Lessingham sat upon a fallen tree on Dutchman's Common near the scene of his romantic descent, and looked rather ruefully over the moorland, seawards. Above him, the sky was covered with little masses of quickly scudding clouds. A fugitive and watery sunshine shone feebly upon a wind-tossed sea and a rain-sodden landscape. He found a certain grim satisfaction in comparing the disorderliness of the day with the tumult in his own life. He felt that he had embarked upon an enterprise greater than his capacity, for which he was in many ways entirely unsuitable. And behind him was the scourge of the telegram which he had received a few hours ago, a telegram harmless enough to all appearance, but which, decoded, was like a scourge to his back.
Your work is unsatisfactory and your slackness deserves reprobation. Great events wait upon you. The object of your search is necessary for our imminent operations.
The sound of a horse's hoofs disturbed him. Captain Griffiths, on a great bay mare, glanced curiously at the lonely figure by the roadside, and then pulled up.
“Back again, Mr. Lessingham?” he remarked.
“As you see.”
The Commandant fidgeted with his horse for a moment. Then he approached a little nearer to Lessingham's side.
“You are a good walker, I perceive, Mr. Lessingham,” he remarked.
“When the fancy takes me,” was the equable reply.
“Have you come out to see our new guns?”
“I had no idea,” Lessingham answered indifferently, “that you had any.”
Griffiths smiled.
“We have a small battery of anti-aircraft guns, newly arrived from the south of England,” he said. “The secret of their coming and their locality has kept the neighbourhood in a state of ferment for the last week.”
Lessingham remained profoundly uninterested.
“They most of them spotted the guns,” his companion continued, “but not many of them have found the searchlights yet.”
“It seems a little late in the year,” Lessingham observed, “to be making preparations against Zeppelins.”
“Well, they cross here pretty often, you know,” Griffiths reminded him. “It's only a matter of a few weeks ago that one almost came to grief on this common. We picked up their observation car not fifty yards from where you are sitting.”
“I remember hearing about it,” Lessingham acknowledged.
“By-the-by,” the Commandant continued, smoothing his horse's neck, “didn't you arrive that evening or the evening after?”
“I believe I did.”
“Liverpool Street or King's Cross? The King's Cross train was very nearly held up.”
“I didn't come by train at all,” Lessingham replied, glancing for a moment into the clouds, “And now I come to think of it, it must have been the evening after.”
“Fine county for motoring,” Griffiths continued, stroking his horse's head.
“The roads I have been on seem very good,” was the somewhat bored admission.
“You haven't a car of your own here, have you?”
“Not at present.”
Captain Griffiths glanced between his horse's ears for a few moments. Then he turned once more towards his companion.
“Mr. Lessingham,” he said, “you are aware that I am Commandant here?”
“I believe,” Lessingham replied, “that Lady Cranston told me so.”
“It is my duty, therefore,” Griffiths went on, “to take a little more than ordinary interest in casual visitors, especially at this time of the year. The fact that you are well-known to Lady Cranston is, of course, an entirely satisfactory explanation of your presence here. At the same time, there is certain information concerning strangers of which we keep a record, and in your case there is a line or two which we have not been able to fill up.”
“If I can be of any service,” Lessingham murmured.
“Precisely,” the other interrupted. “I knew you would feel like that. Now your arrival here—we have the date, I think—October 6th. As you have just remarked, you didn't come by train. How did you come?”
Lessingham's surprise was apparently quite genuine.
“Is that a question which you ask me to answer—officially?” he enquired.
His interlocutor shrugged his shoulders.
“I am not putting official questions to you at all,” he replied, “nor am I cross-examining you, as might be my duty, under the circumstances, simply because your friendship with the Cranstons is, of course, a guarantee as to your position. But on the other hand, I think it would be reasonable if you were to answer my question.”
Lessingham nodded.
“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted. “As you can tell by finding me here this afternoon, I am a great walker. I arrived—on foot.”
