Cover
"THEY RESCUED WHAT THEY COULD." See page [152].
NO MAN'S ISLAND
BY
HERBERT STRANG
ILLUSTRATED BY C. E. BROCK
HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, GLASGOW
TORONTO, MELBOURNE, CAPE TOWN, BOMBAY
1921
PRINTED 1921 IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD.,
PARIS GARDEN, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
HERBERT STRANG
COMPLETE LIST OF STORIES
ADVENTURES OF DICK TREVANION, THE
ADVENTURES OF HARRY ROCHESTER, THE
A GENTLEMAN AT ARMS
A HERO OF LIEGE
AIR PATROL, THE
AIR SCOUT, THE
BARCLAY OF THE GUIDES
BLUE RAIDER, THE
BOYS OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
BRIGHT IDEAS
BROWN OF MOUKDEN
BURTON OF THE FLYING CORPS
CARRY ON
CRUISE OF THE GYRO-CAR, THE
FIGHTING WITH FRENCH
FLYING BOAT, THE
FRANK FORESTER
HUMPHREY BOLD
JACK HARDY
KING OF THE AIR
KOBO
LONG TRAIL, THE
LORD OF THE SEAS
MOTOR SCOUT, THE
NO MAN'S ISLAND
OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN, THE
ONE OF CLIVE'S HEROES
PALM TREE ISLAND
ROB THE RANGER
ROUND THE WORLD IN SEVEN DAYS
SAMBA
SETTLERS AND SCOUTS
SULTAN JIM
SWIFT AND SURE
THROUGH THE ENEMY'S LINES
TOM BURNABY
TOM WILLOUGHBY'S SCOUTS
WITH DRAKE ON THE SPANISH MAIN
WITH HAIG ON THE SOMME
CONTENTS
CHAP.
- [NO MAN'S ISLAND]
- [BELOW THE BELT]
- [PRATTLE]
- [THE FACE IN THE THICKET]
- [THE GAME BEGINS]
- [A SCRAP OF PAPER]
- [TIN-TACKS]
- [PIN-PRICKS]
- [REPRISALS]
- [A SOFT ANSWER]
- [INFORMATION RECEIVED]
- [QUEER FISH]
- [FIRE!]
- [A CIRCULAR TOUR]
- [UNDERGROUND]
- [WATERMARKS]
- [THE TOPMOST ROOM]
- [ZERO]
- [THE PRISONER]
- [THE PACE QUICKENS]
- [TRAPPED]
- [A PARLEY]
- ["VI ET ARMIS"]
- [A LEVY EN MASSE]
- [SQUARING ACCOUNTS]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
["THEY RESCUED WHAT THEY COULD"] (see p. [152]) . . . Frontispiece in Colour
["'CLEAR UP ALL THIS DISGUSTING LITTER'"]
["THE FOREIGNER CHARGED UPON HIM LIKE AN INFURIATED BULL"]
["THE OTHER WAS DIVING INTO THE STREAM"]
["'GOT A PUNCTURE, OLD MAN?'"]
["THEY SHINNED UP A SMALL TREE"]
["HALF A MINUTE LATER THE CAR RAN PAST"]
["PRATT THREW THE INTRUDER HEAVILY TO THE GROUND"]
["'ZE TOWER? NO, IT IS RUIN, FALL TO PIECES'"]
["THEY LIFTED THE BUNDLES OF GEAR, AND CARRIED THEM INTO THE HUT"]
["'THE BOTTOM'S ONLY ABOUT FIVE FEET DEEP'"]
["THEY SAW A SHORT, STOUT MAN DRAWING SHEETS OF PAPER FROM THE OPENED PACKAGE"]
["BETWEEN THEM THE TWO BOYS ASSISTED THE MOTHER"]
["HE STRODE UP AND DOWN, HIS LARGE BONY HANDS CLASPED BEHIND HIM"]
["HE REMAINED FOR AN INSTANT IN HIS BENT POSITION, MOTIONLESS"]
["RUSH SWIFTLY ROPED HIS ARMS AND LEGS TOGETHER"]
["HE STAGGERED BACKWARD, AND THE PISTOL WAS KNOCKED FROM HIS HAND"]
CHAPTER I
NO MAN'S ISLAND
One hot August afternoon, a motor-boat, with a little dinghy in tow, was thrashing its way up a narrow, winding river in Southern Wessex. The stream, swollen by the drainage of overnight rain from the high moors that loomed in the hazy blue distance, was running riotously, casting buffets of spray across the bows of the little craft, and tossing like a cork the dinghy astern. On either side a dense entanglement of shrubs, bushes, and saplings overhung the water's edge, forming a sort of rampart or outwork for the taller trees behind.
The occupants of the boat were three. Amidships, its owner, Phil Warrender, was dividing his attention between the engine and the tiller. Warrender was tall, lithe, swarthy, with crisp black hair which seemed to lift his cap as an irksome incubus. A little abaft of him sat Jack Armstrong, bent forward over an Ordnance map: he had the lean, tight-skinned features, spare frame, and hard muscles of the athlete, and his hay-coloured hair was cropped as close as a prize-fighter's. In the bows, on the scrap of deck, Percy Pratt, facing the others, squatted cross-legged like an Oriental cobbler, and dreamily twanged a banjo. He was shorter and of stouter build than his companions, with a round, chubby face and brown curly hair clustering close to his poll, and caressing the edge of his cap like the tendrils of a creeper. All three boys were in their eighteenth year, and wore the flannels, caps, and blazers of their school Eleven.
"We ought to be nearing this island," remarked Armstrong, looking up from his map. "I say, Pratt, you've been here before: can't you remember something about it?"
Pratt thrummed his strings, smiled sweetly, and sang, in the head notes of a light tenor--
"The roses have made me remember
All that I tried to forget;
The past with its pain comes back again,
Filling my heart with----
Sorry, old man, I've pitched it a bit too high. Lend me your ears while I modulate from G to E flat."
"Keep your Percy's Reliques for serenading the moon. You were here as a kid; aren't we nearly there?"
"'The past with its pain'--fact! It was pain. My old uncle could beat any beak at licking. He made a very pretty criss-cross pattern on me that day--all for pinching a peach! Frightful temper he had. My people said it was due to sunstroke on his travels. Jolly lot of good being a famous traveller, if it makes you a beast. He was more ratty every time he came home. I don't wonder my pater had a royal row with him, and hasn't been near the place since. Rough luck, to have to desert your ancestral dust-heap.
"I try, try to forget you,
But I only love you more."
"Isn't that the island? Away there to starboard?" Warrender interposed. "But I thought you said we might camp there, my Percy?"
"True, sober Philip. We picnicked there in the days of yore."
"Well, we'd have to do a week's clearing before we camped there now. Look at it!"
Pratt swung lazily round on his elbow, and gazed over the starboard quarter towards the left bank. The river was parted by what was evidently an island. The channel between it and the left bank was very narrow, and almost impassable by reason of the low, overhanging branches, which formed a tunnel of foliage. Warrender steered across the broader channel towards the right bank, all three scanning the island intently as they coasted along.
"Shows how old Tempus fugit," said Pratt. "In the dim and distant ages when I was a kid that island was a lawn; now it's a wilderness. Think what your beardless cheeks will be like in ten years' time, Armstrong. See what Nature will do unless you use the razor. The place seems quite changed somehow. But I'd never have believed trees could grow so fast. As we're not dicky birds, we certainly can't pitch our camp there. Drive on, old shover."
The island was, indeed, to all appearances, more densely wooded than the river banks. By the map scale it was about a third of a mile long, and at its widest part fully half as broad. Nowhere along its whole extent did they see a spot suitable for camping.
They ran past the island. The stream narrowed; the wooded character of the mainland banks was unchanged.
"We might as well be on the Congo," growled Armstrong. "Are you sure your uncle didn't bring back a bit of Africa in his carpet bag, Pratt, and plank it down here?"
"Let the great big world keep turning,
Never mind, if I've got you,"
hummed Pratt. "Turn your eyes three points a-starboard, Armstrong, and you'll see, peeping at you through the sylvan groves, the gables of my ancestors' eligible and beautifully situated riverside residence. It's pretty nearly a quarter-mile from the river, but that's a detail."
Warrender slowed down so that they might get a better view of the stately old house of which they caught glimpses through gaps in the woodland.
"You behold that ruined ivy-clad tower about a cable's length away from it," Pratt went on. "Tradition saith that one of my ancestors incarcerated there a foeman unworthy of his steel, and forgot to feed him."
"Well, I want my tea," said Armstrong. "We had next to no lunch, and I can't live on memories."
A sharp crack cut the air.
"Some one's shooting in the woods ahead," said Warrender. "Perhaps we'll catch sight of them, and get a direction."
"Why not make a polite inquiry of that woodland faun or satyr smoking a clay pipe yonder?" suggested Pratt, pointing with his banjo to the left bank.
On a tree-stump near the water's edge sat a thick-set man, square-faced, beetle-browed, blear-eyed, a cloth cap pushed back on his close-cropped bullet head, a red cloth tie knotted about his neck. He wore a rusty, much-rubbed velveteen jacket, corduroy breeches, and a pair of shabby leggings. Warrender slowed down until the boat just held its own against the current, and called--"Hi! can you tell us of a clear space where we can camp?"
The man looked suspiciously from one to another, chewing the stem of his pipe.
"Can't," said he, surlily.
"Surely there's a stretch of turf somewhere?" Warrender persisted.
"Bain't. Not hereabouts. Woods, from here to village up along."
"Nothing back on the island?"
The man half closed his eyes, and again suspicion lurked in the glance he gave the speaker.
"No. No Man's Island be nought but furze and thicket. Nothing hereabouts. Better go on and doss at the Ferry Inn."
Then, however, he leered, barely recovering his pipe as it slipped from between his discoloured teeth. "Ay, I were forgetting," he said with a chuckle. "There be a patch farther up. Ay, that might suit 'ee. A party camped there last week. Ay, try en."
He chuckled again. Warrender opened the throttle, and when the boat had run a few yards up a guffaw, quickly stifled, sounded astern.
"Pleasant fellow," remarked Armstrong.
"When you are near, the dullest day seems bright;
Doubts disappear, my load of care grows light,"
warbled Pratt. "But he didn't say which bank it's on."
"We can't miss it," said Warrender,--"unless he was pulling our leg."
Within three minutes, however, they found that the man had not misled them. There was disclosed, on the right bank, a considerable stretch of smooth green sward, affording ample space for their bell-tent and the simple impedimenta of their camp. Warrender ran the boat in, and hitched it to a sapling; then the three began to transfer their equipment to the shore. Besides their tent, they had a Primus stove, a kettle, a couple of saucepans, pots, cups and plates of enamel, pewter forks and, stainless knives, cases of provisions, three sleeping-bags, three folding stools, and other oddments.
While Warrender and Armstrong were stretching and pegging out the tent, Pratt started the stove, filled the kettle from the river, and assembled such utensils as they needed for their tea. These operations were punctuated by renewed sounds of shooting, which were drawing nearer through the woods that skirted the clearing.
"I say, you chaps," cried Pratt, "I wonder if I talked nicely, if I could coax out of them something gamey for supper to-night?"
"Wouldn't you like to sing for your supper, like little Tommy Tucker?" said Armstrong.
"Excellent idea! As you know, I've got a select and extensive repertoire, and--hallo! Here's my little dog Bingo."
A retriever came trotting out of the wood, stopped in the middle of the clearing, and gazed for a moment inquiringly at the tent, just erected; then turned tail and trotted back.
"A very gentlemanly dog," said Pratt. "No loud discordant bark, no inquisitive snuffling; evidence of good breeding and a kind master."
"Hi, there!" called a loud voice. "What are you doing on my land? Who the deuce gave you permission to camp?"
A stout, florid, white-whiskered gentleman of some sixty years, wearing a loose shooting costume, and carrying a shot-gun under his arm, hurried across the clearing, the retriever at his heels.
"I'm sorry, sir," said Warrender, politely. "We've come up the river, and this is the first suitable place we've found. If we had known----"
"Known!" interrupted the stranger. "You knew it wasn't common land--public property. If you didn't know, any one about here would have told you."
"Just so, sir. But we understood that a party had camped here a short while ago, and----"
"You understood, boy? And where did you get your information?"
"From a gamekeeper sort of man a little below on the other bank. He----"
"That'll do," snapped the sportsman. "Take down that tent. Clear up all this disgusting litter, and be off. The place reeks with paraffin. Look alive, now."
"'CLEAR UP ALL THIS DISGUSTING LITTER.'"
In silence Warrender and Armstrong began to loosen the tent guys, while Pratt put out the stove and started to carry the properties down to the boat. He alone of the three showed no sign of feeling; his friends sometimes said that he was perennially happy because he was fat, not, as he himself explained, because he had music in his soul. Warrender's mouth had hardened, his face grown pale--sure indications of wrath. Armstrong, on the contrary, had flushed over the cheek-bones, and expended his anger in muscular energy, heaving unaided the tent to his back, and carrying it, the pole, guys, and pegs, with the ease of a coal-porter. The landowner stood sternly on guard until the place was cleared.
The boat moved off.
"Dashed old curmudgeon!" growled Armstrong.
"He and my uncle Ambrose would make a pretty pair," remarked Pratt. "I'd give anything to hear a slanging match between 'em. Anything but this," he added, taking up his banjo.
"I had a little dog,
And his name was Bingo.
His master's name ought to be 'Stingo!' Eh, what?"
"It happens to be Crawshay," said Warrender, pointing to a tree. Upon it was nailed a board, facing upstream, and bearing the half-obliterated legend, "Trespassers will be Prosecuted." Below this, however, in fresh paint, were the words, "Camping Prohibited.--D. CRAWSHAY."
"Precisely; D. Crawshay," said Armstrong.
CHAPTER II
BELOW THE BELT
Something less than a mile up the river they came upon an old-fashioned gabled cottage of red brick, standing back a few yards from the left bank. The walls were half-covered with Virginia creeper; a purple clematis climbed over the porch and round a sign-board bearing the words, "Ferry Inn." Beyond it, on rising ground some little distance away, glowed the red-tiled roofs of a straggling village. A ferry boat, or rather punt, lay alongside of a narrow landing-stage.
The lads tied the boat to a post, and stepped on to the planking. At the closed door of the inn, standing with legs wide apart, was a little, round man whose jolly, rubicund, clean-shaven face and twinkling eyes bespoke good humour and a contented soul. He was bare-headed, in shirt-sleeves, and wore an apron. His brown, straight hair was obviously a wig. In front of him stood a group of villagers.
"'Tis past opening time, I tell 'ee," one of them was saying. "I can tell by the feel of my thropple."
"'Twould be always opening time if you trusted to that, Mick," said the landlord, with a laugh. "I go by my watch." He pulled out with some difficulty from the tight band of his apron a large silver timepiece. "There you are; three minutes to the hour."
"Well, I reckon you be three minutes slow, and so you could swear to if so be----"
A slight jerk of the landlord's head caused the rustic to look along the road to the right. Strolling towards the inn was the village policeman.
"He's had me fined once, and I didn't deserve it," the landlord remarked. "And there's another who'd like to catch me tripping."
His eyes travelled beyond the policeman, and rested on a thin, loose-jointed man with a stubbly fair moustache and a close-cut beard, who was hurrying to catch up with the constable.
"Ay, Sammy Blevins do have a nature for such," said another of the rustics. "'Tis my belief he'll be caught tripping himself one o' these days."
"Ay, and Constable Hardstone too," said the first. "Birds of a feather. They be thick as thieves, they two, and no friends o' yours, Joe. Well, I bain't the man to glory in a friend's tribulation, and so you may keep your door shut till three minutes past."
"Say, when is this blamed door opening?"
The loud, hoarse voice caused a general turning of heads. From round the corner of the inn sauntered, somewhat unsteadily, his hands in his pockets, a big burly fellow whose red waistcoat, tight leather breeches, and long gaiters proclaimed some connection with horseflesh. His accent was nasal, but there was an undefinable something in his pronunciation that suggested a European rather than an American origin. A long, fair moustache drooped round the corners of a wide, straight mouth; his clean-shaven cheeks were thin and hard; his pale-blue eyes heavy-lidded and watery. The rustics appeared to fall back a little as he approached. He leant one shoulder against a post of the porch, and scowled at the landlord, attitude and gesture indicating that, so far from needing refreshment, he had anticipated the opening of the door.
"All in good time, Mr. Jensen," said the landlord, placably. "Law's law, you know."
"Law!" scoffed the man. "I'm sober. I want a lemon-squash. See, if you don't open that door---- Ah! I guess you know me."
The landlord, consulting his watch, had turned, and now threw open the door leading into the bar. The foreigner entered behind him, and was followed by the villagers one by one. A pleasant-faced, motherly woman came out into the porch, and looked inquiringly at the three lads. They walked up from the landing-stage, where they had lingered watching the scene.
"Can we have some tea?" asked Warrender.
"Ay sure," replied the woman. "They told me as three young gemmen had come up along in boat, and I says to myself 'tis tea, as like as not. Sit 'ee down at thikky table, and I'll bring it out to 'ee."
"We're pretty hungry," said Armstrong. "What can you give us?"
"Why, there 'tis--I've nothing but eggs and bacon."
"Glorious!" said Pratt. "Two eggs apiece, and bacon to match."
"Ay, I know what young gemmen's appetite be," said Mrs. Rogers, smiling as she bustled away.
They sat down at a table placed outside the window. Within they saw Rogers, the landlord, energetically pulling ale for his customers. He had laid aside his snuff-coloured wig, revealing a scalp perfectly bald.
While they were awaiting their meal, a girl, dressed in white, riding a bicycle, came along the road on the far side of the river, and, dismounting at the landing-stage, rang her bell continuously as a summons to the ferryman. An old weather-beaten man emerged from the back premises of the inn, touched his hat, hobbled down to his boat, and slowly poled it across. The girl wheeled her bicycle on to it, chatted to the old man while he recrossed the river, paid him with a silver coin and smiling thanks, and, having remounted, sped on towards the village.
"Why didn't I bring up my banjo?" said Pratt, dolefully. "Of course, I can sing without accompaniment.
"There's no sunbeam as bright as your smile,
There's no gold like the sheen of your hair----
but you do want the one-two-tum, one-two-tum to get the full effect, don't you, eh?"
"You sentimental owl!" exclaimed Armstrong, laughing. "Here comes our tea."
They had finished their meal, and were leaning back comfortably in their chairs, when the drone of talk within the inn was suddenly broken by voices raised in altercation. The clamour subsided for a moment under the landlord's protest, but burst forth again. There was a noise of scuffling, then two men appeared in the doorway, struggling together in the first aimless clinches of a fight. They stumbled over the step; behind them came the villagers in a group, some of them making half-hearted attempts by word and act to separate the combatants. These, reaching the open, shook off restraint, swung their arms as if to clear a space, and, after a preliminary feint or two, rushed upon each other.
Warrender and his friends got up; were there ever schoolboys, even sixth-formers and prefects, who were not interested in a fight? The antagonists were not unequally matched. Height and weight were on the side of the foreigner, but his opponent, apparently a young farmer, though slighter in build, had clear eyes and a healthy skin, contrasting with the other's well-marked signs of habitual excess.
The rustics formed up on one side, looking on stolidly. The three lads moved round until they faced the inn door. On the step stood the landlord with arms akimbo. His wife came behind him, slapped his wig on to his head, and retreated.
For a minute or two the combatants, displaying more energy than science, employed their arms like erratic piston-rods, hitting the air more often than each other's body. Armstrong's lip curled with amusement as he watched them. Then they appeared to realise that they had started too precipitately, and drew apart to throw off their coats and recover their wind.
"What's the quarrel?" asked Warrender, in the brief interval, of the nearest bystander.
"Furriner chap he said as the Germans be better fighters than us Englishmen, and that riled Henery Drew, he having the military medal and all. You can see the ribbon on his coat."
Stripped to their shirts, the combatants faced each other. They sparred warily for a moment, then the farmer darted forward on his toes, landed a blow on the foreigner's nose, between the eyes, and, springing back out of reach, just escaped his opponent's counter.
"One for his jib!" murmured Armstrong.
