The Red Redmaynes Part 18

"Where does this place lead?"

"There are many shallow steps, then a long slope and, after that, you have to bend your head and scramble out through a hole. You are then on a plateau halfway up the cliff. It is a broad ledge and from it one only track, rough and steep, rises up zigzag, like our hairpin roads in Italy, till you reach the summit of the cliff. But it is rough and broken--impossible by night."

"We must go that way all the same and make it possible. Is the boat fast?"

"If you will help me, we will pull her up into the cave. Then we can hunt and she will not take harm."

Lamenting the loss of time, Mark lent a hand and the launch was soon above high-water mark. Then, with Brendon in front and the light from his torch upon the steps, they began their ascent. Save for a drop of blood here and there, the stone stairway gave no clue; but when they had reached its summit and the subterranean path turned to the left, still in a tunnel of the solid rock, they marked on the ascending slope, slippery with percolations from the roof, a straight smear dragged over the muddy surface. Pursued for fifty yards the tunnel began to narrow and the roof descend, but still the smooth track of a heavy object being dragged upward was evident.

Save for an occasional word the men proceeded in silence, but Brendon sometimes heard the Italian speaking to himself. "Padron mio, padron mio--death!" he repeated.

For the last ten yards of the tunnel Mark had to go on his knees and crawl. Then he emerged and found himself in the open air on a shelf hung high between the earth and the sea. All was dark and very silent. He held up his hand to Doria and the two listened intently for some minutes, but only the subdued murmur of the water far beneath reached their ears. No sound broke the stillness round about. Under their feet stretched a ledge of fine turf, browned by winter and covered with the evidence of sea birds. Giuseppe picked up a few grey feathers as the electric torch swept the surface of the plateau.

"For the master's pipe," he explained. "He uses feathers to cleanse it."

Overhead the cliff line stretched black as ink against the sky, making the midnight clouds above it light by contrast. Here Brendon saw evidences that the dead weight dragged from beneath had remained still a while, and he observed an impress near it on the herbage, where doubtless a living man had rested after his exertions. There were clots of blood on the gra.s.s near this spot, but no other sign visible in the present condition of darkness. Remembering the death of Michael Pendean, Brendon was already reconstructing, in theory, the events immediately under his notice. That Bendigo Redmayne's brother had slain the elder now appeared too probable; and he had apparently proceeded as before and removed his victim--in a sack--for the line on the cave floor below and along the path which Mark had just traversed indicated some heavy, rounded object that did not change its shape as it was dragged along.

For two minutes he stood, then spoke.

"Where is the path from here?" he asked, and Doria, proceeding cautiously to the east of the plateau, presently indicated a rocky footpath that ascended from it. The track was rough and evidently seldom used, for brambles and dead vegetation lay across it. They proceeded by this way and Brendon directed the other to disturb nothing, so that careful examination might, if necessary, be made when daylight returned. The path elbowed to right and left sharply, ever ascending, and it was not too steep to prevent steady progress.

It ended at last on the summit of the cliffs, where, after a barren s.p.a.ce of fifty yards, a low wall ran separating ploughed lands from the precipices. But no sight of any human being awaited them and, on the close sward of the summit, footsteps would have left no record.

"What d'you make of it?" asked Doria. "Your mind is swift and skilled in these deviltries. Is it true that my master and my friend is a dead man--the old sea wolf dead?"

"Yes," said Brendon drearily. "In my mind there is no doubt of it.

It is also true that a thing has happened which I should have prevented and a life been lost which might have been saved. From the first I have taken too much on trust in this matter and believed all that I was told too readily."

"That is no blame to you," answered the other. "Why should you have doubted what you heard?"

"Because it was my business to credit nothing and trust n.o.body. I am not blaming anybody, or suggesting any attempts to deceive me; but I have accepted what sounded obvious and rational, as we all did, instead of examining things for myself. You may not understand this, Doria; but other people will be only too quick to do so."

"You did the best you could; so did everybody. Who was to know that he came here to kill his brother?"

"A madman may do anything. My fault has been to a.s.sume his return to sanity."

"What more natural? How could you a.s.sume otherwise? Only an insane man would have killed Madonna's husband, and only a very sane one would have escaped the sleuths afterward. So you argued that he was mad and then sane again; yet now he has gone mad once more."

Brendon desired to be at Dartmouth as swiftly as possible, so that a search might be inst.i.tuted at dawn. Doria considered whether he might make best speed by road or water, and decided that he could bring Mark more quickly to the seaport in the launch than along the highway.

"We must, however, return by the tunnel," he said, "for there is no other route by which we can get back to the boat."

Brendon agreed and they descended the zigzag path and then, from the plateau, reentered the tunnel and presently reached the steps again and the cavern beneath. Extinguishing the lamp, which still burned steadily, they were soon afloat, and under a tremor of dawn the little vessel cut her way at her best speed, flinging a sheaf of foam from her bows and leaving a white wake on the still and leaden-coloured sea.

They saw a figure beneath the flagstaff at "Crow's Nest" and both recognized Jenny Pendean. She made no signal, but the sight of her evidently disturbed Giuseppe's mind. He stopped the boat and appealed to Brendon.

"My heart is in my mouth," he said. "A sudden fear has overtaken me.

