So, with disrespect, do the boys to whom the nation entrusts its mosquito fleet speak of the little spitfires they love--a disrespect which they would swiftly and haughtily resent if it was evinced by any but themselves.

A word to the man at the wheel caused the _Snipe's_ ugly snout to swing round for her quarry, and then the engine-room gong clanged its sharp command, "Full speed ahead." Reggie, with his eyes glued to his gla.s.ses, watched like a cat for any increase of speed or suggestive manoeuvre on the part of the chase, but she held on her way as if supremely indifferent to, or unconscious of, the fact that she was being pursued by the destroyer.

"She's slowing down a trifle, isn't she, sir?" Parsons called up to his chief after the pursuit had lasted twenty minutes or so. "That doesn't look as if she had a guilty conscience."

Reggie was of the same opinion on both points. The yacht certainly was not travelling so fast as when first sighted, and her slackened speed suggested that her commander had no reason for showing his heels to a navy ship--was, perhaps, moved by curiosity to learn why the spiteful little man-of-war was tearing after him. Whatever the cause might be the result was that in less than an hour the _Snipe's_ lean black hull was within a mile of the yacht, and that objects on the deck of the latter were plainly distinguishable by the aid of Reggie's binoculars.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "there's a woman on board right enough--about Miss Maynard's height, too. And, good G.o.d! she's waving to us like blue murder. But no, her face gets clearer every second--no, it isn't the lady we're after."

"We shall soon know what's wrong," said the second-lieutenant. "The yacht has pretty nearly stopped. She's only keeping enough way on her for steerage."

The acting-gunner, Ned Parsons, who had also been examining the mysterious vessel through his own pair of cheap inferior gla.s.ses, here uttered an exclamation of combined incredulity and dismay.

"If you'd be so good, sir, as to let me have a squint through those binos of yours," he said, "I might be able to tell you something."

Reggie handed over his own splendid pair, the last word in telescopic art and a present from his mother. They had hardly bridged Parson's sun-browned nose when they were lowered again, and the gunner turned a face full of whimsical concern upon his commander.

"Asking your pardon, sir, but it's a funny thing," he said, "but that gal behaving like a semaph.o.r.e yonder is my young lady--the one I was telling you of, seeing as there have been others--Miss Nettle Jimpson, of Grigg and Winter's drapery warehouse, Weymouth. How the Holy Moses you've gone and got her mixed up with the lady the Rajah has his eye on licks me, but what licks me most is how Nettle came to be aboard that steam yacht. She ought to be in her beauty sleep on Grigg and Winter's top floor, preparing for a busy day behind the underlinen counter."

"You're sure?" said Reggie, receiving the binoculars back.

"Sure as eggs," responded Parsons. "I could see that she was holding language towards the little monkey on the bridge, him being the captain, I reckon. That's Nettle Jimpson all over."

"Well," said Reggie, after a moment's reflection, "if your girl hails from Weymouth it's fair proof that that is the steamer we want, for Weymouth was her last port of call."

"Didn't I tell you, sir, that she was a cough-drop," rejoined Parsons excitedly. "You can stake your shirt she's bested that dirty little captain somehow. That's why he's stopping for us."

"But he isn't stopping for us," chimed in the second-lieutenant, and his dictum was emphasized by his slight lisp. "See, he's started at full-speed, and that means that he has scored the trick, for his rascally packet is fitted with turbine engines. He's been fooling us, sir."

Reggie Beauchamp was generally a clean-mouthed man, but the tea-party old ladies of Ottermouth would have banned him for evermore could they have heard the sultry oath that flew from his lips as he realized the truth of the a.s.sertion. Simon Brant, near enough now for his loathsome personality to be appreciated, was making insulting gestures at them with the hand which he had just withdrawn from the engine-room telegraph. And like a hound slipped from the leash the _Cobra_ leapt forward and went racing to the south-west at forty knots--a speed which would quickly reduce her to a speck upon the horizon.

