The Man from the Clouds Part 5

"d.a.m.ned pleasantly in our society, eh?" put in O'Brien with the same sardonic laugh.

They both saw me to the door, and we said good-bye, without enthusiasm on the doctor's part, with a grin on Mr. O'Brien's, and with very mixed emotions on my own.

VI

A PETTICOAT

I was very thankful to get out of that depressing house and away from Mr.

O'Brien's laugh, and yet hardly was I on the high road again before I was blaming myself for not having lingered longer and pursued my investigations there a little further.

The other "Civilised" households in the island apparently numbered only three. Now, if my spy were working single handed he might conceivably be some better educated farmer who had lived abroad and turned traitor, but it seemed to me most unlikely that he should have no confederates, and it was scarcely possible for two or three men of that particular type to be gathered in so small a community. Brains and education seemed implied in every step of the dangerous game they were playing. Therefore it was only common sense to suspect one at least of these "civilised" houses, unless they could all manifestly clear their characters. Anyhow it were foolishness to neglect this consideration.

And what had I discovered already? A couple of men living by themselves in a criminal looking mansion, who hurriedly pulled down blinds, looked both suspicious and apprehensive at the sight of a stranger, and made odd innuendoes and allusions in their conversation. Why hadn't I stayed on and pursued my investigations? Well, because the moment I discovered I was in the wrong house, my insistent idea was to push on to Mr. Rendall's and consult with him about the whole situation. But now I began to reconsider this decision very seriously.

I was out of sight by this time in a secluded part of the road, where it ran through a dip in the ground, with the head of one of those little reedy lochs only a yard or two away, and a bright glimpse of the sea beyond. The marshy sh.o.r.es were a perfect blaze of yellow wild flowers and it looked so jolly that I sat down on the water's edge and began to think things over.

First I thought Mr. O'Brien over. Middle height, a beard, and an Irish brogue. Could the German accent have been put on to conceal the brogue?

Looking to what I was doing myself, why not? Then I thought Dr. Rendall over. Also middle height, a moustache, and no particular accent. But then again, if I put on an accent, why not he? Then I thought over what I had learned of the laird. A cousin of the doctor's, a "d.a.m.ned queer fish,"

almost the only a.s.sociate of this couple, and hard up. Ought I to go straight off and confide in him?

"Not to begin with anyhow!" I said to myself, and up I jumped and continued my walk.

About a hundred yards further on I rounded a corner and came upon a very miserable figure. He was an old, old man with tinted spectacles and a long white beard, and the raggedest overcoat I ever saw, and he was sitting on the gra.s.s with his feet in the ditch apparently doing nothing but simply sitting still. As I approached he peered at me as though he were more than half blind and then in an extraordinary thin, high, piping voice he said,

"A fine day, mister!"

This time I did the Teutonic bully. It went horribly against the grain to strafe such a miserable object, but with no one looking on I thought that the kind of Hun I was supposed to be would probably treat a worm like this to a touch of the All-Highest.

"Be dashed and d.a.m.ned to you!" I growled.

The old boy started perceptibly, and in rather an eager voice he asked,

"Have you got a wax match, mister?"

"Wax match? No, and be confounded!" said I.

For the next quarter of a mile or so I felt too ashamed of myself and too contrite to think much about what the old fellow had said, and then suddenly it began to strike me that a _wax_ match was rather a curious thing to ask for. A match was natural enough, but why need it be wax?

And then I stopped, wheeled round, and walked back. I told myself that I was growing absurd and getting pa.s.swords on the brain. Still, there seemed no harm in exchanging a few more remarks with the old man.

But when I reached the same spot on the road he was gone. There were one or two small houses not far away and it was quite possible he had reached them by now, especially if he wanted his match badly; though it would mean moving a little faster than I had given him credit for. Or he might be lying down out of sight having a nap, and as the day was warm and he had apparently nothing better to do, that seemed a very possible solution. Anyhow, there was no sign of him, and if there had been, I told myself he would probably have proved to be merely the island patriarch with a senile fancy for wax vestas, so I resumed my journey to the "big house."

As I topped another rise I got the best view I had yet seen of the lie of the island. A group of larger buildings on another hillock, still well over a mile ahead, was evidently the mansion at last. Behind me I saw the doctor's house and noted with a nod unto myself that it stood distinctly in the northwest district of the island. It was no long walk from that bleak habitation to the Scollays' on the sh.o.r.e.

And now I addressed myself to a delicate question. If I were going to keep up the part of suspicious stranger at the Rendall's, at all events to begin with, what account of my arrival should I give? It must be a tale plausible enough to keep them in doubt, for unless the laird himself were actually up to his neck in treason (and though I was prepared for anything by this time, there were limits to the a.s.sumptions I ventured to make), he would certainly wire either to the police or the naval authorities and I should immediately become a mere spectator. In fact, I would probably not be allowed even to stay and look on.

