The Mystery at Lovers’ Cave

By

Anthony Berkeley

Contents

Chapter I.
Our Special Correspondent

“If,” said Roger Sheringham, helping himself to a third piece of toast, “your brain had as many kinks in it as your trousers have few, Anthony, you would have had the intelligence to find out our train from St. Pancras this morning before you ever arrived here last night.”

“There’s a telephone here and an enquiry office at St. Pancras, I believe,” retorted his cousin. “Couldn’t the two be connected in some way?”

“You write to me and ask me to waste my valuable time in amusing you on your holiday,” Roger pursued indignantly. “I not only consent but very kindly allow you to choose the place we shall go to and book our rooms for us; I even agree to harbour you here for a night before we start and submit to your company and your chattering at my own breakfast-table (a thing peculiarly offensive to any right-minded man and destroying at one blow the chief and abiding joy of bachelorhood). I do all this, I say, and what is my reward? You refuse point-blank even to find out the time of our train from St. Pancras!”

“I say, did you see this?” exclaimed Anthony, glancing up from the Daily Courier. “Kent all out for forty-seven on a plumb wicket at Blackheath! Whew!”

“If you were to turn to the centre of the paper,” replied Roger coldly, “I think you might find some rather more interesting reading matter than the performances of Kent on plumb wickets at Blackheath. The editorial page, for instance.”

“Meaning there’s another of your crime articles in?” Anthony asked, flicking back the pages. “Yes, I’ve been reading some of them. They’re really not at all bad, Roger.”

“Thank you very much indeed,” Roger murmured gratefully. “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! Anyhow, you understood them, did you? That’s good. I was trying to write down to the standard of intelligence of the ordinary Courier reader. I appear to have succeeded.”

“This is rather interesting,” Anthony remarked, his eyes on the required page.

“Well, yes,” said Roger modestly, folding up his napkin. “I did rather flatter myself that I’d⸺”

“This article on ‘Do Shingled Heads Mean Shingled Hearts?’ By Jove, that’s an idea, isn’t it? You see what he’s getting at. Boyishness, and all that. He says⸺”

“I think you’ve mistaken the column,” Roger interrupted coldly. “The one you’re looking for is on the right, next to the correspondence.”

“Correspondence?” repeated Anthony vaguely. “Oh, yes; I’ve got it. ‘Clergymen Who Gabble. Sir: I attended the burial service of my great-aunt by marriage last Thursday and was exceedingly distressed by the slipshod way in which the officiating clergyman read the⸺’ ”

“I don’t think I’ll go for a holiday with you, Anthony, after all!” observed Roger suddenly, rising to his feet with such vehemence that his chair fell violently to the floor behind him.

“You’ve knocked over your chair,” said Anthony, quite seriously.

At this point, very fortunately, the telephone-bell rang.

“Hullo!” said Roger into the mouth-piece, more loudly than was strictly necessary.

“Hullo!” answered a voice. “Is that Mr. Sheringham?”

“No! He left for Derbyshire early this morning.”

“Oh, come!” chided the voice gently. “Not before eleven o’clock, surely. He wouldn’t go without his breakfast, would he?”

“Who’s speaking?”

“Burgoyne, Daily Courier. Seriously, Sheringham, I’m very relieved that I’ve caught you. Listen!”

Roger listened. As he did so his face gradually cleared and a look of intense excitement began to take the place of the portentous frown he had been wearing.

“No, I’m afraid it’s out of the question, Burgoyne,” he said at length. “I’m just off for a fortnight in Derbyshire with a cousin of mine, as you know. Rooms booked and everything. Otherwise I should have been delighted.”

Expostulatory sounds made themselves heard from the other end of the wire.

“Well, I’ll think it over if you like,” Roger replied with a great show of reluctance, “but I’m very much afraid— Anyhow, I’ll let you know definitely in a quarter-of-an-hour. Will that do?”

He listened for a moment, then hung up the receiver and turned to Anthony with a beaming face. “Our little trip’s off I fear,” he said happily.

“What?” exclaimed Anthony. “But—but we’ve booked our rooms!”

“You’ve booked them,” Roger corrected. “And there’s nothing to prevent you from occupying them. You can sleep in one and brush your hair in the other, can’t you? Of course I shall be delighted to reimburse you for any expense you may have incurred through your misunderstanding that I would accompany you, though I must take this opportunity of pointing out, without prejudice, that I am not legally liable; and should my heirs or fellow-directors dispute the claim, my solicitors will have instructions not to⸺”

“What are you talking about?” Anthony shouted. “Why do you want to back out at the last minute like this? What’s happened? Whom were you talking to then?”

Roger resumed his seat at the breakfast-table and poured himself out another cup of coffee.

“To take your questions in inverse order,” he said at length, and with a slight diminution of his bantering air, “that was the editor of the Daily Courier, a very great man and one before whom politicians tremble and duchesses stand to attention. You may remember that I had some truck with him last summer over that Wychford business. He wants me to go down at once to Hampshire as Special Correspondent to the Courier.”

“To Hampshire?”

“Yes. I don’t know whether you saw a little paragraph in the papers yesterday about a woman who fell over the cliffs at Ludmouth Bay and was killed. The idea now appears to be that it might not have been an accident after all, and there’ve been one or two important developments. They want me to follow up those articles I’ve been doing by covering the business for them, to say nothing of putting in a little amateur sleuth-work if the chance arises. It’s a job after my own heart!”

“But I heard you say that it was out of the question, because you were going away with me?”

Roger smiled gently. “There’s a way of doing these things, little boy, as you may find out when you get a little older. But, seriously, you’ve got the first claim on me; if you’re dead set on this Derbyshire trip, I’ll come like a shot and chuck the other.”

“Of course not!” Anthony said warmly. “I wouldn’t dream of it. What do you take me for? Run off and sleuth to your heart’s content. I may even buy the Courier once or twice to see how big an idiot you’re making of yourself.”

“If you can drag your eyes away from the cricket page! Well, it’s jolly sporting of you to take it like this, Anthony, I must and will say. I know how maddening it is to have one’s plans upset at the last minute.”

“I dare say I shall be able to survive it,” Anthony opined philosophically, stuffing tobacco into his pipe. “I’m not much of a whale for my own company, it’s true, but I’ll probably fall in with somebody or other up there; one often does. Baccy?”

“Thanks.” Roger took the extended pouch and transferred some of its contents to the bowl of his own pipe with a somewhat absent air. Suddenly his face cleared and he smote the table lustily. “I’ve got it! Why on earth shouldn’t you come too? It ought to be interesting enough and I’d be jolly glad of your company. Of course!”

“But the other rooms have been booked,” Anthony demurred.

“For goodness’ sake, stop harping on the bookedness of those rooms! You’re getting positively morbid about them. They can be cancelled, can’t they? Would you like to come down with me?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Then go out and cancel them by wire, and I’ll send the woman a cheque from Ludmouth; so that’s settled. I’ll ring up the Courier and say I’ll go, and then I shall have to fly down there and see them before I start. There’s a train for Bournemouth at twelve-ten, I know, because I caught it a fortnight ago. Greene will have got my bag packed by now, so after you’ve wired come back here and collect the luggage and go on to Waterloo. Take two first singles to Ludmouth and I’ll meet you in front of the little place where you book for Sandown Park five minutes before the train goes. Shoot!”