And after that--chaos!

CHAPTER XXVIII

TRAVERS NUGENT PAYS

After letting himself in through the door from the moor into the grounds of The Hut, Travers Nugent paused irresolute. Should he punish that impudent hussy Enid Mallory by keeping her in the grotto all night and have her accidentally "found" in the morning, or should he go and release her now?

In either case he meant to throw the blame on Tuke, whom he could describe as an irresponsible lunatic--or anything else that came into his head at the time. He need not be too nice about his excuses, for, after all, the girl, as a trespa.s.ser on his private property, was the real offender. It would be interesting to know what account she would give of herself.

On the whole he decided that it would be wiser to go and let her out at once, and so have done with an incident which he regretted as a blunder on the part of his too zealous follower. Mr. Vernon Mallory was a dangerous man to annoy, and, conscious as he was of his veiled antagonism, Nugent did not want to give him cause for open quarrel. Till the _Cobra_ had reached her destination, and all traces of her had been obliterated, Bhagwan Singh's agent knew that he would have to walk warily indeed.

So he struck into the shrubbery, and on coming to the grotto unlocked the door with the key which Tuke had left in the keyhole. With a curious qualm that was not exactly alarm he saw that his kind offices would not be needed, and that the lies he had framed might remain unspoken. For the electric torch which he flashed on the gloomy interior showed it to be untenanted, while the gaping hole in the roof told of the way of escape.

Nugent stared at the improvised ladder of fertilizer kegs, and at the aperture overhead, with a thoughtful frown.

"That is hardly girl's work, yet she cannot have had help," he muttered.

"If she had contrived to attract attention, no one would have been at the pains of breaking open the roof for her when the key was on the outside of the door all the time. Certainly she had hours to do it in; and she's more than half a boy."

He turned away, and, crossing the dewy lawn, entered his library by the unfastened French window. The shaded lamp had been lit, shedding a pleasant glow over the cosy bachelor room, and he gave a little sigh of content. He was fain to admit that he was tired with the day's exertions, and glad to be home again. He rang the bell, and the soft-footed Sinnett appeared.

"Mix me some whisky and soda water and give me a cigar," he said. "You have nothing out of the common to report?"

"Nothing that you do not know already, sir," was the reply. "Tuke will have informed you about Miss Mallory and the stone grotto."

"That is why I asked," rejoined Nugent. "The young lady has gone, and part of the roof of the grotto has been removed. You have heard or seen nothing that would account for it?"

"Nothing at all, sir. I have not been in the garden, but no sound reached me in the house. And I have been listening--in case she called out."

Nugent nodded, knowing the man's ways. "And that mad French seller of onions, he has not been here to-day?" he continued.

"No, sir; I haven't seen him for a day or two."

"Thank you, Sinnett. Then that will be all now I think. Don't go to bed just yet. I may want you to go out and post a letter for the early collection."

The butler having retired, Nugent lay back in his luxurious lounge-chair and sipped his drink and watched the blue wreaths from his Havana coiling upwards. He was filled with a delightful sense of achievement.

The thing which had seemed so easy at first, and had then threatened dire failure through Chermside's defection, had been carried out in spite of the temporary obstacle. That band of electric light stealing away across the dark sea had been the signal that he had won the game, the stakes of which were the Maharajah's twenty thousand pounds. Not bad pay for six months' work, of which his p.a.w.ns had taken the most arduous share.

He did not antic.i.p.ate any trouble from these p.a.w.ns, except perhaps, from one. Leslie Chermside was safe on board the _Cobra_, and Bhagwan Singh might be trusted to see to it that he was never heard of again. That vain puppet, Louise Aubin, could do him no harm if she would, since she would believe, as all the world would believe, that Violet had voluntarily fled with her lover. And if the flighty French maid was disappointed in her preposterous aims with regard to himself--well, a little palm-grease would effectually staunch the bleeding of her fickle heart. Simon Brant, Bully Cheeseman, Tuke, and Sinnett were his accomplices rather than his tools, and they might be trusted to keep silence for their own sakes; if not, he knew enough to hang each or all of them. The crew of the _Cobra_ were to be paid off in India, whence they would doubtless be scattered to the four winds of heaven; and, besides the captain and the mate, not one of them was aware of his connection with the affair.

