It was at this stage that Thalassa was seized with an inclination to thrust himself into the dialogue. Striving to explain his reasons at that distance of time, he said it was Robert Turold's last remark which really decided him—did the trick, as he phrased it. Actually it must have been a prompt recognition of the kinship between two lawless souls.

He left his seat and went across to where the two young Englishmen were earnestly talking, unaware that they had been overheard. He approached them as one shipwrecked sailor might approach two other castaways marooned on the same rock. They all wanted money, and they all wanted to get away from that God-forsaken hole. Diamonds they were after? Well, he could take them to a place at the other end of the world where there were enough diamonds in the rough to make them all rich for life.

After the first surprise at his interruption they heard him in silence, and then plied him with questions. Where were these diamonds? In a volcanic island in the South Pacific. Where about? They couldn't expect him to tell them that. It was Robert Turold (Thalassa seemed to have addressed himself principally to him) who asked him how he knew that the diamonds were still there. Thalassa's reply was that they were buried in a big box, and the island was out of the run of ships. What sort of a big box? Turold had asked. Thalassa replied (perhaps reluctantly) that the box was "a kind of a coffin," and that there was a dead man inside of it as well as the diamonds, but he, at all events, was not likely to run off with them.

Remington and Turold were startled by this answer, and conferred hastily apart. They returned to ask more questions. They wanted to know how the body and the diamonds had got there in the first instance, but that was a story which Thalassa refused to reveal. That had nothing to do with it, he said. The ship which had buried the man there had gone down afterwards with all hands, so nobody knew about the diamonds except him.

After that Remington became the chief questioner, Robert Turold merely looking on, his dark eyes frequently meeting Thalassa's. It seemed as though he must have realized that these last replies concealed a story better left unprobed. But Remington wanted to know why Thalassa had come searching for diamonds in that part of the world when he knew of plenty in another, and Thalassa had replied, in all simplicity, that it was because the Almighty had endowed him with more muscles than brains, and he hadn't recognized the worth of the stones at the time. In fact, he didn't know that they were diamonds. His experience on the fields had improved his knowledge in that respect, and he now knew that he had left behind him on the lonely island enough diamonds in the rough to make them all rich—two bottlesful, and some in a leather bag, where the dead man also kept one of those digging licenses which the damned German officials sold you—what did they call it? Prospector's license—a schurfschein? said Remington. Yes, that was it. He knew it again as soon as he got one on the fields.

Turold and Remington again talked together in whispers, and then Turold asked Thalassa how he proposed to get the diamonds. Thalassa had his plan ready. They must get down to the Cape and get a boat to Sydney from Capetown. That was the jumping-off place. From Sydney they were to take a boat to—another place. The island was a bare two days' sail from the "other place," and Thalassa proposed to hire a cutter on the mainland and sail over to it. He was no navigator, but he could find his way back to that island again at any time.

Turold seemed inclined to agree, but Remington put in another of his sharp questions. Why did he want to bring two strangers into the business? What was to prevent him getting the diamonds on his own account, without sharing with anybody? Thalassa replied that he had no money to finance the expedition, and even if he got the diamonds they'd be no use to him. How could a rough seaman like himself, who could hardly write his own name, turn the stones into the large sum of money they represented? That was an enterprise which called for civilized qualities of education and address which he did not possess. From his standpoint it was an even deal between them. They were to supply the money and intelligence in return for his knowledge, and they would share and share alike.

It was Robert Turold who ultimately settled the decision—winning over the reluctant Remington with words which Thalassa had never forgotten. He also recognized the risk, but he thought it was well worth taking. It seemed that the two had a little more than L200 left between them—just about enough to carry the thing through. What was the use of returning to England with that paltry sum, he had asked. He spoke of a girl—some girl who was waiting in England for Remington while he made his fortune abroad. Was he going to go back to her penniless? "Even if this doesn't turn out right," he went on, "we'll have reached another part of the world, with a fresh chance of making money, instead of being poor in England, that breeding-ground for tame rabbits, where poverty is the unforgiveable sin." "I liked him for those words," said Thalassa, "for they came from a man whose thoughts were after the style of my own. 'Twas they decided the other chap, and next morning we set out for Capetown. From there we got passages in a cargo boat for Sydney."

Charles found it easier to visualize this picture than the former. The departure of the three upon such a wild romantic venture had in its elements all the audacity, greed, and splendour of youth, and he also was young.

Thalassa went on with his story.

During the voyage to Sydney, Robert Turold used to talk to him on deck at nights after Remington had gone to his bunk. It was in these solitary deck tramps under glittering stars that Thalassa first heard from the other's lips of the Turrald title: the title for which the fortune he was seeking was merely a stepping stone—the means to obtain it. "Night after night he talked of nothing else," said Thalassa, "and I knew he would do what he wanted to do." It was easy to gather from his story that his original admiration for Robert Turold soon grew into a deeper and stronger feeling. There was something in the dead man's masterful ambitious character which exercised a reluctantly conceded but undoubted fascination upon his companion's fierce spirit.

Such were their relations when they reached Sydney and set out on a further voyage to the other place which Thalassa was so reluctant to name. On arriving at the "other place" they made their way to its east coast, which was the starting point of their journey to the island. From a brown man living on the coast Thalassa hired a smart little ketch which the three of them could easily handle, and in this they embarked for the island from a beach which curved like a white tusk around a blue bay.

They did not reach the island for six days—through baffling winds, and not because they did not steer a right course. As Thalassa had said, there was no difficulty in finding it, for they had only been one day at sea when the smouldering smoke of the distant volcanic cone came into vision, making an unholy mark against the clear sky which they never lost again. Gradually they beat nearer until they made it—a circular ragged high ridge jutting abruptly from a deep sullen sea, with a red glow showing fitfully in the smoke of the summit.

There was an outer reef, but Thalassa knew the passage, and steered the ketch through a tortuous channel above sunken needle-pointed rocks to a little sheltered harbour inshore. Here they made the ketch fast, and landed on a beach of volcanic violet, where they sometimes sank knee deep into sulphuric water, and felt squirming sea things squelch beneath their tread. Above this margin of violet-black sand, deposits of volcanic rock and lava rose almost perpendicularly, enclosing the central cone in a kind of amphitheatre.

The stones they had travelled so far to obtain were there waiting for them. Thalassa hurried over that part of the story, narrating it in barest outline with suspicious glances directed at his listener's intent face. Apparently he led his companions to the spot as soon as they landed—up a path through a gap in the crater wall, across a furrowed slope all a-quake, where jets of steam issued from gurgling fissures in snaky spirals. On the other side of this dreary waste Thalassa led the way across a ledge to firmer ground and a grave. Charles gathered that the occupant of the grave had been coffined in a seaman's chest in his clothes: "There he was, with his bottles of diamonds in his coat pockets, and more in his leather bag in his breast pocket, just as I left him twelve months afore to go to the other end of the world looking for what I'd buried." A grim smile curved Thalassa's face as he uttered these words; the idea seemed to contain elements of humour for him.

"They were diamonds, then?" said Charles curiously.

"Ay; they were diamonds right enough. Him—Turold—said they were diamonds as soon as he uncorked one of the bottles and poured a few into the palm of his hand. There was some rare big ones in one of the bottles—enough to have brought all those fools tumbling out of Africa if they'd know of them. From some papers they found on the chap Turold said he'd must a-been prospecting in nigh every part of the world."

"How did he come to be buried there with his diamonds, in that lonely spot?" asked Charles wonderingly.

"He was a passenger, and died as we was passing the island. 'Twas the skipper's fancy to give him a land burial. But that doesn't matter a dump—it's outside the story." He turned his eyes away from Charles.

Dusk had fallen before they finished their search, and Thalassa would not undertake the risk of threading the boat out from the tortuous reef passage in the darkness. They decided to camp on the island for the night, preferring the sulphur-impregnated air ("A lighted match would blaze and fizzle in it like a torch," Thalassa declared) to the cramped discomfort of their little craft. They brought some food ashore, and made a flimsy sort of camp above high water, at the foot of the encircling walls of the crater. There they had their supper, and there, as they lounged smoking, Remington in an evil moment for himself suggested that they should sort the diamonds into three heaps—share and share alike. Robert Turold agreed, and they emptied the stones out of the bottles and leather bag into a single heap. Remington took one bottle and Robert Turold another; to Thalassa fell the empty bag. As the stones were sorted one was to be placed in each receptacle until the tally ran out.

It must have been a strange spectacle—so strange that it made a lasting impression on the least imaginative mind of the three, for he tried in his rude way to reproduce it on that Cornish beach after the lapse of thirty long years. He threw bits of rock on the sand to indicate the positions in which they had sat. From his description Charles pictured the scene adequately enough: the violet-black beach, exhaling sulphuric vapours, the yellow-grey volcanic rocks, the gurgling ebullitions of a geyser throwing off volumes of smoke high above them, and the faces of the three men (ruddy in the fire-glow, white in the moonlight) intent on the division of the heap of dull stones scattered on a flat rock between them. Thalassa remembered all these things; he remembered also how startled they were, the three of them, at the unexpected sound of a kind of throaty chuckle near by, and turned in affright to see a large bird regarding them from the shadow of the rocks—a sea bird with rounded wings, light-coloured plumage, and curiously staring eyes above a yellow beak. When it saw it was observed it vanished swiftly seaward in noiseless flight.

