Chapter III: Part I: I (3)

I listened and shook my head. I could see that she was gazing intently down at the beach.

"Do you see anything?" I asked in a voice instinctively hushed.

"No," she answered in the same low tone, "but I thought I heard something."

Again I strained my ears, and this time I distinctly did hear something; it might have been a movement among the rocks below, or on the bank ahead of us. She said nothing more but she seemed to be peering down into the gloom that veiled the beach.

"I'll go down and see what it is," I said.

For an instant I thought she was going to demur, but she said nothing, and with a bold air I stepped off the turf and began to make my way down, first through loose boulders and then along a ledge below. I confess frankly that I felt a trifle less bold than I looked, especially when I discovered the hazardous nature of the going. I remember that the sky began to seem lighter by contrast, but that the rocks were sheer chaotic darkness.

I must have been feeling my way along for some minutes, with a growing sense of the futility of the performance, when I first heard the sharp tinkle of a loose stone on rock. I turned towards the sound and heard it again. Either three or four times I had heard it distinctly when I found myself close to the grass again, only at this place there was a steep little cliff, higher than my head, between it and me, instead of a slope of boulders, so that any one on the bank above would be looking straight down on to me. All this I can swear to.

And then when my shoulder was rubbing this low cliff face, I thought--indeed I am sure--I heard something move above, and certainly there was a sharp grating sound on the rock at my back; within an inch of me, it seemed. I looked round quickly just in time to catch a glimpse of something thin and curved and sinister passing upwards, against the night sky. I did not see it descend again, but the next moment came the sharp grating, close to my head this time, and once more the long curved menace passed up, faintly visible against the sky.

I did not wait for it to descend again. That somebody was striking at me from above and that I had better get out of the way seemed so evident that I spent no further time in watching the operation. I started from the cliff, my foot struck a patch of seaweed, and with a half smothered "Damn!" I did the next few yards sliding seawards on my side. A peculiarly hard ledge stopped my career and for a moment I lay there wondering what bones were broken. By the time I had found there were none, and scrambled to my feet, the sky line above the bank was clear. Whoever had struck at me was gone and there was not even the slightest sound, save the gurgling of the sea below. And then I gingerly picked my way back.

I drew near the turf bank at the top and now again I stopped. Low voices reached my ear distinctly and presently I spied two vague forms standing close together. Before I moved again I had transferred something from my hip pocket to my oilskin jacket and I kept my hand there too, closed upon it and ready. Then I advanced.

"Is that you, Mr. Merton?" said a voice I knew.

"It is, Mr. Rendall," I answered drily.

"Did you see anybody?"

"No," I answered truthfully.

"We thought we heard a cry," said Miss Jean.

"I may have startled a sea gull," I suggested; and then I asked with a sharpness in my voice I could not quite control, "Where did Mr. Rendall spring from?"

"I told you I thought we should meet him," she answered, with a cool note in her voice that countered mine.

"What a curious chance that we should all meet here!" I exclaimed.

"It is precisely what I expected," said she.

"Did you think then it was Mr. Rendall down among the rocks?" I enquired.

"No," she said, "and it wasn't."

"Oh," I replied in a tone which (if I achieved my intention) might have meant anything--or nothing.

Her father had been standing perfectly silent during this bout, a towering figure muffled in a heavy ulster and scarf, with the rim of his hat turned down over his face. Now he spoke in his dry caustic way,

"Have you had enough exercise, Mr. Merton?"

"Quite, thank you."

"Then we can all go back together."

He turned and his daughter took his arm. I walked behind them--it seemed on the whole safer, and I kept my hand in my pocket all the while.

I had seen no one, it is true; I had heard no sound that could be sworn to as made by a human being, the thing I saw so dimly might possibly not have been a lethal weapon (and if it was a weapon, what in Heaven's name could it be? I wondered); it might conceivably have been a large bird some distance off, just as by a reverse illusion men are said to have fired at bumble bees when grouse driving. Also, it was within the bounds of possibility that the tinkling stones might not have been thrown down by some one above in order to draw me under that face. Everything had been so vague that all these alternatives were conceivable. But my own mind was quite and finally determined now that my adventure with the stranger on the shore had been no figment of my fancy, and I felt sure moreover that _they_ had made up their minds about me and decided to act. How and why they had come to such a definite conclusion despite all my efforts to mislead them, beat me at first completely. And then I stopped short and almost shouted "Idiot!"

I had addressed Miss Rendall at her own door in a German accent. Then I had abruptly dropped it and through all my deliberate mystifications one fact had been clear--that I spoke in the accents of an ordinary more or less educated Englishman. The Rendalls clearly had the material for coming to a conclusion, and now in their company I had all but ended my days on earth.

Yet somehow or other now that I saw all this so clearly, I found myself singularly reluctant to accept the logical conclusion that this gentleman of good lineage and standing and this attractive high-spirited girl were actually traitors of the basest sort, and murderous traitors too.