The blow, and the subdued applause of the rustic onlookers, enraged the foreigner. Swinging his bulk forward he bore down on the slighter Englishman, appeared to envelop him, and for a few seconds the two men seemed to be a tangle of whirling arms. Suddenly Armstrong sprang towards them, shouting, "Foul blow!" At the same moment the farmer reeled, and the foreigner, following up his advantage, dealt him a furious body-blow that dropped him flat as a turbot. Angry cries broke from the crowd, but, before the slower-witted rustics could act, Armstrong dashed between Jensen and the prostrate man.
"You hound!" he cried. "You'll deal with me now."
One arm was already out of its sleeve, but before he could fling off his blazer the foreigner charged upon him like an infuriated bull. Armstrong sidestepped, threw his blazer on the ground, and stood firmly, ready to meet the next onrush.
"THE FOREIGNER CHARGED UPON HIM LIKE AN INFURIATED BULL."
The big man topped him by a couple of inches, and bore down as if to smother him by sheer weight. He shot out a long arm; Armstrong ducked, and quick as lightning got in a counter-hit that took the foreigner by surprise and caused him to draw back an inch or two. Armstrong said afterwards that he ought to be shot for mis-timing the blow, which he had expected to crack the man's wind-box. Already breathing fast, the foreigner perceived that his only chance of winning was to strike at once. He lowered his head and swung out his left arm in a lusty drive at Armstrong's ribs. It was an opening not to be missed by a skilled boxer. With left foot well forward and body thrown slightly back, Armstrong dealt him a smashing right upper-cut on the point of the chin. The man collapsed like a nine-pin, and measured his six feet two on the ground.
"Jolly good biff, old man!" cried Pratt. "Won't somebody cheer?"
The rustics were smiling broadly, but their satisfaction at the close of the battle found no more adequate mode of expression than a prolonged sigh and a cry: "Sarve en right!" The farmer, however, a little pale about the gills, had risen to his feet, and, approaching Armstrong, said--
"Thank 'ee, sir. 'Twas a rare good smite as ever I see, and I take it kind as a young gentleman should have----"
"Oh, that's all right," Armstrong interrupted, slipping on his blazer. "He should have fought fair."
"True. A smite in the stummick don't give a man a chance. I feel queerish-like, and I'll get Joe Rogers to give me a thimbleful, and then shail home-along. That's my barton, on the hill yonder, and if so be you're stopping hereabout, I'll be main glad to supply you and your friends with milk and cream."
Assisted by two of his cronies, the farmer walked into the inn, the rest of the crowd hanging about and casting sheepish glances of admiration at Armstrong.
"You'll come in and take a drop of summat, sir?" inquired the landlord.
"No, thanks," replied Armstrong. "You might have a look at that fellow, will you?"
"And can you give us beds to-night?" asked Warrender.
"Ay sure, the missus will see to that."
"Very well; we'll just go on to the village and get a thing or two, and come back before closing time. You'll give an eye to our boat?"
The innkeeper having promised to set the ferryman in charge of the boat, the three struck into the road.
CHAPTER III
PRATTLE
The one street of the village contained only two shops. One of these, the forepart of a simple cottage, was post office and general store, whose window displayed groceries, sweetstuffs, stockings, reels of cotton, and other articles of a miscellaneous stock. A few yards beyond it stood a larger, newer, and uglier building, the lower storey of which was a double-fronted shop, exhibiting on the one side a heterogeneous heap of old iron, on the other a few agricultural implements, a ramshackle bicycle, a mangle, tin tea-pots, a can of petrol, a concertina, and various oddments. Above the door, in crude letters painted yellow, ran the description: "Samuel Blevins, General Dealer."
"We must try the post office," said Warrender. "But I don't expect we'll find anything up to much. Still, there'll be some local views."
They entered the little shop, filling the space in front of the counter, and began to examine picture-postcards. The shopkeeper, a middle-aged woman in a widow's cap, was in the act of handing packets of baking-powder to a customer--a small man who turned quickly about as the boys went in, showing a plump, brown face decorated with a tiny, black moustache and dark, vivacious eyes.
"And how be your missus?" the woman was saying.
"She is ver' vell," said the man, swinging round again. "Zat is, not bad--not bad. She have a cold--yes, shust a leetle cold."
"I be main glad 'tis nothing worse," said the shopkeeper, drily. "Rogers did say only this morning as he hadn't seed or heard anything of her for a week or more--and her his own sister, too, and not that breadth between 'em. She might as well be in foreign parts. 'Twas never thoughted when she married you, Mr. Rod; my meaning is, Rogers believed her'd always be in and out, being so near; whereas the truth is he sees no more of her than if she lived at t'other end of the kingdom."
"And now ze isinglass," said the man, with the obvious intention of turning the conversation. "Vat! No isinglass? Zis is terrible country. Vell, zat is all, madame. You put every'ing in ze book?"
"Trust me for that, Mr. Rod. Remember me to Mary, and I hope she'll soon be rid of her cold."
The man gathered up his purchases, and left the shop, darting a glance at each of the boys as he passed them.
They bought a few postcards and some postage stamps, and issued forth into the street. Blevins, the general dealer, standing at his shop-door with his hands under his coat-tails, gave them a hard look.
"These country folk are as inquisitive as moths," remarked Armstrong.
"Take us for strolling minstrels, I dare say," rejoined Pratt. "Lucky I didn't bring my banjo."
"Our blazers make us a trifle conspicuous," said Warrender. "I say, as we've plenty of time before dark, and I don't want to run into that crowd at the inn again, suppose we stroll on."
They passed the general dealer's, soon left the last of the cottages behind them, and rambled along the grassy bank of the road, which wound across a wide and barren heath land. About half a mile from the village they came to narrower cross-roads, leading apparently to the few scattered farmsteads of the neighbourhood. A few yards beyond this they saw, rounding a bend, a girl on a bicycle coasting down a slight hill towards them.
"The fair maid in white!" said Pratt. "I think my banjo ought to have been a guitar, or a lute, whatever that is."
A loud report startled them all. The bicycle wobbled, stopped, and the girl sprang lightly from her saddle, and bent down to examine the front tyre. She rose just before the boys reached her, gave them a fleeting glance, and started to wheel the machine down the road.
After a brief hesitation Warrender turned towards her, lifting his cap.
"Can I be of any assistance?" he asked.
"Oh, please don't trouble," replied the girl. "It's a frightfully bad puncture, and I haven't very far to go."
"Some distance across the ferry?"
"Well, yes; but this will take a long time, and I really couldn't think of----"
"It's no trouble--if you have an outfit."
"Yes, I have, but----"
"He's a dab at mending tyres, I assure you," Pratt broke in. "Also at all sorts of tinkering old jobs. Our engine broke down the other day--that's our motor-boat, down at the ferry, you know--I dare say you saw it when you passed an hour ago--or was it two? It seems a jolly long time. Do let him try his hand; he'll be heartbroken if you don't. Besides, wheeling a bicycle is no joke; I know from experience; and for a lady--why, there's a smudge on your dress already. Really----"
Like many loquacious persons, Pratt was apt to let his tongue run away with him. The girl had shown more and more amusement with every sentence that bubbled from his glib lips, and here she broke into a frank laugh, and surrendered the bicycle to Warrender, who laid it down on the grass bordering the road, opened the tool pouch and set to work.
"He may be nervous, and fumble a bit, you know," said Pratt, "if we look at him. I used to be like that myself, when I was young. Don't you think we'd better walk on? Perhaps you'd like to be shown over our boat?"
"I think I'd prefer to wait for my bicycle," said the girl, demurely.
"Warrender's quite to be trusted," rejoined Pratt. "He isn't just an ordinary tramp or tinker. We've none of us chosen our professions yet. We have been called 'The Three Musketeers' in some quarters."
"At school, I suppose," the girl put in.
"Because we're always together, you know," Pratt continued. "We came up the river to-day--on a holiday cruise--all the joys of nautical adventure without any of the discomforts. Of course, there are disappointments; bound to be. We thought of camping on the banks--one of the banks, I mean--but, as Armstrong said, it might be the Congo, it's so frightfully overgrown, and as we didn't bring axes or dynamite, or any of the old things that explorers use, we had to reconcile ourselves to the shattering of our dreams.... Whew! That was a near thing!"
At the cross-roads just below, a motor-car, carrying two men, had emerged suddenly from the right, and run into a country cart which had been lumbering along the high road from the direction of the village. The chauffeur had clapped his brakes on in time to avoid a serious collision, but two spokes of the cart's near wheel had been smashed, and the wing of the car crumpled. Springing out of the car, the chauffeur, a dark-skinned little man, rushed up to the carter, who had been trudging on the off-side at the horse's head, and began to berate him excitedly, with much play of hands.
"Vy you not have care?" he shouted, so rapidly that the monosyllables seemed to form one word. "You take up all ze road; you sink all ze road belong to you; you not look round ze corner; no, you blind fool, you crash bang into my car, viss I not know how many pounds of damage."
"Bain't my fault," said the carter, stoutly. "Can you see round the corner? Then why didn't you blow your horn?"
The chauffeur retorted with a torrent of abuse, in which broken English and expletives in some foreign tongue seemed equally mingled, the carter keeping up a monotonous chant of "Bain't my fault, I tell 'ee."
The former appealed to his passenger, a tall man of fair complexion and straw-coloured moustache and beard. A lull in the altercation between the other two enabled him to declare that the carter was in the wrong, and his clear measured words rang with a distinctly foreign intonation in the ears of the four spectators above. The squabble revived, and was ended only when the passenger got out of the car, laid a soothing hand on the chauffeur, and persuaded the carter to give his name, which he wrote down in a pocket-book. A few seconds later the car snorted away into the cross-road on the left-hand side.
Warrender had looked up from his task only for a moment, but the other three had watched the whole scene in silent amusement.
"Can you tell us," said Pratt to the girl, "whether the Tower of Babel is anywhere in this neighbourhood? We've seen four foreigners since we landed at the ferry an hour or two ago, and, if accent is any guide, they all hail from different parts."
"It is funny, isn't it?" said the girl. "And the explanation is funny, too. They are all servants of a strange old gentleman who lives in a big house near the river. Some people say he is mad, but I think he's only very bad-tempered."
"Very likely the old buffer we saw. But go on, please."
"His English servants went to him one day in a body and asked him to raise their wages. It was quite reasonable, don't you think, with all the labourers and people earning twice as much as they did before the war? But they say he stormed at them, using the most dreadful language, dismissed them all, and vowed he would never have an English servant again. Frightfully, silly of him, but my father says that there's no telling what extremes a hot-tempered lunatic like Mr. Pratt will----"
"Who?" ejaculated Pratt.
"That's his name--Mr. Ambrose Pratt. Perhaps you have heard of him? He was a great traveller--quite famous, I believe."
"My aunt! I mean--I'm rather taken by surprise, you know; but--well, the fact is," stammered Pratt, "he's--he's my uncle."
"Mr. Pratt is! Oh, I'm so sorry!"
"So am I!"
"For calling him such names, I mean."
"Nothing to what I've called him, I assure you. He gave me an awful licking once. Not that that matters, of course; we men don't think anything of a licking; no--what I meant was I'm sorry an uncle of mine is bringing the ancient and honourable name of Pratt into disrepute. Why, he must be a regular laughing-stock. Fancy having a menagerie of foreigners!"
"But didn't you know? Aren't you staying with him, then?"
"Rather not. We're not on speaking terms."
"I remember--you said you were thinking of camping out."
"Yes; and our dream was shattered. We've had to take beds at the inn. It's terrible to lose your illusions, isn't it? We all thought nobly of our fellow-men till this afternoon, and now our hearts are seared, and we'll be frightful cynics till the end of the chapter. I don't suppose you know him, but there's a bullet-headed brute of a fellow in a red choker and a velveteen coat who sits on a tree-stump down the river----"
"Oh, yes," said the girl. "That's Rush. Every one knows him. I believe he has been in prison for poaching."
"Well, it seems to be his business in life now to delude unhappy mariners; a regular siren luring them to their doom. We asked him to direct us to a camping-place. At first he protested there was no suitable spot, but his malignant spirit prompted him to tell us of a glade where the sward was like velvet, under a charming canopy of umbrageous foliage. We had just got our tent up, and I was boiling the kettle for tea, when there broke upon our solitude a man and a dog--detestable, unnatural creatures both; the dog hadn't a bark in him--it was all transferred to the man. The old buffer barked and bellowed and bullied and brow-beat and bundled us off."
A ripple of laughter from the girl's lips brought Pratt up short. He looked at her reproachfully.
"Do forgive me," she said, "but do you know, I'm sure that--old buffer--was my father!"
Even the ebullient Pratt was rendered speechless; as Armstrong afterwards put it, in boxing parlance, "he was fairly fibbed in the wind."
"Father is a little hasty, but quite a dear, really," the girl continued. "He has been frightfully annoyed by trespassers--that man Rush, for one, and some of Mr. Pratt's servants. But don't you think perhaps we had better say no more about our relations?"
"Certainly," said Armstrong, with a solemn air of conviction. It was the first word he had spoken, and the girl gave him a quick, amused glance.
"Umpire gives us both out!" remarked Pratt, his equanimity quite restored. "We are now back in the status quo, Miss Crawshay, with this difference: that we know each other's name. The Bard of Avon wouldn't have asked 'What's in a name?' if he had been here five minutes ago. If you had known my name, and I had known that you were the daughter of----"
"That's forbidden ground, Mr. Pratt."
"Well, is there any ground that isn't forbidden?" Pratt rejoined. "For our camp, I mean?"
"Why not try No Man's Island?"
"Siren Rush told us it's a mere wilderness, 'long heath, brown furze,' and so on."
"Oh! That's quite wrong; he must know better than that. There's an excellent camping place on the narrower channel. We often picnicked there before my father quarrelled with Mr. P----"
Smiling, she caught herself up.
"Call 'em X and Y," suggested Pratt. "It is a sort of simultaneous equation, isn't it? But the island can't belong to Y unless Y is generally recognised in the neighbourhood as no man at all."
"Nobody knows whose it is. The owner died years ago; his cottage there is falling to ruin; they say it belongs now to a distant relative in the colonies."
"Then there's no one to chevy us away, as soon as we've got things shipshape?"
"Unless you're afraid of ghosts. There are all sorts of queer tales; the country folk shake their heads when the island is mentioned; not one of them will have the courage to set foot on it."
"A haunted island! How jolly! I've always wanted to meet a spook. That's an additional attraction, I assure you. Perhaps I can soothe the perturbed spirits with my banjo. I admit it has the opposite effect on Armstrong, but----"
The girl turned suddenly away towards Warrender, who had finished his job and was pumping up the tyre.
"You frightful ass!" muttered Armstrong in a savage undertone, heard by Pratt alone. "You've done nothing but drivel for the last half-hour."
"All right, old mule," retorted Pratt, grinning.
"Yes, it will carry you home," Warrender was saying, "but I'm afraid you'll have to get a new tyre."
"Thanks so much. It is really awfully good of you," replied the girl.
"I'm sorry I've been such a time."
"I've been very well entertained. It hasn't seemed long at all. Thank you again. Good-bye."
She mounted the bicycle, beamed an impartial smile upon the three, and sped away down the road.
CHAPTER IV
THE FACE IN THE THICKET
When the three friends arrived at the inn it was full to the door. Rogers, wigless again, caught sight of Warrender over the heads of the crowd, and came from behind the counter, edging his way outwards through the press of villagers.
"Missus have got the rooms shipshape, sir," he said. "She's a rare woman for making a man comfortable."
"I'm sure she is," returned Warrender, "and I'm only sorry we shan't know it by personal experience. The fact is, we're going to camp on No Man's Island; there's plenty of time before sunset to fix ourselves up."
"She'll be main sorry, that she will," said the innkeeper, pocketing the two half-crowns Warrender handed him. "No Man's Island, did 'ee say? Maybe you haven't heard what folk do tell?"
"We have heard something, but I dare say it's just talk, you know. Anyhow, we're going to try it, and we'll let you know in the morning how we get on."
"Now, Rogers--drat the man!" cried his wife's voice from behind. She came out into the porch, flourishing his wig. "How many times have I told 'ee I won't have 'ee showing yourself without your hair? If you do be a great baby, there's no need for 'ee to look like one."
Rogers meekly allowed her to adjust the wig, explaining meanwhile the intention of the expected guests. She received the news with disappointment and concern.
"I hope nothing ill will come o't," she said. "Fists bain't no mortal use against spirits; 'twould be like hitting the wind. Howsomever, the young will always go their own gait. 'Tis the way o' the world." She went back into the inn.
"That furriner chap was hurt more in his temper than his framework," said Rogers. "And knowing what furriners be, I'd keep my weather eye open. There's too many of 'em in these parts."
"I understand they're servants of Mr. Pratt; they should be fairly respectable."
"Ay, that's where 'tis. A gentleman must do as he likes, and we haven't got nothing to say to't. But we think the more. And I own I was fair cut up when my sister Molly married the cook; a little Swiss feller he is."
"We saw him up at the post office a while ago; the shopwoman inquired after your sister, I remember."
"And well she might. I never see the girl nowadays; girl, I say, but she's gone thirty, old enough to know better. By all accounts Rod's uncommon clever at the vittles, and the crew down yonder be living on the fat of the land, while the skipper's a-dandering round in furren parts."
"Mr. Pratt's away from home, then?"
"Ay sure. He haven't been seen a good while, and 'tis just like him to go off sudden-like. You'd expect he'd be tired of it at his time o' life, but 'tis once a wanderer, always a wanderer. Well, the evening's getting on, so I won't keep 'ee. Good luck, sir."
Warrender rejoined his companions, who had taken over the boat from the ferryman, and they were soon floating down on the current. They took the narrow channel on the left of the island which they had avoided on the way up, and found it less difficult to navigate than it had appeared at the other end. The dusk was deepening beneath the trees, but in a few minutes they discovered a wide open space that offered more accommodation than they needed. Running the boat close to the shore, they sprang to land, moored to a tree overhanging the stream, and set to work with a will to make their preparations for the night.
The clearing was carpeted with long grass, damp from yesterday's rain, and encircled by dense undergrowth, thicket, and bramble. They pitched the tent in the centre, beat down a stretch of grass in front of it on which to place the stove and the bulk of their impedimenta, and by the time that darkness enwrapped them had everything in order. The moon, almost at full circle, had risen early, and soon, peering over the tree-tops on the mainland, flung her silver sheen into the enclosure, whitening the tent to a snowy brilliance and throwing into strong relief the massed foliage beyond. A light breeze set the leaves quivering with a murmurous rustle. The hour and the scene made an appeal to Pratt's sentimental soul too strong to be resisted. Opening one of the folding chairs, he lay back in it with crossed legs, gazed up into the serene, star-flecked heavens, and began with gentle touches of his strings to serenade the moon.
Warrender, having slipped on his overalls, kindled a lamp and went down to tinker with his engine. Unmusical Armstrong, always accused by Pratt of being "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils," sauntered, hands in pockets, across the clearing. Elbowing his way through the undergrowth he found, after some fifty or sixty yards, that the vegetation thinned. The lesser shrubs gave way to trees, which grew close together, but with a regularity that suggested planting on a definite plan. Pursuing his way, he came by and by to a more spacious clearing than the one he had quitted; and on the left, in the midst of what had evidently been at one time a small garden, he saw the shell of a two-storeyed cottage. The walls were covered with creepers growing in rank disorder; the windows gaped, empty of glass; the doorless entrance shaped a rectangle of blackness; and bare rafters, shaggy with unpruned ivy, drew parallel lines upon the inky gloom of half the upper storey. Ruins, in daylight merely picturesque, take a new beauty in the cold radiance of the moon, but present at the same time an image of all that is desolate and forlorn. Practical, unemotional as Armstrong was, he thrilled to the impression of vacuity and abandonment, and stood for a while at gaze, as though unwilling to disturb the loneliness.