The division, commenced good-humouredly enough, soon developed the elements of a gamble between Robert Turold and Remington. They forgot Thalassa's existence as they argued and disputed over the allotment of certain stones. The foot or so of flat rock became the circumference of their thoughts, ambitions, and passions—their world for the time being. In that sordid drama of greed Thalassa seemed to have comported himself with greater dignity than his two superiors by birth and education. He even took it upon himself to reason with them on their folly. Perhaps he knew from his own seamy experience of life what such things developed into. At all events, he urged his companions to defer the division until they returned to civilization and could get the spoils appraised by eyes expert in the knowledge of precious stones. But they would not listen, so, not liking the look of things, he withdrew a little distance off and watched them, leaning against a rock. That was his tacit admission (so Charles interpreted this action) that he was on Robert Turold's side, and felt that his own interests were identical with those of the master mind. The two, left to themselves, wrangled more fiercely than ever. There were unpleasant taunts and mutual revilings. The listener by the rock learnt definitely what he had previously suspected—that there was bitter blood and bad feeling between the two men, buried for a time, but now revived with a savageness which revealed the hollowness of their supposed reconciliation. It was about a girl, some girl in England with whom they had both been in love. Thalassa gathered that Remington had left England as the favoured suitor. He had (in Thalassa's words) "cut Turold out."

Charles Turold could not forbear a faint exclamation of astonishment. His brain reeled in trying to imagine the austere figure of Robert Turold squabbling over a girl and some diamonds on a lonely island in the South Pacific. He was too amazed at the moment to see the implications of this part of the story.

"They went on snarling and showing their teeth, but not biting," continued Thalassa, "sorting out the little stones all right, but quarrelling over the bigger. There was two—the biggest in the bunch by far—which they kept putting aside because they couldn't agree about the sharing of them. At last it came about that there was only these two big 'uns left, lying like two beans on the bit o' rock, side by side. Before I could guess what was likely to happen Turold grabbed them up quick, and put them in his bottle. 'These two are mine, Thalassa's and mine,' he said. 'You've had your share, Remington.' Remington sprang from the rock quick as a snake. 'One's mine,' he said. But Turold was up as quick. 'It's not for you,' he says, with his dark smile. 'We'll put it against the girl you filched from me, and call it an even deal. What does a happy lover want with diamonds?' 'Damn you!' cries the other, and hit him in the face. They both went down, scuffling and panting in the sand. I stood where I was, for I weren't going to come between them till I saw how it was going to be. Presently I could see that Remington was stronger, and that Turold was getting the worst of it. After a bit Turold called out, 'Thalassa!'

"I ran down at that fast enough, and got out my knife as I went. They'd slipped down the sloping beach half-way to the sea, writhing like a couple of the blind-worms that I kept stepping on, going over and over so quick that I couldn't do anything at first. But one of them was sobbing in his breath as though he was pretty well finished, and I guessed it was Turold. Then I saw Remington's face on top, and before they could swing round again I got a good stroke in his neck where it gleamed white in the moonlight. The blood jumped out warm on my hand, and he rolled over so quick that I thought I had killed him. But as I stooped over him he was up like a flash, staggering up the steep beach, his feet plopping and sucking in the water underneath. Turold was on his feet by that time, breathing hard, getting back his breath. 'After him—quick!' he says to me, his face black with rage—'he's got the diamonds.'

"I ran after him up the beach, but he heard me coming and had the start of me. He had firm ground under him by then, and was tearing along the rocks towards the path I'd taken them that afternoon, turning round now and again to look back, the blood glistening in the moonlight on his white face. There we was—him going higher and higher, me after him, and Turold standing below on the beach, staring up at the two of us.

"Run my best, I couldn't get near him. I suppose he thought he was done for if I caught him, and by that time my blood was pretty well up. I had one pull over him—I knew the island, and he didn't. The path he was taking led to the top of the island, where the crater was, with a kind of wall of rocks round it. But before you came to that there was a great hole which fell down God Almighty knows how deep, and was supposed to have been another volcano at some time or other. This hole was divided into two by a narrow ridge running right across it, and the path Remington was on took him straight to the edge. So he'd either got to go across this ridge when he come to it or turn back and be caught.

"He was a long way ahead when he come to it, but he never stopped. He just gave one glance down at me, and went on to the ridge. I watched him balancing along it like a man on a tight rope, mounting higher and higher, for the ridge went up steep on the far side. Thinks I to myself, 'You're a plucky one,' then all of a sudden I heard a shout from below, and looked down. There stood Turold, waving me out of the way. He'd been to the boat for a gun we'd brought with us, and was taking aim at Remington. The next thing I saw was Remington turning round on the ledge to come back to my side, having found out, I suppose, that the ridge would take him into the crater. Just as he turned I heard the shot. It must have winged Remington pretty bad, because he went tumbling off the ridge head first, like a man taking a dive into the water. I turned and climbed down to where I'd left Turold. His face was all aglow with rage. 'The infernal scoundrel!' he said, then—'Did you get the diamonds?' 'How was I to get them when I never caught him?' I said. 'Then we'll get them off his body in the morning,' he said in a low tone. 'You'll never do that,' says I. He asks me why not, turning on me a face as savage as a dog's. 'Because whichever side he's dropped he's safe from us,' I said. 'There's a hole that no man's ever seen the bottom of on one side of the ridge, and on the other a stinking lake of green boiling sulphur. When you shot him you sent him into one or the other, so you can say good-bye to him and the diamonds.' 'Oh!' he cries, when he heard that—just like that; then after a bit he points up the path, and asks me to go back and have a look for him. I went back as far as the ridge. The moon was clear as day, shining on that infernal green lake on the one side, and into the deep hole on the other. The lake was bubbling and stewing in the moonlight like a witchpot, and the other side of the ridge was just black emptiness, and there was no sign of Remington—I knowed there couldn't be. Back I went again, and as I was climbing down the path to where Turold was standing I saw something glinting in the black sand at his feet, and when I got there I picked up the bottle of diamonds where Remington must have dropped them when struggling with Turold. I gave them to Turold. 'And now,' says I, 'let's get out of here. The moon's bright enough to let me find my way through the reefs, and this island ain't a healthy place to stay too long on. I know it, and you don't.' He was glad enough to follow me to the boat, and we got through on a good flowing tide."

Thalassa stopped abruptly, as though to leave on his listener's mind an impression of that furtive departure on a dark whispering sea beneath a blood-red moon.

"You got back to the mainland?" queried Charles, as he remained silent.

"Ay—and to England. Afore we got there Turold had persuaded himself that Remington slipped off the ridge accidental, and that he missed him when he fired."

"Perhaps his conscience pricked him. Go on."

"There's nowt much more to tell. Turold got me my share of the money, and then we parted. He offered to invest it for me, but I wasn't going to trust no banks—not I. It took me two years to waste it on gambling and women. Then I took to sea again. That lasted another year. Then I found myself in 'Frisco, where I shipped in a four-masted barque and come home round the Horn. I was pretty sick of the sea after two bad goes of rheumatic fever, so I made up my mind to hunt up Turold. I found him after a while. He didn't seem best pleased to see me at first, but he said I could stay till he had time to think out what he could do for me. That was the beginning of it. We never parted again, him and me, until he was carried out of yon house feet first. We got used to each other's ways, and I was worth all he paid me because I saved him worry and expense. He was all for saving, in those days. Married he was too, to a little timid thing of a girl who was in fear and trembling of him. 'Twas a black day for her when she married that headstrong stubborn devil. 'Mr.' Thalassa she always called me, poor woman. I married a maid-servant they had. That was Turold's idea—he thought by that way he could get his household looked after very cheaply by the pair of us. I wasn't keen on marrying, but it didn't make much odds one way or the other, for no living woman, wife or no wife, would have kept me in England if I'd wanted to get out. As it happened, I never did. I stayed on, going from place to place where they went—where Turold took us."

"Whom did my uncle marry?" asked Charles.

"You might a' guessed that. 'Twas the girl t'other had cut him out of. I thought the masterful devil'd get her when Remington was out of the way, but I asked him once straight out, and he said yes, it was the same girl. She was a pretty timid little thing in those days, but I don't know why they was both so mad after her. However, there it was."

"And do you think that after all these years, Remington is really alive?" said Charles, looking at him earnestly. "Do you think it was he who murdered my uncle?"

"Happen maybe, happen not. The night he was killed I found him in a rare funk in his room. He rang his bell like a fury, and when I went up he swore he heard the footsteps of Remington just afore, running round the rocks outside of Flint House just as he heard him pattering along the rocks on the island that night. I didn't believe 'un then, but I'm not so sure since. If he's come back to get Turold it's for sure he's still somewhere about, waiting his chance to get me as well. I'm keeping my eye open for 'un—walked the coast for miles, I have, looking for him. He won't take me unawares, same as Turold." His eyes searched the cliffs behind them.

"You may not recognize him if you meet him. It is thirty years since you saw him. A man changes a lot in thirty years."

"That's true, 'tis a thought which never crossed my mind." Thalassa's look was troubled.

"As you've told me this story you'd better leave it in my hands, and not go looking for anybody with that knife of yours."

"What be you going to do?"

"I must go to Scotland Yard and tell them your story. It's the only chance."

"And get me into trouble?"

"There's not much fear of that. In any case, you must stand that, for Sisily's sake."

Thalassa nodded his acquiescence. "Better be careful yersel' getting back to London. The police here is watching for you. They've been a' Flint House more than once, looking for both of you."

"It's a risk I must take, nevertheless," said the young man, rising from his seat as he spoke. "It's for Sisily's sake. Good-bye, Thalassa, and thank you for what you've told me."

Thalassa did not reply or offer to accompany him. From his seat on the rocks he followed Charles's ascent up the narrow path with contemplative eyes.



CHAPTER XXIX

Barrant returned to London in the mental disposition of a man who sees an elaborate theory thrown into the melting-pot by an unexpected turn of events. The humbling thought was that he had allowed a second fish to glide through his hands without even suspecting that it was on his line. He had never remotely connected Charles Turold with the murder until Mr. Brimsdown had imparted Mrs. Brierly's disclosure to him. He had acted promptly enough on that piece of information, but once again he was too late.

