in the absence
of her father, it is possible that he brought her here
to recuperate. That would explain everything.”
“Except the lei,” Vicki pointed out, “and the fact
that Kali was not working for the Millets on
Monday. The second letter came back to Bob that
morning—”
“That,” Mr. Walu interrupted, and there was
suppressed anger in his voice, “is what mystifies me.
I know Kali. He would never willingly have left the
land of his ancestors. We knew when he begged to
leave with us that he only did it out of loyalty. He
wanted to care for us in our old age, but we could
not permit such a sacrifice, especially since we
could not afford to pay him as much as he
undoubtedly receives from the Millet Company.”
“Perhaps,” Vicki said thoughtfully, “Kali doesn’t
like the modern improvements the company has
made since you sold it.”
“We did not sell it,” Mr. Walu said quietly.
143

Vicki’s eyes widened. “Oh, I thought—”
“We do not like to talk about that,” Mrs. Walu
broke in hastily. “Forgive us, my dear, we are old,
and it is not good for my husband to become upset.”
“I shall not let myself become upset,” he told her
rather gruffly. “Ua na aku la ka lua o ka inaina.”
She stared at him in surprise, translating for
Vicki. “The pit of anger is appeased. Then you
believe that the Millet heiress was kidnaped for
revenge by Kali?”
“It is not that,” he said, “for Kali knows that if he
harmed a hair of that young girl’s head I would
punish him with my bare hands.” He was a great
chieftain now, striding up and down in his
immaculate white linen suit, but Vicki could almost
see a feathered cape on his broad shoulders.
“This is how I feel,” he went on, speaking now in
English, now in Hawaiian, and Vicki was glad that
she had increased her vocabulary during her hours
of research. “The man suffered much during the
time that he thought his daughter had been taken
from him. We know what it is to lose a child. That
his anguish was based on a mistake, not on fact,
does not change matters.” He stopped, his white
head bowed. “I freely forgive him for what he did to
me.”
“What did he do to you?” Vicki asked quietly.
Mrs. Walu arose, gracefully adjusting the folds of
144

her lovely holoku. “He will tell you now, Vicki,”
she said. “You have already heard so much you
must hear it all. I’ll leave you two together while I
prepare luncheon.”
With a queenly gesture she refused Vicki’s offer
of help and disappeared inside the house. As Vicki
waited for Mr. Walu to speak, she stared down on
the beach. To her surprise the sandal, or conch shell,
was gone. And moving under the overhanging
branches at the bottom of the hill was something
bright and flowered. “It must be a native girl in a
holoku,” she thought.
Mr. Walus low, musical voice broke into her
thoughts. “I have never told this to anyone, Vicki,”
he said. “And perhaps I should hold my tongue now.
But if you have read the legends of my island you
may already guess how it happened that we left it.”
Vicki shook her head. “The only legend I could
find was the one about the Menehunes’ prophecy.”
He sat down on a chair facing her. “There was
another prophecy, also connected with the fountain
lily shrub. When Kamehameha the Great deeded the
island to my ancestor it was with the understanding
that it should remain in my family forever and ever.
The deeding ceremonies were suddenly interrupted
by a kahuna at the conference table who claimed he
could see into the future. In a vision he had seen a
time when there would be no son to inherit the land.
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Then on silver wings would come a white man, a
descendant of the Scottish botanist whom they
called the Father of the Fountain Lily. The island
should then pass into his hands and he would do
great things for the people, increasing nature’s
bounty with magic unheard of at that time.”
Mr. Walu shrugged. “The story as it was handed
down to me did not include Kamehameha’s reaction
to the prophecy. But then, shortly after our son’s
death five years ago, a white man did fly to the
island in a silver plane. As is our custom, we
welcomed Mr. Millet into our hearts and home. He
said he had fallen in love with Hawaii during a
vacation on Oahu, and wanted to buy Walu. We
refused, naturally, since we had left it in our will to
our cousins on Maui. He stayed with us several
weeks, and although he was our guest, he spent his
days turning our people against us. It was Kali who
first told us that Mr. Millet claimed to be a
descendant of the Father of the Fountain Lily. As
proof of his powers he gave each man a flashlight
and a portable radio.”
He smiled wanly. “I would not stoop to his level
by having his ancestry investigated. It was sufficient
for me that my people wished us to leave. I deeded
the island to him, but I would not accept a penny.
Our cousins on Maui were glad to have us occupy
this house which is so inaccessible they had
146

difficulty in finding a tenant. And Luhi and I have
enough between us to live simply and in peace.” He
spread his hands. “I say that Mr. Millet is a liar and
a cheat, but he has been good to my people, so in the
end it turned out well.”
Vicki sighed. “It’s too bad that it often happens
that way. Some of our greatest philanthropists
amassed their fortunes through exploitation of
innocent people.” She frowned thoughtfully. “But
what about Kali? Do you suppose he quit because he
found out that Mr. Millet is a fraud?”
“I doubt that,” the old Hawaiian gentleman said.
“We made no attempt to expose him, since it is best
that our people have faith in the new owner. And no
one else knows why we were forced to leave the
island.”
“But,” Vicki objected, “if Kali was happy there,
why did he leave? You seem to feel sure that the
Millet Company would have had no reason for firing
such an excellent workman.”
He got up to refill his pipe at the sandalwood box
before replying. “The words on that returned
envelope are puzzling,” he admitted, “but it is not
our custom to worry without proof that there is need
of it. Kali will come to us soon and explain
everything.”
Mrs. Walu announced that lunch was ready then,
a delicious curry served with several different kinds
147

of chutney and ground nuts. As they ate, Vicki kept
her eyes on the beach at the bottom of the hill.
“Someone’s down there,” she decided, “and
before I leave I must find out who it is.”

148

CHAPTER X

A Fugitive

After lunch Vicki insisted upon helping Mrs. Walu
with the dishes. As they worked together in the gay
little kitchen, she said, “You know, I’m dying to
explore the path that leads down to your beach.
Hank teased me so the other day, saying I could
never make it in the stilts I was wearing.”
She laughed. “But now I’ve got on fairly sensible
shoes. Do you think I could get down and back
without breaking my neck?”
Mrs. Walu chuckled. “Of course, my dear. If I
can do it, you can. It’s really more of a trail than a
path, but my husband will show you the way.”
“Oh, no,” Vicki said quickly. “I wouldn’t think of
bothering him in the heat of the day, especially after
such a satisfying lunch. I’m sure I can manage by
myself.” She giggled. “If worst comes to worst, I
can make a sled of leaves and slide down.”
“I wouldn’t advise that,” Mrs. Walu said with a
smile. “You’d be sure to bump into a tree en route.
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But actually, it’s quite a simple trail to follow. You
won’t have any trouble. Come on, I’ll start you off.
It begins on the other side of the garden.”
Vicki followed Mrs. Walu down the lanai steps
and through the shrubs and hibiscus hedge. Then
with a wave, she started alone along the winding
trail between the trees. “If I’m not back in time for
supper,” she said with a grin, “send a St. Bernard
after me.”
“I will,” Mrs. Walu promised, smiling.
“Complete with a can of poi and a can opener.”
A light rain was falling and the patter of it on the
leaves over her head seemed to be the voice of the
Menehunes saying, “Follow us. Follow us. When
you reach your destination you will know the
answer to many things.”
“I’ll know the answer to one thing,” Vicki
muttered, slipping and sliding down the hill. “I’ll
know who’s trespassing down there—and why.”
And then suddenly she was at the bottom. There
was no one on the beach. Nestling under the
overhanging branches was the little bamboo shack.
The door was closed, but Vicki did not hesitate. She
knocked on it and said firmly, “Come on out,
whoever you are.”
Silence.
“Is that you, Loi?” Vicki demanded. “Or Kali?”
No answer.
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Vicki tucked her fingers between the bamboo
slats and pulled, but the door was firmly latched on
the inside. “If you’re not Loi or Kali,” she said
impatiently, “you’re trespassing. So you’d better
come out or I’ll report you to the Walus. Didn’t you
see the kapu signs all over this beach?”
This time there was an answer and it sounded like
a muffled giggle. Exasperatedly, Vicki gave one
final pull and the straw hasp gave way. She
staggered backward in the sand as the door burst
open, momentarily thrown off balance. And then she
sat down in amazement. Standing in the doorway
was a lovely, dark-skinned Hawaiian girl whose
long black hair flowed down to the shoulders of her
flowered holoku. Instead of looking frightened, she
was swaying with laughter, clutching at the side of
the hut for support.
“Oh, my goodness,” she finally got out. “You
look so funny. Who are you, anyway?”
Vicki could not help joining in the laughter as she
scrambled to her feet. “The question is,” she said,
trying to sound stern, “who are you? You, a native,
must know the meaning of the kapu signs on this
beach.”
For answer the girl said something in rapid
Hawaiian, then translated. “That’s Waluian for ‘This
hut is not mine but you are welcome to half of it.’ ”
Waluian! Suddenly Vicki knew. “You’re Frances
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Millet,” she said. “You weren’t kidnaped after all.
You ran away from home and you’ve been staying
at the Walus’. And you made that holoku out of their
couch cover!”
The girl, smiling impishly, danced a few graceful
hula steps in her bare feet. “Lovely, isn’t it? And I
whipped it up in about ten minutes.” Suddenly she
stopped, her dark eyes wide and frightened. “You’re
not going to tell on me, are you? I can’t go home
yet. I can’t. I can’t!”
Before Vicki could say a word, Frances Millet
collapsed in a little heap and burst into tears.
“You’ve got to help me,” she wailed. “I’m not as
bad as I sound. I didn’t run away. I was kidnaped.
But I can’t go back until I make my father—” The
rest of it was lost in her sobs.
Vicki sank down beside her. “Begin at the
beginning,” she said soothingly. “I promise to help
if I can. I’ve had you on my mind ever since
Monday evening. You see, I found a broken
fountain lily lei in the airport terminal shortly before
word came over the radio that you had been
kidnaped.”
The girl raised her lovely face, pushing back her
long, dark hair. “That is the beginning,” she told
Vicki. “I was standing there waiting for Dad to
come back from the telephone when someone tossed
a lei over my head. I turned around to see who it
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was, when suddenly everything went black and I felt
numb all over. The next thing I knew I was out in
the sunlight, clinging to Kali’s arm. He’s—or was,
one of my father’s foremen. His was the only
familiar face in all that crowd and I felt so sick I
knew I’d faint any minute.
“ ‘Take me home, Kali,’ I begged. ‘Take me
home.’
“ ‘Everything be all right soon, miss,’ he said,
leading me toward the hack stand. ‘Home too far
away. I take you to friends. Mo’ bettah yet you rest
there.’ ”
She gesticulated with her slim, tanned hands.
“Frankly, I don’t remember much about the ride. I
imagine he kept me pretty much under with a piece
of the lei I broke off when I started to pitch forward
after the first dose. But I didn’t know there were
fountain lily buds in that lei until much later when I
found myself on the Walus’ lanai. I’d never even
seen the shrub, you know. There weren’t any left on
the island by the time Dad sent for me. I remember
being disappointed, because I had read about them
in a little book he gave me on my twelfth birthday. I
couldn’t understand why he had to plow them all up
to make way for his pineapples.”
“You turned that book into the public library
during your last visit, didn’t you?” Vicki asked.
Frances Millet nodded. “You certainly have been
153

