[image]"PRATT THREW THE INTRUDER HEAVILY TO THE GROUND."Meanwhile the sounds had wakened Armstrong and Warrender. Heaving themselves out of their sleeping-bags they rushed in their pyjamas across the clearing. Pratt was sitting up, dazedly rubbing his head."What's the row?" asked Armstrong."Diamond cut diamond," murmured Pratt. "Help me up, you fellows. Everything's whirling round."They helped him back into the tent and sponged his head. Presently he was able to tell them what had happened."Was it Rush you collared?" asked Warrender."No, a bigger man, with a broad face, high cheekbones, and a bent-in nose.""The face I saw in the thicket!" exclaimed Armstrong. "Who was the other chap?""I don't know. I didn't see him, confound the fellow! Just my luck! And it was my scheme!"CHAPTER XA SOFT ANSWERThere was no more sleep that night for any of the party. When Pratt's bruised head had been bathed and bandaged the three placed their chairs at the tent entrance, and sat in the still, warm air, discussing the situation more seriously than they had yet done. They had learnt definitely from the recent incident that at least two men were concerned in the campaign of petty annoyance. One of these--the man whose face Armstrong had seen in the thicket--looked like a foreigner, and apparently either lived somewhere on the island or had means of reaching it from the mainland. What more probable than that the second man was Rush, and that his boat was placed at the foreigner's disposal?"The more I think of it," said Warrender, "the more likely it seems that Rush and one of the foreigners are playing some private game of their own. I haven't a notion what the game is, but I can't believe that Pratt's uncle left instructions to worry trespassers on an island that isn't his, or that any decent fellow in his secretary's position would encourage it.""That assumes the secretary is a decent fellow," remarked Armstrong."Well, why not?" asked Pratt. "A man may be mad without being a fool, and my old uncle, though he's mad enough to hate English servants, wouldn't be such a fool as to engage foreigners without inquiring about their characters.""That fellow Armstrong knocked down wasn't an attractive specimen," said Warrender."He was drunk," said Pratt. "Some of the most estimable characters--the most respectable of English butlers, for instance--may now and then take a drop too much.""That fellow is a sot," said Armstrong. "It's marked all over him.""Well, I tell you what I think we had better do," said Warrender. "Go up to the house, see the secretary, and put the case to him. If he's a decent fellow, and the man you tripped, Pratt, is one of his crew, he'll put a stop to this foolery. Will you go up with me to-morrow?""Better take Armstrong," Pratt replied. "If my uncle were at home I'd go and beard him, and jolly well tell him a few things for his good. But I'd rather not show up in his absence. Besides, I shall have a head to-morrow, and a swelling the size of a turnip. I feel the growing pains; I'll be fit for nothing.""Rough luck!" said Warrender, commiseratingly. "Very well. Jack and I will go, and I dare say that'll be the end of our troubles."At nine o'clock next morning Armstrong and Warrender rowed off in the dinghy; at a quarter to ten they entered the grounds of the Red House. The paths were weedy, the grass untrimmed, the flower-beds untidy."The foreigners don't overwork," remarked Armstrong, as they walked along the drive towards the house. "The place is a disgrace to the neighbourhood.""It certainly looks very much neglected," said Warrender. "The house might be uninhabited but for that smoke from one of the chimneys, and the car waiting at the door.""The same car Pratt and I saw yesterday. It belongs to old Blevins. I wonder whether they use it for joy-riding, or what? The secretary may be away, by the bye; yesterday he went off with a trunk.""A nuisance if he is. But we'll see."The front of the house faced south-east, and the drive wound from the gate in a wide arc to the left. The lower windows were shuttered; at some of those on the upper storey the blinds were drawn; but as the visitors approached there appeared at a small upper casement on the side of the house facing them the form of a woman, At first it seemed that she had not seen them; she stood looking out in an attitude of idle immobility. They could not distinguish her features through the small square panes of the casement; she was stout in build, and dressed in the print of a domestic servant.Suddenly, as her eyes fell on them, she gave a perceptible start. She turned her head quickly from the window, as if to see whether any one was behind her; then raised her hands, apparently to undo the catch. Next moment she dropped them with a gesture of impatience or despair. The boys saw her shake her head, and, lifting an arm, make a sweeping movement with it towards the rear of the house. A moment later she left the window hurriedly, as a servant might do in answering a call."Rummy!" said Warrender. "That's Rogers's sister, I suppose; wife of the chef, you remember. What did she mean?""It looked as if she wanted to open the window and couldn't," returned Armstrong. "She wanted to speak to us.""That movement of her arm--was it a warning to us to go away?""Too late in any case. That's the secretary coming out; he's seen us."The dapper little man whom Armstrong had seen on the day before, dressed as he was then, was hurrying down the steps from the front entrance when he caught sight of the boys. He stopped short, gave a swift glance behind him, then descended the remaining steps and came towards them. His movements were quick, his step was light, and as he drew nearer they were aware of a very vivid personality, accentuated by dark eyes of great brilliance, set rather closely together."Yes, gentlemen," he said, smiling, "what can I do for you?"His voice was low and smooth; the intonation, rather than the accent, alone suggested a foreign origin."Can you give us a few minutes alone?" said Warrender.The chauffeur had just come down the steps, carrying a box, and stood with it still in his arms, beside the car, looking on with an air of startled curiosity."Certainly," replied the man, "if it is only a question of minutes. As you see, I am about to drive out, and my time is short. Henrico"--he addressed the chauffeur--"put the box down and go into the house. Now, gentlemen.""You are Mr. Pratt's secretary, I believe," said Warrender, feeling a little awkwardness in the situation, and wishing that the voluble banjoist were in the office of spokesman instead of himself."Yes. My name is Gradoff--Paul Gradoff.""Well, Mr. Gradoff, I'm sorry to trouble you, but you may be able to throw some light on a puzzle that's rather annoying to us.""Anything I can do----""We are camping on the island over there, and ever since our arrival have been the object of annoying and--I'm afraid I must say--malicious attacks. We have reason to believe that one of the aggressors is not an Englishman, and knowing that your staff here is largely foreign, we have come up to--to----""Complain?" suggested Gradoff, as Warrender hesitated."Well, rather to ask if you can help us," Warrender went on. "I should explain that we fell foul of one of your men on the evening of our arrival, and it occurs to me that he, or one of his mates, may be retaliating.""Ah yes; I had heard of that little matter from my man, Jensen," said Gradoff, suavely. "You could hardly expect him to be amiable, could you? He was insulted by a yokel, very properly chastised him, and was then suddenly set upon by one of you young men, and before he could defend himself was seriously hurt.""That's nonsense, Mr. Gradoff!" exclaimed Armstrong. "The man dealt a foul blow, and I stepped in.""It was you?" rejoined Gradoff, in his suave, smooth tones. "The version is different:tot homines tot sententiæ--being students you will recognise the allusion. It is so very difficult to reconcile conflicting stories, especially in common brawls. But, come; it is not like Englishmen to make a fuss about trifles, and Olof Jensen is not the man to bear malice. If that is the sum of your complaint----""But it is not," Warrender broke in, nettled by the Russian's suavity and his Latin. "We hadn't been twelve hours on the island when our motor-boat was set adrift----""My dear young man,quandoque dormitat Homerus--you will correct me if I do not quote accurately; my schooldays, alas! are a distant past. Even the most experienced sailors--and I am far from saying I do not include you among them--may tie a careless knot; make a slip, as you English say. And the current is strong when swollen by the rain. Really, my dear sir----""At any rate tin-tacks don't rain from heaven. We had a shower of them over our tent one night, and in the morning----""Latet anguis in herbâ! Come, come; you were dreaming. I am told that in the past the island was a favourite resort of trippers, a class of people who reprehensibly leave behind them much rubbish--paper bags, bottles, tin cans; why not tin-tacks?"Warrender was fuming, irritated by his lack of evidence as well as by the secretary's manner. He wished that he had ignored the minor incidents, and confined his statement to the latest."We'd no proof--I know that--till last night," he said. "A fellow tripped over a rope snare we had rigged up. One of us caught him, and knocked him out; he was clearly a foreigner----""And you have him in custody? Ah, now we are getting to something substantial! He was a foreigner; on the principleex pede Herculem--you recognise the proverb?