The Shadow of the Wolf

by

R. Austin Freeman

A. L. Burt Company

New York

Published by arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company

Copyright, 1925, by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

Contents

Chapter I.
In Which Two Men Go Forth and One Arrives

About half-past eight on a fine, sunny June morning, a small yacht crept out of Sennen Cove near the Land’s End and headed for the open sea. On the shelving beach of the Cove two women and a man, evidently visitors (or “foreigners” to use the local term), stood watching her departure with valedictory waving of cap or handkerchief, and the boatman who had put the crew on board, aided by two of his comrades, was hauling his boat up above the tide-mark.

A light northerly breeze filled the yacht’s sails and drew her gradually seaward. The figures of her crew dwindled to the size of dolls; shrank with the increasing distance to the magnitude of insects; and at last, losing all individuality, became mere specks merged in the form of the fabric that bore them. At this point the visitors turned their faces inland and walked away up the beach, and the boatmen, having opined that “she be fetchin’ a tidy offing” dismissed the yacht from their minds and reverted to the consideration of a heap of netting and some invalid lobster pots.

On board the receding craft two men sat in the little cockpit. They formed the entire crew, for the Sandhopper was only a ship’s lifeboat, timbered and decked, of light draught and, in the matter of spars and canvas, what the art critics would call “reticent.”

Both men, despite the fineness of the weather, wore yellow oilskins and sou’westers, and that was about all they had in common. In other respects they made a curious contrast, the one small, slender, sharp-featured, dark almost to swarthiness, and restless and quick in his movements: the other large, massive, red-faced, blue-eyed, with the rounded outlines suggestive of ponderous strength: a great ox of a man, heavy, stolid, but much less unwieldy than he looked.

The conversation incidental to getting the yacht under way had ceased and silence had fallen on the occupants of the cockpit. The big man grasped the tiller and looked sulky, which was probably his usual aspect; and the small man watched him furtively. The land was nearly two miles distant when the latter broke the silence with a remark very similar to that of the boatman on the beach.

“You’re not going to take the shore on board, Purcell. Where are we supposed to be going to?”

“I am going outside the Longships,” was the stolid answer.

“So I see,” rejoined the other. “It’s hardly the shortest course for Penzance though.”

“I like to keep an offing on this coast,” said Purcell; and once more the conversation languished.

Presently the smaller man spoke again; this time in a more cheerful and friendly tone. “Joan Haygarth has come on wonderfully the last few months; getting quite a fine-looking girl. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” answered Purcell; “and so does Phil Rodney.”

“You’re right,” agreed the other. “But she isn’t a patch on her sister though; and never will be. I was looking at Maggie as we came down the beach this morning and thinking what a handsome girl she is. Don’t you agree with me?”

Purcell stooped to look under the boom and answered without turning his head:

“Yes, she’s all right.”

“All right!” exclaimed the other. “Is that the way—”

“Look here, Varney,” interrupted Purcell; “I don’t want to discuss my wife’s looks with you or any other man. She’ll do for me or I shouldn’t have married her.”

A deep, coppery flush stole into Varney’s cheeks. But he had brought the rather brutal snub on himself and apparently had the fairness to recognize the fact, for he mumbled an apology and relapsed into silence.

When he next spoke he did so with a manner diffident and uneasy as though approaching a disagreeable or difficult subject.

“There’s a little matter, Dan, that I’ve been wanting to speak to you about when we got a chance of a private talk.” He glanced a little anxiously at his stolid companion, who grunted, and then, without removing his gaze from the horizon ahead, replied: “You’ve a pretty fair chance now, seeing that we shall be bottled up together for another five or six hours. And it’s private enough unless you bawl loud enough to be heard at the Longships.”

It was not a gracious invitation. But that Varney had hardly expected; and if he resented the rebuff he showed no sign of annoyance, for reasons which appeared when he opened his subject.

“What I wanted to say,” he resumed, “was this. We’re both doing pretty well now on the square. You must be positively piling up the shekels and I can earn a decent living, which is all I want. Why shouldn’t we drop this flash note business?”

Purcell kept his blue eye fixed on the horizon and appeared to ignore the question; but after an interval, and without moving a muscle he said gruffly: “Go on,” and Varney continued:

“The lay isn’t what it was, you know. At first it was all plain sailing. The notes were first-class copies and not a soul suspected anything until they were presented at the bank. Then the murder was out; and the next little trip that I made was a very different affair. Two or three of the notes were suspected quite soon after I had changed them, and I had to be precious fly, I can tell you, to avoid complications. And now that the second batch has come into the Bank, the planting of fresh specimens is going to be no sinecure. There isn’t a money-changer on the continent of Europe that isn’t keeping his weather eyeball peeled, to say nothing of the detectives that the Bank people have sent abroad.”

He paused and looked appealingly at his companion. But Purcell, still minding his helm, only growled, “Well?”

“Well, I want to chuck it, Dan. When you’ve had a run of luck and pocketed your winnings is the time to stop play.”

“You’ve come into some money then, I take it,” said Purcell.

“No, I haven’t. But I can make a living now by safe and respectable means, and I’m sick of all this scheming and dodging with the gaol everlastingly under my lee.”

“The reason I asked,” said Purcell, “is that there is a trifle outstanding. You hadn’t forgotten that, I suppose?”

“No, I hadn’t forgotten it, but I thought that perhaps you might be willing to let me down a bit easily.”

The other man pursed up his thick lips, but continued to gaze stonily over the bow.

“Oh, that’s what you thought, hey?” he said; and then, after a pause, he continued: “I fancy you must have lost sight of some of the facts when you thought that. Let me just remind you how the case stands. To begin with, you start your career with a little playful forgery and embezzlement; you blew the proceeds and you are mug enough to be found out. Then I come in. I compound the affair with old Marston for a couple of thousand, and practically clean myself out of every penny I possess, and he consents to regard your temporary absence in the light of a holiday.

“Now, why do I do this? Am I a philanthropist? Devil a bit. I’m a man of business. Before I ladle out that two thousand, I make a business contract with you. I happen to possess the means of making and the skill to make a passable imitation of the Bank of England paper: you are a skilled engraver and a plausible scamp. I am to supply you with paper blanks: you are to engrave plates, print the notes and get them changed. I am to take two-thirds of the proceeds; and, although I have done the most difficult part of the work, I agree to regard my share of the profits as constituting repayment of the loan. Our contract amounts to this: I lend you two thousand without security—with an infernal amount of insecurity in fact—you ‘promise, covenant and agree,’ as the lawyers say, to hand me back ten thousand in instalments, being the products of our joint industry. It is a verbal contract which I have no means of enforcing; but I trust you to keep your word and up to the present you have kept it. You have paid me a little over four thousand. Now you want to cry off and leave the balance unpaid. Isn’t that the position?”

“Not exactly,” said Varney. “I’m not crying off the debt; I only want time. Look here, Dan: I’m making about five-fifty a year now. That isn’t much, but I’ll manage to let you have a hundred a year out of it. What do you say to that?”

Purcell laughed scornfully. “A hundred a year to pay off six thousand! That’ll take just sixty years; and as I’m now forty-three, I shall be exactly a hundred and three years of age when the last instalment is paid. I think, Varney, you’ll admit that a man of a hundred and three is getting a bit past his prime.”

“Well, I’ll pay you something down to start. I’ve saved about eighteen hundred pounds out of the note business. You can have that now, and I’ll pay off as much as I can at a time until I’m clear. Remember that if I should happen to get clapped in chokee for twenty years or so, you won’t get anything. And, I tell you, it’s getting a risky business.”

“I’m willing to take the risk,” said Purcell.

“I daresay you are!” Varney retorted passionately; “because it’s my risk. If I am grabbed, it’s my racket, you sit out. It’s I who passed the notes and I’m known to be a skilled engraver. That’ll be good enough for them. They won’t trouble about who made the paper.”

“I hope not,” said Purcell.

“Of course they wouldn’t; and you know I shouldn’t give you away.”

“Naturally. Why should you? Wouldn’t do you any good.”

“Well, give me a chance, Dan,” Varney pleaded. “This business is getting on my nerves. I want to be quit of it. You’ve had four thousand; that’s a hundred per cent. You haven’t done so badly.”

“I didn’t expect to do badly. I took a big risk. I gambled two thousand for ten.”

“Yes, and you got me out of the way while you put the screw on to poor old Haygarth to make his daughter marry you.” It was an indiscreet thing to say, but Purcell’s stolid indifference to his danger and distress had ruffled Varney’s temper somewhat.

Purcell however was unmoved. “I don’t know,” he said, “what you mean by getting you out of the way. You were never in the way. You were always hankering after Maggie, but I could never see that she wanted you.”

“Well, she certainly didn’t want you,” Varney retorted; “and, for that matter, I don’t think she wants you now.”

