Part 13

"It's a jolly old muddle," he declared suddenly. "Honestly, Mother, it's not reasonable to suppose Pamela would be such a silly ass as to march up to Crown Hill and publicly say you sent her for a diamond brooch, and then swear she hadn't been! I ask you now, is it feasible? It's sheer blazing idiocy. _If_ she did she's mad and ought to be put in an asylum. It isn't even criminal, it's drivelling. As for Auntie A.--now _she_ is mad. Always has been. Well, I should say she'd dreamed the whole business if Farr was out of it. You say Farr saw Pamela; did Farr tell you, or did Auntie A. speak for Farr?"

"Oh, Miss Ashington told me what Farr remarked about Pam's----"

"_There_ you are then. Bet you the whole thing is some mad vision of Auntie A.'s! Sure of it. She was asleep on the verandah and when you asked for the brooch, having lost it, she says this----"

"But, darling boy, she wouldn't invent----"

"Not intentionally, Mother, but she's got a roving imagination, we see that every week. One time she's teaching pigs to kill themselves in order to save the butcher's feelings! Another time she wants to train calves to drive the sheep to market in order that land girls need never get up! _Don't_ believe her, Mother dear, and for any sake don't sorrow about her rotten fairy tales. They'll find that brooch in Charles' stomach when he dies of over-eating--if she hasn't been wearing it all the while herself. Oh, I say, _do_ let's shut up all this misery, Mum. An atmosphere of crime and sorrow is enough to make one ache to be back. Let's cut it out, and cease persecuting wretched Pamela, because Auntie A. is a lunatic."

If it did nothing else, this speech made Mrs. Romilly "sit up and take notice", as her son said cheerfully a few minutes later. Presently she went upstairs; and fortified by a "nice cup o' tea" made and brought up, and administered by Mrs. Jeep herself, really did begin to think there might be something in what Adrian said.

"Men are very level-headed," thought Mrs. Romilly, "they are not so emotional and impressionable as we are; after all, of course, poor Auntie A. is very vague."

Out of doors Crow and the level-headed one went down to the bay in company. Sisters are given to a certain clearness of vision not always vouchsafed to mothers. Said Christobel:

"Addie--do you _really_ think all that you said to Mother about Miss Ashington and Pam?"

"Of course I don't," promptly answered the shameless Adrian, "Miss Ashington is mad, right enough--raving--ought to be chained up before she drives all the farmers dotty, but she saw Pam right enough--so did Farr."

"But, Addie----"

"Oh, I know--you're going to say one ought not to believe the evidence of one's own sight if it is against people you love. You must--till one's got something more reliable to see with than eyes. All the same life's not worth living if Mother is in a distraught condition--and nobody comes to meals except the Floweret trying to draw us all together by bonds of family love. If she's 'bright' again at tea-time I shall take the yawl to Salterne and stay there. If Pam has got the thing it's her look-out, she won't enjoy having it--as I said before, she's been awfully queer lately."

In order to check another allusion to the Beak, Christobel suddenly proposed bathing from the yacht.

"Time for a heavenly one before tea," she suggested.

Adrian forgot all the sorrows of the household in an instant and received the plan with a cheer; they two went with a rush, which carried them breathless and giggling on to the sands among the seaweedy rocks and the anemone-peopled pools. Here was Hughie--testing secretly a storm or wind anchor that he had invented. Adrian upset him into a sea pool--which Hughie did not mind, because it diverted attention from the wind anchor--then the two elders proceeded to haul the dinghy down and make preparations.

"Whole day since we came," remarked Adrian regretfully, "what waste!"

"She wants washing inside," commented Crow, rubbing certain dirt marks with her fingers. "Look, this isn't a tennis shoe--it's a heel!"

"I'd like to catch anybody messing about with her," said Adrian wrathfully, then Christobel suggested it might be the Floweret.

"She sits in the dinghy with a book sometimes you know, Addie, when the rocks are extra wet. I don't know why; probably it makes her feel adventurous and buccaneering."

