"I'm quite sure of it," Sir Henry replied grimly. "The brute was lunching with my wife at the Carlton to-day, and, as luck would have it, I was landed with that Russian Admiral's wife and sister-in-law. You're breaking up the happy home, that's what you're doing, Rayton!"

His lordship at any rate seemed to find the process amusing. He laughed until the tears stood in his eyes.

"I should love to have seen Philippa's face," he chuckled, "when she walked into the restaurant and saw you there! You're supposed to be off on a fishing expedition, aren't you?"

"I went out after whiting," Sir Henry groaned, "and I'd just promised to chuck it for a time when I got the Admiral's message."

"Well, we'll see to your German spy, anyway," his visitor promised.

"Don't be an ass!" Sir Henry exclaimed irritably. "I don't want the fellow touched at present. Why, he's been a sort of persona grata at my house. Hangs around there all the time when I'm away."

"All the more reason for putting an end to his little game, I should say," was the cheerful reply.

"And have the whole neighbourhood either laughing at my wife and Miss Fairclough, or talking scandal about them!" Sir Henry retorted.

"I forgot that," his friend confessed ruminatively. "He's a gentlemanly sort of fellow, from what I hear, but a rotten spy. What do you want done with him?"

"Leave him for me to deal with," Sir Henry insisted. "I have a little scheme on hand in which he is concerned."

Rayton scratched his chin doubtfully.

"The fellow may not be such a fool as he seems," he reminded his friend.

"I won't run any risks," Sir Henry promised. "I just want him left there, that's all. And look here, Rayton, you know what I want from you. I quite agreed to your proposals as to my anonymity at the time when I was up in Scotland, but the thing's a secret no longer with the people who count. Every one in Germany knows that I'm a mine-field specialist, so I don't see why the dickens I should pose any longer as a sort of half-baked idiot."

Rayton's eyes twinkled.

"You want to play the Wilson Barrett hero and make a theatrical disclosure of your greatness," he laughed. "Poor Philippa will fall upon her knees. You will be the hero of the village, which will probably present you with some little article of plate. You've a good time coming, Henry."

"Talk sense, there's a good fellow," the other begged. "You go and see the Chief and put it to him. There isn't a single reason why I shouldn't own up now."

"I'll see what I can do," Rayton promised, "but what about this fellow Lessingham, or whatever else he calls himself, down there? There's a chap named Griffiths—Commandant, isn't he?—been writing us about him."

"I won't have Lessingham touched," Sir Henry insisted. "He can't do any particular harm down there, and there isn't a line or a drawing of mine down at Dreymarsh which he isn't welcome to."

Lord Rayton rose to his feet.

"Look here, Henry, old fellow," he said, "I do sympathise with you up to a certain point. I tell you what I'll do. I shall have to answer Philippa's letter, and I'll answer it in such a way that if she is as clever a little woman as I think she is, she'll get a hint. Of course," he went on ruminatively, "it is rather a misfortune that the Princess Ollaneff and her sister are such jolly good-looking women. Makes it look a little fishy, doesn't it? What I mean to say is, it's a far cry from fishing for whiting in the North Sea to lunching with a beautiful princess at the Carlton—when you think your wife's down in Norfolk."

Sir Henry threw open the door.

"Look here, I've had enough of you, Rayton," he declared. "You get back and do an hour's work, if you can bring your mind to it."

The latter assumed a sudden dignity, necessitated by the sound of voices in the corridor, and departed. The door had scarcely been closed when two younger men presented themselves—Miles Ensol, Sir Henry's secretary, a typical-looking young sailor minus his left arm; and a pale-faced, clean-shaven man of uncertain age, in civilian clothes. Sir Henry shook hands with the latter and pointed to the easy-chair which his previous visitor had just vacated.

"Welcome back again, Horridge," he said cordially. "Miles, I'll ring when I want you."

"Very good, sir," the secretary replied. "There's a fisherman from Norfolk downstairs, when you're at liberty."

Sir Henry nodded.

"I'll see him presently. Shut him up somewhere where he can smoke."

The young man withdrew, carefully closing the door, around which Sir Henry, with a word of apology, arranged a screen.

"I don't think," he explained, "that eavesdropping extends to these premises, or that our voices could reach outside. Still, a ha'porth of prevention, eh? Have a cigar, Horridge."

"I'm not smoking for a day or two, thank you, sir."

"You look as though they'd put you through it," Sir Henry remarked.

His visitor smiled.

"I've travelled fourteen miles in a barrel," he said, "and we were out for twenty-four hours in a Danish sailing skiff. You know what the weather's been like in the North Sea. Before that, the last word of writing I saw on German soil was a placard, offering a reward of five thousand marks for my detention, with a disgustingly lifelike photograph at the top. I had about fifty yards of quay to walk in broad daylight, and every other man I passed turned to stare after me. It gives you the cold shivers down your back when you daren't look round to see if you're being followed."

Sir Henry groped in the cupboard of his desk, and produced a bottle of whisky and a syphon of soda water. His visitor nodded approvingly.

"I've touched nothing until I've reached what I consider sanctuary," he observed. "My nerves have gone rotten for the first time in my life. Do you mind, sir, if I lock the door?"

"Go ahead," Sir Henry assented.

He brought the whisky and soda himself across the room. Horridge resumed his seat and held out his hand almost eagerly. For a moment or two he shook as though he had an ague. Then, just as suddenly as it had come upon him, the fit passed. He drained the contents of the tumbler at a gulp, set it down empty by his side, and stretched out his hand for a cigar.

"The end of my journey didn't help matters any," he went on. "I daren't even make for a Dutch port, and we were picked up eventually by a tramp steamer from Newcastle to London with coals. I hadn't been on board more than an hour before a submarine which had been following overhauled us. I thought it was all up then, but the fog lifted, and we found ourselves almost in the midst of a squadron of destroyers from Harwich. I made another transfer, and they landed me in time to catch the early morning train from Felixstowe."

"Did they get the submarine?" his listener asked eagerly.

"Get it!" the other repeated, with a smile. "They blew it into scrap metal."

"Plenty of movement in your life!"

"I've run the gauntlet over there once too often," Horridge said grimly. "Just look at me now, Sir Henry. I'm twenty-nine years old, and it's only two years and a half since I was invalided out of the navy and took this job on. The last person I asked to guess my age put me down at fifty. What should you have said?"

"Somewhere near it," was the candid admission. "Never mind, Horridge, you've done your bit. You shall pass on your experience to a new hand, take your pension and try the south coast of England for a few months. Now let's get on with it. You know what I want to hear about."

Horridge produced from his pocket a long strip of paper.

"They're there, sir," he announced, "coaled to the scuppers, every man standing to stations and steam up. There's the list."

He handed the paper across to Sir Henry, who glanced it down.

"The fast cruiser squadron," he observed. "Hm! Three new ships we haven't any note of. No transports, then, Horridge?'"

"Not a sign of one, sir," was the reply. "They're after a bombardment."

He rose to his feet, walked to a giant map of England, and touched a certain port on the east coast. Sir Henry's eyes glistened.

"You're sure?"

"It is a certainty," Horridge replied. "I've been on three of those ships. I've dined with four of the officers. They're under sealed orders, and the crew believes that they're going to escort out half a dozen commerce destroyers. But I have the truth. That's their objective," Horridge repeated, touching once more the spot upon the map, "and they are waiting just for one thing."

Sir Henry smiled thoughtfully.

"I know what they're waiting for," he said. "Perhaps if they'd a Herr Horridge to send over here for it, they'd have got it before now. As it is—well, I'm not sure," he went on. "It seems a pity to disappoint them, doesn't it? I'd love to give them a run for their money."

Horridge smiled faintly. He knew a good deal about his companion.

"They're spoiling for it, sir," he admitted. Sir Henry spoke down a telephone and a few minutes later Ensol reappeared.

"Find Mr. Horridge a comfortable room," his chief directed, "and one of our confidential typists. You can make out your report at your leisure," he went on. "Come in and see me when it's all finished."

"Certainly, sir," Horridge replied, rising.

Sir Henry held out his hand. He looked with something like wonder at the nerve-shattered man who had risen to his feet with a certain air of briskness.

"Horridge," he said, "I wish I had your pluck."

"I don't know any one in the service from whom you need borrow any, sir," was the quiet reply.



CHAPTER XIX

Lessingham sat upon a fallen tree on Dutchman's Common near the scene of his romantic descent, and looked rather ruefully over the moorland, seawards. Above him, the sky was covered with little masses of quickly scudding clouds. A fugitive and watery sunshine shone feebly upon a wind-tossed sea and a rain-sodden landscape. He found a certain grim satisfaction in comparing the disorderliness of the day with the tumult in his own life. He felt that he had embarked upon an enterprise greater than his capacity, for which he was in many ways entirely unsuitable. And behind him was the scourge of the telegram which he had received a few hours ago, a telegram harmless enough to all appearance, but which, decoded, was like a scourge to his back.

