He--" Standish did not finish his sentence.

Into his slow-moving brain, an idea dawned.

Leaning far out of the window and shouting at the top of his enormous lungs, he bawled through the night: "Hade! Back, man! Go back! They'll kill you!" The bull-like bellow might have been heard for half a mile.
And, as it ceased, a muffled snarling, like a dog's, came from the edge of the forest, where waited the silent men whose knives were drawn for the killing.
And, in the same instant, from the head of the path, drifted the fluting notes of a mocking bird.
Disregarding or failing to catch the meaning of the thickly-bellowed warning, Rodney Hade was advancing nonchalantly upon his fate.

The three in the hallway crowded into the window-opening, tense, wordless, mesmerized, peering aghast toward the screen of vines which veiled the end of the path.
The full moon, which Brice had glimpsed as it was rising, a minute or so before, now breasted the low tops of the orange trees across the highroad and sent a level shaft of light athwart the lawn.

Its clear beams played vividly on the dark forest, revealing the screen of vines at the head of the path, and revealing also three crouching dark figures, close to the ground, at the very edge of the lawn, not six feet from the path head.
And, almost instantly, with a third repetition of the mocking bird call, the vine screen was swept aside.