"Grown up, is it, the little spitfire?" grinned the young sailor. "And I am to be Mr. Beauchamp, am I? Well, we used to be Reggie and p.u.s.s.y when I was at home last, and, whatever you may do, the force of habit will be too strong for me. Even if I try to conquer it, which I shan't."

"That was three years ago, before you went to China," retorted Enid with dignity.

"What's the difference? We're neither of us very old yet, though I'm not sure I didn't like you better with a pigtail down your back than with all that crinkly bulge round your ears. However, to be serious, and stick to our muttons--what's the matter with Nugent?"

"Father doesn't like him," replied Enid, still inclined to ride the high horse.

"I know that Mr. Mallory doesn't like him, but why not?" persisted Reggie. "I have the greatest regard for your father's judgment in all things. He is invariably right in his conclusions, but he is so jolly reticent as to how he arrives at them. I saw in the club this morning, when Nugent's name cropped up, that he didn't cotton to the johnny, but he refused to be drawn on the subject."

Enid was mollified at last, as she always was by any tribute to the ac.u.men of the parent whom she adored.

"I don't know his reason," she said, as they turned to retrace their steps along the parade. "But father, till he retired, was at the Foreign Office, as you are aware, and in the course of his duties he learned all sorts of secrets and came in contact with all sorts of shady men. I fancy his antipathy dates back to something that occurred during his official career, but you might as well try to open an oyster with your fingers as induce him to divulge what he knows."

Reggie Beauchamp nodded, really more interested in the sprightly hoyden he was talking to than in the subject of their conversation. "I see," he said. "If that's the way you figure it out, I shall be aware of Mr.

Travers Nugent when I meet him at the club. If he's a dark horse he might rook me at billiards or bridge. I am obliged to you for this warning, Miss Mallory. You have probably saved an unsophisticated sailor from premature ruin and a suicide's grave."

Enid glanced up at him, her eyes dancing with mischief. "Bother Mr.

Nugent!" she exclaimed. "Now that you have addressed me with proper respect, you may call me p.u.s.s.y again if you wish--till you misbehave again."

So for the next half-hour they reverted to earlier nomenclature, and forgot to play at quarrelling as they wandered up and down by the summer sea. And when at length they parted, Enid to go home to pour out tea for her blind mother, and Reggie to enter the club, they lightly made an appointment which was to have its grim bearing on the tale that has yet to be told.

"Look here, Miss Mallory," said the Lieutenant, with feigned solemnity.

"I have to go into Exeter to-morrow to try on some new uniforms, and to-night I must stay at home and help the mater entertain a wretched curate whom she has invited to dinner. But I shall be at large to-morrow evening. What about a prowl along the sh.o.r.e or up the marsh? We might renew hostilities, and get some sort of a notion which of us is really right in the matter of our Christian names. I may change my mind, and come to the conclusion that you are, after all."

"Oh, may you, indeed, Reggie?" replied the girl, and with a roguish laugh she ran away without saying whether or no she would meet him. But he was familiar with his former playmate's impish ways, and it was in sublime confidence that the appointment would be kept that he loitered about on the seafront on the evening of the following day.

Sure enough, a little after nine, when the sunset glow still lingered in the western sky, Miss Enid's white-clad figure was seen threading its way through the loungers on the parade. It was a beautiful evening, and the junior section of residents and visitors were about in plenty. Young men and maidens, hatless and in evening dress, strolled up and down the asphalte side-walk between the coastguard station and the club, for the most part chattering of the handicaps in the forthcoming tennis tournament, while some few exceptions, too busy making eyes at each other for such frivolity, worshipped at the love-G.o.d's shrine. Such public worship, however, has ever been considered bad form at Ottermouth, except among septuagenarians and the rosy-cheeked couples who on Sundays "walk out" together in the country lanes.