Your work is unsatisfactory and your slackness deserves reprobation. Great events wait upon you. The object of your search is necessary for our imminent operations.

The sound of a horse's hoofs disturbed him. Captain Griffiths, on a great bay mare, glanced curiously at the lonely figure by the roadside, and then pulled up.

"Back again, Mr. Lessingham?" he remarked.

"As you see."

The Commandant fidgeted with his horse for a moment. Then he approached a little nearer to Lessingham's side.

"You are a good walker, I perceive, Mr. Lessingham," he remarked.

"When the fancy takes me," was the equable reply.

"Have you come out to see our new guns?"

"I had no idea," Lessingham answered indifferently, "that you had any."

Griffiths smiled.

"We have a small battery of anti-aircraft guns, newly arrived from the south of England," he said. "The secret of their coming and their locality has kept the neighbourhood in a state of ferment for the last week."

Lessingham remained profoundly uninterested.

"They most of them spotted the guns," his companion continued, "but not many of them have found the searchlights yet."

"It seems a little late in the year," Lessingham observed, "to be making preparations against Zeppelins."

"Well, they cross here pretty often, you know," Griffiths reminded him. "It's only a matter of a few weeks ago that one almost came to grief on this common. We picked up their observation car not fifty yards from where you are sitting."

"I remember hearing about it," Lessingham acknowledged.

"By-the-by," the Commandant continued, smoothing his horse's neck, "didn't you arrive that evening or the evening after?"

"I believe I did."

"Liverpool Street or King's Cross? The King's Cross train was very nearly held up."

"I didn't come by train at all," Lessingham replied, glancing for a moment into the clouds, "And now I come to think of it, it must have been the evening after."

"Fine county for motoring," Griffiths continued, stroking his horse's head.

"The roads I have been on seem very good," was the somewhat bored admission.

"You haven't a car of your own here, have you?"

"Not at present."

Captain Griffiths glanced between his horse's ears for a few moments. Then he turned once more towards his companion.

"Mr. Lessingham," he said, "you are aware that I am Commandant here?"

"I believe," Lessingham replied, "that Lady Cranston told me so."

"It is my duty, therefore," Griffiths went on, "to take a little more than ordinary interest in casual visitors, especially at this time of the year. The fact that you are well-known to Lady Cranston is, of course, an entirely satisfactory explanation of your presence here. At the same time, there is certain information concerning strangers of which we keep a record, and in your case there is a line or two which we have not been able to fill up."

"If I can be of any service," Lessingham murmured.

"Precisely," the other interrupted. "I knew you would feel like that. Now your arrival here—we have the date, I think—October 6th. As you have just remarked, you didn't come by train. How did you come?"

Lessingham's surprise was apparently quite genuine.

"Is that a question which you ask me to answer—officially?" he enquired.

His interlocutor shrugged his shoulders.

"I am not putting official questions to you at all," he replied, "nor am I cross-examining you, as might be my duty, under the circumstances, simply because your friendship with the Cranstons is, of course, a guarantee as to your position. But on the other hand, I think it would be reasonable if you were to answer my question."

Lessingham nodded.

"Perhaps you are right," he admitted. "As you can tell by finding me here this afternoon, I am a great walker. I arrived—on foot."

"I see," Griffiths reflected. "The other question which we usually ask is, where was your last stopping place?"

"Stopping place?" Lessingham murmured.

"Yes, where did you sleep the night before you came here?" Griffiths persisted.

Lessingham shook his head as though oppressed by some distasteful memory.

"But I did not sleep at all," he complained. "It was one of the worst nights which I have ever spent in my life."

Captain Griffiths gathered up his reins.

"Well," he said with clumsy sarcasm, "I am much obliged to you, Mr. Lessingham, for the straight-forward way in which you have answered my questions. I won't bother you any more just at present. Shall I see you to-morrow night at Mainsail Haul?"

"Lady Cranston has asked me to dine," was the somewhat reserved reply.

His inquisitor nodded and cantered away. Lessingham looked after him until he had disappeared, then he turned his face towards Dreymarsh and walked steadily into the lowering afternoon. Twilight was falling as he reached Mainsail Haul, where he found Philippa entertaining some callers, to whom she promptly introduced him. Lessingham gathered, almost in the first few minutes, that his presence in Dreymarsh was becoming a subject of comment.

"My husband has played bridge with you at the club, I think," a lady by whose side he found himself observed. "You perhaps didn't hear my name—Mrs. Johnson?"

"I congratulate you upon your husband," Lessingham replied. "I remember him perfectly well because he kept his temper when I revoked."

"Dear me!" she exclaimed. "He must have taken a fancy to you, then. As a rule, they rather complain about him at bridge."

"I formed the impression," Lessingham continued, "that he was rather a better player than the majority of the performers there."

Mrs. Johnson, who was a dark and somewhat forbidding-looking lady, smiled.

"He thinks so, at any rate," she conceded. "Didn't he tell me that you were invalided home from the front?"

Lessingham shook his head.

"I am quite sure that it was not mentioned," he said. "We walked home together as far as the hotel one evening, but we spoke only of the golf and some shooting in the neighbourhood."

Philippa, who had been maneuvering to attract Lessingham's attention, suddenly dropped the cake basket which she was passing. There was a little commotion. Lessingham went down on his hands and knees to help collect the fragments, and she found an opportunity to whisper in his ear.

"Be careful. That woman is a cat. Stay and talk to me. Please don't bother, Mr. Lessingham. Won't you ring the bell instead?" she continued, raising her voice.

Lessingham did as he was asked, and affected not to notice Mrs. Johnson's inviting smile as he returned. Philippa made room for him by her side.

"Helen and I were talking this afternoon, Mr. Lessingham," she said, "of the days when you and Dick were both in the Magdalen Eleven and both had just a chance of being chosen for the Varsity. You never played, did you?"

He shook his head.

"No such luck. In any case, Richard would have been in well before me. I always maintained that he was the first of our googlie bowlers."

"So you were at Magdalen with Major Felstead?" another caller remarked in mild wonder.

"Mr. Lessingham and my brother were great friends," Philippa explained. "Mr. Lessingham used to come down to shoot in Cheshire."

Lady Cranston's guests were all conscious of a little indefinable disappointment. The gossip concerning this stranger's appearance in Dreymarsh was practically strangled. Mrs. Johnson, however, fired a parting shot as she rose to go.

"You were not in the same regiment as Major Felstead, were you, Mr. Lessingham?" she asked. "No," he answered calmly.

Philippa was busy with her adieux. Mrs. Johnson remained indomitable.

"What was your regiment, Mr. Lessingham?" she persisted. "You must forgive my seeming inquisitive, but I am so interested in military affairs."

Lessingham bowed courteously.

"I do not remember alluding to my soldiering at all," he said coolly, "but as a matter of fact I am in the Guards."

Mrs. Johnson accepted Philippa's hand and the inevitable. Her good-by to Lessingham was most affable. She walked up the road with the vicar.

"I think, Vicar," she said severely, "that for a small place, Dreymarsh is becoming one of the worst centres of gossip I ever knew. Every one has been saying all sorts of unkind things about that charming Mr. Lessingham, and there you are—Major Felstead's friend and a Guardsman! Somehow or other, I felt that he belonged to one of the crack regiments. I shall certainly ask him to dinner one night next week."

The vicar nodded benignly. He had the utmost respect for Mrs. Johnson's cook, and his own standard of social desirability, to which the object of their discussion had attained.

"I should be happy to meet Mr. Lessingham at any time," he pronounced, with ample condescension. "I noticed him in church last Sunday morning."



CHAPTER XX

"My dear man, whatever shall I do with you!" Philippa exclaimed pathetically, as the door closed upon the last of her callers. "The Guards, indeed!"

Lessingham smiled as he resumed his place by her side.

"Well," he said, "I told the dear lady the truth. You will find my name well up in the list of the thirty-first battalion of the Prussian Guards."

She threw herself back in her chair and laughed. "How amusing it would be if it weren't all so terrible! You really are a perfect political Raffles. Do you know that this afternoon you have absolutely reestablished yourself? Mr. Johnson will probably call on you to-morrow—they may even ask you to dine—the vicar will write and ask for a subscription, and Dolly Fenwick will invite you to play golf with her."

"Do not turn my head," he begged.

"All the same," Philippa continued, more gravely, "I shall never have a moment's peace whilst you are in the place. I was thinking about you last night. I don't believe I have ever realised before how terrible it would be if you really were discovered. What would they do to you?"

"Whatever they might do," he replied, a little wearily, "I must obey orders. My orders are to remain here, but even if I were told that I might go, I should find it hard."

"Do you mean that?" she asked.

"I think you know," he answered.

"You men are so strange," she went on, after a moment's pause. "You give us so little time to know you, you show us so little of yourselves and you expect so much."

"We offer everything," he reminded her.

