Chapter V: Smugglers?

Iza Marsh had also a disturbed night, but not for the same reason as Hermione. There was only one thing in the world she was afraid of, and that was mice, and apparently to her vivid imagination--where these noxious vermin were concerned--the room was alive with them.

"And not a cat in the place, I'll bet my boots," she muttered to herself, as she scrambled on to the sofa and from that place of vantage began to undress. "If I'd left my fur coat behind and brought a live cat instead, I should have shown more common sense. We'll have to get one in to-morrow." As though, indeed, such things were to be found growing conveniently and in abundance, in the derelict garden. But fear had rendered her far beyond logic or reason.

She got into bed, somehow, and left two candles burning on the table beside her, and, having started a very exciting book on the journey, she began to read from where she had unwillingly left off.

She read for an hour and a half, glanced at her watch, saw that it was long past twelve o'clock, and was in the act of blowing out the candles when a noise in the passage outside made her suddenly desist from blowing and sit up instead.

Someone was walking as silently as possible, on boards that creaked badly at nearly every step, past her door; and as no one save Hermione and herself slept in that part of the house, she reasoned that, unless it was a burglar, it must certainly be Hermione. She had no fear of burglars, only mice, and all fear of mice vanished as soon as the possibility of burglars came into her head.

Considering her bulk, Iza Marsh was an active woman, and a second later her door stood opened and she herself was out in the passage.

It was no thief after all, but Hermione, and Hermione fully dressed and carrying a lighted candle.

"My dear child!" cried Iza, and the girl stopped and turned. "What on earth are you doing?"

"Hush! Don't make a noise," said Hermione in a whisper, and in another moment had joined the elder woman. "I have just seen red and green lights flashed from the top of the tower, and I'm going to find out what it is."

"_You_ are going to find out?" ejaculated the other, aghast. "Are you mad, child? Supposing it's the smuggling people. If they see you they'll murder you! Get back to bed at once and don't be silly. You probably dreamt that you saw red and green lights, I'm sure you're lucky if you saw nothing else," she added, grimly as she recalled her own visions while undressing.

"No I didn't. I saw it as plain as I see you now and I am going. I'm not a bit afraid and won't let anyone see me. And I must try and find out what it is. Please don't try and hinder me, Marshy, I've just got to go."

"Very well," was the grim reply, "knowing you as I do, my dear, I realize the futility of argument. So--I'll just have to come with you."

"Nonsense, you can't--not like that."

"I don't mean to go like this," snapped the other. "It won't take a minute to slip on a coat and skirt over my nightie and get into some thick stockings and shoes. For go alone you shall not."

"But it's half a mile away!" protested Hermione, though now to unheeding ears, for the stout lady was already back in her room, and hastily she followed.

"Just put a candle on the floor, my dear, to frighten away the mice, and then I can get along quickly."

"Mice! Why, they're only in the walls," said the girl laughing in spite of herself.

"Then the sooner the walls are full of cats, too, the better," was the retort. "There, I'm ready, and I can walk as fast as you can when I choose, so you won't waste time through me. But I'll take this with me," she added, as she took a tiny revolver from her dressing-case and slipped it in her pocket. "It won't be the first time I have used it, either--if I have to let it off in self-defence to-night. My poor old man and I went to some queer places at times. Come along, child. I hope the worst we'll get will be double pneumonia."

Silently the two descended the stairs and were soon outside in the cool night air.

"I've got my latchkey," whispered Hermione, as she rucked her arm in that of her friend, and the two struck into an overgrown path that led through the wood and straight towards the tower. "I also brought an electric torch," she added.

"Which would be of more use if the power was turned on now," observed the other, dryly, "for then we shouldn't fracture our skulls against these trees. It's a blessing we are neither of us afflicted with nerves, or subject to hysterics, for I never saw anything quite so grizzly as this wood in the whole of my life. It's also rather a comfort to realize that we are both insane and not afraid to own it."

Never was half a mile so quickly traversed; and towards the end of it the elder woman was more than a little out of breath.

"We are close by now," whispered Hermione, encouragingly. She had switched off the light some time ago for fear it might be seen by whoever was in the tower. "The wood and the path end here and there is nothing but soft grass right up to the tower. Now don't you think it would be best for you to wait here and let me go by myself? I promise to call you if anything is wrong, but I don't think we shall find anyone, for there is no light and not a sound even."