Perhaps it was because of this unwritten law of the place that Reggie Beauchamp and Enid Mallory, having duly greeted each other with flippant discourtesy, but having the germ of quite another sentiment in their irresponsible hearts, intuitively turned their steps to the further end of the parade, and came to a halt at the spot where the struggle between the feeble efforts of the urban council and the giant forces of nature ceased. In front lay the bank of shingle across the former river's mouth; to the left stretched the sedge-covered, d.y.k.e-sected bed of the old estuary.

"Shall we go back to the parade or take a turn up the marsh?" asked Reggie. And then, without waiting for a reply, he added, "By Jingo! Look out to sea. There is a cruiser--the _Terrible_, I think, or one of her cla.s.s."

Enid followed the direction of his pointing finger, and in the fast-fading twilight saw the great four-funnelled monster steaming slowly about two miles out at sea. Even as they looked, the big warship became little more than a huge blurred shape, barely discernible in the darkness that was swiftly blotting out land and sea.

"Well, she won't bite, I suppose," said the girl carelessly.

"No, but she might bark," laughed the Lieutenant. "I expect she's out for night practice with her heavy guns--with blank charges, of course."

The young people quickly lost interest in the ship, and, turning aside, struck into the path traversed by Leslie Chermside and Levison on the morning of the preceding day. It was raised above the level of the mud-flats which skirted it on the right; on the other side rose the umbrageous bank of the old water-course, increasing the shadows in which they walked.

Presently Enid's hand stole under her companion's arm, and they glided naturally into the frank comradeship which had prevailed between them long before the mutual banter which they had lately affected, and which was probably due to a desire to conceal the first stirrings of something stronger than a boy-and-girl attachment. They were both of the age when young folk are supremely susceptible, but have a self-conscious dread of being thought so. Out here on the marsh, in the kindly mantle of a moonless summer night, they could enjoy the pleasure of propinquity without fear of being laughed at.

"Let's sit down here for a bit while I smoke a cigarette," said Reggie, when they had gone half a mile along the marsh. "It is the old ambush, as we called it, where we used to picnic when I was a middy and you were a kid."

He ran down the side of the raised path into a little glade formed by some dwarf oaks at the base of the miniature cliff, and Enid followed, seating herself on the low-growing branch of one of the trees. It was quite dark now--so dark that though they were very close to the path they had quitted, they could not be seen from it. Even in daylight they would have been invisible behind their leafy screen.

"I suppose you executed that manoeuvre because you heard the footsteps behind us," said Enid in a whisper.

"Footsteps? I didn't hear any," replied Reggie.

"Hush! Don't speak. You can hear them now."

The sound of hurrying feet was distinctly audible now from the path, and a moment later a man--the heavy tread left no doubt that it was a man--went by. He was almost running, and they could hear his quick breathing, but it was impossible to tell whether he was tall or short, young or old, rich or poor, in the inky blackness that had swallowed up the marsh.

"A telegraph boy taking a short cut to the Manor House," suggested Enid when the steps had died away.

"Too late for that--the office closed two hours ago," replied Reggie Beauchamp carelessly. "More likely some poacher who has been setting snares for rabbits, and thought he heard a keeper behind him. The Ottermouth fishermen used to be precious handy with a bit of copper wire and a bootlace."

The brief interruption pa.s.sed from their minds, and they had been chattering for about ten minutes when once again the silence of the marsh was broken by the sound of advancing steps. This time the wayfarer came along in more leisurely fashion, and in this case also it was possible to guess from the heavy footfall that the pa.s.ser by was a man.

Perhaps a minute elapsed, and then, just as the young people were becoming absorbed in each other again, there came from further along the marsh--that is to say, from the direction to which both the successive pedestrians had been proceeding--a sudden sharp cry, ending in a long-drawn wail.

"What on earth was that?" exclaimed Enid, jumping down from her bough.

"Goodness knows," laughed the careless sailor. "Either a bereaved cow or a curlew suffering from nightmare. Sit down again, p.u.s.s.y; it was nothing to worry about."