For the first time Purcell withdrew his eye from the horizon to turn it on his companion. And an evil eye it was, set in the great, sensual face, now purple with anger.

“What the devil do you mean?” he exclaimed furiously; “you infernal, sallow-faced little whipper-snapper! If you mention my wife’s name again I’ll knock you on the head and pitch you overboard.”

Varney’s face flushed darkly and for a moment he was inclined to try the wager of battle. But the odds were impossible, and if Varney was not a coward, neither was he a fool. But the discussion was at an end. Nothing was to be hoped for now. Those indiscreet words of provocation had rendered further pleading impossible; and as Varney relapsed into sullen silence, it was with the knowledge that for weary years to come, he was doomed, at best, to tread the perilous path of crime, or, more probably to waste the brightest years of his life in a convict prison. For it is a strange fact, and a curious commentary on our current ethical notions, that neither of these rascals even contemplated as a possibility the breach of a merely verbal covenant. A promise had been given. That was enough. Without a specific release, the terms of that promise must be fulfilled to the letter. How many righteous men—prim lawyers or strait-laced, church-going men of business—would have looked at the matter in the same way?

The silence that settled down on the yacht and the aloofness that encompassed the two men were conducive to reflection. Each of the men ignored the presence of the other. When the course was altered southerly Purcell slacked out the sheets with his own hand as he put up the helm. He might have been sailing single-handed. And Varney watched him askance but made no move, sitting hunched up on the locker, nursing a slowly-matured hatred and thinking his thoughts.

Very queer thoughts they were; rambling, but yet connected and very vivid. He was following out the train of events that might have happened, pursuing them to their possible consequences. Supposing Purcell had carried out his threat? Well, there would have been a pretty tough struggle, for Varney was no weakling. But a struggle with that solid fifteen stone of flesh could end only in one way. He glanced at the great, purple, shiny hand that grasped the knob of the tiller. Not the sort of hand that you would want at your throat! No, there was no doubt; he would have gone overboard.

And what then? Would Purcell have gone back to Sennen Cove, or sailed alone into Penzance? In either case he would have had to make up some sort of story; and no one could have contradicted him whether the story was believed or not. But it would have been awkward for Purcell.

Then there was the body. That would have washed up sooner or later, as much of it as the lobsters had left. Well, lobsters don’t eat clothes or bones, and a dent in the skull might take some accounting for. Very awkward, this, for Purcell. He would probably have had to clear out—to make a bolt for it, in short.

The mental picture of this great bully fleeing in terror from the vengeance of the law gave Varney appreciable pleasure. Most of his life he had been borne down by the moral and physical weight of this domineering brute. At school Purcell had fagged him; he had even bullied him up at Cambridge; and now he had fastened on for ever like the Old Man of the Sea. And Purcell always got the best of it. When he, Varney, had come back from Italy after that unfortunate little affair, behold! the girl whom they had both wanted (and who had wanted neither of them) had changed from Maggie Haygarth into Maggie Purcell. And so it was even unto this day. Purcell, once a bookkeeper in a paper-mill, now a prosperous “financier”—a money-lender, as Varney more than suspected—spent a part of his secret leisure making, in absolute safety, those accursed paper blanks; which he, Varney, must risk his liberty to change into money. Yes, it was quite pleasant to think of Purcell sneaking from town to town, from country to country with the police at his heels.

But in these days of telegraphs and extradition there isn’t much chance for a fugitive. Purcell would have been caught to a certainty; and he would have been hanged; no doubt of it. And passing lightly over less attractive details, Varney considered luxuriously the circumstances of the execution. What a figure he would have made, that great human ox, turning round and round at the end of a taut rope, like a baron of beef on a colossal roasting-jack. Varney looked gloatingly at his companion; considered his large, sullen face, and thought how it would swell and grow purple as the rope tightened round the thick, crimson neck.

A disagreeable picture, perhaps; but not to Varney, who saw it through the distorting medium of years of accumulated dislike. Then, too, there was the consideration that in the very moment that those brawny limbs had ceased to twitch, Maggie would have been free—would have been a widow. Not that that would have concerned him, Varney; he would have been in some Cornish churchyard, with a dent in his skull. Still it was a pleasant reflection.

The imagined picture of the execution gave him quite a lengthy entertainment. Then his errant thoughts began to spread out in search of other possibilities. For, after all, it was not an absolute certainty that Purcell could have got him overboard. There was just the chance that he might have gone overboard himself. That would have been a very different affair.

Varney settled himself composedly to consider the new and interesting train of consequences that would thus have been set going. They were more agreeable to contemplate than the others because they did not include his own demise. The execution scene made no appearance in this version. The salient fact was that his oppressor would have vanished; that the intolerable burden of his servitude would have been lifted for ever; that he would have been free.

The thought of his regained freedom set him dreaming of the future, the future that might have been if he could have been rid of this monstrous parasite; the future that might even have held a place for Maggie—for she would have been free, too. It was all very pleasant to think about, though rather tantalizing. He almost wished he had let Purcell try to put him over.

Of course, some explanation would have had to be given, some sort of story told; and people might not have believed him. Well, they could have pleased themselves about that. To be sure, there would have been the body; but if there were no marks of violence what of it? Besides, it really need never have washed ashore: that could easily have been prevented and if the body had never been found, who was to say that the man had gone overboard at all?

This again was a new view of the case and it set his thoughts revolving afresh. He found himself roughly sketching out the conditions under which the body might have vanished for ever. It was mere idle speculation to while away a dull hour with an uncongenial companion, and he let his thoughts ramble at large. Now he was away in the imagined future, a future of peace and prosperity and honourable effort; and now his thoughts came back unbidden to fill in some forgotten detail. One moment he was dreamily wondering whether Maggie would ever have listened to him, ever have come to care for him; the next, he was back in the yacht’s cabin where hung from a hook on the bulkhead the revolver that the Rodneys used to practise at floating bottles. It was usually loaded, he knew, but if not, there was a canvas bag full of cartridges in the starboard locker. Again he found himself dreaming of the home that he would have had, a home very different from the cheerless lodgings in which he moped at present; and then his thoughts had flitted back to the yacht’s hold and were busying themselves with the row of half-hundredweights that rested on the timbers on either side of the kelson.

It was a curious mental state; rambling, seemingly incoherent, yet quite purposeful: the attention oscillating between the great general idea and its various component details. He was like a painter roughing out the preliminary sketch of a picture; at first carelessly smearing in the general effect, then pausing from time to time to sharpen an edge, to touch in a crisp light, to define the shape of a shadow, but never losing sight of the central motive. And as in the sketch definable shapes begin to grow out of the formless expanse and a vague suggestion crystallizes into an intelligible composition; so in Varney’s mind a process of gradual integration turned a vague and general idea into a clear picture, sharp, vivid, complete.

When Varney had thus brought his mental picture, so to speak, to a finish, its completeness surprised him. It was so simple, so secure. He had actually planned out the scheme of a murder; and behold! there was nothing in it. Any one could have done it and no one could have been any the wiser. Here he found himself wondering whether many murders passed undetected. They well might if murders were as easy and as safe as this. A dangerous reflection for an injured and angry man. And at this critical point his meditations were broken in on by Purcell, continuing the conversation as if there had been no pause.

“So you can take it from me, Varney, that I expect you to stick to your bargain. I paid down my money and I’m going to have my pound of flesh.”

“You won’t agree to any sort of compromise?”

“No. There are six thousand pounds owing. If you’ve got the money you can hand it over. If you haven’t, you’ll have to go on the lay and get it. That’s all I’ve got to say. So now you know.”

It was a brutal thing to say and it was brutally said. But more than that, it was inopportune—or opportune, as you will. For it came as a sort of infernal doxology to the devil’s anthem that had been, all unknown, ringing in Varney’s soul.

Purcell had spoken without looking round. That was his unpleasant habit. Had he looked at his companion, he might have been startled. A change in Varney’s face might have given him pause: a warm flush, a sparkle of the eye, a look of elation, of settled purpose, deadly, inexorable—the look of a man who has made a fateful resolution. But he never looked; and the warning of the uplifted axe passed him by.

It was so simple, so secure! That was the burden of the song that echoed in Varney’s brain. So safe! And there abroad were the watchful money-changers waiting for the clever forger to come once too often. There were the detectives lurking in ambush for him. No safety there! Rather the certainty of swift disaster, with the sequel of judge and jury, the clang of an iron door, and thereafter the dreary prison eating up the years of his life.

He glanced over the sea. They had opened the south coast now and he could see, afar off, a fleet of black-sailed luggers heading east. They wouldn’t be in his way. Nor would the big four-master that was creeping away to the west, for she was hull down already; and other ships there were none. There was one hindrance though. Dead ahead, the Wolf Rock lighthouse rose from the blue water, its red-and-white-ringed tower looking like some gaudily painted toy. The keepers of lonely lighthouses have a natural habit of watching the passing shipping through their glasses; and it was possible that one of their telescopes might be pointed at the yacht at this very moment. That was a complication.