"I'm glad to hear it, my dear," replied Iza Marsh, crisply, "we should have looked pretty if there had been; and you can certainly go on if you like, but I'm coming, too, though I can't go as quickly as you can up this hill. It's a blessing we don't have to go in for tight lacing these days or I should not have been able to come at all."

So Hermione set off to climb to the steep incline, and presently she was beneath the wall of the old round tower, which, now that her eyes were accustomed to the darkness, she could see clearly rising above her. She paused a moment and listened.

There was a sound, after all, faint and rhythmic, but she could not for the moment make out what it was. Quickly she rounded the tower and came out upon the edge of the cliff, which dropped sheer down to the beach below, but in whose rocky sides a winding path was cut, ending in steps up to the door of the tower by which she now found herself standing. And now the sound she had heard was quite distinct and she recognized it for that of the throbbing of an engine. And as she listened and the sound grew more faint, she realized that it came from a motor-boat fast leaving the shore. There were no lights, nothing but the chug-chug of the engine, and her beating heart sounded to her straining ears almost as loud as the throbbing of the engine itself.

Then, presently, as she watched, there came the tiny flicker of light far out, and she understood the meaning of the signals she had seen from her window. Someone in the tower must have signalled a warning to a ship out at sea, represented now by that tiny light. Then followed a summons to send a boat ashore to take off whoever was there. It was true, then, that smuggling was going on there, and someone must have been in the tower all the time, even when the inspector was there watching on the night before. They must have known of his departure and then signalled to be taken off to the ship while there was a chance. It was all clear, that part of it, quite clear. What was not so clear was where these people had been hidden, and what, actually, they were doing.

She wondered, as she stood there, if she dare turn on her light and have a look into the tower room. There was the risk that someone would notice it out at sea and the smugglers return to molest her. But on second thought she knew this fear to be groundless, for, having got safely away, they would not be likely to return and risk capture--possibly by the police who, for all they knew, might have come back in force. So, nerving herself to face and find whatever might be there, she switched on the light, found the iron handle of the old oak door, pushed it open, and flashed her light inside.

The room was empty, save, as she had remembered it, for the table and chair that Dominic had used and the sight of which brought that horrible aching lump to her throat, as did anything that reminded her of him.

She went in and flashed the light round the walls.

There in its place in the wall, that was built into the rocky cliff itself, was the old clock, staring down at her with its many dials, and its rusty and seemingly immovable hands. But it told no time, and could tell her nothing else that went on there in the old tower--though could it but have spoken, what a tale it might have told. So, with a sigh for that day when Dominic Arden had shown it to her and hinted at a secret connected with it, and which now she could never learn, she turned away, gave a hurried glance at the little door which opened on to winding steps leading to the top of the tower, and wondered if she should go up.

As she hesitated she heard footsteps outside and presently Iza Marsh was with her panting and almost speechless.

"No one, of course?" she gasped.

"No, not a soul nor a sign of anything," was the reply. "But now that you are here I'll just go up to the top of the tower and see if there is anything to be seen there."

"Gracious, child! Don't do that!" exclaimed the other. "Supposing there is someone up there!"

"I think they've all gone," said Hermione. "In fact, I'm almost sure, so I'm not so brave as it looks, after all. But they may have left traces, so I feel I ought to go and see. Wait for me here and don't move."

Then she climbed the narrow winding steps and came out upon the tiny ramparts where the sea breeze blew coldly on her face. But here also there was nothing, and since there was neither sign of a match nor drop of oil splashed on the stone floor or battlements, she guessed that the signals she had seen must have been from a large electric lamp.

The chug-chug of the departing boat was audible still, and she hurried down to her friend who was alone in the dark.

"Nothing," she said. "No one there, nor yet a sign of anyone having been there."

"What does it all mean, my dear?" asked the elder woman.

"Hush! Listen. Do you hear that?"

There had been silence out at sea for a moment, but now once more Hermione heard the rhythmic throb of engines, and more powerful engines than she had heard before.

"It's a large motor-boat," she whispered. "And a smaller one came in to fetch whoever it was away, returned to the other waiting one out there, and now they are off. What can it mean but smuggling, Marshy?"

"It's certainly a motor-boat we hear," was the reply, "and if you say you heard one going away from here, it can mean only one thing--smuggling. Well, well, well, and at my time of life to be hunting after a pack of smugglers! And now, what do you propose to do, my dear? I mean, of course, after we have retired to our downies and are once more conducting ourselves like sane and normal females."