Austin Turold might have felt reassured if he had known how little his share in the events of that night occupied Barrant's mind during their last interview. The complexion Austin's conduct bore to the detective's reflection was that of a father who had intentionally misled the power of authority in order to shield his son. The law took a serious view of that offense, but it was a matter which could be dealt with at leisure in Austin's case. By his brother's death Austin Turold had become a man of property and standing. It was the drawback of his wealth that he could not disappear like his son. He was to be found when wanted. The main thing just then was to catch the son, or the girl—or both. Barrant went back to London for that purpose.

As the days slipped away without that end being achieved he became worried and perplexed. His own position was an unenviable one, and his thoughts were far from pleasant. He felt that he had failed badly, and that his standing with his superiors in Scotland Yard was under a cloud in consequence. But he could not see where he had actually been at fault. It was such a damned amazing case. In most crimes the trouble was to find sufficient clues, but in this case there were too many. And the inferences pointed different ways. That was the trouble. He was not even sure that in this latest discovery, so annoyingly belated, he had reached the ultimate solution of the facts. It was not that the theory of these two young people committing murder for love was too cynical for belief. He had encountered more incredible things than that in his professional career. Life was a cynical business, and youth could be brutal in pursuit of its aims, especially when the aim was passion, as it usually was. In his experience youth and age were the dangerous periods—youth, because it knew nothing of life, and age because it knew too much. There were fewer surprises in middle-age. That was the period of responsibility—when humanity clung to the ordered way with the painful rectitude of a procession of laden ants toiling up a hill. Youth was not like that—nor age.

No, it was not that. His difficulty was to fit all the circumstances into any compact theory of the case. Try as he would, there were always some loose ends left over, some elements of uncertainty which left him perplexed. He fashioned a new view of the murder, with Charles Turold as the principal figure in it—the actual murderer. He assumed that Charles and Sisily had gone to Flint House that night to prevent the truth about Sisily's birth becoming known. The assertion of her illegitimacy rested upon her father's bare statement, but his lawyer was convinced he would not have made the statement without having the proofs in his possession. These proofs had not been found. Very well. What inference was to be drawn from that? Sisily knew that they were kept in the clock-case, and pointed out the hiding place to her lover. In a struggle for their possession Robert Turold was shot down, or he might have been shot first and staggered to the clock afterwards to see if they had been stolen. Either supposition accounted for the fallen clock, and fitted in with nearly all the known facts of the murder.

Nearly all, but not all! In face of Mrs. Brierly's disclosure it seemed a condition precedent to the elucidation of the mystery to substitute Charles Turold for Thalassa as the person whose undisciplined love for Sisily had led him to shoot her father to shield her name. Nor was it incredible to suppose that he had remained in Cornwall to cover her flight in the hope of diverting suspicion from her. But the loose end in the theory was Thalassa's share in that night's events, and his dogged silence since under strong suspicion.

Thalassa knew more than he had yet revealed, but what did he know? What was his share in the business? It was difficult to say. Barrant was unable to accept the assumption that three people were concerned in the murder. That idea, if not impossible, was at least contrary to reason. But if it was excluded, how was the silence of Thalassa to be explained? Was he afraid? It was as difficult to associate that quality with him as with an eagle or beast of prey.

And the theory failed to explain the reason for Robert Turold's frantic letter to his lawyer on the night of the murder. That was another loose end.

What a case! It was an abnormal and sinister mystery in any light, with no absolute or demonstrative certainty of proof by any of its circumstances, however regarded. The effect of its perplexing clues distorted the imagination, outraged the sense of possibility and experience. To reach conclusiveness in it seemed as impossible as an attempt to scale an unending staircase in a nightmare. The facts were there, but they were inexplicable, or at least they stared at him with the aspect of many faces.

As he weighed these doubts he found his thoughts reverting with increasing frequency to the hood clock in Robert Turold's study and the question of its connection with the crime. He pondered over the point with the nervous anxiety of a puzzled brain, and it seemed to him now that he had not devoted as much investigation to this peculiar clue as it deserved. He recalled Mr. Brimsdown's conversation on the matter. He remembered that he had been struck at the time by the penetration of his remarks about the clock, and while not accepting his fantastic theory, had determined to give more careful thought to the point. But Mrs. Brierly's disclosure put the idea out of his head.

It recurred to him with renewed force when he found himself in Exeter nearly a fortnight later on another case. It was a good opportunity to go on to Cornwall, and he took it. His business completed, he caught the early train, and in due time arrived at Penzance. With an obscure instinct for solitude he hastened through the town and struck out across the moors.

The afternoon was waning when he reached Flint House and pulled the old-fashioned bell-handle of the weatherbeaten door. There was no reply, and a second ring passed disregarded. That was disconcerting and unexpected. He wondered whether Thalassa and his wife had left the place. Then he noticed that the door was merely closed and not shut. He lifted the heavy iron knocker, and knocked loudly. The repeated knocking sent the door flying open, and Barrant found himself looking into an empty hall. Half-way down a pair of curtains stirred slightly and parted suddenly, revealing a narrower passage which led to the door of the kitchen. The curtains streamed horizontally, twisting and coiling like snakes. Barrant stepped quickly inside and closed the door. The curtains fell together again.

There was something so startling in this action of the wind that Barrant stood motionless, looking round him. The cold current of air he had admitted died away in the draughty passages with queer gasping noises, like a wind strangled. Then there was the most absolute silence. The curtains hung perpendicular, as thickly motionless as blankets. Barrant noticed that the hallstand and a chair beside it were thick with dust. Evidently the house was empty.

Turning first to make quite sure that the front door was securely shut, he took his way upstairs to Robert Turold's study.

A point of light, falling through the shattered panel of the closed door, pierced the vague gloom of the passage and hovered on the door of the bedroom opposite—the room into which the dead man had been carried.

Barrant entered the study and looked around him. It was intolerably dirty and neglected; everything was covered with a thick grey dust. Barrant walked over to the clock and regarded it attentively.

What a rascally fat face that moon had! It must have seen some queer sights in old houses during its two hundred years of life. Strange that those old clockmakers could make clocks to last so long, but couldn't keep their own life-springs running half the time! The moral verse was curious enough. Why should a man who spent half his lifetime putting together a clock presume to tell his fellow creatures to make the most of the passing hour?

His reflections took a more practical turn. The clock was the sole witness to the time of the murder. There were two other clocks in Flint House, but nobody had thought of looking at them when the crime was discovered. Barrant regarded that as a regrettable oversight. It was always important to know the exact time when a murder was committed. Thalassa said that the hood clock was going and kept excellent time, but the value of that secondary testimony was impaired by the fact that Thalassa might not be telling the truth. On the other hand, there was certain presumptive evidence which suggested that he was. It was a proved fact that Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton and Dr. Ravenshaw left the doctor's house in a motor-car for Flint House not later than half-past nine on the night of the murder. Assuming that they covered the journey across the moors in five or six minutes and occupied another five minutes in getting upstairs and breaking in the door, the testimony of the hood clock seemed correct, because Dr. Ravenshaw said death had just taken place, and he and the doctor who made the post-mortem examination were both agreed that Robert Turold could not have lived many minutes after he was shot. Therefore the presumptive evidence seemed to determine the time of death accurately enough.

But that was only a minor phase of the mystery. The real problem was the hidden connection between the clock and the murder. What had brought the clock down, and why had Robert Turold fallen almost on top of it, his outstretched hands resting on the dial? The complete elucidation of the mystery lay behind the obscurity in which these two points were shrouded. To find the answer to them was the surest and quickest way of reconciling all the contradictory facts of the case. But Barrant racked his brains for the reason in vain.

He examined the room. There was a leather-topped writing-table with drawers, several cabinets filled with manuscripts and papers, some walnut chairs with carved legs, and a tall deep bookcase filled with dreary-looking books. His eyes wandered over the titles of the volumes. They also belonged to a bygone period—a melancholy accumulation of works as dead as their writers. Two whole shelves were occupied with the numbers of a forgotten periodical which claimed to give "ample details of the unhappy difference between Queen Caroline of Great Britain and her consort George the Fourth." Barrant wondered idly why human nature was always so interested in the washing of dirty linen. Above these was ranged a row of published sermons. Barrant's eye roamed higher and fell on a fat sturdy volume wedged in between some slimmer books. The title of this book was "Clocks of All Periods." Clocks!

He reached for the volume and placed it on the table. A cursory glance through the pages conveyed the suggestion that it contained more information about clocks than was worth acquiring or writing down. There was a chapter on water clocks, to begin with: "Known to the Egyptians and the Holy Land." Barrant turned the leaves. "The Ancient Chinese used a smouldering wick as timekeeper." Barrant shook his head impatiently. "King Alfred's supposed device of measuring Time by Candles—a Myth." Would to heaven his invention of juries was a myth, too. Scotland Yard would get on much better without them. "A Lamp-clock was another Simple and Ingenious Design." How intolerably long-winded the writer was. What had he to say about hood clocks? "Very few of the Early Clocks had Dials. The Device was generally a Mechanical Figure which struck the Hour on a Bell." Evidently the forerunner of the devilish alarum clock. "Early clockmakers—Old English monks as Clockmakers." The pages flowed rapidly through Barrant's fingers. "Introduction of Minute Hand Marks—Period of Clocks Showing Tides—Longfaced Clocks." Ah, here it was at last—"Hood Clocks."

He began to read the chapter with interest, but as he was about to turn the first page the silence of the room was broken by a faint cackling laugh—an elfin sound which died away instantly. He looked up, startled. His surprise was not lessened at the sight of Mrs. Thalassa watching him from the open doorway. She entered on tiptoe, with a strange air of caution, examining him with restless eyes.