"I want to avoid platitudes," she said thoughtfully, "but is love quite the same thing for a man as for a woman?"

"Sometimes it is more," was the prompt reply. "Sometimes love, for a woman, means only shelter; often, for a man, love means the blending of all knowledge, of all beauty, all ambition, of all that he has learned from books and from life. Sometimes a man can see no further and needs to look no further."

Philippa suddenly felt that she was in danger. There was something in her heart of which she had never before been conscious, some music, some strange turn of sentiment in Lessingham's voice or the words themselves. It was madness, she told herself breathlessly. She was in love with her husband, if any one. She could not have lost all feeling for him so soon. She clasped her hands tightly. Lessingham seemed conscious of his advantage, and leaned towards her.

"If I were not offering you my whole life," he pleaded, "believe me, I would not open my lips. If I were thinking of episodes, I would throw myself into the sea before I asked you to give me even your fingers. But you, and you alone, could fill the place in my life which I have always prayed might be filled, not for a year or even a decade of years, but for eternity."

"Oh, but you forget!" she faltered.

"I remember so much," he replied, "that I know it is hard for you to speak. There are bonds which you have made sacred, and your fingers shrink from tearing them asunder. If it were not for this, Philippa—hear the speech of a renegade—my mandate should be torn in pieces. My instructions should flutter into the waste-paper basket, To-morrow should see us on our way to a new country and a new life. But you must be very sure indeed."

"Is it because of me that you are staying here?" she asked.

"Upon my honour, no," he assured her. "I must stay here a little longer, whatever it may mean for me. And so I am content to remain what I am to you at this minute. I ask from you only that you remain just what you are. But when the moment of my freedom comes, when my task here is finished and I turn to go, then I must come to you."

She rose suddenly to her feet, crossed the floor, and threw open the window. The breeze swept through the room, flapping the curtains, blowing about loose articles into a strange confusion. She stood there for several moments, as though in search of some respite from the emotional atmosphere upon which she had turned her back. When she finally closed the window, her hair was in little strands about her face. Her eyes were soft and her lips quivering.

"You make me feel," she said, taking his hand for a moment and looking at him almost piteously, "you make me feel everything except one thing."

"Except one thing?" he repeated.

"Can't you understand?" she continued, stretching out her hand with a quick, impulsive little movement. "I am here in Henry's house, his wife, the mistress of his household. All the years we've been married I have never thought of another man. I have never indulged in even the idlest flirtation. And now suddenly my life seems upside down. I feel as though, if Henry stood before me now, I would strike him on the cheek. I feel sore all over, and ashamed, but I don't know whether I have ceased to love him. I can't tell. Nothing seems to help me. I close my eyes and I try to think of that new world and that new life, and I know that there is nothing repulsive in it. I feel all the joy and the strength of being with you. And then there is Henry in the background. He seems to have had so much of my love."

He saw the tears gathering in her eyes, and he smiled at her encouragingly.

"Remember that at this moment I am asking you for nothing," he said. "Just think these things out. It isn't really a matter for sorrow," he continued. "Love must always mean happiness—for the one who is loved."

She leaned hack in the corner of the sofa to which he had led her, her eyes dry now but still very soft and sweet. He sat by her side, fingering some of the things in her work basket. Once she held out her hand and seemed to find comfort in his clasp. He raised her fingers to his lips without any protest from her. She looked at him with a little smile.

"You know, I'm not at all an Ibsen heroine," she declared. "I can't see my way like those wonderful emancipated women."

"Yet," he said thoughtfully, "the way to the simple things is so clear."

Confidences were at an end for a time, broken up by the entrance of Nora and Helen, and some young men from the Depot, who had looked in for a game of billiards. Lessingham rose to leave as soon as the latter had returned to their game. His tone and manner now were completely changed. He seemed ill at ease and unhappy.

"I am going to have a day's fishing to-morrow," he told Philippa, "but I must admit that I have very little faith in this man Oates. They all tell me that your husband has any number of charts of the coast. Do you think I could borrow one?"

"Why, of course," she replied, "if we can find it."

She took him over to her husband's desk, opened such of the drawers as were not locked, and searched amongst their contents ruthlessly. By the time they had finished the last drawer, Lessingham had quite a little collection of charts, more or less finished, in his hand.

"I don't know where else to look," she said. "You might go through those and see if they are of any use. What is it, Mills?" she added, turning to the door.

Mills had entered noiselessly, and was watching the proceedings at Sir Henry's desk with a distinct lack of favour. He looked away towards his mistress, however, as he replied.

"The young woman has called with reference to a situation as parlour-maid, your ladyship," he announced. "I have shown her into the sewing room." Lady Cranston glanced at the clock.

"I sha'n't be more than five or ten minutes," she promised Lessingham. "Just look through those till I come back."

She hurried away, leaving Lessingham alone in the room. He stood for a moment listening. On the left-hand side, through the door which had been left ajar, he could hear the click of billiard balls and occasional peals of laughter. On the right-hand side there was silence. He moved swiftly across the room and closed the door leading into the billiard room, deposited on the sofa the charts which he had been carrying, and hurried back to the secretary. With a sickening feeling of overwhelming guilt, he drew from his pocket a key and opened, one by one, the drawers through which they had not searched. It took him barely five minutes to discover—nothing. With an air of relief he rearranged everything. When Philippa returned, he was sitting on the lounge, going through the charts which they had looked out together.

"Well?" she asked.

"There is nothing here," he decided, "which will help me very much. With your permission I will take this," he added, selecting one at random.

She nodded and they replaced the others. Then she touched him on the arm.

"Listen," she said, "are you perfectly certain that there is no one coming?"

He listened for a moment.

"I can't hear any one," he answered. "They've started a four-handed game of pool in the billiard room."

She smiled.

"Then I will disclose to you Henry's dramatic secret. See!"

She touched the spring in the side of the secretary. The false back, with its little collection of fishing flies, rolled slowly up. The large and very wonderful chart on which Sir Henry had bestowed so much of his time, was revealed. Lessingham gazed at it eagerly.

"There!" she said. "That has been a great labour of love with Henry. It is the chart, on a great scale, from which he works. I don't know a thing about it, and for heaven's sake never tell Henry that you have seen it."

He continued to examine the chart earnestly. Not a part of it escaped him. Then he turned back to Philippa.

"Is that supposed to be the coast on the other side of the point?" he asked.

"I don't exactly know where it is," she replied. "Every time Henry finds out anything new, he comes and works at it. I believe that very soon it will be perfect. Then he will start on another part of the coast."

"This is not the only one that he has prepared, then?" Lessingham enquired.

She shook her head.

"I believe it is the fifth," she replied. "They all disappear when they are finished, but I have no idea where to. To me they seem to represent a shocking waste of time."

Lessingham was suddenly taciturn. He held out his hand. "You are dining with us to-morrow night, remember," she said.

"I am not likely to forget," he assured her.

"And don't get drowned," she concluded. "I don't know any of these fishermen—I hate them all—but I'm told that Oates is the worst."

"I think that we shall be quite all right," he assured her. "Thanks very much for finding me the charts. What I have seen will help me."

Helen came in for a moment and their farewell was more or less perfunctory. Lessingham was almost thankful to escape. There was an unusual flush in his cheeks, a sense of bitter humiliation in his heart. All the fervour with which he had started on his perilous quest had faded away. No sense of duty or patriotism could revive his drooping spirits. He felt himself suddenly an unclean and dishonoured being.



CHAPTER XXI

Towards three o'clock on the following afternoon, the boisterous wind of an uncertain morning settled down to worse things. It tore the spray from the crest of the gathering waves, dashed it even against the French windows of Mainsail Haul, and came booming down the open spaces cliffwards, like the rumble of some subterranean artillery. A little group of fishermen in oilskins leaned over the railing and discussed the chances of Ben Oates bringing his boat in safely. Philippa, also, distracted by a curious anxiety, stood before the blurred window, gazing into what seemed almost a grey chaos. "Captain Griffiths, your ladyship."

She turned around quickly at the announcement. Even an unwelcome caller at that moment was almost a relief to her.

"How nice of you to come and see me on such an afternoon, Captain Griffiths," she exclaimed, as they shook hands. "Helen is over at the Canteen, Nora is hard at work for once in her life, and I seem most dolefully alone."

Her visitor's reception of Philippa's greeting promised little in the way of enlivenment. He seemed more awkward and ill at ease than ever, and his tone was almost threatening.

"I am very glad to find you alone, Lady Cranston," he said. "I came specially to have a few words with you on a certain matter."

Her momentary impulse of relief at his visit passed away. There seemed to her something sinister in his manner. She was suddenly conscious that there was a new danger to be faced, and that this man's attitude towards her was, for some reason or other, inimical. After the first shock, however, she prepared herself to do battle.

"Well, you seem very mysterious," she observed. "I haven't broken any laws, have I? No lights flashing from any of my windows?"

