For an instant I thought she was going to demur, but she said nothing, and with a bold air I stepped off the turf and began to make my way down, first through loose boulders and then along a ledge below. I confess frankly that I felt a trifle less bold than I looked, especially when I discovered the hazardous nature of the going. I remember that the sky began to seem lighter by contrast, but that the rocks were sheer chaotic darkness.
I must have been feeling my way along for some minutes, with a growing sense of the futility of the performance, when I first heard the sharp tinkle of a loose stone on rock. I turned towards the sound and heard it again. Either three or four times I had heard it distinctly when I found myself close to the gra.s.s again, only at this place there was a steep little cliff, higher than my head, between it and me, instead of a slope of boulders, so that any one on the bank above would be looking straight down on to me. All this I can swear to.
And then when my shoulder was rubbing this low cliff face, I thought--indeed I am sure--I heard something move above, and certainly there was a sharp grating sound on the rock at my back; within an inch of me, it seemed. I looked round quickly just in time to catch a glimpse of something thin and curved and sinister pa.s.sing upwards, against the night sky. I did not see it descend again, but the next moment came the sharp grating, close to my head this time, and once more the long curved menace pa.s.sed up, faintly visible against the sky.
I did not wait for it to descend again. That somebody was striking at me from above and that I had better get out of the way seemed so evident that I spent no further time in watching the operation. I started from the cliff, my foot struck a patch of seaweed, and with a half smothered "d.a.m.n!" I did the next few yards sliding seawards on my side. A peculiarly hard ledge stopped my career and for a moment I lay there wondering what bones were broken. By the time I had found there were none, and scrambled to my feet, the sky line above the bank was clear. Whoever had struck at me was gone and there was not even the slightest sound, save the gurgling of the sea below. And then I gingerly picked my way back.
I drew near the turf bank at the top and now again I stopped. Low voices reached my ear distinctly and presently I spied two vague forms standing close together. Before I moved again I had transferred something from my hip pocket to my oilskin jacket and I kept my hand there too, closed upon it and ready. Then I advanced.
"Is that you, Mr. Merton?" said a voice I knew.
"It is, Mr. Rendall," I answered drily.
"Did you see anybody?"
"No," I answered truthfully.
"We thought we heard a cry," said Miss Jean.
"I may have startled a sea gull," I suggested; and then I asked with a sharpness in my voice I could not quite control, "Where did Mr. Rendall spring from?"
"I told you I thought we should meet him," she answered, with a cool note in her voice that countered mine.
"What a curious chance that we should all meet here!" I exclaimed.
"It is precisely what I expected," said she.
"Did you think then it was Mr. Rendall down among the rocks?" I enquired.
"No," she said, "and it wasn"t."
"Oh," I replied in a tone which (if I achieved my intention) might have meant anything--or nothing.
Her father had been standing perfectly silent during this bout, a towering figure m.u.f.fled in a heavy ulster and scarf, with the rim of his hat turned down over his face. Now he spoke in his dry caustic way,
"Have you had enough exercise, Mr. Merton?"
"Quite, thank you."
"Then we can all go back together."
He turned and his daughter took his arm. I walked behind them--it seemed on the whole safer, and I kept my hand in my pocket all the while.
I had seen no one, it is true; I had heard no sound that could be sworn to as made by a human being, the thing I saw so dimly might possibly not have been a lethal weapon (and if it was a weapon, what in Heaven"s name could it be? I wondered); it might conceivably have been a large bird some distance off, just as by a reverse illusion men are said to have fired at b.u.mble bees when grouse driving. Also, it was within the bounds of possibility that the tinkling stones might not have been thrown down by some one above in order to draw me under that face. Everything had been so vague that all these alternatives were conceivable. But my own mind was quite and finally determined now that my adventure with the stranger on the sh.o.r.e had been no figment of my fancy, and I felt sure moreover that _they_ had made up their minds about me and decided to act.
How and why they had come to such a definite conclusion despite all my efforts to mislead them, beat me at first completely. And then I stopped short and almost shouted "Idiot!"
I had addressed Miss Rendall at her own door in a German accent. Then I had abruptly dropped it and through all my deliberate mystifications one fact had been clear--that I spoke in the accents of an ordinary more or less educated Englishman. The Rendalls clearly had the material for coming to a conclusion, and now in their company I had all but ended my days on earth.