"I heard you," she mumbled. "I saw you go upstairs. Mr. Thalassa was out, and I was afraid to go to the door. I've been playing patience, and it won't come out."

She showed her apron full of small cards. She placed them on the table, and arranged them in rows.

A new idea came into Barrant's mind as he looked at her. If the poor creature had recovered sufficient wits to take to her cards again she might be coaxed to recall what she had seen on the night of the murder. He drew near her. "Can I help you?" he said.

She nodded sideways at him like a child—a child with withered face and grey hair.

Together they bent over the cards. A gull flashed past the window with a scream, as though it had seen them and was repelled at the strange sight.

"Only kings can go into vacant spaces," murmured Barrant's companion, intent on the game.

The result of the game was inconclusive. A king remained surrounded by small cards, like a real monarch overwhelmed by the rabble on May Day. Mrs. Thalassa's eyes strayed mournfully over the rows, then she gathered up the cards and shuffled them again.

"Do you know any other games of patience?" Barrant asked.

She shook her head.

"Then this is the game you were playing on that night?"

"What night?" she whispered.

"The night Mr. Turold was killed."

"I don't want to think of that—it frightens me."

She remembered, then! Her face went grey, but her eyes were alert, watching his.

"Listen to me"—he spoke very gently—"I want to help you get rid of your fear and terror, but to do so I must talk to you about that night. Do you understand?"

The kindness in his voice seemed to reach her feeble consciousness, and she looked at him earnestly.

"Will you try and recollect?"

She seemed to search his eyes for courage, and gave a trembling nod.

"What time was it when you heard the crash upstairs? Think well."

She seemed to make an effort to remember. "I don't know," she said at last.

"Think again. You were playing patience—the game you have just shown me?"

Her eyes turned to the cards on the table. "Yes," she said.

"What time did you commence—can you think?"

She shook her head. "I seem to remember it was half-past eight by the kitchen clock when I started my last game. I was alone in the kitchen then. The game was just coming out when I heard a crash—"

She broke off suddenly with a painful sigh and a frightened glance at the hood clock on the wall.

"One game!" Barrant glanced at his watch with, an air of mistrust. "You mean two, don't you?"

Her eyes returned to his. She shook her head with a rapid tremulous motion. "No!" she exclaimed excitedly. "One, only one!"

Barrant cast another glance at his watch, which he Still held in his hand. "You are quite sure you did not play two?" he persisted, with a puzzled glance.

"No, no—one!" She sprang to her feet excitedly.

"Very well—one," acquiesced Barrant soothingly. "One. Go on."

But his effort to calm her came too late. She cast a wild and fearful glance at the wall behind her, as if there was something there which frightened her.

"How it rings—how it rings!" Her indistinct utterance grew louder. "Yes, Jasper, I hear. Yes, sir, I'm coming. Where's the supper tray?"

"Don't be afraid, Mrs. Thalassa," said Barrant, approaching her, but she backed hurriedly away towards the door.

"Coming with the supper tray—coming with the supper tray.... What's that? Ah-h-h-h-h!"

Her disjointed mutterings ended in a shrill scream which went ringing through the stillness and seemed to linger in the room after she had disappeared. Barrant heard her muttering and laughing as she descended the stairs.

The sounds died away into a silence so absolute as to suggest the impression of a universe suddenly stricken dumb. Barrant crossed the room to the window, where he stood looking out, deep in thought.

What was the meaning of it all—of this latest scene in particular? The game of patience so tempestuously concluded had occupied half-an-hour. He had noted the time. Yet Mrs. Thalassa insisted she had played only one game after half-past eight on the night of the murder. If he dared accept such a computation of time an unimagined possibility in the case stood revealed. But—a demented woman. "A parable in the mouth of a fool." Perhaps it was because she was a fool that he had stumbled on this revelation. She lacked the wit to lie about it.

If so—

His eyes, straying incuriously over the outstretched panorama of sea and cliffs beneath the window, fell upon a man's outline scaling the cliff path near the Moon Rock. Disturbed in his meditations, Barrant watched the climber. He reached the top and appeared in full view on the bare summit of the cliffs. Barrant stared down upon him, amazed beyond measure. The advancing figure was Charles Turold.



CHAPTER XXX

Barrant hastened from the room downstairs to the front door. From the open doorway he saw Charles Turold advancing across the rocks in the direction of the house, and he ran swiftly down the gravel path to intercept him.

Charles looked up and came on as if there was nothing to turn back for. His clear glance dwelt on the figure by the gate without fear—with seeming gratification. Barrant was amazed. He had been prepared for an attempt at flight, but not this welcoming look. Never before had he known a man show joy at the prospect of arrest. The experience was so disturbing that he went across the intervening space to meet Charles, and laid a hand upon his arm.

"I suppose you know you are wanted by the police?" he said.

"I am aware of it," was the quiet reply. "I was going to give myself up."

"Did you come back to Cornwall for that purpose?" asked the detective, shooting another puzzled glance at him.

"I came back to try and discover the truth."

"About what?"

"About my uncle's death."

"And have you discovered it?"

"I have."

Barrant did not understand the young man's attitude, or the tone of heartfelt relief in which he uttered these words, but he felt that the conversation in its present form had gone far enough.

"Do you propose to tell me the truth?" he asked, with a slight cynical emphasis on the last word.

"I do."

Barrant's surprise kept him silent for a moment, but when he spoke he was very incisive—

"In that case it is my duty to warn you—"

"There is no need to warn me," Charles quickly interrupted. "I know. Any statement I make will be taken down and used against me. That's the formula, isn't it, or something to that effect? Let us go into the house—my story will take some time in the telling."

He made this request as a right rather than a favour, and Barrant found himself turning in at the gate with him. In silence they walked to the house, and it was Charles Turold who led the way to the sitting-room.

"It was here it began," he murmured, glancing round the deserted apartment, "and it seems fitting that the truth should be brought to light in the same place."

"Provided that it is the truth," commented his companion.

Charles did not reply. They had been standing face to face, but he now drew a chair to the table and sat down. Barrant walked to the door and locked it before seating himself beside him.

"You can begin as soon as you like," he said.

"I think I had better tell you about my own actions, first of all, on that night," said Charles, after a brief silence. "It will clear the way for what follows. I was up here that night—the night of the murder."

"I know that much," was Barrant's cold comment.

"You suspected it—you did not know it," Charles quickly rejoined.

He remained profoundly silent for a moment, as if meditating his words, and then plunged into his tale.

The account of his own visit to Flint House on the night of the murder he related with details withheld from Sisily. The visit was the outcome of a quarrel between father and son over Robert Turold's announcement about his wife's previous marriage. Charles was shocked by his uncle's decision to make the story public, and had wandered about the cliffs until dark trying to decide what to do. Ultimately he returned home and asked his father to use his influence with his brother to keep the secret in the family. His father called him a fool for suggesting such a thing, declined to offend his brother or blast his own prospects by such damned quixotic nonsense. On this Charles had announced his intention of seeing his uncle and telling him he would leave England immediately and forever unless the scandal was kept quiet. That made his father angry, and they quarrelled violently. Charles cut the quarrel short by flinging out of the house in the rain, to carry out his intention of interviewing his uncle. He walked across the moors to Flint House. The front door was open, the downstairs portion of the house in darkness, and his uncle lying upstairs in his study—dead.

He hurried over all this as of small importance in the deeper significance of Thalassa's story. That was to him the great thing—the wonderful discovery which was to clear Sisily and put everything right. He believed that the plan which had brought him to Cornwall was working splendidly. The chance encounter with the detective was really providential—a speeding up, a saving of valuable time.

The possibility of disbelief did not dawn upon him. He overlooked that his listener was also his custodian and judge—the suspicious arbiter of a belated story told by one whose own actions were in the highest degree suspicious. His overburdened mind forgot these things in the excitement of hope. He talked with the candour and freedom of one young man confiding in another. When he had finished he looked at his companion expectantly, but Barrant's eyes were coldly official.

"A strange story!" he said.

"A true one," Charles eagerly rejoined. "Thalassa has been walking along the coast ever since in the expectation of finding this man. He will kill him if he meets him."

It was Barrant's lot to listen to many strange stories which were always true, according to the narrators, but generally they caused him to feel ashamed of the poverty of human invention. He was not immediately concerned to discover whether Thalassa's story was true or false, or whether it had been concocted between him and Charles with the object of deceiving the authorities. The consideration of that infamous brownfaced scoundrel's confession could be postponed—if it had ever been made. The present business was with Charles Turold. There was something infernally mysterious in his unexpected reappearance in that spot. He had gone to London when he disappeared—he admitted that. What had brought him back? To see Thalassa, as he said, in order to try and get at the truth? Nonsense! He—Barrant—was not simple enough to believe that. What then?

Barrant was not prepared to supply a ready answer to that question. But his trained ear had detected many gaps in the young man's own narrative which, filled in, might give it. Turold knew more than he had said—he was keeping things back. Again—what things? Behind him stood the shadowy figure of the girl and her unexplained flight. Barrant's instinct told him that Charles was shielding her. He turned to the task of endeavouring to reach the truth.

"Let's go back a bit," he said casually. "You've left one or two points in your own story unexplained. What about the key?"

"The key?" Charles started slightly. You mean—"

"I mean the key of the room upstairs. You said you found the key in the passage outside. You must have locked the door after you and taken it away with you."

"I did," replied the young man, in some hesitation.

"For what reason?"

Charles realized that he was on very thin ice. In his intense preoccupation with Thalassa's story he had forgotten that his own impulsive actions on that night must be construed as proof of his own guilt or bear too literal interpretation of having been done to shield Sisily. He saw that he was in a position of extraordinary difficulty.

"I was hardly conscious of what I was doing, at the time," he said.