"So far as I am aware, there are no complaints of the sort," the Commandant acknowledged, still speaking with an unnatural restraint. "My call, I hope, may be termed, to some extent, at least, a friendly one."

"How nice!" she sighed. "Then you'll have some tea, won't you?"

"Not at present, if you please," he begged. "I have come to talk to you about Mr. Hamar Lessingham."

"Really?" Philippa exclaimed. "Whatever has that poor man been doing now."

"Dreymarsh," her visitor proceeded, "having been constituted, during the last few months, a protected area, it is my duty to examine and enquire into the business of any stranger who appears here. Mr. Hamar Lessingham has been largely accepted without comment, owing to his friendship with you. I regret to state, however, that certain facts have come to my knowledge which make me wonder whether you yourself may not in some measure have been deceived."

"This sounds very ridiculous," Philippa interposed quietly.

"A few weeks ago," Captain Griffith continued, "we received information that this neighbourhood would probably be visited by some person connected with the Secret Service of Germany. There is strong evidence that the person in question is Mr. Hamar Lessingham."

"A graduate of Magdalen, my brother's intimate friend, and a frequent visitor at my father's house in Cheshire," Philippa observed, with faint sarcasm.

"The possibility of your having made a mistake, Lady Cranston," Captain Griffiths rejoined, "has, I must confess, only just occurred to me. The authorities at Magdalen College have been appealed to, and no one of the name of Lessingham was there during any one of your brother's terms."

Philippa took the blow well. She simply stared at her caller in a noncomprehending manner.

"We have also information," he continued gravely, "from Wood Norton Hall—from your mother, in fact, Lady Cranston—that no college friend of your brother, of that name, has ever visited Wood Norton."

"Go on," Philippa begged, a little faintly. "Did I ever live there myself? Was Richard ever at Magdalen?"

Captain Griffiths proceeded with the air of a man who has a task to finish and intends to do so, regardless of interruptions.

"I have had some conversation with Mr. Lessingham, in the course of which I asked him to explain his method of reaching here, and his last habitation. He simply fenced with me in the most barefaced fashion. He practically declined to give me any account of himself."

Philippa rose and rang the bell.

"I suppose I must give you some tea," she said, "although you seem to have come here on purpose to make my head ache."

"My object in coming here," Captain Griffiths rejoined, a little stiffly, "is to save you some measure of personal annoyance."

"Oh, please don't think that I am ungrateful," Philippa begged. "Of course, it is all some absurd mistake, and I'm sure we shall get to the bottom of it presently—Tell me what you think of the storm?" she added, as Mills entered with the tea tray. "Do you think it will get any worse, because I am terrified to death already?"

"I am no judge of the weather here," he confessed. "I believe the fishermen are preparing for something unusual."

She seated herself before the tea tray and insisted upon performing her duties as hostess. Afterwards she laid her hand upon his arm and addressed him with an air of complete candour.

"Now, Captain Griffiths," she began, "do listen to me. Just one moment of common sense, if you please. What do you suppose there could possibly be in our harmless seaside village to induce any one to risk his life by coming here on behalf of the Secret Service of Germany?"

"Dreymarsh," Captain Griffiths replied, "was not made a prohibited area for nothing."

"But, my dear man, be reasonable," Philippa persisted. "There are perhaps a thousand soldiers in the place, the usual preparations along the cliff for coast defence, a small battery of anti-aircraft guns, and a couple of searchlights. There isn't a grocer's boy in the place who doesn't know all this. There's no concealment about it. You must admit that Germany doesn't need to send over a Secret Service agent to acquaint herself with these insignificant facts."

Her visitor smiled very faintly. It was the first time he had relaxed even so far as this.

"I am not in possession of any information which I can impart to you, Lady Cranston," he said, "but I am not prepared to accept your statement that Dreymarsh contains nothing of greater interest than the things which you have mentioned."

There was no necessity for Philippa to play a part now. The suggestion contained in her visitor's words had really left her in a state of wonder.

"You are making my flesh creep!" she exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that we have secrets here?"

"I have said the last word which it is possible for me to say upon the subject," he declared. "You will understand, I am sure, that I am not here in the character of an inquisitor. I simply thought it my duty, in view of the fact that you had made yourself the social sponsor for Mr. Lessingham, to place certain information before you, and to ask, unofficially, of course, if you have any explanation to give? You may even," he went on, hesitatingly, "appreciate the motives which led me to do so."

"My dear man, what explanation could I have?" Philippa protested, "it is an absolute and undeniable fact that Mr. Lessingham was at Magdalen with my brother, and also that he visited us at Wood Norton. I know both these things of my own knowledge. The only possible explanation, therefore, is that you have been misinformed."

"Or," Captain Griffiths ventured, "that Mr. Hamar Lessingham in those days passed under another name."

"Another name?" Philippa faltered.

"Some such name, perhaps," he continued, "as Bertram Maderstrom."

There was a short silence. Captain Griffiths had leaned back in his chair and was caressing his upper lip. His eyes were fixed upon Philippa and Philippa saw nothing. Her little heel dug hard into the carpet. In a few seconds the room ceased to spin. Nevertheless, her voice sounded to her pitifully inadequate.

"What an absurdity all this is!" she exclaimed.

"Maderstrom," Captain Griffiths said thoughtfully, "was, curiously enough, an intimate college friend of your brother's. He was also a visitor at Wood Norton Hall. At neither place is there any trace of Mr. Hamar Lessingham. Perhaps you have made a mistake, Lady Cranston. Perhaps you have recognised the man and failed to remember his name. If so, now is the moment to declare it."

"I am very much obliged to you," Philippa retorted, "but I have never met or heard of this Mr. Maderstrom—"

"Baron Maderstrom," he interrupted.

"Baron Maderstrom, then, in my life; whereas Mr. Lessingham I remember perfectly."

"I am sorry," Captain Griffiths said, setting down his empty teacup and rising slowly to his feet. "We cannot help one another, then."

"If you want me to transfer Mr. Lessingham, whom I remember perfectly, into a German baron whom I never heard of," Philippa declared boldly, "I am afraid that we can't."

"Baron Maderstrom was a Swedish nobleman," Captain Griffiths observed.

"Swedish or German, I know nothing of him," Philippa persisted.

"There remains, then, nothing more to be said."

"I am afraid not," Philippa agreed sweetly.

"Under the circumstances," Captain Griffiths asked, "you will not, I am sure, expect me to dine to-night."

"Not if you object to meeting Mr. Hamar Lessingham," Philippa replied.

Her visitor's face suddenly darkened, and Philippa wondered vaguely whether anything more than professional suspicion was responsible for that little storm of passion which for a moment transformed his appearance. He quickly recovered, however.

"I may still," he concluded, moving towards the door, "be forced to present myself here in another capacity."



CHAPTER XXII

The confinement of the house, after the departure of her unwelcome visitor, stifled Philippa. Attired in a mackintosh, with a scarf around her head, she made her way on to the quay, and, clinging to the railing, dragged herself along to where the fishermen were gathered together in a little group. The storm as yet showed no signs of abatement.

"Has anything been heard of Ben Oates' boat?" she enquired.

An old fisherman pointed seawards.

"There she comes, ma'am, up on the crest of that wave; look!"

"Will she get in?" Philippa asked eagerly.

There were varied opinions, expressed in indistinct mutterings.

"She's weathering it grand," the fisherman to whom she had first spoken, declared. "We've a line ready yonder, and we're reckoning on getting 'em ashore all right. Lucky for Ben that the gentleman along with him is a fine sailor. Look at that, mum!" he added in excitement. "See the way he brought her head round to it, just in time. Boys, they'll come in on the next one!"

One by one the sailors made their way to the very edge of the wave-splashed beach. There were a few more minutes of breathless anxiety. Then, after the boat had disappeared completely from sight, hidden by a huge grey wall of sea, she seemed suddenly to climb to the top of it, to hover there, to become mixed up with the spray and the surf and a great green mass of waters, and then finally, with a harsh crash of timbers and a shout from the fishermen, to be flung high and dry upon the stones. Philippa, clutching the iron railing, saw for a moment nothing but chaos. Her knees became weak. She was unable to move. There was a queer dizziness in her ears. The sound of voices sounded like part of an unreal nightmare. Then she was aware of a single figure climbing the steps towards her. There was blood trickling down his face from the wound in the forehead, and he was limping slightly.

"Mr. Lessingham!" she called out, as he reached the topmost step.

He took an eager step towards her.

"Philippa!" he exclaimed. "Why, what are you doing here?"

"I was frightened," she faltered. "Are you hurt?"

"Not in the least," he assured her. "We had a rough sail home, that's all, and that fellow Oates drank himself half unconscious. Come along, let me help you up the steps and out of this."

She clung to his arm, and they struggled up the private path to the house. Mills let them in with many expressions of concern, and Helen came hurrying to them from the background.

"I went out to see the storm," Philippa explained weakly, "and I saw Mr. Lessingham's boat brought in."

