CHAPTER IV.The Chase in the WoodsIn earlier days, Michael Clifton had been reckoned among the more creditable runners in the School Mile; and he had never allowed himself to fall out of training. Thus as he joined the throng of would-be pursuers emerging from the house, he felt a certain confidence that the fugitive would at any rate have to put his best foot foremost if he was to avoid being run down. Before he had covered twenty yards, however, Michael found himself handicapped by his costume. The full-bottomed wig dropped off almost immediately, and the shoes were not so troublesome as he had feared; but the sleeves of his coat interfered with his movements, and the long skirts hampered his legs.“I wonder if these coves in the eighteenth century ever ran a step,” he grumbled. “If they did it in this kit, they must have been wonders. I must get rid of the truck.”He pulled up and stripped off the full-skirted coat; then, as an after-thought, he removed the long waistcoat as well. While doing this, he glanced ahead to see how the chase was progressing. The light of the full moon, now at its highest in the cloudless heavens, lit up the whole landscape before him almost as clearly as daylight. Far ahead, he could see the white figure of the escaping thief as it ascended the long, gentle slope towards the pine-woods.“I wonder what tempted the beggar to choose that particular costume on a night like this,” Michael speculated. “It’s the most conspicuous affair he could have put on. Well, all the better for us.”The quarry had evidently secured a fair start, for the nearest group of pursuers was still a considerable distance behind him. The hunters were strung out in an irregular file, knotted here and there with groups of three or four runners; and the line extended back almost to Michael’s position. Behind him, he could hear fresh reinforcements emerging from the house, shouting as they came.“They’d better save their breath,” Michael commented critically to himself. “That long rise’ll take it out of a good many of them.”He settled down to his favourite stride; and very soon began to overtake the laggards at the tail of the chase. In front of him he saw a Cardinal Richelieu with kilted cassock; but the Cardinal found his costume too much for him and pulled out of the race as Michael passed him. Shortly after, Michael drew level with an early nineteenth-century dandy and for a few seconds they raced neck and neck. The dandy, however, was unable to stay the pace.“It’s these damned Johnny Walker boots,” he gasped, as he fell behind.Michael, running comfortably, began to take a faint amusement in the misfortunes of his colleagues. He could not help smiling as he passed a Minotaur, sitting beside the track and making furious efforts to disentangle himself from his pasteboard bull’s head which seemed to have become clamped in position. But as he found two more of the hunters by the wayside, a fresh point of view occurred to him.“If they’re going to drop out at this rate, there won’t be many of us left at the finish to tackle the beggar; and he’s armed. We’ll need all the men we can scrape up, if we’re to make sure of him.”Glancing ahead again, he was relieved to see that he had gained a fair amount of ground on the fugitive; and now he began to pass runner after runner, as the rising slope told on the weaker pursuers. He reached the group at the head of the chase just as the escaping burglar dashed into the shadow of the woods a hundred yards in advance.“He’ll dodge us now, if he can,” Michael warned his companions, who evidently were unacquainted with the ground. “Keep your eyes on him at any cost.”But as they entered the pine arcades, Michael found that he was mistaken. The quarry maintained his lead; but he made no effort to leave the beaten track. Ahead of them they could see his white-clad figure dappled with light and darkness as he sped up the broad pathway.Suddenly, Michael remembered what lay beyond the pine-wood. Without raising his voice, for fear the runner in front should hear him, he explained the situation.“He doesn’t know what he’s running into. There’s a big quarry up there, with barbed wire fences on each side. If we can keep him straight for it, we’ll have him pinned.”On went the fugitive, still maintaining his lead and glancing over his shoulder from time to time, as though he were gauging the distance which separated him from his closest pursuers.“The beggar can run, certainly,” Michael admitted to himself. “But running isn’t going to help him much in a minute or two. We have him on toast.”In a few moments the moon shone bright through the trees ahead. As they reached the edge of the wood, the white figure in front of them showed up clearly as it sprinted across the strip of open ground, straight for the spinney which bounded the quarry cliff. With a gesture, Michael called his motley group to a halt.