"Hang it, I may be wrong after all!" I said to myself. "I know I'm young: I am told I'm rash; I have made a fool of myself periodically as long as I've known myself, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt a little longer."

At the door Mr. Rendall left us to resume his conscientious patrol. I said a brief and cool good-night to Jean, went up to my room and tumbled straight into bed.

"In the morning I'll think things over," I decided.

XI

A NEAR THING

Being an optimist has compensations. Indeed, it would need to have, for no virtue has ever landed any one in more damnable scrapes than optimism has landed me. But before the crash comes it does help to keep one happy.

Next morning, after that nasty night, I was singing in my bath and full of wild hopes; the fact being that a new and consoling way of looking at things had suggested itself in the very act of shaving.

"They are afraid of me!" I said to myself.

After a night's sleep the adventure by the shore had grown perhaps a little blurred in some of its details. I wished I could see that curved thing rising against the night sky a trifle more distinctly in my mind's eye; so that I could take my oath in court it was a weapon. Still, I remained perfectly assured I had been attacked, and the sustaining conclusions I now drew were, firstly, that "they" (whoever they were; and I tried to keep an open mind on that point) were so afraid of me that they were ready to stick at nothing to lay me out; secondly, that they were afraid to tackle me by day but had to choose a dark night and a lonely place; and thirdly, that with such a splendid chance it must have been nerves that made them bungle it.

"People in that state of mind will do something or other to give themselves away," I thought hopefully.

In this confident state of mind I came down for breakfast. My host, I found, was staying in bed after his night's vigil, and my hostess was daintier and more inaccessible than ever. After breakfast I reflected for a little over a pipe and then I asked her for a bit of lunch to put in my pocket and told her I was going for a long walk. She got the lunch and gave it to me without wasting a superfluous word, and off I set.

It was a breezy morning with a lot of thin cloud in the sky and a ruffled sea; cool and stimulating; the very day for a walk. I followed the exact route we took the night before, trying to identify such landmarks as rises and falls in the ground and sharp curves in the shore and farms close to the coast, but I found it was practically impossible; every feature seemed so utterly altered in daylight. My object was to find the spot where I had been attacked, and at last I had to be content with knowing that it must have been one of three or four places where the feature of a low cliff immediately under the turf was to be seen.

At one such place there was a long stretch of wall following the shore line, which could have given shelter for any one to stalk me practically from the start. At another I noticed a farm close by, and from this an assailant could easily have slipped down to the beach and run back again. At a third the configuration of the rocks was such that it would have been simple for him to have waited below the bank till he heard us coming, made a noise to bring me down, and then gone up above without exposing himself against the sky. In fact one could draw no definite conclusions at all.

Besides, there was the very distasteful alternative (and the more plausible it seemed, the more distasteful it grew) that there might well have been two people in it; one--who might have followed me, the stone thrower; and the other--who might, for instance, have been patrolling the shore from the opposite direction, the attacker.

Suspicious as I had felt at the moment, I shrank from this alternative, and in justification I asked myself,

"Why didn't she use her pistol, and be done with it?"

But, on the other hand, it was a most extraordinary coincidence that her father should have passed that spot certainly within three or four minutes previously, and that he should have seen no sign of my enemy. So far as I could remember the length of time I had spent groping among the rocks, it was just possible for Mr. Rendall to pass by and for the other man then to begin his work of decoying me, but certainly it was an unpleasant coincidence.

And finally there was a last alternative: that I might have been mistaken in thinking I was actually assailed and instead of that--But what other conceivable explanation could there be? I tried hard but could think of none.

With the flame of optimism burning now somewhat low, I kept on following the shore till I was well past the scenes of both my night adventures and had come to the little sandy bay with the huddle of low grey farm buildings just clear of the tide. I found Peter senior painting his boat on the shore and hailed him cheerfully with the same old guttural accent.

"Painting your boat, I see," said I.

He gave me a long look and one word.

"Ay," said he, and went on painting.

It struck me at once that he was even more wary and more reticent than before, but I was determined to extract some information.

"I have been guarding you against the Germans! Last night I patrolled your coast!" I informed him with great enthusiasm.

He looked at me rather curiously, I thought.

"Did ye see anything?" he enquired.

"I thought I did, but ach! how can one be sure in the dark?"

"It's no easy," he agreed.

"Then you have tried too, my friend?"

"Ay," he admitted, splashing on the paint.

"Were any of your family patrolling last night?"

"No," said he curtly.

"Who was guarding this part here?" I asked.

"I dinna ken."

I wondered, but I saw that there was not much more to be learned here. He had denied that any of his household were out, for what that was worth, and at that I bade him good morning and turned back.

