"We were talking of a swim that George and I propose to have in these pleasant waters," he remarked. "There are supposed to be a good many sharks about, and Virginia is advising prudence."

"Oh!" breathed Lady Gardiner. "She is quite right. We will all join our persuasions to hers. But the Countess tells me this island is actually New Caledonia, the French penal settlement. Isn't that where your friend Miss Dalahaide's brother is imprisoned?"

"I believe so," said Virginia.

"How exciting! And how well you've kept the secret of this expedition! Is there any chance of our coming across the interesting murderer?"

"Don't call him that!" Virginia cried hotly. "How do you suppose that it would be possible for us to come across him? Do tourists who go to Portland 'come across' prisoners who have been convicted of murder--whether innocent or not? Noumea isn't the only port we have visited. It is on our way. We shall stop a day or two, and then--we shall go on somewhere else."

"Quite so," drily returned Lady Gardiner.

It was noon when they slowly steamed into the beautiful harbour of Noumea, and before them lay the crime-cursed land, fair with the fatal fairness of deadly nightshade.

There, for nearly five years, Maxime Dalahaide had not lived, but existed. To give him back to life, she had come thousands of miles and spent more than twenty thousand pounds. What would they find that he had become, if those precious doc.u.ments which Roger had obtained proved as potent as they hoped? Would his brain and heart have been strong enough to bear the hopeless agony, the shame, the hideous a.s.sociations of those years which to him must have seemed a century of despair; or would he have fallen under the burden?

Virginia shivered as if with cold, as she fancied a hard, official voice announcing that Number So-and-So was dead.

CHAPTER VII

THE GATES OPEN

The Countess de Mattos had a headache which was so severe, she announced, that it would prevent her from landing; besides, she was not interested in convicts. Lady Gardiner, on the contrary, was greatly interested.

Never had she been more alert; never had her black eyes been so keen. She wanted to go everywhere; she wanted to see everything. She thought Noumea a charming place; she had "really _no_ sympathy for the prisoners." One might commit a crime solely for the pleasure of being sent here.

The party of five went ash.o.r.e, and Kate's princ.i.p.al preoccupation seemed to be to keep as close to Virginia as possible. She had the air of expecting some choice excitement, which she might miss if the girl were lost sight of for a moment. But nothing in the manner of Virginia or her brother or cousin suggested that they had come to this strange spot "at the end of the world" with any object save that of amus.e.m.e.nt. They behaved just as they had behaved at Sydney, or any other port at which they had called. All five strolled up, under a blaze of tropical sunshine, to the Place des Cocotiers, and sitting on the shaded verandah of the Hotel de France, sipped a cooling drink concocted of oranges, lemons and pineapple. Then they sauntered on again, much observed by a few weary-looking persons they met, through broad streets, with long, low, white houses.

Dr. Grayle kept beside Lady Gardiner now, and they walked in front, as the former was supposed to have studied the subject of the penal settlement so thoroughly as to be qualified for guide.

Kate glanced over her shoulder often; but Dr. Grayle succeeded in genuinely interesting her in a story of an atrocious criminal who had been expatriated to Noumea some years before. When she looked hurriedly back, ostensibly to ask Roger Broom if he had ever heard the spicy narrative, the three had disappeared.

Lady Gardiner flushed in anger with them for their duplicity, with herself for her carelessness in letting them slip away. "Dear me! what _has_ become of the others?" she exclaimed. "We must turn back and find them."

Dr. Grayle took the defection calmly--so calmly that Kate leaped to the conviction that he was in the plot against her. The others wanted to go somewhere or do something without her, and this little brown-faced, sharp-eyed man had been told off as a kind of decoy duck. But she would circ.u.mvent them yet. She _would_ know what was going on.

"They have probably gone to buy some bit of carving or other souvenirs of convict make," said the doctor. "Certainly we'll turn back if you like."

They did turn back, and wandered about in all the (according to Dr.

Grayle) most likely places to find the lost ones, but in vain. Kate could have burst into tears of rage. She was hot, tired, dusty, and--worst of all--thwarted. It was hateful to feel herself helpless in the plotters'

hands, being made to dance when they pulled the strings, and to know that this "horrid little brown man" was secretly laughing at her behind his polite air of concern. Yet she _was_ helpless, and had to acknowledge it.

If she left the doctor and went off on an expedition of independent exploration she would not know which way to go, and might get into trouble. But at last she could no longer bear her wrongs in silence; and, after all, she had nothing to gain by being nice to Dr. Grayle.

