The School By The Sea Part 12

"She'll be round the next corner in a minute."

"So she will. Then, look here, we must wait till she's gone, and then climb up the cliff, and run along and peep over from the top."

"Whew! It'll be a climb."

"Never mind, we'll manage it. Let us take off our coats and carry them.

I'm so hot."

Deirdre's precautions proved to be most necessary. Gerda turned at the far headland, and took a survey of the bay before she scrambled round the point. She did not see the two heads peeping at her from behind the big rock, and, apparently, was satisfied that she had eluded pursuit. No sooner had she disappeared than Deirdre and Dulcie hurried forth, and, choosing what looked like a sheep track as the best subst.i.tute for a path, began their steep and toilsome climb. Excitement and determination spurred them on, and they persevered in spite of grazed knees and scratched fingers. Over jagged pieces of rock, between brambles that seemed set with more than their due share of thorns, catching on to tufts of gra.s.s or projecting roots for support, up they scrambled somehow, till they gained the level of the warren above.

The course that followed was a neat little bit of scouting. Making a bee-line for the next cove, they then dropped on their hands and knees, and, crawling under cover of the gorse bushes to the verge of the cliff, peeped cautiously over. Gerda was just below them, standing at the edge of the waves and looking out to sea. This creek was a much smaller and narrower one than the others, and the rocks were too precipitous to offer foothold even to the most venturesome climber.

Well concealed beneath a thick bush that overhung the brow of the crag, Deirdre and Dulcie had an excellent view of their schoolmate's movements without fear of betraying their presence. Gerda stood for a moment or two gazing at the water, then she gave a long and peculiar whistle, not unlike the cry of the curlew. It was at once answered by a similar one from a distance, and in the course of a few minutes a small white dinghy shot round the point from the west. It was rowed by a big, fine-looking, fair-haired man, who wore a brown knitted jersey and no hat.

With powerful strokes he pulled himself along, till, reaching the shallows, he shipped his oars, jumped overboard, and ran his little craft upon the beach. He had scarcely stepped out of the water before Gerda was at his side, and the two walked together along the beach, he apparently asking eager questions, to which she gave swift replies. Up and down, up and down for fully ten minutes they paced, too absorbed in their conversation to look up at the cliff above, though had they done so they would scarcely have spied the two spectators who cowered close under the shelter of the overhanging hazel bush, squeezing each others'

hands in the excitement of the scene they were witnessing.

The man appeared to have many directions to give, for he talked long and earnestly, and Gerda nodded her head frequently, as if to show her thorough comprehension of what he was saying. At last she glanced at her watch, and they both hurried back to where they had left the boat. He launched his little dinghy, sprang in, seized the oars, and rowed away as rapidly as he had arrived. Gerda stood on the beach looking after him till he had rounded the point and disappeared from her view, then, crying bitterly, she began to walk back in the direction from which she had come. Deirdre and Dulcie waited until she was safely past the corner and out of sight, then they sprang up and stretched their cramped limbs, for the discomfort of their position had grown wellnigh intolerable.

"Ugh! I don't believe I could have kept still one second longer,"

exploded Dulcie.

"My feet are full of pins and needles," said Deirdre, stamping her hardest, "and my elbow is so sore where I have been leaning on it, I can't tell you how it hurts."

"It can't be worse than mine."

"I say, though, we've seen something queer!"

"Rather!"

"Who can that man be?"

"That's just what I want to know."

"It looks very suspicious."

"Suspicious isn't the name for it. Do you think we ought to tell Miss Birks?"

"No, no, no! That would never do. We must say nothing at all, but go on keeping our eyes open, and see if we can find out anything more. Don't let Gerda get the least hint that we're on her track."

"Suppose Jessie asks us why we left the cove? What are we to say?"

"Why, that we missed Gerda, and as she's our room-mate, we went over the warren to see if we could find her and make a threesome. It was our plain duty."

Dulcie chuckled.

"Oh, our duty, of course! And naturally, of course, we didn't find her on the warren. She wasn't there."

"She'll have to make her own explanations if Jessie asks her where she was."

"Trust her for that!"