I fell to walking more and more slowly and at last I stopped and decided to accompany my thoughts with a little lunch. The boundary wall at this point ran close to the edge of the rocks and was rather higher than usual. I thought for a moment of sitting down and lunching under its lee, and then I noticed that it was very loosely built of large beach boulders and that the off shore breeze was whistling through it like a sieve; so I decided to descend to the sheltered beach and lunch there. That decision saved my life.

I clambered down, chose a rock to sit behind, and was just putting my hand in my pocket for my packet of sandwiches, when "Crack!"--something whistled close to my head and smacked against a ledge behind me. "Crack!" again, and the smack this time resounded from the rock beside me. At the third "Crack!" I was flat on my face behind that rock and my hand was in another pocket. It brought out something more to the point than sandwiches.

I had a pretty good idea by this time where the shots were coming from and I risked a quick rise of my head to make quite sure. I just had time to see a flash through one of the holes in the wall and down went my head again as a bullet smacked once more upon the ledge behind. Yet another shot followed and seemed to miss everything, for I heard no sound of lead on stone, and then up went my head and hand together and I was covering that bit of wall with my own revolver. I saw that my enemy was no very dead shot and I meant to risk his fire and snap at the flash through the wall. I knew I could get quite near enough his peep hole to startle him, and after I had sprinkled the near neighbourhood of that aperture for five or six seconds I thought it probably odds against his keeping his head sufficiently to do much aiming. To be quite candid I must confess that it was a soothing sensation to feel I was the better man with a gun, and that I should have been in a proper fright if it had been the other way about. One hears a good deal of discussion on the quality of courage nowadays, and there is my own small contribution.

The seconds passed, my finger on the trigger and my eyes glued to the largest crevice I could spy in that wall, but there was never another flash or crack. And then it suddenly struck me that the man might be moving down the wall to get a shot at me from another angle. As usual I acted on impulse, and this time I think correctly. Scarcely had the thought struck me than I was up and rushing forward to the shelter of the grass bank where the rocks began. There, quite safe but rather cramped, I crept along parallel to the wall for about a hundred yards. And then I jumped up, charged the wall, and brought half of it down as I hurled myself over. As my feet touched the ground I looked in both directions, very nearly simultaneously, and saw--nothing.

Whether in that first instant I was more disappointed or relieved, I should be afraid to say, but as soon as I had had a few seconds to think, my one feeling was disgust that the fellow had given me the slip. I took to my heels and ran along that wall first in one direction and then in the other, but there was not a sign of a living creature. And the sickening thing was that by this time he might have done one of several things--headed away from the shore at top speed as soon as he ceased firing, in which case he would be far enough by now, or lain down in one of the several fields of corn near by, or crossed the wall further along and hidden among the rocks; and it was quite impossible to guess which. I pondered over the problem for a few moments and then decided that as it was perfectly hopeless to search the corn or the beach I would risk it and hasten inland on the off chance of getting a clue, so I chose a grass field and set off across it at a trot.

The ground rose for about fifty yards and then fell sharply, and as I topped this rise I came right on to a familiar figure. It was my friend Jock and he seemed unusually excited; almost, in fact, intelligent.

"Stranger!" he gabbled, pointing in the direction I was going. "Jock seen stranger!"

I followed his dirty finger and a couple of hundred yards or so ahead I spied a figure strolling along a by road, rather ostentatiously strolling, it seemed to me.

"Thank you, Jock," said I, "you're a good man! Here's your half crown!"

I dropped to a walk now and by the time the stranger and I met I think I looked about as cool as he did. It was Mr. O'Brien, as I had guessed at the first glance.

"Been for a walk?" he enquired.

"Having a stroll along the shore," said I.

He started a little and looked at me hard.

"Hullo!" said he, "I could have sworn you talked like a foreigner the last and first time I had the honour of meeting you. Were we both sober, do you think?"

I in turn looked at the man keenly. If his surprise was not genuine, it was as good a bit of acting as I ever saw, on or off the stage, and it was exactly the most disarming thing he could possibly say. Indeed it turned the tables on me completely and it was I who was now left in the position of having something awkward to explain away.

"It must have been the weather," I said lightly, "I'm never drunk before lunch;"

"And be damned if I get the chance at any time of day! You've heard of my sad complaint, eh?"

"No," said I, "I'm afraid I haven't. Nothing infectious?"

He gave one of his unpleasant hoots of laughter.

"Lord, you think I'm a respectable member of society then? Good for you, keep on thinking it--but you'll have to keep away from my friends!"

"It takes me all my time to keep clear of my own," said I.

His narrow eyes seemed to approve of me.

"You're not Irish?" he enquired.

"No; I've enough to answer for without that."

"You ought to be," said he. "You've got some wit. Damn the English, and double-damn the Scotch! Well we're evidently both going in the other direction, so good-bye to you!"