Yet somehow or other now that I saw all this so clearly, I found myself singularly reluctant to accept the logical conclusion that this gentleman of good lineage and standing and this attractive high-spirited girl were actually traitors of the basest sort, and murderous traitors too.
"Hang it, I may be wrong after all!" I said to myself. "I know I"m young: I am told I"m rash; I have made a fool of myself periodically as long as I"ve known myself, I"ll give them the benefit of the doubt a little longer."
At the door Mr. Rendall left us to resume his conscientious patrol. I said a brief and cool good-night to Jean, went up to my room and tumbled straight into bed.
"In the morning I"ll think things over," I decided.
XI
A NEAR THING
Being an optimist has compensations. Indeed, it would need to have, for no virtue has ever landed any one in more d.a.m.nable sc.r.a.pes than optimism has landed me. But before the crash comes it does help to keep one happy.
Next morning, after that nasty night, I was singing in my bath and full of wild hopes; the fact being that a new and consoling way of looking at things had suggested itself in the very act of shaving.
"They are afraid of me!" I said to myself.
After a night"s sleep the adventure by the sh.o.r.e had grown perhaps a little blurred in some of its details. I wished I could see that curved thing rising against the night sky a trifle more distinctly in my mind"s eye; so that I could take my oath in court it was a weapon. Still, I remained perfectly a.s.sured I had been attacked, and the sustaining conclusions I now drew were, firstly, that "they" (whoever they were; and I tried to keep an open mind on that point) were so afraid of me that they were ready to stick at nothing to lay me out; secondly, that they were afraid to tackle me by day but had to choose a dark night and a lonely place; and thirdly, that with such a splendid chance it must have been nerves that made them bungle it.
"People in that state of mind will do something or other to give themselves away," I thought hopefully.
In this confident state of mind I came down for breakfast. My host, I found, was staying in bed after his night"s vigil, and my hostess was daintier and more inaccessible than ever. After breakfast I reflected for a little over a pipe and then I asked her for a bit of lunch to put in my pocket and told her I was going for a long walk. She got the lunch and gave it to me without wasting a superfluous word, and off I set.
It was a breezy morning with a lot of thin cloud in the sky and a ruffled sea; cool and stimulating; the very day for a walk. I followed the exact route we took the night before, trying to identify such landmarks as rises and falls in the ground and sharp curves in the sh.o.r.e and farms close to the coast, but I found it was practically impossible; every feature seemed so utterly altered in daylight. My object was to find the spot where I had been attacked, and at last I had to be content with knowing that it must have been one of three or four places where the feature of a low cliff immediately under the turf was to be seen.
At one such place there was a long stretch of wall following the sh.o.r.e line, which could have given shelter for any one to stalk me practically from the start. At another I noticed a farm close by, and from this an a.s.sailant could easily have slipped down to the beach and run back again.
At a third the configuration of the rocks was such that it would have been simple for him to have waited below the bank till he heard us coming, made a noise to bring me down, and then gone up above without exposing himself against the sky. In fact one could draw no definite conclusions at all.
Besides, there was the very distasteful alternative (and the more plausible it seemed, the more distasteful it grew) that there might well have been two people in it; one--who might have followed me, the stone thrower; and the other--who might, for instance, have been patrolling the sh.o.r.e from the opposite direction, the attacker.
Suspicious as I had felt at the moment, I shrank from this alternative, and in justification I asked myself,
"Why didn"t she use her pistol, and be done with it?"
But, on the other hand, it was a most extraordinary coincidence that her father should have pa.s.sed that spot certainly within three or four minutes previously, and that he should have seen no sign of my enemy. So far as I could remember the length of time I had spent groping among the rocks, it was just possible for Mr. Rendall to pa.s.s by and for the other man then to begin his work of decoying me, but certainly it was an unpleasant coincidence.
And finally there was a last alternative: that I might have been mistaken in thinking I was actually a.s.sailed and instead of that--But what other conceivable explanation could there be? I tried hard but could think of none.
With the flame of optimism burning now somewhat low, I kept on following the sh.o.r.e till I was well past the scenes of both my night adventures and had come to the little sandy bay with the huddle of low grey farm buildings just clear of the tide. I found Peter senior painting his boat on the sh.o.r.e and hailed him cheerfully with the same old guttural accent.
"Painting your boat, I see," said I.
He gave me a long look and one word.
"Ay," said he, and went on painting.