Presently, however, he stepped lightly across the unmown lawn, and the moss-grown path beyond, and, entering the doorway, struck a match and looked around. From the narrow hall--strewn with fragments of brick and mortar, broken tiles, heaps of plaster, and here and there spotted with fungi--sprang the staircase, whole as to the stairs, but showing gaps in the banisters. Curling strips of torn discoloured paper hung from the walls. The match went out; through the open roof the stars glimmered. Deciding to defer exploration till daylight, lest a tile or brick should fall on his head, or the staircase give way under him, Armstrong turned to go out. As he did so he was aware of a low moaning sound, such as a person inside a house may hear when a high wind soughs under the eaves. It rose and fell in cadences eerily mournful, as though the spirit of solitude itself were lonely and in pain. Armstrong shivered and sought the doorway, and as he felt how gentle was the breeze he met, he wondered at its having power enough to produce such sounds. The moaning ceased; he listened for a moment or two; it did not recur, though the zephyr had not sensibly dropped. Puzzled, he started to retrace his way to the camp. At the farther side of the clearing the melancholy sound once more broke upon his car. Almost involuntarily he wheeled round to look back at the cottage; then, impatient with himself, turned again to quit the scene.
His feeling, which was neither awe nor timorousness, but rather a vague discomfort, left him as soon as his active faculties were again in play. Pushing his way through the undergrowth, he was inclined to deride his unwonted susceptibility. All at once, however, without sound or any other physical fact to account for it, he was seized with the fancy that some one was behind him. Does every human being move in the midst of an invisible, intangible aura, that acts as a sixth sense? Whatever the truth may be, certain it is that we have all, at one time or another, been conscious of the proximity of some bodily presence, which neither sight nor sound nor touch has revealed.
Armstrong swung quickly round, and started, for there in the thicket, within a dozen yards of him, a shaft of moonlight struck upon a face, pallid amidst the green. It disappeared in a flash.
"Who's there?" called Armstrong, sharply; then impulsively started forward, parting the foliage.
There was no answer, nobody to be seen. Indeed, within a yard of him the thicket was so dense, so closely overarched by loftier trees, that no ray of moonshine percolated into its pitchy blackness.
Holding the branches apart, peering into the gloom, he listened. Overhead the leaves softly rustled; within the thicket there was not a murmur. He let the branches swing back; stood for a few moments irresolute; then, with an impatient jerk of the shoulders, strode away towards the camp.
Armstrong was not what the pathologist would call a nervous subject. His physical courage had never been questioned; in his healthy life of work and play his moral courage had never been called upon; his lack of imagination had saved him from the tremors and terrors that prey upon the more highly strung.
To find himself mentally disturbed was a novel experience; it filled him with a sense of humiliation and self-contempt; it enraged him. Thoughts of Pratt's mocking glee when the tale should be told made him squirm. "I say, the old bean's seen a spook"--he could hear the light, ringing tones of Pratt's voice, see the bubbling merriment in his large, round eyes. "I swear it was a face!" he angrily told himself. "Dashed if I don't come in daylight and hunt for the fellow--some tramp, I expect, who finds a lodging gratis in the ruins."
By the time he reached the camp he had made up his mind to say nothing about the incident. Emerging into the silent clearing, he saw Pratt and Warrender side by side on their chairs, fast asleep, the latter with folded arms and head on breast, the former holding his banjo across his knees, his face, the image of placid happiness, upturned to the sky. Apparently the swish of Armstrong's boots through the long grass penetrated to the slumbering consciousness of the sleepers. Warrender lifted his head, unclosed his eyes for a moment, muttered "Hallo!" and slept again. Pratt, without moving, looked lazily through half-shut eyelids.
"'O moon of my delight, who know'st no wane!'" he murmured. "Well, old bean, seen the spook?"
"Rot!" growled Armstrong.
"I believe you have!" cried Pratt, starting up, his face kindling. "What's she like?"
"Ass!"
"Well, what did you see? You don't, as a rule, snap for nothing. I'll say that for you. Only cats will scratch you for love. What's upset the apple-cart?"
"I saw the ruined cottage, if you want to know--a ghastly rotten hole. I'm dead tired--I'm going to turn in."
"All right, old chap; you shall have a lullaby." He struck an arpeggio.
"Sing me to sleep, the shadows fall;
Let me forget the world and all;
Lone is my heart, the day is long;
Would it were come to evensong!
Sing me to sleep, your hand in mine----"
Armstrong had fled into the tent.
"I say, Warrender," murmured Pratt, nudging the somnolent form at his side, "something's put the old sport in a regular bait."
"Eh?" returned Warrender, drowsily.
"Armstrong's got the pip. Never knew him like this. Something's curdled the milk."
"Well, it's time to turn in," said Warrender, rising and stretching himself. "He'll be all right in the morning. Good-night."
"Same to you. I suppose I must follow you, but it's so jolly under this heavenly moon."
And Warrender, undressing within the tent, smiled as he heard the lingerer's pleasant voice.
"Dark is life's shore, love, life is so deep:
Leave me no more, but sing me to sleep."
CHAPTER V
THE GAME BEGINS
For all his loquacity, his gamesomeness of temper, Pratt was not without a modicum of discretion. Next morning, when they had taken their swim and were preparing breakfast, he did not revive the subject of spooks, or make any allusion to Armstrong's ill-humour. Armstrong, for his part, always at his best in the freshness of the early hours, had thrown off the oppression of the night, and appeared his cheerful, vigorous, rather silent self.
"You fellows," said Warrender, as they devoured cold sausages and a stale loaf, "after I've overhauled the engine, I think of pulling up stream in the dinghy and getting some new bread at the village----"
"Rolls, if you can," Pratt interpolated.
"And some butter and cheese, etcetera. Now we're on this island, we may as well explore it. You can do that while I'm away."
"And hand you a neatly written report of our discoveries. All right, Mr. President."
"I shan't be gone more than about a couple of hours."
"Unless you get another tinkering job. By the way, why not call at old Crawshay's, and ask if she got home safe? I think that would be a very proper thing to do, and the old buffer would appreciate it. Good for evil, you know; coals of fire; turning the other cheek, and all that."
"You can turn your own cheek, Percy. You've got enough of it."
"Do you allude to my facial rotundity, which is Nature's gift, or to my urbanity of manner, my----"
"Dry up, man. It's too early in the morning for fireworks. So long."
Pratt gave a further proof of his tact when he started with Armstrong on their tour of exploration. Instead of striking southward, in the direction of the ruins, he set off to the north-west. "The island's so small," he reflected, "that we are bound to work round to that cottage, and then----"
Daylight showed the undergrowth dense indeed, but not so impenetrable as it had seemed overnight. At the cost of a few scratches from bramble bushes laden with ripening blackberries, they pushed their way through to the western shore, overlooking the broader channel and the right bank of the river; then they turned south, zigzagging to find the easiest route.
Hitherto, except for the whirr of a bird, or the scurry of some small animal, they had neither seen nor heard anything betokening that the island had any other visitors than themselves. But not long after their change of course they came to a spot where the grass had recently been trampled.
"Oh, poor Robinson Crusoe!" hummed Pratt.
"Here's a wire snare," exclaimed Armstrong. "Some one's rabbiting."
"Very likely Siren Rush," Pratt returned. "It wasn't original malice that prompted him to warn us against the island, but a sophisticated fear of competition. I dare say he made tons of money out of rabbits in the lean time during the war; skinned them and the shop people too!"
Armstrong let this pass; the face he had seen for a brief moment overnight had not recalled the leering countenance of the poacher.
They went on, skirted the southern shore, and turned northward. Presently Pratt caught a glimpse through the trees of the roof of the ruined cottage. He did not mention it, but struck to the right towards the narrow channel, and led the way as close as possible to its brink. A minute or two later, in a shallow indentation of the shore, they discovered the remains of a small pier or landing-stage. The planks had rotted or broken away; only a few moss-covered piles and cross-stretchers were left, still, after what must have been many years, defying the destructive energy of the stream that swirled around them. Through the channel, at this spot contracted to half its average width, the swollen river poured with the force of a millrace.
"The old chap kept a boat, evidently," said Pratt. "There ought to be a path from here to the house, but there's no sign of one. Let's strike inland, and see if we can trace it somewhere."
They pushed through the thicket, here as closely tangled as anywhere else, and emerging suddenly into the wilderness garden, in which perennial plants were stifling one another, they saw the ruined cottage before them.
"Jolly picturesque," said Pratt, halting. "I dare say distance lends enchantment to the view; no doubt it's a pretty dismal place inside; but the sunlight makes a gorgeous effect with those old walls. The creepers running over warm red bricks--it's a harmony of colour, old man. I'd like to make a sketch of it."
"Houses were built to be lived in," grunted Armstrong.
Pratt made no reply at once. For the moment the schoolboy was sunk in the artist. He let his eyes linger on the spectacle--the broken roof; the one gable that here survived; the creepers straggling round it and over the glassless window of the room beneath; the heap of shattered brick-work at the base, half-clothed with greenery and gay with flowers.
"Of course, it looked very different by moonlight," he said at last. "You'd lose all the colour. Still----"
"I saw it from the other side," said Armstrong. "That won't please you so much--it's not so much ruined."
"Well, let's go and see."
He was leading through the riot of untended flowers, Armstrong close behind him, when he stopped suddenly, and in a tone of voice involuntarily subdued, asked--
"Did you see that?"
"'DID YOU SEE THAT?'"
"What?" said Armstrong, starting in spite of himself.
"A figure--something--I don't know; at the back of the room."
The sunlight, slanting from the south-east, shone full upon the cottage, but left the back of one of the rooms on the ground floor shadowed by the screen of creepers falling over the gaping window.
"Well, suppose there was, why the mysterious whisper?" said Armstrong, his own doubts and remembered tremors disposing him to ridicule Pratt's excitement. "Why shouldn't there be some one there? We are here--why not others?"
"Yes, but--well, I didn't expect it. Perhaps you did."
"It may have been only the shadow of the creeper on the wall."
"It may have been your grandmother! Let's get into the place and have a look round. The window's too high to climb; is the door open?"
"There's no door."
"So much the better. Come on."
They hastened to the front, and through the doorway into the hall. The house was silent as a tomb. On either side opened a doorless room. They entered the one on the right--that in which Pratt had believed he saw a moving figure. It was pervaded by a subdued greenish sunlight, becoming misty by reason of the dust their footsteps had stirred up. It held neither person nor thing. They crossed to the opposite room, which, being out of the sunshine, was in deep gloom. This, too, was empty. Passing the staircase they arrived at the back premises, a stone-flagged kitchen and scullery. Both were bare; even the grate had been removed.
"Now for upstairs," said Pratt. "They've made a clean sweep down here."
They mounted the staircase, at first treading carefully, then with confident steps as they found that the creaking stairs were sound. There were four rooms on the upper storey, two of them exposed to the sky. Of these the floors were thick with blown leaves, twigs, birds' feathers, fragments of tiles and bricks, broken rafters, and the debris of the ceiling. The other two, roofed and whole, were as bare as the rooms below. Through the empty casement of one they caught sight of the tower in the grounds of Mr. Ambrose Pratt's house, and the upper windows and roof of the house itself. Pratt's appreciative eye was instantly seized by the prospect--the foreground of low thicket; the glistening stream; the noble trees beyond, springing out of a waving sea of sun-dappled bracken; the gentle slope on whose summit stood the buildings, and in the far background the rolling expanse of purple moorland. For the moment he forgot the shadowy figure he had seen, and lingered as if unwilling to miss one detail of the enchanting landscape.
"There's no one here," said Armstrong, matter-of-fact as ever.
"I dare say it was an illusion. Look how the sunlight catches the ripples, Jack. And did you see that kingfisher flash between the banks?"
"I'll go and have another look downstairs," Armstrong responded. "I'll give you a call if I find anything."
He felt, as he went down, that perhaps he would have done better to be candid with Pratt. Why make any bones about an incident capable, no doubt, of a simple explanation? The tramp, if tramp he was, had, of course, the objection of his kind to being found on enclosed premises, even though they were a ruin. Yet it was strange that he had left no tracks--had he not? Armstrong was suddenly aware of something that had hitherto escaped him. There was no dust, no litter on the stairs. Singular phenomenon in a long-deserted house! And surely the floor of the room in which Pratt now stood, unlike the other floors, was clear. It, and the staircase, must have been swept. Why? Not for tidiness--no tramp would bother about that. For what, then? Secrecy? Dusty floors would leave tell-tale marks--and with the thought Armstrong hurried down to the room in which the figure had been seen, and examined the floor. Yes! besides the footprints of himself and Pratt between door and window, there were others along the wall at the back of the room. The fellow must have slipped out with the speed of a hare. Armstrong perceived at once the clumsiness of the attempt at secrecy, for the very fact that some of the floors were swept gave the game away. At the same time, he was puzzled to account for the man's motive. The island was deserted; it was no longer the scene of picnics; the villagers avoided it; why then should a casual visitor--for there was no evidence of continuous occupation--be at the pains even to try to cover up his movements? The strange oppression of the previous night returned upon Armstrong's mind, and he roamed about the lower floor in a mood of curious expectancy.
He came once more to the kitchen, and noticed that between it and the scullery was a closed door--the only door that remained in the house. Instinctively bracing himself, he turned the handle; the door opened, disclosing a dark hole and a downward flight of stone steps. He went down into the darkness, at the foot of the steps struck a match, and found himself in a low, spacious cellar, empty except for a strewing of coal dust. As the match flickered out he caught sight of something white in a corner. Striking another, he crossed the floor and picked up a jagged scrap of paper, slightly brown along one edge. At the same moment he observed a little heap of paper ashes.
Throwing down the match he trod upon it, and turned, intending to examine the paper in the daylight above. Pratt's voice shouting, and a sound of some one leaping down the staircase to the hall, caused him to spring up the steps two at a time.
"What's up?" he shouted back, unable to distinguish Pratt's words.
He reached the hall just in time to see Pratt dash through the doorway and sprint at headlong pace towards the river. Stuffing the paper into his pocket, Armstrong doubled after him. Pratt was already plunging into the thicket, and, when Armstrong came within sight of the channel, the other had flung off his cap and blazer, and was diving into the stream.
"THE OTHER WAS DIVING INTO THE STREAM."
"What mad trick----"
He cut short his exclamation, for his long strides had brought him to the pier, and he saw the cause of Pratt's desperate haste. The motor-boat, broadside to the stream, was drifting down the channel. Already it was some thirty yards beyond the spot where Pratt had taken the water, and Pratt was swimming after it with the ease of a water-rat.
Feeling that there was no reason why himself should get soaked too, Armstrong forged his way through the vegetation at the brink of the channel, but made slow progress compared with the swimmer. Pratt was rapidly overhauling the boat. Watching him, instead of his own steps, Armstrong tripped over a creeper, and fell headlong. By the time he had picked himself up, Pratt had disappeared. Armstrong's momentary anxiety was banished by the sight of the boat moving slowly in towards the shore of the island.
"Good man," he shouted. "You headed it off splendidly."
Pushing and swimming, Pratt was evidently making strenuous efforts to drive the boat into the bank before the current swept it past the island. If he failed, Armstrong saw that he would have to change his tactics and run it ashore on the left bank--his uncle's property. It would then be necessary for Armstrong to swim across, for Pratt had never taken the trouble to learn the working of the engine.
"Stick it, old man," he called.
In a few moments more Pratt contrived to edge the boat among the low branches of an overhanging tree. Its downward progress thus partly checked, he was able to exert more force in the shoreward direction. When Armstrong, after a rough scramble, arrived at the spot, he had just rammed the boat's nose securely into a tangled network of branches, and was clambering, a dripping, bedraggled object, up the bank.
A prolonged "Coo-ee!" sounded from far up the river.
"There's old Warrender, shrieking like a bereaved hen," said Pratt, shaking himself. "And it's all through his not tying the thing up properly! Armstrong, water is very wet."
"I say, did you ever know Warrender not tie it up properly?"
"How else would it break away?"
"You didn't see it break away?"
"No, you can't see our camping-place from the ruins. It was a good way down before I caught sight of it."
"Well, they've kicked off; the game's begun!"
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Wring yourself dry, and we'll talk."
CHAPTER VI
A SCRAP OF PAPER
Pratt had just stripped off his clothes, and spread them to dry, when Warrender arrived in the dinghy.
"What's the game, you chaps?" he inquired. "Why a second bath, Pratt?"
"Eyes left!" responded Pratt. "The sight of my habiliments basking in the sunlight will inform you that I have just been performing a cinema stunt--plunging fully clothed into the boiling torrent to rescue the heroine, whom the villain----"
"Dry up!" said Armstrong.
"Just what I am trying to do. But you are bursting with information, old chap. Expound. I am all ears."
"You tied up the boat as usual, Warrender?" Armstrong asked.
"Of course. Why?"
"Pratt saw her drifting down the stream, that's all, and had to dive in to prevent her getting right past the island."
"That's rum," said Warrender. "The knot couldn't have worked loose. Who's been monkeying with her?"
"That's the point," said Armstrong. "There's some one else on the island, and whoever it is, wants the place to himself. Setting the boat adrift seemed to him a first step to driving us away, which shows he is a juggins."
"Q.E.D.," said Pratt. "Now the corollary, if you please."
"Wait a bit," Warrender interposed. "It may be only a stupid practical joke--the sort of thing the intelligence of that poacher fellow might rise to."
"It may be, of course," returned Armstrong, "but I think it's more. You remember what Miss Crawshay and the people at the inn told us about the island being haunted, you know? Well, rumours of that sort are just what might be set going by some one who has reasons of his own for keeping people away. It may be Rush; we found a rabbit-snare this morning; but if it is, there's some one else in the game. Last night, as I was returning to camp, I saw a face in the thicket, just for a moment; it was gone in a flash; but it wasn't Rush's face; it was a different type altogether."
"Why on earth didn't you tell us?" asked Warrender.
"Well, I might have been mistaken; moonlight plays all sorts of tricks; besides----"
"Just so, old man," said Pratt. "Are there visions abroad? The witching hour of night----"
"Let's keep to cold fact," Warrender put in. "You saw a face, and it wasn't Rush's; but Rush lied to us about the island to keep us off it; therefore Rush and some unknown person are in league. What next?"
"Pratt saw some one in one of the rooms of the ruined cottage as we approached it an hour or so ago. We hunted through the place, but couldn't find any one. I noticed one strange fact: that while some of the rooms are thick with dust, the staircase and one of the rooms upstairs are pretty clear, although there's no sign whatever of anybody living there. There's not a stick of furniture. What is the cottage used for?"
"Is there anything particular about the upstairs room?" Warrender asked.
"Nothing that I could see," replied Armstrong.
"Except that it gives a magnificent view," Pratt added. "You can see my uncle's grounds, and up and down the river. It was when I was looking out of the window that I saw the boat adrift."
"Well, I think I'll have a look at the place," said Warrender, "and if you'll take my advice, Percy, you'll go up in the dinghy, get into dry togs, and give an eye to the camp."
"Righto! There ought to be some one at home to receive callers. You'll be back to lunch, I suppose?"
Warrender nodded, and strode off with Armstrong towards the ruins. Together they explored the house from roof to cellar, seeking, not for an inhabitant, but for some clue to the puzzle suggested by the partly cleared floors. No discovery rewarded them. It was not until they were inspecting the cellar that Armstrong remembered the scrap of paper he had picked up there. Taking it out of his pocket when they returned to daylight, he handed it to Warrender.
"Is it Greek?" he asked.
"No," replied Warrender. "I fancy it's Russian; a scrap torn from a Russian newspaper, by the look of it. Pretty old, too, judging by the colour."
"I don't know. It's brown at the edge, but that's due to the scorching it got when the other papers were burned. It's fairly clean everywhere else. You can't read it, then?"
"Not a word; how should I? Russian's a modern language; belongs more to your side than mine. Besides, what if I could? A newspaper wouldn't tell us anything."
"Very likely not. But a Russian newspaper would hardly be in the possession of anybody but a Russian, and what was a Russian ever doing here?"
"Ah! I think I see daylight. What if it belonged to one of what Pratt calls his uncle's menagerie of foreigners? They might come here in their off times. There's nothing very wonderful about it after all; but as there's nothing valuable in the ruins, they can't have any object in trying to keep us out. My belief is that that fellow Rush set the boat drifting out of sheer mischief, and we'd better keep our eye on him."
On leaving the ruins it occurred to Armstrong to examine the surroundings more narrowly than he had yet done. The flower-beds and the moss-grown path in the direction of the jetty showed the impress of his own and Pratt's feet, but another path, which they had not trodden, also bore slight marks of use. Following it up with Warrender, he found that it led to a narrow track through the undergrowth, leading southward almost in a straight line. In single file they made their way along this, and came presently to a shallow indentation in the western shore, near its southern end.
"Pratt and I must have crossed this track a while ago," said Armstrong; "but I didn't notice it, and I'm sure he didn't."
