But nobody had reckoned on Hugh Markham, who up till now had been staring in horror and disbelief, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. In his mind, his older brother was more than willing to hurt the pretty lady who had been so nice to him, and that deeply offended his sense of fair play. His lack of mental agility had caused Angus to discount him, so that he never really saw Hugh coming till Hugh was too close to stop. When Hugh charged, he ran so fast that within three seconds he'd reached the horse and its cargo, and had cracked Angus so hard on the arm with the gun that the weapon fell out of Angus' suddenly numb hand. Angus screamed a disbelieving curse and stared at Hugh.
"You're hurting Miss Leslie," Hugh said, glaring at Angus and breathing heavily. "She and Mr. Roarke gave us a nice place to stay and the best food to eat, and did everything they could to help us out. You're supposed to say 'thank you', not try to hurt them!"
"You halfwit," shouted Angus, his rage reaching new levels, and abruptly backhanded his brother with all the force he could muster. Hugh staggered aside and collapsed to the ground, evoking cries from Dori, Linda and Melissa. Colin and Graeme rushed Angus then, both overcome with fury. All the while the Black Phantom pranced and cantered back and forth, reflecting everyone else's emotional distress. Only Leslie didn't react; she had been through enough trauma by now that her brain had more or less shut down and she was inert and unresponsive, staring glassily at some point past the stalls.
Angus lashed out with his foot and hand, managing to get in a couple of blows each on Graeme and Colin. Before they could recover enough from his desperate flailing to try to pull him off the horse, a new voice shouted, "Enough!" Everyone froze and all heads, save Leslie's, snapped around to face the same direction. Roarke had arrived at last and was standing beside the car, with two police cars behind him and a man in a three-piece business suit standing half in and half out of the passenger seat, looking astounded.
"Dismount from the horse immediately, Markham," Roarke commanded, his voice flinty. "If you have harmed my daughter in any way, you won't be leaving this island for quite some time to come."
Angus wavered for a long, extremely tense moment, staring at Roarke, assessing the reinforcements that had accompanied him, and taking in the hostile faces of the Carpenters and his own three siblings. Finally he cursed once again and slid off the horse; several police officers promptly converged on him and put him under restraint with little trouble.
"Thank God," said Dori Markham explosively. "If he'd hurt anybody, I could never have lived with myself. Poor Leslie, I think she'll be in shock for the rest of the day." She and the others picked themselves up from the ground, all of them shaky from adrenaline withdrawal, warily watching the policemen lead Angus away.
Roarke brushed past Angus and the cops, moving with swift purpose for the now-quiet horse and his traumatized passenger. Leslie was half drooped over the Phantom's neck, breathing quickly and shallowly, eyes enormous and unfocused. Their guests looked on with uneasy, worried faces as he reached up and took her hand. "Leslie, it's all right," he said quietly. "Look at me, child…you're safe now."
The sound of his voice punched through the foggy curtain her brain was trying to draw around her, and she blinked and focused on him, not sure if she should believe what she saw. "Mr. Roarke?" she whispered hopefully.
"Yes," he said, nodded and smiled at her in reassurance. "Why don't you come down from there now. It's all over."
She made a move to dismount, but in the end her legs wouldn't hold her up and she slid off the Phantom's back, nearly crumpling to the ground. Roarke and Hugh both caught her and supported her while she tried to regain some of her equilibrium. Dori smiled, her eyes inexplicably misting over, and Melissa's hand slipped into Colin's; they all watched, including Roarke, as Leslie turned to gaze at Hugh with wide eyes that still retained vestiges of shock. "Thank you, Hugh, you're a very nice man," she said softly.
Hugh's face brightened like a sunrise, and the others grinned at one another. He looked at Roarke then, cleared his throat and said earnestly, "I tried real hard not to let Angus hurt her, Mr. Roarke. I told him it wasn't right, after everything you and Miss Leslie did for us this weekend. I'm sorry if he did hurt her."