on my trail,” she said, mystified. “Anyway, there I
was on the Walus’ veranda with Kali and his little
boy. It was a long time before I could understand
that Kali had kidnaped me, and how he had done it.
Then, naturally, I wanted to know why.” She
covered her face with her hands, mumbling almost
indistinguishably. “Oh, it’s all so terrible I can’t bear
to talk about it. Slave labor on that beautiful island!
My own father—”
“Slave labor,” Vicki repeated, slowly beginning
to see what lay behind all three mysterious
disappearances. “Slave labor?”
“Yes,” she replied, throwing back her head and
swallowing her sobs determinedly. “And it’s got to
stop, but I’m the only one who can make my father
tear up those contracts.”
“I don’t follow you,” Vicki interrupted. “What
contracts? Please go back to where you and Kali and
Loi were sitting on the Walus’ lanai.”
Frances Millet bit her lip. “When Kali told me
why he had kidnaped me, I was as stunned as you
are now. He didn’t do it for the ransom money, and
he didn’t do it for revenge, although he had every
reason to want an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth.”
Vicki could hardly believe her ears. “Why, that
sounds as though your father had hurt Loi in some
way.”
154

“He did more than that,” she said bitterly. “It goes
back to when Dad bought the island. He promptly
got all the natives to sign contracts, agreeing to the
pitifully low wages he pays them, and also
promising that if one of them ever left Walu he
would never attempt to return. I didn’t know any of
this until Monday evening when Kali told me he
cheerfully signed with the others. Up until then
nobody ever left the island anyway, except the
Walus, and money means nothing to those natives.
What Kali didn’t realize was that the rule applied to
his son. He would never have sent the boy away if
he had known he could never come back. He had
planned to send for Loi as soon as he was old
enough to work, which will be next month, on his
twelfth birthday. Kali would have let him finish out
the school year, of course.”
“But when he learned of his brother’s death,”
Vicki put in, “he decided to get him right away?”
“That’s right. Kali went to the paymaster to
collect his wages and ask for a leave of absence.
Then he was reminded of the fact that if he left the
island he could never return. Kali immediately
appealed to Dad, asking him to send for his son. As
proof that the boy needed immediate help he
brought along a letter from Loi’s schoolteacher who
wrote that the boy had disappeared right after his
uncle’s death. Loi had also written his father that he
155

would wait for him in this little bamboo shack,
giving him directions on how to get here.”
“Then Kali could read and write?” Vicki asked.
Frances Millet nodded. “A little. Mrs. Walu
taught them as much as they wanted to learn, but
most of them were satisfied with the
accomplishment of signing their own names. But
Kali, in order to keep up with his son, had been
attending night classes at the new elementary
school. And he had sense enough to know that a
letter addressed to a beach hut would never reach
Loi. He was worried about the boy and begged my
father to arrange for him to be brought to Walu on
the next mail plane.”
“And then,” Vicki said with a sigh, “your father
told him Loi could never set foot on the island again.
It must have been a terrible blow to Kali, but there
was nothing to prevent him from getting a job on
another pineapple plantation where he would have
received good pay.”
“Oh, yes, there was,” Frances Millet corrected
her. “Dad told him flatly that if he attempted to
leave Walu he would immediately be arrested,
because he intended to notify the Oahu police that
Kali had escaped after stealing money and jewels
from The Citadel. You can see why my father
threatened him, can’t you?”
“Yes,” Vicki said thoughtfully. “The minute Kali
156

found out what wages other plantation workers were
paid, the cat would be out of the bag. And Mr.
Millet didn’t dare make an exception in Loi’s case.
If he let the boy come back, other Waluians might
demand permission to leave and return. Then it
wouldn’t be long before the labor conditions on
Walu were known, would it, Miss Millet?”
“You’re smart,” the young heiress said with a
swift smile. “But you sound so stern when you call
me Miss Millet. Please call me Fran. And I don’t
even know your name. Forgive me for being so
rude, but I just had to get all this off my chest to
someone, or burst!”
“I’m Vicki Barr,” Vicki said. “A flight stewardess
on vacation. I’m visiting Helen and Bob Kane. He’s
the teacher who wrote Kali about Loi’s
disappearance.”
“That explains a lot,” Fran said. “I’ve been trying
to figure out how someone so young and pretty got
to be a detective. That’s what I thought you were,
but I’m so desperate I hoped you might help me,
anyway.”
“I will,” Vicki promised. “But now go back to the
scene between Kali and your father.”
“Well,” Fran continued, “Kali, as soon as
possible after that, smuggled aboard the mail plane
and got away. But because he didn’t dare ask for
help from the Visitors Bureau or the police, it took
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him until Monday to find Loi here. Naturally he
avoided his brother’s village in the next cove, for
fear detectives would be waiting there to nab him.”
“I can guess what happened next,” Vicki said,
thinking it through from Kali’s point of view. “His
only hope was to get help and advice from the
former owners of Walu. Loi knew they lived on top
of this hill, so up they climbed only to find a note on
the back door saying the Walus would be away until
this morning.”
“You’re strictly on the beam,” Fran said
flippantly. “And I was really quite cross with Loi for
not going to the Walus sooner.” She shrugged. “It
seems that it’s a family custom to mourn alone for
several days after a death. Anyway, there they were,
Kali’s money running out and no way to get more
since he believed he was a fugitive from the police.
He was frightened and bewildered, and then he
noticed my name in a small headline in the
newspaper tucked under the mat. It said that I,
among others, was returning to the States by clipper
that evening. And all of a sudden he saw a way out
of his difficulties. By kidnaping me he might be able
to force Dad to withdraw the robbery charge he had
lodged with the police. There in the Walus’ garden
was the fountain lily shrub with made-to-order buds.
He was fairly familiar with the airport having landed
there in the mail plane. He whipped up several leis,
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among them the one you found, and then went to the
terminal and hung around, waiting for a moment
when Dad and I would be separated so he could
present me with the toxic lei. But Dad, of course,
kept me clamped to his side, and then Kali had a
stroke of genius. He slipped into a phone booth and
dialed the passenger agent’s number. Then he
requested that Dad be paged. After that, all he had to
do was hang on to the wire until he saw through the
glass part of the door that Dad had been called
away.”
She laughed without much humor. “I’ve told it in
a roundabout way, but I guess that brings you up to
date.”
Vicki, too, smiled briefly. “It brings me right
back to the three of you on the Walus’ lanai Monday
evening while the radio was blaring the story of your
kidnaping. Then what?”
Fran’s tense features momentarily relaxed. Her
dark eyes twinkled mischievously. “By that time I
had decided I liked being kidnaped. I told Kali I’d
take over from then on, and he was awfully glad to
be relieved of all responsibility, not having liked any
part of it from the very beginning. I was so furious
with my father that I barged right into the Walus’
home and wrote him a bloodcurdling note,
guaranteed to make him call off the police as soon
as he got it. This is what I said:
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“ ‘Dear Dad: I’m in grave danger, writing this at
the point of a knife. I’ve been kidnaped by two
ruthless men who escaped recently from Alcatraz in
the States. They will torture me if you or detectives
try in any way to find me. You must do exactly what
these men tell you to do or you will never see me
alive again.
“ ‘Within a week a mediator, alone and unarmed,
but bearing as identification my fade ring, will come
to see you on Walu. Do nothing until then. I’m
frightened, Dad, terribly frightened.’ ”
“Her brown cheeks were flushed as she stared
down at her bare toes. “I know it was cruel of me,
but right then all I could think of was that he
deserved a little mental torture for doing what he did
to Kali. I had a frightful time making that poor
native believe that Dad hadn’t framed him with a
false burglary charge. Because, at that point, the last
thing my father wanted was to have Kali and the
police get together. That was one sure way of having
the story of his slave-labor contracts spread all over
the front pages of the newspapers.”
Vicki nodded. “But when he believed you had
been kidnaped, things were different. Your father
wouldn’t hesitate to risk exposure for the sake of
getting you back, I imagine.”
Fran frowned. “He absolutely adores me. You
see, my mother was killed in an accident right after
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she and Dad had had a silly quarrel. It was dreadful
for him to realize that his last words with her were
angry ones. I was just a baby, but even then I looked
a lot like my mother. I think he’s spoiled me in order
to atone for losing his temper that day. And I’ve
always thought he was the most wonderful father a
girl could have until—”
Tears webbed her black lashes. “I’ve regretted
writing that letter ever since I mailed it, but now I
can’t back out. Somehow I’ve got to make him see
that he’s wronging those people.” She clenched her
fists. “I’ll get a job in Honolulu and study nights. I
want to be a social worker, you see, but he wants me
to be a little princess. It’s all so difficult and I don’t
know where to turn. How can I live with the
knowledge that my own father took advantage of
innocent people who trusted him?” She twisted her
brown arms behind her head, swaying to and fro
unhappily.
“Calm down, Fran,” Vicki said soothingly. “You
yourself said money means nothing to those natives.
Your father has spent a small fortune improving
conditions on Walu. Now there are public schools
and hospitals, nobody pays rent or taxes, and they
still have plenty of free time to catch fish and grow
vegetables. Actually, too much money might
complicate the Waluians’ lives. I do think, though,
that he should retract the law prohibiting them from
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leaving whenever they want to.”
“If he’d do that,” Fran said in a more hopeful
voice, “I’d forgive him for everything. That’s all I
was thinking of when I dashed off that threatening
letter. After that I made myself this holoku out of the
Walus’ couch cover, and then I let down my hair,
pinned it back with flowers, kicked off my sandals,
and behold, I’m a Hawaiian maid, properly
costumed for Aloha Week. I addressed the envelope
to the Young Hotel where Dad always stays in
Honolulu, and mailed it myself at the post office in
the plantation town over there. I figured, since the
letter was unstamped, the clerk would notice it right
off when sorting the evening mail, and immediately
notify Dad. I could count on his calling off the
police by midnight, anyway, but Kali and Loi hid in
the garage until dawn just to be sure. Then I gave
them some money and they left to take a boat to
Maui. The Walus have cousins there, you know,
who’ll see to it that Kali gets work without any
trouble.”
Vicki smiled. “You know the Walus better than I
thought you did. Well enough to borrow from them
without any qualms while they were away.”
Fran blushed. “I don’t really know them that
well,” she admitted, “but I do know the old Waluian
custom of leaving the doors unlocked in case a
neighbor needs something. Oh, don’t scold me,
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Vicki,” she begged, suddenly contrite. “I’ll pay them
back for everything, and I didn’t hurt their couch
cover at all.” She jumped up and deftly unpinned the
holoku at the shoulder and waist, and stood there in
her pretty silk slip. “See, it’s just as good as new, I
only draped it around me, and it was an emergency,
you have to admit that.”
“Get inside that hut, heathen,” Vicki said, giving
her a little push. “Have you still got your yellow
linen suit?”
For answer Fran ducked through the door and
came out again properly dressed. “It’s going to be
awful getting used to shoes again,” she said meekly,
buckling on her sandals. “I’ve gone barefoot for
days and loved every minute of it.” She glanced
worriedly at Vicki. “What are you going to do with
me?”
“I haven’t quite made up my mind,” Vicki said
after a minute. “You came down here early this
morning, I imagine, before the Walus arrived,
because you don’t dare to go to a hotel for fear of
being recognized.”
“Oh, no,” Fran interrupted gaily. “I just thought it
would be fun to try and live for a while the way Loi
did.” She wrinkled up her pretty nose. “But I can’t
make myself like raw fish and seaweed, so I guess
I’d be better off at the Royal.”
“The Royal?” Vicki demanded in amazement.
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“Why you wouldn’t dare appear in that big Waikiki
hotel.”
“Why not?” Fran yanked a bulging wallet out of
her white sharkskin handbag. “I’ve got money, and
no one knows what I really look like. Dad would
never allow my picture to be published for the very
reason that I might be kidnaped.”
“Don’t be silly,” Vicki said impatiently. “You are
known at the Outrigger Club because Hank Hoyt
told me he often danced with you there. You’d
better stay away from Waikiki and go to a small,
downtown hotel. You’re supposed to be having a
nervous breakdown out on Walu, you know.”
“Am I?” Fran’s eyes were wide with surprise.
“The Walus evidently don’t approve of radios, so I
just jumped to the conclusion that I was back at
college in the States.”
“It seems to me,” Vicki said, trying to sound
severe, “that you have jumped to a lot of
conclusions since Monday night. For one thing, you
took an awful chance letting Kali come out of hiding
before you were certain he wouldn’t be arrested.”
“I was sure of that,” Fran said stubbornly. “I
know Dad. He can be absolutely ruthless himself
when it comes to business or competition. But I’ll
bet he didn’t waste a minute calling off the police
after he got my letter. He understands words like
torture and extortion. In fact, if I wasn’t his darling
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daughter, I wouldn’t dare cross him.”
Vicki shivered slightly, although the sun was hot
on her bare arms. “I’m glad you told me,” she said
quietly. “Because I’ve made up my mind to one
thing. I’m going to act as your mediator and go to
Walu tomorrow with your jade ring. Somehow, I’m
going to make your father tear up those unfair
contracts!”

