Stream sinister

WHEN LIEUT. GAVIN SCOTT, A.U.S., DECIDED TO SPEND HIS SICK leave at the Hacienda de Monte Real, he didn't expect a gay time, but he certainly didn't expect to land in a morass of mystery, tragedy, and great danger. He went because he wanted to see and give what comfort he could to the twin sister of Chris de Curiel, his friend, who was killed on the Normandy beachhead. Gavin's arrival at the ranch happened to coincide with a set of ghastly—and ghostly—circumstances. A riderless horse, fully saddled, pranced across the road, coming from nowhere, going nowhere; Fernande was certain her dead brother in person had visited her; the legendary family ghost appeared, accompanied by death. Gavin was not a superstitious person and did not believe in the supernatural. He was certain these apparitions were part and parcel of a terrorizing campaign to manœuvre the De Curiels out of their hacienda and sizable family fortune. When another heir-presumptive apparently committed suicide, Gavin saw danger closing in around Fernande, and made a special effort to prove that the supernatural was more malicious than mystical.