Now, as he went to keep the appointment, he was no nearer a solution of his dilemma in spite of anxious deliberation through the long hours of a sleepless night. He was prepared to suffer the pain of giving Violet up, but from her own sweet confession he knew that in vanishing from her life he would inflict upon her a pain equal to his own. He shrank from dealing the cruel blow. And, again, the necessity of guarding her against the plot which he was all too sure was hatching in Nugent's brain was a strong inducement to remain on the spot as long as possible.

Racked with indecision, he loitered on the parade and absent-mindedly watched the bathers till one of the Maynard motor cars swept round the corner by the coastguard station, pulling up opposite the boat which the fisherman in his employ had in readiness. He thought that Violet looked pale and preoccupied as she stepped from the car, but Aunt Sarah was as alert and determined as ever, and, hardly deigning a word of greeting, started across the pebbly beach for the boat. Leslie and Violet followed, the sight of the little old lady's spindle shanks, as she trudged over the stones with skirts held high, for the moment taking them out of themselves.

A little later the boat was running eastward round the headland at the river's mouth before a gently favouring breeze. The wind being steady and the sea smooth, the boatman was left behind, Violet taking the helm and Leslie minding the sheet. Aunt Sarah, settled comfortably forward of the little stick of a mast, spent the first five minutes in a careful scrutiny of the sky, and then, finding that there were no outward evidences that she was to be drowned that morning, suddenly astounded her shipmates with the exclamation--

"You two are in love with each other, and you can't deny it!"

There succeeded ten seconds of intense silence, and then Violet, who was familiar with her aged relative's little ways, laughed at the consternation on her lover's bronzed face.

"It is no use, Leslie," she said. "Aunt Sarah is a witch, and knows the secrets of our inmost hearts. We may as well confess."

"I don't suppose it is a crime," Chermside murmured weakly, in his confusion taking an unnecessary pull at the sheet and sending a spray over Aunt Sarah's mantle.

"No, young man, it's not a crime," she snapped when she had recovered her balance and her equanimity. "I'm a bit of a character reader, and I don't think you're capable of crime--havn't got the backbone for it. But I know that you are weak, and that you're in some sort of a hobble that you ought to be pulled out of. Now just you be straight with me. If you had really been the man of the means you've been credited with in this gossipy little hole you'd have gone to my nephew Montague Maynard and asked him for his daughter three days ago, eh?"

"I admit that. There have been misunderstandings for which I am partly but not entirely responsible," said Leslie, marvelling at the almost uncanny insight with which the old lady had read between the lines, and wondering how much of his secret she had guessed.

She proceeded to cross-examine him after the fashion of a barrister handling a hostile witness. "Leaving aside for the moment the question of financial position," she continued, "is there any other cause or impediment why you should not be joined in holy matrimony to my great-niece? As a man of honour you will answer me truly and without reserve."

Leslie stole a glance at Violet and saw that she had become suddenly grave. Nurtured in the midst of luxury, she hardly knew the value of money, and had the most profound contempt for it; but she cherished the highest ideals of what a man's moral worth should be, and she was clearly awaiting his answer with eager interest.

"Yes," said Leslie, scarcely hesitating, "there is the strongest possible reason why Violet should not marry me. I have already urged it upon her--that I am utterly unworthy."

"He is not so black as he would paint himself, Aunt Sarah," the girl pleaded. "Some quixotic idea----"

"Mind your steering or we shall all be in the water," the old lady cut her short. "Now, Mr. Chermside, be explicit, please. Why are you unworthy to marry my niece?"

"Because," replied Leslie, who had expected the question. "I consented, under stress of peculiar circ.u.mstances, to aid and abet a base conspiracy for doing a great injury to an innocent person. It is true that I repented and left my tempters in the lurch, but I cannot hold myself white-washed on that account."

Miss Sarah Dymmock, not having a barrister's gown to hitch up, adjusted her mushroom hat before returning to the charge. "Has this piece of villainy you set out to do since been accomplished by the people who tried to mislead you?" she demanded.

"It has not," rejoined Leslie firmly. "And please G.o.d it never will.

They have not, I believe, abandoned it; but I am devoting such feeble powers as I possess to thwarting them. I claim no leniency on that score. I tell you, Miss Dymmock, as I have told Violet, that the thing was a horrible thing, and that no decent woman ought to be joined to a man who, even in a mad lapse born of unspeakable misery, could have become a consenting party to it for a single minute."

Aunt Sarah nodded sagely once or twice, and let her keen old eyes rest for a while on the red cliffs past which the boat was gliding.

"Reverting to the question of means," she resumed at length, "if you went to that greedy nephew of mine--not a bad sort, but a money-grubber--you would have to confess that you had no steam yacht to your name, or any of the other tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs with which the Ottermouth wiseacres have credited you?"

"I should have to confess that I haven't a blessed stiver," said Leslie grimly.

Aunt Sarah's stern features relaxed, and her smile could be very charming when she chose. "In that case, Mr. Chermside," she said, "you would be adding the sin of falsehood to your other real or imaginary iniquities. I yesterday arranged the preliminaries of a transfer to you of securities worth, roughly speaking, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. I had an inkling that you were an attractive but quite harmless fraud, and as the present interview has confirmed that belief I shall wire my brokers to complete the transfer. I was aware that my dear girl's happiness was bound up in your ability to satisfy her father of your good faith, and I decided to place you in a position to do so.