“Wait a minute,” he ordered. “You, Mephistopheles, get off to the left there, outside the spinney. Go on until you strike barbed wire. Take this Prehistoric Man—oh, it’s you, is it, Frankie? Well, both of you get down there and act as stoppers, so that he can’t sneak off along the fence. Oliver Cromwell and you in the funny coat! You’re to do the same over yonder on the right. Put some hurry into it, now! And don’t move in towards him till you get the word. The rest of you, extend a bit along the near edge of the spinney. Not too close; give yourselves a chance of spotting him if he breaks cover. And don’t yell unless you actually see him. We’ve got him shut in now, and we can afford to wait for reinforcements. Here they come!”Two panting runners breasted the hill as he spoke. At this moment there came from beyond the spinney the sound of a splash. Michael was taken aback.“The beggar can’t have dived over, surely. It’s full of rocks down below. We’ll have to hurry up. He might get away, after all, if he’s extra lucky.”A fresh group of pursuers gave him the reinforcements he needed; and he fed them into his cordon at its weak points.“Pass the word for the whole line to close in!”The cordon began to contract around the spinney, the wide gaps in it closing up as it advanced.“The beggar’s probably got a pistol; look out for yourselves among the trees,” Michael cautioned them as they reached the boundary of the plantation. “Don’t hurry. And keep in touch, whatever you do.”He himself was at the centre of the line and was the first to enter the tiny wood. The advance was slow; for here there was some undergrowth which might offer a hiding-place to the fugitive; and this was carefully scrutinized, clump by clump, before the line moved forward as a whole. Michael meant to make certain of capturing the burglar; and he could afford now to go about the matter deliberately. Fresh reinforcements in twos and threes were still streaming in from the pine-wood.It took only a few minutes, however, to draw his screen through the spinney; for the belt of trees was a narrow one. Every instant he expected to hear a shout indicating that the quarry had been run to earth; but none came. His line emerged intact from the trees, forming an arc of which the cliff-face was the chord; and as his men came out into the moonlight Michael had to admit to himself that no one could well have crept through any gap in the cordon.“He must be out here, hiding among these seats,” he shouted. “Don’t break your line any more than you can help. Advance to that balustrade in front. Rush him, if he shows up.”Now that he was sure of his quarry, Michael at last had leisure to note the tincture of the bizarre in the scene before him. The high-riding moon whitened the terrace and touched with glamour the motley costumes of the hunters preparing for their final swoop. Here Robin Hood and a hatless Flying Dutchman were stooping to peer below one of the marble seats. Farther along the line Lohengrin and a Milkman discussed something eagerly in whispers. On the left the Prehistoric Man loomed up like a Troglodyte emerging from his cave; while beyond him Mephistopheles leaned upon the railing, scanning the water below. From the inky shadow of the spinney Felix the Cat stole softly out to join the cordon.“A weird-looking gang we are,” Michael commented to himself as he gazed about him.Only a few steps separated the hunters from the clear floor of the terrace. In a second or two at most, the man they were chasing must break cover and make a dash for liberty or else tamely surrender. Slowly the line crept forward.“We’ve got him now!” a voice cried, exultantly.But the living net swept on past the marble tier without catching anything in its meshes. Between it and the balustrade was nothing but the untenanted paving of the terrace.“He’s got away!” ejaculated some one in tones of complete amazement. “Well, I’m damned if I see how he managed it.”The chain broke up into individuals, who hurried hither and thither on the esplanade searching even in the most unlikely spots for the missing fugitive. All at once Michael’s eye caught something which had been concealed in the shadows thrown by the moon.“Here’s a rope, you fellows! He’s gone down the face of the cliff. Swum the lake, probably.”Mephistopheles dissented in a languid drawl.“Not he, Clifton. I’ve had my eye on the water ever since I got up to the barbed wire. You could spot the faintest ripple in this moonshine. He didn’t get off that way.”“Sure of that?” demanded Michael.“Dead sure. I watched specially.”Michael hesitated for a moment or two, considering the situation. Then his face cleared.