This madman--it may be that he has turned against his own and those who are his best friends. There is a thing lunatics will do. It follows--while we are away--do you not see? There are only two women at 'Crow's Nest' now, and he might come and make a clean sweep--is it not so?"

"You think that?"

"With G.o.d and the devil all things are possible," answered the other, his eyes lifted to the house on the cliffs.

"You're right. Run in. There may be a danger for her."

Doria was triumphant.

"Even you do not think of everything," he cried; but the other did not answer. On him lay a load of responsibility and a heavy sense of failure.

He directed Doria how to act, however.

"Tell Mrs. Pendean and the servant to lock up the house and then join us," he said. "They had better come to Dartmouth, and they can return presently with you, after you have landed me. Beg that they do not delay a moment."

Doria obeyed and in ten minutes returned with Jenny, dazed and pale, and the frightened domestic still fumbling at her bodice b.u.t.tons.

They were both in great fear and full of words; but Brendon begged them to be quiet. He warned Jenny that the worst was to be dreaded for her uncle, and their awful news reduced her to silence quickly enough. Thus they sped on their way, leaped between the harbour heads before sunrise, and soon came ash.o.r.e at the landing stage.

Doria's work was now done and, having directed him to take the women back, Mark bade them all keep the house until more news should reach them.

"Telephone to the police station if you have anything to report," he directed, "but should the man appear and attempt to enter, prevent him from doing so."

He gave them further directions and then they parted.

In half an hour the news had spread, search parties set out by land, and Brendon himself, with Inspector Damarell and two constables, put to sea in the harbour-master's swift steam launch. Some food had been brought aboard and Mark made a meal as he described the incidents of the night. It was eight o'clock before they reached the cavern and began a methodical search over the ground and upward.

Mark had arranged with Doria that a signal should fly from "Crow's Nest" for him if there were any news; but nothing had happened, for the flagpole was bare.

Then began a laborious hunt in the cave and the tunnel by which it was approached from above. Morning light filled the hollow place and the officers working methodically left no cranny unexplored; but their combined efforts by daylight revealed little more than Brendon had already found for himself in the darkness. There was nothing but the trampled sand, the partially eaten store of food, the lamp on its stone bracket, the black blot of blood, and the shallow trench left by some rounded object that had been dragged to the steps. The tide was down but the little beach only displayed the usual debris at high-water mark. Inspector Damarell returned to the steam launch and bade the skipper go back to Dartmouth.

"We'll ride home by motor from above," he said. "Tell them to bring my runabout car to the top of Hawk Beak Hill; and let 'em fetch along some sandwiches and half a dozen bottles of Ba.s.s; I'm thinking we shall want 'em by noon."

The launch was off and once more the chimney with the steps, the inclined plane beyond, and the plateau halfway up the cliff were all examined with patient scrutiny. The police went at a foot's pace, yet nothing appeared save an occasional drop of blood upon a stone and the trail of the object dragged upward on the previous night.

"He must be a Samson," said Mark. "Consider if you or I had to pull a solid, eleven-stone man in a sack up here."

"I could not," admitted the inspector. "But it was done. We're going to have a repet.i.tion of that job at Berry Head in the summer. We shall hunt the cliffs, like a pack of hounds, and presently find some place hanging over deep water. Then we shall hit on a sack in a rabbit hole or badger's earth--and that will be all there is to it."

On the plateau they rested, while Brendon found some clear marks of feet--a heavy, iron-shod boot, which he recognized. They occurred in a soft place just outside the mouth of the tunnel and he recollected the toe plates and the triangle-headed nails that held them.

He called Inspector Damarell.

"When this is compared with the plaster casts taken at Foggintor, you'll find it's the same boot," he said. "That's no surprise, of course, but it proves probably that we are dealing with the same man."

"And he'll use the same means to vanish into thin air that he did six months ago," prophesied the other. "You mark me, Brendon, this is not one man's work. There's a lot hid under this job that hasn't seen light--just as there was under the last. It's very easy to say, because we can't find a motive, the man's mad. That's the line of least resistance; but it don't follow by a long sight that it's the right line. Here's a chap has lured his brother to death, and very cunning he's been about it. He's pitched a yarn and then, after a promise to turn up, he changes his mind and makes a new plan altogether by which old Ben Redmayne is put entirely in his power.

Then--"

"But who was to know he meant mischief? We had facts to deal with.

Mrs. Pendean herself had seen and spoken to him; so had Doria. In the case of the lady, at any rate, all she said was above suspicion.

She hid nothing; she behaved like a Christian woman, wept at the spectacle of his awful misery, and brought his message to his brother. Then sudden, panic fear overtook the man at the last moment--natural enough--and he begged Bendigo Redmayne to see him in his hiding-place alone. It rang true as a bell. For myself I had not a shadow of suspicion."

"That's all right," admitted Damarell, "and I'm not one who pretends to be wise after the event. But, as I told you before, I thought it a mistake to suspend our search and take the matter out of professional hands just when we were safe to nab him. You were in command and we obeyed, but whatever the murderer had to say would as well have been said to us as to his brother--and better; because in any case he might have tempted a brother to break the law for him.

Now there's more innocent blood been shed and a d.a.m.ned, dangerous criminal--mad or sane--is still at large. Most likely more than one.

However, it is not much use jawing, I grant you. What we've got to do is to catch them--if we can."