Suddenly there came down the wind a sharp report like the firing of a gun quickly followed by a second. Both men recognized the duplicate report and both looked round. It was the explosive signal from the Longships lighthouse, but when they looked there was no lighthouse to be seen; and the dark blue heaving water faded away at the foot of an advancing wall of vapour.

Purcell cursed volubly. A pretty place, this, to be caught in a fog! And then, as his eye lighted on his companion, he demanded angrily: “What the devil are you grinning at?” For Varney, drunk with suppressed excitement, snapped his fingers at rocks and shoals; he was thinking only of the light keeper’s telescope and of the revolver that hung on the bulkhead. He must make some excuse presently to go below and secure that revolver.

But no excuse was necessary. The opportunity came of itself. After a hasty glance at the vanishing land and another at the compass, Purcell put up the helm to jibe the yacht round on to an easterly course. As she came round, the single headsail that she carried in place of jib and foresail shivered for a few seconds and then filled suddenly on the opposite tack. And at this moment, the halyard parted with a loud snap; the end of the rope flew through the blocks and, in an instant, the sail was down and its upper half trailing in the water alongside.

Purcell swore furiously, but kept an eye to business. “Run below, Varney,” said he, “and fetch up that coil of new rope out of the starboard locker while I haul the sail on board. And look alive. We don’t want to drift down on to the Wolf.”

Varney obeyed with silent alacrity and a curious feeling of elation. It was going to be even easier and safer than he had thought. He slipped through the hatch into the cabin and, as he heard Purcell scrambling along the side-deck overhead, he quietly took the revolver from its hook and examined the chambers. Finding them all loaded, he cocked the hammer and slipped the weapon carefully into the inside breast pocket of his oilskin coat. Then he took the coil of rope from the locker and went on deck.

As he emerged from the hatch he perceived that the yacht was already enveloped in fog, which drifted past in steamy clouds and swirling streamers, and that she had come up head to wind. Purcell was kneeling on the forecastle, tugging at the sail, which had caught under the forefoot, and punctuating his efforts with deep-voiced curses.

Varney stole silently along the deck, steadying himself by mast and shroud; softly laid down the coil of rope and approached. Purcell was quite engrossed with his task; his back was towards Varney, his face over the side, intent on the entangled sail. It was a chance in a thousand.

With scarcely a moment’s hesitation, Varney stooped forward, steadying himself with a hand on the little windlass, and softly drawing forth the revolver, pointed it at the back of Purcell’s head at the spot where the back seam of his sou’wester met the brim. The report rang out, but weak and flat in that open space, and a cloud of smoke mingled with the fog; but it blew away immediately and showed Purcell almost unchanged in posture, crouching on the sail with his chin resting on the little rim of bulwark, while behind him his murderer, as if turned into bronze, still stood stooping forward, one hand grasping the windlass, the other still pointing the revolver.

Thus the two figures remained for some seconds motionless like some horrible waxworks, until the little yacht, lifting to the swell, gave a more than usually lively curvet, when Purcell rolled over onto his back, and Varney relaxed the rigidity of his posture like a golf player who has watched his ball drop. He bent over the prostrate figure with no emotion but curiosity; looked into the wide-open, clear, blue eyes; noted how the great red face had faded to a pallid mauve against which the blood on lips and chin stood out like the painted patches on a clown’s face; but he felt not a single twinge of compunction.

Purcell was dead. That was the salient fact. The head wagged to and fro as the yacht pitched and rolled; the limp arms and legs seemed to twitch, the limp body to writhe uneasily. But Varney was not disturbed. Lifeless things will move on an unsteady deck. He was only interested to notice how the passive movements produced the illusion of life. But it was only illusion. Purcell was dead. There was no doubt of that.

The double report from the Longships came down the wind and then, as if in answer, a prolonged deep bellow. That was the fog-horn of the lighthouse on the Wolf Rock; and it sounded surprisingly near. But, of course, these signals were meant to be heard at a distance. Then a stream of hot sunshine pouring down on deck, startled him and made him hurry. The body must be got overboard before the fog lifted. With an uneasy glance at the clear sky overhead, he hastily cast off the broken halyard from its cleat and cut off a couple of fathoms. Then he hurried below and, lifting the trap in the cabin floor, hoisted out one of the iron half-hundred weights with which the yacht was ballasted. As he stepped on deck with the weight in his hand the sun was shining overhead; but the fog was still thick below and the horn sounded once more from the Wolf. And again it struck him as surprisingly near.

He passed the length of rope that he had cut off twice round Purcell’s body, hauled it tight and secured it with a knot. Then he made the ends fast to the handle of the iron weight.

Not much fear of Purcell drifting ashore now! That weight would hold him as long as there was anything to hold. But it had taken some time to do, and the warning bellow from the Wolf seemed to draw nearer and nearer. He was about to heave the body over when his eye fell on the dead man’s sou’wester, which had fallen off when the body rolled over. That hat must be got rid of, for Purcell’s name was worked in silk on the lining and there was an unmistakable bullet-hole through the back. It must be destroyed; or, which would be simpler and quicker, lashed securely on the dead man’s head.

Hurriedly, Varney ran aft and descended to the cabin. He had noticed a new ball of spun yarn in the locker when he had fetched the rope. This would be the very thing.

He was back again in a few moments with the ball in his hand, unwinding it as he came, and, without wasting time, he knelt down by the body and fell to work. There was a curious absence of repugnance in his manner, horrible as his task would have seemed. He had to raise the dead man’s head to fit on the hat, and in so doing covered his left hand with blood. But he appeared to mind no more than if he had been handling a seal that he had shot or a large and dirty fish. Quite composedly, and with that neatness in the handling of cordage that marks the sailor-man, whether amateur or professional, he proceeded with his task, intent only on making the lashing secure and getting it done quickly.

And every half-minute the deep-voiced growl of the Wolf came to him out of the fog, and each time it sounded nearer and yet nearer.

By the time he had made the sou’wester secure the dead man’s face and chin were encaged in a web of spun-yard that made him look like some old-time, grotesque-vizored Samurai warrior. But the hat was now immoveable. Long after that burly corpse had dwindled to a mere skeleton, it would hold; would still cling to the dead head when the face that looked through the lacing of cords was the face of a bare and grinning skull.

Varney rose to his feet. But his task was not finished yet. There was Purcell’s suit-case. That must be sunk, too; and there was something in it that had figured in the detailed picture that his imagination had drawn. He ran to the cockpit, where the suit-case lay, and having tried its fastenings and found it unlocked, he opened it and took out with his right hand—the clean one—a letter that lay on top of the other contents. This he tossed through the hatch into the cabin. Then his eye caught, Purcell’s fountain pen, slipped neatly through a loop in the lid. It was filled, he knew, with the peculiar black ink that Purcell always used. The thought passed swiftly through his mind that perchance it might be of use to him. In a moment he had drawn it from its loop and slipped it into his pocket. Then, having closed and fastened the suit-case, he carried it forward and made it fast to the iron weight with a half-dozen turns of spun yarn.

That was really all; and indeed it was time. As he rose once more to his feet the growl of the fog-horn burst out, as it seemed right over the stern of the yacht; and she was drifting stern-foremost who could say how fast. Now, too, he caught a more ominous sound, which he might have heard sooner had he listened: the wash of water, the boom of breakers bursting on a rock.

A sudden revulsion came over him. He burst into a wild, sardonic laugh. And had it come to this, after all? Had he schemed and laboured only to leave himself alone on an unmanageable craft drifting down to shipwreck and certain death? Had he taken all this thought and care to secure Purcell’s body, when his own might be resting beside it on the sea bottom within an hour?

But his reverie was brief. Suddenly, from the white void over his very head, as it seemed, there issued a stunning, thunderous roar that shook the very deck under his feet. The water around him boiled into a foamy chaos; the din of bursting waves was in his ears; the yacht plunged and wallowed amidst clouds of spray; and, for an instant a dim, gigantic shadow loomed through the fog and was gone.

In that moment his nerve had come back. Holding on, with one hand, to the windlass, he dragged the body to the edge of the forecastle, hoisted the weight outboard, and then, taking advantage of a heavy lurch, gave the corpse a vigorous shove. There was a rattle and a hollow splash; and corpse and weight and suit-case had vanished into the seething water.

He clung to the swinging mast and waited. Breathlessly he told out the allotted seconds until, once again, the invisible Titan belched forth his thunderous warning. But this time the roar came over the yacht’s bow. She had drifted past the rock then. The danger was over; and Purcell would have to go down to Davy Jones’ Locker companionless after all.