“I see it! I remember there’s a cave right below here, in the cliff-face. He’s gone to ground there. Half of you get through the barbed wire on the right; the rest take the left side. Line up on the banks when you get down to the water. He may swim for it yet if we don’t hurry.”They raced off to carry out his instructions, while Michael pulled up the rope and flung it on the terrace.“That cuts off his escape in this direction,” he said to himself. “Now we can dig him out at leisure.”Without hurrying, he made his way down to the water.“There used to be a raft of sorts here,” he explained. “If we can rout it out, we’ll be able to ferry across to the cave-mouth without much bother. I doubt if he’ll show fight once we lay our hands on him; for he hasn’t an earthly chance of getting away.”He poked about among the sedge on the rim of the lakelet and at last discovered the decrepit raft.“This thing’ll just bear two of us. Do we dig the beggar out or starve him out? Dig him out, eh? Well, I want some one to go with me. Here, you, Frankie”—he turned to the Prehistoric Man—“you’d better come along. If it comes to a ducking, you’ve got fewer clothes to spoil than the rest of us.”Nothing loath, the Prehistoric Man scrambled aboard the raft, which sank ominously under the extra weight.“I can’t find anything to pole with,” grumbled Michael. “Paddle with your flippers, Frankie. It’s the only thing to do. Get busy with it.”Under this primitive method of propulsion, the progress of the raft was slow; but at last they succeeded in bringing it under the cliff-face, after which they were able to work it along by hand. Gradually they manœuvred it into position in front of the cave-mouth, which stood only a yard or so above water-level. Michael leaned forward to the entrance.“You may as well come out quietly,” he warned the inmate. “It’s no good trying to put up a fight. You haven’t a dog’s chance.”There was no reply of any sort.“Hold the damned raft steady, Frankie! You nearly had me overboard,” expostulated Michael. “I’m going to light a match. The cave’s as black as the pit, and I can see nothing.”He pulled a silver match-box from his trousers pocket.“Lucky I hadn’t this in my coat; for you don’t look as if you had a pocket of any sort on you, Frankie.”The first match, damped by the moisture on his hands, sputtered and died out.“Hurryup, Guvnor,” shouted Mephistopheles, cheerfully, from the bank. “Don’t keep us up all night with your firework display. It’s getting a bit chilly, paddling about amongst this sedge. Not at all the temperature I’m accustomed to at home.”Michael felt for another match and lighted it successfully. Standing up on the raft, he held the light above his head and peered into the cavity in the rock. The Prehistoric Man heard him exclaim in amazement.“Damnation, Frankie! He’s not here! It’s hardly a cave at all.”He put his hands on the cave floor.“Hold tight with the raft. I’m going in to make sure.”He scrambled up into the hollow; but almost immediately his face appeared again in the moonlight.“Nothing here. The hole’s barely big enough to take me in.”“Then where’s he gone?” demanded the Prehistoric Man, who was a creature of few words.“I dunno! Must have given us the slip somehow. If he isn’t here, he must be somewhere else. No getting round that.”He shouted the news to the watchers on the banks; and a confused sound of argument rose from amongst the sedge.“Not much use hanging round the old home, Frankie. Pull for shore, sailor. We’d best manhandle her along the face of the cliff. I’ve had enough of that paddling.”When they touched firm ground again they were surrounded by their friends, most of whom seemed to doubt whether the search of the cave had been properly carried out.“I tell you,” declaimed the exasperated Michael, “I got right into the damned hole! It’s so small that I nearly broke my nose against the back wall as I heaved myself inside. It would have been a tight fit for me and a squirrel together. He’s not there, whether you like it or not. . . . I can’t help your troubles, Tommy; you can go and look for yourself, if you like the job of lying on your tummy on a raft that’s awash. I shan’t interfere with your simple pleasures.”“But . . .”“We’ve lost him. Is that plain enough? There’s nothing to be done but go home again with our tails between our legs. I’m going now.”He accompanied his friends to the top of the cliff again; but when he reached the terrace a fresh thought struck him, and he loitered behind while the others, soaked and disconsolate, made their way down into the pine-wood. When the last of them had disappeared, Michael retraced his steps to the edge of the cliff.“He reached here all right,” he assured himself. “And he didn’t break back through the cordon.”He stooped down, picked up the rope, and refastened it round one of the pillars of the balustrade.