--you infer that he belongs to my staff. And you did not bring him with you for confrontation?""He was rescued by----""By another foreigner?""We don't know who by; he gave my friend a blow from behind.""That is more serious, truly. But what do you tell me? You are camping on the island--with permission? No, of course not; is it not No Man's Island? Well, what is no man's is all men's. What more likely than that others are camping there also? One of them falls over your rope, and is knocked out by your friend; your friend is, in turn, knocked out by a friend of the tripper. It is thelex talionis--the term is familiar to you? That, of course, is only a theory, but I commend it to your consideration. And now, I take it, I have the sum of your complaints. I put it to you, do they make a case against my staff?""I wasn't making a case against your staff," said Warrender. "I merely stated the facts.""But with a bias; yes, with a bias, natural enough to youth and hot blood. I do not blame you; but you will agree that I am somewhat concerned for the good name of the men under my charge. Lest you should still harbour doubts about them, I will summon them. You shall see them. They number four. There is Jensen, the Swede, whom you, sir"--turning to Armstrong--"so unhappily misjudged. But you shall see them all. There is a woman, too, the wife of the chef, an amiable countrywoman of yours. It is perhaps not necessary to summon her? You do not suspect her of sowing tin-tacks or falling over your rope?"He smiled, and without waiting for an answer went to the open house-door and called his chauffeur, to whom he gave instructions. Meanwhile, the two boys, chafing under his politeness with its touch of irony, exchanged looks of silent sympathy."The men will be here immediately," said Gradoff, rejoining them. "What a delightful summer we are having!Per æstivam liquidam--you remember the line? How I envy you your daily browsing on the Classics! Ah, here come the four suspects! Two, you perceive, are tall; two are short. I will align them in order of their heights, as they do in your army, I believe. Halt, men! Stand in line: Jensen at one end, then Radewski, then Prutti, last of all, Rod. Now, my dear sirs, inspect the company.""There's no need," said Warrender. "We've seen them all in or about the village. None of these is the man you saw, Jack?""No," replied Armstrong, shortly."But darkness, even moonlight, is deceptive," said Gradoff, in his suavest manner. "Really, I am concerned to convince you thoroughly; I should regret your going away harbouring the least particle of suspicion. I will interrogate them in turn. Jensen, you do not amuse yourself by sowing tin-tacks on No Man's Island?--Jensen, I may explain, is Mr. Pratt's horsekeeper, in particular, and handy-man in general. Well, Jensen?""Nope," replied the man, gruffly, eyeing Armstrong with a scowl."And you, Radewski?--Radewski is the gardener." The boys recognised him as the passenger in the car that had collided with the farm-wagon."No, of course not," answered the Pole, smiling."And now you, Prutti?--the chauffeur, as you see.""It is silly, stupid; I say ze question----" began the Italian, volubly."Yes, yes; but I want no comments. Just say yes or no," Gradoff interrupted."No, zen; I say no. I say ze question----""He comes from the south, gentlemen," said Gradoff, deprecatingly. "Now, Rod, what have you to say?""Sacré nom d'un----""Now, now. Maximilien Rod is the chef, gentlemen, accustomed to the use of the diction of the menu. Plain English, Rod, if you please.""Zen I say zat ze man vat accuse me of so imbecile, so--so--so----""Contain yourself, Rod. Yes or no?""No, no; not at all--no!""Four negatives do not make an affirmative," said Gradoff, turning to the boys, and smiling with the persistent urbanity they were beginning to detest. "These are all my staff--with the exception of the excellent woman, Rod's wife. Would you like to pursue your inquiries?""Thank you, it is unnecessary," replied Warrender, in as even and polite a tone as he was master of."Then the men may return to their duties, and I may begin my journey. May I give you a lift as far as the cross-roads? Or, stay! You are here very near the river. You may prefer to take a short cut through the grounds, and avoid the long walk on the dusty road.""Thank you," said Warrender, ready to accept any suggestion that would remove him quickly from the presence of Mr. Gradoff; "if some one will show us the way.""Certainly. Quite a happy thought," said the Russian. He called to the chef, the rearmost of the party filing away. "Rod, show these gentlemen the shortest way to the river; bring them opposite to the island. Good-morning, gentlemen. I am sorry you have found me a broken reed. But I do hope your holiday will not be spoilt; I have such keen memories of my own happy holidays--liberatio et vacuitas omnis molestiæ: you remember your Cicero?Good-morning."He sprang into the car, in which the chauffeur was already seated, and with a smile and a wave of the hand was driven away.CHAPTER XIINFORMATION RECEIVED"Sarcastic swine!" muttered Armstrong, savagely, as he set off with Warrender behind the rotund little chef."So confoundedly polite I could have kicked him," returned Warrender, in the same undertone. "His beastly Latin, too! What did he take us for?""What we are--a couple of mugs. And Pratt's worse, with his absurd theories. Of course these chaps aren't in it. Rush is at the bottom of it, and the other fellow, though he looked like a foreigner, is very likely only some ugly freak of a Devonian after all.""Well, I'll be hanged if I stand any more of Rush's nonsense. Next time anything happens, I'll get old Crawshay to set that bobby moving we saw the other day. I'm sick of it."Ill-humour had for the moment got the upper hand, and they were conscious only of their soreness as they followed their guide through the unkempt grounds. Their attention was attracted presently by the tower that reared itself out of a thicket some little distance on their left. It was a square much-dilapidated building of stone, encrusted with moss and ivy, reaching a height of some fifty or sixty feet. The window openings were boarded up with deal planks that were evidently new."Is the tower used for anything now?" Warrender asked the Swiss."Ze tower? No, it is ruin, fall to pieces," replied the man.[image]"'ZE TOWER? NO, IT IS RUIN, FALL TO PIECES.'""I say, wearea couple of lunatics!" cried Armstrong. "We've left the dinghy at the ferry. What's the good of the short cut? Pratt can't work the motor.""Hang it! I'd clean forgotten.""Zen ve go back?" said the guide, eagerly. He had come to the end of the open grounds; the rest of the way lay through a wilderness of shrubs that promised laborious walking."No, I'm hanged if we do," said Warrender. "Now we've come so far we'll not go back.""Zen how you cross ze river?""Swim it. You needn't come. We'll forge straight ahead. Thanks."He tipped the man, and plunged with Armstrong into the thicket. Ten minutes' battling with the intricately woven mass of greenery brought them to the brink of the stream almost exactly opposite to their camping-place. They stripped, bundled their clothes upon their heads, and made short work of the thirty-foot channel."My aunt! In native garb!" cried Pratt, as they walked up still unclothed. "'Here be we poor mariners.' Shipwrecked? Lost the dinghy?""No, only our tempers," replied Armstrong. "The dinghy's still at the ferry.""I say, my uncle hasn't got back, has he?" asked Pratt."No. Why?""I thought perhaps you had met him, and got a taste ofhistemper, that's all. 'Tell me not in mournful numbers'--but tell me anyhow you like the cause of this Ulyssean exhibition."Warrender began the narrative as he towelled himself, continued it through his dressing, and concluded it when he had dropped into his chair by Pratt's side. Pratt listened with ever-growing merriment."You priceless old fatheads!" he exclaimed. "When the beggar chucked Latin at you why didn't you pelt him with Greek, Phil?