He turned to hurry from the room, and there in the doorway, where she had stood for the last half-minute, in defiance of the most stringent rule of the club, was the pretty subject of his anxiety, her sun-browned cheeks all seamed with bramble scratches, her corona of golden hair tumbling over her shoulders, her golf skirt in tatters.

"Don't look so scared, father," she said. "I'm all right. But that person has. .h.i.t the correct nail about my being very mixed up in it, and you must come away at once, please. I have a lot to tell you."

Ignoring the incoherences of the inquisitive Lazarus, whom they left babbling his willingness to overlook the infraction of the rule against the admission of ladies if they would only have their say out there, father and daughter pa.s.sed out of the club into the quiet and deserted street. Alive to the value of every second, Enid condensed the narrative of her experience in the grotto into a few words, but she missed no vital point, from her imprisonment by "the bootlace man" to her escape twenty minutes ago by the aid of her fellow-prisoner, the French onion-seller. Nor did she omit to repeat the fantastic notions held by Pierre Legros, and the final mystery of Violet Maynard's voice being heard in the garden so late at night.

In his absorption in the momentous tale, Mr. Mallory came to a halt under a street lamp, for they had intuitively turned their steps up the hill homewards. Enid saw the dawn of a great fear in the well-chiselled features she knew so well. But she would not have abstained from slang on the Judgment Day.

"What is it, dad," she said, laying a grimy paw on the sleeve of her father's dinner jacket. "Have I enabled you to spot the winner?" "This is what I make of it on a rough calculation," Mr. Mallory replied. "The Frenchman's suspicions as to Nugent taking Louise Aubin away on a steamer are, of course, all moonshine. It is Violet Maynard who is being decoyed on to the steamer, with Chermside and the murder of that miserable Jew as items in a nice little plot of Nugent's. I have had inquiries made in London lately, and I find that he was thick with that Indian prince whose name was coupled with Violet's in the society rags.

I know Bhagwan Singh for an arrogant and pitiless libertine, Enid. That steamer is bound for India."

The old man and the girl stared at each other, comprehending the tragedy in all its naked horror.

"How long ago was it that you heard Miss Maynard pa.s.sing through the grounds of The Hut on her way to the beach?" Mr. Mallory asked, breaking the strained silence.

"It must have been more than half an hour. I got out through the roof of the grotto almost immediately afterwards; then I went home, and, finding you out, ran down to the club as hard as I could," Enid replied. Then, glancing up at her father's stern, set face, she said abruptly----

"What time does the telephone exchange close?"

"Hours ago--at eight o'clock, and it's now nearly midnight," replied Mr.

Mallory, looking at her as if she had gone daft.

"But if we made it all right with the exchange people we could get the wire, I suppose?"

"If you could persuade or bribe them--certainly," said Mr. Mallory, with a touch of impatience. "But what good would it do? You cannot telephone to any one who can prevent Miss Maynard from going on board a steamer which, by your own showing, must have been reached by her long ago."

Enid linked her arm in her father's and began dragging him to the shop where the exchange was worked. "Come along and see," she exclaimed excitedly. "The worst of you clever people is that you never give any one else credit for a gleam of intelligence."

A couple of minutes later they had rung the bell at the private door of the shop, and were parleying with a sleepy individual at an upper window, who was at last induced to come down and open to them.

CHAPTER XXVII

PURSUIT

Lieutenant Reginald Beauchamp had been dining at the officers' mess of the Royal Naval Barracks at Devonport, and was making his way back to the dockyard, where he expected to find his boat's crew ready to put him aboard what Enid irreverently called his floating sardine-box. The _Snipe_ was anch.o.r.ed in the Hamoaze, not far from the docks for the convenience of victualling.

Reggie, being a youth of convivial but temperate habits had dined wisely, to the extent of feeling at peace with all the world. The fine digestive powers of eight-and-twenty had served to a.s.similate the excellent fare provided by his hosts; he had enjoyed the society of many old comrades, whose pockets he had afterwards lightened at snooker pool; and the few gla.s.ses of wine he had drunk had done him no greater harm than to render him, out here under the stars, mildly sentimental about his little girl at Ottermouth.

"A rattling good sort, Enid, and no flies on her for a young 'un," he summed up his mental recapitulation of his sweetheart's virtues. "But if she tries to boss me afloat as well as ash.o.r.e the little witch will have to look out for squalls, that's all."