“Every one knows there are secret passages about Ravensthorpe,” he mused. “Perhaps this beggar has got on to one of them. And quite possibly the end of the passage is in that cave down there. That would explain the rope. I’ll slide down and have another look round.”He got into the cave-mouth without difficulty and used up the remainder of his matches in a close examination of the interior of the cavity; but even the closest scrutiny failed to reveal anything to his eyes.“Nothing there but plain rock, so far as I can see,” he had to admit to himself as the last match burned out. “That’s a blank end in more senses than one.”Without much difficulty he swarmed up the rope again, untied it from the balustrade, and coiled it over his arm.“A nice little clue for Sir Clinton Driffield to puzzle over,” he assured himself. “Sherlock Holmes would have been on to it at once; found where it was sold in no time; discovered who bought it before five minutes had passed; and paralysed Watson with the whole story that same evening over a pipeful of shag. We shall see.”He threw a last glance round the empty terrace and then moved off into the spinney. As he passed into the shadow of the trees he saw, a few yards to one side, the outline of the Fairy House dappled in the moonshine which filtered through the leaves overhead. Half-unconsciously, Michael halted and looked at the little building.“They could never have overlooked that in the hunt, surely. Well, no harm in having a peep to make certain.”He dropped his coil of rope, stepped across to the house, and, stooping down, flung open the door. Inside, he caught a flash of some white fabric.“It’s the beggar after all! Here! Come out of that!”He gripped the inmate roughly and hauled him by main force out of his retreat.“Pierrot costume, right enough!” he said to himself as he extracted the man little by little from his refuge. Then, having got his victim into the open:“Now we’ll turn you over and have a look at your face . . . Good God! Maurice!”For as he turned the man on his back, it was the face of Maurice Chacewater that met his eyes. But it was not a normal Maurice whom he saw. The features were contorted by some excessive emotion the like of which Michael had never seen.“Let me alone, damn you,” Maurice gasped, and turned over once more on his face, resting his brow on his arm as though to shut out the spectacle of Michael’s astonishment.“Are you ill?” Michael inquired, solicitously.“For God’s sake leave me alone. Don’t stand there gaping. Clear out, I tell you.”Michael looked at him in amazement.“I’m going to have a cheerful kind of brother-in-law before all’s done, it seems,” he thought to himself.“Can I do anything for you, Maurice?”“Oh, go to hell!”Michael turned away.“It’s fairly clear he doesn’t like my company,” he reflected, as he stepped across and picked up his coil of rope from the ground. “But I’ve known politer ways of showing it, I must say.”With a final glance at the prostrate figure of Maurice, he walked on and took the road back to Ravensthorpe. But as he went a vision of Maurice’s face kept passing before his mind’s eye.“There’s something damned far wrong with that beggar, whether it’s an evil conscience or cramp in the tummy. It might be either of them, by the look of him. He didn’t seem to want any assistance from me. That looks more like the evil conscience theory.”He dismissed this with a laugh; but gradually he grew troubled.“There he was, in white—same as the burglar. He’s in a bit of a bate at being discovered, that’s clear enough. He didn’t half like it, to judge by his chat.”A discomforting hypothesis began to frame itself in his mind despite his efforts to stifle it.“He’s the fellow, if there is one, who would know all these secret passages about here. Suppose there really is one leading out of that cave. He could have swarmed down the rope, got into the cave, sneaked up the subterranean passage, and got behind us that way.”A fresh fact fitted suddenly in.“And of course the other end of the passage may be in that Fairy House! That would explain his being there. He’d be waiting to see us off the premises before he could venture out in his white costume.”He pondered over the problem as he hurried with long strides towards the house.“Well,” he concluded, “I’m taking no further steps in the business. It’s no concern of mine to go probing into the private affairs of the family I’m going to marry into. And that’s that.”Then, as a fresh aspect of the matter came to his mind, he gave a sigh of relief.“I must be a stricken idiot! No man would ever dream of burgling his own house. What would he gain by it, if he did? The thing’s ridiculous.”And the comfort which this view brought him was sufficient to lighten his steps for the rest of his way.
