第53章

Philippa, even for some moments after the departure of Captain Griffiths and his myrmidons, remained in a sort of nerveless trance.

The crisis, with its bewildering denouement, had affected her curiously. Lessingham rose presently to his feet.

"I wonder," he asked, "if I could have a whisky and soda?"

She stamped her foot at him in a little fit of hysterical passion.

"You're not natural!" she cried. "Whisky and soda!"

"Well, I don't know," he protested mildly, helping himself from the table in the background. "I rather thought I was being particularly British. When in doubt, take a drink. That is Richard all the world over, you know."

She broke into a little mirthless laugh.

"I shall begin to think that you are a poseur!" she exclaimed.

He crossed the room towards her.

"Perhaps I am, dear," he confessed. "I want you just to sit up and lose that unnatural look. I am not really full of cheap bravado, but I am a philosopher. Something has happened to postpone - the end.

Good luck to it, I say!"

He raised his tumbler to his lips and set it down empty. Philippa rose to her feet and walked restlessly to the window and back.

"I'll try and be reasonable too," she promised, resuming her seat.

"I was right, you see. Captain Griffiths has discovered everything.

Can you tell me what possible reason any one in London could have had for interference?"

"I seem to have got a friend up there without knowing it, don't I?" he observed.

"This is aging me terribly," Philippa declared, throwing herself back into her seat. "All my life I have hated mysteries. Here I am face to face with two absolutely insoluble ones. Captain Griffiths has assured me that there is here in Dreymarsh something of sufficient importance to account for the presence of a foreign spy. You have confirmed it. I have been torturing my brain about that for the last twenty-four hours. Now there happens something more inexplicable still. You are arrested, and you are not arrested. Your identity is known, and Captain Griffiths is forbidden to do his duty."

"It seems puzzling, does it not?" Lessingham agreed. "I shouldn't worry about the first, but this last little episode takes some explaining."

"If anything further happens this evening, I think I shall go mad,"

Philippa sighed.

"And something is going to happen," Lessingham declared, rising to his feet. "Did you hear that?"

Above even the roar of the wind they heard the brazen report of a gun from almost underneath the window. The room was suddenly lightened by a single vivid flash.

"A mortar!" Lessingham exclaimed. "And that was a rocket, unless I'm mistaken."

"The signal for the lifeboat!" Philippa announced. "I wonder if we can see anything."

She hastened towards the window, but paused at the abrupt opening of the door. Nora burst in, followed more sedately by Helen.

"Mummy, there's a wreck!" the former cried in excitement. "I heard something an hour ago, and I got up, and I've been sitting by the window, watching. I saw the lifeboat go out, and they're signalling now for the other one."

"It's quite true, Philippa," Helen declared. "We're going to try and fight our way down to the beach."

"I'll go, too, " Lessingham decided. "Perhaps I may be of use."

"We'll all go," Philippa agreed. "Wait while I get my things on.

What is it, Mills?" she added, as the door opened and the latter presented himself.

"There is a trawler on the rocks just off the breakwater, your ladyship," he announced. "They have just sent up from the beach to know if we can take some of the crew in. They are landing them as well as they can on the line."

"Of course we can," was the prompt reply. "Tell them to send as many as they want to. We will find room for them, somehow. I'll go upstairs and see about the fires. You'll all come back?" she added, turning around.

"We will all come back," Lessingham promised.

They fought their way down to the beach. At first the storm completely deafened all sound. The lanterns, waved here and there by unseen hands, seemed part of some ghostly tableau, of which the only background was the raging of the storm. Then suddenly, with a startling hiss, another rocket clove its way through the darkness.

They had an instantaneous but brilliant view of all that was happening, - saw the trawler lying on its side, apparently only a few yards from the shore, saw the line stretched to the beach, on which, even at that moment, a man was being drawn ashore, licked by the spray, his strained face and wind-tossed hair clearly visible.

Then all was darkness again more complete than ever. They struggled down on to the shingle, where the little cluster of fishermen were hard at work with the line. Almost the first person they ran across was Jimmy Dumble. He was standing on the edge of the breakwater with a great lantern in his hand, superintending the line, and, as they drew near, Lessingham, who was a little in advance, could hear his voice above the storm. He was shouting towards the wreck, his hand to his mouth.

"Send the master over next, you lubbers, or we'll cut the line. Do you hear?"

There was no reply or, if there was, it was drowned in the wind.

Lessingham gripped the fisherman by the arm.

"Whom do you mean by 'master'?" he demanded. Dumble scarcely glanced at his interlocutor.

"Why, Sir Henry Cranston, to be sure," was the agitated answer.

"These lubbers of sea hands are all coming off first, and the line won't stand for more than another one or two," he added, dropping his voice.

Then the thrill of those few minutes' excitement unrolled itself into a great drama before Lessingham's eyes. Sir Henry was on that ship as near as any man might wish to be to death.

"'Ere's the next," Jimmy muttered, as they turned the windlass vigorously. "Gosh, 'e's a heavy one, too!"