“Hardly,” replied Christian, gazing upwards at the dizzy height. “It is rather nasty stuff--slippery in parts and soft.”
He turned and strolled off by Hilda's side. With a climber's love of a rocky height he looked upwards as they walked, and she noted the direction of his gaze.
Presently they sat on the edge of the boat over which Stanley's sense of proprietorship had been so grievously outraged.
“What do you know, Christian, or what do you suspect about Signor Bruno?” asked Hilda suddenly.
Stanley was running across the sands towards them, and Christian, seeing his approach, avoided the question by a generality.
“Wait a little longer,” he said. “Let me have Trevetz's answer to confirm my suspicions, and then I will tell you. Suspicions are dangerous things to meddle with. In imparting them to other people it is so difficult to remember that they _are_ suspicions and nothing more.”
At this moment Stanley arrived and threw himself down breathlessly on the warm sand.
“Chris!” he exclaimed, “come down here and look at these seams in the boat--the damp is there still.”
The boat was clinker-built, and where the planks overlapped a slight appearance of dampness was certainly discernible. Christian lay lazily leaning upon his elbow, sometimes glancing at the boat in obedience to Stanley's accusatory finger, sometimes looking towards Hilda, whose eyes were turned seawards.
Suddenly he caught sight of some words pencilled on the stern-post of the boat, and by the merest chance refrained from calling Stanley's attention to them. Drawing nearer, he could read them easily enough.
“It certainly looks,” he said rising, “as if the boat had been in the water, but it may be that the dampness is merely owing to heavy dew. The boat wants painting, I think.”
He knew well enough that little Stanley's suspicions were correct. There was no doubt that the boat had been afloat quite recently; but Christian knew his duty towards the _Beacon_ and sacrificed his strict sense of truth to it.
On the way home he was somewhat pre-occupied--as much, that is to say, as he was in the habit of allowing. The pencil scrawl supplied food enough for conjectural thought. The writing was undoubtedly fresh, and this was the 26th of the month. Some appointment was made for midnight by the words pencilled on the boat, and the journalist determined that he would be there to see. The question was, should he go alone? He watched Sidney Carew walking somewhat heavily along in front of him, and decided that he would not seek aid from that quarter. There was no time to communicate with Mr. Bodery, so the only course open to him was to go by himself.