In earlier days, Michael Clifton had been reckoned among the more creditable runners in the School Mile; and he had never allowed himself to fall out of training. Thus as he joined the throng of would-be pursuers emerging from the house, he felt a certain confidence that the fugitive would at any rate have to put his best foot foremost if he was to avoid being run down. Before he had covered twenty yards, however, Michael found himself handicapped by his costume. The full-bottomed wig dropped off almost immediately, and the shoes were not so troublesome as he had feared; but the sleeves of his coat interfered with his movements, and the long skirts hampered his legs.
“I wonder if these coves in the eighteenth century ever ran a step,” he grumbled. “If they did it in this kit, they must have been wonders. I must get rid of the truck.”
He pulled up and stripped off the full-skirted coat; then, as an after-thought, he removed the long waistcoat as well. While doing this, he glanced ahead to see how the chase was progressing. The light of the full moon, now at its highest in the cloudless heavens, lit up the whole landscape before him almost as clearly as daylight. Far ahead, he could see the white figure of the escaping thief as it ascended the long, gentle slope towards the pine-woods.
“I wonder what tempted the beggar to choose that particular costume on a night like this,” Michael speculated. “It’s the most conspicuous affair he could have put on. Well, all the better for us.”
The quarry had evidently secured a fair start, for the nearest group of pursuers was still a considerable distance behind him. The hunters were strung out in an irregular file, knotted here and there with groups of three or four runners; and the line extended back almost to Michael’s position. Behind him, he could hear fresh reinforcements emerging from the house, shouting as they came.
“They’d better save their breath,” Michael commented critically to himself. “That long rise’ll take it out of a good many of them.”
He settled down to his favourite stride; and very soon began to overtake the laggards at the tail of the chase. In front of him he saw a Cardinal Richelieu with kilted cassock; but the Cardinal found his costume too much for him and pulled out of the race as Michael passed him. Shortly after, Michael drew level with an early nineteenth-century dandy and for a few seconds they raced neck and neck. The dandy, however, was unable to stay the pace.
“It’s these damned Johnny Walker boots,” he gasped, as he fell behind.
Michael, running comfortably, began to take a faint amusement in the misfortunes of his colleagues. He could not help smiling as he passed a Minotaur, sitting beside the track and making furious efforts to disentangle himself from his pasteboard bull’s head which seemed to have become clamped in position. But as he found two more of the hunters by the wayside, a fresh point of view occurred to him.
“If they’re going to drop out at this rate, there won’t be many of us left at the finish to tackle the beggar; and he’s armed. We’ll need all the men we can scrape up, if we’re to make sure of him.”
Glancing ahead again, he was relieved to see that he had gained a fair amount of ground on the fugitive; and now he began to pass runner after runner, as the rising slope told on the weaker pursuers. He reached the group at the head of the chase just as the escaping burglar dashed into the shadow of the woods a hundred yards in advance.
“He’ll dodge us now, if he can,” Michael warned his companions, who evidently were unacquainted with the ground. “Keep your eyes on him at any cost.”
But as they entered the pine arcades, Michael found that he was mistaken. The quarry maintained his lead; but he made no effort to leave the beaten track. Ahead of them they could see his white-clad figure dappled with light and darkness as he sped up the broad pathway.
Suddenly, Michael remembered what lay beyond the pine-wood. Without raising his voice, for fear the runner in front should hear him, he explained the situation.
“He doesn’t know what he’s running into. There’s a big quarry up there, with barbed wire fences on each side. If we can keep him straight for it, we’ll have him pinned.”
On went the fugitive, still maintaining his lead and glancing over his shoulder from time to time, as though he were gauging the distance which separated him from his closest pursuers.
“The beggar can run, certainly,” Michael admitted to himself. “But running isn’t going to help him much in a minute or two. We have him on toast.”
In a few moments the moon shone bright through the trees ahead. As they reached the edge of the wood, the white figure in front of them showed up clearly as it sprinted across the strip of open ground, straight for the spinney which bounded the quarry cliff. With a gesture, Michael called his motley group to a halt.