“What’s your second name, Roger?” Anthony asked admiringly. “Pep or Zip?”

As he made his way down the main stairs of the building in which Roger Sheringham’s bachelor flat was situated, Anthony Walton smiled slowly to himself. The little holiday he had fixed up with Roger was going to be even more amusing than he had expected.

Although there were more than ten years between the cousins (Roger was now thirty-six, Anthony a bare twenty-five), they had always been good friends, and that also in spite of the fact that they had scarcely a taste or a feeling in common. It is often remarked, and even by people whom one would certainly expect to know better, that opposites make a happy marriage. Nothing could be more ludicrously untrue, but they do frequently make a happy male friendship. This one was a case in point.

Anthony, big, broad-shouldered, good-natured and slow-witted, had got his blue for rugger at Oxford, and now regularly left his father’s office, where he sat and amiably did nothing for the rest of the week, each Saturday morning to play for the Harlequins. It was his secret opinion that games were the only things that mattered in this world. In the matter of brains he was no match for the keen-witted if slightly volatile Roger, and his slow deliberation was in equal contrast with that gentleman’s dynamic energy; nor did he possess enough imagination to be impressed in the slightest degree by his cousin’s fame as a novelist with an already international reputation, though he did afford him a qualified respect as the owner of a half-blue for golf obtained at Oxford nearly fifteen years ago.

With his usual methodical care Anthony set about carrying out the string of orders which had been entrusted to him. Seven minutes before the train was due to leave he took up his position, tickets in hand, at the appointed spot on the vast surface of Waterloo Station. Punctually two minutes later Roger appeared and they passed through the barrier together, followed by a staggering porter with their combined traps. The train was not full, and an empty first-class smoker was obtained without difficulty.

“We’re going to enjoy ourselves on this little trip, Anthony, my son,” Roger remarked as the train began to move, settling himself comfortably in his corner and beginning to unfold a large wad of newspapers which he had brought with him. “Do you know that?”

“Are we?” Anthony said equably. “I shall enjoy watching you on the trail, certainly. It must be a strange sight.”

“Yes, and now I come to think of it, you’re by way of being rather indispensable there yourself, aren’t you?”

“Me? Why?”

“As the idiot friend,” Roger returned happily. “Must have an idiot friend with me, you know. All the best sleuths do.”

Anthony grunted and began somewhat ostentatiously to turn the pages of The Sportsman with which he had prudently armed himself. Roger applied himself to his bundle of papers. For half-an-hour or more no word was spoken. Then Roger, throwing aside the last newspaper from his batch, broke the silence.

“I think I’d better give you the facts as far as I can make them out, Anthony; it’ll help to stick them in my own memory too.”

Anthony consulted his wrist-watch. “Do you know you haven’t spoken for thirty-six minutes and twelve seconds, Roger?” he said in tones of the liveliest astonishment. “I should think that’s pretty nearly a record, isn’t it?”

“The name of the dead woman was Vane,” Roger continued imperturbably; “Mrs. Vane. She appears to have gone out for a walk with a girl cousin who was staying with her, a Miss Cross. According to this girl’s story, Mrs. Vane sent her back as they were approaching the village on their way home, saying that she wanted to call round and see a friend on some matter or other. She never got there. A couple of hours later a fisherman turned up at the police-station and reported that he had seen something on the rocks at the foot of the cliffs as he was rowing out to some lobster-pots half-an-hour earlier, though it had apparently not occurred to him to go and see what it was. A constable was sent off to investigate, and he and the fisherman climbed down the cliffs, which seem to be fairly well broken up at that point. At the bottom they found Mrs. Vane’s body. And that was that.”

“I believe I did see something about it,” Anthony nodded. “Wasn’t it an accident?”

“Well, that’s what everybody thought, of course; and that was the verdict at the inquest yesterday, Accidental Death. But this is the important development. The Courier’s local correspondent caught a glimpse of Inspector Moresby, of all people, prowling about the place this morning! He telephoned through at once, and⸺”

“Inspector Moresby? Who’s he?”

“Oh, you must have heard of him. He’s one of the big noises at Scotland Yard. I suppose he’s been mixed up in nearly every big murder case for the last ten years. Anyhow, you see the idea. If Moresby’s on the job, that means that something rather important’s going to happen.”

“By Jove! You mean she was murdered?”

“I mean that Scotland Yard seems to think she was,” Roger agreed seriously.

Anthony whistled softly. “Any clues?”

“None that I know of, though of course they must be working on something. All the local man can tell us is that Mrs. Vane was a charming woman, quite young (twenty-eight, I think Burgoyne said), pretty, attractive, and very popular in the neighbourhood. Her husband’s a wealthy man, a good deal older than herself and a scientist by hobby; in fact quite a fairly well-known experimentalist, I understand.”

“Sounds queer!” Anthony ruminated. “Who on earth would want to murder a woman like that? Did you gather whether any motive had come to light?”

Roger hesitated for a moment. “What I did gather is that the girl cousin benefits to the extent of over ten thousand pounds by Mrs. Vane’s death,” he replied slowly.

“Oho! That sounds rather rotten, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Roger agreed gravely.

There was another little pause.

“And you’ve got to write about it for the Courier?” Anthony remarked almost carelessly.

“Yes; as far as we know we’re the first in the field. It’ll be a decent little scoop if we’re the only people to come out with the news about Moresby to-morrow morning. I shall have to fly off and have a chat with him the moment we arrive. Luckily I know him slightly already.”

“Take your seats for lunch, pleece,” observed a head popping suddenly into the carriage from the corridor. “Lunch is now being served, pleece.”

“I say, Roger,” Anthony remarked, as they rose obediently, “what put you on to this crime business? Before that Wychford affair, I mean. You never used to be keen on it. What made you take it up?”

“A certain knotty and highly difficult little problem which I had the felicity of solving about two years ago,” Roger replied modestly. “That made me realise my own powers, so to speak. But I can’t tell you names or anything like that, because it’s a most deadly secret. In fact, you’d better not ask me anything about it at all.”

“Right-ho, I won’t, if it’s a secret,” Anthony promised.

Roger looked slightly disappointed.

Chapter II.
Girls and Murder

Ludmouth village is nearly a mile away from its station. On arriving at the latter Roger and Anthony put their traps in the combined ticket-office, porter’s room, luggage depot and cloakroom, and proceeded to make enquiries regarding hotels.

“ ’Otel?” repeated the combined porter, station-master and ticket-inspector, scratching the top of his head with an air of profound cogitation. “Why, there ain’t no ’otel ’ereabouts. Leastaways, not what you might call an ’otel, there ain’t.”