"You took the key away with you?"

Charles nodded with the feeling that the ice was cracking beneath him.

"And how did it get back into the room afterwards?"

Charles paused to consider his reply, but the detective supplied it.

"The inference is fairly obvious," he said. "The key was found inside the study after the locked door was burst open. It was your father who found it, on the floor. At least, he pretended to find it there. It was your father who started the suicide theory." He paused, then added in a smooth reflective voice, "Really, the whole thing was very ingenious. It reflects much credit on both of you."

Charles spoke with an air of sudden decision.

"My father did these things to shield me," he said. "I did not want to reveal that, but I see that concealment will only direct unmerited suspicion to him. When I returned from Flint House that night I let myself in with my latchkey and went straight to my bedroom. My clothes were wet through, and I lit a fire in my room to dry them. As I was spreading them out in front of the blaze the key of the study dropped out of the waistcoat pocket on to the floor. I had forgotten all about it till then. I picked it up and placed it on the mantel-piece.

"Some time after I was aroused by my father entering the room. He had come to tell me of my uncle's death—the news had just arrived from Flint House. His face was very white. 'Your uncle has been found dead—shot in his study,' he said. I had jumped up when he came in and was standing in the centre of the room. As he spoke his eyes travelled past me to my wet clothes in front of the fire, and then returned to my face with a strange expression. 'Did you go to Flint House?' he asked sharply. I could only nod. 'And did you see him—your uncle?' was his next question. On that, I told him the truth—told him what I had found. I told him about locking the door, and showed him the key on the mantel-piece. He slipped it in his pocket, then turned and gave me a terrible look. 'I am going over to Flint House,' he said, 'but you had better stay here.' And he left the room."

"What time did you reach Flint House that night?" asked Barrant.

Charles Turold realized that the critical moment had come. He had foreseen it when he saw the detective standing at the gate of Flint House. The relation of Thalassa's story to Barrant had carried with it the inevitable admission that Sisily was at Flint House on the night of her father's death. The point Charles had to decide was whether he should divulge the additional information that he had seen her leave Flint House with Thalassa on that night. As he covered the space which intervened between him and Barrant waiting at the gate, he decided that the moment had come to tell all he knew.

"I know now that it couldn't have been much after half-past eight," he said in reply to Barrant's question.

"Did you see Miss Turold there?"

"I was coming to that. I was standing outside, considering what I would say to my uncle, when the door opened and she and Thalassa came out."

"Did you not speak to them?"

"I went to do so, but they disappeared in the darkness of the moors before I could reach them. I hastened after them, but I got off the road track and wandered about the moors for nearly half an hour before I could find my way back to Flint House."

"And found the door open and your uncle lying dead upstairs?"

"Yes."

"Why have you not come forward with this story before?"

"How could I expect any one to believe a story which sounds improbable in my own ears? Even my father refused to believe it—then, or afterwards."

"Still, you might have cleared Miss Turold on the question of time. There was the stopped clock, you know. You reached Flint House shortly after half-past eight, and went upstairs thirty minutes later."

Charles Turold was subtle enough to see that this remark covered more than a trap. It suggested that Barrant discredited the whole of his story. The hood clock in the dead man's study had pointed to half-past nine on the night he was killed. Thalassa's story, as it stood, proved that Sisily must have left the house long before then. But Charles's story threw suspicion back on to Sisily by suggesting that the police had been misled about the time of the murder, which must have been committed at least half an hour earlier than they assumed. Charles did not attempt to point out this supposed flaw in the detective's reasoning. He confined himself to a reply which was a strict statement of fact, so far as it went.

"Until I heard Thalassa's story to-day I had no idea of the time of my own arrival at Flint House on that night," he said.

"The clock found lying on the floor upstairs was stopped at half-past nine," remarked Barrant with a reflective air, as though turning over all the facts in his mind. "According to the story told you by Thalassa, he and Miss Turold left the house shortly after half-past eight. Thalassa could not have returned until after half-past nine. He found the house in darkness, his wife lying unconscious in the kitchen, and his master dead upstairs. Thalassa, retracting his previous statement that he was not out of Flint House that night, for the first time tells of some mysterious avenger who, he thinks, killed Robert Turold while he was out of the house with Miss Turold. Thalassa now suggests (if I understand you rightly) that this man Remington, wronged by Robert Turold many years before, was lurking outside in the darkness, and seized the opportunity of Thalassa's absence to enter the house and murder the man who had wronged him. Have I got it right?"

"Yes," said Charles, "you have it right."

"The story rests on Thalassa's bare statement, and Thalassa is a facile liar." Barrant's tone was scornful.

"He is not lying now," returned Charles, "and there is more than his bare statement to support his story. Thalassa found his master cowering upstairs with fear in his study shortly before he met his death. He then told Thalassa he had heard Remington's footsteps outside. Thalassa laughed at him, but undoubtedly Remington was out there, waiting for his opportunity, which he took as soon as he saw Thalassa leave the house. If I had not followed Thalassa and Miss Turold I might have seen him."

"It's rather a pity you didn't." Barrant's tone was not free from irony. "For then you might have secured the proof which at present the story lacks."

"There are other proofs," Charles earnestly continued. "There were the marks on my uncle's arm, and the letter he wrote to his lawyer under the influence of the terror in which Thalassa found him—the fear caused by overhearing Remington's footsteps. Thalassa posted that letter."

"Did he tell you so?" asked Barrant quickly. Then, as Charles remained silent, he went on—

"How did you find out about the marks on your uncle's arm?"

Charles hesitated before replying in a low voice—

"I paid a visit to Flint House on the night after the murder."

"For what purpose?"

"To see if I could find out anything which might throw light on the mystery. I got in through a window and went upstairs. I saw the marks ... then."

"Did you discover anything else?"

"No; the dog started to bark, and I left as quickly as I could."

"I see."

Barrant's voice was non-committal, followed after a pause by a quick change of tone.

"I shall investigate this story later," he said coldly. "Meantime—"

"Why not investigate it immediately?" asked Charles in a disappointed voice. "Thalassa will be back directly, or I can take you down to the cliffs were I left him."

Barrant was reminded of the flight of time. It would be as well to remove Charles before Thalassa returned. Time enough for Thalassa's story later! At that moment it seemed to Barrant that the final solution of the mystery was almost in his hands. Mrs. Thalassa had been wiser than he. The single game of patience suggested the solution of the problem of the time. It did more than that. It seemed to provide the key of the greater problem of Charles Turold's actions on that night. He had endeavoured to shield Sisily by altering the hands of the clock. The rest, for the present, must remain mere conjecture. One more question he essayed—

"Can you tell me where Miss Turold is to be found?"

"I know, but I am not going to tell you."

Barrant's eye rested on Charles.

"You must come with me," he said.

Charles nodded. Despairingly he reflected that the interview had not turned out as he expected. There were other means, and he must be patient.

And Sisily? There was anguish in that thought.



CHAPTER XXXI

With a beating heart Sisily gained the shelter of her room and locked the door, her eyes glancing quickly around her. She did not expect to see anything there, but she had reached the stage of instinctive terror when one fears lurking shadows, unexpected noises, or an imagined alteration in the contour of familiar things. There was nothing in the room to alarm her, and her thoughts flew back to the face of the man she had seen in the street outside. The owner of the face had leered at first, and then his glance hardened into suspicion as he looked. When she hurried past him he had shifted his position to stare at her by the light of the street lamp. Had he followed her? That was the question she could not answer. She had heard footsteps behind her in the dark street, horrible stealthy footsteps which had caused terror to rush over her like a flood, and sent her flying along the street to her one haven. As she ran she had felt a touching faith in the security of her room, if she could reach it. Out there, in the open street, it had seemed impregnable, like a fortress.

Now as she sat there she had a revulsion of feeling. The room was not safe, the house was not safe. Not now. She had been very imprudent. She had run straight home to her hiding-place, her only refuge. Why had she not waited to make sure that she was followed? Then she could have slipped away in a different direction until she had evaded pursuit, and returned to her room afterwards. She had been very foolish.

She approached her window and gazed down, but could discern nothing in the darkness. She tried to shake off her fear, telling herself that it was imagination. But her mind remained full of misgivings, and her inner consciousness peopled the obscurity of the street below with lurking figures.

Weariness overcame her. She retired from the window and laid down on her bed, not to sleep, but to think. Her fright had turned her mind temporarily from the contemplation of a greater disaster. That was the arrest of Charles Turold. She had learnt the news from an evening paper which she had bought at the corner of the street. The announcement was very brief, merely stating that he had been arrested in Cornwall. The guarded significance of the information was not lost upon her. Charles had been captured on his way back to her, and her agonized heart whispered that she was responsible for his fate.

Bitterly she now blamed herself for having let him go on the quest. She hardly asked herself whether it had succeeded or failed, perhaps because she had subconsciously accepted the view that Thalassa, after all, had nothing to tell. Nor did she think of the calamity which had again overtaken her love. The effect of her original renunciation was still strong within her, and Charles's discovery of her and her promise to him had not really altered her attitude. His finding her, and their subsequent conversation in the room below, bore an air of the strangest unreality to her, as if she had been merely an actor in a stirring scene which did not actually affect her. Some subtle inward voice told her that these things did not matter to her.

It was part of a feeling which she had always within her—the sense of living under the shadow of some dark destiny which would not be mitigated or withheld. It was a strange point of view for one so young, but it had been hers ever since she remembered anything. The tragedy and the shame which had come into her life recently had found her, as it were, waiting. She regarded them merely as the partial fulfilment of the unescapable thing which had been prepared for her before she was born, and had dogged her lonely footsteps since childhood. In the isolated circumstances of her life and upbringings it was not strange, perhaps, that she had such imaginings.