Roarke smiled. "I don't believe any real damage was done to her, Mr. Markham," he said. "Given some peace and quiet, Leslie will be just fine. We both thank you, most sincerely, for your efforts on Leslie's behalf."
A somewhat embarrassed silence fell then, while Roarke gathered a still-shaky Leslie into a loose embrace and the Australians glanced sheepishly at one another. Finally Graeme said, "Now that we know Leslie's all right…what about the Black Phantom?"
"Yes, we do need to resolve that question," Roarke agreed. He turned to the man standing beside the red station wagon and signaled at him to join their group. "This is Mr. Grady Harding, ladies and gentlemen; he is the executor of the will of the Black Phantom's late owner." He proceeded to introduce Harding to each of the Australians, who one by one shook hands with him.
Harding glanced around at the group and then studied Leslie, who stood silently in Roarke's arms, watching blank-faced. "I seem to remember you from seven or eight years ago, Miss Hamilton," he remarked out of the blue, "when you helped break up a false-plagiarism ring for the local publishing house. So we meet again."
Leslie blinked at him as if coming out of a trance, broke her gaze and thought back, then suddenly grinned. "I remember that case too. Nice to see you again, Mr. Harding." She glanced at Roarke, who bore an unmistakably relieved gleam in his dark eyes, and smiled. "I'll be okay, Mr. Roarke."
"Good," he murmured warmly, smiling; then he shifted his attention to the entire group. "The question is this: which group was the first to reach the stables?"
The inquiry brought on a startled silence, and everyone looked at one another in confusion. Shoulders were shrugged, mouths quirked into sheepish grins, and some faces turned red. Finally Graeme Carpenter admitted, "So much happened, Mr. Harding, I don't think I could tell you who got here first." The others mumbled concurrence.
Harding grinned. "I can understand that. Well…Miss Hamilton, you were here the entire time. Do you remember which group arrived first?"
Leslie's eyes widened, and Roarke, still holding her, studied her curiously. "I realize you were under a phenomenal amount of emotional stress, my child, but if you do recall anything, it would be very helpful."
Leslie considered the situation for about a full minute, replaying her memories of the last ten or fifteen minutes. She shivered once and closed her eyes, and Roarke gave her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. Finally she said, "The Carpenters were the first ones to get here, because when Mr. Carpenter saw what was going on, he reacted aloud, and Angus Markham shot at him then."
Graeme and Linda looked at each other, then at Melissa, who was very clearly in the Markham camp. She stood close to Colin, their hands clasped and fingers interlaced. "How 'bout you, Liss?" Linda asked.
"It's all right," Melissa said and glanced shyly at Colin. "You two won. I defected to the Markhams' side during the race, so I don't have any part in this."
Graeme assessed his sister's obvious interest in Colin and his in her, looked curiously at Dori, then eyed Hugh. Something in his features softened, and he suddenly chuckled. "Mr. Harding," he said, turning to the lawyer, "I realize Miss Leslie says Linda and I won the race…but considering everything that's been happening here, and Liss hooking up with Colin there, and Hugh so concerned over right and wrong and Miss Leslie's welfare, I think the only decent thing to do is to have all six of our names on those ownership papers. The Carpenters and Markhams will co-own the horse, just like our great-great-great grandfathers did in the nineteenth century."
Grady Harding smiled and nodded. "In that case, Miss Hamilton, I believe Mr. Roarke gave you the papers."
"Oh, yes, he did," she remembered and reached into her riding jacket, extracting the manila envelope and handing it to Harding.
"By the way," Harding said, his smile becoming a grin, "I should advise both families that you very neatly fulfilled the terms of the will, without even realizing it." While they all stared at him blankly, he removed a white envelope from an inside pocket of his blazer and withdrew from it a few folded sheets of paper. "This is the last will and testament of Liam Fairbanks, late owner of the Black Phantom and the last of the Fairbanks family. He was a distant relative of yours."
"What?" blurted everyone all at once.