165

CHAPTER XI

Vicki’s Plan

Instead of looking horrified, Fran hugged Vicki,
fairly singing with delight. “You as the mediator!
It’s what I’ve been hoping and praying for ever
since you told me you weren’t a detective.”
“That’s another thing I don’t understand,” Vicki
said grimly. “How come you thought I was a
detective if you were so sure your father had called
off the police?”
“The police, yes,” Fran said easily. “But I
wouldn’t put it past Dad, after he got over his first
shock, to have hired someone like you to snoop
around without arousing the suspicion of my
abductors. He must be on the verge of apoplexy,
anyway, not having heard a word since Monday
night. And I’d better warn you right now. My father
has a violent temper. I saw him smash a priceless
Ming cup once simply because the tea was served
with milk instead of lemon.”
Again Vicki shivered involuntarily. “He’ll
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probably toss me right out of The Citadel tower into
the moat.”
“He might,” Fran admitted with a chuckle. “But
don’t worry. It’s always filled with water because he
swims in it. Can’t stand salt water, says his skin’s
too sensitive, although personally I think he’s as
tough as a rhinoceros.”
“And as ferocious as a lion,” Vicki finished with
a rueful grin. “Nevertheless, I’m going to beard him
in his den. But I can’t stay away from the Walus any
longer without their coming down to see what
happened to me. You stay here under the branches
while I wave to them to let them know I’m still
alive.”
Even from the water’s edge Vicki could barely
see the house, screened as it was by trees and
flowering shrubs. But she whirled her handkerchief
around her head several times, knowing that if the
old Hawaiian couple were on their lanai they could
see her. Then she hurried back to Fran.
“The next step,” she said briskly, “is for you to go
to a hotel where you won’t be recognized.”
“Nakayama House in downtown Honolulu is the
very place,” Fran said. “The newspaper ads say it’s
quiet and dignified and is run by a nice old
Japanese-American couple who I am sure never
even heard of me.”
“Fine,” Vicki said in approval. “Now, we’ll have
167

to be very careful in case your father actually has
put private detectives on your trail. Frankly, I don’t
think he has, because one of them would surely have
contacted the taxi driver that took you from the
airport with Kali on Monday.” She told Fran then
how she had met up with Joe Brown ending with,
“When I get back to the Walus I’ll telephone him,
but instead of having him drive me straight home,
I’ll tell him I’m going to pick you up in the
plantation village. He fully expects us to get together
anyway, so he won’t suspect anything when we ask
him to drop us oft for tea at the Nakayama House.”
“But,” Fran objected, “how am I going to get to
the plantation village without the Walus seeing me
as I cross the beach to the woods?”
“I’ve figured that out too,” Vicki told her. “Give
me time to climb the hill. Then, while I’m waiting
for Joe Brown, I’ll ask them to show me through
their house. So, in about half an hour, it should be
perfectly safe for you to make a mad dash to the
woods. Have you got a watch?”
Fran produced a little gold one from her handbag
and pinned it to the lapel of her suit. “Keep the
Walus on the hill side of their house,” she said. “The
walls facing the beach are practically all windows.”
She giggled reminiscently. “I’ll never forget one day
when I was hiding there I heard a car coming up the
driveway. I had just time to lie flat on the floor to
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keep from being seen. Later my heart stopped when
I heard them say they were coming in. I had to crawl
out the back way on my hands and knees, knocking
over a screen en route. They must have thought I
was a ghost.”
“They didn’t think anything of the kind,” Vicki
told her flatly. “For they were I and Hank Hoyt.”
Fran collapsed in front of the shack, convulsed
with laughter. “Oh, my goodness, if I’d only known!
But it’s just as well that I hid in the woods until you
left. Hank Hoyt is as handsome as a movie actor, but
completely lacking in imagination. He would have
reported me to my father then and there.”
“Hank may be lacking in imagination,” Vicki said
as she started up the rocky path, “but nevertheless,
he’s going to fly me to Walu tomorrow. How I’m
going to make him do it is something you and I will
have to figure out in your hotel room later.”
Then she stopped, remembering. “You know,
Fran, the police were here and at the Walus’ house
later that same day. It’s lucky they didn’t find you.
Where were you Tuesday afternoon?”
Fran stared up at Vicki, shuddering. “The police?
Oh, my goodness. Am I glad you and Hank scared
me away! I stayed in the woods until it got dark,
way up on the very top of the hill. I was so hungry
by the time I finally dared to come back to the house
that I ate three fried-egg sandwiches, one right after
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the other without stopping.” She giggled
reminiscently and then sobered. “What on earth
were the police doing around here? Don’t tell me
that after all Dad—”
“No,” Vicki assured her. “It wasn’t your father
who started the investigation, and they weren’t
looking for you. Bob Kane notified them that Loi
was missing, you see, and they followed his trail to
the bamboo shack. Then they noticed the house on
die hill and went up there. In the garage they found
Loi’s pocketknife which he must have dropped
before he and his father left early Tuesday morning.
Lucky for you, Detective Ryan decided that Kali and
his son arranged to meet at the Walus and camped
out in the garage for a while when they found the
note on the door saying the Walus were away. If the
police hadn’t found that knife they might have
searched the woods and found you!”
Fran shuddered again. “I would have had a hard
time explaining what I was doing there, and it
wouldn’t have taken a detective any longer than it
took you to see through my disguise. But I don’t
understand why finding the knife made them stop
looking for Loi. Not that I’m complaining,” she
added with a grin. “Once all this is over I’ll buy Loi
the best scout knife there is to be had.”
“I’ll tell you why they stopped the investigation
then,” Vicki said. “I wondered about it myself and
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Bob explained. You see, when he told them Loi was
missing, he didn’t mention that Kali was missing
too. But when Detective Ryan called him to report
finding the knife, he asked Bob if there wasn’t a
possibility that Loi had gone off with the Walus.
Bob said he didn’t think so and it was then that he
told Detective Ryan that he’d been trying
unsuccessfully to track down the boy’s father. At
that, the police dismissed the whole matter. The
father and son, in their opinion, were together. And
they were right in their reasoning,” Vicki went on.
“Loi did write his father arranging a meeting place,
only it was the shack, not the house on the hill. What
baffled me, but evidently didn’t bother the police,
was why Kali by-passed the native settlement in the
cove.”
Fran nodded understandingly. “You were right to
be baffled by that angle. And, I imagine, what
bothered Loi’s schoolteacher was why Kali didn’t
answer his first letter. If he had, you might never
have scented a mystery.”
“That’s right,” Vicki agreed. “Because then I
would never have started on Loi’s trail, which led
me to the fragment of the broken lei on the Walus’
steps. Why didn’t Kali answer Bob’s letter and say
that he would come at once and get his son?”
Fran chuckled. “At best, Kali is no great shakes at
letter writing. It would have taken him hours to print
171