"Look here," said Warrender, who had bent down to examine the grass and shrubs growing on the low bank. "Wouldn't you say that a boat had been run in? In fact, it's been drawn up on to the bank. Here's a distinct mark of the keel--a small rowing-boat, I should think."
"Not very recent, is it?"
"But certainly not very ancient, or it wouldn't be so distinct. It's on Crawshay's arm of the river, though. D'you know, Armstrong, I shouldn't be surprised if it turns out we're a set of jackasses. I dare say the place teems with rabbits, and there are plenty of fellows besides Rush who'd be glad of getting their dinner for nothing, and would want to keep other people out of their preserves. Let's be getting back."
On arriving at their encampment they took the precaution of drawing the bow of the motorboat well on to the bank, and securing it firmly to a stout sapling. The dinghy, which Pratt had tied to a projecting root, they carried ashore, and placed behind the tent.
Pratt was sitting on his chair, tuning his banjo.
"You perceive I have not been idle," he said. "You couldn't have carried the dinghy with such agile ease if I hadn't emptied her first. Your marketing was a success, Warrender?"
"Yes, I got everything we wanted except petrol. By the way, Pratt, there's a rival troubadour in the village."
"I say! Surely not a banjo?"
"A banjo it is, and the player is no other than that general dealer fellow--what's his name? Blevins. I went up to the shop to get a can of petrol, and heard the tum-ti-tum and a tenor voice as good as your own----"
"Don't crush me quite!"
"Warbling one of your own songs out of the open window above the shop--'Love me and the world is mine.' Really it might have been you, only the fellow has a little more of what you call the tremolo, don't you?"
"Vibrato--if you want to know. But hang it! The glory is departed. Another banjo, another tenor--and singing my songs! Pity we're not in Spain."
"Why on earth?" asked Armstrong.
"Because then we'd meet on some delicious moonlit night under the window of some fair senorita, and after trying to sing each other down like a couple of cats, we'd have a bit of a turn-up, and I'd have a chance to show I'm the better man. But how do you know it was the general dealer? It might have been some fair swain as comely as myself."
"I'll tell you. I went into the shop, and asked the sheepish young fellow there for one of the cans of petrol I saw against the wall. He declared they were all for Mr. Pratt at the Red House. There were at least half a dozen, and I protested that Mr. Pratt couldn't possibly want them all at once, and insisted on his fetching his employer. The singing had been going on all the time. It stopped a couple of seconds after the fellow had gone into the house, and the man Blevins came into the shop. It's a fair deduction that he and the singer were one."
"It is, it is," murmured Pratt, mournfully, throwing a glance across the river.
"What are you squinting at?" asked Armstrong. "I've noticed you several times; what's there to look at?"
"There's me," replied Pratt, quickly. "Look at me, old chap, or at any rate, don't look that way; tell you why presently. Well, what about old Blevins, Warrender? My hat! what a name for a light tenor!"
"I asked him for one can to go on with. He was very polite--oily, in fact;--regretted extremely that he couldn't oblige me; the whole supply had been ordered for Mr. Pratt, and he daren't offend so good a customer."
"But I thought my uncle was away from home."
"Of course. Why didn't I remember that? Anyhow, while he was talking, in came that little foreign chauffeur we saw yesterday--an Italian, I fancy: he talked just like those Italian waiters at Gatti's. He had come to order a car; said that Mr. Pratt's car had broken down, and he had had to tow it to Dartmouth for repairs. He'd keep Blevins's car until the repairs were done. Blevins was a bit offhand with me after that. I suppose it was the regular tradesman's attitude to a less important customer. Anyhow, he told me rather bluntly that I couldn't have any petrol till to-morrow, and I came away."
"Quite right. You couldn't argue with a fellow who sucks up to my uncle, and sings my songs. I say, I think I shall go in for diplomacy. Don't you think I'd make a first-class attaché, or whatever they call 'em?"
Astonished at the sudden change of subject, they looked at him. He winked.
"You know," he went on--"one of those fellows in foreign capitals whose job it is to see and hear everything, and look innocent, while inside they're as wily as the cunningest old serpent. Your chronicle of Blevins is very small beer, Warrender; and while you've been yarning on about your old petrol, I've been corking myself up with something vastly more interesting, and you hadn't the least notion of it. That's why I'm sure I'd make no end of a hit in the diplomatic corps. Just keep your eyes fixed on my goodly countenance, will you? and I'll enlighten your understanding."
He took up his banjo, which he had laid across his knees, struck a note or two, then proceeded--
"After I'd changed, and carried up your purchases, I sat me down to beguile the tedium of waiting for you with my unfailing resource. Happening to glance across the river, I caught sight of some one watching me from the thick of a shrub, and my lively imagination conjured up the goose-flesh sensations of old Armstrong last night. With that presence of mind which will serve me well in my climb up the diplomatic ladder to a peerage, I hummed a stave of 'Somewhere a voice is calling,' and turned my head away with the grace of a peacefully browsing gazelle; but the fellow's been watching me for the last half-hour, and I bet he doesn't know he's been spotted. Armstrong, you've got the best eyes. While I go on gassing, just look round as if you were jolly well bored stiff--no, I've a better idea; go into the tent, and take a squint through that small tear on the side facing the river, and fix your eyes on the shrub--I fancy it's a lilac past its prime--that fills the space between two beeches in the background. I don't flatter myself that the fellow was attracted by my dulcet strains, and if he's watching me, you may be sure he's watching all of us."
Armstrong got up, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, and strolled nonchalantly into the tent. In a couple of minutes he returned in the same unconcerned way.
"You're right," he said, drawing up his chair beside Pratt's. "I saw a slight movement among the leaves, and a face. I'm not quite sure, but I believe it's that poacher fellow. It's certainly not the face I saw last night."
"Well, now, what interest do you suppose Siren Rush takes in us? And what's he doing in my uncle's grounds? D'you think my uncle's a bit potty, and sets Rush to keep watch like a warder on a tower? Is he afraid of some one squatting on his land in his absence? I don't suppose we're far wrong in accusing Rush of setting the boat adrift, but what's his motive in watching us? It's not mere curiosity; but if not curiosity, what is it?"
"We must wait and see," said Warrender.
"That's very prudent, but it promises poor sport," Pratt rejoined. "By the way, I suppose you didn't find anything fresh in the ruins?"
"Nothing. But Armstrong picked up a scrap of paper in the cellar this morning--a bit of a Russian newspaper. Hand it over, Armstrong."
"No," said Pratt, quickly. "Don't show it. I don't suppose Siren Rush can read Russian any more than I can; the paper can't be his, but he'd better not see us examining anything. Where did you find it, Armstrong?"
"In the cellar, by a heap of paper ash."
"Incriminating documents, as they say in the police courts. But why Russian? Look here, I know a man in London who reads Russian; he seems to like it. Give me the paper presently. We'll go into the village this afternoon and post it to him. I can't see how it will throw any light on things here, but we can at least get it translated. And now, let's have lunch."
CHAPTER VII
TIN-TACKS
That night, Warrender was unusually wakeful. As a rule he slept as soundly as his companions; but now and then, when he had anything on his mind, he wooed sleep in vain. The strange incidents of the past two days had affected him more, psychologically, than either of the others. Armstrong, as soon as his doubts were removed, would suffer no more mental disturbance until something fresh, outside his experience, again upset his balance; while Pratt was one of those happy souls to whom life itself is a perpetual joy, and events only the changing patterns of a kaleidoscope.
Envying the two placid forms stretched on either side of him, Warrender was trying to grope his way through the labyrinth of mystery in which they seemed to have been caught, when he was surprised by a sudden slight rattling sound upon the tent, like the patter of small hailstones; it ceased in a second or two. The night had been fine, without any warning of a change of weather; the air was still; it seemed strange that a storm could have risen so rapidly, without a premonitory wind. His companions had evidently not been awakened. Moving carefully, so as not to disturb them, he crept across to the flap of the tent, and looked out. The stars glittered in a vault of unbroken blue; the tree-tops were silvered by the sinking moon; not a wisp of cloud streaked the firmament.
There was no repetition of the sound, and Warrender, thinking that he must, after all, have been dreaming, returned to his sleeping-bag. As often happens in cases of insomnia, the slight exertion of walking had the effect of inducing sleep, and he woke no more until morning.
Armstrong, as usual the first to rise, clutched his towel, and sallied forth barefoot for his dip. He had no sooner passed into the open, however, than he uttered what, with some exaggeration Pratt called a fiendish yell. Hurrying out to learn the cause of it, the others saw him standing on one foot and rubbing the sole of the other.
"Which of you blighters dropped a tin-tack here?" he asked.
"Got a puncture, old man?" said Pratt, sympathetically. "Your skin's pretty tough, luckily. Now, if it had been me--ough!"
"'GOT A PUNCTURE, OLD MAN?'"
He, too, hopped on one foot, and crooked the other leg, his face contorted for a moment out of its wonted cherubic calm.
"Told you so," he cried, picking a blue tack from between his toes. "I'm a very sensitive plant, I can tell you. I see blood. Warrender, I'd have yours if you weren't such a thundering big lout."
"Not guilty," said Warrender, who had prudently stood still. "You had better both come and put your boots on. We haven't any tacks in our outfit, so--I say!"
"What do you say?" said Pratt.
"Last night I heard a sound like a sharp shower of rain or hail on the tent. Just wait till I pull my boots on."
In half a minute he was out again, shod, and began to examine the grass around the tent.
"As I thought," he said. "There's a regular battalion of the beastly things; another trick of that blackguard Rush, no doubt. He's trying frightfulness."
"I'll wring his neck if I catch him," cried Armstrong.
"No, you don't, my son," said Pratt. "The law would say 'neck for neck,' I'm afraid. I shouldn't object to your blacking his eyes. But when you come to think of it, perhaps Rush isn't the culprit after all. We've never seen him on this side of the channel. It may have been the other fellow."
"What's clear is that some one is making a dead set at us," said Warrender, "and I don't like it. It will mean our moving camp."
"You surely won't let this sort of thing drive you away?" said Armstrong.
"What's to be done, then? They first monkey with the boat--by Jove! they may have cut her loose again."
"No, I spy her nose," said Pratt. "They believe in variety, evidently. But I quite agree with you. We shall always have to leave one on guard, and that will spoil the trio. Two's company, three's fun. All the same, the position is so jolly interesting that I shouldn't like to go right away and leave the mystery unsolved--I mean their objection to our company. We haven't had the cold shoulder anywhere else; and here, first old Crawshay, then these unknown--look here, you fellows, I vote we take the job up in earnest, and get to the bottom of it. It will alter the Arcadian simplicity of our holiday, but for my part I'd risk any amount of brain fag over a good jigsaw puzzle like this."
"We'll think it over," said Warrender. "The principal thing is not to lose my boat, and the hundred odd pounds she cost."
On their way down to the river, Pratt espied a greyish object sticking in a bush. Shaking it down, he picked up a broken cardboard box on which was printed a description of "Best quality tin-tacks: British made."
"A clue!" he cried. "Sherlock Holmes would have built a whole theory on this. I don't think I was cut out for diplomacy after all. Criminal investigation is my forte. I'll go down to remote posterity as the most brilliant detective of this Pratt lost no time in taking a first step in his new career. At breakfast Warrender suggested that the tent had better be removed from its surrounding of tacks, which were too numerous to be easily collected.
"Very well," said Pratt. "You and Armstrong are the hefty men. You won't want my help, so I'll scull the dinghy up to the ferry, and start my investigations."
"Don't talk too much," said Armstrong.
"My dear chap, speech was given us to conceal thought. There's an art, some ancient said, in concealing art, and I bet I'd say more and tell less than any old Prime Minister that ever lived."
Leaving the dinghy in charge of the ferryman, he smiled a greeting to Rogers, the innkeeper, whose jolly face he caught sight of at the window, walked on to the village, and entered the general dealer's shop.
"Fine morning," he said to the aproned youth in attendance. "D'you happen to have any tenpenny nails?"
"We've got some nails three a penny, sir."
"No good at all. You couldn't hang a pirate on one of those, I'm sure. I suppose the tenpenny nail has gone out of fashion, but perhaps you have some tin-tacks. I dare say they'll do as well."
"Ay, we've got some tin-tacks--two sorts, white and blue."
"Not red?"
"No; I don't know as ever I seed 'em red."
"Well, I particularly wanted red; they don't show their blushes, you know. If you haven't, you haven't. I'll try blue; they won't look any bluer however hard you hit 'em." The assistant, staring at him like an amazed ox, handed him a box. "Yes," he went on, "now I look at them, I couldn't wish for better. They're a most admirable shade of blue, and exactly match my Sunday socks. I don't suppose there's much demand for 'em; my hosier assured me my socks were a very special line, so, of course, there couldn't be many people wanting tacks of that colour. I dare say you haven't sold a box of these since last season."
"Ah, but we have," said the simple youth, catching at something at last within his comprehension. "Only yesterday one of they furriners up at Red House bought three boxes."
"You don't say so! What an appetite he must have! I suppose it was that big fellow who talks through his nose? He wears a red waistcoat, so I dare say he has blue socks."
"It warn't him. He's the groom. 'Twas the gardener chap."
"Of course. What was I thinking of? He wanted them to tack up his vines. They wouldn't be any good for horse-shoes, and there's no question of socks at all. You needn't wrap it up, the box won't catch cold in my pocket. Sixpence ha'penny? Dirt cheap. I think they're worth quite a guinea a box, but you daren't charge that, of course, or they would haul you up as profiteers. Thanks so much."
He had noticed that the full box exactly matched the broken one taken from the bush.
Elated at the success of his first move, Pratt returned at once to the camp.
"You're soon back," said Warrender. "Changed your mind again?"
"Not a bit. I'm inclined to think diplomats and detectives are of one kidney. I've been magnificently diplomatic, and I've made a discovery."
"Well?"
"My old uncle's as mad as a hatter!"
"A family failing," Armstrong remarked. "But what's that to do with it?"
"Why, this, old tomato. He employs a lot of foreigners; that's mad, to begin with. He goes away, and leaves them in the house with instructions to sow tin-tacks on No Man's Island. If that isn't stark madness, I'd like to know what is."
"Hadn't you better tell us plainly what you've been about?" said Warrender.
"In words of one syllable. I bought a box of tin-tacks. Here it is, and here's the one we found in the bush. You see, they're twins. They were bought at the same shop, to wit, the one owned by Samuel Blevins, general dealer and banjoist, I understand. My uncle's gardener bought three yesterday. Now, I ask you, would any man's gardener sprinkle inoffensive campers with tin-tacks unless instructed to? It's all as plain as a pikestaff. My mad uncle has a morbid horror of trespassers. He leaves word that they are to be chevied away by means fair or foul----"
"But No Man's Island isn't his," Warrender interrupted.
"Certainly. That proves his madness. He thinks anybody who gets a footing here has designs on his property. It's a sort of Heligoland. He employs an ex-poacher to guard his own domains, and the foreigners to clear his outpost. Nothing could be plainer."
"Rot!" exclaimed Armstrong.
"Have it your own way. The facts are undeniable. Rush and the foreigners are in league to get rid of us, and they can't have any motive except their master's interest."
"We don't know that," said Warrender. "Your imagination runs too fast, young man. We don't even know for certain that Rush and the foreigners are working together. All we really know is that some one wants to make the place too uncomfortable for us. The question is, what shall we do?"
"Stick it," said Armstrong. "It means keeping watch by night; we can take turns at that. We'll soon find out if----"
"Ahoy, there!" cried a voice from the river.
Unperceived, a skiff had run in under the bank, and its occupant, a stout old gentleman in flannels, was stepping ashore.
"Old Crawshay!" murmured Pratt.
They got up to meet their visitor.
"Good-morning, my lads," said he, genially. "Surprised to see me, I dare say. We didn't part on the best of terms, but--well, let's shake hands and forget all about that. My daughter told me that you very kindly came to her assistance the other day. I'm obliged to you. I'm only sorry it didn't happen before we--but there, that's wiped up, isn't it? If you knew how I'd been pestered! By the way, one of you is related to my neighbour across the river, I understand."
"Yes, sir, that's me," said Pratt. "We're not on calling terms, though."
"Neither am I," rejoined Mr. Crawshay, with a smile. "We don't hit it together. He's a little----"
"Potty, sir," said Pratt, as the old gentleman caught himself up. "It's a sore trial to the rest of the family. We were only talking about his distressing affliction just before you came. He really ought to be shut up."
"Indeed! I wasn't aware that it was as bad as that. That is certainly very distressing."
"A most unusual form of mania, too. I never heard anything like it before. Of course, there are people who crab their own country and countrymen, but it's more talk than anything else. My poor uncle, however, goes so far as to employ foreigners, who stick tin-tacks into people."
"Bless my soul!"
"Pratt draws the long bow, sir," said Warrender, thinking it time to intervene.
"And hits the bull's-eye every time," Pratt rejoined. "You can't deny that twenty yards away the grass is simply bristling with tin-tacks."
"The fact is, sir," said Warrender, "that some one is trying to annoy us. Yesterday morning our motor-boat was set adrift, and in the night some one showered a lot of tin-tacks round our tent. The motive seems to be the wish to drive us away. And Pratt thinks that his uncle gave instructions to the men at the house to prevent camping either on his ground or on the island. They've chosen a very annoying way of going about it."
"Outrageous! Scandalous!" cried Mr. Crawshay. "He has no rights on the island. It's criminal. I'm a magistrate, and I'll issue you a warrant against the ruffians."
"The difficulty is that we haven't caught any one in the act," Warrender pursued. "I believe that warrants can't be anonymous. We've seen a fellow named Rush hanging about----"
"A notorious gaol-bird. I've had my eye on him."
"But the tacks were bought at Blevins's shop by my uncle's gardener," said Pratt. "I pumped that out this morning. I dare say we could find out the man's name."
"But it's no crime to buy tin-tacks," said Warrender. "We don't know who actually scattered them. Indeed, we've no evidence at all; only inferences."
"Nothing to act on, certainly," said Mr. Crawshay. "It seems to me you had better cross the river, and camp on my ground after all; or, better still, come to the house; I've plenty of room."
"It's jolly good of you, sir," said Warrender, "but it goes against the grain to knuckle under. We'd like to catch the fellows, and find out, if we can, what their game really is. I don't think even Pratt believes his uncle is responsible, even indirectly."
"Not responsible for his actions, unfit to plead, to be detained during His Majesty's pleasure," said Pratt. "We talked it over, and decided to stick it, sir. It's a matter of pride with me. I'm thinking of taking up criminal investigation as a profession."
"Indeed!"
"He's just cackling, sir," said Armstrong, impelled to utterance at last.
"I suspected as much. Well, you've made up your minds, I see. I understand. At your age I should have done the same. If you want any help, you've only to row across the river. My house is about half a mile through the woods and across a field. You must come up one day in any case, and have lunch or dinner with me, and discuss the situation. And, by the way, if you're fond of shooting, my coverts are positively overstocked. I can provide guns, and you're welcome to 'em."
"Many thanks indeed, sir," said Warrender.
"And you'll keep me informed? I'll take action the moment you have evidence. It's atrocious."
They escorted him to his boat, gave him a shove off, and watched him until he was out of sight. Returning to the tent, Pratt remarked--
"D. Crawshay seems to be a dashed good sort after all."
CHAPTER VIII
PIN-PRICKS
Late that afternoon, Warrender and Pratt started for a spin in the dinghy to the mouth of the river, intending to return on the tide. In accordance with their newly formed plan, Armstrong remained on guard in the camp.
Just before the scullers gained the river mouth they overtook a weather-beaten old fisherman leisurely rowing his heavy tub out to sea. Pratt gave him a cheery hail as they came abreast of him, and learning, in answer to a question, that he was proceeding to inspect his lobster pots nearly a mile out, they asked if they might accompany him.
"Ay sure, I've nothing against it," said the old man.
"Nor against us, I hope," rejoined Pratt, smiling.
"Not as I knows on."
"Then we're friends already. I always make friends in two seconds and a half, and being, like Cæsar, constant as the northern star, I stick like a limpet. You can't shake me off."
"Same as a lobster when he gets a grip."
"Ah! you know more about lobsters than I do. Is that a lobster pot on the beach there?"
He indicated a low wooden hut, standing a little above high-water mark, on the shore curving away to the east.