"I suppose you think," she burst out angrily, "that you are making a fool of me, and that I don't know it. But I'm not as simple as you seem to believe. I'm perfectly well aware that there's a mystery going on, and that all these elaborate precautions are to keep me out of it."

Dr. Grayle raised his eyebrows. "Then you are much more enlightened than I am," he returned mildly. "I'm really quite at loss to know what you mean, Lady Gardiner."

"In plain words, I mean that you are walking me off my feet to cover the others' escape. You know perfectly well where they are, but they've ordered you to keep out of the way, and you are doing as you're told, like a nice, obedient little man. I never was so abominably treated in my life."

"I can't see, even if Miss Beverly and her two relations choose to go off for a little private sight-seeing on their own account, that either you or I have anything to complain of," said the doctor. "We are outsiders, and are both very well paid for our services. My opinion is that few persons in our position receive as much consideration from their employers as we do."

Kate was so furious at this snub (which found a vital spot) that she was literally speechless for a moment. She would have liked to strike the impertinent little wretch who dared put her on a level with himself; but she could hardly do that, even in Noumea. When the wave of angry blood flowed back from her brain, and she recovered presence of mind, she turned abruptly and walked away from the doctor. But he was at her side again almost immediately, keeping up with her without any appearance of haste, though she quickened her pace in spite of fatigue, looking as cool, as serene, as if he had been taking an afternoon stroll in Bond Street. Evidently he had torn a leaf out of Roger Broom's book; and Kate recalled the forgotten fact that it was Roger who had recommended him to Virginia's notice.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "but you are now going toward that part of the town which was burnt down at the time of the plague here, about three years ago. It is leading you rather out of the way of the hotel, where we were all to meet for luncheon; but perhaps you have a curiosity to see it? I have studied a map of the place, and if you like can point out----"

"I do not like!" Lady Gardiner cut in sharply. "I wish to send a cablegram."

"Unfortunately, that is impossible."

"_What!_ One can't telegraph from this loathsome place?"

"I thought you were so charmed with it? One cannot telegraph to-day."

"Why not to-day? Is it a holiday for the operators?"

"So far as we are concerned."

"Ah! I see what you mean now. You intend to prevent my communicating with my friends! But this is too much. I will do so."

"I fancied you were attached to Miss Beverly."

"What has that to do with it?"

"A good deal. We are Miss Beverly's guests--or her servants, whichever you please. In either case, we surely owe her fealty. I have been informed that she does not wish to have any communication made with the outside world, from Noumea."

"_I_ was not informed of this mandate."

"I dare say she thought that you would be guided by my counsel."

"Counsel! A strange word for your tyranny. At least, I suppose, there are no orders against returning to the hotel?"

"None. So long as we are discreet."

"And in what does your idea of discretion consist, pray?"

"Keeping ourselves to ourselves. They are rather suspicious folk in New Caledonia. Few tourists come this way. Probably we are the first people who have landed here not on business for many a long year."

"I am not at all sure that we haven't come on business--very particular business."

"I wouldn't make that remark before anybody else, if I were you. You might--get into trouble."

As Dr. Grayle said this he looked steadily at Lady Gardiner. Their eyes met, and so peculiarly cold and menacing was the expression of his that she felt unpleasantly chilled, and even subdued. Those steady eyes so underscored his words with sinister meaning, that Kate dared not ask whether the "trouble" to which he suggestively referred would come to her through him or the inhabitants of Noumea. She thought that he looked capable of reducing her to helplessness by violence, if she showed signs of resisting his will, and she relapsed into silence. But she had not given up the hope of cabling to Loria. She resolved to watch her chance.

They walked back to the Hotel de France, but the others had not returned, though the time fixed was long past. Kate was so hungry and weary that again she could have wept, and was secretly glad when Dr. Grayle ordered luncheon for two, though the prospect of a meal _tete-a-tete_ was not enjoyable. She complained, however, of being too warm and dusty to eat, unless she could refresh herself by splashing a little in cold water, and she had to look down to hide the light which flashed into her eyes when Grayle consented without protest to her taking a room, and re-making her toilet before lunch.

"Now I shall get off that cable," she said to herself. Hardly had she entered the bare, poorly furnished bedroom when she rang, and stood waiting eagerly for a servant to answer the summons. Presently came the expected knock. She flew to open the door, and--there stood the little doctor, behind him approaching a maid, probably an ex-convict.