--or with sines and hypotenuses, and all that, Jack? Don't you remember how some Cambridge josser floored a heathen bargee by calling him an isosceles triangle? I wish I'd gone.""I wish you had!" echoed Warrender. "But when a fellow's so dashed polite----""Polite! I tell you what it is: you're both too serious for this flighty world. When you consider that it's gyrating at the rate of I don't know how many thousand miles a minute, it's unnatural, positively indecent, for any one to be so stuggy. The art of life is to effervesce. But, you know, the important feature of your morning's entertainment seems not to have sufficiently impressed you.""What's that?" asked Armstrong."Rod's wife.Cherchez la femme! You oughtn't to have come away without having had a word with her.""How on earth could we?" said Warrender. "We weren't asked into the house, and if we had been----""My dear chap, if a fair lady beckoned to me out of her casement window I'd find some means of receiving her behests. Rod's wife,néeMolly Rogers, didn't make signs to you for nothing, and I foresee that I shall have to turn our skipping-rope into a rope ladder, and----""Oh, don't go on gassing," Armstrong interposed, irascibly. "Can't you be serious?""Solemnity itself. We've got to fetch that dinghy. I want to go to the post office. Very well, after lunch Phil shall run me up in the motorboat. I'll have a word with Rogers on the way, and I bet my boots I won't come back without some little addition to our dossier."Pratt's programme was carried out. Warrender and he found Joe Rogers pulling spring onions in his garden behind the inn. The man had placed his wig on a pea-stick, and his bald pate glowed in the sunlight like a pink turnip."Good-afternoon, Joe," said Pratt, genially. "I wonder how it is that you sailormen so often take to gardening when your sea days are over?""I can't tell 'ee, sir, 'cept it be as we loves the look o' vegetables, being without 'em so long at a time. The old woman do say it keeps me out o' mischief.""Now, Rogers," called his better half from an upper window, "put on your hair this minute. Drat the man! Do 'ee want to catch your death of sunstroke?"Rogers gave a sly look at his visitors as he donned his wig."It do make my skull itch terrible," he said. "But she's a good woman.""I jolly well hope I shall be looked after as well when my time comes," said Pratt. "But I'm not thinking of matrimony yet. What age did you marry at, Joe?""Thirty-one, just the same age as my sister Molly, but not in such a hurry. My missus took a deal o' courting; 'twas five years' hard labour; whereas Molly give in in less than a month.""He came, he saw--he conquered. Must be something fascinating about him. Has she lost her cold, by the way? My friends happened to see her this morning.""Well now, if that ain't too bad. She haven't been nigh me for a good fortnight, and she didn't ought to go about the village without looking in.""They saw her at the house. She seemed to be catching flies or something at the window. I gather you don't like her husband.""I've nothing against him, 'cept his name and furren nature. My missus told her she was cutting a rod for her own back.""Surely he doesn't beat her?""That wasn't her meaning. Rod's his name, and the missus do have a way of taking up a word and twisting of it about, you may say. 'A rod in pickle,' says she. 'Tis just a clappering tongue; there's no sense in it. But it do seem as Molly have turned her back on all her old friends. 'Tis like this: they furriners bain't favourites in the parish, and Molly sticks to her husband, as 'tis her duty. That's what I make of it.""Well, I dare say she chose the pick of the bunch. How many are there of them, by the bye?""Four, leaving out the secretary. They don't go about in the village much. None of 'em comes here 'cept that feller you saw t'other day, and he don't come often.Idon't get no good of 'em. 'Twas different in the old days.""Things will take a turn," said Pratt, consolingly. "When my--when Mr. Pratt returns I dare say he'll quarrel with the foreigners, and get English servants again.""And be ye all right on the island, sir?""Having a ripping time. We're always on the look-out for the ghost, but he seems rather shy. I can sympathise with him, being so bashful myself.""You do seem to have a bit of a bump one side of the head, sir. No inseck have been poisoning 'ee, I hope.""No. Insects love me too well to disfigure me. I'm inclined to think it was a worm, or something like a leech, perhaps. It's a trifle; a molehill, not a mountain. To-morrow both sides will be equal, and the angles subtended at the base as right as ever. Good-bye; keep your hair on.""Well, old man, we've spent a profitable quarter of an hour," said Pratt, as he went on with Warrender to the village. "The number of Gradoff s staff is confirmed; therefore the chap I collared is not one of them. As to Rod's wife, there's no mystery about her. She's disgusted, as any sensible person would be, at the petty narrow-mindedness of the natives who dislike her husband simply because he's of another breed, and so she cuts 'em dead.""But what did her movements at the window mean?" asked Warrender. "It certainly looked as if she wanted help or something.""Nothing of the sort, depend upon it. She was waving you off; she's as careful of Rod as Rogers's missus is of him; she was afraid Armstrong would go for Rod as he went for the Swede. I'm always ready to own up when I'm wrong. My old theories won't hold water. I think I'll give up detecting and go in for the Bar. You only have to stick to your brief; needn't have an idea of your own.""Well, it seems to me we're not much for'arder.""Quite a mistake. The issue is narrowed down. Clear our minds of the foreign menagerie and all that, and concentrate on Rush. That's the ticket."Calling at the post office, he was handed a letter from his London friend, who reported that the scrap of paper was torn from a copy of thePravda. Only part of the date of issue was visible--the word June; and the incomplete paragraph of text appeared to relate to the high prices of perambulators."There you are," said Pratt. "Much cry and little wool. It proves nothing except that some one, some time or other, had a Russian newspaper, which was partly burnt along with other papers, no doubt equally uninteresting and unimportant. What we have to do is simply to weave a spider's web for Rush.""You change your mind twice a day, and are cock-sure every time," Warrender remarked."A clear proof that I ought to go in for politics, after all. I'm glad it's settled at last. Percy Pratt, M.P.--reverse 'em, you get P.M., Prime Minister; then Sir Percy, Bart.; Baron Pratt, Viscount, Earl--why not Duke while I'm about it? But do dukes play the banjo, I wonder?""You're better qualified for the part of Mad Hatter, I fancy. Come, let's step it out."The evening of that day turned out rather cool and overcast. A breeze sprang up in the south-west, refreshing after the still heat. After early supper, Armstrong, declaring that he was getting flabby for want of exercise, set off in the dinghy for a pull down the river. Pratt thought it a good opportunity for testing Armstrong's report of the sounds he had heard in the cottage, and went off alone, leaving Warrender on guard at the camp.He had not yet come within sight of the ruins when, above the rustle of the stirred leaves, a strange moaning broke upon his ear. He stopped to listen. While far more impressionable than Armstrong, he had solid musical knowledge which his schoolfellow lacked, and he was struck at once by an unusual quality in the sound he heard."That's not the wind in the eaves," he thought. "It's more like the whining of an organ pipe when a lazy blower is letting the wind out."He hurried on. The sound rose and fell. For some moments it maintained a steady, pure organ note; then with rising pitch it became almost a shriek."I don't wonder the rustics are a bit scared," he thought, "but no ghost could produce a tone like that--unless he'd been a cathedral alto in his lifetime. It's due, I expect, to some metal chimney-pot that's got displaced and partly closed. Wonder if I can find it?"He entered the ruins, and ran up the staircase. A roseate twilight suffused the western sky. Led by the persistent sound, he came to the unroofed room facing the west. The moaning proceeded from some spot above his head. He tried to clamber up the mass of broken masonry that littered the floor, but found that he could not gain the level of the roof except by climbing the jagged brickwork of the broken wall, a feat too perilous in the half light."That's the worst of being fat," he said to himself. "I believe Armstrong could do it."Leaving the room presently, he went idly, without definite motive, into the second room, facing east and overlooking the river and his uncle's grounds. In this direction dusk was already deepening into night; the nearer trees were still distinguishable, but beyond the river all individual objects were blurred by the darkness.He sat on the paneless window-sill, listening to the strange sound from above, looking out towards the Red House, wondering whereabouts in the wide world his uncle was travelling. All at once, far away, almost on a level with his eyes, he thought he saw a faint red glow. It disappeared in a moment--so quickly that it seemed an illusion. But there it was