“I see,” Griffiths reflected. “The other question which we usually ask is, where was your last stopping place?”
“Stopping place?” Lessingham murmured.
“Yes, where did you sleep the night before you came here?” Griffiths persisted.
Lessingham shook his head as though oppressed by some distasteful memory.
“But I did not sleep at all,” he complained. “It was one of the worst nights which I have ever spent in my life.”
Captain Griffiths gathered up his reins.
“Well,” he said with clumsy sarcasm, “I am much obliged to you, Mr. Lessingham, for the straight-forward way in which you have answered my questions. I won't bother you any more just at present. Shall I see you to-morrow night at Mainsail Haul?”
“Lady Cranston has asked me to dine,” was the somewhat reserved reply.
His inquisitor nodded and cantered away. Lessingham looked after him until he had disappeared, then he turned his face towards Dreymarsh and walked steadily into the lowering afternoon. Twilight was falling as he reached Mainsail Haul, where he found Philippa entertaining some callers, to whom she promptly introduced him. Lessingham gathered, almost in the first few minutes, that his presence in Dreymarsh was becoming a subject of comment.
“My husband has played bridge with you at the club, I think,” a lady by whose side he found himself observed. “You perhaps didn't hear my name—Mrs. Johnson?”
“I congratulate you upon your husband,” Lessingham replied. “I remember him perfectly well because he kept his temper when I revoked.”
“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “He must have taken a fancy to you, then. As a rule, they rather complain about him at bridge.”
“I formed the impression,” Lessingham continued, “that he was rather a better player than the majority of the performers there.”
Mrs. Johnson, who was a dark and somewhat forbidding-looking lady, smiled.
“He thinks so, at any rate,” she conceded. “Didn't he tell me that you were invalided home from the front?”
Lessingham shook his head.
“I am quite sure that it was not mentioned,” he said. “We walked home together as far as the hotel one evening, but we spoke only of the golf and some shooting in the neighbourhood.”
Philippa, who had been maneuvering to attract Lessingham's attention, suddenly dropped the cake basket which she was passing. There was a little commotion. Lessingham went down on his hands and knees to help collect the fragments, and she found an opportunity to whisper in his ear.
“Be careful. That woman is a cat. Stay and talk to me. Please don't bother, Mr. Lessingham. Won't you ring the bell instead?” she continued, raising her voice.
Lessingham did as he was asked, and affected not to notice Mrs. Johnson's inviting smile as he returned. Philippa made room for him by her side.
“Helen and I were talking this afternoon, Mr. Lessingham,” she said, “of the days when you and Dick were both in the Magdalen Eleven and both had just a chance of being chosen for the Varsity. You never played, did you?”
He shook his head.
“No such luck. In any case, Richard would have been in well before me. I always maintained that he was the first of our googlie bowlers.”
“So you were at Magdalen with Major Felstead?” another caller remarked in mild wonder.
“Mr. Lessingham and my brother were great friends,” Philippa explained. “Mr. Lessingham used to come down to shoot in Cheshire.”
Lady Cranston's guests were all conscious of a little indefinable disappointment. The gossip concerning this stranger's appearance in Dreymarsh was practically strangled. Mrs. Johnson, however, fired a parting shot as she rose to go.
“You were not in the same regiment as Major Felstead, were you, Mr. Lessingham?” she asked. “No,” he answered calmly.
Philippa was busy with her adieux. Mrs. Johnson remained indomitable.
“What was your regiment, Mr. Lessingham?” she persisted. “You must forgive my seeming inquisitive, but I am so interested in military affairs.”
Lessingham bowed courteously.
“I do not remember alluding to my soldiering at all,” he said coolly, “but as a matter of fact I am in the Guards.”
Mrs. Johnson accepted Philippa's hand and the inevitable. Her good-by to Lessingham was most affable. She walked up the road with the vicar.