"You be a joker, sir," said the fisher, his native taciturnity thawed. "That be a fisherman's hut. Fisherman, says I, but 'tis little fishing as goes on hereabouts nowadays. I mind the time when there was a tidy little fleet in these waters, but that was long ago. There was good harbourage in those days, but the sea have cast up a bar across the mouth of the river; we're going over it now; and it makes the passage dangerous for a boat of any draught. One or two old gaffers like me goes out now and again, but 'tis not what it was in my young days."
"That hut looks a bit dilapidated--is it yours?"
"No, it belongs to Mr. Pratt, up along at the house."
"You don't say so! I dare say you'll be surprised to hear it, but it wouldn't be fair to you to keep it a secret; Mr. Pratt is my uncle."
"Do 'ee tell me that, now?"
"But I hope you won't think any the worse of me. It's not my fault--I'm sure you'll admit that."
"Think the worse of 'ee! I reckon 'tis t'other way about. He be my landlord, and a rare good 'un; never raised my rent all the thirty years I've knowed 'un. We thinks a rare lot of 'un in village."
"I say, do you mean that?"
"What for not? He never gives us no trouble, and if you can say that of the landlord as owns best part o' the village, you may reckon there ain't much wrong with 'un. Not but what he've a bit of a temper, and can't abide being put upon; but treat him fair, and he'll treat you fair. Ay, and more. That there hut, now. It do belong to him, but I doubt he's never been richer for any rent paid him for't."
"Who rents it, then?"
"Uses it, I'd say. Nick Rush never paid no rent, that I'd swear."
"Siren Rush again, Phil," said Pratt, in an undertone, to Warrender. "I thought Rush was a poacher," he added, to the fisherman.
The old man made no reply. Pratt guessed that for some reason or other he was unwilling to commit himself.
"My uncle, as you say, can't stand being put upon," he went on. "Which makes it the more surprising that he should allow a rascal like Rush to use his hut rent free. I wonder he doesn't turn him out."
"He did, a year or two back," said the fisherman, tersely.
"That was when Rush went to gaol for poaching, of course?" said Pratt, with the air of one who was well acquainted with the circumstances. "I should have done the same myself. No one would be hard on a poor fellow who kept straight, but when Mr. Crawshay had to sentence him for poaching, that was the last straw. But how is it that he has been allowed to come back? Has he turned over a new leaf?"
"The hut was empty for a year or two, and was falling to pieces," answered the fisherman. "When Rush came back to these parts he mended it a bit, and Mr. Pratt having gone to furrin parts again, I reckon his secretary didn't think it worth while to bother about the feller."
"I dare say that was it. In these days it's not easy to get rid of an unsatisfactory tenant, I understand. But my uncle won't be pleased when he comes home, I'm sure. The secretary ought to know that."
"Ay, and so he would if 'twas an Englishman, but with these furriners, there's no accountin' for them. The village do have a grudge against Mr. Pratt on that score; the folk don't like 'em. I feel a bit strong about it myself. There's my son Henery, as owns a dairy farm up yonder, was courting Molly Rogers, sister of Joe at the inn, afore the war; terrible sweet on she, he was; and everybody thought, give her time, they'd make a match of it. But bless 'ee, afore he was demobbed, as they call it, these furriners come along, and daze me if the smallest of 'em weren't Molly's husband inside of a month. And to make matters worse, it do seem as she've cast off all her old friends, becas nobody sees nothing of her these days. But there 'tis; you can't never understand a woman."
The greater part of this conversation took place while the old man was lifting his lobster pots--the others lying by. He went on to give them information about the coast--where good line-fishing could be had, rocks where crabs could be picked up at low tide. Having bought a couple of lobsters, Warrender turned the dinghy's head for home.
The sun was going down as they approached the island. Near its southern point they met Rush, slowly pulling a tubby boat down stream. He did not look at them as they passed; his square countenance was expressionless.
Rowing straight along the narrow channel to their camping-place, they lifted the dinghy ashore, and carried it towards the tent. Armstrong was not to be seen.
"The sentry has deserted his post," remarked Pratt. "But I dare say he's not far."
He gave a shrill whistle. An answer came distantly from the woods, and presently Armstrong appeared, pushing his way through the thickets on the western side of the clearing.
"All quiet, old man?" asked Warrender.
"Until a little while ago," Armstrong replied. "I heard a rustling and crackling in the thicket yonder. I couldn't see anything, and for a time I simply kept on the watch; but it went on so long that I got sick of doing nothing, and started off quietly to investigate, and nab the fellow if I could. But though I couldn't see him, it's clear he could see me. What his game was, I don't know; I only know that I could always hear him moving some little distance ahead of me, and before I realised how far I had got, I found myself pretty near the farther shore. I just caught a glimpse of a back among the bushes, but when I got to the place there was nothing to be seen or heard either. It occurred to me then that I'd been decoyed away while some one played hanky-panky here, and I cursed myself for an ass and hurried back, but things look undisturbed."
They glanced around the camp and inspected the interior of the tent. Their various properties appeared to be exactly as they had been left; nothing was obviously missing.
"I suppose it was another little freak of Siren Rush," remarked Pratt. "We met him rowing down as we came up. No doubt he was going to visit his hut on the beach."
He retailed the bits of information derived from the fisherman, dwelling particularly on the surprising fact that, "potty" though he might be, Mr. Ambrose Pratt was respected, and even liked, by the country folk.
It was not until they began to make preparations for their evening meal that a new light was cast on the mysterious movements in the thicket. Armstrong took their kettle and bucket down to the river. Neither would hold water. Examining them, he found a hole in the bottom of each, clean cut as if made by a bradawl. Meanwhile Pratt had discovered that their tea was afloat in the caddy, and the wick had been removed from their stove.
"More pin-pricks," he said. "Any one would think the blighters had learnt ragging at a public school."
"Pin-pricks be hanged!" cried Armstrong, wrathfully. "They're much worse than a jolly good set-to--much more difficult to deal with. If they'd come out into the open, we'd jolly well settle their hash."
The others guessed that Armstrong's anger was largely due to his own failure as a watchman.
"One thing is clear," said Warrender, considerately. "Whoever played these tricks, it was not Rush. He couldn't possibly have drawn you to the shore, cut round here and done the damage, and then got back to his boat and dropped down stream to where we met him, while you were coming straight across. On the other hand, if he had got into his boat directly after he disappeared, he could just have done it. If he was the decoy, who was the confederate?"
"'Time's glory is to calm contending kings,'" quoted Pratt, "and among other stupendous feats, 'to wrong the wronger till he render right.' But I'm not disposed to leave old Time to his own unaided resources. These island Pucks are decidedly annoying, but they're also uncommonly interesting. 'Life is a war,' some one said. Well, it's to be a war of wits, by the look of it, and I'll back our wits in the end against sirens or sorcerers, or any old scaramouch. Only I'm bound to confess that up to the present the enemy is several points up."
CHAPTER IX
REPRISALS
"What about dividing the night into watches?" asked Armstrong, when they had cleared away their evening meal.
"Dark to dawn is about eight hours," responded Warrender. "By summer-time, nine to five."
"And three into eight will go with a recurring decimal," added Pratt. "I don't mind being the recurring decimal, which as a matter of practicality I take to mean that I'll come on every tenth hour; that is to say, I'll have ten hours' sleep unbroken, and turn up, fresh as a lark, at seven in the morning."
"Very ingenious," said Warrender, "but I prefer my fractions vulgar. Two-thirds of an hour is forty minutes, and you'll do your two hours forty minutes like us two. We'll start alphabetically, shall we? Armstrong first--then the vulgar fraction, then me."
"I always thought the middleman got the best of it in life," said Pratt. "Here's an exception, any way. The first and last men will each have five hours twenty minutes' sleep on end; the middleman won't get any, because he won't fall asleep at all in the first watch, from over-anxiety, or in the third, because it won't seem worth while. Still, if we permutate--APW, PAW and so on--we'll all suffer in turn. I warn you, when I'm middleman I shan't be able to keep awake without the solace of my banjo."
"I bar that," said Armstrong. "It'd give me nightmare."
"Well, I've warned you. If the Assyrian comes down like a wolf on the fold, somewhere about midnight, don't blame me."
But when, about seven o'clock in the morning, they compared notes, they found that none of them had been disturbed, and Pratt had a good deal to say on the advantages of the midnight hours for the refreshment of the inner man. Two empty ginger-beer bottles beside his chair approved his sentiments.
"It's only a respite, of course," he said. "They wouldn't have started their tricks without a reason; they won't give them up until they find them useless; and they'll make that discovery all the sooner if we open a defensive offensive. I propose to go into the village after breakfast; an idea's occurred to me; and I'll call at the post office and see if any answer has come from the fellow I sent that Russian newspaper to. You had better come with me, Jack; it's Phil's turn to be house-dog."
So it was arranged. Pratt and Armstrong rowed the dinghy to the ferry. Joe Rogers was standing at his inn door.
"Morning to 'ee, young gentlemen," he said. "You be Mr. Pratt's nephew, sir," he added to Pratt.
"How do you know that?" asked Pratt.
"Old Gaffer Drew telled me when he came home along last night. He said as 'twas the young feller whose tongue went like a clapper, so I knowed 'ee at once."
"Well, I'd rather be known by my tongue than by my finger-prints, wouldn't you?"
"Ay, we've all got our weaknesses. Mine is baldness, come of a fever I took aboardship when we was off Gallapagos. My old woman will make me wear a wig, though I could do without it this hot weather. And how do 'ee find No Man's Island, sir?"
"A place of enchantment, equal to Prospero's island. We know there's a Puck, and we suspect there's a Caliban, but more of that anon."
"You do talk like a book, sir. Well, I'm glad you be comfortable. Good day to 'ee."
They called at the village post office. There was no letter from Pratt's friend.
"Let's go on and have a look at my uncle's house," said Pratt, when they came out. "It's about a mile beyond the village, on that by-road we saw the other day. The road winds a good deal, and though I don't propose to leave my card at the house, I'd like to take a peep at it once more, closer than we can get from the river."
They went on, turned into the by-road, and after about three-quarters of a mile came to a brick wall on the right, in which there was a massive gate, and within it a small lodge. The gate was padlocked, the lodge closed and shuttered. A few hundred yards beyond was a second gate and lodge. The latter also was evidently unoccupied, but the gate was open.
"It's the shortest way from the house to Dartmouth," said Pratt. "We can't see the house for the trees, but if I remember rightly the ground's more open a little farther along."
In a minute or so they came to a spot where, by mounting the wall, they were able to obtain a clear view of the building. It stood above a terraced garden some three hundred yards from the road. Fine though the day was, they were both struck by a sense of gloom. The windows were all closed; those on the ground floor were shuttered; and but for a thin wisp of smoke rising from one of the chimneys the house might have been supposed to be untenanted.
"The servants' quarters are at the back," said Pratt. "The foreigners at any rate don't play high jinks in the front rooms while my uncle is away. But it looks pretty dreary, doesn't it, old man? Makes me think of Mariana in the moated grange."
"Don't know the lady," said Armstrong. "But look! there's a car coming out of the garage at the side."
"That used to be the stables," said Pratt, as the doors were flung wide, and an open four-seated touring car emerged. "That's not the car we saw the other day, though the chauffeur's the same."
Perched on the wall they remained watching. The chauffeur stopped the car, got out, and shut the doors of the garage. Meanwhile the big fellow whom Armstrong had felled came round the other side of the house carrying a small leather trunk. Behind him walked a short, dapper little man, wearing a grey Homburg hat and a light overcoat. From his gestures it appeared that he ordered the big man to strap the trunk on to the luggage-carrier at the rear of the car. When this was done, the small man got into one of the back seats, and the chauffeur, already at the wheel, started the car along the right-hand fork in the drive leading to the open gate.
"Down! They mustn't see us," said Pratt.
They dropped from the wall into the grounds, and shinned up a small tree whose thick-laden branches overhung the edge of the road. Half a minute later the car ran past, swung to the right outside the gate, and dashed rather noisily in the direction of Dartmouth.
"THEY SHINNED UP A SMALL TREE."
"HALF A MINUTE LATER THE CAR RAN PAST."
"The passenger is my uncle's secretary, I suppose," said Pratt. "I wonder which of the many nations of the world claims him? He might pass for an Englishman, but you can't tell from a fugitive glance when a man's clean-shaven."
"I thought he looked a decent sort of chap," said Armstrong, as they returned to the road; "not the kind of fellow to consort with a man like Rush."
"No. I dare say Rush is playing some game of his own with one of the underlings. I'll tell you my idea, by the way. Leaving us alone last night struck me as rather suspicious. They've probably got something in hand for to-night. Well, it occurred to me that if Rush comes prowling around our tent, with more tin-tacks or who knows what, it would be rather a good dodge to trip him up and collar him before he can hook it."
"He'll guess we're on the watch. No man would be such an ass as to suppose we'd let him do the tin-tack trick a second time."
"That may be. Very likely he kept off last night just for that reason. As you say, he'd guess we'd be on the watch, and probably thinks we're all jolly sick to-day because nothing happened, and won't be inclined to keep vigil again. Anyhow, if he does come again, he won't expect any danger until he gets near to the tent, and I propose to nab him before then."
"How?"
"Stretch a cord two or three inches above the ground just where the thicket ends at the edge of the clearing. He wouldn't see it, even by moonlight, because it would be pretty well hidden by the grass. But he'd be bound to catch one of his hoofs in it, and a lumbering lout like that couldn't pick himself up before any one of us three would be down on him."
"But how d'you know which way he'd come?"
"He wouldn't come across the clearing, that's certain. Well, the tent is about six yards from the thicket behind, and the edge of the thicket makes a sort of rough half-circle. A cord of fifty or sixty yards would be plenty long enough. I dare say we'll get one at old Blevins's shop. We'll pay him a call on the way back."
The shop was unattended when they entered it, but a rap on the counter brought Blevins himself, wearing the polite tradesman's smile.
"Good-morning, Mr. Blevins," said Pratt. "You've a motor-car for hire, I believe?"
"Well, yes, sir, I do have as a rule, but 'tis out to-day. In fact, I don't know when it will be back. 'Tis hired for the Red House, Mr. Pratt's being under repair."
"Ah! that's a pity. We'll have to put off our joy-ride. Well, it can't be helped. Perhaps you could let us have a skipping-rope instead?"
"A skipping-rope, sir?"
"Yes. Didn't you know? Skipping is one of the most beneficial exercises any one could indulge in. It brings into play I forget exactly how many muscles, develops a perfect co-ordination between the brain, the eye, the hands and feet; and if you ever go to Oxford, I dare say you'll see on any college lawn all the brainiest men of the rising generation skipping about under the eyes of their revered tutors. If the mountains could skip like rams, as we're told they did, there's nothing surprising in a future Prime Minister skipping like a giddy goat, is there? And there are hundreds of future Prime Ministers imbibing the milk of academic instruction at Oxford to-day."
Blevins had listened with a stare of puzzlement. The short, chubby youth appeared to be serious; his companion's face showed no flicker of a smile; yet the general dealer, remembering what his assistant had told him, had a dim suspicion that he was dealing either with a joker or with a lunatic. To get rid of his dilemma he confined himself to the severely practical.
"Well, sir," he said, "I don't keep skipping-ropes as such, but I've a cord which the neighbours do make clothes-line of."
"The very thing!" cried Pratt. "We haven't made any arrangements about our washing, and, as laundry prices have gone up beyond all bearing, we may have to do our own. Of course we shall want a clothes-line for hanging out our shirts and things on, and as my friends are regular nuts, and possess a very extensive wardrobe, we shall want a long line--quite fifty yards. Add ten yards for a skipping-rope, that makes sixty; we'll take sixty yards, Mr. Blevins; and as you can't possibly make a neat parcel of that, you'd better twist 'em round the hefty frame of my friend here; sort of bandolier, you know."
The man proceeded to measure out the cord from a bale which he rolled from his back premises.
"You be camping on No Man's Island, 'tis said," he remarked.
"We are," replied Pratt. "We're followers of the simple life; fresh air, cold water, and plain fare. We drink nothing stronger than ginger-beer, and eat nothing more luxurious than macaroons, and I suppose we can't get even them in a place like this? What's the consequence? We never have bad dreams, like people who stuff themselves and sleep in stuffy rooms."
"And you haven't been troubled by the sounds, sir?"
"What sounds?"
"Well--some folks do talk of terrible groans they've heard if so be they've rowed past the island by night, and 'tis said the place is haunted by the spirit of the old gentleman as used to live there."
"He hasn't disturbed our rest, I assure you. I dare say he's been soothed by my banjo; I usually tune up a little before I go to bed. You play the banjo yourself, I hear; you know how grateful and comforting it is--sweet and low, not like the squeaking scrape of the violin, or the ear-splitting blast of the cornet. I think you're a man of taste, Mr. Blevins, and as a fellow-musician I congratulate you.... That's sixty yards? Now, Armstrong, stick out your chest, and Mr. Blevins and I between us will rig up your bandolier."
When they had left the shop, Pratt asked: "I say, what's he mean by those old groans?"
"I heard a sort of moaning the night I first saw the cottage," Armstrong replied; "but I put it down to the wind, of course."
"There's been no wind to speak of since we settled on the island. I'd like to hear those sounds. Strikes me they're an acoustical phenomenon. Sure it wasn't an owl?"
"Nothing like it; the note was deeper and more prolonged."
"Well, if it's the wind in the eaves the sound will be heard by day as well as by night, and I'll trot over to the cottage the first breezy morning and listen."
Warrender had nothing to report when they regained the camp. He thought well of Pratt's idea of a trap, and they spent the greater part of the day in cutting a number of stout pegs from saplings in the woods. These they drove into the ground, at intervals of a few feet, in a long semi-circle at the edge of the clearing, and stretched the clothes-line upon them about six inches from the ground. One or other of them kept a careful look-out while the work was in progress, and nothing was seen of Rush or any other human being. Before dusk the task was completed, and they had provided themselves in addition with stout cudgels.
It was Pratt's turn to take first watch that night. On the previous night each had sat out in the open, but it occurred to Pratt that a better place would be just within the tent. Accordingly, when the others encased themselves in their sleeping-bags, he posted himself on his chair at the entrance, shaded from the moonlight by the projecting flap.
More than two hours had passed; he was growing sleepy, frequently glancing at his watch to see when it would be time to awaken Warrender. Just before half-past eleven he heard a slight sound from the thicket on his right. Seizing his cudgel, he looked in the direction of the sound. The edge of the clearing on that side was deep in shadow. He stood up; it might be a false alarm; he would not awaken his companions.
Suddenly there was a heavy thud, followed by smothered curses. Pratt dashed out of the tent and across the clearing. At the edge of the thicket a man was struggling to his feet. Even at that moment Pratt was too much of a sportsman to use his cudgel. He closed with the man, gripped him by the collar, and hauled him into the moonlight, crying, "What are you doing here?" The man attempted to wriggle loose. Pratt dropped his cudgel, got a firm grip with both hands, and with a dexterous use of his knee threw the intruder heavily to the ground. Next moment he was struck violently on the left side of his head, and fell half-stunned.
"PRATT THREW THE INTRUDER HEAVILY TO THE GROUND."
Meanwhile the sounds had wakened Armstrong and Warrender. Heaving themselves out of their sleeping-bags they rushed in their pyjamas across the clearing. Pratt was sitting up, dazedly rubbing his head.
"What's the row?" asked Armstrong.
"Diamond cut diamond," murmured Pratt. "Help me up, you fellows. Everything's whirling round."
They helped him back into the tent and sponged his head. Presently he was able to tell them what had happened.
"Was it Rush you collared?" asked Warrender.
"No, a bigger man, with a broad face, high cheekbones, and a bent-in nose."
"The face I saw in the thicket!" exclaimed Armstrong. "Who was the other chap?"
"I don't know. I didn't see him, confound the fellow! Just my luck! And it was my scheme!"
CHAPTER X
A SOFT ANSWER
There was no more sleep that night for any of the party. When Pratt's bruised head had been bathed and bandaged the three placed their chairs at the tent entrance, and sat in the still, warm air, discussing the situation more seriously than they had yet done. They had learnt definitely from the recent incident that at least two men were concerned in the campaign of petty annoyance. One of these--the man whose face Armstrong had seen in the thicket--looked like a foreigner, and apparently either lived somewhere on the island or had means of reaching it from the mainland. What more probable than that the second man was Rush, and that his boat was placed at the foreigner's disposal?