Very soon, the water around ceased to boil and tumble, and, as the yacht’s wild plunging settled down once more into the normal rise and fall on the long swell, Varney turned his attention to the refitting of the halyard. But what was this on the creamy, duck sail? A pool of blood and a gory imprint of his own hand! That wouldn’t do at all. He would have to clear that away before he could hoist the sail; which was annoying, as the yacht was helpless without her headsail and was evidently drifting out to sea.

He fetched a bucket, a swab and a scrubbing-brush and set to work. The bulk of the large blood stain cleared off pretty completely after he had drenched the sail with a bucketful or two and given it a good scrubbing. But the edge of the stain, where the heat of the deck had dried it, remained like the painted boundary on a map, and the hand-print—which had also dried—though it faded to a pale buff, continued clearly visible.

Varney began to grow uneasy. If those stains would not come out—especially the hand-print—it would be very awkward; they would take such a deal of explaining. He decided to try the effect of marine soap, and fetched a cake from the cabin; but even this did not obliterate the stains completely, though it turned them a faint, greenish-brown, very unlike the colour of blood. Still he scrubbed on until at last the hand-print faded away entirely and the large stain was reduced to a faint, green wavy line; and that was the best he could do—and quite good enough; for, if that faint line should ever be noticed, no one would ever suspect its origin.

He put away the bucket and proceeded with the refitting. The sea had disengaged the sail from the forefoot and he hauled it on board without difficulty. Then there was the reeving of the new halyard; a troublesome business, involving the necessity of his going aloft, where his weight—small man as he was—made the yacht roll most infernally, and set him swinging to and fro like the bob of a metronome. But he was a smart yachtsman and active, though not powerful, and a few minutes’ strenuous exertion ended in his sliding down the shrouds with the new halyard running fairly through the upper block. A vigorous haul or two at the new, hairy rope sent the head of the dripping sail aloft, and the yacht was once more under control.

The rig of the Sandhopper was not smart but it was handy. She carried a short bowsprit to accommodate the single headsail and a relatively large mizzen, of which the advantage was that, by judicious management of the mizzen-sheet, the yacht would sail with very little attention to the helm. Of this advantage Varney was keenly appreciative just now, for he had several things to do before entering port. The excitement of the last hour and the bodily exertion had left him shaky and faint. He wanted refreshment, he wanted a wash and the various traces of recent events had to be removed. Also, there was that letter to be attended to. So that it was convenient to be able to leave the helm in charge of a lashing for a minute now and again.

When he had washed, he put the kettle on the spirit stove and, while it was heating, busied himself in cleaning the revolver, flinging the empty cartridge-case overboard and replacing it with a cartridge from the bag in the locker. Then he picked up the letter that he had taken from Purcell’s suit-case and examined it. It was addressed to “Joseph Penfield, Esq., George Yard, Lombard Street,” and was unstamped, though the envelope was fastened up. He affixed a stamp from his pocketbook; and, when the kettle began to boil, he held the envelope in the steam that issued from the spout. Very soon the flap of the envelope loosened and curled back, when he laid it aside to mix himself a mug of hot grog, which, together with the letter and a biscuit-tin, he took out into the cockpit. The fog was still dense, and the hoot of a steamer’s whistle from somewhere to the westward caused him to reach the foghorn out of the locker and blow a long blast on it. As if in answer to his treble squeak, came the deep bass note from the Wolf, and, unconsciously, he looked round. He turned automatically as one does towards a sudden noise, not expecting to see anything but fog; and what he did see startled him not a little.

For there was the lighthouse—or half of it, rather—standing up above the fog-bank, clear, distinct and hardly a mile away. The gilded vane, the sparkling lantern, the gallery and the upper half of the red-and-white-ringed tower, stood sharp against the pallid sky; but the lower half was invisible. It was a strange apparition—like half a lighthouse suspended in mid-air—and uncommonly disturbing, too. It raised a very awkward question. If he could see the lantern, the light keepers could see him. But how long had the lantern been clear of the fog? That was the question; and the answer to it might come in a highly disagreeable form.

Thus he meditated, as with one hand on the tiller, he munched his biscuit and sipped his grog. Presently he picked up the stamped envelope and drew from it a letter which he tore into fragments and dropped overboard. Then, from his pocketbook, he took a similar but unaddressed envelope from which he drew out its contents; and very curious those contents were. There was a letter, brief and laconic, which he read over thoughtfully. “These,” it ran, “are all I have by me, but they will do for the present and when you have planted them I will let you have a fresh supply.” There was no date and no signature, but the rather peculiar handwriting in jet black ink was similar to that on the envelope addressed to Joseph Penfield, Esq.

The other contents consisted of a dozen sheets of blank paper, each of the size of a Bank of England note. But they were not quite blank, for each bore an elaborate watermark, identical with that of a twenty-pound bank note. They were, in fact, the “paper blanks” of which Purcell had spoken. The envelope with its contents had been slipped into his hand by Purcell, without remark, only three days ago.

Varney refolded the “blanks,” enclosed them within the letter and slipped letter and “blanks” together into the stamped envelope, the flap of which he licked and reclosed.

“I should like to see old Penfield’s face when he opens that envelope” was his reflection as, with a grim smile, he put it away in his pocketbook. “And I wonder what he will do,” he added, mentally; “however, I shall see before many days are over.”

Varney looked at his watch. He was to meet Jack Rodney on Penzance Pier at a quarter to three. He would never do it at this rate, for when he opened Mount’s Bay, Penzance would be right in the wind’s eye. That would mean a long beat to windward. Then Rodney would be there, first, waiting for him. Deuced awkward this. He would have to account for his being alone on board; would have to invent some lie about having put Purcell ashore at Mousehole or Newlyn. But a lie is a very pernicious thing. Its effects are cumulative. You never know when you have done with it. Apart from moral considerations, lies should be avoided at all cost of present inconvenience; that is unless they are absolutely unavoidable; and then they should be as probable as can be managed, and not calculated to provoke inquiry. Now, if he had reached Penzance before Rodney, he need have said nothing about Purcell—for the present, at any rate; and that would have been so much safer.

When the yacht was about abreast of Lamorna Cove, though some seven miles to the south, the breeze began to draw ahead and the fog cleared off quite suddenly. The change of wind was unfavourable for the moment, but when it veered round yet a little more until it blew from east-north-east, Varney brightened up considerably. There was still a chance of reaching Penzance before Rodney arrived; for now, as soon as he had fairly opened Mount’s Bay, he could head straight for his destination and make it on a single board.

Between two and three hours later, the Sandhopper entered Penzance Harbour, and, threading her way among an assemblage of luggers and small coasters, brought up alongside the Albert pier at the foot of a vacant ladder.

Having made the yacht fast to a couple of rings, Varney divested himself of his oilskins, locked the cabin scuttle and climbed the ladder. The change of wind had saved him after all and, as he strode away along the pier he glanced complacently at his watch. He still had nearly half an hour to the good.

He seemed to know the place well and to have a definite objective, for he struck out briskly from the foot of the pier into Market Jew Street and from thence by a somewhat zig-zag route to a road which eventually brought him out about the middle of the Esplanade. Continuing westward, he entered the Newlyn Road along which he walked rapidly for about a third of a mile, when he drew up opposite a small letter-box which was let into a wall. Here he stopped to read the tablet on which was printed the hours of collection and then, having glanced at his watch, he walked on again but at a less rapid pace.

When he reached the outskirts of Newlyn he turned and began slowly to retrace his steps, looking at his watch from time to time with a certain air of impatience. Presently a quick step behind him caused him to look round. The newcomer was a postman, striding along, bag on shoulder, with the noisy tread of a heavily-shod man and evidently collecting letters. Varney let him pass; watched him halt at the little letter-box, unlock the door, gather up the letters and stow them in his bag; heard the clang of the iron door and finally saw the man set forth again on his pilgrimage. Then he brought forth his pocketbook and drawing from it the letter addressed to Joseph Penfield, Esq., stepped up to the letter-box. The tablet now announced that the next collection would be at 8.30 p.m.

Varney read the announcement with a faint smile, glanced again at his watch, which stood at two minutes past four, and dropped the letter into the box.

As he walked up the pier, with a large paper bag under his arm, he became aware of a tall man who was doing sentry-go before a Gladstone bag that stood on the coping opposite the ladder; and who, observing his approach, came forward to meet him.

“Here you are, then, Rodney,” was Varney’s rather unoriginal greeting.

“Yes,” replied Rodney, “and here I’ve been for nearly half an hour. Purcell gone?”

“Bless you! yes; long ago,” answered Varney.

“I didn’t see him at the station. What train was he going by?”

“I don’t know. He said something about taking Falmouth on the way; had some business or other there. But I expect he’s gone to have a feed at one of the hotels. We got hung up in a fog—that’s why I’m so late; I’ve been up to buy some prog.”