What was I to make of this? What was to be thought of the whole morning's adventure? Only one thing was perfectly clear to me: that I had a very dangerous, very determined, and very artful enemy in this island--or, almost certainly, several enemies, and that instead of the hunter I had become the hunted. They might fear me but they certainly did not fear to attack me whether by day or night. Had I sat down behind that trellis-like wall as I intended, I shivered a little to think of my fate. I should have been shot at twelve inches range, and that would have been the end of my spy hunt. I began to realise that it was much longer odds on my being dead within the next forty-eight hours than on my getting on the traces of that oilskinned man.

And then as I was walking back thinking these none too cheery thoughts, something put the parachute into my head. I had not thought of it before since the first night when I hid it. It took me a little time to get my bearings, but I found my way to the clover field at last and then made for the low wall with the bed of rank grass and docken leaves beneath it. I hunted up that wall and down that wall, but never a sign of the parachute was there.

"That is how they've bowled me out!" I said to myself. "They have heard by this time of the missing balloon; then they found the parachute, saw that the dates coincided, and spotted me!"

XII

THE KEY TURNED

When I got back I felt very little inclined for society. I passed through the hall as quietly as I could, went straight up to my room, and heaved a sigh of relief when the door was safely shut behind me. Perhaps my adventures had been following a little too quickly on the heels of one another; anyhow it was quiet which I craved at that moment. It was a reposeful room, scented with honeysuckle, and for a few minutes I enjoyed an unwonted sensation of peace; and then my eyes chanced to fall on the chest of drawers. I stared for a moment and then bent over the lock of the upper drawer, that drawer which concealed the mythical uniform coat with the important mythical papers in the pocket.

There could not be a shadow of doubt as to what had happened. The lock had been taken off and put in again since I last saw it. And now of course my hosts knew as well as I did that no uniform coat had ever lain there, and consequently that their guest had never worn one.

I had meant to slack, but this situation obviously required some thinking over, so I lit a pipe, threw myself down on the bed, and began.

"Bowled out again!" I thought. "At the rate the wickets are going down, the innings must be dashed near over. They've found out my German accent was a fake, they've discovered the parachute and know I neither landed from a British cruiser nor a German submarine, and now they know that I lied about that coat.

"And what is my own score? By Gad, I don't honestly think I've made a single run! I have no idea whether these discoveries have been made by people in league with one another, who pool their knowledge, or whether my enemies only know part of all this, and if so which part. However, that matters less since they know enough to shoot at sight.

"Furthermore, I don't know which of them are my enemies, or how many there are, or in fact any dashed thing about them. Therefore--"

At that point I fell fast asleep. My late night, the long morning in that stirring air, and the excitement of two missed-by-a-hair's-breath murders, had trundled me out again. The last wicket was down and the innings over as I slept. The one bit of luck I did have was not setting the bed on fire with my pipe.

It was about three o'clock when I went up to my room. It was 6-10 when I was awakened by a sharp click. I opened my eyes stupidly and looked all round the room. There was absolutely nothing to be seen there. Then with a strong presentiment I jumped up and tried to open the door. It was as I suspected. I was locked in.

My hand went to my hip pocket and found my revolver all right. They had not ventured to try and get at that. Then I began to wonder why the key had not been turned sooner.

"Something has just happened to make them lock the door," I thought, and thereupon I went to the window and looked out.

My room faced right down the island, the north shore to the right--the scene of all my adventures, the sheltered south shore to the left. Craning my head to the left I could just spy a small vessel of the trawler or drifter type lying close inshore. She seemed to be flying a white flag--it might have been the white ensign at the distance. And then I got a glimpse of three or four figures walking towards the house, and one of these wore a white cap.

"Now we shan't be long!" I said to myself. "But what the dickens does it all mean?"

About ten long minutes passed before I heard voices and footsteps on the stairs. The lock clicked again, the door opened, and there stood a square-shouldered man in dark blue, with three gold rings on his sleeve and a familiarly firm mouth and pair of steady eyes. For an instant I could scarcely believe my own eyes, and then I knew that it actually was--of all people--my own cousin. Commander John P. N. Whiteclett, R.N., whom I had last heard of two years before the war when he was on the East Indies Station. And behind him I caught a glimpse of Jean Rendall. There may have been others, but all I was conscious of was her eager face, the eyes brighter than ever, and the lips a little parted in tense excitement.

My cousin Jack spoke first.

"Good Lord, _you_ of all people, Roger!"

"My dear Jack!" I cried, and then I checked myself and shut that door.

"Well," said my cousin, with more candour than politeness, "I always thought you would end in gaol, Roger, and you've had a dashed near squeak this time, let me tell you. What new form of lunacy have you bust out into?" His eye fell on my revolver. "And what are you doing with that thing? If it's going to be suicide, let me fetch in a witness before you begin. I hate being found alone with a body."

"Is that your ship?" I demanded.

"She's one of 'em. I'm boss of a few dozen of these floating palaces at present. In fact we're a patrol and I've caught you red-handed on my own beat, and what I want to know is what the devil are you doing on it? Not trying to elope with that little bit of fluff, I hope, because I can assure you she doesn't love you in the least, Roger."