"The more I think of it," said Warrender, "the more likely it seems that Rush and one of the foreigners are playing some private game of their own. I haven't a notion what the game is, but I can't believe that Pratt's uncle left instructions to worry trespassers on an island that isn't his, or that any decent fellow in his secretary's position would encourage it."
"That assumes the secretary is a decent fellow," remarked Armstrong.
"Well, why not?" asked Pratt. "A man may be mad without being a fool, and my old uncle, though he's mad enough to hate English servants, wouldn't be such a fool as to engage foreigners without inquiring about their characters."
"That fellow Armstrong knocked down wasn't an attractive specimen," said Warrender.
"He was drunk," said Pratt. "Some of the most estimable characters--the most respectable of English butlers, for instance--may now and then take a drop too much."
"That fellow is a sot," said Armstrong. "It's marked all over him."
"Well, I tell you what I think we had better do," said Warrender. "Go up to the house, see the secretary, and put the case to him. If he's a decent fellow, and the man you tripped, Pratt, is one of his crew, he'll put a stop to this foolery. Will you go up with me to-morrow?"
"Better take Armstrong," Pratt replied. "If my uncle were at home I'd go and beard him, and jolly well tell him a few things for his good. But I'd rather not show up in his absence. Besides, I shall have a head to-morrow, and a swelling the size of a turnip. I feel the growing pains; I'll be fit for nothing."
"Rough luck!" said Warrender, commiseratingly. "Very well. Jack and I will go, and I dare say that'll be the end of our troubles."
At nine o'clock next morning Armstrong and Warrender rowed off in the dinghy; at a quarter to ten they entered the grounds of the Red House. The paths were weedy, the grass untrimmed, the flower-beds untidy.
"The foreigners don't overwork," remarked Armstrong, as they walked along the drive towards the house. "The place is a disgrace to the neighbourhood."
"It certainly looks very much neglected," said Warrender. "The house might be uninhabited but for that smoke from one of the chimneys, and the car waiting at the door."
"The same car Pratt and I saw yesterday. It belongs to old Blevins. I wonder whether they use it for joy-riding, or what? The secretary may be away, by the bye; yesterday he went off with a trunk."
"A nuisance if he is. But we'll see."
The front of the house faced south-east, and the drive wound from the gate in a wide arc to the left. The lower windows were shuttered; at some of those on the upper storey the blinds were drawn; but as the visitors approached there appeared at a small upper casement on the side of the house facing them the form of a woman, At first it seemed that she had not seen them; she stood looking out in an attitude of idle immobility. They could not distinguish her features through the small square panes of the casement; she was stout in build, and dressed in the print of a domestic servant.
Suddenly, as her eyes fell on them, she gave a perceptible start. She turned her head quickly from the window, as if to see whether any one was behind her; then raised her hands, apparently to undo the catch. Next moment she dropped them with a gesture of impatience or despair. The boys saw her shake her head, and, lifting an arm, make a sweeping movement with it towards the rear of the house. A moment later she left the window hurriedly, as a servant might do in answering a call.
"Rummy!" said Warrender. "That's Rogers's sister, I suppose; wife of the chef, you remember. What did she mean?"
"It looked as if she wanted to open the window and couldn't," returned Armstrong. "She wanted to speak to us."
"That movement of her arm--was it a warning to us to go away?"
"Too late in any case. That's the secretary coming out; he's seen us."
The dapper little man whom Armstrong had seen on the day before, dressed as he was then, was hurrying down the steps from the front entrance when he caught sight of the boys. He stopped short, gave a swift glance behind him, then descended the remaining steps and came towards them. His movements were quick, his step was light, and as he drew nearer they were aware of a very vivid personality, accentuated by dark eyes of great brilliance, set rather closely together.
"Yes, gentlemen," he said, smiling, "what can I do for you?"
His voice was low and smooth; the intonation, rather than the accent, alone suggested a foreign origin.
"Can you give us a few minutes alone?" said Warrender.
The chauffeur had just come down the steps, carrying a box, and stood with it still in his arms, beside the car, looking on with an air of startled curiosity.
"Certainly," replied the man, "if it is only a question of minutes. As you see, I am about to drive out, and my time is short. Henrico"--he addressed the chauffeur--"put the box down and go into the house. Now, gentlemen."
"You are Mr. Pratt's secretary, I believe," said Warrender, feeling a little awkwardness in the situation, and wishing that the voluble banjoist were in the office of spokesman instead of himself.
"Yes. My name is Gradoff--Paul Gradoff."
"Well, Mr. Gradoff, I'm sorry to trouble you, but you may be able to throw some light on a puzzle that's rather annoying to us."
"Anything I can do----"
"We are camping on the island over there, and ever since our arrival have been the object of annoying and--I'm afraid I must say--malicious attacks. We have reason to believe that one of the aggressors is not an Englishman, and knowing that your staff here is largely foreign, we have come up to--to----"
"Complain?" suggested Gradoff, as Warrender hesitated.
"Well, rather to ask if you can help us," Warrender went on. "I should explain that we fell foul of one of your men on the evening of our arrival, and it occurs to me that he, or one of his mates, may be retaliating."
"Ah yes; I had heard of that little matter from my man, Jensen," said Gradoff, suavely. "You could hardly expect him to be amiable, could you? He was insulted by a yokel, very properly chastised him, and was then suddenly set upon by one of you young men, and before he could defend himself was seriously hurt."
"That's nonsense, Mr. Gradoff!" exclaimed Armstrong. "The man dealt a foul blow, and I stepped in."
"It was you?" rejoined Gradoff, in his suave, smooth tones. "The version is different: tot homines tot sententiæ--being students you will recognise the allusion. It is so very difficult to reconcile conflicting stories, especially in common brawls. But, come; it is not like Englishmen to make a fuss about trifles, and Olof Jensen is not the man to bear malice. If that is the sum of your complaint----"
"But it is not," Warrender broke in, nettled by the Russian's suavity and his Latin. "We hadn't been twelve hours on the island when our motor-boat was set adrift----"
"My dear young man, quandoque dormitat Homerus--you will correct me if I do not quote accurately; my schooldays, alas! are a distant past. Even the most experienced sailors--and I am far from saying I do not include you among them--may tie a careless knot; make a slip, as you English say. And the current is strong when swollen by the rain. Really, my dear sir----"
"At any rate tin-tacks don't rain from heaven. We had a shower of them over our tent one night, and in the morning----"
"Latet anguis in herbâ! Come, come; you were dreaming. I am told that in the past the island was a favourite resort of trippers, a class of people who reprehensibly leave behind them much rubbish--paper bags, bottles, tin cans; why not tin-tacks?"
Warrender was fuming, irritated by his lack of evidence as well as by the secretary's manner. He wished that he had ignored the minor incidents, and confined his statement to the latest.
"We'd no proof--I know that--till last night," he said. "A fellow tripped over a rope snare we had rigged up. One of us caught him, and knocked him out; he was clearly a foreigner----"
"And you have him in custody? Ah, now we are getting to something substantial! He was a foreigner; on the principle ex pede Herculem--you recognise the proverb?--you infer that he belongs to my staff. And you did not bring him with you for confrontation?"
"He was rescued by----"
"By another foreigner?"
"We don't know who by; he gave my friend a blow from behind."
"That is more serious, truly. But what do you tell me? You are camping on the island--with permission? No, of course not; is it not No Man's Island? Well, what is no man's is all men's. What more likely than that others are camping there also? One of them falls over your rope, and is knocked out by your friend; your friend is, in turn, knocked out by a friend of the tripper. It is the lex talionis--the term is familiar to you? That, of course, is only a theory, but I commend it to your consideration. And now, I take it, I have the sum of your complaints. I put it to you, do they make a case against my staff?"
"I wasn't making a case against your staff," said Warrender. "I merely stated the facts."
"But with a bias; yes, with a bias, natural enough to youth and hot blood. I do not blame you; but you will agree that I am somewhat concerned for the good name of the men under my charge. Lest you should still harbour doubts about them, I will summon them. You shall see them. They number four. There is Jensen, the Swede, whom you, sir"--turning to Armstrong--"so unhappily misjudged. But you shall see them all. There is a woman, too, the wife of the chef, an amiable countrywoman of yours. It is perhaps not necessary to summon her? You do not suspect her of sowing tin-tacks or falling over your rope?"
He smiled, and without waiting for an answer went to the open house-door and called his chauffeur, to whom he gave instructions. Meanwhile, the two boys, chafing under his politeness with its touch of irony, exchanged looks of silent sympathy.
"The men will be here immediately," said Gradoff, rejoining them. "What a delightful summer we are having! Per æstivam liquidam--you remember the line? How I envy you your daily browsing on the Classics! Ah, here come the four suspects! Two, you perceive, are tall; two are short. I will align them in order of their heights, as they do in your army, I believe. Halt, men! Stand in line: Jensen at one end, then Radewski, then Prutti, last of all, Rod. Now, my dear sirs, inspect the company."
"There's no need," said Warrender. "We've seen them all in or about the village. None of these is the man you saw, Jack?"
"No," replied Armstrong, shortly.
"But darkness, even moonlight, is deceptive," said Gradoff, in his suavest manner. "Really, I am concerned to convince you thoroughly; I should regret your going away harbouring the least particle of suspicion. I will interrogate them in turn. Jensen, you do not amuse yourself by sowing tin-tacks on No Man's Island?--Jensen, I may explain, is Mr. Pratt's horsekeeper, in particular, and handy-man in general. Well, Jensen?"
"Nope," replied the man, gruffly, eyeing Armstrong with a scowl.
"And you, Radewski?--Radewski is the gardener." The boys recognised him as the passenger in the car that had collided with the farm-wagon.
"No, of course not," answered the Pole, smiling.
"And now you, Prutti?--the chauffeur, as you see."
"It is silly, stupid; I say ze question----" began the Italian, volubly.
"Yes, yes; but I want no comments. Just say yes or no," Gradoff interrupted.
"No, zen; I say no. I say ze question----"
"He comes from the south, gentlemen," said Gradoff, deprecatingly. "Now, Rod, what have you to say?"
"Sacré nom d'un----"
"Now, now. Maximilien Rod is the chef, gentlemen, accustomed to the use of the diction of the menu. Plain English, Rod, if you please."
"Zen I say zat ze man vat accuse me of so imbecile, so--so--so----"
"Contain yourself, Rod. Yes or no?"
"No, no; not at all--no!"
"Four negatives do not make an affirmative," said Gradoff, turning to the boys, and smiling with the persistent urbanity they were beginning to detest. "These are all my staff--with the exception of the excellent woman, Rod's wife. Would you like to pursue your inquiries?"
"Thank you, it is unnecessary," replied Warrender, in as even and polite a tone as he was master of.
"Then the men may return to their duties, and I may begin my journey. May I give you a lift as far as the cross-roads? Or, stay! You are here very near the river. You may prefer to take a short cut through the grounds, and avoid the long walk on the dusty road."
"Thank you," said Warrender, ready to accept any suggestion that would remove him quickly from the presence of Mr. Gradoff; "if some one will show us the way."
"Certainly. Quite a happy thought," said the Russian. He called to the chef, the rearmost of the party filing away. "Rod, show these gentlemen the shortest way to the river; bring them opposite to the island. Good-morning, gentlemen. I am sorry you have found me a broken reed. But I do hope your holiday will not be spoilt; I have such keen memories of my own happy holidays--liberatio et vacuitas omnis molestiæ: you remember your Cicero? Good-morning."
He sprang into the car, in which the chauffeur was already seated, and with a smile and a wave of the hand was driven away.
CHAPTER XI
INFORMATION RECEIVED
"Sarcastic swine!" muttered Armstrong, savagely, as he set off with Warrender behind the rotund little chef.
"So confoundedly polite I could have kicked him," returned Warrender, in the same undertone. "His beastly Latin, too! What did he take us for?"
"What we are--a couple of mugs. And Pratt's worse, with his absurd theories. Of course these chaps aren't in it. Rush is at the bottom of it, and the other fellow, though he looked like a foreigner, is very likely only some ugly freak of a Devonian after all."
"Well, I'll be hanged if I stand any more of Rush's nonsense. Next time anything happens, I'll get old Crawshay to set that bobby moving we saw the other day. I'm sick of it."
Ill-humour had for the moment got the upper hand, and they were conscious only of their soreness as they followed their guide through the unkempt grounds. Their attention was attracted presently by the tower that reared itself out of a thicket some little distance on their left. It was a square much-dilapidated building of stone, encrusted with moss and ivy, reaching a height of some fifty or sixty feet. The window openings were boarded up with deal planks that were evidently new.
"Is the tower used for anything now?" Warrender asked the Swiss.
"Ze tower? No, it is ruin, fall to pieces," replied the man.
"'ZE TOWER? NO, IT IS RUIN, FALL TO PIECES.'"
"I say, we are a couple of lunatics!" cried Armstrong. "We've left the dinghy at the ferry. What's the good of the short cut? Pratt can't work the motor."
"Hang it! I'd clean forgotten."
"Zen ve go back?" said the guide, eagerly. He had come to the end of the open grounds; the rest of the way lay through a wilderness of shrubs that promised laborious walking.
"No, I'm hanged if we do," said Warrender. "Now we've come so far we'll not go back."
"Zen how you cross ze river?"
"Swim it. You needn't come. We'll forge straight ahead. Thanks."
He tipped the man, and plunged with Armstrong into the thicket. Ten minutes' battling with the intricately woven mass of greenery brought them to the brink of the stream almost exactly opposite to their camping-place. They stripped, bundled their clothes upon their heads, and made short work of the thirty-foot channel.
"My aunt! In native garb!" cried Pratt, as they walked up still unclothed. "'Here be we poor mariners.' Shipwrecked? Lost the dinghy?"
"No, only our tempers," replied Armstrong. "The dinghy's still at the ferry."
"I say, my uncle hasn't got back, has he?" asked Pratt.
"No. Why?"
"I thought perhaps you had met him, and got a taste of his temper, that's all. 'Tell me not in mournful numbers'--but tell me anyhow you like the cause of this Ulyssean exhibition."
Warrender began the narrative as he towelled himself, continued it through his dressing, and concluded it when he had dropped into his chair by Pratt's side. Pratt listened with ever-growing merriment.
"You priceless old fatheads!" he exclaimed. "When the beggar chucked Latin at you why didn't you pelt him with Greek, Phil?--or with sines and hypotenuses, and all that, Jack? Don't you remember how some Cambridge josser floored a heathen bargee by calling him an isosceles triangle? I wish I'd gone."
"I wish you had!" echoed Warrender. "But when a fellow's so dashed polite----"
"Polite! I tell you what it is: you're both too serious for this flighty world. When you consider that it's gyrating at the rate of I don't know how many thousand miles a minute, it's unnatural, positively indecent, for any one to be so stuggy. The art of life is to effervesce. But, you know, the important feature of your morning's entertainment seems not to have sufficiently impressed you."
"What's that?" asked Armstrong.
"Rod's wife. Cherchez la femme! You oughtn't to have come away without having had a word with her."
"How on earth could we?" said Warrender. "We weren't asked into the house, and if we had been----"
"My dear chap, if a fair lady beckoned to me out of her casement window I'd find some means of receiving her behests. Rod's wife, née Molly Rogers, didn't make signs to you for nothing, and I foresee that I shall have to turn our skipping-rope into a rope ladder, and----"
"Oh, don't go on gassing," Armstrong interposed, irascibly. "Can't you be serious?"
"Solemnity itself. We've got to fetch that dinghy. I want to go to the post office. Very well, after lunch Phil shall run me up in the motorboat. I'll have a word with Rogers on the way, and I bet my boots I won't come back without some little addition to our dossier."
Pratt's programme was carried out. Warrender and he found Joe Rogers pulling spring onions in his garden behind the inn. The man had placed his wig on a pea-stick, and his bald pate glowed in the sunlight like a pink turnip.
"Good-afternoon, Joe," said Pratt, genially. "I wonder how it is that you sailormen so often take to gardening when your sea days are over?"
"I can't tell 'ee, sir, 'cept it be as we loves the look o' vegetables, being without 'em so long at a time. The old woman do say it keeps me out o' mischief."
"Now, Rogers," called his better half from an upper window, "put on your hair this minute. Drat the man! Do 'ee want to catch your death of sunstroke?"
Rogers gave a sly look at his visitors as he donned his wig.
"It do make my skull itch terrible," he said. "But she's a good woman."
"I jolly well hope I shall be looked after as well when my time comes," said Pratt. "But I'm not thinking of matrimony yet. What age did you marry at, Joe?"
"Thirty-one, just the same age as my sister Molly, but not in such a hurry. My missus took a deal o' courting; 'twas five years' hard labour; whereas Molly give in in less than a month."
"He came, he saw--he conquered. Must be something fascinating about him. Has she lost her cold, by the way? My friends happened to see her this morning."
"Well now, if that ain't too bad. She haven't been nigh me for a good fortnight, and she didn't ought to go about the village without looking in."
"They saw her at the house. She seemed to be catching flies or something at the window. I gather you don't like her husband."
"I've nothing against him, 'cept his name and furren nature. My missus told her she was cutting a rod for her own back."
"Surely he doesn't beat her?"
"That wasn't her meaning. Rod's his name, and the missus do have a way of taking up a word and twisting of it about, you may say. 'A rod in pickle,' says she. 'Tis just a clappering tongue; there's no sense in it. But it do seem as Molly have turned her back on all her old friends. 'Tis like this: they furriners bain't favourites in the parish, and Molly sticks to her husband, as 'tis her duty. That's what I make of it."
"Well, I dare say she chose the pick of the bunch. How many are there of them, by the bye?"
"Four, leaving out the secretary. They don't go about in the village much. None of 'em comes here 'cept that feller you saw t'other day, and he don't come often. I don't get no good of 'em. 'Twas different in the old days."
"Things will take a turn," said Pratt, consolingly. "When my--when Mr. Pratt returns I dare say he'll quarrel with the foreigners, and get English servants again."
"And be ye all right on the island, sir?"
"Having a ripping time. We're always on the look-out for the ghost, but he seems rather shy. I can sympathise with him, being so bashful myself."
"You do seem to have a bit of a bump one side of the head, sir. No inseck have been poisoning 'ee, I hope."
"No. Insects love me too well to disfigure me. I'm inclined to think it was a worm, or something like a leech, perhaps. It's a trifle; a molehill, not a mountain. To-morrow both sides will be equal, and the angles subtended at the base as right as ever. Good-bye; keep your hair on."
"Well, old man, we've spent a profitable quarter of an hour," said Pratt, as he went on with Warrender to the village. "The number of Gradoff s staff is confirmed; therefore the chap I collared is not one of them. As to Rod's wife, there's no mystery about her. She's disgusted, as any sensible person would be, at the petty narrow-mindedness of the natives who dislike her husband simply because he's of another breed, and so she cuts 'em dead."
"But what did her movements at the window mean?" asked Warrender. "It certainly looked as if she wanted help or something."
"Nothing of the sort, depend upon it. She was waving you off; she's as careful of Rod as Rogers's missus is of him; she was afraid Armstrong would go for Rod as he went for the Swede. I'm always ready to own up when I'm wrong. My old theories won't hold water. I think I'll give up detecting and go in for the Bar. You only have to stick to your brief; needn't have an idea of your own."
"Well, it seems to me we're not much for'arder."
"Quite a mistake. The issue is narrowed down. Clear our minds of the foreign menagerie and all that, and concentrate on Rush. That's the ticket."
Calling at the post office, he was handed a letter from his London friend, who reported that the scrap of paper was torn from a copy of the Pravda. Only part of the date of issue was visible--the word June; and the incomplete paragraph of text appeared to relate to the high prices of perambulators.
"There you are," said Pratt. "Much cry and little wool. It proves nothing except that some one, some time or other, had a Russian newspaper, which was partly burnt along with other papers, no doubt equally uninteresting and unimportant. What we have to do is simply to weave a spider's web for Rush."
"You change your mind twice a day, and are cock-sure every time," Warrender remarked.
"A clear proof that I ought to go in for politics, after all. I'm glad it's settled at last. Percy Pratt, M.P.--reverse 'em, you get P.M., Prime Minister; then Sir Percy, Bart.; Baron Pratt, Viscount, Earl--why not Duke while I'm about it? But do dukes play the banjo, I wonder?"