They got the little boat down, and rowed off into the bay--lovely it was, warm and smooth, with a faint swell coming in from outside, the swell that causes a rushing ripple to rise over the hard ridged sand, filling the tiny rock ponds and making the littlest crabs wave their legs about and scamper for the shelter of miniature weed forests. It was a divine day, and a divine scene; brother and sister felt it and cast off the dreariness that had clouded the morning.

They reached the yawl in an utterly joyous frame of mind, and whirled on board anyhow. Then Adrian said in rather a startled voice:

"Hullo, Crow, didn't we leave that door open? Surely, surely we did, because we both said it was whiffy inside--who shut it then?"

"Wind, of course," said Crow indifferently.

"My good girl----"

"Oh don't, Addie--hurry up--get into the fore-cabin or where you like, but hurry, or we shan't have half a swim. I won't say 'time flies', because it's too copy-book--but I'll remind you that tea is half-past four. Get on."

So saying, Christobel took possession of the saloon--"according to plan", as we used to hear in the days of the War, and Adrian disappeared down the fore-hatch. This was the standing arrangement for bathing--as the whole party of Romilly boys and girls could swim like ducks; they learned when babies almost--it was family law.

Christobel did not take long to get ready as a rule, but she took longer than she meant because several small matters seemed to her to be differently placed, or untidy. As everyone knows who inhabits a yacht of say six to eight tons, there must be a place for everything, and everything in that place. It had always been so on the _Messenger_. Every shining hook had its cup, or jug. Every plate or saucer fitted into its own groove. Kitchen things--polished like looking-glasses--were placed along barred shelves, and kettles sat in wells made to fit them.

To-day something was a little wrong. Crow frowned at the hooks and racks, as she pinned her hair up under a rubber cap--this and that seemed to have changed places--or she thought so. The cushions on the settees in the saloon were certainly wrong--all on one side. Adrian must have been right about the door; that was perhaps part of the invasion. She thought of calling out to her brother and then decided not to, because if she said anything Addie would make a point of locking up the yawl every night, and the result would be that peculiar something in the stuffiness that always made her feel sick.

Christobel was not a perfect sailor like Adrian and Hughie--neither of them could be swept off their balance, but Christobel could. So much so, that she had at times borne agonies in silence rather than spoil Adrian's day. She was seldom actually sick, but she felt a horrible nausea and faintness, and the one thing that would precipitate this condition was that mixture of paraffin, varnish, cushion stuffing, and station-waiting-room-stale-sandwich smell, that came up from the saloon when the closed doors were opened; for once locked up there could be no ventilation naturally--without water getting in also; not in so small a boat, for the fore-hatch must be battened down and bolted inside before the companion door was locked outside.

All this occurred to Crow in time to stop her making remarks on her suspicions. After all, she could not remember who came out of the cabin last. Again Penberthy might have gone on board--he might even have taken Major Fraser with him, which would account for the gravel and dirt marks on the dinghy.

Just as she came to this conclusion she heard Adrian's dive and a few seconds after his shout for her, so she ran up, and went over the side with the clean sweep of a first-rate swimmer. That was the end of questionings--for the time.

*CHAPTER XV*

*In which Hughie takes Action*

It has been said, even in this story, that important situations often arise from ridiculously small happenings. Everybody knows it so well that one apologizes for such a stale reflection.

However, in the present instance the thing that led up to the very small happening was tea at Fuchsia Cottage, to which all four were invited, and all four went. The Little Pilgrim's teas were "things of beauty, and joys for ever", the pleasure never palled, because she had particular scones, buns, cakes and jams that other people knew not of, and her table decorations were as original as they were lovely. She held a theory that people ought to eat a great deal at tea, which was delightful when it fell in with the idea of the guests. There was no "company" about it, from first to last it was sheer satisfaction.

This day was no exception to the rule, and for reasons that can be well understood the young Romillys positively jumped at the invitation. It would be freedom from the atmosphere that seemed to spoil everything at the Bell House.