"You mean well, old thing," I said, "but you've guessed wrong as usual, Jack. Take me to your ship, for the Lord's sake, and I'll tell you the whole yarn there."

"These good people probably expect a bit of explanation," he suggested.

"The Rendalls? Not yet! Wait till you've heard everything yourself. Tell 'em then if you like--but I don't think you will."

He looked at me curiously.

"Well," said he, "let's be off then. Don't you even want to say good-bye?"

"I'll send them a Christmas card," I said.

"What, after all the trouble they've taken to round you up?"

"Do you mean to say they sent for you?"

"Rather! Urgent wire."

The prospect of facing my grim host and his disdainful daughter struck me forcibly as less pleasing than ever.

"Come on!" I said. "I'm going to bolt!"

We went downstairs and out of the front door like a couple of burglars. The Commander did not appear to relish this performance particularly, but I went first and he had to keep pace with me.

At the door we found the escort provided for me, and very surprised they looked as they followed us to see their Commander so unaccountably intimate with his captive; but fortunately there was no sign of the laird or his daughter. I looked round me and felt sure I saw a well known slip of a figure standing against the weather beaten wall of the old mansion, gazing after us--with what sensations? I wondered very much.

"When did they wire for you?" I asked.

"Somewhere round about mid-day."

"And what did they say?"

"'They'?" repeated my cousin. "Why drag in the fair Miss Rendall? Her father did the wiring. At least I presume so."

"Assuming he did, what did he say?"

"Suspicious stranger come to Ransay--gave incorrect account of himself--that was the gist of it. Oh, he used the word 'urgent' I remember."

"Incorrect account? That was probably after they had picked the lock of my drawer and had something to go upon."

Again my cousin looked at me curiously.

"This sounds interesting," he said, and quickened his stride.

We reached a little unfrequented pier and jumped into the drifter's boat. Sitting in the stern I looked over my shoulder with very mixed feeling at the receding shores of the island of Ransay. It had baffled me, made a fool of me, nearly murdered me; but after all it had saved my life when the odds were a million to one against me, and it had crowded into that life the four most exciting days and nights I had ever spent.

XIII

ON THE DRIFTER

My cousin led me into the small deck house that served as his cabin when he was aboard. Through the windows we could see the afternoon gradually fading into evening, and the western sky turn crimson as we ploughed our way up winding sounds between the low-lying isles.

He produced a flask and a couple of bottles of soda water, lit his pipe, saw that door and windows were safely closed, and leaned over the table.

"Now," said he, "how the devil did you get to this place? That's the first question. They told me some yarn about a parachute, which I take it was really a hair net or a lobster pot--"

"It wasn't," I interrupted, "it was a parachute and I landed in it. Do you mean to say you hadn't heard of my disappearance in a runaway balloon?"

"What!" he exclaimed. "Are you the same Merton? I noticed the name of course, but do you mean to tell me they're giving away R.N. V.R. commissions as promiscuously as all that?"

"They give 'em to the pick of young England's manhood," I assured him. "The idea is to make the Navy into a real live force, capable of originality and enterprise."

He grinned.

"They've struck the originality all right," he admitted, "but, Lord, the time that will be wasted court-martialling you fellows! However, let's hear the whole yarn from the beginning."

I began at the snapping of the cable and told him my adventures faithfully down to the moment when he unlocked my bedroom door. He only interrupted once or twice to get some point or other clear, and then when I had finished he leaned back and looked at me hard across the table.

"Roger," he said, "I've known you long enough and well enough to know that you are not a deliberate liar, but I hope you'll forgive my saying that this is a damned tough bullet to chew."

"It sounds a tall order," I admitted, "but it's true."

He filled his pipe thoughtfully.

"I may as well tell you," he said in a moment, "that I am not at present a very credulous person. From the moment this blessed war began and I got this job, I have done little else than investigate spy legends, and I have come to the deliberate conclusion that there is either a lot more imagination in the world than any one has ever dreamt of, or that mankind are chronic and inveterate liars. I haven't yet had the luck to find one single true bill in any story I've investigated."

"Your luck has turned now, Jack."

"Possibly," he said slowly, "and mind you, Roger, there's no doubt whatever that a devilish secret service system exists; or that it's being used against us for all it's worth. Secret petrol bases for their submarines, secret signallying from the shore, mine-laying by so-called neutral ships; all that sort of thing is going on under our noses. I've got several very shrewd suspicions and hope to bring off one or two little discoveries not a thousand miles from this very spot. In fact, if you had pitched on any one of three or four other islands for the scene of your tale, or if what you'd seen had been just a little different I wouldn't have questioned a word of your story. But Ransay is not one of the suspected islands, and your friend in oilskins doesn't fit into anything I happen to have heard from other sources."

"Look here," I said, "what's the good of being cousins if we aren't candid? Do you or don't you believe me?"