again, indubitably some small luminous body. "Some one with a lamp in one of the top rooms of the Red House," he thought. Again it disappeared, only to show again after an interval--a third time--a fourth.To Pratt these phenomena were at first merely sensations of sight, not perceptions of intelligence. But by and by he was struck by the fact that the glow always appeared at the same spot, not here and there, like a lamp carried by a person moving about a room. Then he found himself mentally measuring the intervals between its appearances, expecting their occurrence as regularly as the beats of a striking clock. It was with surprise and a sort of disappointment that he discovered that the intervals were irregular, and with curiosity, after a while, that they were regular and irregular both, as it seemed, fitfully; the glow appeared two or three times at equal intervals, then the intervals became shorter or longer. "Signals, of course," he thought, when the impression of order and purpose became fixed in him. "Who is it? Where is it? What's the game?"The alternations continued for several minutes, then finally ceased. Pratt got up, left the ruins, and made his way with some difficulty back to camp."Armstrong back?" he asked."Not yet," replied Warrender. "Time he was. This is the darkest evening we've had. See any one?""Not a soul. All quiet here?""Absolute peace.Youweren't here.""Thanks. Glad you missed me. Will the sweet, melodious strains of my gentle banjo disturb your serenity?""Not a bit. Strum away. But hadn't you better turn in? It's past nine. Old Jack won't get much sleep before second watch if he isn't here soon; no reason why you shouldn't have your full whack, especially after last night's affair.""I'll stay up till he comes."Pratt softly thrummed his strings, musing on his discoveries. Half-past nine came; ten o'clock."I say, what's happened to Armstrong?" said Warrender. "Surely he hasn't been carried out to sea? Come and help me shove off; I'll run down and see if I can find him. You won't turn in, so you won't mind taking part of my watch.""Righto! But I dare say Jack's enjoying himself."They were just about to launch the motor-boat when they caught the dull sound of oars in the distance. They waited. The rising moon struggled through the rack, and cast a faint light on the stream. Presently the dinghy appeared from among the overarching foliage. Armstrong was sculling very quietly."Thought you were lost," said Warrender. "It's past ten; your watch starts at eleven-forty.""All right. Pratt, tie up, will you? Come with me, Warrender."Armstrong led the way at a long, rapid stride across the clearing and into the thicket. He said nothing, and did not pause until he came to the shore of the western channel."Keep well behind this tree," he said, in a whisper, placing himself in shadow.In a few minutes they heard the splash of oars. A boat emerged from the shades down stream, lit up fitfully by the transient moonbeams. It passed close beneath their hiding-place. It held a single oarsman, whose thickset frame would have been unmistakable even if the moonlight had not touched his face. He pulled out of sight."What's he been up to?" said Warrender."Let's get back," replied Armstrong. "I wanted a second witness. Pratt will wish to start a new career now, I expect."CHAPTER XIIQUEER FISHWhen Armstrong had started in the dinghy for a pull down the river his intention was to scull easily on the current to the mouth, then to turn westward, and exercise his muscles more strenuously in a contest with the wind. On reaching the coastline, however, he found that there was much more force in the breeze than had appeared inland, and a considerable swell on the sea, and he contented himself with hugging the shore, protected in some measure by the cliffs that swept round to a promontory in the distance.After a stiff pull for half an hour or so he turned. The last faint radiance of sunset was behind him, and as he approached the river mouth, being himself shadowed by the cliffs, he noticed signs of activity about the fisher's hut on the beach beyond the farther bank. Two men were carrying what appeared to be fishing gear down to a boat at the water's edge. The weather seemed scarcely to promise good fishing, and, knowing from his friends that the hut was in the occupation, if not the possession, of Rush, he was sufficiently interested to decide upon watching the men's proceedings. He pulled a little more closely inshore, shipped his oars, and lay to under cover of a mass of rock.In a few minutes the men got aboard the boat, and pulled out to sea in the direction of a small tramp steamer which was just visible on the eastern horizon, and, as the trail of smoke from its funnel showed, was coming down channel. It seemed to Armstrong a good opportunity for examining the hut; possibly he might find there some clue to Rush's mysterious activities. Assured that under the shadow of the cliffs he would be invisible to the boatmen, he pulled across to the opposite beach, and ran the dinghy ashore in a small, sheltered cove two or three hundred yards from the hut. Leaving the boat high and dry, he made his way back along the beach at the foot of the cliffs, and approached the hut, which stood on a rocky platform above high-water mark. As he neared it he was careful to keep it between himself and the boat at sea; Rush, if he were one of the two, was probably long-sighted.By the time he reached the hut the boat was nearly a mile out, and the men appeared to be letting down a net. He slipped in through the open door, and threw a glance round the interior, seizing the last moments of twilight for his rapid scrutiny. He saw, as might have been expected, the usual fisherman's gear: old nets, lobster pots, cork floats, a broken oar, part of a rudder, an old sou'wester, baskets, ropes--nothing that had any particular interest or significance. But, just as he was about to leave, he noticed in the darkest corner half a dozen tins strung by the handles upon a length of trailing rope. Their shape suggested paraffin or petrol rather than any material useful to fishers; yet they were not the common petrol cans; they were larger and wider-necked than those that held the ordinary motor-spirit. He lifted one; it was empty, but very firmly corked, as likewise were the others.Armstrong took one of the cans, stretching the rope, towards the door, to examine it more closely in what was left of the twilight. On the shoulder, enclosed in a panel, was an embossed description, the characters reminding Armstrong of the printed letters of the Russian newspaper."Rummy," he thought. "Gradoff, judging by his name, is a Russian, and the only Russian hereabouts. Yet we find a Russian newspaper in the cellar, and Russian petrol tins in Rush's hut. Queer!"He replaced the cans, and left the hut. As he did so he saw, out at sea, the steamer he had noticed as a distant smudge some twenty minutes before. No smoke was now pouring from her funnel; apparently she had stopped or slowed down some distance beyond the small boat. While he was watching, the vessel went ahead. The small boat rowed farther out; then appeared to beat about for a time; finally stopped, and from the movements of the figures Armstrong saw aboard, they were lifting something from the water. The steamer, meanwhile, was proceeding steadily on her course down channel.The growing dusk had rendered it impossible for the watcher to discern anything clearly; steamer, boat, and men were merely indistinct shapes. But the boat, without doubt, was the one that he had seen leave the beach; its movements were strange, and Armstrong decided to await its return. Who were its occupants? What was their errand? What were they bringing back with them?The enlarging boat was evidently coming ashore. Armstrong looked rapidly around, and spied, close to the hut, and, between that and his own boat, a ridge of rock that would give him cover. Posting himself there, he waited. The dusk deepened. Presently he heard the faint, slow, regular thuds of oars in the rowlocks, then low voices. He could now discern the boat as a dark patch on the white crests of the rollers. It came steadily in, grounded; the two men sprang into the surf. The tide was going out. They did not haul the boat up, but lifted from it the bundles of gear and carried them into the hut. But there was no fish. They passed Armstrong's hiding-place near enough for him to recognise them. The first of them was Rush; the second--even in the dusk Armstrong knew again that broad, flat face. It was the face he had seen in the thicket--the face of the mysterious assailant Pratt had described.
[image]"PRATT THREW THE INTRUDER HEAVILY TO THE GROUND."
[image]
[image]
"PRATT THREW THE INTRUDER HEAVILY TO THE GROUND."
Meanwhile the sounds had wakened Armstrong and Warrender. Heaving themselves out of their sleeping-bags they rushed in their pyjamas across the clearing. Pratt was sitting up, dazedly rubbing his head.
"What's the row?" asked Armstrong.