“Well,” said Rodney, “bring it on board. It’s time we were under way. As soon as we are outside, I’ll take charge and you can go below and stoke up at your ease.”

The two men descended the ladder and proceeded at once to hoist the sails and cast off the shore-ropes. A few strokes of an oar sent them clear of the lee of the pier, and in a few minutes the yacht Sandhopper was once more outside, heading south with a steady breeze from east-north-east.

Chapter II.
In Which Margaret Purcell Receives a Letter

Daylight dies hard in the month of June and night comes but tardily into her scanty reversion. The clock on the mantelpiece stood at half-past nine, and candles twinkled on the supper table, but even now the slaty-grey band of twilight was only just stealing up behind the horizon to veil the fading glories of the western sky.

Varney sat at the old-fashioned, oval gate-legged table with an air of placid contentment, listening to and joining in the rather disconnected talk (for hungry people are poor conversationalists) with quiet geniality but with a certain remoteness and abstraction. From where he sat he could see out through the open window the great ocean stretching away to the south and west, the glittering horizon and the gorgeous evening sky. With quiet pleasure he had watched the changing scene; the crimson disc of the setting sun, the flaming gold softening down into the sober tints of the afterglow, and now, as the grey herald of the night spread upwards, his eye dwelt steadily on one spot away in the south-west. At first faintly visible, then waxing as the daylight waned, a momentary spark flashed in the heart of the twilight grey; now white like the sparkle of a diamond, now crimson like the flash of a ruby. It was the light on the Wolf Rock.

He watched it thoughtfully as he talked: white—red—white—red—diamond—ruby; so it would go on every fifteen seconds through the short summer night; to mariners a warning and a guide; to him, a message of release; for another, a memorial.

As he looked at the changing lights, he thought of his enemy lying out there in the chilly depths on the bed of the sea. It was strange how often he thought of Purcell. For the man was dead; had gone out of his life utterly. And yet, in the two days that had passed, every trivial incident had seemed to connect itself and him with the man who was gone. And so it was now. All roads seemed to lead to Purcell. If he looked out seaward, there was the lighthouse flashing its secret message, as if it should say, “We know, you and I; he is down here.” If he looked around the table, still everything spoke of the dead man. There was Phillip Rodney—Purcell and he had talked of him on the yacht. There was Jack Rodney who had waited on the pier for the man who had not come. There, at the hostess’s right hand, was the quiet, keen-faced stranger whom Purcell, for some reason, had not wished to meet; and there, at the head of the table, was Margaret herself, the determining cause of it all. Even the very lobsters on the table (lobsters are plentiful at the Land’s End) set him thinking of dark, crawling shapes down in that dim underworld, groping around a larger shape tethered to an iron weight.

He turned his face resolutely away from the sea. He would think no more of Purcell. The fellow had dogged him through life, but now he was gone. Enough of Purcell. Let him think of something more pleasant.

The most agreeable object of contemplation within his field of vision was the woman who sat at the head of the table—his hostess. And, in fact, Margaret Purcell was very pleasant to look upon, not only for her comeliness, though she was undoubtedly a pretty, almost a beautiful, woman, but because she was sweet-faced and gracious and what men compliment the sex by calling “womanly.” She was evidently under thirty, though she carried a certain matronly sedateness and an air of being older than she either looked or was; which was accentuated by the fashion in which she wore her hair, primly parted in the middle—a rather big woman, quiet and reposeful, as big women often are.

Varney looked at her with a kind of wonder. He had always thought her lovely and now she seemed lovelier than ever. And she was a widow, little as she suspected it; little as any one but he suspected it. But it was a fact. She was free to marry, if she only knew it.

He hugged himself at the thought and listened dreamily to the mellow tones of her voice. She was talking to her guest and the elder Rodney, but he had only a dim idea of what she was saying; he was enjoying the music of her speech rather than attending to the matter. Suddenly she turned to him and asked:

“Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Varney?”

He pulled himself together, and, after a momentarily vacant look, answered:

“I always agree with you, Mrs. Purcell.”

“And so,” said Rodney, “as the greater includes the less, he agrees with you now. I am admiring your self-possession, Varney: you haven’t the least idea what we were talking about.”

Varney laughed and reddened, and Margaret looked at him with playful reproach.

“Haven’t you?” she asked. “But how deceitful of you to answer so readily. I was remarking that lawyers have a way of making a solemn parade and exactness and secrecy when there is no occasion. That was my statement.”

“And it is perfectly correct,” said Varney. “You know it is, Rodney. You’re always doing it. I’ve noticed it constantly.”

“Oh, this is mere vindictiveness because he unmasked your deceit. I wasn’t alluding to Mr. Rodney, or any one in particular. I was just speaking generally.”

“But,” said Varney, “something must have suggested the reflection.”

“Certainly. Something did: a letter that I have just received from Mr. Penfield; a most portentous document, and all about nothing.”

At the mention of the lawyer’s name Varney’s attention came to a sharp focus.

“It seems,” Margaret continued, “that Dan, when he wrote to Mr. Penfield the other day, put the wrong letter in the envelope; a silly thing to do, but we all do silly things sometimes.”

“I don’t,” said Rodney.

“Well, ordinary persons, I mean. Then Mr. Penfield, instead of simply stating the fact and returning the letter, becomes mysterious and alarming. He informs me that the envelope was addressed in Dan’s handwriting, that the letter was posted at Penzance at eight-thirty p.m., that it was opened by him in person, and that the contents, which have been seen by no one but himself, are at present reposing in his private safe, of which he alone has the key. What he does not tell us is what the contents of the envelope were; which is the only thing that matters. It is most extraordinary. From the tone of his letter one would think that the envelope had contained something dreadful and incriminating.”

“Perhaps it did,” said Varney. “Dan’s political views are distinctly revolutionary and he is as secret as a whole barrel of oysters. That letter may have contained particulars of some sort of Guy Fawkes conspiracy enclosing samples of suitable explosives. Who knows?”

Margaret was about to reply, when her glance happened to light on Jack Rodney, and something in that gentleman’s expressive and handsome face gave her pause. Had she been chattering indiscreetly? And might Mr. Penfield have meant something after all? There were some curious points about his letter. She smilingly accepted the Guy Fawkes theory and then adroitly changed the subject.

“Speaking of Penzance, Mr. Varney, reminds me that you haven’t told us what sort of voyage you had. There was quite a thick fog, wasn’t there?”

“Yes. It delayed us a lot. Purcell would steer right out to sea for fear of going ashore. Then the breeze failed for a time and then it veered round easterly and headed us, and, as a wind-up to the chapter of accidents, the jib-halyard carried away and we had to reeve a new one. Nice, crazy gear you keep on your craft, Rodney.”

“I suspected that rope,” said Rodney; “in fact I had meant to fit a new halyard before I went up to town. But I should have liked to see Purcell shinning up aloft.”

“So should I—from the shore,” said Varney. “He’d have carried away the mast, or capsized the yacht. No, my friend, I left him below as a counterpoise and went aloft myself.”

“Did Dan go straight off to the station?” Margaret asked.

“I should say not,” replied Varney. “He was in a mighty hurry to be off; said he had some things to see to—I fancy one of them was a grilled steak and a bottle of Bass. We were both pretty ravenous.”

“But why didn’t you go with him, if you were ravenous, too?”

“I had to snug up the yacht and he wouldn’t wait. He was up the ladder like a lamplighter almost before we had made fast. I can see him now, with that great suit-case in his hand, going up as light as a feather. He is wonderfully active for his size.”

“Isn’t he?” said Rodney. “But these big men often are. Look at the way those great lumping pilots will drop down into a boat; as light as cats.”

“He is a big fellow, too,” said Varney. “I was looking at him as he stopped at the top of the ladder to sing out, ‘So long.’ He looked quite gigantic in his oilskins.”

“He actually went up into the town in his oilskins, did he?” exclaimed Margaret. “He must have been impatient for his meal! Oh, how silly of me! I never sewed on that button that had come off the collar of his oilskin coat! I hope you didn’t have a wet passage.”

“You need not reproach yourself, Mrs. Purcell,” interposed Phillip Rodney. “Your neglect was made good by my providence. I sewed on that button when I borrowed the coat on Friday evening to go to my diggings in.”

“You told me you hadn’t a spare oilskin button,” said Margaret.

“I hadn’t, but I made one—out of a cork.”

“A cork!” Margaret exclaimed, with an incredulous laugh.

“Not a common cork, you know,” Phillip explained. “It was a flat, circular cork from one of my collecting jars, waterproofed with paraffin wax; a most superior affair, with a beautiful round label—also waterproofed by the wax—on which was typed ‘marine worms.’ The label was very decorative. It’s my own invention and I’m rather proud of it.”

“You may well be. And I suppose you sewed it on with ropeyarn and a sail-needle?” Margaret suggested.