“Wait a minute,” he ordered. “You, Mephistopheles, get off to the left there, outside the spinney. Go on until you strike barbed wire. Take this Prehistoric Man—oh, it’s you, is it, Frankie? Well, both of you get down there and act as stoppers, so that he can’t sneak off along the fence. Oliver Cromwell and you in the funny coat! You’re to do the same over yonder on the right. Put some hurry into it, now! And don’t move in towards him till you get the word. The rest of you, extend a bit along the near edge of the spinney. Not too close; give yourselves a chance of spotting him if he breaks cover. And don’t yell unless you actually see him. We’ve got him shut in now, and we can afford to wait for reinforcements. Here they come!”
Two panting runners breasted the hill as he spoke. At this moment there came from beyond the spinney the sound of a splash. Michael was taken aback.
“The beggar can’t have dived over, surely. It’s full of rocks down below. We’ll have to hurry up. He might get away, after all, if he’s extra lucky.”
A fresh group of pursuers gave him the reinforcements he needed; and he fed them into his cordon at its weak points.
“Pass the word for the whole line to close in!”
The cordon began to contract around the spinney, the wide gaps in it closing up as it advanced.
“The beggar’s probably got a pistol; look out for yourselves among the trees,” Michael cautioned them as they reached the boundary of the plantation. “Don’t hurry. And keep in touch, whatever you do.”
He himself was at the centre of the line and was the first to enter the tiny wood. The advance was slow; for here there was some undergrowth which might offer a hiding-place to the fugitive; and this was carefully scrutinized, clump by clump, before the line moved forward as a whole. Michael meant to make certain of capturing the burglar; and he could afford now to go about the matter deliberately. Fresh reinforcements in twos and threes were still streaming in from the pine-wood.
It took only a few minutes, however, to draw his screen through the spinney; for the belt of trees was a narrow one. Every instant he expected to hear a shout indicating that the quarry had been run to earth; but none came. His line emerged intact from the trees, forming an arc of which the cliff-face was the chord; and as his men came out into the moonlight Michael had to admit to himself that no one could well have crept through any gap in the cordon.
“He must be out here, hiding among these seats,” he shouted. “Don’t break your line any more than you can help. Advance to that balustrade in front. Rush him, if he shows up.”
Now that he was sure of his quarry, Michael at last had leisure to note the tincture of the bizarre in the scene before him. The high-riding moon whitened the terrace and touched with glamour the motley costumes of the hunters preparing for their final swoop. Here Robin Hood and a hatless Flying Dutchman were stooping to peer below one of the marble seats. Farther along the line Lohengrin and a Milkman discussed something eagerly in whispers. On the left the Prehistoric Man loomed up like a Troglodyte emerging from his cave; while beyond him Mephistopheles leaned upon the railing, scanning the water below. From the inky shadow of the spinney Felix the Cat stole softly out to join the cordon.
“A weird-looking gang we are,” Michael commented to himself as he gazed about him.
Only a few steps separated the hunters from the clear floor of the terrace. In a second or two at most, the man they were chasing must break cover and make a dash for liberty or else tamely surrender. Slowly the line crept forward.
“We’ve got him now!” a voice cried, exultantly.
But the living net swept on past the marble tier without catching anything in its meshes. Between it and the balustrade was nothing but the untenanted paving of the terrace.
“He’s got away!” ejaculated some one in tones of complete amazement. “Well, I’m damned if I see how he managed it.”
The chain broke up into individuals, who hurried hither and thither on the esplanade searching even in the most unlikely spots for the missing fugitive. All at once Michael’s eye caught something which had been concealed in the shadows thrown by the moon.
“Here’s a rope, you fellows! He’s gone down the face of the cliff. Swum the lake, probably.”
Mephistopheles dissented in a languid drawl.
“Not he, Clifton. I’ve had my eye on the water ever since I got up to the barbed wire. You could spot the faintest ripple in this moonshine. He didn’t get off that way.”
“Sure of that?” demanded Michael.
“Dead sure. I watched specially.”
Michael hesitated for a moment or two, considering the situation. Then his face cleared.
“I see it! I remember there’s a cave right below here, in the cliff-face. He’s gone to ground there. Half of you get through the barbed wire on the right; the rest take the left side. Line up on the banks when you get down to the water. He may swim for it yet if we don’t hurry.”
They raced off to carry out his instructions, while Michael pulled up the rope and flung it on the terrace.