"You're better qualified for the part of Mad Hatter, I fancy. Come, let's step it out."
The evening of that day turned out rather cool and overcast. A breeze sprang up in the south-west, refreshing after the still heat. After early supper, Armstrong, declaring that he was getting flabby for want of exercise, set off in the dinghy for a pull down the river. Pratt thought it a good opportunity for testing Armstrong's report of the sounds he had heard in the cottage, and went off alone, leaving Warrender on guard at the camp.
He had not yet come within sight of the ruins when, above the rustle of the stirred leaves, a strange moaning broke upon his ear. He stopped to listen. While far more impressionable than Armstrong, he had solid musical knowledge which his schoolfellow lacked, and he was struck at once by an unusual quality in the sound he heard.
"That's not the wind in the eaves," he thought. "It's more like the whining of an organ pipe when a lazy blower is letting the wind out."
He hurried on. The sound rose and fell. For some moments it maintained a steady, pure organ note; then with rising pitch it became almost a shriek.
"I don't wonder the rustics are a bit scared," he thought, "but no ghost could produce a tone like that--unless he'd been a cathedral alto in his lifetime. It's due, I expect, to some metal chimney-pot that's got displaced and partly closed. Wonder if I can find it?"
He entered the ruins, and ran up the staircase. A roseate twilight suffused the western sky. Led by the persistent sound, he came to the unroofed room facing the west. The moaning proceeded from some spot above his head. He tried to clamber up the mass of broken masonry that littered the floor, but found that he could not gain the level of the roof except by climbing the jagged brickwork of the broken wall, a feat too perilous in the half light.
"That's the worst of being fat," he said to himself. "I believe Armstrong could do it."
Leaving the room presently, he went idly, without definite motive, into the second room, facing east and overlooking the river and his uncle's grounds. In this direction dusk was already deepening into night; the nearer trees were still distinguishable, but beyond the river all individual objects were blurred by the darkness.
He sat on the paneless window-sill, listening to the strange sound from above, looking out towards the Red House, wondering whereabouts in the wide world his uncle was travelling. All at once, far away, almost on a level with his eyes, he thought he saw a faint red glow. It disappeared in a moment--so quickly that it seemed an illusion. But there it was again, indubitably some small luminous body. "Some one with a lamp in one of the top rooms of the Red House," he thought. Again it disappeared, only to show again after an interval--a third time--a fourth.
To Pratt these phenomena were at first merely sensations of sight, not perceptions of intelligence. But by and by he was struck by the fact that the glow always appeared at the same spot, not here and there, like a lamp carried by a person moving about a room. Then he found himself mentally measuring the intervals between its appearances, expecting their occurrence as regularly as the beats of a striking clock. It was with surprise and a sort of disappointment that he discovered that the intervals were irregular, and with curiosity, after a while, that they were regular and irregular both, as it seemed, fitfully; the glow appeared two or three times at equal intervals, then the intervals became shorter or longer. "Signals, of course," he thought, when the impression of order and purpose became fixed in him. "Who is it? Where is it? What's the game?"
The alternations continued for several minutes, then finally ceased. Pratt got up, left the ruins, and made his way with some difficulty back to camp.
"Armstrong back?" he asked.
"Not yet," replied Warrender. "Time he was. This is the darkest evening we've had. See any one?"
"Not a soul. All quiet here?"
"Absolute peace. You weren't here."
"Thanks. Glad you missed me. Will the sweet, melodious strains of my gentle banjo disturb your serenity?"
"Not a bit. Strum away. But hadn't you better turn in? It's past nine. Old Jack won't get much sleep before second watch if he isn't here soon; no reason why you shouldn't have your full whack, especially after last night's affair."
"I'll stay up till he comes."
Pratt softly thrummed his strings, musing on his discoveries. Half-past nine came; ten o'clock.
"I say, what's happened to Armstrong?" said Warrender. "Surely he hasn't been carried out to sea? Come and help me shove off; I'll run down and see if I can find him. You won't turn in, so you won't mind taking part of my watch."
"Righto! But I dare say Jack's enjoying himself."
They were just about to launch the motor-boat when they caught the dull sound of oars in the distance. They waited. The rising moon struggled through the rack, and cast a faint light on the stream. Presently the dinghy appeared from among the overarching foliage. Armstrong was sculling very quietly.
"Thought you were lost," said Warrender. "It's past ten; your watch starts at eleven-forty."
"All right. Pratt, tie up, will you? Come with me, Warrender."
Armstrong led the way at a long, rapid stride across the clearing and into the thicket. He said nothing, and did not pause until he came to the shore of the western channel.
"Keep well behind this tree," he said, in a whisper, placing himself in shadow.
In a few minutes they heard the splash of oars. A boat emerged from the shades down stream, lit up fitfully by the transient moonbeams. It passed close beneath their hiding-place. It held a single oarsman, whose thickset frame would have been unmistakable even if the moonlight had not touched his face. He pulled out of sight.
"What's he been up to?" said Warrender.
"Let's get back," replied Armstrong. "I wanted a second witness. Pratt will wish to start a new career now, I expect."
CHAPTER XII
QUEER FISH
When Armstrong had started in the dinghy for a pull down the river his intention was to scull easily on the current to the mouth, then to turn westward, and exercise his muscles more strenuously in a contest with the wind. On reaching the coastline, however, he found that there was much more force in the breeze than had appeared inland, and a considerable swell on the sea, and he contented himself with hugging the shore, protected in some measure by the cliffs that swept round to a promontory in the distance.
After a stiff pull for half an hour or so he turned. The last faint radiance of sunset was behind him, and as he approached the river mouth, being himself shadowed by the cliffs, he noticed signs of activity about the fisher's hut on the beach beyond the farther bank. Two men were carrying what appeared to be fishing gear down to a boat at the water's edge. The weather seemed scarcely to promise good fishing, and, knowing from his friends that the hut was in the occupation, if not the possession, of Rush, he was sufficiently interested to decide upon watching the men's proceedings. He pulled a little more closely inshore, shipped his oars, and lay to under cover of a mass of rock.
In a few minutes the men got aboard the boat, and pulled out to sea in the direction of a small tramp steamer which was just visible on the eastern horizon, and, as the trail of smoke from its funnel showed, was coming down channel. It seemed to Armstrong a good opportunity for examining the hut; possibly he might find there some clue to Rush's mysterious activities. Assured that under the shadow of the cliffs he would be invisible to the boatmen, he pulled across to the opposite beach, and ran the dinghy ashore in a small, sheltered cove two or three hundred yards from the hut. Leaving the boat high and dry, he made his way back along the beach at the foot of the cliffs, and approached the hut, which stood on a rocky platform above high-water mark. As he neared it he was careful to keep it between himself and the boat at sea; Rush, if he were one of the two, was probably long-sighted.
By the time he reached the hut the boat was nearly a mile out, and the men appeared to be letting down a net. He slipped in through the open door, and threw a glance round the interior, seizing the last moments of twilight for his rapid scrutiny. He saw, as might have been expected, the usual fisherman's gear: old nets, lobster pots, cork floats, a broken oar, part of a rudder, an old sou'wester, baskets, ropes--nothing that had any particular interest or significance. But, just as he was about to leave, he noticed in the darkest corner half a dozen tins strung by the handles upon a length of trailing rope. Their shape suggested paraffin or petrol rather than any material useful to fishers; yet they were not the common petrol cans; they were larger and wider-necked than those that held the ordinary motor-spirit. He lifted one; it was empty, but very firmly corked, as likewise were the others.
Armstrong took one of the cans, stretching the rope, towards the door, to examine it more closely in what was left of the twilight. On the shoulder, enclosed in a panel, was an embossed description, the characters reminding Armstrong of the printed letters of the Russian newspaper.
"Rummy," he thought. "Gradoff, judging by his name, is a Russian, and the only Russian hereabouts. Yet we find a Russian newspaper in the cellar, and Russian petrol tins in Rush's hut. Queer!"
He replaced the cans, and left the hut. As he did so he saw, out at sea, the steamer he had noticed as a distant smudge some twenty minutes before. No smoke was now pouring from her funnel; apparently she had stopped or slowed down some distance beyond the small boat. While he was watching, the vessel went ahead. The small boat rowed farther out; then appeared to beat about for a time; finally stopped, and from the movements of the figures Armstrong saw aboard, they were lifting something from the water. The steamer, meanwhile, was proceeding steadily on her course down channel.
The growing dusk had rendered it impossible for the watcher to discern anything clearly; steamer, boat, and men were merely indistinct shapes. But the boat, without doubt, was the one that he had seen leave the beach; its movements were strange, and Armstrong decided to await its return. Who were its occupants? What was their errand? What were they bringing back with them?
The enlarging boat was evidently coming ashore. Armstrong looked rapidly around, and spied, close to the hut, and, between that and his own boat, a ridge of rock that would give him cover. Posting himself there, he waited. The dusk deepened. Presently he heard the faint, slow, regular thuds of oars in the rowlocks, then low voices. He could now discern the boat as a dark patch on the white crests of the rollers. It came steadily in, grounded; the two men sprang into the surf. The tide was going out. They did not haul the boat up, but lifted from it the bundles of gear and carried them into the hut. But there was no fish. They passed Armstrong's hiding-place near enough for him to recognise them. The first of them was Rush; the second--even in the dusk Armstrong knew again that broad, flat face. It was the face he had seen in the thicket--the face of the mysterious assailant Pratt had described.
"THEY LIFTED THE BUNDLES OF GEAR AND CARRIED THEM INTO THE HUT."
After disposing of their gear in the hut, they returned to the boat. The stranger, a big man, came up again alone, bent under a bulky package, to which a string of petrol tins was attached. "Smugglers, by jiminy!" thought Armstrong. The package appeared to be encased in tarpaulin. The man halted at the door of the hut, let down his load, detached the cans, and waited. In a few seconds Rush joined him, helped him to hoist the package to his back, and bade him a gruff "Good-night." The man marched heavily up the beach to the east, towards a narrow rift in the cliff. Rush took the cans into the hut, shut and locked the door, and, with his hands in his pockets, moved slowly down towards his boat. Fearing that as he rowed back he might discover the dinghy in the cove, Armstrong hurried quietly away, shoved off, and had turned into the river when he heard the splash of Rush's oars. Pulling quickly but steadily, he was out of sight by the time Rush reached the mouth, and when he arrived at the camping-place guessed that he and Warrender could cross to the western shore of the island before Rush rowed past.
Such was the story Armstrong quietly told his companions as they sat on their chairs before the tent.
"Smugglers!" ejaculated Pratt, lowering his voice as if instinctively. "I thought the smuggling days were over long ago. D'you think Rush does a roaring trade in Dutch tobacco, and finds the foreign gang at the house good customers? Tobacco weighs light for its bulk. How big was the bundle, Jack?"
"Two or three feet square, I think," replied Armstrong. "But tobacco is light, as you say. I fancy this was something else, for Rush had to help the other fellow lift it."
"And he took it eastward up the cliff?"
"Yes, in the direction that would lead to your uncle's house, unless I'm out in my bearings."
"Well, I'm hanged! Won't my old uncle rave when he hears what his pet foreign domestics are up to in his absence! He's a terrible stickler for law and order, not the kind of man to wink at smuggling, as the county folk used to do in days of yore. That explains the light I saw."
"What light?" asked the others.
"I wended my way to the ruins to hear the spooks groan. They groan jolly well--a mellow note, mostly on B flat, I fancy, though it sometimes shrieks up a chromatic scale to what you may call vanishing point. Of course, it's caused by the wind, but what surprises me is how the wind can fetch such a musical tone out of a chimney-pot. It must be a tube of some sort, and what else could it be but a chimney-pot? I tried to find it, but that required an acrobatic feat too difficult for a man of my avoirdupois."
"But the light?" asked Warrender.
"Oh yes, I was forgetting! I was looking over towards my uncle's place when I saw a reddish sort of glow, just about the level of the tree-tops. It came and went, and presently it dawned upon my usually alert intelligence that it stood a good deal upon the order of its comings and goings; in fact, that it was a signal. It must have been just about the time that tramp steamer came in sight."
"But why on earth should anybody at the house, even if they are customers of Rush's, signal to the smuggling steamer?" asked Armstrong. "There aren't any revenue officers about here, and if there were any about the coast the people at the house wouldn't know anything about them."
"My dear chap, there are wheels within wheels," said Pratt, oracularly. "You have two contemporaneous phenomena--jolly good phrase, that!--the signal light, and the accosting of a tramp steamer by a poacher and a burglar. That's circumstantial evidence good enough for me."
"Well, drop theories, and come to practice," said Warrender. "Whatever the game is, we're going to find it out. It's time for us to take the offensive. These fellows have stalked us; it's now for us to stalk them. I vote we leave the island, and accept old Crawshay's offer. The enemy will chortle at having succeeded in driving us away, and will very likely be off his guard. Then we'll chip in."
"Just so; we'll reculer pour mieux sauter--you recognise the phrase, as your Gradoff would say? Your suggestion smiles to me, Phil. We carry it unanimously, and we'll strike camp the morn's morn. I say, listen!"
The wind had increased in force, and there came from the direction of the ruins the musical moan which Warrender, alone of the three, had not yet heard.
"'The horns of Elfland faintly blowing,'" quoted Pratt. "Really, it seems a pity, after all, to leave a spot which one can imagine the haunt of fairies, the seat of an enchanted palace, the----"
"Don't start the sentimental strain!" Armstrong interposed. "Suppose your horns of Elfland are a signal, too?"
"Jehoshaphat! What a synthetic mind you have, old bird! I shouldn't be surprised if---- But no! it won't wash. A signal that depended on the wind wouldn't be any good. Leave me some of my illusions, Jack. Let me revel in my romantic imaginings. Call it Roland's horn, appealing vainly for succour when the paladin was fighting fearful odds in the pass of Roncesvaux."
"I think you'd better turn in, old man," said Warrender. "It's your last watch to-night. We none of us got much sleep last night, and that crack on the head----"
"I'm cracked. All right--wake me at two-twenty."
He withdrew into the tent. His companions, tired though they were, resolved to keep each other company, and patrol the neighbourhood of the camp till it was time to awaken Pratt. Hour after hour passed. Nothing disturbed them. The wind increased to the force of half a gale, and the sound from the ruins persisted with scarcely a variation of pitch. When two-twenty came they agreed to let Pratt sleep on, and kept vigil until the eastern sky was streaked with dawn.
"D'you hear the sound?" asked Warrender, suddenly.
"No; it's stopped. But the wind is higher than ever," Armstrong replied.
"That's queer. The wind is in the same direction, too. Darkness and light oughtn't to make any difference."
"Perhaps it has blown the old chimney-pot clean off the roof. I'll go down and have a look presently. I'm dog-tired. We might take a couple of hours' sleep now, don't you think?"
CHAPTER XIII
FIRE!
About eleven o'clock next morning Warrender and Pratt landed from the motor-boat at the ferry, and, inquiring of the ferryman the way to Mr. Crawshay's house, struck up the hilly road that ran westward from the right bank of the river. Mr. Crawshay, it was true, had invited them to make straight for the house across the fields; but they had decided that it would be more becoming, on this first visit, to observe the customary forms.
The house stood amid well-kept grounds, about as far west of the river as Mr. Pratt's was in the opposite direction.
The apple-cheeked maid-servant who answered their ring announced that her master was out, and would not return till the afternoon. Disappointed, they were leaving when Lilian Crawshay, who had recognised Warrender's voice as she descended the stairs, called to them.
"You wanted to see my father, Mr. Warrender?" she asked, as they turned back.
"Yes; I'm sorry he's out, but we'll call again this afternoon."
"What a pity, when you have so far to go! Can't I give him a message? Won't you come in and see Mother?"
"It's very good of you, but we have some shopping to do in the village, or Armstrong will get no lunch. It will be no trouble to come again. We get up and down very quickly in the motor-boat."
"Well, then come up in time for tea. Father will be home then; he has only gone on some stupid business of quarter-sessions. And bring Mr. Armstrong with you. Mother was greatly interested in the 'Three Musketeers.'"
"Thank you very much."
"Good-bye, then, for the present. Tea is at half-past four."
"Why didn't you tell her we can't all come?" said Pratt, as they walked away.
"Because it's clear that the old man hasn't said anything about our affairs, and I couldn't anticipate him with explanations. We'll toss for the odd man."
On returning to the ferry Pratt went on to the village to make some necessary purchases, leaving Warrender to forestall gossip by informing Rogers of their change of plan. Warrender rapped on the door.
"Bain't opening time yet," called a voice from above. Mrs. Rogers's head appeared at an open window. "Oh, beg pardon; 'tis you, sir. We have to be that careful; Constable Hardstone be always on the prowl. You'll find Rogers in the garden, sir--through that little gate. And if so be you find he haven't got his hair on, I beseech 'ee to mind him of it; he's that careless of his brains, and I know they'll be broiled some day."
The innkeeper, with his wig awry, was pinching out his tomatoes. He smiled when Warrender told him of the projected removal of the camp.
"'Tis what I expected--ay, and all the village likewise," he said.
"We find the island a trifle inconvenient, you know," said Warrender, in pursuance of the understanding he had come to with his companions that their real reason should not at present be disclosed.
"Ay sure, that's what we all said. The neighbours wondered how long you'd stand it."
"Stand what?" asked Warrender, wondering whether any whispers of the truth had got abroad.
"Why, them sperits. Flesh and blood you can deal with, but when it comes to sperits they're bound to get the better of you, give 'em time. You can't get hold of 'em no way. Smite 'em, you might as well smite the wind. I've been here and there about the world in my time, and I tell 'ee I wouldn't spend a night on that island not if you doubled my pension."
"Well, we did hear some very queer sounds last night. Of course, it was very windy. I expected rain to-day, but it has cleared up. By the way, are there any coastguards about here?"
"There's Lloyd's signal station away at the point yonder. I go over now and again for a crack and a smoke with an old messmate of mine."
"How far is it?"
"Four mile or so. You go past Mr. Crawshay's, then sheer off to the left and get into the old coastguard track over the cliffs."
"I'll take a walk out there some day. We haven't seen much of the neighbourhood yet. There's no signal station in the village, of course."
"No; we're too far from the sea. Have 'ee heard what they're saying about Mr. Pratt, sir?"
"What's that?"
"Ah, poor gentleman. 'Tis feared he've gone a-lost, or been swallered by lions, or summat. 'Tis the end of many a poor traveller."
"Why do they fear that? Is there any news?"
"No; that's where 'tis; there be no news at all. 'Tis five weeks since he went off, not a soul knowing, as his way is; and Susan Barter up at post office was saying only yesterday that there's not been a single line from him to any o' they people at the house. 'Tis never been knowed afore. As a rule there's a letter from Paris, or Marseilles, or Brindisi--ay, from places farther away; but this time not a line. He'll be missed in the parish, sir, if so be he've gone aloft, like poor Tom Bowling."
Rogers proceeded to relate anecdotes of his landlord--instances of his peppery outbursts and splenetic quarrels with his county neighbours, but more of kindly deeds and unobtrusive generosity among his poorer tenants.
"And your friend be his nephew, to be sure!" he added. "Well, don't worrit the poor young gent yet awhile. No news is good news; maybe there'll be word of him one of these days. Susan Barter is sure to tell us."
Presently Pratt returned, laden with sundry parcels. The boys took leave of Rogers, and by half-past twelve were back in camp. Armstrong had nothing to report. He declined at first to make one of the tea-party, but when the spin of a coin elected him against Pratt, he yielded to Warrender's argument that it would appear discourteous if only one of them accepted the invitation. Promptly at half-past four the two, wearing grey flannels for the occasion, entered the grounds of Mr. Crawshay's house, and were met on the drive by the owner himself.
"Glad to see you, my lads," he said, heartily. "You've something to tell me? I guessed it. Now, not a word before the ladies. I haven't told them anything of your troubles; best not to disturb them, you know. We'll have a talk in private, after tea."
The consequence was that presently Armstrong found himself left in the company of Mrs. Crawshay and her daughter, while Warrender was taken by Mr. Crawshay to his study.