“Well, a pub, then,” rejoined Roger a trifle irritably. The journey had been a long and tiresome one, and since changing at Bournemouth they had seemed to progress at the rate of ten miles an hour. For one who was as eager to get going as Roger had been all that day, few things could have been more maddening than the journey as habitually performed between Bournemouth and Ludmouth. It is not to say that the train does not go fast when it is going, but stations seem to demoralise it completely; it sits down and ruminates for a matter of twenty minutes in each one before it can bring itself to go on to the next. “What’s the name of the best pub in Ludmouth?”

The combination chuckled hoarsely. “The best pub?” he echoed with considerable amusement. “The best pub, hey? Oho! Hoo!”

“I’ve said something funny,” Roger pointed out to Anthony. “You see? The gentleman is amused. I asked the name of the best pub, so no wonder he’s convulsed with mirth.”

Anthony inspected the combination with some attention. “I don’t think he’s laughing at you at all. I think he’s just seen a joke that Gladstone made in 1884.”

“There ain’t nobbut one!” roared the combination. “So when you says the best pub I⸺”

“Where is the one pub in Ludmouth?” asked Roger patiently.

“Why, in the village, o’ course.”

“Where is the village of Ludmouth and its one pub?” Roger pursued with almost superhuman self-restraint.

This time a more lucid reply was forthcoming, and the two strode out into the hot sunshine and down the country road in the direction indicated, leaving behind them a combination of porter, station-master and ticket-inspector guffawing at irregular intervals as some fresh aspect of this cream of jests appeared to occur to him.

It was a warm walk into the village, and they were glad enough to plunge into the gloom of the little old-fashioned inn which stood in the middle of the small cluster of houses which constitutes the nucleus of the village. A smart rap or two on the counter brought the landlord, a large man of aspect not unlike a benevolent ox and perspiring almost audibly.

“Can’t serve you, gents, I’m afraid,” he rumbled cheerfully. “Leastaways lemonade you can have, or ginger-beer, for the matter of that; but nothing else.”

“That so?” said Roger. “Then produce two large tankards of beer, the biggest tankards and the wettest beer you’ve got, for we came not as travellers but as residents.”

“You don’t mean you want to stay ’ere as well? You want rooms?”

“Rooms we shall want, certainly; but what we want just at the moment is beer—and don’t forget what I told you about the size of those tankards.”

“Oh, well, that’s a different matter, that is,” agreed the landlord. “I can let you have a couple of quart tankards, if they’re any use to you.”

“Any use? You watch!”

With much wheezing and creaking the landlord filled the two huge tankards, and the two fell upon them gratefully. Then Roger replaced his on the counter and wiped his mouth.

“So this is the only inn hereabouts, is it?” he asked with a careless air.

“Yes, sir; it is that. Ludmouth’s a small village, you see, as far as the village goes.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, there’s far more big ’ouses round and gentry and suchlike than there is of us villagers, and naturally they don’t want public-’ouses.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, quite so. By the way, I believe there’s a friend of mine somewhere about here called Moresby. You seen or heard of him by any chance?”

“Mr. Moresby?” beamed the landlord. “Why he’s staying ’ere, he is. Took ’is room this very mornin’, he did. Well, fancy that!”

“Fancy it indeed! You hear that, Anthony? Dear old Moresby staying under the very same roof-tree! What do you think of that, eh?”

“Good enough,” Anthony agreed.

“I should say so.” He took another pull at his tankard. “Been having some excitement down here, landlord, haven’t you? Lady fell over a cliff, or something?”

“Mrs. Vane, sir? Yes. Very sad business, very sad indeed. A wonderful nice lady she was too, they say, though I can’t say as how I knew ’er meself. A bit of a stranger in these parts, she was, you see. ’Adn’t been married to the doctor more nor five years.”

“The doctor? Her husband is a doctor, is he?”

“Well, in a manner o’ speaking he is. He’s always called Dr. Vane, though he don’t do no doctoring. Plenty o’ money he’s got now and always ’as ’ad since he settled ’ere twenty or more years ago, but a doctor he was once, they do say, an’ Dr. Vane he’s always called.”

“I see. And where does he live? Near here?”

“A matter of a mile or so out Sandsea way; big ’ouse standin’ in its own grounds back from the cliffs. You couldn’t miss it. Very lonely, like. You might take a stroll out there and see it if you’ve got nothing to do.”

“By Jove, yes, we might, mightn’t we, Anthony?”

“I should think so,” said Anthony cautiously.

“But first of all about these rooms. How many have you got vacant, landlord?”

“Well, besides Mr. Moresby’s, there’s four others altogether. If you’d like to step up in a minute or two and see ’em, you could choose which ones you’d like.”

“We won’t bother. We’ll take them all.”

“What, all four of ’em?”

“Yes; then we can have a bedroom and a sitting-room apiece, you see.”

“But there’s a sitting-room downstairs I could let you ’ave. A proper sitting-room.”

“Is there? Good! Then we’ll take that too. I love proper sitting-rooms. That’ll be five rooms altogether, won’t it? I should think that ought to be enough for us. What would you say, Anthony?”

“I think that might be enough,” Anthony assented.

“You see, landlord? My friend agrees with me. Then that’s settled.”

“It’ll cost you more, sir,” the landlord demurred in some bewilderment.

“Of course it will!” Roger agreed heartily. “Ever so much more. But that can’t be helped. My friend is a very faddy man—a very faddy man indeed; and if he thinks we ought to have five rooms, then five rooms we shall have to have. I’m very sorry, landlord, but you see how it is. And now I expect you’d like us to pay you a deposit, wouldn’t you? Of course. And after that, there are our bags and things to be got from the station, if you’ve got a spare man about the place; and you might tell him from me that if the red-faced man who hands them over begins to make curious noises all of a sudden, he needn’t take offence; it only means that he’s just seen a joke that someone told him the year Queen Victoria was born. Let’s see now; a deposit, you said, didn’t you? Here’s ten pounds. You might make me out a receipt for it, and be careful to mention all five rooms on the receipt or I shall be getting into trouble with my friend. Thanks very much.”

The landlord’s expression, which had been growing blanker and blanker as this harangue proceeded, brightened at the sight of the two five-pound notes which Roger laid on the counter; words may be words, but money is always money. He had not the faintest idea what it was all about and it was his private opinion that Roger was suffering from rather more than a touch of the sun, but he proceeded quite readily to make out the required receipt.

Roger tucked it away in his pocket-book and, professing a morbid interest in the late Mrs. Vane, began to ask a number of questions regarding the exact spot where she had fallen over the cliff and how best to get there. This information having been obtained and the conveyance of the bags arranged for, he shook the puzzled landlord heartily by the hand and drew Anthony out into the road.

“Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing,” remarked that young man, as they set off briskly in accordance with the landlord’s instructions, “but I’m blessed if I do. Why on earth did you book four bedrooms?”

Roger smiled gently. “To prevent all the other little journalists from sharing our advantage in staying under the same roof as Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard, Cousin Anthony. A dirty trick, no doubt; but nevertheless a neat one.”

“Oh, I see. Very cunning. And where are we off to now? The cliffs?”