“Not at all. It was secured with cat-gut; the fag end of an E string that I happened to have in my pocket. You see, I had no needle or thread, so I made two holes in the cork with the marline spike in my pocket-knife, two similar holes in the coat, poked the ends of the fiddle-string through, tied a reef knot inside and there it was, tight as wax—paraffin wax.”

“It was very ingenious and resourceful of you,” Varney commented, “but the product wasn’t very happily disposed of on Dan’s coat—I mean as to your decorative label. I take it that Dan’s interest in marine worms is limited to their use as bait. Now if you could have fitted out Dr. Thorndyke with a set there would have been some appropriateness in it, since marine worms are the objects of his devotion; at least so I understand,” and he looked interrogatively at Margaret’s guest.

Dr. Thorndyke smiled. “You are draping me in the mantle of my friend, Professor D’Arcy,” he said. “He is the real devotee. I have merely come down for a few days to stay with him and be an interested spectator of the chase. It is he who should have the buttons.”

“Still,” said Varney, “you aid and abet him. I suppose you help him to dig them up.”

Phillip laughed scornfully. “Why, you are as bad as Dan, Varney. You are thinking in terms of bait. Do you imagine Dr. Thorndyke and the professor go a-worming with a bully-beef tin and a garden fork as you do when you are getting ready for a fishing jaunt?”

“Well, how was I to know?” retorted Varney. “I am not a naturalist. What do they do? Set traps for ’em with bits of cheese inside?”

“Of course they don’t,” laughed Margaret. “How absurd you are, Mr. Varney. They go out with a boat and a dredge; and very interesting it must be to bring up all those curious creatures from the bottom of the sea.”

She spoke rather absently, for her thoughts had gone back to Mr. Penfield’s letter. There was certainly something a little cryptic in its tone, which she had taken for mere professional pedantry, but which she now recalled with vague uneasiness. Could the old lawyer have stumbled on something discreditable and written this ambiguously worded letter as a warning? Her husband was not a communicative man and she could not pretend to herself that she had an exalted opinion of his moral character. It was all very disquieting.

The housekeeper, who had been retained with the furnished house, brought in the coffee, and, as Margaret poured it out she continued her reflections, watching Varney with unconscious curiosity as he rolled a cigarette. The ring-finger of his left hand had a stiff joint—the result of an old injury—and was permanently bent at a sharp angle. It gave his hand an appearance of awkwardness, but she noted that he rolled his cigarette as quickly and neatly as if all his fingers were sound. The stiff finger had become normal to him. And she also noted that Dr. Thorndyke appeared quite interested in the contrast between the appearance of awkwardness and the actual efficiency of the maimed finger.

From Varney her attention—or inattention—wandered to her guest. Absently she dwelt on his powerful, intellectual face, his bold, clean-cut features, his shapely mouth, firm almost to severity; and all the time she was thinking of Mr. Penfield’s letter.

“Have we all finished?” she asked at length; “and if so, where are we going to smoke our pipes and cigars?”

“I propose that we go into the garden,” said Phillip. “It is a lovely evening and we can look at the moonlight on the sea while we smoke.”

“Yes,” Margaret agreed, “it will be more pleasant out there. Don’t wait for me. I will join you in a few minutes, but I want first to have a few words with Mr. Rodney.”

Phillip, who, like the others, understood that this was a consultation on the subject of Mr. Penfield’s letter, rose and playfully shepherded Varney out of the door which his brother held invitingly open.

“Now then, Varney, out you go. No lagging behind and eavesdropping. The pronouncements of the oracle are not for the likes of you and me.”

Varney took his dismissal with a smile and followed Dr. Thorndyke out, though as he looked at the barrister’s commanding figure and handsome face, he could not repress a twinge of jealousy. Why could not Maggie have consulted him? He was an old friend, and he knew more about old Penfield’s letter than Rodney did. But, of course, she had no idea of that.

As soon as they were alone, Margaret and Rodney resumed their seats and the former opened the subject without preamble.

“What do you really think of Mr. Penfield’s letter?” she asked.

“Could you give me, in general terms, the substance of what he says?” Rodney answered, cautiously.

“I had better show you the letter itself,” said Margaret. She rose and left the room, returning almost immediately with an official-looking envelope which she handed to Rodney. The letter which he extracted from it and spread out on the table, was not remarkably legible; an elderly solicitor’s autograph letters seldom are. But barristers, like old-fashioned druggists, are usually expert decipherers and Rodney read the letter without difficulty. It ran thus:—

“George Yard,

“Lombard Street, E. C.

“25th June, 1911.

“Dear Mrs. Purcell,

“I have just received from your husband a letter with certain enclosures which have caused me some surprise. The envelope is addressed to me in his handwriting and the letter, which is unsigned, is also in his hand; but neither the letter nor the other contents could possibly have been intended for me and it is manifest that they have been placed in the wrong envelope.

“The postmark shows that the letter was posted at Penzance at 8.30 p.m. on the 23rd instant. It was opened by me, and the contents, which have been seen by no one but me, have been deposited in my private safe, of which I alone have the key.

“Will you very kindly acquaint your husband with these facts and request him to call on me at his early convenience?

“I am, dear Mrs. Purcell,

“Yours sincerely,

“Joseph Penfield.

“Mrs. Daniel Purcell,

“Sennen, Cornwall.”

Rodney read the solicitor’s letter through twice, refolded it, replaced it in its envelope and returned it to Margaret.

“Well, what do you think of it?” the latter asked.

Rodney reflected for some moments.

“It’s a very careful letter,” he replied at length.

“Yes, I know, and that is a very careful answer, but not very helpful. Now do drop the lawyer and tell me just what you think like a good friend.”

Rodney looked at her quickly with a faint smile and yet very earnestly. He found it strangely pleasant to be called a good friend by Margaret Purcell.

“I gather,” he said slowly, “from the tone of Mr. Penfield’s letter that he found something in that envelope that your husband would not have wished him to see; something that he had reasons for wishing no one to see but the person for whom it was meant.”

“Do you mean something discreditable or compromising?”

“We mustn’t jump at conclusions. Mr. Penfield is very reticent so, presumably, he has some reasons for reticence; otherwise he would have said plainly what the envelope contained. But why does he write to you? Doesn’t he know your husband’s address?”

“No, but he could have got it from Dan’s office. I have been wondering, myself, why he wrote to me.”

“Has your husband arrived at Oulton yet?”

“Heavens! Yes. It doesn’t take two days and a half to get to Norfolk.”

“Oh, then he wasn’t staying at Falmouth?”

Margaret stared at him. “Falmouth!” she exclaimed. “What do you mean?”

“I understood Varney to say that he was going to call at Falmouth.”

“No, certainly not. He was going straight to London and so on to Oulton the same night. I wonder what Mr. Varney can have meant.”

“We must find out presently. Have you heard from your husband since he left?”

“No. Oddly enough, he hasn’t written, which is unlike him. He generally sends me a line as soon as he arrives anywhere.”

“You had better send him a telegram in the morning to make sure of his whereabouts and then let him have a copy of Mr. Penfield’s letter at once. And I think I wouldn’t refer to the subject before any of our friends if I were you.”

“No. I oughtn’t to have said what I did. But, of course, I didn’t dream that Mr. Penfield really meant anything. Shall we go out into the garden?”

Rodney opened the door for her and they passed out to where their three companions sat in deck chairs facing the sea. Two chairs had been placed for them, and, as they seated themselves, Varney remarked:

“I take it that the oracle has spoken; and I hope he was more explicit than oracles are usually.”

“He was explicit and discreet—especially discreet,” Margaret replied.

“Oh, they are always that,” said Varney; “discretion is the oracular specialty. The explicitness is exceptional.”

“I believe it is,” replied Margaret, “and I am glad you set so much value on it because I am coming to you, now, for information. Mr. Rodney tells me that Dan said something to you about Falmouth. What was it?”

“He said he was going to call in there; at least, so I understood.”

“But he wasn’t, you know. He was going direct to London and straight on to Oulton the same night. You must have misunderstood him.”

“I may have done, but I don’t think I did. Still, he only mentioned the matter casually and I wasn’t paying particular attention.”

Margaret made no rejoinder and the party became somewhat silent. Phillip, realizing Margaret’s uneasy preoccupation, engaged Dr. Thorndyke in an animated conversation respecting the natural history of the Cornish coast and the pleasures of dredging.

The other three became profoundly thoughtful. To each, the solicitor’s letter had its special message, though to one only was that message clearly intelligible. Rodney was puzzled and deeply suspicious. To him the letter had read like that of a man washing his hands of a disagreeable responsibility. The curious reticence as to the nature of the enclosures and the reference to the private safe sounded ominous. He knew little of Purcell—he had been a friend of the Haygarths—and had no great opinion of him. Purcell was a financier, and financiers sometimes did queer things. At any rate, Penfield’s excessive caution suggested something fishy—possibly something illicit. In fact, to speak colloquially, Rodney smelt a rat.

