The Zeppelin's Passenger Part 32

"I sha'n't be more than five or ten minutes," she promised Lessingham.

"Just look through those till I come back."

She hurried away, leaving Lessingham alone in the room. He stood for a moment listening. On the left-hand side, through the door which had been left ajar, he could hear the click of billiard b.a.l.l.s and occasional peals of laughter. On the right-hand side there was silence. He moved swiftly across the room and closed the door leading into the billiard room, deposited on the sofa the charts which he had been carrying, and hurried back to the secretary. With a sickening feeling of overwhelming guilt, he drew from his pocket a key and opened, one by one, the drawers through which they had not searched. It took him barely five minutes to discover--nothing. With an air of relief he rearranged everything.

When Philippa returned, he was sitting on the lounge, going through the charts which they had looked out together.

"Well?" she asked.

"There is nothing here," he decided, "which will help me very much. With your permission I will take this," he added, selecting one at random.

She nodded and they replaced the others. Then she touched him on the arm.

"Listen," she said, "are you perfectly certain that there is no one coming?"

He listened for a moment.

"I can't hear any one," he answered. "They've started a four-handed game of pool in the billiard room."

She smiled.

"Then I will disclose to you Henry's dramatic secret. See!"

She touched the spring in the side of the secretary. The false back, with its little collection of fis.h.i.+ng flies, rolled slowly up. The large and very wonderful chart on which Sir Henry had bestowed so much of his time, was revealed. Lessingham gazed at it eagerly.

"There!" she said. "That has been a great labour of love with Henry.

It is the chart, on a great scale, from which he works. I don't know a thing about it, and for heaven's sake never tell Henry that you have seen it."

He continued to examine the chart earnestly. Not a part of it escaped him. Then he turned back to Philippa.

"Is that supposed to be the coast on the other side of the point?" he asked.

"I don't exactly know where it is," she replied. "Every time Henry finds out anything new, he comes and works at it. I believe that very soon it will be perfect. Then he will start on another part of the coast."

"This is not the only one that he has prepared, then?" Lessingham enquired.

She shook her head.

"I believe it is the fifth," she replied. "They all disappear when they are finished, but I have no idea where to. To me they seem to represent a shocking waste of time."

Lessingham was suddenly taciturn. He held out his hand. "You are dining with us to-morrow night, remember," she said.

"I am not likely to forget," he a.s.sured her.

"And don't get drowned," she concluded. "I don't know any of these fishermen--I hate them all--but I'm told that Oates is the worst."

"I think that we shall be quite all right," he a.s.sured her. "Thanks very much for finding me the charts. What I have seen will help me."

Helen came in for a moment and their farewell was more or less perfunctory. Lessingham was almost thankful to escape. There was an unusual flush in his cheeks, a sense of bitter humiliation in his heart.

All the fervour with which he had started on his perilous quest had faded away. No sense of duty or patriotism could revive his drooping spirits. He felt himself suddenly an unclean and dishonoured being.

CHAPTER XXI

Towards three o'clock on the following afternoon, the boisterous wind of an uncertain morning settled down to worse things. It tore the spray from the crest of the gathering waves, dashed it even against the French windows of Mainsail Haul, and came booming down the open s.p.a.ces cliffwards, like the rumble of some subterranean artillery. A little group of fishermen in oilskins leaned over the railing and discussed the chances of Ben Oates bringing his boat in safely. Philippa, also, distracted by a curious anxiety, stood before the blurred window, gazing into what seemed almost a grey chaos. "Captain Griffiths, your ladys.h.i.+p."

She turned around quickly at the announcement. Even an unwelcome caller at that moment was almost a relief to her.

"How nice of you to come and see me on such an afternoon, Captain Griffiths," she exclaimed, as they shook hands. "Helen is over at the Canteen, Nora is hard at work for once in her life, and I seem most dolefully alone."

Her visitor's reception of Philippa's greeting promised little in the way of enlivenment. He seemed more awkward and ill at ease than ever, and his tone was almost threatening.

"I am very glad to find you alone, Lady Cranston," he said. "I came specially to have a few words with you on a certain matter."

Her momentary impulse of relief at his visit pa.s.sed away. There seemed to her something sinister in his manner. She was suddenly conscious that there was a new danger to be faced, and that this man's att.i.tude towards her was, for some reason or other, inimical. After the first shock, however, she prepared herself to do battle.

"Well, you seem very mysterious," she observed. "I haven't broken any laws, have I? No lights flas.h.i.+ng from any of my windows?"

"So far as I am aware, there are no complaints of the sort," the Commandant acknowledged, still speaking with an unnatural restraint. "My call, I hope, may be termed, to some extent, at least, a friendly one."

"How nice!" she sighed. "Then you'll have some tea, won't you?"

"Not at present, if you please," he begged. "I have come to talk to you about Mr. Hamar Lessingham."

"Really?" Philippa exclaimed. "Whatever has that poor man been doing now."

"Dreymarsh," her visitor proceeded, "having been const.i.tuted, during the last few months, a protected area, it is my duty to examine and enquire into the business of any stranger who appears here. Mr. Hamar Lessingham has been largely accepted without comment, owing to his friends.h.i.+p with you. I regret to state, however, that certain facts have come to my knowledge which make me wonder whether you yourself may not in some measure have been deceived."

"This sounds very ridiculous," Philippa interposed quietly.

"A few weeks ago," Captain Griffith continued, "we received information that this neighbourhood would probably be visited by some person connected with the Secret Service of Germany. There is strong evidence that the person in question is Mr. Hamar Lessingham."

"A graduate of Magdalen, my brother's intimate friend, and a frequent visitor at my father's house in Ches.h.i.+re," Philippa observed, with faint sarcasm.

"The possibility of your having made a mistake, Lady Cranston," Captain Griffiths rejoined, "has, I must confess, only just occurred to me. The authorities at Magdalen College have been appealed to, and no one of the name of Lessingham was there during any one of your brother's terms."

Philippa took the blow well. She simply stared at her caller in a noncomprehending manner.

"We have also information," he continued gravely, "from Wood Norton Hall--from your mother, in fact, Lady Cranston--that no college friend of your brother, of that name, has ever visited Wood Norton."

"Go on," Philippa begged, a little faintly. "Did I ever live there myself? Was Richard ever at Magdalen?"

Captain Griffiths proceeded with the air of a man who has a task to finish and intends to do so, regardless of interruptions.

"I have had some conversation with Mr. Lessingham, in the course of which I asked him to explain his method of reaching here, and his last habitation. He simply fenced with me in the most barefaced fas.h.i.+on. He practically declined to give me any account of himself."

Philippa rose and rang the bell.