“I think, Vicar,” she said severely, “that for a small place, Dreymarsh is becoming one of the worst centres of gossip I ever knew. Every one has been saying all sorts of unkind things about that charming Mr. Lessingham, and there you are—Major Felstead's friend and a Guardsman! Somehow or other, I felt that he belonged to one of the crack regiments. I shall certainly ask him to dinner one night next week.”
The vicar nodded benignly. He had the utmost respect for Mrs. Johnson's cook, and his own standard of social desirability, to which the object of their discussion had attained.
“I should be happy to meet Mr. Lessingham at any time,” he pronounced, with ample condescension. “I noticed him in church last Sunday morning.”
“My dear man, whatever shall I do with you!” Philippa exclaimed pathetically, as the door closed upon the last of her callers. “The Guards, indeed!”
Lessingham smiled as he resumed his place by her side.
“Well,” he said, “I told the dear lady the truth. You will find my name well up in the list of the thirty-first battalion of the Prussian Guards.”
She threw herself back in her chair and laughed. “How amusing it would be if it weren't all so terrible! You really are a perfect political Raffles. Do you know that this afternoon you have absolutely reestablished yourself? Mr. Johnson will probably call on you to-morrow—they may even ask you to dine—the vicar will write and ask for a subscription, and Dolly Fenwick will invite you to play golf with her.”
“Do not turn my head,” he begged.
“All the same,” Philippa continued, more gravely, “I shall never have a moment's peace whilst you are in the place. I was thinking about you last night. I don't believe I have ever realised before how terrible it would be if you really were discovered. What would they do to you?”
“Whatever they might do,” he replied, a little wearily, “I must obey orders. My orders are to remain here, but even if I were told that I might go, I should find it hard.”
“Do you mean that?” she asked.
“I think you know,” he answered.
“You men are so strange,” she went on, after a moment's pause. “You give us so little time to know you, you show us so little of yourselves and you expect so much.”
“We offer everything,” he reminded her.
“I want to avoid platitudes,” she said thoughtfully, “but is love quite the same thing for a man as for a woman?”
“Sometimes it is more,” was the prompt reply. “Sometimes love, for a woman, means only shelter; often, for a man, love means the blending of all knowledge, of all beauty, all ambition, of all that he has learned from books and from life. Sometimes a man can see no further and needs to look no further.”
Philippa suddenly felt that she was in danger. There was something in her heart of which she had never before been conscious, some music, some strange turn of sentiment in Lessingham's voice or the words themselves. It was madness, she told herself breathlessly. She was in love with her husband, if any one. She could not have lost all feeling for him so soon. She clasped her hands tightly. Lessingham seemed conscious of his advantage, and leaned towards her.
“If I were not offering you my whole life,” he pleaded, “believe me, I would not open my lips. If I were thinking of episodes, I would throw myself into the sea before I asked you to give me even your fingers. But you, and you alone, could fill the place in my life which I have always prayed might be filled, not for a year or even a decade of years, but for eternity.”
“Oh, but you forget!” she faltered.
“I remember so much,” he replied, “that I know it is hard for you to speak. There are bonds which you have made sacred, and your fingers shrink from tearing them asunder. If it were not for this, Philippa—hear the speech of a renegade—my mandate should be torn in pieces. My instructions should flutter into the waste-paper basket, To-morrow should see us on our way to a new country and a new life. But you must be very sure indeed.”
“Is it because of me that you are staying here?” she asked.
“Upon my honour, no,” he assured her. “I must stay here a little longer, whatever it may mean for me. And so I am content to remain what I am to you at this minute. I ask from you only that you remain just what you are. But when the moment of my freedom comes, when my task here is finished and I turn to go, then I must come to you.”
She rose suddenly to her feet, crossed the floor, and threw open the window. The breeze swept through the room, flapping the curtains, blowing about loose articles into a strange confusion. She stood there for several moments, as though in search of some respite from the emotional atmosphere upon which she had turned her back. When she finally closed the window, her hair was in little strands about her face. Her eyes were soft and her lips quivering.
“You make me feel,” she said, taking his hand for a moment and looking at him almost piteously, “you make me feel everything except one thing.”