She had loved Charles Turold with all the strength of a passionate solitary nature, and it was this feeling or instinct of fatality which had given her the strength to renounce him. Indeed, it seemed to her that that inseparable companion of her inmost thoughts had prompted her to linger outside the door at Flint House on this afternoon so that she should overhear her father's words—catch that sinister fragment of a sentence which compelled her to refuse the love of Charles until she had learnt the truth. She could not listen to him with that secret half-guessed. And, the full truth known, no other course was open to her save renunciation.

She had not wavered. Sometimes, in the vain way of the young heart seeking for happiness, she found herself wishing that she had not listened at the door to those few words which sent her back to Flint House that awful night to learn the truth from her father, or, at least, had not acted upon them. The words she overheard had not told her much, and she might have tried to forget them. But she thrust that thought from her like an evil thing. She would have hated herself if she had followed that course and found out the truth of her birth afterwards, deeming herself unworthy of the love of one who had been ready to sacrifice everything for her sake. No! It was better, far better, that she should know.

She had not thought of suspicion falling on herself. Her youth and inexperience, borne upward on the lofty wings of sacrifice, had not foreseen the damning significance which might gather round her secret visit to Flint House and her subsequent disappearance. Not even when she heard of her father's death had the folly of her contemplated action dawned on her. Her dreamy unpractical temperament, keyed up to the great act of abnegation, had not paused to consider what the consequences might be to herself.

Lying there in the darkness of her room, she recalled how that revelation had been made to her. It was the first night after her arrival in London, in the drawing-room of a private hotel near Russell Square, where she had intended staying for a few days while she sought for some kind of employment. There was a group of women seated round the fireplace, talking. She was seated by herself some distance away, turning over the leaves of a magazine, when a loud remark by one of the speakers startled her into an attitude of listening fear. "Have you read about this Cornwall murder?" The words, cold and distinct, had broken into her sad reflections like a stone dropped from a great height. They had gone on talking without looking at her, and she had listened intently, masking her conscious features with the open magazine. It was well that she did. They discussed the murder in animated tones. The strangest case! ... A great title ... the Turrald title ... to be heard before the House of Lords next week ... and now the claimant was murdered ... he was very wealthy, too. Thus they talked; then the first voice, which seemed to dominate all the others, broke in: "It was thought to be suicide at first, but I see by tonight's paper that his daughter is suspected. She has disappeared, and is supposed to have fled to London. What are girls coming to—always shooting somebody or somebody shooting them! It's the war, I suppose...."

The shock of that double disclosure had been almost too much to bear. Till then she had not known that her father had been murdered, much less that she was suspected of killing him. Dizziness had swept over her. Things seemed to spin round her, yet she saw them rotating with a kind of dreadful distinctness—the false smiling faces of the women, the furniture, a cat blinking on the hearthrug, an empty coffee cup on a small table. One stout lady, enthroned on a pile of red and blue cushions, sailed round and round on a sofa with the preposterous repetition and tragic reality of a fat woman on a roundabout. Then the circling faces and furniture vanished. She swayed with the sensation of growing darkness, and had the oddest fancy that the break of the waves on Cornish cliffs was sounding in her ears. She was dreamily inhaling the sea air....

She had pulled herself sharply together. She had something of her father's tenacity and courage in her composition, and that had nerved her to face the ordeal and saved her from giving herself away. The darkness lightened, the electric lights danced dizzily back into view, and the room became stationary once more. With an effort at calmness she rose from her seat and sought her room, and next morning she left the house. Henceforth her lot was one of furtive movement and concealment.

As she lay there, staring open-eyed into the darkness, her thoughts slipped back to the night of her visit to Flint House in a vain effort to recollect some overlooked incident which might throw light on her father's mysterious death. There was one thing over which she had frequently puzzled without arriving at any interpretation of it. She thought of it now. She saw herself stealing from her father's room with the sound of his last awful words ringing through her being. Beneath, near the foot of the staircase, she could see Thalassa waiting, the glow of the tiny hall light falling on his stern listening face. She was walking along the passage to go to him when some impulse impelled her to glance through a window which looked out on the moors and the rocks near the house.

Her eyes had fallen on a shape, shrouded in the obscurity of the rocks not far from the window, which seemed to have some semblance to the motionless figure of a man. She had stood there for a moment, glancing down intently, but it had not stirred. If it had human semblance, it seemed to be carved in stone. She came to the conclusion that she was mistaken. Experience had taught her what strange shapes the rocks took after nightfall. With another fleeting glance she had hurried downstairs, and from the house.

She thought about it now without arriving at any conclusion as to what it was that she had seen so indistinctly—whether man or rock. Charles had been up there that night, but it was not Charles. This figure or rock was on the other side of the house.

Stupor descended gradually on her tired brain like the coming of darkness, and she fell into sleep—the first rest that had visited her since she learnt of Charles's arrest. But her slumber was disturbed by dreams. She dreamt that she was back in Cornwall, sitting on her old perch at the foot of the cliffs, looking at the Moon Rock. The face in the Rock was watching her, as it had always watched her, but this time with a dreadful sneer which she had never seen before. It frightened her so that she moaned and tossed uneasily, and awoke with a cry, shaking with terror.

As she reached out her hand for the matches by the bedside to light the gas, the sound of the front door-bell pealed through the house. Sisily sprang up, her eyes seeking to pierce the darkness, her ears listening intently. Who could it be? She was alone in the house. Mrs. Johns had gone to one of her spiritualistic meetings, and was not likely to be home until late. Besides, she had her own key, with which she always let herself in. She crept cautiously to the window and strained her eyes downward. She was just able to catch a glimpse of two vague figures underneath in the darkness. The light of the street lamp glinted on something one of them was wearing on his head. It was a policeman's helmet.

The terror of the hunted took possession of her. She sought to remain calm; her trembling lips essayed a sentence of a prayer. But it was no use. She was too young for philosophy or Christian resignation. Terror shook her with massive jaws. She did not want to be caught, to be put in prison, to be killed. She wandered aimlessly about the room like a trapped creature. She must escape—she would escape!

With a great effort she calmed herself to reflect—to calculate if there was any chance of getting away. She esteemed it fortunate that she had not lit the gas in her room. The whole house was in darkness. The policeman might think there was nobody in, and go away. But she dared not reckon on that.

There came another and louder ring of the bell downstairs.

Again she crept to the window and looked down. The policeman and the other man were conferring in a murmur which reached her ears. The policeman stepped back into the garden path and scanned the darkened windows of the house. She shrank back from the window.

The ring was followed by the sound of knocking at the front door—knocking heavy and prolonged, which reverberated solemnly through the silent house. Then once more there was silence.

In her ignorance of the methods of the law she wondered wildly whether the next step would be to break in the door and search the house. Terror shook her again at this thought, scorched her with burning breath. She would escape—she must. But how? Her fingernails pierced the palms of her hands as she vainly tried to think out a way. Should she hide somewhere? She rejected that plan as impracticable. The back way? But there was no outlet—only a small garden abutting on other back gardens. There was a dark side street only a few houses away. If she could only reach it....

She stood quite motionless, expecting the knocking to start again. But it did not. She thought she heard the shuffle of feet and husky whispers in the garden path underneath, but she could not be sure of that. What were they doing? Why were they so silent? "Suppose they got in through the window?" she whispered to herself. Her soul died within her at that thought. She tried to assure herself that the windows were locked, but her staring eyes peopled the invisible staircase with creeping figures. The darkness grew intense and terrifying, like a rushing black torrent flowing over her head. She was alone, in an empty world ... The torrent ceased, and the darkness took the form of a great sable wing, moving, flapping, seeking to enfold her. She put up her hands to ward it off.

At that instant a sharp and decisive sound reached her. It was the click of a shut gate. As she recognized the sound a new thought came to her—a hope, when hope seemed gone. She stepped noiselessly to the window and looked down. She was just in time to catch a glimpse of two retreating figures revealed in dark contour beneath the rays of the street lamp. The next moment they passed out of sight.

They had gone! But they would return—she felt sure of that. She must get away at once before they did—run out of the door and make for the side street.

She listened for a moment longer. There was no sound anywhere now. The house was lapped in absolute quietness. She felt for her hat, and calming her nerves with a desperate effort, stole quickly from the room and downstairs. As she stood in the silent hall, facing the closed door, she again thought she heard whisperings. She recoiled in fear, wondering if they were outside, waiting. It was her worst ordeal yet. Then desperation conquered her terror. Her trembling fingers pulled back the bolt, and she issued forth.

There was no one there to check her flight. The streets seemed empty. Without turning her head she ran past the houses which intervened between her and the side street. She gained it, and turned into its friendly darkness. She was as free as a bird again, for the moment.

A kind of exultation seized her at this unexpected deliverance from her adventure, but that mood passed as she reflected upon her present position. She had left the house without her few belongings, and what was far worse, without her money, which she kept in a hand-bag locked up in her small case in the bedroom she had just left.

She had not a penny in the world, and she dared not go back.

That was not the moment to reflect upon the grimness of her situation. The sound of approaching footsteps shaped her fears of capture into renewed action. She walked rapidly away.

The time was near midnight, and the streets were almost empty. She kept her way along dark obscure streets, shunning the lighted thoroughfares. She had no settled plan in her mind, except to keep on. Hers was the instinct of the hunted creature for darkness and obscurity. Her fevered spirit hurried her along, spurring her with the menace of an imprisonment which was worse than the cramped horror of the grave. In the grave there was no consciousness of the weight of the earth above, but in prison, held like an animal, watched by horrible men, beating despairing hands against locked doors—ah, no, no! Her free young body and soul revolted with nausea at the thought. Death would be better than that. She walked still more rapidly.