"And Mr. Lessingham will come this way at once," Helen insisted. "I haven't had a real case since I got my certificate, and I'm going to bind his head up."

Philippa began to feel her strength returning. The horror which lay behind those few minutes of nightmare rose up again in her mind. Mills had hurried on into the bathroom, and the other two were preparing to follow. She stopped them.

"Mr. Lessingham," she said, "listen. Captain Griffiths has been here. He knows or guesses everything."

"Everything?"

Philippa nodded.

"Helen must bind your head up, of course," she continued. "After that, think! What can we do? Captain Griffiths knows that there was no Hamar Lessingham at college with Dick, that he never visited Wood Norton, that there is some mystery about your arrival here, and he told me to my face that he believes you to be Bertram Maderstrom."

"What a meddlesome fellow!" Lessingham grumbled, holding his handkerchief to his forehead.

"Oh, please be serious!" Helen begged, looking up from the bandage which she was preparing. "This is horrible!"

"Don't I know it!" Philippa groaned. "Mr. Lessingham, you must please try and escape from here. You can have the car, if you like. There must be some place where you can go and hide until you can get away from the country."

"But I'm dining here to-night," Lessingham protested. "I'm not going to hide anywhere."

The two women exchanged glances of despair.

"Can't I make you understand!" Philippa exclaimed pathetically. "You're in danger here—really in danger!"

Lessingham's demeanour showed no appreciation of the situation.

"Of course, I can quite understand," he said, "that Griffiths is suspicious about me, but, after all, no one can prove that I have broken the law here, and I shall not make things any better by attempting an opera bouffe flight. Can I have my head tied up and come and talk to you about it later on?"

"Oh, if you like," Philippa assented weakly. "I can't argue."

She made her way up to her room and changed her wet clothes. When she came down, Lessingham was standing on the hearth rug in the library, with a piece of buttered toast in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. His head was very neatly bound up, and he seemed quite at his ease.

"You know," he began, as he wheeled a chair up to the fire for her, "that man Griffiths doesn't like me. He never took to me from the first, I could see that. If it comes to that, I don't like Griffiths. He is one of those mean, suspicious sort of characters we could very well do without."

Philippa, who had rehearsed a little speech several times in her bedroom, tried to be firm.

"Mr. Lessingham," she said, "you know that we are both your friends. Do listen, please. Captain Griffiths is Commandant here and in a position of authority. He has a very large power. I honestly believe that it is his intention to have you arrested—if not to-night, within a very few days."

"I do not see how he can," Lessingham objected, helping himself to another piece of toast. "I have committed no crime here. I have played golf with all the respectable old gentlemen in the place, and I have given the committee some excellent advice as to the two new holes. I have played bridge down at the club—we will call it bridge!—and I have kept my temper like an angel. I have dined at Mess and told them at least a dozen new stories. I have kept my blinds drawn at night, and I have not a wireless secreted up the chimney. I really cannot see what they could do to me."

Philippa tried bluntness.

"You have served in the German army, and you are living in a protected area under a false name," she declared.

"Well, of course, there is some truth in what you say," he admitted, "but even if they have tumbled to that and can prove it, I should do no good by running away. To be perfectly serious," he added, setting his cup down, "there is only one thing at the present moment which would take me out of Dreymarsh, and that is if you believe that my presence here would further compromise you and Miss Fairclough."

Philippa was beginning to find her courage. "We're in it already, up to the neck," she observed. "I really don't see that anything matters so far as we are concerned."

"In that case," he decided, "I shall have the honour of presenting myself at the usual time."



CHAPTER XXIII

Philippa and Helen met in the drawing-room, a few minutes before eight that evening. Philippa was wearing a new black dress, a model of simplicity to the untutored eye, but full of that undefinable appeal to the mysterious which even the greatest artist frequently fails to create out of any form of colour. Some fancy had induced her to strip off her jewels at the last moment, and she wore no ornaments save a band of black velvet around her neck. Helen looked at her curiously.

"Is this a fresh scheme for conquest, Philippa?" she asked, as they stood together by the log fire.

Philippa unexpectedly flushed.

"I don't know what I was thinking about, really," she confessed. "Is that the exact time, I wonder?"

"Two minutes to eight," Helen replied.

"Mr. Lessingham is always so punctual," Philippa murmured. "I wonder if Captain Griffiths would dare!"

"We've done our best to warn him," Helen reminded her friend. "The man is simply pig-headed."

"I can't help feeling that he's right," Philippa declared, "when he argues that they couldn't really prove anything against him."

"Does that matter," Helen asked anxiously, "so long as he is an enemy, living under a false name here?"

"You don't think they'd—they'd—"

"Shoot him?" Helen whispered, lowering her voice. "They couldn't do that! They couldn't do that!"

The clock began to chime. Suddenly Philippa, who had been listening, gave a little exclamation of relief.

"I hear his voice!" she exclaimed. "Thank goodness!"

Helen's relief was almost as great as her companion's. A moment later Mills ushered in their guest. He was still wearing his bandage, but his colour had returned. He seemed, in fact, almost gay.

"Nothing has happened, then?" Philippa demanded anxiously, as soon as the door was closed.

"Nothing at all," he assured them. "Our friend Griffiths is terribly afraid of making a mistake."

"So afraid that he wouldn't come and dine. Never mind, you'll have to take care of us both," she added, as Mills announced dinner.

"I'll do my best," he promised, offering his arm.

If the sword of Damocles were indeed suspended over their heads, it seemed only to heighten the merriment of their little repast. Philippa had ordered champagne, and the warmth of the pleasant dining room, the many appurtenances of luxury by which they were surrounded, the glow of the wine, and the perfume of the hothouse flowers upon the table, seemed in delicious contrast to the fury of the storm outside. They all three appeared completely successful in a strenuous effort to dismiss all disconcerting subjects from their minds. Lessingham talked chiefly of the East. He had travelled in Russia, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, and he had the unusual but striking gift of painting little word pictures of some of the scenes of his wanderings. It was half-past nine before they rose from the table, and Lessingham accompanied them into the library. With the advent of coffee, they were for the first time really alone. Lessingham sat by Philippa's side, and Helen reclined in a low chair close at hand.

"I think," he said, "that I can venture now to tell you some news."

Helen put down her work. Philippa looked at him in silence, and her eyes seemed to dilate.

"I have hesitated to say anything about it," Lessingham went on, "because there is so much uncertainty about these things, but I believe that it is now finally arranged. I think that within the next week or ten days—perhaps a little before, perhaps a little later—your brother Richard will be set at liberty."

"Dick? Dick coming home?" Philippa cried, springing up from her reclining position.

"Dick?" Helen faltered, her work lying unheeded in her lap. "Mr. Lessingham, do you mean it? Is it possible?"

"It is not only possible," Lessingham assured them, "but I believe that it will come to pass. I have had to exercise a little duplicity, but I fancy that it has been successful. I have insisted that without help from an influential person in Dreymarsh, I cannot bring my labours here to a satisfactory conclusion, and I have named as the price of that help, Richard's absolute and immediate freedom. I heard only this morning that there would be no difficulty."

Helen snatched up her work and groped her way towards the door.

"I will come back in a few minutes," she promised, her voice a little broken.

Lessingham, who had opened the door for her, returned to his place. There were no tears in Philippa's brilliant eyes, but there was a faint patch of colour in her cheeks, and her lips were not quite steady. She caught at his hands.

"Oh, my dear, dear friend!" she said. "If only that little nightmare part of you did not exist. If only you could be just what you seem, and one could feel that you were there in our lives for always! I feel that I want to talk to you so much, to you and not the sham you. What shall I call you?"

"Bertram, please," he whispered.

"Then Bertram, dear," she went on, "for my sake, because you have really become dear to me, because my heart aches at the thought of your danger, and because—see how honest I am—I am a little afraid of myself—will you go away? The thought of your danger is like a nightmare to me. It all seems so absurd and unreasonable—I mean that the danger which I fear should be hanging over you. But I think that there is just a little something back of your brain of which you have never spoken, which it was your duty to keep to yourself, and it is just that something which brings the danger."

"I am not afraid for myself, Philippa," he told her. "I took a false step in life when I came here. What it was that attracted me I do not know. I think it was the thought of that wild ride amongst the clouds, and the starlight. It seemed such a wonderful beginning to any enterprise. And, Philippa, for one part of my adventure, the part which concerns you, it was a gorgeous prelude, and for the other—well, it just does not count because I have no fear. I have faith in my fortune, do you know that? I believe that I shall leave this place unharmed, but I believe that if I leave it without you, I shall go back to the worst hell in which a man could ever..."

"Bertram," she pleaded, "think of it all. Even if I cared enough—and I don't—there is something unnatural about it. Doesn't it strike you as horrible? My brother, my cousins, my father, are all fighting the men of the nation whose cause you have espoused! There is a horrible, eternal cloud of hatred which it will take generations to get rid of, if ever it disappears. How can we two speak of love! What part of the world could we creep into where people would not shrink away from us? I may have lost a little of my heart to you, Bertram, I may miss you when you go away, I may waste weary hours thinking, but that is all. Oh, you know that it must be all!"