John Whiteclett looked at me very steadily and spoke in his most deliberate accents.

"I believe that you believe every word of it. But I know you're an imaginative fellow and I can see for myself already that at least three quarters of your yarn can be explained away very easily."

"Explain it."

"Well, my dear fellow, just look at things for a moment from the point of view of a perfectly innocent and loyal inhabitant of Ransay--the Rendalls for instance. You appear on their shores absolutely mysteriously in the dead of night, you admit yourself you lay yourself out to behave like a thinly disguised Hun--d----d thinly too, apparently! You blow in from nowhere on the doctor and talk with a German accent. You blow in on the laird, begin talking with an accent and then drop it. You pitch him a cock and bull yarn about being landed from a cruiser and wanting to hide your uniform coat and so on. You conduct yourself like a criminal in church and wander out at night. Naturally the Rendalls--and everybody else--eye you strangely to your face and try to find out a little more behind your back. Do you see?"

"There's something certainly in all this," I had to admit.

"Then they find your parachute--"

"Who found it?"

"I haven't asked that yet; but I shall of course. Anyhow it was found, and as evidently you had hid it. One point discovered against you. Then the Rendalls decide on stronger measures--and very rightly too, I think. They open your drawer and find you never had a uniform coat at all. Most wisely they then wire to me, and to keep you from bolting, lock you in your room."

"Dash it," said I, "I seem at least to have succeeded in providing them with a devilish good excuse for every blessed thing they did!"

"I don't honestly think you have left yourself with any grounds whatever for suspecting the Rendalls of anything."

"On the other hand, sending for you and having me arrested would be an excellent way of getting rid of me when they were certain who I was--or rather, wasn't."

"And who did they make apparently certain you were not? A British officer! That was the natural conclusion when they opened that drawer. No, no, the Rendalls come out of it all right. Then let's take the doctor. He looks at you suspiciously--as well he might."

"Before I spoke!" I interjected.

"And do you flatter yourself that your appearance, without a cap and in a buttoned-up oilskin on a fine day, was reassuring?"

"But the blind?"

"Did you never see a blind come down with a run by mistake? There's a blind in my smoking room at home that comes down like that whenever you touch it. There's nothing against the doctor either--so far anyhow."

"And his friend O'Brien?"

"Ah, that's a different story. Mind you, you have shown me not a shred of evidence against the fellow. Still, what's he doing there? That's a thing I'm going to find out within the next four and twenty hours. But you can't prove that he _did_ anything, and you can't suspect a man of treason just because you don't like his looks. There are possibly prejudiced people who don't like ours."

"Wait till you see him."

"I shall," said my cousin with an emphasis that hardly seemed to mean what I meant. "As for the Scollay family--nothing against them whatever, except that they live at a lonely spot on the shore, which I should say was rather their misfortune than their fault."

"And the old boy on the road, who, Miss Rendall declared, doesn't exist?"

"How long did you give her to run over all the inhabitants of the island? Did she look up a list of them, or a rent roll or anything?"

"No," I admitted. "Still, she seemed very positive, and she lives in the place and must know everybody. If she fibbed, that's certainly suspicious. If she was correct, then I met some one in disguise."

"Well," said he with an indulgent and extremely irritating smile, "I shall enquire about that old gentleman too. But, frankly, I've no doubt whatever that Miss Rendall simply forgot him when you asked her."

"All the characters seem cleared except mine," I remarked.

"Wait a bit, old chap. Now we'll come to the really suspicious things that you actually did see. First, the man on the shore."

"Can't he be explained away?"

"Possibly," said Jack imperturbably, "but he needs a good deal more explaining. You admit you became a bit light-headed soon afterwards."

"I've thought of that explanation myself, but it won't wash when he or one of his friends went for me on the shore."

"Are you dead certain anybody did try to go for you? You admit you saw nobody."

"I saw that curved thing--like a scimitar."

"But who on earth would be using a scimitar in these islands? And what a futile way to use it--jabbing down at you from overhead!"

"The point of it hit the rock hard enough."

"You had only the sound to go by."

"That's all," I admitted.

"And you heard that in the dark." He shook his head, "My dear fellow! I know you are telling me honestly what you _think_ happened, but to be quite frank--"

He broke off and shook his head again.

"Well," said I, "that's explained away very happily. What I saw was only something else and what I heard was something else too. You put the alternatives so clearly, Jack, that one can't help being convinced. And what about the shooting affair? I only heard a thingumabob and saw a what-you-may-call-it, I suppose?"

"My dear Roger, I only want to test the alternatives and see what _can't_ be explained away. Have you ever been under fire before?"

"No, but I've seen pictures of it in the illustrated papers."

"Dash it, be serious!" said he. "You have no doubt whatever that somebody blazed either at you or at something else from behind that wall?"

"Or at something else? What do you mean?"

"There weren't any duck about, or anything of that kind? I've known a wild shot blaze both barrels within six inches of my own head and explain he had never noticed me."