out a reply.”
“That’s true,” Vicki agreed. “And then almost
immediately after he got Bob’s first letter he found
out from your father that Loi couldn’t come back to
Walu. That, I imagine, was enough to upset him so
that he could hardly write his own name.” She
sighed. “Something’s got to be done about those
two.”
Fran shook her head up and down vehemently.
“Even if we have to make Dad destroy one contract
at a time, the first one has got to be Kali’s.”
“And the first step,” Vicki said, as she again
started up the winding path to the top of the hill, “is
to get you safely to the Nakayama Hotel.”
Vicki was panting as much from lack of breath as
from suppressed excitement when she climbed the
lanai steps to where the Walus were placidly waiting
for her.
“I’ve overstayed my welcome,” she said, smiling.
“May I use your phone to call for my taxi?”
“Certainly.” Mrs. Walu led the way to a charming
den. “But we’re disappointed. We hoped you’d stay
on for tea.”
When Vicki had telephoned Joe Brown, she said,
“I wish I could stay longer. I’d love to know the
history of all your beautiful things.”
Mrs. Walu laughed. “We have so few, it’ll only
take about ten minutes to show them to you. But let
172

me call in my husband. They are for the most part
his family heirlooms.”
In spite of her worry about Fran, Vicki grew so
interested during the tour that it was hard to confine
her questions to the rooms on the mountain side of
the house. Mr. Walu showed her an ancient pahu,
the sacred hula drum of his clan. Wrapped in antique
tapa cloth was a ukulele, the reed flute his father had
used to serenade his mother during their courtship.
Carefully preserved in a glass case was a great Chief
Walus feathered cape.
While he was telling her the story of its
presentation to his ancestor, she stood so that she
blocked the window overlooking the beach. But she
wasn’t big enough, for Mrs. Walu suddenly
interrupted her husband’s recital with:
“Vicki, you have sharp eyes. I can’t find my
glasses, but I’m sure I saw something dart across our
beach.”
Slowly Vicki turned around and looked out of the
wide window. She caught a glimpse of a yellow
skirt disappearing through the foliage of the trees on
the point. Fran had made it!
Quite truthfully she said, “No, Mrs. Walu, I don’t
see anything down there,” for now the beach was
empty except for the rock pools.
“How strange,” Mrs. Walu murmured. “I was
almost positive I saw someone or something slip by
173

a moment ago. Something yellow.”
“A bird undoubtedly,” Mr. Walu said, to Vicki’s
relief.
“Undoubtedly,” Mrs. Walu agreed. “I must form
the habit of wearing my glasses all the time.” She
smiled. “I’m afraid I’m vain, my dear.”
Her husband chuckled and said to Vicki, “Luhi
was a great beauty when she was your age, and to
me she hasn’t changed a bit.”
“You’re both very handsome,” Vicki cried
enthusiastically.
But Mrs. Walu wasn’t listening. She had found
her glasses and was staring through the wide
window down at the beach.
Just then they all heard the crunch of tires on
gravel and the toot of Joe Brown’s taxi horn. Mrs.
Walu turned away from the window and took
Vicki’s hand.
“You must come see us again, my dear,” she said.
“I’d love to,” Vicki said, “but I have to fly back
to the States Sunday evening. So I guess this is
goodbye, or rather, aloha.”
“Aloha.” They stood on the lanai and waved to
her until the cab made the turn in the driveway.
“Where to?” Joe Brown asked. “Back to Waikiki,
or are you goin’ to do some more callin’ on folks?”
“First stop,” Vicki told him, “is the post office in
the plantation village down there. I want to pick up
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my friend—the one you drove out here from the
airport on Monday evening. You know, the girl you
said was airsick.”
“Okay,” the driver said. “Hope she don’t get
carsick too. Not that I’d blame her. These hairpin
turns are worse than ridin’ on a roller coaster to
some people. Not that they bother me. Or you. I
guess you flight stewardesses have to take with a
smile some pretty rough weather often as not.”
“Oh, yes,” Vicki agreed. “But I’m used to
updrafts and downdrafts now. The first time I was
ever in a plane we ran into the tail end of a storm,
and the plane bounced like a rubber ball. I thought
that was going to be the beginning and end of my
career.”
Joe Brown stopped long enough to turn around
and grin at her. “The first time I ever drove a car my
big brother said, ‘Joe,’ he says, ‘see that fence over
there? Well, don’t drive into it.’ And before he’d
finished tellin’ me not to, the fence was wrapped as
tightly around the radiator of the car as though I’d
got out and zippered it on!”
Vicki laughed. “Well, here we are, and there she
is.”
Fran, her tanned cheeks flushed with excitement,
climbed in beside Vicki and whispered, “I thought
you’d never come. I got so bored and nervous I—”
“Sh-h,” Vicki cautioned her and said to the
175

driver, “Now, please take us to the Nakayama
House. I understand the authentic Japanese
atmosphere of its restaurant is something no tourist
should miss.”
“It’s a nice little place for two young ladies like
you to have tea all right,” he said, starting off again.
“The waitresses all in costume, bringin’ little tables
to the customers who sit cross-legged on the floor,
and such. If you go for floor sittin’. Now me, give
me a dog wagon any time. I haven’t eaten off the
floor since I was a toddler and now I got the habit of
havin’ to have a place to park my elbows on.” He
laughed uproariously at his own joke. “Chopsticks
they give you at the Nakayama too. But knives and
forks and spoons for them who can’t wangle the
others.”
“I can eat with chopsticks,” Fran informed him
airily. “My father taught me. He spent a lot of time
in the Orient when he was a boy. And we’ve got a
Chinese cook out on Wa—”
“Just look at that rainbow,” Vicki interrupted
hastily, giving Fran a nudge. “A double one. Did
you ever see anything like it?”
Fran, obviously having no idea that she had
almost given away a hint to her identity, sniffed.
“That’s nothing,” she said in a disparaging voice.
“I’ve often looked out of my bedroom window in
the Cit—”
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“City of Honolulu,” Vicki finished for her
emphatically, giving Fran another nudge.
And then it dawned on Fran that she had almost
ruined their plans. The rest of the drive she hardly
said a word. Vicki determinedly monopolized the
conversation by giving Fran a detailed description of
the Barrs’ Castle in Fairview, Illinois. After that, she
amused Fran with the story of Ginny’s latest
escapade.
At last she and Fran were breathing sighs of relief
in a tiny but comfortable suite in the Nakayama
House.
“Whew!” Fran whistled, kicking off her sandals
as she stretched out on the wicker divan. “I thought
during the last half of the trip across the Pali that
your pal, Joe Brown, would never stop talking about
how he mistook me for the Millet heiress.”
“And I,” Vicki said severely, “thought you’d
never stop giggling. You must take things more
seriously, Fran. You may think your father is going
to tear up those contracts the minute I show him
your ring, but I don’t.”
“Oh, but he will,” Fran insisted. She handed
Vicki the lovely piece of jade in its green-gold
setting. “Just tell him he’ll get me back piecemeal if
he doesn’t.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” Vicki said
impatiently. “Who am I to dictate terms to the great
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Greg Millet? Why, he’ll laugh in my face if I
threaten him. In the first place, criminals who escape
from Alcatraz don’t hire vacationing flight
stewardesses as go-betweens. In the second, what’s
to prevent him from counter-threatening me with a
little torture if I don’t tell him where you are?”
Fran rolled over on one elbow and stared wideeyed at Vicki. “I never thought of it that way,” she
breathed. “Oh, Vicki, you can’t go. You’ll be a
hostage, and Dad is perfectly capable of forcing you
to tell him the truth. That’ll ruin everything.”
“He won’t have to force me,” Vicki sniffed. “I
intend to tell him the truth right off the bat. Once he
lays eyes on me he’ll see right through your tale of
ruthless kidnapers. My only hope lies in stating
frankly that I can’t effect a reconciliation between
you two unless he tears up the contracts. If he loves
you enough, he’ll at least think it over, won’t he?”
“He might,” Fran said doubtfully, “if he doesn’t
fly into a violent rage when he learns that I tricked
him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made you tell him
where I am, and then he’d come after me hopping
mad.” She shuddered. “I’m beginning to think we’d
better give up the whole plan. I’ll take the next plane
to the States and carry on negotiations by mail.” She
sat up, clenching her fists determinedly. “No, I
won’t run away. I’m not afraid of him.”
“Well, are you, or aren’t you?” Vicki asked
178