“Except one thing?” he repeated.
“Can't you understand?” she continued, stretching out her hand with a quick, impulsive little movement. “I am here in Henry's house, his wife, the mistress of his household. All the years we've been married I have never thought of another man. I have never indulged in even the idlest flirtation. And now suddenly my life seems upside down. I feel as though, if Henry stood before me now, I would strike him on the cheek. I feel sore all over, and ashamed, but I don't know whether I have ceased to love him. I can't tell. Nothing seems to help me. I close my eyes and I try to think of that new world and that new life, and I know that there is nothing repulsive in it. I feel all the joy and the strength of being with you. And then there is Henry in the background. He seems to have had so much of my love.”
He saw the tears gathering in her eyes, and he smiled at her encouragingly.
“Remember that at this moment I am asking you for nothing,” he said. “Just think these things out. It isn't really a matter for sorrow,” he continued. “Love must always mean happiness—for the one who is loved.”
She leaned back in the corner of the sofa to which he had led her, her eyes dry now but still very soft and sweet. He sat by her side, fingering some of the things in her work basket. Once she held out her hand and seemed to find comfort in his clasp. He raised her fingers to his lips without any protest from her. She looked at him with a little smile.
“You know, I'm not at all an Ibsen heroine,” she declared. “I can't see my way like those wonderful emancipated women.”
“Yet,” he said thoughtfully, “the way to the simple things is so clear.”
Confidences were at an end for a time, broken up by the entrance of Nora and Helen, and some young men from the Depot, who had looked in for a game of billiards. Lessingham rose to leave as soon as the latter had returned to their game. His tone and manner now were completely changed. He seemed ill at ease and unhappy.
“I am going to have a day's fishing to-morrow,” he told Philippa, “but I must admit that I have very little faith in this man Oates. They all tell me that your husband has any number of charts of the coast. Do you think I could borrow one?”
“Why, of course,” she replied, “if we can find it.”
She took him over to her husband's desk, opened such of the drawers as were not locked, and searched amongst their contents ruthlessly. By the time they had finished the last drawer, Lessingham had quite a little collection of charts, more or less finished, in his hand.
“I don't know where else to look,” she said. “You might go through those and see if they are of any use. What is it, Mills?” she added, turning to the door.
Mills had entered noiselessly, and was watching the proceedings at Sir Henry's desk with a distinct lack of favour. He looked away towards his mistress, however, as he replied.
“The young woman has called with reference to a situation as parlour-maid, your ladyship,” he announced. “I have shown her into the sewing room.” Lady Cranston glanced at the clock.
“I sha'n't be more than five or ten minutes,” she promised Lessingham. “Just look through those till I come back.”
She hurried away, leaving Lessingham alone in the room. He stood for a moment listening. On the left-hand side, through the door which had been left ajar, he could hear the click of billiard balls and occasional peals of laughter. On the right-hand side there was silence. He moved swiftly across the room and closed the door leading into the billiard room, deposited on the sofa the charts which he had been carrying, and hurried back to the secretary. With a sickening feeling of overwhelming guilt, he drew from his pocket a key and opened, one by one, the drawers through which they had not searched. It took him barely five minutes to discover—nothing. With an air of relief he rearranged everything. When Philippa returned, he was sitting on the lounge, going through the charts which they had looked out together.
“Well?” she asked.
“There is nothing here,” he decided, “which will help me very much. With your permission I will take this,” he added, selecting one at random.
She nodded and they replaced the others. Then she touched him on the arm.
“Listen,” she said, “are you perfectly certain that there is no one coming?”
He listened for a moment.
“I can't hear any one,” he answered. “They've started a four-handed game of pool in the billiard room.”
She smiled.
“Then I will disclose to you Henry's dramatic secret. See!”
She touched the spring in the side of the secretary. The false back, with its little collection of fishing flies, rolled slowly up. The large and very wonderful chart on which Sir Henry had bestowed so much of his time, was revealed. Lessingham gazed at it eagerly.
