Part 8

We both looked along the sands in the direction which she had indicated by her parasol. A tall, weedy young man, dressed with the utmost care in a grey flannel suit, brown shoes and linen spats, a Panama hat and a quaintly impossible tie, came slowly towards us, swinging a stick in his hand. As he drew near, he diffused multitudinous odours. His pimply face was suffused with a deep flow of colour. We realised at once what was going to happen. The young man whom we knew by repute only as Mr. Arthur Dompers, established at the Grange with a tutor and a small company of satellites, had evidently made up his mind to speak to us.

He came to a standstill, sidled round to the front of us, and raised his hat.

"Good morning! I say, you'll forgive my saying so--what? Awfully jolly show of yours! Ripping!"

Now I cannot say that any of us took to this young man, and, considering our Bohemian manner of life, we none of us had a fancy for chance acquaintances. The gentle rebuke which we had meditated, however, died away, first on Rose's lips and then on mine. It became apparent to us that the boy was horribly nervous.

"Glad you like it," I rejoined.

"So nice of you," Rose murmured.

"Quite a crowd from your place last night, wasn't there?" Leonard observed.

"That's right," the young man acquiesced. "We all weighed in--had dinner early on purpose. Jolly place you've got here."

"Won't you sit down?" Rose invited.

The boy squatted promptly at her feet. He wore pink socks and he reeked of scent, yet there was something a little pathetic in his obvious desire to be friendly.

"Are you cramming for anything in particular?" I asked him.

"I was supposed to go in for the Army," was the dubious reply, "but the exams are so jolly difficult. I failed for Sandhurst twice. Now they're trying to get me in at Cambridge so that I can join a cadet corps."

"The exams are so much stiffer since the war," Rose remarked consolingly.

"Are any of your people down here with you?" I enquired.

The boy shook his head.

"I haven't any people to speak of," he confided, "except an uncle I have scarcely ever seen. Another uncle--my father's brother--left me all my money. Sometimes," the young man added, with a queer flash of seriousness which made one forget his socks and his tie and his pimples, "I wish he hadn't."

"It must be awfully nice, though, to feel that you've plenty of time in life for games and all that sort of thing," Rose remarked, with a mild attempt at consolation.

"I'm not very good at games," the young man confessed. "Mr. Duncombe and his friends are so much better than I am, and they always laugh at me."

"That is a very untutorlike thing to do," Rose declared indignantly.

The young man looked frightened.

"Mr. Duncombe is very good to me--very kind indeed," he repeated, in parrot-like fashion.

"Is he?" Rose queried drily.

"He has no end of people down so that we shouldn't be dull," the young man went on. "There's his sister--she's very kind to me, too. I think I shall have to marry her."

"Why?" Rose asked in bewilderment.

"I think Mr. Duncombe would like me to," was the resigned reply. "I am very fond of Ella. She sings and dances beautifully."

"How old are you?" Rose enquired.

The boy seemed on the point of making another parrot-like reply. Then he chanced to meet the kindly expression in Rose's face as she leaned towards him. He hesitated.

"There's a sort of secret about my age," he confided. "Mr. Duncombe likes me to tell every one that I am twenty."

"And aren't you?" I asked curiously.

He shook his head.

"I shall be twenty-one on Saturday," he said. "I shall be able to sign cheques of my own then--and make my will."

"What do you want to make your will for?" Rose asked. "You're strong enough, aren't you?"

"It is the duty of every one with a great deal of money to make their will directly they are twenty-one," the boy declared, as though repeating a lesson. "If I had my own way," he added, looking up at Rose, "I should leave a great deal of money to you, but I don't suppose I shall be allowed to."

"Good gracious, Mr. Dompers!" Rose exclaimed. "Why, I scarcely know you!"

"I like your face," the young man continued earnestly. "If you saw the faces of the people who are staying at the Grange, you would know what I mean. They all look as though they wanted something. They remind me sometimes of a pack of hounds. And they pretend not to, but they are always watching me."