There is no need to thank me. It is only a little juggle with money for which an old woman has no use. In any case it would have been Violet's when I die."

"And you suggested a sail in order to tell us this?" Violet gasped.

"Yes; you see it is really a sort of plot in which we three must remain the only conspirators," the old lady beamed at the fair young face flushed with joy. "A boat seemed the safest place for such business."

"You dear!" was all Violet could answer as she strove to keep back the happy tears.

As for Leslie, his first impulse was to reject the good fortune thrust upon him. The "coals of fire" heaped upon his head burned his brain and filled him with a greater shame; for he could not but think that if the real enormity of his offence were known this generosity would never have been shown him. His proper course, he felt, was to make still fuller confession, but that would be to stab his darling to the heart in the hour of triumphant love. All he could do then was to begin to stammer inconsequent but grateful protests which Aunt Sarah stopped at once with masterful insistence.

"Nonsense!" she snapped at him. "Just look to the sail and do what's necessary to put us ash.o.r.e again as quick as may be. I've got but a short patience with folk who don't know the b.u.t.ter side of a slice of bread."

So the boat was turned and went gaily dancing over the summer sea, under the red cliffs, and round the headland, to the beach. After the discussion on the outward run it was but natural that words should be few, and Leslie was glad of it for more reasons than one. They had the wind against them now, and the sailing of the boat claimed all his attention. A succession of short tacks was necessary before he landed his precious freight.

The motor car was waiting for the ladies, and when he had bestowed them in it, and given a promise to come out to the Manor House later in the day, Leslie turned in the opposite direction to go to his rooms for lunch. As he neared the end of the parade, he saw Travers Nugent watching him from one of the windows of the club, and he averted his gaze so as not to catch the eye of his enemy. But the elementary tactics were of no avail. Nugent came out of the front door before he could pa.s.s.

"Come inside; there is need for a consultation," said the Maharajah's agent.

Leslie angrily shook off the detaining hand which had been laid upon his arm. "I don't wish to have anything to do with you. I'll be hanged if I come in," he said.

Nugent laughed--the little musical laugh that women loved and men loathed. "My dear fellow, you have used an apt term in the reverse sense," he cooed. "You will certainly be hanged if you don't come in and listen to what I have to say."

For the second time that morning Leslie Chermside paled beneath his Eastern tan, and he meekly followed Nugent into the club.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CREAKING STAIR

Throughout the bewildering excitement in the boat consequent on Miss Dymmock's benevolence, Leslie had been conscious of a weak spot in his armour, which, if it had been detected by his antagonist, might prove his undoing. Nugent's ominous rejoinder suggested that the weak spot had been found, and that he was being led into the comfortable seclusion of the Ottermouth Club for the purpose of having it pierced.

"We had better go into the card-room," said Nugent. "There will be less chance of interruption there, though at present there is no one in the club. Every one has gone home to lunch."

The card-room was on the first floor, with a window overlooking the sea.

Leslie remained standing just inside the door, but Nugent sat down at one of the card tables, his fingers drawing fantastic patterns on the green cloth as he seemed to consider how best to open the subject.

Suddenly he raised his eyes, and Leslie saw with surprise that there was no hostility in them--only a look of deep concern.

"You are in a tight place, my friend," he said. "Are you aware that you are under the gravest suspicion of having murdered Levi Levison?"

"I am not surprised to hear it, since you knew of my engagement to meet Levison on the marsh that night," replied Leslie. "I had more than half expected that you would give evidence to that effect at the inquest."

Nugent brushed the insinuation aside with a contemptuous gesture. "My dear Chermside, if you are going to approach the matter in that spirit, we shall come to grief," he said. "Can't you see that our interests are absolutely identical--that if you fall I fall too. Not quite so far perhaps, but a good deal further than I care to contemplate. I don't pretend to any affection for you, after the way you have played the mischief with everything, but your arrest on this charge would mean my social ruin--if nothing worse. The motive for your crime, and all that led up to it, would be sure to come to light--even if you did not plead guilty and put forward the motive as an extenuating circ.u.mstance."

This was selfish villainy, naked and unashamed, but it sounded like honest villainy. Leslie had realized from the first that if his appointment with Levison transpired, the case against him would be black indeed, but he had expected that Nugent would rejoice in that fact. It had not occurred to him that his former accomplice would be dragged down in his fall.

"It will be time enough to talk of motive when I admit that I killed Levison," he said, in a burst of indignation.

"You didn't kill him? There are no witnesses. Straight now, as from man to man, standing on the brink of the same precipice?"

"I'll swear I didn't."

The shrug and the raised eyebrows with which Nugent received the denial made Leslie itch to hit him, but his anger pa.s.sed with the prompt semi-withdrawal of the implied accusation.

"If you didn't someone else did. Let me think a moment," said Nugent, and again he fell to tracing invisible patterns on the card table.

Leslie leaned against the wall by the door, and stared vacantly through the window at faint specks on the horizon of the sunlit sea--Brixham trawlers on the fishing-grounds twenty miles away. The dapper man in the immaculate grey suit, solving unseen problems on the green cloth, had disarmed him. Nugent's belief in his guilt, he told himself, had been genuine, but Nugent had been shaken in that belief. He was striving for some other explanation of the Jew's death. At last he raised his eyes.