"Diamond cut diamond," murmured Pratt. "Help me up, you fellows. Everything's whirling round."
They helped him back into the tent and sponged his head. Presently he was able to tell them what had happened.
"Was it Rush you collared?" asked Warrender.
"No, a bigger man, with a broad face, high cheekbones, and a bent-in nose."
"The face I saw in the thicket!" exclaimed Armstrong. "Who was the other chap?"
"I don't know. I didn't see him, confound the fellow! Just my luck! And it was my scheme!"
CHAPTER X
A SOFT ANSWER
There was no more sleep that night for any of the party. When Pratt's bruised head had been bathed and bandaged the three placed their chairs at the tent entrance, and sat in the still, warm air, discussing the situation more seriously than they had yet done. They had learnt definitely from the recent incident that at least two men were concerned in the campaign of petty annoyance. One of these--the man whose face Armstrong had seen in the thicket--looked like a foreigner, and apparently either lived somewhere on the island or had means of reaching it from the mainland. What more probable than that the second man was Rush, and that his boat was placed at the foreigner's disposal?
"The more I think of it," said Warrender, "the more likely it seems that Rush and one of the foreigners are playing some private game of their own. I haven't a notion what the game is, but I can't believe that Pratt's uncle left instructions to worry trespassers on an island that isn't his, or that any decent fellow in his secretary's position would encourage it."
"That assumes the secretary is a decent fellow," remarked Armstrong.
"Well, why not?" asked Pratt. "A man may be mad without being a fool, and my old uncle, though he's mad enough to hate English servants, wouldn't be such a fool as to engage foreigners without inquiring about their characters."
"That fellow Armstrong knocked down wasn't an attractive specimen," said Warrender.
"He was drunk," said Pratt. "Some of the most estimable characters--the most respectable of English butlers, for instance--may now and then take a drop too much."
"That fellow is a sot," said Armstrong. "It's marked all over him."
"Well, I tell you what I think we had better do," said Warrender. "Go up to the house, see the secretary, and put the case to him. If he's a decent fellow, and the man you tripped, Pratt, is one of his crew, he'll put a stop to this foolery. Will you go up with me to-morrow?"
"Better take Armstrong," Pratt replied. "If my uncle were at home I'd go and beard him, and jolly well tell him a few things for his good. But I'd rather not show up in his absence. Besides, I shall have a head to-morrow, and a swelling the size of a turnip. I feel the growing pains; I'll be fit for nothing."
"Rough luck!" said Warrender, commiseratingly. "Very well. Jack and I will go, and I dare say that'll be the end of our troubles."
At nine o'clock next morning Armstrong and Warrender rowed off in the dinghy; at a quarter to ten they entered the grounds of the Red House. The paths were weedy, the grass untrimmed, the flower-beds untidy.
"The foreigners don't overwork," remarked Armstrong, as they walked along the drive towards the house. "The place is a disgrace to the neighbourhood."
"It certainly looks very much neglected," said Warrender. "The house might be uninhabited but for that smoke from one of the chimneys, and the car waiting at the door."
"The same car Pratt and I saw yesterday. It belongs to old Blevins. I wonder whether they use it for joy-riding, or what? The secretary may be away, by the bye; yesterday he went off with a trunk."
"A nuisance if he is. But we'll see."
The front of the house faced south-east, and the drive wound from the gate in a wide arc to the left. The lower windows were shuttered; at some of those on the upper storey the blinds were drawn; but as the visitors approached there appeared at a small upper casement on the side of the house facing them the form of a woman, At first it seemed that she had not seen them; she stood looking out in an attitude of idle immobility. They could not distinguish her features through the small square panes of the casement; she was stout in build, and dressed in the print of a domestic servant.
Suddenly, as her eyes fell on them, she gave a perceptible start. She turned her head quickly from the window, as if to see whether any one was behind her; then raised her hands, apparently to undo the catch. Next moment she dropped them with a gesture of impatience or despair. The boys saw her shake her head, and, lifting an arm, make a sweeping movement with it towards the rear of the house. A moment later she left the window hurriedly, as a servant might do in answering a call.
"Rummy!" said Warrender. "That's Rogers's sister, I suppose; wife of the chef, you remember. What did she mean?"
"It looked as if she wanted to open the window and couldn't," returned Armstrong. "She wanted to speak to us."
"That movement of her arm--was it a warning to us to go away?"
"Too late in any case. That's the secretary coming out; he's seen us."
The dapper little man whom Armstrong had seen on the day before, dressed as he was then, was hurrying down the steps from the front entrance when he caught sight of the boys. He stopped short, gave a swift glance behind him, then descended the remaining steps and came towards them. His movements were quick, his step was light, and as he drew nearer they were aware of a very vivid personality, accentuated by dark eyes of great brilliance, set rather closely together.
"Yes, gentlemen," he said, smiling, "what can I do for you?"
His voice was low and smooth; the intonation, rather than the accent, alone suggested a foreign origin.
"Can you give us a few minutes alone?" said Warrender.
The chauffeur had just come down the steps, carrying a box, and stood with it still in his arms, beside the car, looking on with an air of startled curiosity.
"Certainly," replied the man, "if it is only a question of minutes. As you see, I am about to drive out, and my time is short. Henrico"--he addressed the chauffeur--"put the box down and go into the house. Now, gentlemen."
"You are Mr. Pratt's secretary, I believe," said Warrender, feeling a little awkwardness in the situation, and wishing that the voluble banjoist were in the office of spokesman instead of himself.
"Yes. My name is Gradoff--Paul Gradoff."
"Well, Mr. Gradoff, I'm sorry to trouble you, but you may be able to throw some light on a puzzle that's rather annoying to us."
"Anything I can do----"
"We are camping on the island over there, and ever since our arrival have been the object of annoying and--I'm afraid I must say--malicious attacks. We have reason to believe that one of the aggressors is not an Englishman, and knowing that your staff here is largely foreign, we have come up to--to----"
"Complain?" suggested Gradoff, as Warrender hesitated.
"Well, rather to ask if you can help us," Warrender went on. "I should explain that we fell foul of one of your men on the evening of our arrival, and it occurs to me that he, or one of his mates, may be retaliating."
"Ah yes; I had heard of that little matter from my man, Jensen," said Gradoff, suavely. "You could hardly expect him to be amiable, could you? He was insulted by a yokel, very properly chastised him, and was then suddenly set upon by one of you young men, and before he could defend himself was seriously hurt."
"That's nonsense, Mr. Gradoff!" exclaimed Armstrong. "The man dealt a foul blow, and I stepped in."
"It was you?" rejoined Gradoff, in his suave, smooth tones. "The version is different:tot homines tot sententiæ--being students you will recognise the allusion. It is so very difficult to reconcile conflicting stories, especially in common brawls. But, come; it is not like Englishmen to make a fuss about trifles, and Olof Jensen is not the man to bear malice. If that is the sum of your complaint----"
"But it is not," Warrender broke in, nettled by the Russian's suavity and his Latin. "We hadn't been twelve hours on the island when our motor-boat was set adrift----"
"My dear young man,quandoque dormitat Homerus--you will correct me if I do not quote accurately; my schooldays, alas! are a distant past. Even the most experienced sailors--and I am far from saying I do not include you among them--may tie a careless knot; make a slip, as you English say. And the current is strong when swollen by the rain. Really, my dear sir----"
"At any rate tin-tacks don't rain from heaven. We had a shower of them over our tent one night, and in the morning----"
"Latet anguis in herbâ! Come, come; you were dreaming. I am told that in the past the island was a favourite resort of trippers, a class of people who reprehensibly leave behind them much rubbish--paper bags, bottles, tin cans; why not tin-tacks?"
Warrender was fuming, irritated by his lack of evidence as well as by the secretary's manner. He wished that he had ignored the minor incidents, and confined his statement to the latest.