"It struck me as being distinctly human," said Enid doubtfully, but she swung herself back into the tree, willing to be convinced that there was nothing wrong, rather than terminate a _tete-a-tete_ that was rapidly gliding into a flirtation. Another pleasant quarter of an hour slipped by, and then at the beats of a distant clock in the town striking half-past ten she dropped from her perch.

"I must be getting back, or father will be wondering what has become of me," she said as she made for the entrance of their lair.

Reggie's detaining hand fell on her arm.

"Half a second," he said. "There is some one coming along the path--one of those chaps who went by returning, perhaps. Better let him get ahead, whoever he is, before we break cover. We don't want company on our way back."

So they waited in the shadows, listening to the oncoming footsteps till the man who caused them was nearly opposite their hiding-place in the little glade. His ident.i.ty was nothing to them; they had no thought but to enjoy their homeward stroll without having to tread too closely on the heels of any inconvenient outsider.

And then, suddenly, far out at sea a great shaft of light shot skyward, and, after steadying itself in a perpendicular gleam, swooped down upon the marsh, moving to and fro across the broad expanse, prying out its secret places and showing up each reed and sedge in an electric glare, that was twice as effective as lightning because it dwelt longer on its objectives. At first the radiant tongue played on the opposite side of the marsh, then it flickered on the central wastes, and finally darted on to the path close to Reggie and Enid just as the man they had heard advancing pa.s.sed by.

Unseen themselves in the thicket, they had a clear view of him as he strode along the path, for, the latter being raised several feet above their level, his face was silhouetted against the dark sky beyond the electric beam. Their glimpse was only momentary, because as though dazzled, he raised his hand to his eyes, and altogether he was not ten seconds within the range of their vision, but it lasted long enough to enable Enid to whisper her companion--

"That was Mr. Chermside, the young officer from India who has been staying down here for the last month. He's supposed to be awfully gone on Violet Maynard, the daughter of the rich Birmingham man who has taken the Manor House for the summer."

"Then I expect that is where he was coming from," suggested Reggie. "I met him in the club yesterday. Your father introduced him. He seemed a decent sort of chap, but down on his luck I thought."

"You have made two blunders in one statement," was Miss Enid's pert retort. "He can't have been coming from the Manor House because he wasn't in evening dress. And he can't be down on his luck because he's got heaps of money. Why, he's going to start on a cruise round the world soon in a steam yacht that is fitting out at Portland."

"Sorry I spoke," said Reggie. "Come, he's far enough ahead not to be a nuisance now; let me give you a hand up on to the path. I suppose that Mr. Mallory is prejudiced against Chermside, since he's a friend of Travers Nugent, eh?"

Disdaining the offer of a.s.sistance, Enid ran lightly up the slope on to the path before replying.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Their glimpse was only momentary, because, as though dazzled, he raised his hand to his eyes."]

"On the contrary," she said as Reggie joined her, "I can't quite make father out on the subject of Mr. Leslie Chermside. For once in a way the dear old man is inconsistent, or so he seems to me. He won't commit himself to a definite opinion, but I can see that he is deeply interested in Mr. Nugent's friend, and in the relations existing between the pair. I think, from signs and portents known only to myself, that father rather likes Mr. Chermside."

"Lucky for Chermside," Reggie absently mused aloud. "There!" he added with a quick return to nautical briskness. "Thank goodness that infernal searchlight has moved off us and found the town at last. I prefer being at the other end of the beastly thing to having it in one's eyes. There goes the first gun from the cruiser."

And under cover of the restored darkness arms were clasped again, and the young heads fell very close together for the rest of the way back to the town that was now being vigorously bombarded in mimic warfare.

Two miles out at sea the big guns flashed and boomed, and ahead of them on the marshland path the footsteps of the man they had seen in the rays of the searchlight were dying away, so quickly had he outpaced the lingerers. But Lieutenant Beauchamp and Miss Enid Mallory took no heed of either, little dreaming of the terrible significance that attached to what they had seen and heard that night.