The remaining exception, which had cost him more uneasiness than all the rest combined, was Pierre Legros. The onion-seller's insane and vindictive jealousy of himself in respect of Louise might grow into a factor to be reckoned with, entailing unpleasant, if not actually perilous, consequences. Well, it would be surprising if he, Travers Nugent, the finished schemer, were not equal to dealing with a half-demented foreign sailor, whose position was, to put it mildly, somewhat insecure.

"A hint to the fair Louise to revert to her original suspicion would satisfactorily settle Monsieur Pierre Legros, without my having to make an open move myself," he mused aloud, as he summed up the situation.

Sitting there lazily in the lamp-glow, he felt like a general reviewing a victorious battlefield--"cleaning up the mess," as he put it to himself, with the advantage that there was no visible mess to clean up.

He had scored another of those easy wins in the great game of life--the game he had played so long and so successfully, with men and women as counters and gold as the final stake.

But as he murmured that last self-gratulation there came a sudden sound, very faint, but near at hand, to break his train of thought. He had left the long window open so that he could watch the fire-flies on the dew-frosted gra.s.s of the lawn; but he was not sure if the sound came from out there in the garden or from inside the room. It was an ill-defined sound, that might have been the intake of a heavy breath or the stirring of leaves gently moved by the sluggish air. The chair he sat in backed on to a beautifully-carved sandalwood screen which covered the angle at one side of the hearth, and he was smiling, half contemptuously, at an impulse to rise and look behind the screen, when it was checked and driven clean out of his head by quite a different sort of noise.

From the back premises, prolonged and imperative, there reached him the metallic clamour of the electric bell--the bell at the front door. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was half-past twelve. Who could be calling upon him at that time of night?

A moment later Sinnett knocked and entered, and the man's usually imperturbable face, white and quivering, struck the keynote of danger.

With an apologetic gesture, as though to convey that his outer defences had been forced, he stood aside and announced--

"Mr. Mallory, sir, and Sergeant Bruce. I told them I didn't think you would see them so late, but they insisted."

Nugent rose, somewhat heavily, to greet his visitors. He was wondering where was the flaw in the web he had woven. There must be a loose thread somewhere, or these men would not be here. That little devil Enid must have been complaining about Tuke's behaviour, and if that was all there was no harm done. So there was no trace of disquiet in the sleepy smile and stifled yawn which he affected.

"Ah, my dear Mallory; I was dozing, I think. And you, Bruce," he murmured, with a pleasant nod for the police-officer. "This looks very formidable. What is wrong? If it is nothing urgent, perhaps you will sit down."

Vernon Mallory ignored the civility. "I have just seen my daughter," he began, with a quiet directness that duly impressed its hearer. "She has been shut up in the grotto in your grounds all the afternoon--whether with or without your knowledge is immaterial. The point is this: her imprisonment led to her learning that you had planned to entrap some female on to a vessel to-night, using Chermside in some unexplained manner, which, however, I can guess at, as a decoy. Now, a few moments before she escaped from your grotto Enid heard Violet Maynard's voice in your garden, apparently on the way down to the sh.o.r.e. I have telephoned to the Manor House, by favour of the exchange, and I am informed that Miss Maynard cannot be found in or about the house. What have you to say?"

Travers Nugent felt as if an icy finger had touched his spine. The indictment put forward with such inexorable precision comprised the very core of his whole vile plot. This terrible old man had even hinted that the means employed to drive Chermside on to the _Cobra_ were no secret to him. This was a bolt from the blue which only a bold front could avert. Everything depended on the source of Enid Mallory's amazing discovery; till he had ascertained that, it would be childish to abandon his position.