"We'd no proof--I know that--till last night," he said. "A fellow tripped over a rope snare we had rigged up. One of us caught him, and knocked him out; he was clearly a foreigner----"
"And you have him in custody? Ah, now we are getting to something substantial! He was a foreigner; on the principleex pede Herculem--you recognise the proverb?--you infer that he belongs to my staff. And you did not bring him with you for confrontation?"
"He was rescued by----"
"By another foreigner?"
"We don't know who by; he gave my friend a blow from behind."
"That is more serious, truly. But what do you tell me? You are camping on the island--with permission? No, of course not; is it not No Man's Island? Well, what is no man's is all men's. What more likely than that others are camping there also? One of them falls over your rope, and is knocked out by your friend; your friend is, in turn, knocked out by a friend of the tripper. It is thelex talionis--the term is familiar to you? That, of course, is only a theory, but I commend it to your consideration. And now, I take it, I have the sum of your complaints. I put it to you, do they make a case against my staff?"
"I wasn't making a case against your staff," said Warrender. "I merely stated the facts."
"But with a bias; yes, with a bias, natural enough to youth and hot blood. I do not blame you; but you will agree that I am somewhat concerned for the good name of the men under my charge. Lest you should still harbour doubts about them, I will summon them. You shall see them. They number four. There is Jensen, the Swede, whom you, sir"--turning to Armstrong--"so unhappily misjudged. But you shall see them all. There is a woman, too, the wife of the chef, an amiable countrywoman of yours. It is perhaps not necessary to summon her? You do not suspect her of sowing tin-tacks or falling over your rope?"
He smiled, and without waiting for an answer went to the open house-door and called his chauffeur, to whom he gave instructions. Meanwhile, the two boys, chafing under his politeness with its touch of irony, exchanged looks of silent sympathy.
"The men will be here immediately," said Gradoff, rejoining them. "What a delightful summer we are having!Per æstivam liquidam--you remember the line? How I envy you your daily browsing on the Classics! Ah, here come the four suspects! Two, you perceive, are tall; two are short. I will align them in order of their heights, as they do in your army, I believe. Halt, men! Stand in line: Jensen at one end, then Radewski, then Prutti, last of all, Rod. Now, my dear sirs, inspect the company."
"There's no need," said Warrender. "We've seen them all in or about the village. None of these is the man you saw, Jack?"
"No," replied Armstrong, shortly.
"But darkness, even moonlight, is deceptive," said Gradoff, in his suavest manner. "Really, I am concerned to convince you thoroughly; I should regret your going away harbouring the least particle of suspicion. I will interrogate them in turn. Jensen, you do not amuse yourself by sowing tin-tacks on No Man's Island?--Jensen, I may explain, is Mr. Pratt's horsekeeper, in particular, and handy-man in general. Well, Jensen?"
"Nope," replied the man, gruffly, eyeing Armstrong with a scowl.
"And you, Radewski?--Radewski is the gardener." The boys recognised him as the passenger in the car that had collided with the farm-wagon.
"No, of course not," answered the Pole, smiling.
"And now you, Prutti?--the chauffeur, as you see."
"It is silly, stupid; I say ze question----" began the Italian, volubly.
"Yes, yes; but I want no comments. Just say yes or no," Gradoff interrupted.
"No, zen; I say no. I say ze question----"
"He comes from the south, gentlemen," said Gradoff, deprecatingly. "Now, Rod, what have you to say?"
"Sacré nom d'un----"
"Now, now. Maximilien Rod is the chef, gentlemen, accustomed to the use of the diction of the menu. Plain English, Rod, if you please."
"Zen I say zat ze man vat accuse me of so imbecile, so--so--so----"
"Contain yourself, Rod. Yes or no?"
"No, no; not at all--no!"
"Four negatives do not make an affirmative," said Gradoff, turning to the boys, and smiling with the persistent urbanity they were beginning to detest. "These are all my staff--with the exception of the excellent woman, Rod's wife. Would you like to pursue your inquiries?"
"Thank you, it is unnecessary," replied Warrender, in as even and polite a tone as he was master of.
"Then the men may return to their duties, and I may begin my journey. May I give you a lift as far as the cross-roads? Or, stay! You are here very near the river. You may prefer to take a short cut through the grounds, and avoid the long walk on the dusty road."
"Thank you," said Warrender, ready to accept any suggestion that would remove him quickly from the presence of Mr. Gradoff; "if some one will show us the way."
"Certainly. Quite a happy thought," said the Russian. He called to the chef, the rearmost of the party filing away. "Rod, show these gentlemen the shortest way to the river; bring them opposite to the island. Good-morning, gentlemen. I am sorry you have found me a broken reed. But I do hope your holiday will not be spoilt; I have such keen memories of my own happy holidays--liberatio et vacuitas omnis molestiæ: you remember your Cicero?Good-morning."
He sprang into the car, in which the chauffeur was already seated, and with a smile and a wave of the hand was driven away.
CHAPTER XI
INFORMATION RECEIVED
"Sarcastic swine!" muttered Armstrong, savagely, as he set off with Warrender behind the rotund little chef.
"So confoundedly polite I could have kicked him," returned Warrender, in the same undertone. "His beastly Latin, too! What did he take us for?"
"What we are--a couple of mugs. And Pratt's worse, with his absurd theories. Of course these chaps aren't in it. Rush is at the bottom of it, and the other fellow, though he looked like a foreigner, is very likely only some ugly freak of a Devonian after all."
"Well, I'll be hanged if I stand any more of Rush's nonsense. Next time anything happens, I'll get old Crawshay to set that bobby moving we saw the other day. I'm sick of it."
Ill-humour had for the moment got the upper hand, and they were conscious only of their soreness as they followed their guide through the unkempt grounds. Their attention was attracted presently by the tower that reared itself out of a thicket some little distance on their left. It was a square much-dilapidated building of stone, encrusted with moss and ivy, reaching a height of some fifty or sixty feet. The window openings were boarded up with deal planks that were evidently new.
"Is the tower used for anything now?" Warrender asked the Swiss.
"Ze tower? No, it is ruin, fall to pieces," replied the man.
[image]"'ZE TOWER? NO, IT IS RUIN, FALL TO PIECES.'"
[image]
[image]
"'ZE TOWER? NO, IT IS RUIN, FALL TO PIECES.'"
"I say, wearea couple of lunatics!" cried Armstrong. "We've left the dinghy at the ferry. What's the good of the short cut? Pratt can't work the motor."
"Hang it! I'd clean forgotten."
"Zen ve go back?" said the guide, eagerly. He had come to the end of the open grounds; the rest of the way lay through a wilderness of shrubs that promised laborious walking.
"No, I'm hanged if we do," said Warrender. "Now we've come so far we'll not go back."
"Zen how you cross ze river?"
"Swim it. You needn't come. We'll forge straight ahead. Thanks."
He tipped the man, and plunged with Armstrong into the thicket. Ten minutes' battling with the intricately woven mass of greenery brought them to the brink of the stream almost exactly opposite to their camping-place. They stripped, bundled their clothes upon their heads, and made short work of the thirty-foot channel.
"My aunt! In native garb!" cried Pratt, as they walked up still unclothed. "'Here be we poor mariners.' Shipwrecked? Lost the dinghy?"
"No, only our tempers," replied Armstrong. "The dinghy's still at the ferry."
"I say, my uncle hasn't got back, has he?" asked Pratt.
"No. Why?"
"I thought perhaps you had met him, and got a taste ofhistemper, that's all. 'Tell me not in mournful numbers'--but tell me anyhow you like the cause of this Ulyssean exhibition."
Warrender began the narrative as he towelled himself, continued it through his dressing, and concluded it when he had dropped into his chair by Pratt's side. Pratt listened with ever-growing merriment.