quietly. “A lot depends on that. You’re not yet of
age, so you’d be only stalling for time if you ran
away. But if I can convince him that you’ll never
forgive him unless he draws up new contracts, we
have a chance of winning.”
“No, we haven’t,” Fran retorted. “He’d count on
my forgiving him once he got me back. Don’t you
see, Vicki? The minute he knows I’m in no danger,
he’s in full control of the situation!”
“I realize that very well,” Vicki said. “But the
week you mentioned in your letter ends on Sunday
night. If a mediator hasn’t arrived by then, what do
you think he’ll do?”
Fran swung her bare feet to the mat and stood up.
“He’ll hire a pack of private detectives who’ll track
me down in a matter of hours.”
“And then where are you?” Vicki demanded.
“That settles it,” Fran said. “We’ll have to play
his rules. As I told you before, he understands words
like torture and extortion. You tell him tomorrow
that if he doesn’t reform we’ll spread the story of his
slave labor on the front page of all the newspapers.”
Vicki shook her head. “It won’t work. There’s
another word, libel, you forgot about. No reputable
newspaper would publish a word against a man with
Greg Millet’s reputation without proof. And where
are we going to get the proof? We can’t drag Kali
into this, and the other natives obviously don’t feel
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that they’re being victimized.”
She sat down on the divan and continued tiredly,
“When you get right down to it, they aren’t. Think
of it from a hard-boiled editor’s point of view. Much
ado about a rule that won’t let natives leave an
island paradise they don’t want to leave, anyway.”
“Oh, I know,” Fran interrupted. “But it’s the
principle of the thing. Also, Kali and Loi have got to
be allowed to go home. I know those Waluians.
They’ll die of homesickness.”
“I thoroughly agree with you,” Vicki said calmly.
“Now, outside of his love for you and the fact that
he can’t bathe in salt water, has your father any
other weaknesses?”
“An Achilles’ heel?” Fran thought for a minute.
Then she began to pace up and down excitedly.
“You’ve got it, Vicki! I mean, we’ve got him. He
can’t bear being laughed at. I’m convinced he’d do
almost anything to keep from being made the butt of
a joke.”
“Then that means,” Vicki added, “that underneath
his rhinoceros hide he’s really a very sensitive
person?”
“You’re right,” Fran almost shouted. “He’s like a
little boy who has to be constantly told he’s wise
and wonderful.”
“That explains the setup on Walu,” Vicki said,
now almost as excited as Fran. “Instead of paying
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high wages and collecting them in the form of rents
and taxes, he prefers to pay for public benefits out of
his own pocket, even though he spends much more
in the end. Walu, I imagine, is sort of a monument
of his success.”
“It is,” Fran agreed. “If his pineapples hadn’t
flourished, I think he would have died of shame.
That would have proved him a fool for investing all
his money in a little island out in the Pacific.”
“That,” Vicki said, “gives me an idea. Let me ask
you one more question, Fran. Are you of Scottish
descent?”
“Of course not,” Fran hooted. “Whatever gave
you such an idea?”
“Never mind that,” Vicki said because she was
determined not to let Fran know how her father had
virtually forced the Walus into selling their island.
“Just answer me yes or no. Are you of Scottish
descent?”
Fran yawned. “The whole thing bores me to
death, but Dad is very proud of our FrenchHuguenot ancestors. I gather from the way he raves
that they were among the early settlers of America.
My mother was of Welsh descent. Welsh and Irish,
which accounts for my weird sense of humor.” She
chuckled, and then said wistfully, “You don’t know
how lucky you are to have a mother. I don’t
remember mine at all, of course. But I’m glad I’m so
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much like her. I’m gregarious too. I love people like
your taxi driver, Joe Brown. I love people, period.
And so did Mother. That’s what they quarreled
about, Dad and Mother. She wanted to live right
smack in the middle of the small town where Dad
had his business then, but he wanted a house—an
estate—in the country.”
Fran clenched her brown fists. “Mother argued
that she didn’t want him to spend so much time
away from her and me driving back and forth to
business. And also she wanted me to grow up
knowing the butcher, the baker, and the
candlestickmaker in Plainsville which must have
been pretty much like your own Fairview. It was a
silly argument, naturally, and they could have solved
the problem that very evening by compromising on
a place like The Castle your family lives in. It’s real
country and yet it’s near enough to the center of
town so that your kid sister can bike back and forth,
can’t she, Vicki?”
“She not only can, but does constantly,” Vicki
said. “Except when she has bike trouble, which is
pretty constant too. Then she walks, which is good
for her figure. Ginny is on the plump side. She went
into the candy-selling business once and gained five
pounds tasting her own wares.”
“How I envy you,” Fran cried, tears welling up
into her brown eyes. “If only I had a kid sister or a
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kid brother!”
“Cheer up,” Vicki said comfortingly. “You can
adopt all the little Waluians, and Loi, in particular, if
things go the way I hope. It all hinges on how tender
that Achilles’ heel of your father’s really is.”
“I don’t get it,” Fran said flatly. “How are poor
little you and me going to make a man like Dad die
butt of a joke?”
With pencil and paper Vicki quickly outlined the
scheme which had been slowly formulating in her
mind for the past hour. When she finished, Fran was
almost hysterical with laughter.
“It’s so perfect,” she finally got out, “it can’t
possibly fail.”
“Do you really think so?” Vicki asked worriedly.
Fran vigorously shook her head up and down.
“It’s foolproof. And the best joke of all is that Dad
gave me the very book that gave you the idea.”
“It’s not a joking matter,” Vicki said seriously.
“This is important. If we succeed, I feel pretty sure
we can convince your father at the same time that
you should stay out here and prepare yourself for a
career as a social worker. It ties in, you know. Your
ambition is a job promoting the welfare of
underprivileged natives, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Fran said. “If we win him over to
our side on one point, he should give in on that
argument too. I think he’s being very tyrannical with
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me, and after all, charity begins at home.”
“Overindulgent,” Vicki said with a smile, “is a
more accurate word than tyrannical, but let’s not
waste time quibbling. You’ve got a busy evening
ahead of you. Do you think you can read my
scribbled notes?”
“Don’t worry about anything,” Fran assured her.
“I’ll write a story that’ll make his curly gray hair
stand on end!”
“Good,” Vicki said, laughing in spite of her inner
nervousness. “I’ll stop by for it early tomorrow
before my brunch date with Hank. I noticed when
we came in that there’s a job printer across the
street. I’ll get him to make a proof of what you
write, one that will look as much as possible like a
newspaper galley proof.”
Fran crossed her arms, hugging herself
ecstatically. “Oh, how I wish I could suddenly
become invisible and go along with you tomorrow.
I’d give anything to see the expression on Dad’s
face when he reads that little fairy tale!”
“I’ll probably wish I were invisible myself at that
moment,” Vicki said grimly.
“You probably will.” Fran giggled, and then went
on soberly, “Dad’s a pretty terrifying person. In the
first place, he’s simply enormous. Six feet four of
muscle and brawn, and when he loses his temper he
thunders at the top of his lungs. But he’s really a
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darling, Vicki, and when you get to know him,
you’ll think so too.”
“I may never have the opportunity of knowing
him,” Vicki said, starting for the door. “If he’s that
big he may take one look at poor little me and treat
me the way he did that Ming cup.”
Fran followed her out to the hall. “Well, anyway,
aloha nui loa. That means luck and love.”
“I’ll need ’em both,” Vicki thought as she hailed
a cab in front of the hotel. “How on earth am I going
to convince Hank at brunch tomorrow that he should
fly me to Walu and leave me there, to quote Fran’s
letter, ‘alone and unarmed’?”

185

CHAPTER XII

In the Lion’s Den

The next morning as Vicki stood beside the printer,
watching him make a proof of Fran’s little story, she
asked him timidly:
“Does it sound at all as though it were written by
a professional writer? I mean, like something that
might actually appear in a newspaper?”
He wiped his hands on his ink-smudged apron.
“Couldn’t tell you, miss. My job is to pick out the
words, not the meaning. You want another proof
before I throw away the type?”
Vicki shook her head. “No, thanks. One will be
plenty.” She paid him, and carefully read the long
ribbon of printed words before folding it. Then she
tucked it in her pocketbook and left the shop.
It was a good story, but, out in the bright sunlight,
jostled by the early-morning crowd, Vicki began to
worry. Was Greg Millet really as ferocious as Fran
had described him? And even more important, how
weak was his Achilles’ heel?
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The busy office workers, hurrying past her,
seemed to be of all nationalities, and they spoke in
many different languages, Filipino, Japanese, and
Chinese, as well as Hawaiian and English. But she
knew their jobs were similar to those of other
Americans in any big city.
What would the business section, if there was
one, on Walu be like? How isolated would she feel
when she landed there? And how frightened, once
she was alone with the pineapple king in his
Citadel?
“Even if I’m scared to death,” she told herself, “I
mustn’t let him know it. And above all, Hank must
be made to think of the whole thing as a lark.”
For, after tossing and turning most of the night,
Vicki had finally come to the conclusion that in
order to induce Hank into flying her to Walu and
leaving her there, he must be let in on the secret. Not
all of it, but enough to sound convincing.
One thing in her favor was the weather. It was
perfect for sight-seeing by air, the sky a heavenly
shade of blue dotted with the ever-present puffball
clouds. And the breeze blowing down from the Pah
was pleasantly cool, so that Hank could not argue in
favor of an afternoon on the beach. In fact, Vicki
enjoyed the extra warmth of the jacket she was
wearing over her sweater and skirt, and shivered at
the very idea of donning a bathing suit.
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Back at the bungalow, Bob hailed her from the
lanai. “I highly recommend a swim before brunch,”
he yelled. “The water’s warm as anything.”
“But the air is c-cold,” Vicki called back.
“Sissy!” Helen hooted. “What are you going to do
when you fly back to where winter is really winter?”
“Wear more clothes,” Vicki said calmly. But she
didn’t feel calm. If only Hank would come soon!
And then she heard the crunch of his tires on the
gravel driveway and ran out to the patio.
“I’m not going swimming,” she said before he
had time to get out of the car. “This is my next-tolast day and I want to see all of the islands from the
air. Please, Hank!”
“My, my!” He grinned. “The postman on a
holiday always takes a walk. What will you give me,
little stewardess, if I comply with your request?”
“A lei,” Vicki said promptly. “I’ve never seen
you wear a hat yet, so I’m perfectly safe making that
promise.”
“I’ll buy one,” he said promptly, “and wear it
every day. Even in the clinic. See if I don’t.”
“I won’t be here to see,” Vicki said with a giggle.
“I mean to keep you in the air all afternoon and
tomorrow’s Sunday. After that, you can buy all the
hats you want.”
“You’re not going,” he said, holding the door of
his roadster open as she climbed in. “I’ve arranged
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everything. The Walus are going to adopt you.” He
lightly tapped the horn three times, and the Kanes
shouted in reply:
“Have fun, you two. Be seein’ you!”
“They’re perfect darlings,” Vicki said as they
drove away.
“Who?” he demanded. “The Kanes or the Walus?
“All four of them,” Vicki replied. “If I didn’t
have a family of my own, I’d adopt the Walus
myself. They were simply wonderful to me
yesterday, Hank.”
“They’re superior people,” he said seriously.
“And you know, it’s a funny thing. Remember that
couch cover we argued about on Tuesday?”
Vicki nodded, but her heart sank. Had Fran
carelessly left it on the beach? She couldn’t
remember seeing it again after Fran had changed
into her yellow suit.
“Well,” Hank was saying, “it came back
yesterday afternoon complete with a crisp ten-dollar
bill. The Walus told me when I talked with them
over the phone last night that a kid from the
plantation town appeared with it at teatime.”
That impetuous Fran! She must have sent the
couch cover back while she was waiting for Vicki to
pick her up in Joe Brown’s car. Deliberately
attracting the attention of the villagers might have
ruined their whole scheme if a private detective
189

were on her trail. How could she have behaved so
foolishly when so much was at stake?
Vicki hardly dared ask the next question. “So the
Walus know now who borrowed it?”
“They have no idea who their unknown guest
was,” he said blandly. “It would be a violation of
their ethics to inquire.”
“I know who borrowed it,” Vicki said flatly.
“And I’ll let you in on the secret if you promise not
to tell a living soul.”
“I won’t even whisper it to the Menehunes,” he
said solemnly.
They had brunch at the Willows, and out on the
lovely thatched pavilion overlooking a miniature
lake, Vicki began her story.
“Fran Millet was kidnaped,” she said, deciding
not to mince her words with this unimaginative
young man. “And by Kali through the medium of
the fountain lily lei!”
Hank dropped his spoon with a clatter. Vicki
could not help enjoying her little triumph. “But,” she
went on before he could interrupt, “she stayed
kidnaped of her own free will, masquerading in the
Walus’ couch cover as a native girl. She was their
unknown guest.”
He held up his hand and choked, “Have you any
proof?”
For answer, Vicki slipped the jade ring out of her
190

