“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 someone 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 lightheaded 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 heartfelt 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 levelheaded and a first class officer, but somehow or other I felt small confidence