“There!” she said. “That has been a great labour of love with Henry. It is the chart, on a great scale, from which he works. I don't know a thing about it, and for heaven's sake never tell Henry that you have seen it.”
He continued to examine the chart earnestly. Not a part of it escaped him. Then he turned back to Philippa.
“Is that supposed to be the coast on the other side of the point?” he asked.
“I don't exactly know where it is,” she replied. “Every time Henry finds out anything new, he comes and works at it. I believe that very soon it will be perfect. Then he will start on another part of the coast.”
“This is not the only one that he has prepared, then?” Lessingham enquired.
She shook her head.
“I believe it is the fifth,” she replied. “They all disappear when they are finished, but I have no idea where to. To me they seem to represent a shocking waste of time.”
Lessingham was suddenly taciturn. He held out his hand. “You are dining with us to-morrow night, remember,” she said.
“I am not likely to forget,” he assured her.
“And don't get drowned,” she concluded. “I don't know any of these fishermen—I hate them all—but I'm told that Oates is the worst.”
“I think that we shall be quite all right,” he assured her. “Thanks very much for finding me the charts. What I have seen will help me.”
Helen came in for a moment and their farewell was more or less perfunctory. Lessingham was almost thankful to escape. There was an unusual flush in his cheeks, a sense of bitter humiliation in his heart. All the fervour with which he had started on his perilous quest had faded away. No sense of duty or patriotism could revive his drooping spirits. He felt himself suddenly an unclean and dishonoured being.
Towards three o'clock on the following afternoon, the boisterous wind of an uncertain morning settled down to worse things. It tore the spray from the crest of the gathering waves, dashed it even against the French windows of Mainsail Haul, and came booming down the open spaces cliffwards, like the rumble of some subterranean artillery. A little group of fishermen in oilskins leaned over the railing and discussed the chances of Ben Oates bringing his boat in safely. Philippa, also, distracted by a curious anxiety, stood before the blurred window, gazing into what seemed almost a grey chaos. “Captain Griffiths, your ladyship.”
She turned around quickly at the announcement. Even an unwelcome caller at that moment was almost a relief to her.
“How nice of you to come and see me on such an afternoon, Captain Griffiths,” she exclaimed, as they shook hands. “Helen is over at the Canteen, Nora is hard at work for once in her life, and I seem most dolefully alone.”
Her visitor's reception of Philippa's greeting promised little in the way of enlivenment. He seemed more awkward and ill at ease than ever, and his tone was almost threatening.
“I am very glad to find you alone, Lady Cranston,” he said. “I came specially to have a few words with you on a certain matter.”
Her momentary impulse of relief at his visit passed away. There seemed to her something sinister in his manner. She was suddenly conscious that there was a new danger to be faced, and that this man's attitude towards her was, for some reason or other, inimical. After the first shock, however, she prepared herself to do battle.
“Well, you seem very mysterious,” she observed. “I haven't broken any laws, have I? No lights flashing from any of my windows?”
“So far as I am aware, there are no complaints of the sort,” the Commandant acknowledged, still speaking with an unnatural restraint. “My call, I hope, may be termed, to some extent, at least, a friendly one.”
“How nice!” she sighed. “Then you'll have some tea, won't you?”
“Not at present, if you please,” he begged. “I have come to talk to you about Mr. Hamar Lessingham.”
“Really?” Philippa exclaimed. “Whatever has that poor man been doing now.”
“Dreymarsh,” her visitor proceeded, “having been constituted, during the last few months, a protected area, it is my duty to examine and enquire into the business of any stranger who appears here. Mr. Hamar Lessingham has been largely accepted without comment, owing to his friendship with you. I regret to state, however, that certain facts have come to my knowledge which make me wonder whether you yourself may not in some measure have been deceived.”
“This sounds very ridiculous,” Philippa interposed quietly.
“A few weeks ago,” Captain Griffith continued, “we received information that this neighbourhood would probably be visited by some person connected with the Secret Service of Germany. There is strong evidence that the person in question is Mr. Hamar Lessingham.”