“Yes. You see, I want to get hold of Moresby as soon as I possibly can, and it seems to me that if he only arrived here this morning he’ll still be hanging round those cliffs; so the best thing I can do is to make for them too.”

“Seems a sound scheme. And after that?”

“Well, I ought to try to get an interview with one of the people at the house, I suppose, though I don’t much fancy the idea of tackling the doctor himself.”

“Dr. Vane? No, dash it, you can hardly butt in on him.”

“That’s what I feel. He has a secretary, I believe, though I don’t know what her name is, and of course there’s the girl cousin, Miss Cross. She’s the person one ought to make for, I think.”

Anthony frowned. “Seems rather rotten to me.”

“To interview her? Not necessarily, at all. She might have something to say that she’d very much like published. She knows that the uncompromising fact about that ten thousand pounds is going to be talked about pretty hard if there’s any question of Mrs. Vane’s death not being an accident; naturally she’d like an opportunity of putting an indirect answer of her own forward.”

“I never thought of that,” Anthony confessed, his frown disappearing.

“Nor did I, till this minute,” Roger said candidly. “Still, it’s true enough. And there’s a little job for you, Anthony. I shan’t want you with me while I’m talking to Moresby; it’s going to be difficult enough to get anything out of him in any case, but your presence would probably dry him up altogether. So you might stroll along the cliffs, locate the Vanes’ house, and see if you can discover unobtrusively any information as to the girl’s movements or where I might be likely to catch her—outside the house, of course, if possible. What about that?”

“Yes, I could do that for you. And meet you later on?”

“Yes; just stroll back along the top of the cliffs again and I shall be sure to run into you. Well, there’s the sea not three hundred yards ahead, and nothing but nice, open downs along the top of the cliffs up there. We turn off to the right, I suppose, and you go straight along while I make for the edge just over there. I expect I shall be through in something under an hour. So long!”

As Anthony made his way leisurely over the springy turf in the direction in which he judged his objective to lie, he pondered with no little interest over the object of their journey down to this charming part of the world and its possible outcome. There was in his make-up none of that eager curiosity regarding his fellow-creatures, their minds and the passions which sway them that had led Roger, after the way had once been opened to him, to explore the vast field of criminology with all its intense and absorbing interest for the student of the human animal. Indeed the notion of nosing out hidden facts and secret horrors (“like a bally policeman,” as he had contemptuously phrased it to Roger over their lunch on the train) had at first actually repelled him; it was not until Roger had been at considerable pains to point out the moral duty which every living person owes to the dead that his eyes were opened to any wider conception of the idea. And even then, though admitting that there must be detectives just as much as there must be hangmen, he was quite firm in his gratitude to Providence that he at any rate was not one of them; nor could Roger, expatiating on the glories of a clever piece of deductive reasoning, the exquisite satisfaction of logical proof, the ardour of the chase with a human quarry (but none the less a quarry that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred deserved not a jot of mercy) at the end of it, move him an inch from this position.

It was this state of mind which had caused him to receive with ominous disapproval Roger’s pointed information about the girl cousin and her ten thousand pounds. A girl, to Anthony’s mind, should not be mentioned in the same breath as the word murder. Girls were things apart. Murder concerned men; not girls. Girls might be and very often were murdered, but not by other girls. If it were distasteful to hunt down a man suspected of murder, how impossible would it not be to harry a wretched girl in the same circumstances?

As his thoughts progressed with his steps, an idea began to form in Anthony’s mind. He would not only seek out the whereabouts of Miss Cross, as Roger had asked him; he would contrive to speak to her for a minute or two and, if possible, drop a veiled warning as to the things that might be expected to happen—that were, in fact, even now happening—together with an equally veiled hint that at any rate he, Anthony Walton, was prepared to extend to her any help within his power, should she wish to accept it. After all, that was the least a chap could do. It was the only decent thing. Ten to one she wouldn’t need anything of the sort, but the offer—yes, of course it was the only decent thing to do. Girls were weak, helpless things. Let them know they’ve got a man behind them (even a perfect stranger if the case is serious enough to warrant it) and it makes all the difference in the world to ’em. Naturally!

In the glow of this resolution Anthony had unconsciously directed his steps toward the sea, so that he was now striding along the very edge of the cliffs. Coming to his senses with a jerk, he pulled up short and looked inland. Not five hundred yards to his right there stood, in a large fenced area which evidently stretched to the road half-a-mile away, a big red house. As the landlord of the inn had said, there was no mistaking it. Anthony gazed at it for a few moments without moving; now that he was face to face with it, the task of penetrating its purlieus and demanding speech with an unknown lady in order to warn her against dangers which quite probably did not exist at all, suddenly took on a somewhat formidable aspect.

His eyes left its red roof and began, probably with an instinctive idea of looking for help, to sweep the remainder of the view, arriving in due course at the edge of the cliff just in front of him. At this point Anthony started violently, for seated on a small grassy ledge not a dozen feet below the cliff top, which was crumbled away at the point to form a steep but not impossible slope down, was a girl who was occupied in gazing as hard at Anthony as he had been gazing at the house. As his glance at last fell upon her she also started, coloured faintly, and hurriedly transferred her eyes to the horizon in front of her.

On an impulse Anthony stepped forward and raised his hat.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I am looking for Dr. Vane’s house. Could you tell me if that is it?”

The girl twisted half round to face him. She wore no hat, and the sun glinted on her dark hair, unshingled and twisted in two coils on either side of her head; the eyes with which she looked at Anthony were large and brown, and the simple little black frock she was wearing suited her lithe, graceful body so well that one would have said she should never wear anything else.

“I thought you must be,” she said calmly. “Yes, it is. Did you want to see anyone in particular?”

“Well, yes; I— That is, I rather wanted to see Miss Cross.”

The girl suddenly stiffened. “I am Miss Cross,” she said coldly.

Chapter III.
Inspector Moresby Is Reluctant

The village of Ludmouth lies about half a mile back from the sea. At the nearest point to the village, where Roger and Anthony had left the road to strike across open country, the water had broken in upon the stern lines of the high cliffs which form the coast-line for several miles in either direction. The result is a tiny little inlet, almost completely circular in shape, which has been dignified by the name of Ludmouth Bay.

At either horn of this minute bay, which could hardly have been more than a couple of hundred yards wide, the cliffs rise almost sheer to a height of at least a hundred feet, to sink gradually down as they follow the bay’s curve into a strip of sandy beach at the innermost edge, whence a steep track leads up to the village on the high ground behind. It is a charmingly picturesque spot and, lying as it does a little way off the beaten track, has not yet been spoiled (except for occasional excursion parties on bicycles from the neighbouring town of Sandsea, half-a-dozen miles away to the West) by the ubiquitous tripper; for the roads on all sides are too steep and too dangerous for char-à-bancs—a matter of much comfort to those of the inhabitants who keep neither public-houses nor banana shops.