It had been decided that nothing should be said to the old gentleman about the visit to the Red House, the mysterious doings of Rush at sea, or the strange light Pratt had seen among the trees. Determined as the lads were to probe the mystery to the bottom, they felt that their purpose might be defeated by any premature activity on the part of the county magistrate. Accordingly, when Mr. Crawshay and Warrender were seated in deep armchairs facing each other, and the former said, "Now, my lad, what is the latest news?" Warrender simply related the incident of the midnight visit to the camp, concluding--
"And so, sir, we have decided to accept your offer of a camping-place on your land, not merely to escape these annoyances--we should rather like to hold our ground in regard to them--but because we think we should stand a better chance of discovering what really is going on."
"Ah, what does that mean? There's more in it than appears?"
"If you don't mind, sir, I won't tell you details now; but we have found out one or two facts that have given rise to certain suspicions. By removing from the island we feel that we shall be better able to put them to the test, and when our information is complete we will lay it before you."
"Well, I won't press you. Many a rogue has escaped justice because the case against him has been badly prepared. Tell me all in your own time. Now as to your camp. There's a little natural dock in my bank of the river. I'll put on my gardener and odd man to make a small clearing for you. It's too late to-day; the men knock off at five--eight hours' day, you know. But you can bring your boat up the river, and put up for the night with me."
"Thank you, sir; but we have a little errand at the signal station before we go back--it might be rather late before we could get everything packed up. I think we had better wait till the morning."
"Very well. You may have fresh light on the matter then. I shall expect all three to lunch to-morrow. On my land you won't need to guard your camp."
Taking leave a little later, the boys walked across the cliffs to the signal station. On inquiry from the man in charge they learnt that the steamer seen late on the previous evening was the Katarina, from Helsingfors for New York.
"Did you notice a small boat pull out to her?" asked Armstrong.
"Rush's boat," replied the man. "It didn't pull out to her; 'twas out before she came in sight. Rush has some lobster pots out there. He's a well-known character in these parts."
They thanked their informant, and retraced their steps.
"She was a Russian boat," remarked Armstrong. "No secret about her name or course. All the same--a Russian newspaper, a Russian secretary at the Red House, Russian petrol cans, a Russian steamer. Queer coincidences, at the least."
It was nearly eight o'clock when they regained the camp. Pratt was humming "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls" to the accompaniment of his banjo.
"And how is the fair lady of the punctured tyre?" he asked. "Did she deplore my absence?"
"She did say something about 'that amusing Mr. Pratt,'" Armstrong replied. "I like her mother."
"We're all going up to lunch to-morrow," said Warrender, and explained the arrangements made.
"Then, as it's our last night on this island of spooks, I vote that Armstrong and I go to the ruins and track that weird sound," said Pratt. "The wind is high; we'll have time before dark."
Armstrong and he set off. The breeze was blowing in the same direction, and almost as strongly, as on the night before, but no moaning met their ears. Arriving at the cottage, they heard the characteristic whistle and hiss of wind playing about the eaves, but not the tuneful, mellow note that had reminded Pratt of an organ pipe. They searched around the base of the walls for a recently fallen chimney-pot. There was none.
"Extraordinary!" said Pratt. "No wonder the rustics are jumpy. Of course, there must be some simple explanation--some slight change of direction in the wind, I expect. If you've ever tried to play the penny whistle you'll know that you can't always get a note, when you're a beginner. We've had our walk for nothing."
They were half-way back to the camp; dusk was just merging into darkness, when the organ-note, riding, as it were, upon the rustle of the leaves, struck upon their ears.
"By George!" exclaimed Pratt. "One would think the spook was just waiting for the dark. Come back. This is an acoustical phenomenon worth writing about to some scientific rag."
They hurried back to the ruins, and sprang up the staircase. Pratt tracked the sound, as before, to the partially unroofed room on the west side. Armstrong tried to climb up the jagged brickwork of the outer wall, but found the footing too insecure to persevere. Baffled, they stood for a while listening.
"It's no good," said Armstrong at last. "It's a job for daylight. Besides, it's of no importance; we've got more interesting mysteries to fathom."
"True, old matter-of-fact. You haven't a disinterested passion for science. Well, I'll show you where I saw the light from last night."
They went into the other room, and looked across the river into the darkness, faintly patterned by the nearer trees. Suddenly, high up, a glow appeared, shone for a second, disappeared, recurred. They watched in silence. Presently Armstrong spoke.
"They're certainly signals. Keep your eye on them; count them."
There was a period of complete darkness; it seemed that the signalling had ceased. Then the glow peered over the tree-tops again; it was repeated at regular intervals, at first short, then longer, then short again.
"It's like Morse," said Armstrong. "Did you count?"
"Nine times."
"In groups of three?"
"Four, three, and two, I thought."
"So did I. Well, if it's Morse, that spells VGI. What on earth does that mean?"
"Goodness knows. It's stopped. Wonder if it'll start again?"
A minute or two passed. Again the glow appeared, at intervals as before. Again they counted its appearances.
"Nine times. Three groups of three--longs and shorts. I make that ROD."
"Well, that's a word, at any rate; and the chef's name, by gum! But what about VGI?"
"Perhaps I was mistaken. We'll wait for the next."
But though they remained some ten minutes at the window the glow appeared no more.
"A dashed fruitless expedition!" exclaimed Pratt, as they descended the stairs. "They used to divide science into sound, light, and heat. We're flummoxed by sound and light; it only wants heat to biff us altogether."
Before many hours had passed they had reason to remember that almost prophetic utterance of Pratt's. It was his turn again to take the middle watch, and at eleven-forty Armstrong wakened him.
"Hang you, Jack!" he cried. "I was dreaming I was blowing fire-balloons out of an organ pipe, and I wanted to see the end of it. All serene?"
"Not a mouse stirring."
"Well, the air doesn't bite shrewdly. I cap your quotation, you see. It's a warm sou'wester. Can you hear that sound?"
"Just faintly. I say, I believe I understand that signal. I've been thinking it over. I've had no particular practice in reading signals; perhaps the fellow signalling is a novice, too. In that case one or other of us might easily make a mistake. It's clear he made three letters each time; I fancy they weren't either VGI or ROD."
"What then?"
"S.O.S."
"What-ho! The signal of distress at sea. But, I say, this is on land, old man."
"Yes; but I take it that it's a signal for help that any one knowing Morse might make."
"But who wants help? In my uncle's grounds? Wait a jiff. It was in the direction of the house. I have it! What a pudding-head I am! Of course, Rod's wife. You remember she tried to signal to you and Phil. She's in trouble. She's being ill-treated, or something. She's calling for help. We're to be knights-errant--Perseus rescuing Andromeda----"
"Oh, shut up! Is it likely that an innkeeper's sister would know Morse?"
"Mark my words, I'm right. A woman knows everything she wants to. Turn in, old chap. I wanted something to keep me awake, and I'll cogitate a plan for rescuing Molly Andromeda from the jaws of the Minotaur."
Pratt, however, found that cogitation was an ineffectual preventive against drowsiness. Three disturbed nights in succession was an experience unknown to him heretofore. He paced about for a little, sat down and lit a cigarette, dozed over it, started up and walked again. Once more he sat down, ruminated, nodded--and presently awoke, sniffing. What was that smell of burning? He looked on the ground, where the half-smoked cigarette lay. It was dead. He got up. The smell was in the air. He took a few steps, looking around. His eye caught a flicker of flame to windward--two, three flickers some yards apart. For a moment his drowsy intelligence failed to respond to his senses; for a moment only. Then he shouted--
"Hi, you fellows! Fire! Fire!"
Already the flickers had been whipped by the wind into a wall of flame, advancing with a hiss and low roar from the thicket across the little clearing. The heat of the last few days had dried the grass, which, though much trampled around the tent, was still long. The fire swept over it like a ruddy tide. Smoke surged across the open space; twigs and leaves crackled in the surrounding thicket. When Armstrong and Warrender, awakened by the shouts, the reck, the roar and crackle, tumbled out in their pyjamas, they choked and spluttered and fell back before the intolerable heat and smother.
It was only too clear that the camp was doomed. There was not time to lower the tent. They rescued what they could. Armstrong dashed into the tent, and returned dragging the three Gladstones that held their clothes. Pratt caught up a petrol can and his banjo; Warrender secured his razor-case and sponge-bag. Driven by the remorseless flames, they retreated hurriedly towards the river, working round to the right until they arrived at a spot on the bank that lay out of the course of the wind. There they stood, coughing, watching the scene, fascinated. Springing from the south-west, the fire raced across the island, like a giant cutting with blazing scythe a path through the tough undergrowth. There was nothing to stay its advance. The low flames danced beneath the trees, red goblins in a dust of smoke, twigs and branches crackling, the sappy wood adding rather to the smother than to the blaze.
"Sound, light, and heat!" murmured Pratt. "What a magnificent spectacle!"
"We've paid pretty dearly for our tickets!" said Armstrong, morosely.
"And some one shall pay pretty dearly before I've done with them!" cried Warrender. "We're homeless. We'd better run up to the Ferry Inn, and get Rogers to bed us."
"We'll be the talk of the village for a hundred years," said Pratt. "We'll pass into legend; future ages will tell of the three magicians who exorcised the spooks of No Man's Island with fire."
"Come and help shove off the boat," said Warrender. "We've still got that, thank goodness!"
The fire had burnt itself out at the north-east of the island by the time the boat passed. At the ferry was assembled a crowd of the natives. Rogers was in the act of setting off in Fisherman Drew's boat, along with Blevins, Hardstone, the village constable, and one or two more.
"Praise be!" exclaimed the innkeeper, as the motor-boat ran alongside the stage. "I was afeared as you young gentlemen might be cinders."
"We're only smoked at present, dry-cured," said Pratt. "Saved our bacon, you see."
"I want to know summat about this," said the constable. "I'll have to make a report. If so be you set fire to that there island, with the terrible destruction of growing trees, I won't say but 'twill be brought in arson, and that's five years' penal. Which one of you was it chucked down the match?"
"My dear good man," said Pratt, blandly, "we're only too anxious to give every assistance to the officer of the law; but, as you see, we're in a great state of nervous agitation. D'you think Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in a condition to answer questions after their experience of the fiery furnace? Abed we go, if Mr. Rogers will oblige us. Come up in the morning, constable; you're all losing your beauty sleep. In the morning we'll swear affidavits, or whatever it is you want. To-night we're too tired even to swear. Good-night."
CHAPTER XIV
A CIRCULAR TOUR
Fatigued though they were, the boys lay long awake in the room Mrs. Rogers provided for them, discussing the situation into which they had been thrown by the fire, and their plans for the future. They had saved next to nothing but their clothes. If they were to start another camp a new tent--almost a complete new outfit--would be necessary. Pratt suggested that they should accept Mr. Crawshay's offer and take up their abode with him until the mystery of the island had been solved; but this idea was opposed by the others, Armstrong in particular pointing out that they would stand a better chance of success if they remained more closely in touch with their former encampment.
"We must do our best to throw the beggars off the scent," he said. "If we rig up barbed wire round our new camp, they'll imagine we're merely on the defensive, and the longer we keep up that illusion, the better."
"I agree," said Warrender. "There can't be the slightest doubt now that something is going on on the island that they'll stick at nothing to prevent our discovering. We've got to make them believe we can't see farther than the ends of our noses, so we must keep quiet, pretend we think the fire was caused by our cigarettes--anything to put them off their guard. But, of course, we must take the first opportunity of making another search in the ruins. It's as plain as a pikestaff that that moaning sound is artificial; that is to say, they've got some sort of an instrument rigged up that catches the wind just when they wish, and only then. And that signal must have something to do with their schemes; I'm inclined to think you're mistaken, Armstrong, and it's not S.O.S. at all."
"Perhaps," replied Armstrong.
"I stick to it that Molly Rogers or Rod is in distress," said Pratt. "Rogers was a seaman, and there's nothing unlikely in his sister knowing something of Morse. I had a passion for ciphers at one time, and my sister Joan was very keen on it, I can tell you. Anyway, we'll ask Rogers in the morning."
They got up to a late breakfast. Rogers brought them their bacon and eggs, and they were struck by a peculiarity in his appearance.
"I say, Rogers, what's happened to your beautiful auburn locks?" asked Pratt.
The innkeeper looked profoundly depressed.
"I begged and prayed the missus, but 'twas no good," he answered. "She will have me wear a nightcap at night, and my hair by day, no matter how hot it be. I said as every one will laugh at me, and she said as health comes afore feelings."
"A very wise woman. Still, as a mere matter of scientific curiosity, we'd like to know how that brown became apple-green."
Rogers snatched off his wig and held it out with a gesture of indignation.
"'Tis a trick of some blessed young scug in the village, and if I catch him I'll give him all the colours of the rainbow. I did but set my hair on a pea-stick while I was digging yesterday, the missus being out for the day. I own I forgot it, and when, come night, I thought I'd better put it on, bless me if I could find it. Half an hour after I'd closed the door the missus came home. 'Here's a parcel on the doorstep,' says she, and then she undoes it, and gives a shriek. 'You wicked man!' says she: 'you've done it just to rile me.' As if the cussed thing warn't bad enough brown, for one to want it green! Of course I telled her as how I'd put it down and missed it, and she went on like one o'clock, said I'd have to wear it, green or blue, and I'd better stand out in the first shower of rain and see if it'd wash clean, and 'twould be a lesson to me. Don't you never go bald, young gentlemen: 'tis the way to break up a happy home."
"Hard luck, Rogers," said Pratt. "But the colour will soon wear off. You'll be piebald for a bit, I dare say--sort of mottled, you know; but nobody will think the worse of you. I say, you and your sister were great pals, weren't you?"
"Till the missus come along, sir."
"And no doubt you taught her how to splice ropes and reef sails, and make signals, and all that?"
"There you're wrong, sir. The lass don't know more than a babby about such things; and as for signals, I don't know nothing about 'em myself."
Pratt looked crestfallen.
"One theory exploded," remarked Armstrong.
"Did 'ee signal for help last night?" asked Rogers.
"Well, we----" Pratt began, but Warrender interrupted him.
"No, we hadn't time," he said. "The fire came on us too suddenly. By the way, we shall have to buy some new things. I suppose Blevins can provide us with a tent?"
"Surely, sir; he've most everything somewhere about. I always thought no good 'ud come of camping on that island. There's a fate in it."
"How long has it had this ill name?" asked Armstrong.
"Not so long, sir. You see, nobody bothered much about it after the old man died years ago. It didn't belong to no one, seemingly; there was nothing to take any of the folk there; and 'twasn't till a month or two ago that they began to talk of sperits. Nick Rush came in all of a tremble one night--he'd been away for a bit--and said he was setting a snare there when he heard most horrible groanings and moanings. He took some of the folk along, and they heard 'em too, and ever since then the village have give it a wide berth. You're well out of it, that's what I say. Not as ghosts carry matches, though; I reckon 'twas one of you young gentlemen a-smoking as did the mischief."
"A lesson to us, Rogers," said Pratt, gravely. "Smoking is a very bad habit, according to our masters at school--who all smoke like furnaces--they ought to know."
They had hardly finished breakfast when Mr. Crawshay drove down to the ferry in a light trap, crossing on foot.
"It's true, then," he said, as he entered the parlour. "I knew nothing about it until an hour ago. A lighted match, they say."
Pratt got up and closed the door.
"Let them say, sir. We were burnt out."
"You don't say so! Upon my word, it's time something was done. Have you lost much?"
"Almost everything but our clothes."
"Scandalous! Then you'll come up to the house?"
"We'd rather keep to our arrangement, sir," said Warrender. "It will give us a better chance of running the fellows to earth. We think of making a thorough search on the island. The difficulty is that we can't do it by daylight; we are sure to be watched, at any rate for a day or two. There's another difficulty. They're sure to keep their eye on our motor-boat and dinghy; it will be too risky to use them. Of course, we could swim the river, but it would be a bit of a nuisance."
"I can help you there. You had better not use my skiff, but I've an old Norwegian pram in one of my outhouses----"
"A what, sir?" asked Pratt.
"A pram--a sort of abbreviated punt. At one time I used it for fishing on the river. It's small and very light; two of you could carry it. You had better fetch it yourselves; my men might talk in the village. I have set them clearing a camping-place for you, by the way. It's about half-way between here and the island. But I can't lend you a tent."
Warrender explained that he proposed to buy one of the general dealer.
"Very well," said Mr. Crawshay. "I shall expect you to lunch. We'll talk over things then more at leisure."
While Warrender went off to do the necessary shopping, Armstrong and Pratt, in the dinghy, set out for their new camping-place. It lay on the shore of a little natural bay some fifteen yards deep and about half that width. Mr. Crawshay's gardeners had already mown the long grass and lopped some of the lower branches of overhanging trees. A ten minutes' walk through the wood and across fields brought the two boys to the house, where Mr. Crawshay had already arrived. Having seen that none of his men were about, the old gentleman led them to the outhouse in which he kept his pram; and by the time that Warrender, conveying his purchases in the motor-boat, reached the new encampment, the others had carried the odd little craft across the fields, and found a secure hiding-place for it in the wood a little distance from the bay, almost opposite to the north end of the island, near a spot convenient for landing under cover of the trees. With it Mr. Crawshay had lent them a couple of light oars.
After erecting their new tent--a sorry specimen compared with the one that had been destroyed--they went up to the house for lunch, discussed their plans with Mr. Crawshay privately in his study, and returned to fence the camp with barbed wire and get things in order. So far there had been no sign of the enemy; but in the course of the afternoon Armstrong climbed a tree from which, unobserved himself, he could obtain a view of the opposite bank of the river, and discovered without surprise that a spy was lurking among the bushes. No doubt all their ostensible proceedings had been watched, and they congratulated themselves on the illusion of mere defensiveness which their business-like activity must have created.
During the remainder of the day they were careful not to depart from their usual procedure. They had an early supper; when they had cleared away and washed up, they placed three oddly assorted and shabby deck-chairs, purchased from Blevins, in front of the tent, and while Armstrong and Warrender read newspapers, Pratt warbled sentimental ditties to the accompaniment of his banjo.
Just before dark Pratt and Armstrong went into the tent to go to bed, while Warrender perambulated the camp armed with a thick club. The spin of a coin had decided that he should remain on guard while the others paid a nocturnal visit to the island.
About midnight, when it was quite dark, the two raiders crept out of the tent, and striking inland for a little, made their roundabout way to the spot where the pram was hidden. Reconnoitring carefully, to assure themselves that their movements had not been followed, they lifted the pram, lowered it gently into the water, and pushed off, floating on the tide near the bank, and steering with one oar in the stern. They struck the shore of the island about midway, seized a projecting branch, and drawing their craft into the bank, pulled it up among the reeds at the edge. Then they started to cross the island.
It was pitch-dark in the thicket. Spreading roots and trailing brambles tripped their feet; their faces were lashed by the foliage as they pushed their way through; thorns caught at their clothes. It was difficult to avoid noise. Twigs snapped underfoot, branches creaked and rustled, and every now and again there was a strident shriek of rent clothing as they tore themselves from the embrace of some clinging bramble. Heedless of the obstacles, hot and weary, they plodded doggedly on, and presently, after making unconscionably slow progress, they emerged upon the bank of the river. The stream looked much wider than they had expected.
"Whereabouts are we?" whispered Pratt.
"We've come too far south, I fancy," returned Armstrong.
They peered up and down, trying vainly to discover some landmark. They stood listening; there was breeze enough to cause the moaning, but they heard no sound except the rustle of the leaves and the gentle gurgle of the tide. They cast about, taking wary steps up stream and down; hoping in one direction or the other to come upon the wilderness garden.
Suddenly Pratt whispered: "I say, this isn't a tidal river, is it?"
"No; it always flows down," replied Armstrong. "Why?"
"Because----"
And then he stopped.
"Look here," he murmured to Armstrong behind him.
Armstrong looked, and there, at Pratt's feet, was the dark shape of the pram, nestling in its bed of reeds.
"Hang!" exclaimed Armstrong. "We've been going in a circle."
"Just so. Everybody does it!" said Pratt, with a chuckle. "I suspected it when I noticed the way the stream was flowing."
"Nothing to chortle about," Armstrong growled. "We've had all our trouble for nothing. Absolutely waste time!"
"But look how we've enlarged our experience! I think I'd like to be a traveller, like my old uncle. I've read about these circular tours often enough, but never believed in 'em. Why can't one walk straight in the dark?"