change purse. “Read the name inside the band,” she
said tersely.
“Frances Millet!” He handed back the ring
without another word, but there was a look of
respect and admiration in his eyes now.
“I can’t give you the details,” she went on, “but
Kali and Loi can’t return to Walu unless I intercede
for them, acting as Fran’s representative. Fran
herself refuses to return unless her father forgives
Kali. Do you see why I want to take a plane trip this
afternoon?”
“I get the general picture,” he said thoughtfully.
“Fran must have been a willing victim. Sure, I’ll fly
you to Walu. I’d like to meet the great Greg Millet
myself.”
“You can’t today,” Vicki said firmly. “You’ve
got to leave me there to talk things over with Mr.
Millet all by myself. I’m sure when our parley is
over he’ll fly me back to Oahu in his own plane.”
“I’m sure he will too,” Hank said with a laugh.
“He’ll want to take a hairbrush to Fran as soon as
possible. The idea of that kid holding up her old
man!
“So far, so good,” Vicki thought with relief. “He
thinks of it all as a lark.”
“I suppose,” he was chuckling, “she arranged the
deal herself. Hired Kali to snatch her right under her
dad’s nose. Leaving the broken toxic lei as a clue
191

was an added feminine touch to make it look like a
real kidnaping. Then I imagine she wrote to her
father, supposedly at the point of a knife, making
him call off the dogs.”
“That’s right,” Vicki said. “Fran’s a smart gal.”
He frowned. “And a spoiled brat, too. She had no
business involving an innocent native in her
escapade. I don’t know what kind of oil you’re
going to pour on the troubled Millet waters, but I
hope in the end Fran gets the spanking she
deserves.”
“She probably will,” Vicki said easily, adding to
herself, “And unless I’m careful, I’ll get flayed
alive!”
In a short while they were winging across the
blue Pacific, westward to the tiny isle that was not
yet even a speck upon the horizon.
It was three o’clock when they circled it, and
from the air it looked as though a giant had neatly
lined the flatland with green and red-brown chalk.
The pineapple plantation flowed from the foot of the
mountain to a small village and a landing field at the
other end of the island. Through the crossed green
swords of the leaves, Vicki glimpsed the golden
fruit, but no one was harvesting it, for, according to
Fran, work ceased at noon on Saturdays.
The sloping beach below the cluster of white
houses was dotted with natives who were launching
192

their canoes or casting their fishing lines and nets.
Children tumbled all over themselves and their
mothers as they frolicked in the sand or dashed into
the water with small surfboards.
It was an idyllic scene, except that rising
incongruously above the low, frame houses was a
hideous stone structure, topped by a frowning tower
and surrounded by a moat.
“The Citadel,” Vicki thought. “It may be a
symbol of success to Greg Millet, but to me it’s a
monument of his bad taste.”
Hank set the plane down gently and cut the
motor. “Here we are,” he said, “and here comes a
big bad Waluian who’s going to tell us to scram.”
Running toward them was a brown-skinned man
in work clothes, waving his arms and shouting:
“You from newspaper you mo’ bettah go away.
You get plenty pilikia from boss yet.”
Vicki took a deep breath and hopped out of the
plane with Fran’s ring in her hand. “Here,” she said,
giving it to the native, “bring this to the boss. Wikiwiki. He’s waiting for it.”
A wide grin creased his face then. “Can do,” he
said, and trotted off to The Citadel. Suddenly Vicki
decided to follow him.
“There’s no sense in my standing here,” she said
to Hank. “What’s to prevent me from crossing that
drawbridge and knocking on the front door?”
193

“Nothing,” he said. “Sure you don’t want me to
come along?”
Vicki shook her head, wondering if the
nervousness she felt showed on her face.
“Well,” he said, “I won’t take off until I’m sure
you’ve safely passed the forbidding portals. I’m
beginning to understand why Fran got herself
kidnaped. Anything would be better than living in
that monstrosity.”
Vicki managed a smile and a gay wave, and
hurried across the field to the moat. From the bridge
she peered down into the water. “I suppose,” she
reflected, “a man has a perfect right to surround his
house with a swimming pool if he wants to. But
Greg Millet must be as eccentric as he is ferocious.”
And then she was abruptly face to face with him.
The heavy door had silently swung inward, and
standing on the threshold was the tallest man Vicki
had ever seen. He had enormous shoulders and a
thick crop of curly iron-gray hair. The hands he held
clenched at his sides looked big enough to lift the
drawbridge, and from the expression in his steely
blue eyes Vicki thought he might do just that,
hurling her into the moat.
At that moment she was glad Hank was still on
the island, and she was tempted to turn and run back
to him. Fran’s brief description of her father had
been a masterly piece of understatement!
194

Feeling like a pygmy addressing a giant, she
finally got out a weak, “Hello, Mr. Millet. I’m Vicki
Barr. Did you get Fran’s ring?”
Instead of replying he unclenched the hand which
imprisoned the jade ring, then clapped it into a
pocket.
“Come in, Miss Barr,” he said at last, moving
backward into the huge hall. “Come in.”
Even though he was making an obvious effort to
control it, his voice boomed, and to Vicki it sounded
like a funeral knell. But she followed him into the
hall and stood quietly while he closed and bolted the
door. In spite of his size, he walked as lightly as a
cat across the paved floor, taking such long strides
that Vicki could not keep up with him. Breathlessly
she click-clacked after him on her high heels, and
the stern faces in the oil paintings on the walls
seemed to be frowning at her for making so much
noise. There was no other sound in the house, so she
distinctly heard the sound of Hank’s plane taking
off.
“Your pilot has gone,” Mr. Millet boomed,
coming to a halt at the entrance to a room at the far
end of the hall.
It sounded more like a threat than a statement of
fact, and Vicki’s anger flared up. “I told him not to
stay,” she said flatly. “If you think your men made
him leave, you’re greatly mistaken.”
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Amusement flickered in and out of his eyes as he
gestured to a chair and seated himself behind an
enormous mahogany desk. This room, although
austerely furnished as a man’s study, showed signs
of such good taste that Vicki was surprised. The
leather upholstery was old but beautifully preserved,
and the wood, fine-grained and satin-smooth to the
touch. The walls were bare except for the portrait of
a beautiful woman who looked exactly as Fran
would look in a few more years.
His deep voice broke into her thoughts. “Where is
my daughter?”
Vicki jumped. Somehow she had expected him to
wait for her to open the conversation. She could not
remember a word of her carefully rehearsed speech.
Then, before she knew it, she heard her own voice
saying quite calmly, “I’m sorry I can’t tell you
where she is now. But I can tell you this, Mr. Millet.
She will never again be your daughter in the real
meaning of the word unless you revoke the law
prohibiting natives to leave Walu.”
At that he threw back his head and roared with
laughter. Helplessly Vicki watched him, wondering
what had caused such uncontrolled merriment.
Then it ceased as abruptly as it had begun, and he
was glowering at her across the desk. “Was it you
who put Fran up to this trick?”
So, as Vicki had predicted, it had not taken him
196

long to see through the kidnaping ruse! But there
was one thing to be thankful for. The man had a
sense of humor. Fran had said he could not bear to
be made the butt of a joke. Still, when it had first
dawned on him that his own daughter had put him
through days of anxiety, he had seen the humor of it.
But he was mad now, good and mad.
Vicki elevated her chin. “I didn’t put Fran up to
anything,” she told him bluntly. “I’m simply here at
her request.”
“And you think,” he demanded harshly, “that
you, a mere chit of a girl, can dictate to me?”
“No,” Vicki replied easily, “but I think I can
bargain with you.”
“Bargain?” His big fist slapped the desk. “Are
you threatening me?”
Vicki was beginning to enjoy herself now. He
was both angry and worried. “No,” she said, “but I
could remind you that when base wages were fixed,
company benefits went out. If you, however, chose
to continue the benefits instead of increasing your
pay roll, it’s none of my business.” She smiled
sweetly. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that
labor unions frown upon such paternalistic
feudalism.”
He pushed himself to his feet, towering above
her. “You are threatening me,” he bellowed. “That
man, Kali, is behind this interview.”
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Vicki held her breath. No matter what happened,
Kali must not be punished for the part he had played
in Fran’s scheme. She forced herself to say calmly,
“I’m glad you brought him into the conversation.
Fran feels very strongly that Kali and his son should
be allowed to return.”
He sank back in his chair, in control of himself
again. “My dear young lady,” he said, “I am not at
all interested in hearing how Fran feels about my
business affairs. And now that I know the kidnaping
was a fraud, I shall notify the police and have her
brought to me before night.” His steely eyes glinted.
“As for you, may I point out that you are
trespassing?”
Butterflies fluttered in Vicki’s stomach. She was
trespassing, in a way. And he looked as though he
wouldn’t hesitate to cast her adrift in an outrigger
canoe. But in her handbag was the galley proof and
the thought of it gave her courage to remind him
quietly:
“I’m here as your daughter’s representative.”
“But not at my invitation,” he came back. “I
would feel perfectly within my rights as a landowner
if I locked you in the tower room until it was
convenient for me to turn you over to the
authorities.”
Again he arose and Vicki had no doubt that he
planned to do just that. For now she was a hostage
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and he would feel justified in keeping her a prisoner
until Fran was brought safely back to him.
“I can’t let the interview end now,” she moaned
inwardly. “After he’s read that proof he can throw
me into a dungeon for all I care. But first I’ve got to
make him understand Fran’s point of view.”
She stood up, forcing her trembling knees to be
still. “Before you do anything about me, Mr. Millet,
I think you thoroughly ought to understand how
Fran feels about those labor contracts. She has
always adored you, and it was quite a blow for a girl
of her age to find out that her idol had feet of clay.”
His eyes traveled swiftly from Vicki’s face to the
portrait behind her.
“He’s at least listening,” Vicki thought, and went
on quickly, “I did my best to explain to her that
under your feudalistic regime the workers live better
than those who receive higher salaries. I think she
forgives you now for everything in the contracts
except the ruling that prevented Kali from bringing
his son here. Nobody has to threaten you, Mr.
Millet. You’ve brought about this situation yourself.
In trying to deprive Kali of his son, you have lost
your own daughter.”
He whirled away from her to stare out of the long
window overlooking the moat. “I’ll never re-employ
that man. He’s the cause of all this. I suppose he
whined to Fran before he sneaked away, and talked
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her into this ridiculous attitude. A contract is a
contract. Nobody forced him to sign.”
“No,” Vicki admitted, “but you must realize that
such an ignorant native had no idea five years ago
that the ruling applied to a six-year-old boy. Kali
didn’t violate the terms until you refused to send for
Loi.”
“Loi!” He wheeled to face her. “I never even
heard of him until last week. I don’t like your
attitude, Miss Barr. The way you talk one would
think I had deliberately exiled the child.”
“You did,” Vicki pointed out, more courageous
now that she was fighting in Kali’s defense. “And to
make matters worse, you threatened to have his
father arrested on a false robbery charge if he left
Walu. That virtually means that Kali can’t get
another job. How is he going to support his young
son?”
By this time Fran’s father was in one of the
violent rages she had described. His features
contorted, his lips purple, he took a menacing stride
toward her, thundering, “I will not listen to a
maudlin account of my alleged ill-treatment of those
natives.”
“Here I go right through the window” thought
Vicki. Involuntarily she moved backward a step,
then stood her ground. Feeling more like a pygmy
than ever, she said quietly:
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“I’ve brought you a story that Fran wrote, and I
think you should read it since it’s her version of why
you bought Walu. Purely fiction, of course, but so
well done that I’m sure you’ll recognize yourself.”
Although her hands were shaking, she managed
to appear nonchalant as she whipped the galley
proof out of her handbag and let it flutter down on
the mahogany desk. “I understand it’s to appear in a
Honolulu newspaper tomorrow.”
Curious in spite of his anger, he snatched up the
ribbon of printed words and read the title out loud:
“The Menehunes’ Revenge.” Then he tossed it
aside. “I’m not in the mood for fairy tales at the
moment.”
Vicki’s knees were knocking together and she
sank weakly into her chair. This was the crucial
point in the interview and she must not fail. “I think
you’d better read it now, Mr. Millet. It’s really very
amusing. Especially the part that tells how you
aroused the Menehunes’ wrath when you bottled
their teardrops and exported them to a big
pharmaceutical house in the States.”
His bushy gray eyebrows shot up. “I did what?”
Again his big hands grabbed the proof, but this time
he was more than curious; his face was crimson with
fury.