True to Adrian's suggestion, Mrs. Romilly had ignored the mystery of the diamond brooch. She treated Pamela as always--or tried to. But she was pale and absent in manner, and it was a daily stab to poor Pam to look up suddenly and find her mother's eyes watching her with a sort of appeal in their blue depths. Pamela on her part was obviously unhappy, her small face was smaller still, and her grey-blue eyes looked darker. In spite of the heroic efforts of the elder pair, who pulled the business of life along like a pair of well-matched horses, it was not the same perfectly happy life that it had been in the spring and always before in the memory of the children.

Miss Lasarge saw there was something the matter, but the Romilly family had the sense to wash its own linen at home. No one in the house "confided" woes outside. Also, Miss Lasarge had, at the time, considerable anxiety on her own shoulders, which she kept to herself, of course; the sympathy being no less for everybody.

So she asked them to tea, and they came. And the party was one of the most perfect she had ever invented, with rose petals in all shades of pink making a pattern round the delightful dishes. Tongues were loosened by the sense of festivity, even Hughie talked; everybody talked, except Pamela, who looked tired.

They stayed until after six o'clock, and then the Little Pilgrim walked down to the gate with them. Outside in the road they stood talking over the gate, as people do loath to go. Adrian was talking about the yawl, he and Christobel laughing over some of the adventures.

"We go out most days," he said.

Miss Lasarge looked towards the west and the clear sky over the sea.

"It is promising for to-morrow?" she asked; her gaze wandered to the white wall over the road, that high glass-topped wall that enclosed Woodrising.

"Oh, rather!"

"Don't you think you are very lucky?" She asked this question suddenly of Addie, in the soft hesitating tone natural to her.

"Lucky, I should think so! It's awfully jolly of Sir Marmaduke to let us have _Messenger_."

"I was thinking of something bigger than that--I mean, _wider_--than just a yacht. It's the _freedom_, Adrian. Of the sea, of the shore, of the woods--that's what I meant. You see, there are prisoners."

"Oh, not _now_, Little Pilgrim," Christobel expostulated, "we've got them all home, thank God, by this time."

"Ours! Oh, yes, I hope we have, I believe we have; but I was thinking----"

"Miss Anne, please don't ask us to feel--well, sentimental--about German prisoners," said Adrian in rather a hard voice; he was digging a hole in the road with his stick, as a vent for his feelings, "they've had a good time in England."

"Oh no, dear, it was something quite different that was in my mind, I assure you. Only, what one feels is--value freedom--it is so wonderful really."

"Expect it is, one jolly well takes it for granted though, doesn't one, Crow?" Adrian strongly objected to strenuous remarks, whatever the subject. "Well, Miss Anne, thanks awfully, we've had a ripping time, your party was simply top-hole. Think of Crow and me enjoying freedom. Oh, by the way, it's 'the freedom of the seas', isn't it? Early to-morrow, all being well, we want to go to Salterne."

"For the day, or what?" asked Miss Lesarge, smiling.

"For the day," agreed Crow. "As usual, Addie wants his hair cut, and the only man he approves of is in Union Street. We anchor the yawl and come back late; the tides have come round by now, to a nice useful arrangement. Miss Anne, you know Mother doesn't mind now if we sleep on board, as long as we are inside the estuary. That gives us a grand long time to do things."

All this was said in the road, you will remember. Adrian and Christobel possessed clear voices that carried; they did not modulate them to any great extent; lastly the white wall was only the width of the road from this conversation.

Neither Pamela nor Hughie spoke, yet they two realized with a sort of shock what the meaning was behind Miss Anne's little eager protest about "prisoners". She knew, she must know! She was just thinking out loud her own gentle pity for the girl behind the white wall. Pamela saw it so on the instant, and with a flash of memory recalled the large dull old-fashioned drawing-room at Woodrising, and the girl sitting alone, trying to be interested in a book. And she can climb, thought Pam suddenly, perhaps she was used to mountains; why not? Anyway, she must be accustomed to great possessions, to woods and parks, to great estates! A new view of the case brightened Pamela's mind. Miss Anne was looking at her, their eyes met and the girl smiled, then turned pink, and looked away.