“That cuts off his escape in this direction,” he said to himself. “Now we can dig him out at leisure.”
Without hurrying, he made his way down to the water.
“There used to be a raft of sorts here,” he explained. “If we can rout it out, we’ll be able to ferry across to the cave-mouth without much bother. I doubt if he’ll show fight once we lay our hands on him; for he hasn’t an earthly chance of getting away.”
He poked about among the sedge on the rim of the lakelet and at last discovered the decrepit raft.
“This thing’ll just bear two of us. Do we dig the beggar out or starve him out? Dig him out, eh? Well, I want some one to go with me. Here, you, Frankie”—he turned to the Prehistoric Man—“you’d better come along. If it comes to a ducking, you’ve got fewer clothes to spoil than the rest of us.”
Nothing loath, the Prehistoric Man scrambled aboard the raft, which sank ominously under the extra weight.
“I can’t find anything to pole with,” grumbled Michael. “Paddle with your flippers, Frankie. It’s the only thing to do. Get busy with it.”
Under this primitive method of propulsion, the progress of the raft was slow; but at last they succeeded in bringing it under the cliff-face, after which they were able to work it along by hand. Gradually they manœuvred it into position in front of the cave-mouth, which stood only a yard or so above water-level. Michael leaned forward to the entrance.
“You may as well come out quietly,” he warned the inmate. “It’s no good trying to put up a fight. You haven’t a dog’s chance.”
There was no reply of any sort.
“Hold the damned raft steady, Frankie! You nearly had me overboard,” expostulated Michael. “I’m going to light a match. The cave’s as black as the pit, and I can see nothing.”
He pulled a silver match-box from his trousers pocket.
“Lucky I hadn’t this in my coat; for you don’t look as if you had a pocket of any sort on you, Frankie.”
The first match, damped by the moisture on his hands, sputtered and died out.
“Hurryup, Guvnor,” shouted Mephistopheles, cheerfully, from the bank. “Don’t keep us up all night with your firework display. It’s getting a bit chilly, paddling about amongst this sedge. Not at all the temperature I’m accustomed to at home.”
Michael felt for another match and lighted it successfully. Standing up on the raft, he held the light above his head and peered into the cavity in the rock. The Prehistoric Man heard him exclaim in amazement.
“Damnation, Frankie! He’s not here! It’s hardly a cave at all.”
He put his hands on the cave floor.
“Hold tight with the raft. I’m going in to make sure.”
He scrambled up into the hollow; but almost immediately his face appeared again in the moonlight.
“Nothing here. The hole’s barely big enough to take me in.”
“Then where’s he gone?” demanded the Prehistoric Man, who was a creature of few words.
“I dunno! Must have given us the slip somehow. If he isn’t here, he must be somewhere else. No getting round that.”
He shouted the news to the watchers on the banks; and a confused sound of argument rose from amongst the sedge.
“Not much use hanging round the old home, Frankie. Pull for shore, sailor. We’d best manhandle her along the face of the cliff. I’ve had enough of that paddling.”
When they touched firm ground again they were surrounded by their friends, most of whom seemed to doubt whether the search of the cave had been properly carried out.
“I tell you,” declaimed the exasperated Michael, “I got right into the damned hole! It’s so small that I nearly broke my nose against the back wall as I heaved myself inside. It would have been a tight fit for me and a squirrel together. He’s not there, whether you like it or not. . . . I can’t help your troubles, Tommy; you can go and look for yourself, if you like the job of lying on your tummy on a raft that’s awash. I shan’t interfere with your simple pleasures.”
“But . . .”
“We’ve lost him. Is that plain enough? There’s nothing to be done but go home again with our tails between our legs. I’m going now.”
He accompanied his friends to the top of the cliff again; but when he reached the terrace a fresh thought struck him, and he loitered behind while the others, soaked and disconsolate, made their way down into the pine-wood. When the last of them had disappeared, Michael retraced his steps to the edge of the cliff.
“He reached here all right,” he assured himself. “And he didn’t break back through the cordon.”
He stooped down, picked up the rope, and refastened it round one of the pillars of the balustrade.