201

CHAPTER XIII

The Heel of Achilles

There was a long silence in the quiet room as Greg
Millet swiftly scanned the printed version of the tale
Vicki and Fran had outlined in her hotel room
twenty-four hours ago.
Then he sat down behind his desk to read it again
more carefully.
At last he raised his lionlike head. “But this is
ridiculous. I never had any intention of
commercializing the fluid in the fountain lily buds.
Fran knows that. I spent years studying the
pineapple industry from A to Z.”
Vicki shrugged. “It makes a good story though,
doesn’t it? And it ties in so nicely with the fountain
lily legend in that little book you gave Fran on her
twelfth birthday.”
“I don’t think it ties in with anything at all,” he
roared. “It’s libelous, that’s what it is, and I’ll sue
any paper that dares publish it. The very idea!
Nobody would be stupid enough to think he could
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bottle and sell as an anesthetic teardrops shed by
legendary goblins. Why, if this thing appears
tomorrow I’ll be the laughingstock of the whole
archipelago!”
“Not necessarily,” Vicki said. “Walu isn’t the
only tiny island in the Pacific.”
“Miss Barr,” he bellowed. “You are apparently
not as informed as I am. The fountain lily shrub was
never grown anywhere in Hawaii except on my
island.” He slapped the galley proof so hard that it
ripped along the edges. “There can be no mistaking
the locale of this fantastic yarn and the description
of the idiot who faced financial ruin because he
refused to listen to ghostly whispers. Why, it sounds
as though I lost a fortune trying unsuccessfully to
market the fountain lily fluid, and then planted
pineapples as sour grapes!” He covered his face with
horror. “To think that my own daughter would do
this to me. Wait until—”
Vicki interrupted. “To mix metaphors thoroughly,
Mr. Millet,” she said, “I think you’re making a
mountain out of a molehill. Fran’s fictional
character doesn’t resemble you in the slightest. She
states quite definitely that he is a descendant of the
Scottish botanist Menzies, and your ancestors, I
understand, were French Huguenots. Nobody but an
innocent Waluian would connect the two names in
any way.”
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His hands slipped away from his face which was
as red now with shame, Vicki suspected, as with
anger. She went on smoothly, “You have nothing to
worry about, Mr. Millet. Nor have you any basis
whatsoever for starting a libel suit.” This was
absolutely true, since the type had been thrown
away.
He lowered his huge head, like a bull about to
charge. “No basis for a libel suit! Just you wait and
see.” He crossed the room in two long strides. “I’ll
fly to Honolulu at once and tell the editor who was
insane enough to pay money for this thing what he
may expect if he dares to publish it.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Vicki said quietly.
“Protesting too much will only make people sure
that you did buy Walu originally with the idea of
commercializing the fountain lily fluid.” She smiled
sweetly. “You’ve almost convinced me as it is.”
His face was mottled with purple blotches, but he
stopped at the door and came back to his desk.
“You’re right,” he muttered. “I’m trapped.”
“Not exactly,” Vicki said equably. “You can still
appeal to Fran. She can withdraw the story and
refund the money without causing undue
commotion.”
Hope relaxed his taut features. “Why didn’t I
think of that myself?” he demanded, almost smiling.
“I’ll pay that devil-daughter of mine a hundred times
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what they paid her.”
Vicki laughed. “I don’t think Fran’s interested in
money. It will take a lot of persuasion to make her
withdraw the story.”
And then, to Vicki’s relief, he laughed too. “If I
had her where I have you, I’d persuade her with the
back of a hairbrush. But since I haven’t and time’s
running out, I’ll have to bargain. You’re the
mediator,” he said with a shrug. “What do you
suggest?”
“Tit for tat,” Vicki said promptly. “You destroy
those labor contracts and Fran will retract her story.
If,” she added pointedly, “we aren’t already too late.
The presses may be rolling right this minute.”
Vicki knew that she was dealing with a man who
was used to making swift decisions, right or wrong,
and she could tell by the expression on his face that
he knew he had no choice. To hesitate meant public
ridicule, something he could not endure.
Without a word he opened a bottom drawer,
pulled out a large metal box and unlocked it. “You
may tear them up yourself, Miss Barr, or set a match
to them for all I care. The matter is ended. Kali and
his son may return any time they wish. That law is
rescinded as of this minute.”
Vicki ignored the contracts. “I’ll take your word
for it,” she said. “I know enough about Fran to be
sure I can trust her father.”
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He tore the documents to shreds with his big
hands, grinning all the while. “A chip off the old
block, eh? That girl was born stubborn, made of
granite like her old man.”
“She is very much like you,” Vicki agreed. “And
I think it’s quite natural for her to want a career of
her own. I understand that when you were her age
you were self-supporting.”
He grinned, tossing the last scrap into a wastebasket. “May as well give up on that point too, eh?
Let her stay out here and study to become a social
worker?”
Vicki nodded. “I have friends on Oahu who could
give her lots of good advice on the best courses to
take. Bob Kane teaches in a Hawaiian standard
school and his wife helps with nonscholastic
activities. Young Dr. Hoyt devotes most of his time
to the care of natives who come to his clinic. They’d
all be delighted to help Fran get started. And after
she’s had some training, don’t you think she might
be a big help to you here on Walu, Mr. Millet?”
“Of course she would,” he said, completely won
over, and strode to the door. “Neole, Neole!” he
shouted. “Get plane ready wickiwicki. I fly right
away to Oahu.”
He turned back to Vicki, his eyes twinkling.
“Where is that blackmailing child of mine hiding
out?”
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Vicki told him then how she had found Fran on
the Walus’ beach and had taken her to a hotel.
“The Walus,” he repeated, his face reddening.
“I’ve always felt badly about them. They refused to
accept any money for the island, although I offered
them a generous price. Never could understand
why.”
“I can,” Vicki said soberly, “and if you’ll stop to
think about it, I’m sure you’ll understand too.
Money isn’t everything.” She walked with him
down the long hall and out to the drawbridge across
the moat. Then she pointed down to the sloping
beach. “You took those people away from the Walus
and changed their whole mode of living. And yet
you insisted upon withholding from them the rights
that go with civilization. The rights and the
responsibilities. Every man should be paid adequate
wages so that he in turn can contribute to the support
of the whole community. They, not you, should
build the schools and the hospitals and pay the
wages of their public servants. It’s not a question of
how much they gain from company benefits, it’s a
question of dignity.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “I never thought about
it that way. Guess I’ve been thinking of myself as a
great and magnanimous king, instead of the big frog
in the little puddle that I am.”
“Well,” Vicki said cheerfully, “you haven’t done
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any real harm yet. And the Walus have forgiven you
for coming here under false pretenses. All they
really care about is that their people are happy.”
“They are happy,” he said. “As carefree as birds.”
Then he added humbly, “You’re right. The young
boys who are growing up here won’t want things
handed to them on a silver platter. Ran away from
home myself when I was Fran’s age and I’ve never
asked a soul for help since.”
“Like father, like daughter,” Vicki chanted, and
added gratefully to herself: “When Loi comes back
he’ll find things as they are on the other islands. He
won’t have to adjust to a feudalistic system, thank
goodness.”
They took off a few minutes later in Greg Millet’s
plane. “Fran’s been taking flying lessons,” he told
Vicki. “Guess I’ll have to buy her a plane of her
own if she’s going to stay out here. I’m not going to
have my pilot spend all his time taxiing that girl
back and forth.”
Vicki giggled. “I think you’re secretly afraid of
‘that girl,’ Mr. Millet.”
“I am,” he admitted, chuckling. “Wouldn’t you be
afraid of someone who’d put you through what she’s
put me through this past week?” He sobered, his big
features taut with anxiety. “We may not yet arrive in
time to prevent that story from going to press. It’s
after four and the secondary sections of Sunday
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papers are made up well in advance.”
They were silent after that, absorbed in their own
thoughts. Vicki couldn’t help wondering how Greg
Millet would react when he learned that he had been
tricked not once, but twice. Should she tell him the
true story of the galley proof or leave it up to Fran?
She was not at all ashamed of the part she had
played. He deserved every bit of the mental torture
he had suffered since the Monday before. But as Mr.
Walu had put it:
“Ua na aku la ka lua o ka inaina.”—“The pit of
anger is appeased.”
He had suffered, repented, and was determined to
make amends. Shouldn’t he now be relieved of all
anxiety?
Vicki took a deep breath, and as they flew across
the Pacific she told him the whole story from
beginning to end. He listened without interrupting
and after a while he said, “You’re a brave and clever
young woman, Miss Barr. Your parents should be
congratulated for allowing you to develop with a
judicial amount of guidance. I see now that my
feudalists attitude would eventually have harmed a
lot of young people, and my own daughter in
particular.”
Vicki nodded. “Fran is a little too impulsive now
for her own good. But, as my horseback-riding
mother would say, you’ve got to give her her head.
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Curbing her natural desire for a career of her own
would only end in complete revolt. I’m sure she
would have run away in the end. Kali merely
brought matters to a head sooner.”
“I’m glad he did,” Greg Millet admitted. “Opened
my eyes to a lot of things, before it was too late. Tell
me more about your parents and how they manage
that harum-scarum kid sister of yours. Maybe I can
pick up a few ideas on how to handle that strongminded daughter of mine.”
Vicki was delighted to give him a picture of her
home. When she described The Castle, she said, “I
can understand, I think, why you built The Citadel.
It wasn’t to protect you from a possible rebellion of
the Waluians. It’s just that you like old things.”
“I do,” he told her. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve
always wanted to live in a castle and swim in a
moat. Never had a chance to do anything about it
until I bought Walu.”
Vicki was beginning to like this big man, who, as
Fran had said, was at heart nothing but a little boy.
They were flying over Diamond Head and
Waikiki now, and beneath them the sea looked like a
shimmering satin petticoat, tiered with two rows of
lacy foam. Nuuanu Valley was a lush green jungle.
Steep mountain ranges rose above the city and the
airport, sharply silhouetted against the flaming
sunset.
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Tomorrow evening she would be winging away
from all this, and suddenly Vicki wasn’t sure that
she was ready to leave. The days had passed so
swiftly, each one a bright flower woven into a lei
which she would always wear in her memory.
Shyly she explained how she felt to Greg Millet
as their taxi sped along Dillingham Boulevard, away
from the airport and toward the center of Honolulu.
“Everyone feels that way,” he told her. “No
matter how long you stayed here, it would always be
hard to leave. And you’ll be back, mark my words.
There’ll always be a room ready for you in The
Citadel.”
Then they were knocking on the door of Fran’s
hotel room. She opened it at once as though she had
spent the whole afternoon with her hand on the
knob, waiting tremulously for this moment. She was
pale beneath her tan, her dark eyes wide and
expectant. Vicki guessed that she too had suffered
some mental torture during that day.
Without a word Greg scooped her into his arms
and they clung together silently for a long minute.
At last Fran said in a voice that was between a laugh
and a sob, “Dad, you old darling, I’ve missed you.”
He hugged her closer to him, booming, “You
devil-daughter! When I get you home I’ll lock you
in the tower with nothing but bread and water for
weeks.”
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Vicki could not suppress a giggle. “He means,”
she reflected, “that he’ll kill the fatted calf in her
honor.”
And when she left them, they were excitedly
discussing plans for Fran’s future over tea in the
Japanese restaurant on the main floor.