We had been so engrossed in the self-disclosures of this half-witted young man that we had not noticed the approach of another promenader along the sands. It was a very different person who now accosted us, hat in hand and a courteous smile upon his lips. There was not a single criticism in which the most fastidious might indulge against Hilary Duncombe's address, his manners or his clothes.

"Good morning! I am glad to see that my young ward has been finding friends."

The young man scrambled at once to his feet and stood, awkward and speechless, a little apart. His tutor, the very prototype of kindly and aristocratic ease, addressed a few kindly remarks to us.

"I am so thankful," he went on, "when Arthur finds courage to speak to any one. He is a good boy, but he finds conversation with strangers as a rule difficult."

"We haven't found him at all shy," Rose assured him, with a smile at the subject of these remarks. "On the contrary, he has been entertaining us quite nicely."

Mr. Duncombe appeared to find Rose's favourable judgment a matter for personal gratification.

"You are very kind," he said. "I am sure that Arthur has already told you how charmed we were with your performance last night. My guests are agitating for a permanent change in our dinner hour, that we may be more frequent attendants."

"How nice!" Rose murmured. "It does make quite a difference to see some civilised people in the reserved seats."

"My sister," Duncombe continued, "would be delighted to make your acquaintance. We may, perhaps, persuade you to pay us a little visit at the Grange after the performance one evening. Arthur," he went on, "we must get back now. Ella is waiting for a set of tennis."

They moved off together. The impression they left behind was an unpleasant one.

"A second Ardalmont case," Leonard suggested.

"In which case," I reflected gloomily, "the mystery of our presence here is solved."

We were a little depressed as we returned to the hotel--a long, grey-stone building, once a farmhouse and still entirely unpretentious. Our worst prognostications were promptly verified. The maidservant who waited upon us in the coffee room brought me a note with a typewritten address.

"This was left here by a motor-cyclist soon after you went out, sir," she announced.

I tore open the envelope and we pored over it:

Accept any hospitality proffered from the Grange. Encourage the young man, Arthur Dompers, to talk, watch Duncombe, and report on the situation.

"Dull as ditchwater!" I exclaimed, as I tore up the communication in disgust. "An unprepossessing cub of a boy, whom his tutor permits to be fleeced at billiards and whom he is probably going to marry to his sister. Sordid as it can be. Not a thrill in it for us."

"This may be my show," Rose mused, her blue eyes very wide open and innocent. "I may be able to guide the young man from the matrimonial noose. I wonder if he is really very rich. Perhaps I'll marry him myself. I suppose I could keep him on a chain."

I sipped my _apéritif_ gloomily. The taste of true adventures was still upon my palate, and the obviousness of this one repelled.

Our ideas as to the menacing nature of Arthur Dompers' surroundings were to some extent modified by our first visit to the Grange, which took place that night after the performance. Ella Duncombe was a rather slangy, somewhat unpleasant-looking young woman of apparently twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age. She had a bad temper, which she scarcely troubled to conceal, and conducted herself generally towards her brother's charge with more contempt than toleration. She scarcely fulfilled one's idea of an adventuress. Major Lethwaite, a guest in the house whom we had fixed upon as the person accustomed to play Arthur Dompers for a hundred pounds at billiards whenever finances ran low, was to all appearance a perfectly harmless person who played sixpenny points at bridge and thought sixpenny pool excessive. Laura Richardson, a friend of Ella's, was just an ordinary, fairly well-bred, good-looking but rather boisterous young person. Mrs. Scatterwell, whose place apparently was that of chaperon, was a handsome and rather silent woman, whose sole interest seemed to be centred in Duncombe himself. The ménage was perhaps a curious one, but scarcely suspicious. Our host himself appeared to have no reserves except on the subject of his young charge.

"After the war was a bit of a knock for most of us," he remarked meditatively, as we men sat in the smoking room of the Grange after a very excellent supper. "Here are you, Lister, with a game arm, going round the country entertaining, more or less, I take it, for your living. I tried every job that was offered me and did very little good at any of them. Last of all I took this bear-leading on, and, between you and me, I sometimes wish to God I hadn't!"

"Why?" I asked. "The boy seems amiable enough."