“A graduate of Magdalen, my brother's intimate friend, and a frequent visitor at my father's house in Cheshire,” Philippa observed, with faint sarcasm.
“The possibility of your having made a mistake, Lady Cranston,” Captain Griffiths rejoined, “has, I must confess, only just occurred to me. The authorities at Magdalen College have been appealed to, and no one of the name of Lessingham was there during any one of your brother's terms.”
Philippa took the blow well. She simply stared at her caller in a noncomprehending manner.
“We have also information,” he continued gravely, “from Wood Norton Hall—from your mother, in fact, Lady Cranston—that no college friend of your brother, of that name, has ever visited Wood Norton.”
“Go on,” Philippa begged, a little faintly. “Did I ever live there myself? Was Richard ever at Magdalen?”
Captain Griffiths proceeded with the air of a man who has a task to finish and intends to do so, regardless of interruptions.
“I have had some conversation with Mr. Lessingham, in the course of which I asked him to explain his method of reaching here, and his last habitation. He simply fenced with me in the most barefaced fashion. He practically declined to give me any account of himself.”
Philippa rose and rang the bell.
“I suppose I must give you some tea,” she said, “although you seem to have come here on purpose to make my head ache.”
“My object in coming here,” Captain Griffiths rejoined, a little stiffly, “is to save you some measure of personal annoyance.”
“Oh, please don't think that I am ungrateful,” Philippa begged. “Of course, it is all some absurd mistake, and I'm sure we shall get to the bottom of it presently—Tell me what you think of the storm?” she added, as Mills entered with the tea tray. “Do you think it will get any worse, because I am terrified to death already?”
“I am no judge of the weather here,” he confessed. “I believe the fishermen are preparing for something unusual.”
She seated herself before the tea tray and insisted upon performing her duties as hostess. Afterwards she laid her hand upon his arm and addressed him with an air of complete candour.
“Now, Captain Griffiths,” she began, “do listen to me. Just one moment of common sense, if you please. What do you suppose there could possibly be in our harmless seaside village to induce any one to risk his life by coming here on behalf of the Secret Service of Germany?”
“Dreymarsh,” Captain Griffiths replied, “was not made a prohibited area for nothing.”
“But, my dear man, be reasonable,” Philippa persisted. “There are perhaps a thousand soldiers in the place, the usual preparations along the cliff for coast defence, a small battery of anti-aircraft guns, and a couple of searchlights. There isn't a grocer's boy in the place who doesn't know all this. There's no concealment about it. You must admit that Germany doesn't need to send over a Secret Service agent to acquaint herself with these insignificant facts.”
Her visitor smiled very faintly. It was the first time he had relaxed even so far as this.
“I am not in possession of any information which I can impart to you, Lady Cranston,” he said, “but I am not prepared to accept your statement that Dreymarsh contains nothing of greater interest than the things which you have mentioned.”
There was no necessity for Philippa to play a part now. The suggestion contained in her visitor's words had really left her in a state of wonder.
“You are making my flesh creep!” she exclaimed. “You don't mean to say that we have secrets here?”
“I have said the last word which it is possible for me to say upon the subject,” he declared. “You will understand, I am sure, that I am not here in the character of an inquisitor. I simply thought it my duty, in view of the fact that you had made yourself the social sponsor for Mr. Lessingham, to place certain information before you, and to ask, unofficially, of course, if you have any explanation to give? You may even,” he went on, hesitatingly, “appreciate the motives which led me to do so.”
“My dear man, what explanation could I have?” Philippa protested, “it is an absolute and undeniable fact that Mr. Lessingham was at Magdalen with my brother, and also that he visited us at Wood Norton. I know both these things of my own knowledge. The only possible explanation, therefore, is that you have been misinformed.”
“Or,” Captain Griffiths ventured, “that Mr. Hamar Lessingham in those days passed under another name.”
“Another name?” Philippa faltered.