“Every one knows there are secret passages about Ravensthorpe,” he mused. “Perhaps this beggar has got on to one of them. And quite possibly the end of the passage is in that cave down there. That would explain the rope. I’ll slide down and have another look round.”
He got into the cave-mouth without difficulty and used up the remainder of his matches in a close examination of the interior of the cavity; but even the closest scrutiny failed to reveal anything to his eyes.
“Nothing there but plain rock, so far as I can see,” he had to admit to himself as the last match burned out. “That’s a blank end in more senses than one.”
Without much difficulty he swarmed up the rope again, untied it from the balustrade, and coiled it over his arm.
“A nice little clue for Sir Clinton Driffield to puzzle over,” he assured himself. “Sherlock Holmes would have been on to it at once; found where it was sold in no time; discovered who bought it before five minutes had passed; and paralysed Watson with the whole story that same evening over a pipeful of shag. We shall see.”
He threw a last glance round the empty terrace and then moved off into the spinney. As he passed into the shadow of the trees he saw, a few yards to one side, the outline of the Fairy House dappled in the moonshine which filtered through the leaves overhead. Half-unconsciously, Michael halted and looked at the little building.
“They could never have overlooked that in the hunt, surely. Well, no harm in having a peep to make certain.”
He dropped his coil of rope, stepped across to the house, and, stooping down, flung open the door. Inside, he caught a flash of some white fabric.
“It’s the beggar after all! Here! Come out of that!”
He gripped the inmate roughly and hauled him by main force out of his retreat.
“Pierrot costume, right enough!” he said to himself as he extracted the man little by little from his refuge. Then, having got his victim into the open:
“Now we’ll turn you over and have a look at your face . . . Good God! Maurice!”
For as he turned the man on his back, it was the face of Maurice Chacewater that met his eyes. But it was not a normal Maurice whom he saw. The features were contorted by some excessive emotion the like of which Michael had never seen.
“Let me alone, damn you,” Maurice gasped, and turned over once more on his face, resting his brow on his arm as though to shut out the spectacle of Michael’s astonishment.
“Are you ill?” Michael inquired, solicitously.
“For God’s sake leave me alone. Don’t stand there gaping. Clear out, I tell you.”
Michael looked at him in amazement.
“I’m going to have a cheerful kind of brother-in-law before all’s done, it seems,” he thought to himself.
“Can I do anything for you, Maurice?”
“Oh, go to hell!”
Michael turned away.
“It’s fairly clear he doesn’t like my company,” he reflected, as he stepped across and picked up his coil of rope from the ground. “But I’ve known politer ways of showing it, I must say.”
With a final glance at the prostrate figure of Maurice, he walked on and took the road back to Ravensthorpe. But as he went a vision of Maurice’s face kept passing before his mind’s eye.
“There’s something damned far wrong with that beggar, whether it’s an evil conscience or cramp in the tummy. It might be either of them, by the look of him. He didn’t seem to want any assistance from me. That looks more like the evil conscience theory.”
He dismissed this with a laugh; but gradually he grew troubled.
“There he was, in white—same as the burglar. He’s in a bit of a bate at being discovered, that’s clear enough. He didn’t half like it, to judge by his chat.”
A discomforting hypothesis began to frame itself in his mind despite his efforts to stifle it.
“He’s the fellow, if there is one, who would know all these secret passages about here. Suppose there really is one leading out of that cave. He could have swarmed down the rope, got into the cave, sneaked up the subterranean passage, and got behind us that way.”
A fresh fact fitted suddenly in.
“And of course the other end of the passage may be in that Fairy House! That would explain his being there. He’d be waiting to see us off the premises before he could venture out in his white costume.”
He pondered over the problem as he hurried with long strides towards the house.
“Well,” he concluded, “I’m taking no further steps in the business. It’s no concern of mine to go probing into the private affairs of the family I’m going to marry into. And that’s that.”
Then, as a fresh aspect of the matter came to his mind, he gave a sigh of relief.
“I must be a stricken idiot! No man would ever dream of burgling his own house. What would he gain by it, if he did? The thing’s ridiculous.”
And the comfort which this view brought him was sufficient to lighten his steps for the rest of his way.