"Thank G.o.d we are at the end of this horrible suspense," she said.

"It has been a cruel nightmare for me, Mr. Brendon."

"I have felt much for you, Mrs. Pendean, and admired your marvellous patience."

"Who could but be patient with the poor wretch? He has paid the price of what he did. Even I can say that. There are worse things than death, Mr. Brendon, and you will presently see them in Robert Redmayne's eyes. Even Giuseppe was sobered after our first meeting."

That she should use the Italian's Christian name so easily struck unreasoning regret into the heart of Mark. It gave him an excuse for a question.

"Do you believe all Doria tells you? Is he regarded here as a domestic or an equal?"

She smiled.

"As a superior rather than an equal. Yes, I see no reason to doubt his story. He is obviously a great gentleman and a man of natural fine feeling. Breeding and education are different things. He has little education, but a native delicacy of mind belongs to him. You feel it."

"He interests you?"

"He does," she confessed frankly. "Indeed I owe him something, for he has a wonderful art and tact to strike the right note with me."

"He has had rare opportunities," said Brendon grudgingly.

"Yes; but not everybody would have taken them. I came here distracted--half mad. My uncle tried to be kind, but he has no imagination and could rise to nothing higher than reading me pa.s.sages from 'Moby d.i.c.k.' Doria was of my own generation and he has a feminine quality that most men lack."

"I thought women hated feminine qualities in men."

"Perhaps I misuse my words. I mean that he possesses a quick sympathy and a sort of intuition that are oftener found in a woman than a man."

Mark was silent and she asked a question.

"I could not fail to note that you do not like him, or if that is too strong, that you see nothing to admire in him. What is there antipathetic in his nature to you, and in yours to him? He doesn't like you either. Yet you both seem to me such gracious, kindly men.

Surely you have no bias against other nationalities--a man with a cosmopolitan record like yours?"

At this thrust Brendon perceived how unconsciously he had displayed an aversion for which no real reason existed--no reason, at any rate, that he might fairly declare. And yet he was frank; nor did his response perhaps surprise her, though she appeared to be astonished.

"There's only one answer, Mrs. Pendean: I'm jealous of Signor Doria."

"Jealous! Why, Mr. Brendon--what have you to envy him?"

"You would not be likely to guess," he replied, though in truth Jenny had already done so accurately enough. "I am sure that if Doria is a gentleman I need not be jealous, seeing what is in my thought cannot be spoken to you by any man for many a long day to come. And yet to envy him is natural; and when you ask what I envy, I will be honest and tell you. Fate has given him the privilege of lightening the cruel burden placed upon your shoulders. His sympathy and intuition you admit have succeeded in so doing. You will say that no Englishman could have done that exactly in the way he did--perhaps you are right; but one Englishman regrets from the bottom of his heart that the opportunity was denied him."

"You have been good and kind, too," she answered. "Do not think I am ungrateful. It was not your fault that you failed to discover Robert Redmayne. And, after all, what would success have amounted to? Only the capture of the unfortunate man a few months sooner. Now, I hope, he will see that there is nothing for it but to give himself up to his brother and trust his fellow creatures to be merciful."

Thus she led conversation away from Doria and herself, and Mark took the hint. He no longer doubted that her regard for the Italian might easily ripen into love. He a.s.sured himself that he dreaded this for her, yet suspected all the time that his regret was in reality selfish and inspired by personal disappointment rather than fear for her.

Anon they saw the flash of a ruby and an emerald upon the sea westward and soon heard Redmayne's motor boat returning. Less than half an hour had pa.s.sed, and Brendon hoped that Robert Redmayne had yielded to his brother's entreaty and was now about to land; but this had not happened. Only Giuseppe Doria ascended the steps and he had little to tell.

"They didn't want me yet, so I ran back," he said. "All goes well; his cavern lies quite near to us. The lamp flashed out only two miles away and I ran in; and there was the man standing just outside a small cave on the little beach before it. He cried out a strange welcome. He said, 'If any other lands but you, Ben, I will shoot him!' So the master shouted that he was to fear nothing, and he jumped ash.o.r.e as soon as our nose touched the sand; then told me to put off instantly. They went back into the cave together and I am to return within an hour."

He explained the position of the cave.

"It is above the little beach, revealed at low tide, where cowries are to be found," he said. "I took Madonna there on an occasion to gather the little sh.e.l.ls for the fancywork the master makes."

"Uncle Ben fashions all sorts of wonderful ornaments out of sh.e.l.ls,"

explained Jenny.

Doria smoked some cigarettes and then descended again. In twenty minutes the boat had gone to sea once more, while Jenny bade Mark good night and retired. She felt it better not to meet her uncles on their arrival, and Brendon agreed with her.

CHAPTER VIII

DEATH IN THE CAVE

Alone, Brendon regarded the future with some melancholy, for he believed that only Chance had robbed him of his great hope. Chance, so often a valued servant, now, in the mightiest matter of his life, turned against him. Not for a moment could he or would he compare himself with the man he now regarded as a successful rival; but accident had given Doria superb opportunities while denying to Brendon any opportunity whatever. He told himself, however, that a cleverer man than he would have made opportunities. What was his love worth if it could not triumph over the handicaps of Chance?