With that possibility impending she shrank from any chance contact with passers-by, turning into side streets to avoid any one she saw coming. Once, a policeman, appearing unexpectedly out of the shadows, set her heart beating wildly, but he passed by without looking at her.

It grew later, and the streets became quite deserted. She had been walking for more than an hour when she noticed that the houses were scattered, with open spaces now and then, and a bracing freshness in the air which suggested that she was getting away from where the herds of London slept, into open spaces. For some obscure reason this made her nervous, and she turned back. After a while London closed in on her again, but this time in a more squalid quarter, a wilderness of dirty narrow streets, where even in the darkness the debasing marks and odours of squalid poverty were perceptible in the endless rows of houses which seemed to crowd in upon her. She came to a bridge and crossed it into an area of gaunt and darkened factories. Here, strange nocturnal noises and sights frightened her. She saw shadowy forms, and heard rough voices on a wharf in the blackness of the river beneath her, followed by a woman's scream. She ran when she heard that—ran along the riverside till she came to another bridge, which she recrossed. She found herself in a quieter and better part of London, where the streets were wide and well-kept, and she slackened her pace into a walk again.

The night wore on like eternity, with immeasurable slowness yet incredible swiftness. She had been walking for hours, and yet she had no feeling of fatigue. She seemed to move through the streets without any effort of her own. Towards the morning she was carried along with a complete absence of bodily sensation, as if she had been in very truth one of those disembodied spirits of Mrs. Johns' spirit world, driven through the solitude of the ages by the implacable decree of some incalculable malignant force called immortality. She felt as though centuries of time had rolled over her head when the murk of the lowering sky lightened, and the London dawn was born, naked and grey.

The dawn brought London to life with a speed which was in the nature of a miracle. From the appearance of the first workers to the flocking of the streets, was, as it were, but a moment. The 'buses and trams commenced running, and shops opened. Sisily found herself walking along Holborn, where the thickening crowds jostled her as she walked. But she did not care for that now, nor did she seek the comparative seclusion of the side streets. Her fear of capture had passed away, and her only feeling was impenetrable isolation and loneliness. The people who were passing had no more existence to her than if they had been a troop of ghosts. She had the sensation of belonging to another world and could not have communicated with them if she had wished. But the spirit which had sustained her during the night disappeared with the clamorous advance of the day. She became in an instant conscious of the grievous pangs of a body which seemed to have been flung back to her in a damaged state. It ached all over. Her head throbbed with a dull buzzing sound, and she was so tired that she could hardly stand. She felt as if she must lie down—in the street, anywhere. And she was tormented by thirst. But she still kept on.

She found herself, after a while, by one of those little backwaters which are the salvation of strangers to London: a green railed square, with trees and fountains, and a quiet pavement where a street artist was drawing bright pictures with crayons. An old four-wheeler was moored in the gutter by the entrance, the horse munching in the depths of a nose-bag, the elderly driver reclining against the side of the cab, smoking and watching the pavement artist.

Sisily entered the empty square to rest herself. As she sat there on one of the wooden seats the full misery of her situation came home to her, and she asked herself anxiously what she was to do. She had nowhere to go, and no money to buy food or shelter—nothing in the world that she could call her own except the clothes she was wearing. They were the coat and skirt she had put on to come to London, and she noticed with feminine concern that the dark cloth showed disreputable stains and splashes of her night's exposure. Hastily she took her handkerchief from her pocket to remove the tell-tale marks. As she did so a bit of buff cardboard fluttered on to the gravel at her feet. She stooped and picked it up. It was the return half of her ticket to Cornwall.

The remembrance of her arrival at Paddington revived in her as she looked at it—the fright she had had when the ticket collector caught her by the arm to return half of the whole ticket she had given up. She had put the ticket in the pocket of her jacket and never thought of it again. Had Fate decreed her original mistake of taking a return ticket when she needed only a single one? She was at that moment inclined to think so.

The question of its use was decided as soon as she saw it. The ticket would take her back to Cornwall and Thalassa. Thalassa would help and shield her.

The gilt hands of a church clock opposite the square pointed to half-past eight. She knew that the morning express for Cornwall started shortly after ten, but she did not know what part of London she was in or the direction of Paddington. Animated by a new hope, she left her seat and asked the cabman for directions.

The cabman looked at her with a ruminating eye. That eye, with unfathomable perspicacity, seemed to pry into her empty pockets and pierce her penniless state. He did not ask her if she wanted to be driven there, but intimated with a shake of his grey head that Paddington was a goodish walk. Then he gave her directions for finding it—implicit and repeated directions, as though his all-seeing eye had also divined that she was a stranger to the ways of London.

Sisily thanked him and turned away, repeating his directions so that she should not have to ask anybody else. First to the right, second to the left, along Tottenham Court Road to Oxford Street, up Oxford Street to Edgeware Road, down Edgeware Road to Praed Street—so it ran. She followed them carefully, and found herself on Paddington station a quarter of an hour before the departure of the express.

She entered a third-class carriage, but sat in a corner seat, longing for the train to move out. The minutes dragged slowly, and passengers kept thronging in. All sorts of people seemed to have business in Cornwall at that late season of the year. They came hurrying along in groups looking for vacant compartments. Sisily kept an eager eye upon the late arrivals, hoping that they would pass by her compartment. By some miraculous chance she was left undisturbed until almost starting time, then a group of fat women dashed along the platform with the celerity of fear, and crowded ponderously in. The next moment the train began to slip away from the station, and was soon rushing into the open country at high speed.

Of the details of that journey she knew nothing at all. She sat staring out of the window, her thoughts racing faster than the train. The events of the last few days receded from her mental vision like the flying houses and fields outside the carriage window, fading into some remote distance of her mind. Relief swelled in her heart as the train rushed west and London was left farther and farther behind. Something within her seemed to sing piercingly for joy, as though she had been a strange wild bird escaping from captivity to wing her way westward to the open spaces by the sea. London had frightened her. Its crowded vastness had suffocated her, its indifference had appalled her. She had felt so hopelessly alone there; far lonelier than she had ever been in Cornwall or Norfolk. Nature could be brutal, but never indifferent. She could be friendly—sometimes. The sea and the sky had whispered loving greetings to her, but not London. There was nothing but a hideous and blank indifference there. She was glad to get away—away from the endless rows of shops and houses, from the unceasing throngs of indifferent people, back to the lonely moors of Cornwall, to look down from the rocks at the sea, and breathe the keen gusty air.

As the journey advanced and the train swept farther west she became dull, languid, almost inert. Lack of food and the previous night's exposure induced in her a feeling of giddiness which at times had in it something of the nature of delirium. In this state her mind turned persistently to Thalassa, and the object of her return to him. She was struggling towards him, up great heights, under a nightmare burden. She seemed to see him standing there with his hands outstretched, ready to lift the burden off her shoulders if she could only reach him. Then she was back in the kitchen at Flint House, watching him bending over his lamps, listening to the wicked old song he used to sing—

"The devil and me we went away to sea, In the old brig 'Lizbeth-Jane...."

The train caught up the refrain and thundered it into her tired head ... "Went away to sea, went away to sea, In the old brig 'Lizbeth-Jane." And, listening to it, she fell into a dazed slumber.

She awoke with a start to find that it was getting dusk and the train was running smoothly through South Cornwall. As she looked out of the window a grey corpse of a hill seemed to rise out of the sea. It was Mount St. Michael. Then she caught a glimpse of Carn Brea and the purple moors. The people in the carriage began to collect light luggage and put on coats and wraps. The next moment the train came to a standstill at Penzance station.

She clung to the safety of the throng in passing through the barrier, fearing most the St. Fair wagonette which might be drawn up outside. She was not known in Penzance, but the driver of the wagonette might recognize her. But Mr. Crows, indifferent to shillings, had not yet arrived. Sisily hurried past a group scanning the distant heights for the gaunt outline of the descending cab, like shipwrecked mariners on the look-out for a sail.

She reached the moor road by a short cut through, the back part of the town, and set out for Flint House in the velvety shadows of the early gloaming.

It had been raining, but the rain had ceased. The sun, hidden through a long grey day, shone with dying brilliance in a patch of horizon blue, gilding the wet road, and making the wayside puddles glitter like mirrors. A soddened little bird twittered joyfully in the hedge, casting a round black eye at her as she passed. The moors, carpeted with purple, stretched all around her, glistening, wet, beautiful.

In the train she had felt hungry and tired, with burning head and cold limbs. As she walked these feelings wore off, and were replaced by a feeling of upliftment which was magical in its change. Her misery and her burden dropped from her. The softness of the moors was beneath her feet, and a sweet wind touched her lips and cheeks with a breath which was a caress. The plaintive distant cry of a gull reached her like a greeting. The solitude of Cornwall surrounded her.

When she reached the cross-roads she struck out across the moors. Before her, at no great distance, she could see the swelling mountainous reaches of green water breaking on the rocks in a long white line of foam, and the dark outline of Flint House clinging to the dizzy summit of the black broken cliffs.

Her false strength failed her suddenly as she neared her journey's end. The house loomed dimly before her tired vision in the fast gathering darkness. She stumbled with faltering steps round the side of the house to the kitchen door, and turned the handle. It was locked. She knocked loudly.

As in a vision she saw the white furtive face of Mrs. Thalassa peering out at her from the window, and her fluttering hands pressed against the glass, as though to thrust her back. Sisily rushed to the window.

"Let me in!" she cried. "It is I—Sisily."

The window opened suddenly, and Mrs. Thalassa stood there looking out at her like a small grey ghost—a ghost with watchful glittering eyes.

"Go away—go away," she whispered with a cunning glance. "Quick! They're looking for you—they'll catch you."

Sisily's heart went cold within her. "Where is Thalassa?" she faltered. "Send him to me—tell him I have come back." Her eyes travelled vainly around the gloom of the empty kitchen in search of him.