"I wonder!" thought the Little Pilgrim.

Pam was wondering also. Hughie had made up his mind, undoubtedly Miss Anne knew about the girl; that was interesting, but Hughie's estimate of the situation was not like his sister's; there was no sentiment, and no pity in it. He was purely practical. "She might have to stop inside Woodrising," he thought, "then it would be different. But she tells lies and comes out on the sly; she steals things and lets Pam bear the blame. Miss Lasarge doesn't know."

So he looked at Miss Lasarge with a shrewd pitying gaze as he lifted his cap for good-night, and made no remark on the way home.

The evening was uneventful, and a voyage to Salterne was planned for next day as Adrian suggested. Pamela was asked to go and said she would; Hughie refused, he had his own scheme.

Then the household went to bed, and to sleep, but let it be understood that the small matter, namely that little talk outside Miss Anne's gate, had set in motion a far more important event, which was yet to happen.

Hughie slept with his window open, of course; he was a very light sleeper, indeed he said he could hear the crabs' toes clatter as they ran out of one pool into another. This statement might have been exaggerated, but the fact remains that he could hear most things; therefore, when he woke up in the night he realized that a noise from outside had been the cause. He lay still and listened for sounds in the house.

All was still; also all was dark, because the moon did not rise till early morning, and at present was giving her best moonshine in the day-time.

Hughie waited with a sense of growing alertness, and presently slid out of bed, climbed on the window-seat, and looked towards the bay. Soft, velvety darkness, ripple of water, and faint reflected shine on the sea, was all he heard and saw.

"Tiresome!" considered Hughie, not reassured by all this peace. He felt trouble afoot.

Motionless he sat, as some small wild thing of the jungle; motionless, but alive in every muscle.

From the bay came a sudden knock of wood on wood, just the noise a person recognizes who understands boats and would never mistake it for anything else.

"Dinghy," thought the Midget, and, without more ado, he slid from his seat and put on some clothes that would not be conspicuous; so careful was he, indeed, that he got out stockings, articles he hated in summer; but bare white legs show in the dark. Presently he was complete. Serge knickers and sweater, blue stockings and sandshoes. Then he opened his door and looked out. No sound, a pitch dark, silent house.

Hughie's mind was intent on the garden door. The big front door was bolted and barred and would make a noise if opened. The back door possessed a terribly stiff key that turned with a shriek. Jeepy would not have it oiled; she would not have it touched for mysterious reasons of her own connected with the possible bad conduct of Patty Ingles! It was a far-fetched idea, but it kept the key rusty, so that was no good. There remained the children's door, as it had always been called, the door into the garden, just beyond Pamela's window. It would not do for her to hear. Hughie wanted to do this business entirely off his own bat, so to speak, and of all things he did not wish to have "people making a row", so he hoped the door would not betray him.

As it happened, poor Pam was sleeping rather heavily. She had had many restless nights, but something in those words of Miss Anne's had made a difference. Things were not so hopelessly unjust; she did not feel so ill-used quite. So she slept soundly, and Hughie, moving like Sherlock Holmes and "Raffles" rolled into one, as only he could, got out of the house without a creak or a scratch, closed the door, and found himself on the end terrace under Pam's window close to the sea-wall.

Every stone being familiar, he went straight from there along the grass border of the walk, guiding himself by the wall. Once he stopped and listened intently, when he heard that little bump again--it was a slightly grinding bump at irregular intervals. Hughie knew now what it was--the dinghy against the rocks. It might mean that the little boat had got loose and was being shifted this way and that by the tide. There was nothing exciting about that, of course, but Hughie was convinced that something more was being enacted--there was human agency at work.

He came to the end of the wall, went through the gate, round, and then down towards the rocks. Now here was necessity for careful going, because of the darkness, and he wished heartily he had stayed to get the little electric torch that stood on the library writing-table. However, knowing the bay by heart made it easier, and every minute his eyes were more used to the dark.

