Again she smiled, and each time she smiled straight at me like that, I confess frankly I grew less cautious.
"Do you remember when Captain Whiteclett came to arrest you, your bed-room door was open just for a minute?"
I did remember now and recalled her face outside and its very expression vividly.
"I heard him call you "Roger" and saw that you knew each other well, and then of course I knew we had been utterly wrong in thinking you a--"
She paused and I finished the sentence for her.
"A spy."
"Well, are you honestly surprised? You did do some most extraordinary things, Mr. Merton! I only began to get the least idea of what you were about some time afterwards."
"And what idea did you get then? And how did you get it?"
"It was when we began to hear of the bad name our island was getting.
_Then_ I guessed you must have been trying to investigate and catch the traitor--and I had gone and interfered--and even locked you up!"
"It was you, then?"
"Well, father, of course, approved, but I locked the door. And after I had found out the truth, I could have murdered myself! But why did you puzzle us so?"
Her charm and sincerity and animation almost made me tell her there and then, but I had just enough hold of myself to ask instead,
"But this doesn"t explain how you came to find me out this time?"
"Well in a way it does; for I knew then that Roger Merton was your real name and then I remembered where I had heard it before, and I knew you were the same person. When you called as Mr. Hobhouse that first day I hadn"t the least suspicion to begin with, and then suddenly you began to look familiar--"
"With this beard!"
"Well, your face isn"t all hidden by your beard and I thought I recognised the other bits. If I hadn"t known you were an actor--"
"A pretty bad one, it appears," I interposed.
"Oh, no, indeed, you were simply splendid! You still kept me puzzled and only half certain even after I had met you and Captain Whiteclett walking together and noticed you move apart when you saw me. In fact I wasn"t sure till that walk along the sh.o.r.e. I arranged that to make quite certain."
"You arranged it!" I exclaimed. "The deuce you did, Miss Rendall!"
She laughed defiantly.
"I was dying to make sure! So when I saw you coming towards the house, I rushed into my things and went out to meet you. I thought if I could take you the same walk as we had been before, you could hardly help doing something to give yourself away. And at last you did!"
"May I ask what my relapse was?"
"When I got you to the same place as last time and said the same thing, I noticed you jump. And then you did really rather give yourself away when I asked you if you wanted to look at the rocks, and you jumped at the chance. I know nothing about antiquities--not even as much as you do, Mr. Merton--"
"Hit me again!" I laughed.
"Oh, but it was very clever of you to pretend to be so learned!" she hastened to say. "Still, I did know that there are no antiquities below high water mark, so I knew you just wanted to inspect the place where something happened to you before."
"Where what happened?" I enquired.
"That"s what I want you to tell me! Oh, if you only knew how I"ve died to know what happened that night!"
"How do you know anything happened?"
"I guessed," she said.
This may not sound convincing on paper, but it did as she said it. I was almost ready, in fact, to swear by Jean Rendall now.
"And so you made sure of Thomas Hobhouse!" I said. "But why then didn"t you unmask him at once?"
"Oh, but it wasn"t my business to! Of course I had guessed what you were doing here--"
"What?"
"Trying to rid our island of traitors of course! I had interfered with you once, but I wasn"t going to do it again. In fact I tried to rea.s.sure you by talking of my walk with Mr. Merton."
"Miss Rendall," I said, "I am a child at this game. You did rea.s.sure me. I have been as clay in your hands. But tell me one thing more. Why on earth did you come out with me on that first walk--armed with that horse pistol?"
"Oh, you saw it then!" she exclaimed.
"I almost smelt the slow match! But why did you do it?"
"Well, you know what I thought you were then, and there was no one else to go with you."
"Then you actually went out with a spy at night to keep an eye on him--and shoot him if he spied?"
"I should probably have missed!" she laughed.
I was quite ready to swear by Jean Rendall now. Talk of pluck! I never heard of a more fearless performance!
"Please understand, Mr. Merton," she went on earnestly, "that I should never have dreamt of letting you know that I had recognised you--I haven"t even told father, I a.s.sure you!--only when I heard of this dreadful death of Mr. Bolton--"
She paused and glanced at me, half apologetically, half beseechingly, it seemed.
"Well?" I said.
"Well, I realised the danger you were in supposing anybody else guessed. And I thought I"d come and speak to you. I"m afraid I sometimes act on impulse."
"So do I," I confessed. "In fact I"m going to act on impulse now. Do you care to hear some bits of the story you don"t know?"
Her eyes absolutely danced.
"Oh, I"d love to! I"ve been longing--dying to know the rest of it!
I"ve guessed and guessed, but I haven"t been able to make any sense out of things!"
I remembered my uncle"s injunctions distinctly. I also remembered my cousin"s cautions and my own good resolutions. A woman, of all things, I was to beware of; but I knew I was perfectly safe to throw overboard the whole collection of cautions: and already I had a strong suspicion I should be far from a loser by it. Miss Rendall seemed, in fact, to have distinctly more natural capacity for detective work than I had, judging by her performances so far.