It was now dark, and these more minute features of the scene were invisible to Max Van Duren. All that he could discern was, that the hotel was built close to the edge of the cliff, at the bottom of which cliff the tide was now washing heavily in with the noise of low thunder.
Having satisfied himself that there was no one about, Van Duren left the shelter of the shrubbery through which he had hitherto crept, and swiftly crossing the intervening open space, he sought the shelter of another fringe of shrubbery which grew between the gradually rising edge of the cliff and the carriage-drive that led up to the main entrance of the hotel. Keeping well within the shade of the evergreens, and climbing higher step by step, a few minutes more brought him close up to one corner of the house. It was now requisite to move with extreme caution. Suddenly he heard the sound of voices, and two or three loud goodnights. Some one was evidently leaving the hotel, and would pass close by him in a few moments. It would never do to be found there; so he plunged deeper into the shrubbery, and presently found himself close to one of the lighted windows that he had seen from the valley below. He hardly knew whether to advance or retire. The question was. Who were the occupants of the room? If strangers only, he would go quietly back by the way he had come; but if there was a chance of seeing Miriam--well, to see her again, he was prepared to risk much. He hated her, or fancied that he did, and yet there was still a strange fascination for him in the thought that he was close to her, that he was only separated from her by the thickness of a wall. Had he met her there alone in the shrubbery, he would have strangled her, but after that he would have kissed her and wept over her, and would probably have ended all by jumping over the cliff.
He crept close up to the window and peered through the Venetians. Fortunately for his purpose, they were not very closely drawn, and he could see into the room without difficulty. It was a large room, and was lighted by another window opposite to that through which Van Duren was now looking. This second window--a French one, by the way--was wide open, for the evening was somewhat sultry. Beyond it was small balcony, and then the cliff, and, a hundred feet below, the white-lipped waves. Round a table in the middle of the room, four gentlemen were seated in earnest conversation. Three of them Van Duren had never seen before, but in the fourth he had no difficulty in recognizing his quondam lodger, Mr. Peter Byrne. It is true that the white locks, the hump, and the general air of feebleness and decrepitude had all disappeared; but Byrne's strongly-marked features could not be mistaken for those of any other man. But hardly had Van Duren time to notice all this, before his eyes were drawn to and concentrated on an object that was standing in the middle of the table. He shuddered from head to foot, and turned suddenly sick as he looked. He had recognized the object in a moment. It was the silver-clamped box which the divers had brought up from the bottom of the sea: it was the box for the sake of which Paul Stilling had been stabbed in his sleep.