"I do not," he answered stubbornly.

"Oh, you must be reasonable," she begged, with a little break in her voice. "You know very well that I ought not to listen to you. I ought not to welcome you here. I ought to be strong and close my ears."

"But you will not do that!"

"No!" she faltered. "Please don't come any nearer. I—"

She broke off suddenly. The struggle in her face was ended, her expression transformed. Her finger was held up as though to bid him listen. With her other hand she clutched the back of the couch. Her eyes were fixed upon the door. The little patch of wonderful colour faded from her cheeks.

"Listen!" she cried, with a note of terror in her voice. "That was the front door! Some one has come! Can't you hear them?"

Lessingham's hand stole suddenly to his pocket. She caught the glitter of something half withdrawn, and shrank back with a half-stifled moan.

"Not before you, dear," he promised. "Please do not be afraid. If this is the end, leave me alone with Griffiths. I shall not hurt him. I shall not forget. And if by any chance," he added, "this is to be our farewell, Philippa, you will remember that I love you as the flowers of the world love their sun. Courage!"

The door facing them was opened.

"Captain Griffiths," Mills announced.

Through the open door they caught a vision of two other soldiers and Inspector Fisher. Griffiths came into the room alone, however, and waited until the door was closed before he spoke. He carried himself as awkwardly as ever, but his long, lean face seemed to have taken to itself a new expression. He had the air of a man indulging in some strange pleasure.

"Lady Cranston," he said, "I am very sorry to intrude, but my visit here is official."

"What is it?" she asked hoarsely.

"I have received confirmatory evidence in the matter of which I spoke to you this afternoon," he went on. "I am sorry to disturb you at such an hour, but it is my duty to arrest this man on a charge of espionage."

Lessingham to all appearance remained unmoved.

"A most objectionable word," he remarked.

"A most villainous profession," Captain Griffiths retorted. "Thank heaven that in this country we are learning the art of dealing with its disciples."

"This is all a hideous mistake," Philippa declared feverishly. "I assure you that Mr. Lessingham has visited my father's house, that he was well-known to me years ago."

"As the Baron Maderstrom! What arguments he has used, Lady Cranston, to induce you to accept him here under his new identity, I do not know, but the facts are very clear."

"He seems quite convinced, doesn't he?" Lessingham remarked, turning to Philippa. "And as I gather that a portion of the British Army, assisted by the local constabulary, is waiting for me outside, perhaps I had better humour him."

"It would be as well, sir," Captain Griffiths assented grimly. "I am glad to find you in the humour for jesting."

Lessingham turned once more to Philippa. This time his tone was more serious.

"Lady Cranston," he begged, "won't you please leave us?"

"No!" she answered hysterically. "I know why you want me to, and I won't go! You have done no harm, and nothing shall happen to you. I will not leave the room, and you shall not—"

His gesture of appeal coincided with the sob in her throat. She broke down in her speech, and Captain Griffiths moved a step nearer.

"If you have any weapon in your possession, sir," he said, "you had better hand it over to me."

"Well, do you know," Lessingham replied, "I scarcely see the necessity. One thing I will promise you," he added, with a sudden flash in his eyes, "a single step nearer—a single step, mind—and you shall have as much of my weapon as will keep you quiet for the rest of your life. Remember that so long as you are reasonable I do not threaten you. Help me to persuade Lady Cranston to leave us."

Captain Griffiths was out of his depths. He was not a coward, but he had no hankering after death, and there was death in Lessingham's threat and in the flash of his eyes. While he hesitated, there was a knock upon the door. Mills came silently in. He carried a telegram upon a salver.

"For you, sir," he announced, addressing Captain Griffiths. "An orderly has just brought it down."

Griffiths looked at the pink envelope and frowned. He tore it open, however, without a word. As he read, his long, upper teeth closed in upon his lip. So he stood there until two little drops of blood appeared.

Then he turned to Mills.

"There is no answer," he said.

The man bowed and left the room. He walked slowly and he looked back from the doorway. It was scarcely possible for even so perfectly trained a servant to escape from the atmosphere of tragedy.

"Something tells me," Lessingham remarked coolly, as soon as the door was closed, "that that message concerns me."

The Commandant made no immediate reply. He straightened out the telegram and read it once more under the lamplight, as though to be sure there was no possible mistake. Then he folded it up and placed it in his waistcoat pocket.

"The notion of your arrest, sir," he said to Lessingham harshly, "is apparently distasteful to some one at headquarters who has not digested my information. I am withdrawing my men for the present."

"You're not going to arrest him?" Philippa cried.

"I am not," Captain Griffiths answered. "But," he added, turning to Lessingham, "this is only a respite. I have more evidence behind all that I have offered. You are Baron Bertram Maderstrom, a German spy, living here in a prohibited area under a false name. That I know, and that I shall prove to those who have interfered with me in the execution of my duty. This is not the end."

He left the room without even a word or a salute to Philippa. Lessingham looked after him for a moment, thoughtfully. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"I am quite sure that I do not like Captain Griffiths," he declared. "There is no breeding about the fellow."



CHAPTER XXIV

Philippa, even for some moments after the departure of Captain Griffiths and his myrmidons, remained in a sort of nerveless trance. The crisis, with its bewildering denouement, had affected her curiously. Lessingham rose presently to his feet.

"I wonder," he asked, "if I could have a whisky and soda?"

She stamped her foot at him in a little fit of hysterical passion.

"You're not natural!" she cried. "Whisky and soda!"

"Well, I don't know," he protested mildly, helping himself from the table in the background. "I rather thought I was being particularly British. When in doubt, take a drink. That is Richard all the world over, you know."

She broke into a little mirthless laugh.

"I shall begin to think that you are a poseur!" she exclaimed.

He crossed the room towards her.

"Perhaps I am, dear," he confessed. "I want you just to sit up and lose that unnatural look. I am not really full of cheap bravado, but I am a philosopher. Something has happened to postpone—the end. Good luck to it, I say!"

He raised his tumbler to his lips and set it down empty. Philippa rose to her feet and walked restlessly to the window and back.

"I'll try and be reasonable too," she promised, resuming her seat. "I was right, you see. Captain Griffiths has discovered everything. Can you tell me what possible reason any one in London could have had for interference?"

"I seem to have got a friend up there without knowing it, don't I?" he observed.

"This is aging me terribly," Philippa declared, throwing herself back into her seat. "All my life I have hated mysteries. Here I am face to face with two absolutely insoluble ones. Captain Griffiths has assured me that there is here in Dreymarsh something of sufficient importance to account for the presence of a foreign spy. You have confirmed it. I have been torturing my brain about that for the last twenty-four hours. Now there happens something more inexplicable still. You are arrested, and you are not arrested. Your identity is known, and Captain Griffiths is forbidden to do his duty."

"It seems puzzling, does it not?" Lessingham agreed. "I shouldn't worry about the first, but this last little episode takes some explaining."

"If anything further happens this evening, I think I shall go mad," Philippa sighed.

"And something is going to happen," Lessingham declared, rising to his feet. "Did you hear that?"

Above even the roar of the wind they heard the brazen report of a gun from almost underneath the window. The room was suddenly lightened by a single vivid flash.

"A mortar!" Lessingham exclaimed. "And that was a rocket, unless I'm mistaken."

"The signal for the lifeboat!" Philippa announced. "I wonder if we can see anything."

She hastened towards the window, but paused at the abrupt opening of the door. Nora burst in, followed more sedately by Helen.

"Mummy, there's a wreck!" the former cried in excitement. "I heard something an hour ago, and I got up, and I've been sitting by the window, watching. I saw the lifeboat go out, and they're signalling now for the other one."

"It's quite true, Philippa," Helen declared. "We're going to try and fight our way down to the beach."

"I'll go, too," Lessingham decided. "Perhaps I may be of use."

"We'll all go," Philippa agreed. "Wait while I get my things on. What is it, Mills?" she added, as the door opened and the latter presented himself.

"There is a trawler on the rocks just off the breakwater, your ladyship," he announced. "They have just sent up from the beach to know if we can take some of the crew in. They are landing them as well as they can on the line."

"Of course we can," was the prompt reply. "Tell them to send as many as they want to. We will find room for them, somehow. I'll go upstairs and see about the fires. You'll all come back?" she added, turning around.

"We will all come back," Lessingham promised.