"I can't tell you now," was the reply, "I feel too bewildered to think coherently. Of course, something has got to be done, that's certain, but we shall be better able to know where we are if we can get a good night's sleep...."

"At any rate, those smuggling beggars shan't frighten us out of that," agreed Iza Marsh.

But there was little sleep for Hermione that night, even after she found herself once more between the sheets, this time with curtains drawn and in a darkened room.

For there were questions which hammered at her brain and would neither let her think clearly nor yet find oblivion in sleep. And the questions were these: how, in the first place, did those people who had been at the tower that night know of its existence there? And how did they know also of the secret hiding-place which it held? For it was obvious that they must have known and had therefore been told of it by someone who knew of it. And who knew of it? To her knowledge there was only one man who did. Dominic Arden had told her there was a secret attached to the old place, that he alone knew of and had worked for months to discover. He told her this on the day before he left for France, and three months later he had died without returning home. His father and mother were ignorant of what the secret was, he had definitely told her so. And then the place had been sold to a wealthy profiteer who had made no use of it, and had scarcely ever been there.

Betty MacIvor and her husband--who had died a year ago--had been the caretakers. But it was a wild outlandish part of the world and led to nowhere, therefore few, if any, strangers ever came that way. And this tale of smuggling had been lately started. Surely had anyone lived in the tower a light must have been seen at some time before this, but it was only lately that suspicion had arisen.

What, then, was she to think, save that Dominic Arden was still the only man who knew the secret of the tower, and therefore that Dominic was alive and had come there--for what? Smuggling? Law-breaking? The thought revolted her and yet would not leave her. For she knew his reckless, dare-devil spirit that side of his nature which was so curiously unlike the other tender, artistic side that could sit and dream and put his fancies into wonderful words on paper. There had always been two Dominic Ardens--the man who adored and had married her and in whose tender arms she had nestled, and the man who had committed murder, recklessly, in a moment of ungovernable rage because her fair name had been befouled by a notorious libertine, and who was therefore, in his eyes, no longer fit to live.

It was the tender, adoring Dominic Arden who would stay away, breaking his heart sooner than drag her into his shame and misery. But it was the Dominic Arden who had done murder, who would turn reckless and bitterly defiant if anything served to awaken that bitter and reckless temper. Had that thing happened? Was it possible that he had also sought her, as she had--fruitlessly--sought for him?

Rapidly she surveyed the years that had passed. Her terrible illness after the news of his death had been broken to her; her age-long recovery, lengthened by poverty. Then her fruitless search--in case, after all, he might not be dead. After that her search for work; her engagement as companion to Lady Maude Haslop--an angel of goodness if ever there was one; her travels abroad where, in Rome, she had first met Adolf Rodenberg. His constant pursuit of her--Lady Maude's advice which ended, at last, in capitulation, and her final goal--the buying back of Ardenmore, a sufficient motive for her act. And then at long last, release and her journey here.

Was it possible, reviewing all these past events, that Dominic, too, if alive, had been seeking her, and without daring to return to his home, had heard of her marriage, had believed she had forgotten him, and, in utter recklessness and anger, had indeed returned, but this time to flout the law of the land which would hang him if it could--in the only way he knew? It seemed, on the face of it, the only possible solution. And if it were so she could not find it in her heart to reproach him. It would explain so many things, too. For if he had heard that the place had been sold once more, he would return, perhaps, to get possession of those pictures and the books he loved.

Would it explain, too, that scrap of paper? Had he dropped it there knowing who had bought his home, in order to remind her of something she had perhaps forgotten?

No, that was too cruel, he would never do that. He could not know who had bought his home, he might not even have heard whom she had married. In any case there was some other explanation for that paper, and--finally, and after all--was she not quite mad even to suppose that he was alive at all?

That was her last thought before finally she fell asleep in the grey hours of the morning.

But when, at breakfast, her friend asked if she was going to send word to Inspector Mackay about the occurrences of the night, her reply was decided.

"No," she said, emphatically, "I am not going to tell him a word about it. But I am going to wire to Frank Daneham and ask him to come here at once."

"And that my dear," replied the elder woman, "is the most sensible thing I have ever known you do."

After which enigmatical reply Hermione was singularly thoughtful and silent. For did it mean that Iza Marsh, in her heart of hearts, believed what she once more was striving not to believe? If not, for a law-abiding woman like Iza, it was a singular way of helping Inspector Mackay in his investigations.