He felt ruled out, and he had not even the excuse to impose himself upon Jenny and still seek to win her by pretending that he was better fitted to make her permanently happy than his rival. Indeed he knew that in the long run such a cheerful and versatile soul as Giuseppe was more likely to satisfy Jenny than he, for Doria would have all his time to devote to her, while marriage and a home must be only a part of Brendon's future existence. There remained his work, and he well knew that, whatever Jenny's position and independence, he would not leave the business that had brought him renown. Only on one ground he doubted for her, and again and again feared that such an attractive being as Doria might follow the tradition of his race and presently weary of one woman.

Next he considered another aspect of the situation and thought of every word that Jenny had recently spoken. They pointed to one conclusion in his judgment and he believed that when a seemly period had elapsed she would allow herself to love Doria. That was as much as to say she had already begun to do so, if unconsciously. This surprised him, for even granting the obvious fascination of the man, he could hardly believe that the image of her first husband had already begun to grow faint in Jenny's memory. He remembered her grief and protestations at Princetown; he perceived the deep mourning which she wore. She was indeed young, but her character had never appeared to him youthful or light-hearted. Against that fact, however, he had certainly only known her after her sorrow and loss, and he remembered how she had sung on the moor upon the evening she pa.s.sed him in the sunset light. She had probably been cheerful and joyous before her husband's death. But she surely never possessed a frivolous nature. His knowledge of character told him that. And there was strength as well as sweetness in her face. Serious subjects had interested her in his small experience of her company; but that might be because she responded, as a delicate instrument, to her environment; and he himself had never been anything but serious beside her. With the Italian, no doubt, there had happened moments when she could sometimes smile and forget. Doria's own affairs, of which he loved to chatter, had doubtless often distracted Mrs. Pendean from her own melancholy reflection, and in any case she could not sigh forever at her age.

The return of the motor boat arrested his reflections. She had been gone about an hour when Mark perceived her running very swiftly homeward. Guessing that Bendigo Redmayne and his brother were now aboard, he prepared to retire until the following day to the room he occupied. He had arranged to be invisible unless Robert Redmayne were willing to see him and discuss the future.

But Doria once more came back to "Crow's Nest" alone, and what he had to tell soon altered the detective's plans. For Giuseppe was much concerned and feared that evil had overtaken his master.

"After the time was up, I ran in," he said, "and the rising tide brought me within a few yards of the mouth of the cave. The light was burning but I could see neither of them. I hailed twice and got no answer. All was still as the grave and I went near enough to the sh.o.r.e to satisfy myself that there was n.o.body there. The cave was empty. Now I am a good deal alarmed and I come back to you."

"You didn't land?"

"I didn't touch sh.o.r.e, but I was within five yards of the cave, none the less, for the tide is now risen. The light shone upon emptiness. I beg you will return with me, for I feel that some evil thing may have happened."

Much puzzled, Brendon delayed only to get his revolver and an electric torch. He then descended with Doria to the water and they were soon afloat again. The boat ran at full speed for a few minutes; then her course was changed and she turned in under the cliffs. Mark soon saw a solitary gleam of light, like a glowworm, at sea level in the solid darkness of the precipices, and Doria, slowing down, crept in toward it. Presently he shut off his engine and the launch grounded her prow on a little beach before the entrance of Robert Redmayne's hiding-place. The lamp shone brightly, but its illumination, though serving to show the cavern empty, was not sufficient to light its lofty roof, or reveal a second exit, where a tunnel ran up at the rear and could be climbed by steps roughly hewn in the stone.

"It is a place my master showed me long ago," explained Doria. "It was used by smugglers in the old days and they have cut steps that still exist."

Both men landed and Giuseppe made fast the launch. Then immediate evidence of tragedy confronted them. The floor of the cave was of very fine shingle intermixed with sand. The sides were much broken and the strata of the rock had wrinkled and bent in upon itself. The lamp stood on a ledge and flung a radius of light over the floor beneath. Here had been collected the food and drink supplied to Redmayne on the previous day, and it was clear that he had eaten and drunk heartily. But the arresting fact appeared on the beaten and broken surface of the ground. Heavy boots had torn this up and plowed furrows in it. At one spot lay an impression, as though some large object had fallen, and here Brendon saw blood--a dark patch already drying, for the substance of it was soaked away in the sandy shingle on which it had dropped.

It was a blot rather than a pool and under his electric lamp Mark perceived a trail of other drops extending irregularly toward the back of the cavern. From the mark of the fallen body a ridge ploughed through the shingle extending rearward, and he judged that one of the two men had certainly felled the other and then drawn him toward the chimney, or tunnel that opened at the back of the cave.

Spots of blood and the dragged impression of some heavy body stretched along the ground to the stone steps and there disappeared.

The detective stopped here and inquired the length of the staircase and whither it led; but for a time his companion appeared too dazed to answer him. Giuseppe showed a good deal of the white feather, combined with sincere emotion at the implicit tragedy.

"This is death--death!" he kept repeating, and between his words his mouth hung open and his eyes rolled fearfully over the shadowy places round about him.

"Pull yourself together and help me if you can," said. Brendon.

"Every moment may make all the difference. It looks to me as though somebody had been dragged up here. Is that possible?"

"To a very powerful man it might be. But he was weak--no good."