Honor of Thieves by Cutcliffe Hyne — Read

A shining-faced negro waiter came up in answer to the bell, and brought tumblers of tinkling ice and water. Both Onslow and Miss Kildare drank thirstily, and then lay back again in their cane chairs, panting. The close heat was something terrible. There was not a breath of either sea breeze or land breeze, and the electric fan which whirred on the table behind them did little more than send a blast of sickly warmth. Down the long line of the piazza were the rest of the people in the hotel, the men cursing and mopping their faces, the women with closed eyes fanning themselves languidly. And, overhead, the shingles of the roof crackled and rustled in the baking air as though they were alive.

Night came, and the bell clashed out its summons to dinner, but no one went in. The wooden sides of the hotel, baked through and through by a month of tropical sun, had made the rooms unendurable. So they stayed where they were, in the hot, oppressive dark, and blinked at the white summer lightning which splashed the violet heavens in front of them. In heavy panting beats the night seemed to close down upon them and pen them in, so that it was a labor to breathe.