They fought their way down to the beach. At first the storm completely deafened all sound. The lanterns, waved here and there by unseen hands, seemed part of some ghostly tableau, of which the only background was the raging of the storm. Then suddenly, with a startling hiss, another rocket clove its way through the darkness. They had an instantaneous but brilliant view of all that was happening,—saw the trawler lying on its side, apparently only a few yards from the shore, saw the line stretched to the beach, on which, even at that moment, a man was being drawn ashore, licked by the spray, his strained face and wind-tossed hair clearly visible. Then all was darkness again more complete than ever. They struggled down on to the shingle, where the little cluster of fishermen were hard at work with the line. Almost the first person they ran across was Jimmy Dumble. He was standing on the edge of the breakwater with a great lantern in his hand, superintending the line, and, as they drew near, Lessingham, who was a little in advance, could hear his voice above the storm. He was shouting towards the wreck, his hand to his mouth.

"Send the master over next, you lubbers, or we'll cut the line. Do you hear?"

There was no reply or, if there was, it was drowned in the wind. Lessingham gripped the fisherman by the arm.

"Whom do you mean by 'master'?" he demanded. Dumble scarcely glanced at his interlocutor.

"Why, Sir Henry Cranston, to be sure," was the agitated answer. "These lubbers of sea hands are all coming off first, and the line won't stand for more than another one or two," he added, dropping his voice.

Then the thrill of those few minutes' excitement unrolled itself into a great drama before Lessingham's eyes. Sir Henry was on that ship as near as any man might wish to be to death.

"'Ere's the next," Jimmy muttered, as they turned the windlass vigorously. "Gosh, 'e's a heavy one, too!"

Then came a cry which sounded like a moan and above it the shrill fearful yell of a man who feels himself dropping out of the world's hearing. Lessingham raised the lantern which stood on the beach by Jimmy's side. The line had broken. The body of its suspended traveller had disappeared! And just then, strangely enough, for the first time for over an hour, the heavens opened in one great sheet of lightning, and they could see the figure of one man left on the ship, clinging desperately to the rigging.

"Tie the line around me," Jimmy shouted. "Let her go. Get the other end on the windlass."

They paid out the rope through their hands. Jimmy kicked off his boots and plunged into the cauldron. He swam barely a dozen strokes before he was caught on the top of an incoming wave, tossed about like a cork and flung back upon the beach, where he lay groaning. There was a little murmur amongst the fisherman, who rushed to lean over him.

"Swimming ain't no more use than trying to walk on the water," one of them declared.

Lessingham raised the lantern which he was carrying, and flashed it around.

"Where are the young ladies?" he asked.

"Gone up to the house with two as we've just taken off the wreck," some one informed him.

Lessingham stooped down. Willing hands helped him unfasten the cord from Jimmy's waist. He tore off his own coat and waistcoat and boots. Some helped, other sought to dissuade him, as he secured the line around his own waist.

"We've sent for more rockets," one man shouted in his ear. "The man will be back in half an hour."

Lessingham pushed them on one side. He stood on the edge of the beach and, borrowing a lantern, watched for his opportunity. Then suddenly he vanished. They looked after him. They could see nothing but the rope slipping past their feet, inch by inch. Sometimes it was stationary, sometimes it was drawn taut. The first great wave that came flung a yard or so of slack amongst them. Then, after the roar of its breaking had died away, they saw the rope suddenly tighten, and pass rapidly out, and the excitement began to thicken.

"That 'un didn't get him, anyway," one of them muttered.

"He'll go through the next, with luck," another declared hopefully.

Lessingham, fighting for his consciousness, deafened and half stunned by the roar of the waters about him, still felt the exhilaration of that great struggle. He looked once into seas which seemed to touch the clouds, drew himself stiff, and plunged into the depths of a mountain of foaming waters, whose summit seemed to him like one of those grotesque and nightmare-distorted efforts of the opium-eating brain. Then the roar sounded all behind him, and he knew that he was through the breakers. He swam to the side of the ship and clutched hold of a chain. It was Sir Henry's out-stretched hand which pulled him on to the deck.

"My God, that was a swim!" the latter declared, as he pulled his rescuer up, not in the least recognising him. "Let's have the end of that cord, quick! So!" he went on, paying it out through his fingers until the end of the rope appeared. "You'd better get your breath, young man, and then over you go. I'll follow."

"I'm damned if I do!" was the vigorous reply. "You start off while I get my breath."

They were suddenly half drowned with a shower of spray. Sir Henry held Lessingham in a grip of iron, or he would have been swept overboard.

"Get one arm through the chains, man," he shouted. "My God!" he added, peering through the gloom. "Lessingham!"

"Well, don't stop to worry about that," was the fierce reply. "Let's get on with our job."

Sir Henry threw off his oilskins and his underneath coat.

"Follow me when they wave the lantern twice," he directed. "If we either of us get the knock—well, thanks!"

Lessingham felt the grip of Sir Henry's hand as he passed him and went overboard into the darkness. Then, with one arm through the chains, he drew towards him by means of his heel the coat which Sir Henry had thrown upon the deck. Gradually it came within reach of his disengaged hand. He seized it, shook it out, and dived eagerly into the breast pocket. There were several small articles which he threw ruthlessly away, and then a square packet, wrapped in oilcloth, which bent to his fingers. Another breaking wave threw him on his back. One arm was still through the chain, the other gripped what some illuminating instinct had already convinced him was the chart! As soon as he had recovered his breath, a grim effort of humour parted his lips. He lay there for a moment and laughed till the spray, this time with a rush of green water underneath, very nearly swept him from his place.

They were waving a lantern on the beach when he struggled again to his feet.

He slipped the little packet down his clothes next to his skin, and groped about to find the end of the line which Sir Henry and he had fastened to a staple below the chains. Then he drew a long breath, gripped the rope and shouted. A second or two later he was back in the cauldron.

As they pulled him on to the beach, he had but one idea. Whatever happened, he must not lose consciousness. The packet was still there against the calf of his leg. It must be his own hands which removed his clothes. It seemed to him that those few bronzed faces, those half a dozen rude lanterns, had become magnified and multiplied a hundredfold. It was an army of blue-jerseyed fishermen which patted him on the back and welcomed him, lanterns like the stars flashing everywhere around. He set his teeth and fought against the buzzing in his ears. He tried to speak, and his voice sounded like a weak, far away whisper.

"I am all right," he kept on saying.

Then he felt himself leaning on two brawny arms. His feet followed the mesmeric influence of their movement. Was he going into the clouds, he wondered? They stopped to open a gate, the gate leading to the gardens of Mainsail Haul. How did he get there? He had no idea. More movements of his feet, and then unexpected warmth. He looked around him. There were voices. He listened. The one voice? The one face bending over his, her eyes wet with tears, her whispers an incoherent stream of broken words. Then the warmth seemed to come back to his veins. He sat up and found himself on the couch in the library, the rain dripping from him in little pools, and he knew that he had succeeded. He had not fainted.

"I am all right," he repeated. "What a mess I am making!"

The voices around him were still a little tangled, but the hand which held a steaming tumbler to his lips was Philippa's.

"Drink it all," she begged.

He felt the tears come into his eyes, felt the warm blood streaming through his body, felt a little wet patch at the back of the calf of his leg, and the hand which set down the empty tumbler was almost steady.

"There's a hot bath ready," Philippa told him; "some dry clothes, and a bedroom with a fire in. Do let Mills show you the way."

He rose at once, prepared to follow her. His feet were not quite so steady as he would have wished, but he made a very presentable show. Mills, with a little apology, held out his arm. Philippa walked by his other side.

"As soon as you have finished your bath and got into some dry clothes," Philippa whispered, "please ring, or send Mills to let us know."

He was even able to smile at her.

"I am quite all right," he assured her once more.



CHAPTER XXV

Philippa, unusually early on the following morning, glanced at the empty breakfast table with a little air of disappointment, and rang the bell.

"Mills," she enquired, "is no one down?"

"Sir Henry is, I believe, on the beach, your ladyship," the man answered, "and Miss Helen and Miss Nora are with him."

"And Mr. Lessingham?"

"Mr. Lessingham, your ladyship," Mills continued, looking carefully behind him as though to be sure that the door was closed, "has disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Philippa repeated. "What do you mean, Mills?"

"I left Mr. Lessingham last night, your ladyship," Mills explained, "in a suit of the master's clothes and apparently preparing for bed—I should say this morning, as it was probably about two o'clock. I called him at half past eight, as desired, and found the room empty. The bed had not been slept in."

"Was there no note or message?" Philippa asked incredulously.

"Nothing, your ladyship. One of the maid servants believes that she heard the front door open at five o'clock this morning."

"Ring up the hotel," Philippa instructed, "and see if he is there."

Mills departed to execute his commission. Philippa stood looking out of the window, across the lawn and shrubbery and down on to the beach. There was still a heavy sea, but it was merely the swell from the day before. The wind had dropped, and the sun was shining brilliantly. Sir Henry, Helen, and Nora were strolling about the beach as though searching for something. About fifty yards out, the wrecked trawler was lying completely on its side, with the end of one funnel visible. Scattered groups of the villagers were examining it from the sands. In due course Mills returned.