“Some such name, perhaps,” he continued, “as Bertram Maderstrom.”
There was a short silence. Captain Griffiths had leaned back in his chair and was caressing his upper lip. His eyes were fixed upon Philippa and Philippa saw nothing. Her little heel dug hard into the carpet. In a few seconds the room ceased to spin. Nevertheless, her voice sounded to her pitifully inadequate.
“What an absurdity all this is!” she exclaimed.
“Maderstrom,” Captain Griffiths said thoughtfully, “was, curiously enough, an intimate college friend of your brother's. He was also a visitor at Wood Norton Hall. At neither place is there any trace of Mr. Hamar Lessingham. Perhaps you have made a mistake, Lady Cranston. Perhaps you have recognised the man and failed to remember his name. If so, now is the moment to declare it.”
“I am very much obliged to you,” Philippa retorted, “but I have never met or heard of this Mr. Maderstrom—”
“Baron Maderstrom,” he interrupted.
“Baron Maderstrom, then, in my life; whereas Mr. Lessingham I remember perfectly.”
“I am sorry,” Captain Griffiths said, setting down his empty teacup and rising slowly to his feet. “We cannot help one another, then.”
“If you want me to transfer Mr. Lessingham, whom I remember perfectly, into a German baron whom I never heard of,” Philippa declared boldly, “I am afraid that we can't.”
“Baron Maderstrom was a Swedish nobleman,” Captain Griffiths observed.
“Swedish or German, I know nothing of him,” Philippa persisted.
“There remains, then, nothing more to be said.”
“I am afraid not,” Philippa agreed sweetly.
“Under the circumstances,” Captain Griffiths asked, “you will not, I am sure, expect me to dine to-night.”
“Not if you object to meeting Mr. Hamar Lessingham,” Philippa replied.
Her visitor's face suddenly darkened, and Philippa wondered vaguely whether anything more than professional suspicion was responsible for that little storm of passion which for a moment transformed his appearance. He quickly recovered, however.
“I may still,” he concluded, moving towards the door, “be forced to present myself here in another capacity.”
The confinement of the house, after the departure of her unwelcome visitor, stifled Philippa. Attired in a mackintosh, with a scarf around her head, she made her way on to the quay, and, clinging to the railing, dragged herself along to where the fishermen were gathered together in a little group. The storm as yet showed no signs of abatement.
“Has anything been heard of Ben Oates' boat?” she enquired.
An old fisherman pointed seawards.
“There she comes, ma'am, up on the crest of that wave; look!”
“Will she get in?” Philippa asked eagerly.
There were varied opinions, expressed in indistinct mutterings.
“She's weathering it grand,” the fisherman to whom she had first spoken, declared. “We've a line ready yonder, and we're reckoning on getting 'em ashore all right. Lucky for Ben that the gentleman along with him is a fine sailor. Look at that, mum!” he added in excitement. “See the way he brought her head round to it, just in time. Boys, they'll come in on the next one!”
One by one the sailors made their way to the very edge of the wave-splashed beach. There were a few more minutes of breathless anxiety. Then, after the boat had disappeared completely from sight, hidden by a huge grey wall of sea, she seemed suddenly to climb to the top of it, to hover there, to become mixed up with the spray and the surf and a great green mass of waters, and then finally, with a harsh crash of timbers and a shout from the fishermen, to be flung high and dry upon the stones. Philippa, clutching the iron railing, saw for a moment nothing but chaos. Her knees became weak. She was unable to move. There was a queer dizziness in her ears. The sound of voices sounded like part of an unreal nightmare. Then she was aware of a single figure climbing the steps towards her. There was blood trickling down his face from the wound in the forehead, and he was limping slightly.
“Mr. Lessingham!” she called out, as he reached the topmost step.
He took an eager step towards her.
“Philippa!” he exclaimed. “Why, what are you doing here?”
“I was frightened,” she faltered. “Are you hurt?”