"He seems so," Duncombe assented drily, "but the fact of it is that he is innately clumsy and innately deceitful. There is no sport for which he shows the least aptitude. I've tried them all with the same result. The only thing he can do is swim, and even then it's hard work to get him into the sea unless the sun shines. He hasn't the slightest taste; I am bound by the trustees' deed to allow him pocket money at the rate of a hundred pounds a month, and half of it he spends in buying most outrageous clothes. You know who he is, I suppose?"

"Not an idea," I replied.

Duncombe's eyebrows were slightly raised. He looked at me keenly.

"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "I took it for granted that you knew the story. He is the Welsh miner's orphan, who inherited two and a quarter million from Jacob Dompers of New York. A nice little windfall for a cub like this, isn't it?"

I remembered reading the story in the newspapers some years ago. So did Leonard.

"What about his relatives?" the latter asked.

"The only one with whom I have had any communication," Duncombe replied, "was a Welsh Baptist Minister who declined to have anything to say to the young man, and who wrote me on half a sheet of brown grocery paper, pointing out by means of many Biblical texts that no person with a banking account could hope to escape the flames of the bottomless pit."

"Who placed the boy in your charge, then?" I enquired.

"The London agents for the New York solicitors. I answered an advertisement. I think they realise," he went on, "that I have done my best. I have tried to fit him for one or two professions, in vain."

"How long have you had him?" Leonard asked.

Duncombe's long fingers played for a moment with his small black moustache. There was a quick light in his eyes as he glanced towards Leonard.

"Three years this June," he answered.

"Then he was sixteen when he came to you?"

Duncombe assented with a little motion of his head.

"You probably think that he is backward now for nineteen," he said. "You should have seen him when he came to me."

"I suppose he is backward," I admitted, "and yet, to tell you the truth, I should have thought him older."

"His twentieth birthday is this week," Duncombe told us. "I am getting a thousand a year and my expenses for looking after him, and I haven't any prospects of a job when he is out of my hands, but I wish to heavens it was his twenty-first!--I suppose we ought to see what the others are doing."

We made our way out into the hall, which was the main living room of the Grange. Arthur was playing billiards with Lethwaite, playing sullenly and without interest, and turning around after every stroke to listen to the conversation between Rose and the other two girls, who were seated upon a lounge, watching. Lethwaite, just as we appeared, went out with a stroke which was an obvious fluke. Arthur flung half a crown across the table and put up his cue ill-humoredly.

"Beastly fluke!" he grumbled. "No one can play against such luck."

He strode over with his hands in his pockets to where Rose was seated. Miss Duncombe watched him approach with a sombre light in her dark eyes.

"Bad-tempered again, Arthur?" she observed.

"He's a rotten fluker," the young man rejoined surlily. "He wins all my pocket money."

For a single moment the whole situation seemed to be commonplace, almost absurd. Here was a sulky, ill-conditioned boy, pitchforked into the charge of a very ordinary little company of gentlepeople, who were doing their best to make him one of themselves. Duncombe's rebuke was free from all severity, and it was certainly merited.

"Arthur," he said, "you should never accuse your opponent of fluking at any game. Take your defeat in silence if you cannot be pleasant about it. Mr. Lister or Mr. Cotton would tell you that I am giving you good advice."

"It was rather hard lines," Rose remarked, smiling up at him.

The change in the boy's face was almost amazing.

"You see, I was ninety-eight," he explained, "and that's the seventh half-crown I've lost following, just on the last stroke--Miss Mindel--I say--would you sing something?"

Rose got up and made her way to the piano, followed by the young man. For a moment I saw precisely the look in Miss Duncombe's dark eyes as had flashed in her brother's a few minutes before, a look, I fancied, of patient but subdued malevolence. Almost as I realised it, however, it passed. She motioned me to sit by her side.

"Mr. Lister," she said, "I envy you your profession. I think that anything in the world must be better than being bear-leader to a boy like Arthur."

"Your brother seems to have quite a great deal of influence over him," I observed.

"As much as any one could have, perhaps," she agreed. "After all, what can one expect? You can't make bricks without straw, and it's hard to give even the appearance of a gentleman to the son of a Welsh miner. Look at him now!"