And this was not mere selfish desire for glory and excitement. I was quite capable of seeing that my tale might not convince older and wiser people as thoroughly as it convinced myself. In fact I felt a strong presentiment that I should merely be put down as a brilliant liar and the spy hunt would come to an end--_with the spy still in the island_. That was where I still do think I was justified in playing the hand myself.

But what tale could I tell? The truth--that I had dropped out of a balloon? Who would believe it for an instant unless I produced the hidden parachute? And if I unearthed the parachute the whole island would know in a couple of hours and the people I was after would also be convinced.

And it would not be a conviction that I was a fellow Hun.

And then I chanced to turn my head and I had an inspiration. About five miles out to sea I saw a ship, quite distinctly enough to spot her as a cruiser of much the same type as the ship I had soared out of yesterday.

I filled in the details of the inspiration as I walked and when at last I saw her head away into the far distance the final touch was given.

When I drew near the house the road showed a tendency to meander, and as I was getting pretty hungry and counted on luncheon with the laird, be he patriot or traitor, I left the highway and followed a path across a clover field. Though the house and its farm were so near, and I could see half a dozen other homesteads not far away, yet there was not a living soul in sight, or any sound save from the peewees and the gulls. I don't know how to convey the impression of out-of-the-worldness and back-of-beyondness produced by this sense of silence and s.p.a.ce, and by the look of the house and its whole surroundings. The path sloped up to it through a gra.s.s paddock, rather like the approach to the doctor's house, only this gra.s.s was short and well-tended and there were one or two flower beds before the door and ivy on one of the walls (where the wind was least destructive); and though the mansion was weather-beaten and plain and grey, it had nothing of the bleak and chilly aspect of the other house. It simply looked as though it had lived a long and stormy life and had now gone to sleep.

At one side stretched a high-walled garden with the tops of a few stunted trees just showing their heads, and close at the back of the place one could see a collection of farm buildings, very like the mansion architecturally, only greyer and more weathered. A fairly steep roof, crow-stepped gables, rough-cast walls, and rather small windows seemed to my untutored eye to be the chief features of the whole stone gathering.

"Somebody very primitive obviously lives here," I said to myself as I pulled the bell.

Out it came bodily in my hand, so I carefully pushed it back, and tried a large bra.s.s knocker instead, a ma.s.sive affair that looked as though it had once been part of a shipwreck. I knocked once, I knocked twice, I knocked thrice, and then the door opened and I enjoyed a fresh sensation.

Instead of the prehistoric being I had expected, a girl stood in the open door looking at me out of a quite remarkably bright pair of eyes--disconcertingly bright in fact. She was dressed in the very smartest and most-up-to-date country kit; short tweed skirt of a pleasing greenish hue, stockings to match, brown brogued shoes, and a blouse that might have come from Paris. Her hair was dressed as fashionably as the rest of her, and her face was of precisely the kind I had least expected to see, rather thin with neatly chiselled features and delicate eye-brows, and an entirely sophisticated expression. There was no doubt she was decidedly pretty, and quite delightfully fresh and trim looking.

But her eyes were her best feature. As I looked straight into them for an instant I could scarcely bring myself to play the part I had arranged.

They seemed as though they would be a little difficult to deceive.

However, thank Heaven I have lived down most of the virtues that embarra.s.s the young. I had lied before, been found out, and lived through it; so I clicked my heels together, bowed, and enquired,

"Is Master Rindall in?"

(My accent wasn't really quite as bad as that, but I should have to invent fresh vowels to ill.u.s.trate what it actually sounded like.)

I had expected some slight symptoms of alarm, but she answered with perfect composure and in a voice that matched the hair and blouse,

"Yes, he is. Will you come in?"

I bowed again and entered the mansion of Mr. Rendall.

VII

AT THE MANSION HOUSE

As I followed the girl through the hall, a man's voice asked,

"Is that O'Brien?"

"No," she said, "it's some one to see you, father."

She showed me into a room and closed the door, and in the course of the next few minutes I came to one or two pretty obvious conclusions. She was clearly Mr. Rendall's daughter, and they were equally clearly in the habit of receiving visits at odd times from Mr. O'Brien; in fact they evidently concluded it was he, or Miss Rendall herself would scarcely have opened the door to me. Also, her reply might be taken as implying that if Mr. O'Brien had been the visitor, it would not have been her father he had come to see. But whether or no this were the true interpretation, I so thoroughly disliked and suspected O'Brien that any suggestion of intimacy was alone enough to make me glad I had started on the defensive.

"Otherwise," said I to myself, "what a charming girl to find in such a place!"