Margaret also was puzzled and suspicious, but, woman-like, she allowed her suspicions to take a more special form. She, too, smelt a rat, but it was a feminine rat. The lawyer’s silence as to the contents of that mysterious envelope seemed to admit of no other interpretation. It was so pointed. Of course he could not tell her, though he was an old friend and her trustee; so he had said nothing.

She reflected on the matter with lukewarm displeasure. Her relations with her husband were not such as to admit of jealousy in the ordinary sense; but still she was married to him, and any affair on his part with another woman would be very disagreeable and humiliating to her. It might lead to a scandal, too, and from that her ingrained delicacy revolted.

Varney, meanwhile, sat with his head thrown back, wrapped in thought of a more dreamy quality. He knew all about the letter and his mind was occupying itself with speculation as to its effects. Rodney’s view of it he gauged pretty accurately; but what did she think of it? Was she anxious, worried at the prospect of some unpleasant disclosure? He hoped not. At any rate, it could not be helped. And she was free, if she only knew it.

He had smoked out his cigarette and now, as he abstractedly filled his pipe, his eye insensibly sought the spot where the diamond and ruby flashed out alternately from the bosom of the night. A cloud had crept over the moon and the transitory golden and crimson gleam shone out bright and clear amidst the encompassing darkness—white—red, white—red, diamond—ruby; a message in a secret code from the tall, unseen sentinel on that solitary, wave-washed rock, bidding him be of good cheer, reminding him again and again of the freedom that was his—and hers—made everlastingly secure by a friendly iron sinker.

The cloud turned silvery at the edge and the moon sailed out into the open. Margaret looked up at it thoughtfully. “I wonder where Dan is to-night,” she said; and in the pause that followed a crimson spark from the dim horizon seemed to Varney to signal, “Here” and instantly fade into discreet darkness.

“Perhaps,” suggested Phillip, “he is having a moonlight sail on the Broad, or more probably, taking a whisky and soda with Bradford in the inn-parlour where the stuffed pike is. You remember that stuffed pike, Jack?”

His brother nodded. “Can I ever forget it, or the landlord’s interminable story of its capture? I wonder why people become so intolerably boresome about their fishing exploits. The angler is nearly as bad as the golfer.”

“Still,” said Varney, “he has more excuse. It is more of an achievement to catch a pike or a salmon than merely to whack a ball with a stick.”

“Isn’t that rather a crude description of the game?” asked Margaret. “It is to be hoped that Dr. Thorndyke is not an enthusiast.”

“I am not,” he assured her; “in fact I was admiring Mr. Varney’s simplification. His definition of the game is worthy of Dr. Johnson. But I must tear myself away. My host is an early bird and I expect you are, too. Good night, Mrs. Purcell. It has been very delightful to meet you again. I am only sorry that I should have missed your husband.”

“So am I,” said Margaret, shaking his hand warmly, “but I think it most kind of you to have remembered me after all these years.”

As Dr. Thorndyke rose, the other three men stood up. “It is time for us to go, too,” said Rodney, “so we will see you to the end of the road, Thorndyke. Good night, Mrs. Purcell.”

“Good night, gentlemen all,” she replied. “Eight o’clock breakfast, remember.”

The four men went into the house to fetch their hats and took their departure, walking together as far as the cross-roads; where Thorndyke wished the other three good night and left them to pursue their way to the village.

The lodging accommodation in this neighbourhood was not sumptuous, but our three friends were not soft or fastidious. Besides, they only slept at their “diggings,” taking their meals and making their home at the house which Purcell had hired, furnished, for the holiday. It was a somewhat unconventional arrangement, now that Purcell had gone, and spoke eloquently of his confidence in the discretion of his attractive wife.

The three men were not in the same lodgings. Varney was “putting up” at the “First and Last” inn in the adjoining village—or “church-town,” to give it its local title—of Sennen, while the Rodneys shared a room at the “Ship” down in Sennen Cove, more than a mile away. They proceeded together as far as Varney’s hostel, when, having wished him “good night,” the two brothers strode away along the moonlit road towards the Cove.

For a while neither spoke, though the thoughts of both were occupied by the same subject, the solicitor’s letter. Phillip had fully taken in the situation, although he had made no remark on it, and the fact that his brother had been consulted quasi-professionally on the subject made him hesitate to refer to it. For, in spite of his gay, almost frivolous, manner, Phillip Rodney was a responsible medical practitioner and really a man of sound judgment and discretion.

Presently his scruples yielded to the consideration that his brother was not likely to divulge any confidence and he remarked:

“I hope Purcell hasn’t been doing anything shady. It sounded to me as if there was a touch of Pontius Pilate in the tone of Penfield’s letter.”

“Yes, a very guarded tone, with a certain note of preparation for unpleasant possibilities. So it struck me. I do sincerely hope there isn’t anything in it.”

“So do I, by Jove! but I shouldn’t be so very astonished. Of course we don’t know anything against Purcell—at least I don’t—but somehow he doesn’t strike me as a very scrupulous man. His outlook on life jars a bit; don’t you feel that sometimes?”

“The commercial standard isn’t quite the same as the professional, you know,” Jack Rodney answered evasively; “and financial circles are not exactly hotbeds of the higher morality. But I know of nothing to Purcell’s discredit.”

“No, of course not. But he isn’t the same class as his wife; she’s a lot too good for a coarse, bucolic fellow like that. I wonder why the deuce she married him. I used to think she rather liked you.”

“A woman can’t marry every man she rather likes, you know, Phil, unless she happens to live in Ladak; and even there I believe there are limits. But to come back to Purcell, we may be worrying ourselves about nothing. To-morrow we shall get into touch with him by telegraph and then we may hear something from him.”

Here the consideration of Purcell and his affairs dropped so far as conversation went; but in the elder man’s mind certain memories had been revived by his brother’s remark and occupied it during the remainder of the walk. For he, too, had once thought that Maggie Haygarth rather liked him, and he now recalled the shock of disagreeable surprise with which he had heard of her marriage. But that was over and done with long ago, and the question now was, how was the Sandhopper—at present moored in Whitesand Bay—to be got from the Land’s End to her moorings above Westminster Bridge; a problem that engaged the attention of the two brothers until they turned into their respective beds, and the laggard, according to immemorial custom, blew out the light.

In spite of Mrs. Purcell’s admonition they were some minutes late on the following morning. Their two friends were already seated at the breakfast table and it needed no extraordinary powers of observation to see that something had happened. Their hostess was pale and looked worried and somewhat frightened and Varney was preternaturally grave. A telegram lay open on the table by Margaret’s place, and, as Rodney advanced to shake hands, she held it out to him without a word. He took the paper and read the brief, but ominous, message that confirmed but too plainly his misgivings of the previous night.

“Where is Dan? Expected him here Tuesday night. Hope nothing wrong.

Bradford. Angler’s Hotel. Oulton.”

Rodney laid down the telegram and looked at Margaret. “This is a queer business,” said he. “Have you done anything?”

“No,” she replied. “What can we do?”

Rodney took a slip of paper and a pencil from his pocket. “If you will write down the name of the partner or clerk who is attending at the office and the address, and that of the caretaker of your flat, I will go and send off reply-paid telegrams to them asking for information as to your husband’s whereabouts and I will also reply to Mr. Bradford. It is just possible that Purcell may have gone home after all.”

“It’s very unlikely,” said Margaret. “The flat is shut up, and he would surely have written. Still, we may as well make sure, if you will be so kind. But won’t you have your breakfast first?”

“We’d better waste no time,” he answered; and, pocketing the paper, strode away on his errand.

Little was said until he returned, and even then the breakfast proceeded in a gloomy silence that contrasted strangely with the usual vivacity of the gatherings around that hospitable table. A feeling of tense expectation pervaded the party and a vivid sense of impending disaster. Dreary efforts were made to keep some kind of conversation going, but the talk was colourless and disjointed with long and awkward pauses.

Varney especially was wrapped in deep meditation. Outwardly he preserved an appearance of sympathetic anxiety, but inwardly he was conscious of a strange, rather agreeable excitement, almost of elation. When he looked at Margaret’s troubled face he felt a pang of regret, of contrition; but principally he was sensible of a feeling of power, of knowledge. He sat apart, as it were, godlike, omniscient. He knew all the facts that were hidden from the others. The past lay clear before him to the smallest detail; the involved present was as an open book which he read with ease; and he could even peer confidently into the future.