"The hotel people know nothing of Mr. Lessingham, your ladyship, beyond the fact that he did not return last night. They received a message from Hill's Garage, however, about half an hour ago, to say that their mechanic had driven Mr. Lessingham early this morning to Norwich, where he had caught the mail train to London, The boy was to say that Mr. Lessingham would be back in a day or so."

Philippa pushed open the windows and made her way down towards the beach. She leaned over the rail of the promenade and waved her hand to the others, who clambered up the shingle to meet her.

"Scarcely seen you yet, my dear, have I?" Sir Henry observed.

He stooped and kissed her forehead, a salute which she suffered without response. Helen pointed to the wreck.

"It doesn't seem possible, does it," she said, "that men's lives should have been lost in that little space. Two men were drowned, they say, through the breaking of the rope. They recovered the bodies this morning."

"Everything else seems to have been washed on shore except my coat," Sir Henry grumbled. "I was down here at daylight, looking for it."

"Your coat!" Philippa repeated scornfully. "Fancy thinking of that, when you only just escaped with your life!"

"But to tell you the truth, my dear," Sir Henry explained, "my pocketbook and papers of some value were in the pocket of that coat. I can't think how I came to forget them. I think it was the surprise of seeing that fellow Lessingham crawl on to the wreck looking like a drowned rat. Jove, what a pluck he must have!"

"The fishermen can talk of nothing else," Nora put in excitedly. "Mummy, it was simply splendid! Helen and I had gone up with two of the rescued men, but I got back just in time to see them fasten the rope round his waist and watch him plunge in."

"How is he this morning?" Helen asked.

"Gone," Philippa replied.

They all looked at her in surprise.

"Gone?" Sir Henry repeated. "What, back to the hotel, do you mean?"

"His bed has not been slept in," Philippa told them. "He must have slipped away early this morning, gone to Hill's Garage, hired a car, and motored to Norwich. From there he went on to London. He has sent word that he will be back in a few days."

"I hope to God he won't!" Sir Henry muttered.

Philippa swung round upon him.

"What do you mean by that?" she demanded. "Don't you want to thank him for saving your life?"

"My dear, I certainly do," Sir Henry replied, "but just now—well, I am a little taken aback. Gone to London, eh? Tore away without warning in the middle of the night to London! And coming back, too—that's the strange part of it!"

One would think, from Sir Henry's expression, that he was finding food for much satisfaction in this recital of Lessingham's sudden disappearance.

"He is a wonderful fellow, this Lessingham," he added thoughtfully. "He must have—yes, by God, he must have—In that storm, too!"

"If you could speak coherently, Henry," Philippa observed, "I should like to say that I am exceedingly anxious to know why Mr. Lessingham has deserted us so precipitately."

Sir Henry would have taken his wife's arm, but she avoided him. He shrugged his shoulders and plodded up the steep path by her side.

"The whole question of Lessingham is rather a problem," he said. "Of course, you and Helen have seen very much more of him than I have. Isn't it true that people have begun to make curious remarks about him?"

"How did you know that, Henry?" Philippa demanded.

"Well, one hears things," he replied. "I should gather, from what I heard, that his position here had become a little precarious. Hence his sudden disappearance."

"But he is coming back again," Philippa reminded her husband.

"Perhaps!"

Philippa signified her desire that her husband should remain a little behind with her. They walked side by side up the gravel path. Philippa kept her hands clasped behind her.

"To leave the subject of Mr. Lessingham for a time," she began, "I feel very reluctant to ask for explanations of anything you do, but I must confess to a certain curiosity as to why I should find you lunching at the Canton with two very beautiful ladies, a few days ago, when you left here with Jimmy Dumble to fish for whiting; and also why you return here on a trawler which belongs to another part of the coast?"

Sir Henry made a grimace.

"I was beginning to wonder whether curiosity was dead," he observed good-humouredly. "If you wouldn't mind giving me another—well, to be on the safe side let us say eight days—I think I shall be able to offer you an explanation which you will consider satisfactory."

"Thank you," Philippa rejoined, with cold surprise; "I see no reason why you should not answer such simple questions at once."

Sir Henry sighed deprecatingly, and made another vain attempt to take his wife's arm.

"Philippa, be a little brick," he begged. "I know I seem to have been playing the part of a fool just lately, but there has been a sort of reason for it."

"What reason could there possibly be," she demanded, "which you could not confide in me?"

He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again there was a new earnestness in his tone.

"Philippa," he said, "I have been working for some time at a little scheme which isn't ripe to talk about yet, not even to you, but which may lead to something which I hope will alter your opinion. You couldn't see your way clear to trust me a little longer, could you?" he begged, with rather a plaintive gleam in his blue eyes. "It would make it so much easier for me to say no more but just have you sit tight."

"I wonder," she answered coldly, "if you realise how much I have suffered, sitting tight, as you call it, and waiting for you to do something!"

"My fishing excursions," he went on desperately, "have not been altogether a matter of sport."

"I know that quite well," she replied. "You have been making that chart you promised your miserable fishermen. None of those things interest me, Henry. I fear—I am very much inclined to say that none of your doings interest me. Least of all," she went on, her voice quivering with passion, "do I appreciate in the least these mysterious appeals for my patience. I have some common sense, Henry."

"You're a suspicious little beast," he told her.

"Suspicious!" she scoffed. "What a word to use from a man who goes off fishing for whiting, and is lunching at the Carlton, some days afterwards, with two ladies of extraordinary attractions!"

"That was a trifle awkward," Sir Henry admitted, with a little burst of candour, "but it goes in with the rest, Philippa."

"Then it can stay with the rest," she retorted, "exactly where I have placed it in my mind. Please understand me. Your conduct for the last twelve months absolves me from any tie there may be between us. If this explanation that you promise comes—in time, and I feel like it, very well. Until it does, I am perfectly free, and you, as my husband, are non-existent. That is my reply, Henry, to your request for further indulgence."

"Rather a foolish one, my dear," he answered, patting her shoulder, "but then you are rather a child, aren't you?"

She swung away from him angrily.

"Don't touch me!" she exclaimed. "I mean every word of what I have said. As for my being a child—well, you may be sorry some day that you have persisted in treating me like one."

Sir Henry paused for a moment, watching her disappearing figure. There was an unusual shade of trouble in his face. His love for and confidence in his wife had been so absolute that even her threats had seemed to him like little morsels of wounded vanity thrown to him out of the froth of her temper. Yet at that moment a darker thought crossed his mind. Lessingham, he realised, was not a rival, after all, to be despised. He was a man of courage and tact, even though Sir Henry, in his own mind, had labelled him as a fool. If indeed he were coming back to Dreymarsh, what could it be for? How much had Philippa known about him? He stood there for a few moments in indecision. A great impulse had come to him to break his pledge, to tell her the truth. Then he made his disturbed way into the breakfast room.

"Where's your mother, Nora?" he asked, as Helen took Philippa's place at the head of the table.

"She wants some coffee and toast sent up to her room." Nora explained. "The wind made her giddy."

Sir Henry breakfasted in silence, rang the bell, and ordered his car.

"You going away again, Daddy?" Nora asked.

"I am going to London this morning," he replied, a little absently.

"To London?" Helen repeated. "Does Philippa know?"

"I haven't told her yet."

Helen turned towards Nora.

"I wish you'd run up and see if your mother wants any more coffee, there's a dear," she suggested.

Nora acquiesced at once. As soon as she had left the room, Helen leaned over and laid her hand upon Sir Henry's arm.

"Don't go to London, Henry," she begged.

"But my dear Helen, I must," he replied, a little curtly.

"I wouldn't if I were you," she persisted. "You know, you've tried Philippa very high lately, and she is in an extremely emotional state. She is all worked up about last night, and I wouldn't leave her alone if I were you."

Sir Henry's blue eyes seemed suddenly like points of steel as he leaned towards her.

"You think that she is in love with that fellow Lessingham?" he asked bluntly.

"No, I don't," Helen replied, "but I think she is more furious with you than you believe. For months you have acted—well, how shall I say?"

"Oh, like a coward, if you like, or a fool. Go on."

"She has asked for explanations to which she is perfectly entitled," Helen continued, "and you have given her none. You have treated her like something between a doll and a child. Philippa is as good and sweet as any woman who ever lived, but hasn't it ever occurred to you that women are rather mysterious beings? They may sometimes do, out of a furious sense of being wrongly treated, out of a sort of aggravated pique, what they would never do for any other reason. If you must go, come back to-night, Henry. Come back, and if you are obstinate, and won't tell Philippa all that she has a right to know, tell her about that luncheon in town."

Sir Henry frowned.

"It's all very well, you know, Helen," he said, "but a woman ought to trust her husband."

"I am your friend, remember," Helen replied, "and upon my word, I couldn't trust and believe even in Dick, if he behaved as you have done for the last twelve months."

Sir Henry made a grimace.

"Well, that settles it, I suppose, then," he observed. "I'll have one more try and see what I can do with Philippa. Perhaps a hint of what's going on may satisfy her."