The sand felt cool and hard; there was plenty of it, because the tide was just starting to rise steadily and creep into the pools. Hughie knew this must be so, of course--partly because he understood tides, but particularly in this instance owing to Adrian's plan for the morning.

They were to start early for Salterne, while there was still enough of the tide to take them. It could not have been long since the tide turned; he tried to calculate, and succeeded in realizing that the faint greyness that lay in the night was not "moon", but morning coming. And that was what made a chill, fresher than a night wind.

Presently he found the dinghy, and felt all over her with understanding hands. The sculls were there--rolling a little, improperly placed. She was broadside on to the beach, heaving up a little on the wash.

"She simply _never_ went down by herself," decided Hughie, and thought over the matter deeply.

Her normal position was a good way up the shore. In stormy weather well above high-water mark--but last night in a comfortable position for loading a basket and oddments--on the sand, with her little anchor fixed between two rocks. The anchor had been lifted and was put in the bows. The dinghy could not have done that to herself! No need to argue; the question was answered.

_Someone_ had taken the boat out, and sent her adrift! When you come to think of it, this was an odd thing to happen in the night--more than odd in Bell Bay. Almost unbelievable, because you might leave anything about and all your doors and windows open in such a garden of friends as the valley.

The conclusion Hughie came to was that no native of Bell Bay had done it. He had little doubt who was the offender, and stood still considering his next move.

_Why_ should Pam's double want to go out aboard the yawl at such an hour? Crow having said nothing at all to anyone about her suspicions with regard to meddling in the saloon; of course Hughie knew nothing about that, and the idea came to him in all its startling freshness. However, having convinced his reason, he quickly decided on the next action.

"I'd better go and find her," said Hughie to himself in the low murmur with which he held "doll" conversations.

As the tide was rising he had small difficulty in pushing the dinghy down; she was the lightest make, varnished--a first-rate little craft with the power of standing much more than her slight appearance suggested. A very fortunate thing, as it proved afterwards.

The little boy got in, balanced himself in the stern to lighten the bows, and pushed off deftly; then he sat down, took the sculls, and looked about him into the dark. The sculls, small as they were, were too big for his hands, but he was strong and amazingly tenacious--he never gave up what his heart was set on.

"She can't get away," he murmured again, and, as the idea took his fancy, he gave a sudden little wriggle of amusement.

Then he sculled out to the _Messenger_ with very short light strokes, wonderfully noiseless. He went into the thick of the dark, thick because the mistiness of dawn was there--it was what people called "the darkest hour before the dawn", starless, moonless, softly thick. Having gone a short distance, Hughie turned the dinghy round gently by rowing one oar, and, having got his craft stern first, he began to push steadily with both sculls. He knew he would soon find the yawl--but all in a moment, and he must be prepared not to bump.

To his quick ear came a sound; he stopped and listened. It was water--rippling against an obstacle--the incoming tide driving past the bows of the yacht. He had not far to go, because _Messenger_ was pulling the length of her chain cables inshore--a very different position from the one she would have held in a strong ebb, as she lay then almost under the shadow of the Bell Ridge point, the height to the north of the cove.

Hughie pushed his craft cleverly up to the counter, shipped his sculls, and gripped the stern rail as he stood up. It was neatly done. He pushed the dinghy a little farther, holding on till he got the bows in position, then he bent the towing rope--the painter--on to the rail, and climbed up. Being there he made sure of the painter--he never left things to chance like Adrian did, and he possessed in a remarkable degree the quick neatness of the born sailor's handling of things.

Having finished, he stood still and looked about.

The deck showed white. The mainsail was not stowed, but just let down and lightly lashed, ready to haul up quickly in the morning: there was nothing to hurt it but dew--dew was everywhere and the footing slippery. As he stood looking along the shadowy white outline against which the mast rose oddly black, and the rigging seemed like black spiders' web, Hughie again wished he had the torch. Then an idea struck him entirely to his taste. It was better certainly to be in the dark, especially as he knew where the matches were kept. All was well.