And these men and the woman before him, and those others afar off; the men at the office, the caretaker, Penfield, the lawyer, and Bradford at his inn in Norfolk; what were they but so many puppets, moving feverishly hither and thither as he, the unseen master-spirit, directed them by a pull at the strings? It was he who had wound them up and set them going, and here he sat, motionless and quiet, watching them do his bidding. He was reminded of an occasion when he had been permitted for a short time to steer a five-thousand-ton steamer. What a sense of power it had given him to watch the stupendous consequences of his own trifling movements! A touch of the little wheel, the movement of a spoke or two to right or left, and what a commotion followed! How the steam gear had clanked with furious haste to obey and the great ship had presently swerved round, responsive to the pressure of his fingers. What a wonderful thing it had been! There was that colossal structure with its enormous burden of merchandise, its teeming population sweating in the stokehold or sleeping in the dark forecastle; its unconscious passengers chatting on the decks, reading, writing or playing cards in saloon or smoking-room; and he had it all in the grasp of one hand, had moved it and turned it about with the mere touch of a finger.

And so it was now. The magical pressure of his finger on the trigger, a few turns of a rope, the hoisting of an iron weight; and behold! the whole course of a human life—probably of several human lives—was changed utterly.

It was a tremendous thought.

In a little over an hour the replies to Rodney’s discreetly worded inquiries had come in. Mr. Purcell had not been home nor had he been heard of at the office. Mr. Penfield had been enquiring as to his whereabouts and so had Mr. Bradford. That was all. And what it amounted to was that Daniel Purcell had disappeared.

“Can’t you remember exactly what Dan said about going to Falmouth, Mr. Varney?” Margaret asked.

“I am sorry to say I can’t,” replied Varney. “You see he just threw the remark off casually and I didn’t ask any questions. He isn’t very fond of being questioned, you know.”

“I wonder what he could have been going to Falmouth for,” she mused. In reality she did not wonder at all. She felt pretty certain that she knew. But pride would not allow her publicly to adopt that explanation until it was forced on her.

“It seems to me that there is only one course,” she continued. “I must go up to town and see Mr. Penfield. Don’t you think so, Mr. Rodney?”

“Certainly. He is the only one who knows anything and is able to advise.” He hesitated a moment and then added: “Hadn’t we better come up with you?”

“Yes,” said Varney eagerly; “let us all go up.”

Margaret considered for a few moments. “It is excessively kind and sympathetic of you all, and I am glad you offered, because it makes me feel that I have good, loyal friends; which is a great deal to know just now. But really there would be no use in breaking up your holidays. What could you do? We can’t make a search in person. Why not take over the house and stay on here?”

“We don’t want the house if you’re not in it,” said Phillip.

“No,” agreed Jack Rodney; “if we can’t be of use to you, we shall get afloat and begin to crawl round the coast homewards.”

“I think I shall run over to Falmouth and see if I can pick up any news,” said Varney.

“Thank you,” said Margaret. “I think that would be really useful,” and Rodney agreed heartily, adding: “Why not come round on the yacht, Varney? We shall probably get there to-morrow night.”

Varney reflected. And suddenly it was borne in upon him that he felt an unspeakable repugnance to the idea of going on board the yacht and especially to making the voyage from Sennen to Penzance. The feeling came to him as an utter surprise, but there was no doubt of its reality. “I think I’ll go over by train,” he said. “It will save a day, you know.”

“Then we will meet you there,” said Rodney; “and, Mrs. Purcell, will you send us a letter to the Green Banks Hotel, Falmouth, and let us know what Mr. Penfield says and if you would like us to come up to town to help you?”

“Thank you, yes, I will,” Margaret replied heartily. “And I promise that, if I want your help, I will ask for it.”

“That is a solemn promise, mind,” said Rodney.

“Yes, I mean it—a solemn promise.”

So the matter was arranged. By twelve o’clock—the weather being calm—the yacht was got under way for Penzance. And even as on that other occasion, she headed seaward with her crew of two, watched from the shore by a woman and a man.

Chapter III.
In Which Margaret Purcell Consults Mr. Penfield

Mr. Joseph Penfield was undeniably in a rather awkward dilemma. For he had hooked the wrong fish. His letter to Maggie Purcell had been designed to put him immediately in touch with Purcell himself; whereas it had evoked an urgent telegram from Maggie announcing her intention of calling on him “on important business” and entreating him to arrange an interview.

It was really most unfortunate. There was no one in the world that he had less desire to see, at the present moment, than Margaret Purcell. And yet there was no possible escape; for not only was he her solicitor and her trustee, but he was an old family friend and not a little attached to her in his dry way. But he didn’t want her just now. He wanted Purcell; and he wanted him very badly.

For a solicitor of irreproachable character and spotless reputation, his position was highly unpleasant. As soon as he had opened the letter from Penzance he had recognized the nature of the enclosures and had instantly connected them with the forgeries of Bank of England notes of which he had heard. The intricate watermarks on the “blanks” were unmistakable. But so was the handwriting of the accompanying letter. It was Daniel Purcell’s beyond a doubt; and the peculiar, intensely black ink was equally characteristic. And, short as the note was, it made perfectly clear its connection with the incriminating enclosures. It wrote down Daniel Purcell a bank-note forger.

Now Mr. Penfield was, as we have said, a man of irreproachable character. But he was a very secretive and rather casuistical old gentleman, and his regard for Margaret had led him to apply his casuistry to the present case; pretending to himself that his discovery of the illicit blanks came within the category of “clients’ secrets” which he need not divulge. But in his heart he knew that he was conniving at a felony; that he ought to give information to the police or to the Bank, and that he wasn’t going to. His plan was to get hold of Purcell, make him destroy the blanks in his presence, and deliver such a warning as would put a stop to the forgeries.

But if he did not propose to give Purcell away, neither did he intend to give himself away. He would share his compromising secret with no one—especially with a lady. And this consideration raised the difficult question, What on earth was he to say to Margaret Purcell when she arrived? A question which he was still debating with her telegram spread out before him and his silver snuff-box in his hand when a clerk entered his private office to announce the unwelcome visitor.

Fortifying himself with a pinch of snuff, he rose and advanced towards the door to receive her, and as she entered he made a quick mental note of her anxious and troubled expression.

“How do you do, Mrs. Purcell?” said he, with a ceremonious bow. “You have had a long journey and rather an early one. How very unfortunate that this business, to which you refer in your telegram, should have arisen while you were on holiday so far away.”

“You have guessed what the business is, I suppose,” said Margaret.

Mr. Penfield smiled deprecatingly. “We lawyers,” said he, “are not much addicted to guessing, especially when definite information is available. Pray be seated; and now,” he continued, as Margaret subsided into the clients’ chair and he resumed his own, resting his elbows on the arms and placing his finger-tips together, “let us hear what this new and important business is.”

“It is about that mysterious letter that you had from my husband,” said Margaret.

“Dear, dear,” said Mr. Penfield. “What a pity that you should have taken this long journey for such a trifling affair; and I thought I gave you all the particulars.”

“You didn’t mention whom the letter was from.”

“For several excellent reasons,” replied Mr. Penfield, checking them off on his fingers. “First, I don’t know; second, it is not my business; third, your husband, whose business it is, does know. My object in writing to you was to get into touch with him so that I could hand back to him this letter which should never have come into my possession. Shall I take down his address now?”

“I haven’t it myself,” Margaret replied with a faint flush. “I have no idea where he is at present. He left Sennen on the 23rd to go to Oulton via Penzance. But he never arrived at Oulton. He has not been home, he has not been to the office and he has not written. It is rather alarming, especially in connection with your mysterious letter.”

“Was my letter mysterious?” said Mr. Penfield, rapidly considering this new, but not very surprising development. “I hardly think so. It was not intended to be. What was there mysterious about it?”

“Everything,” she replied, producing the letter from her bag and glancing at it as she spoke. “You emphasize that Dan’s letter and the other contents have been seen by no eye but yours and that they are in a receptacle to which no one has access but yourself. There is a strong hint of something secret and compromising in the nature of Dan’s letter and the enclosures.”

“I would rather say ‘confidential,’ ” murmured Mr. Penfield.

“And,” Margaret continued, “you must see that there is an evident connection between this misdirected letter and Dan’s disappearance.”

Mr. Penfield saw the connection very plainly, but he was admitting nothing. He did, indeed, allow that “it was a coincidence” but would not agree to “a necessary connection.” “Probably you will hear from your husband in a day or two, and then the letter can be returned.”

“Is there any reason why you should not show me Dan’s letter?” Margaret demanded. “Surely I am entitled, as his wife, to see it.”

Mr. Penfield pursed up his lips and took a deliberate pinch of snuff.

“We must not confuse,” said he “the theological relations of married people with their legal relations. Theologically they are one; legally they are separate persons subject to a mutual contract. As to this letter, it is not mine and consequently I can show it to no one; and I must assume that if your husband had desired you to see it he would have shown it to you himself.”

“But,” Margaret protested impatiently, “are not my husband’s secrets my secrets?”