"You priceless old fatheads!" he exclaimed. "When the beggar chucked Latin at you why didn't you pelt him with Greek, Phil?--or with sines and hypotenuses, and all that, Jack? Don't you remember how some Cambridge josser floored a heathen bargee by calling him an isosceles triangle? I wish I'd gone."
"I wish you had!" echoed Warrender. "But when a fellow's so dashed polite----"
"Polite! I tell you what it is: you're both too serious for this flighty world. When you consider that it's gyrating at the rate of I don't know how many thousand miles a minute, it's unnatural, positively indecent, for any one to be so stuggy. The art of life is to effervesce. But, you know, the important feature of your morning's entertainment seems not to have sufficiently impressed you."
"What's that?" asked Armstrong.
"Rod's wife.Cherchez la femme! You oughtn't to have come away without having had a word with her."
"How on earth could we?" said Warrender. "We weren't asked into the house, and if we had been----"
"My dear chap, if a fair lady beckoned to me out of her casement window I'd find some means of receiving her behests. Rod's wife,néeMolly Rogers, didn't make signs to you for nothing, and I foresee that I shall have to turn our skipping-rope into a rope ladder, and----"
"Oh, don't go on gassing," Armstrong interposed, irascibly. "Can't you be serious?"
"Solemnity itself. We've got to fetch that dinghy. I want to go to the post office. Very well, after lunch Phil shall run me up in the motorboat. I'll have a word with Rogers on the way, and I bet my boots I won't come back without some little addition to our dossier."
Pratt's programme was carried out. Warrender and he found Joe Rogers pulling spring onions in his garden behind the inn. The man had placed his wig on a pea-stick, and his bald pate glowed in the sunlight like a pink turnip.
"Good-afternoon, Joe," said Pratt, genially. "I wonder how it is that you sailormen so often take to gardening when your sea days are over?"
"I can't tell 'ee, sir, 'cept it be as we loves the look o' vegetables, being without 'em so long at a time. The old woman do say it keeps me out o' mischief."
"Now, Rogers," called his better half from an upper window, "put on your hair this minute. Drat the man! Do 'ee want to catch your death of sunstroke?"
Rogers gave a sly look at his visitors as he donned his wig.
"It do make my skull itch terrible," he said. "But she's a good woman."
"I jolly well hope I shall be looked after as well when my time comes," said Pratt. "But I'm not thinking of matrimony yet. What age did you marry at, Joe?"
"Thirty-one, just the same age as my sister Molly, but not in such a hurry. My missus took a deal o' courting; 'twas five years' hard labour; whereas Molly give in in less than a month."
"He came, he saw--he conquered. Must be something fascinating about him. Has she lost her cold, by the way? My friends happened to see her this morning."
"Well now, if that ain't too bad. She haven't been nigh me for a good fortnight, and she didn't ought to go about the village without looking in."
"They saw her at the house. She seemed to be catching flies or something at the window. I gather you don't like her husband."
"I've nothing against him, 'cept his name and furren nature. My missus told her she was cutting a rod for her own back."
"Surely he doesn't beat her?"
"That wasn't her meaning. Rod's his name, and the missus do have a way of taking up a word and twisting of it about, you may say. 'A rod in pickle,' says she. 'Tis just a clappering tongue; there's no sense in it. But it do seem as Molly have turned her back on all her old friends. 'Tis like this: they furriners bain't favourites in the parish, and Molly sticks to her husband, as 'tis her duty. That's what I make of it."
"Well, I dare say she chose the pick of the bunch. How many are there of them, by the bye?"
"Four, leaving out the secretary. They don't go about in the village much. None of 'em comes here 'cept that feller you saw t'other day, and he don't come often.Idon't get no good of 'em. 'Twas different in the old days."
"Things will take a turn," said Pratt, consolingly. "When my--when Mr. Pratt returns I dare say he'll quarrel with the foreigners, and get English servants again."
"And be ye all right on the island, sir?"
"Having a ripping time. We're always on the look-out for the ghost, but he seems rather shy. I can sympathise with him, being so bashful myself."
"You do seem to have a bit of a bump one side of the head, sir. No inseck have been poisoning 'ee, I hope."
"No. Insects love me too well to disfigure me. I'm inclined to think it was a worm, or something like a leech, perhaps. It's a trifle; a molehill, not a mountain. To-morrow both sides will be equal, and the angles subtended at the base as right as ever. Good-bye; keep your hair on."
"Well, old man, we've spent a profitable quarter of an hour," said Pratt, as he went on with Warrender to the village. "The number of Gradoff s staff is confirmed; therefore the chap I collared is not one of them. As to Rod's wife, there's no mystery about her. She's disgusted, as any sensible person would be, at the petty narrow-mindedness of the natives who dislike her husband simply because he's of another breed, and so she cuts 'em dead."
"But what did her movements at the window mean?" asked Warrender. "It certainly looked as if she wanted help or something."
"Nothing of the sort, depend upon it. She was waving you off; she's as careful of Rod as Rogers's missus is of him; she was afraid Armstrong would go for Rod as he went for the Swede. I'm always ready to own up when I'm wrong. My old theories won't hold water. I think I'll give up detecting and go in for the Bar. You only have to stick to your brief; needn't have an idea of your own."
"Well, it seems to me we're not much for'arder."
"Quite a mistake. The issue is narrowed down. Clear our minds of the foreign menagerie and all that, and concentrate on Rush. That's the ticket."
Calling at the post office, he was handed a letter from his London friend, who reported that the scrap of paper was torn from a copy of thePravda. Only part of the date of issue was visible--the word June; and the incomplete paragraph of text appeared to relate to the high prices of perambulators.
"There you are," said Pratt. "Much cry and little wool. It proves nothing except that some one, some time or other, had a Russian newspaper, which was partly burnt along with other papers, no doubt equally uninteresting and unimportant. What we have to do is simply to weave a spider's web for Rush."
"You change your mind twice a day, and are cock-sure every time," Warrender remarked.
"A clear proof that I ought to go in for politics, after all. I'm glad it's settled at last. Percy Pratt, M.P.--reverse 'em, you get P.M., Prime Minister; then Sir Percy, Bart.; Baron Pratt, Viscount, Earl--why not Duke while I'm about it? But do dukes play the banjo, I wonder?"
"You're better qualified for the part of Mad Hatter, I fancy. Come, let's step it out."
The evening of that day turned out rather cool and overcast. A breeze sprang up in the south-west, refreshing after the still heat. After early supper, Armstrong, declaring that he was getting flabby for want of exercise, set off in the dinghy for a pull down the river. Pratt thought it a good opportunity for testing Armstrong's report of the sounds he had heard in the cottage, and went off alone, leaving Warrender on guard at the camp.
He had not yet come within sight of the ruins when, above the rustle of the stirred leaves, a strange moaning broke upon his ear. He stopped to listen. While far more impressionable than Armstrong, he had solid musical knowledge which his schoolfellow lacked, and he was struck at once by an unusual quality in the sound he heard.
"That's not the wind in the eaves," he thought. "It's more like the whining of an organ pipe when a lazy blower is letting the wind out."
He hurried on. The sound rose and fell. For some moments it maintained a steady, pure organ note; then with rising pitch it became almost a shriek.
"I don't wonder the rustics are a bit scared," he thought, "but no ghost could produce a tone like that--unless he'd been a cathedral alto in his lifetime. It's due, I expect, to some metal chimney-pot that's got displaced and partly closed. Wonder if I can find it?"
He entered the ruins, and ran up the staircase. A roseate twilight suffused the western sky. Led by the persistent sound, he came to the unroofed room facing the west. The moaning proceeded from some spot above his head. He tried to clamber up the mass of broken masonry that littered the floor, but found that he could not gain the level of the roof except by climbing the jagged brickwork of the broken wall, a feat too perilous in the half light.
"That's the worst of being fat," he said to himself. "I believe Armstrong could do it."