As he pa.s.sed through the dock gates his musings were suddenly but respectfully broken into by the police-constable who admitted him.

Reggie was the kind of officer who is known by sight, and was remembered even by those who had but little to do with him.

"You're wanted on the telephone, sir," said the man, leading the way into the gate-house. "Sounds like a lady. Been holding the wire and ringing up every two minutes for the last half-hour."

Needless to say that there is an all-night telephonic service into his Majesty's dockyards, and for the commander of a "destroyer" to be rung up at any hour was nothing out of the common. All sorts of official instructions fly about irrespective of the sun's position in the heavens. Port admirals never go to bed, or if they do they leave some wakeful person to hara.s.s their subordinates with ill-timed change of orders. But a lady on the telephone at 12.30 at night was a novel experience, considering that the common or garden species has not access to telephonic communication in the small hours. It must be the port admiral's wife, Reggie told himself, doing her lord and master's dirty work for want of an available secretary.

"Who is it?" he asked, when he had been shown to the instrument, and had made his presence known to the other end.

The reply, which was also in the form of a question, fairly staggered him, "Is that you, Reggie? It's me, Enid. Yes, you old silly--Enid Mallory at Ottermouth. The most awful thing has happened, and I want your help. You are the only person in the whole world who can help. Are you listening? Are you ready to attend to every word I say?"

"Go ahead!" was Reggie's laconic reply, the flippant gibe that rose to the tip of his tongue checked by the reflection that the Ottermouth exchange was not ordinarily open at that time of night. Allowing for Enid's fondness for exaggerated phrasing, there must be some foundation for the "something awful," or she would not have been able to get through to him on the telephone.

And when at last he took up his own parable and spoke his answer into the transmitter he knew that there had been no exaggeration at all, and that had she been so minded his saucy sweetheart might have used more lurid language without going astray. So impressed was he by what he had heard that he condensed his reply into the crisp sentences----

"What infernal scoundrels! All right, girlie; I'll do it if they break me. Off at once. Good night!"

Hanging up the receiver, and thanking the janitor of the gate, he threaded his way along the deserted quays to the stairs, where his boat was waiting for him.

"By George, but it's a tall order!" he repeated several times as his bluejackets bent to their oars. "Just as I'd settled it, too, that she should never interfere in professional duties. But, damme, it's a good cause to go down in, and perhaps old Maynard will buy me a penny steamboat if I get the sack over the job."

It was, indeed, a "tall order," coming from a minx in her teens to a naval officer enjoying his first independent command, being no less than to employ one of his Majesty's ships on a private enterprise. An enterprise, too, which an ingenious counsel, before a judge of less than average intelligence, might very easily contort and twist into an act of piracy. None knew better than Reggie Beauchamp that for one ship to stop another on the high seas, and do things to her by armed force unbacked by supreme authority was a serious matter indeed.

And yet that was the task which the sunny-haired maiden, with eager red lips to the telephone at the other end of the county, had set him. So graphically had Enid done her bit of descriptive 'phoning that he was under no illusions as to what he had to do. Violet Maynard had been "carried off" in a large steam yacht which had just started from Ottermouth for India. In a few hours' time at most the yacht would be off Plymouth. Enid was aware that the _Snipe_ was leaving port very early every morning for gun practice, and she implored him and threatened him in the same breath to intercept the yacht and rescue Miss Maynard. The few words which Enid had added as to the fate in store for the victim of the outrage had decided Reggie to make the attempt, even at the hazard of his career.

But he was by no means a.s.sured that he would succeed. The whole vile scheme must have been planned with deadly deliberation, and with the resources of vast wealth behind it. The vessel chosen for such a lawless errand would certainly be of high speed, and would avoid the regular steamer tracks. The little _Snipe_, for all her thirty-knot engines, might well be outpaced by the craft bought or chartered by Bhagwan Singh's agent; but before he could put that vital question to the test he would have to find her--no easy matter in the crowded waters of the Channel, when he had no description of her to guide him, and he was entirely in the dark as to the course she would steer.

But in all things pertaining to his profession the young commander was astute beyond his years, and, having once decided to treat the Maharajah's yacht as a hostile ship, he made his calculations as thoroughly as if his promotion depended on stopping her. As soon as he stepped aboard his destroyer he routed out of their bunks the two men on whose co-operation he would have to rely, one being the only other commissioned officer, Second-Lieutenant Ellison, and the other the petty officer who was acting as gunner, a smart young fellow by name Parsons.