Arthur was standing by the piano, listening to Rose, who had commenced to sing. He was awkward, self-conscious and ill at ease. He kept on thrusting his hands into his pockets and taking them out again. There was an expression in his eyes which angered me.

"I suppose he's rather a handful," I said.

Duncombe, who had been strolling about the room, joined us just in time to hear the last remark.

"He is that," he admitted, "and yet, after all, I suppose I ought not to grumble. I'm well enough paid for looking after him. A word with you, Lister."

He drew me away to the farther end of the room. We stepped out of the open window on to the broad gravel path. It was a soft, dark night, with jagged masses of black cloud stretched across the sky. Below us was the sandy beach, and away westwards we could hear the waves crashing amongst the rocks of the Greymarshes Bay.

"It's like this, you see, Lister," Duncombe began, speaking a little jerkily and watching me closely. "I've an agreement to look after this cub for five years--a thousand a year and every mortal expense. I must say the lawyers are generous about expenses. I don't mind admitting that they cover the whole cost of my housekeeping, and I'm able to save practically the lot. I'm going in for fruit farming when the job comes to an end, but the boy's health is uncertain. I can't help wondering what would happen to me if he were to die."

"I suppose," I ventured, "that your job would come to an end."

"I couldn't afford that," Duncombe declared. "I want to secure against it if I can. You're a stranger. You can look at this matter with an open mind. What do you think about insuring his life for, say, five or ten thousand pounds?"

"I wouldn't think of it," I told him bluntly, "while the boy is under your charge."

He seemed disappointed, but he nodded understandingly.

"Strikes you like that, does it?" he sighed. "Well, I was afraid it might. I expect you're right, too. Reminiscent of the Ardalmont mystery, and all that sort of thing, eh?"

"As you say," I assented, a little grimly.

The three of us were inclined to be gloomy during our walk home.

"I don't know why," Rose said, "but I detest that household."

"They're all right in their way," Leonard observed dubiously, "but they seem all of them to hate their job so. If they're paid for looking after that young cub, they ought to stomach their prejudices and do it."

"I don't like him," Rose pronounced abruptly. "I thought he was just simple and foolish at first, but I've come to the conclusion that I don't like him. There isn't a single member of the household I do like. They're just sordid and peevish. I think the chief might have found us something better to do."

"Perhaps he looks upon this in the light of a holiday task," I suggested.

Rose had a flash of inspiration just then. She passed her arm through mine, and notwithstanding the warm wind, she shivered a little.

"There is just one person in that household," she said, "of whom I am terrified."

"Who is it?" Leonard asked.

She shook her head.

"Wait," she begged.

A few days later, we were invited to a picnic party at Greymarshes Bay to celebrate Arthur's supposed twentieth birthday. Duncombe had hired a little petrol launch, and we took our lunch and bathing clothes along the coast. It was a hot, almost breathless day, and we entered the water eagerly for our pre-luncheon bathe. Every one except Mrs. Scatterwell bathed, and she busied herself with one of the servants, preparing luncheon in a shady spot. Somehow or other, perhaps because of the brilliancy of the weather, every one was in better spirits. Even Duncombe and his pupil seemed to be on quite good terms. They vied with one another in diving feats, and Arthur, exulting in his one accomplishment, clambered up the rocks more than once to a considerable height, before he made his plunge. Presently, however, we all tired a little of the sport. Rose was already dressing in a convenient cave. I was lying at full length, enjoying a sun bath on the shingle, when I heard Duncombe's voice from behind a great rocky promontory jutting out from the sea a little to my left.

"One more, Arthur. I've found a new place. It's the best of the lot."

I watched the young man climb obediently up the jagged boulder of rock. The topmost ledge must have been at least twenty or thirty feet high, and he was well on his way to it, with his back turned to me, when I became conscious of a queer feeling of apprehension. The space of water into which Arthur was to plunge was out of my sight, but there was a little foam at the corner, and I remembered how once on a stormy day I had stood and seen the broken waves thunder along this opening. I rose to my feet, waded in as far as I could, and swam on my side towards the promontory. Arthur by now had reached the summit and was cautiously scrambling to his feet. There was no sign anywhere of Duncombe. I swam on a few more strokes, until I was suddenly conscious of a current. I swam round it, until I was directly facing Arthur, now standing upright and commencing to poise.