"I wonder what excuse she'll give?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MAN APPEARED TO HAVE MANY DIRECTIONS TO GIVE _Page 95_]

As it happened, everything turned out most simply. Deirdre and Dulcie overtook Gerda farther on along the warren, and concluded that she had probably climbed up from the second cove by the same path as themselves.

They discreetly ignored her red eyes and made some casual remarks upon the weather. The three were walking together when the rest of the school came up from salvaging. The head girl looked at them, but seeing that they formed an orthodox "threesome" made no comment, and pa.s.sed on. She probably thought they had been taking a stroll on the warren. Gerda looked almost gratefully at her companions. She had evidently felt afraid lest they should mention the fact that she had not been with them the whole time. She made quite an effort to speak on indifferent subjects as they walked back, and was more conversational than they ever remembered her. At tea-time, however, she relapsed into silence, and during the evening n.o.body could draw a word from her. Dulcie woke once during the night, and heard her crying quietly.

The two chums puzzled their heads continually over the meaning of the strange scene they had witnessed. Many were the theories they advanced and cast aside. One only appeared to Deirdre to be a really possible explanation.

"I'll tell you what I believe," she said, "I think that man in the brown jersey is a German spy. You know, although Gerda sticks to it that she is English, we've always had our doubts. She looks German, and she speaks better German than Mademoiselle, though Mademoiselle's Swiss, and has talked two languages from babyhood. Gerda isn't an English name. She says it was taken from Gerda in 'The Snow Queen', but can one believe her? I'm called 'Deirdre' because my family's Irish, and it's an old Celtic name, but 'Gerda' is distinctly Teutonic. Then she spells Thorwaldson 'son' but in one of her books I found it written Thorwaldsen, which is most suggestive. No, mark my words, she's a German, and she's come here as a spy."

"What has she to spy on?" asked Dulcie, deeply impressed.

"Why, don't you see? A knowledge of this part of the coast would be simply invaluable to the Germans, if they wanted to invade us. All these narrow creeks and coves would be places to bring vessels to and land troops, and the Castle could be taken and held as a fort, and perhaps the Dower House too."

"Is that why she was measuring the pa.s.sage?"

"It might very easily be! She'd give them a plan of the school."

"Oh! Would they come and turn us out and kill us?"

"One never knows what an enemy might do. This bit of sh.o.r.e is not at all well protected; we're a long way from a coastguard station on either side. It's just the sort of spot where a whole army could be quietly landed in a few hours, before anyone had an inkling of what was going on. There's no doubt that we ought to watch Gerda most carefully. It may mean saving our country from a terrible catastrophe."

CHAPTER IX

A Message

Now that they had decided on an explanation of their schoolfellow's mysterious conduct, the chums felt that every circ.u.mstance seemed to point in its favour. They wondered they had never thought of it before.

The importance of keeping a strict watch was realized by both. There was a certain satisfaction in doing so. They felt as if they were rendering their country a service, almost indeed as if they were members of a secret diplomatic corps, and had been told off for special duty. Who knew what England might have to thank them for some day? Possibly at no very far-off date the whole country might be ringing with their names, and the newspapers publishing portraits of the two schoolgirls who had averted a national disaster. Just to be prepared for emergencies, they took snapshots of each other with Dulcie's Brownie camera, and added a series of photographs of the school, all of which they thought would be very suitable to give to the enthusiastic reporter who would demand an ill.u.s.trated interview. They were rather disappointed with the results of the portraits, which in their estimation scarcely did them justice.

"I look more like forty than fourteen!" said Deirdre, regarding ruefully the dark shadows on her cheeks and the lines under her eyes. "It doesn't show my hair properly, either. No one could tell it was curly."

"And I look as fat as a prize pig, with no eyes to speak of, and an imbecile grin."

"I wonder how real photographers manage to touch things up, and make them look so nice?"

In spite of their best efforts it had proved impossible to do their developing and printing without their handiwork being seen by their companions. The photographs of the school were so good that the girls begged them shamelessly to send home. Gerda was particularly importunate, and even offered to buy copies when they were refused as a gift.

"We don't sell our things," said Dulcie bluntly. "You may go on asking till Doomsday, and you won't get a single print, so there!"

To the chums, Gerda's request was full of significance.