“You think he may have had an accident—fallen over the cliffs or something?” suggested Copplestone.
“I don’t like to think anything,” replied Stafford. “But I shall be a good deal relieved if we can get some definite news about him.”
The first half hour at Northborough yielded nothing definite. A telephone message from Rothwell had just come to the theatre when they drove up to it—nothing had so far been heard of the missing man at Norcaster—either at theatre or hotel. Stafford and Copplestone hurried across to the Golden Apple and interviewed its proprietor; he, keenly interested in the affair, could tell no more than that Mr. Bassett Oliver, having sent his luggage forward to Norcaster, had left the house on foot at eleven o’clock the previous morning, and had been seen to walk across the marketplace in the direction of the railway station. But an old headwaiter, who had served the famous actor’s breakfast, was able to give some information; Mr. Oliver, he said, had talked a little to him about the coast scenery between Northborough and Norcaster, and had asked him which stretch of it was worth seeing. It was his impression that Mr. Oliver meant to break his journey somewhere along the coast.
“Of course, that’s it,” said Stafford, as he and Copplestone drove off again. “He’s gone to some place between the two towns. But where? Anyhow, nobody’s likely to forget Oliver if they’ve once seen him, and wherever he went, he’d have to take a ticket. Therefore—the booking office.”
Here at last, was light. One of the clerks in the booking office came forward at once with news. Mr. Bassett Oliver, whom he knew well enough, having seen him on and off the stage regularly for the past five years, had come there the previous morning, and had taken a first-class single ticket for Scarhaven. He would travel to Scarhaven by the 11:35 train, which arrived at Scarhaven at 12:10. Where was Scarhaven? On the coast, twenty miles off, on the way to Norcaster; you changed for it at Tilmouth Junction. Was there a train leaving soon for Scarhaven? There was—in five minutes.
Stafford and Copplestone presently found themselves travelling back along the main line. A run of twenty minutes brought them to the junction, where, at an adjacent siding they found a sort of train in miniature which ran over a narrow-gauge railway towards the sea. Its course lay through a romantic valley hidden between high heather-clad moorland; they saw nothing of their destination nor of the coast until, coming to a stop in a little station perched high on the side of a hill they emerged to see shore and sea lying far beneath them. With a mutual consent they passed outside the grey walls of the station yard to take a comprehensive view of the scene.
“Just the place to attract Oliver!” muttered Stafford, as he gazed around him. “He’d revel in it—fairly revel!”
Copplestone gazed at the scene in silence. That was the first time he had ever seen the Northern coast, and the strange glamour and romance of this stretch of it appealed strongly to his artistic senses. He found himself standing high above the landward extremity of a narrow bay or creek, much resembling a Norwegian fjord in its general outlines; it ran in from the sea between high shelving cliffs, the slopes of which were thickly wooded with the hardier varieties of tree and shrub, through which at intervals great, gaunt masses of grey rock cropped out. On the edge of the water at either side of the bay were lines of ancient houses and cottages of grey walls and red roofs, built and grouped with the irregularity of individual liking; on the north side rose the square tower and low nave of a venerable church; amidst a mass of wood on the opposite side stood a great Norman keep, half ruinous, which looked down on a picturesque house at its foot. Quays, primitive and quaint, ran along between the old cottages and the water’s edge; in the bay itself or nestling against the worn timbers of the quays, were small craft whose red sails hung idly against their tall masts and spars. And at the end of the quays and the wooded promontories which terminated the land view, lay the North Sea, cold, grey, and mysterious in the waning October light, and out of its bosom rose, close to the shore, great masses of high grey rocks, strong and fantastic of shape, and further away, almost indistinct in the distance, an island, on the highest point of which the ruins of some old religious house were silhouetted against the horizon.
“Just the place!” repeated Stafford. “He’d have cheerfully travelled a thousand miles to see this. And now—we know he came here—what we next want to know is, what he did when he got here?”
Copplestone, who had been taking in every detail of the scene before him, pointed to a house of many gables and queer chimneys which stood a little way beneath them at the point where the waters of a narrow stream ran into the bay.
“That looks like an inn,” he said. “I think I can make out a sign on the gable end. Let’s go down there and inquire. He would get here just about time for lunch, wouldn’t he, and he’d probably turn in there. Also—they may have a telephone there, and you can call up the theatre at Norcaster and find out if anything’s been heard yet.”
Stafford smiled approvingly and started out in the direction of the buildings towards which Copplestone had