"Mr. Fairbanks was the last descendant of a Carpenter son and a Markham daughter who eloped in 1868, against the wishes of their fathers who had already set up arranged marriages for them with other people. When they disappeared, they took the original Black Phantom with them. They left Australia with the horse and settled on a small uncharted island somewhere in the South Pacific, and no one ever heard from them again. Eventually the family moved on to other residences, till in the end Liam Fairbanks bought a cottage here on Fantasy Island and boarded the current Black Phantom at these stables for the last few years. He never married, and he knew the entire story of the rift that the elopement of his grandparents had driven between the Carpenter and Markham families. It was his hope that, by bringing the current generations of the two families together in competition for the Phantom, that rift would somehow be mended."
"And it worked," exclaimed Hugh. "Well, I mean, except for Angus."
Everyone laughed, and Harding nodded. "Mr. Fairbanks came up with the idea of the contest, from beginning to end, and asked Mr. Roarke to make sure it was carried out according to the terms he set out in this will." Harding tapped the papers he held. "The will provides that, should the rift be mended and the families become co-owners of the Phantom, there be an extra bequest." He turned then. "Mr. Roarke?"
With a last pat on Leslie's shoulder, Roarke let her loose, smiled with anticipation and suggested, "Please follow me, everyone." They all trailed after Roarke as though he were leading a parade, halting abruptly when he paused at the next-to-last stall and opened its door. Leslie, the only one who stood where she could see inside the stall, lit up in wonder; her expression caught the others' attention and they all leaned eagerly forward.
A moment later Roarke led a half-grown horse out into the sunshine. The filly had a shimmering coat of an astounding gray color that seemed almost iridescent. "She's gorgeous!" breathed Dori Markham in awe.
"Indeed she is," Roarke agreed. "This is Silver Spirit, and she is the newest generation of the line of the Black Phantom. Since the Carpenter and Markham families are now reunited in their ownership of the Phantom—precisely as Mr. Fairbanks had hoped—Silver Spirit is also bequeathed to both families as a bonus. So you will be transporting two magnificent horses home to Port Augusta with you."
Pandemonium broke out in the Australians' excited babbling, and Harding made the rounds, getting signatures from each happy member of the two families. Roarke and Leslie looked at each other and grinned at the same instant.
§ § § -- April 8, 1991
"We can't thank you enough," Linda Carpenter said, speaking for the entire group who had already shaken hands with Roarke and Leslie and tendered their farewells. "I think we're all actually relieved that the feud's finally over, especially since those two look pretty chummy all of a sudden!" She indicated Colin and Melissa, and laughed with her hosts.
"I'm just glad everything worked out the way it did," Leslie said. "Liam Fairbanks was quite a visionary, I think."
"I think so too," Linda agreed. "I wish we could have known him." She focused on Leslie curiously. "I hope you weren't permanently traumatized by what Angus did to you. I think it woke up Graeme. He'd always been stubborn about carrying on the feud, but when he saw what it did to Angus, he started thinking things over."
"She has suffered no ill effects," Roarke assured Linda. "I believe that just knowing she was able to help restore the friendship of your two families did her good. Angus Markham did no real damage, although I did take the liberty of sending him home on a plane that left yesterday afternoon. The Black Phantom and Silver Spirit are also already on their way to their new home."
"Wonderful. Thank you so much for everything you've done for us, Mr. Roarke and Leslie," Linda said, and shook hands with them before turning towards the boarding dock. They returned her last wave and watched quietly while the attendant slammed the door and the plane revved up to taxi out of the lagoon.
"No ill effects, that is," Leslie then said wryly, "outside of a colossal nightmare last night. I appreciate your leaving that out of your farewell to Linda Carpenter."
Roarke laughed. "I appreciate your gratitude, but there are other fantasies waiting; so I suggest we get down to business."
"I'd be more than happy to," she said and smiled. "Lead the way, boss." Roarke cast her a surprised glance, and her smile became an impish grin.
The mention of "the Professor" in chapter 5 is taken from the episode "Also-Rans/Portrait of Solange" (first story arc), which first aired February 20, 1981 and starred Larry Linville, Joan Prather, Macdonald Carey, Arlene Dahl and a horse named Professor Oats.