212

CHAPTER XIV

“Till We Meet Again”

“Now the story can be told,” Vicki said with a sigh
of satisfaction.
Her audience, consisting of Hank Hoyt and the
Kanes, grouped themselves around her on the beach.
This was her last day and Vicki intended to spend
every minute of it in the sunshine.
“First,” Hank said, standing at attention and
saluting. “May I report success with the mission to
Maui?”
“Proceed,” Vicki said, trying to look like a
general at a staff meeting.
“Kali and Loi, all present and accounted for.” He
grinned. “Transported them myself early this
morning from Maui to the ‘Young,’ where the
Millets received them with open arms. Will that be
all, sir?”
Vicki giggled. “At ease.”
“He may be at ease,” Helen moaned. “But we’re
on pins and needles. You’ve been acting as
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mysterious as an FBI agent, Vic.” She turned to
Hank, complaining, “I’ve been consumed with
curiosity ever since you came back yesterday after
leaving her on Walu. But she won’t answer any of
my questions. Now, I ask you, is that any way for a
house guest to behave?”
He chuckled. “You deserved that kind of
treatment, Helen. We all did. Almost from the
minute Vicki landed a week ago we’ve made fun of
her suspicions. All of which, I gather, turned out to
be correct deductions.”
“Not all of them,” Vicki said, smiling. “At least
not all of them all of the time. And I must apologize
to you, Helen. I didn’t mean to be secretive, I just
didn’t want to discuss things until I was absolutely
sure Kali and Loi would be welcomed back to Walu.
I could tell from the smug expression on Hank’s
face when he arrived a while ago that his mission
had been accomplished. That’s why I said, ‘Now the
story can be told.’ ”
She told it then, from beginning to end, as she
had told it to Greg Millet the day before. But first
she swore them all to secrecy, especially Helen.
“Don’t you dare let a fine of this appear in your little
book,” she warned. “You’ve got to promise to
pretend that what I’m going to relate is fiction, not
fact. Greg Millet has suffered enough for his
mistakes.”
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They raised their hands solemnly and Bob
intoned in his best professorial manner, “To quote
Ovid, ‘I will sing of facts; but there will be some to
say that I have invented them.’ ”
“It strikes me,” Hank said, folding his long legs
under him as he sat at Vicki’s feet, “that she’s been
singing the truth for days, but we’ve all been too
dumb to follow the tune.”
It was late afternoon by the time Vicki finished
her story, for she was interrupted over and over
again. Then it was time to pack and dress for the
farewell dinner Greg Millet was giving in her honor
in the Sky Room at the airport. Hank insisted upon
their taking both cars so he could have Vicki alone
with him during the drive.
“I’ve a good notion to kidnap you,” he said as
they drove along the shore of Waikiki. “Oh, for a
fountain lily lei!”
Vicki laughed. “You’ve kidnaped my heart,
Hank,” she said. “You and the Kanes and the Walus
and the Millets. A little bit of me will always stay
here.”
“That’s the trouble,” he said ruefully. “A little bit
isn’t enough.”
Fran received Vicki with a hug and a kiss, and
then grabbed Helen’s hand. “To think I’m
entertaining a really and truly published author,” she
said soulfully. “How I envy you!”
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“Don’t waste time on envy,” Helen advised her
with a smile. “Talk to Bob. He’s outlined your
whole curriculum, so you practically have a career
of your own already.”
From then on, Bob and Fran were as thick as
thieves. Hank monopolized Vicki, and Helen
captivated Mr. Millet with her gay chatter.
“You two girls,” he said over dessert, “have
opened up a whole new world to me. I didn’t think
pretty faces went with careers. Are you going to
mention Walu in your book, Mrs. Kane?”
Helen nodded, her eyes twinkling. “As much as
you’ll let me put in, Mr. Millet.”
He chuckled good-naturedly. “Put in any facts
you like, but don’t collaborate with my daughter.
That girl is apt to let her imagination run away with
her.”
“That’s not true, Dad.” Fran laid her brown hand
on his sleeve, smiling at him fondly. “Vicki cooked
up that whole story. All I did was write it.”
“I wish somebody would let me read it,” Helen
put in curiously. “I might get some ideas.”
Mr. Millet shook his head emphatically. “I’ll
never let that little fable out of my strongbox.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t burn it, Dad,” Fran said
mischievously. “Are you keeping it as a souvenir to
remind you of how Vicki outwitted you?”
“That’s right,” he admitted cheerfully. “And even
216

after you grow up and get a job you’d better keep a
hairbrush on your bureau top. To remind you of
what would have happened if it hadn’t been for
Vicki!”
Mr. Millet had hired a troupe of hula dancers to
escort Vicki from the roof garden to her plane. All
too soon they were tossing leis over her head and
swaying gracefully to the haunting melody “Aloha
oe.
Vicki slowly started up the steps to where a
stewardess waited at the entrance to the big transPacific clipper.
The sight of her trim uniform and the manifest in
which she was checking off her passengers’ names
filled Vicki with nostalgia.
“I’ve had my holiday,” she thought. “It’s time I
got back to work.”
“Miss Barr?” the stewardess was asking politely.
She drew a cablegram from the pages of her
passenger list. “This just arrived for you from
Federal Airlines.”
“Thanks,” Vicki said, tucking it in her handbag.
From Federal. That meant news of her next
assignment. But it could wait. Now she must keep
the promise she had made the day before.
On the top step she turned and waved good-bye to
her friends.
“A hui hou,” she called. “Till we meet again.”
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Then she pulled a lei over her head, rolled it into a
ball and tossed it straight to Hank.
He was standing just inside the safety zone but he
caught it with his quick, deft hands.
“Aloha, Vicki,” he shouted, grinning. “Aloha nui
loa.”
“Now he’ll have to buy a hat,” Helen yelled.
They were all laughing and waving now: Fran
and her tall father, the gay young couple, and the
handsome doctor, flushing with pleasure as he
donned Vicki’s lei.
She took one final glimpse of them all, and let the
incoming rush of last-minute passengers carry her
into the plane.
“All good things have to come to an end,” she
decided, fastening her seat belt for the take-off.
Now what?
With her thumbnail she ripped open the yellow
envelope. The message was from Ruth Benson and
it said:
“Report San Francisco headquarters tomorrow
morning. Your next assignment duty in Alaska.”
Alaska! That meant going from one extreme to
the other, leaving tropical islands for frozen wastes!
Vicki scrambled through her memory for all the
facts she had learned about Alaska in geography
classes at school.
Juneau, she remembered, was the capital, and she
218

had seen pictures of its narrow streets and the
colorful Indian totem poles. Alaska’s climatic
conditions, she knew, were almost unbelievable.
During the brief summer with its long days and short
nights, baseball was played under a midnight sun.
Flowers, berries, and vegetables grew rapidly and to
jumbo size.
When winter set in the temperature could drop to
seventy-eight degrees below zero in the same place
where it had risen to a hundred above on the Fourth
of July. Vicki shivered in anticipation.
“I’ll dress like the Eskimos,” she decided, “and
wear fur shoes and parkas, but, like Fran, I’ll never
learn to eat raw fish!”
They were gaining altitude now, flying above
fleecy cumulus clouds that looked as though a child
had scooped up snow and formed it into copies of
the Hawaiian Islands. Below the cloud bank would
unroll twenty-four hundred miles of the Pacific until
they were circling above the blue bay and the bright
towers of the Golden Gate City.
Behind her lay mystery and romance; ahead of
her, Vicki felt sure, was waiting a new kind of
adventure.
Well, she was ready for it!

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