"I was rather too preoccupied to notice whether there were any duck there when he began," said I, "but unless they were deaf duck there certainly wouldn't be any left after he'd loosed off his first bullet. Besides one doesn't usually shoot duck with bullets."

"One might with a rook rifle."

"I admit that one might; also that a very excitable person might go on shooting after the duck had gone. But do you really mean to tell me, Jack, that that explanation satisfies you?"

"I don't say that it does absolutely, and I quite admit that the weakness of my explanations is that your story requires three of them; none being perfectly satisfactory. However, it comes to this, that we have narrowed the field down to three incidents that want a bit of explanation. Everything else points as much one way as the other."

"Which way?"

"To your being mistaken for a spy yourself."

A horried thought struck me. It was so horrid that it took a little pluck to get it out.

"In that case, supposing some patriotic individual had tried first to stab and then to shoot me, for his country's sake?"

"By Jove!" exclaimed my cousin and gazed thoughtfully into space for a bit. Then he said, "That's possible, but it's a tall order too; and it leaves out the man on the shore."

I was visited by another horrid thought.

"He might have been spy hunting!"

"Well, in that case we can easily get on to his tracks. There will be no point in his denying it. But would the conversation fit that theory?"

I thought for a moment and then said with heart-felt relief,

"No, it couldn't possibly."

My cousin fell silent and stared into the thickening dusk. Then he looked round with a start and said,

"We're nearly in."

We both went out on deck and saw at the head of the bay before us houses and lights on shore and a church tower against the evening sky.

"Well, Roger," said he, "I'll go into this business very carefully and make the most thorough enquiry. Don't think I'm not keen on getting at the bottom of it. You've got to get off at once and rejoin your ship of course?"

I said I must.

"I tell you what I'll do," he went on; "of course we've got to lie very low about this sort of thing, but I feel I owe you some account of what happens. I'll write and let you know as soon as I have finished my investigation."

John Whiteclett was the best of fellows, shrewd and level-headed and a first class officer, but somehow or other I felt small confidence in his getting the better of the cunning foe on Ransay. However, it was all that could be done now. My own part was finished and I had to confess I had failed ignominiously.

XIV

MY COUSIN'S LETTER

Three weeks later I received this letter from my cousin:

"My dear Roger,

"As I promised I am sending you a chit to tell you the result of our enquiry into the Ransay mystery. Of course you will understand that this is strictly for your own eye and mustn't be talked about.

"Well, I wanted to leave no stone unturned to get at the bottom of the affair so we got up a pukka detective from London, a man named Bolton, said to be a first class fellow at the job. He spent a solid week in the island and seems to have poked his nose into pretty nearly every house and spoken to pretty nearly every inhabitant from the laird down. Taking a tip from your tale he posed as a cattle dealer (which is precisely what he looks like) and of course he never let on that he knew of your existence--or mine either.

"The result of his enquiries is, firstly--nothing proved against anybody and no evidence of anything fishy going on in the place. This last point confirms my own experience, for, as I told you, I haven't yet been able to associate this particular island with any of the suspicious ongoings which undoubtedly are happening.

"Secondly, your friend O'Brien turns out to be a gentleman with a failing for liquor who was sent up by his relations in Ireland about six months ago to live under Dr. Rendall's charge, there being no pubs in Ransay--and many in the island he came from. I find that it is by no means unusual to send thirsty souls to publess isles, and beyond the fact that O'Brien came up very 'convanient' for this war and is pretty free with his tongue on the subject of England's sins and shortcomings, there is really nothing positive against the man. However we are running no risks, and as we are God and Destiny rolled into one in these islands, we gave Mr. O'Brien his marching orders and by this time he has presumably either secured a drink at last or his friends have shut him up in some teetotal paradise a little further from the scene of war.

"Bolton's opinion is that O'Brien was without doubt the man who fired at you, looking to the type of gentleman he is, and the fact that you ran into him immediately afterwards, and especially the fact that he actually does possess an old rook rifle. He thinks he may have done it out of sheer Irish deviltry, you offering so convenient a target, just as they pot landlords in his own happy country. A man can hardly have drunk as heavily as he must have done without upsetting his brain a bit, and this theory seems to me not at all unlikely.

"Bolton thinks it hardly conceivable that O'B. can have had any deliberate idea of getting rid of you, since it is certain that he wasn't the man in oilskins you met the night you landed--or rather, dropped. He can't have been _because he doesn't know a word of German_. We ought to have thought of that clue ourselves. Bolton was on to it at once and points out that it puts out of court the whole inhabitants of the island except Miss Rendall who has a pretty good school-girl's knowledge of German, and her father who has been abroad a lot and knows a bit of the language. And apart from all other considerations, the man in oilskins can't have been either of them owing to their height. Miss R. is too short and Mr. R. too tall.