"Wait a moment, Arthur," I called out.

"Get out of the way, then," he replied. "I'm coming over. Where's Duncombe?"

I looked around but there was no sign of him, yet I knew very well that he could not be more than a few yards away.

"One moment, Arthur," I shouted back.

He dropped his arms and stood there impatiently. The water beneath me was a green colour, full and sullen, but there were little eddies which I could not understand considering the width of the channel. Then, with a shock which, notwithstanding the hot sun, brought a shiver of fear through my body, I discovered the truth. Scarcely three feet under water was a long line of jagged rock. I turned over on my back and held up my hand.

"Arthur!"

"Get out of the way, will you?" he shouted. "I'm coming."

His hands were already upraised. There was no time for anything but the truth.

"Don't be a fool," I answered. "There's a submerged rock right across here. You couldn't miss it. Climb down, do you hear?"

His arms fell to his sides. For a single moment he stood there, immovable. Not even his youth, his bathing costume, and the clear background of blue sky and sunlit air could lend him any grace of form or outline. He seemed, indeed, from his short neck and hunched shoulders, as he turned away, almost deformed. I looked all around. There was no sign anywhere of Duncombe. I raised my voice and shouted.

"Hello, Duncombe!"

I heard a splash, as though he had slipped off the ledge of the rock behind me. Presently he came swimming round the corner.

"What's the matter?" he shouted. "And where's Arthur?"

"He's climbing down from that rock," I answered, as Duncombe came alongside. "I've just stopped his diving into this pool."

"Why?"

He was by my side now and I pointed downwards to the dark line of cruelly jagged rock. He looked for a moment concerned.

"Jove, I've never noticed those!" he muttered.

"They're barely three feet," I answered. "I can reach them."

Duncombe turned over on his back. We were in the shadow, almost surrounded by rocks. The voices of the others, preparing the lunch, sounded a long way away. I suddenly felt as though I were cut off, as though I could read the thoughts at the back of this man's brain, as though I myself were in danger. All the time he was drawing a little closer to me.

Leonard and Ella Duncombe suddenly appeared upon the summit of one of the lower ranges of rocks.

"Come along to lunch," the former shouted.

The moment had passed. Duncombe began to swim vigorously for the shore. He was quite himself when he stepped out on to the sand.

"I wouldn't make a fuss about that, if I were you, Lister," he suggested. "It looks as though I weren't careful enough. As a matter of fact, I don't think the boy would have come to any harm."

Arthur was seated by himself on the sands, his arms clenched around his knees, his face turned away from all of us. He seemed to have ignored the summons to prepare for lunch.

"Probably not," I answered, trying to speak in as unconcerned a tone as possible. "Boys and drunken men have a wonderful knack of avoiding accidents."

We strolled up the beach together. Duncombe paused and spoke to Arthur.

"Come along," he said, "they're waiting luncheon for us."

Arthur turned and looked at him. I could not say that there was anything either malicious or reproachful in that look, and yet it worried me. He made no answer in words. A few moments later, however, he scrambled to his feet and went to the rock behind which his clothes were lying.

Duncombe seemed determined that nothing which had happened should interfere with the success of the picnic. He abandoned all his reserve, related anecdotes, chaffed everybody in turn, opened wine, and absolutely created an atmosphere of pleasure. Leonard told stories and Rose sang to us and danced upon the sands. Arthur, after a preliminary fit of gloom, drank far too much champagne for his age and became, in his rather clumsy way, as light-hearted as the rest. He and Ella sat for some time apart from the others, his arm drawn through hers, until presently they wandered off together to look for Venetian shells, the spoils of some long-forgotten shipwreck. On the whole, the excursion which I had seen foredoomed to failure, turned out a great success. Duncombe only once, during the rest of the afternoon, referred to the disturbing subject.

"You don't suppose," he suggested, "that Arthur is thinking any more about that little affair, eh?"