Having tersely explained to them the situation, and at greater length demonstrated that his would be the sole responsibility for what he proposed to do, he succeeded in rousing their enthusiasm, and from that moment he was loyally served by both. The three promptly const.i.tuted themselves a council of war in the poky little mess-room, and Ned Parsons was ready with some valuable advice.

"You'll pardon me, sir," he said with a friendly grin, "but if it was my girl instead of yours who was on that yacht I shouldn't fumble for my tactics--not for a single minute."

"It isn't my girl--only a friend of my girl," Reggie corrected him. "But no matter as to that. What would the tactics be, Parsons? You were always a helpful chap."

"Well, you see, sir, I'm thinking, as every man on the ship will be, how to get you out of this without blame," replied the acting gunner. "I don't know the lady that these blackguards are making off with, but if it was my Nettle there'd be only one way to it. I'd lay the _Snipe_ as close as may be to the yacht and trust the girl to do the rest. She'd holler for help, or clout the helmsman over the head, or do something that would justify us in interfering, and in asking questions afterwards. But there! she's a fair cough-drop, though only a draper's a.s.sistant at Weymouth."

Reggie had to smile in the midst of his dilemma. The idea of the stately Violet Maynard "clouting the helmsman," or even "hollering for help,"

was not to be imagined. Still, the notion of getting as close as possible to the yacht and trusting to some stroke of good fortune making it unnecessary to fire on her was a good one. Enid had mentioned on the telephone that by some inexplicable means Leslie Chermside was also on the steamer, and Reggie was as good a judge of men as he was a sailor.

That there was some mystery about the reserved young soldier he was shrewdly convinced, but he did not think that his presence on the fugitive yacht was due to collusion with the enemies of the girl he was popularly believed to be in love with. Chermside, he argued, might be trusted, given the chance, to fill the part which would have fallen to Ned Parsons' "cough drop," if she had been on board.

"Very well," he said. "We will start as pa.s.sive resisters anyway, and trust to luck afterwards. Now as to the course this steamer is likely to steer. She will want to keep clear of vessels bound for Plymouth which might report a craft making down Channel at high speed. For that reason she would leave the Eddystone well to the northward, and she won't travel more than ordinarily fast at first. That being so, if we up anchor at once and choose the sea beyond the Eddystone for our firing practice this morning we ought to sight her before she has slipped away to the westward."

The necessary orders were given, and, the rumour spreading through the ship that some unorthodox adventure was afoot, the crew achieved a record in getting under weigh. In less than twenty minutes from the time of Reggie coming aboard the _Snipe_ was steaming down past Drake's Island on to the broad bosom of Plymouth Sound, and so to the open sea.

There were still three hours to daylight, and Reggie's intention was to utilize them in reaching the spot where his judgment told him he would stand the best chance of intercepting the runaway.

The break of dawn found the destroyer patrolling the sea some ten miles south-west of the great lighthouse, in the comparatively lonely stretch of water that lies between the track of vessels making for Plymouth and the route of those whose destination is further to the eastward. In the immediate vicinity were only a few trawlers finishing the harvest of the night, but away to the north and south faint smears of vapour on the skyline showed the main lines of the Channel traffic.

And then, suddenly, from his place in the miniature conning-tower Reggie saw a great blur of black smoke crossing the southern edge of the vacuum he had selected for his hunting-ground. His binoculars flew to his eyes, and intuitively he knew that, though he had been right in his main conjecture, he had made a slight miscalculation of distance. The cause of the smoke-blur, magnified by his powerful lenses into a graceful steamer running southward at a high rate of speed, was neither a man-of-war or a liner, but a huge yacht--just such a one as would have been selected for a long ocean voyage. And a cry of chagrin escaped him as he perceived that he had not taken the _Snipe_ far enough out to stop her. She had in fact already pa.s.sed him, and was now between him and the mouth of the Channel, thus being nearer to the open door of the trap he would have closed than he was.

"What's her speed?" he asked, pa.s.sing the gla.s.ses to his second-lieutenant. "I put it at about twenty-five."

The other, after a careful scrutiny of the receding vessel, gave it as his opinion that twenty knots was nearer the mark. Anyway, bar fog, the _Snipe_, with her thirty-knot engines, ought to be able to catch her in something under five hours.

"Yes, if she is doing her best now," said Reggie doubtfully. "She may be keeping a bit up her sleeve for an emergency. But we'll shove this old hooker along at her top notch anyhow."