Leaving the room presently, he went idly, without definite motive, into the second room, facing east and overlooking the river and his uncle's grounds. In this direction dusk was already deepening into night; the nearer trees were still distinguishable, but beyond the river all individual objects were blurred by the darkness.
He sat on the paneless window-sill, listening to the strange sound from above, looking out towards the Red House, wondering whereabouts in the wide world his uncle was travelling. All at once, far away, almost on a level with his eyes, he thought he saw a faint red glow. It disappeared in a moment--so quickly that it seemed an illusion. But there it was again, indubitably some small luminous body. "Some one with a lamp in one of the top rooms of the Red House," he thought. Again it disappeared, only to show again after an interval--a third time--a fourth.
To Pratt these phenomena were at first merely sensations of sight, not perceptions of intelligence. But by and by he was struck by the fact that the glow always appeared at the same spot, not here and there, like a lamp carried by a person moving about a room. Then he found himself mentally measuring the intervals between its appearances, expecting their occurrence as regularly as the beats of a striking clock. It was with surprise and a sort of disappointment that he discovered that the intervals were irregular, and with curiosity, after a while, that they were regular and irregular both, as it seemed, fitfully; the glow appeared two or three times at equal intervals, then the intervals became shorter or longer. "Signals, of course," he thought, when the impression of order and purpose became fixed in him. "Who is it? Where is it? What's the game?"
The alternations continued for several minutes, then finally ceased. Pratt got up, left the ruins, and made his way with some difficulty back to camp.
"Armstrong back?" he asked.
"Not yet," replied Warrender. "Time he was. This is the darkest evening we've had. See any one?"
"Not a soul. All quiet here?"
"Absolute peace.Youweren't here."
"Thanks. Glad you missed me. Will the sweet, melodious strains of my gentle banjo disturb your serenity?"
"Not a bit. Strum away. But hadn't you better turn in? It's past nine. Old Jack won't get much sleep before second watch if he isn't here soon; no reason why you shouldn't have your full whack, especially after last night's affair."
"I'll stay up till he comes."
Pratt softly thrummed his strings, musing on his discoveries. Half-past nine came; ten o'clock.
"I say, what's happened to Armstrong?" said Warrender. "Surely he hasn't been carried out to sea? Come and help me shove off; I'll run down and see if I can find him. You won't turn in, so you won't mind taking part of my watch."
"Righto! But I dare say Jack's enjoying himself."
They were just about to launch the motor-boat when they caught the dull sound of oars in the distance. They waited. The rising moon struggled through the rack, and cast a faint light on the stream. Presently the dinghy appeared from among the overarching foliage. Armstrong was sculling very quietly.
"Thought you were lost," said Warrender. "It's past ten; your watch starts at eleven-forty."
"All right. Pratt, tie up, will you? Come with me, Warrender."
Armstrong led the way at a long, rapid stride across the clearing and into the thicket. He said nothing, and did not pause until he came to the shore of the western channel.
"Keep well behind this tree," he said, in a whisper, placing himself in shadow.
In a few minutes they heard the splash of oars. A boat emerged from the shades down stream, lit up fitfully by the transient moonbeams. It passed close beneath their hiding-place. It held a single oarsman, whose thickset frame would have been unmistakable even if the moonlight had not touched his face. He pulled out of sight.
"What's he been up to?" said Warrender.
"Let's get back," replied Armstrong. "I wanted a second witness. Pratt will wish to start a new career now, I expect."
CHAPTER XII
QUEER FISH
When Armstrong had started in the dinghy for a pull down the river his intention was to scull easily on the current to the mouth, then to turn westward, and exercise his muscles more strenuously in a contest with the wind. On reaching the coastline, however, he found that there was much more force in the breeze than had appeared inland, and a considerable swell on the sea, and he contented himself with hugging the shore, protected in some measure by the cliffs that swept round to a promontory in the distance.
After a stiff pull for half an hour or so he turned. The last faint radiance of sunset was behind him, and as he approached the river mouth, being himself shadowed by the cliffs, he noticed signs of activity about the fisher's hut on the beach beyond the farther bank. Two men were carrying what appeared to be fishing gear down to a boat at the water's edge. The weather seemed scarcely to promise good fishing, and, knowing from his friends that the hut was in the occupation, if not the possession, of Rush, he was sufficiently interested to decide upon watching the men's proceedings. He pulled a little more closely inshore, shipped his oars, and lay to under cover of a mass of rock.
In a few minutes the men got aboard the boat, and pulled out to sea in the direction of a small tramp steamer which was just visible on the eastern horizon, and, as the trail of smoke from its funnel showed, was coming down channel. It seemed to Armstrong a good opportunity for examining the hut; possibly he might find there some clue to Rush's mysterious activities. Assured that under the shadow of the cliffs he would be invisible to the boatmen, he pulled across to the opposite beach, and ran the dinghy ashore in a small, sheltered cove two or three hundred yards from the hut. Leaving the boat high and dry, he made his way back along the beach at the foot of the cliffs, and approached the hut, which stood on a rocky platform above high-water mark. As he neared it he was careful to keep it between himself and the boat at sea; Rush, if he were one of the two, was probably long-sighted.
By the time he reached the hut the boat was nearly a mile out, and the men appeared to be letting down a net. He slipped in through the open door, and threw a glance round the interior, seizing the last moments of twilight for his rapid scrutiny. He saw, as might have been expected, the usual fisherman's gear: old nets, lobster pots, cork floats, a broken oar, part of a rudder, an old sou'wester, baskets, ropes--nothing that had any particular interest or significance. But, just as he was about to leave, he noticed in the darkest corner half a dozen tins strung by the handles upon a length of trailing rope. Their shape suggested paraffin or petrol rather than any material useful to fishers; yet they were not the common petrol cans; they were larger and wider-necked than those that held the ordinary motor-spirit. He lifted one; it was empty, but very firmly corked, as likewise were the others.
Armstrong took one of the cans, stretching the rope, towards the door, to examine it more closely in what was left of the twilight. On the shoulder, enclosed in a panel, was an embossed description, the characters reminding Armstrong of the printed letters of the Russian newspaper.
"Rummy," he thought. "Gradoff, judging by his name, is a Russian, and the only Russian hereabouts. Yet we find a Russian newspaper in the cellar, and Russian petrol tins in Rush's hut. Queer!"
He replaced the cans, and left the hut. As he did so he saw, out at sea, the steamer he had noticed as a distant smudge some twenty minutes before. No smoke was now pouring from her funnel; apparently she had stopped or slowed down some distance beyond the small boat. While he was watching, the vessel went ahead. The small boat rowed farther out; then appeared to beat about for a time; finally stopped, and from the movements of the figures Armstrong saw aboard, they were lifting something from the water. The steamer, meanwhile, was proceeding steadily on her course down channel.
The growing dusk had rendered it impossible for the watcher to discern anything clearly; steamer, boat, and men were merely indistinct shapes. But the boat, without doubt, was the one that he had seen leave the beach; its movements were strange, and Armstrong decided to await its return. Who were its occupants? What was their errand? What were they bringing back with them?
The enlarging boat was evidently coming ashore. Armstrong looked rapidly around, and spied, close to the hut, and, between that and his own boat, a ridge of rock that would give him cover. Posting himself there, he waited. The dusk deepened. Presently he heard the faint, slow, regular thuds of oars in the rowlocks, then low voices. He could now discern the boat as a dark patch on the white crests of the rollers. It came steadily in, grounded; the two men sprang into the surf. The tide was going out. They did not haul the boat up, but lifted from it the bundles of gear and carried them into the hut. But there was no fish. They passed Armstrong's hiding-place near enough for him to recognise them. The first of them was Rush; the second--even in the dusk Armstrong knew again that broad, flat face. It was the face he had seen in the thicket--the face of the mysterious assailant Pratt had described.