“Do you hear anything?” she asked, and there seemed to be a little catch in her breath.
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 anyone 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 someone 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,
