For where was the
Tubbs of yesterday--the honey-tongued, the suave, the anxiously
obsequious Tubbs? Gone, quite gone. Instead, here was a Tubbs who
cocked his helmet rakishly, and leered round upon the company, deaf
to the claims of loyalty, the pleas of friendship, the voice of
tenderness--Aunt Jane's.
Manfully Miss Higglesby-Browne stormed up and down the beach. She
demanded of Mr. Shaw, of Cuthbert Vane, of Captain Magnus, each and
severally, that Mr. Tubbs be compelled to disgorge his secret. You
saw that she would not have shrunk from a regimen of racks and
thumbscrews. But there were no racks or thumbscrews on the island.
Of course we could have invented various instruments of torture--I
felt I could have developed some ingenuity that way myself--but too
fatally well Mr. Tubbs knew the civilized prejudices of those with
whom he had to deal. With perfect impunity he could strut about
the camp, sure that no weapons worse than words would be brought to
bear upon him, that he would not even be turned away from the
general board to browse on cocoanuts in solitude.
Long ago Mr. Shaw had left the field to Violet and with a curt
shrug had turned his back and stood looking out over the cove,
stroking his chin reflectively. Miss Browne's eloquence had risen
to amazing flights, and she already had Mr. Tubbs inextricably
mixed with.
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