“Not in the least,” he assured her. “We had a rough sail home, that's all, and that fellow Oates drank himself half unconscious. Come along, let me help you up the steps and out of this.”
She clung to his arm, and they struggled up the private path to the house. Mills let them in with many expressions of concern, and Helen came hurrying to them from the background.
“I went out to see the storm,” Philippa explained weakly, “and I saw Mr. Lessingham's boat brought in.”
“And Mr. Lessingham will come this way at once,” Helen insisted. “I haven't had a real case since I got my certificate, and I'm going to bind his head up.”
Philippa began to feel her strength returning. The horror which lay behind those few minutes of nightmare rose up again in her mind. Mills had hurried on into the bathroom, and the other two were preparing to follow. She stopped them.
“Mr. Lessingham,” she said, “listen. Captain Griffiths has been here. He knows or guesses everything.”
“Everything?”
Philippa nodded.
“Helen must bind your head up, of course,” she continued. “After that, think! What can we do? Captain Griffiths knows that there was no Hamar Lessingham at college with Dick, that he never visited Wood Norton, that there is some mystery about your arrival here, and he told me to my face that he believes you to be Bertram Maderstrom.”
“What a meddlesome fellow!” Lessingham grumbled, holding his handkerchief to his forehead.
“Oh, please be serious!” Helen begged, looking up from the bandage which she was preparing. “This is horrible!”
“Don't I know it!” Philippa groaned. “Mr. Lessingham, you must please try and escape from here. You can have the car, if you like. There must be some place where you can go and hide until you can get away from the country.”
“But I'm dining here to-night,” Lessingham protested. “I'm not going to hide anywhere.”
The two women exchanged glances of despair.
“Can't I make you understand!” Philippa exclaimed pathetically. “You're in danger here—really in danger!”
Lessingham's demeanour showed no appreciation of the situation.
“Of course, I can quite understand,” he said, “that Griffiths is suspicious about me, but, after all, no one can prove that I have broken the law here, and I shall not make things any better by attempting an opera bouffe flight. Can I have my head tied up and come and talk to you about it later on?”
“Oh, if you like,” Philippa assented weakly. “I can't argue.”
She made her way up to her room and changed her wet clothes. When she came down, Lessingham was standing on the hearth rug in the library, with a piece of buttered toast in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. His head was very neatly bound up, and he seemed quite at his ease.
“You know,” he began, as he wheeled a chair up to the fire for her, “that man Griffiths doesn't like me. He never took to me from the first, I could see that. If it comes to that, I don't like Griffiths. He is one of those mean, suspicious sort of characters we could very well do without.”
Philippa, who had rehearsed a little speech several times in her bedroom, tried to be firm.
“Mr. Lessingham,” she said, “you know that we are both your friends. Do listen, please. Captain Griffiths is Commandant here and in a position of authority. He has a very large power. I honestly believe that it is his intention to have you arrested—if not to-night, within a very few days.”
“I do not see how he can,” Lessingham objected, helping himself to another piece of toast. “I have committed no crime here. I have played golf with all the respectable old gentlemen in the place, and I have given the committee some excellent advice as to the two new holes. I have played bridge down at the club—we will call it bridge!—and I have kept my temper like an angel. I have dined at Mess and told them at least a dozen new stories. I have kept my blinds drawn at night, and I have not a wireless secreted up the chimney. I really cannot see what they could do to me.”
Philippa tried bluntness.
“You have served in the German army, and you are living in a protected area under a false name,” she declared.
“Well, of course, there is some truth in what you say,” he admitted, “but even if they have tumbled to that and can prove it, I should do no good by running away. To be perfectly serious,” he added, setting his cup down, “there is only one thing at the present moment which would take me out of Dreymarsh, and that is if you believe that my presence here would further compromise you and Miss Fairclough.”
Philippa was beginning to find her courage. “We're in it already, up to the neck,” she observed. “I really don't see that anything matters so far as we are concerned.”
“In that case,” he decided, “I shall have the honour of presenting myself at the usual time.”