The cliffs which stretch toward Sandsea face the open sea with considerably less frowning austerity than those to the East; they slope slightly backward instead of dropping sheer, and are so irregular and split up into huge boulders, clefts and rocky knobs, as to be by no means impossible for a determined man to climb. About a third of the way down their face they bear a narrow ledge, which proceeds more or less level for a considerable distance and has been turned, by means of a flight of steps cut in the rock at either end, into a pathway. At one time this pathway had been in some favour among the lads of the village as a place from which to fish when the tide was high; but customs change even in Ludmouth, and nowadays anyone in search of solitude could usually be sure of finding it here. To add to its advantages in this respect, a bulge in the rock just above served to hide it completely for nearly its whole length from the eyes of anybody standing on the top of the cliff overhead. Inspector Moresby, sitting on a low boulder at a spot where the ledge widened out to a depth of nearly a dozen feet, could be observed from nowhere except the open sea.

Inspector Moresby was as unlike the popular idea of a great detective as can well be imagined. His face resembled anything but a razor, or even a hatchet (if it must be compared with something in that line, it was far more like a butter-knife); his eyes had never been known to snap since infancy; and he simply never rapped out remarks—he just spoke them. Let us not shirk the fact: a more ordinary-looking and ordinarily behaved man never existed.

To proceed to details, the inspector was heavily-built, with a grizzled walrus moustache and stumpy, insensitive fingers; his face habitually wore an expression of bland innocence; he was frequently known to be jovial, and he bore not the least malice toward any of his victims.

At the moment of our introduction to him he was gazing with an appearance of extreme geniality, his chin on his knuckles and one elbow perched on either knee, at a small rowing-boat half-a-mile out at sea; but his expression was not inspired by any feeling of affectionate regard for the boat’s horny-handed occupant. He was, indeed, quite unaware of the boat’s existence. He was engaged in wondering very intensely how a lady could have managed to fall accidentally off this ledge at the particularly broad part where he was now sitting; and why, if the lady had not fallen off accidentally but had been committing suicide, she should have done so with a large button from somebody else’s coat tightly clenched in her right hand.

Quite an interesting problem, Inspector Moresby had decided; interesting enough, at any rate, to call him over semi-officially that morning from Sandsea, where he had been in the middle of his annual holiday with his wife and two children, to look into the matter a little further pending instructions from Scotland Yard and the county police authorities.

The sound of footsteps advancing along the path from the East caused him to glance up sharply, his face just a shade less genial than usual. The next moment a stockily-built man, hatless and wearing a pair of perfectly shapeless grey flannel trousers and a disreputable old sports coat, and smoking a short-stemmed pipe with an enormous bowl, came into sight round a bend in the path, walking rapidly.

The newcomer slowed up at sight of the inspector and glanced at him with an air of elaborate carelessness. A look of equally elaborate incredulity appeared on his face, then he smiled widely and hurried forward with outstretched hand.

“Great Scott, Inspector Moresby! Well, fancy seeing you here, Inspector! You remember me, don’t you? My name’s⸺”

“Mr. Sheringham! Of course I remember you, sir,” returned the inspector warmly, shaking the other’s hand with great heartiness. “Shouldn’t be likely to forget you after enjoying your books so much, you know, let alone the way you astonished us all at the Yard over that business at Wychford. Let’s see now, it was with Mr. Turner of the Courier, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. The ‘Hattan Garden jewel case,’ as the papers called it. Well, Inspector, and what are you doing in this peaceful part of the world?”

“I’m on my holiday,” replied the inspector with perfect truth. “Staying over at Sandsea with the wife and children.”

“Oh, yes,” said Roger innocently.

“And how do you come here, sir? Holidaying too?”

Roger winked broadly. “Me? Oh, no. I’m down here in pursuit of a new profession that’s just been thrust upon me.”

“Indeed, sir? What’s that?”

“Well, to put it quite bluntly, I’m down here to ask Inspector Moresby on behalf of the Courier what he’s got to tell me about a lady who fell off the cliff somewhere about here a day or two ago, and why such an important person as he should be so interested in an ordinary accident.”

The inspector rubbed his chin with a rueful grin. “And I’d just strolled over here from Sandsea to get away from the crowds for a bit!” he deplored innocently. “I’ve only got to yawn at the wrong time, and there’s half-a-dozen gentlemen of your new profession round the next minute asking what the significance is.”

“Going to have a nice nap before you go back to Sandsea?” Roger asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“A nap?”

“Yes; at least, I don’t suppose you booked that room at the Crown just to brush your hair in, did you?”

The inspector chuckled appreciatively. “Got me there, sir! Well, I may be staying over here for a day or two, yes. Even accidents can have their interesting side, you know, after all.”

“Especially an accident that isn’t an accident, eh? Come on, Inspector; you can’t put me off like that, you know. I’m developing a nose like a bloodhound’s for this sort of thing, and it’s busy telling me very hard that you’ve got something up your sleeve. What’s the idea? Can’t you give me a pointer or two?”

“Well, I don’t know that perhaps I mightn’t. I’ll think it over.”

“Can’t you do it now? Just a few words to send the Courier before the other johnnies turn up. I’ll get ’em to splash your name all over it, if that’s any good to you. Come now!”

The inspector considered. He was never averse to having his name splashed about in an important paper like the Courier if the circumstances warranted it. As long as the bounds of discretion were not overstepped a little publicity never did a police officer any harm, and it has frequently done him a great deal of good.

“Well, without saying too much, I don’t mind telling you that there are one or two suspicious circumstances, Mr. Sheringham,” he admitted at length. “You see, the lady was supposed to have been alone at the time when she fell over here.”

“At this very spot, I take it?” Roger put in.

“At this very spot. But I’m not at all sure—not at all sure!—that she was alone. And that’s really all I can say at present.”

“Why do you think she wasn’t?”

“Ah!” The inspector looked exceedingly mysterious. “I can’t go so far as to tell you that, but I think you can let your readers know that I’m not speaking altogether at random.”

“ ‘Inspector Moresby, who has the matter in hand, intimated that he has discovered an important clue. While not at liberty to disclose the precise nature of this, he assured me that important developments may be expected shortly,’ ” Roger intoned solemnly.

“Something like that,” the inspector laughed. “And of course I needn’t point out to a gentleman like you how improbable it would be for anyone to fall over accidentally just here where this ledge is so deep.”

Roger nodded. “Suicide, by any chance?”

“May have been,” agreed the inspector in a perfectly expressionless voice.

“But you’re quite sure it wasn’t!” Roger smiled. “Eh?”

The inspector laughed again. “I’ll be able to let you know a bit more later on, no doubt, sir. In the meantime⸺” He paused significantly.

“In the meantime you’d be very much obliged if I’d stop these awkward questions and leave you in peace again? I get you, Inspector. Very well. But you don’t mind if I just have a look round here before I go, do you?”

“Of course not, Mr. Sheringham,” said the inspector heartily. “By all means.”