"He's gone—gone away!"

"Gone? Oh, no, no! Don't say that. Where has he gone?"

"I don't know. He went away. He's not coming back." She shook her head angrily, with a wild gleam in her eye. "You go away, too, or they'll catch you—the police. They come every night to look for you."

She cast another cunning look at the girl, and shut down the window. Sisily could see her reaching up and fumbling with the lock. Thalassa gone! Despair clutched her with iron hands, and held her fast. She glanced up at the window of her father's study, and thought she saw the dead man there, his stern face looking coldly down upon her. She turned away shuddering. Where could she go? She had nowhere to go, and she knew her strength would not carry her much farther.

She plunged blindly into the shelter of the great rocks near the house. She found herself wandering among them like a being in a dream. Then complete unconsciousness overtook her, and she sank down.

When she came to herself again night had descended and a storm was brewing. She sat up wonderingly and looked around her, indifferent to the rain which had commenced to fall on her uncovered head. Gradually remembrance came back to her. She saw that she was lying on the great slab of basalt which overhung the Moon Rock. She could hear the beat of the sea far beneath her, but she felt no fear. She was not conscious of her body or limbs—of nothing but a burning brain, and wide-open eyes which gazed out into the darkness and stillness around her.

As she looked it seemed to her startled imagination that the masses of rocks which littered the edge of the cliff moved closer to each other, starting out of the shadows into monstrous grotesque life, then circling round her in a strange and dizzy whirl. It was as though the old Cornish giants had come back to life for a corybantic dance with the demirips of their race—dancing to the music of the sea sucking and gurgling into the caves at the base of the cliffs. With swimming eyes Sisily watched them careering and pirouetting around her. Faster and faster they went, advancing, retreating, bending clumsily, then wavering, toppling, reeling, like giants well drunk. A great stone fell into the sea with a splash, as if dislodged by a giant foot. As though that signalled the cockcrow of their glee, the dancers stopped in listening attitudes, and sank back into rocks once more.

Sisily turned her eyes weakly from the slumbering rocks to the hills. The light of a coming moon behind them showed the outline of the granite pillars and stone altars of the Druids, where they had once sought to appease their savage gods, like the Israelites of old. Sisily had often meditated by these places of sacrifice, trying to picture the scene. Now, as she looked, it was enacted before her eyes. A red light brooded on one of the hills, growing brighter and brighter. Brutish shaggy figures came out of the darkness, dragging a youth to the altar. Sisily saw him distinctly. He was naked, with a beautiful face, haggard and white, and was bound with cords. Suddenly he freed himself, and dashed down the slope into the darkness. He was pursued and brought back, and the cries of his pursuers mingled with an appalling scream for help which seemed to float down the mountain side to where she lay, filling the silent air with echoes.

This scene, too, faded away, and the beams of the rising moon, now beginning to show over the hill-tops, formed in her mind the mirage of a beautiful day—one of those exquisite days which Nature produces at long intervals. Sisily saw a blue sky, sunlight like burnished silver, green fields and clear pools in which everything was reflected ... a slumbrous perfect day, with drowsy cattle knee-deep in grass, bees, and floating butterflies, and the shrill notes of happy birds.

Once more the tangled loom of her fevered brain wove a new picture. She was back in her bedroom at Flint House, looking down at the graven face of the Moon Rock. As she looked, a great hand seemed to come out of the sea and beckon to her. The summons was one she dare not disobey. She left her bed, crept downstairs in the darkness, out to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. The face of the Moon Rock was watching her intently. She thought it called her name.

Ah, what was that cry? She came to her senses, startled, and looked fearfully round her. She was alone on the cliffs, above the Moon Rock, and she could hear the sea hissing at its base. But what else had she heard? Had somebody called her name? It was still very dark. To the south the light of the Lizard stabbed the black sky with a white flaming finger as if seeking to pierce the darkness of eternity. Nearer, the red light of the Wolf rock gleamed—a warning to passing souls flying southward from England to eternal bliss to fly high above the rock where the spirit dog lay howling in wait. Had the cry come from there?

"Sisily! Sisily!"

No. It was not the howl of the Wolf dog that she had heard. That was her own name. She crept closer to the edge of the cliff and looked down into the sea—down at the Moon Rock. The old Cornish legend of the drowned love came back to her. Was Charles dead? and calling her to him? She would go to him gladly. She had loved him in life, and if he wanted her in death she would go to him.

She clutched a broken spur of rock on the brink and looked down to where the sea bored round the black sides of the Moon Rock. She could see her own pool too, lying peaceful and calm in the encircling arm of the rock. In her delirium she struggled to her feet and started to climb down the face of the cliff.



CHAPTER XXXII

The wind tapped angrily at the windows of Flint House, the rain fell stealthily, the sea made a droning uneasy sound. The fire which burnt on the kitchen hearth was a poor one, a sullen thing of green boughs and coal which refused to harmonize, but spluttered and fizzed angrily. The coal smouldered blackly, but sometimes cracked with a startling report. When this happened, a crooked bough sticking up in the middle of the fire, like a curved fang, would jump out on to the hearthstone as though frightened by the noise.

Thalassa sat on one side of the fire, his wife on the other. Her eyes were rapt and vacant; he sat with frowning brows, deep in thought. Robert Turold's dog crouched in the circle of the glow with amber eyes fixed on the old man's face as if he were a god, and Thalassa lived up to one of the attributes of divinity by not deigning to give his worshipper a sign. Occasionally the dog lifted a wistful supplicating paw, dropping it again in dejection when it passed unregarded.

Presently Thalassa got up and went to a cupboard in the corner. From some hidden receptacle he extracted a coil of ship's tobacco and a wooden pipe shaped into a negro's head, with little beads for eyes, such as may be bought for a few pence in shops near the London docks. He returned to his seat, filled the pipe, lit it with a burning bough, and fell to smoking with lingering whiffs, gazing into the fire with dark gleaming eyes as motionless as the glinting beads in the negro's carved head.

The clock on the mantel-piece ticked steadily away in the silence. The dog, with a brute recognition of the unsatisfactory nature of spiritual aspiration, descended to the care of his own affairs, and scratched for fleas which knew no other world than his hind-quarters.

"Go away, go away! You mustn't come in here!"

The shrill voice of Mrs. Thalassa broke the silence like a cracked bell, shattering her husband's meditations, and causing the dog to spring to his feet. Thalassa looked at her angrily. She was making mysterious motions with her hands, as if expostulating with some phantom of her thoughts, muttering and shaking her head rapidly. Her husband stared across in silence for a moment.

"By God! she doesn't improve with age," he growled; then, louder: "What's the matter with you? What are you making that noise for?"

The question went unheeded. To his astonishment she sprang to her feet with a kind of grotesque vivacity, and, darting over to the window, began gesticulating again with an angry persistency, as if to some one outside.

Thalassa left his seat and went to the window also. His wife had ceased her gestures, and stood still listening and watching. Thalassa pulled back the blind, and looked out. The moor and rocks were draped in black, and the only sounds which reached him were the disconsolate wail of the wind and the savage break of the sea on the rocks below. He looked at his wife. She had started tossing her hands again at some spectral invisible thing in the shadowy night. She was quite mad—there could be no doubt of that. He endeavoured to lead her back to her seat by the fireside, but she broke away from him with surprising strength, and again her voice rang out—

"Go away ... go away! You can't come in. I won't let you in. You're a wicked girl, Miss Sisily, and I won't let you in. You killed your father, and you'd like to kill me, but I'll keep you locked out. Go away!" Her voice rose to a screech.

The blood rushed to Thalassa's head as he listened to these words. He understood quite suddenly—this was not a demented raving. Sisily had been there—she had come back to him in her fear—and she had been driven away. He turned to his wife and caught her up in his great arms, shaking her violently, as one shakes a child. The sight was terrible and absurd, but there was no one to witness it but the dog, who circled round and round in yelping excitement, as though the scene was enacted for his benefit alone.

"Has Miss Sisily been here?"

The question thundered out in the empty silence. Mrs. Thalassa crouched like a preposterous hunched-up doll on the seat where her husband had flung her, looking up at him with stupid eyes, but not speaking. He approached her again.

"Speak, woman, speak, or I'll strangle you."

She backed away, whimpering with fear. "No, no, Jasper, leave me alone."

"Has Miss Sisily been here?"

The sight of those long outstretched hands, by their menace to her life, seemed to restore her reason. "Yes," she mumbled.

"When?"

"This evening—before dark—when you were out."

"And you wouldn't let her in?"

"No."

"How did you know it was her?"

"She knocked at the door, and I looked out of the window."

"Did you see which way she went?"

"Over by the cliffs, where she used to go."

Thalassa repeated these last words mechanically. Anger possessed him, but apprehension stirred in his heart. Sisily had trusted him, she had come back to him, and he had failed her. That had been at six o'clock, and it was now nine. Three hours, and there had been a storm. Where was she? Had she been out in the storm?

He searched in the cupboard for a lantern, lit it, and made for the door, followed by the dog. As he flung open the door the wind rushed in with such force that it beat him back, and the candle in the lantern flickered and lengthened like a naked flame. He fought his way out furiously, slamming the door behind him.

Outside, the rocks crouched in the darkness in nameless shapes. Thalassa prowled among them, struggling desperately with the wind, telling himself that she was safe—yes, by God, she was safe. Of course she wouldn't stay on the rocks in that storm. She would seek shelter. "Where?" asked something within him mockingly, "Where would she dare go, except to you?" He stood still to reflect. "She might go to Dr. Ravenshaw's," he said aloud, as though answering an unseen but real questioner. "Fool!" came the reply, "you know she would not go to Dr. Ravenshaw's. She would not dare." And fear gripped his heart coldly.