"Assuming therefore that you weren't a bit light-headed or anything of that kind (which, I am bound to say, Bolton thinks quite a likely explanation), the man you met _must_ have landed from a submarine and gone away again in her. Bolton feels positive on this point, and I must say I agree with him.

"The only remaining difficulty is the attack on the shore. Here Bolton takes exactly the same line as I did when I questioned you. He thinks that as you didn't actually see anybody, and as what you think you saw and heard are so vague and indefinite and so difficult to fit into any known method of murder, one can't really draw any conclusions, and he quotes various cases he has known of people who fancied they were struck or seized or fired at in the dark, when actually there was some other explanation.

"By the way, as to the old gentleman with tinted spectacles who asked for a match, Bolton made enquiries of a number of people about the old men in the island, and he even took the trouble to interview them all. None have tinted spectacles and all deny having spoken with you. I am afraid that this discovery made him a bit sceptical about some of the other incidents. However he went into the whole thing very carefully indeed and I think we can all feel satisfied that with the departure of Mr. O'Brien the possibility of trouble within the island has been eliminated. Of course the Lord only knows who may not land in the place by night, and they may quite possibly have squared one or two of the natives to show a light, or to keep their eyes shut, or help them in one way or another. But that's rather a different story.

"I am sorry I have nothing better to satisfy your dramatic soul, but hang it, a fellow who flies from the middle of the North Sea in a balloon and then drops through a fog and hits an island a few miles square, and afterwards gets mistaken for a spy, and shot at and finally arrested, oughtn't to complain!

"Good luck to you. Keep out of balloons and don't part with that revolver.

"Yours ever,

"J.P.N. WHITECLETT."

And there for the present--and perhaps for ever--the story ends. I sat down straight off and began to write out this full, true, and particular account of the whole adventure, partly to keep my memory of everything fresh, and partly because it strikes me as not half a bad yarn in itself. Now that I have finished the job I must say that whether or no it will convince anybody else, it makes me feel more certain than ever that more has been going on in that island than met Mr. Bolton's eye.

Professional detectives are no doubt very useful men at jobs they are accustomed to and when pitted against the ordinary criminal. But these war problems are quite new, and utterly different even from the German secret service machinations in time of peace. And the men they are opposed to are very extraordinary criminals indeed; they are a highly trained, scientific force, as much a wing of the German fighting forces as their air service or their submarines.

What chance has a man who looks like a cattle-dealer against these experts, especially when he is only in action for a week and starts with the assumption that the few invaluable facts given him are mostly works of imagination? Possibly he may have fluked upon the remedy by removing O'Brien, and if the island of Ransay gives no more trouble for the rest of this war, it will certainly look as though he had. But in that case he will have been uncommon lucky, because he seems to me to have overlooked or dismissed practically everything significant.

Take, for instance, the actual words used by my oilskinned friend. They most distinctly implied that he was living on shore. Take the incident of the blind, which may perhaps have been, as John Whiteclett says, an every-day accident, but which certainly happened in the house where the one man they do suspect was living, and would certainly involve the doctor if it were not a mere accident. Look at my security while I was humbugging them by my suspicious conduct, and then the unscrupulous and quickly repeated attempts to get rid of me after two things had happened--my dropping of my accent at the Rendalls and the discovery of the parachute. Take that night on the shore when Miss Rendall escorted me armed with a pistol and her father joined her at the very place and the very time when the attack was made on me. As to its being an imaginary attack, my last doubts dissipated when I was fired at next day.

Then as to the idea of Mr. O'Brien trying to shoot duck, or suddenly being inspired by high-spirited homicidal mania, I simply decline to accept such absurd interpretations. I am not in the least sure it was he, to begin with. I feel convinced that more than one man is in it, and which conspirator took which part, who can say on the little evidence one has?

Again, take Mr. Bolton's brilliant idea of enquiring who could speak German. How did he enquire? Probably asked them! Is he a German scholar himself? The odds are a thousand to one against it. Or take the mysterious old man with the tinted spectacles. His appearance by that roadside and subsequent disappearance into space is one of the oddest features of the case. I have no doubt at all now that the wax match enquiry was the beginning of a series of questions and answers which would have proved me a fellow conspirator if I had only known them. They probably became doubly suspicious of me from that moment and only waited to make quite sure before going all out to kill me. And yet, Bolton by coolly assuming I was a liar or a dreamer missed the entire significance of the incident.

But when it comes to asking myself honestly which people precisely I suspect, and how I propose to separate the incidents which (I freely admit) are perfectly consistent with the theory that I was genuinely suspected myself, from the incidents which cannot be explained on those grounds, and work out a water-tight case against anybody in particular, I must confess that I am fairly beaten. I know that I don't want to suspect that girl, though she did treat me like a member of a lower race and scored off me badly at the end; and I do want to suspect O'Brien. By the way, was he a real drunkard? I rather begin to wonder.

And that is the very unsatisfactory end of the matter so far.