It was with a mild feeling of resentment, however, in spite of the inspector’s friendly reception of him, that Roger embarked upon a cursory examination of the ledge on which they were standing. It was more in the nature of a demonstration than anything else, for he knew perfectly well that there would be nothing for him to find; Inspector Moresby would have seen to that. No doubt it was perfectly right and proper to withhold from him the clues which he had most certainly discovered—no doubt at all. But Roger did think the man might have treated him somewhat differently from an ordinary reporter, especially after his reference to Wychford. It was annoying in a way; decidedly annoying. And still more annoying was the fact that he had nothing whatever to be annoyed about. In the inspector’s eyes he was a reporter, and that was all there was to it; he had come down here as a reporter, he was acting as a reporter, he was a reporter. Hell!

As he had expected, the ledge yielded nothing at all.

“Humph!” he observed, straightening up from a boulder behind which he had been peering. “Nothing much here. And no signs of a struggle either.”

“There wouldn’t be, on this rocky surface,” the inspector pointed out kindly. “Too hard to take impressions, you see.”

“Yes, that idea occurred to me,” Roger remarked a trifle coldly. He walked over to the western end of the ledge, where it narrowed down rapidly into a pathway not more than four or five feet wide, and began to stroll along it.

He had scarcely covered half-a-dozen paces before the inspector’s voice pulled him up with a jerk. “Not that way, if you want to get back, sir. I shouldn’t go that way if I were you; it’s very much longer. You’ll find the way you came a good deal shorter.”

Roger started slightly. “Oho, old war-horse!” he murmured to himself. “So the ears are pricking, are they?” He turned about and scrutinised the inspector with interest. “Now I wonder just exactly why you don’t want me to go this way, Inspector?”

“It’s no matter to me, sir,” returned the inspector very innocently. “I was just trying to save you a bit of a walk round, that’s all.”

“I see. But do you know, I think I should like a bit of a walk round,” Roger remarked with some care. “I feel it would do me good. Clear my brain, and all that. Good-bye, Inspector; see you later, no doubt.” And he set off again, though more slowly this time, in the confident expectation of being called back once more.

He was not disappointed.

“I see I shall have to tell you,” said the inspector’s resigned voice behind him. “But you understand, I don’t want this mentioned yet awhile, sir. I’m not scaring my bird just at present if I can help it—always provided there is one, of course. Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

He led the way a few yards farther along the path and paused in front of a wide patch of dry mud. Plainly marked in the mud were the imprints of two pairs of feet, both women’s, one pair decidedly larger than the other; the deep impressions of the high heels were clean and distinct.

“Oho!” said Roger softly, staring hard.

“Yes, that’s why I said the lady wasn’t alone,” the inspector pointed out. “I’ve ascertained pretty certainly that she came along from this end, you see, and these marks were made yesterday morning or thereabouts. It’s a bit of luck that they haven’t been obliterated since, but everyone else seems to have come and gone from the other end as it’s so near the steps. I’ve tried the shoes she was wearing, by the way, and they fit exactly in the smaller impressions. That’s nothing like so important as the story-books make out, of course (I dare say there are at least twenty pairs of shoes even in this small place which would fit one or other of those prints); but it’s a point worth mentioning for all that.”

Roger turned eagerly from his contemplation of the mud. “This is jolly significant, Inspector; anyone can see that. But it doesn’t absolutely destroy the accident theory, does it? Not alone. No, I’m ready to bet you’ve got something else up your sleeve as well.”

“Well, perhaps I have, sir,” twinkled the inspector, who was not feeling inclined to talk about coat-buttons just at the moment. “Perhaps I have. But you must take it from me that this is all I can tell you for the moment, and that last bit isn’t for publication yet awhile either, you won’t forget.”

They turned and walked back to the ledge again.

“Where was the body found?” Roger asked. “In the water?”

“No, a couple of feet above high-water mark. You see that big rock down there—the one with the seaweed half-way over the top and a bunch of yellow limpets on this side? Well, wedged between that and the smaller one this side of it.”

“I see,” said Roger thoughtfully, gauging the distance from the edge of the ledge. A person tumbling straight over the edge would miss it by feet; quite a respectable little jump would be needed to reach it. A jump, or—a push! Furthermore, there was, straight down below the ledge, a deep pool among the rocks into which anybody just tumbling over must inevitably have fallen. Mrs. Vane’s body had cleared the pool and landed on the boulders beyond it. The inference was obvious; any question of an accident was now almost definitely ruled out. It was a matter of suicide or murder.

Roger turned to the inspector. “There’s been a post mortem, I suppose?”

“Yes. This morning.”

“Were any bones broken?”

The inspector smiled. “Oh, yes; plenty. She hadn’t been murdered anywhere else and put there, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“It did cross my mind,” Roger smiled back. “I needn’t ask whether anyone saw anything from the sea?”

“No, I was making enquiries on those lines this morning, myself. Unfortunately there don’t seem to have been any boats out here at all just then. But the old fisherman who subsequently discovered the body seems to think he heard a scream coming from this direction about an hour beforehand; in fact, he says that’s probably what made him look over here as he was rowing past. But he didn’t pay any attention to it at the time, thinking it was some dratted girl being tickled—his own words, by the way.”

“That’s interesting,” observed Roger, the light in his eye belying his laconic words. “By the way, I suppose you’ve been down to those rocks?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t,” said the inspector a little guiltily. “I should have done, I know, but I’m not built for climbing down from here, and I don’t seem to have had time to get round there in a boat. In any case, I’m pretty sure there’d be nothing to find. The constable who recovered the body brought her hand-bag and her parasol, and he said he’d had a good look round. Strictly between ourselves, Mr. Sheringham, I was going to assume that his eyes are as good as mine; but don’t put anything about that in the Courier.”

“I’ll have to think that over,” Roger laughed. “Anyhow, I’m a man of stern duty: I’m going to see if I can scramble down and poke round. I know there won’t be anything to find, but it’s the sort of thing that gives one a lot of satisfaction afterward to have done.”

“Well, don’t you stumble and pitch on the rocks too,” said the inspector humorously. “Somebody might come along and accuse me of things.”

The way down was not nearly so difficult as it looked from above. Everywhere the face of the cliff was so seamed and fissured that foothold was easy, while half-way down a great piled-up pyramid of boulders provided a kind of giant’s staircase tolerably simple to negotiate. Within five minutes of leaving the inspector, Roger was standing on the big rock beside which Mrs. Vane’s body had been found.

For some minutes he poked about, peering into pools and religiously exploring the recesses of every cranny, while the inspector kept up a running commentary upon the habits of crabs, lobsters and other sea-going creatures which lurk in dark holes awaiting an opportunity to deal drastically with exploratory hands; then he stood up and swept a brief glance round before beginning the climb back.

“No,” he called up to the inspector, who had just finished recounting an anecdote about the grandfather of a friend of his who had been stung to death by a jellyfish while paddling among the rocks off Sandsea. “Nothing here! Now tell me a story about the great-aunt of another friend of yours who fell down a hundred feet when rock-climbing in Cumberland. I shall be ripe for something like that in about five minutes, when I’m clinging on to that last bit of cliff up there with my teeth and eyebrows.”

The obliging inspector instantly embarked on the anecdote required, and at the same moment Roger, in mid-stride between two boulders, noticed something white glistening below him. Action was almost instinctive.

“Hullo!” exclaimed the inspector in concern, breaking off his narrative abruptly. “Hurt yourself?”

Roger picked himself up slowly and brushed a little green slime off his trousers with his hands. “No, thanks,” he called back cheerfully. “Not a bit!” And he went on brushing himself with his hands.

He couldn’t use his handkerchief, because that was lying in his breast pocket, wrapped about the piece of paper on top of which he had skilfully stage-managed his fall.

Chapter IV.
Anthony Interviews a Suspect

Anthony had not had very much experience with women. In the brief instant after the girl had spoken it occurred to him with some force that his ideas on the subject might require drastic revision. Women were not necessarily weak, helpless creatures. Names such as Joan of Arc, Boadicea, Florence Nightingale, Queen Elizabeth, occurred to him with startling rapidity. Were they weak, helpless creatures? They were not. Nor was the girl who was standing in front of him and regarding him now with cold, haughty eyes. Anybody less weak and helpless, anybody more obviously capable of looking after herself could hardly have existed.

“I am Miss Cross,” she repeated in frigid tones. “What do you want?”

Anthony’s tongue seemed to have become jammed. His mission, which had seemed a moment before so altogether right and proper, suddenly took on the aspect of the most fatuous thing ever conceived by misguided human mind. Even to connect this beautiful, proud creature with the mere idea of bare self-interest appeared a kind of blasphemy.

“Oh, I—I wanted to speak to you for a minute,” he managed to stammer. “But it doesn’t matter.” At this point Anthony ought to have turned about and run off at top speed with his tail between his legs, making a noise like a flat pancake. But he couldn’t. By some curious action of nature his feet seemed to have taken root in the ground.

“Are you connected with the police?” the girl asked with incredible scorn.

“Great Heavens, no!” cried Anthony, genuinely shocked. “I should think not! Great Scott, no! Good Lord, no!”

The girl’s uncompromising attitude relaxed slightly. “Then why did you want to see me?” she asked, as if very few people except the police ever wanted to see her.

“Well, it was just about something I thought I ought to tell you,” Anthony mumbled. “But it doesn’t matter. I see that now. It doesn’t matter a bit.”

Curiosity could be seen struggling with resentment in the girl’s face. Strangely enough, curiosity won.

“You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve come all this way out to speak to me, and now you’ve got here you’ve decided that it doesn’t matter?” she said, and actually a faint hint of the merest shadow of a suspicion of a smile flitted for a quarter-of-a-second into and out of her eyes.

“Now I’ve seen you, I’m quite sure it doesn’t matter, Miss Cross,” Anthony said simply.

“Well, thank Heaven my appearance seems to impress somebody favourably,” murmured the girl wearily, more to herself than the other, and for an instant the mantle of pride she had been wearing seemed to drop from her and she looked utterly forlorn and miserable.

Anthony was emboldened into a sudden decision. “I’ll tell you why I came, Miss Cross, after all. I just came to say that if you wanted any help in the present circumstances, I should be very proud to— That is to say, I should like you to know that—I mean⸺” He ceased floundering, for the girl’s eyes were regarding him steadily with an expression in their depths which he was finding peculiarly disconcerting.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” she said haughtily. “I was not aware that I needed any ‘help.’ ”

“No, of course not,” Anthony stammered. “Naturally not! I was only thinking that⸺”

“And I must decline to discuss my private affairs with a stranger! So if there is nothing else⸺” She paused, obviously waiting for him to go.

Anthony felt himself becoming annoyed. He knew that his recent embarrassment had made him look a fool and he resented the fact; he knew that his motive in seeking speech with this girl had been a completely altruistic one and here she was treating it as a piece of unwarrantable impertinence, and he resented that still more.

“In that case,” he said stiffly, “there is nothing more to be said, and I must apologise for bothering you. Though I think you should understand,” he added on the impulse of the instant by way of a parting shot as his temper momentarily got the better of his manners, “I think you should understand that possibly your private affairs will soon be becoming of some interest to the public at large, Miss Cross.”

The girl coloured violently and for a moment seemed incapable of speaking. Her eyes blazed, she clinched her small fists by her sides and her dark head was flung back as if to meet an actual attack.

“If you’ve come here to insult me⸺” she choked out.

“But I haven’t!” said Anthony in considerable alarm at this unexpected result of his thrust. “I simply meant that I’ve come down here with a friend of mine who’s working for the Daily Courier and he said something about getting you to give him an interview. I thought you ought to know.”

As abruptly as it had arisen the girl’s anger disappeared and something very like fear took the place of the fire in her eyes. She stared at Anthony widely.

“A—a reporter?” she muttered. “Good Heavens, has it come to that now?”

Men are curious creatures. A moment ago Anthony was severely annoyed and wanted nothing better than to make this extremely crushing young lady severely annoyed too. The instant he had succeeded in doing so, he had been filled with alarm. Now that he had changed her mood once more, from anger to fear, he began to feel the worst kind of inhuman brute imaginable.

“No, but look here,” he said eagerly, “there’s nothing to be alarmed about. They always do it, you know. Interviews and all that. He’s an awfully nice chap too. Roger Sheringham, the novelist, you know. Cousin of mine, as a matter of fact. I dare say he won’t try to see you at all if you don’t want him to. Sure he won’t! I’ll tell him, shall I? Dash it all, there are crowds of other people he can interview if he must interview somebody. I was against it at the time, to tell you the truth, but he thought you might want to be interviewed for some reason or other. I’ll tell him, Miss Cross. Don’t you bother about that. I’ll see it’s all right.”

It was doubtful if the girl had understood a single word beyond the general drift of what Anthony was saying. She continued to stare at him; but mechanically, as if paying attention only to her own thoughts. When next she spoke her voice was under control again, though her words were a little halting.

“Then am I to understand that—that the London papers are taking an interest in—in my cousin’s death?” she asked.

“I’m afraid they are,” said Anthony humbly, apologising for the London paper en masse.

The girl shifted her gaze and contemplated the horizon with unseeing eyes, busy again with her thoughts. Anthony, judging he had received permission to exist a little longer, made advantageous use of his reprieve by contemplating her.

She really was extraordinarily pretty, he had no difficulty in deciding. He liked her slimness and grace, he liked the way her head was set on her neck, he liked the way her black hair curled over her ears, he liked her wrists and her small feet, he liked— But why reduce Margaret Cross to a catalogue? There was nothing about her Anthony did not like. When he got back to his lodgings he would probably think this over and the realisation would suddenly strike him that this was the one girl in the world for him—expressly designed and manufactured by a thoughtful Providence for the sole purpose of delighting, harassing, maddening and ultimately very greatly gratifying one Anthony Walton, bachelor. The realisation had already struck him exactly twenty-three times before and twenty-three times he had mistaken the intentions of Providence; but this time it was the real thing. It always was.

Anthony continued his contemplation, each second more raptly than before.

Suddenly the girl appeared to come to a decision. She turned to him with an impulsive movement, and to his relief Anthony saw that she was smiling.

“Will you come and sit down here a minute, Mr.⸺?”

“Walton!” Anthony supplied hastily.

“Mr. Walton. I owe you an enormous apology, I’m afraid. It was very kind indeed of you to think of coming along to give me warning. I was a pig to you.”

“Not a bit,” Anthony averred, scrambling eagerly down the little bank to join her on the little grassy ledge a dozen feet down from the cliff’s lip. “It was most natural. I ought to apologise if anyone should. Frightfully tactless.”

“Not at all!” said the girl warmly. “It was entirely my fault. But if you’ll forgive me, we’ll say no more about it. Now let’s sit down here and make ourselves comfortable, because I’m going to take you at your word.”

“Do, please,” Anthony said earnestly, as he seated himself on the warm, springy turf at her side. “I should be awfully proud.”

The girl clasped her arms round her knees and stared out to sea. Anthony, glancing at her covertly, noted with approval the firm and resolute lines of her profile. She could not be more than one- or two-and-twenty, he decided, but even he could read an experience beyond her years of the world, its trials and its anxieties in the tiny lines of care about her mouth and the faint markings on her white forehead.

“You said something about my needing help,” she said slowly, as if choosing her words with care. “Well, why should I be silly and pretend I don’t? I do need it. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you; but I feel I can trust you, and there’s nobody else to whom I can speak. Not a single soul. I suppose you know that—that⸺”

“Yes,” Anthony interrupted gently. “I think I know all the facts.”

“I supposed so, or you wouldn’t have said that.” She fixed her big, sorrowful brown eyes on Anthony’s face. “But what you don’t know, Mr. Walton, is that a police inspector from Scotland Yard was with me for nearly two hours this morning, asking me the most horrible questions!”

A cold hand seemed to lay itself over Anthony’s heart. “I say, was he really?” he muttered. “No, I didn’t know that.”

The girl nodded. She opened her mouth to speak again, but her lips trembled and she turned her head quickly away. A little quiver shook her body. Then suddenly the control that had borne her up all this time, ever since that dreadful interview in the morning, gave way before Anthony’s silent sympathy. She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

“He seems to think—oh, the most awful things!” she sobbed.

Anthony stared at her in dismay. It was bad enough that she should have burst into tears at all, without the terrible significance of her last words. He was certain that Margaret Cross was not the sort of person to give way to tears unless matters had reached an acute crisis; the fact that she had done so impressed him with the seriousness of the situation even more than had her decision to confide in himself, a complete stranger. She must be not only utterly alone in the world; she was very nearly at the end of her tether as well.

Masculine sympathy with distressed femininity is nearly always inarticulate (distrust it when it is not!), but fortunately it has resource at its command far superior to mere words. Anthony did not stop to think. He acted instinctively. Putting his arm about her he drew her toward him without a word and laid her head on his shoulder. Almost gratefully she buried her face in the hollow of it like a small child seeking consolation from its mother and continued to weep. Anthony had the wisdom to let her go on doing so without attempting a single word of clumsy consolation—though indeed it is doubtful whether he would have been able to do so had he wished, for he was vaguely feeling himself almost sanctified by contact with something rather holy and, for such an outwardly unemotional Briton, there was a most unusual lump in his throat as he looked down on the sleek dark head sheltering against his rough coat and felt the sobs shaking the slim body he held in his arms.

By degrees the girl’s weeping subsided. Her form ceased to quiver and she gently disengaged herself from Anthony’s encircling arm.

“I’m a fool,” she said, looking at him with rather a watery smile. “Is my nose disgustingly red?”

“Not a bit!” Anthony lied stoutly, considerably relieved by the smile. “It’s ripping.”

Margaret dived into her bag and produced a little mirror. Sounds of dismay issued from her, and a powder-puff was hastily brought into action.

“That’s better,” she observed a minute or two later, scrutinising her image with close attention. She turned and faced Anthony with a frank smile that was a tacit acknowledgment of the bond between them. “Will you ever forgive me for making such an idiot of myself?”

“Look here,” Anthony said slowly, “I don’t want to butt in on anything you don’t want to tell me, but wouldn’t you like to tell me the whole story? You know I’m only too anxious to do anything I possibly can to help you, and matters seem to be a bit—well, a bit more serious even than I’d thought. If you would like to let me know the whole circumstances⸺?”

He paused, and the girl nodded understandingly. “You mean it’s no good asking you to help me unless you know what I’m up against?” she said thoughtfully. “Well, that stands to reason. Of course I’ll tell you. I was going to before as a matter of fact, only I⸺” She left the sentence unfinished and, hunching her knees, resumed her former pose and gazed out to sea.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Anthony asked, producing his pipe.

“Of course not. In fact I rather feel I need a cigarette myself. No, don’t you bother!” she added quickly, as Anthony felt in his pockets. “I’ve got some of my own particular brand here, and I hardly ever smoke anything else.”

She produced a cigarette-case from her bag, and Anthony held a match for her, lighting his own pipe from it afterward. She drew one or two deep inhalations and sighed contentedly.

“Well, about myself; there’s really very little to tell you. Four months ago I was in London, broke to the wide—as I had been off and on for the last seven years. My father was an officer in the regular army; he was killed in France in 1917, when I was fifteen years old. I inherited about two hundred pounds from him and, of course, a pension; the pension was just enough to keep body and soul together if one lived on rice and cold water, but not much more.” She paused for a moment as if in thought.

“Unfortunately,” she went on with a touch of cynicism, “it appears that my father had ‘married beneath him.’ I don’t remember my mother at all (she died when I was a baby), but I believe that she was the daughter of a fraudulent bucket-shop proprietor in Liverpool who had served two terms of imprisonment and my father was more or less entrapped into marriage with her when he was a young subaltern. He never hinted a word of all this to me, by the way; don’t think that. He was a dear. But it’s been rubbed into me pretty thoroughly since by other charming people.”

“I say,” Anthony put in in acute distress, “please don’t tell me anything you’d rather not. I mean⸺!”

“Why not?” asked the girl in a hard voice. “Why shouldn’t I tell you everything? That police inspector seems to know all about it. Probably it will be in all the papers to-morrow.”

“But⸺” Anthony shifted his position and relapsed into uncomfortable silence.

“Well, the consequence was that my father had been cut off by his family. They wouldn’t have anything more to do with him. Nor would they with me. One of his brothers sent five hundred pounds to daddy’s solicitors to provide for my education and keep me till I was old enough to earn my own living, but that was as far as any of them would go. I’m not complaining; in the circumstances it was remarkably generous of him. That money, with my own two hundred, kept me till I was eighteen, after that I had to earn my own living. You’ve probably heard that girls had some difficulty in getting jobs after the war. It’s perfectly true. I was trained as a shorthand-typist, but unfortunately nobody seemed to want a shorthand-typist. But I got work all right. I had to. During the last three years I’ve been a governess, a shop-assistant, a waitress and a parlour-maid.”

“Good God!” Anthony breathed.